Are most actresses very very slim in real life?

[Mitford1789]

I saw a well known actress a few days ago, standing behind her in the queue for a coffee. She was dressed down, however was clearly very pretty in person. However I was taken aback by how slim she was. I would say she was slightly taller than average, not a tiny person if you know what I mean. But so so slim. Do you think most famous actresses/singers etc are like this? Maybe I’m very naive.

Jinglinghellsbells I don't think she did. My friends and I saw it in the cinema when it was released and comnented on how thin she was. It was more noticeable when she was wearing the skirt and blouse at the beginning of the film, not the black trousers at the end.

@suckingonchillidogs

I really hope that young kids are more aware of photoshopping/ camera tricks now though. That pic of Kendall Jenner above - she's taken it in front of a long thin mirror wearing high heels - that will make even a super model with an already killer body look even taller and slimmer than she really is!

Photoshopping is truly insidious as it is a complete distortion of reality and the truth. I read some comments recently where someone had asked Zara McDermott where she'd put her internal organs as in the pic she'd posted, her waist and torso was about the width of her head. I've heard she is well known for photoshopping all her images to the extreme and she's also moving into promoting beauty and fitness, so basically she is selling a lie!

I loved the fact that Kate Winslet had spoken out against photoshop and how it promoted a fake image of people.

It's a shame they haven't legally introduced that photoshopped images should carry some sort of disclaimer or indicator on them.

@SaltAndVinegarSandwiches

I can't understand how Kate Middleton manages to have such a slim waist after the children!

While it's possible she's natural skinny it's much more likely she spends a lot of time and effort maintaining her figure since she's in the spotlight. In terms of health she'd be better putting on weight, she's clearly at the very low end of the healthy BMI which is less than ideal.

I'd guess that she's under the lowest healthiest BMI. When she turns sideways you can barely see her. I'd really like to see her put a little bit on, just to look a bit healthier, but she probably does have an ED now.

Re: naturally slim v ED, I think you can tell the difference, by looking at people.

I was listening to Katherine Ryan’s podcast and she has a really interesting take on beauty standards and the pressure on female celebrities.

www.globalplayer.com/podcasts/42KrX9/

Basically you need to look as small and young and tiny as possible, like a child, not an adult woman. I think there’s something to this. It’s definitely extreme and not related to real life.

Like celebrity men with all those bulging muscles and veins, in real life it looks very odd. It’s like other extremes such as the insanely wealthy Gates/besos/musk. There’s no way I’d change bodies with any celebrity woman/man and I wouldn’t change bank accounts with the insanely wealthy either. I really would rather be fat and ‘poor’.

This refers to models rather than actresses so I suppose it comes with the territory (sadly) but I knew someone who was the editor of a high fashion magazine. She said that most of the models hadn’t even started their periods, so there was definitely a preference for child-like bodies in an industry that often crosses over into acting.

I saw an interview with Hugh Laurie when he was just starting out in movies. He had been coupled with Geena Davis playing his wife in whatever film it was. He said it was difficult to cast someone to play a spouse for either of them as practically all Hollywood actors/actresses are really short with great big heads, yet he and GD were both over 6 foot, so a good match for each other on screen but not for anyone

I wonder why the camera makes people appear bigger

I saw Miley Cyrus in a hotel once and she was tiny. Like so skinny, I think if you were to calculate their BMIs they would mostly be borderline anorexic. I think the person who guessed celebs are 6-8 are still guessing too big, I think they're more like 4s

else . . . ^ that should have finished

A size 10 was a 24 inch waist

That's an easy 6 now.

I've read articles by journalists (mostly in The Times) interviewing famous actors/actresses. They steer clear of mentioning size in their descriptions but usually there's a food check on what they've ordered/eaten/not eaten in the course of the chat (as interviews often seem to take place over brunch/lunch in a restaurant). Most descriptions suggest virtually nothing eaten, although 'picked at' is regularly used!

@HaveringWavering

Only kidding

How horrible of you 😡

I'm sure it was from about the 70s that the fashion for uber-thin actresses started. If you watch the original James Bond films, Carry On films etc the actresses are certainly slim but look a lot more "normal" and have some wobbly bits

Yes people tended to have more "normal" shapes, slim but with a bit of wobble as you say. Now it's abs, 6 packs, big muscular arms, very slim thighs etc.

@JinglingHellsBells

I suspect it's not that many actresses are thin but that most people now are overweight, so the perception of 'normal' has changed.

If you look back at films and newsreels from the 1940s and 50s when my mum was young, almost everyone was slim.

Also, we don't actually see 'most actresses'. You see those on TV and in films but there are many actresses or actors working in the theatre or on radio who aren't always on TV.

I've met a number of very famous actors and actresses over the years including a 'mum at the school gate' and they were slim but not excessively so.

I don't think it's necessarily just that but I definitely think it does play a part in it. When I was in my late 20s my job involved working with quite a lot of London based celebrities. My husband also worked in tv/film so I met and interacted with quite a lot of famous women. For the most part they women really were tiny. The one who stands out the most to me is a woman who would have been known as a 'glamour model' and famous for being really buxom and curvy. You definitely wouldn't think of her and think she was small and really, really thin. But she was tiny. I was working with her clothes for a few days before I worked with her and they were shockingly tiny. I couldn't get my head around how small they were. Yet even with that 'pre-warning' I wasn't prepared for how utterly tiny and elfin she was in real life.

