The Hunger Games (2012) dir. Gary Ross

Me to the fan artists who include Peeta's prosthetic leg and Katniss and Peeta's postwar burn scars in their art:

Me to the filmmakers who decided to cut these character details from the movies:

THE HUNGER GAMES (2012) dir. Gary Ross

- What am I going to do? How can I go out there this way? Look at me. - Have you got any make-up? PLEASANTVILLE (1998) dir. Gary Ross

“Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear”

The Hunger Games (2012), directed by Gary Ross

ROMANCEGIFS 10K FOLLOWERS CELEBRATION → FAVORITE MOVIE COUPLE PER MEMBER Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark from THE HUNGER GAMES MOVIES (2012-2015) - airam (@magnusedom)

Nobody needs me.

I do. I need you.

— Ocean's 8 (2018), directed by Gary Ross.

The Hunger Games (2012)

"Thank you... for your consideration."

Pleasantville (1998)

Director: Gary Ross

Cinematographer: John Lindley

"May the odds be ever in your favor."

THE HUNGER GAMES (2012) dir. Gary Ross

The Hunger Games (2012) dir. Gary Ross

They should've let Katniss be unhealthily skinny in the movie.

I understand a little bit how Jennifer Lawrence or whoever didn't want to present yet another very skinny main female character. They didn't want to ~promote~ anything. They wanted their main girl to be a healthy-looking skinny. However, I think they missed an opportunity.

Katniss as a character is starving to death. She is struggling to survive. In the books, her drive to feed herself and her family is an important part of her character, and it's important that she isn't skinny because she wants to be; she's skinny because she literally cannot get herself to a healthy weight. The Capitol designers wanted to give her a boob job after the Games to make her look better. Seeing a healthy-slim Jennifer Lawrence represent this felt dishonest. It does her character a disservice to ignore that reality. And frankly, it felt like it had the opposite effect of its goal, because it sent the message that this is what people who are starving to death look like. That starving to death produces a hot skinny.

What if they'd given us a scary skinny Katniss? What if they'd started the movie with her starving to death, showed her struggling with energy and strength, showed her eating a lot during training to try to bulk up? The movie could have used this opportunity to focus on the detrimental effects of low body condition and malnourishment. We could've had an obviously healthier weight Katniss in Catching Fire and Mockingjay and seen her enjoying no longer starving to death. We could've seen her training for the Quell, putting on muscle like she's never been able to before. They could've left in the Capitol party vomit scene, too, and not shied away from the subject matter.

The movies tried to dodge the problem of ~promoting~ unhealthy thinness and ended up ignoring the way that very issue is tackled in the books. I almost wonder if the problem isn't that Hollywood didn't want a skinny Katniss detrimentally affecting young girls' body image, but that Hollywood couldn't handle an honest representation of what being starving skinny actually means. They didn't want to be the "bad guys" for this one, but they didn't want to be honest about the problem or fix anything either. The decision not to give us starving skinny Katniss was because showing a healthier female body was trendy, not because they cared about any message. Cowards.