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It's okay to be fat. So you're fat.
Just be fat and shut up about it
*Roseanne Barr*
I've been on a diet for two weeks
and all I've lost is fourteen days
*Totie Fields*
I never worry about diets. The only
carrots that interest me are the
number you get in a diamond
*Mae West*
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In an acting world where those with the most talent often get
overshadowed by youthful hunks and dime-a-dozen beauties,
we tend to under-appreciate the cream of the crop too often.
When award season rolls around, the great actors are recognized,
but it always seems like the less-deserving dominate the headlines.
One woman that deserves this flattery and does not get it nearly enough is Kathy Bates. |
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The voluptuous Sophia Loren was among the most successful international stars of the postwar era; not only did she rise to fame as a sex symbol, but she also won a measure of critical acclaim rarely afforded most of her foreign-born contemporaries.
At the age of 14, she began entering area beauty contests, later becoming a model and appearing in a number of uncredited bit parts in films. After winning a beauty contest in Rome, Loren was signed to a film contract by producer Carlo Ponti, who began grooming her for stardom by recruiting drama coaches and casting her in small movie roles.
By the mid-'50s, Loren was a star in Italy as well as a major sex symbol, but few of her pictures were distributed internationally. |
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A seductive, overdressed, endearing, intelligent, buxom, sometimes vulgar blonde actress and sex symbol with drooping eyelids, Mae West featured a come-hither voice, aggressive sexuality, and a genius for comedy.
In 1926 her first play, Sex, which she wrote, produced, and directed on Broadway, caused a scandal and led to her imprisonment on Welfare Island for over a week on obscenity charges. She wrote and directed her second play, Drag, in 1927; about homosexuality.
In 1954, when she was 62, she began a nightclub act in which she was surrounded by musclemen; it ran for three years and was a great success. By now a legend and cult figure, she went into retirement. She appeared in two more films in the '70s. She is the author of an autobiography, Goodness Had Nothing to Do with It (1959). |
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Vera Jayne Palmer visited Hollywood for the first time when she was thirteen. After a tour of Twentieth Century Fox Studios, she and her mother went to the Brown Derby for lunch. Jayne spotted The Great Gildersleeve radio stars Dennis Day and Harold Peary, and asked for their autographs. "You know Mama," she said when she returned, "one day some other young girl is going to make her way across this room and ask for my autograph." |
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No other person in the 20th Century has made such an unforgettable
impression on the popular culture in America like Marilyn Monroe. Some reduced her as being merely a sex symbol, but a mere sex symbol
would never have been able to capture the hearts of millions like she did. The essence of Marilyn Monroe lies much deeper into our
consciousness than many can understand. She was the epitome of the glamour girl, a shimmering starlet, a pin-up whose beguiling beauty
mesmerized both men and women alike. Far beyond her exterior gloss however, was a woman, strong but fragile, a little girl, sweet yet
precocious, and the girl next door, as simple as they come, but hiding behind her own very real problems. |
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She's a television and a film actress. A soon-to-be talk show host. A label president. An artist manager. An author and an entrepreneur. Blessed with style, substance and mad skills, Queen Latifah has blossomed into a one-woman entertainment conglomerate, heralded by the press and the industry as a force to be reckoned with and a talent to be watched. She has, quite simply, done it all and shows no sign of slowing down. |
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It took Delta extensive therapy and medication to deal with her severe depression and realize she liked herself better as a size 16 than as a "starved" size 6. The self-described "beautiful, curvy woman" is now on a mission to make other "real-size" women feel good about themselves with her line of plus-size clothing. She started designing fashions for herself during her very public weight gain on Designing Women. Fan letters helped her through that difficult time, making her want to give back. So the actress created her first size 14-26 collection several years ago, and now Delta Burke Designs is in several clothing chains and catalogs. Her autobiographical book, Delta Style: Eve Wasn't a Size 6 and Neither Am I, explains how she dealt with a lot of problems, including sexual abuse as a child and her very public battle with her weight. |
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