Oh, gag me. via ualani @ flickr
Of all the important news stories you read this year, none will be more compelling than this: a woman has gained weight, and a famous woman at that. Kirstie Alley is on the cover of the new issue of People, talking about her “blame, shame, and regret” over gaining 83 pounds. Note that it is very, very important that we know exactly what she weighs and how much she gained. The cover has an earlier picture of Alley next to a current photo; the first picture has the line “Sexy & Slim in 2005″ above it, just so readers can be completely sure that this means Alley is definitely not sexy now. Never mind the fact that Alley’s 2005 picture would probably be used as the “before weightloss” picture for any other celebrity, because the tabloids aren’t really okay with a woman being at Alley’s “slim weight”.
Oh, and the headline reads “Kirstie Alley Weight Saga”. “Saga”? How ambitious! People‘s coverage of this saga reads like the Beowulf of fat-shaming.
Everything Alley says plays right into the magazine’s cherished tradition of obsessing about weight and slamming anything that is not a size 6 size 00. Alley describes herself as “disgusting” and “schlumpy” and you can practically hear the editors rubbing their hands together in glee that she’s using these words — this way, they can fat-shame without actually being the ones held liable for using such words. Instead of trying to counter Alley’s assertions about how she looks, or even trying to point out that her worth is not based on how many pounds she’s gained, the magazine just pumps her for details on how she got so “disgusting”:
Okay, how did this happen?
[Alley] It started with New Year’s [2008], right after leaving Jenny Craig. When you’re a spokesperson for Jenny Craig, there’s responsibility. You have a person every week standing over you when you get on the scale, and I did it naked because those panties could weigh 30 lbs.! It was amazingly successful. But the first nail in the coffin was that I didn’t have to weigh in. I just sort of went wild.
I have to say, that image of Alley being weighed so she can be a spokeswoman is pretty upsetting. I get that she signed on for the Jenny Craig gig, but I’ve endured my own weigh-ins and they are absolutely humiliating.
Naturally, the magazine is sure to get the obligatory details on exactly what she was eating. Alley is asked, “Did you go right back to indulging in cakes and pies the way you did the first time you let yourself go?” Cute. “Let yourself go” is such a precious euphemism. Apparently, this time Alley indulged in different foods: pasta and popcorn and Chinese food. The horror, the horror!
People also thinks everyone should know Alley’s goal weight: “I have to be below 140 to really look good.” Oh Kirstie, that is not true. Look good to whom? She adds, “When I’m overweight I will not go out. With my closest friends, yeah. But you wouldn’t see me at a premiere.” (You will see her on the cover of a magazine, however.) The reporter then says, “But you seem ready to turn your life around.” No, losing weight does NOT equal turning your life around. And please, let’s not pretend that this story is about health because the article doesn’t mention things like cholesterol or blood pressure or anything of the sort. It only talks about Alley’s weight in terms of how it makes her look.
Every tabloid rag is constantly talking about the weights of famous women, and People is the one that truly drives me insane. They pretend to be a respectable publication, and they have a very large subscription base. And they are fixated on weight. The Alley cover comes one week after their annual “Most Beautiful” bullshit issue, and you will notice that their cover girl for that issue (it’s always a woman) is never anyone who is even close to the average weight for American women. They also enjoy running stories on the “detox/cleansing diets” stars use to get red carpet-ready, and all of those features on how women lost the baby weight (hint: trainers, starvation diets, and giving birth to the tiny human that’s inside of you). Oh, and their weekly “Body Watch” feature once reported on Allegra Versace and her attempted recovery from anorexia. Classy.
Of course, they will run the obligatory headline “Too Skinny?” every once in a while, in which they feign concern for the women who have gone too far in trying to achieve the ideals that their magazine tirelessly promote. Then they go back to fat-shaming. I imagine that at some point later this year, they will feature Alley on the cover again with a headline that reads something like “How I Lost the Weight and Reclaimed My Life!” And I imagine I will write another rant. And I imagine that nothing will really change.
