[Alley] recently bragged on her Twitter site that she’s lost 50 pounds with exercise and her Organic Liaison weight-loss program. But those close to her say she’s lost barely half that weight and that there’s no way she’s down to 180 pounds!

What’s more, a photo taken on Sept. 29…shows that the plus-size actress hasn’t lost nearly as much as she claims… The struggling star “has been goosing her weight-loss numbers” – insisting she’s dropped 50 pounds, when it’s more like 25…

In September, while in Italy, she tweeted that she had lost 50 pounds, posting a photo of herself surrounded by handsome men. But the picture appeared to be air-brushed to make Kirstie look thin, and she hid her lower body behind one of the hunky men.

As if weight-loss programs aren’t enough of a scam, hers doesn’t even temporarily work! I hunted down that picture so you can see for yourself. She does look pretty airbrushed, no?

2. Ricky Gervais has lost weight recently, and now feels like jokes about fat people are off-limits.

“Now I’ve got to stop making jokes about fat people, which is annoying. When I was fat, it was okay,” the creator of ‘The Office’ tells People. Gervais, 49, lost “20 or 22 pounds,” he says. “It wasn’t so much about the weight. It was more that I was a fat, lazy, out of shape slob, to be honest.”

Ricky Gervais shutting up about fat people is probably for the best, then, isn’t it? Oh, Ricky.

3. Kim Kardashian posed nude for W Magazine (photos at this link are NSFW) and the pictures are everywhere. There have been a lot of ugly comments that I’m sure you can find if you search for about ten seconds, but I liked this one:

I’m 5’1 and I love the way I look, and it’s nice to see more women with hourglass figures in the media lately, being unafraid to [bare] it all, like Christina Hendricks and Ms. Kardashian here. I’m not going to stop loving myself just because I have the figure of a cartoon character.

Stop the hate, people! There’s so much hate in the world, do we really have to tear each other down over how we perceive each others’ bodies?

4. Crystal Renn is a size 10, and Manolo for the Big Girl is over it.

There’s nothing wrong with being a size 10. She’s had a tough row to hoe body-image wise and if that’s where her body is happy then far be it from me to complain.

But she’s a size 10.

That’s not plus-sized, that’s not close to plus-sized and even though I am the biggest fashion industry apologist on the planet, I just can’t pretend that she counts as a plus-sized model in any meaningful sense and therefore she deserves no more and no less press or attention than any other model who doesn’t wear plus-size clothes.

I’m a big proponent for variety and I’d rather see a size 10 model as a staple than a size 20 as a gimmick every few years, but the days of breathlessly reporting on her every move as a victory for fat girl kind –inasmuch as I ever have– are over.

5. Via The F Word, celebrities who have struggled with eating disorders include Felicity Huffman, Elton John, Kate Winslet, Victoria Beckham, and Snooki.

For years she denied the rumors that she had an eating disorder, but Calista Flockhart finally admitted to her problem with anorexia. “I started under-eating, over-exercising, pushing myself too hard and brutalizing my immune system. I guess I just didn’t find time to eat.” Even though the actress hasn’t gained much noticeable weight she ensures, “I am much more healthy these days.”

I recently read Kathy Griffin’s Official Book Club Selection, where she talked frankly about her binge eating, her husband’s binge eating, and going to Overeaters Anonymous—as well as the botched liposuction that nearly killed her.

Wanted to write you last month after I saw Ricky Gervais live — most of the show was amazing, but he did a solid 15 minutes of fat jokes that were just horrifying and they were all — ALL — aimed at fat women. He’s newly buff and living it up, which, you know, bully for him and all, but I sat there and tried not to cry for that portion of the show, and then listened to him explain how he wouldn’t apologize for making jokes like that b/c comedy was supposed to be edgy and push people. All I could think was truly edgy fare needn’t be explained as such, and since when the fuck are fat jokes “dangerous” and “taboo”? Sort of smacked of David Brent waxing on to the doc crew about his “comedy.” Was offended and made me sad.

Anyway, knew you were an Office fan, so I went home and looked up what you’d written about it, which made me feel lots better, knowing I wasn’t the only conflicted Gervais fan out there.

Sheila also discussed this with her friend, Entertainment Weekly PopWatch blogger Mandi Bierly, and this theme found its way into a recent interview Bierly did with Brooke Elliott and Margaret Cho, both of whom are on Drop Dead Diva. That interview is here, and it’s a really interesting read, and Bierly brings up Ricky Gervais, the Eat Less shirts, and plenty of other topics.

Margaret Cho on Ricky Gervais:

I haven’t seen it, but I always think he’s funny. The fact about his humor is that in his comedy, people always say that he’s fat. So it’s interesting, he’s the one who’s been hurt by it, too, a lot. So I wonder what that means… In any case, as a comedian, I could never make fun of it because I almost killed myself so many times as a younger woman. I took so many diet pills. I have a heart murmur because I took Fen-Phen in the ’90s. I have permanent damage to my body because I wanted to be thin. That desire to have a smaller body, to take up less space in the world, was so important to me that I don’t remember most of my twenties. I didn’t appreciate the young woman that I was, or my young beauty, because I was so obsessed with the fact that I felt fat. It’s never good to add to anybody else’s suffering.

Brooke Elliott on her character in Drop Dead Diva (a formerly thin model who ends up in the body of a plus-size lawyer):

I think the show treats this character with so much dignity and respect. That’s why this show’s so popular. She’s a beautiful woman, and it treats her like a beautiful woman. She’s got all these guys fighting over her. There’s so much drama in her romantic life. She feels beautiful, she is beautiful, it’s just about taking somebody [the real Jane] who formerly considered herself invisible and making her visible. Deb’s never been invisible, she doesn’t know how to be. So when she’s in Jane’s body, she knows how to be visible. That’s what this is about: Somebody becoming visible to themselves and to the world, which is powerful.

And finally, a recommendation!

Speaking of beautiful, confident big women on TV: you prob. know about this since you’re hip to the Brit coms, but if you haven’t watched, you MUST MUST MUST see Gavin and Stacey. BBC America is currently showing series three, but the first two are available on DVD. The title characters are the least interesting, actually. The two writers, Ruth Jones and James Corden, play the supporting characters and are fantastic. Ruth is a gorgeous voluptuous woman (also, she plays the bartender in Daffyd’s pub in Little Britain, if you’ve ever seen that). Hilarious, amazing cast, great writing.

I have actually never seen Gavin and Stacey but my friend Eliza loves it, and she has great taste, so I’ve been meaning to check it out. Thanks for the e-mail, and the recommendation, Sheila! And thanks for the interview, Mandi, it was a terrific read.

This first one, I think it was the exclamation point that sucked me in. But I took the text from Yahoo! (there’s that exclamation point again).

1. Obese U.S. Man Hides Gun Between Rolls of Fat!

Twenty-five-year-old George Vera was charged with possession of a firearm in a correctional facility…Vera was originally arrested on charges of selling illegal copies of compact discs. The 500-pound man was searched during his arrest and again at a city jail and the county jail, but officers never found the weapon in his rolls of skin. Vera admitted having the gun during a shower break at the county jail.

2. Brits Too Lazy To Have Sex, Let Alone Run For A Bus

People need to get fitter, not just for their own sake, but for the sake of their families, friends, and evidently their pets, too. If we don’t start to take control of this problem, a whole generation will become too unfit to perform even the most rudimentary of tasks.’

Doctors blamed chubby celebrities for adding to the obesity crisis by showing that it is possible to be fat and famous.

From, “we are fat and lazy because of e.g. Ricky Gervais” to “WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE”:

3. Obesity-Cancer Link Is Growing

In the 1980s, researchers focused on the amount of fat people ate as a probable cause of cancer, but studies did not strongly support that. Later they turned to diets high in fruits and vegetables as a way to reduce cancer, but again, Willett said, they struggled to find convincing evidence in studies.

Now attention has turned to obesity, and more and more research is providing evidence that indict that as a cancer cause.

I remember Rachel Twittered about this one:

4. Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin

“In general, for weight loss, exercise is pretty useless,” says Eric Ravussin, chair in diabetes and metabolism at Louisiana State University and a prominent exercise researcher. Many recent studies have found that exercise isn’t as important in helping people lose weight as you hear so regularly in gym advertisements or on shows like The Biggest Loser — or, for that matter, from magazines like this one.

The basic problem is that while it’s true that exercise burns calories and that you must burn calories to lose weight, exercise has another effect: it can stimulate hunger. That causes us to eat more, which in turn can negate the weight-loss benefits we just accrued. Exercise, in other words, isn’t necessarily helping us lose weight. It may even be making it harder.

And the last one is just embarrassing (also, it’s a three-paragraph article with like 87 typos, my god):

5. Ashlee’s Secret To Post Baby Weight Loss

Ashlee, who gave birth to her son Bronx Mowgli with rocker hubby Pete eight months ago, said that reducing weight after the delivery was much easier than she had thought. Ashlee told People’s Celebrity Baby Blog : “After I had Bronx I lucked out…I mean, I’m 24-years-old. I have the genes from my mother and I did work out for three months, ” reports the Sun .

The singer-actress, who is all set to return to the world of television in Melrosde Place, said she and Pete manage their time with son Brionx easily.

Um, [sic].

Any thoughts about 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5? Please share!

Actor Seth Rogen is struggling to accept his newly svelte figure – because he’s let down the legions of chubby men who looked up to him. The funnyman slimmed down to star in forthcoming comic book move The Green Hornet, and has to cope with strangers approaching him about his weight loss…

“I think for chubby guys, I was their guy so they were like, ‘I can be chubby. Seth Rogen’s chubby, so who cares.’ But now I’m not so chubby anymore. So now they’re like, ‘I have to lose weight.’ I’ve let them down. I’ve blatantly sold out. It’s only for money.”

