Celebrities like Longoria, who apply the word “fat” to themselves when they are clearly no such thing, might be part of the problem. But how about Mariska Hargitay, who referred to herself as full figured in Self magazine? My first reaction: “Mariska Hargitay? Really?” Glossed Over says:

Is Mariska Hargitay’s appraisal of her body self-deprecation, the misuse of a term commonly used to mean “plus-sized,” or the result of working in an industry where breakfast is a cigarette and a swig of Starbucks? I don’t know, but it depresses the hell out of me.

But then Jezebel jumps in to say that Hargitay might not mean what we think she means:

I sincerely doubt that Hargitay is trying to tell Self readers that she’s at all overweight. I think it’s more that terms like “full figured,” “curvy,” “plus-size,” and “big-boned,” have become so obfuscated by the dieting industrial complex that their original meanings are essentially moot at this point.

In mag parlance, Gisele Bundchen and Jennifer Hudson are both “curvy,” (which these days means “possessing breasts”) and Whitney from America’s Next Top Model is “plus-size.” We got an angry email after New York Times reviewer Manohla Dargis described Keira Knightley as “a big-boned beauty” because the reader had assumed that Dargis was calling Knightley fat. The thing is, Knightley is “big-boned” according original definition of the word, which is “having a bone structure that is massive in contrast with the surrounding flesh.” Her shoulders are broad and her clavicle protruding, but she has little flesh on her bones.

So now my mind is a little blown. What do we mean by terms like “thin” and “curvy” or “full figured” or “average” or “voluptuous,” and what should we mean? Is “full figured” automatically a euphemism for fat, and in the celebrity world (or the real world) is it automatically a negative thing? Is Keira Knightley really “big boned”? I don’t know the answer, but I sure would be interested in having the conversation.

Thanks to Nonk for the link!

If you were making a “most beautiful” list, who would you put on it?

Feel free to discuss this story or anything else in the open thread! Regular posting will resume next week.

We all know that OK Magazine lied about Britney’s weight loss, and Glamour airbrushed America Ferrera. And now there’s another problem—or is it a problem? Conde Nast has admitted to airbrushing ultra-thin models to make them look larger.

[There is] a trend towards presenting less “extreme” images of thinness and of enhancing figures. “Where models are looking particularly gaunt, magazines are saying, ‘We can’t have that – fill out their chests…It is now deemed just as negative to be too thin as too fat. Every­one is scared of being highlighted as the magazine or label that promotes very thin girls, so they are being a lot more careful about the images they present”…

Nicky Eaton, the head of press and PR at Condé Nast, which publishes Vogue, GQ, and Glamour, also confirmed that images of models were enhanced to make them appear fuller-figured. “There have been cases where models are booked way ahead of a shoot and then they turn up two months later looking less healthy and perhaps a bit underweight. We wouldn’t be happy showing them that way, so it is then that we would need that person to look a little bit fuller.”

I think it’s a little diningenuous to pretend that this is the motivation. Remember when Kiera Knightley was airbrushed in the chest? Feministing agrees, and points out why this is dangerous:

At its core, I don’t believe this type of Photoshopping is about deflecting criticism that models and celebrities are dangerously thin. I think this is about perpetuating an even more unrealistic beauty standard than unattainable thinness (something I never thought possible): the message is that you should be super, super skinny, borderline skeletal, but without any of the things that come with the territory, like jutting hipbones or small boobs. So even the skinniest celebrities STILL require Photoshopping to meet this standard. You can be less than a size zero and still lose this game. And that’s pretty frightening.

So what do you think? Is airbrushing okay as long as we’re making the models look larger? Or is airbrushing in general just reinforcing a totally unattainable beauty ideal?

Knightley is quoted as saying: “Weight is a big issue in Hollywood because I’m twice the size – height and everything else – of most of the girls who are going in to see the director for a part.

“When you realise that I am, at my size, one of the largest actresses there, you start to think, ‘I don’t think it’d be healthy for me to stay here much longer.’”

I absolutely refuse to believe that this gossip is true. There’s just no way. I mean, come on, she was just talking about accusations of anorexia like a week ago! Plus, she probably doesn’t have to audition for anything anymore. She has an Oscar nomination. I call shenanigans.

“It’s really frustrating, and particularly when you come to Venice with a film that is an intelligent film. I think it was just a shame that that had to be brought up then, and the fact that we all knew that it was going to be brought up. We actually had a bet going. I was like ‘Come on, how many times either anorexia or something about my body, are going to come up?’”

Not to dredge up the whole debate again, but it really does happen only to women. I keep thinking of Jezebella’s comment:

I’ve never seen a close-up picture of a man’s ass in any magazine or online with a headline saying something like, “Nicholson’s got cellulite!” “Philip Seymour Hoffman tells us he’s okay with his curves!”

Actually, that Philip Seymour Hoffman line would make a great tagline.

[P]hotos of her looking super-slim in a bikini from earlier this year were snapped after the “grueling” “Pirates of the Caribbean” shoot, which required her to film in “searing temperatures” while “wearing a wetsuit underneath a load of corsets, fighting with heavy weights in the water. Can you imagine a more advanced cardio workout than that done hour after hour?”

Still, says Keira, “When all that blew up, I felt terrible… I took it very seriously. I went to the doctor to be checked out and asked him what I could do to put on weight…I don’t want to have to go around eating crap and being really unhealthy in order for people to stop having a go at me”… She also admitted to coveting the slim but shapely (read: stacked) frames of Scarlett Johansson and Kate Winslet, saying yearningly, “That kind of decadent flesh is absolutely beautiful. How sexy is that on a woman?”

She even goes on to say that Beth Ditto–who is not Hollywood fat like Johansson and Winslet, but actually full figured–is “sexy” and has an “amazing body.” It is awesome that a Keira, a role model for young women who want to be thin, is saying such public, positive things about curvier women. I just wish she felt less insecure about her own body. Skinny girls deserve our love too!

Thanks to Rei for sending along the link.