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Hollywood movies are so linked with magazine covers and a public image that you run the risk of having actresses homogenized, where there's only one ideal of beauty.  That's unfortunate, but my new philosophy is that, as an actor, your body and the way you look are your instrument, and you just sort of hone that.  Julia Stiles .....[Houston Chronicle Dec 24 2004] photo at left from julia-stiles.com ; at right from "Mona Lisa Smile"

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Actress Drea de Matteo is elated to be playing a character older than her own age in upcoming sitcom Joey - because she'll never have to worry about getting Botox shots to look young.  The screen star recently departed from hit mob drama The Sopranos and is currently preparing to hit screens as Matt Le Blanc's sister next month. And while her character is required to wear fake breasts, nails and hair, she's glad she won't have to make herself look younger.  She says, "I don't have to worry about being shot up with Botox. You want people to see you and what you've been through; your face is a map to your world, a door to your soul. When you start to hide it, you're not giving yourself to your audience. I don't like this pristine world." [imdb.com 31 Aug 2004]

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.. .. Naomi Watts : One thing I've noticed about your work is that you're one of the few women who's able to let go of all self-consciousness and abandon all vanity. Laura Dern : I will totally accept that compliment, even though it's hard for me to hear it, because I need to remind myself that I've been willing to do that.  Someone will always be there to say, "Don't you want to play the pretty girl?' But a part of me is going, "I want more herpes on that face!"

I was raised by an actress, and I watched all those women turn 60 and ask, "Should I get face work?"  And my mother and Anne Bancroft said to each other, "We are who we are, and we're not going to fall into that."  Something scary is going on in our generation of women, because there are 35-year-old actresses who have completely redone their faces.  We're 35! We're kids! And yet we're questioning whether we should be altering ourselves.  I'm supposed to just be an actor and be honest and authentic. I'm not supposed to look a certain way. Laura Dern Interview mag. Aug. 2004 / photo by Dimitrios Kambouris ©WireImage

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.. .. Ingrid Bergman.. was offered a part in the 1968 movie Planet Of The Apes opposite Charlton Heston and, according to her actress daughter Isabella Rossellini, was keen to appear so she could "disregard her regal bearing".  Rossellini tells London's Time Out newspaper, "She badly regretted turning down a part... I remember going to see one of those monkey movies with her and she was astounded at how well it had turned out.

.. .. "I know she was tired of playing roles which wouldn't allow her to discard her regal bearing. I think she realized that all those putty muzzles the ape actors would have liberated her from her image in an instant.  "But she hesitated, the part went to someone else, and she and Charlton Heston never again came as close to working together." [imdb.com 27 April 2004] ---bio: Notorious : The Life of Ingrid Bergman left : Kim Hunter as Animal Psychologist Dr. Zira

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Carmen Electra is considering having her breasts reduced. She had her chest size boosted in the 90s, but now often has regrets about not having stayed natural. Electra says, "I had nice breasts to begin with. They weren't the biggest boobs (but) I just think it was really trendy (to have implants) at a certain time and I decided to do it. "There's moments when I think it's kind of silly and I wish I would've just stayed natural." She adds of her husband Dave Navarro, "He actually wants me to get 'em bigger but I said no."      [contactmusic.com 02/08/2004]

 

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.. .. I noticed there has been a lot of talk about people's appearances lately and I'm going to give you my opinion cuz I can.  For all of you out there who don't think you are good enough or pretty enough or skinny enough, forget about it because it's not important. Your faith in yourself is all you will ever have. Do not let anyone take it from you ever.

I've met beautiful, smart women in this business who are miserable because they are always trying to live up to someone else's expectations.  I didn't grow up with a lot of money. And now that I can afford food I can't see a reason to starve myself because someone decided somewhere that all actresses had to be stick figures.  I go to the gym to be strong and healthy. I ride horses and dirt bikes because it's fun.  I want every little girl out there to take care of themselves as they would take care of their best friend.  Be proud of who you are and do not let anyone tell you can't do something. Only you can decide what you are capable of. Holly Marie Combs - from official site forum

 

*related page:.....self-limiting

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Cybill Shepherd is most insightful, however, on the subject of her beauty -- how it served her ambitions but ultimately isolated her and stunted her emotional growth. "It's a kind of mask that I sit behind and watch people react to," she says. "Beauty opens or closes doors, brings out love, falsity, and cruelty." It was her beauty that delivered her to New York City as the Model of the Year in '68 and mesmerized filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich. Yet she was also intellectually restless, skeptical of superficial adulation even as she was craving it. She sought out teachers who would inspire her to develop other parts of herself.

