The face that we won’t love. Evidently.
I must have missed the memo, but apparently we all hate Anne Hathaway. She’s dripping in acting awards, sports Audrey Hepburn eyes, supports an admirable charity, and even totes the baggage of a Hollywood heartbreak, but “we” hate her. And, poor girl, she knows it, which is why all the gossipmongers are laughing at the rumor that she “practiced her Oscar speech” so that she would sound “likable.”
And why do we hate her? There is a litany of excuses.
Anne Hathaway, apparently in the throes of “shamelessly jockeying” for an award.
“Her shameless jockeying for critical acclaim and awards consideration in her role in ‘Les Misérables,’” says this Shine! fashion editor. ”There’s no way you haven’t heard by now that Hathaway lost 25 pounds eating one oatmeal square a day, cut off her hair, sang her own songs, and forced her agent to get her the audition.”
So, in other words … she’s a serious actress? I don’t see anyone berating Christian Bale for touting his role-immersion tactics.
(Other evidentiary complaints from that post: “she’s a dork, but not a cool dork,” she’s always smiling, and “she tries too hard.” Man, sure sounds like a waste of space to me.)
Moments after Hathaway’s Oscar acceptance speech, which was prefaced with a breathy “It came true!” Twitter summarily ran rampant with (okay, admittedly hilarious) reactions like these:
In essence, though, it all comes back to what we perceive as the “neediness” factor.
Maybe it’s because I can relate. I once installed an “Unfriend Finder” Firefox plug-in on my Facebook account, for goodness sake. And how self-defeatingly helpful was that? So I could obsess over each person who unfriended me, wondering why they didn’t like me enough to stay connected? Retrace my steps so I could try to narrow down exactly which status update had perhaps offended them? Ridiculous.
But true.
And kind of smacks of what Hathaway is doing.
In every subject and arena of humanity, we are conditioned to look for what’s wrong. The negative. We seek out the bad even when perhaps none exists, because it is a basic survival trait that helped us evade animal predators. Take science, for instance, where “critical thinking” and “critical evaluation of theory and ideas” integrate heavily into everyday critical evaluation in order to “ask knowledgeable people to poke holes in what we’ve produced.” Is the experiment designed correctly? Were appropriate methods used to collect and analyze data? Are the results accurate?
In some ways, that seems to be what drives the Internet hate of Hathaway. We’re looking for what’s wrong, because something tips us off that she’s trying. We don’t like “trying,” I guess. We like “natural.”
Contrast that with Jennifer Lawrence, who doesn’t seem to be trying at all. She makes awkward off-the-cuff remarks and she trips on the Oscar stage on her way to her acceptance speech, but still “we” love her.
Because we only like people who are “naturally” “likable,” and if you aren’t innately adorable, resign yourself to being an unlovable misfit for the rest of your days.
Oh, wait, Kristen Stewart already cornered the market on that. But “we” still hate her, too.
Also, Lawrence flirted with Jack Nicholson, and we adoringly made a gif out of it. A gif!
… I’m sure the unfairness of this dichotomy is not lost on Hathaway, if she does indeed aspire so desperately to be likable. Particularly because a significant proportion of our population suffers from this exact fear.
So many of our updates to Facebook, Twitter, etc., scream, “Love me! Validate me! Tell me I’m important! Tell me I’m beautiful/handsome/talented/successful! Show everyone how lovable I am by how many favorites/retweets/likes this tiny, minute update in my life garners!”
Research shows this phenomenon of social media-motivated self-validation has promoted an increasing prevalence of narcissistic disorder within both the virtual realm and outside.
There’s hypocrisy in this post, because I fall prey and still struggle with the same malaise. I was in a relationship once where my boyfriend told me, “Look how many more ‘likes’ the picture of us got than theirs did. We are so much more attractive as a couple.”
As if that was the most important thing.
And sometimes, it really feels like it is. Even though it shouldn’t.
A lethal blend of irrelevant reality shows and social media has mired us in a microcosm of compliment-fishing and back-patting, where we become the stars of our own little shows. (And it sometimes produces travesties of Internet confessionals like this. Don’t ask, no one knows).
