The Model & Celeb Weight Thread [Read post #1 before posting] #1

[xmodel citizen]

^

[gia0202]

well i am 5.11 with a bmi of 18 and i am a size 0---at 132--i am hardly starving. i think the double standards are moronic. basically i thnk people are overly sympathetic to thicker women, yet are constatnly lookign for reasons to criticize skinny ones. as aisde note, if america ferrara is a 6/8-s-she is probably 140-145. isn't that bigger for 5.1?

[Ciyvk]

Originally Posted by xmodel citizen

^^ America Ferrera is a size 6/8, I don't understand how you can deem someone overweight or fat that is a size 8. Have you ever even seen her outside of her roles where she is forced to be "fat and frumpy"? She's a whopping 5'1" and looks like this:
imdb

Jennifer Hudson on the other hand is 5'9" and a size 12. She USED to be a size 28. It's sad when a woman makes that much progress on her body, goes to less than HALF the size she once was and people still say she's too fat and needs to lose weight. Hmmm, why even get healthy for yourself if you're still a grotesque fatty?

As for people making comments, tell them to shove it! One of my good friends and I used to take the bus together everyday and one day this random guy asked her if she was "dyslexic" (instead of anorexic). She's 5'10" and very thin (and looks a lot like Julia Dunstall oddly enough). But instead of getting offended she just laughed hysterically and we mocked the guy the whole way home. Why even give them any satisfaction? It's much funnier to make fun of them for being so idiotic anyway.

There's no way I would think that America is fat. America is proabally a true 6/8. And I think that Jennifer is fine. I'm talking about when vanity sizing reduces a size 16 or maybe even a 18 to an 8,10 or 12. There are stores out there that reduces sizes alot.

I've been to stores where I would shop for my normal size and the clothes would be grossly to big for me. I think sizes should be based on the actual measurment not some random number.

[BaroqueRockstar]

from people

Jennifer Lopez: I Could Never Be a Size Zero

THURSDAY APRIL 05, 2007 01:35 PM EDT
By Courtney Rubin
Jennifer Lopez Photo by: Rick Diamond / WireImage Jennifer Lopez says she's been a steady size six for the past decade – and that you'll never see her looking like a waif.

"I couldn't ever be a size zero," she tells the British edition of Elle in its May issue. "I just don't see how I could get down to that size and still be healthy.

"It wouldn't work. I have a butt, I have boobs and I have a woman's curves; there is no way I'd see them go to zero. I hate to look in a magazine and see a picture of a girl who looks so thin she looks unhappy and as if she just needs someone to give her a good meal."

Lopez, 37, continues: "There are girls out there who are naturally thin and who look great, but it's got to the point where models are dropping dead on catwalks because it's all about being thin. It's insane."

Other celebrities, including Claudia Schiffer and Kate Winslet, have spoken out against the trend among models and actresses to be dangerously thin. In recent months, several models have died from anorexia, including Brazil's Ana Carolina Reston, 21, who died in November.

Lopez can understand the pressure: She says that in Hollywood, "I've always been seen as a big girl.

"But I like my body. My husband [singer Marc Anthony, 38] likes my body. And for most of my adult life, my body hasn't gone up or down, it's remained the same, give or take four pounds. I'm not obsessive. I work out with a trainer two or three times a week, but I'll go months at a time without any exercise at all. I just keep myself in check."

What does that mean, exactly? "I eat meat, I eat carbs, I even eat McDonald's. What I don't do is ever overeat. I don't eat desserts and I can limit the chocolate chip cookies to one or two."

She says if she puts on a few pounds, "I feel it immediately and I just get a bit more strict with myself."

Her best tip: "For me, looking good is all about looking healthy, and the ultimate beauty secret is about being happy in yourself."

[xmodel citizen]

Originally Posted by Ciyvk

There's no way I would think that America is fat. America is proabally a true 6/8. And I think that Jennifer is fine. I'm talking about when vanity sizing reduces a size 16 or maybe even a 18 to an 8,10 or 12. There are stores out there that reduces sizes alot.

I've been to stores where I would shop for my normal size and the clothes would be grossly to big for me. I think sizes should be based on the actual measurment not some random number.

