It’s a tale as old as time in Hollywood. An aspiring female artist begins to reach stardom status and the entire world makes it their entire mission to tear down her success. There is always something about her that is annoying or overrated that the Internet begins its vicious hate train over. The recent victim of this has been Rachel Zegler. It all started when a Variety interview was released where she was asked questions about her role as Snow White in the upcoming Disney live-action. In the interview, she clarified what she meant by bringing a new “modern edge” to the classic fairytale. Her exact words were: “I just mean that it’s no longer 1937. We absolutely wrote a Snow White that’s not going to be saved by the prince and she’s not going to be dreaming about true love. She’s going to be dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be and that her late father told her that she could be if she was fearless, fair, brave and true.”
Suddenly everyone around the world was a Snow White fan and was up in arms about how “narcissistic” and “ungrateful” Zegler sounded when describing the live-action. Interestingly, people fail to include the beginning part of the interview where Zegler exclaimed how overwhelmed she was seeing her name up on the big screen as Snow White. Not to mention, the entire cast supported what Zegler said. It’s also not a crazy idea to criticize a fairytale created during the 1930s where the princess was originally 14 years old and the prince was an adult. Videos were made analyzing every single movement of Zegler’s and trying to come up with baseless diagnoses of her behavior. Every effort was made to misconstrue Zegler’s words.Â
While Zegler received countless hate comments, male actors continue to get off scratch-free for saying the same things and worse. Robert Pattinson has made countless negative remarks about the Twilight series. Jacob Elordi admitted to a laughing audience on The Tonight Show how he only knew about Elvis through Lilo and Stitch. Elordi and Pattinson, along with countless other men in Hollywood, continue to rise to stardom receiving no pushback for their comments. The hate Zegler received represents the double standards for women in Hollywood and the vicious sexism they receive.
Zegler is not the first woman I’ve seen become a victim of the Internet hate campaign. Millie Bobby Brown, Megan Thee Stallion, Brie Larson, Taylor Swift, Ice Spice, Halle Bailey, Anne Hathaway, Sabrina Carpenter and so many others were seemingly hated just for existing or speaking their mind. It’s misogyny, plain and simple. You will not see male actors get this much vitriol or criticism from the Internet for even worse crimes.Â
Even more ironic was the fact that the Zegler hate train occurred shortly after the release of Barbie. We watched a movie that made it a point how women have to bend and twist themselves to achieve standards that will always be out of reach or never enough and then did the opposite with Zegler. Women in Hollywood will always be subjected to double standards that men will never experience.Â