Let's Talk About Bodies!

Everyone please welcome my yoga teacher and new friend Marissa Procelli to A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations! I’ve been taking Mar’s yoga classes for about two years now, and it wasn’t long before I recognized she approaches her teaching through a healthy body image lens. Her language in her classes spoke to me and allowed me to further deepen my connection to my own body in my practice.

Mar is an incredible leader, and I’m so excited to share our conversation with you. There are so many chunks of wisdom hiding in here for you, and I hope if you’re in the South Bay/LA area, you come take one of her classes to experience her magic for yourself!

“  It's really hard in this industry to not have people look at your body as your business card because, as a teacher, whether it's privates or yoga or strength training or Pilates or whatever, when they come to your class, a lot of people, whether they mean it consciously or not, look at your body as your business card. I can teach things that I don't know how to do in my own body. I can prep you and get you all ready to go and work into the splits. Do I have my full splits? No, I do not. My hope is that for people to understand, as teachers, it's about our knowledge, it's about what we've studied, it's about how much work we put into creating either a flow or a playlist or a type of class. My hope is that people start to see the teacher as what they teach and not what they can do in their own practice.”

- Marissa Procelli

Marissa Procelli: So when I was two years old, I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis. And so, with that, your joints tend to stiffen and swell and you lose your range of motion in a lot of parts of your body. And growing up with that, I was always in and out of remission, and because of that, I felt like I spent most of my life numbing my body because I was told that I shouldn't feel pain. And so, with all my medications, I was constantly numbing and subsiding the pain, but because of that, I was numbing everything, yeah? And your body's supposed to have a conversation with you, and you're supposed to get input from your body.

So growing up I was very active still. I played a lot of sports. Even when I was in the depths of my RA, I always found an alternative. I wasn't cleared to do land sports in high school halfway through. And so, I quit volleyball and basketball, which volleyball I played for, like, five years, and then I just switched to water polo and swim, and I was like, “Okay, I guess I can't do heavy-impact sports, but I can go in the water. So movement was always something that I really enjoyed.

And then college happened, and at least my college experience was a lot of going out, a lot of eating fast food, a lot of drinking, and, yes, academics, and I had a lot of great experiences. And I was an athletic trainer or assistant for the football team there. So I did learn about the body, and I was a public health major. But yeah, I was going out, I was having fun. So then when I moved here to LA, I was a very swollen version of myself just because I didn't really understand how to take care of myself.

So then when I started yoga, I was thinking, “Oh, this –.” Well, first, I actually didn't like it in terms of, I thought it was so challenging and it wasn't my vibe. But then I realized, after the class, I felt better in my body, and I said, “Oh, I haven't felt good in my body, or I haven't felt period in a long time.” So that was in 2016, and then I was in a really stressful job at the time as a behavior therapist, and I did in-home services, and I was getting a lot of anxiety attacks. And so, I started going to yoga more, and I was like, “Okay, I want to do teacher training.”

So I did teacher training, and at the same time as doing teacher training, I'm injecting myself once a week with my arthritis medication. I'm on what's called Methotrexate, which I was on for 20 years off and on, which is a type of chemo. But it helps regulate RA in the body. And so, I'm going from very westernized medicine to learning about yoga, which is very different.

And so, then after I did teacher training, I was like, “Okay, how can I incorporate what I have learned in my choices, in how I move my body, how I fuel my body, how I rest my body versus just relying on medication?” So then, I went to a nutritionist. I switched my diet, which was hard. It was like an elimination diet, so I took out things, brought it in, and so, then I figured out what worked. And that was in 2018, like I said, injections on the chemo meds. Six months later, I got off, and I have not been on it since.

Megan Gill: Oh my god, my heart.

Marissa Procelli: So that was 2018, and it's 2025, and I have not had one ounce of medication for my arthritis since.

Megan Gill: That is incredible.

Marissa Procelli: Yeah. So the downside part, though, is that because of my diet, I ended up dropping a lot of weight quite quickly, so much so that I dropped I think it was, like, 23 pounds in two and a half months. And I'm a small human. I'm five two. I haven't weighed myself in years, so I don't know how much I weigh, but like I don't have a ton to lose. And while my body was feeling great about not being on meds anymore, the compliments, which I know you hear the word compliment and you're like, “Oh, that's nice. That's a good thing.”

Megan Gill: But I know exactly what you mean. Yes.

Marissa Procelli: And literally everyone was like, “What are you doing? What?” I still remember to this day walking into my yoga studio and another student looking at me and said, “Oh my god, you lost half of yourself. What did you do?” In like a I-want-to-know-the-secret type of way.

Megan Gill: Oh my god.

Marissa Procelli: Yeah. So what was initially a good thing then started turning into me getting very intense about my diet, so much so that one of my best friends, still best friend, who's a teacher, a fellow teacher who also has a past of body image and eating disorders, she reached out and was like, “Hey, I'm worried about you, and I just want to check in and see what's up.” And she is a very vital component as to what pulled me out of a very slippery slope.

So after that, I started seeing a nutritional therapist and kind of going back onto being balanced. But I was so hardcore about the diet for my RA that it then wasn't about RA anymore. It was about everyone giving me compliments and me wanting to continue that and almost this weird feeling of like, “I feel like if I start gaining weight again, I'll let them down.” It was very weird expectations.

Megan Gill: Especially as the person who is leading a movement space where people are looking to you as like their, not mentor, but the leader in that area, yeah.

Marissa Procelli: Yeah, and also like what I wrote on the notebook was I just was talking about it with a friend, it's really hard in this industry to not have people look at your body as your business card, because as a teacher, whether it's privates or yoga or strength training or Pilates or whatever, when they come to your class, a lot of people, whether they mean it consciously or not, a lot of times they look at your body as –

Megan Gill: The projected results or something like that?

Marissa Procelli: Exactly. Yeah, as, like, your business card. So it was very tough, and now I'm kind of – I felt really good about it. I did have a bit of a low recently because, like I said, I got sick when I got back. Every time I get sick, after, it's always like, “Oh, like you look great.

Megan Gill: “I was just sick!”

Marissa Procelli: Yeah! Malnutrition? Is that where we're going for? Yeah, so there are still moments where I have to really pause and back up, and honestly, a lot of my fellow teacher friends, we chat about it every once in a while of the comments that people will make or the things that they expect from themselves based on us. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely there. It's not something we make up. It's a very active conversation, which is hard to, like, navigate sometimes of how to change that topic or almost make it a learning moment in moments.

Megan Gill: Mm-hmm. Like kind of steer the conversation, so that they walk away being like, “Oh, maybe that’s not how I should – maybe I shouldn't speak to my teacher in that way,” not from a disrespectful standpoint.

Marissa Procelli: No, and it's all good intentions, right? I do feel that. A lot of people, especially towards me, I don't think they're being malicious in any way, but it's more of we're so used to that.

Megan Gill: That conversation is so embedded in our culture.

Marissa Procelli: Yes, it is.

Megan Gill: It's everywhere! It’s everywhere.

Marissa Procelli: Yeah, and then I come from a Hispanic family, so it's kind of the opposite. When I go home, a lot of it is like, “You need to eat more.” A lot of the “endearing” terms are gordo and flaco, which is fat and skinny. And they are originally like endearing terms. They really are. But now we're in a world where they didn't really age well.

Megan Gill: Mm-hm, totally. And that they could be triggering said under certain circumstances, yeah.

Marissa Procelli: Yeah. So it is, it's a lot of navigating other people's impressions of you. And again, a lot of it I don't think is bad. I think it's just so ingrained in us to just say something out loud.

Megan Gill: Yep. About our bodies, about the way people look.

Marissa Procelli: Comparing…

Megan Gill: Oh my god, yes. Or even like you said earlier, the simple compliment that you think is a compliment, but when you're complimenting someone's appearance, okay, I mean, I do it. And I like having this conversation because it's like I've really challenged myself to maybe not pay a compliment about someone's appearance. Even if I'm thinking something I like about their appearance, just to challenge myself to think differently and challenge myself to not fall into that trap because I think it's so easy for all of us. And of course, and it's okay to be like, “You're beautiful. Your skin is glowing.” But still.

Marissa Procelli: Yeah, exactly. It’s funny, the way that I've really tried to get out of that, a lot of times I start to look at what people are wearing, in terms of jewelry or outfits. Because for me, honestly, if someone gave me a compliment about my outfit or my jewelry, I get way more excited because I'm like, “Oh, this is something I chose. This is like something that I actively chose to put on my body, and someone else likes it.”

Megan Gill: Right, which then is a reflection of me.

Marissa Procelli: Yeah, like my personality or how I'm feeling today. So a lot of times I like to give a lot of outfit slash jewelry compliments.

Megan Gill: I like that.

Marissa Procelli: I love an outfit compliment. And I like to tell people – it's kind of weird. My husband's always like, “You just talked to that person that just walked by you.” I was like, “Yeah, I liked her hat. I wanted her to know that I liked her hat.”

Megan Gill: But do you know that that could change someone's day? Truly.

Marissa Procelli: Yeah, exactly. Yes, so that's why I get excited about it because I'm like, I'm like, if I genuinely like it, I want them to know so they could feel good, you know?

Megan Gill: Yeah, and I think we need more of that in the world, truly. And I think sometimes – I used to be very quiet, and I think it stemmed from this place of being really overly self-conscious and just so concerned about what every single person thought of me. And the minute I – I mean, not the minute, it obviously took so much time to get to the place where I can pay someone a compliment and not feel insecure or shy about it.

Marissa Procelli: Yeah.

Megan Gill: Because it also makes me feel good to genuinely give a compliment to somebody. It’s like, “Great!”

Marissa Procelli: Yeah, like we're both doing this. Well, and also I say this too, a lot of times in classes I'm shopping in my head. I'm like, “That's a really cute outfit.” “Oh, I didn't know that brand came out with that.”

Megan Gill: I bet. I love it.

Marissa Procelli: There's a lot of moments where I'm like, “Wow. Yeah, that's a cute color. I like earthtones.” Yeah, so I do, I have really tried to shift to that.

Megan Gill: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I like that. And I also think it's so cool to hear that you do come together with other teachers and do converse about it.

Marissa Procelli: Yeah.

Megan Gill: And I think that's also how we work to change the narrative in a community and in a space when multiple people are showing up with this new approach and this new vision for how it could be different. To then maybe change that one student's mind that day, or show them how it could be done differently.

I know that like in my friend groups, a lot of times, all my friends at this point, now that I'm doing this a little bit more publicly, having these conversations and sharing them with the world, a lot of my friends know I'm the body image girlie. And so, they'll say something and be like, “Oh, well I know you probably don't approve of this!” And sometimes I'm like, “Okay, like let's be discerning.” There's the awareness there, but then there are times with certain people where I kind of do the same thing as you, and I allow that learning moment to be there and be like, “Hey, maybe we don't have to do that,” or a lot of times it's about themselves. They'll be putting themselves down.

Marissa Procelli: Yes! It’s really hard, and you've heard me say it a bunch of times in classes. What's really hard about some of the classes is like multiple people can be showing up to a class and doing the same thing. Some people are doing it as a celebration of their bodies. Some people are doing it as a punishment. Some people are “rewarding themselves,” and that's one of the hardest things for me is that I want to facilitate a space where hopefully everyone is celebrating their bodies. But I do know, unfortunately because I have been that person, so that's why I know, is I have been the person that goes to class as a punishment. And so, that's why I bring it up so much because so many people are so hard on themselves, including myself. I am not perfect.

Megan Gill: Me too.

Marissa Procelli: There are ups and downs. It's not like I'm like, “Oh, now I'm super confident!” Last year, I got married, and that is one of the biggest – at least for me, my wedding dress – first off, just picking a dress. Not even me fitting into it, just like figuring out something I liked. I did one day with my core group of people, a lot of them were from out of town. I did a quick dress fitting because it's like that's what you're supposed to do. The rest of the time I went by myself because I didn't need – I was already in my head so much. I did not need outer opinions when I know, again, they're coming from a good place, but I knew it would not be healthy for me.

Megan Gill: I think that's so important that you were able to be aware of that and take care of yourself in that way, almost as, “This isn't about anyone else. This is me. This is my day. This is my dress. This is how I feel.” And then I can imagine if you're not in the best mental space when you're trying it on and getting alterations and XYZ, then to be putting it on on the day, it's like only a precursor for how you’re gonna feel.

Marissa Procelli: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Megan Gill: Yeah. Wow.

Marissa Procelli: You know, so I think definitely as a teacher, that's like the hard thing is knowing that there are people – it's okay that they're struggling. That's not necessarily what I'm saying, but knowing that some people are walking in and like being so harsh to themselves.

Megan Gill: Yeah, especially because you teach Sculpt. At least at YogaSix you teach a lot of Sculpt and Flow.

Marissa Procelli: Yeah, I teach a lot of Sculpt in general.

Megan Gill: And even with Pilates too it’s a lot of – I love Sculpt and Flow, but I'm a big Hot girlie because I'm like, “Okay, I don't need the intensity.” I am in a very –

Marissa Procelli: And you know what's coming. You know where you're going.

Megan Gill: But also I'm in the place in my body image journey in my life where I am going to feel mentally well, to feel strong. I have muscles now that I did not have two years ago before I started!

Marissa Procelli: We love that! We love muscles.

Megan Gill: But I can imagine a lot of people coming into Sculpt are coming in with the mindset of like, “Okay, I need to be here in the most intense class. This is the class that I have to go to.”

Marissa Procelli: Yes, exactly.

Megan Gill: And sometimes it's maybe they don't have the best relationship with it because it's the one that's gonna kick their ass the most.

Marissa Procelli: Yeah, or burn the most or whatever, yeah. Yeah!

Megan Gill: But Slow Flow can be just as beneficial in different ways. I don't know the ins and outs, but you know.

Marissa Procelli: Yeah! No, I mean, they are all – I always tell people, for example, with Slow Flow, I'm like, “Slow does not mean easy. It just means slow. They’re not synonymous.”

Megan Gill: Slow Flow kicks my ass, I will say.

Marissa Procelli: Yeah! So I think it's a very interesting line of figuring out, “Okay, how do I facilitate a space the way I want? Because I mean, for example, we're going into the summer months. I cannot stand when a fitness instructor or a movement teacher or whatever you wanna call yourself is like, “Let’s get ready for our summer bodies.” I'm like, “Oh my God. Get me out of this class.”

Megan Gill: Same. Yes, no, same. It's quite cringe.

Marissa Procelli: Yes!

Megan Gill: And also so detrimental.

Marissa Procelli: Yes, it's not helpful. Most likely people in there that are insecure are going to feel even more insecure right after that statement.

Megan Gill: Right, because then also like what is a summer body? Eye roll!

Marissa Procelli: Exactly, what does that even – ?

Megan Gill: Like, what? Oh, so does that mean that my body – I've been there, again, myself. Like, “Right now my body is not a summer body? All the things that I'm feeling insecure about, I need to change? I need to fix?” When in reality, it's like, how do we look in the mirror – at least for us at YogaSix with the mirror – I imagine a lot of other studios have them too.

Marissa Procelli: Yeah, a lot of studios do.

Megan Gill: Yeah, it's like looking in the mirror and being able to embrace myself and embrace the things that I maybe don't love about myself innately, or that one thing I want to change, or whatever it is. And just have radical acceptance that it's part of me, and it's here with me, it's allowing me to move.. Oh my god, I'm here, I'm moving!

Marissa Procelli: Yes! And that's why a lot of the times the intention that I use is, “This body is the one that got you through this class, not the one that you're looking for, if you are. This one just worked out. This one just moved. This one just worked. So enjoy this one.” But, you know, sometimes we're so pushed to look into the next thing to make our “goal.”

Megan Gill: Well, I’m like, “What is that? What is that?” I truly don't believe that there's ever going to be a time that we are able to reach that end goal or that goal.

Marissa Procelli: No.

Megan Gill: Every time you get there to that arbitrary in place, there's something else. So why are we – for me, I'm like, “Why are we fighting it? Why can't we try to do more of the work?” Because the work is so hard, but yeah.

Marissa Procelli: Yeah, a lot of us teachers, we do talk about it, and you know, like I said, there are a lot of teachers that feed into it. So it's kind of like finding the teachers that align with you.

Megan Gill: To talk about it with, kind of? There have been instances for you then where you're like having these conversations with maybe a group of teachers and like people will disagree or?

Marissa Procelli: I wouldn't disagree. I would say a lot of there have been moments where a teacher's talking badly about themselves.

Megan Gill: Yeah. Okay, yes.

Marissa Procelli: And you’re like, “Okay, this is stemming from something deeper.” But also sometimes you have to realize that you might not be the container that they need. And so, that's also a line to play into, is that you might not be the person that they want to hold space for them, or they just might not want to dive into it at all.

Megan Gill: Oh, totally. And then that makes me just think of just how impactful it is then for you to be – the way you speak at the beginnings and ends of your classes to this room full of people or like 30-ish people, a lot of times, a lot of those people probably might not want you to be the person saying the stuff to them.

Marissa Procelli: Yeah, a hundred percent.

Megan Gill: But at the same time, on the flip side of the coin, I think it's so, so, so important that you are and that you're allowed that space to say those things, because as a student of yours and someone who's been in those spaces where the stuff you're saying really hits me and impacts me, I can only imagine how it's sitting with other people that really, really, really, really, really need to hear some of that stuff, you know?

Marissa Procelli: Yeah, and there is. It always surprises me, the people that come up after class and say that something resonated with them because a lot of times it's the people that are quieter or that, you know, haven't really talked to me before or things like that. So that's always been really nice. I mean, all of it is great. Well, I shouldn't say all of it. Sometimes it's not great, but most of the time it is great.

Megan Gill: Because then it opens up a door for those people that might not have even come up to say hello to at least then engage with you, which how cool is that?

Marissa Procelli: Well, I remember I did talk about my wedding dress one time in class, and there were two other women that were on that were also getting married, and both of them who've never talked to me outside of class before were like, “Oh my god, I literally had this experience last week. I was just thinking about this.”

Megan Gill: Ah, chills.

Marissa Procelli: Yeah, and I'm like, okay, you know, we're talking about it.

Megan Gill: We're not alone!

Marissa Procelli: Exactly. Yeah. So I think those are nice moments when people that you haven't really connected with one-on-one end up doing that.

Megan Gill: Oh, absolutely. Agreed. So okay, you said before we started recording that a lot of times people will ask if you write down the magic that you say in class afterwards, and you said no. It's probably just in your body at this point, and your mind is geared towards speaking in these ways. But what do you pull from? What do you kind of try to implement when you are speaking?

Marissa Procelli: Man, honestly, it could be the smallest to the biggest things. Sometimes an intention will literally come from a conversation I had right before class, and sometimes it'll be something that I've talked about for a few days. I am someone who very much uses my own life experiences. Not every teacher's like that. I also, because you are trying to – you know, there's a line in terms of when you're in a studio, and there's a lot of different walks of life in there. I will subtly talk about the climate of the world. I will try not to name it, but I will definitely allude to it.

Megan Gill: Important also, in my opinion. So important.

Marissa Procelli: Yeah, and so, but a lot of times it's what I'm going through in that moment, or, it sounds silly, but it's almost like what I'm feeling in the room. And so, by that I mean sometimes the energy's really high. Sometimes it's low. Sometimes I see a lot of engagement with each other. Sometimes I see it's a little quieter. And so, I think that also plays into what I say. I am a bit of an oversharer, so I can get pretty deep pretty quick.

Megan Gill: She’s open. She’s vulnerable.

Marissa Procelli: I am. I am. I’m giving Cancer.

Megan Gill: She's leaned in.

Marissa Procelli: Yes, yes. And so, but with that, I've created so – like this! Because I've opened up, you feel comfortable asking about this. I can’t tell you, I've had so many students where I've created such a bond with them because of my vulnerability. So I feel like I'm just getting positive reinforcement. So I just keep doing it, even if those things are hard because, again, other people are going through hard things, and so, they just want to be seen.

And, also too, I would like to think that I come from a space where I don't like being seen as a guru. I don't like being seen as on a pedestal. I really – maybe it's because I'm insecure, but I just don't like that dynamic.

Megan Gill: I think that’s very fair. I don't like it either. I exist in a lot of spaces that are not structured that way, and I think it's really important.

Marissa Procelli: Okay, thank you because it’s not my – that’s not the vibe I'm giving, right? So a lot of times I tell people I am sharing because I'm living life next to you, not because I'm living above you. It's because we are going through life side by side and trying to figure this out together. Not because I've gone through it and so I know exactly what it is.

Megan Gill: And you should look to me because – and then I think that also puts the pressure on you and all of the sense to be this thing that –

Marissa Procelli: Yeah, and I’m like, “No. I don't need that. I'm trying to figure out my own stuff.”

Megan Gill: Like, “I'm trying to live just like you.”

Marissa Procelli: Exactly, and just share so that way you feel open to share too. So yeah, I mean, long way to say that is just I pull in the moment a lot.

Also, on a nerdy side of it, both of my parents are trial attorneys, and they came from very little, which I've mentioned before in classes. Both my parents were farm workers, and, you know, went through school and went through law school, and they both have their own firms and do a lot of great work. And so, with that, my dad was – well, I should say my dad and my mom, but my dad especially was like, “You will be public speakers,” to my brothers and I. Like, “You will feel confident to talk to a room.”

And so, I don't think he was expecting me to take that to a yoga teacher lane. I definitely think that he wishes – not wishes. I think now he's like, “Great!” He actually just started doing yoga.

Megan Gill: Oh, cool! I love it.

Marissa Procelli: Yeah, so now he's excited about it, but I think before he was like, “You know, you could still be a lawyer,” which he would just tease. It was all teasing. But, you know, I feel comfortable public speaking. So that's why I'm a social butterfly, I'm a Cancer, and he took me to public speaking camp. He would send us to public speaking camp.

Megan Gill: I love that. It’s honestly an incredible skill to have.

28:07

Marissa Procelli: It is. I mean, it's great to feel comfortable in front of a room, because that's the hardest part for a lot of teachers when they first go through teacher training. So it's just funny. So that's why I'm like, “Okay, I will tell you all.”

Megan Gill: “Here's all of my stuff.”

Marissa Procelli: Yeah.

Megan Gill: I really do admire your vulnerability, and I do think that it's very needed, especially in our world today. And I know that it's not always the easiest route, like you were saying. But I think it's so important, and I'm just really, really grateful that you are so open and are an oversharer, because I think we need more of it. Your heart is open, it's clear. It’s clear to me. It's clear to a lot of people. It’s just really special.

Marissa Procelli: Well, thank you! I am an extrovert, and so, I love getting energy collaborating with people. And what's been really great about the South Bay, at least from my experience, is that there's a lot of other people that are trying to do like this and trying to get the word out and be vulnerable. And there's a lot of spaces in this area that provide that because there are a lot of places that don't. And so, I feel very lucky to be in an area like this where I feel like I could have a positive impact without a bunch of people trying to –

Megan Gill: Yeah, come after you, or what I presume to be like the LA side of it all, which is why I love being in the South Bay because it's like, sure, I'm still a part of the “entertainment industry” by nature, but I do really appreciate that it's this safe community down here.

Marissa Procelli: Well, same thing with me. I'm a part of the fitness industry. I have to say that. That is true. And so, it does feel good to be around other teachers that are also trying to make this about longevity and feeling good versus aesthetics or all those other things that come along with it. Because the majority of teachers that I work with or get classes from or take classes from, provide that space. And that's wonderful because, like I said, a lot of places you'll walk in and be like, “All right, let's get that summer body!” And you're like, “No.”

Megan Gill: “Nope, not for me.” And it's like once you see it, you cannot unsee it.

Marissa Procelli: Yeah.

Megan Gill: I will personally never do well with a leader like that or a space like that. It's just not gonna work for me at this point.

Marissa Procelli: No, no! And it shouldn't, right?

Megan Gill: And I'm really just so glad to hear that in your experience too, and with the people you're working alongside and the studios you're working at and taking class at, that your general experience is one of health and overall mental, physical wellness and wellbeing.

Marissa Procelli: Yeah, and honestly I think too, because now I'm 31 – I was like, how old am I? I'm 31. And the different things that I'm working in my body is also something that I'm like, “Okay, I should still celebrate it.” It's that fine line.

For example, yesterday, it was a big moment for me. I've been working on handstands a lot lately, and I have a handstand coach, and her name's Tracy and she's wonderful. And yesterday, she had me do wall taps where I'm literally upside down and like touching my hand and my shoulder, and I'm just like, “Wow, my body can do this. That's amazing!” And still making sure that we're celebrating those moments. Because I think sometimes people that don't want to get into body image are like, “Oh, so we can't say anything now?” And it's like, no, there's a difference. If a student gets their first crow pose, their first half moon, their first whatever it is, I'm like, Hell yeah! Celebrate that! Those are wins,” because I'm not saying, “Oh my gosh, what does your arm muscle look like in –,” I don't even – I can't even say it. But you know what I mean? It’s not like I'm like, “Oh, your butt looks good in that.” No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm like, “Wow, you have been working hard to get to this pose and get your body there, and that's amazing.”

So I think a lot of times too, it's like I do want people to know, yes, it's great to celebrate other people's bodies, but in a way of what they're working and what they're accomplishing, not what they look like.

Megan Gill: Totally. Yes.

Marissa Procelli: Because we should still celebrate those moments, right?

Megan Gill: No, absolutely. One hundred percent. And to me it's like more about – not to equate strength with the way your body looks at all. But it's appearance versus strength and mobility or…

Marissa Procelli: Longevity. Yeah, one hundred percent because the way you look does not equate to what you can do.

Megan Gill: Right. Literally. And we have to like separate that narrative and I think it's hard for a lot of people to understand that, that,

Marissa Procelli: Yeah, Exactly.

Megan Gill: And we have to separate that narrative, and I think it's hard for a lot of people to understand that, and that's also just like a big cultural issue, in general, of course. But yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!

