Victoria Beckham has inadvertently boosted the sales of a new diet book that highlights the current obsession with extreme svelteness.

Posh ‘n’ text: Victoria’s patronage gave a boost to sales of ‘Skinny Bitch’
Until recently, not many people had heard of the American diet book, Skinny Bitch. That is, until Victoria Beckham decided to buy a copy.

The perpetually pouty British singer – dressed in her trademark dark sunglasses – was snapped by paparazzi buying the diet guide in an LA boutique last month. Within hours of the photo appearing on the web, the book had jumped from 77,939th place on the Amazon website sales chart to 209th – a whopping increase of 37,000 percent.

The sassy book – described as a “no-nonsense, tough-love guide for savvy girls who want to stop eating crap and start looking fabulous” – had failed to garner much attention prior to being lifted off the shelf by the rail-thin Posh. Now its authors are reaping in the cash as thousands of readers turn to the unconventional book for quick weight loss advice.

The book was written by two LA fashion luminaries: former model Kim Barnouin, who has a degree in holistic nutrition, and ex-Ford model agent Rory Freedman. “They may be bitches,” the book warns. “But they are skinny bitches.”

Not for the faint hearted, the in-your-face book is loaded with strong language and no-holds-barred advice such as, “you are a total moron if you think the Atkins Diet will make you thin”; “soda is liquid Satan”; and “coffee is for pussies”.

Based on a vegan philosophy, the Skinny Bitch guide encourages women to eat whole grains, fruits and vegetables while urging them to abandon dairy products, eggs, meat and fish. The authors also issue a scathing attack on meat eaters, calling those who choose to eat meat while attempting to lose weight “morons”.
(more…)

Bookmark to:

Nicole Richie, whose rail-thin frame has been a source of much discussion in the media, is now joining the chorus of voices saying that she is too skinny.

“I know I’m too thin right now, so I wouldn’t want any young girl looking at me and saying, ‘That’s what I want to look like,’ ” Richie tells Vanity Fair in its June issue. “I do know that they will, which is another reason I really do need to do something about it. I’m not happy with the way I look right now.”

Richie blames her severe weight loss on, in part, her December breakup with then-fiancé Adam “DJ AM” Goldstein. “I get really stressed out, and I do lose my appetite,” she says. (She and AM have been spotted together again recently.)

In an effort to put on a few pounds, Richie says she forced herself to eat – particularly high-calorie foods like burritos – but eventually sought professional help. “I started seeing a nutritionist and a doctor. I was scared that it could be something more serious.”
(more…)

Bookmark to:

The struggle for food has long been a drama for millions of impoverished Brazilians.

But these days the nation is transfixed by another sort of starvation: anorexia among the successful and well off.

The deaths of four young women in the last two months from anorexia – a disorder characterised by an abnormal fear of becoming obese, an aversion to food and severe weight loss – have been splashed across the front pages of newspapers. The subject has become a morbid fascination for Brazilians and a theme of a popular soap opera. It’s also touched off a debate within the fashion industry that has long presented the rail-thin model as the paragon of female beauty.

The most recent victim was Beatriz Cristina Ferraz Lopes Bastos, 23, whose death on Sunday at a hospital in Jau, 300kms northeast of Sao Paulo, was reported by national television news programmes.

Local media reports said she was 1.57 metres tall and weighed just 35kgs.

“Another victim of anorexia,” the Globo newspaper said on its website, alongside a glamorous photo of the blonde-coiffed Bastos. An English teacher and a skilled piano player, Bastos was an amateur historian and wrote a literature column for a hometown website.

Folha de S. Paulo newspaper reported that she described herself as “thin” on an internet discussion group and friends said they had to “fight with her to eat”. A former boyfriend, Leandro Murgo, told reporters Bastos was a chubby teenager and became fixated on losing weight.

Brazilians were shocked at the November 14 death of 21-year-old model Ana Carolina Reston, who died of generalised infection caused by anorexia nervosa. She was reportedly 1.72 metres tall and weighed about 40kgs.

Two days later, college student Carla Sobrado Casalle, 21, died in the southeastern city of Araraquara, also with symptoms linked to anorexia.

She was 1.74 metres tall and weighed 45kgs. A third anorexia victim died later in the month.

Vía: Gulfnews.

Pandeblog shows us the faces of the dead skinny girls

Bookmark to:

When you’re hungry, take a nap. Shower, drink tea, numb your taste buds with teething gel, give yourself a manicure. Do anything but eat. These are some of the tips that “pro-ana,” or pro-anorexia Web sites offer to those who choose to restrict their eating.

These Web sites gained popularity the last few years as a kind of support group and community for those who have accepted anorexia as a lifestyle rather than a disorder. They have also become a source of national concern as those with eating disorders reinforce self-destructive habits and ideals through the Web sites.

Before this year, there was no actual study on the effects of viewing the Web sites, but two MU researchers, Anna Bardone-Cone and Kamila Cass, have published a pilot study in “European Eating Disorders Review.” Their larger study about the topic is being considered for publication in an eating disorder journal.

There is a format that comes with a pro-ana, mia (bulimia) or pro-ED (eating disorder) Web site. There’s the “thinspiration” section filled with pictures of rail-thin runway models and celebrities, sometimes accompanied with their measurements, “to set better goals for yourself and to keep on track,” as displayed on “Shophisticated,” a pro-ana Web site. There’s also the “reverse trigger” section, composed of pictures of morbidly obese people, greasy food and “fat” celebrities.
(more…)

Bookmark to: