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originally published on WildWeb, 5/5/99
Sizing
Up America
Our Country's Fascination With Celebrity Weight
By
ALLYSON KRIEGER / The cover of TV Guide, the cover of InStyle, Vanity
Fair, the highly hyped "20/20" interview ... if I have to see
one more headline about "getting the skinny" on Calista Flockhart,
I’m going on a hunger strike. Whether or not the anorexia rumors
are true is beside the point already – the real travesty is how this
"scandal" has turned the "Ally McBeal" star into an
national superstar.
Much like the recent flurry of media attention surrounding Gwyneth Paltrow, the hubbub over Calista is, unfortunately, not about her talent but about her appearance. More egregious yet, it’s about her weight. America has a long history of oddly perverse interest in the skinniness of our stars – we’re still talking about the Karen Carpenter tragedy, for godssake. Is Oprah on a diet again? Is Matt Perry losing too much weight? Have you seen Paula Devicq on "Party of Five" lately? These questions, undoubtedly uttered by entertainment junkies throughout the land, exemplify our eagerness to pry into the scales of our favorite personalities. Celebrity weight watching has become a national pastime.
Why? According to social worker and eating disorder specialist Joan Polzin, we’re intrigued by eating disorders because they’re so difficult to understand. "People starving themselves is such a strange phenomenon," Polzin says. "Anorexics behave in a way that’s harmful to themselves, which is incomprehensible to the average observer." Because anorexia is essentially a mental disease with visible, physical side effects, it catches attention in our voyeuristic society. The anorexic’s distorted body image – looking in a mirror and seeing fat – is another symptom inconceivable to the layperson. "It’s sensational because it can be fatal," Polzin also notes.
Take a morbid fascination for anorexia in general, combine it with the as-American-as-apple-pie fascination with celebrity life, and you’ve got an irresistible combination.
In last week’s "20/20" interview, Calista Flockhart indignantly answered questions about having anorexia. "What do you think I’m going to say? ‘Yeah, I do’? I would never say that in a million years," she told Connie Chung. "That’s the problem with [anorexia]," she continued, "that people who have this disease are in denial." For those hoping to learn the truth about Calista from the interview, it’s a tricky answer. At once, she’s saying that she’d never admit it if it was true, but she’s also conceding that many anorexics are in denial. What Calista really did was compound the mystery around the issue – causing us almost reflexively to wonder.
More attention was heaped on the actress when she finally drew the line. Canceled appearances on "Today" and, most recently, "Late Show With David Letterman," drew criticism from the media. How dare Calista refuse to talk pounds? Entertainment site Mr. Showbiz even ran a poll on the issue, asking readers if they’d bother to read or watch an interview where Flockhart didn’t discuss her weight.
Anorexic or not, the current controversy over the "Ally McBeal" star has propelled her to the forefront of national consciousness. The ingredients of the relationship are complex indeed: voyeurism, image issues, morbidity, perfection. That our culture is obsessed with body image in general is a sociological truth; what compounds the issue here is that it’s the body of a celebrity.
WildWeb | May 05, 1999