Rebel Wilson Made a ‘Conscious Decision to Look Ugly’ for Roles

[hewontgo]

Rebel Wilson Made a ‘Conscious Decision to Look Ugly’ for Roles: ‘I Knew I Wouldn’t Be Taken Seriously Like a Cate Blanchett’ https://t.co/1mtAofa8ex
- IndieWire (@IndieWire) April 1, 2024
Rebel Wilson made herself “ugly” in the early parts of her acting career because it was the best way to get comedic roles. She was “degraded” due to her

Comments

[angriest_girl]

Is she saying fat people are ugly? Because she was fat, but she was never ugly; even in her early TV roles in Australia when she was always playing some variation of “fat bogan”, she was still fairly conventionally attractive.

Anyway, I’m sure people in her industry have been awful to her and that’s shit. But whatever hardships she has endured, I will still always hate her for her whinging during lockdown.

[sarahvma]

Further down in the quote she implies that she willingly participated in humiliating scenarios -- ie. costumes that emphasized her fat or wearing no makeup.

But... short answer is basically yes.

[h_wyatt]

Yeah I think she’s using ugly as a euphemism for being fat.

Which, I understand what she is trying to articulate, but it is still pretty messed up.

[ginainabottle]

I took it as her saying she'd emphasize things that people see as flaws (like her "gut hanging out") instead of hiding them, and while some of those things happen to be about her weight, she also talks about not wearing make up. Reminds me of how Lena Dunham said she wore spanx during fittings but didn't wear them to filming so the clothes wouldn't fit as well/look as flattering. That said, considering the whole deal about her clothing line not having inclusive sizing, it's also very much possible that fatphobia did a number on her and she's perpetuating, however discreetly, the awful shit she was once a victim of.

[braindiva]

Some of the most preachy people about judging other people's body are people who've lost weight. Of all people, you would think they would know being thin doesn't change who you are, but it is wild how much praise you get when you lose weight.

That said, I can see why that happens. I have been all sorts of sizes in my life, and what I'm about to say may sound strange, but the amount of (unwanted) attention and praise I got 10 years ago over losing a lot of weight really messed with me. For my own sanity, I have refused to engage in diet/weight loss talk for a very long time now, but some people still kept trying to pry. What was most upsetting though was the amount of validation people kept trying to give me for looking a certain way as if, all of a sudden, I was a better person but when I still felt the same inside. It really messed with my head, and honestly, left me with a very poor opinion of some people that I had known for a long time. So I can understand why some people join the dark side when they lose weight.

[butnow]

The praise is so fucked up! I lost a fair bit of weight because I was having a really hard time and developed disordered habits to cope with that, and the number of coworkers complimenting me and asking what my secret was was so disturbing. Like maybe if you look a little closer, you can tell that I'm pale and dehydrated as hell with dark bags under my eyes and black out for a moment every time I lean down and this might suggest that I have no nice diet tips for you, because my diet is 'feeling sick and sad all the time and engaging in very unhealthy behaviours to try and keep my head above the water even though it really only makes it worse' but nope. All that mattered was that I was thinner and obviously that had to be a good thing. (Extra disturbing when I know that I have relatives who think I was better then than I am now after having gained some weight back, even though they could tell something was wrong with me at the time...)

[braindiva]

I'm so sorry to hear that. Glad things are better now on your end, but I'm so sorry you had to deal with people praising your misery. This is why people should keep their comments to themselves.

[butnow]

Yeah, like overall unless someone is telling you 'hey I started this new exercise routine and I think it's really working for me' or similar, people either gaining or losing weight shouldn't be anyone else's business. There are so many reasons for weight changes that aren't 'lazy and greedy' or 'living your best life and losing weight' and a lot of them are super sensitive. I wish I'd had some snappy comeback at that time but because I mostly wanted to be invisible, having anyone comment on my body was just daunting. And though I'm in a better place now mentally, I'd still rather my body and weight were not anyone else's business.

[braindiva]

Oh for sure! I think if someone brings up the topic of weight loss themselves, then that's fine, but otherwise, it is no one's business. No one wants to have to live by other people's opinions of their body

Currently, I am on the fatter side, but I still go hike in mountains and forests many weekends a month with a hiking group. I absolutely love it. Many people would look at me and probably assume I sit on my butt all the time as opposed to doing 12-15 km hikes regularly. However, the one thing I do not like about the hiking group is that some members, all of them in average/skinny bodies, often engage in diet talk, but under the cover of "health talk". Endless discussions of what they eat and don't eat to be healthy, and how people are killing themselves by eating this food or that beverage. I can pretty safely assume those people make a lot of assumptions about me and judge my body a whole lot, even if they are too polite to say it to my face.

[insomniachobs]

Yep. There's a particular sub-category of formerly fat folk who really cannot deal with the fact that losing weight was not the magic self-image cure it was sold to them as. They feed on the praise they get at the same time as being disoriented by it, and a lot of that inner dissonance gets projected out onto other fat people who don't feel the need to lose weight. I think partly as a way of propping up that moralised narrative of being 'better' for being thinner, which they need to maintain to justify all that effort they went to (because if it didn't fill the hole, what was it for?), and partly out of resentment that other people are able to self-accept where they couldn't.

As a side note - I totally hear you on the whole praise thing. I have never been so praised in my life as when I was losing a bunch of weight because of illness issues, and honestly it makes me so mad. None of my actual accomplishments have ever got even half the compliments.

[sarahvma]

I think it's because the praise is often more about their strength and willpower than their physical appearance, and it's impossible not to buy into it. The hard truth is that most will gain back some, most, or all of their weight. And it's usually not because they "lost control" but because it's hard to be in a calorie deficit for the rest of your life.

[braindiva]

Yes, people try to dress it up nicely with talk of how hard you worked, but honestly, it's a lot of "you look so good" and "you are glowing and look so healthy".

Well yes, thank you, I did work out to be controlling with myself which eventually evolved into some fucked up eating habits to survive on 2 small low cal meals every day and lose more weight. That's where that manic glow comes from. LOL

[sarahvma]

Same same same.

[winter_lace]

You did not lie. I was sick a couple of years ago and lost a chunk of weight because of it and the praise and compliments I got while being internally very unwell fucked me up for awhile.

[anagramofbrat]

I had a similar experience when i lost a shitton of weight due to my immune system actively eating my intestines making eating excrutiating. Its hard to look at pictures of myself from then (including unfortunately my wedding) because I look gaunt and like something was clearly wrong, yet people would praise me for how I looked to the point where i would just be an asshole about it. "Ask your doctor about Crohn's disease!" became a pretty common clapback.

[titti]

This is so accurate. I had health problems that led to losing a lot of weight and when people found out, their comments implied or sometimes outright said that I was lucky to be sick because I lost weight.

It did fuck up with my head a little and I was at a point that I was looking at surgeries to look better (lots of lifts to deal with the extra skin) despite the fact that with my essential thrombocythemia, I could literally die from a blood clot. I finally came to my senses, but there are days I look at myself and think how 'ugly' my body is.