Too Thin to Throw a Punch?

Female Action Stars Too Skinny to Throw a Punch?

In the new action drama Colombiana (which opens tomorrow), we first meet heroine Cataleya as a young girl who aspires to be Xena, Warrior Princess when she grows up. Instead, when we check back in with Cataleya as an adult, she's become Zoe Saldana, and if there's one major difference between the action heroine she idolized and the one she has become (besides the fact that her bangs are way better), it's that Xena's Lucy Lawless had some believable heft to her, while Saldana resembles a supermodel who could be toppled not just by a gang of thugs but a stiff breeze. Saldana's a talented actress who can sell ferocity with her face, but her slender arms could snap in two if a stuntman grabbed her the wrong way, and when she roundhouse kicks an assailant, Saldana looks like a spider doing a cartwheel.

Of course, you don't need us to tell you that women in Hollywood are skinny. (Covers of Cosmo can make that point without words!) But right now, with superhero movies in vogue, action heroes and heroines seem to be racing to comically opposite extremes. Just call it the "conservation of muscles" law, where no body weight shall be created or destroyed: As men pack on weight for their Captain America moment, women have to keep the universe in balance by going on the cleanse. Look no further than The Dark Knight Rises, where the already buff Tom Hardy is bulking up to play the villainous Bane by eating a full chicken every two hours, while his female counterpart Anne Hathaway describes her Catwoman diet as "dust and dreams." Evocative, but probably not tasty!

Nowhere is this trend more evident than with the one female superstar who can get an action movie green-lit instantly, Angelina Jolie. Conceptually, it's clear why Jolie is seen as an action heroine: She radiates power, and she's intimidating even while standing still. The problem — and you can see it in last year's Salt, which kept her as covered up as possible — is that Jolie has gotten too thin for her punches and kicks to be believably forceful. She once filled out her underweight frame to play Lara Croft in Tomb Raider, but these days, she seems to be keeping one eye on the head she's about to kick and the other on the red-carpet dress she'll need to wriggle into soon.

At least there's some hope on the horizon: For the lead in his upcoming action flick Haywire, Steven Soderbergh cast Gina Carano, a mixed-martial-arts fighter making her acting debut. Carano is gorgeous and flat-abbed enough to land a Maxim photo spread (get ready to hear a lot of "knockout"-related puns), but her healthy frame looks like it could inflict actual damage, because it's called upon to do just that inside the octagon. At Comic-Con, Soderbergh played a clip of Carano brutally beating up Michael Fassbender, and in an era that's already saturated with action heroines, this scene still managed to elicit impressed winces: Ladykiller Magneto, snuffed out by a lady killer! Carano cuts a seriously impressive figure, and let it be a lesson to those other actresses who like to talk a good game about getting into shape for action roles: Until they let us see that essential, extra weight on their bodies, it's just empty calories.

 

Have always admired Gina. Pretty girl not afraid to get in the ring, messing her looks up be damned.
In my eyes, Gina's action-girl physique and strength personna much more admirable and plausable than Angelina's.

 

She looks like a very fit, pretty and NORMAL woman. Wind wouldnt knock her over

 

That is always what bothers me about "tough chick" movies or TV shows. They always have a 98lb girl, beating the crap out of 250lb thugs. I mean c'mon It's cartoonish. The average man is 2-3 times as strong as the average woman. (there is a reason men are heavier and have bigger muscles) Men can also take more physical damage.

I hope there aren't any women out there, who are making bad personal safety decisions, because they have taken Hollywood's silliness as reality.

 

Which is why I own a gun. I know my limits, and while I could take on most bad females, I'll let my gun take on bad men.

 

LOL. hell yeah. Its called gun-fu

 

I think that's a smart move.

On the subject of the movie (which I want to see), it's an interesting article. It's just all entertainment to me so, no big deal but, the article does make sense IMO.

 

Yeah like after I saw Superman I thought I could fly and Spiderman I thought I could make webs and climb buildings. This is moves/TV and imaginary. If people use it as a handbook for life they are .....well stoopid. They don't have to cast it to be 100% believable and many times they don't.

 

It did to me, too. Women's sizes have now added a double zero, which I guess means less than nothing.

Compared to some of today's actresses, I look like a tank, and I generally weigh in around 104 pounds. When I was climbing all the time, I actually put on 10-15 pounds of muscle. It's like Hollywood is trying to disappear women or something, I can't figure it out. Is it really attractive to see someone's vertebrae??

 

I wouldn't underestimate the power of media influence. Media can have a hypnotizing effect on people. The repetition of a theme can make some people think things, that they normally wouldn't.

 

Yeah, that has always seemed like too much to me. I like petite women but, not unhealthy petite women. I remember when a size ten was considered thin, now they have double zero? wow!

In the article they talked about Angelina Jolie. She looked way hotter in tomb raider at that size, than in Salt. (although she still looks hot either way).

The actress who played Allie McBeal (Calista Flockhart) looked real good when she played that role. I thought she looked so good in those dress suites with those short skirts. She was just right - to me - and then she lost a lot of weight and looked almost anorexic. I remember Bill Maher saying that this is what men really liked and, I thought to myself "speak for yourself idiot"

 

We should start a thread of people who were totally believable in their roles and people who you thought in your head........are they kidding.

 

If I started a thread about all the things In Movies or TV that I'm critical of. It would be 100 pages of just my posts

 

But as the OP story pointed out, they cast it believable for the men, why not the women? Men get to eat chicken to beef up for their roles, the women..dust and dreams. Blah @ Hollywood. :x

 

Yeah but were just their for window dressing right??!!

 

haha Big Bad Mama up in this motherfucker.

Whatever.

 

Just the oposite. And the point Thump was making. A Big Bad Mama would thinks she could take on a man with her bare hands...I give men that much respect that I understand it may just take a gun to stop him.

But I know guns are a no-no for you, so for you I can wrestle with you. Happy?

 

At about 5'3" and 104 pounds, I'm a size 4. How the hell much would I have to lose to fit in a 3 sizes smaller 00? That can't be healthy.

 

You are a very wise person.

Even though I have respect for the female MMA fighter, there is a reason why she don't compete with the men. You have SOME young female recruits who come in and actually think they can beat up men.

The military has a way of humbling women like that. With true MEN, size really doesn't matter. A strong short man can toss around a guy twice his weight like it isn't nothing. I've seen it happen, many times.

There is no comparison of the upper body strength of a man vs. a female. This is the true physical divider. No matter how many pull ups or push up she does it won't equal to what a man can do who is fit and strong.

This doesn't mean women can't play a significant role in support units or can't be a great sniper or whatever. But physically going up against men, no!! This is why it's hard for me to watch those GI Jane movies because those are true fiction.

 

actually it's very possible for a thin woman to punch out a dude. There was this youtube video I saw a while back, in which this gynmast was like 95 pounds, and this big buff guy tells her to hit him anywhere one time, he could take it, and wam, tko.

Being stronger has nothing to do with it, no matter how strong you are, one good hit at the right spot will lay you out cold. Here is the video.

[YOUTUBE]YWDSRjyiuWI[/YOUTUBE]