Lawrence’s new normal

Wherever Jennifer Lawrence goes, the paparazzi and gossip hounds follow.

Jennifer Lawrence knows she’ll get no sympathy by complaining about the price of fame, said Jonathan Van Meter in Vogue. “I teeter on seeming ungrateful when I talk about this,” she says, “but I’m going through a meltdown about it lately. I’m just starting to feel like a monkey in a zoo.” Wherever she goes, the paparazzi and gossip hounds follow—taking her photo on the beach, on the street, at a restaurant, speculating about her love life and her career. “All of a sudden the entire world feels entitled to know everything about me, including what I’m doing on my weekends when I’m spending time with my nephew. I don’t have the right to say, ‘I’m with family.’” She knows it sounds obnoxious when celebrities whine about their lack of privacy—she calls it “a dangerous topic”—but insists that her “new normal” is impossible to accept. “I’m not going to find peace with it. If I were just this average 23-year-old girl and I called the police to say there were strange men sleeping on my lawn and following me to Starbucks, they would leap into action. But because I’m famous, well, sorry ma’am, there’s nothing we can do. It makes no sense.”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up