Vital statistics.

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  • Author(s): Ainsworth, Claire
  • Source:
    New Scientist. 10/30/2004, Vol. 184 Issue 2471, p40-41. 2p. 3 Color Photographs.
  • Additional Information
    • Subject Terms:
      MOTION pictures; PHYSICAL fitness for women; PHYSICAL education; MENTAL health; PATHOLOGICAL psychology; CULTURAL industries
    • Abstract:
      The article presents information on the trend in Hollywood films regarding physical fitness. A film from 50 years ago will notice show how different yesterday's Hollywood icons look. It is a trend that scientists have confirmed by studying male and female bodies in soft porn magazines. In a famous paper, David Garner, then at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry in Toronto, Canada, and his colleagues showed that while the average weight of ordinary women increased between 1956 and 1978, the average weight of Playboy centrefolds decreased. In 2001 Richard Leit, a psychologist at American University, Washington DC, published a paper looking at how Playgirl centrefolds had changed between 1973 and 1997.