Are Hollywood starlets getting too thin?

Lindsay Lohan, Kate Bosworth and Nicole Richie are just three Hollywood starlets who've been accused in the tabloids of getting too thin.It's the 2007 MTV Movie Awards, and judging by the standards of the youth-obsessed network's magenta carpet, blubber, let alone curves or even softness, is out of fashion. Girls - and I mean girls, given their lack of womanly heft, glide by. Jessica Biel, in a loose black mini-dress. Jessica Alba, with sylphlike arms rising above her red puffy mini-dress. Cameron Diaz, at 34, the veritable grandma of the bunch, in a black micro-dress, only inches longer than a bathing suit.

Not one woman won an award that night, but the few female presenters hovered like ethereal specters over such giant, solid, male movie stars as Jack Nicholson, Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell. Host Sarah Silverman, in a parade of girlish dresses, presided like the tiny, squeaky-voiced, mean girl from every high school nightmare.

It's no news flash that women are skinny in Hollywood - by far, skinnier than the 66 percent of American men and women who qualify as overweight or obese. But are they getting skinnier? Or do we just read a lot more about them thanks to an endless stream of fashion mags? Such celebrity rags chronicle their corporeal exploits, alternately castigating them when their bones stick out (Attention: Angelina Jolie! Kate Bosworth! Mischa Barton! Nicole Richie!), then celebrating the personal resourcefulness they exploited to lose excess poundage.