8/26/2002: Jamie Lee Curtis, realist

(All gender confusion rumors aside - and yeah, I do think they were just rumors.)

Jamie Lee Curtis has generally been considered a fairly "hot" actress, amongst those who consider such things. In a magazine coming out soon, she does a photo shoot of what they now go through to give her that image. This is the "before". And yeah, it was considered entertainment news somewhere that a celebrity was going to let the world know what she really looks like.

Ms. Curtis does the world a service by being open about her relative average-ness. We need to get beyond this body image stuff -- that seems to be ever-worsening. I'm not talking about obesity, I'm talking about people feeling good about looking like Jamie Lee's "before".

American average-ness

Land of the free, home of the fat and unhappy

Gotta admit she cleans up nice. :-)
And if she *is* intersexed or otherwise transgendered, I'm pleased to have her on our team. :-)

Nic. I believe the idea is that it's okay to have a normal, healthy, non-glamorous body, like the one in that photo. Are you telling us that photo looks obese to you?

Obese, no. Overweight, yes. Average, yes.

She's more ideal than, say, Calista Flockhart. But she is overweight and out of shape.

She's looked better. (So have I, but I'm not in a magazine in my underwear.)

I wasn't arguing with UT on this point, but just adding another perspective to the discussion.

The CDC stats came out this week. Their point is that more than half of the American population is overweight, and over one quarter is classified as obese.

UT described JLC's "average-ness" and I just wanted to get some perspective on the fact that the average is, as a matter of health, overweight.

In large part, it may be a function of the greater amounts of prepared foods eaten outside the home. Value-added supersized portions are the norm in American restaurants. All you can possibly eat for the price is the value proposition the consumer is being fed.

The linked article makes the point that the American perspective is changing to accept as normal a body condition that is by world standards, and medical health standards according to the CDC, actually overweight.

In growing numbers the condition is really unhealthy and that point was made in another thread discussion, when the schools sent letters to parents noting some children's unhealthy weight conditions.

I think UT was suggesting we should all just lighten up a bit about this weight ... and I'd have to agree.

There are numerous articles on news sites critiquing the CDC study for having too small a sample. The CDC admits this themselves. Also, the body-mass index measurement that they're using doesn't differentiate between muscle and fat.

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/D...es_020726.html

Moreover, I've heard about studies that show that 5-10 pounds overweight is healthy. It gives you a reserve if you get really sick, for example. It gives you more leeway before you get dehydrated. So what's "healthy" is style, what's "perfect" is pretty much genetic. And meanwhile we get dizzy, broke, and probably even fat, trying to follow the diet-of-the-day.

And that hotty Julia Child just turned 90, and celebrated with a week's worth of indulgent meals.

Heh.. cool, we posted at the same time! Get out of my head!!

I just spent a weekend among a large group of recreational and professional cyclists. One friend really was too lean, she was sick recently and had no reserves to get her through the period where she couldn't eat. The bulk of the group was fit and active, as I intend to be as long as I can. A fifty year old woman won the womens cat 3-4 race on Saturday, on the bike she could have passed for late twenties. Americans are generally fat eating a lot of crap and getting little or no exercise. As a choice, thats fine people should be able to choose to be however they want to be. Unfortunately, (oh oh here he goes again) we don't have a free market in health care so the "public" has a vested interest in controlling other peoples lifestyle choices from tobacco to sexual activity to the Big Mac. Our Puritan streak gets justified by cost analyses. So if you smoke or are 30+ pounds overweight and wish to remain so, don't let me catch you voting for Teddy Kennedy. Take responsibility for yourself. [starts looking for a bomb shelter]

I think she is one hot babe. She absolutely does it for me.

Regardless of the rumors.

Body Mass index

This still doesn't take into consideration if the individual is a mesomorph, ectomorph, or endomorph, but it does give percentiles of where you would be in the bell curve of the general population.

http://www.halls.md/body-mass-index/av.htm

There is no one way to measure healthiness.....

Nice link, lawman.

The following quote from that page gets us back to JLC ... and UT's point in the original post in this thread:

As to whether this is a service to the world...
hmm...the fact that this realistic, and I would argue, very-healthy-looking-44-year-old-child-bearer image (produced to be all about the creation of "the" image), is going to appear in a celebrity mag spread, serves to raise important discussion not just about health and fat, but of the distortion of the public gaze, media intimacy, the power of sexual display, and the slippery-ness of identity.

This is maybe just me, but has anyone else noticed that the closer you are to someone, the harder it is to imagine what they look like in your head? I can conjur a mental image of some co-worker very easily, maybe even draw a decent likeness, but try to sketch out my mom or spouse, its really hard for me. I know them in too many ways other than visual. And then to see them age...Its like they change, but don't, but do,...

?

> Regardless of the rumors.

Or because of the rumors...?

There certainly are other possibilities beyond the frank intersexuality suggested by the Snopes page.

Another is Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, a abnormality in the hormone receptors. These receptor normally cause the default feminine sex to masculinize. The result of AIS is a an otherwise fairly feminine body with an XY genotype....with some possible skeletal characteristics that tend to the masculine.

Certainly there are some skeletal markers that folks like me watch for pretty closely (since it takes one to know one); they're stuff those of us who have done a countergender transition simply can't do anything about, absent the future nanotechnology that John Varley wrote about in his <i>Steel Beach</i>.

I do agree with the author of the Snopes page when she says: "As only someone who has seen <b>True Lies</b> can say, if that's not all woman, then maybe we need to rethink what is."