Amy Schumer has responded to critics who say her upcoming movie “I Feel Pretty” fails to relay a body-positive image.
“There’s been a lot of projection,” Schumer said in a recent interview with Vulture, arguing against those who have slammed the film’s trailer for portraying her character as an “ugly” woman who, after injuring herself, regards herself as pretty.
“I heard a lot of, ‘She doesn’t have a right to feel bad about herself because she looks however she looks,'” Schumer said. “I heard the comment, ‘Why does she have to think of herself as skinny?’ a lot.”
Some of the jeers stemmed from a Twitter thread by comedian Sofie Hagen: “How about instead of her ‘hitting her head and damaging her brain’ in order to become so deluded that she’d think she was ACTUALLY pretty, she read about capitalism and [realized] that women’s low self-esteem is a patriarchal ploy and that she is worthy of self-love?”
Schumer told Vulture the movie is “not about an ugly troll becoming beautiful, it’s about a woman who has low self-esteem finding some… Everyone’s got a right to feel that feeling, regardless of their appearance.”
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She also said the audience never knows how her character, Renee, sees herself.
“You never see how I see myself! That’s a guess, that Renee thinks of herself as skinny,” Schumer said. “In the scene after the head injury, the assumption is that the woman I see when I look in the mirror is skinny, but I’m just seeing my same self and perceiving my body as beautiful. She doesn’t say, ‘I’m so thin!’ She just says that she’s amazed by her jawline, and her boobs, and her ass. If anything, that sounds like a more voluptuous woman to me.”
“We all struggle with self-esteem. I certainly have,” she continued. “Your friends who you think are so beautiful, they could be struggling too. You want them to see themselves the way you see them, but it’s not our place to say who should be allowed to have low self-esteem.”
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The actress urged would-be critics to see the movie before making judgements about its message.
“There was a backlash to the trailer, and that was kind of disappointing,” she said. “Even then, though, I understood it, and knew that the film wasn’t about what they thought it was about. I just wished they could see it.”
Read Schumer’s full interview over here.
“I Feel Pretty” opens in theaters Friday.
Evolution of Amy Schumer: From Stand Up Comic to 'I Feel Pretty' (Photos)
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