Today's New York Post nicknames
tennis temptress Anna Kournikova "Anna-rexic."
Kournikova, however, explains her
new, less-curvy physique by saying, "I'm naturally long, lean and
lanky."
She's not the only celebrity who's
getting noticed because of drastic weight loss.
A story on the cover of next week's
Us Weekly asks the question: "When does slender become anorexic?"
Shrinking Celebs
Hollywood often sets the tone for
our standards of beauty.
More celebrities are becoming
dangerously thin, and that worries experts and parents of the kids
who emulate them.
Research shows 80 percent of
10-year-olds are afraid of being fat, and many of them are getting
"thinspiration" from the growing list of young Hollywood
celebrities who seem to be shrinking before our eyes.
"More and more celebrities are
losing weight very quickly," said Us Weekly editor Caroline
Schaefer. "Kate
Bosworth , Ellen Pompeo,
Keira Knightley .
The list goes on. Stars are just getting smaller and smaller."
Bosworth made her big splash as a
fit and healthy surfer girl in the movie "Blue Crush." After
"Superman," she's sported quite a different look, where a size
zero dress looks too big.
Two weeks ago, Bosworth told Jay
Leno that her refrigerator was packed, and that she cooked
macaroni and cheese and pasta.
Then there's Knightley, whose
breakout role was as a toned soccer jock in "Bend It Like
Beckham."
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Last week, the "Pirates of the Caribbean" star looked radically
transformed. At an estimated 100 pounds, the ribs on her
5-foot-7-inch frame were visible.
Knightley denied that she was
anorexic at a news conference.
"I can safely say that I'm not
[anorexic]," Knightley said. "I've got a lot of experience with
anorexia. It's in my family hugely. My grandmother and my
great-grandmother suffer from it, and I've got a lot of friends at
school who suffer from it, so I don't think it's anything to be
taken lightly."
Pro-Anorexia Web Sites
Jim Karas, a trainer at the Equinox
Fitness Center in New York, said he was not so sure about the
denials.
"I would respectfully say they are
not telling the truth," Karas said.
He's not talking about specific
girls, just a generation of thin celebrities, for whom he says the
math just doesn't add up.
"For an actress to be, say, 5-foot-7
and around 100 pounds, there is no way she is consuming more than
1,000 calories," he said. "And if it's their choice, they should
be open and honest about it rather than misleading so much of the
young American population when they are not."
Research shows teenage girls and
boys are particularly vulnerable.
More than half of teenage girls and
nearly one-third of teenage boys adopt unhealthy weight-control
behaviors such as skipping meals, fasting, smoking cigarettes,
vomiting, and taking laxatives.
Some Web sites reveal how young
people are attempting to become like their pencil-thin idols.
Images of emaciated celebrities and
models provide what these sites call "thinspiration" -- promoting
unhealthy dieting as a way of life.
New research published in the
European Eating Disorders Review found that teenagers with no
history of eating disorders suffered from a drop in self-esteem
and negative body image after just 25 minutes of exposure to these
so-called "pro-ana" and "pro-mia" -- pro-anorexia and pro-bulima
-- sites.