Marissa Procelli: And one, one thing I do want to mention, as a teacher, I like to put out there like. Because I mentioned earlier about the your body is your business card thing. I can teach things that I don't know how to do in my own body. I can prep you and get you all ready to go and work into the splits. Do I have my full splits? No, I do not. I also think that my hope is that for people to understand, as teachers, it's about our knowledge. It's about what we've studied. It's about how much work we put into creating either a flow or a playlist or a type of class. And a lot of people will, again, you'll come in and they'll just see what you look like and assess whether you could teach from that.

I know some teachers that look really good, but I have taken classes and they feel – they do not equate to what their bodies look like, which they shouldn't. And I've seen a lot of people that can't bench however many pounds, but can teach someone how to properly bench something, if that makes sense.

Megan Gill: Yes, that makes sense.

Marissa Procelli: So I think my hope too with this, and just people listening or reading, is that just because your teacher cannot get into a shape does not mean that your teacher does not know how to prep you or get you into that shape. And it's based on their knowledge and their education and how much work they've put into it, not if they can do it necessarily. Because, like with my arthritis, my left leg cannot go fully straight. It does not have that ability. I don't know if it will ever come back. So even if I opened up to a splits, I will not, by definition, be able to do the splits ever, and that's okay. But I think my hope is that people start to see the teacher as what they teach and not what they can do in their own practice.

Megan Gill: Yeah. Mic drop right there, truly. Thank you so much for chatting with me, Mar. I think that's so important, truly so important. Oh my god. I cannot stress it enough. Seriously

Marissa Procelli: Thanks! And thanks for thinking of me with all of this. I mean, it's always a nice reminder for myself too because, you know, we have so many things going on, and sometimes we forget, for me, the goal, and when I say goal, I mean just creating a safe space for students and letting them learn about themselves rather than try and change it, you know?

“  That's why a lot of the times the intention that I use is, ‘This body is the one that got you through this class. Not the one that you're looking for, if you are. This one just worked out. This one just moved. This one just worked. So enjoy this one.’ But sometimes we're so pushed to look into the next thing to make our ‘goal.’”

- Marissa Procelli

Marissa (Rodriguez) Procelli started her yoga journey back in 2016 when she first moved to Los Angeles after completing her Bachelors in Public Health at the University of Arizona. This native Californian grew up in the central valley where sports were a way of life, which meant movement was a way of life.

Mar grew up with a bit of a disadvantage when it came to sports as she was diagnosed with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis at the age of two. However, this did not stop her from playing volleyball, basketball, swim, and water polo.

When she attended college it was the first time she had never been on a sports team, but she wanted to continue to learn about the physical body and how to maintain a healthy lifestyle. She worked as an assistant athletic trainer for the Arizona football team and spearheaded their injury prevention program called Fusionectics to reduce the likelihood of injuries for their football players.

When she moved to Los Angeles she started a job as a behavior therapist where she provided in home services to people living with social disabilities such as autism, Williams syndrome, and the like. This job led to a lot of emotional stress causing flare-ups in her arthritis. Yoga became her outlet, her safe space, and a way to move through the obstacles going on at work.

After practicing religiously, she enrolled in the 200 Power Teacher Training at SoHo Yoga not anticipating becoming a teacher, but just to dive into the practice more. Five years later, she has completed over 2,500 teaching hours, completed her barre certification, pilates certification, kids yoga certification, and is a 500 E-RYT, YACEP.

Mar realized that she spent most of her life numbing her body to stay away from negative symptoms; the aches, the stiffness, the pain. But in addition to masking the symptoms she lost connection with her body. She was telling her sensations to turn off rather than letting it process through. With yoga, she has started a long journey of repairing that connection and understanding that there will be obstacles and triumphs along the way. She hopes she can be a guide to do the same for you.

Follow Mar on Instagram!

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Take class with Mar at YogaSix - you’ll love the music! (I can atttest)

Take class with Mar at Soho Yoga!

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While I’m not a licensed therapist, registered dietician, or medical health professional and cannot speak to body image topics from a clinical, trauma-informed place, I am an expert of lived experience. I’m an academic of my own body, and I’m passionate about facilitating conversations with other humans about their relationships with their bodies. I believe it’s important to continue conversations about healthy body image in creative spaces as a means to heal individuals as well as the collective whole. But just know the information presented in this medium is not professional mental health advice or medical advice, and any questions or concerns you have should always be directed to your health providers.

Everyone please welcome my newer friend and fellow actor Asher Phoenix to A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations! Asher and I met through a dear friend (hi, Kate Stoss), and I’m so beyond grateful for our discussion about body image. In our conversation, we discovered we both work through the Internal Family Systems modality in our own therapy sessions, and Asher speaks on how some parts of themself (like their eating disorder) are not enemies but simply broken friends, and how much of a better world we’d live in if we could view those in the world around us that are hurting in this way too. The way Asher speaks to empowering their trans subjects in their photography work is chef’s kiss, and they have so many important nuggets of wisdom on how we can do better for the trans community in the arts.

Asher is an actor and photographer currently based in Kansas. Their passion is portraiture for trans people and they focus on helping trans people embrace their bodies in front of a camera, which I truly believe is insanely impactful work. Keep an eye out for their future work in clinical psychology - I cannot wait to see where Asher’s future work leads them! Asher shares their story with such generosity and compassion, and I really cannot wait for you to hear our conversation!

Spoiler alert: if you have not seen “The Civility of Albert Cashier,” Asher does spill how the musical ends (for good reason)

“I really am most passionate about doing portrait shoots where the subject is not comfortable in their skin and very clearly needs guidance into being comfortable in front of the camera. And I've had the honor of doing body neutrality practices with my clients where they come to me and they're like, “I don't like the way I look, but I trust you to make something out of this.” And then I'll lead them through a guided meditation-type thing where I'm just like, “Name the part of the body that brings you the most insecurity, and tell me something neutral about it. Tell me what its function is.” And so, for me, I guess an example of this for me would be I am insecure about my hands, which are very strategically tattooed. But they hold my camera, and that's – the coolest thing is that they serve a purpose and a function for me every single day creatively, and I am grateful for that.“

- Asher Phoenix

Megan Gill: I would just love to learn a little bit more about your lens and where you're coming from the artistic, creative perspective as well.

Asher Phoenix: Yeah, totally. I, so as far as theater goes, I have been doing it since I was, like, seven years old. I grew up begging to play boys’ roles, and my parents still had no idea I was trans. But I guess most notably I played Randolph McAfee in Bye Bye Birdie. And it was the first time I had ever had to bind my chest for a role, and that was at Friends University my freshman year. And I just remember the costuming designer profusely apologizing as she handed me a binder and I put it on and was like, “Whoa, this is me. This is cool. Yeah.”

And then I insisted that it was more logistically sound to wear boxers with my costume so that I had something sturdy for the mic pack to hold onto. But really I was just taking a deep dive into exploring gender. And I don't know, that role really opened up my entire world as far as gender expression and coming out as trans goes.

And a few months after that, I went to Chicago to see The Civility of Albert Cashier, their initial run. For those listening who don't know what Albert Cashier is, it's a musical about a transgender Civil War veteran who was found out once he was placed in a nursing care facility, and had his pension taken away, had to go on trial ultimately just for being trans. And, spoiler alert, he ended up dying because he was forced into a dress and tripped on the dress, fell, and went into cardiac arrest.

Megan Gill: Oh, my.

Asher Phoenix: And he was a real person. His grave is a four-, or five-hour drive from where I'm staying now. So I really wanna make it up there just to pay respects to a Civil War veteran who literally changed my whole life and will continue to do so if Albert continues to get the stage time that it deserves.

But professionally, I pivoted when I left college my sophomore year to pursue photography, music photography, concert photography. But I really am most passionate about doing portrait shoots where the subject is not comfortable in their skin and very clearly needs guidance into being comfortable in front of the camera. And I've had the honor of doing body neutrality practices with my clients where they come to me and they're like, “I don't like the way I look, but I trust you to make something out of this.” And then I'll lead them through a guided meditation-type thing where I'm just like, “Name the part of the body that brings you the most insecurity and tell me something neutral about it. Tell me what its function is.”

And so, for me, I guess an example of this for me would be I am insecure about my hands, which are very strategically tattooed. But they hold my camera, and that's the coolest thing is that they serve a purpose and a function for me every single day creatively, and I am grateful for that.

Megan Gill: Yeah, that’s beautiful.

Asher Phoenix: This last August, I had the pleasure of doing media and photography work for The Civility of Albert Cashier's run in Los Angeles, and it was like the first fully produced and costumed – and even the script was rewritten a little bit because there was, arguably, some trans trauma porn that happened in the original where they showed Albert's death, and it just wasn't necessary. It hit, but it was hard to watch in a way that it shouldn't be for trans people. And so, they rewrote the ending to just give a narrative of what happened in his last years, which I think props to Jay and Keaton and Joe for coming up with the new finale that they did because it was incredible. But yeah, I got to do photography work for that and write a little writeup about my story and how The Civility of Albert Cashier has impacted my story for LA Times, which is, like, the greatest honor.

Truly, I consider myself a multifaceted artist. I love writing, I love photography, but I also still really enjoy performing. Just navigating a medical transition with being on stage has been difficult because I went through a good two years where I just couldn't sing, and it was so sad. But it comes back eventually. It just is a major waiting process, and that sucked for the time being. But I'm grateful to have found my voice again.

I actually just recently – my college choir director had her last concert at Friends University and invited alumni to come back and sing a couple songs, and I got to learn the tenor part and sing with my new voice, and it was a lot of fun.

Megan Gill: Ah, that's amazing. That's powerful. I’m glad you had that opportunity, especially at a place like your college –

Asher Phoenix: Me too.

Megan Gill: – a place that you have ties to that you've previously studied at. Oh, that's so great. Thank you so much for sharing all of that. There are so many things to talk about!

I just think it's really cool and impactful that you had the opportunity to take photography of this musical that had such an impact on you. I’m not sure how many years prior you first saw it?

Asher Phoenix: Nine years. Eight years? Something like that.

Megan Gill: Oh, my gosh, wow! Okay, either way that really hits that eight, nine years later you got to come back and capture this piece through a different creative lens. I just think that's so powerful, and I'm so glad that you had that opportunity, and I hope that you get to do more – I hope that you get to follow the show as it's produced elsewhere because it needs to be produced elsewhere, like you were saying.

I was reading up on the Jagged Little Pill – what happened with that musical as far as the casting goes, because I wasn't super familiar myself until you had mentioned it to me. So I went on a little bit of a deep dive. And just reading about how many non-binary and trans characters there actually are written into musicals is really not okay and truly just not reflective of our world. Yeah, I would love to talk a little bit more about that and about your experience watching on as this huge Broadway musical decided to just completely rewrite this non-binary character into a cis female character, and the harm that was done by a cis female actor even being cast in the role in the first place.

Asher Phoenix: Yeah. Yeah, that was a major blow. I grew up listening to Alanis, and I love her, and like she's been such a Madonna for the queer community, such a fierce advocate. And then she goes on to be part of the making of the script for Jagged Little Pill, and expectations for other people get us nowhere in life. But I guess I just had this expectation that – I don't know, a hope that she would be more fierce of an advocate for keeping that role as non-binary.

I have to give Lauren Patton, I think, credit because it was actually a big wake up for them as far as gender goes. But trans roles are not there for cis people to realize that they're trans. Trans roles are there for trans people to be cast as them from the get-go.

Megan Gill: Amen.

Asher Phoenix: And I'm so glad that Lauren is now on their own gender diversity exploration process, whatever. I just think that if I were in her shoes as someone who thought they were cis, I would not have even auditioned for that role because it's not for you. Yeah. Yeah.

Megan Gill: Right. Oh, I was gonna say, as a cis female, I, where I stand now as an actor, would not for one second audition. Now, back when I was in college and specifically in college when a bunch of my best friends around me were queer, I remember having the thought of, “Oh, it would be so cool to play a queer character and get to explore that.” Obviously, I know now and have known for many years now that is just not appropriate and that those characters and those roles are written for queer people, not for I.

So I think that was a really important thing that I had the pleasure of learning as well so that I can sit here today and be like, “Yeah, no,” and advocate for the queer community, and to educate the cis females and males of the land. “Okay, that's not for you.” As the actor, you have a right – I have a right to email my agent and say, “Hi, actually, I don't feel comfortable auditioning for queer characters because I am not.”

Asher Phoenix: Absolutely.

Megan Gill: And I just wonder how many actors are actually taking it upon themselves to do that in an industry that, especially right now, is so bleak and is the industry that's just so slow. And I know that there's a lot of desperation for actors to be like, “I just wanna get cast. I don't care!” or “I want to explore. I want to play this character.” But I think we really just have to continue – we as in me, a cis het female – to be like, “No, that's not for you.” I feel like that's on us to educate and not on the queer community, if that makes sense as well.

Asher Phoenix: 100%.

Megan Gill: It shouldn't be your emotional labor to carry.

Asher Phoenix: Respect. No, 100%. When I think of this, I don't know, like cis people queer baiting and queer roles, god bless them. I think of Darren (Criss) because he played Blaine in Glee. He was hands down one of my biggest childhood heroes. But then once I gained the maturity to realize, “Oh, maybe he shouldn't have played Blaine, or maybe he shouldn't have played Hedwig,” I don't know. I think that he's just taking space from people who deserve to be uplifted for their actual identity. And while he has come forward and been like, “I don't think I should have played Blaine,” he continued on to play Hedwig and that was just like –

Megan Gill: Oh, wow.

Asher Phoenix: I don't know. He's used his platform for good, as far as advocating for the queer community goes but even seeing him as a red-carpet guest at Pride in 2021, I was just like, “Darren, what are you doing?” Not that cis, het people aren't allowed at Pride, but why am I taking red carpet photos of a cis het person at Out Loud Pride? Like what?

Megan Gill: This is not the space for you to be leading, almost, is what it feels like to me. Step aside, let somebody else lead, take headway in this space.

Asher Phoenix: Yeah. But it's a learning and growing process, and I think that he has done the best he can with what he knows and what society has presented to him as far as wanting to pioneer the queer acting scene. Yeah, definitely just doing the best he can with what he has. I don't wanna slam him or anything.

Megan Gill: Yeah, I appreciate the amount of compassion that you have in speaking about these people. I think that’s also really noteworthy because it's so easy for me also to be – I’m so quick to be judgmental, but I've just been challenging myself lately to have a little bit more compassion for these people because we really are all just trying to do our best. And as long as people are open to education and open to learning and open to trying to do better, I think that's really important. So I just really think it's lovely how you are speaking so compassionately about these people that – I guess we all fuck up from time to time.

Asher Phoenix: One hundred percent. I think I took the Alanis thing really personally because one of my best friends originally auditioned for one of the original readings where Jo was still non-binary, and this friend is non-binary, trans masculine. And I just, I don't know, I felt like their space was being taken away from them. But then in discussing it with them, they were just like, “Alanis is doing the best she can with what she has,” and I credit this friend for a lot of my worldview on, I guess just not even anti-trans, but just cis hiccups in the entertainment industry, because they came to me and they were like, “I think Lauren is incredible in the role,” and while the role absolutely should have stayed non-binary, they said that they were grateful that Lauren is now on their own path to self-discovery because of the role. And I don't know, that helps me be a little less bitter about it.

Megan Gill: Oh, for sure. And my heart, just even hearing you share that, because I don't blame you. I think I would have a very similar energy if that were my close friend as well, or just even for your friend, I'm like, “Ugh,” and feeling for them as well. But ugh, gosh, if we could all like, take a page out of their book and now your book, too, to be able to lead from that instead of just, “You're wrong,” judgment, judgment here, there, and everywhere, it’s like, wow, wouldn’t we have much lovelier world, and not that that's again, yours to take on or to lead, but of course that's the lens through which they're viewing these things and like these adversities. Of course, is all I can think.

Asher Phoenix: Yeah, I think that we as trans people almost have to take on this fight from a very compassionate lens because if we come out of the woodwork kicking and screaming, the people who are most against us, we have no match against them because they're gonna come back kicking and screaming. Whereas, if I'm able to offer the perspective of having compassion for Darren or Alanis, then I feel like people who are so adamantly against just trans existence might have more likelihood that they are willing to come at it from a compassionate lens. I think hurt people hurt people, and free people free people. And if I am putting my hurt out there and trying to hurt the people who are against me, it gets us nowhere.

Megan Gill: I fully agree with you.

Asher Phoenix: I think cis people witnessing emotional freedom and maturity from trans people is really the only shot we have at unifying.

Megan Gill: Which I'm like, ugh, the fact that it has to be that way is hard, I think.

Asher Phoenix: Yeah.

Megan Gill: It is unfortunate that you feel like that is the only route, and that obviously hurts my heart, and I wish that it were not like that, I guess is what I'm trying to say. But I also hear you and understand why that is the route that you take, yeah. Oh, gosh, thank you for sharing all of that.

Asher Phoenix: Yeah, totally.

Megan Gill: I really appreciate it.

Asher Phoenix: I think that trying to almost foster viewing the far right as just broken friends is very similar to my path towards healing eating disorder stuff, because I know that is also part of this conversation.

Megan Gill: Yeah.

Asher Phoenix: My eating disorder used to be my absolute worst enemy. I hated it. I hated the fact that I couldn't just sit down and have a meal. I hated what it wanted me to do to my body and in my relationship with food. And then once I was able to look at it through the lens of, “No, this is just a part of me that's doing the best it can with what it knows,” that was a big turning point for me, just making friends with the darker parts of myself instead of fighting them constantly.

Megan Gill: Yeah. Wow, that's a really lovely way to put that. I have never heard it phrased in that sense before. But I think it's, again, just so wonderful that we can relate that to so many different things. It's so fucking hard to think that people that want such harm for others and for the world and for all of these things, could potentially be just broken friends in the way that an eating disorder is something that disrupts your life and is horrific and makes you do horrible things to yourself and your body, could potentially just be like a hurt, broken friend. But I think that more of us need to adopt that mentality of approaching these things, like you said, from that lens as well.

Oh, my gosh. I'm just sitting with this all right now, and it's all hitting me, and it's just really powerful and really beautiful, and I'm just so glad that adopting that mentality – obviously, I'm sure that it took a while to get there. I can only imagine, but I'm really grateful that you were able to get there and you were able to see it in that way.

Do you still have that type of a relationship with your relationship to food and your body when those things do pop up? Seeing it as a broken friend that you need to hold their hand, tend to, maybe ask a question, see what's going on, to acknowledge its presence and its existence and that it's clearly looking for attention I think is what I'm getting from this concept of broken friend.?

Asher Phoenix: Yeah, I definitely still – when it does pop up, because I have three and a half years abstinent from purging and in recovery from my eating disorder. But when the little voices pop up, I'm just like, “Okay, what's underneath this? What are they trying to protect me from? What do I not wanna feel right now?”

I've done a lot of therapy work on my eating disorder through the lens of Internal Family Systems, which is just this model of –

Megan Gill: Stop, wait, I’m so sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you. I shouldn't have interrupted you! But I also am in therapy and work with Internal Family Systems.

Asher Phoenix: Yes, we love to see it!

Megan Gill: Sorry, I just had to make that note!

Asher Phoenix: No, it's totally okay. Not very many people know the difference between Family Systems and Internal Family Systems, so I love that. I don't even have to explain that to you. But yeah, this idea of all of these different parts of us being like protectors and firefighters and managers of negative coping mechanisms, I think, is such a healing way to be able to really lean into my authentic self.

Yeah, I think just extending compassion to the negative coping skills is the biggest part of recovery for me because being able to extend compassion to such negative parts of myself makes it so much easier to extend the same compassion to A) other people, but my authentic self and just embracing who I am, not in spite of these parts, but because of these parts.

Megan Gill: Yeah. And that who you are and the way that you view the world and the way that you view your art and other people's art is almost like a culmination of, sure, joy of course, but also pain and dark experiences and things that hurt our heart and force us to are the catalyst for the reason that we're even artists in the first place. That's really lovely, and I think that's just a nice reminder to have because no one gets out of life unscathed, of course, and we all have our exiled parts and those parts of us that are deeply wounded, and we do need to sit with and hold their hand to give them a hug from time to time.

And then also just thinking of the way in which you so beautifully and shared that you also, then, doing that for yourself can open you up to extend that hand to others. If that isn't humanity and the beauty of being a creative and telling these important stories, what is?

Asher Phoenix: Absolutely. I am a huge believer that like anyone and everyone should go to therapy at some point in their life if it's accessible. I acknowledge that, In the current state of this country, mental health care is a luxury, and it should not be a luxury. But for those who can afford it, we absolutely need to utilize it. Because if we all looked at our literal exiles, not just the parts of us, but the minorities who have been marginalized and exiled as being able to view their behavior as a result of our oppression, it would be such a game changer.

Megan Gill: Wow. Yeah, that is a word for sure. It could change everything. Imagine that.

Asher Phoenix: Yeah, I think of riots and what happened in LA in 2020, and it's just a marginalized community being traumatized and having a trauma response. Fight is a trauma response. It's so sad when people get caught up on the semantics of the behavior and aren't willing to look at the motivation behind it.

Megan Gill: And track it back to cause and to look at all of the systemic issues that are even causing it in the first place, yeah.

Asher Phoenix: Yeah.

Megan Gill: I think that's really important, yeah. Ooh, I'm curious – sorry, I just have a couple things swirling in my brain and I was like, “Which way do I wanna go with this? What do I wanna ask you about?”

I'm curious if you would be interested in sharing a little bit more about the way in which you work with your subjects and your models when you are behind the camera. I loved the piece that you said about that you specifically seek to work with people who maybe don't feel super comfortable in their skin or in front of a lens or just being a “model,” or all these different things that could pop up for us. I think it's really wonderful that you are doing what you do and that you are there to be a safe space for these people. I’ve been there. As much as I'm in front of the camera and people are like, “Oh, you're a natural!” I'm like, “Yeah, but you don't know what's going on beneath the surface.” I just think it's really important that you're doing that work.

So I would love if you would be interested in sharing a little bit more about your approach to that and how you really come at it with a body neutrality lens as well.

Asher Phoenix: Yeah, absolutely. When I think of the subjects that I'm most passionate about, it's definitely those trans people who experience dysphoria so severely that they just won't have photos taken of them. The motivation for that stems from losing my trans partner in 2021 to an overdose, and we had literally one photo together. And she just never let me take photos, and I was still in the space of not being on testosterone and not having had top surgery yet. And so, I was just like, I don't want photos either. And that is one of my biggest regrets. I wish that I had tangible memories of her, but both of our dysphorias were so severe that it just wasn't possible.

And so, I think that I come at portraiture for trans people from the lens of let's work with what we've got and uplift that in whatever way possible. I think that there's this unset expectation for trans people to pass and for all trans people to pursue medical transition, and for some of us that's not attainable, whether it be financial resources, insurance, or just I think of one of my really good friends who has not medically transitioned and does not plan to and is completely and totally sound in their skin. And I think that is so beautiful. I don't have that expectation for every trans person because, yes, dysphoria does get so bad that surgery is medically necessary, mentally necessary, suicide prevention, honestly. But I also think that suicide prevention for trans people is modeling to them that they are okay to exist and be uplifted exactly as they are in that moment.

I got top surgery in 2020, and it opened so many doors for me, just mentally and professionally, because I was finally so at home in my own skin that I was okay with sharing myself and art with the world. And also I so wish that I would've had someone to be like, “It's okay that you have a bigger chest and identify as a masculine person.” I still would've pursued top surgery, but I think that it would've given me a lot more self-compassion in the process of doing that. And so, when I get a trans person, whether they're pre- or post-op, pre-hormones, never going on hormones, whatever, I just encourage them to find their home where they're at and meet themselves where they're at and be able to be okay with being captured exactly as they are.

Megan Gill: That's really beautiful. Thank you, and I am so sorry for your loss, and I appreciate you being open and vulnerable and sharing that. And I'm just so glad that you are behind the camera and that you are singing again, but no, mostly that you're just this space for trans people to come and to show up exactly as they are. I think that is really needed and, from what you've shared, really important and impactful. And I'm just really glad that you are doing what you're doing.

Asher Phoenix: Thank you. Yeah, it's so important to just meet, not even just trans people, but everyone where they're at. But also part of my mission in clinical work, because I'm pursuing degrees in psychology and in clinical psychology.

Megan Gill: Exciting!

Asher Phoenix: Yeah! My end goal is to create a detox slash transitional facility for trans people who are discharging from the hospital after surgery, because for a lot of trans people, surgery isn't accessible solely because they don't have the familial support for recovery afterwards. And so, I want to create a resource where the trans person who has been completely outcasted by their family and does not have anyone to take care of them after surgery, has someone that they can depend on to manage their meds and help reach things that they can't reach. It's such a novel idea for me because this resource should already exist. But I'm excited to be on the path to creating that.

Megan Gill: Oh, I'm so thrilled for you. Truly. I’m with you. It should exist, absolutely. But sometimes these things that are so needed, just don't. This is yours to take on and a space for you to create, and oh, my god! I'm so excited for you and for all of the people that you're going to help.

Ugh, and I'm just so overwhelmed and excited for you because I think sometimes it also takes us through these dark times and these really tough things to light the path towards our life's work and the ways in which we want to give back and help others and be the resource that we wish we had. And I love that you are just trusting that journey and like following that call and going to do the damn thing, and I think it's fucking admirable, and I cannot wait to see where you are in a couple years or, no timeline, but like in the future.

Asher Phoenix: Totally. Thank you. As an artist, I'm sure you resonate with the fact that creating is literally converting dark into light. It's taking the shit that life has handed us and creating something not shit out of it. Literally two months after my partner died, I shot my first Pride festival, and I had never even been to Pride before because I am anxious and hate crowds. She died and didn't have any photos of her, and then two months later I'm standing onstage taking photos of Kim Petras, and it was just the most incredible experience for me.

Megan Gill: Oh my gosh. I love that. And truly the sentiment of turning the shit into beauty is so true, and I love that it seems that you have taken that and ran with it and live your life in that way because I think it's so easy sometimes for humans to just sit in the shit and sulk in the shit and just let the shit rule the show, instead of taking the shit and alchemizing it into something even bigger and more impactful because partner did not have photos, you're going and taking the photos. It's just so beautiful and just such a good lesson, I think, for especially people that maybe aren't creatives, because I think it's just easier for us to take the dark things and turn them into light. It’s just a good reminder, I think, to keep that in the back of our minds at all times.