"I remember [acting teacher] Stella Adler, one of my mentors, once saying to me, 'You're not really beautiful. You have an Irish snout. You just think you're beautiful.' " /// "People disliked her for being successful and beautiful and not apologizing for it," Bogdanovich says. "She was sexy and striking and smart, and it was a little bit too much for people. A lot of men were threatened." For her part, says Shepherd, "I felt like an imposter." She kept her mouth shut in the company of their friends Orson Welles, Larry McMurtry, and John Ford, soaking up their stories and reading voraciously the books they recommended. "She'd knock off a couple of fat books a month," Bogdanovich recalls. "She read all seven volumes of Proust -- it was amazing." from article : Cybill Liberties - by Nancy Griffin, AARP magazine July/Aug 2004

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I have a tremendous sympathy for tall girls. I probably was 5'8" when I was 12 years old. I was really obscenely tall compared to my other classmates. ...  I think that probably added to my sense of separation, my lack of coordination because my feet were too big, hands too big, head too big, the whole thing. I think when you're tall, you take some growing into. ... I had big lips and a big nose and huge eyes... my mother thought I was cute, of course. ...  Being the new kid a lot, you tend to find the extracurriculars that make you comfortable and theater was one of my major outlets. Uma Thurman  -  Biography Magazine August 2002 - posted on uma-thurman.net / photo: age 15

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I love butterflies. They're metamorphosis. They prove you can be beautiful and then become  even more beautiful... You can become as beautiful as you want to be. Beauty is a good thing.     Drew Barrymore .... [Jane, Sep/Oct 1997] ~ ~ I'm so comfortable in my skin... I had to go through tons and tons of sh*t to get there.     Drew Barrymore  ... [LA Times, May 14, 1995] ~ ~ photos l-r from books : Barrymore's butterfly tattoo from Tattoo Nation: Portraits of Celebrity Body Art Bodies of Subversion 2 Ed: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo by Margot Mifflin The New Tattoo by Victoria Lautman, Vicki Berndt ~ ~ *more on tattoos on page: cutting / self-injury

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Robert Redford.has slammed Hollywood's "sick obsession" with plastic surgery - vowing never to go under the knife. The 64-year-old actor accepts he's lost his youthful looks... but he refuses to resort to the knife to turn back time - because it saps people's souls.  He rallies, "Everyone in Tinseltown is getting pinched, lifted and pulled. It's becoming a sick obsession. They lose some of their soul when they go under the knife, and they end up looking body-snatched. So what if my face is falling apart? I don't give a damn. Anyway, it gives me character." ... [imdb.com  PeopleNews  Jan. 10, 2002]

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Marcia Gay Harden Told To Get Surgery  To Be A Success Oscar-winning actress Marcia Gay Harden was warned she'd never be a success in Hollywood if she didn't alter the shape of her nose. The Pollock star was given the advice by a producer - who even recommended a surgeon to do the job.

Harden, 42, says, "He said, 'Unless you get it fixed, you will never work as an actress. He handed me a card that had a plastic surgeon's name on it." The budding young actress was devastated, but in the end, she simply refused to go under the knife.  She explains, "I went home and cried for a couple of hours. Then I got so angry, I decided I was going to 'show him' by hanging in there and not giving up."  The hard work paid off when Harden won the Best Supporting Actress award this year for her role in Pollock. [imdb.com/PeopleNews 10.8.01]

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On camera you gain 10 pounds, so when you see these people in real life and you realize how skinny they are, it's scary. And they're always talking about dieting and about not eating and working out and everything.  There'd be times when I'd go, "Oh yeah, I need to start working out more and I need to eat differently and I need to do this or that." And then I'd go out into the real world where everyone is normal-sized and I was like, "What am I doing?!" When I was 13 and old enough to realize what the business was about, I made a commitment that I would never change myself for the industry. Because there was so much pressure. A manager once said to me, "Oh, you need to lose a little weight." I'm a skinny girl, I mean, I'm very petite. So for me to lose weight is just a ridiculous thing! And there was another time when a manager said, "You know, you should change your appearance. You might need to get a nose job and maybe a boob job." And I was like, "No!"

