Big and sexy? Fat chance
To be or not to be fat: Geri's new look versus Renee's
The generous curves of Bridget Jones might seem to suggest larger bodies can be beautiful. Not in this weight-obsessed world, says Jan Moir
WHEN Renee Zellweger gained 20lb to play the role of Bridget Jones in the current hit film, the actress had no idea of the greedy feeding frenzy she would launch in Britain. Since Bridget Jones's Diary opened to rave reviews, only one topic has burned in the minds of the nation's thinkers. To be or not to be fat is the question.
Hugh Grant pitched into the argument early, mentioning that he always "liked a bit of meat with his gravy", concluding that he preferred a blubbery, curvy Bridget to the more austere charms of the highly toned, whittled down figure that Zellweger presents in real life. While female cinema-goers either reached happily for another helping of butter-slicked popcorn or pinched their own cellulite in horror and resolved to jog home after the screening, newspaper columnist Tony Parsons was weeping with lust in print, howling that Renee/Bridget's chubby hamster cheeks and large bottom made him want to "pull down her enormous pants".
Ah, yes. Even Bridget's pants - those sensible, body control numbers that lurk at the back of every girl's knicker drawer - were given their own starring role in a newspaper spread that dared to ask the question: can big pants be sexy? One male pundit, confronted with a pair of waist-high, floral-patterned Debenham's Shapewear (with reinforced stomach-control panel), concluded that they "scared the life" out of him.
Pity poor Renee Zellweger. For, in more ways than even she could have imagined, her worst nightmares have come true. During an interview for In Style magazine last month, the actress told me of her fears that her weight gain and subsequent weight loss would overshadow the various talents displayed in the film. She understood the fascination, but didn't like talking about her ballooning bust, which went up three cup sizes - "discussing it makes me feel like a shell of a human being" - and has already told the producers that, although she is keen to star in the Bridget Jones sequel, she will never go through the weight-gaining ordeal again.
One can see her point, for Zellweger is a Hollywood actress with a Hollywood way of life and a permanently strict diet - no fat, no dairy, no late nights - and an ironing-board body hardened by regular visits to the gym. With her angular cheekbones and boyish figure, she doesn't even look like Bridget, for in real life, Zellweger is a non-smoking health nut who is as slim as a bus stop.
Even during the fattest moments of her fat reign as fatty Bridget Jones, she never got bigger than a size 12 and was made to look bulkier by the wardrobe department squeezing her into a size 10. Which isn't, however you look at it, very fat at all.
Even a big girl like Tony Parsons - who, over the years, has made a point of being scornful about women who really are overweight - knows this. The problem is, we now live in such maniacally body-obsessed times that teeny-tiny Jennifer Lopez - you could push her over with your pinky - is regarded as a red-hot Latin mama with curves like an ocean-going yacht, while big screen Bridget, with that slight hint of podge under her chin, is dismissed as Two Ton Tessie, and Geri Halliwell - God, it hurts my eyes to look at those painfully carved curves - is admired and applauded, instead of being force fed cheese sandwiches and big glasses of full cream milk.
Halliwell says her new body is courtesy of the serotonin rush she gets when exercising, an experience so thrilling that she has not required sex nor hot nourishment of any sort since she began her high-tech physical training regime. Although Incredible Shrinking Spice is beginning to look like something you might stick in a cage for the budgie to play with, she still has some way to go to catch up with the truly frightening appearance of her former colleague Victoria Beckham.
Last week, Posh was yet again photographed leaving a London restaurant after a dinner date with her husband. On a cold wintry night, old Whippet Face was wearing a few scraps of photographers-here-I-am clothing, which revealed an alarmingly large bosom set atop a jangling collection of jutting bones. Is she healthy? Does she actually eat anything inside these establishments, or merely content herself by nibbling a toothpick and sipping plain water?
But celebrities such as Posh and the rest are different from us. They are usually richer, they are undeniably prettier, they are always weirder and - unless they happen to be Marlon Brando or Missy Elliot - they are thinner. Of course they are thinner. They are always thinner. If an image of your face and body shape were regularly projected on to a screen the size of a house, beamed around the world and watched by millions, then perhaps you would be thinner, too.
Over the years, I've shuffled into hotel rooms and on to film sets to interview the likes of Minnie Driver, Ashley Judd, Cher, Mira Sorvino and many more. Tall or short, today's film stars are all, to a woman, as slender as twigs - they make Marilyn Monroe look like a crisp-chomping monster. Each time, I have to fight the urge to whip a tape measure out of my handbag and lasso it around their tiny waists to make sure that seeing is believing. I mean, really. I've got bracelets at home that are bigger than Ashley's belts. I've got teacups that are roomier than Mira's bras.
Poor Cher pulled up her jumper to disprove the persistent rumour - nobody mention this to Geri Halliwell - that she had some ribs removed to make her look thinner. Minnie told the story about how she, too, had to gain weight for a film role - playing a gauche Irish teenager drowning in puppy fat in Circle of Friends - and how the public's fascination for her hi-fat/goodbye fat routine continued to dog her for years. Frequently forced to explain her new figure to diet-obsessed audiences on American chat shows, she would say: "It was quite easy. You have to eat less and move around more."
Another journalist recorded Portia di Rossi's reaction when the waiters in a Los Angeles restaurant charmingly wished the Ally McBeal actress Happy Birthday, then presented her with a slice of cream cake. "Do they really think," she huffed, after they had gone, "that I am going to eat that?"
So who is really obsessed with body image? Is it the whip-thin stars on the big
screen - or is it the popcorn-crunching audiences who scrutinise their every
curve from the anonymous, dark comfort of the auditoriums? And the next
time you ponder on thunder thighs Bridget Jones's celluloid appearance, or
consider having an extra bit of meat with your gravy, remember that even at
her biggest, Renee-as-Bridget was still two sizes smaller than the average
British female.
-- Anonymous, April 22, 2001
