Going to Xtremes: XS and XL

The images have become a familiar part of the Hollywood landscape: teeny-tiny actresses, almost two-dimensional stick figures, going from thin to thinner in front of our eyes. Their names have become synonymous with the trend toward ultra thin: Calista Flockhart, Lara Flynn Boyle, Courtney Thorne-Smith, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Paula Devicq.

Their incredible shrinking bodies are fodder for tabloids, Hollywood insider shows and gossip columns. We can’t seem to stop scrutinizing every bony arm and hollowed-out cheek that comes before the camera.

But while these women do a disappearing act, something else is happening in this country: The gap between the real and the ideal is growing wider and wider every day. Real women are getting larger. In fact, about half of American women are overweight.

As women struggle to attain this new standard of of beauty, there’s been a dramatic rise in eating disorders. The desire for a taut, svelte body is even reaching immigrant and ethnic groups--traditionally not obsessed with weight--as more women from these communities seek help at eating-disorder clinics. It’s not hard to understand when the dominant images in the media are skinny, blond and white, and show little evidence of this country’s diversity.

Media reports of the diets, eating disorders and plastic surgeries of the rich and famous aren’t always perceived as cautionary tales. Kelly Brownell, co-director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, says, ‘In some cases they serve to make these problems seem glamorous. We see cases now of young girls with eating disorders who boast about it to their friends. If a celebrity is naturally thin, that’s fine. But people should be satisfied with the way they look. What society needs to do is tolerate natural differences in body types.’

He worries about his athletic, 11-year-old daughter, who loves to run and climb trees.

‘If she yields to societal pressure, her body will become her enemy, and it will defy her best efforts because she can’t be perfect,’ he says.

Striving for that perfection can actually lead to obesity, Brownell says.

‘People wish to be a different weight than they are biologically predisposed to be,’ he says. ‘So they restrict their eating, but they’re only temporarily successful. Then they lose control and gain weight, then they have to diet more severely to lose the weight again. Then they lose control even more, and you have an upward spiral in weight. Then they give up. And as society gets heavier, the ideals become more extreme.’

The celebrity-driven obsession with diminutive sizes--as low as 0--has plenty of critics who believe that it will take a high-profile backlash to put ultra-thin chic in perspective.

‘One question we should keep on asking is: Why do we need emaciated actresses?’ says Ruth Striegel-Moore, professor of psychology at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., and a member of the Academy for Eating Disorders. ‘Why can’t actresses be a little larger? It’s not important to the plot that they be a size 0. I think it requires a societal effort, similar to the issue with smoking. It used to be that everybody smoked in films. That hasn’t changed because Hollywood agents have changed; it changed because it’s became socially unacceptable. And this will require that level of initiative.’

Hollywood hasn’t always been obsessed with this reed-thin body type.

In the not-too-distant past, the curvaceous figures of Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth were worshiped as the feminine ideal.

But the bar slowly started rising. Twiggy’s boyish body set a new standard for glamour and beauty in the ‘60s, and the pendulum hasn’t swung back since. Even Miss America has gotten trimmer. Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins School of Public Health did a study recently and found that since the pageant began 78 years ago, the weights of the winners has dropped 12%.

Hollywood casting director Roger Mussenden says the thin trend escalated with the popularity of ‘Ally McBeal.’

‘I think definitely there is pressure from the networks and the studios that thinner is better,’ says Mussenden, who has cast such films as ‘Big Daddy’ and ‘Suicide Kings.’

While actresses may be reacting to the 15 pounds that the camera adds, some may take the desire for cut cheekbones and toned arms to the extreme, he adds. But the competition for jobs is fierce, causing some to diet down to the minuscule proportions that are in demand.

‘In casting sessions, I can’t hire some people I think are very, very competent actresses because they’re a little too round. [The executives] like the hotties. It’s a boy’s club.’

Another Generation Is Already Affected

Sometimes women turn on the pressure too.

Stylist Jessica Paster, who outfitted Hilary Swank and Minnie Driver for the Oscars, recalls, ‘I was working with this drop-dead gorgeous actress on a cable TV series, and we were doing a print photo shoot. The girl has a beautiful body; she’s a size 4. And the costumer told me that the show’s two female executives wanted her to look even more skinny. I was so disgusted.’

The troubling trend toward thinness already is affecting another generation, according to Sharlene Hesse-Biber, a professor of sociology at Boston College. Her female students have daily conversations on what they’re going to eat and how much they’re going to work out.

‘It’s not an issue of not wanting to feel beautiful,’ she says, ‘but that we value ourselves pound for pound.’

