That's Keira Knightley at the premiere of "Dead Man's Chest." That photo along with that movie title ... a little disconcerting.
ADDED: I actually think the dress, creating a breastless look, is cool. Really daring and different.
July 5, 2006
"I'm not anorexic."
Okay.
That's Keira Knightley at the premiere of "Dead Man's Chest." That photo along with that movie title ... a little disconcerting.
ADDED: I actually think the dress, creating a breastless look, is cool. Really daring and different.
That's Keira Knightley at the premiere of "Dead Man's Chest." That photo along with that movie title ... a little disconcerting.
ADDED: I actually think the dress, creating a breastless look, is cool. Really daring and different.
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44 comments:
I don't think it's the dress that's creating the "breastless look".
Hey, if you were thinking of 'creating the breastless look' for me, please. PLEASE. Don't put yourself to the trouble. Certainly not on my account. If I wanted pedophilia, I'd ASK for pedophilia, but, as a matter of sad fact, I DON'T.
It's Blogger Sweeps Week, right?
Word verification - mamov Sometimes you can't make these things up, but the software can.
How is it daring and different? Britney Spears wore the exact same thing a few years ago. All it achies is to announce to the world that you need to eat more and take less drugs.
I'm not sure which is sadder - that she thinks she looks good, or that she's wrong.
Don't forget that the camera adds 15 pounds.
Don't forget that the camera adds 15 pounds.
That's not true anymore. The new digital cameras don't add an ounce, unless photoshopping is used. Technology doesn't stand still, DTL.
"In the States, we disapprove of thin women these days"
I find it extremely hard to believe that statement. Certainly, when one stands at the WalMart checkout, the magazines one sees just scream societal disapproval of thin people. Every magazine that doesn't offer a banner headline "gain fifteen pounds in a weekend" has a picture of some thin starlet in a bikini labeled "see Scarlett Johansen's terrible new thin look" or somesuch. The stories about "I gained fifty pounds and I'm much happier now" are particularly heartwarming.
Disregard the head and its looks like some dude in the boys locker room in junior high. Not the kind of look I'm into, but hey whatever trips your trigger.
catherine said...
"You must not be a thin woman receiving constant comments and unsolicited advice."
What gave it away?
Look, even if you recieve comments and unsolicited advice - in fact, even if every woman does - that comes nowhere even close to establishing your massively counterintuitive statement that "[i]n the States, we disapprove of thin women these days." Every aspect of popular culture, at every age level - from MTV videos to Good Housekeeping Magazine - screams the contrary conclusion. In the States, these days, we fetishize thin; we revel in it to the point of unhealthiness. It is why a high percentage of women of all ages routinely starve themselves; it is why diet books sell in quantities out of all proportion to their actual societal value. I don't necessarily agree with the feminist conclusion that it is a tool of the patriarchy to supress women in society, not least because the same pressures apply (albeit with less force) to men; but I do share their conclusions that it is unhealthy, and I would tend to finger the businesses that profit from it as the culprits. I'd go so far as to say that society's obsession with thin is the single greatest contributor to persistent and systemic misery in this country. To blithely claim that we are worried by thin is so blatantly at odds with every ounce of the culture that surrounds us that you're going to have to do a lot more than "well, people tell me I'm thin."
One more bit of snark - when was the last time a female movie star was told she'd have to gain weight for a movie?
Sorry, Catharine, but it must be pretty comfortable in that there Egyptian river you're swimming in.
She was on GMA or some similar program this morning and the comment was made that she was very aware of anorexia, since it had happened within her family, but she was not personally anorexic.
Just very naturally thin I guess - hey, if some people seem to get grossly obese without a lot of effort, it seems that there ought to be some people at the other end of that bell curve as well. Goodness knows I'm having to fight to get my weight back down to normal - and that's with between 2 and 4 miles walking each day and a fairly low calorie diet.
Well Simon I do think Rene Zelwigger (sp?) had to gain weight for Bridget Jones Diary but I otherwise agree with you. Its also true that people will find any excuse to criticize someone else, especially under the guise of concern.
10:56 AM, July 05, 2006
Catherine - Keira Knightley is in the business of trading on her appearance. If she weren't gorgeous, she wouldn't likely be a millionaire actress. I think its completely fair to judge her appearance.
