That's Weightertainment
What do Oprah, Britney Spears, and Kirstie Alley have in common? They’re all part of the phenomenon that one writer calls weightertainment: our obsession with how much people weigh or don’t weigh. She blames Oprah for starting the trend, and posits that the best way for a celebrity to gain attention these days is to gain or lose a bunch of weight.
Call it the Fat Follies or the Obesity Opera: How big anyone is, or looks to be, seems to be the most compelling topic for public conversation… In this new world of weightertainment, fat Britney Spears is more fascinating than her younger, slimmer persona. She’s clearly a media savant: The reveal of her chunky middle at the MTV Video Music Awards is what now qualifies as great TV.
Definitely gave me pause to think. I remember the furor over Tyra Banks and her bathing suit, Catherine Zeta-Jones and her anorexia, and of course Britney at the VMAs. Not to mention the covers of People and Star every week. Damn. Maybe she’s got a point.
(Notice that it’s women, though. Always, always women. Sigh.)
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Britney Spears, Celebrities, Feminism, Gossip, Kirstie Alley, Meta, Oprah, Tyra Banks
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Usually the women, but Al Gore has been taking a beating for his weight gain. I bet if he was in shape he’s be taking another run at it.
Weightertainment…That is exactly what we’re experiencing and it’s so disgusting. Actually I’m starting to find most of society disgusting with this lashing people about their weight.
I find this to be extremely ironic after reading the local news for my town. In Cincinnati, we’ve been holding our breath forever for an area alongside the Ohio River called The Banks to be developed. Developers just released their final plans and what they have in store is what they’re calling “eatertainment.”
As for the article, I think its very right on. As Joan Jacobs Brumberg writes in her book Fasting Girls:
“Sadly, the cult of diet and exercise is the closest thing our secular society offers women in terms of a coherent philosophy of self.”
Britney Spears is fat? I just thought she was, you know, not sixteen anymore. My mistake.
I haaaaaaaaaaate the entertainment industry. They suck.
There is definitely an obsession with how much celebrities weigh.
haven’t you ever read sites like http://www.theskinnywebsite
It is based on watching celeb weight gain/loss.
The obsession grows every day, that’s for sure.
and I hate that they called Britney’s midsection chunky. Hello, not chunky, toned…and yes, she’s had two kids so she’s not size two anymore…what is she now…an 8??? omg, SO chunky!
So very, very true. And we wonder why so many of our teenagers and pre-teens, young adults, and adults, have eating disorders. Could it possibly be because of the extreme prejudice the entertainment industry promotes about being thin and not fat because fat people are ugly and disgusting?
Geez, who would’ve thunk?
Yeah, how dare Britney have kids and not remain suspended in adolescence? The nerve!
It’s sickening how maturation of the body now makes women targets for a public stoning.
Anyone who doesn’t believe that this is a MAJOR seller of tabloid media is fooling herself. If we are not freaking out over Britney’s double chin, we are freaking out over Nicole Ritchie’s sternum. NR is weightertainment’s first superstar — catapulted to the limelight simply by virtue of her weight (or lack thereof).
I guess the dirty old men who leched after Brittany are going to have to find fresh meat. Poor babies. NOT!
I agree that it is normally women, but the copy of Empire magazine which I bought today has a rare male example – a little entry on Christian Bale, which makes a change – although he has lost weight for a film, rather than just in the course of things.
I also remember that around the time that The Machinist and Batman Begins were out, every single article would mention his weightloss for the former film (which was health-endangering) and subsequent gain for the latter. It’s also in the first para of his wikipedia entry, come to that.
I have to say, I don’t remember Empire particularly mentioning (say) Charlize Theron’s weight gain for Monster, but I may just have missed it. Possibly I only remember the Machinist/Batman example because, you know, it’s Christian Bale.
What gets me is that a lot of these “fat” entertainers (i.e. Britney Spears) have gotten to the point that the media glorified just 10 years ago (meaning a size 8 or so). Back then, it was “the way to look,” and now it’s “fat.”
WTF?!
What Nuckinfutz said! You know, no matter how many times I turn this issue around in my mind I keep coming back to one things–fat hatred or acceptance frequently comes down to aesthetics. And aesthetics change.
So will the pop culture taste swing back to accepting curvy frames? How bad does this emaciation standard have to get before it changes?
The only person who seems to keep track of the men is Perez Hilton and even then it’s only the “manorexic” ones.
It’s so disturbing, but I think it’s true. And I hate it. we have no right to be so obsessed with other peoples’ weights.
As one who works, albeit peripherally, in “the industry” (hey – it is what it is and we all have to eat *ha*), I would say there are a few factors at work contributing to the phenomenon:
1) It’s sexist.
As Mo says, with the recent exception of Ryan Gosling, it’s ALWAYS WOMEN enduring this intense focus. The fact that one minute you’re a too-fat celeb and the next you’re a too-skinny celeb just reinforces the general cultural assertion that if you’re a woman, you can’t win no matter what.
