Oh geez, this was Brittney Murphy beginning of December?

[LynneSin]

Yes I know some of you are naturally thin but Brittney was not. You only need to see some of her earlier movies where she was a gorgeous woman with curves to her body. When is Hollywood going to stop dictating that starvation is the only way to look in Hollywood?

[Redstone]

1. Whoah. She didn't look healthy in that picture.

Redstone

[LynneSin]

2. I wonder if she was one of those 'zoe-bots'

hollywood starlets that use Rachel Zoe's guide to being famouse - starve yourself with a diet of diet coke & cigarettes and bleach the hair long & blonde. Lindsay Lohan and the Olsen Twins were a part of that gang too

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. After her husband's creepy comment about waiting for her to grow up so

he could be with her, I wonder if she tried to stay slim and girlish to keep him happy? (I know, I know. It's really out there. But his comment was just really creepy to me.)

[gardenista]

16. I agree with you.

Creepy and I don't think you're far off the mark.

[joeybee12]

4. Remember, the camera adds 10 pounds...

...so she probably looked worse in person...seems to me she had some serious problems.

[HipChick]

5. If she was diabetic, and was taking meds to control it

that could affect her appearance..my mother looks almost anorexic at times, due to her diabetic meds

[jobycom]

6. It's not completely Hollywood.

She stopped getting decent roles a few years back partly because she had crossed that line. There were reports that several magazines had started refusing to publish pictures of her because she was too thin and looked too unhealthy, and they didn't want to embarrass or encourage her.

Hollywood is a symptom, not a cause, and the illness isn't a desire for thinness, nor the beautification of thinness, but the equation of beauty in women with value by our whole society. Women are judged by their looks first. "The lovely and talented..." or "the lovely and intelligent" are common introductions for all women. When salesmen greet an old woman they consider it polite flattery to address her as "miss" or "young lady," as though to be herself is less flattering than to be young. Men aren't greeted that way. We don't hold Mr. America pageants, or if we do, they aren't as prominent. Entertainers, lawyers, businesswomen, politicians (how many "big butt" jokes or other looks-related comments were there even here about Hillary Clinton when she ran?), athletes, all are judged either by looks first, or at most looks second or third, at least until they reach an age or a status that earns its own respect. Commercials, movies, love poems, the daily news, and every other form of public approval is based for women on their looks. They are rewarded for being beautiful, and by extension not rewarded for being plain, no matter their talent.

It's pure sexism, pure misogyny, only people don't see it because it's reversed. Rather than condemning women for their looks, they are paid in the extreme for their looks, and ignored for not meeting the standard.

Whatever the standard is, it creates a psychosis in some women, who equate their looks with success. Lack of success means they need to improve their looks. Fear of failure means they have to torture themselves to fit the standard. It can never be enough because they are full of doubts, and reach a point where doubt becomes an obsession. It's a mental illness we are almost afraid to cure, because curing it would upset the standard.

If the standard were fat, some women couldn't be fat enough until they ate themselves to death. If it were short, some women would cripple themselves. The original version of Cinderella has one of the step sisters slicing parts of her foot off to fit it into the glass slipper--probably an indication that the legend came from the east, where women bound their feet to keep them smaller. Women maim and kill themselves to meet the ideal because the ideal is what determines whether they succeed, whether they are happy, whether they fall in love and get everything society has to offer.

That's the price of not having control of society, of depending on someone else's approval or permission for success. It's not a natural situation. We are carefully taught from birth to view gender as the supreme division between humans. Boys were blue, women pink. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. Men are one way, women are another. Comedians say this, people here on DU say this, and when someone protests we're labeled as contrarians or whatever. Even liberals, sometimes especially liberals, cling to this ideology. Every time we start off praising a woman for her looks we are condemning those who don't fit that standard.

That's what killed her. Not Hollywood. Hollywood is a mirror. We all killed her. We kill every damn one we can when they don't fit our standards, one way or another. Misogyny is the worst and most accepted form of bigotry in the world. Even here.

[Frosty1]

7. Excellent post jobycom

:applause:

[jmowreader]

8. Yeah. We hold Mr. America pageants.

Better Living Through Chemistry is just as harmful as anorexia, and this guy's living proof of it.



