Although there will be some trashing of Jennifer Love Hewitt in this post, my rant has more to do with the publishers of magazines and specifically Shape and Self. Each month on their covers these two magazines generally have a picture of a woman on the cover who looks toned and fit and perfect. I understand about photoshopping and airbrushing and that is how the game is played. Fine.

But if you are going to do that don’t run an article in your pages about the person on the cover that talks about how she got this perfect body by diet and exercise because it isn’t true. Yes, Jennifer Love Hewitt diets and exercises but she doesn’t look like the person you have put on your cover and I especially hate it when you have a sample diet inside that makes it seem like you will look like her when you have completed the diet.

The picture on the cover is not Jennifer Love Hewitt. Yes it is technically her, but the parts that most people find difficult to look at in the mirror are not her own. She is not flawless but the cover and the article make it seem like you will look flawless if you follow the diet or do what Jennifer does. You won’t though because even the subject of the article doesn’t look like the image portrayed on the cover.

Jennifer Love Hewitt famously exploded two years ago when people said she was fat in her bikini. She wasn’t fat at all. She looked great. She said the whole thing was unfair and that people should be judged for who they are and not what they look like. Fine. From now on when you agree to do a cover of a magazine in a bikini, make sure as part of your agreement that no airbrushing or photoshopping is done to your picture because if you do, then you are being a hypocrite and not having people focus on you but some imagined perception and feeding the stereotype that you said was wrong. Be proud of who you are and if you want the world to change, then you need to be part of the solution and not adding to the problem.

Of course, this rant does say she “wasn’t fat” and therefore “looked great” (fat people can look great too, even in bikinis) but makes some good points otherwise, I think.

And now she’s back on the cover of Us magazine (looking nothing at all like herself–who is this person, and what has she done with Jennifer Love Hewitt’s face?) because she’s struggling again–apparently she’s called off her wedding, is very sad, and the part that got me, is apparently incredibly insecure about her body:

Hewitt — who was famously mocked in 2007 when photos surfaced of her looking particularly curvy in a bikini — also struggled with insecurity issues.

Said Wick, “She would try on clothes over clothes. She would not have lights on or mirrors in the dressing room. It’s sad because she had a beautiful body.”

Two things: Will Jennifer Love Hewitt’s obituary include the Story of the Bikini? And secondly, I have always thought I understood how horrible it truly must be to be immersed in the Hollywood culture and have not only demands placed on your body, but criticism heaped upon it daily, all over the media. But I don’t think I ever really thought about the kind of lasting effect it could have on you, to endure something like the firestorm that erupted over the size of her ass. Call her a hypocrite, sure, for saying she was happy with her body and then spinning around and dropping some pounds, but I am not sure I could have withstood that kind of pressure and hate and derision spewing my way, either.

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!

When shown J.Love’s bikini pics on The Today Show, the world’s first self-proclaimed supermodel had this to say: “Jennifer Love Hewitt is a healthy, not emaciated, woman. She’s a healthy girl. And these are unflattering camera angles on her. You want to see someone fat? I’m sorry, Tyra. Tyra Banks is fat.”

I have a feeling this is going to degenerate until every publicity-hungry female celebrity has gone on television to call another celebrity fat. “She’s not fat, Bai Ling is fat!” “She’s not fat, Gabrielle Carteris is fat!” “She’s not fat, Downtown Julie Brown is fat!”and so on and so on until the world is destroyed in some kind of…black hole of D-list celebrity sniping? I don’t know, I’m no scientist.

[Ooh, breaking news. Alerted by the posters on Snarkfest, I found photos of Jennifer Love Hewitt dressed in a fat suit for Halloween a couple of years ago. Note the hot dog accessory! Does this make you feel any differently about the whole thing?]