After the Oscars last year (2024), I saw Anora. I had better context for the speech Mikey Madison gave about sex workers and honoring them after she won for Best Actress in a Leading Role. But I was also troubled by her win. She fully embraced her character, an exotic dancer and companion in New York who experiences and whirlwind romance as part of her own, raw fairytale, but it was a role reminiscent of Emma Stone’s Frankenstein-esque nod from the prior year in ‘Poor Things’. The connective thread for me was a woman owning her sexuality, open to exploration, unashamed in her pursuits. Does bearing your soul and being raw and vulnerable as an actress/ female actor mean having to literally bear it all?
Initially, I did question whether I was being too sensitive about the matter and maybe pulling at a thread and making a knot unnecessarily. But then I thought back to a few other Oscar wins and nominations where soul and self-bearing performances were lauded. Halle Berry won for Best Actress for her portrayal of a widow in ‘Monster’s Ball’ in 2002. One of the pinnacle moments in that movie is a very graphic, painful and oddly poignant sexual encounter that her character has with Billy Bob Thornton’s character. Emma Thompson was applauded for her performance in ‘Good Luck to You, Leo Grande’, where she portrays an older business woman who has standing “appointments” with a male escort after years of sufficient yet not fully pleasurable love making with her husband. Towards the end of the film we witness her character naked, free and reembracing her beauty and sensuality in an age and season where the societal expectation is for her to cover and lament the tumultuous tides of aging. And in the same year that Anora won big at the Oscars, Demi Moore had a major resurgence as an actress for her role in ‘The Substance’. Her character bears herself physically and emotionally as she makes a seriously life altering decision that causes her world to completely unravel. Her performance and that of her co-star Margaret Qualley pushed the limits of acting and made us all take a pause on considering aging, beauty and variations on body dysmorphia.
Further bolstering the validity of my feelings and contemplations about the concept of women bearing it all as a sign of impactful acting was a segment on ‘Last Week Tonight with John Oliver’. He presented a retrospective on women portraying “whores” in cinema and how many Oscar nominations were associated with those roles. His diatribe included a similar contemplation and that because of this deep-seated love that the Oscars has for women in these roles, it will continue to perpetuate the need for actresses to include moments of nudity, sex as part of the base requirements for their acting to be taken seriously and deemed worthy of Oscar consideration.
While I do have an appreciation for aspects of each of the roles and characters portrayed in the earlier cited films, it is frustrating that there are still standards and expectations of female actors that their male counterparts do not have to endure. Having folks like me raise an eyebrow and experience a mixture of emotions and question the choices made in depicting these characters is admittedly judgey, but still valid and permissible. We are all entitled to our opinions. For me, it is rooted in deep respect for the women who bring multi-layered characters to life and make us question our bias, standards, morals and deeply held beliefs and my desire to have all these various shades of character development and portrayal held in similar esteem to those that require more literal and figurative nakedness.
Been Thinkin’ About 