This is the story of how Lawrence became the biggest female movie star in the world — but it’s also the story of how an image can become an albatross.

Four years and eight days ago, Jennifer Lawrence reached Peak Cool Girl. Coming off the press tours for American Hustle and Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Lawrence, then 23, had spent the months prior performing her particular brand of hapless and adorable while oversharing in public. She chugged champagne, she tripped at the Oscars, she talked about ʙuтт plugs; she was H๏τ and chill, dirty-mouthed but cherubic — a living manifestation of Gillian Flynn’s conception of the “cool girl,” first articulated in her 2012 book Gone Girl. “The Cool Girl never nags, or ‘just wants one’ of your chili fries, because she orders a giant order for herself,” I wrote in 2014. “She’s an ideal that matches the times — a mix of feminism and pᴀssivity, of confidence and femininity. She knows what she wants, and what she wants is to hang out with the guys.”

Lawrence never played a Cool Girl onscreen — not in her blockbusters (The Hunger Games, X-Men), not in the small, indie film that garnered her first Oscar nomination and national attention (Winter’s Bone), not in her two collaborations with David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle) in which she plays decidedly unchill female antagonists. Off camera, Lawrence said and did plenty of non–cool girl things. But that’s not what caught people’s attention: Whenever Lawrence did or said something that seemed to affirm her Cool Girl persona — drinking Veuve Clicquot out of the bottle on a picnic; freaking out when Jack Nicholson congratulates her at the Oscars — those moments became GIFs, and headlines, and proof of the authenticity of the image.

But a star’s image isn’t who she is; it’s a curated collection of moments, phrases, and pH๏τos that, taken together, convey a larger vision of how a woman could and should be in the world: an idea and an ideal. And in Lawrence’s case, that ideal took on a life of its own: articles revolved around it; late-night interviews pivoted on it. The image fed on itself, regenerated. The more people understood Cool Girl–ness as emblematic of J. Law, the more moments and GIFs and quotes needed to be harvested in order to maintain that understanding. For a star like Tom Cruise, or Tom Hanks, that cycle is sustainable: Men are taken seriously even when they’re not serious. But for someone like Jennifer Lawrence — whose image was formed on the basis of a smattering of behaviors between the ages of 22 and 24, during her precipitous rise to superstardom — it can become an albatross.

Back in 2014, at least, Lawrence seemed to embrace the image forming around her. Before The Hunger Games, she’d been sold as a sort of baby-faced ingenue: H๏τ but talented, making bedroom eyes from the pages of Esquire, generally subdued or well-trained in her interactions with the press. Sometimes around 2012, that restraint seemed to fall away: If people liked it when she told weird stories, why not tell more? If pounding champagne made her likable, why not lean into it?

For months, all these GIFable moments seemed natural, which is part of why they were so charming. But then that naturalness began to fade, especially after she tripped (again) at the 2014 Oscars. As one Twitter user asked, “If Jennifer Lawrence falls and no one’s around… is it still quirky?” The Cool Girl image began to feel less, well, cool: few things seem less chill than (supposedly) tripping so people will make a GIF of you. Calculation, meditation, practice, preparation — they’re all so off-putting. So Anne Hathaway. So not Jennifer Lawrence.

Instead of “J. Law being J. Law,” suspicions arose that she was doing a shtick. Which, of course, it was: Every prominent person performs a shtick in public. Barack Obama has a shtick. The principal of your high school had a shtick. Some are just more seamlessly performed, and less discernible as shtick, than others. But when a man has a discernible shtick, he’s called corny. When a woman has one, she’s called fake, or phony, or accused of committing the ultimate sin for a woman in public: trying too hard.

Since this Cool Girl image first formed around Lawrence, it’s proven remarkably difficult to shake — even as she makes decisions and statements that should complicate it. Lawrence is now 27; she’s an immensely wealthy, award-winning actor who is, by any measure, one of the most powerful people in Hollywood. Yet she is rarely taken seriously. The Cool Girl, after all, is easy to love — and equally easy to dismiss. For some, “Peak Jennifer Lawrence” will always mean climbing over a row of seats while holding a glᴀss of wine at the Oscars, rather than actually winning an Oscar, or being nominated for three more. This is the story of how Lawrence became the biggest female star in the world, but it’s also the story of how an image, especially for a young woman in Hollywood, can become a prison.

On the Sunday of Labor Day weekend in 2014, dozens of private pictures of Jennifer Lawrence — including several in lingerie, or otherwise partially clothed — were leaked online as part of what has since become known as the Fappening. Shortly thereafter, Lawrence issued a statement saying the pH๏τos, which had been hacked from her iCloud account, had been sent to her then-boyfriend. The images were not framed by the press — or received by audiences — as scandalous; if anything, the easy embrace and ownership of the Sєxuality suggested by the pH๏τos simply reaffirmed her Cool Girl image.