Body Wars

"After viewing recent pictures of you strolling around Santa Monica earlier this week," begins the CEO's letter to Sidibe, "we at AcaiSupply.com have decided we can no longer sit back and keep our mouth's [sic] shut! ... the only way you can reach your goal of someday winning that Oscar is by being active, fit and most of all healthy!"

And clearly, the way to become "active, fit and most of all healthy" is by taking pills you bought off the Internet. Snark aside, though, the guy does have a point. I mean, Gabby -- can we talk? -- let's be real here.  Posthumous Oscars notwithstanding, we all know how hard it is to win major awards unless you're clearly in the pink of health. As concerned people have no doubt pointed out to you, obesity is correlated with Type 2 diabetes, and do you know who has that disease and has also never won an Oscar? George Lucas. Are you going to tell me that's a coincidence?

Or think of Jane Fonda, who struggled with anorexia and bulimia throughout a large portion of her career -- and only won two of the seven Oscars she was nominated for. While at his "lowest point in terms of addictions," Robert Downey Jr. only won Golden Globe and SAG Awards for some stupid, girly TV show -- that's a big step down after an Oscar nomination for work he did while less high, am I right? Speaking of "Ally McBeal," that show barely won anything important while at least three of the actresses on it were suffering from eating disorders -- just a single Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy and Golden Globes for the show and Calista Flockhart, stuff like that. Before her untimely drug-related death, Judy Garland merely landed a juvenile Oscar, though she was nominated twice more. Similarly, Marilyn Monroe's most noteworthy win was a Golden Globe, John Belushi earned but a single Emmy, and Chris Farley got practically nothing but a gazillion dollars and an MTV Movie Award. Patty Duke only won one Oscar at 16 -- years after her allegedly abusive managers started providing her with alcohol and drugs -- and later, just three Emmys before her bipolar disorder (which may have been related to her anorexia, ongoing substance abuse issues and suicide attempts) was finally diagnosed.

I could go on, but I trust you get the picture, Gabby: History shows that when the Hollywood establishment spots someone who's obviously in ill health and/or engaging in self-destructive behavior, they're loath to ignore it and hand that person more jobs and awards anyway. Actresses suspected of having dangerous relationships with food, in particular, have a notoriously difficult time finding work; as you surely know, the only extremely thin women really thriving in the industry are those who maintain their weight by eating sensibly and chasing around after their kids, not those who resort to starvation, surgery or drugs. (And when an already thin young woman loses a substantial amount of weight, it's truly heartwarming to see how folks express their sincere concern instead of judging and turning away.) This is because Hollywood cares, Gabby -- just like anonymous Internet commenters and serious journalists and Acai berry diet pushers care, deeply, about your health.

Me, I don't care so much about your health, if I'm being honest. I mean, I wish you comfort, happiness, longevity and other good things -- but since I've never seen you look anything but radiant, you never appear high or drunk in public, you've spoken about how you've never been skinny and regular exercise doesn't change your size much, you apparently aren't struggling anymore with debilitating body-related shame and anxiety, and when the word "infectious" is used to describe you, it invariably relates to your charm and good humor, I assume you're feeling OK. And if there comes a time when you don't, I can't imagine why you and your doctor would be interested in my opinion on the matter, so I've gone ahead and filed the whole issue under "Not My Business; Don't Care." Please forgive me, Gabby, if that makes you feel that I, as a serious lady journalist, am not taking a sufficient interest in your career.

What I am interested in is the lack of good roles out there for women in general, and for fat women and African-American women in particular. I'm interested in the fact that most of these people expressing such deep concern for your health and your prospects as an actress are completely uncritical of the forces that usually keep women who look like you from landing big roles, because it's so much simpler to criticize you instead. I'm interested in the fact that even if you somehow starved yourself down to a size 0, you still couldn't do a damned thing about the fact that in 82 years, no woman with your skin tone has ever won best actress -- only one has even been in the ballpark -- and how that data point gets ignored while everyone's saying only your weight will prevent you from being the next Meryl Streep. I'm interested in how you've already, on your first frickin' try, scored a leading role in an award-winning film and been nominated for a best actress Oscar (not to mention practically every other possible award) and how even articles fretting about your future are full of casting directors singing your praises and news about your upcoming projects -- while the "She has no future" side is represented only by Howard Stern and an entertainment columnist. (I also love how said entertainment columnist sniffs, "the only roles she'll have a shot at playing will be down-market moms and hard-luck girls working at Wal-Mart"; Mo'Nique and Jennifer Aniston might disagree that such roles are the sign of a dead career.) I'm interested in why, as that same columnist says, "no one in the executive world looks like [you]," much more than I'm interested in whether a hypothetical thinner you would be easier to cast, in fact.

