What It Feels Like for a Girl
Here's a short but interesting little article from Entertainment Weekly magazine about Hollywood's double standard for young actresses vs. young actors.
What It Feels Like for a Girl: How scandals hurt Lindsay Lohan but helped Shia LeBeouf's career. Today's young stars are all experts at scandal, but when the public starts to tut-tut, the ladies pay at a bigger price.
- Amateur Nudity. Vanessa Anne Hudgens had to apologize after a nude photoshoot hit the web in 2007, while Pete Wentz got away with just warning fans against taking risque photos after his own leaked in 2006.
- Artistic Nudity. When Lindsay Lohan recreated a topless Marilyn Monroe photoshoot for New York magazine, the website received millions of hits -- and so did her struggling career. Yet frenzied fans snapped up tickets to see Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe get naked on Broadway in Equus.
- Edgy Movie Roles. Sundance 2007: Dakota Fanning's film Hounddog -- featuring the pre-teen actress in a rape scene -- bows amid a public outcry and calls for an investigation. Sundance 2008: Audiences shrug off a sex scene in The Wackness that involves Nickelodeon star Josh Peck, of Drake & Josh.
- Acting Out in Public. The blogosphere went nuts over a video of a slurring Ashlee Simpson at a Canadian McDonald's in 2005. But after Shia LeBeouf was arrested for refusing to leave a Chicago drugstore in 2007? Lots of talk about his super-cute mug shot. Oh, and the charges were dropped.