Hypocrisy, healthy lifestyle or simply the demands of being a prime time TV star.
Either way, Jennifer Love Hewitt’s body has once again caught the eye of the paparazzi.
So What?
Well, unless you have been living under a rock, America’s obesity epidemic has become big news.
And last November, the Ghost Whisperer, our beloved size 2, Jennifer Love Hewitt, became an unofficial spokesperson for the Size Acceptance movement.
The History
Late last year, Jennifer Love Hewitt took a beating from tabloids and bloggers over some bikini pics snapped of her during a Hawaiian vacation with her fiancee, Ross McCall.
Here is some of the abuse.
A few days later, Love responded to the photos and internet comments via posts on her blog. Here is some of what she had to say:
“I’ve sat by in silence for a long time now about the way women’s bodies are constantly scrutinized. To set the record straight, I’m not upset for me, but for all of the girls out there that are struggling with their body image”.
“A size 2 is not fat! Nor will it ever be. And being a size 0 doesn’t make you beautiful”.
“What I should be doing is celebrating some of the best days of my life and my engagement to the man of my dreams, instead of having to deal with photographers taking invasive pictures from bad angles. I know what I look like, and so do my friends and family. And like all women out there should, I love my body”.
“To all girls with butts, boobs, hips and a waist, put on a bikini — put it on and stay strong”.
Xoxo
JLH
These comments garnered JLH support from the media, the American public and the Size Acceptance movement. Heck, she even received an on-air apology from TMZ.
She became a quasi cause célèbre in the defense of overweight women around the world.
Three Cheers for Curves - Hip Hip Hooray!!!
An article in People magazine chronicled this rebellion against the standard Hollywood expectation of physical perfection.
Hewitt’s body-image battle cry rallied others to speak out. “To have to defend [your weight] or explain it—I don’t understand when that happened,” says actress Anne Hathaway.
But it is a phenomenon with which she and her peers are familiar.
Eva Mendes adds, “Of course it bothers you. A few months ago, people thought I was pregnant. Maybe I was bloated that day? It’s one of those things you’ve got to laugh at.”
Hewitt’s stand also became a hot topic on The View.
During the Dec. 4 episode, Kate Walsh, 40, of Private Practice—who was also recently snapped in her bikini in Hawaii—told viewers to give Hewitt a break, saying, “she’s not being lit in a studio and made up, or airbrushed, or wardrobed! It’s not a fat thing.”
Dr. Ian Smith of Celebrity Fit Club says, “There’s a distorted view of what a Hollywood starlet should be. She’s in the normal range.”
Lynn Grefe, the CEO of National Eating Disorders Association, commends Hewitt’s gumption. “Kudos to Jennifer Love Hewitt! It’s painful to see the constant pressure on girls to be a certain size. I wish that we could get everybody to take a stand like her. It’s so demeaning to people to keep apologizing for having a healthy size,” says Grefe. “Good for her for saying, ‘This is who I am, I’m happy with my size.’”
As she should be, says actress Julianne Moore: “It was an unflattering picture of her. She’s a beautiful girl and she looks absolutely perfect.”
But it was Hewitt’s comments about her own body that drew respect from the S.A. movement.
“I’m not very tall and I have curves,” the 5′2 1/2″ Texas native told PEOPLE in April when her new underwear ads hit the air. “I’m not a supermodel.”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlgQ67dQRSs]
But like many young women, she can’t help but compare herself to that unattainable standard. Her biggest problem area is “thighs,” the actress told PEOPLE last year. “They’re just jiggly and no matter how much I work out they just don’t look like Gisele Bündchen’s!” And she quipped with resignation, “I have a lovely thing called cellulite on my butt.”
If her recent blog manifesto resonates with women, it may be because so many of them share Hewitt’s experience of getting to an age when it takes hard work to stay fit.
As a teen portraying Scott Wolf’s doe-eyed girlfriend on Party of Five in 1994, Hewitt was naturally thin and a regular at McDonald’s, Tony Roma’s and Pizza Hut. “She ate whatever she wanted,” says a source who worked with her then. But “her teenage metabolism is going away now that she’s all grown up.”
As Hewitt nears 30, “I eat something now and I see it on my leg or I feel a difference body-wise,” she told PEOPLE last spring. “I do still eat pretty much what I want. I still like my In-N-Out Burger! I just eat small portions.”
And she’s been honest that she has no interest in spending all her free time in the company of a personal trainer.
With her 16-hour days on-set, “I literally have half an hour to myself before I go to work and maybe a couple of hours when I get home,” she said last spring. “Never did it cross my mind that I wanted to spend that time working out!”
But she can’t hide away at home and avoid the cameras forever—nor does she intend to.
“I try to never go out of the house looking horrid. I wouldn’t want people to look at me and go, ‘Oh my Lord,’” Hewitt said last year. But if she happens to be caught on-camera again—imperfections and all—she knows life will go on. “What am I going to do?” she asked. “They catch me living my life, and sometimes my life is not glamorous.”
Looking pretty glamorous here
Today, JLH is one of US magazine’s Weight Winners after dropping 18 pounds from her 5-foot-3 frame.
She is also a hypocrite in the eyes of the S.A. movement.
Too bad.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Fox News must be really embarrassed by this.
