Michelle Trachtenberg, 24, is maybe best known for her roles in Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Gossip Girl. She’s seen out at events occasionally, and I remember reading some rude commentary on her weight earlier this year. She’s a gorgeous average-sized young woman in a very tiny insular community that considers anything over a size 2 fat. (Yes I got that from Jennifer Love Hewitt.)
Trachtenberg has finally spoken out about the criticism, and she tells Hollywood Life that she’s not fat. It’s not that she’s personally insulted, she explains, she just doesn’t want young girls to get the wrong message about their bodies.
We got to catch up with actress Michelle Trachtenberg at week two of the Mercedes-Benz Polo Challenge on Jul. 31 at Blue Star Jets field in Bridgehampton, where she took a break from filming Gossip Girl and openly expressed her frustration over being called fat — and considering how great the actress looked, wearing a flowing floral Rebecca Taylor maxi dress standing in the shade while attendees mingled at the SWAGG Moblie Application lounge, I don’t blame her! “Look at me,” she said while grabbing both sides of her teeny waist, “Tell me, where am I fat?”
Honestly, I couldn’t agree with her more! I’ve seen her in person at multiple events and Michelle is a thin girl with a nice figure — I think it’s ridiculous that her body is constantly under scrutiny! The down to Earth star said at the end of the day, it’s all about how it effects her fans. “It isn’t even about me, it’s about the message it sends to normal girls,” she said. “Some girl in Middle America is gonna pick up [a tabloid] and say, ‘Oh Michelle is my favorite actress and they think she’s fat, what does that say about me?’”
[From Hollywood Life]
I agree with her message, but did she have to add the part where “some girl in Middle America” says she’s her “favorite actress“? It just sounds a little haughty, but I’m looking for something else to talk about other than body issues and am prone to nitpick. Michelle looks to have lost some weight in the past few months, but she was perfectly gorgeous before. It looks like she made some bad fashion choices that didn’t flatter her as well. The average woman is a size 14 and Trachtenberg was maybe an 8 at the most earlier this year. She’s not fat, but when you line her up against her emaciated peers she does stand out as particularly lovely, healthy and normal-looking. There will probably be many more girls in middle America calling her their favorite actress now that she’s spoken out about this.
I think it’s interesting that the average size is 14. A few years ago it used to be 12…..
She looks like she has a body type a lot like JLH’s – thinner on top, small waist and rounded hips. Of course, that’s awful in Hollywood, which prizes either stick thinness, or if you have to have curves, you’d better have the boobs to match. Ugh.
She looks fine to me, but then so does Mischa Barton, if she’d just wear clothes that fit and matched. This crazy obsession about what NUMBER are you when it comes to size is just..crazy. Who cares if you are a 2 or a 0 or a 6? I was a 0 when I was 20, but I’m pretty sure that same size and weight now would put me in a 4. Sizes have changed a lot.
It doesn’t help that she’s not just pale, which can be lovely (Anne Hathaway), she’s practically blue.
She’s gorgeous and obviously NOT FAT. But why don’t we seem to be progressing as a society regarding this issue? (That Pink song, Stupid Girls, keeps going through my head now.)
I love her on the show Mercy! And I still have Harriet The Spy on VHS.
Not fat, but a little pale. A touch of real sun -not lots- would look really good.
I think she has an ethereal beauty and I love her hair. Real hair is as rare as curvy figures in Hollywood it seems….
She is one of those people whose bottom half is larger than her top half, and she doesn’t always dress it well. But she is clearly not fat. I like the paleness on her, at least on her face. I think her coloring on her face is lovely.
Good for her – now let’s see if unlike JLH, she can refrain from showing up a few weeks later on a magazine cover touting her weight loss!
She is not fat by any means – I think people were used to seeing her as a sticky skinny KID, and now she’s a grown woman. She looks great.
I think she looks fabulous!
She’s pear-shaped, so she’s tiny on top (you can even see her ribs in her chest!) and carries much of her weight in her butt, hips and legs. Maybe because celebs are photgraphed so much from the waist up that when people see her from head to toe they’re surprised by her fuller hips and that’s what contributes to the “She got fat!” mentality?
She has a great shape and a lovely face. She is far from fat, and I love her pale skin.
she is so cute.