That said, I don't think she's anorexic. But, she'd look a little less sick if she canned the pasty makeup and the ribcage exposing drapery.
No, Catherine. We should pay them millions of dollars and place them up on untouchable pedestals so they might never bother themselves with the pedantic opinions of the unwashed.
Anybody who's hung around Hollywood/Sherman Oaks/Universal City/Pasadena knows that your average actress and wanna-be model is pretty petite anyway. These women are generally not very tall nor loarge of stature, especially by hearty Midwestern standards.
I get disappointed when I see young actresses (see Reid, Tara and Lohan, Lindsay) lose so much weight as to transform from budding young vixen to unidentifiable waif - and then resort to plastic surgery once they discovered that breasts come in handy.
Catherine - I didn't think you were being ugly. I apologize if my comment came off that way.
I just think your concerns are misguided. When we are talking about celebrities, we are talking about people whose life ambition is to be famous. People who want everybody's eyes on them. People who peddle themselves to things like the Maxim List of 100 Sexiest Women (or whatever list she was near the top of this year).
These are hardly people who would be perfectly happy with themselves if only Tom and Jane didn't snark about their weight.
As a side note, I think the "Anorexia!" claims are ridiculous for all these celebs. They starve themselves because they are dying to be the next "it" girl not because they suffer from a psych disorder.
Ah yes, a blog called Althouse:
Where a distinguished law professor presides over a discussion with other adults about whether a young movie star's breasts are too small or not.
You must be so proud!
VW: grwup
While waiting for my prescription at the pharmacy (which is right beside an NYU dormitory) I watched two young female students, dressed in a sort of down-market version of this actress' "cokehound lame" dress, each average height and each weighing no more than 110 pounds, giggling in front of the laxative selection and finally walking to the register with two boxes each. Apart from the rather unpleasant image of these two potentially lovely young women sitting on toilets, giggling as they excrete the little nutrition they actually put in their bodies, I was reminded of director Todd Haynes' early film about Karen Carpenter which, thanks to the magic of YouTube, you can watch. The quality's terrible (the film was never officially released because of threats of civil action from Richard Carpenter and I think Mattel) but it's a pretty interesting little experiment, in the form of a pseudo-documentary. Watch it before it gets taken down or YouTube finally burns through all their VC and ceases operations.
Catherine: "...keeping in mind that opinions are most often offered about women."
We can start a thread on John Goodman's breasts if you wish.
And yes -- celebs are more fair game. A significant amount of time they and their publicists are promoting or touting their good or new looks thereby opening the door for critique. Heat and kitchen...
"But doctors (and our eyes) tell us that Americans are fat"
You're talking about two completely unconnected issues. When doctors tell us that Americans are overweight, they're not stigmatizing thin people - they're complaining about the morbidly obese. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that people don't get criticized for being fat, I'm suggesting that there is immense societal pressure to be not only thin, but unhealthy. Hence's Jennifer's absurd comment that "[i]f [Knightley] weren't gorgeous, she wouldn't likely be a millionaire actress," implicitly arguing that Knightly is gorgeous. Personally, I think she looks absolutely repulsive; that is not a natural look. It doesn't look healthy, and it certainly doesn't look attractive. She doesn't look sexy, she looks hungry.
"As a side note, I think the 'Anorexia!' claims are ridiculous for all these celebs. They starve themselves because they are dying to be the next "it" girl not because they suffer from a psych disorder."
Are you suggesting that voluntary starvation in pursuit of Mammon and public adulation is not evidence of deep pyschological disorder, or just that it is not in itself a disorder? I would think an excessive and all-consuming desire for attention and validation does rise to the point of requiring therapy; the real question is why on Earth we encourage and reward it as a society by placing (or tolerating the placement of) people with no discernable claim to substantive fame (in the proper sense of the word: "Great renown or noteworthiness") into the public eye. Any person who ever bought an "OK Magazine" is part of the problem.
Catharine,
I really don't care one whit about some minor actress or what she does, but I am concerned about a societal trend which places on a pedestal as a desirable goal the starvation of women. As per Palladian's comment, this is a problem which reaches down from supposed role models to people who we should be concerned about. To the extent that she has been willing to participate in this process, she is either a victim of it or an active contributor to it. You can take your pick as to which you think reflects worse on her.
