14 DAY TRIAL // For a few days now, there's been a lot of talk in the media about how actress Octavia Spencer, more recently seen in the critically acclaimed “The Help,” had admitted to not being the “healthiest” weight, which even cost her some movie roles.
In a lengthy post on her Facebook page, Spencer sets the record straight: she did say her weight was a reason of concern to her, but only as far as it affected her health.
In other words, she has no intention of torturing herself in the manner other female stars have done, just to attain an impossible ideal of beauty set by the industry and maintained by the media.
Also here, she rips into said media for constantly promoting standards of beauty that are not real and, in the process, ruining the lives of millions of women – and their children, who grow up to believe this is what they should aspire to.
“First of all, Ladies and Gents here's what i am NOT DOING....I am NOT WORRYING ABOUT MY WEIGHT! I AM NOT TRYING TO CONFORM TO an unrealistic model of beauty,” the actress writes, in what is considered one of the best argumented and well presented essays on body image.
The focus for her, she says, is not on losing weight until she's a size 0 (or the closest to it), but of eating healthy. This may or may not translate into losing a few pounds.
“I AM however being proactive in being the healthiest I can be. And before you ask, NO, awards season is not the reason. I've been doing this for the past 10 years because it took that long to gain the weight! Right now, believe it or not, I'm pretty damn healthy! 20 LBS (max) is all I intend to lose,” she writes.
She then proceeds to accuse the media of being weight obsessed, saying that she would have never been asked at the 2012 SAG Awards how she felt about underweight women, had she not been on the curvy side.
“The weight obsessed media is destroying not only us but our children! Our culture is at the precipice of redefining who we are. Right now in this salacious age of the internet coupled with the 'beauty and fashion' industries respectively ONLY promoting a 'certain' kind of pretty, we've seen a dramatic increase in bullying, eating disorders and body dysmorphia among MALE and female teens. This is no joking matter,” Olivie writes.
She concludes her message by urging all those who are reading it to be happy in their own skin and to strive to be as healthy as possible. What others say don't even matter.
Here is Olivia Spencer's full essay. It's worth a read.