Gossip magazines tormented Kirstie Alley for years. All because she dared not to be thin.

Actress. Comedian. Writer. Mother. Wife. Scientologist. Trump-supporter. 

Kirstie Alley, like all of us, was a lot of things. But for anyone who was watching celebrity culture in the noughties, there was one thing above all that they knew about Kirstie Alley. 

She wasn't thin.

In fact, for a period of more than a decade, her body was the only thing anyone wanted to talk to her about.

Where was she at in her "weight loss journey"? Was she big? Was she small? Was she on a diet? Was she "proud of her curves"? 

Watch: How to improve your daughter's body image. Post continues after video.

This was a time, remember, when talking about famous women's bodies – out loud, in print, in TV interviews – was not only tolerated, it was compulsory. Celebrities were asked about their weight on TV chat shows, round-table junkets, and in glossy magazine profiles. 

If they were regulation TV thin, they were asked how they did it. If they were not, they were asked how they could bear it. And that's the niche Kirstie Alley filled.

In the noughties, Alley wasn't on a hit network show. Veronica's Closet had run for three seasons and was in the rear-view mirror, Cheers was a distant memory. Movie stardom, which briefly beckoned in the late-80s with Look Who's Talking was long over. 

But Alley was on the cover of celebrity magazines with clockwork regularity throughout the decade – all because of her body. 

She had done something actresses, even ones in their 40s who were no longer playing the 'Hot Young Thing' were not supposed to do. She had put on weight. And celebrity magazines were obsessed with it.

Image: The National Enquirer.

In 2004, Alley sat down with Oprah and told her, "Honestly, I didn't know how fat I was. Thanks to the tabloids, I went, 'Damn, girl, you're fat!'"

If you are a woman who is not one half of a celebrity couple, not in a hit movie, not pregnant, there is one reason the paparazzi were following you around in the early 2000s – to get what the industry called 'body image' pictures. 

Weekly celebrity magazines like People in the US sold millions of copies 30 years ago. They were where everyone found out everything about everybody. And if the supermarket tabloids – titles like Star and US – were posting unflattering pap-shots of you looking bigger than you did when you were on a hit show in the 1990s, it was only a matter of time before the slightly more upmarket ones – yes, like People – would start offering you dollars to talk about how it feels to be fat-shamed next to the register-side mints across America, and, you know... what you were going to do about it. 

Which is exactly why what happened next, happened. Kirstie Alley took a deal with Jenny Craig, and sealed her destiny as a Woman Who Talks About Her Weight for eternity. 

In tabloid land – and, full disclosure, I worked in that world for a decade or so here in Australia – we loved Women Who Talked About Their Weight. Because in the twisted logic of the day, once a famous person went there, it was permanently on the table. And we had what we saw as free rein to show new pictures of their body next to old pictures of their body, to ask them about it, to publish their 'days on a plate' and to print big numbers next to their photo-shopped frames. 

Image: People.

Alley ran with this more than most. 

In 2005, she created a show called Fat Actress. She played a heightened version of herself, recruited her famous friends like John Travolta and Kid Rock to cameo, was constantly filmed eating burgers and cold-cuts and trying to zip up too-small clothes and subjected herself to lines from her "assistants" (played by actors) like: "Your ass is like the back of a cab." 

It ran for a season. 

She wrote a book called How To Lose Your Ass And Regain Your Life: Reluctant Confessions of a Big-Butted Star. 

The blurb read: "Alley's account gives readers an intimate look into her life while providing a hilarious view of being overweight in a skinny-obsessed world. Whether readers are struggling with weight or personal integrity – or if they're just looking for love and happiness – they'll identify with Alley's experiences. She tells it like it is and helps us laugh at ourselves (and others)."

And she – more than once – signed lucrative deals with Jenny Craig, creating a convenient narrative arc for the magazines who wanted to run her body image 'before and afters' with impunity. 

Listen to this episode of The Spill, where Emily Gillespie and Melissa Mason look back at the life of Kirstie Alley. Post continues after audio. 

Today, Alley would be accused of being complicit in toxic diet culture for signing those deals, writing that show, and publishing that book.

But it's possible to understand how, when you've been subjected to years of constant scrutiny and taunts – Star magazine once ran a cover shot of Alley with the all-caps line 'TOO FAT FOR SEX', and she was regularly declared near-death by The National Enquirer – a woman would begin to question why she couldn't take control of this narrative herself. 

When Alley appeared on Celebrity Big Brother in 2018, she expressed how it was almost an act of rebellion, profiting from the endless fascination with a public body that refused to conform to the 'Size Zero' standard of the time.

"I decided I’m going to write a show called Fat Actress. And I’m going to get an account with a weight loss company – and I did," she said with pride.

The Kirstie Alley you're remembering will depend on your age. Maybe you are old enough to have a soft spot for Look Who's Talking. Maybe you more recently saw her on Tucker Carlson clips, espousing the "dangers" of admitting you voted for Trump. 

Or maybe you remember all those magazine covers of her in a series of unflattering stolen snaps or in the contrasting posed and glossy body-con dresses, being asked about what she eats and how much she weighs. 

Giving the people what they wanted.

Feature Image: Getty/The National Enquirer/People/Mamamia.