(Full disclosure: the pageant hasn't been called Mr. America for many years, but they still have them.)

[Captain Hilts]

26. It's not mainstream. Though I don't like it that magazines are appearing that

are forcing 'six pack' standards on men. Men aren't supposed to look like that.

[LynneSin]

11. very very valid points

Think about the concept that for centuries women in China were told that they had to bind their feet in order to be considered beautiful. And that foot-binding process had to be one of the most crippling things a woman could do to her body.


I think what we're seeing is 'foot-binding' evolving to a new generation.

[amitten]

14. Great post. I think the worst thing is the plastic surgery madness.

Everyone freaks when an actress is "too thin". But yet it is acceptable for any actress or model to have plastic balloons filled with gel inserted into her breasts, or have silicone injected into her lip tissue, or have her face muscles paralyzed by Botulism toxin, or any other number of truly gross surgeries.

My personal mantra as a woman is this: If you don't like how I look, fuck off. It's not my job to please you.

[LynneSin]

18. who is advising these women???!!! - Nicole Kidman is ruining her looks

I think Meryl Streep looks 100 times better than she does. Nicole finally went and got herself a pair of trout lips, so sad. And yet Meryl Streep is 60 and being cast as a romantic lead opposite men 10 years younger than her like Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skaarsgard, Colin Firth and Alec Baldwin.

[Captain Hilts]

27. The fat lips thing is really weird. nt

[gardenista]

17. Right on.

[Blue_Tires]

20. well said

[Captain Hilts]

25. Well said. nt

[jus_the_facts]

9. SHe looks a lot like one of my friends....

....she thinks she looks HOT...yet she looks like she escaped from a concentration camp..truly sickening and sad. :(

[Xipe Totec]

10. I think I saw her sister in Guanajuato Mexico

She was a bit thiner.

[applegrove]

12. Yup as soon as she died I thought of this picture and thought it was thinness related.

[unpossibles]

13. So sad. As someone who's had body/weight issues

these stories really make me sad. And angry. Although I suppose her weight loss could be more incidental to other activities than the goal, but it's still really upsetting.

[Cant trust em]

15. I'm a skinny guy, so I do like thin women...

but this is ridiculous. I don't want women who look like they're going to die.

[Lindsey]

19. People with eating disorders often die of heart attacks. I think

that's what happened to Karen Carpenter. People are speculating on what really happened to Btittany but my guess it that it really was a heart attack based on the eating disorder.

[Cant trust em]

21. A lot of cocaine can be a contributing factor as well. nt

[vixengrl]

22. Beauty you will always be--

ensnared in the trap you laid for aye,
young and smooth and tender and brilliant,
you kept the gold where oft man killed it--
failing to maintain their innocence---
their wild-eyed open cognizance--

but you stayed youthful in body and mind,
forever sweet and always to be loved,
and some will claim the business shoved you
into a pigeonhole of romantic lead
and let you bleed your figure out

to a normative form that was more "real"
but less your reality--they should never make
a gorgeous girl be the thing she is not,
they forgot how beautiful she really was, and so did she, because
of ridiculous conventions and pretensions.

But her real beauty was the art of playing
a part and saying the things written,
and there, within the lines she spoke, and the
DVD's, that still give life to her--

let these give pause to thee.
For in the actors' experience, I think she had acceptance,
and more than this had love.
And though her life was less than full, call it well-spent.

Where there is remembrance and love,
there is still life,
and so she lives--part the victim of tabloid charms,

part enfolded in her fan's arms.
She was beautiful, and she had something
Beautiful to see. And different to be.

[LynneSin]

23. Did you write that?

If you did it's very good.

[LeftinOH]

24. She played the role of Daisy the anorexic girl in "Girl, Interrupted"

-interesting, huh?

[LynneSin]

28. I think Daisy was Bulimic

Remember she hid all the rotting chicken carcasses under her bed. If you eat and purge - that's Bulimia.

[WinkyDink]

29. Brittany, the normal spelling.

[LynneSin]

30. aye-aye Grammar policeman

:hide: