Celebs & Their Weight Issues

[BobbyD 2]

Report: Russell Crowe Too Fat for New Role?

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Reuters

 

Russell Crowe is one of Hollywood’s biggest stars … maybe a little too big.

 

The actor has reportedly been told that he is too fat to play the role of the sheriff of Nottingham in the upcoming Robin Hood film directed by Ridley Scott.

 

According to the Daily Mail, the British director has asked Crowe to commit to a diet for the role. Scott previously directed Crowe in the film “Gladiator,” a role that earned the actor an Oscar.

 

The upcoming film puts a spin on the Robin Hood story, the Mail said, with Crowe’s sheriff portrayed as a noble man whose corrupt king is to blame for the oppressive taxes on his subjects. Crowe’s character will compete with Robin Hood for the love of Maid Marian, played by Sienna Miller.

 

Crowe has piled on the pounds from the days when he starred in “Gladiator.”

 

According to the report in the Mail, “[scott] is one of the only directors on earth who could ask [Crowe] to slim down.”

[schumibabe 0]

Report: Russell Crowe Too Fat for New Role?

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Reuters

 

Russell Crowe is one of Hollywood’s biggest stars … maybe a little too big.

 

The actor has reportedly been told that he is too fat to play the role of the sheriff of Nottingham in the upcoming Robin Hood film directed by Ridley Scott.

 

According to the Daily Mail, the British director has asked Crowe to commit to a diet for the role. Scott previously directed Crowe in the film “Gladiator,” a role that earned the actor an Oscar.

 

The upcoming film puts a spin on the Robin Hood story, the Mail said, with Crowe’s sheriff portrayed as a noble man whose corrupt king is to blame for the oppressive taxes on his subjects. Crowe’s character will compete with Robin Hood for the love of Maid Marian, played by Sienna Miller.

 

Crowe has piled on the pounds from the days when he starred in “Gladiator.”

 

According to the report in the Mail, “[scott] is one of the only directors on earth who could ask [Crowe] to slim down.”

 

Oh great. We've already had a Robin with an American accent. Now we get the Sheriff with an Aussie one. English actors must be in short supply.

 

And no matter how many Oscars Mr. Crowe may have won, he's no Alan Rickman.

[cathmonast 0]

Let Russell be Guy of Gisbourne and let Mark Strong be the sherrif/Robin.

[galaxygirl 0]

My main problem with that movie is Sienna Miller as Maid Marian. That's enough to keep me away.

[cathmonast 0]

My main problem with that movie is Sienna Miller as Maid Marian. That's enough to keep me away.

actually, Ridley Scott said that they were not settled on Marian yet. I am just happy that Mark Strong is in it for now. I just hope that Russell will lose his weight on time. And I know it must be hard losing weight. Sometimes I tell myself that I'm happy that I'm not an actress because my size 18 frame would not fit...and while I am more careful, I am not ready to be a slave to a diet.

[FrenchDoll 0]

http://www.dlisted.com/node/29980

 

It is so sad to see Joaquin Phoenix at such an unhealthy weight.

[galaxygirl 0]

It's not the unhealthy weight I'm worried about with Joaquin. Boy looks like he has much, much bigger problems

[FrenchDoll 0]

:4biggrin: I was being polite! You are sooo right!

[schumibabe 0]

I'm not even going to ask what seven layer cheese dick is. I have a feeling I would find the answer way too disturbing.

[Hihomumio 168]

Joaquin has the psycho look in his eyes. That along with the way he's let his looks and hygiene slide (although none of those guys looks very clean either) are bad signs. I really hope he gets his shit together before he ends up like his brother.

[FrenchDoll 0]

I'm not even going to ask what seven layer cheese dick is. I have a feeling I would find the answer way too disturbing.

I know! Micheal from DListed uses that expression all the time!

[FrenchDoll 0]

Joaquin has the psycho look in his eyes. That along with the way he's let his looks and hygiene slide (although none of those guys looks very clean either) are bad signs. I really hope he gets his shit together before he ends up like his brother.

