14 Times Celebrities Got Real About Facing Body Image Issues
You can talk to a million people and you wouldn’t find one person who is perfectly content with the way they look. Everyone is struggling with a supposed flaw that transforms into another flaw once you’ve managed to ‘correct’ the first one. We look at the perfectly styled and polished images of celebrities in magazines and our Instagram feeds and immediately put them on a pedestal they never asked for. In recent years, many celebrities have come forward to talk about how much they still struggle with body image issues.
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Most recently, supermodel Bella Hadid revealed that she had gotten a nose job at the age of 14 to look prettier. Hadid admitted that she had always felt like the “uglier sister” and her insecurities led her to get the appearance-altering surgery. The model says that she regrets her decision now and wished that she had stuck with her old nose, a feature she got from her Palestinian ancestors.
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We have compiled a list of celebrities, from Sonam Kapoor to Taylor Swift, who have opened up about facing body image issues and insecurities so that it can inspire you and serve as a reminder that we should learn to be happy with ourselves and that everyone is going through the same struggles, albeit on different levels…
Celebrities Who Opened Up About Facing Body Image Issues
Priyanka Chopra Jonas
In an appearance on The View, the former Miss World revealed how she faced criticism on her body at the beginning of her career. “Before I became an actor, I met a producer about the possibility of acting. I was a beauty pageant winner at that time, Miss World. And he said that everything was wrong about me. He said my nose was not proportionate, the shape of my body was not proportionate,” she said, adding that her body fluctuates between sizes naturally and now she’s fine with it.
Kylie Jenner
It’s no news that the Kardashian-Jenner siblings are heavily scrutinised for each and every move they make, including their physical appearance. In a 2017 episode of Life With Kylie, the cosmetic mogul admitted to getting plastic surgery done on her lips after facing criticism.
Sonam Kapoor Ahuja
The Neerja actress has never shied away from stripping away the glossy facade of stardom for her many online followers. Kapoor makes it a point to highlight the effort that goes into her looking like the way she does on and off-screen to assert that nobody is born perfect. In an open letter for Buzzfeed India, the actress wrote, “Like every girl, I spent many nights through adolescence leaning into my bedroom mirror, wondering why my body looked nothing like it should. Why does my belly crease? Why do my arms jiggle? Why am I not fair? Why are there dark patches under my eyes? Why am I taller than boys my age? Do stretch marks ever go away? Will this cellulite stay forever? “Itni lambi, itni kaali,” a relative casually let slip at a family gathering. “Shaadi kaun karega?” It confirmed that my greatest insecurities were well-founded,” she wrote, “I constantly worried that, if asked to dance in a backless choli, rolls of back fat would give me away as an imposter to the industry. Nobody lines up to buy tickets to see cellulite. The ball is in the media’s court to celebrate fit bodies rather than thin ones, and to know the difference. I know now that there’s nothing wrong with stretch marks, cellulite, or scars. They’re markers of our growth. There’s beauty in their realness.”
Parineeti Chopra
When the actress got in shape after shedding a tonne of weight, she received criticism for conforming to Bollywood’s standards of beauty and fitness as she was one of the few ‘real’ actresses in the industry. Chopra said that she had never asked for the tag and she had lost weight to feel better about herself. In an Instagram post, the actress talked about how she would feel under confident about the way she would look on camera and that she consciously made an effort to get fit to feel better about herself.
Demi Lovato
On The Ellen Show, the former Disney star recounted their horrifying struggles with eating disorders because of their management. The pop star recalled that phones from their hotel rooms were removed, lest they called for room service to order food and all forms of fruit were kept away from them. They also revealed that each year she was only allowed to eat one piece of fruit covered with fat-free whipped cream in place of a birthday cake. Thankfully, they got a new management team that did away with these restrictions and they could finally do what they wanted.
