Jennifer Love Hewitt became the poster girl for gorgeous regular-sized women after a minor controversy over the fact that she doesn’t look super toned or scary skinny. The 32 29 year-old Ghost Whisperer actress was photographed in a bikini in Hawaii late last November, with many outlets calling her heavier. The Daily Mail said she’d “piled on the pounds” while TMZ quipped “We know what you ate this summer, Love – everything!”
Hewitt wrote about how wrong it was for people to pick on her and to scrutinize women’s bodies so rudely in the press, affecting many girls’ self esteem. She said she loved her body and that it was shame people were focusing on that when there was happy news that she had just gotten engaged. She concluded “To all girls with butts, boobs, hips and a waist, put on a bikini – put it on and stay strong.” She also wrote “A size 2 is not fat,” but she was criticizing the media characterization of small women as fat, not saying that she was a size 2.
Hewitt looked pretty sexy and didn’t need to lose weight by many people’s estimation. She said at the time that if she did lose weight she would do it for longevity and health, not to fit some ideal standard.
Now she has lost weight and she looks great. She looked pretty hot before, but if she’s happier this way more power to her. US Weekly reports in its latest issue that she’s lost 18 pounds in under three months.
In the new issue of Us Weekly, on newsstands now, the 32-year-old [sic] shows off the new body she got after just 10 weeks and her trainer reveals to Us exclusively how she lost 18 pounds.
“I am in a pretty good workout regimen that I like, so it inspired me to keep it up,” Hewitt tells Us. “The energy level and the way I feel now is great.”
“With her, it’s not, ‘I want to look good in that dress,'” trainer Stevie Sant’Angelo tells Us. “She wanted to start moving around because she thought it would make her feel better.
“She told me, ‘They said some rude, mean things, but that’s not why I wanted to change,'” Sant’Angelo says.
[From US Weekly]
Hewitt is thought to be planning a small summer wedding with herfiance, Scottish actor Ross McCall. Maybe that’s why she wanted to lose weight.
Whatever her motiviation, it sounds like she did it the right way and not by starving herself. I wondered why we haven’t seen her in a little while and I guess now we have our answer.
Hewitt is shown in the header at the 2008 CBS/CW/Showtime Summer TCA Partyon 7/18/08 and you can tell she’s thinner there. She is also shown at the Saturn Awards on 6/24/08. Credit: PR Photos.
Poor jennifer,
She says she didnt do it because they called her fat but everyone knows its the reason she did it .
I feel bad for her she looked great before now she looks like all the other skinny actresses in hollywood.
yay for seeing ribs!!
She looks way better. While I don’t think she ever actually looked fat, (certainly never as fat as Tyra) she did look pretty wide through the hips area and now she looks just happier. Good for her. Trying to lose weight sucks.
She does look great– I hope though that she doesn’t try to lose much more… there are too many stick figures out there already
I always thought she was pretty.
She looks way better now. I like her in the Saturn awards pics. You can tell she’s much healthier and eating better just judging by the skin tone. She went from a swiney pink to a healthy glow.
I think she looked great before and after. She’s one of the few natural uninhanced people that are famous.
I think her skin looked more “rosy” than “swiney pink” in the first picture.
And her new “glow” is called self-tanner.
I am disappointed that she succumbed to TMZ’s preference for thin, orange people.
I can’t figure out if I love or hate that white dress.
Funny how she made statements saying it was all a lie and then went on a mission to lose almost 20 pounds. Another reason why statements are never enough and ppl refuse to believe them.
Of coarse she’s beautiful. She always will be.
she is 29, not 32
I have a lot of sympathy for her. I respect that she stood up for herself when the bikini photos came out, but can totally understand her choosing to slim down when she started getting photographed by paps all the time.
If I had to see unflattering pictures of myself all the time (and you KNOW the paps would have picked out the ones that were the MOST unflattering), I would probably give in and lose the weight, too.
And, yes, in all honesty, she does look better…but I think in part that’s because she is a small-boned woman and even a little extra weight on her frame looks like a lot.
Whitey Fisk~ I feel the same way. She looks great, but she was beautiful before. If she had to do it, I’m glad she did it the healthy way.
She is one of my favorites; so cute and seems NICE. So many interviews and personal accounts (people I know who’ve met/worked with her) can’t say anything bad about her. She looks awesome here though. Thinner but not a bobblehead.
I can understand her losing weight for her wedding, them photos last a lifetime so u want to look your best.
It was about time she lost that weight!!! Now she does look very very pretty!
I think she looks great, regardless of her size.
It’s funny. After I saw the original photos, I suggested she needed to lose 20 pounds and people attacked me for saying it. Months later, she has lost 18(20) pounds? She was not a size 2 then, so it was laughable. Her lie about being a size 2 was bad as Mischa Barton going off about “all women have cellulites and it’s not the end of the world,” then claiming the photos of her with cellulites were photoshopped. It’s either you’re proud or you’re not.
I never really thought that she was standing up for herself in the first set of bikini pics, because after all her ranting about respecting women, etc., she claimed she was a size two, which she was not. She wasn’t really proud of herself if she lied about her true size.
That aside, I find it really disappointing that she lost the weight…she validated people calling a “size 2” fat.
I liked her chubby look better, she looked cute. Now she looks a little like the rest of them, but managed to at least retain a little bit of her curves.
Yeah, in her bra.
