FitSugar

"Fat" Kate Moss Is a Sign of Lean Times?

TresSugar — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:00:00 PDT

Kate Moss, fairly or not, has been a symbol for heroin-chic and anorexia since the mid-90s when, at the tender age of 14, her modeling career took off.

Making her the symbol for unhealthy thinness has always seemed unfair to me for many reasons. Some healthy teenagers are scrawny looking; Kate's body type has always been on the waifish side (especially compared to the size-six early '90s glamazons like Claudia Schiffer and Cindy Crawford); and since then, her slender '90s frame has been replaced by the truly skeletal clothes-hanger body types on the runway.

But her body and its symbolism is back on the table: a recent article makes a connection between a heftier Kate Moss (yes, that's supposed to be visual evidence right there) and the economic crisis. Want to understand the reasoning? Then

read more. People are describing Kate as fat not as an insult, but with admiration. According to researchers, in lean economic times, men prefer heavier women (to make up for their leaner wallets and hence, depleted egos); people are eating more processed food because it's cheaper and gaining weight; and counting calories seems too self-involved. Whatever the case, it's fascinating that we haven't stopped looking at Kate's body as a barometer of what's going on in culture. She must be used to it by now. Source

Speak Up: Has Your Family Ever Pressured You to Diet or Be Thin?

FitSugar — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:30:00 PDT

We learn a lot about relationships from our immediate family. Not only do we learn how to relate to other people, but also things like money and food. If fact, researchers have found that sitting down to regular family meals can help prevent eating disorders. Ahhh . . . but the home front isn't always so sweet and homey, and negative lessons can be learned in there as well. I think of the painful mother-daughter relationship in Spanglish, where the character played by Tea Leoni buys clothes many sizes too small for her daughter.

How was the family dynamic around food and body image in your house while growing up? Did anyone pressure you to lose weight? If you're a parent, how do you talk about your weight in front of your kids? How do you talk to them about their food choices? For being one of our basic needs, food can be quite an emotionally-loaded subject. Share your stories in the comment section below.

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French Parliament Outlaws Thinness

CitizenSugar — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 07:42:23 PDT

While we all know French women don't get fat, now they might be forbidden by law to appear too thin. The French parliament's lower house passed a controversial bill today that will make it illegal for anyone - that includes fashion magazines, advertisers, and websites - to publicly encourage extreme thinness.

If the bill passes the French Senate, the no-thin law will be the strongest of its kind. The measure was proposed in partial response to the 2006 anorexia-linked death of a Brazilian model. Her death has spurred efforts throughout the international fashion industry to address the impact of glorifying and showing ultrathin models.

The Conservative author of the law went so far as to argue that encouraging anorexia or severe weight loss should be punishable in court. The bill will give judges the power to imprison and fine offenders up to $47,000 if found guilty of "inciting others to deprive themselves of food" to an "excessive" degree. To see the fashion industry's response,

read more. Industry leaders in French couture are opposed to the idea of legal boundaries on beauty standards, and doctors warn that the link between seeing images of extreme thinness and anorexia is hazy at best. The president of the influential French Federation of Couture, said he was not aware how expansive the proposed measure was, but firmly expressed his disapproval of such a sweeping measure.

Never will we accept in our profession that a judge decides if a young girl is skinny or not skinny. That doesn't exist in the world, and it will certainly not exist in France.

Do we need government protection from unhealthy images of thinness? Should ads that encourage anorexia through showing the super skinny, be a crime? Is it the government's duty to ban this kind of speech, or should we be able to filter out negative images for ourselves? Will the ban make for a more hospitable environment? Source

Spain Bans Ultra-Thin Mannequins

FitSugar — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 02:00:00 PDT

Women are made to feel awful about their healthy size. Who could blame them with all the super thin models and celebrities glorifying their bony frames? When we go shopping, the latest fashions of tight leggings and skinny jeans are no help. Of course, smooth-skinned size zero plastic mannequins, reminding us that we could never look like that, are modeling them.

