Camille Paglia has a piece in Salon about how Taylor was part of the last generation of film actresses who had real bodies. Neither she nor I am talking about Liz's years of excessive weight but her years before 1975.
Gloria Swanson says in SUNSET BOULEVARD, "We have faces then."
Taylor could say similarly, "We had bodies then."
Do you ever wonder if the dearth of nude scenes in movies might be because today's actresses are not all that appealing naked. I don't think anyone would want to see Paltrow without clothes nowadays. And there are a hundred others right behind her.
My husband says it is easier not to eat at all than to eat sensibly. Or is it a form of mutilation like tattoos and body piercing? Or is it a desire to punish oneself? Or to prove you have the most marbles. Or no marbles.
Paglia mentions the two actresses in THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT. And this is true. Both of them looked too fragile to take out the garbage. Lose the fat on your face after a certain age and it is aging.
This is not a new topic, but pictures of Liz in her prime brought it home.
I guess it was Gloria Vanderbilt who said you could never be too thin. But can you? What do you think? Is there an actress today that wears a size larger than 4? Do men like these bodies? Most men seem to think Christine Hendricks from Mad Men looks just fine but women speak differently.
How thin is too thin?
34 comments:
Whatever is difficult and unobtainable becomes prized. In our well fed (and increasingly poisonously fed) culture, thinness is a more difficult ideal. When people are starving, the zaftig is the ideal. There's a very American puritan attitude toward the flesh: it's both desire and disgust. The asceticism of mortification of the flesh appeals to a nation which grew from people who spent their days castigating their own sinfulness in straight-backed wooden pews.
I really didn't notice the super thin look until ALLIE MCBEAL with Calista Flockhart looking emaciated. Now, all the super models are bone-thin. Not an appealing look. Liz Taylor, in her prime, was one of the most beautiful women in the world.
Yes, it does circle around certain trends and being thin in this day of fast food is more difficult.
And Allie McBeal was a benchmark, wasn't she? Before we thought Twiggy an aberration.
Look at England. There is a whole different ethic going on there. You see "real" women (if I may use that phrase) who would be considered "fat" in Hollywood playing not only mothers but romantic leads. You will never see that here.
I agree that Callista set the tone for all that has followed. And I must say it is insidious: have you ever found yourself looking at an actress and saying "she could lose a few pounds" because Hollywood has put out the message that anyone over a size 2 is too fat? I know I have. (Then I snapped out of it.)
Look at singer Adele. I guarantee if she wasn't British but American you'd be seeing weight stories about her daily.
We live in a very sick society. It's not just Liz Taylor. Marilyn Monroe was considered the sexual icon of my youth and now she's be considered flabby or worse.
Jeff M.
Just about any woman in the public eye these days is too thin, if you ask me, with rare exceptions.
Living with a fashion designer, it's interesting. When we see these celebrities in fancy dresses and things at events, they are wearing dresses that were made as samples from whatever designer who came up with it. Those samples have gotten smaller and smaller; what used to be size 6s and 4s (shrunk from 8), are now 2s and 0s. In order for celebs to get these items, they have to be sized accordingly. When it comes to high dollar fabric, it's obviously cheaper to make a smaller garment than a larger one.
The other thing that bothers me is how young celebrities, mostly actresses, are getting. Most of them are "too old" by the time they hit 30. Meanwhile they are paired with 40, 50 and 60 yo leading men. That's tiresome.
I understand that there is now a size 00.
And it is all to easy to fall into the trap. As long as actresses are clothed and not too old, it is difficult to determine their weight. Again, I think it is why we have so few nude scenes. I have watched actresses like Keira Knightly go from thin to emaciated in the last few years. And who objects? Mothers perhaps.
When actresses are this thin they begin to look alike which fits the interchangeable roles they are offered in Hollywood today.
I like that this thread borders on a discussion of the utter lack of nude scenes in American movies today.
Both subjects are nostalgic for the movies of the 70s.
We had sex in movies then.
