Why did Jason Segel have to lose weight?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/01/why-jason-segel-lose-weight

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Contrary to the old saws, most clouds do not have silver linings but in fact have fuzzy cloudy linings and the road to hell is not paved with good intentions. It is paved with a sticky sediment of fire, brimstone, recycled copies of OK! magazine and Katie Price's hair extensions.

But occasionally one comes across a cliche that is spot on and one such cliche is that two wrongs do not make a right.

I was reminded of this most forcefully over the weekend when The Five Year Engagement, the film starring Jason Segel and Emily Blunt, was released in the US. Few romantic comedy actors working today appeal to me more than the sweetly lunkish Segel and the beautiful and hilarious Blunt, both of whom have the three qualities that I ask of all actors but rarely get: they're funny, they seem smart and they make me believe that, were we not separated by mere geography, career choices and status, we would be the best of friends.

However, I am boycotting this film. It was during the making of this film, you see, that Segel suffered not just a shocking indignity but a self-defeating indignity: he was told to lose 30lbs.

"I was forced to lose weight for this movie. It was by the studio president! I was told it had to be conceivable that Emily Blunt would ever choose me to be her husband, which I think is fair enough," Segel told David Letterman last week, accepting with dismaying alacrity a theory that insults both genders – are women truly such sizeists? All of us? – and betrays a shocking ignorance of film history, especially of classics such as King Ralph.

But before we delve into the lessons of King Ralph, it behoves me to tackle the protestation that I suspect quite a few readers are already making. As someone who has spent a large portion of her career interviewing female actors, including one who, in the 72 hours that we were together, ate only pineapple and salt-free edamame, I am all too aware of the ridiculous lengths to which women are forced to go in order to keep their weight at a level considered acceptable by Hollywood standards, a level that decreases every year, visibly and bonily.

However, to return to the earlier touted cliche, two wrongs really do not make a right. So as easy as it would be to waggle my finger and twist my mouth into a smirk while intoning that it's about time the boys had to suffer what the girls have had to endure for years fnah fnah, I'm afraid that will not do. To borrow another cliche, what's bad for the goose is going to be terrible for the gander because female actors will now have to shrink themselves yet more – better cut out that pineapple, so high in fruit sugar! – in order to keep pace with the shrinking men. After all, if there's one weight stipulation more set in stone in Hollywood than leading ladies weighing less than eight stone, it's that they must be about half the size as their leading men. Makes them look even more childlike, you see.

But back to today's news-agenda-setting issue. When it comes to actors, I wouldn't go so far as to call myself a chubby-chaser, but I am struggling to think of a single generously proportioned actor whom I don't enjoy watching: Richard Griffiths, John Candy, John Goodman, Zach Galifianakis, Nick Frost, James Gandolfini, Jason Alexander, Jonah Hill – the list is long and noble, and never once have I ever thought that any of their films would be improved had they lost some poundage. If anything, I find that it often works in reverse. As Seth Rogen lost weight, so he lost much of his appeal, like a fleshy, as opposed to hairy, Samson. A chunky Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers is a far more pleasing presence on the screen than the skinny Vaughan of the Swingers years when he bore a bizarre resemblance to Max Headroom. (Yes, I appreciate that, from a health perspective, being slim is probably preferable to being overweight. But the studio head who ordered Segel to lose weight was not thinking about his health – he was thinking about his screen appeal.)

It is hard to imagine what John Belushi would have been like as a thin actor. No, wait, scratch that – it's not hard to imagine at all: he would have been James Belushi. I rest my case.

In 1991's King Ralph – a hugely underrated film, but that is by the bye – it was not John Goodman's size compared with his slim love interest that was seen as a sticking point. Rather, it was that he was royalty and American and she was a pole dancer and cockney. Massive impediments, no question. The thought of a studio objecting to this coupling today because of Goodman's girth makes me despair of the modern age as much as the concept of vajazzling.

Thus, I am boycotting The Five Year Engagement. Forcing male actors to lose weight will not only make female actors eventually cut out even the edamame from their diet but may well result in a future King Ralph remake starring, not Jonah Hill, as it clearly should, but Zac Efron. And in this case, a right and a wrong make a terrible, nightmarish wrong.