Day 57 – Hollywood, C’est Moi

“Don’t confuse: Jell-O with whipped cream for dessert and J-Lo with whipped cream for dessert.”

~ Anonymous

197.0 lbs.

I recently discovered I’ve some things in common with certain peeps in Hollywood, and not just calling myself a film maker either (to be fair, my documentaries, music videos, etc. added up might have made the revenue of one of MGM’s straight to video flicks. Maybe.)

Rapper / actor 50 cent is looking more like a thin dime these days. He’s starring in the movie Things Fall Apart about a football player stricken with cancer, so to look suitably sickly he lost 54 lbs., going from 214 to 160. To do so he lived off a liquid diet and ran on a treadmill for 3 hours a day.

Hmmm… I’ve lost 42 lbs in 8 weeks. Maybe I should start running 3 hours a day.

Eh, we’ll see.

Early in this project I pointed out the schism between male and female weight loss or gain in Hollywood, and the flack that Mischa Barton was taking for losing weight after taking flack for supposedly looking plump. Well it seems the set of Mad Men is turning back the clock not just on fashions, but the body types clothed by them: they encourage their women to eat and not exercise, in order to maintain the more curvaceous physiques that women had back then.

In fact January Jones, who plays the wife of the lead character Don Draper, got in hot water during filming of Season 3 for being ‘too skinny’. Mmmm…. January Jones soup…

*ahem* Right. Article. Yeah, so the producers told her to quit being so Hollywood 2010 and look like a 60′s housewife.

“I got told…”, she said, “that I look too skinny, and I was in trouble.” She held up the Amstel Light beer she was drinking. “I’m naturally pretty thin, so I’m trying”.

She does try. “I eat whatever is at craft services. I’m a big eater. I’m from South Dakota, so meat, potatoes, carbs.”

January points out that to maintain Mad Men’s early ‘60s look, a period in which women definitely had more meat on their bones, she and the other actresses are “encouraged NOT to work out. We want soft; we don’t want any muscle definition.”

That works for me. Between January and my other girlfriend, Christina Hendricks, I’ve no complaints about their interpretation of “curvaceous”. In fact anyone who thinks those two should lose weight to “look healthy” is going to have to go through me. Well, not me now that I’m weak and emaciated. The strong me. Grrr.

However, before we start patting Hollywood on the back for allowing curvaceous cuties, remember this is Mad Men specifically trying to get that 60′s look. Gemma Arterton (Clash of the Titans, Quantum Solace) ‘felt fat’ on the set of Prince of Persia, saying that film execs from Disney told her what not to eat after she was photographed with a double chin last year.

“They sent me to a personal trainer, wanted to get my teeth done, hair extensions, make me look like somebody else. And that’s fine… I became the thing they wanted me to be for the part.”

“But I don’t agree with what they think is beautiful because it’s not me,” she says. “Unless you’re really famous and successful then they’re going to bully you into going to the gym. It’s a side of the industry that I find uncomfortable.”

From film to fashion, we’re screwed. Male mannequins continue to shrink in size, pressuring men into skinny clothes (and pressuring them to have skinny bodies to fit into those garments)… something women like Gemma are no strangers to.

“”I went to a designer the other day — who will remain nameless — and he said to me: ‘I’m amazed that you’re fitting into these sample sizes.” (She’s a size 6 US, 8-10 UK)

Gemma might never meet Hollywood standard of stick-bug-with-boobs. “The only way that I could ever be a size six is if I didn’t eat. I’m not naturally meant to be that size, and I just feel like there’s a responsibility to people who aren’t that size to make that known.”