Did Jennifer Lawrence Go Too Far With A Globes Reporter? 

Lawrence shut a reporter down, and now the Internet wants to shut her down.

Jennifer Lawrence is at a crucial point in her career. She’s inarguably one of the biggest — if not

biggest — stars on the planet, but with the “Hunger Games” series over, and her time with “X-Men” wrapping up this year, she’s undoubtedly about to embark on a new phase in her life as an actor.

The multiple Oscar wins and a Golden Globe for Best Actress certainly does’t hurt things; but after years of JLaw’s magic touch — from red carpet pratfalls, to goofy expressions, to statements of unequivocal feminism — it’s inevitable that even the most hardcore Lawrence fans might be looking for a crack in the armor.

Enter a reporter camped out backstage at last night’s Golden Globes, who got shut down by JLaw when he attempted to ask her a question about her big win:

Jennifer Lawrence calls out a reporter for not looking up from his phone. #GoldenGlobes #backstage https://t.co/anWeQCsIL6

To my ears, it sounds like Lawrence was being dryly sarcastic. You can hear laughter from the room (and it seems, even the reporter). And it certainly stands to reason that after a night of drinking, loud music and being harried by hundreds of reporters, maybe (like most of this year’s Golden Globes), JLaw didn’t nail her jokes as hard as she usually does.

But the rest of the Internet was reading the clip a very different way, and in the wee hours of Jan. 11, it seemed like public sentiment was turning firmly against the actress.

jennifer lawrence gets more and more annoying every second

the comments Jennifer Lawrence made to the reporter were so unnecessary what was the point of that

Jennifer Lawrence is going from fun, lovable gal to problematic, obnoxious hoe real quick she better sort it fast https://t.co/aHRdjDwTGe

— GOGGLEBOX LOUIS (@Louisxmichael) January 11, 2016

"you gotta get off your phone and live in the now" -jennifer lawrence solving the problems of everyone trying to learn new languages

The general feeling was that Lawrence wasn’t making jokes, she was being rude to a man who didn’t speak enough English to get his question out properly. And so the JLaw backlash has begun. Not that all of the dissenters are referencing this incident in particular, but with nearly 250,000 tweets about Jennifer Lawrence currently trending on Twitter, a good portion are painting the incident negatively, and very few are defending the actress.

Two questions I’ll raise: would fans be jumping on an incident like this if it wasn’t the normally flawless Lawrence; and would fans be jumping on the incident if she was a man?

For the former, I’d venture the answer is, “no.” A good portion of the tweets against Lawrence state how they’ve never liked her, and feel she’s finally shown her true colors. For every person that loves a thing or celebrity, there’s an equal number of people who hate that thing or celebrity. So, in a way, this is a coming out for that portion of the population.

The latter question is entirely hypothetical speculation, and it’s impossible to say with any certainty. Given that — even today — men are allowed to tell jokes, be sarcastic, and be funny, while women have a much harder time being accepted for their humor, it’s inevitable that (if we assume JLaw was joking) people would be less likely to read a woman’s jokes as jokes.

The bigger question is how much this affects Lawrence in the long run. You don’t need to look farther than Mel Gibson, who spewed racist, sexist and anti-Semitic speech — publicly — in the past, getting applause and laughter when he presented at the Golden Globes, to understand how forgiving Hollywood can be of its male celebrities.

Women, not so much. This is, relatively speaking, a minor incident, but may end up being the tipping point that turns the conversation against Lawrence. And given how we tend to chew up our female celebrities and spit them out, if the collective unconscious has decided they’re done with Jennifer Lawrence, she’ll have a hard uphill battle to get out of this.

But she’ll probably sarcastically make fun of all of you while she does.