Food for thought: A history of celebrity diet icons

"I mean, look at her! Looking almost like a plump refugee at 65Kg in 2000,  she is now a svelte 48Kg, drawing even critisim that she must be into anorexia.  Denials were promptly issued by her but all it matters is the she looks divine and that is what counts." (An article on Kareena Kapoor's size zero look, by website MensXp.com)In today's magazine world of 'size zero', where write ups like the one above sum up popular sentiment, celebrities are often the standard by which the rest of us 'common folk' (literally) measure ourselves by. And as this article in BBC magazine points out, the phenomenon of the 'celebrity diet icon' may actually date as far back to the 1800's with none other than Lord Byron as its first proponent. But instead of curds and chapati, Byron subsisted on biscuits and soda water or potatoes drenched in vinegar.Authored by Louise Foxcroft, a historian and the author of a book titled Calories & Corsets, the article also states that Byron "wore woolly layers to sweat off the pounds and measured himself obsessively. Then he binged on huge meals, finishing off with a necessarily large dose of magnesia." However Byron's huge popularity led to criticism of his diet as it was feared that he was setting a bad example for the youth of the day. (Does anything ever change?)The article which goes on to look at other celebrity diet models through the ages, notes that even Nietzsche and Henry James dieted. Nietzsche reportedly tried a traditional restricted calorie diet and James went in for Fletcherism, an elaborate system of chewing each morsel of food several hundred times (He was later referred to as the great masticator).[caption id="attachment_170994" align="alignleft" width="380" caption="Raju Shelar/Firstpost"][/caption]Today, unsurprisingly, the 'celebrity diet icon' is propagated mainly through the film industry. Be it Hollywood or Bollywood, the accepted rule of thumb is that, the thinner you are, the better you look. The article deals with this too, noting that "The downside of looking up to someone is being looked down upon. The distorted, even obsessive, thinking that characterises our relationship with celebrity can, it is said, be traced to the limbic system of our brains. Food, sex and memory are all bedfellows in this, one of the oldest, most deeply buried structures in the cerebrum. It is not hard to see how these three fundamental elements become meshed in our perceptions of the celebrity bodies constantly on parade before us. "Do read the entire article here.