Gerard Butler Gets Slammed For Losing His Fighting Shape
Some pictures have been circulating around the internet lately of Scottish actor Gerard Butler, shirtless in Barbados, looking a little less 300 and a little more 250-ish. He’s getting slammed, hard, by celeb blogs and tabloids for having traded in his Spartan abs for man boobs.
The headlines are ruthless: “From Spartan to Softie: Gerard Butler packs on the holiday pounds and shows off his new beach body,” claims the New York Daily News. “Gerard Butler packs some paunch on his Barbados holiday as his Spartan muscles become a distant memory,” says the U.K.’s Daily Mail.
These headlines are usually reserved for female celebs who, god-forbid, have cellulite, or are just standing at too bad an angle for the author/blogger/jerk face’s liking, but these are some of the first we have heard about a man.
Gerard Butler starred in 300, the tale of 300 Spartan men who stood up to an entire Persian army. Men loved the action, women loved the glistening, half naked hardbodies.
Butler, and the rest of the actors, spent hours and hours in the gym to get into fighting shape. With bootcamp style strength training workouts that would have even seasoned athletes puking in the locker room, these men still got a little help from makeup and camera tricks. Gerard looks more now like he did pre-bulk up, but the blogs and ragmags feel cheated out of a stereotypical heart throb by seeing what he can look like, and then having him choose not to kill himself to stay that way- just like so many actresses and models do these days.
Does the Butler slamming mark the end of a double standard? Yes. Is that a positive change? I don’t think so. It reminds me of those tacky Walmart t-shirts that say, “I don’t discriminate. I hate everyone.” It’s progress, but not in the right direction. As a woman, it gives me a little twinge of “now you get to see what it feels like to have the world jump all over you for not wanting to spend hours in the gym” but the bigger part of me would rather see the judgement stop completely, no matter what the gender of the victim.
