Starlets Slam the “Skinny” Look
Category: Beauty, Celebrity News, Gossip, Health, Lifestyle
Kate Winslet and Billie Piper last week slammed the skinny look, saying it skewed the perceptions of young women and was dangerous. They were then joined by Cameron Diaz, who said much the same on the Parkinson talk show. The controversy has been a hot topic since the death last month of Ana Carolina Reston, 21, a Brazilian model who suffered from anorexia, and the August death of Uruguayan model Luisel Ramos, 22, who died of heart failure after not eating for several days. The shrinking figures of Nicole Richie and Kate Bosworth have also lately been the subject of intense debate.
Sexy blond singer Piper, 24, who suffered from an eating disorder herself after being called ‘fat’ at a British awards show, said to Glamour Magazine: “I think the whole size zero debate is disgusting. Some models you see are tiny because that’s the way they were born, but then they’ll get the attention and that will start feeding a fire. My sister, who is 13, looks amazing but she’s already worried about her figure. She loves Posh (Victoria Beckham) and I say ‘Come on Ellie, she’s tiny. What’s wrong with Shakira? She’s sexy, curvy.’ But she has no interest.”
Billie admitted that she worried that her own problem would return. “It’s a constant worry, but it’s not a continual struggle any more. If it’s getting out of hand I get help. For a while I wouldn’t see people because I was thinking ‘I don’t need people to tell me what to do’, so I started reading loads of books instead and I’ve been all right for a couple of years now. For me, the danger is when my life gets out of control. It’s the first thing I think about. When I broke up with Chris (radio mogul Chris Evans) I had it for a moment but I was able to nip it in the bud.”
Kate Winslet of Titanic fame was quoted on BBC’s Sunday AM as saying, “It is unbelievably disturbing what’s going on at the moment. It’s so disturbing because young girls are impressionable from 11 up to 19 or 20 even, women are very impressionable at those ages. They’re trying to figure out who they are and they want to be loved, and what I resent is that there is an image of perfection that is getting thinner and thinner and it’s truly upsetting to me.” The 31-year-old actress refuses to have any magazines showing skinny stars in her house because of the damaging effect it could have on her six-year-old daughter, Mia. “It’s only a matter of time before she becomes aware of it and it frightens the life out of me,” she said. She added: “I hope that in some small way I’m able to say ‘I’m a normal person, I’m doing all right, I’ve got a lovely husband and children and I didn’t lose weight to find those things, and those things are what should be important’.”
Cameron Diaz joined the fray on Parkinson, blaming the media for its promotion of super-skinny frames as the model of perfection. “I think it’s terrifying, it’s tragic and sad”, said Diaz. “I think that it’s a sickness, something that’s going on in someone’s head where their perspective is off. We get ideals from images that we see and there certainly should be more responsibility put on those people who are putting those images out into the world. Let’s be a little bit more responsible to what’s realistic. I’m a skinny girl, so all my life all I have ever wanted to be is curvaceous and voluptuous, have everything falling out everywhere. Some people… their perception and their perspective is completely askew.”
Tags: Ana Carolina Reston, anorexia, Billie Piper, Cameron Diaz, eating disorder, Kate Winslet, Skinny Models