But still, I have my own career to think about here, and I'm not about to let this opportunity to grab an easy 15 minutes pass me by. I'm sure you understand the importance of striking while the iron is hot, Gabby.

So I'm saying it: Gabourey Sidibe is obviously unhealthy and needs to lose weight if she wants to have a successful career! Do you hear me, people? She'll never work again, much less win an Oscar, if she doesn't learn to hate herself like a normal fat person and get rid of all that weight that's making her look like she's at death's door every time she appears in public. I know nobody likes hearing it -- and certainly, nobody likes saying it -- but sometimes, a serious journalist has to go out on a limb and express an unpopular opinion like "Fat is bad." And now that I've bravely done so, I expect this post to go viral by morning, folks. My agent and I are counting on you.

Not because she's not talented, but because she's an overweight African-American girl in Hollywood. I think we all know the odds there. E! Online mentioned that Sidibe is already working on a Showtime drama starring Laura Linney, but if anyone's wondering when her next big movie role is, I think you're going to be waiting for a long time.

People are attacking Stern for his comments, but they're not bringing up the elephant in the room -- the truth. Normally, when a woman is nominated for best lead actress for her film debut, she's stepping over offers left and right.

Now, it's possible that Sidibe is working on her television show and so hasn't been able to commit to another project yet ... but let's be honest, I think that's doubtful.

She's had to dodge questions about future movies on countless television shows.

Sidibe's only project listed on IMDb is another independent film, like "Precious" was, and based on the description it sounds a little like typecasting. In comparison, the traditionally pretty Carey Mulligan, also nominated for her film "An Education" this year, is dating Shia LaBeouf and starring in the "Wall Street" sequel coming out this spring.

Rather than rail against Stern, why don't producers prove him wrong and hire the girl?

Because there simply aren't roles for her, that's why.

It's become a sad tradition that African-American Academy Award winners tend to fade out of sight once they win. Yes, there are exceptions (Denzel Washington comes to mind), but think of all the stars who received a nomination or award and then never made it back to the red carpet.

Halle Berry hasn't been able to match her "Monster's Ball" acclaim. Jennifer Hudson settled for small roles in "Sex and the City" and "The Secret Life of Bees." Forrest Whitaker turned in a revelatory performance in "The Last King of Scotland" and then did a guest spot on "ER."

It's not uncommon for people to go into professional paralysis after receiving such a high honor. All of the people I just listed took a few steps back in their careers after the Oscars, but Sidibe's career doesn't seem to be going anywhere at all.

This is because on top of being a minority actress in Hollywood, she's also overweight. Like it or not, nobody's tripping over themselves to write movies for overweight African-American girls.

I give Howard Stern credit for at least pointing out that it's ridiculous to have a bunch of celebrities who weigh 8 pounds stand onstage at the Oscars and say Sidibe has a long, A-list career ahead of her.

I'd still like to see Hollywood prove him wrong.

Yet a study released this week from the Archives of Internal Medicine that followed over 19,000 American "normal weight" women over age 39 and tracked their drinking habits for 13 years found that women who were "light to moderate" drinkers gained about 30 percent less weight over time than the teetotalers. Now if there could just be a study linking bacon consumption to smooth skin, this would be my best day ever.

How'd we get so lucky? First, as the New York Times noted today, alcohol gives the female metabolism a minor boost (sorry, guys, it doesn't do the same for men). Furthermore, there's some evidence that the resveratrol found in grapes and red wine might inhibit obesity.