Asher Phoenix: Totally.

Megan Gill: Okay, I do have one question for you, and I know this might be a bit of a loaded question and not have one solid answer, but I'm just curious about what you think the next right step is. If this greater overarching industry of Hollywood, Broadway, the performance world where we're highlighting people in stories at such a large scale, if there was one right next step that they could take for the trans community and the non-binary community and the queer community in general – I know that's very broad. Maybe even just the trans community. I don't know how you wanna answer it. But is there something that comes to mind for you, or something of that nature? I would just be curious to know.

Asher Phoenix: I think the next right step is to just lean into taking people exactly as they are and writing their stories and letting them fit into the classics. I don't know, the person who played Elphaba in the new Wicked is now like in some, I don't know if it's Technicolor Dreamcoat or Jesus Christ Superstar, but there's some revival happening where they're genderbending it, and I think that is the most beautiful thing. And I think, yes, characters obviously have molds that people who can fit into those molds, they're the ones who audition for it. But I also think that making those molds a little more malleable and adaptable to people's identities and truths is really important.

Megan Gill: Mic drop right there. Yep, I love that, and I am right there with you. Yeah. Thank you so much, Asher. I so appreciate you having this chat with me and sharing about your story and your work and your perspective!

Asher Phoenix: Totally! It honestly is my pleasure. I was telling one of my friends earlier today how excited I was to do this, so grateful to just be given another platform to bring awareness to things that matter.

“ I think the next right step is to just lean into taking people exactly as they are and writing their stories and letting them fit into the classics. The person who played Elphaba in the new “Wicked” is now in some, I don't know if it's “Technicolor Dreamcoat” or “Jesus Christ Superstar,” but there's some revival happening where they're gender-bending it, and I think that is the most beautiful thing. And I think characters obviously have molds that people who can fit into those molds, they're the ones who audition for it. But I also think that making those molds a little more malleable and adaptable to people's identities and truths is really important.”

- Asher Phoenix

Asher is a Los Angeles-based photographer, using their work to provide a space for others to shine – and heal. After photographing their first wedding at the age of 15, they have found great joy in watching clients light up on camera for over a decade since.

Adversities faced as a transgender person raised in conservative central Kansas have given Asher an artistic perspective – and world view – based on love, acceptance, and empowerment. Following a 14-year battle with anorexia, they directly understand the importance of ensuring subjects feel comfortable in their bodies. The overwhelming desire is to provide a safe haven for gender-diverse people, while creating space for body-neutral philosophies.

Connect with Asher on Instagram

Asher’s LA Times Article: “I drove 12 hours to see a stage musical about a Civil War veteran. It saved my life”

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While I’m not a licensed therapist, registered dietician, or medical health professional and cannot speak to body image topics from a clinical, trauma-informed place, I am an expert of lived experience. I’m an academic of my own body, and I’m passionate about facilitating conversations with other humans about their relationships with their bodies. I believe it’s important to continue conversations about healthy body image in creative spaces as a means to heal individuals as well as the collective whole. But just know the information presented in this medium is not professional mental health advice or medical advice, and any questions or concerns you have should always be directed to your health providers.

Everyone please welcome my college friend and fellow creative Ashley Justice to A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations! Ashley and I went to Wichita State University together circa 2010-2014-ish, and this girl knows the body!!! She was in the dance department, and I was in the musical theatre department. Ashley is an insanely talented dancer and choreographer, and I had the pleasure of taking many a dance class alongside her.

Ashley is one of the first people who opened up to me about her experience in our college program when I was crowdfunding for “A Broadway Body” back in 2021. She shared what she’d gone through during our time in college, and I opened up about my experiences and those of friends of mine, and I knew I had to create the film to expose what goes on behind the closed doors of collegiate dance, theatre, and musical theatre programs.

Ashley is a dancer, choreographer, SLT instructor, and barre instructor in New York City. She’s found her own community of advocates for her work in NYC, but that hasn’t come without its share of emotional labor. Ashley’s lens on having to carry the burden of being a dancer in a societally unconventional “dancer body” is extremely important and nuanced in a culture that lumps certain body types with certain professions. I hope you walk away changed after hearing Ashley’s story!

“ I've been told more than once that I have like a Black girl body, right? And that is racist. Not that it's racist to me, right. It's racist to Black people and to Black women, and also depending on who it's coming from it’s an insult, right? And it doesn't insult me. I don't feel any insult being compared to Black women at all. But if it's coming from a white person, I know that that's an insult, right? It's a microaggression, and it's not a microaggression — I mean, I guess it's a microaggression to me, but it's a microaggression of putting Black people beneath you and then putting me in that category with Black people that are underneath you. So that's a whole other layer that I've talked about with friends and with people, and it's why, in dance, the people that've encouraged me the most are usually people of color. White people in dance are genuinely not my advocates. I don't try to have them be my advocates, and I don't seek out people of color for that. The people that have become closer, given me opportunities, or taken the time to ask me what I want have always been people of color and never white people.“

- Ashley Justice

Ashley Justice: I turned 27 in February of 2020. I feel like I was robbed of my late twenties where I was feeling finely grounded and then the world said, “Ha ha ha!”

Megan Gill: “JK , LOL.” We are reclaiming those years.

Ashley Justice: Yeah. Oh, but speaking of that, I feel like that was such an interesting time mentally. I mean, I probably told you that I had a really severe ED pretty much my whole life. But that was such an interesting time where I knew it was flaring up, or that the thoughts or the anxiety around it was flaring up, because as soon as I stopped being active in my New York life, I was like, “Oh my God, I'm not gonna be able to do anything. Everything's gonna change, da, da, da.” And I was like, “Okay.” I remember having to tell myself, “You're going to gain weight and it's fine.”

That did happen, but I remember having to coach myself through it because, “There's just no way you can be as physically active as you were.” I didn't have access to a real gym, so I couldn't really lift weights or anything. And I also didn't want to go into hyper –

Megan Gill: – force yourself to do something that you genuinely don't want to do.

Ashley Justice: And I remember that was a really big moment because I was like, “Oh shit.

Like I really have to sit with this.”

Megan Gill: And do the hard – to me, like the easy out would be that we're gonna just fall back into old patterns, we're gonna just do what we've always known instead of approaching the challenging path of – wow, how aware of you to be able to be holding your own hand like, “It's gonna be okay.”

Ashley Justice: Yeah, because I was like, I could hyper control everything I eat and really restrict because that would make the most sense to go from being really active and not having to think about it as much to only thinking about what I'm consuming, but that's the big issue that I had anyway, right? So I was like, “Oh crap.”

And I wasn't in a healthy enough space to be like, “Well, some of that's valid.” If you're removed from ED brain, a normal thing to do would be to modify your intake with what you're doing in a day.

Megan Gill: Yeah, from a “fitness” perspective, “nutrition” perspective.

Ashley Justice: Yeah, your activity decreases, so your intake of calories should decrease. But it was such a stark change. It literally went from a full life –

Megan Gill: Like night and day, and not to mention the state of the world, which then, at least for me in my experience, put my mental health at like an – it really tested me mentally.

Ashley Justice: Same.

Megan Gill: And with anxiety and everything.

Ashley Justice: And a big thing that triggers my ED is control, right? And the state of the world, we couldn't control it. So the pattern, or the “easy” thing for me to do would've been to go right back into that. That's how I felt in control, just everything I eat, make sure that – and I was like, “I'm releasing that because I genuinely can't control any of this,” and the idea of trying to manage this in this time of uncertainty was like so much. So I had to release it, and it's been a thing because my body really did change from that point.

So that's something that I'm still managing being like, “Okay, it was a big change that happened over those couple years.” That was a challenge for sure.

Because you go from, I had just turned 27, I had just moved to New York. I was in the depths of having all these dreams and really trying to navigate that. And then it was all kind of ripped, and it was a big challenge for my body image. It was hard.

And then coming back to all of it, post that, I mean, I feel like no one talks about we just started doing capitalism again like it was a normal thing to do.

Megan Gill: Wait, what? Like, “What is all of this again? It's been a year,” or however long. I don't know how long – lockdown lasted for quite some time. But I feel like the ease back into like, what is this normalcy – when are gym's opening? When are we able to go outside again and be back in public?

Ashley Justice: Well, and it was like I was working in a restaurant and doing group fitness. Everything was just – all of my normalcy was ripped away.

Megan Gill: How long, can I ask, were you away from that pre-COVID life? How long would lockdown have lasted for you?

Ashley Justice: I think what happened was March happened, everything shut down. That was the middle of March. I lasted about three weeks in this apartment before I went to New Orleans to go home with my family. I was like, “I can't be in this apartment anymore.”

And so, I was there until I think maybe May or June. So a few months – March, April, May, June, so a few months. Because then it became summer and we started doing these outdoor classes and things were like a little bit more. And then I think August or so hit and I went back to New Orleans.

Megan Gill: Yeah, which also disrupts any semblance of normalcy that we're trying to create or like a daily flow.

Ashley Justice: Yeah, routine or something to do. And being able to teach was far and in between. They had kind of reduced us. They had a few people teaching online, like Zoom classes. But I was a brand new instructor. I think I had gotten certified in February of 2020. And so, everything that I was working towards had been very much ripped away from me. And I was just trying to hold onto it a little. I could have easily just been like, “Oh, fuck, whatever,” but I didn't wanna do that because I had hindsight. I was like, “No, when it reopens, I wanna be able to come back to it. I worked too hard to have it in New York to not do it.”

So I really had tried to dig my feet in, but, you know, it was very tumultuous for a time. My niece's mom also passed at that point though. And so, it was a weird time. So I remember that being August and me being like, “I think I just have to –,” and like the classes weren't really – it was turning into fall. Outdoors, the thing that was allowing us to do it was coming to an end. So all of that was kind of just like in the air. So I was like, “I'm just gonna go home until whenever.”

And I think I was home for – I was obviously paying my rent and my stuff was here, but I was laid off from my restaurant. I was laid off from my fitness job, so neither one was operating. And then eventually Landry’s sold our restaurant, so it was like, okay, that's not reopening.

So I stayed. I stayed until Barre3 was like, “Hey, what's the –,” I mean, I got my first vaccine in New Orleans. I was there for like a while, which was nice because I was with my family and my sister lives in Houston, so I was going back and forth to Houston some of the times. And yeah, my niece was born in February of 2020. So it was my sister's first baby, so there was a lot going on that was kind of nice to be home for a little bit. So I just spent a lot of time with my best friend and my family for a while. And that was nice because I wasn't working.

But while I was teaching, I would sub dance. I was subbing at Barre3 in New Orleans because I was like, “No, I'm gonna keep doing it. You guys can't tell me that I am not teaching,” so I picked up classes there, and I was teaching in person and on Zoom, so I was like, “You guys can't tell me that,” because New Orleans was a little different. You had to wear a mask, and I think it was maybe seven people or whatever. So it was in person and they were doing it on Zoom, so people could come in, and they were in person too.

So I was doing that, and I was working the front desk some days. So I was doing some stuff, trying to do the things that I would hopefully do here when I came back. That's just kind of how I kept myself going because I had gotten certified. Like, “I'm doing this!” And it's funny now because now I've been doing this for a long time, and that's what I was gonna say earlier when you were like, “Let's record!”

It's weird because I worked so hard for this to be a part of my career, right? And it used to be something that I love to do for fun, and now I'm like it's work. Now it's just work, and it's an interesting thing because I'm like, I don't teach dance, really, because I was getting burnt out with something that I really care about sharing becoming such a monetized thing. I was like, “If I don't get paid enough, I feel really unappreciated, and that makes me feel bad.” But also just to get a paycheck, that also makes me feel burnt out and feel bad because I'm like if my motivation is just money, then what am I giving? But like, if I'm not getting enough money, I feel bad.

Megan Gill: It's hard to put your heart into.

Ashley Justice: Yeah, or to constantly have those negotiations and conversations. I think part of it too was I didn't want to stay in New Orleans and do that. And like I'd never found a place here where I was like, “Oh, I care about these students,” or “I like these people.” It never happened. So that's always on the back burner for me.

I mean, I love teaching, but I do feel like it's exhausting navigating that because I've had people be like, “Well I don't think you're worth that much money,” and I was like, “And I don't think your kids are worth that much of my time.”

Megan Gill: Amen to that, mic drop right there.

Okay, so she's not teaching dance, but she is teaching group fitness. Is that the proper term for it, group fitness?

Ashley Justice: Mm-hmm. I teach on the Megaformer, to be specific.

Megan Gill: Okay. Pilates?

Ashley Justice: Well, it's not Pilates. It's Lagree.

Megan Gill: Okay. Apologies.

Ashley Justice: Or the Pilates girl will come for us. It's on the Megaformer.

Megan Gill: Okay, got you. I, myself, have only taken one Pilates class in my whole life and never a Lagree class.

Ashley Justice: So there’s mat Pilates, and then there's like reformer Pilates. So reformer Pilates are on the machine. A reformer is like a little bit more – it's like a carriage connected to springs and there's a platform and then there are other things that you can put on it. And Pilates is meant to be low impact. You know, it's about using your breath and using you know, smooth flow, right, which I love. We love that.

Megan Gill: And also talk about not having any injuries, right? The strength and like the low impact compared to…

Ashley Justice: Yes, so everything is with resistance, but not pressure on your joints, basically. Everything is meant to be smooth, and you're really trying to engage the muscles to allow the movement to happen. And then you add on the tension to do that.

With a Megaformer and the Lagree method, is a strength-based workout that is low impact but high intensity. The machines are, I would say, a bigger version of a reformer and I mean bigger. They're wider and they're longer. And the resistance is heavy. There are different springs, and it's a lot of resistance. It's meant to be similar in the sense that you transition really quickly, but it's mostly strength based. So it's still low impact, meaning you're on a machine, you're doing time under tension, but you're meant to be moving quickly and getting your heart rate up and really working your strengths. If you go to Club Pilates, that's based in Pilates, and if you go to Solidcore, that is based in Lagree method.

So those are the differences. I teach at SLT. Which is Lagree method.

Megan Gill: Do you only teach at SLT?

Ashley Justice: Yeah. I mean, I am technically on payroll for this corporate company called Exos that has contracts with – you know, like I taught at Pfizer. I would teach barre. And I used to work at Equinox. I used to be a trainer at Equinox, but I hated that. But right now I'm just with SLT. So I've done barre, personal training, Lagree, and dance.

Megan Gill: She knows the body.

Ashley Justice: I think so, yeah.

Megan Gill: No, you definitely do.

—

Megan Gill: How is this transition as a dancer and someone who's been moving your body in some way, in these ways for a good portion of your life, and then now coming into the group fitness space, how have these ebbs and flows of taking a lot of classes and then now how you're not taking a lot of classes, how have you navigated that and kind of coped with that?

Ashley Justice: I think it’s hard because I feel like also I'm getting older. And so, that's also playing a role in what feels good and what doesn't. And also a hard thing is, I mean, we were talking about that earlier, you go, go, go and you don't even realize that it's not healthy because your body, for some reason, can handle it at some point. And then you get to a point where it can't anymore. And now that I'm older, I've learned my lesson. I can only do so much, and I can't stack things and just go, go, go. I'll physically have a breakdown, like emotionally, mentally, physically, and it's just gonna put me back even more. So it's kind of this constant circle of trying to find what feels sustainable enough.

But yeah, I think the hard thing for me as a dancer is there is this constant thing of, “Oh, you're never doing enough,” and I think that goes back to like what we were talking about before, in college, all that pressure, where it was like we were moving all day and they were like, “And you are not small enough, and you need to be doing more cardio.” But what I needed to be doing was lifting weights. But that's a different thing. This makes me so mad because I got tendonitis because of that shit.

Megan Gill: Because of the overdoing of the cardio and not strengthening your muscles.

Ashley Justice: Yeah, I'm like, you guys want all this endurance, but I'm eating, like, zucchini and quinoa and an apple and then running for an hour on the elliptical after I've danced for five hours. It doesn't really –

Megan Gill: Make it make sense! The math is literally not mathing!

Ashley Justice: I was scared too. I didn't know what to do with weights. I needed a personal trainer that was gonna be like, “Lift that! Lift that!” I wish I had that because it would've made all the difference to not put so much pressure on being smaller, but put pressure on – and just the acknowledgement of how much we were working. It was because they were like, “That's the expectation.” And that's fair. Sure, that's the expectation. But on top of that, we were constantly being told, “Outside of this, you're not doing the right things. You're not eating right. You're not moving right.” I got told like my legs were too big because I was activating the wrong muscles and it was making them bulky, and my legs just look like that. They were never gonna be small.

Megan Gill: You’re like, “These are my fucking legs!”

Ashley Justice: It’s so funny because I said something the other day and Rita was like, “Your legs are literally insane!” She just said that, and I was like, “That's so funny.” I don't even know if she remembers, but she was just saying like, “Your legs are literally bonkers, like insane muscle. It's crazy. It's always been crazy,” and I'm like, “Yeah, remember when I was bullied about this?” She's like, “But like they're so crazy. Your legs are insane,” and I was like, “Thanks!”

But it's funny because it was the first feedback – it was my first semester, it was the first feedback I got.

Megan Gill: About your legs?

Ashley Justice: Yeah.

Megan Gill: Being quote unquote too big.

Ashley Justice: Yeah. Okay, also, they were the wrong shape.

Megan Gill: Oh my God. It's so wild to me that the emphasis is on, like you said, being smaller and the emphasis is not on general strength. And then also to go along with that, emphasis was on being smaller and being thin and looking this picture perfect way that they had envisioned for us to look. When in reality, where is the overall general emphasis on health? The fact that we were not eating enough is also insane.

Ashley Justice: I don't know if I ever told you this, but there was a point where I couldn't keep my arm up in ballet because my body was convulsing because I was shaking so badly because my blood sugar was so low, and I got called lazy by one person that I don't feel like talking about, someone that I don't even know if you even remember this person. So it's no one that in your head that you've thought of that came up. It's none of them actually.

And another person was like, “You're gonna call the doctor, and you're gonna sit in my office until you call,” and it was crazy because I didn't understand what was going on. I didn't even know why I was shaking.

Megan Gill: That's how normalized all of this –

Ashley Justice: It was like, “I don't know why I can't hold my arm up. I don't know why my body is shaking and why I feel like I can't get through barre.”

Megan Gill: Was it like, “I'm doing everything you're telling me –,” this is very broad and generalized. “I'm doing everything that you're telling me that I'm being told to do”? You just thought that you were doing what you were supposed to be doing kind of a thing?

Ashley Justice: Yeah, and even on top of that was still getting the messaging like, “You're not strong enough. Your core is not strong enough. You need to do Pilates.” But I was like, “How the hell am I supposed to do Pilates? I can't afford Pilates because I had this scholarship that said I needed to work, but I couldn't work on campus. So I had to work off campus.” But I also was a scholarship student. So then they were like, “Well, you have to be available for every rehearsal we want you to be available for.” So I was like, “Well, how am I supposed to do all of that? Because I can't work enough to pay for anything, but I have to work.” That's why I worked at Bella Luna once a week. I worked on Sundays. They just let me come in on Sundays because I was like, “I have no other time to come in.” So I’d just come and work a brunch on a Sunday so that I had a job, right, so that my scholarship wouldn't get taken away. But I also had no other time, and there were no resources for me to pay for Pilates, and there was very little time for me to – because, hello, I also had academic classes.

Megan Gill: Yeah, not to mention!

Ashley Justice: Not to mention, I also had academic classes, so going home, I was usually doing them online. So I did a lot of online classes, and there were some semesters where I had rehearsal all the time and some semesters where I probably could have fit that in, right? But I didn't even know where to access it because I'm not fucking from this city and I don't know anyone here, and you're the only people I fucking know. That was the other thing, too, about my experience was like, “I don't have a community here.” And I felt like nobody understood that. I'm like, “You guys are the only community I have, so every bit of my experience is consumed by this.”

Megan Gill: I can very much relate with that.

Ashley Justice: Like, “This is all I've got.”

Megan Gill: And it becomes like your, like community is almost synonymous with family in a sense that there is a lot of trust here, and it's like, there's someone who very much took me under their wing and was like, “This is gonna be great,” and there's a lot of trust built there when it's like, “Oh, someone sees something in me,” and it's like, “Okay, this is great, and I trust them!” And then like the messaging you're getting from them, in various ways, indirectly through things that were said to my close friends that then were passed on to me, things that were done to me, and then it's just like the general messaging within said program.

Ashley Justice: I had a very, very similar experience because I was also taken under the wing. I had a very, very similar experience, and the person that inflicted so much of that shit on me was also the person who got me my eating disorder specialist therapist, was the person who found it for me. Wild, right? You're actively perpetuating this on me and also recognizing that I'm not okay.

—

Ashley Justice: I mean, it's a little bit of hindsight, a little bit of survival too. I just couldn't stand it anymore. I was past the breaking point. It was really, really bad. And it wasn't just me. I think a lot of people were at a breaking point and they were just like me, “Eh, we're getting what we want, so that's good.” And yeah, I think I got to a point where I was like, “Oh, I mean, if I'm not gonna be dancing, I can say what I want.

And yeah, I've gotten apologies from – for some reason I elicit people apologizing to me when I'm like, “Oh, okay.”

Megan Gill: You're like, “Oh, thank you.”

Ashley Justice: And I mean, I remember Donnie and I were so close at the time. He lost a bunch of weight and got pulled aside and they were like, “Are you okay?” I mean, correct. Good to check in. Did I ever get that? No. They were so deeply hard on me and they would always be like, “Well, it's just because we think you're so capable and blah, blah, blah,” and I was like, “But you're putting this pressure and you've instilled in my head that my capability doesn't matter, right?

Megan Gill: Because it's about my body and not about my capability?

Ashley Justice: Yeah, and I remember one time being like, “You keep saying that I'm so good and I'm such a good dancer, but my body's the problem, but my body's the one dancing. So if I'm so good, then how is my body the problem? If I'm so much better the –,” and better is a big word to use. But if I'm so “good” or in this prime of me dancing, but my body's the issue, you just don't like seeing my body being capable of doing it. Or it defies what you think my body looks like, should be capable of doing it, because I can do it at a level that you're trying to make me smaller and put me down because you're like, “Well that's not how it's supposed to go.” And instead of that, they tried to, I think their perspective was, “If she can just get her body right, she's gonna be able to book.” That's what I think, true to god, the motivation was yes. “If you can just do that, you can book,” and I couldn't do it because I was already fucked up mentally and it was putting pressure on me that was not sustainable, right? And maybe that's true, right? Maybe that is true, and maybe they were right, or maybe not.

But the reality is, like what we said before, it wasn't their position. Their position should have just been, “All right, see this. Let's foster it.” And they just focus so deeply on me. And what are the implications of you telling me that my body's not where it – the implications of me in that moment are, like you said, “You're someone that I trust, you're in a position of power, so I believe what you have to say because you know more than me.” That's implication one. Implication two: what they know about me is that I left everything I knew and I'm in a place where I don't have anyone, and you’re my only support system. So everything you say is the only thing I have, right?

So you know that, and you're telling me that I'm not doing enough outside of this department. So now in my head, I'm not doing enough, I'm not working hard enough, I need to do more. These are all the implications of telling people things like that in those positions, right? Because you're talking about a position of power and you're talking about students and professors, and in these performance programs, like we said, those lines get very blurred. They really do, and I think that can happen in general. But I think with performance-based programs, it's way more prevalent, because in other programs, there's a little bit of a structure and separation that there's not always in these scenarios.

Megan Gill: Right, and we're also like feelers and artists and creatives, so I feel like we like family up, kind of. We get really close with our people.

Ashley Justice: Yeah, you’ll cut yourself open just for the validation of doing it. But yeah, the implications of what they're saying, I just don't think that they were really understanding that, or maybe they did and they didn't care, or they were just like, “That's too much for me to handle, so I can only look at it through this lens.” But the implications of telling a student all of that is very personal, right? At least from my perspective, you're telling me that your perspective of me is that I do not do enough to be adequate, right?

Megan Gill: Or that I will, then, graduate this program, and from everything you're telling me and projecting onto me, I will not be bookable, and I will not get work –

Ashley Justice: I mean, I straight up was told that.

Megan Gill: – because of my body, which is extremely fucked, literally so extremely fucked, right? So what about a world where the leaders in this dance program see you and they're like, “Yep, we're gonna put her in this, we're gonna book her in this” We are never going to even have the fucking body conversation because it doesn't fucking matter. Like what? I know it's a little Pollyanna, but it’s like –

Ashley Justice: I mean, the costumes are a whole different conversation that I was also dealing with. I don't even wanna talk about it. Giving me a six-foot-five man's costume was maniacal, and then Renee was like, “Hey girl, your costume looks crazy from the audience.” I was like, “Yeah, it's giant.” So she had to go in and sew it on the sides to make it – it’s a biketard, by the way, so it should have been fitted. We were borrowing them from OCU, and I was just too big to fit into the other one, so they gave it to Casey or something. I mean, to be fair, Casey's really skinny and needed a smaller one than me.

Megan Gill: It's called go fucking find another solution and not make it about you being the problem. The problem is not you, the problem is that –

Ashley Justice: Well, luckily, Renee was like, “Why the fuck does Ashley’s costume look like that?”

Megan Gill: Thank god! But also to have to go through that experience and to have these people that you know and love and trust be so – and not to blame them but, you know?

Ashley Justice: Then by the senior year, Cheyla's texting me, “Hey, we're ordering costumes. What size are you most comfortable with?”

Megan Gill: This should be the fucking baseline.

Ashley Justice: But only because I crashed out on them!

