http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HollywoodThin

Mischa Barton hasn't worked much since The O.C. Casting directors probably think she needs to lose a few.

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The opposite of Hollywood Pudgy. Basically, the media's tendency to present women far skinnier than the average person as attractive, healthy and average/normal.

If you were to take these people and compare them with a random selection of people, it would become obvious that many of them are much thinner than average. Often they will have an extremely small waist, very shallow ribcage and extremely narrow shoulders that very few women in the real world can possess.

Women considered "fit" enough to be shown on TV generally fall into the fifth percentile when it comes to shoulder width and rib cage depth. These are hereditary traits that no woman can actually control and that have nothing to do with actual physical fitness. Yet these women are the ones who Hollywood shows as "average", especially if they have unrealistically enormous breasts (that are almost definitely implants) hanging just above that extremely narrow waist.

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For men the opposite holds true. Any male who isn't sporting a six-pack, ripped pecs, or biceps as thick as oak trunks is often portrayed as, or is implied to be, scrawny and weak, even if the character is supposed to be fourteen years old. (The opposite may be true in cultures that favor the Bishounen archetype for male beauty.) Again, if you were to take these guys and compare them with a random selection of men in the real world, their bodies would not be seen as very average-looking.

Ditto in animation, video games, and a great many comics, doubly so because they aren't required to find living people who have the desired looks. In fact, being unconstrained by human physiology allows non-live-action media to take this trope Up to Eleven; see also Noodle People, Most Common Superpower and Heroic Build.

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This is quite possibly a side effect of the entertainment industry's tendency to cast, and then depict, an entire slate of attractive people, except for when the plot demands otherwise.

Subtrope of Hollywood Beauty Standards. Contrast Hollywood Pudgy and Hollywood Homely. Compare Informed Attractiveness.

Examples:

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April Hunter stopped eating when she arrived to Japan on her first trip to Chiba to do a Toyota commercial, leading her host/employer to worry she'd get too skinny, something no one had apparently hassled her about before. She then realized Japan where many athletes follow a sumo diet, including the ladies, she realized she came off as fairly small for her size, where she was used to being bigger than most peers at home.

Anime and Manga

Any human or humanoid character (male or female) in any series by CLAMP. All are very tall (except for kids) and very thin. There's a reason why they're often called Noodle People.

Hiko Seijuro in Rurouni Kenshin. He spends a lot of time pumping iron to offset the side-effects of the Hiten-Mitsurugi Ryu , to the point where he has weights put into his trenchcoat. As a result, he has biceps the size of tree trunks, washboard abs, and huge pecs. Contrast this to his student, Kenshin, who does not spend as much time weight-training (and, while not flabby or scrawny, is nowhere near as muscular as his teacher.)

, to the point where he has weights put into his trenchcoat. As a result, he has biceps the size of tree trunks, washboard abs, and huge pecs. Contrast this to his student, Kenshin, who does not spend as much time weight-training (and, while not flabby or scrawny, is nowhere near as muscular as his teacher.) The eponymous character of Nana. She's so thin as to be one of the Noodle People; one has to wonder how she got pregnant in the first place!

in the first place! Clair Leonelli in Heat Guy J. The artist (Nobuteru Yuki) draws thin people to begin with, but really played it up with Clair. (It's especially noticeable with his dark clothes and sickly pale skin. Justified, as he's the resident Ill Boy in this anime. Averted in the manga, where he's still thin, but no more so than any other character, and not sickly looking.

Fashion

Tabloids. Pick one up at random and you'll see a Shocking Exposé of some star's "embarrassing body flab" or cellulite (which roughly nine out of ten women have), accompanied by ancient stock swimsuit pics. Anyone with ten pounds of extra fat or more is considered "struggling with weight problems." Tabloids are really inconsistent about it, too. The cover will show a Hollywood Thin girl with the appropriate headlines (Deathly skinny! Only 94 Pounds! Family is Scared for her Life!). However, open it up and five pages later it will talk about her looking "Fabulous in a [HARD TO PRONOUNCE DESIGNER] gown at a party last week." It's also not unusual to see a hand-wringing "How Thin is Too Thin" tabloid that contains pages of advertisements for questionable (and dangerous) diet pills that promise you'll lose twenty pounds in two weeks. In some cases, the woman (and it's usually a woman) in the "before" picture looked a little bit fleshy at the most and in the "after" shot, she looked Hollywood Thin. More insidiously, the "BABY BUMP??!??!!" articles/headlines often serve the same purpose, except that instead of directly shaming an actress for daring not to be Hollywood Thin, they purport to be excited about her suspected baby. Even if the suspected "baby bump" is no more than wearing a loose T-shirt and sweatpants, or simply looking like she exhaled.

