Gillian Anderson feels fat, too

Body image issues affect us all

From a Sept. 14 New York Times profile on the actress Gillian Anderson:

In 1998, when Gillian Anderson posed for the cover of the now-defunct feminist

magazine Jane, she had already been voted the “world’s sexiest woman” by the

readers of FHM magazine. She had also recently won a Golden Globe and two

Screen Actors Guild Awards for her role as the F.B.I. special agent Dr. Dana

Scully on “The X-Files.”

But on the day of the shoot, all she could think about was how fat she felt.

Wait, what? Gillian Anderson, the gorgeous and talented actress whom millions of people have crushed on since her X-Files days, thought she was fat?

I actually was glad to read this. Too often, media make it seem as if body image issues are the province only of those on the extremes. But body image issues so insidious it’s difficult to find any woman who hasn’t struggled with them, myself included. And the more we hear about women like Anderson who have struggled with perceptions of themselves, the more we can bring it into the open and crush it.

Is anyone else tired? Is anyone else tired of feeling bad about themselves for not meeting an impossible standard? Is anyone else tired of not listening to their bodies and instead restricting and withholding when in all actuality, all we want to do is eat a damn cookie? I know I am.

The article quotes Anderson: ‘“So much of my youth, at a time when I could have — should have — been as happy as you can imagine,’ was spent obsessing over perceived flaws.”

Leave a comment if any of this resonates with you.

And join me in getting Anderson’s new book, Want.