Yet before you dump your weight-loss shakes down the drain and break out the Jagermeister tap, there is one glaring caveat -- that inhibited weight gain seems to be linked less to what women drink as how they drink. Women, much more than men, are likelier to use alcohol as a substitute for food rather than an accompaniment. Think of all the whoooo-hoooo girls you've ever seen at the bar, forgoing dinner for one more sex on the beach. It'd be interesting to see further research on women and their attitudes toward weight, drinking and aging. One hopes maybe some of those moderate drinking, obesity-deflecting women are also just normal, balanced human beings who don't view their health or their bodies in terms of all or nothing. As for the ones who think a glass of sangria makes a meal? They may be thinner than their plusher counterparts at the dinner table, but there's no study in the world that would call them wiser.

She IS full-sized, mofos. She's not ashamed of it. Stop trying to be ashamed for her! DAMN.

But this Linda Medvene stylist person did also proclaim that they had decided to go with Marchesa, a house known for the fab dresses they do for all the A-list actresses.

Marchesa's head designer, Georgina Chapman, is married to Hollywood honcho, Harvey Weinstein, who I have a love/hate relationship with because his outfit dropped the film renewal option on my first novel, BLING, which they also published thru Miramax Books, at the 13th hour on some real shady shit after the Hollywood writer's strike and basically force majeured my ass out of the equivalent of a year's salary. So, yes, I have beef with the Weinstein camp. I'm admitting that right up front.

And I was side-eyeing the whole thing from the get-go because Georgina is a size negative 0 (or here's a good one ... notice the plate? empty) and the largest actress she's ever dressed is a six. That would be her bestie J. Lo who she didn't do right by when she got hugely pregnant with her twins. So when I heard about her dressing Gabs I was thinking, I'd like to be a fly on the wall at THAT fitting. But at the same time I was trying to be optimistic about the outcome. Well, as we all know, our first instinct is almost always the right one.

Now, one day before the Oscars, it's come out in a Fox News article "Gabourey Sidibe's Dress Mystery: When Plus Size Is Too Big for Hollywood," that Gabby has been showing up at all these events in off-the-rack clothing. And BALLET FLATS. Damn, are her FEET too fat to squeeze into a motherfucking Choo?! What are these people doing to this poor child's self-esteem?!

And now Medvene can't won't name the designers who have sent her sketches but she can say who Gabby won't be wearing on Oscar night: Marchesa.

• "She is not wearing Marchesa, that's untrue. I don't know where everyone is getting this information but it's not true," Medvene insisted.

Bitch, we got it from you!!!!! Has she ever heard of Google? Is she trying to say USA Today fabricated her direct quote from a week earlier? Which was ...

• "We have our first fitting today with Marchesa," says Sidibe's stylist Linda Medvene. "We've been offered dresses by all these huge designers. It just proves that anyone can dress a full-sized woman."

This Stylist We've Never Heard Of gets an emphatic #hositdown (and not at the Oscars or the VF party -- at your apartment in the Valley)

I think we all knew she was exaggerating about being DELUGED by top COUTURIERS, but this Marchesa business smells to high heaven! These fucking people. Just get more fabric, bitches!

And if André Leon Talley, who I love, EVER wanted to do something good in his life he would have swept this child up into the bosom of his kimono and sat in the wings at her last-minute fitting with Whoever He Commanded To Do This!

This is some reeeeal funny style bullshit going on here and my only consolation is to believe that Gabby is so above and beyond this surface CRAP that hopefully it will not affect her or let it ruin her night. But this still makes me wanna CRY! I know SHE doesn't give a fuck about a Dior but she HAS to do the red carpet and then to have to say 100x, "It's... Lane Bryant"?! UGH, it's so hard to be a girl!

And this whole thing is rubbing salt in the as-yet-unhealed wound of Chris Rock presenting her the award at the NAACP Awards last week and calling out her name as "Gaaa...PRECIOUS!" They are not one in the same MOTHERFUCKER!!!! Someone said he probably didn't know how to pronounce her last name. Well, does Pookie know how to fucking pronounce Gabby?! #hositdown to him too!

Now if on top of this, Sandra Bullock wins for Blind Side, aka The Magical Negro Bullshit That Made $250mil and Made Me Turn On My Once Beloved Sandy Like A Rabid Dog, beating MERYL in her tour de force (yet again) as Julia Child, I swear I swear I swear ... I cannot be held accountable for what I TWEET!