1. Palladian: Thanks! I've been wanting to watch that for years.
2. I think Keira Knightly is beautiful, but the dress is shocking because it flaunts flatchestedness. People don't know how to deal with that. I think it's cool. You're having a bit of a struggle with dissonance at looking at a beautiful woman who seems to have the body of a boy.
3. I don't think she's anorexic, because I'm not seeing that horrid bumpy, bony chest that many actresses have. That means she has a layer of flesh and is not just skin and bones.
4. Plenty of us women would love to be that thin.
5. Men do get put down for being too thin. They are sometimes bullied or subjected to homophobic remarks. They are made to feel like weaklings if they're too thin.
6. And men get put down all the time for being too fat. Don't kid yourself, fatties. Women notice. It's not a good look, guys. And fat is feminizing. Women look bad fat, but men look womanly when they are fat. It's not good! If you're a man and can't see your penis when you're naked without looking in a mirror... how can that not feel awful?
#6 That would be Dickie Do disease and no its not a good look.
GoFugYourself has more pictures. I agree with GFY girls, that Kiera is too thin. Whether or not she has anorexia, I'm not willing to judge. Her face doesn't have that sunken cheek dead-eyed look that I recall from the anorectic woman I worked with years ago.
Thinking back over Kiera's movies -- Bend it Like Beckham, Pride and Prejudice, and POTC -- she's always been a willowy thing. I think the dress just highlights it, IMO in an unattractive way.
Catherine: BTDT re criticized for being too thin. My 7-year-old daughter takes after me and is thinner than a rail (3rd percentile weight, 90th percentile height). Somehow or other, it's in the genes. When my daughter's feelings are hurt by someone's careless "skinny" comments, I assure she's perfect just the way she is.
I honestly don't know what motivates people to make personal comments of any sort about private individuals. Discussing celebrities is fine -- that's what being a celebrity is all about, but if anyone has anything to say about me or my kids, I wish they'd do it out of earshot.
"Are you suggesting that no one is naturally thin
I'll certainly suggest that nobody is naturally that thin. A person eating a healthy, balanced diet and getting a reasonable amount of exercise will not look - as Knightly does in that photograph - like a body double for He-Man's nemesis.
"Are we to assume every thin starlet and every aspirational celeb is psychologically disordered and in need of therapy as you suggest?"
As anyone who has it will tell you, anyone who seeks celebrity is naive or psychologically unbalanced. Since it is hard to imagine that in a world so saturated with media that anyone is that naive, we are left with one possibility.
"Is it fine for Condi to be thin, since she's only on TV news and not sitcoms?"
One can hardly compare the Secretary of State to a minor actress, not least because Condi is (a) far more attractive, in every sense, than is Knightly, (b) not actually rail thin, and (c) is actually of some importance and thus deserving of fame.
"Women look bad fat..."
What are you defining as "fat" for the purposes of that comment? Are we talking about fat in a real sense, or are we talking about fat in that bizarre parallel world where Knightly is "normal"? Was Kate Winslet circa Titanic fat? Certainly in bizarro Knightly world, she would have to be, in order to maintain the fiction that the undeniably thinner Fiona Apples and Keira Knightleys are normal. As we learn from How to lie with statistics, if you're willing to change your point of reference enough, you can reach almost any result.
Joan beat me to posting a link to the Go Fug Yourself site. The picture they use where you can count her ribs, and her scapula juts out, is frightening.
I don't think just, plain old naturally skinny leads to that, but I could be wrong.
The LATimes had an article on fat girls (Sausage Casing Girls is the term they contrive) who let it all hang out which serves in stark contrast to those usual photos of starlets.
Of course, what that article fails to point out is that it's more a cultural thing then anything. Most of the women they pictured and interviewed were latina. Being chubby to obese to even being morbidly obese will not prevent many women from that culture from viewing themselves, or being viewed as by men, as still very attractive sex objects. Similarly anorexic black women are almost as rare as unicorns. Cultural expectations matter when it comes to the various body image disorders.
An acceptance of, and even celebration, of women who are not just chubby but down right obese is not any healthier than cultural expectations for being dangerously thin, but it's bound to be a lot easier to maintain and achieve a 'full' figure than barely any figure at all for the vast majority of women.
