Portia de Rossi promoted her new memoir, Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain, in an emotional appearance on Oprah yesterday. The 37 year-old actress candidly described what she went through struggling with anorexia and bulimia. The more Portia’s television career took off, the more disordered she ate, reasoning that she needed to lose weight to look good on camera. Some of the stories Portia told Oprah were incredibly heartbreaking, particularly one in which she says she was treated cruelly on a photoshoot in which she didn’t fit into the clothing. She also described how she would erratically exercise on the spot by running and jumping to try and burn off the calories from whatever bit of food she had eaten, including a few sticks of gum or some morsels at Thanksgiving with her family.

Portia de Rossi sat down with Oprah for an emotional interview about her anorexic past to air Monday.

“It wasn’t that I was proud of it,” she said. “But it was certainly a recognition for my self control. I definitely had some pretty amazing willpower to get down to 82 pounds. And that’s what I was holding on to. I didn’t think about anything else.”

Portia reveals that she ate only 300 calories a day at the height of her disorder, and E! reports that she attributes her food issues to anxiety over being gay.

[From The Huffington Post]

We know her story has a happy ending, and that she found love and acceptance from her now-wife, Ellen DeGeneres. When Ellen and Portia discussed their relationship, I actually got misty-eyed.

Ellen explained on Oprah that she understood that Portia had a severe eating disorder, but didn’t realize how bad it was until she read parts of the book. “I knew it had been bad, but I didn’t know what it takes to get to that point. The insanity of the repetitious behavior and the loneliness and the hiding.” Ellen added that she hopes Portia helps others by revealing such personal and painful information. She said “She saves me every minute of the day. I don’t know what I’d do without her.” It’s clear that Portia feels the same.

You can watch videos of Ellen’s segment and Portia discussing her over-exercise on Oprah.com.

The bones that call themselves Rachel Zoe took her out on the town last night for the ‘Cracked Xmas’ fundraiser event at Wiltern Theatre in L.A. Both Rachel’s face and ribcage were on prominent display, scaring children and the elderly, and making fellow guests wonder if she’d mistaken Christmas for Halloween.

Though I don’t think anyone – celebrity or otherwise – should ever feel they HAVE to get Botox, Rachel thankfully got some and smoothed out the forehead of her Nicole Richie dubbed “Raisin Face” awhile ago. But the rest of her is still a living example of what cigarettes and anorexia will do to a person’s face. The 37-year-old looks easily ten to fifteen years older. Nutrition – or even a Big Mac, if nothing else – can do wonders for a person’s complexion.

There’s thin and then there’s unhealthily skinny. Rachel has long claimed that she’s not anorexic, but she’s also admitted to barely eating a thing. Her whole argument was that the motivation was different; she wasn’t trying to be skinny, she was just too busy to eat all the time.

I don’t care what the excuse is; at this point it’s clearly a health issue of paramount importance. Whatever else is going on in her life, Rachel needs to make this priority number one. She looks so brittle I’m afraid a decent necklace would topple her down. Seriously, this is beyond the “get help” point. Her bones are going to start poking through and screaming for an intervention soon.

Thanks to Just Jared for the story idea.

Here’s Rachel Zoe at the 11th annual ‘Cracked Xmas’ fundraiser event in Los Angeles yesterday. Images thanks to WENN and PR Photos.

Fashion Group International held their style awards last night – the Night of the Stars awards at Cipriani Wall Street in New York. Just about every style making celebrity was there, with stars like Kate Bosworth and J-Lo drawing rave reviews for their outfits. And while they did indeed look amazing, I was stunned by Allegra Versace’s appearance. Allegra has been battling anorexia for a long time, yet it appears that she’s not getting any better.

To say that she looks skeletal is an understatement. What I find oddest of all is that supposedly anorexics hide their bodies because they feel they still look fat or unsightly. Yet Allegra is in a sleeveless dress with a short hemline. Her outfit is beautiful and very appropriate for the event, but it’s definitely not some quiet little number that’s meant to leave her unnoticed.

Hopefully someone in her life is doing something to get her some help. It seems like she’s been dealing with anorexia for a very long time, and even though she’s young her body can only take so much of it.

Here’s Allegra Versace, Donatella Versace and Balthazar Getty at the awards last night in Manhattan. Also pictured are Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez, Kate Bosworth, Karl Lagerfeld, Lindsay Price, Christian Louboutin, Ashley Olsen, Debra Messing, Georgina Chapman, Marcia Gay Harden, Penn Badgley, Isaac Mizrahi and Mamie Gummer, Blake Lively, and Julianna Margulies. Images thanks to WENN.

