Kirstie Alley and the Big Life

I stumbled upon yet another reality show the other night. It was called, "Kirstie Alley's Big Life."

All I could say was, "Wow..."

I remember Kirstie Alley from Star Trek II and Cheers. Other than that...not much. I've seen her on the cover of the occasional tabloid with headlines discussing how she gained weight and lost weight and gained more, as well as a headline declaring that she had been dropped from Jenny Craig as a spokesperson (they wouldn't come out and say it's because she regained weight).

I remember hearing the news in passing and scanning headlines on tabloids, but I didn't pay attention to it. Most of that gossip just sort of floats around out there like turds on sewage wastewater, waiting to be processed by a bored public that tries to feel more connected to those they admire by reading about the flaws in those making a metric crap-ton more than we do. So I wasn't prepared to see just how Kirstie Alley has changed since her days on Cheers.

Just...wow.

And the series didn't leave a good impression.

I must have seen an early series episode; she decided to test her new weight-loss program on her "handyman" and enlisted him to work with her. It kind of reminded me of the handyman on "Murphy Brown." He always seemed to be paid to just hang around more than actually do anything, and I guess it's a double-paying job when you're hanging around in front of reality show cameras.

My first thought; how can you shill your own weight-loss program when you're really not looking like you could be a successful poster child for your program? She's overweight. She puts it out there (c'mon...it's called "Big Life," and I believe she had a show called "Fat Actress" before that).

Second, the show had her deciding to get more exercise. Exercise will help her lose weight. They had an entire episode dedicated to interviewing personal trainers to come in and help her and her handyman lose weight.

Ugh. I so hate that.

I've railed against it before. Exercise is good for you, but it will not be your magic key to losing weight. Yes, you may lose a few pounds. But I'm willing to bet that much of that is because exercise fills time you otherwise would use eating.

When I'm on the treadmill, it takes an hour to burn 500 calories at an easy pace. An hour. A plain cheeseburger from McDonald's takes five minutes to eat (or less) and is 300 calories. Yeah, five minutes to take in 300 calories takes at least half an hour to forty minutes to burn off.

So if your lifestyle has you eating two thousand calories a day more than your body needs, can you fill in four or five hours a day with exercise to get your caloric intake to a manageable level?

I'll say this again; exercise will let you eat what you want as an obese person to achieve a skinny body if you become a professional trainer. You'll spend eight hours a day sweating calories from your pores. You'll have a huge calorie deficit. Most of us have jobs that don't involve wearing sweats for the majority of the day, however.

Second thing I'll say again; the "easiest" way to lose weight is to change your food lifestyle. That cheeseburger from McDonald's isn't really all that bad compared to most fast food fare; the average McMeal of a Big Mac, large fries and large Coke comes to 1,350 calories. That's over half the calories the average person should be eating in the course of the entire day compressed into one meal. And I don't think it's all that unusual for someone to have a meal like this.

Exercise isn't bad and I'm not advocating not exercising. Exercise makes you stronger and healthier in a number of ways. I'm simply saying that exercise isn't a magic bullet for losing weight, and unless you do a LOT of it, it won't make a huge difference in your weight loss routine. Want a big difference? Don't eat so much. Not eating that 540 calorie Big Mac will save you over an hour on the treadmill.

Forget how this relates to Kirstie Alley? Her show, or the episode I watched, seemed entirely endorsing the idea that if you have a personal trainer (because every fat person can afford one of those, along with your own personal home gym) you would lose weight. She mentioned the idea that she needs to change her lifestyle, but in the same session of marathon Big Life episodes she called her handyman one night to ask if he'd like to come over to eat something.

Um...

Now she has released her Certified Organic Weight Loss Program  (no I don't care enough to put in the actual name because it's yet another program dedicated to miraculous weight loss if you follow the magic "system"). Does it work? I don't know, but it seems clear that her show is less about the life of an actress who is no longer in the headlines for her roles and instead is on the tabloids because of her size and is instead a show cashing in on the public's fascination with reality shows to help promote her program. Good marketing, I suppose. But I think it's bad that it's promoting yet another "system" to an American public that desperately wants to believe all ills have a simple, singular magic bullet cure.

It's reported that she's lost 20 pounds since January (and now it's March) on her own diet program. That's great for her. The key is finding out if her system continues to have positive effects after five and ten years...

Gabby Sidibe and Weight in Hollywood

I don't really have any desire to see the critically acclaimed movie "Precious." IMDB has a plot summary that reads, in part, "In 1987, obese, illiterate, black 16-year-old Claireece "Precious" Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) lives in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem with her dysfunctional family; she has been raped and impregnated twice by her father..."

Not really my idea of a movie that grips my attention, but that's okay.

In a move that isn't all that surprising, Howard Stern made the news (again) by criticising Sidibe's weight on his Sirius radio show. He said, in part, "There's the most enormous, fat black chick I've ever seen. She is enormous. Everyone's pretending she's a part of show business and she's never going to be in another movie," Stern ranted. "She should have gotten the Best Actress award because she's never going to have another shot. What movie is she gonna be in?"

Her weight is definitely on the high side. She claimed to Oprah that her first diet was at the age of six. She decided to love herself and her body, making her sound like one of the members of the fat acceptance movement.

But is Howard Stern wrong?

He refuses to apologize for the remarks. From an article posted at Contactmusic.com: "Stern's comments stirred up a swathe of controversy in the U.S., but he's standing by his opinion - insisting Sidibe should not be held up as a role model for overweight people, because obesity is a life-threatening condition."

He also apparently said that she will have trouble with landing roles in Hollywood due to her weight.

From the article: "I feel this girl is going to kill herself - you can't eat like this. I did enjoy her performance (in Precious) I have nothing against her, I'm just trying to say she's enormous...The girl has got tremendous problems and she needs help. And we got slammed (for saying it)."

I won't argue whether Stern is an opinionated ass or talking head like so many others who capitalize on their fame by stirring controversy. The question is, how right is he?

There are those who are saying he's full of it because Gabby is already wrapping a second movie and is starting in a TV pilot. She also has had support from some heavy hitters...no pun intended...in Hollywood such as Oprah Winfrey. Ha ha! Take that, Stern!

At the same time I'm wondering how many grossly obese actors and actresses (especially actresses) are in movies and television. I could probably count them on one hand, and these were very talented people who excelled in their craft...usually as comedians, or people who slid into acting from a comedy career. Even those that are famous and overweight are often not known for their acting career; Oprah, a one-woman business mogul, has a well known struggle with food. But she's not known for being an actress (nor is she truly grossly obese). She's a savvy businesswoman with her fingers in many media revenue streams. Sidibe is a newcomer in Hollywood with one hit movie on her resume.

And there is the fact that she is fat. She can pretend that it won't have an impact on her career, but observation tells us that it simply isn't true. Even little slips of the tongue tell us that it is something on the minds of people around her. The director of Precious apparently said on the carpet: "No one in Hollywood told me they wanted to see a movie about a 350 pound black girl who had HIV," Daniels said at the podium. Immediately realizing his gaffe, Daniels noted, "She's not 350 pounds, Gabby...but the book says...before you were hired."

The fact is that her weight right now is stirring controversy, increasing her publicity stops with more interviews in part because it's unusual to have a 350 pound actress that has managed to get nominated for so many awards.  The director was quoted that after seeing her audition tape that she seemed to be in a state of denial of her weight.

Another fact; the movie was about an overweight, sexually and physically abused poor black girl impregnated by her father. What big names in Hollywood would pull off this role without a fat suit? This girl had some acting skills and fit the physical specifications the role required. But that doesn't mean that she's going to have a career in Hollywood. And if you see the train wreck that has come from other flash-in-the-pans, chances are she'll enjoy a window of fame then slowly peter away into nothing.

This girl is having a lot of publicity specifically because she is in a unique position. A 350 pound actress made a name for herself in a movie that garnered a lot of awards. If this were commonplace we wouldn't be hearing about it, and soon it'll disappear as someone else takes over the public's short attention span, and that's when you find out how much staying power and talent the girl really has. The true talents are the ones that you see in movie after movie and you can't even recall when you last paid attention to her, yet you still find her name coming up for Hollywood roles.

I'm afraid that Howard Stern was being realistic here. Harsh, uncouth, but realistic. Hollywood is fascinated by freak breakouts and the media loves to swirl around fresh meat so long as the public buys the gossip rags. It doesn't take a genius to see that the women on the covers of magazines aren't 350 pounds; weight is usually a topic for deriding the Jessica Simpson's and Oprah Winfrey's to emphasize the latest "Oh My God She's Gaining Weight From Breakup/Illness/Stress/Bizarre Career Event" headline, or "See Who's Losing Weight And How They Did It" article.

The real story will come if Sidibe is on the covers of magazines in another year highlighting her latest movie or television project and not gossip on her personal life or yet another weight-acceptance article. Until then, I think Stern has a point. My inclination is to believe that Sidibe is a flash in the gossip pan that will disappear in a short amount of time, for better or worse.