Researching celebs' statistics - what do you lot know?

[Moomin]

I've decided to do a talk at my school to some of the older girls about positive body image as I am alarmed at the way they do themselves down and what they perceive as being "beautiful". A lot of them equate happiness with thinness.

I thought it would be a good idea to show them in real terms just how tiny and thin some of their idols are, in real life, either by doing cut-outs or life-sized shapes on the wall. I also want to show them how air-brushed most cover girls are.

Do any of you know where I can find out some vital statistics of the likes of the Friends girls and pop stars such as Destiny's Child, Chrsitina Aguilera, etc.?
I'll do an internet search but would also welcome some fo your own ideas/thoughts.

[spacemonkey]

I found some very interesting websites about how celebrity photos (especially for the likes of FHM, Loaded etc) are "faked" to enhance the celebrity's appearance, will try to find you the links and post them here if you're interested.

I think this is a very important issue to address, great idea moomin!

[babster]

If you want to talk about impossible perfection in photos/airbrushing etc, Kate Winslet was on the cover of GQ magazine recently, stretched and airbrushed as to make her unrecognizable - there was an article about it in the Mail (read it at my mother's house, honest ) Found it online too:

www.thesundaymail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,5856413%255E5422,00.html

[Moomin]

That's brilliant, spacemonkey - just what I'm after.
Already I've found out that Sarah Michelle Gellar is 5'3" and 7st 1lb!!! and also that 20 yrs ago models weighed about 8% less than the average woman. Now they weigh 23% less!!

[Tinker]

Kate streeeeeeetched - found the pic but not the details

[WideWebWitch]

Blimey that picture doesn't even look like her Tinker. Moomim, great idea. No stats though I'm afraid. Jennifer Anniston and Courtney Cox have shrunk big time haven't they, since the first series of Friends? They both look worse for it IMO too. Will see if I can find anything about their weight etc.

[babster]

Lots of articles about celebs who have/have had eating disorders here

www.eatingdisorderresources.com/celebs/

Must learn how to do links - very lazy

[babster]

celebs and eating disorders website

Did it!

[WideWebWitch]

There are some pics of stars without make up here Might help illustrate your real women vs airbrushed image thing. Will keep looking, quite interesting so far but nothing else relevant enough to post!

[WideWebWitch]

Moomim, some good stats on body image and reality here Let us know how your lessons on this go, I'd be really interested to hear about the reactions you get.

[jasper]

moomin you may find some of this stuff useful which I got from a link from babster's link


body image

[SoupDragon]

Have a look at the reflection of Kate W in that picture - do you think she looks less thin in it??

[Nutjob]

Oh my god Soup Dragon - it looks like a totally different women!!

[Bumblelion]

Well spotted Soupdragon!

[Bozza]

Just looked at WWW's link to the stars without the makeup and I was truly shocked. Why doesn't my make-up have that effect? I think that really does show the difference between the image and the reality.

[Frieda]

Agree with you Bozza about the make-up. I know magazine features always tell you to use concealers, which I never do, but think it helps, too, to have a professional make-up artist, lighting expert, top photographer plus a graphic artist who has several hours to spend hand re-touching the finished photo. Or it certainly would in my case.
Think it such a shame about Curvy Kate. She looked much more gorgeous when she looked a normal woman instead of some elongated stick-thin version of what the media seems to think a woman should look like.

[SoupDragon]

I can't believe those Stars without make up photos! They look like normal people!! Except Michael Jackson, obviously.

[Bozza]

So no chance for me then Frieda?

[bells2]

Did anyone see the pictures of Jamie Lee Curtis before and after?. One showed all her saggy bits, without make up, stylist and airbrushing and the other showed her after the customary five hour session. The difference was amazing. She wanted to do it to demonstrate that the pictures we see of stars bear almost no relation to the reality. I would have thought that would be a good one for your talk Moomin.

[mum2toby]

I don't know what country you live in, but one of the Sunday Newspapers in Scotland has a magazine with it called 'People'. It has a brilliant quarter of a page with 2 different celebs each week. It's called 'Don't forget the Air brush' and it shows a cover shot and a real life paparazzi-type shot of the chosen celebs. Fantastic!!

