“I’ll leave it to your imagination”: Scarlett Johansson Frustrated With Relentless Sexualization After Being Asked if She Wears Underwear By Dumb Journalist
If one asks a Hollywood celebrity what the worst aspect of their job is, there are high chances that the answer would be – dealing with the paparazzi and media. Journalists, interviewers, and hosts can be really insensitive and mind-numbingly rude and inappropriate, and there are countless examples of the same. And the women in the industry are especially prone to vicious and demeaning questions, comments, and behavior – be it being kissed at award functions against their will, or touched inappropriately in the name of friendly banter, and last but not the least, intrusive questions about their bodies and outfits, often with the intent of sexualizing them. Scarlett Johansson would be one to know, she has been on the receiving end of quite an amount of unnecessary sexualization and rude questions.
Scarlett Johansson was hypersexualized early on in her career
Scarlett Johansson has been in the industry since childhood. She debuted in the 1994 film, North when she was just nine years old, and she is now thirty-seven. Over the course of this long journey, spanning almost 3 decades, she was sexualized early on itself. She confessed the same to Dax Shepard and Monica Padman in their Armchair Expert podcast. She said,
“Because I think everybody thought I was older and I’d been [acting] for a long time and then I got kind of pigeonholed into this weird hyper-sexualized thing. It was like, that’s the kind of career you have. These are the roles you’ve played and I was like, ‘This is it I guess.'”
“A lot of times I’ve felt like an object. I was typecast in a way where I felt like I wasn’t getting offers of work.”
A lot of the humiliation that she has gone through has been before the public eye as well.
Even an Avenger is not prone to sexism
Johansson is possibly best known for her portrayal of Black Widow in the MCU. And it was during the promotion of the first Avengers film in 2012, that an interviewer posed quite an uncomfortable question to the actress.
She and her co-star, Jeremy Renner who plays Hawkeye in the franchise, sat down for an interview with Extra reporter Jerry Penacoli. During the chat, Penacoli blatantly asked whether Johansson wore underwear under her Black Widow costume. The Marriage Story actress was clearly displeased and it was palpable in her response.
“You’re the fifth person to ask me this today. I’ll leave it to your imagination. Whatever you think I should be wearing or not wearing underneath that suit”.
