The 1990s were definitely a vibe — but not the cool and carefree one that many Gen Zers like to believe it was. Especially if you were a woman.
Case in point, Annette Bening recently spoke to The Guardian about the kinds of criticisms she received when she first rose to fame. The “Nyad” star, who got her big break in 1990’s “The Grifters” at age 30, reminded the news outlet in a profile published Monday how fatphobic and sexist the ’90s were when she came to Hollywood after years of theater performances.
“It felt very funny to speak very quietly, very funny not to fill a room with your voice. They would always say: ‘You’re going to be too big and too loud ― and, by the way, you also put on 10lb [on camera],’” Bening said about the expectations of her at the time.
She also said that because she rose to fame at age 30, she was often criticized for looking her age.
“I remember, maybe when I was 35, people talking about how I was aging. Even in your 30s, there were those articles. Now, when I hear people worrying about it at 50, I think: What?” said Bening, who is now 65.
Although the “American Beauty” star ultimately summed up the ’90s as a “weird time,” she lamented the way women are still treated today.
“When women have complexity, when women are difficult, our metric for being able to accept them is so different,” she said. “It’s like politicians: there’s always this sense that they have to be likable. There’s a quality that a woman has to have that’s non-threatening and pleasing. Either that, or they have to be very conservative. Like [former British Prime Minister Margaret] Thatcher. We can accept a woman if she’s very conservative, but the idea of a liberal woman is much scarier.”
She also spoke of her exhaustion over how little progress there’s been for women.
“We’re moving away from the female stereotypes that we all struggled with for so long,” Bening said. “But then there’s been this weird backlash; there’s a beauty standard for young women that I think is really pretty tough. I don’t envy young women growing up now.”
Bening, who was nominated for a Golden Globe for 2017′s “20th Century Women,” did not elaborate on what these current beauty standards are, but plenty of younger women have expressed that social media has negatively affected the way they feel about their appearance.
A recent study conducted by Toronto’s York University found that looking at images of women who fit the “slim-thick” ideal ― a body type popularized by Kim Kardashian and Beyoncé ― causes more body dissatisfaction among young women than looking at images of women who are thin.
Random social media trends and the popularity of beauty filters that allow social media users to drastically tweak appearance have also been found to be detrimental to young people’s mental health.