Seeing Scarlett Johansson Naked Got Under My Skin

by Justine Harman

Scarlett Johansson's newest project is pretty out there—both literally and figuratively. In Under the Skin, out Friday, she plays a from-another-planet call girl on a mission. After we're acclimated to the genre via a narration of Mork and Mindy-style alien blurps from Johansson, we watch as she prepares for her envoy to earth. A dead lookalike lies clothed on a stark white floor. Johansson, fully naked, undresses the girl—removing lace stockings, a mini skirt, an uncomfortable looking starched denim jacket, and ankle booties—and then meticulously dresses herself in the ensemble.

And then we're off to Glasgow, Scotland, where Johansson cruises around the dreary city in a white van. Her orders are never fully spelled out, but it appears that she is tasked with seducing men—any kind, really: young, old, disfigured, disinterested—and luring them back to an abandoned shack, where she'll lead them into a tar pit before sucking the matter from their bodies. The skin gets discarded and the muscle gets transported back to the mother planet, where it's used as fuel. I think? It's pretty weird stuff. Johansson, however, is marvelous in the role. Whether she's flirting (in a lilting British accent, no less) with a prospect, or walking on the beach in stonewashed highrise jeans, her character is at once lushly warm and stiffly cold. Her body, which is on full display throughout the film, is as foreign to her as the clothes she's dressed it in. And it's a body I found myself examining, justifying, and categorizing throughout the entire 107-minute film.

Everyone knows Scarlett Johansson is curvy. A stylist once told me she has an E-cup bra size. And yet, I've seen her in person and she's practically diminutive—all slender calves and bird-like wrists. I've heard the same thing about Kim Kardashian: She looks voluptuous in pictures, but is "tiny" in person. Except in Under the Skin, Scarlett Johansson doesn't look tiny. Her breasts look full and her hips are round. When she's dressed up in borrowed clothes, I'm able to watch the plot unfurl, but the second she drops trou, all I can do is analyze her body. I crane my neck looking for evidence of Hollywood perfection amid the soft and familiar shapes, only to find it's not there.

And that's because this is no Hollywood flick. In the film's production notes, director Jonathan Glazer says that he "never wanted to cast [Under the Skin] with famous people." Glazer relented to casting Johansson because he says she "had a real appetite to do something risky," adding, "This is not the Scarlett Johansson as you might see her in a glossy magazine." (He also acknowledges the value of her star power to generate press and ticket sales: “I understand the need to cast somebody who means something in the marketplace–it's the law of the jungle, isn't it?")

As I mentioned before, our heroine's victims come in all shapes and sizes. And as they foolishly trot to their deaths, we are confronted with a cavalcade of specimens: the tightly muscled short guy, the skinny guy with loose skin and weird patches of body hair, the young beer enthusiast with rugby-size legs. And yet, I don't feel compelled to judge them. I don't care that I'm not attracted to them. In a way, I accept them for being real people (which many of them are). But I can't seem to do the same for Scarlett.

Maybe it's because I have put so much currency in the celebrity machine. When I see that someone whose radiant skin I have admired from afar has an uneven complexion in real life, I feel cheated. Similarly, when a celebrity, whose standard of beauty I have been spoon-fed since I was a teenager, looks even the slightest bit different from the version I'm used to seeing, I get rattled. As Anthony Lane puts it in his recent profile of the actress in The New Yorker: "Her character [in Under the Skin] regards humans much as we regard movie stars—as unreachable creatures, whose rituals we yearn to uncover and mimic."

If Scarlett Johansson isn't, all of a sudden, the "Sexiest Woman Alive," what does that mean for me? For my non-Hollywood, regular person body?

When she's on the red carpet, Scarlett Johansson perfectly fits the celebrity paragon: She has insanely sculpted cheekbones, a tiny waist, and somehow, despite alleged size-E breasts, can wear designer samples. Being born a genetic lottery jackpot winner gives her, and other celebrities, a certain kind of power. Our habit of gazing at step-and-repeat images only reconfirms what we already know: We'll never look as good as her; her beauty is worth celebrating because it eclipses our own.

Except when it doesn't. After Under the Skin, I will never look at Scarlett Johansson the same way. Not because she plays a homicidal E.T. but because, for 107 minutes, Glazer presents us with an imperfect, flawed, and, well, alien version of the star. And as a cog in the celebrity fan machine, I've been conditioned to catalog these changes. Recent photos of Johansson (who is newly pregnant) have spurred moderate online outrage. "Love Scarlett but this is not a picture of pregnancy," one commenter writes on People.com, while another says, "Please...the girl is 15 minutes pregnant. Let us know when she's so swole her feet can't fit in shoes LOL." Clearly I'm not the only one who demands verisimilitude from her celebrities. If she's pregnant, look pregnant. If she's perfect, look perfect.
But a project like this wouldn't work with a Photoshopped and Spanxed Johansson. To be believable, it requires real-woman dimensionality. Her character's strength lies not in sinewy arms and six-pack abs, but in her ability to disarm victims via a warm smile, eye contact, and open-ended questions.

Even without human context—this is her first time on earth, after all—she knows what we're all seeking: acceptance. The character has to appear "real." It's a bold and daring choice for someone whose legacy is tied up with the Hollywood ideal—an ideal that, for Johansson, is particularly Marilyn Monroe-esque. By taking this role, she is placing the artistic value of the film over having a "flawless" and unattainable body.

When the schism between stars and us gets smaller, idol worship gets compromised. And maybe that's a good thing. If stars are really just like us, does that mean we have to worship ourselves for a change? That concept makes me feel pretty damn naked.