For decades, Hollywood has been a place filled with the rich and famous. It’s a world where starlets with the potential to do something big can go and pursue their dreams. However, over the last few years, Hollywood has seen a transformation from this glamorous lifestyle to a destructive setting. In recent years, more female actresses, models, and singers have come forward with their experiences of harassment and the pressure put on them to be a certain way in order to meet the expectations of their audiences. Women in Hollywood’s entertainment industry who are victims of harassment include Kesha, Oprah Winfrey, and Lady Gaga. Art teacher Stacy Bailey believes women are subjected to poor treatment at the hands of executives in their industry because of how society wants them to be seen.

“Women get treated poorly in Hollywood for similar reasons that women get treated poorly everywhere because society objectifies our bodies. There’s a different set of expectations on women to be not only women, feminine mothers, but now we also have to be bosses, drive in charge of our own lives, have agency over our lives. But then we also have to still keep all the soft feminine things like we have to do literally everything. So there’s so much expectation on women, that it’s hard to actually be it,” said Bailey.

Bailey views the Me Too movement as a pivotal point in Women getting their chance to speak up about their mistreatment. The Me Too movement was started to allow survivors of sexual harassment to voice their allegations. The movement also helped many of these survivors get justice.

“The Me Too movement was a huge shift in how we saw women in Hollywood, taking a stance for themselves. I remember anytime a woman said ‘Me Too’, I was never actually surprised,” said Bailey.

Besides the harassment of women in Hollywood, there is also a noticeable pattern of exploitation of children by those around them. In the past, celebrities like Drew Barrymore, Hillary Duff, Corey Haim, and Shirley Temple were products of this phenomenon. Later on, in their lives, these stars and those around them paid the price of enabling young and impressionable kids to be put into unsuitable and dangerous situations.

“I think it’s interesting when a famous person like, let’s just say Justin Timberlake’s family, or like Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, like they don’t post about their kids or they don’t like put pictures up of their kids and people like Kim Kardashian, we all know what her kids look like, like she shares her kids. And I think there’s gonna be some kind of interesting study in like, maybe twenty years about how that affects them. Because I can’t imagine being pre language, and you’re a famous person you know, for literally doing nothing,” Bailey said.

Sophomore, Luis Reyes does not like many of the trends that come from Hollywood. He thinks that they should not be followed because they influence people to not do what they want.

“The trends on social media from Hollywood I often dislike because I don’t feel the need to do what other people think is the trend. And that people should never listen to what other people think about the trend,” said Reyes.

Celebrities such as Brittany Murphy, Juice WRLD, and Amy Whinehouse were all part of the entertainment industry at the time of their deaths. They and other famous people lost their lives at the peaks of their careers. People online have blamed the press and paparazzi for their downward spirals. Some of the prominent figures in Hollywood lost their lives to drugs, mental health, and horrific accidents. Reyes thinks that the pressure put on them leads them to their demise. 

“I think celebrities tend to have mental breakdowns or even quit is because of all the stress that fans put in then like body image, disliking a song or because of rumors about the artist,” said Reyes.