I hate the body policing in hollywood and I think MT is beautiful. But this does remind me of annoying Dawn whining on Buffy.
She’s tiny. I don’t know why you even referred to her as “average sized.” She’s very, very petite if you meet her in person.
@denise:you stole my thoughts
The thing is, in the 80s or early 90s it wouldn’t even have been a question. But compared to her peers in Hollywood (even Gossip Girl alone), she is ever so slightly bigger (meaning HEALTHY and NOT FAT) so everyone is inclined to label her a whale. I’m glad she’s well-adjusted about this.
She is very cute. She was on Chelsea Lately a few months back and had me rollin’. Plus I love that she supposedly gets ol’ Ashlee “I bet you five million dollars the manager of this mcdonalds will come and talk to me” Simpson worked up. Favorite actress is stretching it though, even for the tween set.
Was that weird Taylor Momsen on Gossip Girl? I would love to hear Michelle’s take on working with her.
She’s adorable and wears fabulous clothes. She’s also a pretty fierce actress. She turns GG on it’s head when she rolls in.
Fat? Where? This is healthy and gorgeously curvy. She actually could even use a couple more.
She is beautiful. Her pale skin looks so creamy and nice. Her hair is lovely too.
She looks great, thin even, not “average”. Everyone needs to pipe down about her being “too pale”…too pale for what?!? It’s SKIN! Everyone is different and no one needs to apologize for what they naturally look like.
She’s not fat but she IS notoriously haughty. The reason she’s getting all the flack is she’s gained maybe 5 pounds in three years and it’s gone straight to her face. She used to have a sharper jawline, back when she was living on coffee and cigarettes. Some people’s faces change more when they gain even a little weight; Elizabeth Hurley is the same, if you’ve seen pictures from the Eighties. She starved herself into that Versace dress and never ate another thing to this day, it seems.
she is gorgeous and not at all fat. i agree she is pear shaped and needs to learn to dress that shape better. her coloring is the same as mine, and i never tan or fake & bake, either. there is nothing wrong with being pale – at least she isn’t orange.
Michelle is beautiful.
I’ll hate her forever for being Dawn. And if the blind reveals at Crazy Days and Nights are true, she’s a huge bitch. I think she’s a horrible actress and can’t understand how she gets work.
She has cankles. I know that’s bitchy to say but she does. But she does have the most beautiful hair. It’s so shiny and thick, I’d kill for her hair.
She has awesome hips! Killer curves. 😀
The average woman is a size 14 now? Yikes!
She may be a pretty girl, and not fat compared to the average woman, but for Hollywood, she is on the chubby side.
She has gained weight and it went to her lower half. She has pretty chunky legs.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/23/michelle-trachtenberg-rai_n_622146.html
Though we can debate on what look is preferable:
http://www.zimbio.com/Michelle+Trachtenberg/articles/27/Skinny+Versus+Curvy+Battle+Time+Whitney+Port
If she’s fat then let us all be that fat. Sheesh.
Indeed, where is she fat?
Don’t make me laugh, she’s beautiful and that’s all.
she isn’t fat she is just average and unfit which doesn’t quite cut it for hollywood. she would look better if she hit the gym and shaped up a bit, no need to lose weight just tone up and whatnot…
jeez it does my head in when people say that you can be too pale. would you say someone can be too dark? if it’s your natural colour then why would it be “too” anything.
She’s fat in her lower half. Upper half, fine, but she’s pear-shaped and that is where all her weight goes. She also has a tendency towards having cankles which make even a thin person look fat.
“The average woman is a size 14”. The average woman is OVERWEIGHT. There is nothing wrong with creating an ideal where people are slightly slimmer than need be. You can gain weight quickly and easily, losing weight is typically a struggle.
Way to stand up for yourself after you’ve lost weight :-/
i think she’s beautiful. i wish she’d go back to red hair. the red hair and porcelain skin combo is gorgeous IMO. she doesn’t need to tan at all.
She is bigger than how she used to be, which was a twig, honestly. Now she looks sexy, she looks like a woman for once.
It does seem like she gained some, then lost some of it, and is now looking fabulous. She seems in a “middle” weight for her, and wow does she look great. But she also looked great at her supposed “biggest,” which is probably much smaller than I’ve ever been!
