There is always a strange amount of divisiveness of public opinion when it comes to actress Anne Hathaway.

 

She is, undoubtedly, talented. She's got the Oscar to prove it, if you were looking for further clarification.

 

She's always in films that people really enjoy. The Devil Wears Prada, The Dark Knight Rises, One Day. All solid, film gold. And then she appeared in Les Miserables and demonstrated those impressive vocal skills. 

 

From the outset, she seems like a genuinely lovely person, though a celebrity never fully comfortable in her own skin. This writer has often wondered if it was perhaps an agonising case of Imposter Syndrome. But maybe Anne never gave her own skin a second thought, until the mass media descended on her and decided that she could be in a few romantic comedies, but that didn't mean she was likeable. 

 

 

Likeable. A detestable word almost solely reserved and used in a sentence when talking about women. Another term that is associated with successful women in a predominantly negative manner.

 

To be labelled unlikable if you're a woman, particularly while in the public eye, means this follows you around for almost the entirety of your career.

 

And in the grossly unfair case of Anne Hathaway vs The World, it's a label she still carries around. She's hugely successful, handles this with grace, yet in 2013, articles still got written with titles such as: 'Why does everyone hate Anne Hathaway?

 

There was even a term for the bullies around that period: ‘Hathahaters’ - which is incredibly depressing. 

 

So, she has had to pre-empt the trolls. Taking to Instagram this week, Hathaway made a point of pre-emptively shutting down body-shamers, knowing full-well what would occur if she didn't speak first.  She's gaining weight for a new role, and because the tabloids could care less about her accomplishments and always focus on outside appearances, she mentioned it before they did. 

 

 

“I am gaining weight for a movie role and it is going well,” she wrote.

 

When asked last year if she had changed as a result of what happened, she summed it up as eloquently as ever:  

 

"How the world feels about me has nothing to do with me. How other people treat me has nothing to do with me. But if anything that anybody said resonated with me as something I’d like to work on for myself, I took it in like that […] I still found a way to be grateful to it.”

 

And going back to her latest Instagram post, her message sums this entire article up. 

 

“To all the people who are going to fat shame me in the upcoming months, It’s not me, it’s you."

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