Fashion photography has reached the point, in its ever-stricter search for vanishing thinness, where the models are starting to look like death warmed over. So, the visible ribs, the bags under the eyes, the other signs of starvation are photoshopped away , though, of course, the model remains as twig-thin as she was at the start. Readers are led to assume that this kind of body shape can be attained without looking like a walking corpse, and the search for a model who actually looks like Gumby ◊ goes onward.

, though, of course, the model remains as twig-thin as she was at the start. Readers are led to assume that this kind of body shape can be attained without looking like a walking corpse, and the search for a model who actually looks like Gumby goes onward. Worth noting is the controversy over 2011's London Fashion Week, which used models that were obviously very unhealthy . Say all you want about some people being naturally thin, but that sure as hell ain't natural!

. Say all you want about some people being naturally thin, but that sure as hell ain't natural! Closely related... shop mannequins generally have Barbie-like implausible figures, being tall and sylph like. To make the mannequins look even thinner, the stores will put them in the smallest possible size, then pull the excess fabric to the back and tie it there so that the mannequin's inhuman figure can be displayed in full.

The aptly named model Twiggy is widely regarded as having first popularized the idea of thin women as sexy, moving away from the "curvy is sexy" image of the early 20th century. There were allegations that she was anorexic, despite the fact she was noted for being a Big Eater. Ironically, Twiggy herself observed in interviews at the time that "obviously" no other models would be so freakishly thin in the future.

It has been repeatedly shown in studies that Hollywood Thin is the least healthy weight category of all (it is far less risky to be among the most morbid of morbidly obese). The lack of body weight causes undue stress on internal organs and means your body has no reserves to fight infection or repair from injury. That said, being slightly underweight might actually be a benefit in terms of lifespan and health (there is, however a difference between being at slightly below the healthy body weight, and being anorexic or bulimic, since there are other reasons, such as a fast metabolism or a whole-grain vegan diet, that one might be below normal). BTW, the same website found that as more and more Americans became overweight this average was wrongly deemed a "healthy" weight, which may be what the article was talking about in the first place.

Thankfully, this trope may be on its way to become discredited as many Fashion industries impose a minimum weight limit. They're beginning to realize having models that fit their definition of beautiful isn't much good if they're too unhealthy to get on the catwalk.

Film — Animation

Mulan uses this to show the hypocrisy and inconsistency of the standards Mulan has to live up to. When preparing to meet the Matchmaker, Mulan is told that her future husband would prefer a girl with a tiny waist (as they tie a sash tightly to make her waist smaller). Upon seeing her, the Matchmaker immediately says she's too skinny.

For some of the Disney Princess characters, it actually makes sense for them to be thin in-universe (although Author Appeal was clearly the main intent). Snow White and Cinderella grew up in poverty as servant girls. Aurora and Belle likewise had modest upbringings in the countryside. Ariel and Pocahontas are established to be very athletic and adventurous. Of course in the 2000s, one of the most common criticisms of the franchise was the 'unrealistic body' message the characters were sending to young girls.

Merida in Brave is not an example in her film as while she's slender, is not impossibly so and has a figure justified by her love of horse riding and archery. However the Disney Princess merchandise received criticism for making her waist thinner to go with a controversial Girliness Upgrade.

Esmeralda of The Hunchback of Notre Dame is the opposite case, where she has a very curvy body and is quite voluptuous for someone who lives on the streets and has to dance for change.

Film — Live Action

Along with the Twiggy example above, Audrey Hepburn (unintentionally) set a standard in the early 1960s for Hollywood Thin. She suffered starvation during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands when she was a teenager, which damaged her body's metabolism and led to a relatively early death at 63, after a lifetime of health problems. The irony of this is that she at first didn't fit the beauty standards of the day, so she was often cast as the Hollywood Homely girl who needed a makeover. She was also less uptight about her costumes being altered to hide her body flaws than other starlets of the day. Of course nowadays she's seen as one of the most beautiful women ever.

Bridget Jones presented a Values Dissonance example. To pass as the British everywoman (who obsesses over a weight of 125-138 lbs), Renée Zellweger had to put on 20 pounds to carry the part. This wasn't much of an issue in Britain, but in America this put her outside the realm of "Hollywood starlet." Renee had to lose the weight before she could get Hollywood jobs again, surprising many British fans of the film with her rail-thin physique. She gained the weight back for the second film but not the third - and there was a line from Bridget mentioning that she was now at her ideal weight.

Subverted in Anger Management where Adam Sandler's character is confronted with a girl who's sensitive about her weight and thinks he's calling her fat. He tries to say she could stand to gain a few pounds, but this just makes her even angrier. It later turns out she was an actress hired to annoy him.

