Hilary Duff And The Celebrities Who Regret Being "Too Skinny"

In the November issue of Health, Hilary Duff reportedly regrets being too skinny as a teenager. “I don’t think I was happy then,” she admits, joining a small but growing group of celebs who go public with their body acceptance.

Kylie Minogue says she also used to be “too skinny,” until she underwent chemotherapy to treat her breast cancer and put on some weight. “When I look back at some pictures, I just think, ‘That’s too thin, that doesn’t look good,'” she says. “Now everything’s changed. It’s coming back to normal—whatever normal is. New normal.”

Duff and Minogue aren’t the only ones to find some sort of peace in being their bodily selves:

Ashley Tisdale, who told Shape magazine that “being a bit more curvy and toned is so much more beautiful.”
Kristen Wiig — who, even as a skinny child, was called “Kristen Pig” — claims to have been too thin when she was “younger.”
Ellen Pompeo, who gained some weight after having a baby. “I weigh 10 pounds more than I ever have. I love it, because everyone always told me I was too skinny before… [My weight] doesn’t matter to me. I have a healthy baby.”
Mirrors 2 actress Christy Romano, who gained “maybe 10 pounds” after moving from L.A. to New York. “Now I’m in New York and they’re fattening me up, which is great!”
Even Lindsay Lohan has been quoted as missing the boobs she’d once lost during a spate of hyper-thinness, though it’s been a while.

While finding acceptance with one’s body is a good thing, it’s a little stange — and also sad — that this is the sort of thing about which a celebrity “goes public.” And it’s still rare. On the other end of the spectrum, Christina Hendricks and her curves have been praised, but at some expense: now it seems people can’t stop talking about her body, and it’s making her nervous. (If she starts talking about eating a lot of roasted chicken breasts, we’ll know what happened.)

All chicken-dinner projections aside, Duff et al demonstrate that there is another way to live in Hollywood that doesn’t depend on dieting. Of course, these are celebrities who have a degree of confidence seems to be the major factor here: The Hollywood star industry feeds off of women’s insecurities, and promotes the idea that one can never be too thin by continually presenting audiences with a certain beauty ideal. (You can blame snack foods for this as well.) But as we all know, when staying thin becomes a preoccupation, as it did for Duff and others, you can be too thin. Why else would she be unhappy, if she weren’t feeling pressured to be thinner than she wanted to be? When she started focusing on she wanted, she became happier. Would it be nice if other stars followed her lead?