Celebs Who Need To Swap Lycra For A Life
Sun Herald
Sunday May 28, 2006
IT'S hard to find time to exercise. Unless you're Madonna, in which case it's easy. You just don't do anything else. Before kicking off her world tour last week, 47-year-old Madge had been working out for 16 hours a day, every day.
I know you'll be as keen as I am to emulate Madonna and sacrifice your every waking moment to hardening your body. So. Ready? Here's the drill: first thing before breakfast she puts in two hours at the gym on the Stairmaster, treadmill and weights machines. Then she goes jogging with her nine-year-old daughter Lourdes before taking her to school. Or maybe they jog to school. This is unclear. Anyway, no time to wonder because it's straight on to an hour of yoga or Pilates followed by a quick 12-hour dance rehearsal. Look Madonna, I know you're 47 and gravity is not your friend. I know the concert footage on the news last week showing you in a white Lycra catsuit was jaw-dropping. I know that wearing a white Lycra catsuit at any age past puberty requires extreme sacrifices if not radical surgery. I know your arms are so muscly you could bench-press your own husband during sex. And possibly you do. But Madge, at what point do you have to say: "Hey, I'm middle-aged. I've got kids. Britney's no longer a threat. The hassle required to look like this just isn't worth it any more. I'm going cut my gym hours to single digits and maybe eat a Wagon Wheel, buy some slippers, that kind of thing."Rapper Missy Elliott lost a lot of weight last year. When reporters asked how she did it, she explained she'd changed her diet and had started working out. Fair enough. Then it got weird because she said she now goes to the gym FOUR TIMES A DAY. Let's pause for a moment and try to understand how that's even logistically possible. From where I'm sitting (admittedly on the couch), I don't get how going anywhere further than the bathroom four times a day leaves you time to do anything else.Lord knows how Madonna and Missy ever made their funky Gap commercial together. Imagine trying to fit that shoot around their respective exercise routines. Maybe they made it at the gym car park.It's true that the older you get, the more you must exercise and the less you must eat to stay the same weight. This is patently unfair. It is also cruelly ironic. Because the older you get, the busier you are, the more hours you work and the more children you have. None of these things is conducive to finding more time to exercise. Clearly the only solution is to become famous. Famous people can dedicate vast slabs of their lives to exercise. Like Oprah. I love Oprah. She is my hero. But the whole weight thing perplexes me. News broke last week that she's just signed a deal to write a book about weight control. This deal is reportedly worth more than the $US12 million ($16 million) Bill Clinton got for his 2004 memoir. Oprah's no-brainer book will be released next January and is guaranteed to make a motza.Given her highly public and continuing weight fluctuations (She's fat! She's thin! Wait! Fat again! Again!), isn't an Oprah book about weight control like a Bill book about fidelity? Or a Pete Doherty book about sobriety? Or a Britney book about parenting? Oprah talks about her diet and exercise routine a lot on her show. Like always mentioning how she never eats after 7pm. And how she works out for two to three hours every day. This is arguably the most powerful woman in the world and one of the richest. And how much time a day does she spend exercising or not eating? Much. Not to mention the kick in the pants to her social life by never eating after 7pm. Is it worth it, Oprah?Patsy Kensit, another celebrity weight fluctuator, reckons it is. The UK media was in a in frenzy last week about Patsy's newest incarnation. "She's back! And she's not fat any more!" is the gist of it. Refreshingly, Patsy has not done the usual thing and pretended she lost it with deep breathing and gentle Pilates. "It's just a lot of bloody hard work," she sighs, explaining how her regimen includes getting up at 5.30am every day to run for an hour, followed by an hour with a personal trainer "which is so tough I can't speak during it or afterwards". I'll spare you her diet routine; all you need to know is that it's strict and horrible and involves steaming a lot of fish.No white Lycra catsuit is worth that kind of deprivation. Cash for red carpetEVER wondered how that Paris Hilton makes her money (or cheddar as it's called in teen speak)? Here's how: by getting paid to go to parties. Yes, in Cannes last weekend she was paid $US200,000 ($266,000) to attend a charity event (gee, wonder if she donated her fee to the charity?) and was also reportedly paid $US1 million to appear at another event in Vienna last month. "All I had to do was wave, like this," she said, doing the royal palm swivel. No wonder NYC publicists have given her a new nickname: Parasite Hilton.Pooches go plasticSICK and scary plastic surgery trend of the week: facelifts for Fido. Yes, taking your pet for a walk is so passe. If you really want to show him you care, get him a nose job, facelift or tummy tuck. Vet to the stars Dr Alan Schulman says it sometimes helps quality of life by giving nose jobs to breathing-impaired pugs and chin lifts to droopy bloodhounds. But in other cases it's purely aesthetic. Like the silicone pooch testicles (Neuticles) that are a hot seller for desexed dogs who want to look macho even after the chop.
© 2006 Sun Herald