How Stars Stay Skinny

If rumors are to be believed, Courtney Love had gastric bypass surgery. Former Spice Girl Gerri Halliwell is battling bulimia — again — a condition which Lindsay Lohan also finally admitted to sharing.

And Angelina Jolie is allegedly addicted to diet pills. (Whether we’ll hear about Angie entering drug rehab for this is only a matter of time.)

How weird is it that we in America so greatly worship the thin body that we pursue a “perfection” based on the image of people who admittedly abuse their own bodies?

Today while working out to an exercise video from “The Firm” I had to pause the DVD player to answer the phone. Fifteen minutes later I returned and glanced at the screen before pressing the “Play” button again. What I saw was, when I think about it, rather horrifying.

Have you ever actually looked at the bodies of some of these “exercise gurus” and wondered what they’d look like wearing more than spandex shorts and sports bras? How they’d look if you couldn’t see their chiseled abs, their muscular biceps and squared-off shoulders?

These women look perfectly healthy when surrounded by a half-dozen or so fat-free, hard bodies just like their own. But throw a pair of jeans and a t-shirt on them and set them on Main Street U.S.A. and they’d look frighteningly thin. Anorexic, even. Sure, they’ve got cardiovascular fitness and definite muscle tone, but at what point did we begin thinking it “healthy” to so greatly reduce one’s body fat that we can see every tendon and vein in a woman’s arm?

Sure, I’d like to lose weight. I’d like to be able to survive a 55-minute step-aerobic workout without feeling at some point like my heart was going to leap out of my mouth (and that I’m so darned hungry I’d be tempted to eat it). But just as I think there are too many celebrities who abuse their body and drugs to acquire that “perfect” physique, I’m starting to wonder if those exercise gurus don’t engage in their own kind of self-abuse to achieve the same look.