The Importance of Perception.

Last night I mentioned, on twitter, that I find Keira Knightley exceedingly attractive. The few responses I got were judgemental, to say the least. The word ‘anorexic’ was thrown around, which I personally find distasteful (Aside: in general, calling every thin woman anorexic is the same as wandering around calling every heavyset person a disgusting pig, with a nice dollop of insisting they have deep mental problems on top.)

This is a reaction I have gotten several times regarding admitting I find Knightley, or any woman of a similar body type, attractive. Other common responses include a reference to ‘real woman’ which indicates that thinner females are somehow not female enough, or accusing me of chauvinism and/or causing eating disorders due to finding certain women attractive.

The thing I find funny, however, is this: If I mention that I find Natalie Portman attractive, I won’t hear a single thing about what is wrong with her. Why is this interesting? Mostly because of this quote, from Knightley’s wikipedia entry:

Knightley appeared in several television movies in the mid to late 1990s—as well as ITV1’s The Bill—before being cast as Sabé, Padmé Amidala’s decoy, in the 1999 science fiction blockbuster Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Knightley was cast in the role due to her close resemblance to Natalie Portman, who played Padmé; the two actresses’ mothers had difficulty telling their daughters apart when the girls were in full makeup.

The big difference is public perception of the two, despite the fact that at one point, they were close enough in appearance to be considered doppelgangers. But when mentioning finding Natalie Portman attractive on twitter, the irked response wasn’t there.

My guess is that it comes down to the associations made in tabloid culture. Portman is more likely to bring to mind her extreme acting talent, her Harvard education, or her work with the UN. She is also unquestionably certified as acceptable by most of my peers, who are, to be fair, twentysomething urbanites. And yet, when I bring up Knightley, someone who is allegedly interchangeable from a physical standpoint, the first things that comes to mind are likely the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and how thin she is.

I don’t know if either of these women struggles with an eating disorder, but I find it interesting that one is instantly assumed to, while the other is generally just praised for being so awesome. If public perception of the overall traits of a person, is the major separation between a thin woman being called anorexic or not, maybe we can understand why so much work, money, and importance is put on public image.

[End Note: I have a personal problem with assuming someone’s body type is inherently the result of mental illness, an eating disorder, a physical problem, or a lack of self-control. It not only trivializes a serious issue, it also encourages exactly the behaviour it is supposed to discourage, by insisting people have to be ‘broken’ in order to look the way they do.]