Our friends over at The Skinny have been dutifully reporting on the ever-shrinking figures of 90210 actresses Jessica Stroup and Shenae Grimes. Both have lost a dramatic amount of weight in the last several months, presumably due to joining the show. They were each very slim to begin with, but along the lines of what Hollywood would probably define as a “healthy slim.” Now they’re both nearly skeletal, and Us Weekly claims that 90210 producers and the other actors are planning an intervention of sorts.

Beverly Hills, 90210 stars Jessica Stroup and Shenae Grimes are so thin that show producers and costars are poised to take action, Us Weekly reports in its latest issue, on newsstands now.

“They want the girls to gain weight,” a show source tells Us. “They are trying too hard to be skinny, and it’s started to wear on them. It’s just not healthy.” Stroup, 21, is 5-foot-8 but weighs 100 to 105 pounds while Grimes, 18, is 5-foot-3 and stands at a mere 90 pounds, Beverly Hills-based weight-management expert Dr. Joyce Peters estimates to Us.

“I’ve never seen Jessica or Shenae eat,” another show source tells Us. So shocking is the situation that their 90210 male costars are contemplating an intervention. “I heard some of the boys on the show are going to sit down with the girls and talk to them,” an additional show source tells Us. “The girls were all skinny when they started, but they’re definitely thinner now,” the source adds.

[From Us Weekly]

Both of the actresses are bordering on scary skinny, and I would think now is the time to catch it. Actually a few months ago probably would have been better. The problem is that they both work in an industry that actively rewards and encourages disordered thinking about body weight. I’m so used to it just from seeing so many pictures of emaciated starlets everyday that I didn’t even bat an eye when I first checked out pictures of Stroup and Grimes. You really have to consciously smack yourself and remember how a healthy body is supposed to look after a while. And it isn’t like this.

Hopefully the show’s producers will bring in some kind of expert and help Jessica and Shenae. And also make sure they don’t have the kind of show that encourages this.

Here’s Shenae Grimes (in black) and Jessica Jessica Stroup (in orange) at the Teen Choice Awards on August 3rd. Images thanks to PR Photos.

I love delusional celebrities. They make me feel so much better about myself. I may kid myself into believing that I’m thirty pounds lighter and two inches shorter, but at least I’m not chatting it up to Us Weekly. Poor Kate Moss still seems to be pretty delusional – but of course she is talking to magazines about it. Kate says she was never anorexic, even though she admit she hardly ever ate anything. She’s just got a really long list about how that’s everyone’s fault but her own. Apparently no one fed her. Though last time I checked, past the age of about seven you’re pretty much able to feed yourself if you want to.

“I was never anorexic, so I was never that skinny,” she tells September’s Interview. “I was never bony-bony. But I remember thinking, ‘I don’t want to be this skinny.’” She says when she was “doing shows and flying economy … nobody ever fed me. Or I’d be staying in hotels so cheap that by the time I’d get in, there wasn’t any room service… I didn’t eat for a long time. Not on purpose,” she admits. “You’d be on shoots with bad food or get on a plane, and the food would be so disgusting you couldn’t eat it.

“You go to a show, and there’s no food at all, so if you’re doing shows back to back, you can forget eating,” Moss adds. “I remember standing up in the bath one day, and there was a mirror in front of me, and I was so thin! I hated it. I never liked being that skinny.”

Over the years, Moss says she has come to accept her body. But it took her some time. When she was 15, photographer Corrine Day used to make her pose topless as training. “I’d cry,” Moss says. “After five years, you get used to it and you’re not self-conscious anymore.

[From Us Weekly]

Kate acknowledging that her body didn’t look good doesn’t mean she didn’t have anorexia. If anything it makes it even more suspect. Most anorexics don’t think they look good. Few of them walk around in skin-tight outfits parading their thinness. They tend to hide behind bulky clothing because they still think they look bad.

That last comment is particularly upsetting. I’m not sure if being forced to pose topless while crying is normal for 15-year-old models, but it sounds incredibly creepy. Kate seems to still have some body issues – she talked a lot about breast implants, saying that they were gross – but then goes on to say she’d consider getting them if her own boobs were ever too saggy.

I’m not sure how this interview is supposed to make her come off as more self-aware. If anything it makes me think she’s still got a lot of issues.

Here are a few of Kate’s Calvin Klein ads from back in the day. The ones that best show just how skinny she was show some nipple and are NSFW, but this gives you a good idea.

