Chris Pratt has some surprising thoughts on Hollywood objectification.
During a press conference for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Pratt said that he didn't mind being an object — but he also knows things are a lot different for him as a man.
Vulture explains that a reporter asked Pratt about his shirtless scenes in the film, and if he thinks Hollywood has a double standard for men's and women's objectification.
"Hasn't hurt my career," Pratt responded. "We are objects. It's true, we are. We're props. They shine a light on us, they paint us up with makeup, and they take a camera and point it at us. Half the time, what ruins it is us talking." He's not wrong about that last part — earlier today, the actor came under Twitter fire for suggesting that Hollywood should tell more blue collar stories.
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"I would say that objectification is good for me, because when I turned my body into an object that people liked, I got paid a lot of money," Pratt said at the press conference. "My kids can go to college because I'm an object."
You have to praise Pratt for his honesty — it's not a secret that he wasn't a household name before he lost weight ahead of the first Guardians movie. (Although, we love Andy Dwyer just the way he was.)
But Pratt added that he can only make jokes about his own objectification because he's a man. "I have to be careful because for generations — for millennia — women have been objectified in a way where there's a pretty horrifying past," he said at the press conference. "So that's a little bit different, and there probably is what you'd call a double standard, but I think you have to deal with them separately, because there's a history of objectification [with women] that is a sensitive issue."
Guardians director James Gunn commented too, saying that he wants women in the film franchise to be "full characters." The discussion included a female perspective, as well — Elizabeth Debicki, who plays Ayesha in the franchise, praised the role. "It is lovely to play Ayesha, because she's powerful and she keeps all her clothes on," Debicki said.