I started A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations in January of 2025 in hopes of having intimate and transformative conversations about body image with performing artists. While my initial focus was to talk with artists because of the level at which our bodies are involved in our work onstage and onscreen, as the series evolved over this past year, I’ve come to understand that it’s vital to highlight an array of humanity through this project. Everyone has a body image story. Do you want to share yours?
What started as a project to highlight performing artists’ body image stories has turned into a movement to showcase that every single person on this planet has a body image story - no matter who you are. My mission is to highlight these stories in hopes of:
* Demystifying taboo around body image in our image-obsessed culture
* Normalizing shared struggle within our physical beings
* Helping people feel seen, validated, and therefore less alone in their own journey towards liberation in their body
Subscribe over on Substack to get notified when I share a post, and please consider a paid plan to help support my work for either $10/month or $80/year.
If you’d like to be a part of the series, send me a DM or email me at themegangill@gmail.com. I’m currently booking virtual conversations for 2026, and I’d love to talk with you. If you’d like to remain anonymous but still share your body image story - there’s a form to do so! Please reach out via email, and I’ll send it over to you ◡̈
I’m so looking forward to either chatting with you for a conversation or hearing from you via the form and highlighting your body image story!
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Disclaimer: While I’m not a licensed therapist, registered dietician, or medical health professional and cannot speak to body image topics from a clinical, trauma-informed place, I am an expert of lived experience. I’m an academic of my own body, and I’m passionate about facilitating conversations with other humans about their relationships with their bodies. I believe it’s important to continue conversations about healthy body image in creative spaces as a means to heal individuals as well as the collective whole. But just know the information presented in this medium is not professional mental health advice or medical advice, and any questions or concerns you have should always be directed to your health providers.
Trigger Warning: In our conversation, we discuss injury, eating disorders, disordered eating, food intake, and exercise. Please take care of yourselves as you listen and avoid if these topics might be triggering for you.
Everyone, please welcome Halle Hunt to Continued Conversations! Halle and I met through mutual friends a few years ago, and I was so excited to bring her in for a conversation. She is the first pro athlete I’ve spoken with on this show, and she brings an extremely important lens to the conversation - being at the intersection of both athlete and model, and all that comes along with these two identities in terms of our bodies.
In our conversation, we discuss…
* Halle’s (very important) work in clinical research of medical devices and the impact of working on devices that are in people’s bodies and changing people’s lives in real time
* How Halle’s overall experience as a college athlete impacted her relationship to her body
* Her struggle with a stomach ulcer leading her to modify her diet, which led to being told she had an eating disorder, which then led to binge-eating
* The nuance of a trainer/teacher-athlete/student dynamic when the person in the position of power is concerned their student is struggling
* Halle’s struggle with depression, disordered eating, and body image issues during the pandemic
* Learning to take care of our bodies - learning what makes our bodies feel good and what doesn’t
* Eat the dang pizza
* Eating patterns on the road while traveling to different countries to play volleyball, and the nuance of spending the entirety of the trip alongside her partner (who may have different eating patterns) - and advocating for herself through it all
* Eating with other people and understanding we are each our own individual with our own food/eating preferences
* And ultimately doing what is best for you and your body.
Halle opened up about her story of struggle and redemption in such beautiful ways, and I am endlessly grateful for her vulnerability in sharing as much as she did in our conversation. We touched on an array of themes in the realm of body image, and I got chills multiple times listening back through to edit this one. I’m also excited to say Halle will be coming back on the show to continue our conversation and dive a bit deeper, but for now, and I cannot wait for you to hear Part 1 of our conversation!
Halle was a part of one of my very first sign days in Hermosa Beach for “What’s Your Favorite Thing About Your Body.” So in our conversation, she expanded on that saying that her favorite thing about her body is that it fuels her to do her sport.
“ Being able to trust my body, that I have prepared it enough to be able to go play the tournaments that I'm playing and win at the tournaments that I'm playing, and just being thankful that I can still do this after injury, sickness, all of those things. I'm just happy to be here, and I'm glad that my body lets me be here.” - Halle Hunt
“Especially with the whole, I don't know what else — the skinny epidemic that's going on in Hollywood right now, I feel like that's so important to find like the — especially modeling, it's like I'm applying for jobs and then looking at other people that are also applying for these jobs are, yes, fit models. They're this-big, fit models, and I'm just looking at them like, ‘Okay, I play my sport. Like, I can't lose that much weight and play my sport.’ And it's just nothing wrong with them at all. It's just I don't have the same structure as them.”
- Halle Hunt
Halle Hunt is a professional beach volleyball player and former Division I indoor and beach volleyball athlete. Outside of competition, she works in clinical research and models, balancing high-performance athletics with a career in healthcare. She is passionate about sharing her experiences as an athlete and encouraging others to pursue excellence both on and off the court.
Subscribe to the A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations newsletter + sign up for a paid plan to support me in creating more of this content for you ❤️🔥
If you want to be a part of the conversation… either reach out to me via email at themegangill@gmail.com to schedule a conversation or fill out this form to share your body image story anonymously.
A couple of notes to ensure this is a safe space for my guests to share their intimate and vulnerable body image stories in:
* These conversations are quite nuanced, complex, and oftentimes very vulnerable. Remember that everyone has their own body image story, and while someone else’s might look differently than yours, I encourage you to keep an open mind and stay empathetic.
* That being said, I welcome your support of my guests in the comments. Please be kind and considerate with your words.
* Thank you for being here. By sharing this type of content, my hope is to inspire collective reflection and cultural questioning. Thank you for supporting me in exploring the effects of our society’s beauty norms and body standards on human beings existing in today’s world.
Do you have a friend, family member, or peer who might be interested in being a part of the conversation? I’d be honored if you could help me spread the word about Continued Conversations!
While I’m not a licensed therapist, registered dietician, or medical health professional and cannot speak to body image topics from a clinical, trauma-informed place, I am an expert of lived experience. I’m an academic of my own body, and I’m passionate about facilitating conversations with other humans about their relationships with their bodies. I believe it’s important to continue conversations about healthy body image in creative spaces as a means to heal individuals as well as the collective whole. But just know the information presented in this medium is not professional mental health advice or medical advice, and any questions or concerns you have should always be directed to your health providers.
Trigger Warning: On our conversation, we discuss some themes around food intake, exercise, and body alterations. Please take care of yourselves as you listen and avoid if these topics might be triggering for you.
Everyone please welcome Aidan Rees to Continued Conversations! Aidan and I have known each other for a long time now, and I was so excited to sit down with her to talk body image. We both met in the acting space, and Aidan is both a brilliant actor, teacher, and all-around creative human being. I cannot wait for you to dive into this one!
In our conversation, we discussed…
* “Creative person” is a real title of work
* Losing her mom at an early age and growing up with her dad leading the charge when it comes to body stuff
* Conscious curiosity about the distinct nuances of our own bodies
* Training our brains to divert to neutrality when it comes to what our bodies look like
* Embracing the things about our bodies we’re taught to dislike
* Meeting aging with open arms instead of trying to fight it
* Seeing the uniqueness and the beauty in others instead of immediately comparing yourself to them
* Shutting down negative self-talk narratives when they come up in conversations we’re involved in
* Properly fueling our bodies and removing the narrative of “bad” food
* Rejecting societal beauty standards
* The body liberation movement and learning how capitalism and patriarchy impact how we view our bodies
* Truly examining the why behind your choices when it comes to your body
Aidan shared so much of her story and also dropped some incredible knowledge in our conversation. We went deep into the body image talk, and we unpacked a LOT in this hour-long chat. Please, please enjoy Aidan’s brilliance and thoughts and shares. I walked away from our conversation thinking about these themes and topics for days after, and I hope that you take as many golden nuggets away from our converstion that I did!
Get full access to Continued Conversations with Megan Gill at
Continued Conversations with Shalon Dozier
Tuesday, February 24, 2026 • Duration 50:30
Everyone please welcome Shalon Dozier to A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations! Shalon is a plus fit model (for brands like Skims, Good American, Cato, Adidas and any popular brand in Nordstrom’s, Target, Walmart). She is also the owner of The Dozier Agency in Los Angeles, CA, which is a plus-size fashion consultation firm who consults brands on what plus-size women want when it comes to their clothing. She and I met modeling for some of the same clients, and I knew I wanted to bring her in for a conversation about body image.
Shalon has been a range of sizes on the spectrum, and her story of realizing she didn’t have to change her body to have success as a fit model gives me chills.
In our conversation, we discuss…
* How Shalon got her start in the fit model industry
* Her realization and understanding that her body and its biggest was needed in this industry, and she could maintain it
* The feeling when a friend asks if she fit a plus-size garment because it actually fits well
* How fit modeling is not for the faint of heart
* The lack of plus-size representation in the rooms where decisions are being made about plus-size fashion
* The lack of inclusion of plus-size bodies in the fashion industry as a whole
* Taking action to make this industry more inclusive for plus-size bodies
* How being discovered by Torrid kick-started her whole career and catapulted her into an inclusivity revolution
* Understanding the history of fashion and where the standards originated
* Rewriting the narrative to de-center the male gaze in the fashion industry
* Remembering the “why” behind the work we do as fit models
* The keys to being a great fit model
* How Shalon ended up founding her agency
Shalon is a gem of a human being and an extremely knowledgeable model. This was such an educational conversation to be part of, and I hope you take so much away from the intersection of Shalon’s expertise and lens on the state of the industry and being a plus model in today’s fashion industry climate. Shalon is truly for the girls and women she works with and represents, and I cannot wait for you to hear our conversation!
Get full access to Continued Conversations with Megan Gill at
Continued Conversations with Cornelia Hanes
Tuesday, February 3, 2026 • Duration 49:01
Everyone please welcome Cornelia Hanes to A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations! Cornelia and I met in acting class - she’s a phenomenal actress and filmmaker, as well as a lovely human being. The intersection of her work in both the fitness and entertainment industries, not to mention her being a new mama, makes for a vital conversation about body image. There is so much to take away from what we chat about and what Cornelia shares.
In our conversation, we discuss…
* Doing the inner work to love your body for all it can do
* Feeling strong and calling on your body to do incredible things
* Creating messy, real, raw female characters in raw, real, messy films
* The physical body changes along with the habitual diet/movement changes being a new mom brings
* The beauty in feeling strong as hell
* Our deepest insecurities will always be with us
* Challenging our modern concept of beauty standards
* Raising her daughter to non-negotiably care for her body through leading by example
Our conversation is full of golden nuggets Cornelia shares about her journey with her body, and I’m so excited for you to listen in!
“The other day, I was in a parking garage, and the elevators – one didn’t work and one was working, but there was a long line. This was a holiday, so that’s why I didn’t – there was just a lot of people there. And I was like, all right. After seven minutes standing in this queue for getting in the elevator, I was like, I’m just gonna take the stairs. So I took the stroller with my – she’s probably 25 pounds at this point – and the diaper bag, and I just lifted it and walked the stairs. I loved being able to do that. I was like I got this. I’m just gonna carry all of this. And then as I got to where I was going, I met a woman who had two toddlers, and she saw me and she just nodded her head and she’s like, “Hell yeah, strong mom.” And I was like, Ugh. I love the mom community.”
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Continued Conversations with Roxana Venzor Garcia
Tuesday, January 20, 2026 • Duration 58:50
Everyone please welcome my dear friend Roxana Venzor Garcia to A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations! As Roxana and I have become closer friends this year, she has been so receptive to my deep affinity and love for talking about body image online. Slowly but surely, she would respond to my posts and share bits and pieces of her story with me. She then came to me with her story being diagnosed with alopecia areata and how much it changed the way she viewed her body, saying how much the work I’ve been doing has inspired her (which, like, INSTANT TEARS for me), and I knew I had to ask her to come have a conversation with me. I’m just amazed at how vulnerable and willing to share her story Roxana was, even though she was nervous and didn’t know she’d ever find herself in a place to share this story without breaking down, and I’m so beyond grateful she trusted this space with me to explore it verbally. This is a powerful conversation on so many levels, and I cannot wait for you to listen!
In our conversation, we discuss…
* Roxana’s upbringing in a culture that normalizes commenting on bodies
* Roxana’s bout with diet pills and an ED
* The cultural norm of never being satisfied with our bodies
* Her journey with alopecia areata
* The direct correlation between treating our bodies well and our overall health and wellness
* The emotional rollercoaster from diagnosis to treatment to healing and everything in between
* The trauma of losing your hair, especially as a woman
* The importance of caring for our mental health in order to be physically healthy too
* The power of sharing your struggles online to reach those who need to hear what you’re going through to not feel alone in their struggle
* How meaningful basic support from friends and family actually is
* Working through no longer letting our bodies define who we are
* Finding the gratitude, appreciation, and tenderness for the body that you have
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Continued Conversations with Dona Gill (My Mom!)
Tuesday, January 6, 2026 • Duration 24:55
Everyone please welcome my mama, Dona Gill, to A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations! I somehow swindled her into sitting down with me when I was home over Thanksgiving to have a conversation. She was hesitant to say yes, but I’m so thankful she did because I walked away from our conversation a more empowered woman.
In our conversation, we discuss…
* When little kids start to recognize their bodies are different
* SlimFast, Zumba, and all of the diets/workouts we tried as I was growing up
* The dynamic between my mom and her mom as she was growing up
* Older generations of women being raised for survival vs. 90s kids being raised to harp on every physical flaw
* Body comparison and desire to hide your body
* Finding your own personal priorities when it comes to our health and your movement practice
* How our relationship with seeing yourself in the mirror vs. seeing yourself in photos can be so different
* Complimenting others and receiving compliments yourself (Mama Gill is here for the compliments!)
* The cultural acceptance of a belly being viewed as beautiful when pregnant and unattractive when not
* The experience of looking in the mirror and seeing your mother
This conversation could have gone so many ways, and it was lovely to follow where it led. (Though I know I want to have her back for another conversation in 2026!) I’m so grateful for my mom - she raised me the best she could. She put me in dance and gave me the gift of mobility and flexibility without even recognizing that’s what she was doing. She moved with me in Zumba classes and at little boutique gyms for women because it was a fun way for us to connect. My body image issues didn’t fully stem from her as much as they stemmed from social and cultural conditioning, and for that I am grateful. But being a woman in today’s society comes with its inherent body image norms and standards that we naturally gravitate towards adhering to. It was intriguing to explore some of these topics with my mom and hear her thoughts.
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Continued Conversations with Amy Geist
Tuesday, December 23, 2025 • Duration 46:14
Everyone please welcome Amy Geist to A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations! Amy Geist and I met on the set of a music video almost ten years ago. We’ve since produced multiple projects together and have both created short films with themes of body image. Amy is a powerhouse filmmaker and a wonderful human being, and she opens up so beautifully in our conversation about incredibly important topics.
In our conversation, we discuss…
* Amy’s short film, “Dysmorphia” and how it’s impacted her body image journey along with others
* A peek into Amy’s body image origin story
* Generational body image cycles
* The mental gymnastics it takes to audition for GLP-1 commercials
* Disconnecting from a deep-shame response when someone sees our body in a certain way
* The nuance of your physical body being tied to your livelihood
* Changing bodies isn’t supposed to be scary
* Compassionately changing the narrative when others put their own bodies down - “it doesn’t have to be that way”
* Stepping away from a triggering industry to heal
It was a pleasure to sit down and chat with Amy. She’s hilarious and also has such an important perspective. I know I was changed from our conversation, so I cannot wait for you to hear it!
“I guess I also don’t have any ill will towards our mothers who sort of unintentionally were doing the best that they could as well in just a fucked up system, you know? Don’t hate the player, hate the patriarchy, you know? Those messages are so just ingrained and can so easily be absorbed by things that – you know, talking about diet culture and sort of orthorexia part of diet culture that pops up and is disguised as health, and so, it’s like, you know, just so many different ways for this messaging to get ingrained in little ones and by, you know, no fault of a parent. But it is, I feel in my experience and in my family, I think the way that it got to me was very much, you know, passed down through different generations and growing up in the nineties and Slim Fast.”
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Continued Conversations with Destiny Allen
Tuesday, December 9, 2025 • Duration 39:47
Everyone please welcome my sweet friend Destiny Allen to A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations! Destiny and I have known each other for a few years now (spoiler alert: she’s dating two of my besties), and being an expert in the field of bridal fashion, I was so excited she agreed to have a conversation with me.
Destiny is making waves in the way she shows up as a bridal consultant. She works at LOHO, which literally stands for League Of Her Own, and she also has big plans of opening her own shop one day that caters to all types of people who are getting married. (Bridal suits? Yes, please!). I know that what Destiny creates is going to be much needed in our world, and I can’t wait to see the incredible lives she continues to impact!
In our conversation, we discuss…
* How empowering brides despite their preconceived notions about their bodies helps Destiny to connect to her own body image in a helpful way
* Shutting down body shaming in bridal appointments
* Your wedding dress needs to fit you - not the other way around
* Her goals of opening her own shop that provides bridal suits to the queer community
* Wearing clothes that reflect our personal style
* The origins of Destiny’s body image story and dealing with body image bullies
* Reminding yourself how incredible your body is, first and foremost
* Finding the hope in the intersection of young people, body image, and social media
I cannot wait for you to hear our conversation!
“ I think that’s the beauty of fashion and why I fell in love with it too is because find pieces that make me feel confident, and I’ve stopped trying to fit into this box of what people think I should be wearing. I’ve moved past that, and now I’ve truly found myself. I’m also like, “Oh, if I don’t feel good wearing dresses and skirts, I don’t have to wear them.” I can wear what I want. That makes me feel the best in my body.”
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Continued Conversations with Liz J
Tuesday, November 25, 2025 • Duration 42:31
Everyone please welcome Liz J to A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations! Liz and I were a part of the same university program, so we’ve known each other for quite some time now. I was so excited to bring Liz in for a conversation about body image.
Liz pulled back the curtain on being raised in a musical theatre world and discussed how the beauty and body standards of Broadway impacted her as a teen and into adulthood. She talks about her relationship to dance, body modifications, and bodily agency. This was such an impactful conversation for me to be a part of, and I cannot wait for you to hear it!
In our conversation, we discuss…
* When Liz first started using the phrase “A Broadway Body”
* Richard Simmons Tapes - seeing people in different sizes of bodies dancing for fun
* The impact of the wild ideologies preached to us in musical theatre
* Pursuing what body modifications work for you and respecting others’ bodily agency
* Our thoughts on plastic surgery, aging, body modifications
* Art about the beauty standards, overconsumption, body image, and more
Get full access to Continued Conversations with Megan Gill at
Continued Conversations with Christine Dickinson
Tuesday, November 11, 2025 • Duration 41:04
Everyone please welcome my friend and fellow actor, writer, producer, Christine Dickinson, to A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations! Christine is an actor, a writer, and a producer, and I met in our acting class at Crash Acting a few years ago. She very recently debuted her one-woman play “Mother” in Los Angeles, CA, and the show was phenomenal. We’d had this conversation before I saw it, and I will say that many topics of convo that Christine brought to the fore were beautifully touched on in her show.
In our conversation, we discuss…
* Breaking the generational trauma cycle (with body image and more broadly)
* The debut of her one-woman, one-act show “Mother” and what inspired her to write the play
* How rehearsing her play brought her body image story front and center
* The conscious permission it takes to write about topics we don’t necessarily feel “qualified enough” to speak on
* The comment her play makes about the impacts of social media on today’s culture
* Navigating our feelings around our bodies
* Her body image story - from being praised for being thin and invalidated in her feelings about her body, to uncovering a body image story through the rehearsal of her play
Christine so openly shared her body image story with me, and her vulnerability to speak on these topics she’s just recently started to face head on is beautiful. Her thoughts on generational trauma and the impacts of social media on our individual body image are powerful, and I cannot wait for you to hear our conversation!
“I think a lot of comparison is what comes up in the play, kind of in a subtle way. But there are a lot of different videos in the video sequences that you see that indicate that my character is doing girlhood or womanhood incorrectly. So you have one person saying, “Hey, if your body is larger, that’s bad, and you should fix that.” And then another person, “If your body is smaller, that’s also bad and you should fix that.” And then, “Oh, you should be dainty and feminine and always keep a groomed appearance.” And then like, “No, fuck that!” And then, you know, all of these different, you know, expectations about what we should and shouldn’t use our bodies for. And yeah, then there’s, you know, the whole topic of what happens to your body during pregnancy. That’s something that’s explored in one of the video series as well.”
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“ I'm like super pale, and I bruise super easily, and I've had spider veins since I was a kid, which you usually don't get until you're a senior. I do have memories of being like, “Oh my god, how do I already have spider veins?” And then now — again, I don't really know how it happened, but I really consciously just choose to, if not like it, go, “Whoa, cool,” or “That's so interesting, I can see my veins.”
- Aidan Rees
Originally from Salt Lake City, Aidan is based in LA where you can find her acting, writing, doing comedy, and playing soccer. Honored to be an Angeleno, Aidan believes it is a privilege to be a transplant and finds joy participating in local mutual aid. She is a graduate of AMDA College and Conservatory, The Second City, and has found her home in sketch and storytelling. Her proudest piece of work is her solo show Smoochy Girl. She was once asked, “Aidan, why can’t you just sing the melody for once?”
Subscribe to the A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations newsletter + sign up for a paid plan to support me in creating more of this content for you ❤️🔥
If you want to be a part of the conversation… either reach out to me via email at themegangill@gmail.com to schedule a conversation or fill out this form to share your body image story anonymously.
A couple of notes to ensure this is a safe space for my guests to share their intimate and vulnerable body image stories in:
* These conversations are quite nuanced, complex, and oftentimes very vulnerable. Remember that everyone has their own body image story, and while someone else’s might look differently than yours, I encourage you to keep an open mind and stay empathetic.
* That being said, I welcome your support of my guests in the comments. Please be kind and considerate with your words.
* Thank you for being here. By sharing this type of content, my hope is to inspire collective reflection and cultural questioning. Thank you for supporting me in exploring the effects of our society’s beauty norms and body standards on human beings existing in today’s world.
Do you have a friend, family member, or peer who might be interested in being a part of the conversation? I’d be honored if you could help me spread the word about Continued Conversations!
While I’m not a licensed therapist, registered dietician, or medical health professional and cannot speak to body image topics from a clinical, trauma-informed place, I am an expert of lived experience. I’m an academic of my own body, and I’m passionate about facilitating conversations with other humans about their relationships with their bodies. I believe it’s important to continue conversations about healthy body image in creative spaces as a means to heal individuals as well as the collective whole. But just know the information presented in this medium is not professional mental health advice or medical advice, and any questions or concerns you have should always be directed to your health providers.
“ If you want to make money, make the damn (plus-size) clothes!”
- Shalon Dozier
Below is a text insert of our conversation that stuck with me, starting at around the 9-minute & 20-second mark:
Shalon Dozier: You have to have kind of a thick skin to do this because they’re gonna talk about your body, and they’re gonna talk about you like you’re not even human.
Megan Gill: And they’re gonna talk about you right in front of you.
Shalon Dozier: In your face!
Megan Gill: While you’re in your bra and underwear.
Shalon Dozier: In your underwear and your bra! In front of a whole room of people.
Megan Gill: Yeah, yep. It’s so true.
Shalon Dozier: Okay, so you have to be thick-skinned. I think you’ve got to love this. It’s very niche, but you’ve got to love it. And I know that there’s a big influx of plus-size people wanting to get into the fit modeling industry. And I’m totally for all of that. But this is something that – it’s not like a means to end – it is a means to an end, but it’s not that. If you really want to be successful in this – and where I got my success was that I literally was like, “This is an untouched market.” I was like, “You mean to tell me you’re gonna pay me hundreds of dollars an hour to tell you what I think about some clothes?” And the rest of the models that I knew and circles that I knew was like, “Oh, fit modeling? I don’t think so. I want to be in a campaign.” And I was like, “That’s fine,” because I’m gonna haha to the bank because this is something untouched. And you have to look at it like that. Like it’s not this thing like a means to an end, you know what I mean? And that’s where a lot of girls, I think, lose their success in it or burn out because they’re just like, “Wait a minute. So I do this day in, day out? I have to keep up with my body? I have to do this da, da, da?” You have to really love to do this.
Megan Gill: It’s very true.
Shalon Dozier: Seriously.
Megan Gill: I can absolutely co-sign that myself, and it’s cool because I, over the past six years, have grown to love it. And at first, like the first time someone is talking about your body in front of you in front of a room of people, it is so jarring and it’s so like, “Wait, what’s going on?”
Shalon Dozier: Yes.
Megan Gill: But if you have the, if you have the understanding that, sure, it’s about your body, but it’s not about your body. It’s about producing the best clothes that we can produce for so many people. You’ve got to separate yourself from that a little bit. I feel like it’s really helpful. But also how lovely that your experience with fitting has brought you to understand that you don’t need to be smaller and that you can maintain where you are.
Shalon Dozier: Yes.
Megan Gill: And if you do maintain where you are, then you can help create these clothes that so many other plus-size women need. Like that piece of it all is just really special and so important.
Shalon Dozier: Yes! Yes, that to me is amazing, and it’s really good when I get friends who text me, and they’re like in the Target like dressing room, and they’re like, “Did you? Were you the fit model for this? Because girl, look at this. This looks good on me, girl!”
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Shalon Dozier: Or, “Shalon, did you do these jeans? These are amazing!”
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Shalon Dozier: And it feels like that little – those little messages let me know that I’m working and my purpose because I’m a girl’s girl. I want us all to win, and I am about us all feeling good in the skin you’re in. It’s like I did a post the other day, I’m no woman’s competition. I want us all to win.
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Shalon Dozier: I want us all to feel beautiful. I didn’t get in this to be like, “Ha, I’m better than you. Ha!” No. I’m like, “Girl, I’m standing, taking the hits, you know, them talking about my body, for this to fit good for you to have a great product that you feel good about when you walk out in the street.”
Megan Gill: Yes.
Shalon Dozier: “You’re welcome!”
Megan Gill: Absolutely, and that’s why you say you have to love it because you are taking the hits, and granted, it’s not – okay, taking the hits is not – I don’t know. It’s not like people are being always blatantly like –
Shalon Dozier: No, it’s not that.
Megan Gill: But it’s in the little nuance of things that people say, and when you’re with a client, and there’s just like a little tiny comment that doesn’t feel like a big deal. But to some people, I’m like, it could be a huge deal.
And I had an epiphany a year or two ago, like when I was in the thick of getting into the body image work myself and really feeling like I was coming to a really good place – I was in a good relationship with my body, it dawned on me that some people who maybe didn’t have a good relationship with their body or who were in the thick of eating disorders or who had really bad body dysmorphia, it might not be good for them to be in this industry and to be doing this work.
Shalon Dozier: No.
Megan Gill: Because it could really mess with your brain if you’re not careful and if you don’t have the understanding of the broader reason behind what’s going on here.
Shalon Dozier: A hundred percent.
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Shalon Dozier: You got to be – like I said, this is not something for the faint of heart. I’ve had people say, “Oh, I could be a fit model!” And I’m like, “Okay. Sure.” Because you have to have a thick skin. There are times that I have literally walked out in a situation where I was in tears, okay? There’s a flip side. There’s a great side to it. I love what I do; it’s like I have friends, I’ve met these amazing people, I’ve met you. I have all these wonderful people in my life that I have gained over my time in the industry, right? And there’s something to be said about when a room is listening, and it’s like the CEO of a company, and they’re like, “Can you say that in our sales meeting?” You know what I mean?
Megan Gill: Yeah. Yeah.
Shalon Dozier: Granted, yes. But then there are times, like you’re saying, those little nuances, that at the quietude of you being in your home, you’re like, “That shit hurt my feelings,” you get what I mean?
Megan Gill: Absolutely.
Shalon Dozier: And then the next day, you’ve got to shake it off and go in there and be a badass. You get what I mean?
Megan Gill: Absolutely, one hundred percent.
Shalon Dozier: So you have to really love yourself and accept yourself for exactly who you are, you know what I mean? And go in there with, “God put me in this purpose for a reason, and it’s to help other women and other people.”
Megan Gill: Absolutely, mic drop to all of that. And then to just add on another layer to what you are talking about, this is our livelihood, and therefore if a client is talking about your body and how it might not work for them any longer or something of the sort, not to mention like the mental gymnastics that we have to do as the models to be like, “Okay, am I gonna lose this client? This is part of what I’m paying my bills with.” That that comes along with it too is also not for the faint of heart because it’s tough. It’s tough.
Shalon Dozier: Yeah, it is. No, it’s super tough, and I think where I’m noticing, as a plus model, and this is where it’s affecting my livelihood is I’m a child of God. I’m a Christian, so I believe that God will provide for me no matter what, okay? But I have noticed a decline in work. And I seriously believe and I’ve been told by certain companies, “Oh yeah, we’re not doing plus anymore.” And I’m like, “Okay, but they are still plus-size women – there are still fat girls –,” and I say fat lovingly because I’m fat, so I can say that. You know what I mean? But, “Okay, there are still plus-size women out there that still want to buy clothes!”
Megan Gill: Right! “From you. Probably because they know that you’re producing, you’ve been producing them. What do you mean you’re just gonna stop?” To get on what you’re saying, I’ve noticed, and a lot of plus-size models in the industry, we’ve all noticed that there’s a lack of plus-size bodies, plus-size presence in fashion week now, on runways. There’s a lack of plus-size people being shown in e-comm, on certain companies that were inclusive at one time and are no longer, you know what I’m saying?
Megan Gill: Yep.
Shalon Dozier: We are watching this in real frickin’ time. And my thing is – and I will die on this hill – when I came into this business. it was $3 billion for plus. In 11 years, it has gone to $34 billion. We have spending power. We are here buying the clothes. We have the money to spend. We like to dress. We like to look good. So my question is, when it’s this paradigm shift that you’re talking about with clients and no longer needing your body type, it’s like, “Are you crazy? Because do you not want to make money?”
Megan Gill: Literally!
Shalon Dozier: “Do you not want to make the money?” But what I’ve found is it’s happened to me, and then they have to ask me to come back.
Megan Gill: Uh-huh. I know we’ve spoken about that before. Yep. “I’m sorry, what?”
Shalon Dozier: Oh yeah. And, “We’re not gonna do plus.” And it’s, “Oh, that was a mistake. Mm-hmm. We want that money. Hi, can you come back? We’re gonna be doing inclusive again.” You know what I mean?
And I do believe that there is about to be this wave – we’re on the tail end of lack of inclusivity because this is something that happened long before the Trump administration did away with DEI. That’s the thing people don’t know is that the lack of inclusion, in terms of plus-sized bodies, happened long before this, okay? This whole situation with DEI being removed was just kinda like the icing on the cake. Well, because of our economy being so bad, companies are actually like – actually, after I did that post on my Instagram that we talked about, it was like literally a literal shifting again. And it’s shifting again, where people started being like, “Hey, we have a line. Would you like to come in? Can we meet with you?” And I was like, “Wait a minute, my phone is ringing now!”
Megan Gill: It’s almost like who do you stand for? If you are gonna get rid of plus, or if you’re just not gonna have a plus line, do you stand with the,m or are you trying to do the right thing and do better for the people of the world, of this country?
Shalon Dozier: Personally, yeah, I would like to believe that’s what it is. But I’m gonna say that this is about money. It’s about business. It’s about if it doesn’t make dollars, it doesn’t make sense. But the problem is that a lot of these companies are making these decisions without plus-sized people in the room. You cannot make a decision for what I want, what my friends want, family members want, that are plus-size, and you’ve been a size two all your life. You don’t know what I want. And it’s no amount of you having an MBA or you having enough business skills in sales or merchandising is going to allot you to know what my body wants.
Megan Gill: Yep. What the lived experience is.
Shalon Dozier: You are basing it on a personal opinion, and then when you indoctrinate that personal opinion into your company, and the sales drop, then you have to go, “Oh, my bad. Yeah, come back, actually,” you know what I mean? And what I find is that there have been times with companies, even famous, infamous, plus-sized companies – will remain nameless. I did a sales meeting one time, and I was the only plus-sized person in the room, and this is like a tried-and-true plus-sized brand. And I was like – I sat back like, “Ooh, if everybody knew that these people making the decisions for this, nobody’s plus-size.”
Megan Gill: It just doesn’t make sense.
Shalon Dozier: Make it make sense.
Megan Gill: So it’s like where’s the representation in front of the camera, and where’s the representation behind the camera or behind the scenes, you know?
Shalon Dozier: Yes, yes.
Megan Gill: Because we need both.
Shalon Dozier: Yes, you do. And I don’t see plus-size – sometimes I’m the only plus-sized person in the room to this day. Okay, so that tells me a lot, and what I’ve learned in my career and how I started consulting is that I had a tech designer tell me once, she was like, “You’re such a wealth of knowledge because you don’t only just fit for us. You fit, you give out pattern correction callouts.” She was like, “And you consult us. You literally ask a question like, ‘Oh, this is cute. So how are you gonna market this to us? Oh, what are you gonna put with that?’” You know what I mean? And I’ve had to, because I’m like, I like to shop! So, “How are you gonna present this to somebody? How are you gonna do that?”
“It’s really good when I get friends who text me, and they’re like in the Target dressing room, and they’re like, “Did you? Were you the fit model for this? Because girl, look at this. This looks good on me, girl!” Or, “Shalon, did you do these jeans? These are amazing!” And it feels like that little – those little messages let me know that I’m working and my purpose because I’m a girl’s girl. I want us all to win, and I am about us all feeling good in the skin you’re in. It’s like I did a post the other day, I’m no woman’s competition. I want us all to win. I want us all to feel beautiful. I didn’t get in this to be like, “Ha, I’m better than you. Ha!” No. I’m like, “Girl, I’m standing, taking the hits, you know, them talking about my body, for this to fit good for you to have a great product that you feel good about when you walk out in the street.”
- Shalon Dozier
Shalon Dozier is a Los Angeles based, full-time size 16/18 fit model and fashion industry leader with a career rooted in advocacy, expertise, and representation. She has worked extensively with top denim and apparel brands including Good American, Reformation, NYDJ, AVA&VIV, Max Studio, Celebrity Pink and 7 For All Mankind, and is proudly the first Target Certified Plus Size Fit Model for the California.
In addition to her work as a fit model, Shalon is the owner of the only black owned modeling agency on the west coast, creating pathways for greater inclusion and equity within the fashion industry. Her fit clientele spans luxury, contemporary, and mass-market brands such as Fendi, ZARA, IVY PARK, SKIMS, Adidas, Nordstrom, Volcom, Wild Fable, Dia & Co., Stitch Fix, Beyond Yoga, Macy’s, Torrid, and more.
Discovered at an early age, Shalon has built a successful career in the plus-size fashion space, including gracing the cover of Plus Model Magazine, modeling e-commerce for SKIMS, and being featured on the website of historic department store Selfridges in London. She has also worked with Banana Republic, Gap, and Orvis, walked in major plus fashion shows, and trained with acclaimed supermodel Coco Rocha and Keenyah Hill.
Shalon’s mission is to empower women, challenge outdated beauty standards, and actively reshape the fashion industry to be more inclusive, representative, and equitable.
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A couple of notes to ensure this is a safe space for my guests to share their intimate and vulnerable body image stories in:
* It can be easy to feel alone on your journey of existing in a body. I welcome the connection and support of one another in this space through considerate and curious comments.
* These conversations are quite nuanced, complex, and oftentimes very vulnerable. Remember that everyone has their own body image story, and while someone else’s might look differently than yours, I encourage you to keep an open mind and stay empathetic.
* Thank you for being here. By sharing this type of content, my hope is to inspire personal reflection and cultural questioning. Thank you and supporting me in exploring the effects of our culture’s beauty norms and body standards on human beings existing in today’s world.
Do you have a friend, family member or peer who might love this too? I’d be honored if you could help me spread the word about my writing and body image conversations!
While I’m not a licensed therapist, registered dietician, or medical health professional and cannot speak to body image topics from a clinical, trauma-informed place, I am an expert of lived experience. I’m an academic of my own body, and I’m passionate about facilitating conversations with other humans about their relationships with their bodies. I believe it’s important to continue conversations about healthy body image in creative spaces as a means to heal individuals as well as the collective whole. But just know the information presented in this medium is not professional mental health advice or medical advice, and any questions or concerns you have should always be directed to your health providers.
Below is a text insert of our conversation that stuck with me, starting at around the 19-minute mark:
Megan Gill: Okay, so shifting over to you and where you are at now in your life. You are an actor, and you have been working in the health and wellness space for quite a while now, and you are a new mom. So I’m curious how your body image journey has led you now to this place, and kind of if there’s a trajectory of how your relationship to your own body has shifted through different phases of life, and where you find yourself now as a new mom, which I understand does bring up change. You literally housed a baby inside of you for nine months. Of course your body’s changing.
Cornelia Hanes: Yeah.
Megan Gill: I’m just curious your personal experience and if you would be willing to share a little bit about where you’ve been and where you find yourself now.
Cornelia Hanes: Yes, so I am in a wonderful place with my body. I have never been so appreciative and grateful for it. I’m so in love with my daughter and the fact that I had a healthy pregnancy, a healthy delivery, she’s thriving. I am just in awe of women’s bodies and being able to create life. So that I feel very grateful to have experienced, and the fact that we are doing well and I had a nice recovery, not without its bumps for sure. And I am nursing still, so a big thing for me is, one, I have to work out. I’m a former athlete, so if I don’t move my body, I go cuckoo. I just do that to move energy and just make sure my head is clear. But that doesn’t necessarily always mean lifting weights. Sometimes that’s a walk outside. It’s just moving the body. So I make sure I get movement every day. I really have to be adamant about protein and calories and drinking at least three liters of water so that my supply doesn’t dip. So that’s where I’m at right now. I gotta make sure that I am still able to feed her and feed myself and do all of that.
I’ve had a different experience with body image. So I used to be an elite swimmer, right? I grew up swimming and I’ve always been an athlete, and when I was growing up, I was skinny and I had broad shoulders and I hated that. I just wanted curves. I wanted boobs. I wanted an ass so bad. That’s what I wanted. And so, being a teenager, and then it got better in college, but I was always – I had a swimmer’s body. Sure, I was strong and I was athletic. But it’s so funny, right? You always want what you don’t have, especially as you’re growing up and trying to figure out who you are.
Megan Gill: The grass is always greener. So I had a lot of self-doubt around just not looking feminine enough. The fact that I had a big back because I was strong as hell, now I’m like, oh, I wish I would’ve appreciated all the benefits instead. But you’re a teenager. You don’t really think about it that way. And then in college, much of my identity was a swimmer. You know, I was in the pool all the time and competing in NCAA and all of that. So that kind of faded a little bit, and I had a great team of other girls and we were just such a strong unit, that noise dampened a little bit.
Megan Gill: I love that.
Cornelia Hanes: But still, also, American culture – I don’t know if when the Kardashians came up to light, but again I just wanted to be curvy and I just wanted to feel more like a woman than I did. And, like we talked about with aging, I think I’ve done a lot of work on myself where I’ve just realized that’s just silly. This is the body you have, love it for all it can do. So I’ve done a lot of work on myself in that capacity. And now, I just love feeling strong. I just love being able to call on my body for all of the things.
The other day I was in a parking garage, and the elevators – one didn’t work and one was working, but there was a long line. This was a holiday, so that’s why I didn’t – there was just a lot of people there. And I was like, all right. After seven minutes standing in this queue for getting in the elevator, I was like, I’m just gonna take the stairs. So I took the stroller with my – she’s probably 25 pounds at this point – and the diaper bag, and I just lifted it and walked the stairs.
Megan Gill: Hell yeah.
Cornelia Hanes: I loved being able to do that. I was like I got this. I’m just gonna carry all of this. And then as I got to where I was going, I met a woman who had two toddlers, and she saw me and she just nodded her head and she’s like, “Hell yeah, strong mom.” And I was like, Ugh. I love the mom community of just…
Megan Gill: Ah, that makes me emotional.
Cornelia Hanes: But I was like, I love that she saw that and recognized that, and she’s probably been there herself.
And also, with my my short film, Anaconda, I think I’ve always just been passionate about embracing being perfectly imperfect. And I love seeing women on screen that are messy and just real and raw, and I’ve always tried to mimic that with my filmmaking and my comedy. And so, I think that’s the underlying theme of my adult life, that I just want, any way I can, to make other women feel good in the skin they’re in but also feel empowered and strong from the inside out is really a passion of mine. And if I can help women feel even a little bit better in that sense, that’s just something I love being able to do and feel so passionate about.
But I will say even, Anaconda is on Omeleto now, and when we released it to the world, and – you know this – it’s a little daunting releasing a film into the world. And don’t know what I was thinking with the outfits I was wearing in that short, I don’t know. But for some reason, I’m choosing this crop top, and it’s making my shoulders look even wider. And I could tell that came up for me again. It hasn’t really been a thought for a long time. I’ve embraced my athletic body. But there were some comments like, oh, she looks like a dude, or that’s a man or whatever. And my stomach was just like – first it was like, what? And then I just started laughing. I was like that’s very inaccurate, but still, comments like that still –
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Cornelia Hanes: – sent me back to my teenage self when I was not feeling good in my body and being so self-conscious about that. Now I can look at that and laugh, but in that moment I was like, oh, wow, that was triggering for me.
Megan Gill: Yeah. Oh my god, it makes so much sense. It’s like these traumas, if you will, body traumas, body image traumas never leave us. And the things about ourselves that we are most insecure about are always going to be there, right, no matter how much work we do. But it’s like, of course, I think we have to – and not that you’re not giving yourself grace, but overarchingly, I think that us women need to give ourselves grace for feeling those things and for having insecurities because of course you felt the way you did in a culture that is obsessed with women that are skinny but not too skinny, but also have a curvy butt and also have big boobs. It’s like nobody – we can’t ever win.
Cornelia Hanes: Yeah.
Megan Gill: My insecurities of having my belly pooch, that is not culturally seen as attractive in a similar sense as being super thin and tall with broad shoulders isn’t necessarily seen as the “ideal.” So it’s like, of course, we are feeling these things, which I think is just important to point out that there is a reason for us to feel like we are not – these parts of ourselves that we’re insecure about are never going to be good enough or accepted or all of that, all of that stuff, all of that noise.
Especially as an actor too, because, god, don’t worry, the same experience happens for me as well, or a similar experience of seeing myself on camera and being like – judging my body.
Cornelia Hanes: Yeah.
Megan Gill: And granted, my first film was about body image, so that was such a freeing experience to be like – I remember when I was in pre-production for that project, I was like, “It’s okay. I can eat whatever I want. My body can be however it’s gonna be,” and I’ve carried that forward with me.
I do not do the thing of, “Oh, before I’m shooting a film –,” I shot a short film last weekend, and I had a donut on the last day of filming, and I’m not doing this psycho no sugar, no this, no that, which I understand for some people that works and that’s okay, but for me, that’s not a way to live. I’m like, yes, I want to be eating my vegetables, but I’m also allowed to have a fucking donut on the same day that I’m shooting a film.
Cornelia Hanes: Of course you are! You get a donut! You get a donut! Everybody gets a donut!
Megan Gill: Everybody gets a donut! But yeah, god, it’s like tenfold as an actor. And like even shooting in your own project where you’re like, oh, I had control over what I was wearing. And then I can only imagine reading those types of comments from people. Ugh, it’s like why do they think the way they think? Because they also exist in the same culture that we exist in, which is the reason that we are judging these parts of our bodies in the first place.
Cornelia Hanes: Yeah.
Megan Gill: Oh, god.
Cornelia Hanes: And maybe that little voice will always be there, but like you said, how can you give it grace and how can you just shine light on it and be like that’s not necessarily true anymore. You don’t have to buy into that, and you can change the narrative. I’m curious, after Broadway Body, how was the response? Did you read comments? How did you feel with people’s feedback on the film?
Megan Gill: I was very self-conscious throughout a lot of the process because my body, though curvier, though on like the curvier side of an average body, if you wanna even say that, I’m still very straight sized.
Cornelia Hanes: What is an average body? I don’t know.
Megan Gill: I don’t fucking know.
Cornelia Hanes: What is that? Sorry to interrupt you, but…
Megan Gill: No, you’re fine! You’re fine. When I say it, I’m thinking culturally speaking, what the “ideal” is.
Cornelia Hanes: The magazines, the…
Megan Gill: What’s pushed in media as being a “good” body to have, which what the fuck is that even? I don’t agree with that.
Cornelia Hanes: Magazines? What am I, from the nineties? Media is a better way to it. What we see in the media.
Megan Gill: No, I love it. I get it. I knew what you meant. I knew what you meant! But I remember just feeling like I – I was feeling insecure because I felt like my body was too small to be the one telling this story.
Cornelia Hanes: Oh.
Megan Gill: And I think that’s something that has still stayed with me. Though I’ve worked through it because, listen, I have a body image story just as you have a body image story, just as anybody in any shape and size and color of body has a body image story. So why can I not be the one to tell this story?
I’ve heard nothing but great feedback. Granted, the film is not on a big platform like Omeleto, so it’s not – I don’t even think it’s on YouTube. I think it’s on Vimeo, so it’s not really in a public space at the moment to have a bunch of eyes and a bunch of people, random people, commenting on it. But I am very grateful that I didn’t hear certain things and granted like the comments that you were hearing about your body in your film, if people were making those comments to me about my body in a film about body image, that would be wild. But also – yeah, I don’t know.
Cornelia Hanes: Yeah, and I think it’s also like why am I paying attention to these few comments, maybe it was like three, instead of the response of, “Oh, this is so funny!” “Oh, I relate to this.” “Oh, this is such a fresh take.” “Oh, I love the characters. It’s so interesting.” Also, why do our minds go to the negative instead of embracing all the positive and being like, “That’s not true,” or whatever, “Fuck you.” So it’s just an interesting – I try to always zoom out a little bit and be like, “Okay, what’s happening here?” Or, “Why do I pay attention to this and not that?” Or, “Why do I give this more brain power than the message, which is embracing and just being imperfect and being messy and just being real. And that’s much more relatable, I think.
Megan Gill: Do you wanna share a little bit about Anaconda?
Cornelia Hanes: Sure!
Megan Gill: For context and to just talk about your work?
Megan Gill: Oh, you’re fine! I should have asked you earlier!
Cornelia Hanes: So Anaconda is a comedic short about a group of friends that go on a road trip to Burning Man. But they don’t quite make it there, so they have to stop in Reno, and there’s only one hotel room left, so they all have to share. And in the middle of the night, there are some things that happen and they take place in a bathroom. And I’m not gonna say anything more than that.
Megan Gill: We’ll link to it. We’ll link to it!
Cornelia Hanes: Yeah, but I feel like, with Anaconda, I felt encouraged to portray a more accurate reflection of life maybe than people really share even in person, or definitely not on screen. And so, we try to showcase, female characters aren’t afraid to be messy and, in turn, challenge the modern concept of our beauty standards in a silly, fun way.
So like I said, it’s about embracing your imperfections. It’s realizing that being imperfect can be pretty attractive. And I just love when I see films that have characters that are real and raw and vulnerable and messy and not pretty and not put together. So I really try to mimic that with my own filmmaking and my comedy, and I love playing characters like that. So it was a lot of fun. Again, it’s very silly. Whenever someone’s, “Oh, I wanna watch it!” I’m like drink a glass of wine, smoke a joint, or whatever is your vibe. And it’s not that serious. It’s meant to be a good time but also have an underlying message, which is cool too.
Megan Gill: And imperfect is beautiful and imperfect is the antithesis of our cultural beauty standard and diet culture and all of these things that we are told that we should do and should be, because I’m right there with you. I think that it’s so important to be creating media that has something to say about that and is a comment or just an example of the type of stories and the type of people that I would like to see more of and that I think are just so needed. Which I also think is the way that you’re showing up with your work in the wellness industry as well, I think has a similar vibe, and I just think it’s such incredible work and so needed and so important today and such an important example that we are allowed to be imperfect and we are allowed to listen to our bodies and we are allowed to be strong.
Cornelia Hanes: Yes.
Megan Gill: And another thing that you said – sorry, I’m all over the place. There are so many things! The other thing you said about how you want to raise your daughter is something else I’d like to circle back to, because when you said that I was like, “Oh, absolutely. Of course.” Do you have anything else – I don’t really have a question around it, but I’m like, yeah, that’s such an important thing, everything that you’ve been through and everything that you’ve learned and are still learning, I’m sure, about how to teach others and lead by example to work to love your body and really take care of your body instead of making it about your body being an ornamental thing. I’m wondering if there’s anything else you’d like to share in terms of how you hope to raise your daughter or even – I know she’s eight months old, but like she’s eight months old. Babies are sponges, right? I’m just curious about that.
Cornelia Hanes: I love that question. And it’s fun because when I work with my clients – and I’m thinking about this one woman. She has two kids, and sometimes her oldest will interrupt the workout, but she always lets her, which I think is very cute. She’s like, “Wll right, join me! Now we’re doing this.” I know that some days she says, “Time is sacred for me. Go to your dad or go to your nanny,” or whatever. But the times she does bring her in, I’m like that is so awesome because, one, she sees you take time for yourself, she sees you lift weights, she sees you prioritize working out in your health and just being strong, and what a great role model you are for your daughter. And I’ve always said that to her. And now that I’m in that same boat, she is very much very aware at eight months. It’s very cute. She’s starting to – you can just tell that more is happening back there.
Megan Gill: The wheels are turning!
Cornelia Hanes: The wheels are turning! So the times where she’s woken up early for her nap and I’m in my workout, I just bring her. And it is so cute to see her watch me with joy, and she’s probably like, “What the hell are you doing? Why are you down on the ground? Why are you lifting that thing over your head?” But I think that’s definitely something I wanna keep doing. I just want to see her – I want for her to see me doing stuff like that, lifting heavy stuff and working out and taking care of my body and prioritizing that and not make that something that’s – honestly, it’s non-negotiable. It’s gonna be a non-negotiable, and it’s not about looking a certain way. It’s about feeling a certain way. And I hope that she will be into sports and be an athlete as well, but if she’s not, that’s also totally cool. But yeah, I’m definitely starting to think about even now, just making sure that I am living the way that I would do her justice, so that I make sure that my behaviors and my patterns are something that I want her to adapt and do as well down the line. And yeah, I think it’s they don’t do what you say they do what you do, right?
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Cornelia Hanes: It’s that, even now when she’s so young, I think it’s important to bring her into my world in that sense and be outdoors and go on hikes and just…
Megan Gill: Yeah, make walking your movement for the day.
Cornelia Hanes: Yeah!
Megan Gill: So important, yeah.
Cornelia Hanes: But I think that’ll probably come up more and more for me as she gets older. It’s still so new, all of it. But I think that’s just non-negotiable. It’s gonna be that we take care of our bodies, and how lucky we are to have a strong body that can take us places and that you can do things with. I guess just having a being grateful for the body you’re in and the things that it can do, more so than the way it looks.
Megan Gill: Absolutely 100%. And I just love the point about allowing the child to see mom working out and enjoying it and being joyful and having a good time with it, instead of maybe the way that we were raised where working out was a punishment to either how much you ate. It wasn’t this thing that was culturally seen as a non-negotiable.
“ For the everyday average Joe, it’s finding that balance with working out and a balanced diet. It’s so important to not feel shame or guilt, if you can. I talked to a girlfriend of mine the other day about how fortunate we feel that we have such a healthy relationship with food and how that’s quite rare because, as you talked about, just the way we grow up and how the inputs we get as we grow up, we don’t really understand the effect that has until later in life when you start to do your own inner work or it shows up and you just can’t ignore it anymore. And now that I have a daughter, I just really want to make sure that I install the same in her, that food is fuel, and it’s fun, and it’s a way to explore and try different cultures.”
- Cornelia Hanes
Cornelia Hanes is a Swedish-born actor, award-winning filmmaker, and former elite swimmer based in Los Angeles. Her creative work often centers on sharp, relatable storytelling—most notably her comedic short film ANACONDA, which earned a feature in Forbes and distribution on Omeleto, YouTube’s premier platform for cinema. The film’s success is underscored by its impressive festival run, securing wins and nominations at 19 out of 30 festivals.
Off-screen, Cornelia is dedicated to empowering women through movement and wellness. As a National Academy of Sports Medicine certified Personal Trainer, Precision Nutrition certified nutritionist and a Girls Gone Strong certified pre- and postnatal coach, she helps career moms navigate their fitness journeys. Leveraging her background as an elite athlete, she is passionate about helping women feel their strongest, most confident selves during and after pregnancy.
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A couple of notes to ensure this is a safe space for my guests to share their intimate and vulnerable body image stories in:
* It can be easy to feel alone on your journey of existing in a body. I welcome the connection and support of one another in this space through considerate and curious comments.
* These conversations are quite nuanced, complex, and oftentimes very vulnerable. Remember that everyone has their own body image story, and while someone else’s might look differently than yours, I encourage you to keep an open mind and stay empathetic.
* Thank you for being here. By sharing this type of content, my hope is to inspire personal reflection and cultural questioning. Thank you and supporting me in exploring the effects of our culture’s beauty norms and body standards on human beings existing in today’s world.
Do you have a friend, family member or peer who might love this too? I’d be honored if you could help me spread the word about my writing and body image conversations!
While I’m not a licensed therapist, registered dietician, or medical health professional and cannot speak to body image topics from a clinical, trauma-informed place, I am an expert of lived experience. I’m an academic of my own body, and I’m passionate about facilitating conversations with other humans about their relationships with their bodies. I believe it’s important to continue conversations about healthy body image in creative spaces as a means to heal individuals as well as the collective whole. But just know the information presented in this medium is not professional mental health advice or medical advice, and any questions or concerns you have should always be directed to your health providers.
“ When I went to my doctor, she told me, ‘No, I have a lot of patients like you, but it’s a very hard thing that women go through that nobody wants to share it.’” - Roxana Venzor Garcia
If just one person hears this story, we hope they feel seen and know they are not alone on their journey.
“ So I remember I had one of my best friends till now, she was like, “Hey, my aunt is just taking these pills that make you lose a lot of weight.” And you cannot buy them if you are not 18 years old. We were like 15 at the time and she was like, “But she’s gonna buy them for me, and I’m gonna share them with you, but just don’t say anything.” And I was like, “Perfect.” So I remember just starting taking those pills, and they will make me feel really weird, but I was losing the weight, so I was like, “Perfect.” I think that was probably for a year during high school where I was literally just having one meal a day. My mom was working, at the time, three jobs at the time, so I was the one making food and helping out with my brother, whatever. So I was able to get away with not eating. Also, I lost a lot of weight, and my whole family, my mom, everybody, was like, “Oh my god! You look so pretty! Good job!””
- Roxana Venzor Garcia
Megan Gill: Hi, Roxana!
Roxana Venzor Garcia: Hi!
Megan Gill: I’m so excited that you’re here having this conversation with me today, and that you are feeling nervous about it, but doing it anyways!
Roxana Venzor Garcia: Thank you for inviting me, and yes, I am nervous, but I’m gonna work through that with our conversation.
Megan Gill: I love it. I love it. So can you just start by introducing yourself and sharing a little bit about the type of work that you do in the world?
Roxana Venzor Garcia: My name is Roxana. I think I need to say, first and foremost, I’m from Mexico, so there is where the accent is coming from for anybody that is listening. I moved here in 2017, and I work as an RN, and I work in the oncology department with cancer patients. So that’s what I do three times a week for 12 hours. That’s my job.
Megan Gill: That’s amazing and so needed in our world, as I’m sure you know. Yeah, so it’s also interesting that you – because I believe everybody has a body image story, no matter who you are, no matter what your body looks like, no matter what you’ve dealt with or haven’t dealt with, your experiences that you may have had. Whatever your life experience and lived experience is, I believe everyone has a body image story. And you so graciously came to me and shared yours. I know that you had shared it on your Instagram, but you sent it over to me to read through, not necessarily the whole of your story, of course.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: No.
Megan Gill: This shit runs very deep. But before we dive into the specific aspect that you had shared with me, do you wanna talk a little bit about your relationship with your body in general in your life? So obviously now being in your thirties, I feel a lot of women grow into – their relationship with their body grows and flourishes and blooms in a different way than it did in our younger years. So I’m just curious if anything’s coming up for you within that, that you wanna share or talk about?
Roxana Venzor Garcia: So I honestly feel everything, my relationship with my body and the way that I always thought and spoke to my body led me to have alopecia areata, which was the problem that I shared with you. My relationship with my body, I feel like as every other woman, has always been – it’s a toxic boyfriend, toxic ex.
Growing up Hispanic, growing up Mexican, talking about your body in front of other people, it’s okay in your family. They will always – it’s very toxic, and they will always be talking about your body even if you are not okay with it. I remember growing up, I was in a normal weight. I remember having a normal – I never had any issues or thoughts about my body until – my childhood was not a very easy childhood. I moved a lot. My mom was a single mom, so it was a lot of things, and I remember probably when I started my treatment for alopecia, that’s when I was oh my god, I think I have anxiety since I was five years old, but I didn’t know.
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: So I remember food was a comfort for me. So I remember hiding food in my room when I was little and just eating it at night. And then I will wake up and I will have candy in my mouth. These are things that I haven’t shared with a lot of people, but I remember and that will bring me comfort. And I think that’s when I started gaining weight. So obviously my brother will always make fun of me because my best friend was super skinny and they will say, “Oh look, the number 10 walking.” And I was like, “I’m the zero.”
Megan Gill: Wow.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: And it’s crazy because I know that my mom was doing the best she could with what she had. She grew up the same or even worse with those comments, you know?
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: So she wouldn’t stop it. She wouldn’t say anything. So my brother would be literally my biggest bully sometimes. I have a good relationship with him, but I remember.
Megan Gill: Is he older or younger? I’m just curious.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: He’s older.
Megan Gill: Okay. Yeah.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: Yeah, and then obviously going to visit my family, everybody will have a comment about me and I was there. And then they will say – my mom’s name is Roxana as well. So they will say, “Roxana, she’s getting chubby,” and I was there. Or, “Oh, my god, she’s eating a lot. Maybe you shouldn’t eat another plate,” or things like that. I remember I was probably eight, nine years old, and my mom had my younger brother when I was seven, and I remember my mom was trying to lose weight from her pregnancy, for the pregnancy weight, and there was this book, and I will never forget, it was like “How to lose 25 pounds in 10 days or 15 days,” something like that.
Megan Gill: Oh my god, yeah, wild.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: And I will never forget. And my mom was, “Hey, Roxana, we’re doing this.” And I was like… I honestly was probably seven, eight years old. She’s like, “We’re doing this.” And I remember it’s, “Oh, okay. I’m gonna lose weight. I’m gonna lose weight.” And I remember she will make breakfast for my brother or whatever, and then it was something really nice and good. And then she – I will never forget; I feel this is a core memory – she brought out two pieces of ham with just a string of cheese, and she’s like, “This is yours.” And I was like, “Oh.” And she’s like, “Because we’re losing weight, remember?”
Megan Gill: Oh, my goodness.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: And I’m not saying this like, “My mom –.” This is the way that honestly Hispanic families – and I know other cultures, other races is the same, but Hispanic is toxic about women’s bodies and the way that they approach it. I can say that for my family.
