During an interview on The Jamie Kern Lima Show, Chelsea Handler discussed how her relationship with her body image has improved since her younger years.
Around 33 minutes into the podcast, Lima mentioned that 91 percent of women avoid meaningful activities when they feel bad about their appearance, asking Handler if she’d experienced this.
“Yes, of course, I’m a woman,” replied the 50-year-old comedian. “I’ve done the same thing in my twenties. I would weigh myself 15 times a day. If I weighed a certain amount, I wouldn’t go out that night. I would exercise. I would run for two hours on the beach and then come back and weigh myself to see how much water weight I lost. … Such a waste. I’ve wasted so many hours about my body image.”
Handler expressed frustration that “every woman in this world deals with that,” noting little progress has been made regarding unrealistic body standards.
“Even though we’re beginning the conversations, it’s going to take another thousand years for girls to understand everyone is different. You all have different parts. So yes, I am a victim of the very same thing,” she continued. “I still care about what I look like in a bathing suit. I’m much more freer about the fact that I do have cellulite and it’s not shameful.”
She mentioned taking better care of herself to look her “strongest” and “healthiest,” lifting weights and training regularly so she can “ski like a badass.”
“I also want to look good,” Handler admitted. “I’m not somebody that you can excise from that argument and say that I don’t feel that way. I do care about the way I look and I wish we had an answer but I don’t have the answer for that. I don’t know.”
Earlier in the chat, Handler revealed she hits the slopes in a bikini for her annual birthday celebration. “Sometimes I’ve been topless,” she mentioned, noting her nieces and nephews have asked her to stop. “It is slightly vulgar. But it’s not vulgar—it’s freeing, it’s freeing,” she explained. “I understand where they’re coming from.”
Check out the complete interview above.
