Amy Schumer says ‘I Feel Pretty’ is about confidence, not looks
When you’re doing press for a movie that’s all about how confidence is the key to looking your best, what do you wear when you’re not feeling so hot? If you’re Amy Schumer, you go for business on top (a blazer and blouse), casual on the bottom (sweatpants and sneakers).
“I feel like garbage today,” Schumer says, noting that it’s the second day of her period. “But I knew the cameras were only going to shoot waist-up, so I’m in huge underwear and dirty sweatpants — and I’m feeling blessed as hell.”
For the most part, she is blessed as hell. After becoming a household name through her Comedy Central sketch show “Inside Amy Schumer,” she’s starred in films, both successful (“Trainwreck”) and not so much (“Snatched”); written a best-selling book of essays; branched out to Broadway (starring in Steve Martin’s “Meteor Shower”); planned a host of upcoming projects, including a script with Jennifer Lawrence; and has been pushing for gun control. Schumer has reached that point in her career, and in her life as a woman in the spotlight, where she knows it doesn’t matter what she wears, as long as she owns it.
The character she plays in “I Feel Pretty,” which Schumer coproduced, is far from that realization. Renee has cripplingly low self-esteem, which holds her back in her career and her love life. She can dress up and put on makeup from the fancy cosmetic line she works for, but all she sees in the mirror is something in need of polish and improvement, the equivalent of dirty sweatpants.
Until the day Renee falls off her bike at SoulCycle and bonks her head. When she comes to, she suddenly sees herself as supermodel-gorgeous. Cue the work success, cute new boyfriend … and the predictable Twitter backlash to the movie trailer.
Some saw the movie’s premise as offensive — that a woman needs to sustain a traumatic brain injury to feel beautiful. And by the way,