Pigs.

And now, a word about women. I love them. Just about all of them, with one or two exceptions (cough-Ann Coulter!-cough), but like most men or gay women, I do have my preferences. They aren't dealbreakers, but they're my things, and that's part of the tapestry that makes this planet so cool, or maybe so frustrating to the point of deadly warfare. Maybe it's somewhere in between.

One of those preferences is size. I prefer women who are curvy. This is not to say that I would turn my head away from a thin woman, but a lot depends on how thin she is. If she's, say, Sarah Jessica Parker thin, where there's some tone to her frame, that works. If she's Nicole Richie thin, then it's a no-go situation. If I'm with a woman in bed, I'd rather not slide off of her during the intimate moment. So you can guess that I'm not a big proponent of the trend that never ends, the Hollywood starlets that think that the best way to show off, to get that big part or that hot guy, is to have the figure of a 12-year-old emaciated boy from the Sudan.

So on the one end, I'm happy to see an article by Holly Millea in Details magazine about the revival of the curvy, healthy Hollywood babe in the forms of such actresses as Scarlett Johansson and Evangeline Lilly, not to mention "old" stalwarts such as Kate Winslet, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Drew Barrymore. What I am not happy about at all is the supplements the Details editors felt the need to add to Millea's piece to make it - oh, I don't know - punchier? Was it really necessary to use a headline such as "Why Fat Is Back in Hollywood"? Since when is Scarlett Johansson "fat"? This country has a serious, real problem with obesity, but it's not a solution to slap that label, however indirectly, on Liv Tyler or Katherine Heigl? And how clever is it to begin an online slideshow of famed voluptuous women with a shot of a pig wearing glittery high heels?

By invoking this tasteless imagery, the Details folks have dropped the ball. Millea's curve-positive article, standing alone, could have been a celebration of the notion that a woman doesn't have to starve herself to be sexy and desirable, in Hollywood or otherwise. Instead the editors went for the cheap thrill in an effort to be funny or cute. All they are, apparently, are idiots. We know where their bread is buttered now.

Click on the subject line to read Millea's article. It may help to use the printer-friendly version.