Of course, in our hearts, we know we wouldn't want to anyway, because we know how models get to size zero. These stupidly thin fashion dummies contribute to the perception that skinny is the only way to go, which in turn contributes to eating disorders. Well I can tell you that starving myself is not on my list of things to do.

Madrid and Milan banned ultra-thin models from their fashion week runways late last year, and this year the Council of Fashion Designers of America announced guidelines designed to help models eat and live more healthfully (wa-hoo!).

I was happy to find out that Spain is also taking a step towards banishing this unachievable standard. I didn't know this but about 1 in 5 Spanish women between the ages of 13 and 22 suffer from an eating disorder.

One step Spain is taking is to get rid of the super skinny mannequins in clothing stores. All mannequins will be replaced with ones that are no smaller than a size 6. They are also planning on dealing with the issue of sizes. In one store a size can fit you just right, but in another store, that same size can be too tight. So all sizes will become standardized in all stores.

Spain is aiming to make the standard go from unreal and unhealthy, to a standard of healthy beauty. Italy is becoming interested as well. I'm hoping that these recent moves made by Spain will encourage all of the world's countries to make the change to support healthy women's bodies.

Liv Tyler Agrees That Size Zero Is Unhealthy

FitSugar — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 04:00:00 PST

Liv Tyler recently talked about dieting and motherhood. She said, "I've been on a diet my whole life." Being in the public eye, she spent years worrying about her weight, that is, until she became a mom.

Many women can relate, comparing themselves to skinny models, and forever being on a diet and working out to shed pounds. The thing is, models are getting skinnier, so women think they need to too, even though it's unhealthy for their bodies and their self-esteem.

Liv Tyler doesn't agree with it. She said,"I definitely think the girls look too skinny now. I'm friends with Helena Christensen and Linda Evangelista, and I remember Linda telling me that when she was a model (in the '90s), a sample size was a 6 or an 8. Now a sample dress size is a 0 or a 2. That's pretty alarming. There's a lot of pressure on the models. It's not healthy. I can't even imagine what that's like."

I'd like to find inspiration in Liv's thoughts and in her sister, Mia Tyler. She's a gorgeous and sexy plus-size model who's healthy and confident. It's great to see celebrities who represent real women. You know, for all of us who'll never have a model's strict BMI, not because we can't, but because we know it's unhealthy.

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Thin the Movie: The Reality of Eating Disorders

FitSugar — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 15:45:00 PST

Eating disorders affect 5 million people in the U.S. More than 10% of those diagnosed with anorexia nervosa will die from the disease. Seeking to put a human face on these sobering statistics, acclaimed photographer Lauren Greenfield went inside a Florida treatment center to tell the stories of four women who are literally dying to be thin.

The devastating documentary film titled Thin, reveals her findings. It is captivating and you are drawn in by the heart-wrenching stories of these girls and their painful struggles as they each try to recover.

You can purchase Thin, a groundbreaking book about eating disorders. Greenfield's photographs are paired with extensive interviews and journal entries from twenty girls and women suffering not only from their eating disorders, but from the personal struggles that lead to the disorders in the first place.

No Girl Scout Cookies? Make Your Own Thin Mint Body Scrub

Miriam Lacey — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 05:17:00 PST

It's Girl Scout cookie season, and across the USA echoes the resounding crunch of Thin Mints. If you can't get enough of their chocolate-y, minty goodness, here's a super easy DIY scrub that has all the things you love about the cookies and will leave your skin looking, feeling, and smelling sublime, too. To whip up your own Thin Mint scrub, just follow our recipe below.

