M or W Week 2

Yeah but she showed her titties in 'Trading Places'. They were magnificent.

True ThighsJamie Lee Curtis wants you to know the difference between celebrity illusion and all-too-real life.

Jamie Lee Curtis wants to expose herself to you. It is, she says, the only way to make things right.
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Jamie Lee as she really is -- no lights, no makeup, no retouching.
2002Look at her, traipsing around a whitewashed Los Angeles photo studio in nothing but a sports bra and tight spandex briefs. But don't let the swagger fool you: She knows she's taking a risk. The 43-year-old movie star has certainly shown more skin in the past than she's flashing right now. But in a very real way, she's never been more naked.

"There's a reality to the way I look without my clothes on," she says. "I don't have great thighs. I have very big breasts and a soft, fatty little tummy. And I've got back fat. People assume that I'm walking around in little spaghetti-strap dresses. It's insidious -- Glam Jamie, the Perfect Jamie, the great figure, blah, blah, blah. And I don't want the unsuspecting 40-year-old women of the world to think that I've got it going on. It's such a fraud. And I'm the one perpetuating it."

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But not anymore. In an age when divas often use their clout to nix unflattering photos in magazines, Curtis has demanded the opposite: Glam Jamie will pose only if Real Jamie gets equal time. She even knows what this article should be titled. "'True Thighs,'" she declares.

She knows that her body, held up as an icon of female perfection in movies such as, well, Perfect, has made some women think that they don't measure up. She knows how that feels -- not being good enough. The daughter of two members of Hollywood royalty, Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, this actress has struggled with feelings of inadequacy all her life. In youth-obsessed Hollywood, where the dearth of good roles for women over 28 is a constant lament, it's a ballsy move to admit your age at all -- let alone to revel in it. But Curtis is seeking something bigger than her next acting job. She wants to feel at peace with her flaws, her genes.

This is not the first time that Curtis's work has led her to make changes in her life. In 1999, after writing her third children's book, it occurred to her that, even as she was urging kids to pay attention to their feelings, she had difficulty expressing her own. The result: She quit drinking and ended a lengthy addiction to painkillers that she said began when she was recovering from plastic surgery. Yes, that's right: Curtis is a veteran of the nip-and-tuck.
"I've done it all," she says...