Male Gaze in Media: Roles & Representation

Scarlett Johansson is opening up about how roles have changed for women since she joined Hollywood.

In a recent interview with The Times of London, Johansson said that when she first entered the industry, the roles she was offered usually centered around “desirability,” and the goals and needs of her male counterparts. However, she thinks the Hollywood of today is ushering in “a different time for young women.”

“The messaging is different — there are many more role models, women are visible in powerful positions and the opportunities I have had to play women who don’t have to just be one thing or another have increased,” Johansson said. “But when I was younger, a lot of the roles I was offered, or I went for, had their ambitions or character arcs revolving around their own desirability, or the male gaze, or a male-centred story. That is less frequent, though — something has shifted.”

This isn’t the first time Johansson spoke out about her representation in Hollywood. Back in 2022, the “Avengers” star said she was so “hypersexualized” by the industry at a young age, that she thought it would be impossible to branch out to different types of roles.

“I kind of became objectified and pigeonholed in this way where I felt like I wasn’t getting offers for work for things that I wanted to do,” Johansson said. “I remember thinking to myself, ‘I think people think I’m 40 years old.’ It somehow stopped being something that was desirable and something that I was fighting against.”