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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Finally, Making Room For Real People

Julia Gorin Special To The Los Angeles Times

I’ve been tempted toward bulimia many times. That’s because, like many other women, I take my cues from Hollywood. But with Kate Winslet in “Titanic,” Hollywood is finally giving a beauty with an imperfect body a prominent role a romantic lead possibly even to test public reaction. And now she has been nominated for a best actress Oscar.

But poor Kate! Just when she thought she was making the movie that would catapult her to stardom’s greatest heights, all that people could talk about was how fat she looked.

Review after review of “Titanic” was consumed by rantings of the zaftig redhead’s moon-pie face and ballooning curves.

To wit, Barbara Shuglasser of the San Francisco Examiner wrote: “Winslet … ballooned by about 15 pounds from her last scene. For most of the movie, her head is so bloated that no amount of tricky camera angles can make her doughy face look interesting. There is nary a cheekbone on which a clever cinematographer could cast a mysterious lighting effect.”

All this talk of blubber and cheekbones overshadows young Winslet’s performance, which didn’t get more than a half-sentence mention from any reviewer, save for Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, who agreed that “winsome” Leonardo DiCaprio blew her away. Perhaps they came to this conclusion because they were so busy watching DiCaprio’s every facial twitch that they forgot to look at Winslet’s stunning performance. Perhaps if Winslet were shaped less like a woman and more like a 16-year-old boy, she would have stood a better chance of getting into the two thumbs’ good graces.

“Why Kate Winslet?” Larry King asked a stunned James Cameron, the film’s director. “She’s not drop-dead gorgeous.” Perhaps after eight wives, King, too, prefers something that looks more like a boy.

Never mind Winslet’s statuesque beauty and classic porcelain-doll features. Nevermind that her costumes, recently auctioned off, ranged no farther than size 6 to size 8. Apparently, anything that isn’t the industry size 0 standard is substandard. Being a top actress in Hollywood means inspiring us to want to put an apron on and feed you.

Are we expecting such cookie-cutter perfection from our movie stars that we are incapable of detecting beauty through an extra pound? Winslet could gain another 25 pounds and still be exquisite. If anything, she was pleasantly plump in scenes - far from displeasing to the eye. In the packed movie house where I saw the film, all eyes seemed peeled for the Winslet scenes. Scenes without Winslet were spent waiting for scenes with Winslet.

In this contradictory state of affairs, Hollywood deserves congratulations. We have a clear case of Hollywood being smarter than the reviewers. Tinseltown is usually pushing unwholesome good looks to a viewing public that has been conditioned to accept Michelle Pfeiffer’s bony tush as the norm. Hollywood finally did the right thing and gave us someone healthy to look at.

But some reviewers think we want the other Kate - waif Kate Moss - back. The good news is: Not everybody is falling for it. Surprisingly, with the Internet as their forum, teenagers wrote in from all over the country in defense of the appetizing Kate.

On a Kate Winslet chat page, Eric J. Henwood-Greer wrote, “For the record, I am a going-on 17 male from Pennsylvania who thinks Kate Winslet is damn good looking, and the Kate Moss rave of the ‘90s irritates me. What do people nowadays think is ‘normal’?”

Thank God the country is raising an aesthetically smarter generation, with real people who can recognize real beauty when they see it. And may they enjoy all the milkshakes their little hearts desire.

xxxx