14 DAY TRIAL // Wendy Williams is 50 years old now and, she says in a new interview with People magazine, she’s never felt better about herself and more confident in her life. The talk show host, who is now doing stand-up comedy as well, also tells the publication about her troubled younger years and her painful miscarriages.
Wendy has always struggled with her weight and she never made a secret about it. Today, she’s thinner and healthier, but also happier because she’s finally embraced her insecurities and accepted that the ideal of perfection she was chasing doesn’t exist.
“I'm 5 foot 11 [1.80m], 165 lbs. [74.8 kg] and I love my body at this point in my life,” she tells the publication. In a previous interview, Wendy admitted that she had been fat-shamed in school and that this scarred her for life.
“Honestly, my life before 21 sucked,” she adds. “My first diet was in the first grade! Tuna fish and mustard with yogurt on the side. Weight was a big thing for me to overcome.”
As she grew older, she also started using illegal substances as a means to cope with all her insecurities. “Drugs were a demon I had to overcome,” she tells People magazine of her decade-long struggle with cocaine.
Today, Wendy is feeling more confident and happier than ever, but at the same time, she’s just as outspoken as before, if not actually more so, because she wants to tell other women in a similar situation that things will eventually get good again.
The same goes for the marital drama she went through when she miscarried a couple of times. “Life is hard on us women,” Wendy says in a very matter-of-fact manner.
Everything about Wendy is straight to the point: in July this year, she addressed a very old Internet rumor about how she was actually a drag queen, joking that she “gets it” when people say these things online because she’s heavy set, she has a deep voice and a love of wigs that is almost proverbial.
In the video below, also from People magazine, Wendy talks about how her relationship with her husband has matured with the years. At 50, she laughs, she’s earned the right to be her own person.
Whether you like Wendy as a talk show host or not, whether you agree with the things she says on other topics or not, there’s no denying that she’s striving to be really honest about these issues and that she’s actually hoping her coming clean about them might help other women too.
Being fat-shamed is a reality for many girls and women still, so perhaps some of them will find comfort in hearing from someone as famous as Wendy that she too went through the same when she was younger.