M. Lopez

Here's something that I came across today which seems to offer a glimmer of hope. An article in a British newspaper has slammed the stars of the Desperate Housewives TV show for being way, WAY too skeletal-looking:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/te...in_page_id=1773

What makes this article different from similar criticisms of this type is that it doesn't express some vague resentment about beauty standards. Rather, it quite explicity states that losing weight is making the stars look frankly...ugly.

The writer points out that on the show:


"skin is stretched tightly across gaunt faces, cheekbones are razorsharp, rendering their smiles neither pretty nor convincing."


The writer points out that "no, it isn't attractive" and asks,


"Do all these...women realise how hard, angular and strained they are beginning to appear? Why do they do this to themselves?"


The article also reports that fans are complaining too:


"Ardent Desperate Housewives fans...are now fretting about the weight of the stars.

" "They're way too skinny. It makes them look awful," wrote one. "Women of that age need meat on their bones," added another."


The point about age is so true. Just as weight gain preserves beauty, or can even make a woman look younger, weight loss ravages looks and accelerates aging.

The writer also compares this situation to what happened on Friends:


"Courtney Cox...lost her looks by turning into a stick insect"

"Jennifer Aniston...began to look too angular"


I think this development is so important because the whole point of starving, for many Hollywood celebs - and indeed for women in general - has been the misguided notion (promoted by diet profiteers) that this will make them look better. But the opposite is true. And once the public - and the press - finally realizes that weight loss only makes women look WORSE (and this article suggests that such a realization is beginning), maybe the insanity will finally stop, and timeless full-figured beauty will return.

HSG

The article represents a step in the right direction, but the writer fails to identify a flaw in his reasoning.

On the one hand, he acknowledges that weight loss dramatically accelerates the aging process, but on the other hand, he claims that Hollywood actresses waste away in order to achieve a "teenage-imitation body."

In making such a claim, he is reproducing the very same error in judgment that prompts these actresses to starve in the first place--i.e., the association of gauntness with a teenaged appearance. But this is absurd, and for two reasons:

1. As the writer's own observations demonstrate, food deprivation alters a woman's appearance for the worse, and makes her look further removed from her teenaged years, not closer towards them.

2. The only reason why this writer associates a skeletal frame with a teenaged look is because the only types of teen girls that the media ever displays are . . . underweight teens. But there is absolutely no intrinsic reason why youth should be associated with a bone-thin frame. In fact, today's teens are more comfortable with their naturally curvaceous appearance than ever before. And the teen years are a time of growth and development, which makes it natural, indeed, necessary, for girls that age to become full figured.

If anything, to say that an actress is trying to achieve a "teenage-imitation body" should actually mean that said actress is trying to look more curvaceous, not less so.

* * *

Ultimately, one of the main reasons why actresses destroy their looks with weight loss is because the only substantial commentary that they ever receive about their appearance comes from the entertainment-industry press corps. And today's entertainment reporters all share an anti-curvy aesthetic that bears no relationship whatsoever to the tastes of the general public. This tiny group of like-minded writers praises emaciation, and excoriates any actress who fails to conform to the androgynous standard.

For Hollywood to change, the thin-supremacist hegemony must end. More reporters must enter the profession who believe in timeless beauty, who praise actresses for becoming fuller-figured, and who critique those who torture themselves into emaciated forms.

Sensual image of Delta Burke, who gained weight on Designing Women and became one of the most beautiful actresses ever seen on television--and was savagely attacked by the press, as a result:

- New Kailee O’Sullivan gallery: youth = curves