I hate this as much as the next woman, but I can’t imagine that Kristy Alley is not aware of her own culpability in perpetuating this stuff. While I don’t blame her for figuring that this is the best way to keep her name known, is it really possible that someone who has played the tabloid game as long as she has is not completely conscious that she is spoon feeding (no pun intended) them everything they want?
How can we fight it if individuals are willing to freely offer themselves up at the altar of tabloid weight speculation and fat shaming like this? This is a genuine question for which I have no answer at all.
@kelsium: Oh, I’m sure she knows. She played right into it with her series Fat Actress. I can’t postulate what Alley’s motives are, but these articles would be written with or without Alley’s participation. If it wouldn’t be People interviewing her, it would just be In Touch blaring nasty headlines on the cover.
When this story came out (along with stories about Valerie Bertinelli, Marie Osmand, Oprah, blah blah blah) losing/gaining weight I finally came to the conclusion: I am over this. I just don’t CARE when an older actress loses or gains weight. And why the hell should I care? It seems that the only way a non-working older actress can get in the news nowadays is for losing or gaining a tremendous amount of weight. I’ve dealt with my own weight going up and down, but I don’t presume to think that anyone outside of myself and possibly my immediate family gives a flying fig about what size I currently am.
When Oprah “came out” talking about her recent weight gain she said something like “I can’t believe I’m STILL TALKING about my weight”. Well, frankly, I can’t either and I wish she and all the others would just stop.
@sarah.of.a.lesser.god: Oh, that’s is for sure. I just can’t begin to wrap my brain around how to deal with a culture that requires fat women to either silently endure, drop out, or assume an “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” attitude. I thought that to a certain extent Alley was subverting these attitudes in Fat Actress, but I don’t see that here.
It pisses me off that she’s apologizing for gaining weight or “letting my fans down” as she put it. I think it only adds to the pressure on women to fit into the mold of being thin as opposed to happy. She’s setting a very bad example for her fans. Now if they gain weight, they’re likely to feel bad about themselves and apologize for it. Fuck Kirstie Alley seriously.
@Becky: It works that way for younger actresses, too. Remember the tabloid kerfluffle over Jennifer Love Hewitt’s bikini body and how she was “fat” and she declared proudly how she was thrilled with her weight? It was the most press coverage she had ever received, and now she plays it the other way by going on the cover of Us to talk about her weight loss.
@kelsium Actually I’m sure she knows she is giving them everything they want. I’m also sure that she is well aware that this is the only way to get in a magizine and retain her notoriety. Female actresses/models/singers/etc have to live up to that unrealistic body type to gain/ maintain their fame. Patricia Heaton openly admitted to getting a breast enhancement because she wouldn’t have been a sucessful actress without it. I’m sure Kirstie Alley is aware of he has to maintain the thin=beautiful=happy ideal in order to get a job.
Until media outlets are willing to hire average looking women, actresses/models/singers will continue to drastically alter their bodies and “freely offer themselves up” for fat shaming. And as long as women keep buying magazines like that, they will continue to only hire women who are willing to fat shame. And as long as they continue to fat shame, women will but the mags that so it. It’s a vicious cycle and I don’t know where the end of it is.
I wrote a letter to People once blasting them for a “Body Watch” feature comparing the “healthy” (SKINNY!) girls on Gossip Girl to the “very slender” (SKELETAL) girls of 90210. I ended it with “I think I’ll just tape a picture of a corpse up to my refrigerator and aspire to that.” They never did publish it…
@Alyssa: I agree with you on this, but I think the end of it needs to start with the actresses not standing for and playing into this type of crap. I know their careers depend on their looks and it’d be a risk to go against the grain, but change can only happen when someone actually, well, makes a change.
And that’s why Camryn Manheim hasn’t been heard from in a while. She won’t play their reindeer games.
@anni: I have written countless letters to that magazine; the one where they included Allegra Versace in the “Body Watch” section that always deals with diets inspired a particularly vituperative letter. They never publish me.
I find this sentence from the article really depressing: (on reading her weight on the scale) “It said 228 lbs., which is my highest weight ever. I was so much more disgusting than I thought!”
