Fatwatch: Courtney Love

Holy shit, she is skeletal. I cannot believe that is Courtney Love. On her website, Courtney says:

"im happy not to have crazy lips and a crazy teensy unnatural little nose. so you have your opinion and ill have mine and it is my body and my face and lost 44 pounds with 6 more maybe 11 more to go. and ill fit tin that dammed couture, ( the uh ..real stuff) so im pretty yhappy and really all i care about i sthat my self esteem is limitellss and intact"

Translation: she apparently got a nose job that gave her back her old nose, and she wants to fit in couture, which is why she is starving herself. She thinks she needs to lose up to 11 more pounds. Oh god, Courtney!

Via Shawn at TUS.

I Still Don't Eat

The Fug Girls apparently were also watching the Oscar pre-show I talked about here. They applaud her refreshing honesty while at the same time pointing out... she may actually want to reconsider her stance on self-starvation.

"I kind of get the impression that Debbie's reaction might be, 'oh, you NOTICED! I'm so glad.' And, honestly, that's kind of f'ed up... So here's yet another in our long line of pleas to the ladies of the world: we were not all built to weigh 90 pounds. Being healthy is a good thing: being HUNGRY just makes you really crabby and then your face starts to look prematurely aged, and while some people believe you can never be too thin, there's no cliche along the lines of "you can never be too cranky and gaunt."

Thanks to Jelly for the tip!

Smoked Salmony Nibbly Things

British celebrity Myleene Klass popped up in my mailbox today saying she "couldn't cope being a size 8." I clicked on the link fully expecting to read that she would rather be a size 6. I was anticipating my reaction already, which is that people should be the weight they are most comfortable at. I wouldn't judge her for wanting to be a 6 rather than an 8. But that's not what she was saying.

"I have gone against the accepted wisdom that the best things happen to women when they are at their thinnest. When I was at my smallest I was most unhappy. I was in a miserable relationship and my career was nowhere. The best things have happened to me when I am most natural and curvy."

So even though I've never heard of her, I found that refreshing and figured I'd post it. Also, there are plenty of bikini photos in that article, and she looks absolutely fabulous.

Anna Nicole Memorial... Marshmallows?

Here are two rather bizarre tributes to Anna Nicole Smith: Michael Levitt's Rest in Peeps (Anna Nicole has been sculpted out of marshmallow peeps and is featured on the cover of Peeple) and this sad sparkling clown painting by Rene Garcia, Jr. I don't know which one is more unsettling, so I'll let you decide.

Thanks to Kaylin for the links!

Oh, Lettucecup

Rachel "Lettucecup" Zoe, celebrity stylist to the stars, has long been linked to various blind items and gossip tidbits like this one on Nicole Ritchie's MySpace a while back. (What 35 year old raisin face whispers her order of 3 peices of asparagus for dinner at Chateau everynight, and hides her deathly disorder by pointing the finger at me, and used her last paycheck I wrote her to pay for a publisist instead of a nutritionist?)

Zoe has also famously been accused of pushing diet pills on her clients. Stars who've signed on with Zoe and gotten dangerously thin include not only Ritchie but also Mischa Barton, Lindsay Lohan, and Kiera Knightley. Circumstantial evidence! My favorite kinds!

Rachel Zoe did an interview with the New York Times denying the diet pill allegations:

"Sounding by turns wounded and willful, she added: 'I’ve never touched a drug in my life. Until recently, I didn’t even know what crystal meth was. And I haven’t known the name of a diet drug since Dexatrim in the ’80s. The only person I’ve told to lose weight is my mom.'"

It's amazing that she hangs out with Lindsay Lohan and doesn't know what crystal meth is. I mean come on, how disingenuous can you be? In other words: I don't buy it. Also, she's kind of a bitch to her mom, isn't she?

"I Don't Eat"

I was watching the Oscar pre-show last month on E!, and caught a refreshing conversation. There were two hosts, one thin and the other disturbingly super-skinny. Here's a paraphrase:

Thin: You are so thin! It's amazing! How do you do it! Do you eat?
Skeleton: Not really.
Thin: (surprised laughter)
Skeleton: I'm really tired of these actresses saying "I eat cheeseburgers all the time!" It's such a lie. I'm always on a diet. I never eat. All I've had today is a cherry.

It was just an offhand piece of banter but it totally stuck with me. I love that she's admitting that in order to achieve looking like a skeleton, she has to not eat. Simple as that. Ever wonder how many calories the average celebrity consumes? Snarky Gossip hypothetically breaks it down for us:

GWYNETH PALTROW: Mother-of-two Gwyneth has followed a macrobiotic diet for years. Recently she adopted a diet prescribed by celebrity health guru Dr Joshi. s well as dairy, red meat and alcohol, she is banned from eating wheat, tomatoes, peppers, fruit, sugar and gluten. Typically she eats celery sticks for breakfast, lentil soup for lunch and salmon with brown rice for dinner.
One portion celery sticks: 10 cal.
One portion lentil soup: 150 cal.
One portion grilled salmon: 127cal.
One 200g portion cooked brown rice: 216 cal.
Total: 503 cal.

