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.
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5 Comments »
Comment by Flap
September 11, 2007 @ 2:53 pm #
Weight Watchers and moderate exercise (walking and weights) works for me!
Comment by Mad William Flint
September 11, 2007 @ 5:40 pm #
Take the ridiculous standard of weight.
Divide it in to these claims of our nation/culture’s obesity problem.
and…uhm… do something else mathy.
I call shenanigans on the body image industry and the news outlets that support it.
I’m 5′11″ and clock in at a clean 225. I’m supposedly between 40 and 60 pounds overweight.
BULLSHIT.
It’s a damned lie.
Seek to feel good. throw the damned scale away.
Comment by silvermine
September 11, 2007 @ 6:10 pm #
Of course they do. If they didn’t look that way, people wouldn’t buy it and they wouldn’t have a job.
It’s not healthy. Women are supposed to be soft and not angular. I’m sure those women in those videos couldn’t get pregnant because their body thinks they don’t get enough food.
Now, granted, right now I’m working on losing 30ish pounds. Okay, maybe 20-25ish. So i’ll be down to 135. I’m 5′3″. BWI-wise, I think that’s still on the edge of fat.
But that’s how my body should be. It shouldn’t be all bony and pokey.
That’s not healthy. It’s healthy to have a little cushion of fat to see you through illnesses and disease.
Comment by Anne
September 17, 2007 @ 5:39 pm #
The good news is that they are teaching seventh grade girls (at least at my daughter’s single-gender public school) about how the photos of models are altered so that most of the pictures you see in magazines aren’t real.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that even though I know this, why do I look at the pictures with envy? Do I really believe that the seventh graders aren’t doing the same?
About The Firm video. I used to go to The Firm long, long ago. They made a lot of those videos here in my city. I know one of the people who is in the background group in one of the later videos. Her husband, who was a judge, kept the kids while she went to California to be filmed. She gave me a great recipe for some really fattening stuff that she claims to make and eat all the time.
And she’s absolutely gorgeous in everything she puts on. She’s smart, too. If it weren’t for that recipe, I’d just hate her. Think I’ll go pig out now.
Comment by Chubby Mommy
September 17, 2007 @ 6:01 pm #
I know what you mean about those videos, Anne. I’ve seen them, too, along with the “Before” and “After” shots of models (who truly don’t look like all that without the makeup and hair).
My brain reminds me not to look to them as, well, ‘models’ of what I should strive to be. But there’s that word — model — and it was chosen for a reason. Our brains can’t convince us not to try to resemble an image that’s held up to our eyes hundreds of times each day as the epitome of perfection.
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