.. .. But the thing is, she made me doubt myself. So I decided that never again would I let anyone make me doubt myself. I'm in this industry because I love it and that's great. But I love myself more and I would never jeopardize my self-esteem for anyone. It's not worth it. .....Beverley Mitchell from article Out of This World - Beverley Mitchell talks about airbrushing, body image and the beauty of imperfections by Lori Gottlieb - chickclick.com 2001-10-25

 

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When I first became an actress, I was told I didn't look right.. I had to dye my hair blonde, wear falsies... That all helps to make your mind alienate you from what you are, not only inside, but outside.   Jane Fonda

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I feel like the best design I can have is an awareness of where I've come from so that I don't repeat myself. Luckily, my work provides me with a tremendous source of new opportunities. ... "Striptease" [her movie] has to do with the body, both the external and internal issues of it. And by moving through it, it changed me. It changed my perception of me... Of my body and of my acceptance of myself. ... Well, like many people, I think I'm my own worst critic. And I think I take a lot out in an internally abusive way, looking at how I measure up, which usually was never enough. I never, never was as good as someone else.     Demi Moore       [Interview mag., July, 1996]

..related page:.... perfectionism

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model / artist Raquel Salinas - about art and recovering from being raped:

'After years of support groups, one-on-one therapy and Alcoholics Anonymous
(nine years of being sober) -- she began her long process about feeling good again
about her body. To rid herself of her shame of her own body, she began to do nude
modeling at UCLA. Then she allowed herself to be artistically photographed in the nude.

Part of the controversial image ["Our Lady"] was an effort by her to complete her healing
from "the shame and the guilt." And the dialogue that has ensued "is part of the healing
process," she noted. "I feel good about my body. I carry no shame anymore. It's part of
what happened to me."     [Universal Press Syndicate, 4/20/01]

related page:   more about "Our Lady" by Alma Lopez: photography : page 3
 

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"Perhaps the deepest damage that sexual abuse can do to a child is to shake her trust
in her own instincts, so that s/he becomes a stranger and an outcast to her own body"

As R.D.Laing pointed out, this kind of divorce of the body and the self is developed at
the time of abuse as a necessary defence, but in adulthood, "the self wishes
to be wedded to and embedded in the body, yet is constantly afraid to lodge in the body
for fear of there being subject to attacks and dangers which it cannot escape."

from article:  Cognitive Accommodations to Childhood Sexual Abuse by Douglas Eby

 
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And I'm always doing something kind of "off." Because I can preach that black women need to present ourselves in a dignified light, because we've been represented as slutty or promiscuous. But I'll pose in a really short miniskirt, and maybe show cleavage. I love feeling sexy, and being sexy, and looking sexy. And I don't think that doing that means that I'm giving up what I believe in in terms of how I want to be perceived. ***Golden Brooks***[Playboy.com]

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Is there a big pressure in Hollywood on young girls to grow up quickly? Amanda Bynes: Definitely. I wouldn't want to stay 10 forever. You have to grow older gracefully. A lot of girls, what they do is they try and show their stomach and stuff. They think that's the only way. It's always better to have a bit of mystery. A lot of girls just give it all away.  It's important to respect yourself and other women. You have to be confident in yourself. A lot of girls are so insecure that they think the only way people will like them is if they look a certain way, the superficial side. ...[agirlsworld.com interview 2/16/02]

related page:....self-esteem / self concept

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Viola Davis is all too aware of what Hollywood makes of her as a dark-skinned black actress -- a point hammered home when she joined Steven Bochco's TV show "City of Angels," which made headlines in 2000 for being the first hourlong drama with an all-black cast. Despite the talent on board.. the show didn't last even a season. ... "Those characters in 'City of Angels' were people with lives," she says. "They were doctors and nurses, but they were also people with senses of humor, girlfriends, boyfriends, shortcomings." Davis says she's tired of seeing black women on screen as nameless nurses, judges and public defenders.

