Culture and Her Criticism: Rachel Zegler
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
News Section Editor Siya Pujari, ruminates on the criticism surrounding Rachel Zegler, where talent takes a back seat to the tired spectacle of tearing women down
For this issue’s Culture and Her Criticism column, we are going to be talking about the one and only Rachel Zegler, who at one time was the most disliked female celebrity in the cultural zeitgeist. For those of you who have missed her rise in Hollywood, she first entered the public eye by beating 30,000 other auditionees to be Steven Spielberg’s Maria in the 2021 West Side Story at the ripe age of 17 years old. She then went on to be a part of the sequel to Shazam, and played the memorable Lucy-Gray Baird in the prequel movie in The Hunger Games saga, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. She entered the world of Broadway after years of being the lead in her school musicals by playing Juliet in Sam Gold’s Romeo and Juliet on stage and following this with a highly-acclaimed performance as Eva Peron in Jamie Lloyd’s Evita. One piece of media I have left out of her artistic catalogue is perhaps one of the most infamous movies to emerge in this past decade… Snow White (2025).
This movie was plagued by a nebulous storm of media attention, cumulative of multiple factors, but whose consequences most seriously impacted Zegler, over the truly culpable individuals involved.
Before we dissect that specific discourse, we must first establish that women’s talents have always been veiled by society’s interpretations of their personality. They first must appease the masses, and then they are granted the ability to showcase their talents; their talents are never allowed to speak solely for themselves. This is not the same for many male actors on stage and on screen, who do not have to play by these same invisible rules. Rachel Zegler is the perfect example to explore this phenomenon. No matter how incredible her singing voice is, when she vocalises her political opinions it automatically takes her out of the running to be an embraced and celebrated figure. This insidious social rule is a way of concealing women’s talents and not rewarding them for their ability–instead punishing them for having the bravery to speak out on important issues, and exist without having to continuously mute themselves.
Zegler is an activist in her own right and has strong convictions; a deeply admirable trait. This trait has been relentlessly veiled by conservative backlash that has clouded her career thus far, funneled by the inherent wrongness of an unregulated yet centralised court of public opinion that exists within the modern media landscape.
The most egregious example of this is how the disaster of Snow White’s reception escalated to Disney actively scapegoating her to be the ultimate cause of the film’s box office failure. After Zegler publicly voiced her support for Palestinian liberation from the state of Israel on her social media alongside Snow White promotional material, Disney actively pushed her to be the face of the hate the film was receiving instead of standing up behind their choice to cast her and criticise Gal Gadot’s rigid Israeli support. In fact, Marc Platt, the producer of Snow White, flew in from LA to her New York apartment to invasively pressure her to take down her pro-Palestine posts and reprimand her for speaking out against the atrocities [1].
In her case, it cannot be assumed that it was solely her political perspectives that contributed to her demonisation in pop culture, as there is a more sinister reason behind it all. It is important to acknowledge that by Zegler advocating for herself and the rights of others, it automatically subliminally indicates to those more conservative that because she has a voice, she lacks humility. There is an expectation for a young woman to always be visibly grateful and in debt to those around her and to the public when she first rises to stardom—and if she is not constantly praising her fans, instead choosing to draw attention to important political issues or her own personal grievances with the industry machine of Hollywood, she is now painted as disrespectful, too outspoken and grossly arrogant. This outrage machine is best exhibited within comments such as “young Rachel Zegler doesn’t have her frontal lobe fully developed yet, so she tends to speak before thinking, which makes her a public relations disaster for Disney” [2].
The pure hypocrisy of this situation is best exhibited within the public reception towards actors such as Robert Pattinson, Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin’s interviews versus Rachel Zegler’s interviews.
Arguably, the men are all ‘cringier’ in their responses but don’t get criticised nearly as much; Eisenberg made an interviewer cry during their conversation. Culkin publicly stated, “Lower those expectations. I have no idea what I’m doing with that,” when asked about his casting in the new Hunger Games prequel movie as Caesar Flickerman—not dissimilar to Zegler making a joke about taking her role in Shazam because she needed a job. However, in her case, some people did not take too kindly to that comment and decided to pounce on her for not being grateful for the ‘art’ of the comic book film (that was critically panned).
It is easy to see how people don’t feel shame when it comes to the undue criticism of women in the public eye but will bend over backwards to protect and defend their favourite men.
Ultimately, most aptly coined by Rayne Fisher-Quann, Zegler has been woman’d. To be woman’d means to be built up and applauded by the same society who then tear you down in the public eye with the ultimate intent to humble the woman in question—either because they are exhausted of her (with little reason) or start to think of all her previously admirable and enjoyable quirks as deeply disturbing. It is a “perpetual cycle of ritualistic idolisation, degradation, and redemption that serves only to entertain the masses and generate profit for the powerful” [3].
by Siya Pujari
References
[1] Keates, E. (2025, March 25). Marc Platt reportedly flew to New York to reprimand Rachel Zegler about social media. AV Club. https://www.avclub.com/snow-white-producer-marc-platt-reprimanded-rachel-zegler-social-media
[2] Reddit. (2023). Reddit.com. https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/16zlnrf/whats_up_with_all_the_hatenegativity_towards/
[3] Fisher-Quann, R. (2022, July 25). What does it mean to get “woman’d”? I-D.co. https://i-d.co/article/what-does-it-mean-to-get-womand/
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