It’s no newsflash that women are skinny in Hollywood — by far skinnier than the 66 per cent of Americans who qualify as overweight. But are they getting skinnier? Or do we just read a lot more about them as an endless stream of celebrity rags and fashion mags chronicle their corporal exploits, alternately castigating and holding them up for public ridicule when their bones stick out and celebrating the personal resourcefulness they exploited to lose excess poundage. Some observers believe that yes, women in Hollywood are shrinking. One person who has noticed that Hollywood women are skinnier than ever is casting director Joseph Middleton, who has cast an array of youth-oriented films including American Pie, Go and the upcoming Jumper. “You can tell, because the first year that you (audition) them, they come from Chicago, Ohio and Georgia, and they’re really pretty girls who are healthy. A year later, you read them and they look like slimmer Hollywood versions.” Us Editor-in-Chief Janice Min, another close observer of Hollywood’s mores, agrees that extreme thinness “has become an issue.’’ “Obviously, being a female celebrity, you’re in constant competition. You’re competing for roles, parts, male attention. It’s a system of rewards, and you are rewarded for being the most beautiful, the sexiest, and the competition has almost extended to being the thinnest. One major costume designer says that when looking for clothes for actresses, she can hardly find any in size 0. “They’re all sold out. Why are Hollywood women shrinking? We’re certainly not in any heyday of women’s power, as behind-the-scenes female power players increasingly disappear from the ranks. In a review of movies dating from June 2006 to June 2007, there were 185 films that featured male leads and only 47 that sported female leads — meaning there’s a lot of competition for parts. At least one top manager points out that actresses who compete most in the weight realm appear to be the same ones who live in the tabloids. “The skinny-minnies,” the manager said, tend to be “the pop celebrities in the axis of fashion and celebrity. Instead of the fake boobs of 15 years ago, there’s a whole generation obsessed with being thin.’’ Eating disorders is another aspect to be considered. One show notorious for skinny actresses was Ally McBeal. The Desperate Housewives all seem improbably sylphlike. At least Felicity Huffman has talked publicly about her battles, discussing an eating disorder she had in her 20s. As of late, more attention has been paid to the dark side of Hollywood’s extreme thinness, mostly, says University of California, Los Angeles professor Michael Strober, because people in the public eye — namely two Brazilian models — have died of anorexia nervosa, and the European fashion houses are trying to set minimum standards of BMI, or Body-Mass Index.-Rachel Abramowitz (LAT-WP)