Beyonce expressed backlash to the figure she maintained for Dreamgirls, saying she was relieved to be able to gain weight after it was over. She had to lose twenty pounds for the role.

Anne Hathaway refused to say her methods for losing weight in Les Misérables (2012) - she lost twenty five pounds in a short space of time - as she didn't want fans trying to emulate them. The point for the weight loss was that Fantine was starving to death on the streets.

Defied by Jennifer Lawrence when she starred in The Hunger Games, as she refused to lose weight to play Katniss. In the book it's a plot point that District 12 is starving, so Katniss is quite thin, but she opted not to send a negative message to impressionable young fans who would miss the context.

Live-Action TV

Ally McBeal was this trope at its extreme. Portia DeRossi has recently come out about her anorexia issues stemming from the show. Callista Flockhart was no fatty either...

Lost, which does this for both men and women (with the exception of Hurley).

House. Particularly Thirteen (Hugh Laurie is skinny—which given the fact he had been a rower at Cambridge makes sense—but any perception of sexiness arises out of his scruffy beard and big blue eyes). Lampshaded in-verse a few times with Cameron. "All right. You weigh 90 pounds because it makes you healthier?" At one point, House "jokes" that Cameron is too thin to be menstruating.

Series/V2009 series. Justified for the Visitors. For the humans, not so much.

America's Next Top Model. All of them. Even the contestants portrayed as "big" or "full figured" are fantastically curvy but nowhere near fat.

Actually subverted in the makeover show The Swan, of all places. Contestant Kelly Becker from season 1 was the only girl who had to put on weight during her training as the judges felt she was dangerously underweight. She put on some muscle and looked much healthier by the end.

Nicely subverted in Ringer, as former prostitute and drug addict Bridget attempts to assume her healthier twin sister's identity, and everyone comments on how much thinner she is, which they largely don't see as a good thing. Of course it is still Sarah Michelle Gellar that they're talking about.

Buffy: One of Sarah Michelle Gellar's stunt doubles talked about how hard the popularity of this was on female stunt doubles. The stunt double was previously a suit actor for the Pink Power Ranger and several of the monsters at different times, and, despite being the double for wispy gymnast Amy Jo Johnson and willowy dancer Catherine Sutherland, it gave her a little more room in terms of body shape (since the identity-obscuring costume and scenes shared with a team of muscular male stunt actors always made her look smaller by virtue of perspective.) However, she went to Buffy, and as the "Lollipop" look (as she called it) came in vogue in Hollywood, she said she had a hell of a time matching body-type with Gellar and still being healthy enough to do her job. She also said that Rangers switched over from an American to an Asian stunt team around the time she left for possibly the same reason (she mentioned the male actors they brought over from Japan and Korea were about the same size she was, right after she mentioned she was sweating herself down to nothing doing fight scenes in the California sun under several feet of foam rubber.) Average-sized Amber Benson was criticized for her weight on fansite boards, despite being only large compared to her thin costars.

The rigid "thin" standard took its toll on young actresses on other shows, as well. Two notable examples: Tracey Gold had a well-publicized battle with anorexia after media outlets commented on her weight while she appeared on Growing Pains. As you can see in this photo ◊ , she was a healthy, attractive teenager. Likewise, Christina Applegate has said in interviews that she spent an unhealthy amount of time dieting and working out to wear the tight outfits required of her as Kelly on Married... with Children.

, she was a healthy, attractive teenager. Likewise, Christina Applegate has said in interviews that she spent an unhealthy amount of time dieting and working out to wear the tight outfits required of her as Kelly on Married... with Children. On The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency, Janice very honestly seemed to believe there was no such a thing as "too skinny." When she was told it would be good for business to at least have a few plus-sized models on her roster, she was openly hostile toward them, saying (in tears) they were bad role models and wondering how she would be able to explain health, fitness, and nutrition to her young children and not sound like a hypocrite for employing them. This was then undercut by one of her models named Crystal (who Janice seemed to be grooming as her protege) who later said she had dieted down so far she was no longer having her period, talking as though it were some kind of necessary sacrifice instead of the giant red flag it was.

The Suite Life of Zack and Cody had an episode where Maddie and London were respectively convinced that they were too fat and too skinny. Refreshingly they were taught An Aesop that binge eating to gain weight is just as unhealthy as excessive exercise to lose it.

That's So Raven has an episode where Raven tries to model a dress she designed for a Fashion Magazine - only to discover the magazine photoshopped her to be thinner on the cover. They get a professional to model the dress on the catwalk, which Raven crashes. Refreshingly, rather than demonising the thin model, they have her also criticise the magazine's blatant use of photoshop. Raven: (pointing to the cover) No one looks like that. Model: I don't even look like that.