It makes me crease myself every week and feel really smug!!

[SoupDragon]

The pictures of Jamie Lee Curtis are here

[leese]

and I thought Sophie Dahl looked better before........

[babster]

This is very childish, and not at all helpful to Moomin, but a while back there was an email doing the rounds called 'People you'd like to see fat', with fake pics of J-Lo, Julia Roberts, Catherine Zeta-Jones etc. Very funny.

[aloha]

Moomin, mind you that doesn't mean so much that models have got thinner, more that the average woman is much, much fatter. Honest. Look at a sixties Vogue and the models were very thin then too - and even in the Fifties they were tiny. Everyone was thinner then. When I worked on a very major women's mag we sometimes retouched to make models look less thin - we took out ribs and over-prominent collar bones all the time as they looked incredibly ugly, particularly on a cover. But I can tell you lots åbout the retouching of covergirls in general - what would you like to know? We always took out every skin blemish (models get corking spots sometimes as they are so young), we removed lines, changed the colour of eyes, and sometimes completely remade features - took bumps off noses, 'flipped' eyes to make them perfectly symmetrical (ie used the right eye, copied it, reversed it and then replaced the left eye with it) etc etc. Actually I don't think this looks very nice so wouldn't have done it if I was editor and very few editors retouch quite as much as that one did. Oh, I remember the mag completely reworked Cameron Diaz's nose once! She has a 'squashed' looking schnozz so the editor and the art director gave her a nose job. You know something though, no celeb ever complains about retouching, in fact, some put in their contract that they can demand specific retouching. One star asked for her ankles to be reduced, a tatoo of her ex lover to be removed and for the evidence of her cosmetic surgery to be retouched out. BTW I suspect Geri Halliwell is about six stone and she's 5'1" max. She looks like a child in real life.

[aloha]

Moomin, mind you that doesn't mean so much that models have got thinner, more that the average woman is much, much fatter. Honest. Look at a sixties Vogue and the models were very thin then too - and even in the Fifties they were tiny. Everyone was thinner then. When I worked on a very major women's mag we sometimes retouched to make models look less thin - we took out ribs and over-prominent collar bones all the time as they looked incredibly ugly, particularly on a cover. But I can tell you lots åbout the retouching of covergirls in general - what would you like to know? We always took out every skin blemish (models get corking spots sometimes as they are so young), we removed lines, changed the colour of eyes, and sometimes completely remade features - took bumps off noses, 'flipped' eyes to make them perfectly symmetrical (ie used the right eye, copied it, reversed it and then replaced the left eye with it) etc etc. Actually I don't think this looks very nice so wouldn't have done it if I was editor and very few editors retouch quite as much as that one did. Oh, I remember the mag completely reworked Cameron Diaz's nose once! She has a 'squashed' looking schnozz so the editor and the art director gave her a nose job. You know something though, no celeb ever complains about retouching, in fact, some put in their contract that they can demand specific retouching. One star asked for her ankles to be reduced, a tatoo of her ex lover to be removed and for the evidence of her cosmetic surgery to be retouched out. BTW I suspect Geri Halliwell is about six stone and she's 5'1" max. She looks like a child in real life.

[aloha]

I think it might also be worth telling them how unhappy many celebs are - and they are. They are paranoid, cry in interviews all the time, have eating disorders - in fact, often the very fact that they are unhappy people is what drives them to seek fame. Also, many models can't find nice boyfriends. Meeting models never made me feel more unhappy with my looks, funnily enough. I was really paranoid abotu meeting C Schiffer, but when I met her I thought she was really dull, freakishly tall with obviously dyed hair, funny clothes and thin, shapeless, pale limbs like spaghetti. I certainly didn't dislike her or think she was a bad person, just not anything like the dazzling glamour puss I had expected. I felt happier with myself afterwards than before! There's a hell of a lot to be said for personality. On a completely trivial and sexist (!) note, assk men who they fancy and IME more fancy Nigella than Nicole Kidman, for example. A big smile is worth more than a 22in waist. And I have twice seen a pre-diet Sophie Dahl at parties - blimey, the only reason you could spot her in the throng of men was because she's six feet tall and prefers to wear skyscraper heels. She was very, very, very sexy!