And yeah, so it was like growing up I always hated my body. The word was I hated my body. I hated it. I always remember feeling – and sometimes I even struggled with that. I always – I grew up feeling less than other people my age, other girls. So obviously I grew up hating my body.
And when I was in high school, I remember I really liked this guy, and I was oh my god, he’s never gonna me because I’m fat. So I lost a lot of weight because I just wanted to do it for myself. So I lost the weight and he still didn’t me. And I was like, oh, so it’s not that, it is just…
Megan Gill: Oh, wow. It’s so wild because – I just wanna jump in because that is also a core social part of my childhood. My middle school, high school years was me being a chubbier kid and just learning that the cute boys that I had a crush on weren’t gonna like me – just learning. Not that it was true that they weren’t gonna like me because of my body, but it was socialized into my brain that you are a young girl in a bigger body, and therefore cute boys will not like you. That was what I learned.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: Yeah, boys are not gonna look at you because you are fat, because there are girls that look way better than you. So I feel that’s a universal thing for girls. And that’s the first thing like, if there’s ever a time when a girl loses weight it’s to attract one of the guys that she likes. And that was for me, I was like I don’t know what I did. I honestly, I don’t think I was having any eating disorders at the time. Then after that I was like, okay, he still doesn’t like me, and I was like maybe it’s because I’m still not super skinny or whatever. And obviously other things that growing up like that, obviously, it’s gonna affect you.
So I remember I had one of my best friends till now, she was like, “Hey, my aunt is just taking these pills that make you lose a lot of weight.” And you cannot buy them if you are not 18 years old. We were like 15 at the time and she was like, “But she’s gonna buy them for me, and I’m gonna share them with you, but just don’t say anything.” And I was like, “Perfect.” So I remember just starting taking those pills, and they will make me feel really weird, but I was losing the weight, so I was like, “Perfect.” And then I think I started an eating disorder, but it never got to the point that it got out of control. I was able to control it, but I know my best friends will be like, “If you don’t eat, I’m gonna tell your mom.” Or even the gym. I used to go to the gym every single day. If I didn’t go one day, I will cry. I was like, “I missed the gym. I missed the gym.”
So my trainer at one point was like, “You are doing things wrong, and I’m gonna talk to your mom.” And I was obviously so scared. I was like, “No!” I think that was probably for a year during high school where I was literally just having one meal a day. My mom was working, at the time, three jobs at the time, so I was the one making food and helping out with my brother, whatever. So I was able to get away with not eating. Also, I lost a lot of weight, and my whole family, my mom, everybody, was like, “Oh my god! You look so pretty! Good job!”
Megan Gill: Oh my God. Yeah.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: I remember my uncle being like, “Good job! You look amazing. Keep doing what you’re doing, blah, blah, blah.” And I was like…
Megan Gill: Yeah, that type of reinforcement is so damaging. Oh my god.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: It is. It is because I remember I look at those pictures now, and I look amazing, but I never felt that way. I never felt good about myself. I was just – my self-esteem and is something that I’m still working with, has always been very low just for I feel everything, but I remember I was damn. Now I look, I’m like damn, if I look that now, I’ll be like…
Megan Gill: I know. It’s always interesting to look back on ourselves in hindsight and be like wow. Or even just the thought that you had of how sad that she couldn’t even be satisfied. She couldn’t even – what was enough? Would it ever be enough? Oh, that’s heartbreaking.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: Yeah. That’s honestly my – that was my question before I got the alopecia was when is it gonna be enough? Then when I started with this whole thing with the alopecia, I remember feeling so guilty and I was like, “I did this. I did this to myself because –.” And I get emotional because I’m like, “It’s been 30 years, and I have never been happy with my body, and now my body’s getting sick from it.” So I’m like, “I cannot keep doing this. I cannot. I need to stop,” but I didn’t know where to start.
So then fast forward to 2023, again, I’m always trying to lose weight. I’m always trying to look better. I’m always trying blah, blah, blah, and I was just like hanging out with my dog in my apartment, and I remember I was just – I love touching my hair and my scalp and just massaging it. And I remember feeling a spot, a bald spot, and I was like, what is this? And it was 11:00 PM. At the time, I was fighting with my mom for a couple weeks, and I remember the first thought I had. I was like, “I need to call my mom.” So I called my mom, and I was like, “Hey, I have a bald spot.” And she’s like, “What do you mean?” And I was like, “I have a bald spot.” And she’s, “Oh, that’s normal. Don’t worry. My hair falls a lot too, blah, blah.” And I was like, I don’t think she understood, and I was crying. I was like, “I don’t know what this is.”
So I remember it was 11, and I was just Googling CVS, 24 hours, Walmart…
Megan Gill: When I read this part about you Googling what CVS was open, I was like this is the most effing relatable thing, and I would’ve done the exact same thing. Okay, sorry. Continue. I was just like, yep, yep. I don’t blame you.
.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: I was like I need something now. Even though that wasn’t gonna change anything, it was I need something now. because I was spiraling. So I remember I was in my pajamas at CVS asking the lady, “What do you think is best for this?” And they give me a bunch of stuff. I have spent so much money on this, it’s crazy. I wish I could just go back and see how much I’ve spent on this. But I bought a bunch of stuff at CVS and then I was you know what? I’m gonna go to Walmart. I need natural things, natural shampoos, oils, everything. Then I came back home, and I just couldn’t sleep. And I started googling things, and that’s the first time I saw the name, the word alopecia areata. And I was like oh, my god, because I literally went through a rabbit hole of it, and I was like this is what I have. I’m sure I have this. And the more I read, I was like this is just gonna get worse. It’s usually not just one spot.
I remember the next day I was already calling a dermatologist. I was like I need help. Obviously that’s when the emotional and the – I don’t even know how to say it. It was just probably the darkest time of my life. Emotionally, I was just a mess. I was just trying to isolate myself. I just literally isolated myself, actually. I was just so anxious all the time. My hair, I will put my hand like this, from top to bottom, and I will just like – clumps of hair. And then I will shower, and it will be even more and more. I literally used to shake and cry before every time I had to hop in the shower because it was traumatizing, because I was like I’m gonna lose a lot of hair in the shower, and after that I’m gonna have to brush my hair, and it’s gonna be even more.
I remember I used to grab all the hair together and then just put it in a little ball just to see how much I lose every day. And it was a crazy amount. So seeing that, I was just so depressed, crying all the time, anxious all the time.
Anyway, I went to the doctor and, yeah, they told me, “You have alopecia areata.” And they were like, “We’re gonna do injections,” directly to my scalp. Very painful, by the way. They did steroids. And I was like okay. And I remember asking – I was crying. On the first day there, I was already crying. I was like, “Is it this gonna get better? Is it just this one?” And they were like, “We cannot tell you. We’ll see.”
Megan Gill: Which is not what you wanna hear.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: No, obviously not! So I remember thinking, I was like okay, this is just a wake up call. This is a wake up call to just be grateful for what I have, for the body that I have right now, for the hair that I have right now. And also, I remember you were just talking at the beginning how me being a nurse and all that in oncology, especially. I remember telling my patients before all this happened to me – I have some women patients, female patients, that they don’t wanna go through chemotherapy or they are very anxious about it because they don’t wanna lose their hair. And I remember looking at them, I was like, “It’s just hair! Just do it! You’re gonna save your life!” But they’re like, “Yeah, but I don’t wanna be bald!” And I remember I didn’t understood, and when this happened to me, I was humbled and I was like I will never say anything like that to any of my patients or any other person because I know now, it’s like losing a part of yourself.
Megan Gill: Yeah, like a part of our core identities as women, a lot of times.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: And you know what? I feel women, we rely a lot on our hair because we that’s one of the only things of our body that we can change on a whim, you know?
Megan Gill: Mm, that’s a good point. I like that. You’re so right.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: It’s like you wanna change it, you can change it. You want another color, you can do another color, you can cut it, you can do this, and it’s still a part of your body, you know?
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: And we’re always trying to change our bodies, and I feel women with our hair, it was a crazy awakening for me.
Megan Gill: Your hair is one of the things you actually have control over, because a lot of times we can’t control, no matter how “healthy” we eat, no matter how much we’re working out or moving our body, my body’s still gonna look this. No matter what I do, I’m still gonna have a belly pooch because that’s just my freaking genetics. Like it’s never going away.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: You cannot do it just one appointment, yeah, and hair you can.
Megan Gill: Oh my god, going through this experience, this traumatic experience, of losing this piece of yourself after already struggling with a body image crisis is so tough, and I can imagine so extremely difficult. Sorry, I feel I put words in your mouth, but I’m just like… wow.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: No, I literally felt I lost myself. I was just on autopilot every day. And honestly alopecia areata – and I say the whole name because that was in my head all day, every day. It was, “Alopecia areata, you have alopecia areata.” And I was like how to get rid of it? I was always looking for things online. I was always looking up other women. When I will go out and to the store or whatever, I will look to see maybe someone else has it. I just felt so lonely at the same time because I felt like nobody else had it. And when I went to my doctor, she told me, “No, I have a lot of patients like you, but it’s a very hard thing that women go through that nobody wants to share it.” And I was like I agree.
Megan Gill: Wow.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: So, yeah. That started happening and my day to day was that I was just crying and not wanting to get in the shower because I didn’t wanna lose hair. It was just my depression was just so bad and the relationship with my body, now, I felt guilty, and I was like I did this to myself. But then at the same time, I just didn’t even care about my body anymore because I was just thinking about my hair. Not in a good way. Not that I wasn’t thinking about my body in a good way. I was just like I don’t have the capacity to be like and on top of that, I wanna lose weight.
Megan Gill: It forced you to shift focus. Not that it was a good, a positive thing that you were now focusing on, but it almost forced you to take the pressure off of your body in a way.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: Yeah. So I started doing everything medically possible, and nothing was really working. I started, I remember the day that I saw a second spot on the other side of my head. I was just like I cannot do this. So I remember my parents will ask me, “How are you doing? Is everything okay with your hair?” And I was yeah, it’s fine. Because I felt if I will talk about it, they wouldn’t understand. And I just felt lonely.
And one day it just got really bad, to me. And I remember explaining to people, “It’s not about seeing the bald spots, it’s about me seeing the hair falling. It’s just so traumatizing. It’s I’m losing more and I’m losing me.
So I remember one night I was like I’m just gonna shave my head because I cannot do this. I was like I’m just gonna shave my head. And I had – how do you call, the ones – you know?
Megan Gill: Like a buzzer?
Roxana Venzor Garcia: Yes, I had one for my dog.
Megan Gill: Oh my gosh, yes.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: Yeah, and I was like I’m just gonna get that. But thankfully I was just so depressed that I couldn’t get out of the bed. The only time that I got out of the bed was to go to work, come back home, take my dog out, and I will literally sleep on the floor of my apartment because I just didn’t have the will to just go to the bed. I was just literally waking up at random places in my apartment every day. So I was just going to work, taking my dog out, because she will wake me up. She will literally lick me to take her out. So that was literally my life. So I’m thankful that I wasn’t able to shave my head because I literally was just like – I didn’t have the energy.
One day I got to my parents’ house and they were like, “How are you doing?” And I just broke down with my dad and I was like, “I’m not doing good. My hair is not looking better.” And I literally just opened my hair to him, and my dad was shocked. And I could see that he wanted to start crying, just for seeing how bad I was feeling. And he talked to my mom, because again, my mom was like, “Oh, you’re fine. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.” And I literally told my mom, “I’m not fine. Please, I just need your support. I’m not okay,” and I show her, and she was shocked. And then she was like, “Please don’t show me again, because it hurts me.” And I was like, “I get it. But at the same time I’m hurts me too,” you know?
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: And she started praying, and I was like this is bad. My mom is praying for my hair? And I remember that, and I feel like it’s so sweet. But then at the same time I was like that’s so traumatizing too.
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: She was praying for my hair and she was like, “Please,” whatever. Then my mom was like, “I feel someone is being very envious or jealous of you, and that’s what’s happening.” The Hispanic, the Mexican in her. And she’s like, “You need to go and see this guy, and he will help you, and blah, blah, blah.” And I was like I don’t wanna do that. I don’t believe in that, and I don’t wanna do that. Then my mom kept calling me and telling me to do it, and I was like you know what? I’m so desperate that I’m just gonna go see this witch.
So I literally called this guy, didn’t even see him in person, FaceTimed this guy, and he was just – it was even worse. He just told me so many things, and I was like okay, this is way worse. I remember just calling my parents and was like, “I know it’s hard. I know you guys don’t get it. At this point, I just need your guys’ support. I just need support. I don’t need any more, ‘Hey, try this oil. Hey, try this thing.’ I just don’t need that.” I was like, “I just need support.” I was just so lucky that I had my best friend – you know, her – Kiara, and she was very understanding. She was very helpful. I’m so grateful for her. At that time she was like, “No, I understand. You need support,” and that was it, I just had support. And then I was doing great. I did everything medically possible for it. It wasn’t helping very much, but it was getting – it was halting the process. That happened September.
In December, I went on a trip to the UK and I was like you know what? I’m just gonna leave on a trip. I left my dog with my cousin while I was there – two days before my – yeah, you know already – they called me and they told me that my dog is dying, so I had to come back. I, thankfully, was able to come back and say goodbye to my dog and put her down because I had to.
Megan Gill: I’m so sorry.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: Yeah, thank you. And after that, everything got – if it was already bad, it got worse because the only thing that was keeping me literally functional was my dog, and I didn’t have that anymore. So I didn’t wanna be in my apartment anymore, because that was just a reminder of the life that I had with my dog. And my parents were very supportive. Literally, the night that my dog passed away, they had my bag. I didn’t know. They went to my apartment, took everything out, and they were like, “You’re moving back home with us. Don’t worry about it. You just need time right now to heal and focus on you.” And I was like, “Okay.” I was grieving my dog and I was grieving my hair at the same time.
It was the hardest time. If I thought that alopecia was bad already, just grieving my dog of 16 years and my hair, my life, everything. It was just hard. And that’s when I started therapy. I moved back with my parents, I started therapy, and again, the body image issues came to top. My therapist was like, “You struggle with body image since you’re very little,” and she was like, “I feel that this is your body telling you that you need to love your body. You need to be nicer to yourself because you are getting sick from this.” Because I literally did everything possible. We did every single test to try and find a reason for my alopecia, and there was none. There are some people that there’s no reason at all. They say stress is a very big part of alopecia areata, but don’t have an actual thing that, “Okay, you have alopecia areata because of this.”
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: But they told me I probably had lupus, I probably have an immune disease, I probably have all this, and everything came back negative. And I was like what is it? What is it? And my mom, I remember she told me, “I feel like it’s you. You’re just so anxious and depressed, and you’re just not doing well, and your body’s literally telling you you’re not.”
So after my dog passed away, in January I started therapy. It wasn’t helping very much, to be honest. I was still just crying every day, feeling – now on top of everything, I was feeling a failure because I was back home with my parents and it was a lot.
One day, my mom – mind you, I don’t wanna generalize and say all Mexicans, but I can assure you that 90% of Mexican parents don’t believe in depression, they don’t believe in mental health issues, and they don’t believe in therapy or psychiatrists.
Megan Gill: I feel that’s also just the boomer generation in general, because my parents are the same.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: They’re like, “If I did it without therapy, you can do it.”
Megan Gill: Right. “Surely you can.” Like, no, guys. There’s a different way, okay?
Roxana Venzor Garcia: Exactly. So January I was already living with my parents for a month, and literally one day my mom sat me down and she started bawling her eyes out. She was crying, and she’s like, “I want you to be better. I want you to feel good.” She was like, “I hate to see you like this.” And I was like, “What do you mean?” Because I thought I was hiding it because I will just cry in my room and just be on autopilot. She was like, “You’re not doing good, and your hair is never gonna grow if you are like this.” She was like, “Please go to a psychiatrist.” And I was like, “Psychiatrist? What?” I was like, “You, telling me about a psychiatrist?” And she was like, “Please, you probably need medications. You’re depressed, you are anxious, you need something.” And I remember just thinking and thinking. I was like if my mom, my Mexican mom that didn’t believe in this told me to do it, how bad am I doing? How bad am I doing that they can tell when I thought I was so good at hiding it.
So I started. I went to the psychiatrist, and honestly, I was also very like – I believe in therapy, I believe in psychiatrists. But I was like, “I’m never gonna be on pills. I’m not gonna do it.” So that was judgmental on my part because I was like I think I’m gonna be good with therapy. That’s what I thought all my life. For me it was like once you need meds, no, that’s bad. I talked to my psychiatrist and she diagnosed me with PTSD from the alopecia, PTSD, anxiety, and depression. And she was like, “Your depression – I feel the way that you were raised and the way that you are, your depression is not like the common depression that you’re in bed and you cannot go to work,” and blah, blah, blah. She’s like you have a functional depression, but still there.
Megan Gill: It’s the sneaky kind. It’s just hiding in the shadows, but it’s actually something that is deeply affecting your body, yeah.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: Yes, exactly. And she was like, “Let’s start the medications,” and I was like, “Okay.”
Megan Gill: Oh, I’m glad that, as resistant as you were to them, I’m so glad that you trusted her.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: I was just doing whatever they told me because I was like I got this far by doing the things that I thought they were okay and by the beliefs that I have, I am just gonna leave it to other people at this point, I honestly was just like I’m just gonna – whatever they tell me to do, I’m gonna do.
At the same time I went to my dermatologist and, again, I was a mess. Every time I was with her I was crying shaking, because they will look through my whole hair and they will find spots and that will be the end of me. I will just start crying. I’d be like, “You find another one?” She’s like, “Yeah,” and they will hold my hand, they will hug me because I will be a mess.
Megan Gill: Because it’s every time you go, I imagine, you’re like, “Is it getting better? Is it getting better? Is it getting worse?” And how do you even mentally prepare yourself for hearing either?
Roxana Venzor Garcia: They were like, “Hey, there’s another one, but it’s okay. It’s very tiny.” And I was like I already know it’s gonna get bigger, I already know. And I remember I went that time, it was the beginning of January, and she told me, “I don’t wanna see you here until you get help.” And I was like, “What do you mean?” And she’s like, “We’re not doing this anymore. I need you to get help because mentally you are not okay.” I was like, “I just went to the psychiatrist.” And she’s like, “Perfect. Just do that. And then once you’re ready, I’ll be happy to see you again, but I don’t wanna see you right now. Let’s take a couple months off the treatment. Stop doing everything you’re doing, Stop the oils, stop everything, and just focus on that. Focus on healing. You are not doing well.”
So that’s when everybody was like you’re not doing well. And I was yeah, I know. I started my treatment, and it changed my life. I am a huge supporter of if you need meds, do you. Do whatever you need to do for your mental health, for your sanity, for whatever you need to do to feel good, do it. Of course, if it’s legal.
Megan Gill: No. Yeah, absolutely. And I’m just like, dude, yes. This is such a big piece of the body image conversation. Whatever you need to feel good in your body – our brains are in our body. There’s so much more than just our physical body, right? It’s like, oh my gosh, our mental health is such a big piece of the conversation. So I am so glad that you are touching on this. Yes, sorry to interrupt, but I’m just like yes.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: Yeah. No, because it’s true. As soon as I started taking care of my mental health, my negative thoughts that I always had, I remember waking up and, “Oh, I’m so fat. Oh, I hate my thighs. Ugh, I hate this. Ugh!” I will just be all the time talking so badly to myself because that’s what you do when you grow up hating your body, that’s the main goal, changing it.
Megan Gill: Right. “What am I working on now? What do I see that I hate now?” Yeah. Oh my god, yes.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: Yes, literally. I remember, if you ask me, and I feel like a lot of women if you ask them, “What’s your favorite part of your body?” they will say their hair because it’s your body., but at the same time, as I said, it’s something you can change and that you can mold and do whatever how you want it. So I didn’t have that anymore. I was having to wear headbands. I was having to wear – I wore a wig for a while because it got to the point that it was really bad I was going into this trip, a bachelorette party, and it was only girls. And I remember just feeling – I was like here I am. I’m gonna have to go and put the wig on while they are just doing their hair and they look so pretty. And I was like okay.
So that was a hard thing to do, but at the same time, I just love womanhood, and that trip was one of the best trips ever. We went to the beach. I was so scared of going to the beach because I was gonna have to wet my hair and all that. They were all so supportive. They were like, “Oh, my god, you look so good! Like your hair…” Because my hair looked exactly the same. It didn’t look like a wig. Or maybe that’s what they said because I don’t know. But they were like, “Oh, my gosh, I wish I had one too! You’re ready so quick!” And I was like, “Yeah! Right?”
Megan Gill: Girlhood is the fucking best. Ugh!
Roxana Venzor Garcia: It healed me. It was so healing. I thought I was gonna feel shit next to them. because all of them had their hair. All of them were pretty and beautiful with their hair whatever they wanted. And I had to always had it either in a bun and put in – I mastered the bun, the whatever hair style you wanted to do with alopecia, I know how to do it and I know how to cover it. I had many different things that I bought to dye my hair, dye the bald spots, whatever.
But yeah, girlhood, that trip, it was just amazing. And that was the start of my healing process. I remember I felt beautiful and I was just so confident in my body on that trip because I was like this is what I have right now. I was literally now relying on everything except my hair to feel beautiful. So I was like I need to make the best of it. I need to feel the best. And I felt beautiful. I felt hot on that trip!
Megan Gill: Yes! I love it!
Roxana Venzor Garcia: Literally, I was just – I wasn’t relying on my hair anymore.
Megan Gill: Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Wow.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: That was just so good and for the start of my healing. So yeah, I did that, came back, I started traveling a lot. That’s when I started relying a lot on my family, on my friends. And honestly, that was 2024. I thought that it was gonna be the hardest and the worst year of my life, and it was the best year of my life. My friends threw me a surprise birthday party. They knew that I was going through a lot, and they were there for me. My family was there for me. My friends were there for me, and they were just so supportive.
I finally – with the medications and with therapy, I was feeling so good about myself. And also I started being grateful just for having an able body, because I used to take it for granted and I remember thinking you work in oncology, you see patients on their deathbeds, people your age. I see girls my age, I see people that are younger than me tied to a bed, not able to walk, not able to eat on their own, not able to even go to the bathroom on their own, and here I am complaining that I don’t like my thighs, and I’m like these thighs have me moving! These thighs have me taking care of people that cannot take care of themselves.
Megan Gill: That’s really powerful.
Roxana Venzor Garcia: I started seeing things differently.
“ I have some women patients, female patients, that they don’t wanna go through chemotherapy or they are very anxious about it because they don’t wanna lose their hair. And I remember looking at them, I was like, “It’s just hair! Just do it! You’re gonna save your life!” But they’re like, “Yeah, but I don’t wanna be bald!” And I remember I didn’t understood, and when this happened to me, I was humbled and I was like I will never say anything like that to any of my patients or any other person because I know now, it’s like losing a part of yourself. And you know what? I feel women, we rely a lot on our hair because we that’s one of the only things of our body that we can change on a whim, you know? It’s like you wanna change it, you can change it. You want another color, you can do another color, you can cut it, you can do this, and it’s still a part of your body, you know?”
- Roxana Venzor Garcia
Roxana is a 31-year-old oncology nurse from the north of Mexico, living in Redondo Beach after moving here in 2017. She loves making people laugh, she’s obsessed with dogs, and she’s constantly picking up new hobbies — currently running, plant parenting, and learning how not to kill her indoor plants. She loves traveling and camping, and while she has alopecia areata, it’s just one of the many things that makes her her.
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A couple of notes to ensure this is a safe space for my guests to share their intimate and vulnerable body image stories in:
* It can be easy to feel alone on your journey of existing in a body. I welcome the connection and support of one another in this space through considerate and curious comments.
* These conversations are quite nuanced, complex, and oftentimes very vulnerable. Remember that everyone has their own body image story, and while someone else’s might look differently than yours, I encourage you to keep an open mind and stay empathetic.
* Thank you for being here. By sharing this type of content, my hope is to inspire personal reflection and cultural questioning. Thank you and supporting me in exploring the effects of our culture’s beauty norms and body standards on human beings existing in today’s world.
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While I’m not a licensed therapist, registered dietician, or medical health professional and cannot speak to body image topics from a clinical, trauma-informed place, I am an expert of lived experience. I’m an academic of my own body, and I’m passionate about facilitating conversations with other humans about their relationships with their bodies. I believe it’s important to continue conversations about healthy body image in creative spaces as a means to heal individuals as well as the collective whole. But just know the information presented in this medium is not professional mental health advice or medical advice, and any questions or concerns you have should always be directed to your health providers.
We shared a few really lovely moments in our conversations of things that I did not know about my own mama, and it was lovely to listen to her open up about her relationship to her body. I hope you enjoy our chat and that it might inspire you to have similar conversations with your own mom about these topics ♥️
“I always thought I was fat. Even though I was size 14, I always thought I was fat. I don’t know why. I just always thought that and I really wasn’t ever, but it never brought me down. It was just a comparing thing, but it never made me feel bad, that I know of. But I always thought I was fat. Like I couldn’t wear a two-piece until our honeymoon. And then I could. Because I just felt I couldn’t. I felt I was fat and I really wasn’t. And in today’s world it’s not at all, not at all how I was feeling at the time. But it didn’t bring me down, and I didn’t think anything of it, really. Just like, ‘No, I can’t wear that. I’ll wear this instead.’”
- DONA GILL
Megan Gill: Hi, mom!
Dona Gill: Hi, daughter.
Megan Gill: Mama Gill is here today having a conversation with me! I’m home for Thanksgiving.
Dona Gill: Yay!
Megan Gill: And I somehow conned her into sitting down to talk with me.
Dona Gill: So much fun!
Megan Gill: So, I’m glad you’re here, mom.
Dona Gill: Me too.
Megan Gill: And thank you for being open to talking with me. Do you wanna start by just introducing yourself and your work that you do in the world?
Dona Gill: My name is Dona Gill. I’m Megan’s mommy. I am a kindergarten teacher, and I’ve been a teacher for many years.
Megan Gill: Yes. Okay. So you’re teaching young people – young, young, young, young people.
Dona Gill: Five-, and six-year-olds right now.
Megan Gill: And before you had me, you were teaching third grade.
Dona Gill: Correct.
Megan Gill: And I know that you substituted me when I was in high school…
Dona Gill: Middle school. I never did high school. Elementary and middle school.
Megan Gill: So you’ve taught an array of different-aged children over the years.
Dona Gill: Yessiree.
Megan Gill: How interesting. Is there anything, specifically in kindergarten? Like, are little kids aware of their bodies and what they look like in space?
Dona Gill: Not really. Once in a great while you might hear someone say, “You’re fat,” just to be mean. Once, I’ve maybe heard it once or twice, maybe. They don’t recognize skin color until we say something, till we’re teaching about it. Not really, I try to teach positivity in the classroom. So yeah, I don’t hear a lot of it.
Megan Gill: That’s really interesting. And also just sad that young kids are still thinking calling somebody fat is an insult, you know?
Dona Gill: Yessiree.
Megan Gill: Yeah, and how that’s still very much baked into our culture.
Dona Gill: Yes, it is.
Megan Gill: Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Thanks for sharing. Okay. So obviously I grew up in the nineties and early two thousands, in a time where thin was definitely in and the term people like to say “heroin chic” was a thing where everybody was very skinny and everybody in the media was preaching thinness, and diet culture was rampant. And god, I know we were on SlimFast and we were in random workout classes when I was in like middle school working out together, which was actually kind of fun and empowering to be like working out together when I was young. I think that’s pretty cool that we did that, like mother daughter.
Dona Gill: I think we just did it for fun to be together.
Megan Gill: Yeah, it was fun.
Dona Gill: And to let’s just do it.
Megan Gill: But also it’s interesting because there still was totally like this cultural overarching like, “Oh, but let’s lose weight!” I remember it being like that, and I think it’s so interesting because for us it was more “fun,” like it was more enjoyable. I remember having a good time with it, but it’s also just like, damn, man. Still, there’s like the under-arcing layer there, like the invisible layer almost of like, “Okay, but we’re gonna do this because we’re gonna lose weight.”
Dona Gill: Mm-hmm. “And it’s gonna work.”
Megan Gill: And it’s gonna work, instead of like, “Oh, let’s go move our bodies because it’s joyful and because it’s fun and because, oh, it’s good for you and because you should be moving your bodies.” It’s interesting because I don’t know that I learned – granted I did grow up doing a bunch of different sports and dancing, and I’m very grateful to you for putting me in dance. So grateful. So beyond grateful, because my body’s able to move in these ways now, and it’s able to stretch in these ways that I think is just inherent. I’m realizing more and more as I’m like in different yoga classes and just experiencing different types of movement and moving my body in different ways, I’m realizing, oh, not everybody gets to move like this and has this much ease in their body. And I’m just so grateful to you. You probably didn’t even realize at the time.
Dona Gill: I just wanted to find something that you enjoyed doing.
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Dona Gill: To pursue. And I’m glad it was dance because I loved watching you.
Megan Gill: Yeah, me too. Me too. Sorry, I took that on a tangent. But it’s interesting because – I’m trying to tie it back to what we were saying before…
Dona Gill: Doing it for fun or now you can move.
Megan Gill: Right, I don’t know that I was taught movement is good for you and I don’t think that’s at any fault to you. I don’t know that you would’ve known to even teach that at that time that our culture was in. I think we’ve come so far in the past 30 years of understanding how important movement is and how important activity is and how important eating your daily greens or whatever, just these different things to, to keep our body going, to keep the longevity of our body up and just – yeah, it’s so sad how much diet culture was baked into all of the things that we were doing, and I guess that’s my perspective on it.
