Wednesday, July 05, 2006

A River In Egypt

I guess I shouldn't expect Kiera Knightley to admit that she has a problem with her weight, especially when it is apparently NOT a problem, given that (a) she is getting loads and loads of attention for her washboard ribs and concave abs, (b) she is a big movie star making millions of bucks and working with screen stars like Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom and (c) it is doubtful that her severe weight loss will have any impact on her ability to get work, given that Hollywood appears to handsomely reward women whose bodies have no more flesh than the average 8-year-old boy by giving them more and more and more work.

So, what's a little malnutrition when you can still manage to support the weight of a silk halter dress despite having eaten nothing but a rice cake and a raisin over the past two days (and felt disgustingly guilty for being such a brazen pig at that)?

I for one am hereby boycotting all movies until the madness stops.

Oh...and Kiera? Your hair gives it all away. You might want to consider a hot oil treatment. I hear they don't absorb through the scalp.

YC

Addendum: to give you some perspective, here is what Ms. Knightley looked like before the weight "mysteriously" began to fall off:


15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ewww. I hadn't seen that photo though I had read her denial of being anorexic.

Yeah, right.

If she isn't anorexic, she ought to rush to the doctor right away to find out why she is SO THIN. Egads. Poor girl.

Anonymous said...

I actually saw some footage of this event (London's premiere of "Pirates of the Caribbean 2") and I actually thought she wasn't that thin. But looking at this pic...ew! She is really skinny! Way too thin to be attractive, at least to my eye.

Tiff said...

Too bad...I know she's always been on the thinner side...I hate hollywood.

Anonymous said...

If I was to put money, my bet is not anorexic.

When she had her first big role in Bend it like Beckham, she wasn't much bigger than in this picture. Keira has always been quite thin on her upper body.

The "before" picture that you show is from a film where she had to "buff up" for the role. I remember reading about all the training she had to do to build bulk, and I bet that the troglobra she is wearing is padded and pushing the little chest she has, up.

I bet she, like every other Hollywood celebrity, is on some sort of diet or other. But I don't think she has an eating disorder. She just seems to be naturally thin on top (and the stylists always play this feature up, like when for the BILB premiere she wore a skimpy top that showed her abs).

Obviously, I don't know her so I don't know the truth, but I am just trying to offer another perspective, coming from someone (me) who has sometimes being accused of having an eating disorder just for the mere fact of being thin.

Anonymous said...

Photoshop is the culprit of many stars looking thinner in photos than they are (eg. one of my massage clients...I KNOW her body and it ain't that thin!) Looking at that photo, Keira seems to have been "doctored" on her chest as her arms are by no means skin and bone. I know bodys and this photo doesn't add up. And her hair not looking perfect? How dare she step onto the red carpet! Why all the fuss? It's not going to help anyone affected with this disorder.

Yoga Chickie said...

So you're saying that we can no longer trust photos anymore? I am not surprised. But dismayed. The trick this plays on female fans can be devestating to their egos, and whether or not that is right or wrong, it just is the way it is. Role models being doctored to look like they eat nothing? That is appalling.

I also don't believe it applies to Kiera since the photographers were shouting at her about her skinniness on the red carpet. They saw her in person. But whatever. It really is not the point. The point I am making in my blog is that Hollywood rewards anorexic-looking bodies on women and places them out there for all to see. And it isn't a good thing.

Her hair looks dry and strawlike - that is why I mentioned it. It makes her look like she is malnourished. I guess they "doctored" that up too.

And maybe it won't help anyone affected with this disorder today, but perhaps if enough people voice disapproval of the shrinking female body portrayed by Hollywood, many of us will stop comparing ourselves and feeling like we come up short. And by us, I mean, anyone.

Lees Lamar said...

If you want any kind of attention in Hollywood right now, you either need to get "too skinny", or "too fat" or wear a heinous outfit.
Then you get all sorts of press.

But I'm gonna say something and I might get ripped for saying this but...We need tolerance of all body types, skinny and heavier. Some people have as hard a time keeping weight on as others do keeping it off. Everyone is so heavily criticized for any step outside the little tiny
approval box that the media has set up. That's a ton of pressure. Fuck em. Stop buying into it.
Teach your children well. Feed them well. Keep them active and keep them realistic and happy about their bodies and the bodies of others. Keep them away from the media if you can, have real discussions about what they see if you can't.

Anonymous said...

Even us guys. The whole body image thing is everywhere...from Men's Health to, yes, Yoga Journal!