Agreed. I was thinking the exact same thing....he's going down the same road....

[BobbyD 2]

Young, white and super skinny? We don't buy it, women tell advertisersReal women prefer brands whose ads mirror their own identities, survey shows

Peter Walker

The Guardian, Saturday 10 January 2009

 

 

The advertising world's perennial reliance on young, white and extremely thin models has long faced criticism from feminists and health campaigners. Now, new research at a leading UK business school suggests it might be doing something else: harming companies' balance sheets.

 

In what is believed to be the first such global survey of female consumers' attitudes, the research says women respond more favourably to a brand if the models it uses somehow mirror their own identities.

 

Advertisers cannot, however, simply enlist a few fuller-figured models, says Ben Barry, who is carrying out the research at Cambridge University's Judge business school: "In general, people have a more favourable reaction to brands that show models who represent people's age, size and background.

 

"It's not necessarily enough to show one component which is similar - people really wanted to see someone who represents them in all three factors."

 

Such an approach has been used by a handful of brands in recent years, notably the Dove skincare range, which made a deliberate virtue of using older and larger models in its award-winning Campaign for Real Beauty.

 

But elsewhere, particularly in the fashion and luxury goods industries, the traditional reliance on so-called aspirational advertising has limited change, despite high-profile campaigns against perceived racism and the encouragement of unhealthy female physiques within modelling.

 

The study, which is still being completed, canvasses the opinions of 2,000 women in the UK, US, China, India, Canada, Brazil, Kenya and Jordan.

 

Barry commissioned advertising agencies to produce a number of realistic print campaigns for products, including consumer and luxury goods. Half were made using what the study termed "traditionally attractive models" - aged 16 to 24, white and around US size zero, the equivalent of a UK size four - while the remainder pictured "realistically attractive models" of a range of ages, races and shapes.

 

The findings were marked. Aside from women aged under 25, who were less likely to object to an abundance of young, white, ultra-slim models, and Chinese consumers, who actively preferred them, most of those surveyed felt positive towards the brands that used the more diverse models.

 

A small number of earlier studies, mainly carried out by psychologists, have suggested that the use of excessively slim models can create a bad impression with female consumers. But Barry's work goes further: as well as looking at the issue from a business and marketing viewpoint, it additionally considers race and age.

 

The latter is a particular factor for companies to take note of given the relatively high spending power of older women.

 

The study quotes the reaction of one 50-plus participant to a mocked-up ad for a luxury product using a very youthful model: "It's a slap in the face to show this young woman because she'd never have the money to shop there whereas I do."

 

Another key finding was that while women preferred to see attainable images of beauty, this did not mean they were against glamour.

 

"The women wanted models who looked like they were part of the fashion industry but also looked like them," Barry says.

 

"It made them feel that they, too, were included in the industry and were considered beautiful. It's not just about taking a plain mugshot of a real woman."

 

Barry, who previously set up an agency for non-traditional models in his native Canada, says businesses needed to take note: "It's clear that in order to unleash new economic potential you need to represent your consumer physically.

 

"If you're a big fashion retailer and you're going to hire 10 models, you should make sure that each one of them represents a different aspect of your consumers."

 

While alluring for those who believe the promotion of unrealistic body images is inherently wrong, advertising experts warn that such studies are treated with extreme caution in the commercial world.

 

"This kind of research may have some interesting insights, but it's insights into the way consumers talk and think about the adverts when you prompt them," said Paddy Barwise, professor of marketing at the London Business School.

 

"There is a gap between what they say, particularly in the presence of other women, and what they would do actually at the point of sale, and that's a big gap, not a small gap."

 

But he added: "I think that we will see a trend away from very, very skinny models, because there is a social trend against it."

