Disney's New Pirates Movie Will Have Women Jumping Up and Down

by Shaker TheLadyEve

A March 21st article in the New York Post recently described part of the casting process for Rob Marshall's upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Apparently, the casting call for female extras was very specific in one department (emphasis original):

The filmmakers sent out a casting call last week seeking "beautiful female fit models. Must be 5ft7in-5ft8in, size 4 or 6, no bigger or smaller. Age 18-25. Must have a lean dancer body. Must have real breasts. Do not submit if you have implants."

And they warn that there'll be a "show and tell" day.

To make sure LA talent scouts don't get caught in a "booby trap," potential lassies will have to undergo a Hollywood-style jiggle-your-jugs test and jog for judges. If there's nothing moving from the waist up, they're saying, it's a dead giveaway that you're not all flesh and bones -- and you're out.

Apparently, the bouncier the better, especially for sword-fighting action sequences, according to the Sunday Times of London.

"In the last movie, there were enhanced breasts to give that 18th-century whorish look and men were pretty well padded too, and no one worried," a former casting agent said. "But times are changing, and the audience can spot false breasts."

Okay, where to begin? I'm not certain why the casting director is so preoccupied by casting women without implants; if anecdotal evidence provided by previous Pirates installments teaches us anything, it's that the women in the film are just going to be crammed into costumes that make their breasts look preternaturally high, firm and big anyway. But the casting agents involved make it clear that they are concerned with authenticity, the hallmark of any effective period piece. And those fight scenes need to look authentic all the way down to the breasts, apparently.

Notice that they do not strive for authenticity by casting women of all sizes, or by casting women with disabilities, or by casting women with the imperfect teeth and skin that one would expect to see in an era that came before modern medicine and plastic surgery and that was rampant with malnutrition and disease. There will be no women with scurvy or pellagra in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. No, they must all be tall, beautiful models with "dancer bodies" but their breasts must look authentic, because women are defined solely by their breasts.

And fake breasts mean you're a "whore," according to the casting agents. After all, fake breasts in an 18th century pirate fantasy film would be the equivalent to the Roman soldiers wearing wrist watches in Spartacus—unthinkable for an true auteur churning out pablum for the nefarious Disney octopus.

I'm more than a little irked by the wink-nudge style of this article. It comes complete with a pun using the term "booby!" It is positively creepy how the author lightheartedly recounts the painful extremes to which Keira Knightley was forced to go in order to look "well-endowed," joking about how she was spared a "breast exam." It all boils down to women, yet again, being held to an unattainable standard of beauty. While this standard is to be expected in the U.S. film industry, it is particularly despicable when it is shrouded in the guise of supposed "authenticity."