Rosario Dawson: Body Pressure On Women Is 'A Form Of Violence'

Rosario Dawson says of receiving compliments when she lost weight to play a drug addict in Rent:

“I remember everyone asking when I was doing press for the movie, ‘What did you do to look so thin? You looked great’ and I’m like, ‘I looked emaciated’ … It’s a form of violence, in the way that we look at women and how we expect them to look and be — for what sake? Not health, not survival, not enjoyment of life but just so you could look pretty. I’m constantly telling girls all the time, ‘Everything’s airbrushed, everything’s retouched. None of us look like that.”

She adds that she’s “grateful to be on the cover of Shape and be able to show myself, my normal self.”