I agree, but vanity sizing also depends on the brand. For higher-end clothing, I have to go up a size or two. Oddly enough, I also have to go up a size for cheaper clothing. I've noticed that vanity sizing seems to be more predominate in lines with price points towards the middle. Stores like Ann Taylor or the low quality but overpriced brands like Ambercrombie and Fitch and Hollister. Maybe it's because they cater to women towards the middle to slightly upper class, and want to present an image of high quality or faux-luxury while still serving people who are not upper-class. Who knows, but vanity sizing is very disingenuous, and I don't even think it strokes the ego like people think it does. Sure, your size may be smaller, but when you get on the scale, you're still going to have to see the same weight.

[CelineChic]

This all makes me very sad to see. I almost started crying when I saw that picutre of Allegra Versace with a feeding tube in her nose. I understand it is an illness but I'm sure that fashion and magazines don't help the illness either.

Needless to say I agree that banning model with unhealthy BMI is a good idea.

[sbey]

Originally Posted by BaroqueRockstar

from people

^^^I've never been a fan of Jennifer's but I like her attitude about the way she looks.

[Carrme]

definetly..she has always been so strong and seemed confident.. i wish i could love my butt as much as she loves hers !

[seanutbutter]

I've never been a fan of Jennifer's but I like her attitude about the way she looks.

Agreed; it's a shame that more celebrities aren't as confident about their bodies as she is.

[xmodel citizen]

She's also not unhealthy. She's quite fit and has lost a bunch of fat and gained plenty of muscle since her Fly Girl days. Back then her butt was waaay bigger than it is now! I totally remember her from In Living Color!

[TheGlassAngel]

Yes. I am hardly a fan of Jennifer Lopez's (though you have to give the woman credit for creating a one-woman empire) but she does look healthy. She's slim but she has curves in all the right places. Granted she has dropped weight since she first entered the industry but it was towards a weight that was more suited to her body type.

[gia0202]

i think jennifer looks amazing cuz she is soo toned. also, i think she is only a size 6--but the tv exaggerates her curves (like beyonce). i don't even see how she is considered on the full side. she appears to be right in the middle.

[ruthie]

‘My 11 Grape Diet’ A Model Confesses

Failure to Lunch

By Cleo Glyde
With models literally dying to be skinny, former model and MC's new style director, Cleo Glyde, recalls the days when six grapes equaled a binge.

With eight days to go till the Bill Blass show, I was deep into a green-grape diet (three for breakfast, two for snacks, six for binges). How else was I going to fit into my assigned skintight showstopper? I was a model on a mission. But given that I was also a robust 6'2", wedging myself into munchkin minis was no picnic. Somewhat inevitably, I collapsed in New York's Chelsea Hotel and was carried past the jaded bohemians to the nearest hospital.

That was a lot of dress sizes ago. Today, 15 years later, the debate is heating up: Has the tyranny of the superskinny silhouette gone too far? Last August, when 22-year-old Uruguayan model Luisel Ramos died of anorexia-related heart failure between costume changes, Spanish authorities decided that models under a certain weight might need medical help, not a gig: They declared that 5'9" catwalkers must weigh a minimum of 125 pounds.

Three months later, a Brazilian model met a similar fate. America's reaction? It doesn't look like we'll be banning the undernourished look anytime soon. With skeletal celebs like Portia de Rossi, Kate Bosworth, Nicole Richie, Teri Hatcher, and former plus-size model Sophie Dahl — now bug-eyed and tiny — treading the red carpet oh-so-lightly, extra pounds are still grossly off-trend. Plenty of trainers are flogging ketosis, a dubious state achieved when a carb-starved body burns fat to save itself. No surprise, then, that a new jeans size has just been invented: 00. Satirical news site The Onion couldn't resist chiming in via a fictional young actress who nails an audition for the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa campaign: "I'm pretty thin, but I didn't think I was eating-disorder thin," she gushes triumphantly.

I signed up for modeling by accident, not design, when I was discovered at 17 in Paris on a study tour in the late '80s. Soon enough, I was in the hands of a team of bookers whose job it was to turn me into a robotic goddess onto which fashion fantasies could be projected. Of course, every new girl had to have a gimmick — mine was flaming red hair and goofy, coltish height.