She teaches them to be skeptical of computer-enhanced ads and magazine layouts that further pare down even the most gorgeous of supermodels.

‘What we have done with computer-enhanced imagery is construct a more unreal real model,’ says Biber, author of ‘Am I Thin Enough Yet?’ (Oxford University Press, 1996). ‘We have blurred the line between reality and non-reality, and we’ve constructed these women the way our culture wants. It’s saying that we don’t accept you as is. Industries want to make money off of products that promise this perfection, but we can never attain it. If we do, then they push the envelope even further. Even if you die to be thin, you still can’t be thin enough.’

At least one actress is in revolt: Margaret Cho.

Cho was living every actresses’ dream in 1994 when she was plucked from the stand-up circuit and given her own ABC sitcom, ‘All American Girl,’ based on her life as a young Korean American woman. Although she was playing herself, the network brass still wanted her to lose weight.

She dutifully crash-dieted, going into kidney failure and nearly dying. The details of her brief but profound TV stint are chronicled in her one-woman show, ‘I’m the One That I Want,’ now an independent film (it premieres in L.A. on Aug. 4).

Cho considers herself lucky that she emerged from this ordeal happier, healthier and much wiser about the ways of Hollywood and our weigh-conscious world.

‘We have this small, select group of women who are supposed to represent beauty for all, and we are not allowed to choose what we feel is beautiful,’ Cho says. ‘Just because they’re selected by some unseen power doesn’t mean that the rest of us are necessarily going to try to become that. Yet psychologically I think it’s really damaging. It’s a really painful thing to not see yourself represented in the media.’

Cho finally quieted her demons by flat-out rejecting any notion of what was expected of her as a female.

‘I decided not to judge myself and compare myself to anyone or anything anymore,’ she says. ‘I decided to create standards for myself that I found acceptable. My solution was to get out of Hollywood and do my own projects. I have really found a satisfying place, and my role is to talk about these issues, to bring them to light and to enjoy my work.’

Now it’s her turn to be a role model for women. She’ll continue to talk about issues of weight and acceptance.

‘It’s such a big issue, and it’s really downplayed. It’s about how we feel about ourselves as women. The whole idea of what beauty is needs to be restructured because what we have now is very narrow. It doesn’t include the unique beauty that everyone has,’ says Cho, who explained that weight is a big issue for some Asian women. ‘The stereotype of the Asian woman is very small and delicate and quiet--I’m almost like the anti-Asian woman. A lot of Asian women told me that they felt grateful that the silence was broken for them.’

Changing Attitudes Via Athletic Fields

A change in attitude about women’s bodies, shapes and sizes is emerging on athletic fields as more girls and women participate in sports, according to Hesse-Biber of Boston College.

The success of the American women’s soccer team in the World Cup and increasing popularity of women’s professionals in basketball (L.A. Sparks Lisa Leslie models) is bringing different images of women to the screen.

‘They’re using their bodies as other than objects of admiration,’ Hesse-Biber explains. ‘They’re using them to relate to one another to achieve goals, to cooperate instead of just compete; they’re learning that muscles are useful. The soccer rage teaches us that women can be beautiful with muscles and big bones. They are beautiful, and that’s a revelation for some women.’

But are we making too much of this small, exclusive club? Stylist Jessica Paster believes there’s been something of a witch hunt going on, with actresses being picked on just because they happen to be naturally thin.

‘I think we should leave all these women alone,’ Paster says. ‘We are making such a big thing out of all of this. But people want to build you up and then tear you down. Women should be celebrating each other, but we are our own enemies.’

And lest we think that Flockhart and her skinny colleagues are the only body types shown on the large and small screens, we must remind ourselves they are not.

Camryn Manheim, Rosie O’Donnell, Kathy Bates, Whoopi Goldberg, Loretta Devine and Queen Latifah are working. The female cast of HBO’s ‘The Sopranos’ ranges from average weight to zaftig.

‘I don’t think this trend is as widespread as people seem to say,’ says Nancy Nadler LeWinter, co-publication director of Mode, a fashion magazine for plus-size women. ‘We make a lot of noise about the same five women all the time. But if you look at some of the recent hit movies, Olivia Williams from ‘The Sixth Sense’ was a realistic size, so was Chloe Sevigny in ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ and Annette Bening in ‘American Beauty.’ Also, think about Ally McBeal. That character is a bit delusional and not the happiest camper on the block. Lara Flynn Boyle’s character on ‘The Practice’ didn’t end up with Dylan McDermott. These women are not very happy.’

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Jeannine Stein can be reached at socalliving@latimes.com.