2) It’s simplistic.
We’re a sound-bite culture and not exactly a nation of intellectuals. “OMG FAT” and “OMG SKINNY” are much easier for any watching/reading/ogling demographic to swallow whole (pun intended) that an actual analysis of FISA and exactly what it’s ramifications are. OMG BORING.
3) It’s escapist.
If you’re overfocused on the most recent fat/skinny headlines screaming at you from People and E.T. (note the absolute binary nature of the analysis), you don’t have to think about Katrina and Blackwater and Greenspan and the interest rates and the subprime mortgage debacle and figure out how to avoid having a panic attack trying to determine whether our entire economy and culture are in complete Rome-like decline and what if anything could going to rise up in their place and whether you’re working too many hours to try to figure out how to deal with any of that in your own life. Denial works.
4) It’s distracting.
Underscoring what Rachel and Joan Brumberg said, if you’re a woman (and or, G*d help you, a teenager) attempting to wrestle with putting a self-concept together for yourself, you can just forget about all that and compare yourself to the pictures in the magazines. Sure, you might be miserable, but at least you don’t have to focus on who you think you are. If you’re a man, you don’t have to focus on whether a woman would actually add something to your life, or whether you need to do anything yourself to improve your relationships. You just compare your girlfriend/wife/S.O. to the “cultural norm” and then you don’t have to think about what you actually need and want.
5) It’s “good for the economy”. “Eatertainment” (Bleargh!! What?!?) makes millions putting the chemicals into your food that make you want more (and besides, you’re American – you’re not smart enough to want to do anything other than be passively entertained). The Diet Industry then makes billions as you break your head trying to get rid of the excess the chemicals put there and are graciously helping you retain.
Damn. Anyone else wondering if there’s any way out of this place?
I think it’s another way to put us in our place…valued only as something to have sex with.
It is the exact same thing with men, but men have the advantage of being allowed to be attractive for different qualities.
It’s why I hate the whole “real women have curves” BS…
What? My gorgeous friend with slender frame isn’t allowed to be considered a woman?
Similarly…I am not allowed to be sexually attractive, interested in sex or considered a valuable person because I’m fat?
Granted…celebraties are paid to look good…but there is a bias to a very specific type of beauty here in the United States that you become aware of when you start watching foriegn films…The idea beauty and female sexuality shifts from one country to another and it seems that many contries and cultures have a wider standard for what exactly is beautiful.
This is another example of women being reduced to objects and men being reduced to the buyers of such objects and it is criminal for both sexes.
It is a pity that instead of people being valued as people more and more men are now being valued as objects as well.
How much of what is considered the popular version of beauty really just the lowest common denominator?
I was always annoyed especially by Oprah’s “weightertainment”. I mean, seriously, who cares if you can fit into a size 2 pair of jeans? That’s not putting me through school or making the world a better place. Seriously, with all the clout and power and potential Oprah has to change the world, the last thing she should be doing is bragging about how weight loss has changed her life.
I think the obession with celebrity weight and celebrities in general is reaching a point of outrageousness. There are much more important things to be informed about that who’s screwing who in Hollywood.
*gets off soapbox*
Nuckinfutz, you are totally right. If you look back at pictures of Cindy Crawford at the height of her supermodel fame in the ’90s, for instance, she was what would today be considered as downright “fat.” The regular runway models were thicker and curvier than today’s Victoria’s Secret models.
Also, if you look back, you will see that the models and entertainers in the 80s and 90s who were larger, also had greater autonomy. Emily Nussbaum wrote about this in a piece called “The Incredible Shrinking Model.”
Crazy- but i do have to say to the statement that it is always women- IMO that is because it is women watching these shows and buying these magazine and posting on these forums… me thinks we care way more about our own weight and others, as well, than men do. For instance, I know my weight and the weight of many female bloggers I have never met, as well as many celebrity women- and my husband doesn’t even know his own…
It IS always women. The one that really makes me mad is how every time they post pics of Pierce Brosnan and his wife, who never took her baby weight off, they always make nasty comments about her. it’s like they don’t listen to him saying that he loves her and thinks she’s sexy as hell just as she is. They also miss the body language that in every pic of them he has his hands all over her. They make it sound like she committed a crime by not losing the baby weight. Well gee, welcome to the real world folks. Who are these jounalists, anyway? Are they not real people with real lives?
I made the mistake of reading the imdb.com bulletin boards on Bryce Dallas Howard. She had the nerve to plug Spider-Man pregnant or just post-baby. I laughed out loud at one poster who said he wouldn’t “let” his wife gain pregnancy weight! That was hi-larious.
Sometimes I feel bad for being out of touch with popular culture, because I spend all my time working on my PhD. Then I read posts like this, which remind me why it is that I shouldn’t give a monkey’s a** about what the majority of the population is thinking about, because it is so utterly inane.
Yeah, I still hate myself for being fat sometimes. But I am finally starting to not care.