I’m an obsessed GG watcher, a huge fan of Harriet the Spy, and I even watched that ice princess movie, so that’s where I get my timeline. She looks pretty awesome at every weight. And don’t we all go back and forth in a 5-10 lb range?
I like that her paleness presents a makeup and styling challenge due to the blonde/tan norm. Yay for her (and Anne Hathaway) making us pale dark haired girls look chic.
Oh, and I vote she’ll make a fantastic Anna Karenina in a decade (with some voice coaching).
OMG, she’s soooo fat! She and Kirstie Alley need to do a show together.(sarcasm)
Are these the “fat” pictures? If they are that’s a very scary message to send to women, actually society as a whole.
Seems like the issue is her skin color that looks cyanotic. NOT the wieght.
Just because she doesn’t look anorexic , doesn’t mean she is fat. I think she looks healthy and beautiful. Don’t pressure everybody to be a size 0-2.
I agree with above.
LOL. As I read that line I literally cringed.
Not because of why you think, though, that being the fact that she said it. But that I just knew you were going to pick it apart. These poor women in show business, they can’t win. And before anyone says oh boo hoo poor little right girls: whatever. Men don’t deal with this kind of crap. So yeah. Not fair however ya paint it.
AAAnyway. She looks adorable and has a great shape. I hope she sticks to her guns.
Sure, she’s fat, if you compare her to when she was a skinny little 14yo on Buffy. Most women get curvier when they go through puberty and mature. She looks a lot better now than when you could count all her ribs in Eurotrip.
Cankles? Too pale? Fat? Really??? Stating the obvious, no one is perfect…I suppose she has to look like Smashlee Simpson to be suitable. But like someone else said, if you are naturally dark, or maybe a black person, is it nice to say that person is too dark? Unless maybe it was a fake tan that looked nasty, but not your natural skin color. Whatever happened to curvy women like this in Hollywood? Geeze. Even that girl who played Nancy in Elm Street was about this size and she looked cute and was a very pretty girl. Models used to be like this too, then everyone went to SHIT DEAD THIN throughout the years. I think she has a cute style, she isn’t slutty or skanky, and I love that red dress on her, very pretty. She should have been on Twilight with her complexion and style. 😉
I don’t think I’ve ever noticed how pale she is. She looks beautiful though and it makes me feel better she doesn’t feel the need to spray tan. I’m very pale myself (in fact I don’t think I’ve found someone paler than me but Michelle might just be!) and people don’t seem to understand I can’t stay out in the sun and tan. I burn (which then turns into a tan but not healthy for my skin) and I’m glad Michelle seems to be doing the same thing–avoiding the sun.
What does the average size of a woman really have to do with this? Just because the average size of a woman is 14 doesn’t mean it SHOULD be. I know that it isn’t necessarily healthy for everyone to be shooting for a size 0, but do size 14 women have a healthy body weight?
I understand that people have different body types and that being a size 14 isn’t fat, but for some women it is. Will this silly statistic still constantly be brought up when the average dress size is 18? 20?
MT has pretty clothes, but she doesn’t really know what flatters her. Maybe that What Not to Wear show could help her get it together.
And cankles + minis = don’t.
When a celeb is “too heavy” she get’s dogged by the press and when she’s “too thin,” she’s anorexic or a crackhead. Everyone cannot be “heroin chic.” I LOVE my booty, hips and thighs!
I think she’s using weight to deflect her poor behavior. She knows she’s not fat. She’s very self confident. That’s not the issue.
I have been called fat before too.. I am a size 8/10 and I’m just about 6″…
People have a skewed version of what is fat in this country… it has caused many eating disorders (myself included) and I wish people would quit judging others and take a long hard look in the mirror.
We don’t have to be a stick to be beautiful!
She’s not fat at all! I think she looks lovely. And as a fair skinned girl I love women like her and Cate Blanchett who rock the pale look.
Hi im italian and i like this post… Michelle is my favorite actress and she is not fat… she is BEAUTIFUL… she is sexy,i love her body,her eyes…Go Michelle gooooooooo :))))))))))))
Proportionate curves are sexy. A girl can have curves and be sexy as long as she’s not too curvy for her height.
I don’t like the stick skinny models, but Michelle’s legs are a little too thick for her frame.
she is definitely not fat. she has very pretty lips. they are the rare type in hollywood; natural.