 

Closed door

While "real" models have made their way into campaigns for a range of products in recent years, when it comes to the luxury sector the door remains shut. A flick through the advertisements in the latest UK issue of Vogue brings no sign of anyone who would have to even breathe in to fit into a size eight dress, while there is one non-white face, actor Halle Berry

 

A recent craze has been the return of the supermodels prominent in the 1980s, such as Linda Evangelista and Claudia Schiffer, but even in their late 30s and 40s there is not a wrinkle or grey hair. Most of the fuss about excessive skinniness is now absorbed by the haute couture fashion shows; the last equivalent furore in advertising was over the Kate Moss "heroin chic" campaign for Calvin Klein 15 years ago.

 

More recently, the cosmetics giant L'Oréal was accused of lightening the skin tone of the singer Beyoncé Knowles for a press advert. Nonetheless, black faces - Naomi Campbell apart - remain extremely rare and size 14s unknown. Such luxury brands tend to be "very conventional in the way they communicate", said Neil Dawson, a leading advertising executive who heads the judging panel for the industry's IPA Effectiveness Awards. "This has meant that their campaigns have historically become a bit samey."

[BobbyD 2]

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/nurtureshoc...h-thinness.aspx

 

Do Disney Princesses Make Young Girls Obsessed With Thinness?

Po Bronson

 

My 5 year old daughter is excited to see The Princess and the Frog, Disney’s new movie being released nationwide next weekend.

 

Here’s how I’d rank her reasons for being excited:

 

There’s popcorn at theaters, in huge quantities;

 

The movie’s about a princess;

 

The princess is African American; and

 

The movie is set in New Orleans, where my wife’s family is from.

I know many parents won’t overtly discuss #3 with their daughters, figuring the movie’s focus on an African American heroine will convey its multicultural message implicitly. However, readers of our book and this blog know that our family will discuss it quite openly, as we’ve been talking explicitly about race with our daughter since she was three. I’ve been trying to construe the movie as something to celebrate, but I admit it sometimes comes out jaded – America took two hundred years to elect a black president, and it felt like it took Disney almost as long to create a black princess.

 

In fact, because our daughter is already well-versed in racial tolerance, I’ve been concerned about something else. I’ve looked at pictures of the new princess, Tiana. I can’t tell how old she is – a tweener or teen – but she appears to be just as thin as Cinderella and Pocahontas, perhaps even more so: her arms are slender and sculpted. She’s athletic, but unrealistically thin.

 

My daughter’s been infatuated with Disney princesses since she was three, and she’s also now showing some early concerns with her body image. It’s important to her to “look pretty,” or “look cute.” She’s said things like, “Those sneakers make my feet look fat.”

 

I'm bewildered to hear my sweet kindergartner say such things, and where she is getting this from, I'm not sure – but I have been wondering if it relates to my daughter’s fascination with the princesses. If so, taking her to the new movie might just encourage her budding concerns with body image. And that I definitely don't want to do.

 

Do Disney princesses make young girls obsessed with thinness?

 

Well, there’s a perfectly-timed study on this, just released this week.

 

Even going into the experiment, Drs. Sharon Hayes and Stacey Tantleff-Dunn anticipated it might be complicated. The catch has been that media use and body image dissatisfaction are related for girls aged seven and older – numerous studies have demonstrated this. However, with girls six and under, the correlation isn’t really there. While many girls six and under express weight concerns and preference for thinness, it’s not clear that media exposure is the cause.

 

In a nutshell, Hayes and Tantleff-Dunn brought 121 girls aged three to six into their lab and showed them video clips for fourteen minutes. Half the girls watched princess clips; half watched non-princess cartoons like Dora, Clifford, and Dragon Tales. Then each girl was given fifteen minutes to enjoy herself in a play room, and the scholars recorded how many of those minutes were spent in appearance-related play, such as sitting at the vanity or changing clothes in front of the mirror. The children were also asked to pick the “Real Princess” from a photo collection of girls in ballerina costumes, ranging from thinnest to heaviest. Before and after the experiment, the girls were asked some questions about body-type preferences.

