Weight Loss Winners Woo!
Us Magazine has a slideshow of the “weight winners of the year“—naturally, the stars who have lost weight this year! And look great! Woo! And they’re all women. OF COURSE. Because who cares if men gain or lose weight? Nobody! Woo!
Stars include J. Love, Ricki Lake, Kim Locke, Vanessa Williams, and multiple women (including Jennie Garth and Tori Spelling) whose “before” shots show them as pregnant. They are weight loss winners as they are no longer carrying developing human beings inside of them. Woo!
Some of the quotes are worth noting, too:
Mariah Carey: “I got tired of people telling me, ‘You need to lose weight.’”
Leann Rimes: “I’m constantly working out.”
Lauren Conrad: Before she lost weight, she went to the beach and felt really self-conscious. “I wore a one-piece bathing suit the entire time, with a wrap!” [Thank god she lost those six pounds. Woo!]
Hilary Duff: At the age of 15, press criticism drove the actress to drop an estimated 30 pounds on an extreme no-bread, no-sugar diet.
Really? “Press criticism”? Is that, like, criticism from magazines that publish judgmental articles about “weight winners,” there, Us Magazine? Is that the kind of press criticism that drives a 15-year-old girl to starve herself? I wonder. But hey, she looks great now, so everything is awesome and she’s a winner too! Woo!
Thanks to Eliza for the link!
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Celebrities, Feminism, Gossip, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Kids, Magazines, Mariah Carey, Media, Ricki Lake
Am I the only person who thinks that Rikki Lake looks better with a little meat on her bones? She is starting to get that lollipop head look about her…
:/
I think you’ve gotten right to the heart of the scheme. By publishing articles like this, they make celebrities and their agents and so on feel this crushing need to pressure themselves into losing weight. If they do so (or don’t do so), US Weekly has another topic for an article.
It’s quite the little perpetual motion device. Woo!
I think every single one of those women look better in the before pictures… even when deliberately “unflattering” pictures were use. *sigh*
This is one of the more disturbing blurbs for me: “Once uninterested in dieting, this singer has changed her tune. “I’m into eating well and taking care of myself now,” the 5-foot-6 star, 27, tells Us of bettering her bod this year with regular runs and trainer Harley Pasternak’s 5-Factor-Diet.”
I hate, hate, HATE the conflation with taking care of yourself and eating well with not eating enough.
rrg. typoes. Sorry ’bout that…
Three of them were pregnant. That’s not being fat. The rest, except for Kimberely Locke, were not plus-size, and even Kimberely was on the small end of plus-size. LeAnn Rimes looks frightening and has got a very bad case of lollipop head. None of these gals had to be “interested in dieting.”
I found that whole thing deeply disturbing.
OMG I just died laughing reading this. The sarastic WOOOO!!! *giggle*
Also, I read somewhere that K Locke supposedly went down to a size 6. If that balloon is a six I will kill myself. Maybe a size 6 at some sort of specialty plus size vanity size store. 30 lbs. She looks the EXACT SAME. I don’t know I find that whole claim to be false and misleading. The only way she is a size 6 is with photoshop and prayer.
Six pounds? Six pounds made her self-conscious? I can gain and lose six pounds during that week I’m on my period.
Ricki’s getting a scary, Celine-Dion-esque face. I do covet LeAnn Rimes’s shoes in the “After” picture, though.
No men?
Oh, that’s right. We’re all MANLY and don’t have confidence issues about our weight.
Right.
Okay, I’ll admit… I don’t have a whole lot in the way of confidence issues about my weight - which has hovered around 500 pounds for the last few years. But it does crop up from time to time. Am I just supposed to brute my way through those issues and “man up” enough to laugh it off?
Oy.
I thought the slideshow was deeply disturbing as well. Not a single one of them looked bad in their before pictures and Hillary Duff… for God’s sake… she’s a baaaaby, let her be!
My head, it is in my hands.
I think if I was a celebrity, I would wear a bikini to the beach, with no wrap, and bring a sumptuous picnic lunch, which I would then eat either before or after boogie-boarding to my heart’s content. I would do all these things regardless of who may or may not be watching, and with total disregard to the cameras or potential wank-fantasies (or lack thereof) of other beach patrons. Because I don’t give a rat’s patootie about any of ‘em.
That’s the picture I’d want the slimy mags to print: me, encrusted in salt and sand, my hair slick and saturated and plastered to my back, with my body doing as it will in regards to whether I am positioned in a way that looks “sexy” or not, or any rolls or dimples it might make while I’m seated on a beach towel, all while taking a big bite of a sandwich (egg salad, or perhaps PB&J), with a satisfied smile and a sun-induced squint on my face.
I’d never read any printed material in a magazine or tabloid regarding me, of course, but I’d be proud of that picture.
I suppose it’s just as well I’m not a celebrity.
If that balloon is a six I will kill myself.
We can only hope…..
Re: Men’s issues with weight. While men suffer from fat discrimination, oddly enough, nobody has an “attaboy” attitude for men who lose weight. I knew a Weight Watcher leader who lost 30 lbs., and not only did nobody congratulate him, they all assumed his weight loss was tied to something negative: either he was cheating on his wife, or had cancer.
Linda, seriously? That’s odd. At least on the internet, men are beginning to become just like us in that regard. And even IRL I have met some of those.
I also agree with the person who said that they all looked better before. *sigh*
Here’s an idea: photoshopping to remove pudge (real or imagined) from celebrity photos is common, so might an occasional instance of the reverse occur? You know, just to make the contrast between “before” and “after” pictures greater? I’d swear that’s what happened in some of these pictures.
That pictorial made me want to kill myself.
This is my message to the world: Stop buying those magazines!
I want to know where the stretchmarks went, for all the ladies in bikinis after babies. Heck, I *haven’t* had kids, and I have stretch marks on my hips just from puberty.
So, are they heavily airbrushed, covered in makeup, or simply women with amazing skin that handled their changing bodies beautifully?
I think all of the women and girls looked beautiful in both pictures, and agree it wasn’t really worth a photo slideshow.
Eh, I have the opposite of “amazing skin” and I didn’t get any stretchmarks. I do assume that any stretchmarks that are there have been airbrushed out, but not everybody gets them.
The whole pictorial is full of shit, though. I don’t believe all of those women gained 60 or 80 pounds during pregnancy and I don’t believe most of them lost whatever imaginary weight they claim to have lost through diet and exercise. Meth and high colonics, maybe.
There are so many good comments here already, but I just want to say to SugarLeigh:
WHY WAIT UNTIL YOU ARE A CELEBRITY?! Break out the boombox, the oil and the PB&JWITHSAND and head to the beach to frolick in the water!!!
*Mariah Carey: “I got tired of people telling me, ‘You need to lose weight.’”*
With all the money Miriah has she needs to buy some new friends.
I’m so tired of these before and after slush piles.
I thought the worst part of Mariah’s quote was the “My jean size went down to my 10th grade size,” she says.”
Yes - because all adult women should aspire to bodies they had while still in adolescence! *shakes head*
What is wrong with people?! Hilary Duff looks perfect, and yes part of that is cause I’m a gamer, and I do believe she bears a striking resemblance to Princess Peach. And hell if Mario would ever let someone tell her that she needs to loose a few pounds!
Actually, I imagine Peach would probably tell anyone who told her to loose weight off too. Cause now she’s like, a modern princess who doesn’t just sit in the castle all day.