Kate Hudson Gets Real About Being Body-Shamed by Tabloids in the 2000s: ‘It Was Like Harassment’
Kate Hudson is opening up about how being body–shamed early in her career affected her self-confidence and dating life.
In a recent episode of SiriusXM’s Let’s Talk Off Camera podcast, the 43-year-old actress spoke to host Kelly Ripa about the near-constant body-shaming she endured from tabloids in the 2000s. “There was so much tabloid stuff. Like, when I got really famous, there was so much,” she recalled. “There were so many lies. … It was like harassment, eating away at me. It was so negative.”
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As Yahoo noted, Hudson ended up suing the National Enquirer for libel damages after the magazine falsely called her “way too thin” in 2005.
“[The press was] so mean to women,” the actress told Ripa. “I mean, the body-shaming — from being too skinny, to too fat, to then going up your skirt and from the cellulite.”
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Unfortunately, she’s right, especially in the context of female celebrities. The recent body positivity movement has helped a bit, although in the age of social media, everyone has a forum to comment on famous people’s appearances. It often feels like a lose-lose situation: No matter what women in the limelight look like, their appearances are still subject to scrutiny.
The tabloids’ fixation on Hudson impacted her romantic relationships, too. For years, the actress felt like she “couldn’t speak to a man without being partnered with him. Like, literally, I couldn’t sit and say hello to someone.”
Today, the Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery star has learned how to tune out the chatter, but it took her a long time to get to this place.
“There was so much of it at such a rate that I couldn’t in any way comprehend, that I just realized I need to figure out how to not care about any of this,” she added. “You just realize that you’re letting them win the more you feel bad. If I’m going to allow this negative energy to get into me, then they win. I’ve given them all my power.”
Hudson joins a growing number of celebrities who’ve spoken out about the dangers of body-shaming, including Selena Gomez. Although popular media often comments on celebs’ bodies, this disparaging talk reinforces Hollywood’s ultra-narrow, totally unrealistic beauty standards. Not to mention, it’s usually littered with toxic diet culture rhetoric.
Take it from Lizzo, who recently used her platform to denounce body-shamers and point out how they’re wasting their time.
“Do we realize that artists are not here to fit into your beauty standards?” the “About Damn Time” singer and body positivity activist said in an Instagram post. “Artists are here to make art. And this body is art. And I’m going to do whatever I want with this body. I wish that comments costed you all money, so we [could] see how much time we are fucking wasting on the wrong thing.”
Diet talk got you down? Check out these powerful quotes to inspire healthier attitudes around food:
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