I’ve talked a lot about female “fat icons,” but this did make me think about the guys, and who it is they look up to. We’ve got Beth Ditto and Queen Latifah and Nikki Blonsky; who are the fat icons for guys? Do guys even see it that way?

I don’t feel betrayed by Seth Rogan losing weight, really; number one he was never an icon for me, and number two it is “okay” for guys to be overweight, especially comedians (Jack Black, Ricky Gervais, Jim Belushi…) in a way that it is definitely not okay for women. What do you guys think—about Seth, about “selling out,” or about the size of male celebrities?

I feel like we’ve talked about this before—his description of himself as a “fatty,” his standup routine where he mocks Dawn French’s weight, his self-loathing, and so much that I have tried to ignore because he is a comic genius.

Now, he’s defending some anti-WLS comments with more anti-fat comments. First, his comments about weight loss surgery:

“They have bits sliced off and tied up and sucked out. I want to say to them, ‘You lazy f—ing fat pig. Just go for a run and stop eating burgers. You might fucking die’. “Some things are not worth the risk… If your arse is too fucking fat, stop eating and go for a run.”

He’s defended himself with some follow-up comments on his blog (which are obviously intended to be funny, and NSFW if your W is very P about what you LA on the I):

I heard someone on the radio once say that they were tired of the prejudice aimed at the overweight. They said something like “you’re not allowed to make fun of gay people, so why are you allowed to make fun of fat people? It’s the same thing.”

It’s not the same thing though, is it? Gay people are born that way. They didn’t work at becoming gay. Fat people became fat because they would rather be that way than stop eating so much. They had to eat and eat to get fat. Then, when they were fat they had to keep up the eating to stay fat. For gayness to be the same as fatness, gay people would have to start off straight but then ween themselves onto cock. Soon they’re noshing all day getting gayer and gayer. They’ve had more than enough cock… they’re full… they’re just sucking for the sake of it. Now they’re overgay, and frowned upon by people who can have the occasional cock but not over indulge.

When a doctor tells me that that’s how you become gay, I’ll stop making jokes about fat people.

Fatshionista responds to the idea of equating fatness with gayness in a thought-provoking way. As for me, I thought I’d talked about this somewhere—of course now I can’t find it, so maybe it was in real life, with some actual flesh-and-blood people—but whenever I think of Ricky Gervais and fat, I think of David Brent, in this moment from the series finale of The Office:

Gervais’s comedy has routinely included fat people, mostly making fun of his own weight, in the characters of David Brent and the “little fat man” Andy Millman. In this scene, like many of the scenes from the UK Office, it is David Brent’s own fat-hatred, and the hypocricy of that hatred, that is played for laughs.

David Brent goes on another blind date in this episode, with another woman who he thinks is too overweight and unattractive for him, and on top of that, has no personality. (“I thought she’d be one of those jolly ones.”) Again, the emphasis is on David Brent’s inappropriate attitude towards fat people. On the other hand, in the commentary track, Gervais is laughing at Brent’s total delusion—he says something like, what is he expecting?

Gervais does seem to buy into the notion that fat is unattractive, even though he’s not buying into the idea of “Hollywood fat” (Dawn Tinsley, after all, his romantic heroine, is much larger than her American equivalent Pam Beesly). He seems to feel that at some point, fat becomes inappropriate, irresponsible, mockable, and easily reversible—even though, or perhaps because, he struggles with weight issues himself.

As you might have noticed, at some point this post just became a brain dump. I’m a big fat fan of Gervais, and I can’t bring myself to hate him, I just can’t. Maybe you can, though! Tell me what you think. Just don’t take away my Office DVDs.

“I never knew I was fat until I got famous… Then I suddenly realised I was overweight. The papers can’t simply put ‘comedian Ricky Gervais’. They have to put ‘rotund comedian’ or ‘chubby fatster’.

“The other day, I was trying to keep fit by going jogging with my iPod, and the paparazzi leapt out a bush and got me. The headline the next day? ‘Ipodge.’ What can you do?”

Man, that bugs the hell out of me, too; certain celebrities often get some descriptive plus-sized adjective attached to them, even when it’s not relevant to the story. (I was Googling for examples and found this article where Nikki Blonsky not only escapes that fate, she gets referred to as “Golden Globe nominee” instead. She’s working on an album! Yay! Sorry, tangent.)

Anyway, Ricky Gervais pokes a lot of fun at his own weight in both The Office (him sucking in his gut for the benefit of the motivational speaker people) and Extras (oh god, the the girdle); in each case it’s not so much mocking the character’s weight, but his vanity. To sum up, Ricky Gervais is a genius. Wait, was that not the point I was supposed to be making here?