Body image and Hollywood?

Last night I was watching Old School for the first time with my boyfriend. (We were bored and we found it on his hard drive so meh, what the heck.)

Anyway, two things kind of pissed me off about this film. First, as with just about any “bro” comedy, the female characters played into EVERY gender stereotype and were basically living props – dimwitted, “sexy”, and there to laugh at the guys but never generate any laughs themselves.

The second thing that got me thinking is how unrealistically thin just about ALL woman in movies are. It seems that for a woman to be deemed, sexy, beautiful, worthy of male desire she has to pretty much disappear when she turns to the side.

I don’t have a problem with them showing skinny girls but why is the ONLY body type they ever showcase? Isn’t there room for other types of women?

For example, there’s a silly scene where two topless women are wrestling in KY jelly and of course, they’re both thin to almost the point of emaciation, complete with ribs showing between their breasts. Then, Vince Vaugn’s character just has to disclose that they weigh 105lb each. Because of course, knowing a woman’s stats much makes her ooooh so much sexier regardless of what she looks like just by eyeballing her. Is this because knowing they have a super small female makes guys feel manlier in comparison? Another example of this is a recent cover of women’s magazine, Allure where they just had to disclose that Zoe Saldana weighs 115 lbs (she’s 5’7 btw) http://jezebel.com/zoe-saldana-totally-fine-with-her-weight-being-on-the-c-507400425

Regarding stats: I also suspect that Hollywood tends to undershoot the weights of already-thin women just to make them seem even smaller – making women feel even more like crap when they can’t compare. Example: my friend who is 5’4, has no body fat and wears a size 2 weighs 120 lbs and these girls are said to weigh even 15 lbs less.

Almost since I can remember, I’ve only seen extremely thin (Size 4 and under) women portrayed as love interests. In fact, the only exceptions I can think of right now are Kate Winslet in Titanic and more recently, Christina Hendricks on AMC’s Mad Men.

Now I understand the U.S. does have a weight problem and being ‘fat’ isn’t attractive to most. But would the Earth spin off it’s axis if every once in a while they showcased a beautiful woman over a size 6? I mean actors always talk about playing “real” people and a lot of real people aren’t living skeletons and we STILL get laid.

For example, I’m 6ft tall and a size 10/12 and I feel like I’m such a behemoth compared to these women. As an adolescent I would punish my body trying to get down to a size 4 or 6 and even by starving myself, I couldn’t budge below a size 8. I seriously thought men would NEVER like me because I didn’t match the “normal” statistics of dainty, frail femininity (but still able to do ridiculously athletic feats) as put forth by the media.

When I got older, I realized most guys (if you care what they think) actually don’t care that much about what a girl weighs as long as they’re attracted to her. And ironically, a lot of guys I hear saying really nitpicky things about women’s bodies end up with really unattractive girls. But according to Hollywood, only the skinniest girls get the guy and the rest of us gross fatties end up forever alone.

What do you think of this? Do you think Hollywood reflects the true tastes of the public?