Body image and Hollywood?

Of course they don’t.

But I, personally, love seeing women of various body sizes portrayed as love interests. One of my favourite examples is on Gray’s Anatomy. Sara Ramirez as Callie Torres. Smokin’ hot woman.

I agree, she’s a very beautiful woman. I’m not a fan of the phrase “real women have curves” and I think a lot of thin women are beautiful too. But there’s definitely a wide range of body types most people find attractive and it would be awesome if we saw more of that.

I worry if I have a daughter one day that she’ll go through what me and so many other girls went through for generations and grow up feeling inadequate if she doesn’t fit the media’s singular image how how her body should look.

You asked “does Hollywood reflect the true tastes of the public”?” Which is way different from “does Hollywood reflect the public?”

Hollywood makes moves that reflect what people (in this case, guys) want to see. And that is thin, nubile, undressed girls. It’s pure merchandising.

That does not reflect reality (what girls/women really look like). It is a portrayal of what the directors and producers think will sell the most tickets (and DVDs).

Now you could do all sorts of psychological analysis (why do guys like to see young women undressed? why are thin women seen as sexier?), but the fact remains that ever since the first camera was invented, looking at nubile women has been an enjoyable pasttime for men.

Is it reality? Of course not. Has Hollywood EVER reflected reality? Of course not.

I just wonder if Hollywood really reflects the tastes of the public. Now I understand that a lot of men would prefer to look at a thin woman than a large woman but I think the movies portrays extreme thinness to too much of an extent. I don’t think that extreme boniness reflects the true preferences of the general population from what I’ve heard.

For example, I’m always hearing guys saying they like some curves on a woman and yet the typical female love interest looks like she could break in half and the standard seems to get skinnier over time. Women of the 50s and 60s were still small (I really don’t believe Marylin was a modern size 12) but they were softer and had some girth in places. Now, luckily for women who are in the more average-sized category (I’m not overweight by the way) we have some actresses like Kate Winslet and Scarlet Johannson who are a little curvier but they are somewhat rare and I see them continuously phased out by the Kirstin Dunsts and other waifs.

I’m not saying we should replace all the size 2’s with 300lb-ers, I’m just wondering why the Hollywood lens favors one EXTREME body type while ignoring that there’s a curvier range that is also very desirable and looks great on camera as well.

I call this “The Case of Disappearing Women” because it seems that they’re saying women should occupy as little space as possible while men are free to occupy all spaces and STILL get the girl.

I don’t know why it never occured to me before this Q that actresses and models probably lie about their weight, the same way some women lie about their age. Being 6 feet tall is vastly different than the average women who is 5’4” and a size 2 or 4. Expecting someone so much taller to be in a 2 is ridiculous. Unless you live in the upper midwest near where many Vikings and Germans settled, you probably are going to feel like you don’t fit in if you are a 6 feet tall teenage girl. I’m 5’6” tall and I wanted to stop at 5’5” when I was in high school. I didn’t want to get much taller than other girls, and I wanted to be able to wear a 3 inch heel and not be taller than a man. It had nothing to do with Hollywood and everything to do with the height and average build of people in my community.

Many models are teenagers! Why are 40 year old adults comparing their skin and bodies to 17 year olds ever? There is a difference between a girls body just from the age of 17 to 25.

I do see women of various shapes and sizes on TV and in movies more and more.

I have to agree that some of the Hollywood women are ridiculously thin, in my opinion unnattractive thin. Unnattractive. Again, I say unnattractive. But, half of America is too fat, and I am not sure we should feel obligated to represent that in the media. They are at an unhealthy weight. A lot of America’s idea of “nornal” or “average” weight is actually overweight. We are so screwed up in this country when it comes to weight.

A woman, I don’t remember her name, several years ago wrote a book about the runway model industry and how horrific the expectations were for runway models to be super skinny and what they went through, basically starving themselves for the demands of the designers. It is not that extreme anymore in the industry, things have changed a little for the better, but still too extreme for my taste. There is some sort of organization or agency that follows this sort of thing to protect models.

I don’t know the movie you mention, but sounds like that movie called for stereotypical ditzy girls. There are plenty of movies that have interesting complex women represented. But, for sure the majority of women on screen are thin, hair coiffed to perfection with extra extensions (the extreme hair extensions bother me more than the weight to be honest, but I have thin hair) mak-up to the max and designer clothing.

@JLeslie I agree America does have a weight problem and a lot of people are simply too fat. I hope I don’t come off as a bitter fat girl here because that’s really not who I am. I’m telling the truth when I say I used to work as a commercial print model and while I was never as scrawny as the runway girls, I was thin enough to book a couple of decent campaigns. I’ve gained a few pounds since then but I’m still about the same and feel okay about my body for the most part.

What I’m saying here doesn’t come so much from current insecurity as much as remembering how it made me feel in the past and being concerned for how young girls feel now. For me, the problem isn’t that the thin women are “unattractive” as much as how only ONE body type is being portrayed to young men as desirable furthers the objectification of women and women needlessly feeling like crap because they don’t have 6 inches of space or something between the tops of their thighs or whatever the “thinspo” crap tells them.

