the Dalaverse

*gasp* They're giving away the old TDS couch! I WILL ENTER THIS CONTEST!

Also, Keira was on last night, being adorable and beautiful. Child is thin, though, and while it doesn't bug me the way it does a lot of other actresses (*coughMischaBartonandherhorrendouspostureomghershoulderbladesaretryingtostabyouRyancough* Also, *hackwhathappenedtoyourhipsJenniferAnistonouchsplutter* ), I do hope she eats.

It's not so much the overwhelming numbers of skinny actresses that bother me. Well, okay, it is, but what bothers me more are the ones who lose scary amounts of weight, usually as they move up in the biz -- Nicole Kidman, Lindsay Lohan, the aforementioned Ms. Aniston, Renee Zellweger (I'm not talking about the Bridget Jones weight, which in my opinion looked great on her but it was clear in the second film how uncomfortable she was; you can see the difference from "Jerry Maguire" to now), and a bunch of others I can't recall at the moment. Even Drew Barrymore looked much thinner in the "Fever Pitch" trailers.

Look, I understand that women can be very thin and still be healthy. I think Keira Knightley is gorgeous exactly as she is. It's just that slimness is literally the only option according to the media, or close enough to the only option. We've got, like, Kate Winslet and Reese Witherspoon and Catherina Zeta-Jones and Toni Collette as representatives slightly closer to the average woman's size, and that's it. For every one of them, there are twenty actresses or models who are stick-thin. Some of them are built that way, sure, but a lot of them spend thousands and thousands of dollars and deny or actively harm themselves to maintain that ideal. It's not a fair or realistic image for young girls to aspire to.

This was prompted by Keira promoting P&P, but really I was doing most of the pondering last weekend when I saw the week's People magazine. The cover story was effusive praise for actresses who make an appearence a month or two after giving birth, looking pretty much the same as they always have. I've never had a kid, so I don't really know what the recovery is like, but this seems like another example of unrealistic, possibly unhealthy goals. Again, it's not so much the fact that these women are able to get back into shape so quickly, it's the way they are worshipped for it and the implied accusation beneath it. Fuck, if Britney Spears can squeeze back into a size 4 four weeks after giving birth, why can't you? Why can't you, huh? Oh, maybe because I don't have a fortune to spend on personal training and diet regiments, but mostly because I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO.

Skinny women should be celebrated as beautiful. Fleshy women should be celebrated as beautiful. The concept of beauty should also rely less on physical appearance, but I realize that's asking too much of the media. For now, I would settle for seeing more actresses have a tummy when they lean over, and thighs that touch when they walk.