Other celebs on the list include Renee Zellwegger, Kate Winslet, and Victoria Beckham. Found via Fitness Fixation.

Star Jones Is A "Skinny Bitch"

The upswell in traffic from people searching for Star Jones tells me that something's brewing with our favorite llama lookalike. In fact, she has a new job at Court TV, and her old friends at The View discussed it today. Rosie even graciously congratulated her:

"We want to wish Star Jones congratulations. She just got a new job with Court TV and she looks beautiful," Rosie said. "She looks wonderful and we wish her all the best."

It was Joy Behar who called her a skinny bitch. But forget all about that, did you see the picture attached to that article? She's definitely uber-skinny and looks like she's had her boobs done. I think she looks better a little heavier but who am I to say? I will say that the ruffled sleeve monstrosity she's wearing is not doing her, or me, or anyone with eyeballs, any favors.

Dear Nigel Lythgoe: I am fat and I have sex and get naked. A lot. Thank you.

I'm a little late to the party with this, but I've been really bothered by the fact that Frenchie Davis was unceremoniously kicked off the second season of American Idol for topless photos on the internet, while X-rated photos of Antonella Barba emerged that show her topless while actually engaged in the act of sex (Granted, not according to the Clintonian definition, but we'll go with the definition of the current White House administration, shall we?) and yet we were still subjected to weeks of her tone deaf warbling until America collectively spat her out.

One argument is that Davis was paid for modeling while Barba is just a cheap date. But what is also interesting is that Davis claims that she disclosed the existence of the photos to AI producers from the start, while I somehow doubt that Barba disclosed her night of too many Flirtinis with her date and his camera phone.

Davis is black, plus-sized, and immensely talented. Barba is white, looks like a Bratz doll, and has marginal vocal ability. While there have been black idols and overweight idols that have gone quite far, do the producers prefer their Idols lumped into one of two categories: either you're a sex symbol or you are nontraditionally attractive yet powerfully talented. And while it is possible to be sexy and talented (see Clarkson, Kelly), please don't remind the nation that fat people have sex.

Is it justified that Frenchie got shown the door while Antonella continued to perform each week? Am I just being over-sensitive to fatism and continuing to show my bias toward plus-sized Idol contestants? Would Mandisa have been kicked out if candid photos had surfaced of her giving her man some oral pleasure?

Model Thinking

Catching up with Too Fat for Fashion, I came across this post meditating on the thin ideal, especially in the modeling world:

"People genuinely believe what they're saying; people believe clothes look better on the thin, the slim, the tall. I sometimes believe it, even though I 'know' differently. How have we learned to see this way, and how do we learn to see differently? One cover girl or one plus-size model isn't enough, because they will automatically look 'wrong' set amongst other bodies of a thinner type. "

The whole blog post is great, and at the moment, I have nothing to add. I just wanted to make sure you didn't miss it.

You're Gonna Love Me

In honor of tonight's Oscars, here is a delightful article about Jennifer Hudson's style transformation since the days of American Idol. (I don't remember that pink outfit, but holy god.)

"No rail herself, [Hudson's stylist Jessica] Paster said that 'working with a girl that’s curvy has been a dream for me. She likes herself, so she’s not one of those freaks who is like "Oh, my God, I’m fat. Oh, my God, I can’t wear that"... she knows when she looks good in a hot dress.'"

I can't wait to see what she ends up wearing tonight; I'm sure she'll look amazing. I also love that instead of a pre-Oscar party, she had a "praise party" at her church. We're rooting for you, Jennifer!

Fat People: Stop Being Happy.

Anne Diamond, a British television personality, has a column in the Daily Mail, called "Why you can never be fat and happy."

It shouldn't - but fat demeans you, even in your own eyes...I was already divorced, but it is at this stage that many people turn away from their partner, and turn instead to the fridge. Outside my family, the closest relationship I had was with a packet of Hobnobs.

When you're fat, you dread getting dressed in the mornings because you hate all your fat clothes, and you dread going to bed at night feeling a failure because you've eaten a Malteser.

Because that is what it all boils down to. Fat people spend their entire lives hating themselves, wearing stretch pants and t-shirts and being ashamed to be looked at. Her experience struck some nerves with me, but I have spent a lot of my fat life deliberately working against every single thing she said, and I have ended up happy. It is hard to be fat, but Anne Diamond, you just made it harder on yourself.

The moral of the story: What's really demeaning? This article.