I’ve lived in both Europe and South America and there is less of a weight problem in these places. However, the portrayal of women (outside the high fashion industry) does tend to be a little more average. While they still have extremely beautiful faces and bodies, they carry slightly more flesh on them and look a little “healthy” overall. Now, I’m not saying that thin women are necessarily unhealthy and that you have to be a size 12+ to be curvy, I’m saying you don’t see as many super concave stomachs, knock-kneed chicken legs, ribs showing through the chest, and sunken facial features.

It seems to me that the fatter the general population gets, the skinnier the idea becomes to differentiate between the typical and the exceptional.

Real men don’t like skinny women. That is why real life is so different from Hollywood. Most everything you said about that place is true. I don’t know why they don’t show more regular women. Like Meg Caswell HGTV Design star winner.

@marinelife I’m not a fan of real men/real women talk personally. “Real” women come in various shapes and sizes and “real men” are attracted to a range of female bodies. That’s the point I’m making – there is a range of attractiveness and TV and film only shows one type.

I think pure physical attractiveness is more about proportion and carriage than what the scale says or what size your jeans are. I love both Audrey Hepburn and Sophia Lauren because they were both uniquely beautiful in their own ways. Just because one is skinny and one is curvy doesn’t mean one is “better” than the other, they’re just different.

@LeavesNoTrace I didn’t have the impression you are overwieght. Are you? You called yourself a bitter fat girl, and it seems to me you are not fat at all. What size 10 or 12 at six feet tall?

You point about the extremes, that the population is getting fatter and Hollywood actresses thinner is interesting. The model industry has been ridiculously, dangerously thin off and on for 50 years. The classic example is Twiggy, but there are many models and trends who have been skeletal thin after her. I worked in fashion for many years. When the girls started getting very thin again, behind closed doors we blamed the gay men who wanted men to be wearing their fashions. No tits, boy bodies, the girls to be like hangers for the clothing. I am just repeating what was being said, I am not personally generalizing about all gay male designers, and of course even some female designers wanted these superthin models. In fact, to contradict what I just wrote, I think many of the male designers fully appreciated a woman’s figure. If you have never seen the movie Valentino: The Last Emporer it is fantastic, the man is a true artist. His appreciation of the female form was amazing. But, even he I guess had an ideal body type for women.

Anyway, back to Hollywood, it seems to me in the last 10 years the trend has gone back to very skinny. Maybe partly because there are so many new ways to reduce fat through cosmetic procedures. It’s like there is a new wave of thin expectations even for “older” women. I don’t mean old, but now even 50 year olds are expected to look like teenagers, it wasn’t like that 30 years ago from what I can remember. Not to this extreme.

And, I wanted to add I don’t like the expression real women have curves either, because women come naturally in all shapes and sizes. Expecting women to have curves is also a problem. That’s why we have people getting boob jobs and butt lifts.

Maybe it’s just my perspective as a skinny woman, but I seriously don’t understand why very thin women are the pervasive body type in films and whatnot because it seems to me that every time I come across a frank discussion, among average people, about what body types they find attractive, “very thin” is not mentioned at all.

So I’m going to say “no” to your ending question about Hollywood representing the true population’s desires.

It always seems like the men in these discussions just want to see junk in the trunk and big boobs and that goddamn “real women have curves” phrase popping up all over. They usually even turn on thin women and say how they find them gross and unappealing and they just want to “give them a cheeseburger” or whatever.

@Mariah For the most part they want tits and ass, but still want a thin waist, slim legs, slim arms. No matter what we women have something we can feel bad about when it comes to our bodies.

I like your attitude @LeavesNoTrace. I, too am sick of the “real men….” comments. People (not just women) come in all shapes and sizes and luckily different people are attracted to different things. I am seeing more and more healthy looking women in Hollywood movies or TV programmes (@Seek_Kolinahr Mmmmm Sara Ramirez) but films like Old School are deliberately immature and tongue in cheek so I don’t tend to pay them much attention.

@Leanne1986 Yeah I don’t think labeling people based on body size and preferences adds anything to the conversation and I don’t like when people bash skinny girls to make themselves feel better. That kind of talk doesn’t help anyone.

@Mariah Honestly, I don’t think most guys don’t care what size a girl is as much as they say. They’ll say one thing when they’re with their friends but the girls they end up with are usually “meh” to average unless they themselves are exceptionally good looking.

Personally, being bigger than a US 6 has never stopped men from looking at me, so I’m sure being thin doesn’t hurt you either. :)

Meant to say “I don´t think most guys care…”

I don’t think Hollywood only shows skinny, anorexic type girls. I think they show a variety of girls from size 0–4 and every once in a while a size 6 will slip in there! Also, let’s be honest, it’s not just men who obsess over the super skinny. Look at women’s obsession with Sarah Jessica Parker! Skinny, skinny, skinny. I actually think men are more open to different SMALLER body shapes than women are. The women I know who look down on what they consider fat girls have a much smaller view of what looks good. I used to be a size 8 with very nice curves (oh, the good old days!) and I knew way more women that thought I was too big to be “attractive” than men.

I understand that to play the “hot” girl you have to meet society’s expectations, but what about all of those extras and “non” hotties – why are they always thin?

I am more concerned about the pairing of 20 something actresses with much older actors. You can control your body size (to some degree), but nothing to do about father time!