Is Jennifer Lawrence the Biggest Victim of Hollywood Sexism?

Jennifer Lawrence keeps getting cast as a grown-up, despite the fact that she's only 27 years old. Does that mean she's a victim of Hollywood sexism? The folks at Bustle think so.

Via Bustle.

Jennifer Lawrence's latest film, Mother!, comes out Sept. 15, and it's already re-awakening a conversation that's been had many times over: that J.Law is playing a character far older than she actually is. In Mother!, Lawrence, 27, plays the wife of Javier Bardem, 48, and while it's customary in Hollywood for younger female actors to be paired with older men, Lawrence is a specific case, because it seems with each new movie she's is in, she's aged another decade. Audiences rarely see her, a star often called the "most relatable actress in Hollywood," ever play relatable 20-something characters. The reason for this? Industry sexism. For a female actor to get truly meaty roles, she has to portray older women, not ones her own age. And for Lawrence, that means being miscast in much older roles, over and over again.

According to a Time study, female actors' careers peak at age 30, and they begin to decline around age 35. Meanwhile, male actors' careers peak around age 46, then they decline around 51. This, unfortunately, makes sense, as in our society, men are seen as becoming sexier and more authoritative with age, while women are seen as losing both their appeal and innocence as they get older. As such, Lawrence's love interests, in films like Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle, are often much older than her. But for Lawrence herself, in order to get good, Oscar-worthy roles at the age of 27, she must move to play characters drastically older than her actual self.

You see, movies that are deemed awards-worthy are rarely about women in their 20s, and ever since Lawrence was nominated for Lead Actress for Winter's Bone back in 2010, she's been on a path set apart from most of her contemporaries like Anna Kendrick, Emma Watson, and Kristen Stewart. Those actors often play women in their 20s, in movies that rarely get Oscar-nominated or earn major acclaim. Lawrence's films, meanwhile, nearly always rack up the awards. There are exceptions, of course. Saoirse Ronan's Oscar nomination for Brooklyn, in which she played a 20-year-old, is one, but in that same year, Lawrence was nominated for Joy, in which she portrayed a woman in her mid-30s. Ronan is 23 and Lawrence is 27, yet that four-year age difference warrants a decade's difference in character ages, by Hollywood norms.

Lawrence has commented on her frequent over-aging. In a 2015 interview with the New York Times, she said, "It’s not like I was old enough for American Hustle. And I was way too young for Silver Linings [Playbook]. That’s why I almost didn’t get it." It's understandable why she's drawn to these parts, as, as said, movies where 20-something actors portray women their own age or younger are rarely taken seriously. Looking at past Oscar-nominated films, many of them feature young female actors, but very few are actually about women in their 20s.

In order for actors around Lawrence's age to star as protagonists in big-budget films, they usually have to be in comedies or superhero/comic-based films. For example, we have Kendrick in the upcoming Pitch Perfect 3, Cara Delevingne in Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, and Zoë Kravitz in Rough Night, films that, while possible box office successes, don't reach Lawrence's movies' levels of acclaim.

Check out the rest of the story at Bustle.

Do you agree that Jennifer Lawrence is victimized by being asked to play an adult? Let us know in the comment section below.