Here's the thing though. By the time I was in my late 20s I was overweight but I would not really have thought I was overweight. I did know I could stand to lose a 'few pounds' but I wore size 10 clothing so figured I was a completely normal, healthy weight. I was failing to account for the fact that I was 5'1" and flatter sizing meant that the 10 I was wearing then was a size or two bigger than the 10 I wore a decade before. (A decade after this, my size 12 jeans were getting tight and I had a BMI high enough to count as obese.) So while I remember looking at a photo of me with this model in the newspapers and joking that I looked like an absolute ogre next to her because she was so very tiny. With the benefit of honest hindsight, the fact is that I was overweight in the photo. So it wasn't a photo of a very, very tiny woman making a normal woman looking like a hulk beside her. It was a photo of a very small woman and an overweight woman. I'd be extremely curious to stand next to her now that I'm at a healthy weight. I'd love to know if she would still look freakishly small to me. I know from working with her clothing that her measurements then are still smaller than I am now but not by a huge amount and she was 2 or 3 inches shorter than me.

That said, I do look at extremely thin women on tv and wonder about their muscle tone. When my mum (who was always a healthy weight) was diagnosed with osteoporosis I started investigating ways to improve bone health for both of us. And I've become absolutely convinced that for our optimal health women are meant to be a damn sight more muscular than our cultural norms encourage. Considering they type of lifestyles we would have had for the vast, vast majority of human history we would have evolved in a way that our bodily norm is to have strong visible muscle. And the fact that over half of European and Asian heritage women develop osteopenia post-menopause may well be because we are encouraged not to build the muscle our bodies need to stay as healthy as possible in middle age and beyond. As a result of what I've read, I started including strength training into my routine and became visibly muscular almost instantly. So now between what I look like and the fitness channels I follow on youtube watching women like Cori Lefkowith nearly everyday, slim but muscular feels like my norm. So when I see women with very, very thin limbs, especially women my age or older, I feel really worried for their bone health.

Yes, I think most Hollywood stars are Size 0s (UK size 4).

I was a young adult in the early 80s, a teen in the late 70s. I couldn’t get clothes to fit me. They were all ginormous. A size 8 was a rarity. Any clothes I bought, often a size 10, I had to take in inches at the waist and they never hung properly. It was, however, somewhat embarrassing to be smaller than a ten - a ten was the smallest you could generally get in adult sizes. If a ten was too big, it indicated you weren’t a “proper” woman and were still a child. It was a bit humiliating.

I saw Caroline Catz, of Doc Martin and her actor husband once. She is absolutely stunning and petite. As an actor she looks totally normal size and pretty on screen but girl nextdoor type. In real life, I thought she was just stunning but so petite. She had killer heels on too. It was at a family event so she really stood out. Her husband is also very handsome.

I am not commenting on her body shape as I didn't notice, but she was small in stature and just gorgeous in the most fabulous dress.

I think the 10 year old, lollipop heads style comments aren't necessarily rude at all. I'm a size 6, worked it fitness all my life & we actively try to dissuade the younger clients from trying to attain these looks. So much body dysmorphia, disordered eating, obsession with being thin. It's true that so many women then chase this awful ideal and they DO look like that. Not a healthy size 6 as in 'i'm naturally small and I eat really well and exercise and I have good muscle'. Nobody who is truly healthy at that weight looks lollipop head like. When you see that lollipop look, it's indicative of an unhealthy state and eating disorder/orthorexia, etc, so IMO it is very fair to acknowledge as we need to fight against this and at the very least call it out when we see it.

I've got loads of really small friends but they're athletes and the look powerful and in proportion with it. The exception is when they might be in peak week for their sport and they would acknowledge that for a minority of time it's not necessarily a healthy state, so the lollipop head style comment might hold for them for a short time too - but we all totally acknowledge that, and periodize training so there's a lot of healthy eating, increased carbs, rest time from exercise, etc, that tends to follow those short periods.

@dorangme

I'm sure it was from about the 70s that the fashion for uber-thin actresses started. If you watch the original James Bond films, Carry On films etc the actresses are certainly slim but look a lot more "normal" and have some wobbly bits

Yes people tended to have more "normal" shapes, slim but with a bit of wobble as you say. Now it's abs, 6 packs, big muscular arms, very slim thighs etc.

Same for the men too. Compare Sean Connery in his trunks as Bond with Daniel Craig. Connery has body hair and a healthy but not especially developed musculature; Craig is heavily muscled and as smooth as a dolphin.

Ready Brek (saucer size)?

My teenage daughter is 16 and I often look at her and worry sometimes as she’s so small but she eats loads and never exercises, it just seems her proportion as she is 5ft, size 3 feet, tiny hands, she’s a size 6. I get it if they are small all over with small hands/feet that it might be natural but I don’t understand why you would want to intentionally look like a child in the first place.

@PlumpAndDeliciousFatcat yes definitely was including the men in that.

Has anyone ever seen the costumes at the V&A? Adam Ant and Mick Jaggers stage costumes - so so so tiny. It’s not just women

@Polkadots2021 interesting you should mention athletes. My friend works with teenagers & often some of the gymnasts & tennis players are seen as fat by them which is crazy.

@Badyboo
in the 1970's it was shocking for anyone to weigh 10 stone

”Utterly dangerous nonsense.”

‘Shocking’ is probably a little bit of an exaggeration, but 10 stone in the 70s was definitely considered overweight. I think people were generally smaller-framed, shorter and had smaller feet. I know this because I was there, but a quick Google will also confirm it.