Kristen Stewart Talks Badass Fairy Tales, Bella Swan, and Her New Leading Man on Snow White Set Visit

Molly Goodson — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:01:00 PST

Last October, we were so excited to pay a visit to the set of Snow White and the Huntsman outside London. We got a sneak peek into the amazing world Kristen Stewart and her costars, including Chris Hemsworth, Sam Claflin, Charlize Theron, and more, inhabited while shooting the action-packed fairy-tale movie. We have tons to come from our day poking around the remarkable set and learning about everything from the costumes to the fight scenes. While we were there, we even got to see the aftermath of Kristen accidentally actually punching Chris Hemsworth in the face filming a scene. Check out our chat with Kristen and stay tuned for lots from the set:

Is there something you admire about Snow White?

Yes. It’s strange playing a character that you actually could never truly embody. Her spirit affects people. . . I can’t have Snow White’s effect on people. I can’t actually be completely selfless because nobody is. You can only really play a character like that in a fairy tale and play it with an awful load of integrity. She’s very fully formed, but very farfetched-from-the-reality-that-we-live-in type of person. She also is strong in a very different way than you’d expect. Strength, yeah, but also gusto. I mean, she’s strong. She can kick ass. It hurts very much to do so and so it’s not like you’re watching her go take down a kingdom. You’re not watching going, "Yeah! Kill him!" Really it’s more like you’re watching someone having to do something that doesn’t just go against your sensibilities or that you agree with. It’s gutting. It’s physically gutting, literally. A million reasons, but she’s special.

Do you like that she’s not like your prissy fairy tale?

Yeah, because that’s just a very surface, though she is prissy sometimes. That’s the other thing. It takes her the whole movie basically to become who I’m talking about now. I’m really sort of talking in retrospect. It’s strange. It’s a total identity movie. It’s all about not finding yourself, but actually just being OK with who you always have been and not being ashamed of being the only one who sees the light. It’s an enormous burden and she’s so stunted. She was put away when she was 7 years old and your mother and your father were killed basically right in front of you. We’re not doing the version of a fairy tale that wouldn’t deal with all of those things, where you just sort of skim over all those things, and it's like all of these things are actually really important to the characters. She literally bleeds for her land and her people, and that’s just such a cool concept for me because it’s other people caring about people. It’s very simple, but it’s so common. Every day all the time you see people not caring about each other, and this is just about that.

She learns to be a leader or she’s born a leader inside, do you think?

She’s definitely a born leader. I mean, it’s literally pumping through those veins, but it’s been taken from her. She’s been so stolen from.

To read the rest of the interview, including her thoughts on Bella vs. Snow White and what it was like to punch Chris just