Taylor Swift
In her documentary Miss Americana, the singer opened up about how seeing headlines about her appearance would lead her to starve herself so that she could look better on camera. “I would’ve defended it to anyone who said, ‘I’m concerned about you.’ I was like, ‘What are you talking about? Of course, I eat. It’s perfectly normal. I just exercise a lot.’ And I did exercise a lot. But I wasn’t eating.” She admitted that she realised she needed food to gain energy to perform on-stage and this realisation led to a healthier attitude towards food.
Sam Smith
The singer took to Instagram to share a shirtless photo of themselves, writing, “In the past, if I have ever done a photo shoot with so much as a T-shirt on, I have starved myself for weeks in advance and then picked and prodded at every picture and then normally taken the picture down... Yesterday I decided to fight the fuck back.” They added that they’ve decided to reclaim their body after years of trauma related to their body image and is happy to show off their body now.
Ileana D’Cruz
The actress opened up about her struggles with coping with Body Dysmorphia at the 21st World Congress of Mental Health. D’Cruz revealed that there was a time when she even contemplated suicide because of her body image issues. Later, in an Instagram post, she wrote, “I’ve always worried about how I looked. I’ve worried my hips are too wide, my thighs too wobbly, my waist not narrow enough, my tummy not flat enough, my boobs not big enough, my butt too big, my arms too jiggly, nose not straight enough, lips not full enough... I’ve worried that I’m not tall enough, not pretty enough, not funny enough, not smart enough, not ‘perfect’ enough. Not realising I was never meant to be perfect. I was meant to be beautifully flawed. Different. Quirky. Unique. Every scar, every bump, every ‘flaw’ just made me, me. My own kind of beautiful. That’s why I’ve stopped. Stopped trying to conform to the world’s ideals of what’s meant to be beautiful. I’ve stopped trying so hard to fit in. Why should I?? When I was born to stand out.”
Jameela Jamil
The Good Place actress has been one of the few celebrities who have been crusaders of body positivity online. In a 2019 interview, Jamil opened up about how she had always struggled with Body Dysmorphia ever since she was weighed in front of her classmates at the age of 14. “I was really unhappy and I think it contributed to my ability to have an eating disorder for so long, because there was no one kind of monitoring me and I had no one to turn to with my sadness and bad feelings, so I just had a really rough time as a teenager.”
Lorde
In an interview, the singer shared that she had always been fine with the way she looked until she became famous. It was when she read the criticism about her physical features from strangers online that she started facing body image issues. Thankfully, she was able to build a safe space around her that helped her deal with these issues in a healthy way and accept herself the way she was.
Lisa Haydon
In an interview, Lisa Haydon spoke about the ‘thin shaming’ she had to face while growing up. “People always think that if you’re on the larger side or you’re overweight, then you (develop) a complex. But I think being a really skinny kid (gives you a) complex too. I just remember being picked on for being a toothpick. Really skinny and really tall. Eventually, you fill out and then, you tend to not put on weight when you’re older. But, when you’re younger and if you’re really thin, people just make fun of you.“
Lili Reinhart
The Riverdale actress has been open about living with Body Dysmorphia, always asserting that it can affect anyone, regardless of their size. At the 2018 Glamour’s Women Of The Year Summit, Reinhart talked about how she would endlessly examine her body in the mirror, worrying about how it would change constantly. The actress also spoke about how we’re conditioned to think that way and such insecurities can take a long time to disappear.
Miley Cyrus
During an Instagram Live, the pop star revealed that she had stopped wearing shorts after reading the comments people made about her body and the outfit she wore during her 2013 VMAs performance. “I was just starting to understand myself as an independent person, and it was just really, really hurtful to be so body-shamed like that. It really affected me in my personal life.”
Billie Eilish
In an interview, the singer revealed that the reason she’s always wearing baggy, over-sized clothes is that she had never felt comfortable with her shape. She attributed this to the perfect bodies she would see on social media all the time, leading her to start doubting herself. “I know the ins and outs of this industry, and what people actually use in photos, and I actually know what looks real can be fake. Yet I still see it and go, oh God, that makes me feel really bad. And I mean, I’m very confident in who I am, and I’m very happy with my life… I’m obviously not happy with my body.”