The 2008 Miss America pageant was held this past Saturday. It marked the first time the organization has dramatically changed the format to appeal to modern viewers: a four-part series leading up to the pageant. “Miss America: Reality Check” aired from January 4th – 25th on TLC and gave viewers a different view of the pageant world. All 52 contestants lived together and had to participate in events and challenges that would supposedly prepare them for the Miss America pageant. The reality show format allowed viewers to vote for their favorite, dubbed “America’s Choice” – who was Miss Utah, Jill Stevens. That must be like the reality show runner up. Stevens placed in the final 16 in the actual pageant. The winner was Miss Michigan, Kirsten Haglund, 19. Haglund will spend her year in power promoting eating disorder awareness, and as part of that has already discussed her battle with anorexia.

Just three years ago, newly crowned Miss America Kirsten Haglund was eating tiny portions of food and became so thin her concerned parents “dragged me to the doctor.” Haglund was diagnosed with anorexia, and the lack of nutrition caused her collar bones to stick out, her heart rate to drop and her relationships to suffer. “I would feel fatigued walking up six stairs,” the 19-year-old Haglund said Sunday, a day after being crowned Miss America 2008. “I was a completely different person. It’s not a pretty sight.”

Haglund plans to spend her yearlong reign, trying to raise awareness of eating disorders, promoting the pagaent [sic] and helping the Children’s Miracle Network while maintaining a healthy lifestyle and exercise. “You have to have curves,” she said proudly. “You can’t look like a stick-thin model.”

[From the Associated Press]

Haglund also went on to proclaim that “I love chocolate. Chocolates are a girl’s best friend.” I’m guessing she’s going to get a lot of free stuff from See’s. Unlike a lot of contestants, Haglund refuses to disclose her weight to “avoid setting standards for youths obsessed with getting lighter.” She has studied ballet and dreamed of dancing professionally, but eventually changed her mind about the dance world, which she felt ignored eating disorder concerns. Each year Miss America chooses a cause to focus on. Haglund also won a $50,000 scholarship. She is a student at the prestigious Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

One of the downsides of celebrity is everyone not just noticing but also commenting on your every little pound. Add a few and you’re pregnant or fat (sometimes both depending on the article). Drop a few and you’re anorexic. It seems Catherine Zeta-Jones has dropped a few from her normally slightly curvy frame, and everyone’s making a thing out of it. I say “slightly curvy” meaning she wasn’t one of those pin-thin-without-boobs-or-ass actresses, not as a euphemism for fat.

Catherine Zeta-Jones is brushing off questions about her recent weight loss, saying she’s merely exercising and eating well to keep her svelte figure.

The actress told PEOPLE she laughed when her husband, Michael Douglas, informed her that reports had surfaced suggesting she had an eating disorder. “Michael was laughing at me. He told me what [people had] said – that stories say I’m anorexic. Do I look anorexic?” she told PEOPLE Saturday at the Savannah Film Festival. “How could I ever, ever be anorexic?”

The actress, who joined her husband and their two children, Dylan, 7, and Carys, 4, at the Savannah College of Art and Design’s 10th Annual Savannah Film Festival where Douglas was given a Lifetime Achievement Award for acting, said that her eating habits have simply changed a little.

In the past she was a “bread girl,” she said, adding, “I looooove bread.”
 But these days, “I’m just working out and not chomping down what I usually chomp down.”

Zeta-Jones, wearing a black strapless dress at a festival afterparty, said she’s concerned about the attention on women’s weight. “There are many women [who are] maybe a little fragile, and it becomes a huge issue.”

[From People]

Catherine Zeta-Jones has an amazing body and she definitely doesn’t look anorexic to me. Though Nicole Richie could have said that halfway through her weight loss and I would have believed her too. Losing weight certainly doesn’t indicate an eating disorder in and of itself, especially if that weight loss is due to healthier eating habits. It just gives us something to speculate about. Now if the bones of her back are all visible in a few months, then there’s something to talk about. I feel badly though – women always feel like they’re under the microscope in terms of their weight – I can only imagine how frustrating it would be to try to be healthier, and then have papers writing that you’re sick.

Picture note by Jaybird: Here’s Catherine at the “No Reservations” New York Movie Premiere on July 25th. Images thanks to PR Photos. Header image from the third annual ‘A Fine Romance’ benefit on October 10th. She’s definitely lost a little weight, but nothing dramatic.

“Hairspray” actress Brittany Snow has admitted to an extreme eating disorder, cutting, and depression in a recent interview with the website “Half of Us.” Snow talks about her struggle with weight, which began at the age of 12 when she started the “Eat Right 4 Your Blood Type” diet, after it was recommended by some of her “Guiding Light” adult costars. Wonderful influence. She got a lot of compliments on her weight loss, and the feeling of acceptance and encouragement became addictive. Eventually, she was down to 85 pounds and worried she still wasn’t thin enough.