read more. Is it helping you get into the character's mindset to wear those cool costumes? Absolutely. If you look down and something doesn’t feel like you would definitely be wearing it, or if you go to grab your knife and it flops around or - basically [Colleen Atwood] thinks about every detail. It’s so wearable. I also have puffy sleeves. Somehow she manages to make puffy sleeves look butch. I was always expecting to personally wind up in a - basically what I’m wearing underneath it, like that little blue dress, which is just thin and wispy. I was really happy that she’s got something heavy on - a bit of armor before she actually finds her own armor. How did you feel the first time you put on the armor? Did you feel more badass? Yeah. That’s the first thing you want to [pound your chest]. Also, my armor doesn’t have a huge top on it. All the guys, unfortunately, they [raise their arms] and they hit themselves in the head. I can run around in mine. Somehow the armor on the men - unless they’re on horseback and they look amazing, but there’s also something kind of dainty about it, too, like pointy toes. It fits a woman’s body better, I feel. I don’t know, the guys running around suddenly look like little toys - slightly feminine little toys. Both Snow White and Bella had traumatizing experiences in the woods - being led out to die or have her heart broken - compare those two experiences? Well, it’s funny. I think [Snow White] genuinely lacks that innate fear of death that we all have. She’s got a serious, fierce survival - not skills, but insights. But she isn’t afraid of anything. What’s harder is to have dreams and hopes that you lived your whole life sort of be just shattered in front of you. So I think probably it’s totally impossible to compare the two. And I know that doesn’t make sense, but I kind of can’t compare. Can you compare the movies in general? Are there similarities at all? Bella and Snow White both come to find that they’re leaders. I mean, that’s definitely a similarity. They’re different. They’re very, very, very, different people. Also, I guess in a very sort of righteous way as well it’s all very like - everyone’s telling them “no” and both of them I guess see the light. Both of them are sort of a little more intuitive and spiritually, for whatever reason, connected and their gut is always sort of dead right. What about working with Chris surprised you? Did you have any preconceptions of him? Before I met him, I was like, "gosh, so charming." You know what I mean? Like he’s so ridiculously, seemingly nice. Movie-star caliber nice. But he really actually just is. But then again, it’s strange working - cause I mean it’s not a secret. It was completely different part before. It was totally like a rethought. So when he came in it was like "Wow! This is f*cking interesting!" I mean, it was like they really elevated it. Chris is an amazing, nice guy and also [has] great instincts and he can roll with everything on set. He’s really relaxed, whereas I’m always like, "oh my god!" I use my anxiety to do this and he’s always sort of like - he’s a good energy for me. I really like working with him. You actually punched Chris filming a scene and gave him a black eye? It’s actually a very confidence building experience. I don’t like punching anyone. So, you know, when you dream and your hand just slides right down their face, it doesn’t do that in real life. It really works. God, that really made me feel horrible, though. I mean, like instantly hot tears and I was like "oops!" We were watching it. It looks - it’ll be in the movie. Favorite fairy tale as a kid? I honestly don’t - somebody asked this the other day. I wasn’t here til the end of fairy tales. I really liked The Jungle Book. I was obsessed with The Jungle Book. Chris said Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. He is obsessed with Lord of the Rings and he was always like humming Enya as we were trudging up the mountain. I was saying basically, "You should make a remake of Lord of the Rings. Why are you doing this? . . . We’re doing Snow White and the Huntsman, Chris!" Photos courtesy of Universal Pictures

6 Things to Do With Scallions

Susannah Chen — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 04:23:26 PST

Ever buy a bunch of herbs for a recipe, only to use a scant stem and find the rest wilted with dehydration a week later? This has admittedly been a long-standing problem in my kitchen, and I've been determined to cultivate a solution for it. This week I'm addressing an aromatic I have a chronic problem forgetting about: scallions.

When they're fresh, green onions have a biting smell and are resilient to the touch, but days later, the exact same stalks will take on a muted brownish hue, made slimy thanks to dehydration, and hunched over in sadness and neglect.

Since they age quickly, the key is to make sure you use them up before they get to such a sorry state! Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to do that; scallions have a mild pungency that's versatile enough to go into just about every savory dish. A few examples:

Slice green onions as thinly as possible, then toss a handful into a garden salad.
Make a four-ingredient ginger scallion sauce to drizzle on eggs, chicken, and fish.

For four more suggestions, keep reading.

Jill Stuart Fall 2012

Chi Diem Chau — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 10:54:45 PST

Jill Stuart's feminine interpretation of Fall was a botanical experience blooming with florals in all shapes and sizes. The show, attended by stylish celebs like Olivia Palermo and Nikki Reed, highlighted the designer's unapologetic feminine flair, with pretty party dresses - the floral dresses with the delicate lace detailing and Peter Pan-collared little black dresses were the highlights of the show - and luxe ladylike outerwear. Adding a modern effect were leather touches throughout; pencil skirts featured leather panels and coats were trimmed with thin leather piping. The latter showed an outstanding leather-trimmed navy coat paired with trousers, floral top, and fur collar. We can already see the front-row celeb attendees checking off their wish list . . . The full breakdown below.

Trends: Floral prints, fitted sheath dresses, printed trousers.
Colors: Black, gold, Winter white, purple, mauve, aubergine.
Key Piece: The floral and lace dresses were the perfect mix of sexy and feminine.
Accessories: Platform sandals, fur collars, leather belts, patent leather and velvet boots.
Who Would Wear It: We can already picture front-row celebs like Olivia Palermo and Nikki Reed wearing every piece from this collection.