Yet when we recognize this trait in an actress like Hathaway, we uniformly condemn it.
Do we simply hate those vices which we most despise in ourselves? The ones we truly don’t want to admit, in the darkest corners of our soul? So much so that we vilify the people who really are in our corner?
It’s especially depressing when one reflects that the majority of the people railing on about Hathaway hate are women. Something that new it-girl and “Girls” creator Lena Dunham pointed out on Twitter, to the delighted mass favoriting and retweets of many.
… gotta say, I think Lena Dunham has it right. Wait. “We” like her, right? I’d better establish that first.
very good and relevant article thanks.
I indeed think we don’t like people who “try to be likeable” because it’s a reflection of our own imperfection to be likeable , and that reveals our hypocrisy
Precisely. And thanks! I’m thoroughly pleased you enjoyed.
Awesome read. As someone who was perusing the Twitterverse during the Oscars, immediately after Anne Hatthaway was announced as the winner of Best Supporting Actress I literally counted down the seconds until some snarky comment about “how annoying Anne Hathaway is” would pop up in my news feed. 3-2-1, and sure enough there was a torrent of them that came through.
And like you said, a lot of the vitriol seems to come from women, and even a lot of feminist women. I follow quite a bit of card carrying feminists on Twitter and many of them were just going off on her (admittedly they spent much more time criticizing Seth MacFarlane).
I’ve always liked Anne Hathaway. I think she’s a great actress, she was born in Brooklyn (represent), and in addition I find her very attractive.
you don’t get it. Hathaway is hated because her persona (in the psychological sense) is so excessive and calculated that it’s transparent. It appears she’s always acting, and usually when someone behaves that way it’s because there’s something about their true personality that they want to hide. Then when she sees everyone catching on to how fake she is she apparently responds by being more fake (practicing the acceptance speech as reported). The writer of this article is either lacking the small amount of emotional intelligence required to see how fake hathaway is, or deep down, is simply talking about herself and her own insecurities.
Your interpretation of and opinions of Hathaway are nearly word-for-word echoes of the interpretations and opinions I cited in my piece. I also openly admitted that, if the rumors concerning her speech are true, I share her perceived flaw. So, uh … exactly what new insight are you contributing to the discussion, again? Sorry.
sam m. , you don’t know Anne Hathaway personally to give a valid opinion of her persona. But, I will say it is refreshing to see a young celebrity lady , like Ms. Hathaway, be highly intelligent, well-spoken, and keep out of trouble- in a world that celebrates the horrible role models of Britney Spears and Rhianna. I am sick and tired of seeing articles ( especially from these so- called reputable publications ) and tweets that are trashing Hathaway or making a big deal about this ridiculous. The social media is acting as if she was convicted for murder. It has basically become this Scarlet Letter scenario. Men never have to deal with this type of cyber bullying and this type of hate ( example: Mel Gibson and Roman Polanski ) .
I really admired and respected the way Anne dealt with the scandal of her ex-boyfriend ( he spent time in prison for fraud ) , because she never played the sympathy game , and she never publicly bashed him. In my book, it proved she is a stand-up person. This dire need to bash her, says a lot about people’s self-hatred , insecurities, and their hatred for women. Unfortunately, I have to raise my young daughter in a world ( and cyber world ) that repeatedly loathes and chastises females. Instead of writing articles about the Hathaway hate, their should be articles written about that dehumanization of women ( and why it is condoned ) and why most females hate each other. All of this mess is scary to me, and I feel we have to be careful about what we put out to the universe.
Personally, I’ve always liked Anne Hathaway. She hasn’t behaved inappropriately, does some good charity work, and above all does what she’s paid to do: act well. Also, all actors are to some degree fake. They have to be to survive public scrutiny. If she hadn’t rehearsed her speech (and I feel many of them do) she probably would have made a mistake and then we’d be hearing about how unprofessional she is. What it comes down to is “haters gonna hate”. People enjoy feeling superior and passing judgement, and picking on someone they’ll never meet gives them that.