“Brittany Snow’s descent into the dark world of eating disorders began when she landed the role of Susan Lemay on TV’s Guiding Light, the actress, now 21, tells MTVU.com. ‘I remember looking around at all these women who were on the soap opera who were working out and dieting,’ Snow says. Taking their cue, a 12-year-old Snow tried her first diet, called Eat Right 4 Your Blood Type. ‘I took it to the extreme,’ the Hairspray star admits, which included a two-month stint when she ‘lived on pineapple.’

“After losing 10 lbs. on the diet, Snow says she heard compliments and felt accepted from those around her. Soon it was a feeling she couldn’t get enough of. ‘It kind of progressed into this thing where I needed to always be dieting and losing weight and more weight,’ she says in the site’s interview series Half of Us, which addresses mental health issues and ways to get help. ‘It became my life and I didn’t have any friends and this was definitely my best friend and I held on to it really tight.’

“At 15, Snow was stepping onto the scale 10 to 15 times a day and weighed only 85 lbs. ‘I knew that was a really low number and I knew that my hair was falling out and I had really weird skin. My face looked really weird and I was getting this fuzz on my face and I was always cold – always to the point of uncontrollably shaking,’ she says. But ‘I was more scared that 85 lbs. wasn’t good enough. I wanted to be lower.”

[From People]

Brittany Snow is one of those sorta famous actresses that I never really thought much about, and she’s very pretty in a small, petite person kind of way. I never noticed just how tiny she was until I read this story, and really started looking. That would mean she was obviously struggling with anorexia through much, if not all, of her time on “American Dreams.” Snow says she finally reached the end of her rope when she started cutting herself.

“Rock bottom came when Snow began cutting herself. ‘I would look at the scars and what I had done to myself and that would convince me not to eat,’ she says. ‘I also was crying for attention and I also really wanted someone to see my scars and help me and give me a hug.’

“By 19, Snow was in rehab and things took a turn for the better. She stopped cutting and got help for her depression. ‘But the eating stuff was still really hard to deal with,’ she says. ‘It’s still a struggle.’

“Her advice to girls who are going though a similar situation is to take baby steps. ‘It’s very important to talk to anybody. Maybe the first step is just to talk to a friend about it,’ she says. ‘Probably they’ll relate in some way.’”

[From People]

That advice sounds very sensible. I imagine that for someone struggling with something as complex, private, and scary as anorexia, making a full-on confession might seem too overwhelming. The idea of baby steps makes sense. It’s amazing that Brittany could have had so many people around her who either didn’t notice or didn’t say anything.

Picture note by Celebitchy: Brittany Snow is shown in a white dress at fashion week on 9/5/07. She is at a party for her Vegas Magazine cover on 8/24/07 in the photos where she is wearing a pink dress. Thanks to PRPhotos.

I don’t usually write about fashion – mostly because I consider Old Navy to be the height of couture. But once in a while a story will pop up that has implications far beyond the fashion world. Italy’s Fashion Week is going on right now, and Italian fashion line Nolita has used a picture of an anorexic woman on leaflets they’ve been handing out that say “No Anorexia.” An interesting message, but at first glance it’s confusing and seems like they’re promoting the disease, even though they’re trying to do the opposite.

“A photograph of a naked anorexic woman appeared on Monday in Italian newspapers and on billboards to highlight the effects of the illness during Milan fashion week while promoting a fashion brand. Written above the photo of the woman, used to advertise fashion group Flash&Partners’s clothing brand Nolita, are the words: “No Anorexia”.

“The picture was shot by the controversial Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani, who in 1992 photographed a man dying of AIDS for a campaign for clothing group Benetton. Toscani’s aim was ‘to use that naked body to show everyone the reality of this illness, caused in most cases by the stereotypes imposed by the world of fashion’, Flash&Partners said in a statement.

“‘Everyone says it’s ugly but I don’t think it is, it really brings the message home,’ said passer-by Giuseppina Ravelli after seeing the billboard in Milan. ‘The people who reach these kind of levels have such great problems it is good that they use their illness to teach others about it.’

“But the president of Italy’s Association for the Study of Anorexia, Fabiola De Clercq, said the woman used for the photo should be in hospital and the image was ‘too crude’. Far from helping women suffering from anorexia, the photo may make many of them feel envious of the model and determined to become even thinner than her, she said.”

[From Reuters]

It’s an interesting idea, but I’m not sure it’s good to put that picture out there when it’s directed at women with a distorted body image. Associating it with a fashion brand might add flames to the fire. It seems (and I may be naïve here) that Nolita is trying to do something good, but perhaps a better way to go about that would be to have a picture of a healthy, real woman on there. The idea is probably to shock people with what anorexia really looks like, but the people it’s aimed at probably won’t be shocked, they may be impressed, and strive for that extreme. Points for the idea, but not the execution.