OMG, I just did an image search to find another pic of Gabby...read this --> Gabourey Sidibe slaps Chris Rock after awards show grope

How fucking BOMB is she? I tell you, I would murder for this girl. Don't test me. #TeamGabby4Life

 

 

 

 

 

I'd spent the majority of my pre-pregnancy years bouncing around in the top third of this range, always a little heavier than I might have liked, never the sort of girl who would ride a bike in a bikini or ask a salesgirl why the stores carried so darn few size zeros, but a solid, healthy woman with a healthy Body Mass Index. Suddenly, with a 6-month-old and a lot less time on my hands for working out, I was firmly outside of this zone and not only at increased risk for diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, but -- more immediately distressing -- fits of despair in front of three-way dressing room mirrors, emotional breakdowns brought on by the bridesmaid dress I wore for a friend's wedding, a red strapless number in which I resembled a ripe maraschino cherry. Through all this, I could make joking reference to my "empty pouch" or my "leftover maternal reserves," but when I stepped on the scale, I knew the truth. Pregnancy had pushed me over that threshold so many women fear crossing. I was no longer curvy, no longer a stubborn but reliable size 10. I was fat, and I wasn't alone.

Despite the fantasies of celebrity magazines, in which bone-thin women drop baby weight before they've changed a diaper, for the average-size American woman -- that is, a size 14 -- pregnancy is a gateway to years of elastic waist bands. It's not hard to see how this happens: When you've given up caffeine and alcohol, when you have to struggle to tie your shoes or roll over in bed, chips and Häagen-Dazs are no small comfort. A friend confided in me about the last few miserable weeks of her trimester: "I was drinking a chocolate milkshake every freaking day. I was shameless." Problem is, however easy it is to pack on the pounds, it can be really, really hard to get them off.

In decades past, the dominant way of thinking was to acknowledge this reality and fight against it tooth and nail. But lately, against the backdrop of eerily vanishing celebrity baby bumps, a kinder, gentler approach is on the rise. Forget fitting back into your skinny jeans a few weeks postpartum. Love your post-baby body. Embrace the extra "you." Katie Gentile writes in the Daily Beast that, "When women shed the baby weight, they are not merely getting back their pre-baby bodies, they are obliterating all evidence of ever having had a baby in the first place … The post-baby body is wrung of its recent life-giving feat." In a Jezebel item, Sadie Stein admonishes the new "baby weight craze. She quotes a commenter on UrbanBaby who tells women to "think about all your body's been through and don't be so hard on yourself."

There's even a book devoted to this anti-Hollywood, anti-dieting perspective, a feel-good meditation on baby weight -- "Does This Baby Make Me Look Fat: The Essential Guide to Loving Your Body Before and After Baby." Its authors plead with new moms not to be too hard on themselves for having a little postpartum flab, encouraging women to love their bodies, to eat healthy and to embrace their roundness. All of this is part of an understandable pushback to the beauty-industrial complex, which creates impossible standards for women made worse through airbrushing and Photoshopping. But the big, fat truth is that most mothers aren't going too far to shed their excess baby weight. We're not going far enough. Sixty-two percent of American women are overweight, and so for the majority of American women, excess, lingering baby-weight is a real problem: health-wise, self-esteem-wise, and otherwise. There's a reason women are buying those "baby weight craze" tabloids; because in a world of stubborn belly fat and clinging cellulite, that fantasy is powerful.

If I'd heard someone making this argument four years ago, I probably would have rolled my eyes. What's changed between then and now is a 2-year-old (mine), two pregnancies (I'm currently in my third trimester for No. 2), and 15 pounds of excess weight that have made my second pregnancy a lot more uncomfortable than my first.

I take full responsibility for this predicament. I have a profound and unshakable love of good eating. A slice of perfectly buttered, warm-from-the-oven bread has been known to bring tears to my eyes. I don't know that I want to live in a world without cheese. I adore cooking and baking and holiday feasts and dining with friends and spending too much money on mind-blowing meals in wonderful restaurants, but mostly, and quite simply, I love food. Before my pregnancy, I stayed healthy (never skinny) by exercising regularly, eating tons of fruits and vegetables all summer and not getting too down on myself if I plumped up a little, hibernation-style, in the winter. It was a delicate equilibrium that took years to achieve and only a few months to unravel, specifically the first few months of my pregnancy, a dark, cold winter in Chicago when, elated by the knowledge that I was nurturing a little life and relieved by the fact that I could keep nausea at bay with the continuous ingestion of egg bagels, plain pasta, white rice, baked potatoes and every other starchy goodness known to woman, I dispensed with moderation.