So I’m more so curious to take it back further to when you were like a kid, teenager coming into your body as a young woman. And I’m really curious to know what the dynamic between you and your mom was, or you also have an older sister. So I’m curious to know if there was anything there in terms of what you learned about your body as a young woman, and then I don’t know if culture has impact into that as well, social conditioning, cultural conditioning. I’m just curious kind of what your experience was with all of that.
Dona Gill: Not a lot. There really wasn’t. It wasn’t body image because I was size 14 all the time. So I never thought anything of it, unless maybe I would go with my sister who’s shorter and maybe slightly chubbier, but not really. And then she would always say, “Everything always looks so good on you. Everything looks good on you whenever you would try something on.” And my mom would always say, “Yeah, that looks good. Yeah, that looks good.” So I never thought anything of it. I don’t think it was really a big deal in my eyes growing up.
Megan Gill: Okay. So your mom didn’t have a lot to say about your body?
Dona Gill: No.
Megan Gill: That’s pretty fucking cool, honestly.
Dona Gill: No, never thought about it. Never. No. Yeah. Not at all.
Megan Gill: Okay. This is also interesting though, because your mom is first generation in the US?
Dona Gill: Correct.
Megan Gill: Okay. So I wonder just like how much that impact also had on like her upbringing.
Dona Gill: Right, because I don’t think their upbringing was body image. Their upbringing was survive. Survive. What do we eat? Can you get anything to wear? Just survive. Not how you look.
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Dona Gill: And then they brought that to us, really. Yeah, really, I had no clue on body image.
Megan Gill: Can you pinpoint a time, even like beyond young adulthood, a time in your earlier life, even in your twenties where you started to get messaging that you maybe should be…
Dona Gill: I always thought I was fat. Even though I was size 14, I always thought I was fat. I don’t know why. I just always thought that and I really wasn’t ever, but it never brought me down. It was just a comparing thing, but it never made me feel bad, that I know of. But I always thought I was fat. Like I couldn’t wear a two-piece until our honeymoon. And then I could.
Megan Gill: Why not?
Dona Gill: Because I just felt I couldn’t. I felt I was fat and I really wasn’t. And in today’s world it’s not at all, not at all how I was feeling at the time. But it didn’t bring me down, and I didn’t think anything of it, really. Just like, “No, I can’t wear that. I’ll wear this instead.”
Megan Gill: Just so sad that you thought you couldn’t wear it, that you thought you couldn’t exist in the world in a fucking two-piece bikini, you know? God forbid!
Dona Gill: I mean, I could have. I just felt I couldn’t, I did as a little kid. Well, no, take that back because my mom wouldn’t let us wear a two-piece when we were little. It was just the way she was at the time. Then when I could, I’m like, “Yeah, I don’t know if it looks good.” But then again, I was also from the seventies where everything was very, very skimpy. Very skimpy. And maybe I didn’t feel the best about me not being in clothes. Maybe.
Megan Gill: Wait, you didn’t feel the best about – you wanted to cover up.
Dona Gill: Right, right.
Megan Gill: That was your comfort zone.
Dona Gill: So not so much body image, but more just cover up.
Megan Gill: Like feeling like you need to hide your body?
Dona Gill: Yeah. I guess, maybe, but not really hide – in between.
Megan Gill: Okay. Yeah, she was giving modest.
Dona Gill: There you go. Yeah. I guess modest. I don’t know.
Megan Gill: Okay. How does it feel now to be in your sixties – we celebrated your 65th birthday in Florida last year, and you were in a two piece swimsuit!
Dona Gill: Oh, I did.
Megan Gill: Okay! How does that feel?
Dona Gill: The words you always use. It’s empowering, but still embarrassing. So both.
Megan Gill: Why embarrassing?
Dona Gill: Because I don’t like the way I look in it. I mean, certain ones, yeah, okay. But I know because I’m unhealthy, so that’s why.
Megan Gill: Because you’re unhealthy. Why do you say that?
Dona Gill: Because extra poundage is not healthy.
Megan Gill: Not necessarily on your body always.
Dona Gill: It would help with my arthritis if I didn’t have it.
Megan Gill: Sometimes your body is just gonna exist at an even-keel weight.
Dona Gill: And it does. And that is interesting because I was always a certain weight growing up. I was like 128 always, always until I had you guys. And then I went up to like 142, and I stayed at that forever and ever and ever and ever. And then I hit the old age, and now, whew. It’s gone up now.
Megan Gill: Okay. Well it’s very fascinating. I just wanna point this out because I also distinctly remembered my weight in terms of numerology but I’m just like blown away, also, by the fact that you said you at that time were a size 14 for as long as you can remember. But that you weighed 128 pounds. And I’m just am so fascinated by the correlation of those two numbers and what we in our brains today, someone who’s my age who’s thinking like, okay. Well, I weigh a lot more than that. And I am not a size – I’m smaller than a size 14. I’m like a size 8/10 right now.
Dona Gill: Oh yeah. Interesting.
Megan Gill: And it’s just so fascinating how I think we just like – I don’t know, I’m just like, damn, that’s wild. We cling to these numbers sometimes or these numbers can haunt us sometimes or we think like, you know, obviously as women we know that if you try on a size 30 (or whatever your go-to size is) at 10 different stores, the pants are all gonna fit differently. And I just think also it’s, I don’t know. I don’t know. I just think it’s interesting.
Dona Gill: I thought it was fascinating that I could stay that weight no matter what. I could eat a lot of candy; I could not eat candy. I could eat healthy; I could not eat healthy. I could eat anything I wanted. I was always the same weight at each of the three periods of time. Even today, either way I go I’m around the same weight.
Megan Gill: And that’s what I mean when I say sometimes our bodies are just supposed to exist around this baseline level. That’s where I feel like I’ve finally reached a place of like, my body is just going to be this. It’s never going to – I’m going to have to do things I don’t wanna have to do to it in order to be smaller, and it’s just not worth it to me. I just don’t want to do that. And I’ve come to this place of like radical acceptance of, “Okay. All right. I refuse to live like that. So this is just the way that my body is.” And it also does feel – I don’t know if it feels for you – for me it feels freeing to be able to be like, “Okay, it, it’s fine.” I can come here for Thanksgiving and not be in my normal movement routine and, you know, maybe not be eating in the same patterns that I would back at home and not feel like I have to beat myself up for that or not feel like so scared that I’m gonna gain weight, or even if I do fluctuate a few pounds,my body’s still gonna generally look like this, because that’s just like where it wants to exist at.
Dona Gill: Right. You think you eat a lot, but it’s a lot for your body at the time. So that’s I think why you stay in your weight. That’s why I think no matter how much you eat or how much less you eat, you’re gonna end up at the same just because that’s who you are and that’s just your pattern. At least that’s what I’ve found over the years.
Megan Gill: Yeah, that’s really interesting.
Dona Gill: Mm-hmm. I would love to go back to that weight before and stick around that. But it’s not happening. That’s all right.
Megan Gill: Okay. Well, you’re also working a full-time job teaching kindergartners. You need to give yourself a little bit of grace too. It’s really hard. It’s hard to be dedicated to, again, like how far are you willing to go? How far do you have the capacity to go to change your body, and what is important to you at this time? If right now what’s important to you is getting through this next – she’s about to retire, everyone getting through this next –
Dona Gill: Yay!
Megan Gill: – six months to just get to the end of the year so that you can maybe start to focus on yourself a little bit more next year? Then that’s what you gotta do to get through, you know?
Dona Gill: I think that’s a good motto. I think that’s good. Just keep pushing on.
Megan Gill: Yeah, or finding what’s important for you because that’s gonna be different for everyone, you know? And finding the why behind sure, we wanna, you know, get back to where we were before, but why?
Dona Gill: I wanna be healthy, and I feel like I wanna move more and I want clothes to look better on me, my perception of looking better.I think I look good in the mirror, but then when I see a picture of me, I’m like, “Oh, whoa. No, that didn’t look very good.”
Megan Gill: Wait, okay. Tell me why. I’ve had this conversation recently with multiple people.
Dona Gill: Oh, really?
Megan Gill: Yes! And it’s so fascinating because it’s like these two reflective things for us, right? The mirror and photos, video, whatever it is for you. And how we can have a strong relationship with our body and what we see in the mirror in the present moment, and then in hindsight, retrospect, you see this image captured of you, and your relationship to that is off. And it also makes a lot of sense. And I think that it’s like, I don’t know, if I were to sit here and be like, “Which is more important, your relationship with the mirror or your relationship with photos?” Like, I don’t know. I think it’s, it’s so nuanced and, you know, obviously different for each person and –
Dona Gill: I don’t think you can have one or the other. Because you see yourself in both all the time, especially now with the use of phones and photos and internet, social media.
Megan Gill: Right I just mean like, if you were to have a strong relationship with one or the other, is what I mean. I would almost want people to have a strong relationship with what they say reflected in the mirror.
Dona Gill: That’s probably what I have, because I don’t like to look at photos. I will ignore them.
Megan Gill: Well, exactly. It gets convoluted with photos and I think it’s hard too because it’s like this other thing captured, and depending on literally how you’re standing, what you’re wearing, right? All these different – the lighting, all these different factors come into play in photos that it’s like we, I think, have to sort of look at them with a grain of salt anyways. I tell myself this all the time as well. What really matters is what’s going on in your body in the present moment in the mirror. And I know that – that’s not to discount the fact that certain people do have a tough relationship with what they see in the mirror. Granted, hello, not every single day do I love what I see in the mirror either, you know?
Dona Gill: Oh, I agree.
Megan Gill: But it’s so interesting that you bring that up.
Dona Gill: Interesting. Yeah.
Megan Gill: Okay. So you find yourself avoiding looking at them.
Dona Gill: Mm-hmm. Even avoiding mirrors a lot.
Megan Gill: Oh, and avoiding mirrors, even though you don’t mind what you see in the mirror?
Dona Gill: Well, because in the morning I like looking at what do I look like for the day? Okay, this is how I’m presenting myself for the day. I could change something if I need to, if I’m looking at the mirror, but later on, if I’m passing a mirror, I can’t change my outfit. I can’t change my hair. I’ve gotta just keep on going with what I see. And you’re like, oh, maybe I shouldn’t have picked that out today, so that’s why.
Megan Gill: Oh, I experience that as well. It’s interesting. It’s like a fear of seeing something you don’t like in yourself, which is valid. It’s so valid. But I think also the difficulty in that, or the difficult thing to put yourself through is the acceptance of, okay, well, can’t change it. This is what I chose. We’re rolling with it, and we’re gonna try to just breathe and be like, it’s okay.
Like for me, my makeup, I’ve been doing different makeup lately, and like when I put it on, I’m like, ooh, I love it. And I love the way I look. I go live the day. At the end of the day I look in the mirror and I’m like, oh my god, I was walking around like this? It’s kind of like smudged and I don’t know, it’s just whatever! I was living my life. And I think we put so much pressure on ourselves to like, be perfect, look perfect all the time. It’s like, for what?
Dona Gill: I think I really like when someone says, “Oh, you look good in that today. Oh, you look good today, or you look happy today, or you look something” I’m like, okay, I’m doing pretty good today. I think I need that every day.
Megan Gill: I love that! It’s important because also it’s like you look happy. You look good. Like you don’t look ill, you don’t look unwell. I think that those are two really important compliments to pay someone. You know?
Dona Gill: I try to do that to others too. Yes. “I really like what you’re wearing today,” or “That color looks really good on you.”
Megan Gill: Or even I’ve been having an interesting battle of like, okay, I am trying to just not pay people so many appearance based compliments. But also it’s like, well, we can’t discount the fact that we are visual creatures and…
Dona Gill: And they took the time to pick out that outfit.
Megan Gill: Exactly. It’s art!
Dona Gill: So like, that looks really good on you today. That color is really good. Someone the other day said to me, “That color is really good on you, Mrs. Gill.” It’s an adult, but doesn’t matter. “That looks really good on you.” So then I’m like, okay, what color is that? What color looks good on me? So then I try to do more of that color on me.
Megan Gill: It’s so true. It’s a creative process to put together.
Dona Gill: So I appreciate those compliments.
Megan Gill: Yeah, me too. Do not get me wrong. Some girl yesterday was like, “Ah, I love your shoes!” I’m like, “Thanks, lemme tell you, I got them on sale at Marshalls, I love them too, so thank you!” I don’t know that there is anything wrong with it. But I think it’s also just having the awareness of how it made you feel when someone said, “You look happy! You look good!”
Dona Gill: “Aww, thank you!”
Megan Gill: Like, “Oh my god, thanks!” Because that also just speaks so much more than just your appearance. It speaks to like your character and your soul and how you’re, you know, affecting other people.
Dona Gill: And you can kind of tell if the person really means it or if they’re just saying it to say it. You kinda know the people – or yesterday that girl about your shoes seemed just really interested because she was really looking at ‘em, and it’s not like you were just walking by and she just said it because.
Megan Gill: Okay, but here’s the thing, I don’t know – granted, I don’t know every person in the world, but I don’t know that people pay a compliment – I don’t know that a lot of people pay a compliment unless they mean it. At least that’s my take, because I’m not gonna pay a compliment unless…
Dona Gill: Sometimes at a job you might pay a compliment just because you need to say it, but then you find something good to try and make a compliment. Sometimes in your family you might do that just to keep the peace or knowing that that person needs to feel good.
Megan Gill: Oh, okay. That’s fair!
Dona Gill: But then it’s usually you find something that’s really good to make that compliment about. But there are people that just make a random compliment.
Megan Gill: I guess, maybe, but I don’t know. That’s my take. My optimistic outlook.
Dona Gill: That’s a good take. Good job.
Megan Gill: Thanks. Thanks, mom.
Dona Gill: I think one of the best times that I felt really good about myself was when I was pregnant because our heredity is the tummy, that’s just my family all has it going way back as far as I know.
Megan Gill: The belly. Yep.
Dona Gill: The belly. So when I was pregnant, people would say, “You look good!” And I’m like, “Yeah, I do. Because now I can have a belly and it’s okay to have a belly when I’m pregnant..”
Megan Gill: Oh my god.
Dona Gill: So I used to think I looked really good pregnant.
Megan Gill: Wow.
Dona Gill: So maybe I should have had more kids.
Megan Gill: Wait. That is honestly a really important thing that you just pointed out. And something that I, obviously, I’ve never been pregnant myself yet, but something that I think about all the time in myself and how it’s just so wildly accepted and beautiful and seen as this magnificent thing when you’re pregnant and your belly is big, but then when a woman is just not pregnant and has a belly, it’s seen as gross or unhealthy or unattractive, and it’s like – wow, I’m just like sitting with that. I don’t even have anything to say about that. I’m just like, that dichotomy is crazy to me and just how much pressure society puts on women and how much pressure women put on women and media puts on women.
Like, okay, I’ve been watching a show called, Nobody Wants This on Netflix. Have you seen it yet?
Dona Gill: No. No, not yet.
Megan Gill: The women in it – I love the show, and they’re all so talented and lovely, but they’re all just very straight-sized bodies with not a lot of curve action going on. And the men in the show – there’s a scene where you see one of the leading men with his shirt off and he has a belly, and I’m like, of course it’s normalized for a man on this television show on Netflix to be seen with a shirt off with a belly, but none of the women probably even have that belly. And I say probably because we just don’t know, but just like how the double standard is so crazy and yeah, we are getting somewhere. We’re getting somewhere. We’re starting to talk about this stuff. The media is starting to shift, but it’s also still so prevalent. It’s like, damn, well, I just wanna see a woman that looks like me, or even someone bigger, or someone, a mom – I mean, granted, a lot of times mothers are perceived to have bigger bodies, which is another piece to the conversation. But just seeing people with not perfectly-thin bodies in these leading roles on TV and like showing the elements of them, like the belly that I have, I wanna see somebody in a bathing suit in a Netflix series with a belly like mine!
Dona Gill: That would be nice. That would be nice.
Megan Gill: Yeah, so I’m hopeful that we’ll get there, but it’s just like, god, wow. I took that and ran with it. But how fascinating that you felt the most, what did you say, beautiful when you were pregnant. But also, how magnificent is that? Because you were making a life.
Dona Gill: Ha ha ha ha - you!
Megan Gill: Like of course you felt beautiful, you know?
Dona Gill: Oh, true. Mm-hmm.
Megan Gill: But also, damn, because, what? You were pregnant with two kids. So 18 months of your life were you pregnant, and then all the other time you maybe didn’t feel what you felt while you were pregnant. And it’s like, I want you to be able to feel that. Yeah. I think that’s the important piece of this here. Yeah.
Dona Gill: Guess so.
Megan Gill: Is there anything else you wanna chat about?
Dona Gill: For me? No. I don’t think so.
Megan Gill: Okay. It’s good – you’re gonna cry.
Dona Gill: The sun also is on my eyes. Anything else you wanna know about me?
Megan Gill: Yeah! I wanna know what your favorite thing or things about your body are. They can be physical, non-physical, one of each. Whatever comes to mind. Totally up to you.
Dona Gill: My favorite thing? My eyes. Eyes.
Megan Gill: I do like your eyes.
Dona Gill: I like that. I used to like my legs now, not so much anymore. They’re getting old.
Megan Gill: They still carry you from place to place.
Dona Gill: Yeah. Hard though. Hard. Yeah. I guess I like my mind with people.
Megan Gill: That’s a good one!
Dona Gill: Being able to socialize or being able to teach, being able to love, have fun.
Megan Gill: Yeah, all important shit.
Dona Gill: Other than that, maybe my nose.
Megan Gill: I do like your nose.
Dona Gill: A short little stubby nose, yeah. Otherwise, everything’s starting to get old and wrinkly, old and wrinkly and sun spots.
Megan Gill: Well, I think that’s beautiful. I like your sun spots.
Dona Gill: Thank you. Well, I’m glad you do.
Megan Gill: I have some too, so I’m glad I’m looking at my future.
Dona Gill: Well, I’m glad. You are sadly yes.
Megan Gill: Don’t say sadly!
Dona Gill: When I look in the mirror and say, “Oh my gosh, that’s my mom looking at me,” when I look in the mirror. And I never thought I would look like her, but I do now.
Megan Gill: Oh god. Okay, what’s that experience like?
Dona Gill: Very strange when you see the wrinkles in the same spots that she had. Like, gosh, I look like her. I never thought I would. It’s just – it’s strange.
Megan Gill: “I never thought I would.”
Dona Gill: I never thought I would, but it is a good connection. Then you’re like, “Okay, yeah, that was my mom.”
Megan Gill: And how silly it would be to want to change those things that remind you of your mom.
Dona Gill: True.
Megan Gill: Not that you would, but I think that a lot of women see wrinkles as – yeah.
Dona Gill: Oh, for sure. Would I like some plastic surgery? Yes, for sure. Am I gonna do it? No.
Megan Gill: Why do you think you would like it? Because society told you that it’s an option and that… you could do it?
Dona Gill: Yeah, yes. I just think it would make me look better. Even though that means nothing. People at the store, do they really look at me and say, “Ooh, she’s got that ugly lady walking by”? No. Nobody does that.
Megan Gill: Well, maybe don’t call yourself ugly.
Dona Gill: Okay. That old lady?
Megan Gill: Can I remind you that you’re my mother? Again, I will look like you one day. So please do not call yourself ugly.
Dona Gill: “Look at that beautiful old lady walking by.”
Megan Gill: Exactly!
Dona Gill: “I wanna be like her. I wanna be like her.”
Megan Gill: You are a beautiful.
Dona Gill: Thank you.
Megan Gill: You are welcome.
Dona Gill: I am glad. Do I like my body now? No. Would I love to change it? Yeah. Is it hard to because I’m getting old? Yeah, for sure. So there’s the answer to all your questions.
Megan Gill: Well, thank you for chatting with me today.
Dona Gill: Yeah. Yay.
Megan Gill:I know you were a bit hesitant to sit down and talk.
Dona Gill: Very much, it’s very strange –
Megan Gill: Hopefully cool.
Dona Gill: – to hear you and your podcast voice and then having to answer your questions like that when you’re just my daughter.
Megan Gill: All right.
Dona Gill: And we should just talk.
Megan Gill: Well, thanks for doing it.
Dona Gill: Yeah, sure. Anytime.
Megan Gill: Okay.
Dona Gill: Anytime.
Megan Gill: Okay.
Dona Gill: We’re done.
Megan Gill: We’re done!
Dona Gill: Okay, cool.
Megan Gill: That’s it!
Dona Gill: Oh, my –
“I think one of the best times that I felt really good about myself was when I was pregnant because our heredity is the tummy, that’s just my family all has it going way back as far as I know. The belly. So when I was pregnant, people would say, “You look good!” And I’m like, “Yeah, I do. Because now I can have a belly and it’s okay to have a belly when I’m pregnant.” So I used to think I looked really good pregnant. So maybe I should have had more kids.”
- DONA GILL
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A couple of notes to ensure this is a safe space for my guests to share their intimate and vulnerable body image stories in:
* It can be easy to feel alone on your journey of existing in a body. I welcome the connection and support of one another in this space through considerate and curious comments.
* These conversations are quite nuanced, complex, and oftentimes very vulnerable. Remember that everyone has their own body image story, and while someone else’s might look differently than yours, I encourage you to keep an open mind and stay empathetic.
* Thank you for being here. By sharing this type of content, my hope is to inspire personal reflection and cultural questioning. Thank you and supporting me in exploring the effects of our culture’s beauty norms and body standards on human beings existing in today’s world.
Do you have a friend, family member or peer who might love this too? I’d be honored if you could help me spread the word about my writing and body image conversations!
While I’m not a licensed therapist, registered dietician, or medical health professional and cannot speak to body image topics from a clinical, trauma-informed place, I am an expert of lived experience. I’m an academic of my own body, and I’m passionate about facilitating conversations with other humans about their relationships with their bodies. I believe it’s important to continue conversations about healthy body image in creative spaces as a means to heal individuals as well as the collective whole. But just know the information presented in this medium is not professional mental health advice or medical advice, and any questions or concerns you have should always be directed to your health providers.
Megan Gill: Amy, thank you for having this conversation with me today. I am excited to chat.
Amy Geist: Oh, Megan, thank you for asking me.
Megan Gill: Absolutely.
Amy Geist: I’m excited to chat with you too.
Megan Gill: Do you wanna just start by introducing yourself and a little bit about the work that you do in the world?
Amy Geist: Oh, sure. My name is Amy Geist and the work I do in the world is a producer and a writer/director of film and commercial. And then I’m also a burgeoning standup comedian as well over the past couple of years. and yeah, I work with a lot of indie filmmakers, new filmmakers, female filmmakers. Those are kind of my favorite people to work with. Yeah.
Megan Gill: You’ve also created quite a few of your own projects as well.
Amy Geist: Oh, thank you for reminding me. Yes, Megan. I wrote and directed a short film called Dysmorphia, which is a horror film, and around the themes that we’re gonna talk about, of body image and relationship with body and self and beauty standards and how sometimes those are inherited from our moms and from their moms. And I’ve also, as a producer, I guess, a writer and director, have produced a couple of, I guess, series weekends. One was called Fuse, where we had different female writer/directors and shot their films over five day, and they got to use those projects to be their calling card for projects and for to grow into a filmmaker, and a couple of them, one of them got into Sundance, one of them got into Tribeca, and that was kind of one of my favorite experiences as a producer in film. And then I did the weekend Collision Film Initiative, which we did together, where we got to film. Again, female filmmakers coming together to make four short films in a weekend. And those films are making their way through the film festival circuit as well, and giving people a chance to just try out their voice, get to know their voice more as an artist. And now we have these awesome, I guess, calling cards as well for ourselves. I think those are the things I did.
Megan Gill: Yeah, thanks for sharing about them.
Amy Geist: Yeah. Thanks for reminding me.
Megan Gill: Absolutely! Well, it’s cool because you and I met in Chicago, I was thinking about it, almost 10 years ago.
Amy Geist: Oh, wow.
Megan Gill: Which is crazy
Amy Geist: On a music video.
Megan Gill: On a music video, which was actually one of my favorite projects even still to date.
Amy Geist: It was a lot of fun.
Megan Gill: Yeah, it was so unique and just a different acting experience for me at the time –
Amy Geist: Yeah.
Megan Gill: – that really impacted how I viewed film work.
Amy Geist: Yeah.
Megan Gill: And I feel it was an impetus for wanting to do more film work, but then you and I had reconnected because you moved to LA and then I moved to LA, and we reconnected here I wanna say about the time that you were in readings, doing table reads for your short film that you made about body image.
Amy Geist: Yes, yes, yes. Absolutely.
Megan Gill: Right. I feel that’s where we kind of reconnected. And then our story, you and I, you shot your film and then I shortly shot my film A Broadway Body, which you helped me produce, and introduced me to what it is to create your own short film.
Amy Geist: Yes, yes.
Megan Gill: And both of these pieces were centering around body image themes, which I think is really cool. Now, looking back in hindsight. And it’s interesting that these worlds kind of brought us back together here in Los Angeles.
Amy Geist: I know, right?
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Amy Geist: That’s something that I am – I have a joke about that in one of my sets of like, yeah, I waited till LA to go into recovery for an eating disorder. You know, because I a challenge. I don’t wanna make it too easy. So why not go to the one place that makes it hardest to accept yourself.
Megan Gill: Throw yourself to the fire.
Amy Geist: Yeah, just give it a shot. Yeah. duh. Of course we worked together on A Broadway Body. I gotta get better talking about my –
Megan Gill: Oh my god, no, you’re perfectly fine. You do so many things I was even perusing your website just obviously so impressed by all the different things you’re doing and all the different projects you’re working on and how your hands are in all these different creative pots. But yeah, I just thought it was interesting this timeline of – sorry, not to jump in, but this timeline of when we’d met around 10 years ago, I know, at least for me, I was kind of in the throes of my unhealthy relationship to my body and my self-image, and then moving to LA, kind of where you were starting to go with it, and creating this work that’s centered around trying to heal those parts of myself and trying to heal my relationship to my body, and then also being involved in a project where you had written the story around body dysmorphia and those types of themes with how toxic the beauty industry can be. And then now a couple years removed from that, just sitting back, I just think that there’s something really powerful about that.
Amy Geist: Well yeah, I think something that’s cool about the juxtaposition of our projects is just that there’s so much to say around this subject because our films could not be more different, you know? So it’s like, which I think just as a credit to A, our, our different voices as, as artists and filmmakers, and B, how many different angles and points of view you can have on the same subject because it affects just so many people so many women.
Megan Gill: Yeah, absolutely 100%. And I think it’s interesting that you chose the theme of horror because Dysmorphia is a horror film. It’s incredible, by the way. I was revisiting parts of it before our conversation. And yeah, some of it is hard, like, going back to it, I was resistant to it. I didn’t wanna watch it. I’m like, ugh, I know this is difficult to watch. So I’m curious how – because I know it was really important to you to talk about these themes in the horror setting, so I’m curious to hear you speak a little bit more on that and how that maybe helps you navigate the topics or helped you find your voice within how you wanted to say what you wanted to say. Yeah. Anything that comes up for you.
Amy Geist: Yeah. I mean, I think, I am myself a horror fan. I always have loved horror and I’ve always, in college I used to write plays and you got to put them on in college for free. And it did not set us up for the realistic experience of making those outside of college. But you got to do it for free. And so you were able to do all this weird stuff, and I had a reputation of like, “Oh, Amy’s weird to put up another weird thing,” because it was just, I think always more interesting to me, to explore from a visceral and what I felt was an honest, more of a place where people could interpret and take away what they wanted from what was going on.
And I think what I liked about horror as a genre for this project in particular was because one of the reasons that I wanted to do it was, you know, going through an eating disorder for 20 years and from when I was 15 to 34 and just the different – the actual experience, the visceral experience of being in it when it was most active and the process of recovery, and never really seeing something in media that reflected that experience of my personal experience of what that was like, of only really ever seeing the Lifetime movies that are very like, “Oh, she stopped eating, but then we took her to the hospital. Now she’s okay,” and just very simplified and sanitized of these struggles and always making it the focus about the pathology of the disorder rather than kind of like, how do we get here?
And so, yeah, that seemed a really good opportunity for Dysmorphia, to really talk about the first person, to encapsulate, I guess, the first-person experience of going through something like that. I want to very much say Dysmorphia is not autobiographical in any way. It is entirely fictional, but it is inspired, yeah, by just the first person experience of going through something like that. So, and I think to really kind of drive home Isabella’s struggle, to visualize her psychological struggles, horrific shadowy figures seemed like the best way to go.
Megan Gill: Did writing and going through the process of creating this piece of art that in some ways reflected your own struggles, at least what I’m garnering from what you’re saying. Was that healing for you in any way?
Amy Geist: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, luckily when I – I guess luckily or not, but when I really kinda started on this process, I was already a couple years into recovery of what I felt was an actual recovery. And so, I think I created a little bit of a buffer of distance with the experience, which I think made it easier for me to make a project about it because I think if I’d still been a little too close to it, it would not have been a healthy experience. So I had a bit of a distance from it, but I do think what was healing was actually talking to, you know, the crew that worked on it, people that saw it, people that read it, and hearing how it made a part of them feel seen and acknowledged, and people coming up and feeling safe to share their story with me and their experience, because they haven’t really felt they’ve seen something that really touched on what they went through in a real way. And so, I think that in itself was – I didn’t expect to happen, but was like, I do think healing and rewarding and a really beautiful experience every time somebody trusted me with that information.
Megan Gill: Yeah, it’s really hitting me in the emos, Amy, because this is your baby. This is your creative baby that you are now tied to in such a beautiful way because, just the fact that it did open up pathways for these conversations to be had and for people to feel seen in this creative piece that you created is so important. And one of the ways that I think we’re continuing to get this conversation rolling and to kind of uncover some of these things that we all experience that we don’t usually talk about because a lot of it is really dark. And a lot of people do struggle – I mean, no matter what level of depth you’re struggling on, it can be difficult to talk about.
