14 DAY TRIAL // Welcome to Hollywood, the magic world where all dreams come true, where one can have money and fame by simply doing something as fun as starring in movies. It is a wonderful land, populated by physically perfect, flawless people, who are the ultimate embodiment of Beauty.
At least, that's what happens on the outside. But are really the men and women whom we see everyday in newspapers and whose figures grace the covers of the most read magazines really that perfect? Of course they are not... far from it.
A closer look at some of the slimmer women actresses reveals from the very start a more than disturbing reality: stress, not of entertaining, but that of always looking as people would expect them to look, of permanently being in tone with the latest 'tendencies'. As to bodily weight, all these reasons make those stars shrink down in size up to the point when you would bet there is nothing left of them.
Because, as we were saying only a couple of weeks ago, Hollywood's standards are completely rigid when it comes to actresses' bodies. They are to look a certain way and possess certain 'qualities' - fabricated or not - in order to be considered really beautiful or, at the very least, good looking.
And we can easily imagine that you have already figured it out about whom we are going to talk today. Who is the person whose name pops into everybody's mind when we're saying 'aberrantly thin'? Who else could it be but the one person who has absolutely no right of being called a celebrity, the daughter of soul crooner Lionel Richie, Nicole.
Nicole came to be even more famous than she was (she is truly one of those fortunate ones who were born with a silver spoon in their mouth, as the saying goes), when she started doing 'The Simple Life' reality show, with her then best friend, Paris Hilton. Back in those happy days, Nicole was almost like an average person (except for the money, the clothes and the people she hang with), a bit too plump but prettier than most celebrities out there.
Then, all of a sudden, she started losing weight and became even prettier and more accepted by her peers. Her losing weight even got her some considerably advantageous modeling contracts and her success was huge. And what else could she do when she saw how many people dwelt on her new look or praised her even more than before, but to continue shedding pound after pound after pound.
Until she got to where she is now, so skinny and feeble than one gets the distinct impression that she might, any minute now, crumble under one's very eyes or forever disappear from the face of the earth. Nicole is constantly making all the headlines and is permanently followed and harassed by the paparazzi, but their focus has changed now. She is no longer called pretty, graceful, or beautiful; she is now labeled as 'bug-eyed skeleton' (because of her affection for large-rimmed sunglasses), 'zombie', 'disgusting brat' and the list could go on forever.
Yet, she continues to say that she doesn't have an eating disorder, but her losing more weight by the day seems to imply otherwise. Even her father is said to be so worried about her slender body and the state she is in that, at one point, he ended up by promising her a yacht cruise if she gains some extra pounds. Well, by the look of thinks, Nicole won't be going on no yacht cruise too soon...
Who's next? Well, let's see... one of Nicole's former friends and party-buddies, the troublesome red-headed Lindsay Lohan. The budding and slightly talented actress' case is similar to that of Richie. Lindsay too was of regular weight but, unlike Nicole, she couldn't even be called plump.
A while ago, Lindsay was admitted into a hospital and, when she got out, she was a completely different person: slimmer, less curvy and more delicate. Reporters waited for her at the gate and, maybe out of compassion, thought of complimenting her on her good looks. Bad move! Because the spoiled Lohan immediately lost the red locks that were her trade image up to that point, and started losing other things too, like her breasts, her butt, her hips and, basically, every ounce of body fat that she might have had.
And she got almost as skinny as Nicole is now, minus the holes in the chest and the ridiculously small body frame that makes her head look huge by comparison. And people were keeping on with praises about her good looks until Lindsay reached her lowest in weight and the press turned on her. Phrases like 'Lindsay needs breasts and ass' were used as headlines on a regular basis; she was being constantly called anorexic and other similar names until she snapped.
But, unlike Nicole, Lohan made a fast comeback and now she's almost as good as she was in the beginning. Except the love the public showed her on the onset of her career, 'cause that's gone and it's less than likely to ever return. But that's a whole different subject and maybe we'll address it some other time.
Moving on, we find another wonder child-actress. Well, not quite, and the statement is true only if one believes that becoming famous because you have a twin sister equals precocious acting talent. Sure, this is Mary-Kate Olsen, a woman (now) who had serious problems dealing with a confessed eating disorder and depression.
But she, too, refused to admit to being an anorexic until she fell flat on her face in the middle of the street. But she was mature enough to seek treatment and to stick to it and she is now more than happy to say that she is entirely recuperated and feeling good again about herself as a representative of the beautiful sex. And that only took her a couple of years to cope with...
Actually, Mary-Kate's example was put in just to illustrate that there are many more women celebrities facing problems with rapid weight loss than those two we spoke about. Frankly, we don't see how she could have become an anorexic, 'cause there was not that much stress on her to look good. But, whatever, she was in the spotlight and that must have been enough.
We could go on like this for a longer time but we wouldn't want to fall into the other extreme and be downright boring. Just know that there are many women out there in Hollywood who react negatively when subjected to too much attention. Women like Brittany Murphy, Kelly Osbourne and Anna Kournikova cope with all the attention by losing the extra pounds that they believe they have, and thus raising many questioning voices about their eating habits.
Others, like Janet Jackson or Madonna handle things differently and hit the gym at least once a day, building and shaping their bodies in ways that would make any man jealous. But that's life and, in Hollywood, one must never forget that, if you want your movie (or music album or whichever is the project you are working on) to sell, you must be, first and foremost, not talented, but sexy and slim. Fatsos are ruled out from the very beginning and, if that means you will eventually become and anorexic, at least you can comfort yourself by pretending it's all in the name of 'art'...
