BY ALISON DELLIT
"When I see people on TV who are starving, I just cry. I mean, I'd like to be that thin but not with all the flies and death and stuff." — Singer Mariah Carey, 1998.
Mariah Carey's sympathy for the hungry did not generate calls for her to be professionally treated. In Hollywood, where an extreme weight obsession is as essential a career accessory for an actress as a fixed grin is for a fast food waiter, they didn't even raise a blip.
Hers and similar comments have, however, contributed to a growing cynicism about Hollywood imagery among the very women they are aimed at — as have some embarrassingly extreme incidents of weight loss on personalities such as actor Calista Flockhart and singer Victoria Adams ("Posh Spice").
So now the celebrity media are running hard in a desperate attempt to appear critical of the entertainment industry's obsession with thinness.
The Who Weekly magazine which hit the shelves on March 23 featured the headline, "Hollywood's healthy bodies are back", the proof being provided by such actors as Drew Barrymore, Charlize Theron, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Jennifer Lopez.
Such articles are nothing new: NW magazine ran a cover in July last year screaming "Too skinny to play real chicks", which argued that thin was "out" in Hollywood.
But the evidence for this is as thin as your average actress. All Who's featured actors (except Drew Barrymore) are an Australian size 10, while the average woman is a size 14.
The only discernible difference between Lopez and stick-thin Gwyneth Paltrow is that Lopez has bigger breasts and a bum — but her waist is just as tiny.
The emphasis in the article is on these actors' "beauty" and "sensuality", continuing the media's ongoing obsession with how women look.
Who does attempt to argue that these women look "beautiful" without consciously altering their body shape. But the evidence that Lopez is not "body conscious" comes from her personal gym trainer.
Another "healthy body", Zeta-Jones, went on a crash diet after her pregnancy last year, losing over 15 kilos in two months and paying a consultant $US250 a day for the privilege.
She explain her decision to the British tabloids: "I want my boys [son Dylan, 6 weeks old, and husband Michael Douglas, 58 years old] to remember me as a fairy princess on my wedding day, not a chunky bride. My diet started the second Dylan was born."
In the end, the article simply argues that some women can make it in Hollywood with a few more kilos than others — providing that these kilos are carried in the "right" places.
But even in this limited message, the hypocrisy of the magazine industry is staggering. Who led off the article by quoting Charlize Theron who, like British actor Kate Winslet, has publicly complained about being forced to lose weight in order to keep working at the highest level. Who, however, featured Theron in their "20 most beautiful people" edition for 2000 — during the very period she believes she was too thin.
In an even more blatant dose of hypocrisy, NW magazine featured a cover on March 14 condemning the British tabloids for calling singers Kylie and Danni Minogue fat. In the same issue, NW ran a story on how the original "Popstars" (band Bardot) got their "fabulous" bodies, featuring the women's diets prominently, including singer Tiffany's claims to eat no breakfast, salad for lunch and an iceblock for dinner.
But the media barons know that women are sick to death of confronting images of anorexic women, and increasingly angry about it.
Who's US sister magazine, People, conducted a random survey last year of women about media and body image. Unsurprisingly, it found that over 50% of women think Hollywood actresses are too thin, and a whopping 80% said that Hollywood imagery made them insecure about their own looks. Since then People (and Who) have run four cover stories criticising the thin cult of Hollywood.
But all these articles are designed to do is get women reading the magazine, where they will be bombarded again with images confirming how "inadequate" they look.
This is not an unfortunate by-product of "society's" obsession with the beautiful: it is a deliberate strategy designed to sell cosmetics, cosmetic surgery and clothes. The advertising from these industries contributes the vast bulk of funding to women's magazines.
Ironically, People's survey confirmed how well this strategy was working: 34% of respondents were considering cosmetic surgery to make them feel better about their looks.
The magazine industry is not critical of Hollywood's weight obsession. In fact it contributes to it by actively promoting actresses with unrealistic body shapes. This will not change while companies can make mega-bucks out of women's insecurity with their bodies. In the words of Kate Winslet, "It makes me sick!".
[Alison Dellit is a writer for Green Left Weekly and a member of the Democratic Socialist Party.]