Was Bryce Dallas Howard’s Butt Changed For The Jurassic World Poster?

The question of the day: did Bryce Dallas Howard' butt get photoshopped for a poster of Jurassic world and if so, why?

By Nathan Kamal | Published

Bryce Dallas Howard

We live in a world full of incredible controversies. Issues like the inevitability of catastrophic climate change, the precariousness of our political systems, and the fragile economy continually seeming in freefall (not to mention the likelihood of imminent new pandemics) are difficult to think about, let alone deal with. That might make it a little more understandable why Twitter is currently in a tizzy over whether or not Jurassic World star Bryce Dallas Howard’s rear end was photoshopped on a poster to look smaller. 

The controversy (such as it is) about the butt of Bryce Dallas Howard appears to have begun when a Tweet by a user with the handle of @RenaultFailure went viral. The post showed side-by-side pictures of Bryce Dallas Howard, one from the poster for Jurassic World and the other from a red carpet event. The former shows the actor/director/producer wearing a white outfit and gazing out a window in the film, probably at some dinosaurs or Chris Pratt or both. The latter image sees Bryce Dallas Howard wearing a blue dress and looking toward the photographer, with noticeably longer hair, the importance of which we will explain in a moment. 

The actual picture posted by RenaultFailure includes the caption “Bryce Dallas Howard’s butt is so big they had to Photoshop it down in the Jurassic World poster.” The caption to the post itself reads “This is what they took from you.” That phrase, or variations on it, are popular Internet-speak for the perceived de-sexualization of fictional characters (or in this case, an actual living human being), which apparently some people online take as a personal slight against things they assume they deserve and have ownership over. 

Newsweek verified that the image on the right (of a more curvaceously figured Bryce Dallas Howard) is from 2016’s 5th Annual Reel Stories, Real Lives event. This event took place approximately ten months after the premiere of Jurassic World. In addition, principal photography for the film took place even earlier, between April and August of 2014. All of this is to say that human beings have bodies that frequently change over the passage of time; actors are particularly known for attempting to gain or lose weight for particular roles. 

Around the time the latter picture of Bryce Dallas Howard was taken, she had starred in an episode of the science fiction anthology series Black Mirror titled “Nosedive.” For the role of a woman obsessed with social status and ratings, Bryce Dallas Howard gained thirty pounds in order to add subtext of body shaming and perception to the story. It can be inferred that at the time of the Reel Stories, Real Lives red carpet, the actor had still retained some of that body weight.


In short, rather than Bryce Dallas Howard’s body being photoshopped for the poster of Jurassic World, a real-life human being had a different body weight during different periods of her life, which appears to be difficult for some to conceptualize. In an interview with Marie Claire, Bryce Dallas Howard herself said “ In the culture we live in, there’s this pervasive, shared agreement that there’s a certain body type to admire, and it isn’t actually based on anything real or substantive. It’s a truly superficial thing, and there’s a cost to that.” We’ll just take a moment to ponder that.