For the first time in my life, I felt light and free, even as my thighs and hips grew heavy. I did things I never would have done sans fetus. I "treated" myself to drive-through junior bacon cheeseburgers on my way home from the gym. Guacamole-laden tortilla chips replaced seasonal salad as my first course of choice. I bought a maternity tee with the words, "We're hungry," printed across the belly. I didn't stop exercising, but it seemed like the more I exercised, the more I ate. In 39 1/2 weeks of pregnancy, I gained 39 1/2 pounds, and then delivered, to my astonishment, a little peanut, a 6-pound, 10-ounce baby boy. When I came home from the hospital, I hardly recognized myself. It took me about a year to lose the first 25. I was still working on the last 15 when No. 2 made an appearance on the sonogram screen.

It's because of women like me, or women in far worse health predicaments -- women entering pregnancies with a lot more than 15 excess pounds -- that many healthcare providers are beginning to focus more on nutritional counseling programs as an integral part of prenatal care. The medical director of one such program at Northwestern University, Alan Peaceman, explains that in addition to the risks of gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, and cesarean sections, new research suggests that "women who gain excessively during pregnancy may be putting their children at risk for obesity. So they're not doing this to fit back into their jeans six weeks after pregnancy. They're doing this for the health of their babies."

When I asked Peaceman if he worries some women might take the message too far, falling prey to the body-hating, "pregorexic" mentality, he laughs: "That's just not the major issue that affects the population in this country. The much bigger problem is the women who gain too much and then can't lose it. A lot of women who've fought weight issues their whole life look to pregnancy as a time when the rules are off, when they don't have to engage in the struggle. We need to get the word out that this is not the case."

The program is intended for women with a pre-pregnancy BMI over 30, which means I'm not quite fat enough to join in. Nonetheless, it inspired me. I wouldn't say I've been on a diet during this pregnancy, but I haven't been throwing caution to the wind, either. Unlike last time, the woman at the fast-food drive-through doesn't know me by name. And unlike last time, when after the birth of my son I put off diet and exercise for as long as possible, I plan to be working off the weight this time as soon as my doctor gives the green light. Look, any woman who's given birth and nursed a child knows there's no fighting physiology at least in some respects. But I want to recognize myself in pictures. I want to feel sexy again in a short skirt. I don't want an entire lot of pre-baby clothes to languish in the back of my closet for the next 20 years until I pass them along to some smug, skinny niece who loves their "vintage" look. I could say that I'm doing it for my health, and this would be partially true. But frankly, I'm doing it because however short my pre-pregnancy body might have fallen from the celebrity ideal, it was mine, and even with two babies in tow, I want it back. 

So it's sad, but not shocking that in the latest edition of Us Weekly, Kelly Osbourne says that she got more attention for her weight than for her three stints in rehab. "I took more hell for being fat than I did for being an absolutely raging drug addict. I will never understand that," Osbourne said. Nor should she. But it prompts the question: Is it more socially acceptable to have a substance abuse problem than to be overweight?

Kevin Smith's much-publicized debacle with Southwest Airlines apparently earned him much more derision than sympathy. "They're really pathetic," Smith told the LA Times about the media reaction. "I was unfairly bounced and discriminated against … They just went with the easy fat jokes."

The media, it seems, is far more forgiving of a little heroin now and then than it is of a person with a couple extra pounds (and Osbourne, even at her heaviest, was far, far from unhealthy). While Hollywood doesn't outright condone drug use, it seems like common practice to look away when your star actress is doing rails of coke and then profess to be shocked, shocked when she ends up in rehab. The truth is that drug abuse and the public scrutiny of celebrities' bodies—which, thanks to her famous parents, began for Kelly Osbourne very young—are not unrelated. Go to rehab or even jail, and you might get your career back, or at least a reality show about it. But have a slice of pizza now and then, and you'll get nothing but wisecracks about your thighs and an invite for "Celebrity Fit Club."