Kerry Washington talks self-image issues, saying she felt pressure to have a body like Gwyneth Paltrow
Kerry Washington has peeled back another layer on her book tour for her candid new memoir, Thicker Than Water.
The Scandal and Little Fires Everywhere star opened up about her struggles with body image earlier in her life while speaking alongside actress Gabrielle Union Sunday at the Palace Theatre in Los Angeles.
"These are stereotypes, but the ways that their moms and the women in that world looked was so different from the women that I grew up with," Washington told Union, discussing how she compared herself to "very affluent white women" during her private school days in New York City, per PEOPLE. "And all the messages I was getting from Hollywood and from this environment was that thinner is better. And that success looked like thinness."
Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images Kerry Washington and Gwyneth Paltrow
Washington also said that, being from the same neighborhood as Jennifer Lopez, she saw a distinct clash of beauty standards: one, at her private school, celebrating thinness, and the other, in the Bronx, lifting up women with curvier bodies.
"Jennifer's butt was being celebrated everywhere," the actress said. "But that wasn't what I was interpreting as beautiful. Because I was spending nine hours a day at Spence, where Gwyneth Paltrow went. I'm not body-shaming Gwyneth Paltrow, but... there was one area that I was sort of being told was the direction to pursue."
Representatives for Washington did not immediately respond to EW's request for comment.
Paltrow and Washington have remained friends after attending the same high school together. Washington also appeared on an episode of Paltrow's The Goop Podcast in March.
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