Music

During his "Thin White Duke" period in the mid-1970s (i.e. Station to Station), David Bowie dropped in weight to 94 pounds as a result of his diet of "red peppers, milk, and cocaine." Let us repeat: 94 pounds. Not 194. Not 94 kilograms. 94 pounds. And no, Bowie is not short: he's 5'10", which is slightly taller than the average British man of his generation.

One of the most well-known examples is Karen Carpenter . Once she became famous, the singer was criticized in the media for her appearance. In her twenties, she was 5'4" and about 120lbs, which is slender by normal standards (BMI of 20-21). When she died in 1983, from complications due to anorexia nervosa, she weighed only 91lbs (BMI of 15.6), shortly after being hospitalized at 78lbs, and looked terrifyingly skeletal.

Professional Wrestling

Stand-Up Comedy

Margaret Cho jokes about this in her standup special Assassin, talking about how women at awards shows always want to show off their collar bones. (Valley girl accent) "Like oh my god! Look at this bone! Do you see this bone? I'm like, totally emaciated! Look at this bone, I'm almost dead! Like, look at this bone!"

Toys

Barbie is probably the most famous offender of this trope. Countless studies have been done trying to determine what she would look like if she were a real woman. They all say a wide variety of different things, but most come to a conclusion that can be summarized thus: "She would be extremely unhealthy, and her body type is virtually impossible for a real woman to attain." To be exact, they said that she would be unhealthily thin, six feet tall in her bare feet, have feet too small to walk with, and have a long, serpentine neck. This ◊ is a good image showing just how ridiculous Barbie's proportions really are.

is a good image showing just how ridiculous Barbie's proportions really are. The male counterpart would be newer G.I. Joe figures. If blown up to full size, they would have roughly 25-inch biceps. For comparison, jacked-as-all-hell Mark McGwire had about 22 inches at his peak, and Hulk Hogan, at his steroid-laced hugest, would brag about his 24-inch, which were really only around 21-22 inch,"pythons".

Bratz are this. They've probably done less physical damage than Barbie though, because their bodies are more an anime style. What's more concerning is the stereotypes for fashion, makeup and hobbies that they set little girls.

Video Games

Square Enix: In the later years had started to develop several characters that can be considered unhealthily thin, around the time of the PlayStation 3 era, with Lightning starting the trend of characters being really skinny for their line of work, unless the character had a more developed figure in canon, most characters had a very thin physique. Women were the most affected characters, but men were also hit by this. Aya Brea was hit with this in the third installment with Aya originally being more curvaceous (but still not at all unrealistic), having her body being a twig, compare the artwork ◊ and then check ◊ the models ◊ , the latter ones she has a much petite frame, compared to her original depictions.



Webcomics

Ciem Webcomic Series: Ciem is the closest to this that Machinomics are capable of committing. Almost every female character uses the same custom "Barbie" mesh (Zenman's Curvy Default Replacement at Mod The Sims, with size B breasts.) Candi herself is extremely prone to narrowly avoiding being the poster girl for Hollywood Thin, especially as a teen. Her sisters, however, are implied to be slightly curvier with their clothes off; though there is little evidence in the written canon. Then again, since her sisters aren't superheroes, their being thinner is tolerated, if not actually justified: not having Candi's job gives them an excuse to be laz y (-ier).

(-ier). Cinna Grossul of Pacificators is one. However, it's not for Fanservice - her teammate Daryl Smithson is doing her best to get Cinna to eat more. It's actually given Cinna some trouble; for example, she's particularly susceptible to wind attacks, which could easily pick her up and toss her away. Blow Her Away, indeed.

Web Original

Embraced by the woman in this article - illustrating the double standards between fat shaming and thin shaming, and that accusing skinny people of being anorexic or telling them they "need to eat something" is just as hurtful as shaming someone for being overweight.

- illustrating the double standards between fat shaming and thin shaming, and that accusing skinny people of being anorexic or telling them they "need to eat something" is just as hurtful as shaming someone for being overweight. Subverted in the Freakonomics blog , when interviewing a former call girl. She says she expected that all call girls "had to look like Barbie", and her physique was okay with light workouts five days a week - but the clients looking for them were interested in multiple body types.

, when interviewing a former call girl. She says she expected that all call girls "had to look like Barbie", and her physique was okay with light workouts five days a week - but the clients looking for them were interested in multiple body types. Film Brain of Bad Movie Beatdown attempted to criticise Hollywood Pudgy in Bride Wars - a scene where Kate Hudson's character is tricked into gaining too much weight to fit into her wedding dress - but ended up falling headlong into this trope (he remarked "Kate Hudson would look healthy if she put on five pounds"). In recent years this has come to be seen as just a backhanded form of body shaming.

Western Animation