They're all much too thin, but it's what the market will bear. I used to think that actresses in the 50's and earlier weren't as thin, but lately I've been watching movies from that era which feature tiny waisted women who seem very, very narrow (and small) to me. I think Liz Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, Rhonda Fleming, Jayne Mansfield, and the like were actually exceptions to the rule. (Though Liz, in reality, was tiny, height-wise)
Jean Simmons, Jean Arthur, Lauren Bacall, Katherine Hepburn, Grace Kelly and that type, were actually quite thin when they were young, but maybe it was 'thin' in a different way. Thin with curves. The actresses today don't seem to have curves except for manufactured ones. And most of them have hideous stick legs. I was watching the runway Spring Shows in NY during Fashion Week (online) and I was horrified by the stick legs many of these models showed off down those runways. Surely, fashion designers can't think this makes their clothes look good...But obviously they do.
I thought no one could be thinner than Twiggy way back when, but I was wrong. And by the way, if you look at the top fashion models from that era as well: Jean Paget, Dovima, Verouchka and the like - they were stick thin as well, but again, somehow, with curves. The only one who broke the mold was Jean Shrimpton who actually had a 'normal' looking body. Sorry for the ramble...
My husband says it is easier not to eat at all than to eat sensibly.
Your husband is sooooo right!
Rather than starve, I pick ... a lot.
When I was younger, thin was definitely more appealing to me. That changed about a dozen or so years ago (for me). I wonder if it is an age thing.
So far no one has blamed gay fashion designers for thinking women should look like boys. My homophobic mind tends to drift in this direction on this topic, and I apologize. Still, I look at super thin women in the media and on the street, and I wonder, whose idea was this?
It is almost impossible to get it right weight wise. Especially after forty. But as women drift under one hundred and over other thresholds, there must be an answer.
Yvette is right though. Actresses were quite thin in the thirties and forties. But not so carved looking, I think.
And Lara Flynn Boyle made Flockhart look beefy. And yet she was held up as a rising face of beauty...needed to be held up, because she had no musculature to speak of. (ALLY MCBEAL, btw, even if she wasn't your ally.)
"It's the clothes that got small."
Male homosexual resentment of women in the fashion industry may not be just the presumption of a basher...the SEX AND THE CITY mentality (this is what gay men think straight women are like) doesn't stop within the entertainment industry, as Nora Ephron noted some decades back...but the hetero men and all the women in the industry generally seem to hate women, too.
Watching actresses growing ever thinner on long-term series is distressing.
The tat and piercing crowd don't think they're mutilating themselves, though. I tend to see it that way, but as long as no one's taking a needle to me...
Not sure I agree with the premise. There are tons of shapely stars and models around today who aren't too thin. Check out Angie Dickinson's nude scenes in Big Bad Mama for a gander at a beautiful woman with the right amount of flesh on her bones. Okay, that goes back a few decades, but she was a post-Liz actress.
Look, some women were always extremely thin - look at Audrey Hepburn, for crying out loud.
But now it's almost all of them. Youknow it's bad when you see an actress and think, "now she looks normal" and she weighs 110 pounds.
I can still remember years ago when TV Guide had a piece (at least, I remember it as being in TV Guide, but don't hold me to it) where they came to the conclusion that the actress with the ideal figure was Lea Thompson (who was starring in a crappy sitcom at the time).
The letters to the editor were scathing, the most memorable (and accurate) saying that Thompson had the figure of a 10 year old boy.
And this was more than 10 years ago. It's gotten much worse.
Jeff M.
Whatever is most likely to be achievable will be the standard of "beauty." Go back to the paintings of Rubens. How many women could achieve 60-inch hips in the famine eras of the 1600s? And yet, there on the canvas, are the rosy, zaftig models Rubens adored (and, in one case, married).
Let's not forget that Twiggy and the other "emaciated" models who came out of England in the 1960s looked the way they did in large part because England rationed most foods from WWII until the late 1950s, so people like Twiggy grew up eating less than 6 oz. of meat a week, with perhaps one or two eggs, some powdered milk, an occasional piece of fruit, and (oh, yes) fish and chips. A whole fashion industry trend based on "austerity Britain."
Sorry, my first sentence above should read "Whatever is LEAST likely to be achieved...."
Stupid keyboard!
And I think they created a whole style of eating because of it. Things like nutella for instance.
The camera really does add ten pounds. I recall hearing the editor of some movie fan magazine saying that if you met Gwyneth Paltrow in person, you'd want to call an ambulance.
And no, I don't find anything appealing about that look. In fact, I'm part of a nationwide network of men who watch Spanish-language news without understanding much of it, because it's a pleasure to see anchorwomen who have the bodies of adult women.
