OPINION: Aging Well? The Body Shaming of Carrie Fisher

There may be any number of debates about what happens in STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS. Is Han Solo really dead? (Yeah, probably. Sorry.) Is Luke Rey's father? (Maybe. But maybe not.) Is BB-8 the cutest droid ever built? (Do you even need an answer to this? It's fact.) Is there a continuity problem with the original trilogy? (Oh yeah. Big time.) Why does Kylo Ren look like a more handsome version of the young Severus Snape? (There is no answer for this. Perhaps the Force came to this galaxy through him and then there came the wizarding world.) And then there's the one that has no reason to exist: Does that pseudo-uniform make Carrie Fisher look fat? Or old?

Let's see: STAR WARS (known by those who came into the franchise during the prequels as A NEW HOPE) was released in 1977. Fisher was born in 1956. Twenty-one when the movie was released, she was younger when it was filmed. THE FORCE AWAKENS was released in 2015. Fisher is currently 59 years old, and rather than playing the intrepid, spunky young Princess Leia Organa, she is playing General Leia Organa, the mother of an adult son and the forceful, very adult leader of an entire army. Rather than wearing a flowing white dress of extreme inconvenience when fighting, or a metal bikini that got assigned to her when she was a slave of Jabba the Hutt, she wears trousers, a vest, and boots - relatively practical military gear with durable fabrics and pockets. This is not in the least a "sexy" uniform. Spoilers--not: her hair is gray and she looks... older than 21. Maybe like she's even had a child or two in her time.

Of course, it's also over thirty years since Fisher was last seen as the fabulous Princess Leia, fighting girl warrior. It might be noted that it's also over thirty years since Leia's now-ex, Han Solo, played by Harrison Ford, was seen on screen.

Ford, or Han Solo, has aged in the franchise into a gray-haired smuggler and fighter who pilots an equally aged Millennium Falcon. He's no young hunk, no muscular, rugged smuggler dude in THE FORCE AWAKENS. No one seems surprised by this. No one has made one comment about Solo's aging over thirty-some real, or apparently longer canon, years.

Which makes the furor over Leia Organa's thirty-some years of change that much more peculiar. Apparently smugglers, or men, are allowed to age, while rebel (now Resistance) leaders, or women, aren't.

It was reported by E ONLINE in 2014 that Fisher had lost forty or more pounds to take on the role in THE FORCE AWAKENS. Apparently making sure she was slim enough for the twenty pounds that film adds to one's frame was not enough.

Almost immediately,a few long-time franchise fans, assorted online trolls, and some critics began debating how Fisher had aged, and whether she'd done so well or not. Fisher tweeted to fans on December 29 that she didn't appreciate the discussion, and on the 30th that her body is a "brain bag" for getting her brain from place to place; in short, that her acting was not about her aging, any more than Ford's acting was about his aging.

The critical reaction from Kyle Smith of the NEW YORK POST was swift and vicious: "If Carrie Fisher doesn't like being judged on her looks, she should quit acting... No one would know Carrie Fisher if it weren't for her ability to LEVERAGE her looks." He added that she'd "made millions off of being pretty."

Smith apparently forgot that despite her youth, the former London Central School of Speech and Drama student had already debuted in Columbia Pictures' popular Warren Beatty vehicle, SHAMPOO and that the year after STAR WARS' release she was in a televised production of William Inge's COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA, a serious dramatic vehicle, for Laurence Olivier's series.

Fisher, a book and screen writer noted for her wit, as well for acting, first came back at Smith with "OK. I quit acting. Now, can I not like being judged for my looks?" She later commented that "youth and beauty are not accomplishments, they're the temporary happy byproducts of youth and/or DNA." When she re-tweeted a message from a fan that "men don't age better than women, they're just allowed to age," the body-shaming trolls re-emerged on Twitter.

Bonnie Burton of CNET is a supporter of the older, wiser Leia Organa, general and stoic wise woman. "All our old favorites look rough around the edges. Leia is clearly showing her age, but so is Han Solo, who appears in the trailers with a full head of gray hair. (On the flip side, Chewbacca still looks as young as ever. Apparently, when you're covered in Wookiee fur, it's easier to hide your age.)" She views the older characters as a gift to the old guard of fandom, while the new younger characters should appeal to the new, younger fan base.

CNN opinionista Peggy Drexler also weighs in for Leia: "This, in turn, has led to a heated, if tedious, debate over whether or not Fisher has aged well, as if "aging well" was a talent to be celebrated and not an entirely subjective construct used again and again to remind women in Hollywood and elsewhere that they're only as good as their ever more lineless foreheads."

One question that might be asked is how a rebel fighter is expected to look as young as they did thirty-some years ago. There's the obvious point that some over-aged fanboys see Leia now as not being the hot metal-bikini chick that she was when she was Jabba the Hut's slave and their primary sexual fantasy, which means that she looks somewhere around the right age to actually be a general and not a sex slave. In that sense, it's surprising that Fisher's aging should even be a question. Does one seriously expect a woman in her late fifties to appear as fantasy material to boys and young men? That's hardly the purpose of a female general outside of the pornographic film industry. (It's almost worth noting that the X-rated industry, in its GLORY days, did in fact have a stable of mature women of great good looks as well as certain talents, including acting talent.)

Website Dlisted adds, "Maybe Princess Leia's face looks different because Luke keeps using the last of her La Mer and replacing it with some cheap s from the Galactic Empire's version of CVS. Or maybe it's because Carrie Fisher is 59-years-old and we should all lay the f off."

The attempted body-shaming of Fisher, which she's resisted with wit and humor, as have her fans and supporters, comes at the end of a year of body-shaming flaps, beginning with the insulting of singer Kelly Clarkson over her current weight, and including insults to comedian Amy Schumer, whose revenge was the hit movie TRAINWRECK. In November, Ariel Winter of MODERN FAMILY discussed body-shaming and slut-shaming efforts (for a bikini photo with her niece) that had been lobbed at her. Ariana Grande, alternatively, was body-shamed by people who insisted she was too slender (though not anorexic), which happened, coincidentally, after Grande took on two radio hosts for sexist questions in an interview. Her response to the attempted shaming was, "You know what is not sexy? Misogyny, objectifying, labeling, comparing, and body shaming." It's a good thing she noticed that, because her body-shaming crowd apparently could not comprehend at first that what women look like is themselves, and not what other people think they should look like.

It's been the great year of attempted body-shaming of a sizeable group of talented, beloved women - and the most beloved may be Fisher. She's also the one who's hit back the hardest, and that only stands to reason - after all, she did strangle Jabba the Hutt for putting her in that damn bikini. A woman who can do that in her twenties can look any way she pleases in her fifties, when she's heading the entire army.

Photo Credit: Disney/Lucasfilm

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