 

Before I discuss the results, it’s worth noting some details of the experiment. First, Hayes and Tantleff-Dunn work right near the Disney epicenter – at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. They had expected the girls who watched princess videos would exhibit more body-image dissatisfaction. They also expected those girls would play more at the vanity and with the dresses.

 

Second, the concern isn’t just that the heroines are princesses. It’s that with characters like Sleeping Beauty and the Ugly Stepsisters, "good characters often are depicted as beautiful and thin, and attractiveness is associated with sociability, kindness, contendness, and success. In contrast, evil is linked more readily to obesity, cruelty, and general unattractiveness." Most of Disney movies include scenes where beauty is overtly cherished as desirable. In Beauty and the Beast, Gaston comments that Belle is “the most beautiful girl in town, and that makes her the best.” Cinderella becomes prince-worthy by donning a gown. And it was scenes like this – with a clear value placed on attractiveness – that were shown to the young girls.

 

Third, asking preschool and kindergarten-aged girls about body image is tricky. Older girls can point to silhouettes to guess what their own body shape is, or their preferred body shape. But young girls won’t get it. So Hayes and Tantleff-Dunn took every girl’s photograph on the way in to the lab. As each girl progressed through the experiment, her photo was quickly morphed onto computer-generated figures of differing body mass. So when the girl was later asked, “Which one looks most like you?,” or “Which one would you like to look like?,” she was seeing herself – same face, hair color, and skin color. The only variable that changed was body mass.

 

Their results showed that little girls, much like my daughter, are concerned with their body image. 31% said they always worry about being fat, and another 18% sometimes worried about it. One-third of the girls desired a thinner ideal figure compared to their current size. And when asked to pick the “Real Princess,” 50% of the girls chose the thinnest ballerina.

 

Crucially, however, these measures weren’t affected by watching the princess videos. On every measure, there was no statistical difference between the girls who watched princess scenes and those who watched Dora and Clifford. Watching Anastasia and Cinderella and Belle didn’t make them play longer at the vanity or try on more dresses afterwards. It didn’t make them more likely to pick the thinnest figure as the Real Princess. It didn’t exacerbate their desire to be thinner.

 

Hayes and Tantleff-Dunn speculate that girls seven and older have learned to compare themselves against what they see in media. However, girls six and under haven’t really started doing that yet; instead, they adopt the persona of the heroine and become enmeshed in the story – they are Aurora, Snow White, and (starting next weekend) Tiana. Nothing yet disqualifies them from being a princess.

 

So where’s the body image concern coming from? This experiment wasn’t conclusive on that point, but it had clues. Many of the girls in the study were indeed heavy – as typical of America today, 22% were obese and another 12% overweight. So for some, their concern could certainly come from conversations with Mom and Dad about not getting fat. The girls said things like, “Being fat is bad,” and “My mommy thinks she’s fat.”

 

Asked what they would change about their physical appearance, though, skinniness wasn’t the big concern. Instead, these girls wanted to change their hair color, their clothes, and their skin color. According to these young girls in Orlando (40% of whom were nonwhite), it helps to be a princess if your hair is blond and skin is white.

 

Given that this study has alleviated my concerns about body image – at least a little – I can go back to celebrating Princess Tiana’s race.

[princess 1,712]

people.com

Kate Winslet and Halle Berry Top Most Desirable Bodies List

 

While there remains no shortage of Hollywood starlets whose stick-thin frames continue to appear in magazines and on the red carpet, it seems now more than ever ordinary women are tiring of the look — and the possible extreme measures it takes to achieve that near-impossible standard. A recent survey, which polled 2,000 women aged 18 and over, found that stars with curvier, healthier figures were more desirable, reports the UK’s Daily Mail. Topping the desirability chart is Kate Winslet, followed by Halle Berry and Beyonce. Also making the list: Megan Fox and Lily Allen, while svelte Victoria Beckham and Kate Moss tie for last place. Could the era of too-too-skinny starlets be coming to an end?

[Hihomumio 168]

Could the era of too-too-skinny starlets be coming to an end?

 

We can only hope and pray that people are finally coming to their senses about this huge problem.

