MediaThe Heat is on
Could the glossy magazine's latest obsession with 'skinnies' actually do some good, asks Emily WilsonOne of the many ways in which I grate upon my boyfriend's nerves is by providing a running commentary on the fake boobs, lips, eyes and bottoms of the women who walk on to our television screen. He could not be less interested, and yet I feel compelled to inform him that Teri Hatcher has definitely had something done to her forehead - it doesn't move! And that Rebecca Loos and Abi Titmuss have both had their breasts done. See how their boobs keep standing up when they lie down? And look at so-and-so's bloated lips! Don't they look ludicrous?
I persist because I don't want my boyfriend to imagine that he is looking at Real Women - which might make me look a little fuzzy about the edges by comparison. He has lived in the world longer than I have, but there is the innocence of testosterone to contend with: it is my duty to make sure he is properly educated. Also these celebrities are cheating: I feel a righteous urge to expose them. Then there is the simple pleasure one gets from studying fabulous people closely for the signs of age, decay, stupidity and desperation that no amount of money can hide. They are human too, and it is good to stumble upon evidence of this for yourself. Good, but bad too, of course.
Heat magazine is the celebrity bible du jour, and it is sensationally successful because for just £1.50 a week it prints enormous close-ups of celebrities complete with the sort of running commentary that I provide - gratis - to my ungrateful boyfriend. Check out Posh's surgery scars! And Jade's too! And look at the awful marks around the nipples of some woman I've never heard of ... Gripping stuff indeed.
It is not only surgery that catches Heat's attention. Its no-punches-pulled commentary takes in frocks, cellulite, sweaty/hairy armpits, saggy knees, pants-up-bums, wrinkles and all the other crimes against perfection that women tend to be very hot on. In short, Heat has everything a suitably shallow person could possibly require for a dental appointment, or perhaps four stops on a bus.
Now Heat has got itself a new obsession: skinnies. A few years ago, when heroin chic had finally eaten itself, the tabloids started doing a look-at-the-lollipop-lady thing on an ad-hoc basis. If a celeb pops up with a few bones showing, they'll pop her in the paper alongside some made-up quotes from concerned friends. (Calista Flockhart was always the queen of the lollipop ladies until she managed to pile on about three quarters of an ounce; after that the crown passed to Posh and then on to Renée.) But this latest Heat effort is a more serious endeavour: "dangerously" skinny women are now a regular feature. In the past month alone we've had cover stories entitled "20 skinniest celebrities" and "The most shocking skinny pics yet". Nicole Kidman, Renée Zellweger, Angelina Jolie, Hatcher ... you don't need to be some kind of fat specialist to work out who made the cut. This week the cover line is: "Curvy girls on the beach", and inside it says: "They're super sexy - because they've got flesh on their bones. Move over skinny stars, it's the curvy brigade."
Is Heat's anti-skinny campaign a symptom of some growing backlash against the west's twisted worship of women with a body mass index of 10 or less? No, of course it isn't. Heat didn't stop showing pictures of women's bums with the cellulite ringed in red when it started its skinny campaign; it's done fatties, now it's doing skinnies too. The campaign may accidentally do some good. Maybe Linsay Lohan and Nicky Hilton will stop with the crazy dieting, or whatever else it is that keeps them hyper thin, now that Heat's had a go at them. More probably though, they'll just end up even more mixed up than they already are.
One ought to hate Heat and its very modern freak show - but it is hard to summon up real anger, and not just because it's so yummily addictive. La La Land would have us believe that its stars are as nature intended them, and it is a pernicious lie: Heat, for all its flippant nastiness and its body fascism, levels the playing field a little for all the non-reconstructed, non-styled, non-airbrushed women out there. But then, of course, I'm a celebrity surgery bore, and I have exactly zero chance of ending up in Heat's Circle of Shame section; if I did, I might feel rather differently.
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