I love Kristin Davis. I’ve loved her since Melrose Place, and I ended up loving the Charlotte character on Sex and the City – the television show, not the film. One of the reasons I’ve always adored Kristin is that she always had a “realistic” body type and she seemed to own it. She’s “pear-shaped” I suppose – with bigger hips, thighs and booty on an otherwise small, slender frame. Though SATC was so heavy on the fashion porn, I always appreciated that they tried to keep Charlotte grounded in fashion reality, to a point. She always had the best clothes, I thought, great shifts and pencil skirts and pieces that emphasized her curves. So it with consternation that I’m looking at Kristin’s cover of Fitness Magazine. Is this her body? I don’t remember her body looking like this. Her top half, sure, I’ll buy it. But Kristin is a girl with some hips and thighs. Did she lose a lot of weight? Judging from her interview, it doesn’t sound like it. Kristin talks about how much she enjoys food, so the Photoshopped cover makes for an interesting dichotomy:

Here’s the skinny: Kristin Davis has embraced her curves.

“I’m never going to be the thinnest actress, and I don’t want to be,” the Sex and the City star, 45 (the sequel hits theaters May 27), tells the May issue of Fitness. “I have hips!”

Davis admits it was “very intimidating” to slip into a bikini for the mag’s cover.

“There are people who feel comfortable in bathing suits, and I don’t know how they do it,” she says. “I worked with Kristen Bell and Malin Akerman on the movie Couples Retreat, and they didn’t care about standing around in their bikinis for days. The guys in the movie were more self-conscious than they were!”

Davis — who has been running since her days on Melrose Place, and even taught yoga when she first moved to L.A. — tries to keep a healthy diet.

“I eat a lot of chicken, salmon, eggs and side salads. But if all I ate were salads every day, I’d shoot myself,” she says. “Who cares if you can fit in your skinny jeans if you can’t enjoy life and have something good to eat? I went through periods when I said I can’t have this, I can’t have that. Now I don’t deprive myself. Food is meant to be enjoyed.”

The actress — who will host the More/Fitness Women’s Half Marathon in New York City’s Central Park on April 25 — does indulge in M&Ms and ice cream in the summer.

“One trick I’ve learned is that if I have an ice cream bar, I’m OK having four bites and then throwing it away,” she says. “I don’t need to eat the whole thing to feel satisfied.”

When asked about the worst rumor she’s read about herself, Davis says, “That the cast of Sex and the City hates one another. We’re standing so close during filming that we touch for 18 hours a day, and then people want to say we don’t get along. It’s the funniest thing in the world.”

She even hits the gym occasionally with Sarah Jessica Parker, 45.

“Sarah Jessica doesn’t need a support buddy. She’s one of the most motivated people I’ve ever met, and she has an amazing body even when she doesn’t work out; though, like the rest of us, she doesn’t feel that way,” Davis says.

[From Us Weekly]

Ugh, is that what happened? Kristin started looking at Sarah Jessica Parker and thought, “I want to look like that”? Please, no. SJP used to have a really amazing figure too – and I bought that it was just her genes and her active lifestyle. But in recent appearances, something has taken a turn for the worse. Anyway, I tend to think that Kristin still has the same basic figure she had during the show, and this cover was probably Photoshopped like crazy.

Fitness cover courtesy of CoverAwards.