When Lawrence was set to play Katniss Everdeen, the hero at the center of “The Hunger Games,” she was asked to lose weight and she refused, telling SciFiNow:
“In the first movie, when it was obviously being talked about, like, ‘It’s ‘The Hunger Games,’ you have to lose 10 pounds,’ I was like, ‘We have control over this image; we have control over this role model. ‘Why would we make her something unobtainable and thin?’ This is a person that young girls — well, all women, but mainly young girls — will be looking up to and are going to want to look like her, and we have control over it, so why not make her strong? Why not make her beautiful and healthy and fit? I was very adamant about that, because I think that our industry doesn’t take enough responsibility for what it does to our society, about having these unrealistic expectations, and I don’t want to be part of that.”
Considering that “The Hunger Games” is a best-selling young adult novel that was made into a film for mainstream (and primarily young) audiences, Lawrence is absolutely on the money. It’s much more important for kids and teens to have healthy role models to look up to, especially when you know that it’s a character that’s going to be emulated for years to come.