Natural beauty

Friday’s Wall Street Journal had a great article on the myth of natural beauty pointing out that celebrities have to work hard to maintain their “natural” beauty. Although we see them in the context of the sit-coms, dramas, movies and other media where they all seem to be acting like normal people, albeit it beautiful normal people, we often lose sight of what these folks have to do to maintain their phenomenal physiques. It can get discouraging for us common folk going about our normal business, fighting our weight, exercising when we can to see these celebs looking like a million bucks seemingly effortlessly. Well, it ain’t so. As I’ve always told my patients, to stay lean and healthy requires work and will power, neither of which come easy. Money quote.

One celebrity glossy recently estimated that, in a single year, the actress Jennifer Aniston spends close to the average woman’s annual salary on trainers and other aspects of a high-level work-out. Former tween-queen Britney Spears told Oprah Winfrey that she used to do between 500 and 1,000 crunches a day to perfect her on-display abs. Actress Kate Hudson told one interviewer that, to lose post-pregnancy “baby weight,” she worked out three hours a day until she lost her 70 pounds: It was so hard that she used to sit on the exercise cycle and cry. Entertainment figures and models are like athletes; it takes a lot of discipline and social support to look like them. Money helps, too.