[princess 1,712]

Plus-size models in V Magazine’s “Size Issue”

 

[Hihomumio 168]

Oh my goodness, can you believe it? Real women looking wonderful!!

[Freckles 79]

Model considered Fat at a size Four

 

from USA Today. December 2009:

 

Meet Lara Stone.

 

She's 5'10'' tall and a size 4. And that's "fat" in her world. The Dutch model has struggled so much with her weight that she became an alcoholic, she says in the new Vogue.

 

"It's depressing when the clothes don't fit and you are always the odd one out," says Stone, referring to the fact that most models are a size 0.

 

Now, fresh from rehab in South Africa, she's upbeat. She doesn't even blame the designers—"That is their aesthetic. It's not for me to say whether it's right or wrong."

 

And she's seeing things more clearly, she says. "People still tell me I'm fat, but when I look in the mirror, that's not what I see."

[Freckles 79]

Vogue Magazine article about "fat" model

[BobbyD 2]

Fashion freeze! Gabourey Sidibe has no chance of ever appearing on the cover of Vogue magazine

BY Cristina Everett

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Friday, March 26th 2010, 4:00 AM

 

Following the snub on Vanity Fair's recent Young Hollywood cover, "Precious" star Gabourey Sidibe is getting another fashionable cold shoulder.

 

The Oscar award nominee is said to have zero chance of ever appearing on a future cover of Vogue magazine due to her size, PopEater.com reports.

 

"She's a joke in the fashion community," a fashion industry insider scoffed. "What she wore on the red carpet at the Academy Awards wasn't a dress, it was a tent."

 

Sidibe, 26, is no stranger to being criticized for her weight.

 

Not only was she noticeably absent from the star-studded Vanity Fair cover that included many of her svelte industry peers, she has also been the butt of shock jock Howard Stern's many vulgar insults regarding her appearance.

 

A second fashion source went on to explain that Vogue is an exclusive forum used by designers to debut the best pieces in their new collection.

 

"All are of which are one of a kind and sample size," the insider added. "It would be impossible to get a regular-sized girl in those clothes, let alone Gabby."

 

Following the exclusion from Vanity Fair, Sidibe carried on an optimistic attitude that she said has only helped her prosper in an industry that focuses on aesthetics. She explained that she decided long ago to be happy with the person she sees in the mirror.

 

"It was a long transition," she told "Access Hollywood." "I'm just grateful that I am there because so many people go through this — beautiful people, gorgeous people — don't feel it, don't feel as if they're gorgeous and I think it's really sad and I'm glad that I happen to be one of the people who does feel [it]."

 

A spokesperson for Vogue editor Anna Wintour has yet to comment on the matter

 

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2010/03/...l#ixzz0jK4RA7Wn

[galaxygirl 0]

Gabourey Sidibe has no chance of ever appearing on the cover of Vogue magazine

No way!! I'm shocked, I'm telling you, shocked!

 

Not only was she noticeably absent from the star-studded Vanity Fair cover that included many of her svelte industry peers

Please someone refresh my mind, were there any not white girls on that cover?

[Hoyaheel 1,874]

Please someone refresh my mind, were there any not white girls on that cover?

Not that I recall.

[princess 1,712]

Matthew McConaughey

Wasting Away ...

For New Movie Role

TMZ

 

Matthew McConaughey is usually known for flaunting his buff and topless torso, but it was his startling gaunt new look in NYC on Thursday that had everyone's jaws dropping.

 

The 42-year-old is drastically losing the pounds to play Ron Woodruff in the movie "The Dallas Buyer's Club," the true story of a man who contracted HIV through drug use in the '80s and has to smuggle life-saving medications from Mexico.

 

From dropping trou in "Magic Mike" to now dropping pounds ... it's no question Matt is racking up an impressive body of work.

 

R

[tyler 408]

Wow -- he ws incredibly hot looking in Magic Mike -- I wonder how he is going to get the body back assuming he is doing the prequel?