One of the reasons I love being in the UK is that more of the people on television and in films look like human beings -- not rejiggered plastic anonymities. Unfortunately the popularity of American shows and films has made inroads into that, but for the most part it remains an oasis.
As one of the pierced and tattooed folk, I will again acknowledge that matters of beauty are taste in the end, but there seems to be enough pressure for women who look thin as clothes hangers in the this country for it to continue for some time.
It's interesting that when everything else in Hollywood is about copying one another and chasing the same trends the breakout success of Christina Hendricks has had pretty much no effect.
This fall there will be at least two more dramas set in the 60's - one at the Chicago Playboy club and one about the pilots and stewardesses (before they became flight attendants) on Pan Am airlines. Some of the casts have been announced and so far I don't see a Christina Hendricks in the bunch.
Unless you are a female comedian I think you have to be extremely thin.
Yes, Lara Flynn Boyle was an even more exaggerated Ally McBeal.
You mentioned THE BIG BANG THEORY the other day, and Kaley Cuoco (Penny) is a current actress who doesn't look too thin to me. Another one is Katee Sackhoff (we're watching BATTLESTAR GALACTICA on DVD these days), and as Starbuck, she looks like she actually could kick somebody's ass if she needed to.
Great example. Penny actually has a shape. Give her another year or two though. The vanishing body is prevalent. Look at Jennifer Anniston over the years of FRIENDS.
Funny you should mention this, Patti. In Los Angeles, there is the Hollywood look, which is the extreme thinness for the cameras and clothes, and then there is the "real" LA where beauty goes all the way up to 300 pounds and beyond. I've put on a few pounds in the last year or two (I may be understating the case) but because obesity is so much more common in young people these days, the guys under 30 years old don't think the extra padding is a bad thing. They have a different view than the 30-on-ups, because bigger is so much more common in their age group. From a health standpoint, it's not good. But from a self-acceptance POV, I'm grateful for it.
Liz Taylor rest in peace. She was one of the greats.
Do you ever wonder if the dearth of nude scenes in movies might be because today's actresses are not all that appealing naked.
I'll need to perform a very close and private inspection of those actresses' nude scenes and still photos before announcing a decision.
One more example of a "real" woman: Tony-winning actress Sara Ramirez (for SPAMALOT), who has a major role on GREY'S ANATOMY. She stands out in a cast of very thin women, though since there have been a couple of pregnancies among the cast they don't seem as extreme as they did a couple of years ago.
Jeff M.
Gerard-I invite you to conduct that inspection.
Jeff-I am still fighting to lose my pregnancy weight gain 39 years on.
Elaine-Maybe the last of the greats.
The good actresses didn't/don't need to disrobe to be sexy. Remember Liz as Maggie the cat in Cat On A Tin Roof? Remember her scene in that slip? Now that was sexy.
Actually, "indy" films and imports can still be relied upon for nudity, particularly the good (female) kind, though also for the unimportant (male) kind. Seems like male nudity is becoming pretty prevalent in the Lad movies...something about the greater acceptance of bisexual feelings, perhaps.
I should be noted that although Kate Winslet has now starved herself down to almost perfection, to toy with Tom Wolfe's phrase of some decades back, she did achieve sexpot status as well as taken seriously for acting while curvaceous. Though she and Hendricks are among the relatively few pale Caucasians to have done so who come to mind. Heroin/starved junior division champ Lindsey Lohan has certainly held up the other end of late...apparently it took a discriminating eye to see Jean Smart for the attractive woman she clearly was (and healthily curvy women, even if slender, such as Sela Ward and Amanda Donohoe, certainly didn't seem to starve themselves).
Never liked Taylor much. AIDS activism good. VIRGINIA WOOLF good. Entirely too much of her career devoted to X, Y, AND ZEE and such. The stoned cover on the diet book didn't help anyone.
Todd, there are only a few of La Liz's early movies that are good (IMHO): Father of the Bride, A Place in the Sun, National Velvet. I hated Raintree County; it was boring as hell. Virginia Woolf and Suddenly Last Summer gave me nightmares. I couldn't care less about the rest.
No, she didn't make many good films. Pity there is no defining movie in her prime. FOB is more Spencer's movie.
Helena Bonham Carter is another "normal"-sized actress. Although I think she overdoes her hair, makeup, and wardrobe, so sometimes it's hard to tell there's a real, curvy woman underneath it all.
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