Amy Geist: Yeah, and I think that was another thing that horror helped with was it giving it enough of a distance where it didn’t feel quite as raw or touch quite a nerve because you can have that separation of like, “Well, that’s make believe,” you know?
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Amy Geist: You know, “There aren’t really monsters!” So I think allowing people to maybe process it in a different way, yeah.
Megan Gill: Totally. Yeah. I love that. I was perusing some comments because Dysmorphia is on YouTube, an Alter for viewing pleasure (for free!), we will obviously link it to the Substack. But one of the comments that jumped out at me if I can share it –
Amy Geist: Sure.
Megan Gill: – kind of aligned with what we’re speaking about. And I just think that it’s something that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately and just a really beautiful thing that somebody – beautiful, I don’t know, really important thing that somebody said. Okay, so this person said:
“One thing someone once told me helps me fight off the urge to have plastic surgery. My mother passed away some years ago and people always used to say how much we looked alike. Now that she’s gone, the features that I always hate(d) about myself, like my nose and face shape, are the things I want to keep as they are because it reminds me of her and she created me. If I would change them then I would no longer see her when I look in the mirror, discard what she created and not love her face. Thank you mom, miss you so much.”
And this also just brings me to the piece of where you were speaking in the beginning about how a lot of this can be passed down generationally, or when our mothers don’t heal their trauma and their unhealthy relationships to their self-image and their body, it can get passed down to us. I just think that this – I’m just so glad that you made this piece of art because that was a really powerful comment to read.
Amy Geist: That’s beautiful. I definitely got a little emotional listening to that. That’s like – I haven’t read that. I kind of intentionally stopped reading the comments –
Megan Gill: Oh, god, sorry.
Amy Geist: – for my own – no, no, no, no. No, that’s a very good one. That’s a good one. That’s a good one. You know, as any – because if you believe all the good ones, you have to believe the bad ones or whatever. Isn’t that something somebody said? But this is a really good one because I think that’s so beautifully said. And I will say I know a large part of Dysmorphia deals with plastic surgery, and I do wanna say that I believe in bodily autonomy, absolutely. I do not want to demonize anybody that chooses to get plastic surgery. I think it should be a personal choice between you, your doctors, whatever you want to do. And I know this movie can be interpreted as a statement against plastic surgery, so I do wanna say I do not demonize or pass judgment on people who do it. I think it’s you gotta do what you gotta do to feel safe in your body. And I think it was just an element that I use in the film because of just the inherent violence that it comes with surgery. The violence of surgery – I’m personally terrified of getting surgery. I’ve never gotten a major surgery
Megan Gill: Same.
Amy Geist: Right? Yeah, where’s the wood to knock on. Let’s knock on something. And so I think just the inherent violence of voluntarily going under the knife and having your body ripped apart and put back together is just sort of just using that as a way to show the violence that we inflict on ourselves. And so it was more of a tool narratively than of people who do that.
And yeah, I guess, you know, when it comes to the mom, it is just like, oh man, aren’t we little sponges? Just little baby us, we’re just little baby sponges. I guess I also don’t have any ill will towards our mothers who sort of unintentionally were doing the best that they could as well in just a fucked up system, you know? Don’t hate the player, hate the patriarchy, you know?
Megan Gill: It’s so true.
Amy Geist: Those messages are so just ingrained and can so easily be absorbed by things that – you know, talking about diet culture and sort of orthorexia part of diet culture that pops up and is disguised as health, and so, it’s like, you know, just so many different ways for this messaging to get ingrained in little ones and by, you know, no fault of a parent. But it is, I feel in my experience and in my family, I think the way that it got to me was very much a, you know, passed down through different generations and growing up in the nineties and Slim Fast and –
Megan Gill: Oh god, yeah. Yep. Yes.
Amy Geist: Wasn’t that the worst.
Megan Gill: I’m sitting here thinking same! And in the non – what am I trying to say? Like, my mom didn’t push these things onto me in a negative light.
Amy Geist: Right. Mm-hmm.
Megan Gill: There was enthusiasm about it, you know, and it was just disguised with this, this is good for you.
Amy Geist: Yeah.
Megan Gill: It is really sad to think about how unknowingly so many mothers have probably done that to their children. But also, at the same time, I do think it was a very particular era that we grew up in where, side note, I’m gonna have a conversation with my mom over Thanksgiving, and I’m very curious to dive into kind of how this stuff showed up with her mom and if anything was present as she was growing up, because we’ve never really talked about that. And I am just so curious because a lot of what I’ve been thinking about lately in having these conversations is like, okay, obviously I know my experience growing up in the nineties and the early two thousands and a lot of my peers in this same millennial stage of life had a very similar experience. And it’s cool because I do think with the resources now, some of it is shifting. Yes, as toxic as social media can be, the fact that people are even talking about this –
Amy Geist: Yes.
Megan Gill: – online and on a wider scale, or making art about it, it’s becoming more of a topic of conversation I think is really impactful and it’s what’s gonna help drive change. Where our moms, when we were 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years old, there were probably no conversations about how fucked up the Slim Fast regimen was, you know?
Amy Geist: Girl. No. No. There were no conversations about any of anything, really! It was just what was in the new issue of People or Cosmo or on MTV. It was just such a limited funnel of pop culture of messages of, like, “Are you as thin as Naomi Watts?”
—
[Timecode: 26:22]
Amy Geist: It’s a struggle, it is. It’s a gross feeling. The GLP-1 ads, it’s so wild, right? It’s just wild because our industry is wild in that way of, you know, you see the character description of what you’re auditioning for and it’s like, “Interesting faces. We don’t need model faces. We need interesting ones.” And it’s like, “Okay, okay, cool. It’s good to have an interesting face, I guess.” And the way that casting will just talk about your body – and I think it’s been like, I’ve had to check in with myself of like, because in the past, especially when I was closer to my disorder of feeling immense amounts of shame when someone would talk about my body in a certain way. So now being a place where I’ve disconnected myself from a shame reaction when I hear that because it’s like, I mean, that’s just the truth of my body is I have a larger body. So I think the silliest insult that anyone could ever do is like, “Well, you’re fat!” I’m just like, “Okay, well, great job.”
Megan Gill: “You’ve accomplished nothing.”
Amy Geist: Yeah. It’s like, “Are we just saying things that we see?”
Megan Gill: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Amy Geist: “You’re an asshole.” So it’s just like, I think, disconnecting myself from a deep, shameful response when I hear those words. And I think just checking in with myself when I get these auditions. And I think the ultimate irony of these auditions is like, if everyone was taking this, how are you gonna sell it, man? You need my body. You need my body to be this size in order to sell a way to make it smaller. So it’s just wild. You, in one hand, want my body to not exist because you’re selling this product to make it disappear. And yet, if I did not exist, you would be obsolete. So it’s just wild, honestly, every time. There’s definitely been a couple that I’ve said no to. And there have been some that I’ve auditioned for because it’s the reality of, I guess just checking in with myself every time. And, well, let’s be very clear. I’ve never gotten to the point where I was offered a GLP-1 commercial. And so, I do think if I ever got to that point, it would probably be a different conversation internally. So I guess in my mind I’m like, okay, well this is just an audition and I’m just auditioning for this casting director. And then I guess if it comes down to me being the person at the end that’s dancing the salsa or so happy because they’re – you know what I mean, then I would be different. But yeah, it’s wild.
Megan Gill: Yeah. Thanks for sharing your experience with that too. I think it’s helpful just to talk about.
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[Timecode: 34:32]
Amy Geist: It’s so stressful. And especially what you’re saying in an industry where we’re both pretty reliant on our bodies and the way that they look, and I can’t imagine. That’s gotta be so tough to balance on your end as well of having such an intimate – having to look in the mirror, having to look in the mirror barely clothed, having to stand in front – and there are just so many triggers in there. And so, it seems what you’re going through needs constant sort of vigilance to stay because those voices are always there. They’re stil there.
Megan Gill: Oh yeah. Yep.
Amy Geist: No matter how recovered you are, they’re just waiting. They’re like, “Eh? Is this my chance to come back?”
Megan Gill: Yeah, even not when I’m working, right? Even just on a random Tuesday –
Amy Geist: Yep.
Megan Gill: – they’re still extremely present. So yeah, that is an interesting point about the hyper-vigilance. And even just self taping and having to see yourself in different phases of your cycle on camera. We have to also remember that our bodies change. So as women, our bodies change so much in a four-week cycle. And the way we – at least me, the way I feel in my body changes so much and can trigger certain things too. So I think we just have to continue to remind ourselves and each other that it’s okay to change and that it’s actually really fucking magical, and what a cool thing to get to age. Granted, I’m sitting here at 33 years old. Ask me in ten years, I really hope… I really hope that I can say the same thing. And I think that this project has helped me stay in that mindset and helped me keep my eye on the prize kind of in a way. Like, no, aging is cool and aging is a privilege.
Amy Geist: A privilege. Absolutely.
Megan Gill: And also why would I wanna give all my money to these things that – to this industry that’s trying to make me change so much? No, I actually my smile lines. I want to keep them, you know? But that’s just me. And I think that we maybe, hot take, need a little bit more of people with you and i’s perspective here to kind of combat the noise. Not that any one way is correct because there is no one correct way. It’s gonna be different for everyone, but I’m like, maybe that’s my thought around how we kind of conquer all of these messages we’re hearing about how we do have to change, right?
Amy Geist: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it all starts with of what we both did of doing the homework to heal your own relationship with your body and to be in a place where – and I think doing that will put you in a place where you can hold space for other people, because I think it’s so hard to do that when you can’t – you know, put the mask on the kid before to save yourself. You know, you can’t save everybody at the same time. You gotta work on yourself, put your own mask on. Wait, what?
Megan Gill: Yeah! Yeah, you put your own mask on first.
Amy Geist: You put your own mask on before you save the kid. Put your own mask on before you save the kid. You know?
Megan Gill: Right.
Amy Geist: Because you can’t save everybody at the same time.
Megan Gill: Totally. So true.
Amy Geist: But yeah, so I think that’s a really important place to start. And I think I try to sort of just offer a different perspective, really, because I know from my own experience and I know just from cognitive bias and the way that our brains work, coming in and being like, “Actually, you’re wrong for the following reasons,” is like, not gonna – nobody wants to listen to that.
Megan Gill: Right.
Amy Geist: So just when I hear people using language or talking about their bodies in a certain way or being really hateful towards themselves, I usually just try to offer a, “Well, the size of your body does not have any moral standing on who you are as a person,” and just offering a, “That actually doesn’t have to be that,” and, and sometimes it’s taken and sometimes it’s not. And that’s kind of the most that I try to do just because it’s like are you gonna change somebody’s wiring of their brain in three seconds? No, but it could be a thought that is a seed that is planted, that they’re like, “Oh, what if this was something that I – what if I thought about myself in a different way? Or just maybe something that pops up, you know?
Megan Gill: That’s really beautifully put and a very similar experience to what I have in those scenarios as well. And I do have to believe that you never know what the planting of the seed could do, but that we do have to approach it from a place of compassion and from a place of, “I care about you and I’m not pushing my shit on you.” I feel I always talk about this, but my friends at this point obviously know that I’m the body image girl, so don’t talk shit about yourself, because I will chime in, you know? My close friends at least. And it’s like I kind of like it because it allows me to like – I don’t know. It’s like once you see it, you can’t unsee it, right?
So I’m sure you probably feel similarly where when someone is talking poorly about their body or something is said in terms of, I don’t know, how our body shouldn’t be changing or aging isn’t cool or whatever, it’s like I can’t not hear that. I’m gonna hear it every single time, which I do appreciate and I think it has opened my eyes up. Just having that general awareness has been a really interesting thing. But then to be able to exercise the ability to come in and, if I’m going to offer something, do it from a place of neutralized compassion.
Amy Geist: Yeah, I mean that’s so important, right? And I think that that’s one of the ways that I can gauge in myself if I’m trying to talk about something that I’m not totally healed from. if I feel myself being very triggered and very defensive about something that someone is saying and then notice that me wanting to combat them is coming from a place of it’s about me, it’s my own stuff, then kind of points to, “Oh, maybe I need to do more work on this before I start trying to give advice to other people.”
Megan Gill: Yeah. Okay. I have a final question I wanna ask you, but before I do, is there anything else that you want to bring up or touch on that we haven’t yet?
Amy Geist: I guess the one thing I’ll say is we talk about a lot about the recovery process, and I do think us both being actors and I don’t know if there’s anyone else – I mean, I know there are so many other people that are actors that are probably struggling with this or have a very intimate relationship with this. And I think one of the most important things that I ever did for myself in healing from this eating disorder and also for my career was to take a break from acting.
I took a five year break because it was impossible for me to heal in an industry that is so triggering kind of what we’ve already said. So I stepped away for five years to just take care of myself and my relationship and figure out what it was like to be in my body with nobody looking, you know? And then that’s when we kind of reconnected, in LA, and I started going to acting class again and started, you know?
Megan Gill: Doing comedy!
Amy Geist: And started doing comedy, and I think back to it from that place of being – because there’s so much of the romanticized starving or tortured artist bullshit that you get as an actor as well. And I think that being on the other side of that and coming back to acting, I think I definitely A) could definitely never have done standup. I could never have done standup had I not done that. And then also have such a different relationship with acting and be able to hold it a little more softly and not have it define my self-worth. And it’s like, able to not be as triggered by it. And I think I never, again, would have tried comedy. I definitely would not be able to write about all the things that I can write about. I use a lot of my experience with my body and aging in my standup because I think there’s a lot of humor there of just – and I think that it’s something that’s so universal and then like, that’s what I want to use a platform for is to talk about something that’s like, isn’t this crazy that we’re all dealing with this? Does anyone else have a mustache? You know, and I think that’s what’s really fun about comedy now for me is being able to use all of that shit that I was scared of before and find the humor in it.
Megan Gill: Oh my god. Yeah, that’s really powerful. And then just also brings me back to the modality with which you are sharing these certain pieces of yourself. You used the genre of horror to talk about this heavy topic of body dysmorphia, and then you’re using comedy to now talk about the very real things that it is to age and exist in a body and live in Los Angeles and be an actor and a comedian and all of these things that are just so real and relatable. And I think that the way that you are using your voice and sharing your story and your stories is really impactful.
Amy Geist: Well, thanks, man.
Megan Gill: Of course! Thank you!
Megan Gill: Okay, love that. And thank you. I had made notes about some of those things, so I’m really glad we circled back to that because –
Amy Geist: Yeah, there’s so much.
Megan Gill: Yes, yes. Literally. I’m wondering what your favorite thing or things about your body are, and they could be physical, non-physical, a combo of both. Totally up to you. What is your favorite thing or things about your body, Amy?
Amy Geist: Oh my gosh, this little giggle, this little giggle! What are my favorite thing or things about my body? I feel I should have thought about this. I think my favorite thing about my body is it holds me and allows me to access the world out of health and privilege. I don’t have a lot of restrictions in my body, so I think my favorite thing is I have a lot of respect and appreciation for what it allows me to do in the world. And I think if we’re talking from just an aesthetic perspective, I think my eyes are pretty cool.
Megan Gill: Yeah, they’re lovely.
Amy Geist: I think so. Thank you. I haven’t thought of – that’s such a good question because I feel that’s something I should ask myself more often. I think I’ve defaulted to being very neutral about my body and just being like, “Yep, there it is. That’s what it looks like.” So, to like, yeah, take a moment to say what you like I about it is a good idea.
Megan Gill: Yeah, and it can shift every day. It can shift morning and night. It’s so cool that it is another thing that can change and evolve, and how beautiful is that? And I think that the more that I’ve been exploring this question with others and with myself, the more I have been able to look at parts of myself that I’ve struggled with before and been able to see them through a different lens, which is very interesting in terms of speaking about seeing yourself very neutrally, through a neutral lens. It’s been a really interesting experience. That does not happen all the time, but when it does, it’s like, “What is going on? This is crazy!” Literally.
But thank you for your feedback on the question and thank you for sharing and thank you so much for having this conversation with me, Amy. I really, really enjoyed it, and I’m grateful to you.
Amy Geist: Oh my gosh. I’m grateful for you asking me. Thank you for having me. It was such a blast to dive deep and always a blast to see you and talk to you. So thank you.
Megan Gill: Same. Of course!
“When I really kinda started on this process, I was already a couple years into recovery of what I felt was an actual recovery. And so, I think I created a little bit of a buffer of distance with the experience, which I think made it easier for me to make a project about it because I think if I’d still been a little too close to it, it would not have been a healthy experience. So I had a bit of a distance from it, but I do think what was healing was actually talking to, you know, the crew that worked on it, people that saw it, people that read it, and hearing how it made a part of them feel seen and acknowledged, and people coming up and feeling safe to share their story with me and their experience, because they haven’t really felt they’ve seen something that really touched on what they went through in a real way. And so, I think that in itself was – I didn’t expect to happen, but was like, I do think healing and rewarding and a really beautiful experience every time somebody trusted me with that information.”
- Amy Geist
Hailing from Ohio, Amy Geist is a Producer, Director, Writer, and Founder of Beloved Root Films. She started in Los Angeles as a commercial Producer and Production Manager.Her feature film work includes Blade Runner 2049 (Alcon Entertainment *Academy Award Winning), Little (Universal), Trees of Peace (Netflix), Bar Fight (IFC Films), #FBF (Mar Vista Entertainment), and Trap House (Signature Entertainment).She produced Fuse, a series of five short films, for Powderkeg Media: launched by Paul Feig and Laura Fischer. The films went on to premiere at Sundance and Tribeca.Her film Dysmorphia premiered at Hollywood ShortsFest where it won the Grand Jury Award. Dysmorphia went on to screen at other well-known festivals such Hollyshorts and during it’s festival run won Best Cinematography and Best Horror Film. You can watch it on Alter for free. During the 2023 strike she started performing stand-up. Since then she has toured in Colorado, headlined at the Moab Women’s Festival, and won won Best in Fest at the Burbank Comedy Festival. You can see her on stage at the Hollywood Improv Lab, The Crow, Flappers, or The Kookaburra Lounge. She most recently produced a stand-up comedy fundraiser: BeCause We Can Comedy and all proceeds went to help a family in Gaza.
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A couple of notes to ensure this is a safe space for my guests to share their intimate and vulnerable body image stories in:
* It can be easy to feel alone on your journey of existing in a body. I welcome the connection and support of one another in this space through considerate and curious comments.
* These conversations are quite nuanced, complex, and oftentimes very vulnerable. Remember that everyone has their own body image story, and while someone else’s might look differently than yours, I encourage you to keep an open mind and stay empathetic.
* Thank you for being here. By sharing this type of content, my hope is to inspire personal reflection and cultural questioning. Thank you and supporting me in exploring the effects of our culture’s beauty norms and body standards on human beings existing in today’s world.
Do you have a friend, family member or peer who might love this too? I’d be honored if you could help me spread the word about my writing and body image conversations!
While I’m not a licensed therapist, registered dietician, or medical health professional and cannot speak to body image topics from a clinical, trauma-informed place, I am an expert of lived experience. I’m an academic of my own body, and I’m passionate about facilitating conversations with other humans about their relationships with their bodies. I believe it’s important to continue conversations about healthy body image in creative spaces as a means to heal individuals as well as the collective whole. But just know the information presented in this medium is not professional mental health advice or medical advice, and any questions or concerns you have should always be directed to your health providers.
Megan Gill: I’m so excited that you are here having this conversation with me today. Thank you for joining me!
Destiny Allen: Yes, of course. I’m excited!
Megan Gill: So do you wanna start by just introducing yourself, who you are, and a little bit about the work that you do in the world?
Destiny Allen: Yeah, so my name is Destiny. I’m a bridal stylist, so I’ve been styling brides for about nine years now. So it’s been a minute since I’ve been in that area. And by styling, I mean finding dresses for the brides, because I feel people hear styling and they think I do hair and makeup, and I’m like, absolutely not. So just the actual fashion of it. So that’s kind of what I do.
Megan Gill: Very cool. And also I can only imagine how that ties into what we’re here to talk about today, which is the overarching theme of body image, because I have never been married myself, but I have ideas in my head and have experienced being around my friends on their wedding day, and your dress is a big, important piece of the puzzle of feeling really good about yourself and being in your body on this big, exciting day where you are on display in front of so many people, friends and family, and you really just wanna be able to, I can imagine, feel your best so that you can not be in your head and just be really present and enjoy your special day with your people and the person that you are getting married to.
Destiny Allen: Yeah, definitely. So I feel like there’s a lot of pressure around having to change your body for your wedding day. There’s so much stress behind it. Every bride is like, “Oh, but I’m gonna lose 10+ pounds and I’m gonna be this and this,” and I’m like, “You do not have to do that.”
I think my biggest thing in bridal when I hear someone say, “Oh, this would look good if I lost this much weight,” I tell them that that is not their dress because they need to feel beautiful in the dress the way they are at this moment. So I think that’s huge. I don’t wanna hear anyone say, “When I change my body, then it’ll look good.” Then it’s not the one.
Megan Gill: Oh my gosh. I love that.
Destiny Allen: There’s a lot of pressure with moms. That’s a big thing, the family dynamics. A lot of moms put the pressure for people to lose weight, which is crazy to hear because my mom is the most supportive person. So it’s so bizarre to hear a mom say, “Oh, when she loses weight, it’ll look better.” It’s a crazy thing. It’s mind blowing. So, yeah, I feel I’m also a little bit of a therapist as well, because I wanna make sure the energy’s good. So I feel there’s a role where I have to protect my bride at the same time as styling them.
Megan Gill: Yeah. Yeah. Which is, I think, what sets somebody like you apart from just maybe the average stylist and having that awareness going into – is it called a bridal session or the bridal appointment where they’re trying on the dresses? It’s an appointment?
Destiny Allen: Yes.
Megan Gill: Okay. Can you tell I’ve never been down this road before?
Destiny Allen: That’s okay. That’s okay!
Megan Gill: But I would want to have somebody like you working with me, but I can only imagine, especially in Los Angeles, the amount of mother-daughter dynamics that come through. And I just wanna point out that it’s really amazing that you are showing up the way you are and that that is so top of mind for you. I know when I approached you about having this conversation, that was something that you shared with me, and it’s just so important because you’re helping to break those generational cycles. Even if a mom wants to say that, you chiming in or offering your perspective on it to the bride or whatever it may be, could really change the trajectory of someone’s thought process about their daughter’s body or about their own body, honestly. Because right, it’s this concept of I need to, whether it’s lose 10 pounds or do X or do Y to be happy, at least I believe is never going to give us true happiness, right? We have to accept where we are and work to find the joy in where we are right now.
Destiny Allen: Yes, very much so. I think I love just being that voice for these brides because none of their friends or family are saying that to them. They’re just kind of being like, “Oh, yeah wear undergarments,” or, “When you do lose 10 pounds…” you know? It’s such a fucked up thing. And I’m like, “No, no, no, no. You are perfect the way you are right now, and you have to feel confident in what you’re wearing. So this is not your dress. We’re gonna move on and find the one that makes you feel that way.”
But yeah, I don’t know. I’ve been in bridal for so long, and I think so many people have said negative things about me and my body that I think it’s so inspiring for me to flip that and be the person that is empowering for people to feel beautiful in their own skin because I’ve had so many people try to put me down. I wanna do the opposite for brides and just women in general.
Megan Gill: Yeah, which is incredible and I feel that’s one of the many ways that we can take the adversities we face or, you know, the tough situations with whoever’s telling us these things, because I’ve been there too, and flip it around to change the narrative and to help other people see that there is a different way to view these things.
Destiny Allen: Yeah, absolutely.
Megan Gill: Yeah, and also just thinking about the piece of you guiding the brides who are feeling like, “Oh, well this dress would be perfect if I lost 10 pounds,” or whatever it may be, guiding them to understand that, no, then that dress isn’t for you because it doesn’t fit you in a way that makes you feel good, and then finding the dress that does fit you well as you are today is such an important concept for women dressing themselves say-to-day as well. I think that is something that I think a lot of women get hung up on, myself included. The understanding that the clothes are supposed to fit us. We are not supposed to fit this garment that we think we need to fit into for XYZ reason.
Destiny Allen: Yeah, exactly. I think that’s the beauty of fashion and why I fell in love with it too, is because I find pieces that make me feel confident, and I’ve stopped trying to fit into this box of what people think I should be wearing. I’ve moved past that and now I’ve truly found myself. I’m also like, oh, if I don’t feel good wearing dresses and skirts, I don’t have to wear them. I can wear what I want that makes me feel the best in my body. So that’s why I do bridal. And sometimes I have days where I’m like, “Why do I do this?” Because you get so many different energies in the store, and sometimes it’s crazy. But I get the brides where I’m like, “This is why I do this.”
Because, you know, I think my favorite thing is when a bride comes in super insecure, super nervous, super shy, and then by the end of the appointment, she’s crying because of how beautiful she feels. And she’s thanking me for the experience and I’m like, okay, this is why I do it. Because she came in so nervous about who she is and dresses and not being able to find something that she likes because of body issues, and then I’m able to help her – it’s a journey – flip it. So I think that’s why I love it so much. I mean, like I said, I have moments, but it’s really just to get women to feel beautiful within their own skin.
Megan Gill: Which is really transformational because then hopefully that woman that you impacted in that way is able to then walk into dressing rooms on her own and maybe feel a little bit more confident or have more of an understanding of the types of garments to look for that she’s attracted to, that she wants to wear, that are calling to her.
Destiny Allen: Yeah, I mean, we all have our things about our bodies, and I think that’s very normal. I always have thoughts back, because I think my body issue started back in middle school. I think if somebody didn’t say anything to me about my body, I wouldn’t have insecurities. It’s so crazy to see it. People would come up to me and be like, “Are you anorexic? You look like you’re anorexic. You look sick. You’re too skinny. Eat a burger,” you know? All of the things that I feel people don’t think about with thin people has happened to me.
Even in the bridal space, back in Maryland, I had a curve bride look at me and she didn’t even wanna work with me. I didn’t even get to say hi to her yet.
Megan Gill: Whoa.
Destiny Allen: And that sticks with me. Isn’t that crazy how somebody so insecure comes in of her insecurities, she looks at my body and doesn’t wanna work with me, without me even being able to say hi to her. I think that type of story makes me feel stronger to be able to like, I don’t know – little nabs, jabs that, I’m like, wow, that’s crazy to think that you looked at me for one second and said, “No, I won’t work with her,” because of my body type. Isn’t that crazy?
Megan Gill: It’s wild.
Destiny Allen: That’s the thing too. I’m like, I could have given her the best experience and I could have been her bestie by the end, but she didn’t even gimme a chance because of the way my body is.
Megan Gill: Right, which is so wildly unfair to you.
Destiny Allen: Yeah.
Megan Gill: And it’s unfortunate because I think it does stem so much from just, like you said, societal conditioning. Where did those people that were approaching you and making comments about your body out of left field, where did they learn it from? Unfortunately, just the way that our culture is as a whole. And also I think it’s important to point out, on your end, as being someone in a thinner body that it’s happening both ways too. Because I think a lot of times we’re just a little bit more aware of, of course, people in bigger bodies have a hard time dealing with people commenting on their bodies. I think that’s just something that culturally, as a whole, we have a general awareness of.
Destiny Allen: Yeah.
Megan Gill: But it’s like, it can go either way. And I’m not trying to categorize thin bodies and plus size bodies.
Destiny Allen: Right.
Megan Gill: No matter what your body is, you probably deal with something of the sort.
Destiny Allen: Yeah.
Megan Gill: Which is also really sad that we’re all struggling in these ways and yet we’re still attacking each other or still placing judgment on somebody without even trying to understand their story or who they are or what they’re about, or how they approach their work.
Destiny Allen: Right. Yeah, it’s such a crazy thing. We were just born this. This is just our bodies. We should be so grateful that we have legs and arms. It’s so crazy to judge someone by the way their body looks. I’m like, well, we’re healthy. That should be something to appreciate.
But yeah, no, I feel I’ve been so even shut down if I try to – I just even remember talking to friends in high school and just being shut down because of my struggles because it’s so opposite than other people’s struggles and they belittled me in that way, by me being like, “You know, I really struggle with being so skinny. I wanna gain weight.” It ends up being a joke to a lot of people. So, you know, you kind of stop talking about it because people think it’s funny because that’s — you know, I guess the American dream is to be thin or whatever, but I’m like, “No, you guys, I struggle so immensely with my body as well.” That’s a huge thing.
It’s so interesting that, on the other spectrum of things, people just shut it down because they think it’s not their issue, so they don’t understand it.
Megan Gill: Right, there’s no empathetic thread there to have an understanding because, at least I believe, our society has ingrained this ideal into us through the beauty industry and through beauty standards and diet culture and all of the things. This piece has come up in recent conversation, and I think it’s such an important thing to touch on and to talk about, and I’m really glad that you’re sharing about it today because it breaks my heart, and it’s so unfair for you to be dismissed like that. It’s like, no. That’s part of the reason why I want to do this project and talk to just a bunch of different people about their body image story, because we all have one, and I think that a lot of peoples’ get dismissed or get disregarded because of the way society categorizes what their body looks like, which is just incredibly unfair.
Destiny Allen: It really is. Yeah, it’s tricky, and I think at this point in time, I have grown so much from all of the people that have commented on my body, and I think it was way worse in Maryland, where I’m from. For some reason it was constant, even just when I was just working my job, I would have moms being like, “Oh, I need to feed you.” It would be constantly someone once a day at least saying something.
Megan Gill: Oh, my god.