As far as Fiona Apple, she's put on weight and looks skinny/normal rather than skinny/dying in her recent appearances. Just head over to the copyright infringing paradise of YouTube and compare her Criminal video from nearly a decade ago to any of her Extraordinary Machine (her appearance on Jimmy Kimmel is a good contrast) related appearances.
(and she seems a lot happier, also, which I think might just be related)
(and back then she was a touch skanky and scary (but talented), now she's a touch quirky, and much, much hotter (and still talented))
(and part of it might just be the difference between being 19 years old and being 28 years old)
(at 19 I was scary skinny (for a guy), too at about 125lbs and 5'10", and by 28 I was a more normal (and I think better looking) 160lbs)
Simon Kenton wrote:
If I wanted pedophilia, I'd ASK for pedophilia, but, as a matter of sad fact, I DON'T.
I reply:
As a matter of sad fact, isn't it a shame that there's still so many men who think a woman isn't a "real" woman unless she's got tits the size of zepplins?
I also think there's some people who really should avoid giving medical and psychological advice on the basis of photographs. At the very least, stick to old school witch doctoring like jitterbugging around in chicken blood. The woman's wearing a seriously unflattering dress, for frack's sake, not puking her lunch all over the press line.
With some trepidation, I followed Joan's link, which is of course horrific, but on the frontpage of that "blog", they talk about Kelly Clarkson - as an addenda to my previous question, is Clarkson regarded as "fat"? I would have said she looks pretty normal (heck, I'll go so far as to say she looks pretty good, although that's a terrible outfit) - but obviously, a world where Clarkson is normal or average is a world where Knightly is painfully, horribly thin.
XWL - I really didn't think Extraordinary Machine was much good. As for the Criminal video - they say that McPhee is better enjoyed with the sound down, and I think Fiona is best enjoyed when you don't have to look at her. ;)
Catharine "think[s] [that] we've gone overboard in our critique of thin chic and our celebration of fat beauty," which aptly demonstrates the truth of Marghlar's point, above, that "people have trouble with the concept of a happy medium -- we are either too fat, and so the solution must be that we must lose as much weight as we can, or else we are too skinny, so we must all gain weight until we become rhinoceri."
She looks sick.
And GoFugYourself is brilliant. :)
Anorexic or not, go do a google image search and you can tell she's clearly much lighter now than a year or two ago. She even had something closely approximating breasts, while there is no evidence of that in the current picture that spawned this post. Some guys like thin; some guys like a little more; and other guys grow to like plump. But generally we're married and plump too.
And yes, the dress is a disaster.
Simon: You're assuming there's one perfect weight, but really there is a normal range, and it should be pretty big. Take your average 5'5" woman. This is my height, so I can really identify with the weights. I think you could weigh as little as 105 or even 100 without being alarmingly thin. 107 is the weight I tried to maintain in college, but would have to engage in endless bizarre dieting to be at today. 120 would be a nice, healthy, slender weight. 125-135 would be quite normal, but so would higher weights, maybe even as high as 155. So I think there could be a 50 pound range of normal, not worth talking about someone having a health problem. As to what the prettiest weight would be -- it's a matter of taste and a matter of the individual woman.
Tim's right; I was doing just that when he posted, and found this photo of Knightley in the nightclub scene in "Bend it like Beckham", in which she seemed very thin to me. It's clear she's even thinner now -- but her face still looks lovely to me, with nice full cheeks.
She even had something closely approximating breasts, while there is no evidence of that in the current picture that spawned this post.
The reason she looked like she has no breasts in that picture is that she's not wearing a cleavage-enhancing bra like she normally does and the dress is covering up the tiny breasts she actually has.
I'm puzzled as to why anyone would look at that picture and assume she's anorexic. She doesn't look unhealthy or particularly bony. She just looks very thin -- which she always has been. That dress makes her look even thinner, is all.
Here are some other pictures of her from the last few months:
From this June:
http://us.imdb.com/gallery/granitz/4971/Events/4971/KeiraKnigh_Cohen_9184858_400.jpg?path=pgallery&path_key=Knightley,%20Keira
From this March:
http://us.imdb.com/gallery/granitz/4432/Events/4432/KeiraKnigh_Pimen_7770324_400.jpg?path=pgallery&path_key=Knightley,%20Keira
That's not an anorexic woman. Now, it may well be that she's thinner than she was in her early roles (although having just seen both Bend It Like Beckham and the Pirates 2 trailer I saw no evidence of that), but it is hardly unusual to lose weight between your teen years and your early 20s if you adopt (as she has) a more active lifestyle.
