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In 2015, the culture journalist Anne Helen Peterson wrote a BuzzFeed article in response to a sludge of misogynistic tabloid headlines reading: “Anne Hathaway vs Jennifer Lawrence: Why we hate one and love the other,” to, “The Happy Girl vs The Cool Girl: Why People Don’t Like Anne Hathaway.” It was a strange phenomenon, she argued, because Hathaway had always done everything right. (The actor worked hard; her physical appearance more than met societal standards; she was gracious in interviews.) And yet there was something that still irritated, something stirred annoyance in people.
Peterson revisited that conundrum in a recent Substack. “The more I’ve thought about it, the simpler it becomes: Anne Hathaway is and was a theatre kid with theatre-kid earnestness during the crescendo of the Jennifer Lawrence cool-girl era. She annoyed people for the same reason Taylor Swift rapping/dancing around to “Shake It Off” at her Yahoo live album premiere annoyed people. It was cringe to be that joyful in your own fame.” This is, after all, the same woman who accepted her 2013 Oscars acceptance speech with, “It came true…” Culture wants its celebrities to be relatable, but it also needs them to be inaccessible.
That might explain why Hathaway has spent the past 12 months or so reminding the general public that she is also hot and “not that nice.” (Which is precisely the kind of thing only a nice person would say.) Her wardrobe has subsequently veered between classic bombshell and cruel mistress: hourglass cut-outs and wipe-clean minidresses. She also starred in a Versace campaign wherein Donatella Versace described the actor as “a little bit dangerous,” and has been photographed wearing fishnet Alaïa flats associated with the celebscape’s professional “It-girls”.
And yet Hathaway’s most recent look–including those mesh slip-ons, a baggy skirt, a waistcoat, a grandma-ish sunhat and a Birkin customized with an infantile horse charm–is a return to form. This is the earnest theatre kid that most of us first fell for. Perhaps Hathaway really is over the whole “people pleasing” thing. Because there is nothing more earnest, and more charmingly twee than wearing a sun hat in New York.