Destiny Allen: It’s miraculous that I even stayed in the industry because it was kind of like, “Oh, I’m here to empower women, but they’re bashing me down.” So it’s such an interesting thing, but I think that’s what makes me so much stronger is I made it through all of that, and I’m still working on loving myself. I think everyone is. I think that’s something that’ll forever be worked on, but I really do love who I am, and I am appreciating and loving my body now way more than I ever have. So it’s nice that I’m still in the industry and have made it through.
13:10
Megan Gill: Yeah, I 100% agree because it might be easier to just take the easy way out sometimes, right? And not face these things day to day. At work specifically, hearing comments about your body all the time at work in an industry where you are helping other women. It’s not about what you look like, it’s about what the women – you know, it’s not even about what they – well, I guess it is about what they look like, unfortunately. because that’s just what it is when you’re looking to find your wedding day attire, also about what you feel like, but it’s just so, so wild. And I can relate to that in a sense, but it’s kind of different, I feel like, because my body is on display a lot of times in my work. But I do feel you on the fact that, at this point in my life, I have learned to just have an understanding and have empathy for the people that are saying these things. Granted, it’s a little bit more understood in my industry because if I’m fit modeling in front of people, it’s like, well, you don’t have the right necessarily to comment on my body in certain ways. It’s a very nuanced, fine line, but it’s, yeah, just wild to hear that you were faced with so much of that. And you’re like, whoa, whoa. This is not about me. What’s going on here?
Destiny Allen: Yeah. And you know, I can always understand, everyone would be like, oh, well that’s their insecurities. That’s why they’re talking about your body. I’m like, yeah, I understand that, but it doesn’t take away the pain when somebody’s commenting on your body. I can understand that they have something they’re not happy with in their life, but it still stings a little.
And you know, I think ever since, I said, middle school like, and then in high school for me, Snapchat was becoming a thing, and I had a girl – I would play with the guys at lunch, basketball and stuff. And I had a girl circle my body post it and say, “Oh my god, why is she so skinny?” And posted it everywhere, and I am not a quiet person when it comes to that. So I, of course, I didn’t even know her. I had to add her on, gosh, Instagram and message her and be like, “What the fuck is that?” Like, I kind of confronted her, of course, and she just kind of was like, “Oh, that wasn’t meant in a mean way. I meant that in a nice way.” And I was like, “No, it’s just because you’re being confronted right now. Let’s be honest here.” I was like, “Take that shit down and fuck off.” You know? It infuriaterates me, because also how embarrassing to have your body circled and posted all over and then have multiple people send it to you and be like, “Just to let you know this is happening.” It traumatized me.
Megan Gill: I can imagine, especially as a young, young person, I don’t wanna say kid, you’re in high school, but still it’s like our brains aren’t fully developed yet. We’re figuring out who we are, we’re figuring out how to exist in this odd, bizarre social climate that we’re just stuck in for four years plus, whatever. Oh my god. I’m so sorry that that happened, and I’m so glad – I mean, it sucks because you shouldn’t have to take on the emotional labor of having to confront this person, this kid, for doing this. But I’m glad that you did. Ugh.
Destiny Allen: I think that’s something that I’ve never been scared of is speaking up for myself, but it doesn’t take away the fact that it tore me down, but it’s such a crazy time too. I worry so much about the kids growing up now. because the fact that social media was just like – Instagram was brand, brand new in high school. Now the social media is crazy. So I feel so for the kids that have to grow up with social media as the main, gosh, it feels a life source for these people.
Megan Gill: Yeah. Oh, for sure. And especially because not only is there content that we’re viewing on social media, right, but the fact that social media was used in the sense of the story that you just told, it was used to bring some somebody down, to make somebody feel they should not be existing in the body that they just have just because they have it. Genetics, I don’t know, so many factors make our bodies the way that they are.
Yeah, it’s crazy. And you know, that affected – I stopped playing basketball at lunchtime. I stopped because I didn’t want to be stared at, circled, and posted. So I just like, I mean, I just stopped playing and that sucks because that was something I really enjoyed. So interesting that it has that much of an effect on people.
Megan Gill: Yeah. Oh. For sure, and it makes a lot of sense too. And there are things in my story that I can trace back to, as well, as far as not fully expressing who I was or who I wanted to be, or wearing the things that I wanted to wear because of the comments people were saying about me. And I don’t think people realize, especially kids, I don’t think they understand how much of an impact the things they do or say has sometimes, and I am hopeful that – I mean, it’s two-sided, right? This whole social media climate that is now our norm down to kids that are, what, five, six years old with cell phones? Wild. I don’t know. But even middle school, high school, whatever it is I think that it’s cool on one hand because there is so much good content out there, right? And some of these kids could, or young people, could see the good side of the internet and the good side of social media and the people that are out there being body positive or body neutral, or talking about eating disorders. I didn’t even understand what an eating disorder was truly until I was older. The educational piece of social media is so lovely, but then at the same time, it’s so scary, like you were saying. I worry too about the young people too because it’s like, god, there’s so much opportunity there for, for negative impact.
Destiny Allen: Yeah. There’s just so much pressure to look good on your Instagram, and I think that’s taking away from being present, but it also puts the pressure on these young kids to be somebody and edit and make sure that they look good for, I don’t know, the kids that they’re surrounded by. It’s just sad.
Megan Gill: I agree.
Destiny Allen: Middle school is the worst year of everyone’s life. I feel everyone’s growing into puberty, but they’re also being so hateful and horrible to each other. And then we all have this trauma that sticks with us from these years.
Megan Gill: It’s so true.
Destiny Allen: It always has to do with our bodies. That’s why I love – I’m so proud of you for doing this platform because this is. This is good for the kids that are struggling, if they stumble upon your podcast, to be able to listen to this and feel like, “Okay, yes, I have a beautiful body and I need to love myself.” It’s a hard thing to do, but these are the types of things that are tools for us to feel good.
Megan Gill: Yeah. I appreciate you sharing that. That is part of the impetus of doing this. And I think it’s tough sometimes because when we’re younger, we don’t really understand it. Or at least I didn’t understand it or understand radical acceptance of this is the one beautiful body I get no matter what happens to it, she’s the only one I got, and it’s so much more peaceful to pour love into her than to talk shit to her. And I think that part of the puzzle is maybe more difficult for young people to understand, but young people are also fucking smart. So who am I to say that the more we get different people’s take on body image out there, or people in different sized bodies talking about body neutrality or how they’ve worked really hard to come to a place of acceptance and ultimately, whether it’s neutrality or love or whatever, your relationship to your body is this healthy place in terms of how they view their bodies and how they exist in their bodies and how they treat them. Yeah, I think that we could start to get these kids on track sooner. It took me so long to even kind of recognize what the hell was going on, right?
Destiny Allen: Right.
Megan Gill: But also, I did grow up in the age of social media, so MySpace was big in middle school. Facebook was big halfway through my high school career. And then it was still like, you know, up and coming when I was in college. So that’s interesting too because I’m like, well maybe there just wasn’t enough education around me or around like, you know, my generation and then your generation and now it’s just an inundation of TikTok, Instagram education everywhere. Oh gosh. I don’t know. It is terrifying. But ultimately I have to try to see the good in it and just hope and believe that, I mean, not just me, obviously. It would be incredible to have an impact on as many people as we possibly can here with this project, but I just know that a bunch of influencers are out there also.
Destiny Allen: Maybe that is – yeah. I mean, see both ways, but I think naturally it took me forever too to realize, “Oh, I just need to lift myself. I gotta stop putting myself down.” It puts you in a depression hole, you’re just bashing yourself constantly and that’s not good for your body. You’re not feeding it at all. It’s quite the opposite.
So though I still have my insecurities, I love her so much more now. Okay, this is my body. She does amazing things. I am okay. I need to just sit with that. It takes a lot of work though. That needs to be talked about, how much work it is to shift the mind to go from negative to positive. It’s hard. But it’s possible. And I think that – yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know what my tools would be to get there, because I think bridal really helped me in some ways, being surrounded by women talking about their bodies every day. I think me feeding other brides and making them feel good in their own bodies somehow shifted me to make me feel good in my body. Oh, you’re so cute.
Megan Gill: That’s extremely impactful. Truly, it’s almost like – because I have an understanding of what you mean. When you’re put face to face with it and you’re forced to challenge the way you are thinking and then also challenge the way that people around you are thinking, you’re forced to see another way.
Destiny Allen: Yeah, I’m like I can’t feed these brides this advice and not follow it myself, because then it wouldn’t be genuine. I think it flipped a switch in me and I think I’ve been feeling it way more lately in what I’m saying.
Megan Gill: It’s so cool because I also don’t think that we talk enough about, obviously, all the different jobs that are out there and all the various ways that different career paths can have such an impact. And I obviously knew I was having this conversation with you, but talking about this more in depth is just so beautiful and lovely. Because a lot of people that come into contact with you probably don’t even know the ways that they’re being impacted, maybe they do, or maybe they’re just not expecting it, but it’s like, oh god, that’s so, so important, and I’m so glad that you’ve just flipped the script for yourself, put in the work to flip it for yourself so that you can show up for the people that you’re supporting in this way.
Destiny Allen: Yeah. It’s such a beautiful thing and sometimes they know, because I’ll cry with them, sometimes. It’s rare because I’ve been in bridal for so long, so I see tears a lot. But sometimes it’ll send goosebumps up my body and I’ll just tear up with them. It’s also rare for brides to cry nowadays, but a lot of times they, a lot of times they don’t, but sometimes they do. And it’s very powerful when they do because the entire group will cry with them.
Megan Gill: Oh my god.
Destiny Allen: And me too. Sometimes I will cry with them, and it means a lot when it does happen. If you see any tears coming from your eyes, it touched me in a different way, which I love. And I love when I get a queer bride because I never get queer brides. And I think that’s what’s so special about the work I do at LOHO, because LOHO stands for a League Of Her Own. I resonate with that because I’m very edgy and covered in tattoos and I’m in a throuple and I’m different. And I love when I get a queer bride that comes in. because I’m like, “I’m gay too!”
Megan Gill: Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
Destiny Allen: “I can relate to you!” Let’s start out with that because then it makes them feel comfortable immediately. And instead of feeling shy and being like, “Oh my fiance, she,” and I’m like, “Me too!”
Megan Gill: “I get it!” Yeah. Yeah. Oh, oh my gosh.
Destiny Allen: I know, you know, if I get engaged I’m probably going to be nervous to go shopping at different places because there’s still a tradition behind it, unfortunately.
Megan Gill: And I can imagine being faced with that initial judgment because you also just don’t know who you’re dealing with anywhere, really, right? So what a lovely surprise for the queer brides to walk in and for you to be the one helping them find what they’re gonna wear on their special day.
Destiny Allen: Yeah, it’s the best.
Megan Gill: It’s incredible.
Destiny Allen: Those are the ones that really stick with me because I don’t get a lot of them at all. It’s gotta be one out of a hundred. I don’t get a lot.
Megan Gill: Really? Oh my gosh!
Destiny Allen: I don’t think queer people get married often. I think there’s just, there’s so much more behind that. But it just warms my heart when I get two fiances in my shop that are shopping together, and are the ones that pull tears outta my eyes for sure.
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Destiny Allen: Yeah. But that’s also my goal in bridal is to have my own shop and have more of a comfortable space for queer people as well. I wanna have a section for bridal suits.
Megan Gill: Yes!
Destiny Allen: And I want to have a section for the edgier brides. And of course I’ll probably have some classic looks too, because I wanna make sure I have a good mix of everything. But I think we need a spot for bridal suits, and I think that is my overall goal is to provide that and just a space to feel people can be themselves. That’s huge.
Megan Gill: Insanely huge for them to show up and know that they are going to be met with kindness and respect, right? These baseline things that you would hope would be offered everywhere, but I am not sure are. Oh my god. I think that that is so needed and so important and exactly where I can see you heading, and I’m so excited for you and so excited for all of the people that one day you are going to be able to show up for.
I was also thinking, as we started this conversation I was like, oh, their wedding dress. And it’s not always necessarily a wedding dress that people are choosing to wear on their wedding day.
Destiny Allen: Yeah.
Megan Gill: It’s also exciting that we’re – you know, whether you’re queer or not, no generalizations – moving away from maybe a more traditional garment, that people are being able to express themselves.
Destiny Allen: Exactly. And my doors are gonna be open for all people, non-binary, gay, queer, lesbian, everybody, straight people, of course, are welcome into my shop. I feel I’m a person that is – you know, I’m a very genuine, down to earth person, but on the outside I’m covered in tattoos. I have an edge to me. So sometimes I feel like I don’t have a place, you know, in certain environments that I’m not receiving judgment. So I wanna make sure that I’m that place for brides, grooms, whatever, to just feel good and they’re not scared to come into my shop. That’s a very normal thing for brides to feel very scared and nervous to come shopping. So I think I just, yeah, I don’t know. I wanna bring that warmth. It’s gonna take a while, but I’ll get there one day.
Megan Gill: You will absolutely get there. And even just thinking of how you were mentioning that you present more of an edgy appearance to people who maybe don’t know you, and when people think about, you know, brides, they think white, lacy, floral, very, for lack of a better term, feminine, very girly, feminine vibes. And how maybe there are some brides out there that want an edgier look or an edgier dress or an edgy pants suit. And why is that not more widely normalized, you know?
Destiny Allen: Yeah. Yeah, and I think that’s why I appreciate LOHO so much. Christy brings in the fashion and the edge. Such an inspiration because this is the only shop that I’ve worked at that I felt I could feel myself. I’ve been in bridal for so long and, you know, I’ve bounced around different shops, and a lot of the other shops are very traditional and girly, and I’ve felt the pressure to wear dresses skirts. I love that the owner is just like, wear what makes you feel comfortable and who you are. She’s not pressuring me to wear a dress.
For example, my last shop, I think I had an event to go to for the bridal shop, and I was like, “Oh, I need to find something to wear. I don’t feel comfortable wearing a dress. I think I’ll have to look for a pants suit.” And the owner of the shop was like, “It wouldn’t kill you to wear a dress. You work in bridal.” And I was all, “Excuse me?” I was so thrown off. I didn’t even go to the event. I was like, you won’t have my support at this event because you’re not supporting me and who I am.
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Destiny Allen: And I think that’s what I was looking for when I found LOHO. I was like, oh, thank god.
Megan Gill: Thank god.
Destiny Allen: I can wear a suit and tie to work. I feel like, you know, I can kind of pull in my masculine energy too, and she appreciates that and thinks it’s cool that I’m bringing in my own fashion, which I’m like, okay. This is where I’m meant to be.
Megan Gill: Yeah, I fucking love that. I think it’s super important because, hello, fashion, expression, it’s so individualized and it’s so up to each individual person how they want to express themselves and the clothes that they want to wear and feel good in. And it’s so counterintuitive to think that working in this industry that preaches that, but to then be like, “Oh, well you need to wear a dress,” if that’s not something that you vibe with, it’s just not, not it. That’s not the vibe. What are we doing here?
Destiny Allen: No. A lot of judgment coming from all sides too because I would keep getting tattoos and she’d be like, “Oh, another one?” I’m like, yeah, I’m gonna keep covering myself too. It’s gonna keep going this is just it, girl. I’m gonna be covered in tattoos. It’s just not the typical stylist look because I think it throws a lot of people off. That’s kind of why I love doing this too. because I’m not, I am not the typical bridal stylist that’s all proper and a little dress. I am a little different and I appreciate that.
Megan Gill: I love that. Okay, well one day, one day when I am engaged…
Destiny Allen: You will come to me and I will be there for you.
Megan Gill: Exactly. Maybe by that point you’ll have your own shop!
Destiny Allen: I will!
Megan Gill: I can’t wait because I’m like, yeah, I can imagine the nerves. I would feel I would wanna trust the person that’s helping me to find this, A of all, very expensive, B of all, very important, C of all, garment that I’m going to be wearing on one of the most important days of my life. I feel there has to be a lot of trust there, and especially in a city Los Angeles, I know I would be extra on my guard. And looking for someone that, you know, someone who is someone who is kind and open to hearing me out and isn’t just gonna push certain things on me.
Destiny Allen: Right, yeah.
Megan Gill: Or isn’t gonna push a weird body image narrative on me, because I’m also curious to know how many women that have shopped around for dresses have experienced that. I don’t know if that’s a thing. I don’t know if it’s happening, but I would imagine that it possibly is.
Destiny Allen: I think it is. Yeah, I hear it a lot. And it’s crazy. People will come to me and just be like, “Oh my gosh, you were amazing thank you.” And I’m like, I feel I am just doing what I’m supposed to do. It feels crazy that their experience at other shops were so horrible, because this is a special moment for brides. They’re finding their wedding dress. I think the person helping you should be just as excited. It’s so bizarre when I hear horror stories coming from other places. because I’m like, “Really? I’m so sorry. That is awful.” But that’s what I’m here for. And I’m here to pull dresses in for brides because. Most of the time, this isn’t something they try on every day to know what fits right. So I’m here to pull in the wild cards and I love finding that wild card that the bride is like, “Oh my gosh, I had no idea that this is the direction I would go in!” It’s crazy.
Megan Gill: Yeah. Oh, this is also another interesting thing. I am thinking this whole concept of flattery, right? And certain body types that think certain silhouettes are more flattering or less flattering. Are there ever times where you maybe present a bride with a silhouette that she didn’t think she would feel good in and it ends up being the one?
Destiny Allen: All the time. I think that’s something that brings me so much joy too, because they’re able to pick five gallons to try on before they come in, off the website. Most of the time it’s not gonna be in those five that are the one because they don’t know. They don’t know. They haven’t tried on wedding dresses, like I said, so they don’t know the different shapes and details and all the things.
So my favorite thing is when I pull in the dress. I always say, they whisper to me the dresses. I’m always like, they whisper at me. I’m like, they pull me in and when I pull it in and they try it on, it’s so fun to see them light up, compared to all the other dresses they’ve tried, there’s just a different glow that brides have when they put on their dress. It’s incredible.
Megan Gill: Another round of chills coming right up.
Destiny Allen: I’m always like, it’s like dating people because there’s so many beautiful people in the world, but it needs to feel right. It’s based on a feeling that you have in the dress, and that is about your confidence. And just see when you envision your wedding day, can you envision yourself in this gown? And it just brings all kinds of emotions with it.
Megan Gill: Ooh, I think that’s huge. The fact that you are saying it’s about how you feel and it’s a feeling. Because I think so much of body image and clothes – I talk about this with one of my girlfriends all the time about how I’m just trying to wear clothes that I feel good in. Yeah, sure, I wanna like what I see when I look in the mirror, but do I feel good in it? Like with a wedding dress, I would wanna feel good, so good in that dress that I could move around in it, I could dance around in it, I could do all of the things that I wanna do on my wedding day comfortably.
Destiny Allen: Mm-hmm. Yes.
Megan Gill: And not kill myself over it, right?
Destiny Allen: Yeah. Yeah, it’s beyond, and I think that’s the hard part. Social media brings in a whole nother thing with bridal shopping because you get lost in all of the TikToks of the brides posting all the dresses they didn’t choose. So they feel they need to hit a hundred shops.
It’s not a logical decision. It’s not based on logic. So I think I have to kind of guide brides through that to be like, “Hey, I’ve noticed in this dress that you’re pointing out the straps, the waistline, the fabric, but in this dress, you didn’t point out anything, you just said, I love it. It was just based on a feeling. You’re not picking pieces apart on it. You’re like, I love this dress. And it was an immediate reaction.”
So I think it’s nice for me to be able to watch body language. That’s kind of what I’m also there for is to watch their body language and then tell them how they’re feeling because sometimes they can’t do it for themselves. It’s very hard. I have to be like, “This is actually what you’re feeling and thinking, and I need to point that out to you,” because it’s also what I’m, what I’m here for.
Megan Gill: That’s so cool. It makes so much sense, you are the reflector for them because also it’s so hard making these big decisions on our own. Seems so difficult and sometimes overwhelming. So to have a trusted source there that intuitively has worked with so many women now at this point, and just you understand these little pieces of what goes on and how it goes, that is so beautiful and so cool.
Destiny Allen: It’s so fun. It’s such a game to me, it’s a psychological game where you have to figure out what will make them feel the most beautiful, and yeah, it’s a different journey each appointment, which I love having. You just don’t know what you’re walking into. It’s so much fun not knowing and not having the same thing over and over and over. It’s very different.
Megan Gill: Yeah. That’s so cool. And I’m just thinking how many different lives you get to impact too. Oh, they’re so lucky to have you! I feel we talked about an array of incredible things. But my last question for you is I’m wondering what your favorite thing or things about your body are. They can be physical; they can be non-physical. It can be a combination of both. Just kind of whatever comes top of mind for you.
Destiny Allen: Oh my gosh, that’s such a cute question. Okay. Well, I love – I feel this is gonna sound a little silly, but I love my arm of tattoos.
Megan Gill: Not silly.
Destiny Allen: I only have one of them right now. My other one will be filled eventually. But I love showing off my sleeve of tattoos. It is probably my favorite thing. Yeah, I feel that’s probably my absolute fave. I think that was my automatic response. I got this beautiful artwork on me, and I love to show it off, and it also helps me not feel so insecure about how thin I am, naturally thin. But also I forget about my insecurities when I am covered in tattoos, which is kind of amazing. So that’s probably one of my coping mechanisms is tattoos.
Megan Gill: Because you’re able to add art and make something that people maybe tried to convince you was not good or worthy or beautiful, so sadly, and you get to make it you and a reflection of your expression too.
Destiny Allen: Yeah, I like that. Definitely. I think it’s funny because our bodies are already art pieces, but I like to add more art onto my art piece.
Megan Gill: I love that. I love that! Yeah. And just the expression piece of it too, the extra creative piece of it, I think is so lovely.
Destiny Allen: Yeah. I love that.
Megan Gill: Yeah. Well, thanks Destiny. Thanks for having this conversation with me. It was really lovely!
Destiny Allen: Thank you!
Megan Gill: Of course!
“ I think naturally it took me forever too to like realize, “Oh, I need to lift myself. I gotta stop putting myself down.” It puts you in a depression hole, like you’re just bashing yourself constantly, and that’s not good for your body. You’re not feeding it at all. It’s quite the opposite. So I still have my insecurities. I love her so much more now. “Okay, this is my body. She does amazing things. I am okay. I need to just sit with that.” It’s a lot of work though that needs to be talked about, how much work it is to shift the mind to go from negative to positive. It’s hard, but it’s possible. I think bridal really helped me in some ways, surrounded by women talking about their bodies every day. I think me feeding other brides and making them feel good in their own bodies somehow shifted me to make me feel good in my body.”
- Destiny Allen
With nearly a decade of experience as a bridal stylist, I’ve dedicated my career to helping brides feel beautiful, confident, and completely themselves. As an edgier queer person, I want to be that safe place for brides that don’t feel seen. At LOHO Bride—an unconventional haven for the non-traditional bride—I bring my love of fashion and my deep belief in body positivity to every appointment. I’m passionate about creating a space where every bride feels comfortable in her own skin and celebrated for who she is.
If anyone would like to schedule an appointment with me, they can reach me at Destiny@lohobride.com or they can schedule on the website and request me: Lohobride.com.
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A couple of notes to ensure this is a safe space for my guests to share their intimate and vulnerable body image stories in:
* It can be easy to feel alone on your journey of existing in a body. I welcome the connection and support of one another in this space through considerate and curious comments.
* These conversations are quite nuanced, complex, and oftentimes very vulnerable. Remember that everyone has their own body image story, and while someone else’s might look differently than yours, I encourage you to keep an open mind and stay empathetic.
* Thank you for being here. By sharing this type of content, my hope is to inspire personal reflection and cultural questioning. Thank you and supporting me in exploring the effects of our culture’s beauty norms and body standards on human beings existing in today’s world.
Do you have a friend, family member or peer who might love this too? I’d be honored if you could help me spread the word about my writing and body image conversations!
While I’m not a licensed therapist, registered dietician, or medical health professional and cannot speak to body image topics from a clinical, trauma-informed place, I am an expert of lived experience. I’m an academic of my own body, and I’m passionate about facilitating conversations with other humans about their relationships with their bodies. I believe it’s important to continue conversations about healthy body image in creative spaces as a means to heal individuals as well as the collective whole. But just know the information presented in this medium is not professional mental health advice or medical advice, and any questions or concerns you have should always be directed to your health providers.
“ I’m thinking about just the experience of the contrast of being a high schooler with a BFA problems Twitter account to then being a college student getting a BFA, I guess I don’t necessarily want to rehash all the wild feedback that a lot of us got in our program, but a lot of us were getting wild feedback that reinforced these ideas that you need to look a certain way to perform and you need to look a certain way to be even worthy of being seen on stage. I didn’t realize that I was thinking about things in those terms until after college.”
- Liz J
Megan Gill: Hi, Liz!
Liz J: Hey, Megan!
Megan Gill: I’m so excited that you’re here today and that we get to chat!
Liz J: Oh, I’m so excited to be here. Yeah, thanks for having me!
Megan Gill: Absolutely! Do you wanna just start by introducing yourself and a little bit about the work that you do in the world?
Liz J: Sure, so I’m Liz J. So Megan and I went to college together. We were in the musical theater world.
Megan Gill: We were.
Liz J: So I have that background and I still very much consider myself a creative person and do a lot of creative work, but I’m not really doing it for money. And I kind of like that setup right now. I have a normal-person job working at a law firm. So I’m mostly making trainings for new attorneys, and it’s a really great job in a lot of ways. And I still am able to be creative.
For example, I’m working on a training right now that I get to design puppets for it. That’s crazy. In what world are puppets at a law firm. But I have a really cool team that I work with, and I feel they see what I’m interested in and take interest in the things that I’m interested in and are very open-minded about what my role can look like. Yeah, I just am lucky to work with people who are also creative.
So, outside job-job, I also do puppetry and I make solo music and I’m in a choir and I make visual art and I write, and I wrote a musical with one of my best friends. Yeah.
Megan Gill: Whoa. Tell me more if you can.
Liz J: I mean it’s a really silly and campy musical, and we wrote the first draft in 2019, which is kind of wild to say because that is now a long time ago. But yeah, we had performance dates set for 2020, and then 2020 happened. So obviously we had to take a step back. And yeah, we weren’t sure when it would be a good time to do an in-person show again. So we kind of put it aside for a while. And then last year we brought it back up and we started working on it again, and we started working on it with Garrett Welch he’s helping us arrange the music, so…
Megan Gill: Cool.
Liz J: Hopefully gonna be producing it soon. It’s been a long journey, but that’s okay.
Megan Gill: Totally okay. This is so exciting, and I’m so excited to hear that you’ve stuck with it this long.
Liz J: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s not been consistent this whole time. we’ve kind of put it to the side for good chunks of time, but I think that’s also been good for it, you know? We can live life, do other creative projects, and then we kept wanting to revisit it, which I think says something the fact that we wanted to complete this project.
Megan Gill: Yeah. Agreed. I think that’s beautiful and lovely. It’s had time to breathe. It’s ready.
Liz J: Yeah, word. Exactly.
Megan Gill: Yeah. Okay, cool. I love that. Thanks for sharing all of that stuff. So yeah, we had crossover years at the same college program together. We weren’t in the same year, but whatever. It doesn’t matter because we were still in a lot of the same classes and we were still performing together and in dance together and probably even in scene study at some point. Yeah.
Liz J: Shows, yeah.
Megan Gill: Yes. Shows together, all of that good stuff. So that’s how we met. That’s our origin story. And I think that we met at this time where I was in a very different place in terms of relationship to my body. So I’m curious to hear a bit of your body image story and how your evolution as an actor and a creative and just a human being in general has influenced that.
Liz J: Yeah, so I mean, like I think a lot of young performers, I got bit by the bug early and was really, really passionate about it and really striving, I guess might be the word. I basically from the first time I did a musical in middle school, I just really wanted to do whatever it took to keep doing that. Let’s see. I’m trying to think how exactly to really phrase this.
I really wanted to pursue musical theater really hard, and when I was in high school, I was in a bunch of dance classes and I felt I was kind of playing catch-up because I hadn’t been dancing my entire life. And I think a lot of girls who were raised in the nineties, got a lot of wild feedback about what it meant to – as you’re growing up, what you should look like and what kind of body you’re taught is desirable. So that’s the air we’re breathing, at that time. It was very much a present – it was just incredibly on my mind throughout high school and into college. Thinking about my body is part of this package.
It’s kind of stunning thinking about myself being a teenager, having these thoughts like, “Ooh, I am something to market.” But it really – the teachers that I listened to, their messaging really stuck with me that I was just very much thinking of myself as a commodity from this tender age.
And yeah, when I got to college, it was a lot of also similar messaging. Megan, I’m honestly, I’m thinking about just wild, wild shit that I thought in high school because I’m like it really was – I don’t wanna get on here and trauma dump. That’s not it. I’m not – I don’t wanna be like, “Here are all these crazy things that were said,” but I do wanna demonstrate, like, okay, it really was so present.
I had all these friends that I was doing theater with in high school, and we had a satirical Twitter account called “BFA Problems.” We were high schoolers. We were not pursuing a BFA, but it was like we had a Twitter account and the icon was a LaDuca and we were just tweeting all this stuff about, about literally saying the phrase “Broadway body” in Tweets as high schoolers, you know? I’m 15, and we were deep in it. And one of my other very good friends who also went on to go to college for musical theater, he and I would do P90X in the morning.
Megan Gill: In high school.
Liz J: We were 16! That’s wild. You know? And so, it was just on my mind from an early – it’s early. That is an early age. That’s kind of wild thinking about a teenager thinking of – yeah.
Megan Gill: Hyper-fixating on bodies in this way. Yeah, agreed.
Liz J: Yeah.