"I feel like with white women, there are different kinds of beauty," she says. "You have the pre-Raphaelite beauty, then you have the girl next door, then you have the geek princess like Janeane Garofalo. So you have them playing the different kinds of roles.  "With black women, you're either beautiful or you're not. I'm not even just talking pretty. If you're not a classical beauty, you're nothing. "And what happens at the end of the day is you don't want to carry that home with you. You don't want to believe that's what the world actually sees and believes about you. That's my thing." [LA Times December 1 2002] / photo: as scientist Helen Gordon in "Solaris"

*related page:.......social reactions / interactions

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There is so much peer pressure. I mean, not with drugs or cigarettes or anything, but with the fact that everybody has to look the same. You wake up in the morning and go, 'If I wear this, will I get made fun of? Will I be criticized, or will I be judged differently than everybody else because I'm not wearing something that everybody else is?' You have to be really careful in order to get people's attention in the right way. Everybody's got to make fun of somebody else. People make fun of me all the time because I'm overweight. It's just something you try to hide from, I guess. You don't want other people to see. - Lisa, 13 years old ....from  Lauren Greenfield. Girl Culture

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Alfre Woodard.. said her looks don't exactly fit Hollywood's standards on beauty. In fact, she said that when auditions called for "pretty Black girls," she would turn them down at one time. "I don't feel like a beautiful American woman," Woodard told the New York Daily News, "but I try to strike a blow for all the wide-nosed, bug-eyed, brown-skinned, grinning gum-chewing gals in West Virginia and Macon, GA, and all across Ghana and South Africa. I gotta strike a blow for freedom. I want little girls - all these very deep and Africanic-looking women - to sashay and say, 'Yeah, I look good.'" Woodard.. told the newspaper that she began to feel good about her looks after a trip to Zimbabwe some 12 years ago. There she realized she was cute after the African men and women told her she was "a little skinny, but so beautiful." She adds, "I felt like starting a fund to have every one of my nieces visit Africa immediately. You just realize everybody's beautiful if they just got to the right place."****[Jet, Jan 11, 1999]***[People Magazine named Woodard one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in America]

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In African-American society, there is a lot of leeway as far as body type. The ideal body is thick, not fat, kinda voluptuous. Big butt, big hips, big breasts, small waist, and long hair. I don't think a lot of girls in the African-American community focus on their body type.  If they aren't skinny, they don't care. If they're not voluptuous, they don't care. And if they're fat, they don't care. They eat what they want, and that's it. It's not as big an issue. A person like me, who's skinny all over, was not looked at as having a very attractive figure. In fact, they made fun of people like that. They used to call me anorexic, as a joke, because when I started high school, I was very skinny. But at UCLA, I'm told all the time, "Oh, you have the perfect body." Here, the perfect body is slender, like what you see in the magazines. - Nkechi, 18 years old *-from Girl Culture by Lauren Greenfield

 

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In her career Ms. Winokur has succeeded in steering clear of fat-girl roles and instead played character parts that have tapped her comic side.  In the film "Scary Movie," she got stuck in a dog door. "I was full-out committed to getting through that door," Ms. Winokur said. The scene was shot in one take, she said, and the director had to leave the set because he was laughing so hard. "I don't take jobs that are about the poor, pathetic fat girl," she said. "I think that's really important. Fortunately my agent agrees with me." ... When saleswomen bring her oversize clothes to try on, Ms. Winokur said, she protests, "No, I want clothes that fit me. I always wear tight clothes. I don't want them to cover up my body." The determined, feisty Tracy [her character] is the heart of "Hairspray," said Mr. O'Brien, the director. "Whatever else we're doing here, you have to fall in love with this girl, and you have to want desperately for her to succeed," he said. With Ms. Winokur, you do, he added. "Her smile is so lethal."

.. .. Inevitably, since "Hairspray," Ms. Winokur has been touted as a role model for large girls who might want to follow in her footsteps, and she said she felt the burden of breaking new ground.  "This is a role that has never been done on Broadway before," she said. "Here I am, the young character actress," she added. "I'm the lead this time." Marissa Jaret Winokur, 29, is five feet tall and a size 11/12, and "likes her skirts short and her T-shirts tight." Her character Tracy in "Hairspray" is 16 and "wide-eyed about the world."****[NY Times, August 21, 2002]

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The body image stuff just obliterates women's self-esteem. I'm never going to be the thinnest girl in Hollywood, or the smartest, or the funniest, or the richest. I finally came to peace with that. You have to let go of that garbage if you're going to get anywhere. It's so cool when I meet other actresses and know they don't give a rat's ass, either. That's why they'll be successful. You'll never be good if you're caught up in that. Reese Witherspoon....[ew.com 07/13/01] ~ ~ Reese Witherspoon attended an all-girls high school, which she says was a positive experience: "Those are such formative years, and it's really hard to know who you are if you're too caught up with what your makeup looks like or your hairdo." ... from interview

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*body image resources : books / sites

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