Megan Gill: But this is where the power – and it sucks because it's like I'm sitting here saying like, “I'm so, so glad, Ashley, that you used your voice and like the power of fucking speaking up and saying, ‘This is not okay.’ But then how much emotional labor for you came along with that, and how unfair is it that you had to step up?” Yay, go you, but also it's not beside me that that took so much of your time and energy while you were also struggling with your own –

Ashley Justice: Which is why I don't enjoy taking on the burden of being like a beacon of symbolism for bodies doing things. I hate it. I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like it, and I don't want it to be projected onto me. I don't like it because I've already labored enough, I feel like that I'm like, “I don't wanna do that anymore.” I want it to be neutral. I really resent the, “Oh my god, you got, I love that because –.”

It’s even hard, the shit that I get submitted for is all this like weird curvy shit. But that's just casting, right? It's just casting. So that's fine. It doesn't burden me in that way, but, I don't know, I've definitely been projected onto where people message me: “Oh my god, I love seeing when you just post your photoshoots, and you're so confident in your body,” and all this stuff. And I'm like, “Why?”

Megan Gill: Why are we talking about this? Yeah.

Ashley Justice: Nor did I open that conversation. My caption wasn't like, “Back when I…” No messaging about that. It's something that gets projected onto me.

Megan Gill: That you did not ask for, kind of like you didn't ask to be taken – I feel like there's a theme of people just thinking that they can show up and either look at your body in these ways, or talk about it in these ways, or make it everything in these ways and it's like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hi, I'm Ashley. I'm a dancer and a choreographer and the fucking awesome person.” Why couldn't the comment have been like, “You're gorge!” or “You're exuding confidence!” Why does it have to tie back to like, “You're exuding confidence because I'm so inspired by you sharing your body in this way.” Why do we have to talk about that, least of it all, why is that what everything comes back to?

Ashley Justice: Yeah, and it's hard because with social media and with all of these things, it's taken me a long time to be able to even live in that because for so long, I was just like I just don't wanna be commented on, I don't wanna be perceived. That was kind of the fallout of graduating. I was like, “I don't even want to be looked at or talked about or talked to.” If someone brought anything up, I literally would shut down and be like, “Oh, I'm not talking about that.” Like, “Oh no, I'm not doing that.” Literally, I was just like, I simply can't even be in these situations.

And that's why, at the time, I was teaching dance a lot and I was like, “Ooh, this environment is not the environment for me right now because I feel so strongly about it and I'm still dealing with my own stuff. And it's not the time for me to be in charge because I'm either going to get mad at people, or I'm gonna have conflict a lot. I still have to navigate everything about me before I become this advocate of body positivity in dance. I couldn't handle that at that moment in time, but I also couldn't stand back and watch kids be subjected to the things that I know caused me so much harm. So I really had to remove myself from that because I was like, “I can't do it. I'm having a hard time,” because I just came from this place, right, where I was already fighting. I was literally already in fight mode, and I'm like, “I'm not in the place to have this fight with people.” Because people are like, “Why do you feel so – where is this coming from?” There's no context for where it's coming from or you know, any of that. So I was like, okay, this isn't a space that's gonna be good for me at this point in time. I can't be there.

Now it's fine. I'm good. Back then, ten years ago when I was in that position, I was like, “No way.” And at the time I was dancing too, and people were just so interested in what I was doing and, “Oh, how you look –,” and all this stuff. It's a lot to try to do and to be projected on and then to also try to be auditioning and then deal with that outside of it? I'm like, I just need anything that isn't consumed by that.

Megan Gill: Mm-hmm, which I think is so hard because it's like, gosh, for your passion to be dance, this thing where, like you said earlier, my body's doing the dancing – our bodies are so synonymous with the art form that it just, it makes it so, so nuanced. And it's like, god, there is no separating that and it is really fucking hard to navigate. So then if I need to take care of myself and maybe not be spoken about in these ways and like not fully be on display, well then does that also mean that I'm not dancing? What does that mean?

Ashley Justice: And on top of all of that, what's very interesting for me – and I think women experience this, I think anyone who identifies as a woman experiences this in some capacity, in whatever way they fit into the way society views them, objectively, as a woman, which is gross and I hate, but also a reality. An interesting time to get into my twenties and really develop the body type that I have and an interesting time for BBLs to be a thing and for the Kardashians and all of this stuff. So it's a weird juxtaposition to be a single woman who's a dancer. Very confusing, right?

It's always been hard to be a white woman with the body type that I have because my sister also has a similar body type, and we're from a place where it's also very Black. So these things are not dynamics that we're not used to, but you remove yourself out of my little New Orleans bubble and you put me other places – so, mind you, my personal life, my inner workings, my trauma, my stuff, all this dance stuff, right, that's such a big, huge part of who I am. Then I go and I do things, and I've always like, “I need an identity out(side) of this,” right? So I'm building my life outside of that. And then I date men and guess what's the forefront for all of these experiences, right? Then you have social media, and guess what's the forefront of all of these experiences? It doesn't matter which way I turn, it doesn't matter who I'm talking to, no matter what, for some reason, the forefront of how people see me is body first, person second, and then I have to navigate conversations from there.

So it's a hard thing because it's like what's more triggering, going and being in dance or literally just living real life? I think women experience that in every way, shape, or form. Women have heard either peers say something about their body, whoever they date say something, maybe, about their body. I teeter because on social media, I almost love to put it out and be like, “Okay, this is just my body and I'm not gonna be uncomfortable with any of this stuff,” and I've just decided to be like, “I'm doing this shoot and I don't care.” It's fine and I can post it and I'm happy about it or whatever. And it's interesting to see how people treat me because of that, particularly men. It's very telling whether right away I'm being objectified, or what they think about what I do, or all this stuff. So it's a really, really interesting place to be in and how I have to navigate my identity outside of dance too. So I'm constantly teetering that.

And I was telling my good friend, we've been friends since high school, and I was telling her that one day and I was like, “Yeah, it's always this,” and I was talking about somebody saying something to me about my body. Like I said the other day, just casually, someone was like, “Oh yeah, you've always had this. Oh yeah, da da da. That must be really hard.” That's not something I deal with. People don't talk about my body to my face regularly. And I'm like, I get spoken to about my butt all the time; the fact that I'm white, all the time. It's such a theme in my life that I'm this blue-eyed, blonde, curvy person that it's the only lens that I get viewed from, I feel like, on a outward perspective. Now, I don't feel like that talking to you or I don't feel like that with like my close friends, but I just mean like in a –

Megan Gill: If you're out there like going on first dates or meeting people in a while or whatever it may be, yeah.

Ashley Justice: Yeah, and it’s hard because then you talk about fitness in New York, but then I'm in a Pilates space, right? And it's like the goal is to be white, thin people, and that's interesting. It doesn't really bug me because I'm like I just don't fit into that and I don't care. But the societal pressure of white supremacy and whiteness on women – or this goal to be thin. That's what I mean, not the pressures of being white.

Megan Gill: Right.

Ashley Justice: Within white supremacy, within this system that we are –

Megan Gill: Yes, that absolutely goes right along with it.

Ashley Justice: – inside is this need to be thin, right? And that's the other thing too.

So we talked about body image, and to give context to all this, we're white, right? We didn't even talk about the racial aspects and the racism that happens with bodies and how my body and how I've been spoken to in a very – I don't wanna use in a racist way, but I don't know how else to explain it, that I've been told more than once that I have like a Black girl body, right? And that is racist. Not that it's racist to me, right? It's racist to Black people –

Megan Gill: Absofuckinglutely.

Ashley Justice: – and to Black women, and also depending on who it's coming from is an insult, right? And it doesn't insult me. I don't feel any insult being compared to Black women at all. But if it's coming from a white person, I know that that's an insult, right? It's a microaggression, and it's not a microaggression – I mean, I guess it's a microaggression to me, but it's a microaggression of putting Black people beneath you and then putting me in that category with Black people that are underneath you.

So that's a whole other layer that I've talked about with friends and like with people. And it's why with dance, the people that have encouraged me the most are usually people of color. White people in dance are genuinely not my advocates, and I don't try to have them be my advocates. And I don't seek out people of color for that. It’s just the people that have become close or given me opportunities or taken the time to ask me what I want, have always been people of color and never white people. White people have projected things. They have done these microaggressions. It does feel easier to be in community with people of color because, while I'll never know their experience, and while all I can do is be a better voice and not be silent if I see racism happening – it's always happening, but if blatant things, I see it because it's been expressed to me in ways that I don't think it's expressed to white people who fit the white mold. The microaggressions have happened to me. The implications are less so because I know that it's happened, I feel like I have the responsibility to call that out. Because what an interesting position to be in, right?

I've been told that so many times. Me and my sister have been told that so many times. And it's not always in a dance context. Sometimes dudes will say that shit. It's a whole other conversation that I'm happy to talk about if I'm invited into. And it's just something that I keep front of mind because how I'm spoken to and the way that people interact with me in a social way is also rooted in an race lens, right? Which is a weird thing because I'm white and such a very – my face is giving, like my face is giving Aryan race, and then my body is giving confusion for white people. So it's been a thing for a long time, and I feel way more in community with people of color in dance spaces, and I'm always grateful to be in those spaces when I'm invited, and I feel more comfortable in those spaces.

And it's interesting when I was talking to you about that guy I went on a date with who's a white guy and, you know, when I was talking about that, it's funny because what I said, my friend, she said the same thing. She's Filipino and, you know, she's a person I listen to, and she allows me in those conversations a lot when it comes to race in performing arts and all of these things. And she's allowed me in on like thoughts and experiences that she's had and things with her friends that are happening. And she said something exactly what I said to that guy and I was like, “See! White people never understand what I'm fucking saying. White people always get mad and say that I'm negative.” And I'm like, “No, because when I talk to my friends of color, they know exactly what I'm talking about, but it's because I'm white and you're perceiving that.” People don't treat me the same way they treat other white women who fit into that mold. So when I'm critiquing it, you are taking offense, but it needs to be critiqued!

Megan Gill: Right!

Ashley Justice: Right? I was like, “See, I'm valid! I'm not crazy. What I was saying, it makes sense.

Megan Gill: Oh, totally.

Ashley Justice: But it's another layer that is very complicated and not – you know, I feel like I have to be cautious how I insert those experiences, but I do feel like I live somewhere in between. My agency is an all-Black agency. Of course, none of the big agencies fucking picked me up. Of course, a Black man is my agent. And it’s always Black people in dance who have ever given me an opportunity, always. I can't even think of a white person that has given me an opportunity besides, you know, my company in New Orleans. But yeah, it's always people of color who have opened the doors for me.

So that's why I really listen and I do critique musical theater. I was talking to someone, you know, about doing ECCs for Hell's Kitchen. I'm like, “If you don't know who Camille A. Brown is and you're white, do not go to that. Do not go to that.” I was talking to my friend Veronica because she was complaining about it. I was like, “If I was dancing right now, I would go, but I know Camille's background. I go to her – I know, and I have the background and I have the training in where her stuff is rooted, and I also would just be happy to just be in the room.

But we were talking about it's white girls who went to OCU or went to these programs and they're like, “Oh, and I'm gonna go to everything, and I belong and everything and blah, blah blah.” It’s like, “You don't belong in this space.”

“  They were so deeply hard on me and they would always be like, ‘Well, it's just because we think you're so capable,’ and blah, blah, blah. I remember one time being like, ‘You keep saying that I'm so good and I'm such a good dancer, but if my body's the problem, my body's the one dancing. So if I'm so good, then how is my body the problem? If I'm ‘so good’ or in this prime of me dancing, but my body's the issue, you just don't like seeing my body being capable of doing it, or it defies what you think that what my body looks like should be capable of doing. Because I can do it at a level that you're trying to make me smaller and trying to put me down. Because you're like, ‘Well that's not how it's supposed to go.’ But you could just be like, ‘All right,’ period.’ And instead of that, this is what I think their perspective was: ‘If she can just get her body right, she's gonna be able to book.’ That's what I think, true to god, the motivation was: ‘If you can just do that, you can book.’”

- Ashley Justice

Ashley Justice is a dancer, choreographer, and fitness instructor, based in New York City. She has a B.F.A. in Dance Performance and Choreography from Wichita State University. She has toured nationally and internationally with Wichita Contemporary Dance Theatre, Lightwire Theater, and was a dancer with Mélange Dance Company. She has worked on multiple film sets in New Orleans as a dancer and is currently represented by 216 Talent Agency. Ashley has premiered her own work in multiple cities across the U.S. including NYC, New Orleans, and Wichita, KS. She was the Assistant Choreographer for the 71st Miss Universe Pageant in 2022 and is currently a full time instructor at SLT, NYC.

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While I’m not a licensed therapist, registered dietician, or medical health professional and cannot speak to body image topics from a clinical, trauma-informed place, I am an expert of lived experience. I’m an academic of my own body, and I’m passionate about facilitating conversations with other humans about their relationships with their bodies. I believe it’s important to continue conversations about healthy body image in creative spaces as a means to heal individuals as well as the collective whole. But just know the information presented in this medium is not professional mental health advice or medical advice, and any questions or concerns you have should always be directed to your health providers.

Everyone please welcome lovely friend and fellow (voice)actor Maddie McGuire to A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations! Maddie and I met online in 2020 during Ashli Pollard (of The Doers)’s business course, Square One Accelerator. We’d only known each other over the internet until the fall of 2024 when we finally got to meet in person! Since then, we’ve gotten closer and closer, and Maddie was one of the first people to express to me how much she believes in what I’m doing with this project. (Thank you Maddie!)

Maddie is an inspirational gem of a human being. She’s the voice of Comcast on TV (along with many others), and she does a lot of other voice acting work as well. She’s such a humble, caring, talented woman with a heart of pure gold, and I am so excited for you to hear our conversation. Our discussion floats around connecting with our bodies to allow us to use our voice confidently in the spaces we frequent, the journey of embracing aging and our ever-changing bodies (and careers), and Maddie’s journey with running a half marathon. Tune in and enjoy Maddie and I’s conversation!

“It’s been happening recently too, Megan. Probably from a year ago when we first kind of met and I was hearing so much about your business, I feel like my brain – I've just been so much more open to explore what comes up, whether that be a feeling, a thought, challenging myself to be like, “Let's just try something different today with the workout clothes I'm wearing,” or whatever the case may be, instead of getting locked into comfort, not that that's a negative thing at all. I just think that that's become such a safety net, especially in COVID for me. I'm just ready to write a new permission slip, and that's what all these findings are is like, “Okay, what's that permission slip we're writing next, and what are we kind of sorting through to get there?””

- Maddie McGuire

Maddie McGuire: I feel like I've had a couple phases before in my life where it's almost like I woke up and realized my body has changed, and then it's forced me to reevaluate my relationship with my body, health, clothes, feeling sexy, feeling strong, all of those things. And so, I feel like I'm in a period of that, of almost like, okay, things have changed. I'm accepting that. Now, what does past acceptance and actually falling in love with my body again look like, or a different form of the relationship.

Megan Gill: Yeah. It’s evolving and how do you mentally have radical acceptance for the way that it's evolving while also working towards loving and caring for and appreciating the changes, because I feel like it's so easy to be like, “Ah! I’m changing!” Whether it's my body is changing in the sense that it's getting older, or my knee is starting to hurt a little bit more now, or whether it's in a sense of, “Oh, I've gained weight,” or “Oh, I've lost weight, and like now my clothes don't fit, and how am I supposed to feel sexy in a pair of jeans that don't fit me right, whether I've gained weight or lost weight?”

So, oh, gosh. I feel like this is just such a relatable topic probably for so many women and people in general.

Maddie McGuire: Yeah.

Megan Gill: Do you feel like you've gone through different periods in your life of having to reevaluate kind of like you are right now?

Maddie McGuire: Yeah. I feel like – and I was thinking about that too, where I was like, when have I felt like this before? And every time's different, obviously, but I feel like the first big one, I was never like chubby, per se, as a kid, but I definitely had a lot of baby fat in my tummy and my face. And then when I started going through puberty, really, almost like the last two years of high school, growing a little bit and things changed, I got more attention. I was also starting to act at that time, and I was mainly doing theater improv things off camera. And then that was kind of the first time I was also starting to do on-camera acting. My body was changing.

And I feel like I've been pretty lucky because I don't think I've ever had a true issue with disordered eating, per se. But there are two times in my life where, looking back, I was like, oh, I had tendencies that kind of started like ebbing into that category. And that was the first time where I was like, “Oh, I'm getting praise. I'm getting validation for the changes that my body naturally did. Let's do more.”

Megan Gill: Mm, yeah. Wow.

Maddie McGuire: So let's control our eating more, everything. That was the first time I even noticed it. And then from there, there's been a couple other times throughout my twenties, I feel like when I was 25, that was the first time I was like, “Oh, I have hips. My hips are starting to come in.” I was like, “I'm looking different in jeans than I did when I was 21 or 22 or 18.”

And then I really think there was like another big shift into my thirties where I was like, “Oh wow, okay. My body's like becoming more womanly, and it's actually becoming a lot stronger than it used to be.” And also I think I've noticed different things with my face and my neck and other parts of my body. So yeah, I would say around 18, 25 and then 31/32 have been three very distinctive markers where I was like, “Oh.” I woke up and I feel like I noticed the shift.

Megan Gill: This is so interesting, and how fascinating that it's coming out of like our teenage years, and into your early twenties, and then sort of around that 25 mark where you're like, “Okay, well, I'm definitely not a teen teenager anymore. I'm like a full young adult.” And then I do think moving into your thirties, I mean, I'm experiencing it myself where you're like, “Oh, these are the gray hairs that they talk about, that our moms talked about. These are the crow's feet or the wrinkles,” or “My friends are getting Botox? Like, what? Okay, do I need to get Botox?” Like, all of those things that then come with being in your thirties. Or, gosh, I was in my yoga class this morning and seriously my knee, there was a little pain there. And I'm like, “Am I good?” Oh, my god.

Maddie McGuire: You know, when they're like, “Okay, whatever, obviously be aware of your body,” in different classes. You’re like, “Not for me, I'm fine.” And then yeah, all of a sudden you're like, “Is this one of those moments where I'm pushing myself?” Because I want to be like, “No, you're fine. That's not happening. But you're like…”

Megan Gill: Like, I'm literally aging. Yeah, I'm 32, but at the same time, our bodies day by day are getting older and just having that recognition. But that's beside the point.

I think that what's most interesting to me about what you were saying before about your recognition of, “Oh, I'm coming into –,” I think you said like your last couple years of high school when you started to notice that the way your body was naturally changing and evolving was leading you to get more attention. I think that's a really important piece to pull out and note here. And how that, then, catapulted you to want to continue to maintain that.

Maddie McGuire: Right.

Megan Gill: Because I also can very much relate with that sentiment as well. And for me it was when I entered college was when I started to realize that if I ate this and worked out like this, my body would get smaller.

Maddie McGuire: Mm-hmm.

Megan Gill: And then that’s when I started to get the attention that I'd never gotten in high school, middle school, prior. And, I mean, I think I was very much driven by a similar mentality of like, “I need to maintain this because I don't ever wanna go back to the world before where I didn't get attention - in acting, from my peers, from my family, from boys.” Whatever it was, it was like, “Oh yeah, no, this is what –,” like the comments about how my body was changing and how my body looked at that point. That is what society teaches us is “good” or what we should “strive for,” right? At least like when we were going through our high school and college years in the 2000s/2010s.

Maddie McGuire: Well, and you said two things, Megan. There was something you posted on your Instagram that pretty much was like, “Bodies are meant to change. Bodies are literally always in a state of growth,” and that really stuck with me when I saw it. So I've been thinking about that since I saw it on your Instagram a couple weeks ago, and then you just said something about “maintain,” this need or this want to maintain this size, this look, this whatever it is that we've been getting validation and praise for. And I feel like those two thoughts literally just captured so much of the duality that I've been in of this acceptance of, “Wait, my body's like a growing, living organism that is changing every day, and this trying to relinquish that almost gripping on wanting to still maintain something that, one, is not even relevant or longer there anymore. But there still is this little bit of a fight that I'm constantly trying to reframe that's like, “What if XYZ could lead back to the ballpark of what that size was,” you know what I mean?

Megan Gill: Yes. No, I know exactly what you mean because I think that's when we get caught in this really, really detrimental cycle of control in order to get the thing that we think we should want. And there's no freedom in that. There's no joy in that, at least in my experience. And it's just like a lot of unfortunate mental gymnastics that, then, we are hyper-focused on like the eating and the exercise and the equation of if I do this plus this I'll get this result, which then takes us away from all of the wonderful things that we want to do with our lives, all of the wonderful things that matter.

I think that it's so difficult, and it does take a lot of energy to do what you're doing with bringing yourself back to like, “Okay!” Do you find that every time that comes up for you and every time you recognize that those thoughts are there and are present for you, that you're able to have a lot more awareness now at this stage of your life to be like, “Oh, this is coming up. Okay, we need to really sit with this for a second and remind ourselves that we are an ever-changing organism, and that's what really matters more than trying to bring myself back to a certain size.” I'm just curious kind of what your mental process is now when those things come up for you.

Maddie McGuire: Great question and I think, yeah, there's definitely so much more awareness on the thoughts coming up and then not getting attached to that thought being something that I actually think or believe, and then kind of giving it meaning and not being so attached to myself or my self-worth.

So one, I've been to a significant amount of therapy, so that helps. Also conversations like this, and I think a couple of my friends, we've actually started having more and more conversations like this. And so, that's helped a lot because then it's not as isolating. You don't feel as alone. I think in general, being able to kind of thought map or thought track a little bit has helped me, again, not attach meaning to every single thought that I'm having and to replace it with something else as opposed to just being like – whatever is coming up and around mainly like how I'm viewing what I look like in my body rather than what I'm feeling like in my body.

Half the time when I'm trying on clothes, I will, as if I'm like, “Oh, this doesn't feel good.” And I'm like, “Why doesn't it feel good? Is it because I'm probably not that size anymore, and there's something like, what are the clothes that do make me feel good? Why do those things feel good?” And also reminding myself, too, “Before I put on these jeans, I felt great.” So maybe just don't wear those effing jeans, you know what I mean? Stop trying to force that.

I also think there is a fitness studio that I go to now, and it's a mix of kind of like a Barry's Bootcamp type of strength training, HIIT classes, spin classes, and then sculpt classes. And in the studio I've never seen a wider range of women at different ages and points of their life where there's a ton of people in their twenties, tons of people in their thirties and forties, and a lot of women in their fifties, sixties, seventies. So in one class, there could be 20 of us, and we're in so many different age groups.

I went out to a happy hour with one of the girls in my class, and she brought that up. She was like, “I feel so empowered when I walk into this space. We're all in different phases of our life, and we're all here like empowering each other, showing up, trying to become a better version of ourselves, trying to be stronger.” And then I was like, “Oh yeah, that is why I love –.” I never walk into that space worried about what I'm looking like in the mirror as I'm doing a workout, or you feel more alive from the energy of the community around you, and you're like, “That woman is 75, and she's kicking ass right now,” and it’s, again, more about that feeling rather than even noticing what she looks like. So I think that's been a huge help in changing that inner dialogue.

Megan Gill: Mm-hmm. I'm just on the brink of [tears] because how beautiful that is and how wonderful that you have a space that has helped you, has helped kind of pull you out of the thinking about it and like pull you back into your body and into the feeling. I can relate as well with my yoga studio that I go to. It's so, so freaking incredibly inspiring and amazing to look around and see an array of different bodies, an array of different ages altogether in this hour class. And that has also been something for me I think that like, gosh, I didn't even really realize until just listening to you reflect about your fitness studio and the culture and community there that, as actors, as someone who grew up in front of the mirror dancing for a lot of my childhood around other kids my age, and even in college dance classes and in theater and high school and different things like that where everyone is your same age, it’s, I think, so much easier to play the comparison game and to be like, “Oh, we're basically the same age, so we “should have a similar body,” or look similarly or blah, blah, blah, whatever that is.

But I think being able to look around a room where you're there to show up and, like you said, better yourself and gain physical strength for your actual health and wellness, instead of it being like, “I'm here to lose X amount of calories,” or whatever, you know, other markers there are out there. I'm so grateful these spaces exist because I think it helps pull us out of that.

I’m just spinning off of everything you just said, but I'm just sitting here thinking one of my good friends at my yoga studio is in her – I believe that she's turning 60 this year, and it's so cool because there's a sculpt class, and it's like the hardest of the classes. It's really gnarly, really intense. And this woman is always at a sculpt class, and it's incredible, and it's so inspiring and she'll sometimes turn to me and be like, “Oh, my gosh, I looked over at you and like, you're still doing it, and you inspired me.” And I was like, “Jenn, are you kidding? I looked over at you, and like you are still in the movement, and that you inspire me.” And just how wonderful to have that experience. I don't know what the point of this is, but I just think it's really special.

Maddie McGuire: I think too, Megan, it's exactly kind of the reframe we're talking about of being more connected, again, to the energy. Again, when you're there, like you're like, “Wow, I'm in a room, yes, for the point of moving my body, and I'm not even thinking about my body, right? And it's like when we're talking about there's so much focus that we have on our bodies, from ourselves, from the career paths that we've chosen. There's so much attention on that.

I didn't even think about what a great thing you brought up of like, oh, when we're in classes, it's all the same age of people. I'm like, I didn't even think about that until we're kind of unpacking this here, but I think that's part of it, to be able to have these spaces where there's celebration, there's all the focus on strength, and again, that empowerment, because I do a sculpt class, so effing hard. I'm always like, “Why am I here? I love/hate it,” you know? I’m going through all the mantras to get through it, and it is true. I never am like, “Oh wow, I need a break right now, and she's still going, I want that in a negative way.” Again, there's so much more empowerment I think when there are spaces where, yeah, it's women of all different ages and phases of life. I'm in a small town right now, and also a lot of people are pregnant, which is like people younger than me, a lot of them younger than me are pregnant. So I've seen them go from not being pregnant to pregnant to after being pregnant and having the baby. There's so many, again, different phases where it's like even if they are focused on how they're looking, that's not the conversation that's happening, and that's not what's being shared in that space.

Megan Gill: Yeah. Oh, gosh. Yeah, and also just like adding the pregnancy body into it all. It's like all of these different bodies. It's really cool and really special to be able to be in a space where it's become less about us staring in the mirror and looking at our bodies and analyzing our bodies.

