Watched the Alicia Vikander Lara Croft last night, and it got me wondering. As someone who has very little interest in gaming, I'm only really aware of the famous titles - and one of the most famous was Lara Croft, equally renowned and ridiculed for her trademark enormous boobs. The most immediately striking thing about this particular film portrayal of Lara is that she doesn't have ample breasts. Nowhere close. I go online to see if anyone else has picked up on this oddity, and sure enough it turns out there's a massive argument about body shaming. It's not often that I get caught between two arguments, but this really did the trick. My take? If the film producers wanted to make a film about an athletic, small chested woman going on a quest to find an ancient tomb, then that's fine. Just don't call the character Lara Croft. It's like doing a film about Nigel Kennedy, only making him a pianist. If the producers wanted to make a film about Lara Croft, but make her character more about her achievements than her cup size, brilliant. After all, as most of the defenders of the film argued, if **** are all that matter to you, just watch porn. But why stop there? Why did they choose a quite obviously stunningly good looking woman to play the role? Why not a woman that could easily have been working in Asda petrol station? It's always puzzled me that in any action film when the guy is on the phone to some female scientist (who can speak a dozen languages) and they arrange to meet up, you can guarantee that she's going to be off the scale gorgeous. Easily good-looking enough to have been a film star if the whole science thing hadn't worked out. Why? Shouldn't believably plain girls be routinely represented on screen? Is that any worse or better than casting a Lara with her trademark boobs? Why aren't people up in arms about the body shaming in practically every film on screen? What's so special about this one that it actually made the news?