Yeah, SAYS, She was never a size 2. It just goes all over me in these magazines when women lose weight, and in the ” before ” and ” after ” pictures almost EVERY woman is either a size 8 or 6… I don’t care what their height or weight is AFTER, they could STILL be bigger than me ( 5’7 142 lbs. ) and wear a 6 or 8. I’m sorry, but I wish I knew what brands they try on, because I wear a size 12 to 14 depending on the brand. These celebrities just kill me with their size 0’s and 1’s. And having fat sucked out every week. Jennifer looked awesome before, and I would have loved to have had her size THEN. I guess we are NEVER satisfied.
So much for representing “real women” and embracing your body…
Is there a limit to the hypocrisy of her previous statements, now that we know she did a lot to loose weight so fast?
BTW, she might be a size 2.
She is short and I know short women who wear really tiny sizes, even if they are chubby?
There are NO role models today for young girls and that scares me for the generation to come.
This woman works in Hollywood. When she is not working, she doesn’t watch her weight. When she is contemplating upcoming work or a public event, she slims down swiftly. If she didn’t do that, her career would end very quickly.
I fail to see hypocrisy, disrespect, or dishonesty in that. Seriously. What I see is a woman who’s figured out how to work the system when she needs to and how to stop obsessing over it when she doesn’t.
She appeared to be a size 8 or 10 to me in the “fat” photos, but I never took her comment as a claim that she was a size 2. I took that comment, the very first time I read it, to mean, “They called me fat when I was a size 2, so I don’t care if they think I’m fat now.” And…she most certainly HAS spent a lot of time in size 2’s.
This woman is one of the good ones. Give her a freaking break. She has never been anorexic-looking or unrealistically thin, and she has, on the other side of the same token, never allowed herself to get to an unfit heavy weight, either. She got big enough to have some butt cottage, but she never got unhealthy. That, Ladies and Gentlemen, is a healthy example. With all due respect, you don’t have to be a size 16 to “represent real women.” Lots of women are somewhere in between…and for Ms. Hewitt to keep her career, she cannot indulge in her “comfy” jeans all year-round.
Awesome post, Aspen. I definitely concur, with all of what you pointed out, and kudos to Hewitt for working off her little extra poundage rather than starving it off with speed and coffe and grapefruit. The work and discipline required for any of us to exercise diligently every day for weight loss is very admirable, nothing to shake a stick at or downgrade – that’s hard work. And that’s what it takes, WORK, in order to stay relevant in Hollywood when you’re an actress, espECIally when you’re a woman, not a man.
I think it would have been better if she’d been honest about her weight gain when those bikini-pics surfaced.
“Yeah, I’ve gained a few and I would like to be slimmer but I don’t need the hassle right now and only by Hollywood’s twisted standards would anyone consider me fat!”
Better than pretending to embrace her mild chubbiness and striving to be a role model for confident normal women – only to stab them in the back by going back to her willowy self as soon as she can.
I don’t really watch the movies she’s in, but I love Jennifer Love Hewitt. I think she’s a class act, and actually has a personality.
I’ve also always found her to be pretty. She gains weight, as does the rest of us, and I see nothing wrong with her attitude.
I totally get what she means. It’s very difficult ignoring the nasty things the media has to say and congratulations on the weight loss. I think it’s wonderful that she’s trying to be a positive role model for young women by showing them that weight gain is normal, and that no- just because you’re not a size two means you’re fat.
I think it’s a huge problem for girls being told that if they’re not perfectly thin that they’re mammoths. Jennifer Love Hewitt was never fat, but she got a little bit overweight, and by saying that she wasn’t fat, that she meant that overweight and fat aren’t always synonymous.
“I fail to see hypocrisy, disrespect, or dishonesty in that. Seriously. What I see is a woman who’s figured out how to work the system when she needs to and how to stop obsessing over it when she doesn’t.”
Here’s the hypocrisy – she said one thing (“I’m chubby and proud!”), then did another (slimmed down to conform).
God this girl is so annoying. I’ve hated her acting since Party of Five.
i’m a little disappointed… after trying to pretend as though she’s totally secure in how she looks, she goes and loses weight… sort of hypocritical… and i don’t buy that these weight losses are for “health reasons” because a woman with an extra 10 or 15 pounds doesn’t exactly suffer from dire health problems.
I remember years ago she went through a VERY skinny phase, at the time i thought she looked aged and haggered. hopefully she will know where to stop and just maintain the weight loss.
I have a weight loss blog and just blogged about Jennifer Love Hewitt’s weight loss.
At first I annoyed and my initial reaction was that she was a sellout to the slime ball media (TMZ, Perez Hilton)…but then I started looking at why I might feel that way, is it because I myself am less than perfect?
Anyway, check out the post (and others!) if you are so inclined.
http://www.lost100.com/blog/2008/08/jennifer-love-h.html
even tho im not a fan of over skinny bodies…lets face it…some females just look better skinny…its hard for some females to carry weight and be attractive…she looks alot better…in my opinion she could even lose 5 more pounds…LOL or just tone a little bit more…and people who are saying she looked better 20 pounds heavier…are probably just over weight themselves…im 117 pounds…and I would love to get down to 110..i feel overweight 90% of the time..but im just not willing to cut my diet down…LOL because i already only eat 1600 calories a day…with the occasional splurge once a week..its probably also because she is only 5’3 …its alot harder for a short person to look thin…i would know im only 5 feet..it just depends on how you carry your weight..when she gained weight it all went to her hips and ass…so it made her look huge…plus the camera does add alot!…its not just something stars make up to make themselves feel better…lol