Show week is a ritualistic mini Olympics that defines the fashion calendar. We queued up at the casting calls, the funnel that sifts out everybody who doesn't have the look du jour: "Give me a storm-trooper blonde"; "Give me a jolie laide"; "Give me retro"; "Give me that slack-jawed junkie look." What constituted fabulous morphed from season to season, but one rule never changed — you must adhere to a body ideal that is way taller and thinner than average. An Italian greyhound spareness, topped by a wilting asparagus neck and lolling head that accentuates the clothing, not the woman. Fabric hangs beautifully till it pools on the floor; it's all about the dress. Bottom line, if you couldn't achieve the look, you weren't in the game. So we played — smoking to kill our appetites and wringing ourselves out in steam rooms. Of course, plenty of models ate what they liked and simply threw it all up later.

My dilemma: those pesky Celtic warrior genes that kept me from looking "Park Avenue fragile." Some girls are meant to be slim-hipped and tiny; I'd watch them wolf down burgers and mud cake without gaining a gram. It's being unhealthily thin that's the bitch. At the beginning, I thought cutting out the creme caramels of life would be enough. Dream on.

At a certain point, my photo got past the gatekeepers of a godlike Italian designer. I was summoned into his presence and made to put on a pair of putty-colored shorts in exquisite, feather-light fabric. My heart sank when I saw how my grandmother's hips filled them to the brim, pushing the pleats apart instead of letting them hang limply. As I filed past, the maestro remarked to his staff, "Molto," not unkindly. But you don't need to have read Dante to translate. I was mortified. A pear-shaped woman like me in a gamine's job — clearly I'd have to start smashing square pegs into round holes.

Why? I couldn't resist. The lottery aspect of the castings stirs the "pick me, pick me" dynamic, so potent for young girls who are barely out of childhood and still inventing themselves. You become emotionally invested in the constant appraisal. As for the designers, they withdrew validation with one hand while offering temporary superpowers with the other.

The attention, the flattery, the heart-surgeon money, the city-hopping, the all-access social pass — the job is a hoot, and a parallel universe that constantly reaffirms the normalcy of weighing as little as possible. There were always more Marlboro reds and rancid champagne backstage than food, and we were all dieting together — food deprivation was a badge of honor. My body became a battlefield where willpower and genetic destiny duked it out. Once I fixated on the goal weight, starving down was easy — especially when I discovered diuretics, which rid you of fluid, the lifeblood of the body.

The more I punished myself, the more fashion rewarded me. That white-hot attention of a show or a shoot provides a druglike rush, everyone pivoting around to create an uber-you. Of course you're on a pedestal, but you're a piece of meat up there, being pawed, looked at, discussed, and tweaked. Your requisite passivity blinds everyone — even yourself — to your humanity.

I once rented my cute little apartment that overlooked the chimney pots of Paris to an American farm girl right off the plane, ready to model. She was stunningly beautiful; every-thing about her was meant to be round — her cascading curls, her pommette cheeks, her booty, the figure-eight swoop of her body. When I caught up with her six months later, even I was shocked: The purplish circles under her dead eyes, the jutting bones, and the air of misery were as repellent as her milky, creamy lushness had been lovely.

I did the reverse. Toward the mid-'90s, I was ready, even excited, to move on to other careers. But my uphill battle with food wasn't over. Once relieved of trying to be an impossible size, my policy became, "Say yes to everything," like a naughty girl bolting out of convent school. As trays went by, I crash-tackled waiters and partied on booze and cocktail canapes. I ate for revenge, comfort, and company; the cheese platter was my idea of a stable relationship. After all those years of deprivation, my body threw its own Mardi Gras: Instead of being thinner than everybody else, I went bigger. Not that I enjoyed it — I just tossed it all down.

The only real silver bullet was the discovery of my "happy weight" many cities and years later, back home in Sydney: swimming, bush-walking, playing with my son — happy and in love. While I focused on other things, my body naturally stabilized at exactly where it's meant to be: size 12. And I have come to relish my big ol' womanly curves.

There is such a thing as a healthy model — a girl who got dealt the thin card. But as sunken-cheeked chic creates an undertow that drags regular-shaped women into a losing battle only models used to have to fight, I believe a mantra of self-acceptance needs to be put out there. Once you make peace with who you naturally are, life is an incredible feast.

*lifestyle.msn.com

[Zen]

I would kill to have some curves in the right places like Lopez and Biance....unfortunately my genetic codes won't allow it....

[MadameX]

great article! thank you ruthie