Bingeing on Celebrity Diets
Why we can't get enough of celebrity trim-downs
Another day, another wacky celebrity diet. This time, Oprah's the culprit. She's announced that she's starting a 21-day detox to make her "a more conscious eater."
The diet, based on the book Quantum Wellness by Kathy Freston, forces the talk-show queen to cut out caffeine, sugar, alcohol, meat, fish and dairy. Without all the good stuff, Oprah's surviving on meals like wheat-free pancakes.
Of course, it's not the first time Oprah's exiled herself to the Land of the Diets. In the 1980s, she famously hauled a wagon of animal fat onstage to represent the amount of weight she'd recently lost through crash dieting. When she was invited to appear on the cover of Vogue, editor Anna Wintour requested that she lose 20 pounds for the shoot. She did - and she lost eight of them in just one week. A few years back, she enlisted the help of personal trainer Bob Greene, signed a "healthy eating commitment" and recruited her staff members to do the same.
We're not strangers to celebrity diets - in fact, they're gossip mag staples. As much as we'd like to pretend otherwise, we're obsessed with bodies - big, small, or best of all, big one week, small the next.
We love reading about the tactics celebs use to keep themselves trim. When Beyonce slimmed down for her role in Dreamgirls by drinking maple syrup-infused water, we couldn't get enough of the crazy get-thin-quick scheme. Katie Holmes jogs constantly and eats steamed kale for dinner - that's front page news. And aside from snagging herself a toyboy in the form of Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore is probably best known for her raw food diet (which is exactly what it sounds like).
So why the fascination? I suppose it has something to do with seeing celebrities for who they really are: normal people with the same vulnerabilities and failings as us. It's also why we never tire of hearing Paris Hilton say silly things, or seeing Britney in meltdown mode. We're part of a strange culture that simultaneously idolises and castrates celebrities - and wacky diets are only one example of the ways we love to bring 'em down.