Ann said, and in a rather interesting tone:
Don't kid yourself, fatties. Women notice. It's not a good look, guys. And fat is feminizing. Women look bad fat, but men look womanly when they are fat. It's not good! If you're a man and can't see your penis when you're naked without looking in a mirror... how can that not feel awful?
Yes it probably does feel awful, and not seeing your penis is the least of the problems one faces. The biggest problem is that you want to break out, and get control, and lose weight, but you are slave to your habits.
So you can't fit in some movie seats, you have to pull your pants up every three minutes (or wear suspenders), you end up with man boobs, you get various rashes, and when you walk home the 5.2 miles from work (because you tend to eat up the money you could use to buy a car and your shift ended after the last bus), you get home and your thighs are bleeding. Oh yea, and then you can't see your penis, but you probably don't really need it, because, as Ann suggests, you kind of suck and are like an ugly fat chick.
An anorectic in reverse, in terms of being slave to a habit, though at least those suffering from anorexia actually want to go in the direction that their habits are driving them.
They want to be thin and do what it takes, whereas the overweight don't want to be fat, but still do what it takes to get there.
Invariably, and more related to the post, the actress will no doubt be doing a People magazine cover about how she was anorexic "back then" (meaning now), but is not anymore.
That's how they work.
Heavy people cannot be compared to anorectics, at least not generally, because anorectics usually suffer from an extremely distorted sense of what they actually look like. It's not just that they want to be thin, it's that they cannot "see" that they are thin, dangerously so. They tend to experience their body in a disturbed way, that makes them continuously find more weight to lose. Anorexia is one of the most fatal of all psychiatric disorders, with I think a 10% mortality rate.
Marghlar said:
Is there no room in your thought process for people to feel regret or sadness when they see people who look sick?
I reply:
Marghlar, is there any room in YOUR thought process that people don't make vulgar, impertinent and ill-founded assumptions about the physical and mental health of complete strangers? I certainly hope in the real world, you keep such comments to yourself - because I have one friend who had recently undergone a double masectomy & cancer treatment wno doesn't feel the need to either tell the world her medical history or stay home so not to offend the eye of people like you. And I've also recently lost a lot of weight (on medical advice, and with the advice of a dietician), and don't really have the money to go on a clothes shopping binge until I hit my target weight. The nice thing about being a man, is that I've not had anyone assume I have an eating disorder.
Marghlar said..."'Honestly, I'm pretty jealous of her figure--almost every girl I know would love to be that thin.' And herein lies the irony -- I know very few men who are attracted to figures as skeletal as Ms. Knightly's."
Ha ha. That reminds me of the great scene on the beach in "Some Like It Hot" when Marilyn Monroe says to the in-drag Tony Curtis:
"There's one thing I envy you for...You're so flat-chested. Clothes hang better on you than they do on me."
And it's still true. We care about how the clothes hang, We want to be clothes hangers!
Personally, I don't think she looks anorexic. Calista Flockhart always looked anorexic to me, but this girl just looks slight and small. And I give her credit for not going the plastic boobs route. There's nothing wrong with being a little on the small side and a little "less" endowed. I frankly wish I were.
But then it is the rare woman who is perfectly happy with her body. My sister is flatchested and always wonders why I got the chest. I, on the other hand, would gladly give her my excess, if I could.
I do agree with those who say she's not anorexic.
Although she looks to thin, and she certainly needs to gain some weight.
She's probably naturally thin, or she just doesn't want to get fat because she wis one of those girls that sees everything she eats straight to her tighs and butt.
However, i think it's not pretty to see, specially in that dress, such a lack of chest.
She has a gorgeous face and that's all that matters if she's healthy.
I do think Keira would look better if she put on weight. Having said that, it seems to me that Charlotte's comments are much more insightful than most and are actually needed to keep things more balanced.
While Simon does have valid points, they are points that don't need pointing out as we all know them fully well.
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