Shake out a few each month
to support Free Republic
Posted on 01/03/2012 8:00:48 AM PST by decimon
Another new year and another host of celebrity dieters, but it's not a modern phenomenon. Lord Byron was one of first diet icons and helped kick off the public's obsession with how celebrities lose weight, says historian Louise Foxcroft.
There has never been any shortage of celebrities who have followed diets, endorsed them or tried to sell us one of their own devising, even back as far as the 1800s.
The "mad, bad, and dangerous to know" Lord Byron was thought of as the embodiment of the ethereal poet, but he actually had a "morbid propensity to fatten". Like today's celebrities, he worked hard to maintain his figure.
At Cambridge University, his horror of being fat led to a shockingly strict diet, partly to get thin and partly to keep his mind sharp. Existing on biscuits and soda water or potatoes drenched in vinegar, he 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.
>
Everyone was getting in on the diet act during the 19th Century, either slimming down or fattening up on the profits of their diets, apparatus, potions and powders. Even Nietzsche and Henry James dieted. Nietzsche tried a traditional restricted calorie diet and James went in for Fletcherism, an elaborate system of chewing each morsel of food several hundred times.
In the 1920s, Hollywood mass dieting really took off. Gayelord Hauser, an LA diet guru and Greta Garbo's lover, exploited the power of the movies. He released that "most of our high-priced movie stars are living in constant fear of losing their attractiveness and thereby their popularity... they simply can't afford to become fat and unattractive".
>
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Something different ping.
People placed large amounts of food in front of him, but he just denied it existed.
What does not kill me, makes me fatter.....Friedrich Nietzsche
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.