Megan Gill: Agreed because as kids we’re so active, and a lot of kids play a sport or maybe have an afterschool activity. And so we do these things and there’s a long time of your childhood where you don’t even think twice about how much you’re moving your body. And then there comes a point, and for me it was high school as well, where I realized, “Oh, you mean I can move my body in this certain type of way or this much, and it can then look potentially a different way than it does now? And I don’t what I look like right now because all these messages tell me I shouldn’t look what I look right now.” It’s that moment that forever changes you. And I feel when that moment happens so early, even in high school, when our brains are not developed yet, it really can mess with your psyche. Yeah.
Liz J: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it was it is pretty stunning. I don’t know. I’m just thinking about how I had a childhood doctor say, “Hey, your kid should play a sport.” And so, I started doing swim team, and that’s also a tough sport.
Megan Gill: I’m sorry, I’m smiling because I also did swim team in high school.
Liz J: Wait, yes! I remember this!
Megan Gill: So I feel you!
Liz J: Yeah. I keep saying it was just in the air, but it was I’m thinking about being on swim team and then later going to the dressing room at Hollister and Abercrombie and you know always having an idea of which size you are and wondering – literally talking to friends about what size jean they wear.
Megan Gill: This is stuff that’s very fascinating actually, because I think a lot of these high-school conversations that we – I think a lot of us had very, very similar conversations. Or for instance, just the fact that we were both on a swim team where not only are you in a bathing suit in front of spectators, your whole team, but also that’s where I realized, “Oh, I can lift weights and move my body this much and maybe lose some weight because society’s telling me that my body is not good the way it is, and I need to change it.” It’s all of these different facets of what you’re talking about I think are such a universal experience for so many young people.
Liz J: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’m also just thinking about the books that were out at that point, so many diet books, those were definitely in my house. The Atkins Diet. Skinny Bitch, that’s one wild title. But that book, thinking about also just what was considered plus-size back then is wild to me. Bridget Jones, that that’s a plus-size woman allegedly at that time, or Jennifer Hudson when she was on American Idol. There was so much discussion of her body and her weight. And looking at pictures, it’s really stunning. I guess it’s not about what the threshold is for what kind of body is considered a big body, but it’s that was just such an average woman.
I just read this book called Girl on Girl, and it talks a lot about how the nineties and the early aughts just really did girls and women dirty, in terms of representation of women and how we talked about bodies, how we talked about femininity, what that is, and yeah, reality TV also, the way that that played a big role in things. It was such a weird time. But I also feel like I’m preaching to the choir, you know? We all were surrounded by this wild media that had these really impossible standards. And no matter which way you swing on the pendulum, whether you’re considered culturally too large or considered too small, there really is no – what’s the fable? It’s too hot, it’s too cold…
Megan Gill: Ooh, Goldilocks!
Liz J: Yeah, it’s there really is no way to do everything right.
Megan Gill: Right, there’s no winning here.
Liz J: Yeah, and I feel so much of disordered eating ends up being – this is kind of a disjointed thought, but I’m thinking about just when I think of my relationship with disordered eating, it’s so much out of a desire to control, control my life, control my body. But ultimately it is not something that I have control over and there is no “right” body.
Megan Gill: There really isn’t. We are all truly so different and so unique in our own magical ways, but it’s just so devastating, I think, because we, instead of seeing the good in our physical bodies, a lot of times we can only see the bad things. And I know that I, too, for the longest time, and even still listen, one is never healed from this shit, but sometimes it’s really, really hard to see the good. And so, it’s so easy to just harp on the things we dislike and the ways that we think our body is letting us down or is doing us wrong or is betraying us. For instance, if the equation of, “Moving my body this much and eating this way equals I’m gonna look like that,” it’s like, no, it doesn’t work like that because our bodies are different and because, as you age, they evolve even more and grow in various ways.
But also I am curious – and it’s to the extent that you feel comfortable and to the extent that you wanna share, of course – how growing up in a time where all of these messages around you and your deep involvement in this BFA problems Twitter with all your theater friends affected you and your relationship to your body. Then, and then two-part question. I always ask the big questions, and my guests are like, “Whoa, there’s a lot going on here.”
Liz J: A lot to unpack here, yeah, yeah.
Megan Gill: I know! And then how that has evolved kind of as you’ve grown into who you are today, sort of.
Liz J: Okay. Yeah, so overall it has gone from this thing that really I was thinking about on a daily basis to something that is just way less present in my mind and is not – I think also just aging has given me an amount of perspective and realizing, “Oh, oh, wow, there really is so much more to be focused on than my appearance or the aesthetics of my body.” Like the function of my body is much more important to me, or just being an adult who works or experiencing grief and gaining appreciation for, “Oh, my body is relatively healthy and functional. I think all of those things have helped with the perspective and kind of decreasing the size of the body-image stuff in my brain.
But I think also being able to talk through a bunch of this stuff with people that we went to college with or people who also went to college for performance stuff, that has been so important in kind of deconstructing some of this stuff that really felt, at the time, truth. Really, I think about myself when I was a teenager into my early twenties. While I was in college in this program I was in this cult mindset of, “This is all correct, and if I do want to have success, then my body needs to look a certain way.” And also having a very narrow idea of what success looks like.
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Liz J: Yeah, I’m thinking about just the experience of the contrast of being a high schooler with a BFA problems Twitter account to then being a college student getting a BFA, I guess I don’t necessarily want to rehash all the wild feedback that a lot of us got in our program, but a lot of us were getting wild feedback that reinforced these ideas that you need to look a certain way to perform and you need to look a certain way to be even worthy of being seen on stage. I didn’t realize that I was thinking about things in those terms until after college.
I really love to dance, and I’m not talking about technical dance. I’m not talking about executing choreography. I love to dance. I love to go to a show and just move and have fun and dance, and for the longest time – well, not for the longest time, but basically I think until I was I don’t know, 26 or something – I’m 31 now for context, but, I really was thinking, “Oh, I don’t wanna go out dancing. No one wants to see me dance,” which now feels such a wild way to think about it. When I go out dancing, that is so much for myself, so much for the liberation of being out and also being out with other people and being with people I love and also with strangers and the freedom of moving my body. It is not an aesthetic experience. And when I’m watching other people who are fully dancing with their whole bodies, it’s like I am not looking at them with that kind of evaluating eye that I was looking at myself with when I was younger.
But yeah, I very much had these ideas that – I was more flexible with other people, but with myself, I had these very inflexible ideas about what I need to look to be worthy of – how I needed to meet whatever guidelines I had made up for myself to be worthy of performing. Which I just so don’t feel anymore. I think about myself it during those periods of my life and I’m oh honey, you don’t – the world is so much bigger than that, and there are so many more people.
Megan Gill: And almost when – just to jump in here, there’s so many things. Oh my gosh, so many things. But it’s when you are embodied and when you are dancing because you fucking love to dance and you just wanna move and vibe, that is when the magic happens and when the connection happens and when – this whole concept of living your life to the fullest, that’s the beauty. That’s when the beauty of that gets to really shine and isn’t that what life is about? And it’s just really heartbreaking to hear you say that. It just shakes me to my core because, sure, it’s this messaging that, well, yeah, you don’t inhabit a body that typically is onstage and therefore we’re gonna teach you this so heavily, teach you this ideal and shove it down your throat and feed you this messaging from when you’re 18 to 22, more or less. And therefore the fact that that gets – I mean, that’s what happens. It gets internalized and tied to our worth as a human being. You did not feel worthy of being onstage or you didn’t think that other people should have to look at you experiencing your joy in this incredible vessel that you have? That is really what pisses me off.
Liz J: Yeah. I mean, I’m being glib, but yeah, it’s a bummer. It’s just not right. I am hopeful that things are changing. I do feel a lot of hope when I look at people who are pursuing, I mean, I don’t know. Honestly, I cannot pretend to have my finger on the pulse of theater or musical theater right now. I, in so many ways, feel – I am just not as I used to be really glued to it. And I don’t have my finger on the pulse in that way now, but…
Megan Gill: That’s okay. I do not either.
Liz J: Yeah, but the flashes I see are like, oh, this is encouraging. It seems the way that people are talking about casting and type, it is changing.
Megan Gill: Yes.
Liz J: That gives me hope. Also, seeing younger people who are pursuing any kind of creative thing. People are talking about appearance and aesthetics in different ways. I mean, I will also say a caveat to that is I also see a lot of – you see 10 year olds who are Sephora children, you know?
So you really see quite a range of approaches too, and also capitalism is always going to be a big old force there that keeps us wanting – tries to encourage us to keep spending money on this pursuit that is kind of fruitless a lot of the time.
Yeah, there is a lot that gives me hope about future generations who are pursuing creative paths. And I also, I don’t know, I feel being a teacher in any kind of space, it’s a really kind of sacred occupation. It’s a really important role. And I think, people are getting a little more – I think it’s starting to become more clear, the impact that educators can have or anyone in any kind of authority role where they have say and input. I think people are becoming a little more aware of the words that you say, they matter and they can stick with a person. And so don’t mince your words.
Megan Gill: I know that I can very much relate to you in the aging process because I’m now 33 and being 10 years removed from our college program, I have a completely different relationship to my body than I did back then. And it is also interesting because I’m also not pursuing music theater and theater at the moment. I’m not deep in it. And so it’s interesting because we also kind of share that, and I’m like hmm, I wonder how much of an influence that has had on my ability to sit with some of these things and try to heal some of these wounded parts of myself and heal my relationship to my body and try to carry that forward.
Liz J: Hearing you talk about just the element of neither of us are deep in it the way that we were when we were 18 to 22, give or take, know I personally had to give myself some space from it. And I really trust on a deep level that I’m always going to be a creative person and always be able to do creative work. I just trust that, and I’m grateful that I do trust that because I don’t know that I had those beliefs when I was, you know, a fresh little teen. I think I was thinking about things in a little more of a binary of you’re pursuing the arts or you’re not. You’re performing professionally or you’re in a cubicle and it looks you’re in the movie Office Space and you hate your life.
And it’s actually there are so many nuances there, so many shades of what your work means to you and what the role your work plays – how your work plays into your life, and what you want from a job at that point and how identity gets tied up in it. So much of my identity was tied to being a performer. But it wasn’t tied to being creative.
Megan Gill: This is revolutionary because I think you’re touching on an experience that I, myself, also had in my own way, and I can pinpoint it for myself because I always say that, specifically when I was in college and high school and thereafter when I was deep in the thick of my tumultuous relationship to my body, with food and exercise, I was so disconnected from the art and the why I was even doing it in the first place. And now that I have worked to heal so much of my relationship to my body, I am freed up to be creative and to let the creativity that was always inside of me come out. This is so interesting, but it also makes so much sense to me, and I’ve never thought about it like this before.
Liz J: Yeah, I mean, in college, don’t get me wrong, I do feel there were a lot of opportunities to be creative and I still am not trying to say that I didn’t have any agency. I did kind of reach a point, a little bit after graduating college where I kind of felt like a puppet. I was kind of like I am saying lines, someone else wrote, I’m being directed by someone else. This is music. Someone else wrote, I’m in a costume someone else designed, the lighting is designed by someone else. I am in a lot of ways executing what other people have designed or written or created. Which is not – I think also I was just not in the greatest of head spaces to where I was all of this equals I’m a puppet. I did feel like, oh, I would to be a little bit – I’d to be maybe more in partnership with the creation process. And I’d to explore what it is I have to say. And I think that also was such a – moving to Chicago from Kansas was such a good thing for me because when I moved to Chicago, I moved here largely thinking, oh, I wanna do improv and sketch comedy. And I say that with a little bit of a shrug because I definitely do not do improv nowadays. But all that stuff is still with me. And I met a lot of my greatest friends and people that I still make stuff with through the comedy kind of world. But it was such a. Refreshing, I guess, adjustment, going from a musical theater program to being in improv and sketch comedy classes where the focus is on what you have to say and how you’re saying it and what you’re making, and I didn’t really feel that in the same way when I was just pursuing performing in musicals. It also felt incredibly foreign to me. I was like you’re asking me what my point of view is? I don’t have one.
Megan Gill: Yes, yes. That’s also a piece of the experience for me as well. So interesting. It’s liberating to come into your voice and to find like, yeah, sure. We’re using our voice when we’re saying other people’s words, but when you find your voice as a creative and tying that to who you are as a human and letting the human parts of yourself come out in said expression too, right?
Liz J: Yeah. I’m joking about ha, I didn’t have a point of view. And it’s like, well, I did, but I had to kind of dig in there and get a little more secure in myself and start. I had to cook, you know? I had to just grow up a little bit and get a little more secure in myself. And also talking about body stuff, get more comfortable in my own body and like myself more. Are you kidding? it’s very hard to make art if you don’t feel like – instead of saying royal you, I should just say It was hard for me to write anything when I felt very disconnected from myself and had very much been in this trying to please different teachers and these prescribed paths and plans, and it’s liberating but it was also scary to realize, oh, I have a lot more agency than I thought I did.
But yeah, also, I really feel like queerness has also helped and changed my relationship with my body. This is another way that Megan and I met, but when I went to college, I promptly got a girlfriend who was friends with Megan. We’re all still pals, rock and roll.
Megan Gill: Hey, Kate!
Liz J: Yeah, but it was oh, I just – generally speaking, dating women and seeing it’s seeing the parts of my body that I have been insecure about or felt whatever way about, kind of mirrored in another person that I care about and seeing, oh, that’s not a – I still like that about them. Or that’s not gross. That’s part of them. I love that because it’s part of them, it’s not this – I don’t know if that makes sense.
Megan Gill: No, that makes total sense.
Liz J: Thinking about, “Ooh, my stomach,” or whatever the heck thinking, ugh, this is something I wanna not have. But then it’s seeing that on another person and hearing them say, “I’m insecure about this,” or whatever. It’s like, oh, my god. I’m not even thinking about that.
Megan Gill: Yeah. I’m not even looking at that or taking that into account when I’m thinking about why I like you as the person I’m seeing, yeah.
Liz J: Yeah. And I also just think queerness, it’s got its own kind of world and ideas about – it’s not playing by the same kind of heterosexual rules of what is deemed attractive. It’s way more expansive than that. I think that also played a big part in me kind of repairing my relationship with my body, renegotiating it, how I feel about it and learning to like different parts of myself.
Also, getting tattooed. It might sound trite, but it has been amazing to kind of put other people’s art on my body, and I feel like I’m speaking about agency a lot, getting tattooed, I feel so much agency over my body when I’m deciding if I wanna get a new tattoo and what I want and where, and it feels great to be like I get to customize this weird little this meat suit I’ve got for the rest of my life. I get to design it and I love it. I love my arms. They’re covered in tattoos, and honestly, growing up I felt kind of neutral about my arms, and now I’m like, oh yeah, I’m gonna wear sleeveless stuff all the time. Yeah. So…
Megan Gill: Yeah. That’s really lovely. Both of those pieces I think are super important and I’m so glad that you touched on how they have influenced bringing you back into your body. And I love how you said you renegotiated the terms with your body too. That’s such a beautiful phrase. That’s a beautiful way to put it.
Liz J: Richard Simmons. Also, shout out Richard Simmons. He was my COVID guy. It felt very nice to be doing grapevines at home. When I was talking about oh until maybe 26, I was not really – these weird ideas about dancing. And then it was like doing Richard Simmons – also seeing all this body diversity in his old tapes. That was huge.
Megan Gill: Wait, cool. Were they YouTube or were they physical VHS vibes?
Liz J: Yeah, on YouTube, I just fell down this rabbit hole watching old Richard Simmons YouTube videos. I love him. I really do. I mean, okay, I can’t endorse everything. He would still say some weird thing about you know, melting fat or something, and I’d be okay, chill.
Megan Gill: Yeah. Can we not?
Liz J: But for the most part it was this really body positive cool thing where it’s all these people dancing, and they’re all shapes and sizes, and I think also just seeing people in different bodies dancing and dancing for fun also. Seeing them have pleasure and fun from dancing, that really changed things too.
Megan Gill: That’s really, really great and really important as well.
Liz J: I will say, this last year I read The Manicurist’s Daughter. It’s a really kind of stunning memoir that this woman writes about her mother. Her mother dies while getting a tummy tuck.
Megan Gill: Wow.
Liz J: Have you heard of this book?
Megan Gill: I have not, but I will be taking note of it.
Liz J: So I’ll be frank, especially during these really critical of my body periods of time, I had been like, “Maybe someday I’ll get a tummy tuck.” Anyway, zooming back out, reading this book, the author, she describes in so many ways, her relationship with her body and she’s also kind of trying to piece together based on the time she did spend with her mom, her mom’s relationship with her body, and I just shout out to The Manicurist’s Daughter. And it made me – I don’t want to be eating my words, but I just do not want to pursue – I don’t know. I’m not trying to, yeah, I don’t know. I’m like, “No, fuck no. I’m not ever gonna get a tummy tuck. I don’t want that.” I value my life too much.
Megan Gill: Yes to all of that. That’s huge. Yeah. I’m with you. I’m so with you. It’s these things that come up, whether it’s a piece of art or whether it’s just re-relating to the way we’re marketed to, or the beauty industry or whatever it is. And realizing and coming to terms with I don’t want to alter my body in that way. I know I’ve had my own version of that. I’m still pursuing film acting and commercial acting, right, in my own ways. But I’m like I don’t wanna get Botox because everyone’s doing it. And I wanna explore what it’s to have to sit with the discomfort of looking at the lines in my face as I age and working through those feelings. And again, I’m same as you. I don’t want to eat my words or speak too soon, but I really hope that I can stick with this just for the personal growth this, the self-growth that could be in that, that a lot of people wanna run from. And I don’t blame them for wanting to run from these feelings. It’s fucking terrifying.
Liz J: Oh, for sure. To be pretty I don’t know, harsh or blunt about it. The world is harder on women who age and show signs of aging, you know? And not just in the entertainment industry, I feel like just culturally, yeah, youth is a currency. I feel it’s a totally natural reaction to try and want to retain as much of that currency as you can.
So I grind my teeth, and my dentist suggested I get Masseter Botox, and on my temples. I was straight up grinding through my night guard, okay? And so they were like, “We really recommend this.” So I did it and it was $600 for this. It’s not covered by insurance. And they had said, “You’ll probably need to get it redone in I think they said maybe four to six months.” Because it’s temporary. You have to keep doing this. Eventually it can have the effect of – I don’t know. I feel I’m kind of talking out my ass because I am not an expert on Botox. And this is me relaying this conversation that was over a year ago. But I got the jaw Botox. I got the Botox and the temples from my dentist. And I was also kind of nervous that I would – that this would be the introduction to it, and then it would kind of – that barrier is now taken down and it’s like I feel comfortable doing it wherever. And it did help my teeth grinding my, a little bit, a little bit. But I’ll say, really not enough, truly not enough. And it’s $600 every six months. Those are flights. I don’t know. It is really tough, but it’s I think about – you know, I think spending that money in other ways, that feels like a decision that’s more aligned with how I wanna live right now, you know? I can’t guarantee that’s how I’m always going to feel. And also, you know, I also have a lot of friends who have gotten Botox or different injectables. You could also totally argue that me getting tattooed, that is body modification. And getting filler, that’s another kind of body modification.
Megan Gill: Yeah, that’s true. I think it’s whatever works for each individual person, and it’s not about shaming any one person for – which, again, historically with tattoos, I know that there has culturally been a lot of shame wrapped up in them in various social circles and various cultures, yada, yada. But yeah, we also have a lot of work to do as far as not shaming the people who do want to explore those things because it’s not your body, it’s theirs.
Liz J: Oh, yeah. I’m also just thinking about some of this stuff can also be very gender-affirming, and I’m absolutely not looking at folks that are doing it to feel more in line with how they want to present. I’m not looking at them thinking, “Ooh, no.” But it’s just I’m thinking about my own relationship with my face and my body.
And for me, I guess the choice that feels more in line with – I don’t know, I feel I’m making this a little convoluted, but just trying to say being able to – part of having agency over your body is you get to choose what you do and don’t do to alter it, and it’s something that we all have to – again, I feel I’m preaching to the choir, but it’s just like, yeah, that’s something we all have to figure out for ourselves. And I think the more time I spend with it, the more I’m like, okay, the way that I am going to – I think I want to try and just let this face wrinkle and sag, let it age and I will continue getting tattoos. I don’t know.
Megan Gill: Yeah, and that can evolve as you age too, right? It’s coming to terms with that within yourself, but then also coming to terms with that as far as letting other people do them. And then also coming to terms with the fact that this can change and evolve how it may at any point in time. It’s so, so, so nuanced. It’s really lovely and also difficult at times, and so interesting to talk about because it is different for every person, right?
Liz J: Yeah, okay, now we’ve got me thinking about film. The last couple years, I’ve really gotten into body horror and especially after watching The Substance.
Megan Gill: I have not seen it, but it is on my list and I think I’m just – and horror is a little – I need to watch it, Liz, but I’m scared.
Liz J: It’s a lot. It really is a lot. But anyway, I had seen that. And then also recently saw Dumplings directed by Fruit Chan. That was a movie that was made in Hong Kong, kind of a similar premise where she’s approaching middle age, she’s an actress, and she meets this woman who makes these dumplings that have this rejuvenating effect. And you know – yeah, you’re grimacing.
Megan Gill: I’m already ill. I’m already ill. It’s giving Sweeney Todd.
Liz J: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, no spoilers, but it’s very similar. Yeah. It’s kind of part of the same genre as The Substance. Helter Skelter is a Japanese movie that I also saw for the first time this year with really similar themes. And Ugly Stepsister, this Norwegian movie.
So I’m saying all of these, but I’m also kind of stunned that there aren’t more films that deal with the obsession of plastic surgery and aging and body modification. And I started making a list in Letterboxd of okay, here are all these movies that have to deal with this. And I’m like, all right, we’ve got The Substance, Ugly Stepsister, Death Becomes Her, Helter Skelter, Eyes Without a Face. I also have a lot of movies listed in there that I haven’t seen yet. But I’ve heard that they’re thematically in that kind of world.
But the fact that mainstream, big-budget films, kind of dealing with these themes we’re in the dozens, versus you think about how many films are about being like, “Oh, I’m still single in my thirties.” You’ve got so many movies about that. I don’t know. That was just the first thing I thought of. But yeah, I thought it was interesting that we really don’t have a ton of films that tackle this cultural capitalist – just how much money and effort and energy can be put into appearance, I suppose.
Megan Gill: Yeah. I’ll co-sign that through and through, because I feel The Substance was the first film I saw widely marketed at the level that it was with the cast that it had.
Liz J: Yeah. And as I’m saying this, I’m starting to kind of think, okay, maybe I am generalizing a little too much because I do think there are quite a few films that do deal with like, “Oh, I don’t feel I’m enough appearance-wise.” That is a theme that I see a lot of.
Megan Gill: Yes. But let’s call it out at the level that these films you just spoke about are calling it out. So, yeah, totally. There’s nuance there. There’s nuance there.
Liz J: I want to see more about the financial aspect, how predatory some of this can be. How consuming it can be. Consuming, consumption, just over-consumption. I wanna see more about that.
Megan Gill: Yes, absolutely. I’m with you on that. Okay. I have a final question for you before we wrap up, it’s funny because you kind of touched on it a little bit earlier, but I’m wondering what your favorite thing or things are about your body. They can be physical, non-physical, both physical and non-physical. Totally up to you, however you want to answer that.
Liz J: Well, yeah, I mean, I did already refer to all my tattoos. I really do love all my tattoos, and I love that I get to continue getting tattoos. I also got the supplies to start giving myself tattoos. I gave myself a really terrible stick and poke last year.
Megan Gill: I am obsessed with this.
Liz J: We’re gonna very slowly evolve there. But tattoos and also just I like that I feel very comfortable and grounded in my body these days. And I love that I can use it to bike. I’ve gotten into biking this year, and it’s so great to be able to bike from home from work. Now I’m into the, the music festivals, the dancing
Megan Gill: I love it.
Liz J: I’m so pleased with myself that I can dance comfortably and that I feel comfortable doing that and that I dance hard and I have fun dancing. I love that my body allows me to do that. And I love that my body houses everything. It houses my brain, it houses my voice, and to sing. That’s what allows me to do that. So I think I have a lot more gratitude for my body nowadays.
Megan Gill: That’s really, really beautiful and so special, and just the imagery of the fact that it houses your brain and your voice and your heart and everything about who you are and the things that you do. That made me emotional. That was lovely. Thank you for sharing that, Liz.
Liz J: Well, thanks for asking and thanks for having me!
Megan Gill: Of course! Thank you for having this conversation with me!
“ This is kind of a disjointed thought, but I’m thinking about just when I think of my relationship with disordered eating, it’s so much out of, you know, a desire to control - control my life, control my body. But ultimately, it is not something that I have control over, and there is no ‘right’ body.”
- Liz J
Liz is an artist, writer, and performer based in Chicago, IL. She grew up in Wichita, Kansas as a little musical theater freak, and has since branched out into puppetry, visual art, non-musical-theater-music, and has also co-written a musical that she’ll (hopefully!) co-produce in 2026.
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A couple of notes to ensure this is a safe space for my guests to share their intimate and vulnerable body image stories in:
* It can be easy to feel alone on your journey of existing in a body. I welcome the connection and support of one another in this space through considerate and curious comments.
* These conversations are quite nuanced, complex, and oftentimes very vulnerable. Remember that everyone has their own body image story, and while someone else’s might look differently than yours, I encourage you to keep an open mind and stay empathetic.
* Thank you for being here. By sharing this type of content, my hope is to inspire personal reflection and cultural questioning. Thank you and supporting me in exploring the effects of our culture’s beauty norms and body standards on human beings existing in today’s world.
Do you have a friend, family member or peer who might love this too? I’d be honored if you could help me spread the word about my writing and body image conversations!
While I’m not a licensed therapist, registered dietician, or medical health professional and cannot speak to body image topics from a clinical, trauma-informed place, I am an expert of lived experience. I’m an academic of my own body, and I’m passionate about facilitating conversations with other humans about their relationships with their bodies. I believe it’s important to continue conversations about healthy body image in creative spaces as a means to heal individuals as well as the collective whole. But just know the information presented in this medium is not professional mental health advice or medical advice, and any questions or concerns you have should always be directed to your health providers.
Megan Gill: Hi, Christine! I’m so excited to talk with you, and I’m just so glad that you’re here.
Christine Dickinson: Hi! Thank you so much for having me. I’m very excited. I’m a big fan. I’m a big Megan fan.
Megan Gill: Hey, I’m a big fan of you! Do you wanna just start by introducing yourself and introducing your work in the world?
Christine Dickinson: Yes, I’m Christine Dickinson and I am an actor, playwright, and new producer. And right now, I am producing my first original work called Mother, which will be a workshop production of my one-woman show.
Megan Gill: Which is just so exciting because, at the time of recording this, you are premiering this piece to the world in just a couple of days!
Christine Dickinson: Yep. Yep!
Megan Gill: How do you feel?
Christine Dickinson: I think, more than anything, excited but also terrified. So I would say it’s probably equal parts both. This has been something that’s been marinating for me for a couple of years. A few years ago, I wanted to write a screenplay of this kind of a thing, and now it’s kind of evolved into a play and, you know, that’s a little bit more my realm anyway than film. So I’m definitely excited to share the story in a medium that I have been working in for so long. But scary because I’ve never really put my own voice out there like this before. So I would say it’s a little bit of both.
Megan Gill: Oof, I just got chills. That is so, so totally fair. Okay, so the premise of your story is, “In this comedy thriller play, a daughter faces the cost of being a woman in a modern world where her mother isn’t answering her calls.”
Christine Dickinson: Yes.
Megan Gill: Can you share a bit more about the premise in the story and kind of these themes of what it is to be a young woman today and how those themes are woven into the piece?
Christine Dickinson: Yeah, absolutely. So the play opens when a daughter, my character, comes in from a long-haul flight, and the first call is, you know, just checking in with the mom like, “Hey, I got home,” that kind of thing. And it becomes pretty clear that something happened during the last moments that we saw each other, because I guess the idea is that we live on opposite sides of the country, and I no longer live near my mom. So the phone is really the only way that we can connect. So there’s this idea that something happened, and we’re not quite sure what happened, but there was some sort of tension between daughter and mother that was unresolved before the daughter left to get on a plane to go back home.
So that’s where we start. And throughout the play, without giving too much of it away, we start to see this person’s life shake out kind of maybe how you would imagine it to with a lack of guidance or support. And many of the troubles, again, without getting too much into it, because it’s only 40 minutes. So I’m like, there’s not a ton that I could really tell about the plot that’s not a total spoiler.
Megan Gill: Totally. No spoiler alerts!
Christine Dickinson: I’m like, I just tell you the whole thing right now. “In scene six, this happens.”
Megan Gill: I’m like, “No, I’m seeing the play this weekend!” And I’m so excited. I cannot wait!
Christine Dickinson: Yes. Okay. I won’t spoil it for you. But, you know, it’s everything to do with the things that we have to face, particularly as women in a modern world, everything from pressures of how we look, pressures of how we are coming off (especially to people who have authority over us like employers), pressures of being equal parts girl boss and equal parts dainty, feminine. And then we kind of dive into this whole world of like, whoa, okay, these are modern lenses on these issues, but these are really issues that have existed for centuries.
So we kind of go back and look at some ancestral stuff a little bit and some things that – like what happens when we experience traumatic things and we leave those traumatic things unchecked and we continue to reproduce, especially when it’s a woman giving birth to a daughter, and then she has a daughter, and then she has a daughter. And how those cycles kind of don’t break themselves unless somebody breaks it.
Megan Gill: That is such an important thing to be talking about and something that I very much think our generation is all about looking at and uncovering and trying to get to the bottom of. So I just think it’s really beautiful and also quite relevant to probably what many women are unpacking today.