Eat well, be well!

Yoga Chickie said...

Susan - I hear you. But most of the women in the media who are severely downsized are not people who "can't" keep weight on: if you look at them from a year ago, two years ago, etc., you will see that they were quite thin, but not to the point of one having to take their shoulder blades literally.

But it siucks that an individual's struggles with eating has to get played out on the front pages of Star and Us and the rest of them. And it sucks that the playing out of these struggles may actually BE a necessary part of one's ongoing PR junket. I have actually come to wonder whether Janet Jackson ever WAS overweight, or if the whole weight loss thing was a stunt to get attention.

There is no question that the media dupes us, manipulates us, seduces us. I guess the key is to realize that it is a lot of smoke and mirrors and not to be followed as gospel. But I am greatful that I am not a mom of a daughter because it must be a lot of work to keep their heads on straight in a culture whose byproduct is the feeding of anorexia.

(and yes, a culture can be responsible for mental illness coming out in the form of anorexia - when I was 15, I was an exchange student in Sweden, and skinniness was NOT valued there at the time, and the family I was staying with thought it was hysterical how puny I was. But when the daughter of the house came to the states to live in L.A., she promptly adopted the eating patterns she saw around her and became severely anorexic. She went home to Sweden to recover.)

Andrea said...

My best friend is a model (temporarily to fund grad school), but only by virtue of the fact that she's naturally a size 4 (so is her whole family, I used to live with her brother who's 6'4" and about 165 lbs. and eats more than anyone I've ever met!), but she has curves and looks extremely healthy. Of course, in her industry she encounters all kinds of people who are always telling her she needs to lose weight. Luckily, she's mature and confident enough to roll her eyes and ignore them.

Anyhow, all that to say that she and I have talked countless times about how the fashion industry proliferates these ridiculous, unhealthy, and frankly, unattractive "ideals." And what shocks us so much, is that no one in the industry has ever stood up and said, "Fuck this. This is ridiculous and I'm not longer going to feed it."

You'd think that there would be at least one big-name female designer out there who would say that she wasn't going to use size zero, starved models. Not only would it make a statement about how not okay the whole state of affairs is in the industry, it would also be a brilliant PR move.

It shocks us that there are designers like Stella McCartney for example, who eschew using fur, and make a big goddamned deal about animal rights (as they should), but have no problem using models who are clearly malnourished...

Something is seriously, seriously wrong.

--A

Anonymous said...

The former Marie Claire editor, a famous (in the UK) journalist named Liz Jones, launched a campaign for "real bodies". It failed miserably and she resigned shortly after that. Apparently, the public doesn't want health. The public wants to actually see impossible "ideals". I mean, for God's sake, one of the most admired women in Britain is Victoria Beckham who wears jeans with a 23" (yes! 23) waist!

Yoga Chickie said...

Yeah, the Dove Campaign for Real Bodies was a dud here too. And Nicole Richie, Kate Bosworth, Keira Knightley - they are all at the height of skinniness and the height of their popularity, whereas...has anyone seen Debra Messing lately since she put on the baby weight and didn't take all of it off?

Anonymous said...

I can't stand Vicky Becks' extreme thinness. I get shivers whenever I see her on TV, and not in the good sense. She's such a bad role model (and for many other reasons, like her passion for books - I mean, for buying them, not reading them!).

Andrea said...

Are you serious that the Dove campaign didn't fly there?

Here (i.e. Toronto...Canada in general really) it's huge. People love it. There are gigantic billboards everywhere of real Canadian women recruited for the campaign. I love it. As much as I know that it's just a super duper clever ad campaign for a big bad company, I love it. And I buy their products. And so do all my friends. Brilliance I tell you...brilliance.

--A

Yoga Chickie said...

The ads have almost disappeared from here! At least in NYC, and I am guessing all over, since I read all the magazines (even the trashiest ones, yes), and the ads are nowhere to be found (except for one with a really slim-stomached curly-haired beauty who is barely a "real beauty" and much more like a catalogue model who got too old to do catalogues anymore.

I am surprised that the ads are big all over Canada! But it's good to hear!

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About Me

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Northern Westchester, New York, United States
I live by a duck pond. I used to live by the East River. I don't work. I used to work a lot. Now, not so much. I used to teach a lot of yoga. Now not so much. I still practice a lot of yoga though. A LOT. I love my kids, being outdoors, taking photos, reading magazines, writing and stirring the pot. Enjoy responsibly.

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