The Verlander-Upton Picture "Scandal"

Is this whole deal about taking naked selfies just something we don't get as old folks? Does your average 25-year-old have an album of the days she looked best in the buff?

If so, damn we were all born at the wrong time.

 

Jennifer Lawrence: from The Bill Engvall Show to Oscar-winning actress. That still amazes me for some reason. And makes me laugh.

 

I suppose I agree with both camps: Lawrence is and isn't over-rated.

She's certainly the "it" girl right now and had about a five-year record of excellence that includes a Best Actress Oscar.

That being said, she doesn't reach Hollywood royalty for me until she's got a long record of continued excellence -- another five years or so without going all Lohan.

 

The reason for more naked selfies or whatever is the same as the reason people take 25 pictures of the same sunset or shoot a selfie in the airport bathroom -- because it's cheap and easy to do. You don't have to worry about conserving film. I'm sure plenty of people took naked pics of each other in the film days, but I'm sure the numbers were restricted because they had to make sure they brought the film to a developer who wouldn't call them out or be a total perv about it.

 

You, sir, take that back! I will not have you disparaging such a Helenic thespian as Jennifer Lawrence. She has exposed but a tease of her dramatic talent and bares her range emotions in all her movies.

 

In today's culture, these photos enhance careers.

 

I know you're posting from the other side of the culture wars from me on this, but you're basically right: No one is going to judge Jennifer Lawrence harshly over this. No one under 80 years old is.

 

It is funny.

I had never heard of her when I saw Winter's Bone.

Hillary Swank was fired from 90210.

DiCaprio started on Growing Pains.

Jamie Foxx went from doing LaWanda on In Living Color to winning an Oscar.

I'm sure there are others.

The Sixth Sense kid was on the Jeff Foxworthy show.

 

Come on, though. The proportion of people snapping self-nudes has to be 100x what it was when we were growing up. I understand all the technology and convenience reasons for it. But I think there's a huge part of it that's about cultural sensibilities to it.

Put another way, if there were thousands of high school and college girls wanting to commemorate and celebrate their bodies like this in the late '80s/early '90s, I sure as hell didn't find them.

 

I guess this is a good time to mention also that Silver Linings Playbook, and Lawrence's "Oscar-winning" performance therein, is also severely overrated.

 

I don't even know how I would begin to broach the topic with Mrs. Whitman, who is a pretty progressive gal.