Like, do we go up one disgusting point for every pound? Is there an exponential growth? It’s obviously not surprising, but it’s incredible how much power one number can have over us.
@PhDork:
Exactly. Women who refuse to play their game go right into obscurity, and end up making no difference. Unfortunatly, it’s a all or nothing game. Unless all (or at least most) of them are willing to say FU to the magizines/producers who hire them, nothing will change.
@NellMood: The whole article was severely depressing, but that line just made me want to tear my hair out. It also made me feel better about not having a scale.
@sarah.of.a.lesser.god: I haven’t stepped on a scale in years. I think I have a pretty healthy relationship with my body, but I’m not immune to the value we put on pounds.
On the one hand, I kind of understand her motivation to give these articles — as soalg said, they’d write them without her, so she might as well profit from her own humiliation. But it has to be so soul crushing. I just wanna give her a hug.
@NellMood: I just gave up my scale a few weeks ago. It’s terrifying and part of me wishes I never had one; the other part of me wants it back.
@sarah.of.a.lesser.god: Honestly, not having a scale has helped me appreciate and deal with my body in really positive ways. I tend to fixate on certain numbers, and not knowing where my body is in terms of X number of pounds has helped me measure it in other terms, like how far I can run, or how strong I feel, or whatever. I hope your experience is a positive one, too.
Geez, she fat shames herself so much that she doesn’t even need someone else to fat shame her.
ok, so what exactly is the “perfect” weight with which magazines will think an actress is just plain normal? it seems like no one is just “ok” anymore. they’re too fat, too thin, too muscular, too etc… madonna is thin, but look at her crazy arms! alley is too fat, but let’s give her some free publicity anyway! (are fat actress reruns about to start?) the 90210 girls are tiny! let’s publicize that! when is a woman (not even an actress) just normal anymore? if someone is healthy, they’re on the cover of US for gaining or losing weight. apparently if a woman’s natural weight fluctuates (which we all know is normal anyway) more than 1 pound above or below her perfect weight, which is clearly decided by the magazine editor, this is important for the general public to know. i’ll admitt, i read them all for free at barnes and noble anyway, because i’m insecure and want to know what people think of actresses who are the same height as me. hmm, she gained 4 pounds and now she’s fat. so i’m fat now too, i guess?
done with my rambling now.
love you dear!
@Becky: It’d be nice to hear someone talking about their weight in a positive light, though. Someone saying, “I weigh x pounds, and this is how I learned to love my body.” But that’d never happen. :/
1. Kirstie Alley looks beautiful on that cover!
2. These magazines make gaining weight seem like such a SIN, such a SCANDAL! “What did you eat to gain this weight?? So you fell off the wagon, let yourself go?”
I never feel let down by famous people gaining weight, geez. How sad if they really think they have that responsibility to others!
Ugh, tell me about it. This whole non-story was a forcible reminder that Patriarchy doesn’t just go away. Just when you thought it was safe to leave the house…
[...] A female celebrity has gained weight?! Gasp! How dare she!! Unsurprisingly, more fatism in the media. [...]
I watched the Oprah interview and was disturbed by the conversation in all the reasons noted so far. But I was also shocked by her weight. I find it very hard to believe (based on her height and size) that 228 is the highest she’s ever been. So image the shame/damage she and the magazine (and Oprah) are doing if she’s actually lying about the weight and yet sending the message that 228 is disgusting.
Sh–i have often wondered the same thing about Oprah. she is typically very upfront about what she supposedly weighs, but sometimes the number doesn’t seem anywhere near close, and she is talking about what that particular number represents for her, either 140 is such a miracle landmark for her, after hours of personal training and no food after 7 pm, or she can’t believe she “let herself go” so horribly to reach 180. I sometimes also wonder why she thinks her readers/viewers really care about what she happens to weigh this month, but think that there probably ARE a lot of people out there who do actually care, and use her as a role model. Heck, if Oprah can get down to 165, so can I! (but at the same time, i think people are sometimes fascinated by the complete trainwreck that has been her yo-yo weightloss history.)