Jennifer Love Hewitt opened up about the misogyny and constant comments on her body she’s faced over the years.
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Jennifer was only 16 when she filmed her movie breakout role, I Know What You Did Last Summer, following a successful run on the Fox show Party of Five. Unfortunately, being a child didn’t stop her from being subjected to objectification (see: Jay Leno asking her about her love life and when she’ll turn 17).
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The now-46-year-old is reprising her role in a sequel of the horror movie, with images from the red carpet already going viral on the worst parts of the internet. Speaking to Vulture, she said she had to be talked into the movie by her friends, noting, “What people were going to say about how much older I would seem than when I was 18. That’s literally the only thing I was anxious about.”
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On the commentary surrounding her teenage body, she reflected, “It bothers me more now than it did at that age because I was in it. Before I even knew what sex was, I was a sex symbol. I still don’t know that I have that fully defined for myself because it started so weird.”
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Looking back on that 1996 Jay Leno interview, she said, “I was trying to be like, I’m not overly sexy! I’m a nerd! I’ve referred to myself a lot as a dork, and I wasn’t aware of it at that time but, looking back, that was my way of saying, ‘That’s not me.’”
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“I don’t put blame on the people asking those questions,” she added. “Nobody was saying, ‘Don’t talk to women like that. Don’t talk to little girls like that.’ But I worked hard on that movie. I brought good stuff to it, and no one was talking about it. It was just ‘Boob, boob, boob’ everywhere.”
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Things got worse when People ran paparazzi photos of her in 2007 with the headline “Stop Calling Me Fat.” The actor, who notes that she no longer eats carbs, reflected, “I don’t think I was ever really insecure until that cover. And then when it happened, I don’t know that I’ve ever recovered from it…Because there’s a part of me that’s always like, Is this version going to be good enough, or is that going to happen again? Where somebody’s going to be like, ‘Hey, this is her without makeup at the cleaners. She looks 59.’”
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On the upside, Jennifer got to work on the new IKWYDLS wardrobe, along with the director and her stylist, which she called “healing.” She said, “Nobody’s going to be talking about my boobs. ‘Oh, you want me to flash you? They’re down here.’”
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You can read the full interview with Jennifer here.