I think that, just throwing this out there as a little piece for me, I'll force myself to not hike up my leggings when I'm sitting down in a class, or I think I always have the tendency to hide my stomach, just as a side note.

Maddie McGuire: Oh, okay. Yeah.

Megan Gill: Something that my yoga studio space and community has just inspired me to do is to not. Sometimes I'm like, “Okay, I'm just gonna –,” because it feels more comfortable to me, which is something I also feel like I need to unpack on a different day. But I think that just the act of being like, “My body's safe here in this studio. It’s not going to be criticized by this community,” and guess what, I'm never analyzing other people's bodies. So no one's looking at me, at my tummy rolls thinking anything about them. Phew. Yeah, I feel like there's been a lot of personal unpacking for me in that sense as well, which has been really interesting to explore.

Maddie McGuire: Absolutely. And even you bringing that up, Megan. Yeah, it's so funny because as my body's been changing, I noticed a habit. I've had it, I think, since I was a kid, again, that puberty, let's say like 13, 14, 15 range where I didn't even realize I was doing it. I was always kind of grabbing by my love handles or by my stomach. Teeny, little pinches just to be, I don't know, like, “What's there? What's not there,” like a fixation of some sort. And it's been really interesting exploring even wearing different types of clothes to the gym or taking different classes like a spin class versus the sculpt class versus the strength class and how I feel, because I think I've also had a similar fixation with my stomach.

What's funny is I also do a lot of voiceover, and now I do voiceover from home, literally in a closet. I'm not going into a studio where I'm dressing cute and whatever because I'm around producers and around clients, and now it's such a push pull with my stomach because I think, even naturally, if I'm sitting on the couch, I will bring a pillow. I always want something to hold onto and protect that part of me. And I've been trying to be more like, “What if it's open? What if it's free? I'm at home. Let's challenge myself to just lay it all out there.”

And what's funny in voiceover, I got so used to not wearing stuff that had pressure on my stomach, I realized how much better I breathe with my diaphragm and how much more strength and power I have. And so, it's just been something funny that I've started playing around with the clothes I wear in workout classes because sometimes I'm like, “Why can't I breathe?” I'm like, “Oh, because everything's tight. My pants are tight on my stomach, and my sports bra’s tight on my chest, and I can't fricking breathe.” And so, it's been interesting with voiceover. I was like how can I take some of this openness, this fluidness into the clothes I'm wearing working out? What would that change?

Megan Gill: Oh, wow. Ooh, that is a word, truly. And just taking that into the other spaces of your life. I'm even thinking, as a stage actor, my god, the amount of times I was on stage and like the tightest tights and a tight ass leotard, and there was always talk about, “Oh, the dichotomy between keeping your core tight while you're dancing, but at the same time you're fucking singing because it's musical theater,” and that dichotomy too of keeping it tight, yet you need to breathe in order to support your voice. Wow, that's really lovely that you've had this discovery.

Maddie McGuire: It’s been happening like recently too, Megan. I think since we – probably from a year ago when we first kind of met and I was hearing so much about your business. I feel like my brain – I've just been so much more open to explore what comes up, whether that be a feeling, the thought, challenging myself to be like, let's just try something different today with the workout clothes I'm wearing, or whatever the case may be, instead of getting locked into not that being locked into comfort, not that that's a negative thing at all. I just think that that's become such a safety net, especially in COVID for me. Yeah, I'm just ready to write a new permission slip, and that's like what all these findings are is like, “Okay, what's that permission slip we're writing next, and what are we kind of sorting through to get there?”

Megan Gill: Yeah, I think that's a beautiful way of looking at it, giving yourself the permission to explore and have freedom and maybe find the joy in the exploration. Because also hearing you say – oh, what word did you just say, locked into this place of comfort also makes me think of how much control we have to constantly be putting out and having –

Maddie McGuire: Yes.

Megan Gill: – in order to keep ourselves locked in. Whereas giving yourself this permission to go and not have the pillow guarding your belly space and being able to let it relax a little bit, and allowing that to be okay and seeing what that brings up for you, I think there's just so much more freedom and play in that that will hopefully lead to expending less energy on the things that keep us locked in and keep is small and keep us, honestly at least for me from experience, struggling or in that toxic cycle or in the negative self-talk loop or whatever it may be.

Maddie McGuire: Well, and I think that's such a beautiful way to look at it too, Megan, of just the amount of energy expended on control, because that really is what it is. It's like trying to control to feel safe, right? It's like all of it's trying to make us feel safe, but it's almost like when they say you're kinda like the creator of your own cage, you're keeping yourself stuck. Even though you have the key. The door is open, you just don't realize it's open. I feel like it's that same thing. It's like the safety that ultimately is keeping everything contained and stuck in a certain place.

So what I was thinking about in general too, I think that energy, for me it can look a lot like questioning myself, like micro questions of this or that, this or that for my body or for the way I look, and what I've even noticed – and again, I'm so happy I'm in this process of knowing and noticing to, again, figure out ways I want to accept, ways I want to adapt. But I find it that I'm so much more in tune with myself now. Like this workout class, I have the unlimited pass so I can do spin, I can do whatever I want at the studio, and it's so nice to have that freedom to be like, “Okay, what do I wanna do today? Boom, sign up for this.”

But part of what I have is also they've got this really cool infrared sauna that's in the back, and there's only one. And so, you have to sign up for it. You can't go online and sign up because of the way it works. So you have to either go to the front desk and call in or go in and organize a time. I've had this pass since July, let's say, like last July, and I've never used the infrared sauna. And I was like, “Why? Why is that?” And it's so funny, Megan, because even then I was uncomfortable to ask the front desk woman. I was like, “Hmm, how funny. I'm paying for it. Everyone's so nice here. They'll be like, ‘Great, let me show you!’ Like no one's going to care at all.” And so, I've noticed, I feel like it's that it bleeds over into, again, questioning my space or my place in a space and how I'm showing up in this space.

And so, it's just been interesting to notice when I feel very rooted and grounded and connected to my being in my body and how I'm showing up and when I'm like, “Oh, I feel like I'm walking behind myself,” if that makes any sense, trepidatious in even just like a basic ask of, “Hey, can I use this facility? How do I do that? Can I sign up?”

Megan Gill: Almost like a fear of showing up kind of? Or is it there's a little bit of a fear of something? I mean, I can relate with this. I know where you’re going.

Maddie McGuire: It definitely is a fear, right? I don't know exactly what it is, but yeah, it's been funny because it's like even to go to this studio, I passed it so many times before I finally signed up and went, right? So I was really afraid. I was really uncomfortable. And then I did, and I loved it. And so, I feel like there's something that's in this. I don't know if it's – I don't know. It's interesting because, initially, going to the studio, it could be it's obviously new. I don't know any of these people. Will I be accepted here? Will I feel good here? Will I fit in here? So I think there's definitely some form of that. But yeah, it, I just notice it even trickles down into like, I don't know, my movement within my body in spaces.

Megan Gill: Oh, gosh, I feel like this is such an important thing that you're bringing up and something I feel like I can relate with as well. I wonder if it's something to do with being seen possibly?

Maddie McGuire: Yeah, for sure. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Megan Gill: I'm trying to relate with you through my own experiences too, and something I've personally been working on a lot in the last year, for sure, is getting away from the anxious spin of what other people are going to think about me.

So, for instance, with this front desk person, just totally being so present and rooted in myself and my system and my body and my wants and needs to not even worry about what this person is going to think about me, which I think is so hard because, as someone who's a recovering people pleaser –

Maddie McGuire: Oh, same. Preach!

Megan Gill: – who has constantly had these thoughts of, “What do people think about me? What do people think about my body? What do people think about how I look, and am I a good person?” All of these things and these thoughts, it's so, so difficult to be so present and to be so rooted in yourself. And I just love that you're even like acknowledging this and that this is even coming up for you and that you're even questioning why this type of stuff is happening for yourself.

Maddie McGuire: Right?

Megan Gill: Because we never we never talk about this shit. I, for the longest time, didn't fucking realize that I was so anxious about what other people thought about me in anything, in anything. God, it was ruling my life. And I don't know what the answer is, but I do think that something that has been really helpful that I've noticed is presence, presence, presence and knowing that we are good people with good intentions, and this person is probably not going to think anything.

Maddie McGuire: No, because like you said, they're worried about themselves, right? We know that, but it's so – I've been very much so trying actively to be more present, whether that means going for a walk and not taking headphones and looking at my phone or different things, because then I feel like I'm actually more in touch when these feelings erupt inside of me to notice.

And I didn't even realize this until we were talking. I went in with the intention of, “I'm gonna ask about the infrared sauna,” and then her and I were talking about other stuff, and I left, and I literally was walking out the door, took a couple steps out, and I'm like, “Go back in and ask about the infrared sauna.” I got scared even in the moment. I made myself go back in and ask, and it was a lovely conversation, and now I know how to sign up.

But, again, it’s even having that awareness. I felt in my body be like, “What are you doing?” So I don't know. I think that the presence has helped so much. I think this whole year has been that exploring all that comes up with being present and how, again, there's so much duality in that moment. The duality of connecting with her and asking the question and catching myself almost, I don't know, I guess be too afraid to ask her, to go back in, and “Oh, is she gonna think I'm weird that I went back in?” And I'm just like F it, whatever. Here we go. Opening the door again!” And then the duality of yeah, the moment and like letting it unfold.

So the whole year has felt like those two things kind of being held, like the new presence and what that's bringing to my mind and how I'm feeling about things, and then the experience of all of the different things that are coming up within my relationship to my body.

Megan Gill: Almost like proving yourself right and/or wrong in a certain way. Which is again, I think I'm just over here geeking out because I'm sensing this freedom and the joy and the play in that, the play and getting to be like, “Okay, we're gonna take ourself out of our little comfort zone here, and we're gonna just challenge it, whatever that may be. We're gonna just challenge judging ourself for going back in to ask about the infrared sauna. We're gonna do it, so that we can prove to ourselves whatever we need to prove to ourselves.” There doesn't have to be an answer, but the fact that you did that and then I feel like that just opened a new door in a sense of even being like, “Okay –.” And I don't mean to speak for you, but what I'm gathering from you is like, “Okay, I needed to do that to sort of get over the hump of it in a way.” But what's interesting is these humps are always, always, always gonna consistently, consistently, consistently come up.

Like, my god, even this morning in my yoga class, my teacher – I've been going to the studio for over two years now, which is wild. Crazy to think of that. My teacher was like, “Megan, what do you do? What do you do with your life and your work that allows you to be here at this 9:00 AM class?” And we were chatting, chatting. I told her what I did, and then I said, “Do you only teach yoga?” And then I judged myself after that conversation. I judged myself in the conversation, while it was finishing up, and after the conversation I was like, “Why did you say, ‘Did you only teach yoga?’ like you're insinuating that only teaching yoga is a bad thing, because if she wasn't doing other stuff?’” And then I was like, “Well, if you said, ‘What else do you do aside from teach yoga?’ and she didn't do anything else, then you would've made her feel bad in that sense.”

So I really had to have a me-to-me moment where all these different parts of me are chitter chattering, thinking all these different things, and I had to be like, “Okay, no. It’s fine. Literally fine. She's not thinking –,” like how you were saying with the front desk person. “She's not thinking a damn thing about me. We had a lovely conversation with our teacher. So what? We're not perfect. She doesn't care.”

Maddie McGuire: I love this. No, and I love this, Megan, because I feel like what this is is us examining our experience in our bodies and how we show up and what that looks like with connecting with others, connecting to ourselves, the conversations we're having. And I love that example because, you know, being in a town where I am newly making in-person friends, and I love, “Ooh, happy hour with the girls.” I was like, “Yes, let's go!” We’d go for a run on the beach all together, whatever the case may be, those in-person times to connect. And then moving to a new city in a much smaller city that doesn't have as much of an art community that I would naturally be connecting to with acting, with voiceover, with, you know, theater, all the different things, that's been something that's been super interesting is now making new friends, which has been lovely.

—————

Megan Gill: There are a couple things that are coming up for me and like, I don't even know what I'm trying to say around one of them, but I think there's this interesting tie between the way that we show up when we are so hyper aware of when we're in our thoughts around how our body looks and how our body's perceived and those times in our lives where we've been so like, “Oh god, I need to show up this way so that I get this thing or get this result or so that this person likes me or whatever.” And then showing up in the times when that is no longer running the show and we are able to tap in and be present and be unapologetic and show up and be like, “Yeah, this is me. Take it or leave it.” It's so effing hard when the conditioning is – and you've learned that if you do this thing and you show up in a certain way or you look this certain way that people will like you and you'll be generally accepted. And I think that like I also, I don't know, I just think that this is so much of what goes on for a lot of us.

And then the theme that I keep coming back to that you brought up in the beginning of our conversation is, “How do I feel?” Not, “How do I look?” Not, “How the jeans look on me?” Not, “How does this person think I look?” It's, “How do I feel?” And I feel like all of this is connected in a sense, but I think that that piece is so important and such something that I want to shout from the rooftops, from the mountaintop, if you will. Oh, gosh. And even just recently for me, like I got this pair of jeans from Old Navy on sale for $20, and they looked so good. I was like, “I’m snatched. These look so good on me!” in the store. And then I put them back on when I got home because I'm like, “Do I really like them though?” And I was like, I think I need to return them, man, because yeah, they look good. Yeah, they make like, you know, like a lot of my jeans these days are baggier and really comfy, cozy. I can sit down and fucking breathe in them.

Maddie McGuire: What a thought. Yes.

Megan Gill: What a thought, and this is just what you said in the beginning about the jeans and how do I feel in them? I'm like, yeah, dude. I had a similar experience where I am gonna return them because, sure, they look good, but I don't feel good in them. And I think that leading our lives from this place of like feeling, whether it's, “How do the jeans feel on me, how do I feel in my body? How does my stomach feel when I consume certain foods? How are my energy levels? How do I feel after I go for a walk outside or take a nap.”

This, I think, is such an important theme of being able to tap in and recognize and have the awareness of how you feel and switching the narrative of what we were taught and conditioned by society of the thinking, thinking, thinking, thoughts, thoughts, thoughts ruling our lives and switching it to, “How do I feel in my body?” and letting that like steer the ship more so, you know?

And even in our lives with the work we're doing, it's like, “Well, how do you feel when you're doing voiceover work? Would you feel the same if you were to get back into the theatrical world and auditions were being thrown at you and you were so fucking stressed because you had all this voiceover work to get done, which is what you really love and care about, but you're trying to memorize all of these sides that you don't even really care about, and just being so real and honest and discerning with ourselves about how we want to feel in our bodies, in our lives, around the people that we share them with.

Maddie McGuire: Girl, that was like, preach. I was like, “Pastor Megan is in the house!” No, honestly, Megan, what you just said, I think is so beautiful and so pertinent. That is kind of the antithesis of, I feel like the conversation we're ultimately having. And I think that that is exactly it. I ultimately know, in this moment, I'm living my life. It's happening right now. Never gonna get it back. And how I feel right now is what I'm gonna remember. I probably actually won't remember any of the bullshit going through my head. Rarely do I. Even if I think back to the moment when I left and then went back in to go ask for the sauna, I don't remember exactly what I thought; I just remember how I felt in the entire interaction. And so, it's like, yeah, what would being so cognizant and aware and almost prioritizing the feeling, how would that shift how we serve ourselves and, again, create because that's ultimately the experience, right, is like the feeling of what's happening. And I feel like once you start getting more connected to that, you can't depart from the feeling.

Megan Gill: It's like once you see it kind of a thing, but once you feel it, you can't unfeel it.

Maddie McGuire: Yeah, truthfully, right? Because it's like, you know how there's always, they call it like bottoms up or top down, to self-soothe or different things in therapy? That's not the word of soothing, but it's like, “Bottoms up.” We can essentially use a technique to calm the body down and then work with the mind, or some people, specifically people who have ADHD, sometimes that is hard for them to do. So it's actually better to go top down and maybe play a game of Solitaire while they're talking about something, so their brain actually has something to do while they're organizing through their thoughts and feelings. And I feel like when I started learning about that, I'm like, oh yeah, how funny that we instantly go to the brain to help ourselves when the body is so much larger than just the brain. Why are we not utilizing that more? And I feel like that's kind of what we're discussing. That's the feeling, and this is the thinking.

Yeah, that's how I'm starting to feel even in life as I'm putting on clothes to go out, as I'm walking into a restaurant with my husband or to meet a friend, noticing what the hell is going on feeling-wise inside.

Megan Gill: And how that brings you into presence and allows you to show up as your truest self, I would imagine, because we’re not stirring in our brains and we're not overthinking and we're not in the anxiety spin or the thinking about the past. We're right here. We're able to fully show up and just allow our hearts to be open.

Oh, gosh, it's so interesting also because as actors and performers we've studied this for so long and we're so used to doing this type of work, what a cool thing that we're able to talk about and share today. It's like, “Oh gosh. This is what I want for all of us. I wish I had this ten years ago for my little actor self,” you know?

Maddie McGuire: Oh, preach, girl. I know. I can't even imagine. I go back to my cute, little actor self ten years ago and what if she got to listen to this conversation! What's so cool too, Megan, is I had no idea where this conversation was gonna go when we started. Who knew we'd end up here, but here we are. And I'm like my little 22-year-old actor self I think just would've felt so seen so much earlier than I did actually finally feel seen.

Megan Gill: And safe to actually be or explore what it is to “be yourself!” We're told as actors, “Be yourself,” in different ways, whether it's in your slate or like bringing piece of yourself to the character or just showing up as ourselves onstage even if we're playing a character. But it's so hard to connect to yourself if there's such a disconnect to your body and to yourself.

Maddie McGuire: Well, and I think you and I have probably seen that not only have we experienced that probably as young actors – and you could tell. You could tell when someone is like technically a very, very good actor and they work their ass off, but that there's a disconnect because they're not rooted within who they are or they're wanting to use acting as kind of like a scapegoat to not be seen or heard as they are. But yet you will never be able to fully depart from yourself.

Megan Gill: Right.

Maddie McGuire: I always say it's the relationship we obviously need to prioritize is you literally never can get away from you. From the time that you are born to the time that you are not here, you're with you every step of the way.

“  That was a gift that I feel like being in creative circles, being in creativity, on one hand there were times where I was overly critical about what my body looked like. And then there was this beautiful time period and season where I remember just being so rooted in myself and rooted. I had so much self-trust in what was gonna happen and what I was gonna do. And I was way more connected to the storytelling aspect than the character, than how it looked on screen and what the end product ended up being.    And so, I think that part of me is exploring, now that I'm not currently in that type of a creative community or circle, not to replicate that feeling or that thing, but what does that mean or look like now?”

- Maddie McGuire

Maddie is a certified coach and a SAG-AFTRA performer. She’s been in the entertainment industry for over a decade and is obsessed with storytelling. She’s done over 100+ voiceover jobs, booked national commercials, guest stars, indie features, and print jobs. She’s also created her own projects that have gotten into film festivals and has written TV pilots that were semi-finalists in writing competitions… And she’s never stopped growing, learning, and expanding her skillset and definition of who she is as an artist…. AND as a business owner steering the ship of her career.

Maddie’s Personal InstagramMaddie’s Coaching InstagramMaddie’s Website

Maddie is currently recording season 2 of her podcast Get Messy - and she’s VERY excited about some of the amazing women I've already been interviewing. Spotify Link / Apple Podcasts Link

The Mountain is You - Brianna Wiest

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While I’m not a licensed therapist, registered dietician, or medical health professional and cannot speak to body image topics from a clinical, trauma-informed place, I am an expert of lived experience. I’m an academic of my own body, and I’m passionate about facilitating conversations with other humans about their relationships with their bodies. I believe it’s important to continue conversations about healthy body image in creative spaces as a means to heal individuals as well as the collective whole. But just know the information presented in this medium is not professional mental health advice or medical advice, and any questions or concerns you have should always be directed to your health providers.

Everyone please welcome my wonderful friend and fellow creative Scarlett Dyer to A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations! Scarlett and I met when we both first moved to Los Angeles in 2019 through the Crash Acting community, and we have been friends ever since. Scarlett is an actor, a fashion designer, a costume designer, a writer, and an activist. She designed the wardrobe for my short film, “A Broadway Body,” and she has recently written an original feature film screenplay featuring a female lead who’s in a wheelchair.

Scarlett is a bright, shiny, vibrant incredible force of a human being, not to mention extraordinarily talented, and I am so thrilled for you to hear our conversation. We discuss all things ableism in Hollywood, how Scarlett is working to normalize leading roles that feature disabled actors, and her experience of existing in a wheelchair as an actor. She is making such an impact in the many different creative areas she lives in, and I cannot wait to see where she is ten years from now.

“ When I'm out with my friends at a bar just, like, living my normal life and some old man comes up to me and is like, “I just think it's so great that you're out living your life. You are out in public at night having fun. Good for you,” or someone else is like, “Um, you don't look like you need a wheelchair. Why are you in a wheelchair?” Like, excuse me. Don't look —? What is that? What is that? Talk about body image. Like, what is that? What is that? Because I don't look classified disabled to you? That is so offensive, not only to me, but the entire community because it comes in all different shapes, sizes, forms, everything. ”

- Scarlett Dyer

Scarlett Dyer: Yes, I did just write a screenplay. It is a romcom, and it's called Get Lucky. It's set in Ireland. I went to Ireland about a year ago, and I was just so inspired, and I had so many just ideas coming to me driving around in a van and looking at cows and sheep and I was like, “This is so a romcom. This needs to be romcom.” And I was like, “I have to write this.”

Megan Gill: I love that.

Scarlett Dyer: I literally took things that actually happened and implemented it in a more dramatic way. So it's very close to home to me. And it features a female lead who uses a wheelchair because I'm a wheelchair user, and as an actor and a writer and a designer, that's really what I want to bring into the industry and to the world is a greater representation for this community because it has been so, so underrepresented. And we need a female lead in a romcom who is not tokenized, who is a real person, who is iconic and fun and badass, the whole nine. We need that. We need to see that. So yeah, I wrote it.

Megan Gill: You wrote it, Scarlett! You wrote the damn thing. And also she sounds a lot like the energy that you bring and the energy that you give.

Scarlett Dyer: Oh, I channeled myself. I sort of wrote what I know I guess.

Megan Gill: Right? Isn't that what all the advice tells us to do?

Scarlett Dyer: That's what they all say, just write what you know! And so, I was like, “Okay!” The character, she is different from me in a lot of ways. She's fictionalized. She has things that are a lot different from me, but we share the same disability. In that way we share similarities due to that. But she's different from me, yeah. I wanted to make sure of that.

Megan Gill: Oh, I'm just so glad that you are writing this role, and would the goal be for you to play her?

Scarlett Dyer: I definitely want to play the role, for sure, for sure, for sure. So this is kind of like the first thing I've written. This is my first feature film that I've written, original feature film. But I don't really know where to begin with producing, so I definitely think I might need some help with that area, just getting it to the right people and, you know, me making friends in that kind of way, but acting in it, yes, I'm so down for that. Yeah.

Megan Gill: Yeah. I love that, and I think that's really important and an important way to get your voice out into the world, not only as the writer but also as the person portraying the role as well.

Scarlett Dyer: Yeah, yeah. Yes, thank you for saying that.

Megan Gill: Of course. When I look at you and I look at the work that you're writing and the work that you do and how you show up in acting class and how you show up in the commercials that you're in, and I'm just frickin’ cheering you on because you're right, we do need more representation, and it's unfortunate that the cultural norm just chooses to leave disability out of the conversation a lot of times. They choose to leave a lot of things out, but it's like, this is something I feel like that we are starting to see a little bit more and more, but it’s not the norm. It’s not the go-to, right?

Scarlett Dyer: It’s really not. It's really not. Yeah, it's overlooked, and I am all about representation for all communities, for all marginalized groups. But yeah, you know, the disabled community has been so overlooked. And even going into auditions for these roles, like “wheelchair user,” they don't know what they're looking for. Are you looking for a manual wheelchair? Are you looking for a power wheelchair? It's different and sometimes they don't quite know what to expect, and that can also conflict with casting and it kind of can make it awkward sometimes. And it's like, “Well are you able to do this? Are you able to move your arms in this way and do this sort of thing?” And it's kind of like that sort of dehumanizes it in a way.

So I just really, with this script, it really shows how this character lives her life, and that is really what I wanted to show.

Megan Gill: I feel like that hits for me for you, being able to show up as you are and not have it questioned, not have someone ask you something.

Scarlett Dyer: I get asked so many things.

Megan Gill: I can only imagine. But also it’s so devastating and sad because that just falls down like the emotional labor of that –

Scarlett Dyer: Yeah.

Megan Gill: – constantly, I can imagine, is coming back to you and coming back to you. And yes, there's a lack of education in general in society, in our culture

Scarlett Dyer: Yeah, there is.

Megan Gill: But then showing up in a space, like in the casting office and having these questions asked of you, where we're already, you know, as actors, a lot of times you're showing up to an audition in person. The nerves are already there, and it's not fair for them to be tenfold because you're like, “Well, are they gonna ask me something out of pocket today? What weird question am I gonna have to answer today?”

Scarlett Dyer: And don't get me wrong, there have been so many, so many cool instances where they're so nice and so cool and like so accepting and excited to be casting differently-abled roles. But sometimes they'll just expect that I can do something, and then I show up to the thing and it's like I can't do it. And even some of the things my agent sends me – I had to have a meeting with them and just say, “This is kind of hard for me to do, these kinds of things.” Because doing self-tapes even when it's like, “Okay, well, they're obviously not gonna pick me because I can't do this activity,” you know?

Megan Gill: Mm-hmm.

Scarlett Dyer: Or I can do it, but I can do it in a different way – in my own way.

Megan Gill: You can do it in your own way, right.

Scarlett Dyer: Yeah, where it's like, I'm not sure they're gonna go for that. They're just gonna want somebody who can do it easily, quote “normally,” which I hate.

Megan Gill: Yeah, I hate that too. I'm sitting here thinking do you ever put yourself on tape for those roles where you're like, “They're probably not going to cast me because I quote unquote ‘can't do this’ the way they're probably gonna quote unquote ‘want to see it?’”

