News

First the good news: Kate Moss has cellulite.

Yes, you heard me right. Put down your spritzers, my fellow mortals; pick up a beer instead and rejoice. The original waif model, harbinger of heroin chic and hard-partying Dorian Gray of her generation is, it turns out, somewhat human after all.

Recent photographs of the fashion icon on a beach in Thailand do not show a bottom half that is “saggy” or “fat” as the gloating tabloid headlines suggest, but rather one that is disarmingly real – healthy and slim and imperfectly normal-looking in a black boy-short bikini bottom. Yup, that's some dimpled supermodel butt.

Looking at Moss's cottage cheesecake shots, I suddenly wanted to cry. Not for the fading beauty of the original grunge princess and not for the connotations of mortality contained in those untouched-up ridges and valleys of celebrity skin. No, I wanted to cry because I was standing in the supermarket checkout line and realized I'd forgotten my wallet at home.

Wake up, people! Of course Kate Moss has cellulite! Practically all women – from Olympians to olive farmers, porn stars to palliative care nurses – do. If you're female and you've got thighs, chances are you've got it. After the pain of childbirth and the need to talk about our feelings, cellulite is the most common curse known to womankind. Dubious estimates floating around the Internet range from 80 to 90 per cent, but who needs to do a survey when you can just go to the beach and see for yourself? Cellulite is everywhere.

Indeed, it's at this time of year – b-b-b-bikini season – that magazines, websites and lifestyle television shows begin bombarding us with promises of a cure for this “affliction.” An endless selection of over-the-counter creams, gels, lotions and potions promises to have a “smoothing effect” on those dreaded posterior lumps and bumps while an ever-increasing range of high-tech solutions – lasers, radio waves and liposuction among them – promise to melt, zap or simply suck the stuff away.

Which brings us to the bad news: There is no cure.

Oh, you can be vibrated, massaged, electrocuted and vacuumed to your heart's content. You can apply and reapply and switch brands and reapply again. But you will get nothing but minor, temporary results at best.

“At this point, there is no outstanding treatment for cellulite,” Molly Wanner, an instructor in dermatology at Harvard Medical School and the author of a 2008 review of existing treatments, told The New York Times last week.

I, for one, think we'd all be wise to take her word for it.

But we won't and we don't. And this is why the market for cellulite-reduction devices totalled $47-million last year in the United States alone and is estimated to grow to $63-million by 2013.

But it's madness, hopeless, a complete and utter waste of time and money. Because cellulite is not a sickness or dermatological affliction, as the beauty industry would have you believe, but a natural and harmless characteristic of the female body. Basically it consists of fat bundles that get trapped between fibrous tissue beneath the top layer of skin (think of the quilted top of a mattress). And while I'll admit that it's not my favourite thing to look at, it is a fact of life, so we really ought to get used to it.

Until quite recently, the concept of cellulite didn't actually exist in North America. Then came the miniskirt. In 1968, the first reference appeared in – where else? – Vogue. “Like a swift migrating fish,” the magazine noted, “the word ‘cellulite' has suddenly migrated across the Atlantic.”

Like so many fashionable things invented to torture women – high heels, thongs – cellulite was invented by the French. According to Lionel Bissoon's The Cellulite Cure , the term (actually pronounced cell-u-leet) was first introduced to Europe around 1923 by two doctors, Alquier and Paviot, who dubbed it an “unaesthetic condition.” A classic case of pathologizing the unfashionable – and not at all surprising, since it's a well-known fact that French women are obsessed with their own asses. One day I'm going to write a book about it called French Women DO Get Cellulite , but I digress.

Prior to the 20th century, cellulite was actually a beauty symbol. As seen in the paintings of Peter Paul Rubens or William Etty, it was a sign of fecundity and social status, the evidence of a life well lived. Its inconsistencies were evidence of lusciousness, like a decorative quilting meant to draw attention to the well-padded female form. Contrast that with today, when cellulite is described in The New York Times as “a telltale sign that life is a crapshoot” and tabloids bear headlines like “Britney's cottage cheese nightmare!”

The sad truth is this: Our collective hate-on for cellulite is the ultimate boon for the beauty industry that created it. The more we shell out money for false promises, in a futile attempt to “cure” what is harmless and natural, the harder the industry will try to convince us there is hope to eradicate something that didn't need to be got rid of in the first place.

Not only is the search for a cure in vain, it's just vain period. And if Kate Moss can learn to love her cellulite, surely the rest of us can follow.