1997's Batman & Robin is not exactly the most fondly remembered movie in the world. The fourth film in Warner Bros. original Batman franchise has been called one of the worst movies in the world. Whether you ascribe to that particular perspective on the film, I would hope we can all agree that insults directed at the actors who were in it were never OK. However, Alicia Silverstone had to deal with a lot of that.
The Clueless actress was a star on the rise when she took the role of Batgirl in the Joel Schumacher directed movie. She tells The Guardian that making the movie was not the best filmmaking experience of her career and what followed after filming was over probably wasn't either. Alicia Silverstone had to deal with a lot of crude comments about her weight. The woman playing Batgirl would be called "Fatgirl" in the media, even by paparazzi photographers trying to get a picture. It would be easy for somebody in her position to take the negativity to heart, but Silverstone says that, while the comments did hurt, she was mostly able to keep everything in perspective. According to the former Batgirl...
They would make fun of my body when I was younger. It was hurtful but I knew they were wrong. I wasn’t confused. I knew that it was not right to make fun of someone’s body shape, that doesn’t seem like the right thing to be doing to a human.
Can you even imagine what it would have been like if Twitter had been a thing in the '90s?
There's little to argue with in regards to the idea that making fun of somebody's weight is unkind and not something one human should be doing to another. It's impossible not to let something like that get to you a little, but it does seem like Alicia Silverstone took it in stride, to the degree one can. She never started to actually believe the comments.
Of course, Batman & Robin wasn't the end of things for her, but Alicia Silverstone never seems to have lost the right perspective. She goes on to say that when she found her working conditions to be less than favorable, she would just use it as a learning experience to not put herself in that position again. It's likely for this reason that we haven't seen Silverstone in those major movie roles like we did back then. She just didn't find the experience to her liking, and so she's done with it.
While I'm not sure Batman & Robin is the worst movie ever, it's one that certainly has issues, but Alicia Silverstone's look is not one of them.
It would be nice to be able to say this sort of behavior is a relic of the past, but it certainly isn't. Hopefully, other celebrities dealing with issues today can deal with it in much the same way that Alicia Silverstone did.