Scarlett Dyer: I still do.

Megan Gill: Okay, I love that. I love to hear that.

Scarlett Dyer: Yeah, I still do. Thank you. That’s so supportive!

Megan Gill: Even though I know mentally it potentially could be taxing I to have the preconceived notion that maybe you won't book it, but it's only because I've been there in my own ways as an actor.

Scarlett Dyer: Absolutely.

Megan Gill: And I don't mean to speak for you in that matter.

Scarlett Dyer: No, no, no. That is so accurate. And it's also like, okay, are they gonna see this and be like, “Hmm, nice try sweetie”? And that thought kind of makes me be like sometimes I don't want to do it. But then I over think that, and I'm like, “No, I'm getting in front of these people. It’s fine. I'm just gonna do it. I'm gonna do my best.” And yeah, I just recently did one for a makeup brand and they wanted – I do my makeup in a very unique way, and it's not typical, “Get ready with me.”

Megan Gill: You did a tutorial, and you shared it!

Scarlett Dyer: I did share it.

Megan Gill: And it was incredible, and I'm so glad you did that. It’s also so badass.

Scarlett Dyer: Thank you. That means everything. I love makeup. I've taught myself how to do makeup in my own way. And so yeah, they were like, “Show us how you – show us a little makeup routine.” So I did. I did one for them, and I didn't hear back, and I was kind of getting my hopes up a little because I was like, “Oh, maybe they'll want to feature this unique way of doing makeup.” But it's okay. I don't let it get to me. I just am like, “That's fine. Next!”

Megan Gill: I can see a world in which somebody is going to represent you in that way, someone's gonna be like, “Her. We want her, and we want her way of doing it.”

Scarlett Dyer: Yeah. Yeah. That’s really special.

Megan Gill: It would be incredible to see a beauty spot where you are doing the makeup in your own way.

Scarlett Dyer: I know. Thank you for saying that.

Megan Gill: It's not just you doing it in your own way; you're representing this whole community of people.

Scarlett Dyer: I would love if someone with any sort of disability went into Sephora and saw a video of a makeup brand. You know how they have little displays or something. I would love that if it was like, “Oh my god, look how she's doing her makeup. Maybe I should try it that way. Who is that?”

Megan Gill: I'm getting chills!

Scarlett Dyer: Megan! You're making me get jealous. I want to see that too.

Megan Gill: I want to see that for you and for everyone who moves in this world in – I don’t mean to say in an unconventional way, but in a way that society doesn't deem as –

Scarlett Dyer: As conventional, as normal.

Megan Gill: The way it’s represented in the mass media.

Scarlett Dyer: Yes. Yes, and it’s all about adaptation, really, my body and how I move, how I work, how I do all of the things that I love, like how I draw and all these things. I’ve taught myself through years, and I've never had a bitter bone in my body about using a chair or having, quote, “limitations.” I don't see it as limitations. I see it as kind of my thing, you know?

Megan Gill: Yes, girl. I know, and as your friend, someone who loves you, you're going to get hired for that. I know it. I know it, and the fact that you believe that deep down, I mean, just like everything, it radiates out of you at all moments. The whole time that I've known you, I've always received that type of energy from you, which I also think is really important for you to be representing the disabled community in the media with this type of energy.

Scarlett Dyer: Yeah, thank you for saying that because there's so much taboo around it. I don't know if you've seen, I've been making funny videos about it, literally things people have said to me and how I wish I responded. And it's things like that and things I run into on a daily basis. It's like this wall in my apartment. Let's just normalize this. It's human. I'm not an alien.

I love having conversations with people like you about this, and there's a special way to have the conversation, and it's like not coming up to somebody and being like, “Hey, why are you in a wheelchair?” It's befriending the person and then being like, “So can I ask you about your, and how you – because you're so – the way you move and like the way you work is so cool, and I just want to know more about it.” That is okay with me. I love talking about that. But if it's like said in a rude way, like, “So, like, why are you in a wheelchair”

Megan Gill: Yeah, no. That should never be a thing that's said to you.

Scarlett Dyer: No, and it has, and it's okay. I've grown used to it. It's mainly from random strangers, so I try not to let it bother me. It’s so fucking awkward when I'm out with my friends at a bar just living my normal life and some old man comes up to me and is like, “I just think it's so great that you're out living your life. You're out in public at night having fun. Good for you,” or someone else is like, “You don't look like you need a wheelchair. Why are you in a wheelchair?” Like, excuse me? I don't look –? What is that? What is that? That is body image. Like, what is that? What is that, because I don't look classified disabled to you? That is so offensive not only to me, but the entire community because it comes in all different shapes, sizes, forms, everything. It's so offensive.

—

Megan Gill: So in light of what you're writing, you are writing this piece for a wheelchair user, right? You mention that a lot of times you'll go in for an audition, maybe for a commercial where the breakdown says wheelchair user. Is the professional life you’re living as an actor right now; are you being sent out for this breakdown that does not mention a wheelchair user? Is that very much in your talks with agents and everything?

Scarlett Dyer: I would say 70-80% of the things my agent sends me, I would say that percentage is non-wheelchair roles. It's just like Gen Z, cool, hip vibe. And that was the Venmo thing. They did not cast a wheelchair, and that's what made me so fucking happy. Same with I booked an AT&T commercial.

Megan Gill: Oh, my gosh, congrats, girl!

Scarlett Dyer: Thank you! I filmed it in the early fall. But you know what? Commercials are great. Commercials are great, but sometimes mm. So yeah, that percentage of commercial work is non-wheelchair specifying, but I do get some that are like, “We want a wheelchair.”

And then in terms of theatrical, most of the things they send me are wheelchair users, which is interesting. Yeah, but some of the things they send me are also non-wheelchair, like this person is just a 20-something-year-old.

Megan Gill: The breakdown doesn’t specify?

Scarlett Dyer: Yeah, and my headshots, they show a peek of the chair. I know, it's cute. I worked with Cathryn Farnsworth and she's the fucking best.

Megan Gill: Your chair is not the star.

Scarlett Dyer: She's not the star, but like she’s the supporting. Her name is Beth. I actually need a new one.

Megan Gill: Scarlett plus Beth. You get both of us when you book.

Scarlett Dyer: Look, it's a package deal, baby. It's a package deal. I worked with Cathryn Farnworth, and oh, my god, she was so amazing to work with. Ugh, I love her. We wanted to show pieces of the chair, so when I get sent in for non-wheelchair-user roles – and my agents have told me, “We submit you for non-wheelchair roles,” and I'm like, “Thank you!” And they're like, “Of course.” They're like, “You're a cool, hip girl.” I'm like, “Thank you. But we just need to show the chair in the picture, so they know, so it's not weird like when you get to the audition and it's like, “Oh, shocker.” I understand that, but, at the same time, why is it like that?

Megan Gill: Why is it like that? Why can’t you just show up as you and have that be accepted? And have that be like, “Hi, welcome, Scarlett!” You’re literally incredible.

Scarlett Dyer: Thank you. I know. That's what I want to change. That's what I want to change. And that's why playing Juliet was so impactful for me because this famous Shakespearean character is not canonically in a wheelchair. However, that does not mean that she could not have been in a wheelchair. Juliet very possibly could have been a wheelchair user, and we just wanted to show this amazing, sexy show. It was just so special and meaningful to me.

And our director, Emilia, who you know. She directed your iconic film. She was just so, so sweet, and the way she worked around my chair and the way she had the stage arranged, and the way she had Romeo around, it was just so beautiful, and I am forever, forever grateful for her for that because that’s how it always should be. I don't want it to ever be awkward for people. And I feel like a lot of times, sometimes it's like, “Oh, well, where are we gonna put her? Where is the chair gonna fit?” you know, this kind of thing. And it's like, “No, let's arrange the set around your chair. Let's arrange the acting around it. Let's include your chair in the acting. Because that’s what I do. Obviously when I'm acting, I have movement, and my chair is kind of an extension of me, so I just include it in the movements of my body. So yeah, it was just really special.

Megan Gill: Thank you for speaking on that because I think that is huge, and what an impactful experience for you. And even just speaking about what my experience of entering Crash was, and I think you were already in class. You were one of my first scene partners.

Scarlett Dyer: I was. I think I was. What scene did we do?

Scarlett Dyer: Oh my God. It was The Favorite.

Megan Gill: But I remember coming into your night of class, and there was no question about whether or not you could move around the space.

Scarlett Dyer: None, and that’s also the acting teacher and the class, Ben.

Megan Gill: Of course, it’s a huge testament to Ben and the whole community. But for me to come in and see that it was just incredible as a witness.

Scarlett Dyer: That's so meaningful.

Megan Gill: And it speaks volumes of Ben Mathes and also the community.

Scarlett Dyer: It really does. The Crash community is so beautiful and so loving, and no one has ever, ever – Ben, I don't even have words. I hope he is listening. Ben, I hope you're listening.

Megan Gill: Hi, Ben!

Scarlett Dyer: Hi, Ben! I literally, I don't even have words for what he has done for me. I was so unsure. I was like, “I want to be an actor, but I don't know if I'm accepted in this space.” And he was just like, “Shut the fuck up. You are.” He literally was just like, “No, here's your ramp. Get the fuck on the stage and do it.” The support he has given and the community of Crash, it's just like no one has ever, ever been like, “Oh, well, I don't know if I can do this scene with Scarlett because this character isn't a wheelchair user.” No, it's never been like that. It's never been like that.

Scarlett Dyer: And I love this community. It's so loving, and all of my friends, like, hello. I literally would have no friends if I didn't have Crash.

Megan Gill: Literally same.

Scarlett Dyer: So if you're looking to audit an acting class, I highly recommend Crash Acting.

Megan Gill: Crash Acting. It’s the place to go. You won't regret it.

Scarlett Dyer: You won't regret it. You will literally cry every time, but in the best way.

Megan Gill: Oh, my god. It's true. I'm bawling every single class.

Okay, my heart, even just expressing that you wanted to act, you wanted to be an actor, because you went to school for fashion design.

Scarlett Dyer: I did.

Megan Gill: And you didn’t act during that period of time?

Scarlett Dyer: I did. So I've kind of always acted. I've gone through different ups and downs and stages in my life where I was like, “Oh yes! I want to be an actor!” But then when I was little, yes, it was like I want to be on stage. I used to want to be a singer. I used to want to sing onstage. Then I kind of got into the teenage years and it was kind of like I let others' opinions get to me. And this is a really sad story, but I feel like it needs to be shared.

So, when I was in high school, I auditioned for Liesl in The Sound of Music, and I was like, “Okay, I love fashion, I love acting, but I really want to do this. I really want to act. I love singing. I want to do it. I'm gonna audition.” And I was so excited, and I got to the audition. I did it. And then after that the teacher, who was also the choir teacher and I was in chorus, I knew her. I was never really her favorite. She had favorites. She had favorites, as they all do.

Megan Gill: I was gonna say, they always do.

Scarlett Dyer: There's always a boy and a girl that are just, “Oh, they're so perfect! They're the perfect musical theater!”

Megan Gill: Oh, I hate it.

Scarlett Dyer: And I don't consider myself a musical theater actor. This was just the high school play. It happened to be Sound of Music because basic, but anyway

Megan Gill: We did Sound of Music in high school too.

Scarlett Dyer: Of course you did! It's so basic. Were you in it?

Megan Gill: No. I didn't make it.

Scarlett Dyer: Me either, girl. So here's the tea. I literally didn't get a callback. They had callbacks for this small-town, high-school fucking play. And I was like, cool, cool. I wasn't bitter. I was just like, “Okay, maybe I need to improve a little.” Maybe I need to take lessons, singing lessons, acting like, whatever.

So I went to the choir teacher slash director, and I said, “So I'm just curious, is there something I can work on to, you know, perfect – or not perfect, but get better at my craft of what I want to do?” And she was like, “Sweetie, no. You have the voice; you have the talent. It's just this show requires dancing, and you can't dance. And also Liesl is the tallest of the Von Trapp children, and you are in your chair, and you're shorter than the youngest. So it would just look weird in the lineup. It wouldn't be right. It wouldn't be right for you to be on this stage in this show.” And that kind of broke me. That really fucking broke me. I'm not gonna lie.

After that it was like, stage fright. Nope. No. I'll study fashion. I'll costume design. Yeah, I started with costume design, but then I turned into fashion, and I was like, okay, I can have my acting in this way. I can be a part of that community through designing the clothes for the actors. And it made me sick because what I really wanted to do was act and then I got here.

Megan Gill: Wait, so can you give me a timeline of about how old you were when that conversation happened?

Scarlett Dyer: I was 16 when that happened. Yeah, and then I moved out here when I was 18, and my mom was just like, “Look, fuck these hoes. I think you need to do this. you’re a fucking actor since day one. You've always wanted to be on stage. Do it. What are you doing? Do it.”

So I stayed in fashion school, and I'm so glad I did because I loved it. But I got signed with an agency, and I was so happy. And then I got in Crash, and I told Ben the whole trauma story of that, and my entire world shifted on its head. I was literally like, “No, fuck that. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna make a change in the industry and in the world, and I'm not gonna say her name because I don't want to get called out, but you know who you're girl.

Megan Gill: You know what you did.

Scarlett Dyer: You know what you did. So yeah, and this is the head space – of course, I still get in my head like, you know, as we all do. It’s the not only am I good enough, but also what if they chicken out and they're like, “Oh, we're just gonna cast an able-bodied person and put them in a wheelchair.” Like, “Ugh, this is too much work.”

Megan Gill: No, no, no, no, no.

Scarlett Dyer: Like, no. And that's a huge thing now. So I still have that fear, but I know I'm gonna do my damnedest to change it, to change that whole thought process and scenario.

Megan Gill: We need you, and we need your voice. And I'm so, so proud – proud of you? I'm proud of your mom.

Scarlett Dyer: I know. I'm so grateful for her.

Megan Gill: I don't know, proud of her feels like a weird thing to say, but it's like I'm so glad that she advocated for you and that you advocated for yourself.

Scarlett Dyer: Oh my god, let me tell you about this woman. Oh my god, she raised me the way I am to be like nothing can stop me. Nothing can stop me. She never ever was like, “You can't do that because you're in a wheelchair,” ever. My dad also, but my mom and I have a different relationship, and we're honestly more like sisters, it feels like a lot of the time. And we vibe on – we're just so similar. She fought for me so many times.

There was another instance where I auditioned for this new theater program. I was 13, and the stage was not accessible, so I couldn't even – the auditions were on the stage. I couldn't even get on the stage to do the audition, so I had to do the stage on the floor in front of everyone, and the room was full of everyone, every teenager in the upstate New York area who was auditioning, and I was terrified. I did a monologue from Twilight, and I did the “Flightless Bird” song in the prom scene in Twilight. I sang that shit, and everyone else did musical theater, and I was like, “Nope. I'm gonna do Twilight.

Megan Gill: “I’m gonna do my own thing. Hell yeah.”

Scarlett Dyer: So I didn't get in, and the guy, the director of the thing, called my mom and was like, “We wanted more than anything to get Scarlett in here, but we just can't because the stage isn’t inaccessible,” and my mom was like, “So build a fucking ramp,” and he was like, “It's in a school, so we don't have the rights to do that.” “So ask the school’s superintendent or whatever,” and he was like, “We don't have the –.” It was just excuse after excuse after excuse. And finally she was like, “Okay, then find a different space. If you really want her to be a part of your project, you can find something that will accommodate her.” And he was like, “We don't have the funds for that.” So she was just like, “Okay, this is gonna devastate her, but okay.”

So that was sort of the first breaking point, and then the Sound of Music thing happened, and I was like, “Oh cool, I'm gonna – I'm done. No.” Then I moved to LA, and I was like –

Megan Gill: Bye, bitches!

Scarlett Dyer: Bye, bitches! Bye, upstate New York! No, not that there's anything wrong with upstate New York, but you know.

Megan Gill: Right. Totally. But it's that way that certain educators are approaching the conversation around not just different shapes of able-bodied humans, but not to mention that disabled humans are in the mix too.

Scarlett Dyer: Uh-huh, and I love what you talk about body image in all shapes and sizes and everything. That so goes hand-in-hand with this. It really does because I feel like sometimes they just don't see it.

Megan Gill: And it's about representation of all communities, like you were saying.

Scarlett Dyer: Yeah, and I don't want to come off like I'm only fighting for the disabled community.

Megan Gill: But you're also an advocate for that specific community.

Scarlett Dyer: I'm also an advocate for this community because I'm a part of it, but I'm an advocate for all communities who are underrepresented, and that is my goal as an artist is to make everyone feel welcome and comfortable and seen. So yeah, it goes all around.

Megan Gill: I think that's really special and really important, and we need more artists and creatives like you trying to really get representation in all of these different spaces.

Scarlett Dyer: Yes.

Megan Gill: Like in the media across the freaking board.

Scarlett Dyer: Across the board. I told you this before we started recording, but the way you see people and the way you represent body image is just so meaningful, and you post so many beautiful things that I'm just like, wow, that actually made my day. If I'm having a shitty day or whatever, like today. I was having a shitty day. I'm no longer having a shitty day. We’ve turned that day around, honey. But being here with you, you are so just magnetic and sweet and adoring and accepting, and you always make everyone feel comfortable, so thank you. We need more artists like you as well.

“ I don't even have words for what [Ben Mathes] has done for me. I was so unsure. I was like, “I want to be an actor, but I don't know if I'm accepted in this space.” And he was just like, “Shut the fuck up. You are.” He literally was just like, “No, here's your ramp. Get the fuck on the stage, and do it.” The support he has given and the community of Crash, it's just like no one has ever, ever been like, “Oh, well, I don't know if I can do this scene with Scarlett because this character isn't a wheelchair user.” No, it's never been like that. It's never been like that.”

- Scarlett Dyer

Scarlett Dyer is an actor, fashion/costume designer, writer & advocate based in Los Angeles. Originally from Upstate NY, Scarlett moved to L.A. after high school to study fashion design at FIDM and pursue her love of acting. Since moving here in 2017, Scarlett has shown a runway collection, starred in a production of Romeo & Juliet, costumed multiple shows, been featured in national commercials and co-wrote a rom-com with her badass mom. One of her goals as an artist is to bring inclusivity into all phases of the industry especially for those with different-abilities.

Email: [email protected]

IMDB: www.imdb.com/name/nm1527567/

Website: www.houseofscarlettdesigns.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/scarlett.dyer

Keep an eye out for Scarlett’s upcoming feature film “Get Lucky!”

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While I’m not a licensed therapist, registered dietician, or medical health professional and cannot speak to body image topics from a clinical, trauma-informed place, I am an expert of lived experience. I’m an academic of my own body, and I’m passionate about facilitating conversations with other humans about their relationships with their bodies. I believe it’s important to continue conversations about healthy body image in creative spaces as a means to heal individuals as well as the collective whole. But just know the information presented in this medium is not professional mental health advice or medical advice, and any questions or concerns you have should always be directed to your health providers.

Trigger Warning: This conversation contains discussion of eating disorders, body dysmorphia, and weight loss drugs. There is a lot of nuance in our conversation around cultural conditioning of weight gain stigma and the stigma of weight loss drugs. Please take care of yourselves as you listen and avoid if these topics might be triggering for you.

Everyone please welcome my dear friend and fellow actor Kacie Patricia to A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations! Kacie and I met at Crash Acting and instantly hit it off. She’s an insanely talented actor, a sweet angel of a human being, and I can’t wait for you to hear her story.

In our conversation, Kacie opens up about her body image story and how seeking weight loss drugs pulled her out of a toxic, all-or-nothing body image cycle. Her vulnerability to share about her journey was so brave, and I feel so grateful to have a space where my guests feel safe enough to open up about some really tough topics. Kacie walked us through her story from when she was young until now. She shares about how her all-or-nothing mentality sabotaged how she’s previously tried to care for her body, and she opens up about how her past silent suffering, shame cycles, and how her journey of seeking weight loss medication has forced her to open up and talk about her body image struggles.

Kacie’s vulnerability opened my eyes and my heart, and I hope hearing her story does the same for you.

“ All we can do is just keep talking about it and just trying to change it and giving ourselves safe spaces to talk to each other about it. Because it’s felt really, really, really healing for me, this conversation specifically, but just this past year in therapy and the journey that I've gone on. I healed a part of myself that I did not know needed to be healed, or I started to at least. We’re never fully healed. But those insecurities will always be there.”

- Kacie Patricia

Kacie Patricia: When I think about my body image, the word impossible comes up. I feel like I've had an impossible relationship with my body for literally as long as I can remember. I probably wanna say it started in middle school, even before. But when I think about it, it's interesting because I'm like, well, I never had anybody tell me that I was fat or looked different. It's society that makes you feel that way. It's like I was never told or felt a certain way, you know? I don't know. I'm trying to pinpoint in my mind the moment where I was like, “Oh, I don't feel good about myself,” or “I don't look like my friends,” or “I don't look like this person,” or “How do I look like this person?” and there really isn't a moment, but there’s obviously magazines and TV and all the girls that I looked up to as a kid and friends.

And so, when I think about when I was younger, some of the big moments that stand out were my mom would always look at herself in the mirror and grab her stomach or the sides of her body and be like, “Oh my god, I'm so fat. Oh my god, I'm so fat.” And I would see that and I never said anything. I never really said anything until I was older. But that was really detrimental to the way that I was thinking about myself as a tween.

Megan Gill: Like the witnessing of that over and over again.

Kacie Patricia: The witnessing of that.

Megan Gill: Of what it subconsciously does to you kind of thing?

Kacie Patricia: Yeah, exactly. And I remember my best friend in middle school had a really, really, really intense relationship with her body. And she would not eat for days, and she would go to the gym and run on the treadmill for hours and burn thousands of calories at a time. And she would go to these really, really extreme lengths for days at a time to try to achieve this body. And she always talked about how she thought she was so fat or she can't eat this today, or she can eat this next week or not today. And I just remember I personally never felt like I wanted to do those things to myself. But seeing how intense it got for her, I was like, “Oh my God. If she feels this way about herself, how should I be feeling about myself? Oh my God. Something is going on here.” But also we were kids, so it was just like we weren't thinking about it that deeply, you know? It was just kind of like, “This is intense, but, you know, we're in middle school, so.”

But yeah, it was really, really, really intense. And she was my closest friend from like seventh, eighth, ninth grade. And then I remember kind of realizing as we got older that she was just bigger boned, you know? Her body wasn't made to be so tiny, and she was working towards this body that she was never gonna be able to achieve most likely without starving herself and making herself sick. And it was really, really sad to see. Looking back, I haven't thought about this in like a really long time, actually. I hope she's doing well, and I hope that she's worked on that relationship and it's really, really sad to think about how intense she was feeling and these extreme lengths she was going to at such a young age. We were, like, 12, 13 years old. I think I remember telling my mom about it and my mom feeling really bad, but it definitely started making me think about myself more.

I remember she was just a little bit bigger than me. She was taller than me. She always had a flat stomach and a proportionate body. It was just like her legs were a little bit bigger and her shoulders were a little bit broader. She was just a little bit bigger. That was it. And I think I always was smaller, and maybe she thought she was trying to achieve the way I looked or our other friends looked, when it was just like never gonna happen for her. And it was just really, really, really sad to think that was happening at such a young age.

Kacie Patricia: But for me, I think the biggest issues for me have always been I’ve never had a flat stomach my entire life.

Megan Gill: Girl, can I relate with you on that?

Kacie Patricia: Never, and I've always thought, “Okay, there's something wrong with me. Everything else looks okay. But this is a part of me that I just cannot figure out.”

Megan Gill: Yeah. Right, “Why me? Why do I have this bump when all my friends –.” Ever since I was a kid, ever since I was a child I've always had it. It's always been with me, and looking at my friends’ stomachs and being like, “Well, wait. I don’t get it! The math isn’t mathing!”

Kacie Patricia: Yes. Right. The math isn't math thing at all. Yeah, now I'm thinking about things that I haven't thought about in a while that I guess I did go to some extreme lengths starting in, like, eighth grade, freshman year of high school.

I remember when this friend specifically, we were starting to talk to boys. It was when I had my first kiss that summer, and then all of a sudden we were like going to each other's lake houses and like wearing bikinis, but I didn't feel comfortable in a bikini, and I was like, “Okay, now I have to do something about this.” My body was starting to form and fill out, and then all of a sudden I wanted to look good for boys and whatever.

And I remember the summer going into freshman year of high school, I decided that I wasn't going to eat and that I was gonna come home off the bus and run, like, a mile before my parents got home, so they didn't know that I was doing it. For me, it was always silent suffering. It was like nobody could know that I felt this way about myself. That's literally how it's been up until this year of my life, to be honest. It's like nobody could know that I'm insecure about this. If I never talk about it, nobody will ever know. Nobody will ever think anything.

Megan Gill: And it'll just magically change and then that’s that.

Kacie Patricia: Exactly. Yeah, and in a way, the silent suffering was just a way of pretending it wasn't really there and not acknowledging it. And so, I didn't realize how much it was really affecting me until much later in life.

But yeah, I remember this one summer I was not eating and running when I got home from school, and then that was not working for me. I literally maybe did a couple days, and then I was like, “I can't do this anymore. This is not sustainable,” and then I would go right back to just regular life. And that was kind of a cycle that went on for the next five/ten years of my life. It was just like something would make me feel really bad about myself, and then that day I would decide, “Okay, I'm not gonna eat,” or “I'm going to eat just one thing, and then I'm gonna exercise so much, and I'm gonna do that for the next however long it takes, and if I just do that, then I'll be good. Then I’ll be good.”

Megan Gill: “Then I'll like my body, and I'll like the way I look, and I will be better and therefore worthy.” Like, all of those types of thoughts that pop up for you?

Kacie Patricia: Mm-hmm. Yes. “If I could just do this one thing, then everything would be better, and then I'll feel good about myself, and I won't have to worry about it,” thinking it was so simple. It was never sustainable for me. I never was able to commit to doing anything like that for longer than, like, a day or two. Yeah, never longer than that. And for that reason, I think I always told myself, “You're fine. You don't have an eating disorder. You don't have these things. Think about people who are starving themselves and making themselves throw up all the time. You've never done that, so you're just like everybody else.”

