Comments on: Beverly Hills 9021-Oh

By: Alisa

Alisa — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 02:22:25 +0000

I actually screamed, “Change the channel! Get that girl to eat something!” when I flipped past the season premier of the new 90210. I don’t know her character name but her collar bone is so pronounced! I know people who have trouble keeping weight on (I am NOT one of them) and even they don’t look that skinny.

By: Dee

Dee — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 23:57:47 +0000

I can’t really tell the difference. I couldn’t back then, and I still can’t now. I remember a Sassy magazine survey back then that asked guys to compare four different body types (athletic, thin-thin, curvy-thin and a-bit-of-extra-weight) and they all looked the same to me (incidentally, the boys preferred curvy-thin to the other three body types).

It’s just so binary with me. I am fat. They are not. The original cast was thin. So it this one. I do perceive more differences in body types now than I did then (i.e. I am learning to perceive differences amongst the thin) but I can’t see the differences in the 90210 casts. Especially considering the type of clothing on the actresses, as has been mentioned by other posters.

By: kate217

kate217 — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 23:49:49 +0000

I blame Ally McBeal. Before that show, "Hollywood skinny" wasn't the extreme that it is now. One reason Courtney Thorne-Smith gave for leaving the show is that she started feeing insecure about her body. Courtney Freaking Thorne-Smith felt fat around the likes of Calista Flockhart and Portia DeRossi. Jane Krakowski, who might be all of a size 4, looked HUGE next to Flockhart. Of course, Ally and Nell wore impossibly short suits, that in real life any judge would throw out of a courtroom for being inappropriate to the gravitas of the setting. (Believe me, I've seen it done. In 1997, there were still judges who wouldn't allow women lawyers to appear in the courtrooms in pantsuits, let alone micro-mini skirts.) I think that it was right about the time that Law and Order started putting it's ADAs in them, too. I've noticed that the women in Shark disappear if they turn sideways. They're gorgeous and teeeeeeny tiny. Compare that to, say, Cagney and Lacey, who were pretty and slender by the standards of the day when the show started, were allowed to gain weight without too much crap as they aged, and look enormous compared to the women in today's cop shows. They're still gorgeous in my book, but neither would get a lead role in anything these days at the weights they were then.

By: K

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 14:47:20 +0000

Not only is it worrying… where is it going? How can the standards get any more stringent? And yet in 1990 there was already a belief that young women were pressurised to look like “unattainable” images in magazines and on TV. Do we not notice that it’s getting worse? Because it is getting worse.

On a related topic, I’m generally appalled by the way the standards for minimum personal grooming seem to keep rising. I have recently heard other women saying – apparently seriously – that it is “disgusting” not to wax your legs (not shave, wax) and “unhygienic” not to get regular manicures.

I’m sorry. No. Not washing is unhygienic. Relying on a nailbrush and soap and water… isn’t. Choosing not to undergo a painful and expensive procedure to appear as if you don’t have body hair, that also isn’t.

These things are style choices, not an obligation.

By: Meg

Meg — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 03:05:31 +0000

Tori Spelling was damn skinny, and I generally don’t think of her as being well proportioned.
I have to agree with bryneout jeans were pretty horrible and very unflattering!!

By: AlaskaJoey

AlaskaJoey — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:41:03 +0000

I’m laughing my ass off at those high waisted jeans! Oh man.

It is such a shock seeing those 2 photos together. I’m assuming all the actresses in the new cast are size 0, and Jennie Garth was probably a 6 at most, but she looks so bottom heavy (mostly thanks to those jeans, I bet). And probably wouldn’t get work today if she was an 18 year old.

By: Magpie

Magpie — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 23:52:37 +0000

The difference in body types really is striking, but mostly I’m bummed to see Jessica Walter playing a 90210 grandma instead of tossing back drinks and being snarky as Lucille Bluth. Guess that makes me shallow too.

By: Cindy

Cindy — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 22:27:10 +0000

I think the article is right on. Product placement is a major motive in television now. I watched the premiere of The Cleaner on A & E, and it was supposedly commercial free. Interestingly enough, all of the named characters were filmed in the same make of car (can’t remember which automobile company was sponsoring the show.)

Fashion is marketed through the shows, now.

And so are breast implants.

By: Simon

Simon — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:00:02 +0000

I haven’t been able to peg why Hollywood has the need to cast these skeletons as “beautiful”. The rest of the world, by and large, doesn’t think of them quite that way, and everything I’ve heard, from every direction, suggests they’d be better off casting women with a little more curvature.

By: byrneout

byrneout — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 17:44:09 +0000

Looking at that old 90210 cast snap, I can only reflect on how far we’ve come. Jeans were horrible back then.

This has been your moment of shallowness. You may now resume sociocultural commentary.