Christine Dickinson: Hmm. Yeah. Thank you. What’s really interesting about writing this play was that I think we had actually had a conversation years ago because, when I saw your short, A Broadway Body, the screening of that, I felt really inspired. And I was like, “Oh, I’m writing something that’s kind of touching on something similar to this.” And I think we had a conversation about that because I was so inspired. I was like, “How did you sit down and write this?” I kind of felt like I abandoned that project for a while, but then I sat down, I think it was February, and I was, like, “Ooh, I’m really kind of feeling something right now.” And so, I just sat down without thinking of it being a play or anything. I think I just wrote a conversation or a one-ended phone conversation, like a voicemail, like so much of this play is a voicemail series. So I think I just wrote one. From there I was like, “Oh, this is kind of setting something off in me a little bit.” And then I stepped away from it for I think a couple weeks, and then I went back to it and I read it and I was like, “Oh, no, no, no. Something else happens after this.” And it just kind of one thing led to the next, to the next.
I just, over the course of maybe two months, kept walking away and then coming back, and then it was just so abundantly clear what happens next in this person’s story. And I didn’t know how this play was going to end until I sat down and I wrote the final scene. And I think my fiancé, who was literally in the room. He came in, in the middle of me writing it, and he was like, “Hey, how was your –?” And I was like, “No. No, no, no. Hold on, hold on!”
Megan Gill: “Zip it! Not now!”
Christine Dickinson: Hold on one sec. Hold one second. And then da, da, da da, last line of the play. “Okay. Yes, it was fine. Um, take five and I’m gonna read you this.” So yeah, it just – like, I had no idea some elements of it, that were coming in, until literally I was writing it. It was as if something was kind of moving. It sounds silly when I say it, but it’s like something else was moving through me that was not my own narrative anymore, even though it felt like it started off that way.
And even in the rehearsal of it, the reading of it, all of this, we had a dress rehearsal on Sunday, and even in that I’m like, “Oh, there are things that I’m discovering in this text that I was not aware that I was putting into it.” Yeah, so it’s been a really strange experience. So bizarre for me and foreign but cool.
Megan Gill: Wow, that’s so cool and so magical. And how beautiful that you literally produced these words and these words came out of you, and yet you’re still finding so much in them and so much that you are discovering and didn’t know was coming out of you at the time. Are you familiar with Elizabeth Gilbert’s work?
Christine Dickinson: Not super.
Megan Gill: Okay. She wrote this book called Big Magic. When I was moving out to LA, I read it and I was obsessed with this concept because it had happened to me one time before, and it’s this concept of inspiration is flying out there, right? And then inspiration hits you, and either you take it right then and there and you alchemize it into art or you kinda let it pass by you and it’ll go to somebody else. And this feels like a bit of a Big Magic moment because it’s so outside of yourself, but also it’s so beautiful to hear how you were just inspired and hit by this thing that you couldn’t say no to that helped you produce this piece. Anyways, I just think it’s so cool.
Christine Dickinson: Yeah. That is really interesting and cool to hear that this is a thing that – because, in a way, it does kind of feel that. And I think there have been moments of that for me before in glimmers, but it’s always kind of been, “Ugh, yeah. But it would be stupid if I did it.” Like, “Yeah, other people can do this, but like, I don’t think my narrative needs to be heard or my narrative isn’t really quite ready to be heard or like, who am I to really speak on something like ancestral trauma, and who am I to speak on this thing?” And there would be things that I was about to write, and I was like, “Ugh, no. I don’t wanna be the one to say that because I don’t feel qualified to speak on that.” But then I would be like, “No, I’m gonna do it anyway.”
So it was a lot of conscious permission that I had to give myself. And I think – and I brought this up in class too, when we were talking about the play and the creation of it is that I’ve been having to give myself, different versions of myself permission throughout the entire creative process of this, where I feel like my actor-self was kind of on my shoulder when I was writing it saying, “It’s okay. You can say that. I will take care of the words for you. When it’s time for them to be heard, I will take care of that and do that due diligence and build the belief that those words deserve in order to not just make it true to you, playwright, Christine, but to make this transformative for other people as well.” And then when the actor in me was really (and continually is) very hard on myself about the performance of it and like, “I don’t know if that was embodied,” or “I don’t know if that was present,” or “I don’t know if that was true,” the playwright in me is like, “It’s okay. I gave you room to discover things in this. It’s okay that you’re not crying during this line that I was crying during when I was writing it. Like, that’s okay.”
So it has been this continuous permission that playwright is giving actor and actor is giving playwright. That has been really cool and interesting and, and weird. I never thought that I would feel so different as the actor than I do as a playwright. I feel like we’re different people. I mean, obviously it’s both me. This sounds very odd and silly, but I’m not the same person.
Megan Gill: It makes sense! It’s different facets of your vessel, right?
Christine Dickinson: Yeah, and I’m a different person than I was in February when I started writing this. And so, there were many moments where I was so hard on myself where I’m like, “I’m not feeling emotionally moved. This is so – these are the words that I wrote. Why am I not feeling moved?” And it’s like you have to experience those as you are right now for that to be in any way accessible to other people as well. So yeah.
Megan Gill: That’s really lovely. Thank you for speaking to all of that. I know that when were chatting a bit about this piece, you had mentioned that there were parts of the process where some body image themes were coming up for you. Are these baked into the play, or are these kind of subliminal things that, obviously, just by nature of being a woman growing up in today’s culture, is just a part of our life and was actually probably a part of women’s lives for a long, long – for forever and ever, and we’re just now starting to kind of acknowledge them in a different way? But I’m just curious if that’s something that – when these themes of body image started to either come up to you or hit you or maybe made you question your own relationship to your own body – I know that there’s kind of a lot in that, but if anything is jumping out to you, I would be curious to hear.
Christine Dickinson: Yeah, absolutely. So when I was writing this, a majority of the body image stuff kind of came up in the second draft. There are little cameos of other students in the – we have multimedia, so it’s video collage. It’s Instagram reels or TikToks, whatever you want to call ‘em. And we have several of those, and my character is living alone. Her mother’s not speaking to her. So these are really her only form of connection with other people is through these videos. They’re the only other faces that we see on the stage. So, you know, naturally, when we don’t have close relationships and we’re kind of just seeing what other people want us to see, in my experience, it’s been a lot of comparison that will come up from that. Especially these days, social media is being used as a marketing tool and it’s not entirely honest about that. So that is something that’s really touched upon.
But I will say my own personal deep-rooted body image stuff didn’t really come up for me until I started rehearsing this. I’ve always – I mean, I feel like every woman, really every person, has their own body image story. But mine didn’t really take a front seat until I started really working on this. And I think it became really abundantly clear some of the things that I had been struggling with and pushing down for a really long time once I started confronting this in my work on this play, in particular.
Megan Gill: Wow.
Christine Dickinson: Yeah, I think a lot of comparison is what comes up in the play, kind of in a subtle way. But, you know, there are a lot of different videos in the video sequences that you see that indicate that my character is doing girlhood or womanhood incorrectly. So you have one person saying, “Hey, if your body is larger, that’s bad, and you should fix that.” And then another person, “If your body is smaller, that’s also bad and you should fix that.” And then like, “Oh, you should be dainty and feminine and always keep a groomed appearance.” And then like, “No, fuck that!” And then, you know, all of these different, you know, expectations about what we should and shouldn’t use our bodies for.
And yeah, then there’s, you know, the whole topic of what happens to your body during pregnancy. That’s something that’s explored in one of the video series as well. We have someone featured as a content creator who is going through some pregnancy struggles in her videos, and then my person watching that from a third-person perspective, empathizing for her but also being jealous of her but also being confused by her. So I would say a lot of the issues, my own personal struggles with body image, it’s crazy to say, but for the first 28, 29 years of my life kind of got pushed down, and I was like, “No, no, no. That’s not – I feel a little negatively about myself, but that’s not front and center. But now I’m like, “Okay, yeah, no, it is.”
Megan Gill: Wait, that’s really interesting because – sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off.
Christine Dickinson: oh no, go ahead.
Megan Gill: But this tie between, “Oh, my body image struggles aren’t legit,” is kind of what I am taking from what I hear you saying, you shoving them down, and then you exploring this thought that had come up for you around writing and telling your own stories of, “Oh, well why me? Why my stories? Why?” It’s so interesting that these are both coming to a head at the same time. You deciding to open up and share your heart in this new and very vulnerable way, I’m like, wow, it makes a lot of sense that now is the time that you are giving validation to some of these experiences and feelings and things that maybe you haven’t looked at in this particular way before. And it’s such a – there’s so much nuance in that, I think. I don’t know. I just wanted to point that out because I’m like, “Whoa.” But then also. All of this is happening at the same time. There’s a lot going on here!
Christine Dickinson: Yeah. I didn’t even think about that before, how it is kind of happening at the same time. And so, I think it makes sense why I feel a lot of pressure right now. I will say, the play is a little bit of a call out towards very toxic ideologies that are kind of being promoted on social media right now. Yeah, I mean, not explicitly calling anyone in particular out, but sort of calling out certain types of videos, certain messaging, certain tones, some of them very subtle. And the actors that I gave the scripts to, it was really, really cool to see because I had kind of an image in my head when I was writing it, and then I cast, you know, whoever was interested in being cast in it, and I put it out there, and to see these people’s spin on this was so cool because like, no, it’s not what I envisioned all the time. But to see their spin and to see their language and to see them embody that, it’s like, “Oh, okay, these people get it. I’m not screaming into a void. These actors, they’re on the same page as me that this messaging is also bad without making it so in-your-face, preachy this is bad.”
So yeah, I’m really excited for people to see the cameos as well because they’re a super talented, amazing bunch who just all jumped right into it and were like, “Yeah, let’s do this!” They took the script, made it their own. I told everybody to kind of ad-lib a little bit, and they all did. So, yeah. But it is definitely a little bit of shade. There’s a little bit of shade in there, and I’m not gonna lie about it.
Megan Gill: No, I’m here for it, obviously. I’m obsessed with that. And what a cool experience too for you to have to be like, “Oh, I’m not alone in thinking that this is fucked up or that this isn’t how we should be approaching these conversations.” Like, these actors get it too!” Because also, one of the reasons why I am having these body image conversations is because image is not something that is talked about a lot. It’s a very vulnerable topic, and like you said, we all have a body image story. I believe that as well. And it’s scary to talk about that and sometimes you’re maybe not even in touch with your body image story or things haven’t come to a head for you yet, so what a lovely experience to be like, “Oh, they also get it.”
Christine Dickinson: And I hope that people who are seeing it can kind of – it sounds kind of cliché to be like, “I hope people can relate,” but I hope that people can see it and feel a little bit more seen because, like you said, this is not something that we hear people talking about. I think you and I had a conversation maybe a couple months ago or something where I was talking about this thing that you’re doing and, you know, I think one of us said you see people’s likes, right, on social media. And that’s such a big part of this is that you see who likes what. And so, you’re like, “Oh, that makes me sad that this person that I’m close with is liking this thing that is very clearly telling them to change something about themselves.” And you see certain people that kind of shove these very toxic ideologies on people about how you should be or how you should look, and you see people that you know and love following them and it’s like, “Okay, I think that more conversations need to be had about this because this person is saying that you need to change your body in a way that is not sounding like it’s shaming you, but it is because it is telling you that you need to change. I think I saw this ad the other day that was like, “You’re not fat. You just have high cortisol,” pointing to different parts of her body. And I’m like, okay, so these ads that they’re making are more harmful than they were 15 years ago because they’re saying, “I’m not body shaming you. I’m just looking out for your health.” And it’s like, no, you are because my doctor has never said anything about that affecting my health, and you are telling me that I need to change that about myself. So that in and of itself is not ethically good, and the fact that companies and brands are hiding behind that is very, very disturbing.
Megan Gill: I absolutely agree, and I’m so glad that you are calling it out and have written about it and are speaking in your own way to this cultural phenomenon that’s going on that is, in a way, just sort of brushed under the rug. And then also just to call back to this ad that you just witnessed, all I can think is, well, here we are demonizing being fat. Like, come on. Have we learned nothing, people? Yeah.
Christine Dickinson: Yeah, and also using the phrase, “You’re not fat.” It’s like, “Okay, and if I was?” Also, you don’t know who you’re talking to. So it’s just, so bizarre.
Megan Gill: Being fat is not this horribly terrible thing that our culture has made it out to be. It’s literally just a descriptor.
Christine Dickinson: Right.
Megan Gill: This person is fat. This person is skinny. Those are descriptive words. Fat does not equal bad. Fat does not equal unhealthy. It’s, yeah, all of these different pieces of the conversation that are, like you said, just so subtly okay.
Christine Dickinson: Mm-hmm. I did not survive the Tumblr “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” epidemic just to experience this again in my thirties.
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Christine Dickinson: I didn’t go through that, which I, objectively at the time, knew was wrong. Going through that and now looking through this as an adult, and especially – I work with teenage girls. I see that they are, like many other teenagers, kind of chronically online. And it’s very disturbing to see that no matter how supportive your family members are, no matter how many supportive adults you have in your life, that as a teenager in 2025, this is what you’re constantly being bombarded with. It’s heartbreaking, and there’s nothing that adults can really say when their favorite influencers, their friends, their favorite celebrities are endorsing these companies that are like, “GLP-1s, GLP-1s, GLP-1s.” It’s like, how do you – I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m kind of at a loss for words thinking about it, to be honest.
Megan Gill: No, I hear you. So am I. Because, like you said, how are we still here, for the teenagers today or for the young people today? It’s like we already went through all that shit, and here we are again? And it’s rearing its head and making a comeback in this really odd way masked in health. And everything is online. We can see fucking everything, and it’s impacting everyone in such a different way than it was. And maybe that’s a through line to this concept too is that this has always been a thing. Preaching health and preaching thinness has always been a thing, but for our generation, when we started to come online, where I think it really started to become more of an epidemic – granted, I don’t know. I haven’t done the research into the seventies, eighties, nineties, and our moms and our parents’ generation. But the way that it affected us now, tying into how social media was starting to become a thing when we were young. And now that social media is a huge thing and it’s still here and it’s just shape-shifted, and it’s now just being approached in different ways and we’re being marketed to in weird, sneaky ways, it’s always been a thing. The question is how do we continue to try to do better and make a change? And I think it’s so fudging hard, because it is so baked into our culture, in our society, right?
Christine Dickinson: Yeah.
Megan Gill: I love my mom so much, and she doesn’t mean harm when she does these things, but the way that she was raised to applaud thinness and to applaud weight loss was just something in reflecting on my body image journey that she did when I lost weight. When your own mom is like, “Go, you! You lost weight! You look great!” Oh my God. I’m like, yeah, of course she’s doing that because that’s how she was raised. And now that social media is a thing and everyone’s online and people are having these different opinions and are having conversations about body image and are writing more art about body image online or the ways we’re marketed to by influencers or whatever it is. I feel like I’m just on a soapbox at the moment. I don’t even know where I’m going with this, but like, yeah, I’m like this shit has always been here, and is it going away? Are we really going to be able to do anything about it? I mean, it breaks my heart too because I’m like, I can vision a different way and a different world, but it’s gonna take a lot of work on a lot of fronts, right? I don’t know if you have thoughts on that too. Sorry, I’m sweating. Worked up a sweat!
24:23
Christine Dickinson: Me too! I’m pissed off about this. No, for real. Yeah. Everything, everything you said, and it’s interesting that you bring that up about your mom because I think that that’s such a generational thing. When I was much younger, I was very praised for being thin, not just by my own mother, but by everybody. I was a really skinny, small-framed kid. I was very long and skinny, long and thin, tall and thin. And I was also a very weird kid. I was a very bullied kid. I was a very quirky, not normal kid. I had a lot of social issues. I had a lot of social anxiety. I still do. But as a kid it was like, “Well, at least you’re skinny.”
And I remember when I got older, and I was in high school, I had a very close friend who I was talking to about – I have all these other physical insecurities. I’m like, “I don’t like this, I don’t like that. I don’t like this, I don’t like that.” And she was like, “Christine, I need you to shut up because you’re skinny.” And I’m like, oh, okay. So I’m not allowed to have issues or concerns and none of that is valid because I’m thin?” And so, I think I really glamorized my own thinness, and I never looked at someone else and was like, “Oh, I’m better because I’m –,” not consciously, anyway. That was never something that I equated other people’s beauty with. But I think because I had been praised for so much of my life for being skinnier, I hid behind it and I was like, “Okay, yeah, I’m fine,” right?
So then it really hasn’t been until maybe the last two years of my life (like 28, 29, 30), where I’ve looked at myself in the mirror, and I’ve thought, “Okay, I am heavier than I’ve ever been,” objectively speaking, and I see myself a little bit differently now. And I think when you’re raised to equate your thinness with value of yourself, when that goes away, being told you look healthy is an insult. It’s a stab to the heart because you equate, “You look healthy,” with not thin. Because before you were very skinny. You were thin, and like, “Yay. We that,” I guess. And now when you ask a close friend or a family member or a loved one, “Do I look thin in this?” And they say, “You look healthy.” That means no, and that can kind of shatter a person’s self-worth who has gone their entire life being told that thinness for you is all of your beauty. That’s all of your beauty right there, is the fact that you’re skinny.
Megan Gill: Jesus. Yeah.
Christine Dickinson: Yeah.
Megan Gill: That is some heavy shit right there. And also some very real shit too that has just been put on so many of us, specifically, I think of our generation too, or at least the ones that are – you know, no matter when you come around to taking a look at it or examining it or realizing it’s happening or are curious about it, it’s really not okay, and it’s really devastating. And I think what’s even more devastating is that we like to think that’s not what’s happening, right? But you sharing that story, your story, is proof that it is. And that when we tie our value and our “worth in this world” to the shape of our body, which is just the reality of what’s going on and what has been going on forever and ever amen and is potentially not stopping anytime soon, that’s not okay, and it’s really fucked up. And it’s really – the emotional labor that is now put onto that person, whether you’re me when I was 16 like, “Oh my god, I am getting bullied for my weight, and I am fat and I’m getting all these messages,” or you’re 27 and you’re like, “Whoa, I’ve always been thin, and I am now being referred – my friends are telling me I look healthy.” And also, I just wanna point out the fact that looking healthy, A) what does that even mean? But also healthy is relatively used as a good, positive word.
Megan Gill: You don’t look like you’re dying, thank goodness, not to mock that. I think that just shows the depth of how devastating the impacts of the messages we receive about our bodies actually are.
Christine Dickinson: Yeah, and I think the answer – I mean, I don’t know the answer, but what I think the answer is towards making this stop, making anything that is evil and bad in the world to stop, it always starts inward, I think. Anything that’s hurting people, anything that’s making people feel insecure, anything that’s making people feel betrayed by the vessel that’s carrying them throughout their life, it all starts inward.
It all starts with work on yourself because people, not to shame anyone for procreating or not, but I think a lot of the times people have – and this is something that’s explored very much in Mother is that people will have children without even looking inward at healing any of their past traumas. They’ll just say, “I’m just gonna be better for this child. I’m just gonna be better because I now have the responsibility of taking care of another human being.” But the reality is that that little child, particularly that little girl is hearing you call her beautiful and then is watching you look at yourself in the mirror and hate what you see.
And that’s something that’s very much, without spoiling it, something that we dive into a little bit in this play is like there’s a whole monologue about what can we do to make sure that our children aren’t constantly obsessing and fearful in the same ways that we have been? And the way to do that is by stopping doing that yourself. Children don’t take on and learn based on what you tell them. They take on the behaviors that you, yourself, exhibit. You can’t say, “Don’t dance on the table,” and then dance on the table and expect your kid not to get up with you.
Megan Gill: Right.
Christine Dickinson: You have to walk the walk in so many ways, and I think this might be a controversial thing. I’m not telling anyone that they should or shouldn’t, or should have or shouldn’t have, but I think that a lot of people do have children and just don’t at all look at themselves anymore. And maybe they think that’s an act of selflessness because now I’m responsible – maybe it’s probably, more realistically, the pressures that society puts on moms.
And how much this country loves to hate on moms, despite the fact that, you know, women are told that we should be baby machines and they just don’t take care of you or give you maternity leave. It’s probably everything. It’s probably all of the pressures that are put on us, but I think a lot of people end up as parents, and they really have not examined the things that they need to examine in order to create healthy humans.
Megan Gill: Yeah, I absolutely agree, wholeheartedly. And that’s obviously how trauma just gets passed down generationally. And I think that I’m really proud of our generation because I think we are one of the first that is exploring therapy on a wider scale and is taking the time to look inward and say, “All right, let me look at my own shit and maybe get my own life together before I have kids, or just settle for a man.” I mean, I think it’s clear that a lot of women these days are still single well into their 30s – hi, I’m one of them – because they are not going to settle for not being healed or not being on a healing journey and not being with someone who isn’t right for them, and I think we’re breaking some of these traumatic patterns that our parents didn’t have the tools to break or didn’t necessarily know how to break.
And I don’t know if that’s also just social media and the internet? It’s very fascinating, but I am proud of the work that the millennials are actively doing. And I don’t know, I guess I’m just saying that because I am one and I see this happening amongst our generation. I think Gen X is included in that in some way, and obviously the younger generations too. Yeah, I think we are getting somewhere, but yeah, you’re so right that mother-daughter relationship where you are looking at your mom, and you’re right, you are looking at her words, but you’re also looking at her behaviors.
Christine Dickinson: Yeah.
Megan Gill: I think that in a lot of these conversations that I’ve had and in a lot of my own
conversations just in the world, I think a very universal experience that a lot of women have had is being young and looking at your mom, whether it’s in the dressing room or at home, looking at herself in the mirror and not being nice to herself. Oh, that was a nervous chuckle because it’s so fucking deeply, deeply sad.
Christine Dickinson: Mm-hmm.
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Christine Dickinson: Yeah. And this is something – I’m so glad we’re having this conversation because I really had not examined these things until we started rehearsing this play. And it’s kind of at a point where it’s coming to a real head for me. And you know, I feel like I hear all of these people talking about their experience with it where they’re like, “Yeah, you know, and I endured all this stuff, and now I still struggle but I’m in a place of where I love myself and I’m able to take care of my body.” And I wish that I was there.
I think at this point, I think I’m gonna say I’m not there yet. The reality is I’m not in a very happy place with my self-image right now. I’m hopeful that this play and sharing this story and getting it out there and just speaking it out into the world is gonna be a good first step. And it’s something that I’ve now officially brought up twice in therapy. In the five years that I’ve been with my therapist, I’ve never brought it up. And this is now something that I’m able to bring up.
Yeah, I mean, I wish that I could, you know, come on here and share like, “Yeah, now I’m out of place of acceptance,” but I’m really not. And I think, yeah, a big first step of that is just calling it out, and I know that sounds like, “Oh yeah, first step is calling it.” Yeah, I said that a couple months ago and then two weeks ago I was crying in a bar bathroom because I realized I was the biggest in there, which was crazy. I’m like, okay, this is not – I was comparing myself to the other women at the bar who were all much younger than me, and I ended up crying in the bathroom and hiding for a really long time, and this was two weeks ago.
So, yeah, I mean, I think it’s a lifelong journey and I can’t really – I don’t know. I can’t really say that I’m in a super healthy mental space with particularly that, but I also have to be gentle with myself because the last five years have just been full-blown chaos for me, as I feel it has been for most people with the pandemic and everything. I feel post-COVID, everything’s been a fever dream. But yeah, I think the last couple of years of adulthood have just been very stressful, and there have been other things that have had to be front and center. And now that those things are all kind of taken care of, it’s like, all right, now it’s this thing’s gotta be front and center, so yeah.
Megan Gill: Thank you so much for sharing that, and what a lovely way to talk about that because, yeah, we can’t address everything at once, right? So I love that this is what’s front and center for you right now, and I know that working through this is only gonna take you to beautiful places. But I also just wanna share that I also firmly believe that we are never at a place of healed with our body or our body image or our relationship to our body, right? And I have to check myself a lot with this too because I’m like, “Wow, yes, I feel I’ve done so much healing and I’m in such a place,” and then I’ll turn around, and today I had a pretty bad body image day, man. It was pretty rough. And that happens all of the time. It’s just the ebb and flow of life, right? And I think that it’s just about getting the tools in your toolbox to be able to carry you through those bad days to then get over the hump to then maybe do it again two weeks later. Because that’s just the nature of life, right? And also I think it’s once you see it, you can’t unsee it. Once you come up to these body image roadblocks, I’ll just call them, within yourself, it’s like, “Well, that’s not going away now.” And maybe some of us have just been with ours for longer.
I’m really proud of you, happy for you. I hate saying, like, “I’m proud of you,” because that sounds so, I don’t know, oddly condescending, even though it’s not. But I just really love that you said that you were actively giving yourself grace throughout this process, and even when we come up against the setbacks and the bad days, that’s all we gotta do, give ourselves grace and remind ourselves that we are good and just question why this is coming up for us, right?
Christine Dickinson: Right.
Megan Gill: At least I do a lot of that, but I’m just really glad that you’re giving yourself grace, because sometimes that’s all we can do.
Christine Dickinson: Thank you for saying that. And it wasn’t taken in a condescending way at all. It made me very happy. So thank you.
Megan Gill: That’s good to hear!
Christine Dickinson: Yeah, it is a lot about giving grace to yourself, and I have a very hard time with that. I can go from here very, very quickly, jump off the cliff very, very quickly. Yeah, so it really is just about stopping and saying, “Why is this this way?” And I think a lot of it is where we live. I go back to Boston or Rhode Island or anywhere else, and I’m not confronted with the same amount of this as I am here.
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Christine Dickinson: I feel it’s a little bit more normalized in LA too. If you don’t like something, you just change it immediately without stopping and sitting with it. I don’t think that that means that people don’t feel the same way in other places, but I think that here we’re just so constantly confronted with it. So then stopping and acknowledging that, and then getting out of that sometimes to just go somewhere else for a little bit and change of scenery and seeing other perspectives and seeing how different it is in other places and how you’re just like – you can kind of get a break from it and take a step out and say, “Okay, yeah, no. That place –.” I mean, I like living here, I love LA but this place sometimes can get a little much with that sort of messaging. So I think acknowledging that that’s a reality here as well for me, has been very, very important.
Megan Gill: Absolutely for me too, 100%. I’m glad you called that out. I have one last question for you before we wrap things up that I’m really excited to ask.
Christine Dickinson: Oh, boy!
Megan Gill: I’m wondering what your favorite thing or things about your body is or are. It can be physical, it can be non-physical. It can be a combination of both. Whatever strikes you. I know I’m springing this on you.
Christine Dickinson: I guess this counts. The first thing that came to mind when you said that, I guess it’s kind of physical, kind of not, my nervous system. Historically, that has been my least favorite thing about myself. But now I’m like, I don’t think I would’ve written this play if my nervous system wasn’t like, “Ughhh,” all the time because it is, “Ughhh,” all the time. If you know me, you know that I’m like a meerkat. But yeah, this play, I think because of the heightened nature of where I am all the time, even though I know it’s important to zen out and meditate and be chill sometimes, that’s not really how I am naturally. So I think my nervous system being so crazy is just keeping me safe and kind of exploring that within the play and seeing how that pushes me to different points. I don’t know, now I see it as a little intuition giving me a little boop, message about where to go next. So, yeah.
Megan Gill: I absolutely love that. And your nervous system is beautiful because it is keeping you safe, right? How freaking cool is that? Oh my gosh. Thank you, Christine!
Christine Dickinson: Thank you!
Megan Gill: I’m so, so grateful that we were able to have this conversation, and I’m so grateful to you for being so open and vulnerable and for sharing so many things about your play and about yourself and about your relationship to your own body and some of the things you find yourself coming up against right now, because that is just not easy to talk about sometimes. So I’m really, really grateful to you, and thank you for being here.
Christine Dickinson: Thank you. I’m grateful to you. Thanks for having me!
Megan Gill: Of course!
“ But I will say, my own personal deep-rooted body image stuff didn’t really come up for me until I started rehearsing this [play]. I mean, I feel like every woman, really every person, has their own body image story. But mine didn’t really take a front seat until I started really working on this [play]. And I think it became really abundantly clear some of the things that I had been struggling with and pushing down for a really long time once I started confronting this in my work.”
- Christine Dickinson
Christine is an actor, writer and creative living in LA. She is originally from Rhode Island, where she attended university and received her BFA in acting. Christine has been performing onstage for over 20 years, and moved to LA to pursue a deeper relationship with creativity. Her original one woman show MOTHER workshopped in October of this year. She hopes to take it to fringe festivals around the world. When she’s not working, acting or writing, she’s probably spending time planning her next mini road trip, catching a new movie with her fiancé, or snuggling with her sweet rescue pup Levi. Learn more about her project MOTHER on Instagram @calling.mother
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A couple of notes to ensure this is a safe space for my guests to share their intimate and vulnerable body image stories in:
* It can be easy to feel alone on your journey of existing in a body. I welcome the connection and support of one another in this space through considerate and curious comments.
* These conversations are quite nuanced, complex, and oftentimes very vulnerable. Remember that everyone has their own body image story, and while someone else’s might look differently than yours, I encourage you to keep an open mind and stay empathetic.
* Thank you for being here. By sharing this type of content, my hope is to inspire personal reflection and cultural questioning. Thank you and supporting me in exploring the effects of our culture’s beauty norms and body standards on human beings existing in today’s world.
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While I’m not a licensed therapist, registered dietician, or medical health professional and cannot speak to body image topics from a clinical, trauma-informed place, I am an expert of lived experience. I’m an academic of my own body, and I’m passionate about facilitating conversations with other humans about their relationships with their bodies. I believe it’s important to continue conversations about healthy body image in creative spaces as a means to heal individuals as well as the collective whole. But just know the information presented in this medium is not professional mental health advice or medical advice, and any questions or concerns you have should always be directed to your health providers.