And so, I think I like sort of gaslit myself into thinking that this was just normal behavior and normal thoughts to have. And that it wasn't actually that bad, even though it was–

Megan Gill: That it wasn't actually affecting you in the ways that it actually was, yeah.

Kacie Patricia: Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I was thinking because I wasn't going too extreme, so I couldn't keep up with it for more than a day, that it wasn't really that extreme for me.

Megan Gill: Right. That it wasn't an actual disordered eating pattern, ir that it wasn't deemed worthy of an actual diagnosis, per se?

Kacie Patricia: Yeah.

Megan Gill: I can relate with you on that as well. It wasn't until much later in life that I realized that I truly, really was struggling with some semblance of an eating disorder, and I never thought for one second – I just thought that it was, oh, I was dieting, and I was in control of what I was eating and how much I was exercising, and I was in control of my body.

Kacie Patricia:Right.

Megan Gill: And therefore this isn't not an eating disorder because I'm not purging or I'm not, for lack of a better term, starving myself. I'm not going to such extreme lengths, and therefore I don't have a problem.

Kacie Patricia: Exactly.

Megan Gill: But in reality it's wild how I feel like it's very downplayed societally, these like little tendencies that can really fuck a person up, coupled with seeing celebrities in magazines and the way women's bodies are spoken about on social media and in the media. It's like we're receiving all these messages and, yeah, I think it's so normalized that we are like, “Okay, this is fine. Everyone's doing it.” At least at that point in my life, it was kind of like that for me.

I didn't mean to jump in there, but it's like, oh, my god, I can very much relate with that. And I love the way that you said you gaslit yourself because same.

Kacie Patricia: Yeah, yeah. Right, it felt like, “Well, I don't have anorexia or bulimia, so therefore I don't have an eating disorder.” And then just because I'm having these thoughts, you know, doesn't mean that I'm sick or have some sort of diagnosis. That's how it felt. It was like, “If I'm not doing these two things, then I'm good.”

Megan Gill: Right. I’m in the clear. I’m okay. Yeah.

Kacie Patricia: Right. But yeah, going back to what you're saying about magazines and shows and movies and music and everything that we see growing up, it's like, while I was never told, “You are bigger. You need to lose weight,” it was like I've never been told that by anybody in my life - not my mom, not my family, not my friends. I've never felt anybody has ever made a comment to me, that I know of, that's about my weight or how I look. It doesn't matter at all. It's society, the things that we're seeing when we grow up that shape our brains and how we think about ourselves that are doing the damage.

Megan Gill: Yeah, that piece right there, I'm sitting here going, “Thank goodness no one ever commented on your body in those ways.”

Kacie Patricia: Right. Imagine what that could have done on top of everything else if that had happened.

Megan Gill: Right. A lot of times people discount people in bigger bodies for having an eating disorder, when it's like, in reality, you can be in a bigger body and have an eating disorder. That is such a thing, and it's wild to think that anyone would ever discount that. And just with that piece of info being said, so many people of so many different body types from so many different backgrounds, so many people struggle with this because of society. And then, like you said, coupled on top of their own personal experiences socially, relationally, in educational systems, with whatever conditioning they've been fed and the messaging they've grown up hearing and continue to hear, it's just such a systemic issue. It's so, so deep and runs so deep that everyone – it's very interesting because I truly believe everyone has a body image story to tell.

Kacie Patricia: Yeah, 100%.

Megan Gill: No matter who you are, no matter what you look like. You know, because society likes to be like, “Oh, you look like that so you're “perfect.”” But it's like, “Mm, what is “perfect”? I’m sorry, what?

Kacie Patricia: Yeah, or even if you are “perfect” or you've always been thinner, it doesn't mean that you haven't struggled with things. It's really insane to think that just because somebody looks like something – we're looking at somebody and thinking, “They look this way. They can't ever have thought bad about themselves,” that's insane to think.

Megan Gill: It's so unfair.

Kacie Patricia: It really is.

Megan Gill: It’s so unfair.

Kacie Patricia: So right now I feel like I'm in high school and, you know, I feel like I've had this stomach my whole life, and, you know, this was the part of me that I just couldn't figure out. Everything else I kind of liked about myself. I always felt like I was proportionate. I liked the size of my boobs. I liked my butt. I always thought my thighs were a little fat, but that was something we could work on. This was also the Tumblr era, like 2013/2014, Tumblr, thigh-gap era. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Megan Gill: I don’t know the Tumblr piece of that, but I do know the thigh gap.

Kacie Patricia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you remember the thigh gap era of life?

Megan Gill: Trigger warning, the thigh gap. Yeah, yeah. yeah.

Kacie Patricia: Oh, my god, that was crazy. It was like Ariana Grande, like I remember photos of her on Instagram and Tumblr in 2014. She was so tiny, and then everybody was replicating this photo of the thigh gap.

Megan Gill: Oh, my gosh.

Kacie Patricia: And then I was like, “Oh my God, I don't have that…”

Megan Gill: It means something’s wrong with me.

Kacie Patricia: It's crazy. Like what the fuck? So I remember, yeah, that was when I started to, I don't know, I just really wanted to wear a bikini. I remember I was actually coming to LA in 2014 for my cousin's wedding, and I remember I really wanted to look good in this dress that I was wearing. And I was so excited to come to LA because I'd never been here before and this was like such a dream. This is what I wanted to do when I grew up. I wanted to move here so badly, and I wanted to look good.

I remember going to the gym with my mom, like, every day for maybe a month. We went to this all-women's gym together. But what she didn't know was that I was not eating lunch at school. I was coming home, and I was eating a bowl of cereal, and then that was it. And I would skip dinner and go to the gym with her and do that for, like, a month. Maybe I lost a couple pounds from doing this, but ultimately that was not sustainable at all. I didn't achieve the body that I was reaching for. I still don't have it. Nothing has ever really worked for me in the way that I've hoped.

Yeah, I've always had this all-or-nothing mentality. Always, always, always. Like, “We're gonna not eat, and we're gonna go to the gym,” or “We're gonna eat whatever we want, and not go to the gym.” There's never been a balance.

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Kacie Patricia: I was now single in LA trying to pursue an acting career.

Megan Gill: Not trying – you were totally pursuing it .

Kacie Patricia: Yeah, and here comes all of those things like I am trying to date, and now I'm insecure because I've never been with anybody except my boyfriend. I don't know what other men think about me or my body, or they don't wanna see me again because I was too big or I was too fat, those kinds of things. And I think the comparison to other women was larger than anything else for me. I was constantly seeing other women around in public, on social media around my age trying to pursue acting too, and thinking, “Oh, well, they're skinnier. I'm not gonna get anything until I look like that.”

And this was again like a silent sufferer for me. I've always had these thoughts, I've just never talked about them. I’ve never told anybody about them. I started discussing it in therapy last year.

Megan Gill: Amazing.

Kacie Patricia: And yeah. I've never told a friend about it or anything. And to be honest, I don't know that I would've been comfortable sharing this stuff until this past year. I don't think that I was at a place that I was – because I really didn't realize how much I was thinking about it and suffering through it until I talked about it in therapy.

And so, yeah, those were some really rough years, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 specifically. It was really rough. To go along with body image issues, I felt like I was in such a victim mentality, and also the state of the industry really sucked too. And I always felt like, “When is something gonna happen for me? When is something gonna happen to me?” I was in such a, “When is something gonna work out for me?” You know, like just kind of waiting, whether that be acting work or for a boyfriend, a relationship, or just something. I was so angry. Yeah, this is something I've been talking about in therapy lately. I was in such a victim mentality, and I had so much built up anger for just everything going on in my life.

I was moving around. I had all these different apartments and like no stability. I kept having to move out of my apartments for reasons that were outta my control. Dating sucked for me. I was going on tons and tons and tons and tons and tons of dates, not realizing that something was going on with me. I shouldn't have really been doing that. I was seeking validation, not realizing what was happening. And I hadn't started acting class yet. I hadn't figured out the industry stuff. I just thought, you know, “I have headshots and a reel. When am I gonna get an agent? When is this gonna happen for me?” or “I have an agent now. Now we just wait.” I just was misinformed, hadn't gained enough knowledge or information about anything, really. And yeah, I felt like such a victim, such a victim. I was really suffering and not really realizing it.

And then 2023, I had a really rough year, and I remember going to the doctor and finding out how much weight I had gained. I accepted it at that point, or I was starting to. I was like, “Wow, okay, I’ve got to do something about this. This is not okay. I'm never gonna get anywhere, book anything if I don't…”

Megan Gill: Ugh. God, but those thoughts.

Kacie Patricia: Yeah, that's how I felt.

Megan Gill: Agh.

Kacie Patricia: And so, I wasn't sure that I was going to share this, but I feel like it's really important to, so I'm going to. This was back in 2023 when I went to the doctor. I really loved my doctor, and I felt like I could ask her this and she. I had done some research before, and I was like, “Can you prescribe me weight loss medication? Is that a thing?” And she was like, “I'm happy to write you a prescription, but I will tell you right now, it's probably not gonna get approved by insurance. But yeah, it works, and I can absolutely write you a prescription.” And so, I thought, “Yeah, just write it and we'll see what happens.”

And so, it didn't get approved. So at first it didn't, and then at that same doctor's appointment I had routine blood work, and I have high cholesterol in my family (my mom, my dad, grandparents), and so, mine was high. And my BMI was at a number that just met the threshold for drugs. And if you have that and then you also have another condition, you can get it approved.

So I then was like, “Hey, my cholesterol meets the requirement. Do you think you could submit it again?” And I got it approved. And so, starting in June 2024, I have been on Wegovy, which is weight loss drugs. And this is something I have started telling people, but also I feel really, really, really, really weird about it. But I just think that it's important to share everything that's going on. It’s been really strange to tell people because I thought, “I'm just gonna lose a little bit of weight. Nobody will notice. Nobody will know. I won't tell anybody. I won’t tell my mom. I won’t tell my family. I won’t tell my friends.”

Megan Gill: Kind of like the same mentality you'd kinda been living in.

Kacie Patricia: Right. Exactly, nobody's gonna know. Exactly. And then I started losing weight, and then I started telling people, and then I started talking about it in therapy, and then I started realizing how much I had been suffering.

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Kacie Patricia: I feel so weird talking about it because I'm not proud of it, but I am proud of myself for getting to a point where I feel good about myself and I did it in a way that works for me and there's such a stigma around these drugs. But, ultimately, I got it approved for reasons – I met the threshold for that. And I think as much as we are really working to accept our bodies as they are and working to, you know, really try to fix society and really, really work on these things, you can still lose weight, and you can still change yourself and feel good about yourself and do things. As much as you are totally fine the way that you are at all times, you can still change and you can still do things. We don't want to encourage either way. We just want to be okay and neutral about it and not feel like anybody needs to change, except if you want to do it for yourself.

Megan Gill: Absolutely. That is like the mic-drop moment right there. And I just so appreciate you sharing this and being so open because you're also making me open my eyes a little bit and learn from you. And I'm just so grateful for you sharing, and I do think that that is what it comes back to is doing it for yourself and finding what works for you, because just like body's different – everybody has a different body, (shape, size, this, that, whatever) everybody's approach to how you care for your own body is so different as well. And what works for one person might not work for someone else. And I think it really is all about tuning into yourself.

And honestly, the older I get – I know I'm only in my thirties – but the more I'm really out here looking at my blood work and really trying to genuinely take care of my overall health and wellbeing and really care for my body and like really try not to break a bone and really try not to pull a muscle because this is all we got. It is really important to look at those numbers, and I think that like for such a long time that's something that I wasn't doing, that I wasn't paying attention to in my twenties. I was like, “Oh, I'm fine? Okay!”

Kacie Patricia: Right, you think you're so indestructible in your twenties or thirties, you really do. But I also think that for me, I was really suffering so silently and never talking about it, and it wouldn't have come out in this way, I wouldn't have talked about it ever, maybe, because I was just pretending like it didn't exist, if this sort of transformation hadn't happened. And even now just telling you about it, it's crazy to think I was never planning on telling anybody ever that I was doing this. I was thinking that it wasn't ever gonna be a noticeable difference, but when it started to be it was like, “Oh, okay, maybe, maybe I don't have to feel so bad about this. Maybe I can start telling people about it. What's really so bad? I'm doing something that works for me, and it's given me so much more confidence in myself, as an actor, as a human. Just in all aspects of life, I feel so much more confident in myself, and I'm really, really grateful for that because I don't know what would've happened. I think I just would've continued on this path. I never would've been able to talk about it with you, I never would've been able to talk about it in therapy if I didn't really start to look at the way that I was thinking about myself. So thank you.

Megan Gill: Thank you. And I also just wanna point out that, everything aside, whatever anyone wants to think about these types of drugs, these types of weight loss drugs, and whatever anyone wants to place judgment on or applaud you for, at the end of the day, I think the real takeaway here, like as I'm listening to you talk, is that you are now voicing this and you are now able to sit here with me today and share your true body image story and like look at your self and your relationship to your body and really examine that. And I think that that's so, so, so, so, so important that you're no longer silent suffering because agh.

Kacie Patricia: And let me just say one more thing. I still have a stomach. I lost 50 pounds, but I still have a stomach. I still have a belly, and that's not going anywhere.

Megan Gill: High five, girl. This is the radical acceptance piece!

Kacie Patricia: This is just to say you can go through a transformation, I guess, as big as I did and still have that thing that you're insecure about. It might not go away.

Megan Gill: Oh, my god, I just got like literal chills hearing you share that. I'm cradling my belly at the moment.

Kacie Patricia: It’s still there, and it has not gone away. It's lessened, but it's still there. It’s still there in the ways that I thought it wouldn't be.

I do think that this conversation right now is making me realize like, oh, this was really, really, really important to talk about. I had been seeing my therapist for about a year before I brought up the body image thing, and it wasn't until I was starting the medication that I decided to talk about it and start really looking at it and seeing what was going on.

Megan Gill: Kind of allowing yourself to zoom out and have like an out-of-body experience, in a sense?

Kacie Patricia: Yes, for sure. It wasn't until then that I was really able to look at it and see and understand how much was really going on.

I was gonna say about the medication and stuff and the judgment and the shame that we might have about it, I think ultimately I was in a place where I was able to get it for health-related reasons and that I met the requirement, and that is true for so many people. But it's also being abused in ways where people don't necessarily need it but are getting their hands on it because they have the money. And that's happening here in Hollywood all the time, of course. But I think it's important to remember that those people have a story too, to tell. Those people are also going through it. Those people are probably also going through the same shit we are going through. And yeah, it's just important to remember that these drugs are helping so many people. And if you're using them in a safe way – like for me, I've been lucky to not have many side effects and stay pretty healthy throughout it. And I think if you use them in those ways, then they can work for you. And there shouldn't be so much judgment around them. But there are a lot of people who aren't using them in safe ways, and I think we just need to remind ourselves and have empathy that there's a bigger cause and there's like a bigger root of the issue, and people are using them because society is still trying to fit us into these boxes. And that's why this conversation is important. That's why what you're doing is so important because we are trying to change that. Yeah, it's really important to talk about this specifically because this is something that's going on right now. It hasn't been going on forever. So yeah, thank you for giving me a place to share it. I wasn't sure when I was driving here, I like wasn't sure that I was gonna talk about it. I really wasn't sure and I'm really glad that I did.

Megan Gill: I'm really glad you did too. Truly, thank you. And you've opened my eyes and my heart, and I'm just so grateful for you and for your vulnerability.

Kacie Patricia: Yeah, thank you.

Megan Gill: Thank you!

Kacie Patricia: Some actor things that have come up for me is that I've always felt like there is no place in this business for like a regular fucking body. There's no place in this business for somebody who's five three and size six or eight. There was nothing wrong with me the way that I was before, but I do think it's really important that you have to get to a place where you're comfortable and you're cool talking about it and seek therapy if you're feeling these things. And I really, really, really feel for everybody who's like suffering in silence or just suffering at all about these kinds of things because, especially with this career, I don't think that you're gonna be able to bring your full self to it until you are comfortable and that you might not ever be fully comfortable. You're always gonna have thoughts and feelings about it, but I don't know. I don't think that I was really able to fully give myself over to this pursuit at that time. I don't know, because those thoughts were always just in the back of my mind of like, “I'm not gonna book this. Somebody skinnier than me is gonna book this.”

Megan Gill: It’s almost like it was distracting you from doing the actual work.

Kacie Patricia: Yeah, it was distracting me from really giving it my full attention, my full work, to think about the work outside of my appearance. But it seems like there's really not much of a place for somebody who is a normal size.

Megan Gill: Who's just an average woman existing in an average body.

Kacie Patricia: There seems to be the spectrum of larger people and skinny people, and you're type-cast as the larger, funny friend or whatever, or you're the skinny lead.

Megan Gill: Do you know what's very oddly interesting? That's how it was in the theater world 10 to 15 years ago when I was starting college. That's how you were categorized. Either you were the fat, funny friend, or you were the leading lady. There was no in-between. Talk about like black-and-white thinking. Talk about all or nothing, oh, my god. And you had to somehow fit yourself into a category, and I feel like part of my mission now as an actor, even just like as an indie filmmaker making my own projects, is there has to be a space for the average female in the average female body in this industry. We have to almost change our mentality around it because we belong here. We are real people with real stories to tell. I believe that. I don't know if I'm delulu in believing that, because I'm like, “I have to believe that because that's who I am, and I belong here and so do all my friends that look like me too,” you know?

Kacie Patricia: Totally, and I'm thinking as we're talking about this and thinking of all the shows and movies I watched recently, I can't think of anybody like that looks like a regular body. I really can't. It's really hard. I'm gonna specifically look out for that in the stuff that I watch from here on out. But there really isn't a place, and it really sucks.

Megan Gill: I hear you. I'm thinking, “What am I watching right now?” Running Time. Kate Hudson, she's a babe. And I'm like, “I want to see your belly roll. I wanna see your arm flab.” Okay. White Lotus, everyone's hot, right? Everyone, and of course the men are the ones that can get away with being a little “not the hottest.” And it’s frustrating! Sorry, I just wanna throw that in there.

Kacie Patricia: It’s true! It's so fucking frustrating. And so, so real and so true. And I think this is also a thought and fear that I had before too that I didn't want to admit to myself. That was just kind of like a fear that lived in the silent and suffering. Like, “There's no place for me, so I must mask this. I must make myself look this like a skinny version of myself. I must put this illusion on. I have to fit into that category. There is no place for me as I am. I have to make myself look that way.”

Megan Gill: Do you feel like that dissociated you from your body even further? Before it, then, like now brought you back into your body in a way?

Kacie Patricia: Yeah. For sure. And when I was at my heaviest a couple years ago, I remember that was when I really mostly disassociated. I remember I wouldn't even look in the mirror. I would never look at my body in the mirror. Maybe like from here up.

Megan Gill: Wow.

Kacie Patricia: Yeah. I only wore baggy clothing, oversized clothing, and I was just doing all of these things and not realizing that's what was going on.

Megan Gill: It was very subconscious.

Kacie Patricia: I was just not acknowledging what was really happening. So yeah, I really, really disassociated and disconnected from myself and my body for sure. But I also wanna talk about how now being a much smaller version of myself, the insecurities haven't really gone away. I do feel more confident in myself. I feel more like myself, I guess, if that makes sense.

Megan Gill: Do you think that’s because you’re feeling more connected to your body because of this whole transformation?

Kacie Patricia: Yeah, it could be. Yeah, I do think so. I think what has happened is that I look in the mirror and I see the version of myself that I thought that I looked like, if that makes sense. I looked in the mirror and rejected what I looked like for so long, and now I'm looking in the mirror and I see what I wanted to look like and I see what I thought that I looked like, or I was telling myself that I looked alike, but I didn't really look like that.

Wait, this is wild. Because to me this almost feels like reverse body dysmorphia. Whoa.

Kacie Patricia: Yeah. Literally, yeah. This is what I thought I looked like at that time, what I was trying to tell myself that I looked like at that time in order to make myself feel better. But that wasn't really true. And looking back at photos of myself from that time, I have empathy and compassion for myself at that time. And again, like this goes along with not telling anybody, not thinking that I was ever gonna look that much different. I was just gonna lose a little bit of weight. I really was downplaying the fuck out of it. I really, really, really rejected every part of being insecure and being unhappy with the way that I looked. I'm so glad that this conversation happened. It would not have happened had I not gone through this. It’s really important.

Megan Gill: It’s so important. And I, too, am so glad that you're here sharing all of this, because I think it's also just so important to note like just you sitting here and saying, “Wow, the insecurities are just, in a sense, still with me.”

Kacie Patricia: Yeah. The thing that I have been insecure about my whole life, my stomach, is still with me, and it's the same. I don't think it's really – that specific insecurity has not lessened.

Megan Gill: I’m only laughing because I know from experience. There comes a point where – I don't know when it happened. I think it might've been, kinda like you were saying, I couldn't pinpoint the exact moment when I started realizing that I had body image issues I don't know the exact moment when I started relating better to my belly, but slowly over time, I am able to look at her in the mirror and be like, “I see you girl. You're good. You’re okay.”

Kacie Patricia: She has organs in there. That’s where we carry our uterus, which holds a child. It's housing our reproductive organs. Men could never.

Megan Gill: And how could we not look at ourselves in the mirror and have compassion for that part of our body? It makes me so sad that our society has conditioned us to look at whatever part of your body it is for you (for us, it's our tummies), to look at our tummy in the mirror and not want to see her. For me for a long time it was like if I could feel my stomach on the other part of my stomach, like my roll, if I could feel my roll on my legs or touching my other roll, like it would literally give me anxiety. I would start to stress out. Or if I could feel my boobs like sagging and touching my belly, I was like, “Ew, this is disgusting.” What? What the F? Those feelings didn't come out of thin air. Hmm, where do you think I learned that this visual that I had that I was feeling in my body was “bad” or “disgusting”?

Kacie Patricia: We just grew up never seeing anybody that looked like us on TV doing the things that we wanted to do. We grew up with Selena Gomez and Miley Cyrus. It's like who's really to blame? Who's really to blame? All we can do is just keep talking about it and just trying to change it and giving ourselves safe spaces to talk to each other about it because this has felt really, really, really healing for me, this conversation specifically, but just this past year in therapy and the journey that I've gone on. I healed a part of myself that I did not know needed to be healed, or I started to at least. We’re never fully healed. But those insecurities will always be there, right?

Megan Gill: Always, and it's like how we approach handling them and how we approach the self-talk when they come up and how we work with ourselves and our mental health, really, to support ourselves and support each other through these really tough things that are never probably gonna go away.

Kacie Patricia: Yeah, I think for me, like the tummy thing has always been there. That was my first insecurity for as long as I can remember, going back to like fifth, sixth grade when I started to have body image issues. That was the first thing. And so I've had it for as long as I can remember.

I remember as a kid, from like 10, 11, 12, I was small. I was skinny as a child. But I still had it, in my eyes at least. I still had it, so it's been there my whole entire life. So it's just meant to be a part of me. It's always been there. It's always meant to be a part of me. It’s always been there. Even now, at the weight that I'm at, where I'm at, it's still there. It hasn't gone anywhere. It's just gonna be a part of me. And I have tried for so long to try to figure it out like, “What can I do about this? How do I get this to go somewhere else? Why is it there? Why is everything else okay in proportion, but this is just like there? What do I do?” But it's just my body. That's just the way that my body was made. It's just the way that it's made. I have a really small waist, but my belly goes over the waistline, so it's like the waist is small, but the belly goes over, and that's just the way that it is. That's just how I was born. That's just how my body is meant to be. Yeah, that's just our genetic makeup.

I'm sure I'm always gonna be insecure about the things that I'm insecure about, but all we can do is just keep talking about it and keep making it okay to talk about it. Because that is how we keep a good relationship with our bodies is to keep talking about it.

Megan Gill: Absolutely, and having those safe spaces and having those supports and having people to turn to if you're struggling or like going through it.

Kacie Patricia: Even to speak more about the transformation too, I think I thought that I was gonna feel so much more different. I definitely feel much more different in ways that I wasn't really expecting, like the confidence to talk about this kind of stuff and confidence in my work or just in myself as a human being. I feel more like, “This is me!” I'm not hiding so much anymore. I think I was hiding a lot, like I said before. Yeah, I was hiding myself physically. But you're also hiding mentally a lot. You're hiding a piece of yourself because you don't want people to see a certain part of yourself.

Megan Gill: I also think that presence pulls us out of those cycles and pulls us out of that, how you were saying you were like silently suffering. It pulls us out of silently suffering and forces us to be present, be in the moment, open up to people that we love and trust and that care about us. And that I really believe is like where the real, true healing and transformation happens.

Kacie Patricia: Yeah, and when I started noticing that clothes weren't fitting, they were getting too big on me, blah, blah, blah, it's funny, there are two completely opposite sides of the spectrum about clothes. When I started to notice that they were getting too big on me, I was like, “Why am I not more excited? This is what I've dreamed of for as long as I can remember. Why am I not feeling differently about this?” It's like you can do all this work, and you still are gonna feel this way sometimes about yourself. I'm thankful for the changes that have happened because they've been really important, but it hasn't been like a, “Oh my god, thank god I finally looked this way!” There hasn't been that big moment of like, “Well, now I can finally do this and that and book work!” No, that hasn't happened.

Megan Gill: Thank you for sharing that. I think that's so important to talk about also.

Kacie Patricia: Yeah, that feeling never came to me. It's like, was it nice? Sure. It was nice to go down a few sizes and see that it was working, but those body image issues are at such a core belief that doing all this work is not gonna make them go away and changing in such a significant way is not gonna make them go away, most likely.

“ For me, it was always silent suffering. It was like nobody could know that I felt this way about myself. That's literally how it's been up until this year of my life, to be honest. And as much as you are totally fine the way that you are at all times, you can still change and you can still do things. We don't want to encourage either way. We just want to be okay and neutral about it and not feel like anybody needs to change, except if you want to do it for yourself.”

- Kacie Patricia

Kacie is a New England native who has spent the last six years in Los Angeles pursuing her acting career. Throughout her career, she has navigated the complexities of body image, a topic that once made her uncomfortable. Though significant life changes in recent years have transformed her perspective, allowing her to embrace her own experiences and foster a deep empathy for others facing similar struggles. Keep an eye out for a play Kacie is producing coming to Crash Acting fall of 2025!

Email: [email protected]

IMDb: www.imdb.com/name/nm11202500/

Instagram: www.instagram.com/_kaciepatricia

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While I’m not a licensed therapist, registered dietician, or medical health professional and cannot speak to body image topics from a clinical, trauma-informed place, I am an expert of lived experience. I’m an academic of my own body, and I’m passionate about facilitating conversations with other humans about their relationships with their bodies. I believe it’s important to continue conversations about healthy body image in creative spaces as a means to heal individuals as well as the collective whole. But just know the information presented in this medium is not professional mental health advice or medical advice, and any questions or concerns you have should always be directed to your health providers.

Trigger Warning: This conversation contains discussion of eating disorders and nutrition post-recovery. Please take care of yourselves as you listen and avoid if these topics might be triggering for you.

Everyone please welcome my friend and fellow Substack writer Sarah Plenge to A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations! Sarah and I met while I was thick in the depths of a serving job, and she brought a little beam of light to my life every Tuesday night. We have since kept in touch, and on a recent strand walk with Sarah, I knew I had to have a body image conversation with her.

In our conversation, Sarah speaks on how much clarity she has in her life now that she’s out of the weeds of her eating disorder. She shares about so much deeply impactful insight into how her experience has shaped how she now lives her life and how she creates her art and how healing has brought her closer to all of the wonderful things she wants for her life. Listen for her take on how our bodies are our best friends and how we need to shape our culture to treat others with kindness and respect.

It was a true honor to have Sarah as part of this series. She’s so wise when it comes to the topics of body image and nature. Sarah drops pure poetic gold in this conversation, including but certainly not limited to this quote that’s stuck with me since we spoke: “We are flowers; we are not meant to bloom year round.“ I can’t wait for you to listen to our conversation and soak up all of the goodness Sarah has to share!

“One really big shift I had in recovery was starting to see my body as the best friend I'll ever have and the only one that I'll have for the entirety of my life, and she is the only one that knows everything. Everything! What an incredible friend. And she's held me through all of it - the excruciating pain and the boundless joy. I vow to take care of her just as much as she takes care of me.”

- Sarah Plenge

Sarah Plenge: I was trying to get my thoughts in order before we sat down to talk, and one thing I was reflecting on in kind of my own body image journey and even how it's affected my professional life and obviously my personal life, but it's been really interesting for me. I think the greatest lesson that my eating disorder has gifted me has been the power of choice, and we really get to choose what we subscribe to in life and especially the media that we consume and the messages that we're telling our self. And I will say probably the biggest shift that happened internally on my recovery and that continues to happen in so many aspects of healing in my life is my self-talk and how I choose to talk to myself and others and, especially, I mean around body stuff and around food, and a lot of it feel can feel like automatic and overwhelming at times, but I really focus on trying to be willing to receive the pause because there's always a pause between thoughts. And before I go down this rabbit hole of like freaking out because a certain pair of jeans doesn't fit, what can I do to be like, “Hey, actually, I don't want to wear this outfit because it's really uncomfortable,” and that's fine. And some days the jeans fit, and sometimes they don't, and that's fine and super normal. And It really sucks that our education system does not involve an aspect of talking about how our bodies fluctuate and change and delves into hormones. And I mean, that's probably a function of a lot of research not getting funded, and we're like just learning so much about women's bodies as women are allowed more and more into STEM spaces, and that's a whole different conversation, so I'll stop myself there.

Megan Gill: Yeah, no, but also an important thing to point out. It's very true. I think that so much of it is the lack of our education, even as young women. I'm so grateful that there is more research being done about women and our bodies. And even just the simple fact that we fluctuate so much over the course of a 30-day cycle, body-wise, is something that I didn't realize until recently. Like, everyone's talking about your luteal phase and your follicular phase, and I'm learning like, “Oh yeah, duh, of course this makes sense,” and of course our bodies and our energy levels and our minds are going to be different over the course of our cycle. And I do think it's important to point out.

Sarah Plenge: And I think a really big piece of it that I am learning right now is that all of the seasons are okay and feelings are perfectly safe. They show up and they pass through, and it's just all water in the creek and it all flows on at some point. And I think as women especially go through these seasonal periods, within our cycles especially, it's kind of cool that every month we are offered an invitation to go in and explore whatever's in there. And like I know that my diet really affects how my cycles work, and the more I've gotten in touch with that, the more I've actually been open to eating to feel good and not to look a certain way, and how can I fuel myself to move in the ways that I want to and not just move because I want this set of muscles to look good or I want this outfit to look good or I want this person to pay attention to me. It's crazy all these things that like go through our heads all the time!

Megan Gill: Oh, yes! And all of these things I think we, at least in my experience, did not speak about to anyone until now. And it's just It's sad that we, for so long, I think were struggling on our own in those ways, trapped in our own minds with all of these thoughts.

Sarah Plenge: Oh, so much shame.

Megan Gill: So much shame. And just looking in the mirror and even trying to get ready one day, right, this morning, it comes down to the self-talk. It’s like I'm not going to let myself go there. Doing the healing to get to a point where you're like, “Hey, I'm aware that I'm, I'm having these thoughts. And I'm gonna honor the thoughts,” because they're gonna pop up. Like you said, it's normal. We get to revisit it every month, you know,

Sarah Plenge: Hey buddy!

Megan Gill: Before I kind of went on this deep dive of my own healing, I used to be like, why is it that like two weeks out of my cycle I feel really good about myself, and I'm vibing, I like feel good in my body, I like the way I look, I have a lot of energy. And then the other two weeks I'm like, oh, I don't feel good in my body, I don't like the way I look, nothing fits, nothing feels good. Like, oh, hmm, now it makes sense to me. And also just honoring those phases and honoring the thoughts that come up and having enough awareness, that's what I was getting to.

Sarah Plenge: No, I understand. But it's also learning can I love the question, can I love the uncertainty, can I love the place that feels weird and gushy and unhealed and not fit, for five minutes? It's fine, you know? I don't know, listening to you talk just now brought up a couple things for me where I think so much of an eating disorder is wanting to shrink, right? And it's wanting to fit into a mold that we perceive that is in front of us. I'm speaking about my experience and also experiences that I've connected with with others. And I think, at least for me, it was so much about this desire to be loved. And I was like, “If I can look a certain way, then people are going to like me, and I'm not going to have to deal with my stuff.” And that doesn't work for a very long time. We're super seasonal creatures. We're not meant to look a certain way all the time, and so much of my healing has been around learning to accept myself as I am and knowing that I am enough just as I am right now in this moment and that is worth everything, and I don't want to waste any more of my precious, sweet time on this planet trying to be someone that I'm not. It doesn't work, and it never has for me, and whenever I stray off the path, my body has a really funny habit of reminding me, “Hey, man, go enjoy what's right in front of you.”

I'm having that experience right now, where I have had two really random injuries this month. And I just moved to a place that's super beautiful, and I was intending on exploring all this nature. And I've actually been brought back into myself in being like, actually, I don't have to move through nature really intensely in order to enjoy it. I actually get to go sit and be still with this place and appreciate it for what it is. And how does the sun move through the trees and what can that teach me? And how can I go be in nature in this body and still feel beautiful? Because that's really what we want at the end of the day. It's like we all want to know that we're worthy and loved and capable of connection and just to be ourselves. That’s so much of what it's about, and it is really interesting that I think a lot of – I mean everyone of every gender might struggle with an eating disorder, but I'm just speaking from the experience as a woman, and so many of the women I know have, especially in LA and growing up here, so many of us have gone through just like weird stuff with food, even if it wasn't just with an eating disorder. How many, how many of the women I know have tried to be smaller? And how many of us have used our food as a method of control? And how many of us have demonized our emotions? I sure did. I've used it since I was a little kid, emotional eating. I didn't know any other coping skills. I was like, “The ice cream makes my brain feel awesome.”

Megan Gill: Same, same! So I'm gonna eat a whole friggin half-gallon of it, quarter-gallon, something like that, yeah!

Sarah Plenge: And it was delicious, and I really wish it had been like, actually, that was super okay to do. And I actually went through a phase where I just really needed to eat a lot of ice cream when I was weight restoring, and it felt really scary, and I kind of wish I had just been able to relax and eat the ice cream.

Megan Gill: Like enjoy it?

Sarah Plenge: Yeah, because I didn't. I was so scared of the ice cream, but I had to eat it. It was crazy! Recovery feels really crazy sometimes. And sometimes I just need to eat a bunch of food and that's okay. It's so okay to eat your food and like take a nap instead of going to the fucking Pilates class. It’s fine!

Megan Gill: I think that it like ultimately comes down to true deep listening to what your body needs today in this moment, which I think ties back to this whole piece about what you were just speaking of, which reminds me of presence, how coming back into our bodies and how being present in the moment, instead of being hyper-fixated on things and worrying about the future or worrying about food things and exercise things and all of these things that my brain used to literally think about 24/7 – not to be so definitive, but I spent so much time and energy worrying about that shit. But coming back to the present moment and being like, “What do I need now? I planned on going to a yoga class at 5:30, but actually, I'm really freaking tired, and I'm worried that –.” Now my brain goes to, “Maybe you should not go to class. Stay home, rest your body, and nap, so that you don't get sick.” It comes back to how can I truly protect this vessel that is mine, that I have done so much work to love so deeply.

Everything you were saying about coming back to self-love, the love that you were seeking from someone else, realizing that you can give that to yourself even by just taking care of your body in these subtle, important ways, and how eating food that your body's craving equals self-love. I think that's such a wild concept for at least my brain.

Sarah Plenge: That’s beautiful, yeah.

Megan Gill: And it took me a while to latch onto that and be like, “Oh, that can be a form of self -love. Crazy!” But it makes sense because also, at the end of the day, like this is all you've got.

Sarah Plenge: Yeah, I get one of these!

Megan Gill: Yeah! I know, and I also don't want to waste all of my time worrying about her. I want to be able to be present and be in my body.

My perception of like a lot of your art and a lot of your work is nature based and how you have now allowed yourself to fully be present and fully be in your body in this thing that you love to capture, and you love to write about. And I just think the power of being present is so, so impactful and so important also for our healing around the body stuff too. I loved hearing you talk about that because – do you think that's almost shifted the way – you coming back into your body and like being able to show up and be present, not always, but in those times you are, has that allowed you to write about nature and capture nature and the things that you love to capture through the camera through a different lens?

Sarah Plenge: There are a couple things. I actually think my healing shows up the most through my writing right now, and I'm putting together an anthology of poetry about some stuff I went through a couple years ago. It was really difficult and painful, but I was kind of going through like years and years of poetry, and it was interesting for me as I really commit to my healing that so much of it I was able to view through just different times of day and different seasons, and how I was able to like take rage, which is a really scary feeling for me, and I'm still learning how to hold that and like be vulnerable and be like, “Actually, it's super okay for me to just be mad when something bad happens. It's okay. It's a super ike safe feeling of outlets,” you know? And knowing that, oh, that feels like night for me, and knowing when I have a breakthrough, that feels like dawn for me, and knowing that all of these places that I feel broken are just opportunities for light to come in.

And I also think that I have had some really unfortunate – and all of them are like due to my eating disorder, when I run back to it, your gut is connected to your brain, and when you're not taught to take care of your tummy from a young age, it can really mess you up. And I struggle with a lot of health issues as a result of that. And I have found a lot of gratitude in, especially with photography, and I guess in that vein, when I am able to go out and I do feel good enough to participate in nature and I can go do a big gnarly swim with my water housing and I get all the juicy adrenaline and yapping with people in the lineup and it's awesome and, honestly, that's like where I feel the best. But I'm not always there, and that's super, okay. We are flowers; we are not meant to bloom year round. It's okay. If you can, that's wonderful.

Megan Gill: Yeah, you write poetry, yeah. You're so eloquent with these beautiful visuals. You keep dropping gold on me. And I'm like, “Oh my god” But just hearing you speak, I keep coming back to this cycle, not like the circle of life, but that we're cyclical beings, and that we're not meant to be stagnant, and that we are meant to change, and that we are meant to shift and evolve.

Sarah Plenge: Yeah, healing is not linear!

Megan Gill: Yeah, even just like being a human is not linear. We are growing older each day and changing and evolving each day. Something that has stuck with me from a young age, which is really interesting, is I've always loved change. When I learned in science class in middle school that the delta meant change, I was like, “Oh, if I ever get a tattoo, I want that because I think it's important to always be changing.”

Sarah Plenge: Aww.

Megan Gill: Which is very, very interesting, then, to know that I went on for the next ten-ish years of my life to not want to allow nature to take its process via my body. What am I trying to say? I was like not allowing the natural process of change to happen. I feel like I was almost trying to control it and pull it back.

Sarah Plenge: It can be really scary. Yeah, it can be super scary.

Megan Gill: Like, ah how fascinating, how interesting. And now to be on the other side of the ways in which I struggled in many ways and to be able to see oh, wow. Interesting that change can be so beautiful and lovely if we embrace it and if we allow it, but then if we try to control it to change ourselves to be something we're not meant to be, it can be very dark.

Sarah Plenge: Totally. Well, what you were saying about the control piece is so central to eating disorders, and I think disordered body image in general. And I remember having some people I was working with when I was younger say, “Well, you know, this is like really a control mechanism. Your not eating or your eating too much or your purging is like a function of control.” And I remember being like, “What are you talking about? You are so silly! I'm fine! I can handle it.”

But when you're talking about change, change can be terrifying and change can mean that you're walking over a carpet and suddenly there's a trap door or you're on top of a nice, beautiful wave and the bottom falls out and you're over the falls. And It can be really, really scary, and it sometimes doesn't feel good. And I also think that when we're trying to control the drop, we're not trusting the process, which is a lot easier said than done. But knowing that, ultimately, I don't think I'm screwed, and I know that my life's purpose is something greater than shrinkage or stagnation and knowing that if I surrender to this process that's natural and in front of me, then I'm probably going to turn out okay, and if I give my lif the respect and honor to teach me, then I usually find some really incredible gift on the other side that I wouldn't have access to otherwise. If my life's purpose was to be skinny, you and I wouldn't be talking.

Megan Gill: We wouldn't be!

Sarah Plenge: No.

Megan Gill: Also, what a very sad life purpose. Like, what? Why? Ugh.

Sarah Plenge: I don't know. Enough! Enough!

Megan Gill: And I don't want anyone to experience that and I don't want anyone to think that that's the end goal and that to be skinny means that I will be loved and all of these things and I'll be worthy and I'll finally book TV. It's like, “No bitch, be yourself because that's when you're gonna fucking see the magic happen!” And just hearing you talk about embracing what's ahead for you, it’s just so lovely.

Sarah Plenge: Well, pain is what gets us to pay attention. And a lot of time, if we're ignoring our bodies, they are really expressive. And I mean, I feel really blessed that my body is really somatic, and one really big shift I had in recovery was starting to see my body as the best friend I'll ever have and the only one that I'll have for the entirety of my life, and she is the only one that knows everything, everything! What an incredible friend, and she's held me through all of it, through all of it. Yeah, the excruciating pain and the boundless joy. She has been there for me more than anyone.

Megan Gill: That’s really beautiful. Really, really beautiful. I've never thought about it in that sense and how also you treat your friends the way you want to be treated too, right?

Sarah Plenge: Yeah, exactly.

Megan Gill: In a lovely, little metaphorical sense. It's like why are we putting our best friend through all of this turmoil?

Sarah Plenge: Yeah, there are things that I've said to my body that are horrific, you know? There are things I've like done to my body that are awful. I would have called CPS on myself. Like, jeez, you know? So it's like I think a lot of it, I mean, in talking about trust and change and surrender and awareness and also reforming – it's a relationship, right – reforming a relationship with my body, and learning that she is worthy of trust and affection and love and like all of the good things. And when I'm going through injury or if I don't feel good, I vow to take care of her just as she takes care of me. And I also know that my body is a really valuable source of intuition, and she knows what's up and the more I listen to her, the more I am led down a path that's been really beautiful. I feel so blessed with my life, and I've been through a lot of stuff and I could really choose to stop somewhere, you know? I could say that actually this is as far as I go, but I really want to do that!

Megan Gill: No, you’re not doing that! No, no, no!

Sarah Plenge: Yeah, I'm not doing that. I’ve got too much art to make!

Megan Gill: So much art to make!

Sarah Plenge: Yeah, it keeps coming out of me!

Megan Gill: Hmm, almost like you're meant to do this with your life! Crazy! Wild! Gosh, I'm just like the world needs your stories and what you have to say. And even listening to you speak right here right now, I just love the way that you are speaking and I'm just like, yeah, you're a really good fucking writer because the way that you speak also, I think, reflects the way that you write too. And it's just really lovely and beautiful.

Sarah Plenge: You're so sweet. Thank you.

Megan Gill: Well, it's really lovely, and the world needs your lens of everything that you went through and all of the experiences you've had. They need to hear what you have to say and see via your art, and I think that's really important and there is so much more to be said and I'm so excited for this compilation of poetry to be released to the world!

Sarah Plenge: I studied environment in school. I studied a couple things, but environment was one of them. And my eating disorder recovery was super intense in college. Just for context, I went from one of my low weights to one of my high weights within six months my freshman year, and it was like so intense, oh my god. But I was also in a new environment, and I was experiencing really gnarly winter for the first time, and that was the first time I had gone through a really deep wintering, and I was also really lucky to be surrounded with people that were really involved in climate action and people that I was able to like share some of what I was going through with.

And in learning about environment, the more I got in touch with it and also through the lens of anthropology, which is one of the other things I was studying, learning a lot about the perception of self and other and how damaging that is to our psyches in a lot of ways, and how it's important, I think, sometimes to have binaries, just to give us some perspective. But in the broad scheme of things, if we are to heal a planet that is really burning and that's really talking to us, and the more we're able to see ourselves as products of the planet, and we're just a bunch of animals that happened to figure out how to talk and breed like crazy and do all the wonderful things that humans do. But seeing ourselves in relation to the planet, and starting to see my body as a landscape has been really helpful and has so deepened my relationship with myself and has allowed me to perceive my body with reverence and understand that, I don't know, I'm not going to go up to a canyon or go up to a rock and tell it that I think it's bad because it has some bumps or lines or scars or whatever. I'm not going to go to a tree that happens to be really chubby and be like, “You suck.” That's so lame.

Megan Gill: Oh, my gosh, yeah, absolutely.

Sarah Plenge: Yeah, so I think, I don't know, I guess that's like a sweet way that I practice self-love. And also I've really been able to care about the planet I live on, and I'm just really blessed that I'm able-bodied and allowed to go surf and swim and ski and hike and do all the things that I love doing and have formed communities through that and have, you know, let an old version of myself shed through that way too. And also that's been a really big part of my family for a really long time. And being able to look at, actually, I want to ski with my dad forever. If I take care of myself, I get to do that. And I want to be able to go on like cute, little walks with my mom for as long as we're both walking. I want to do that.

And one of the ways that I feel like I get to celebrate and honor my, I don't know, people that came before me, I'm really blessed that I come from a family of athletes, and one of the ways that I can honor my family is by continuing to be active and move. I'm not necessarily a competitive person, but I just love to move. It just feels so good for me, and it reminds me of one of the reasons why I get to live this life that I do. And, I don't know, not to get too woo, but I do think that like everyone is here for their own reason and we're all endowed with our own set of gifts. And the more I pay attention to what's right in front of me, the more I'm allowed to just be grateful for what is here now, and yeah, not try to fit into things that weren't meant for me. And sometimes it's also okay to outgrow things and shed and that just means we're making room for new things to come into our lives.

It's like crop cycling, you know? Not everything can grow year-round in the same climate, and it's all just kind of okay. My food's okay. My body's okay. I'm in good health. I have so much to be grateful for right now, and I don't know, I wouldn't have spoken this way a couple years ago – not a couple years ago, but a little bit longer ago. But whenever I'm going through it with body image stuff, when that little friend crops up –

Megan Gill: Hey, old friend.

Sarah Plenge: It's like, hey buddy. Yeah.

Megan Gill: We’ll acknowledge you, we’ll hear you out and then let you go on your way.

Sarah Plenge: Yeah, she just wants to talk, you know?

Megan Gill: She wants to be heard, yeah.

Sarah Plenge: Yeah. The more I understand humans in general as just like a bunch of little kids that at some point have to do taxes, it’s like the more I'm just like, “Oh, hey man, what's up? What are we doing today? Like, how are you?” Yeah, and just like getting in there and being really cozy with uncomfortable stuff, the question becomes more, yeah, like I said, “How can I love this today?” And I don't know, I feel like I'm this whole time I've been speaking, I'm noticing I'm coming from a very – I've definitely been in like a hibernating season for a while and like definitely kind of been in my like psychic cave of, “Okay, I have to go into the editing hole and finish my weird, little projects, and I'll emerge at some point!” And I'm sure in a different season of my life I would be speaking differently. But yeah, I think right now something I'm really feeling is when we are invited to go in, it’s really important to honor the call and there's so much richness in that soil.

—

Megan Gill: I agree, and even if it does feel a little uncomfortable or unknown, just having faith that it's going to lead you to where you're supposed to be, I very much believe that too, what you were saying about us being here for a reason and acknowledging the beauty around us and acknowledging the things in the present moment. I couldn't see beauty for such a long time. I couldn't see, not necessarily beauty, but I couldn't see the rock. I didn't even know it was there, let alone to be able to see that it had bumps on it, you know? I feel like when you start becoming more present and shedding those things that kept you hung up for so long on this and that or whatever, being able to be in the moment and see where you're supposed to be heading or be able to even listen deeply for that call of what's next, like you were saying, so that you can follow it, I feel like is the only way to move through the world. But not everyone allows themselves to explore that. And I think it takes going through the deep unknown and the discomfort of what's coming next to even get to the place of the beauty.

It is scary. It is scary to surrender and have radical acceptance of, “This is where I am right now. I don't know what tomorrow is going to bring.” Yeah, it's terrifying. But also I struggled with a lot of anxiety in my past, and not that I still don't, but something that's helped me really deal with that is being more present and is having radical acceptance and is embracing the uncertainty of what's ahead. And I can't go back because being anxious or struggling in the ways that I struggled. I don't want to live like that. I don't want that life anymore. It's so beautiful over here and it's so much clearer and it's so much more rich. And I want more people to get to that place, to be able to fully experience their lives and be able to fully see the beauty in the trees and all of these subtle things in nature that are just given to us that we like choose to look over every day. That’s the stuff.

Sarah Plenge: That's the stuff. That's what we're here for. When I think about the times in my life that I kind of get to look around and go, “Oh, like this is what it's about,” has been a lot of times skiing or surfing or being somewhere and usually being in nature in really good company. And not to say that any of the times I've had just beautiful dinner conversations or have gotten to hold somebody's hand who I love so much, all those things are so worth it. And yeah, the present moment has so much to offer if only we choose to be here. And I think when we're caught, I don't know, in the torrential downpour of bullshit that we are forced to consume, especially as women around our size and like what's deemed good and worthy and all of those things, it's really hard to be present. And the more we're able to step out of that, yeah, like you said, the beauty is all right there if we choose to see it.

I mean, what you were saying was really on point. It is a choice to want to look at it. Also knowing that sometimes when you choose to look at it, it can be really painful, and sometimes you're looking at something that's like not aesthetically beautiful and that is also worthy of love and tenderness and care.

Yeah, my poet is showing, but there's this one Khalil Gibran poem. It's called “On Pain”, and it's an excerpt from The Prophet, and it talks about how if only you understood the richness of what was in front of you, the more you would be able to watch serenely as the winters of grief passed over your fields and know that all of the seasons are there. It's just a lot about trust. It's a lot about faith, I think, and not even faith necessarily in a religious sense, but just faith in, “Okay, I'm gonna turn this over to not me, because my tiny, little human brain can't always figure this out, and my human brain is the one that picks up on all the diet culture stuff.” So the more that I'm able to just be like, “Oh, hey, like, that's the thing that my brain is doing,” which is exactly what it's supposed to be doing. It's supposed to be digesting and analyzing and…

Megan Gill: Keeping us safe.

Sarah Plenge: Yeah, exactly. So, you know, she's just doing what she knows how to do and also knowing that like I am more than just my brain. I'm also more than just my body. I'm so many other things, and it is a choice too to step into the woman that I want to become, and I have had to spend a lot of time in my mid 20s writing about what that looks like. And there's a lot of stuff that when I was younger, I didn't let myself dream about. I never dreamed about a wedding or any of that stuff. I was so obsessed with trying to be thin and trying to fit in and all of these things.

Megan Gill: Oh, my god, same. Ahh!

Sarah Plenge: Yeah, and more recently I've just been letting myself write about what do I actually want my life to look like? I'm so lucky that even though, I don't know, this country is far from perfect, I do still have autonomy, and I can still choose to express myself as I want to. And what does that look like for me? Like, what do I, Sarah, want out of all of these spaces in my life? And, you know, I so wish I could go back and tell my little eight-year-old, and just be like, “Hey, actually, it's, like, super normal for you to be the tallest girl in the class, and you gained a bunch of weight really fast because you're growing so tall, like so, so tall.”

I'll just share this, but I had a really interesting therapy session last week where I was kind of going in and exploring some stuff around my inner child. And I like uncovered this memory of being in ballet when I was little and being in this little Christmas tree costume. And I remember being so, so scared that I was the biggest person in the photo because I was just like a head or two taller than all the other girls. I don't know if that was a function of all the hormones in the soy milk or what. But I was just a really tall little kid, and I was just a bigger little kid. Super normal but girls would tease me about it. It sucked, and like instead of that being like a thing of reverence like, “Damn, actually, she is so athletic. Can I get her to like be on sports teams really young?”

Megan Gill: Right? Why is that seen as such a bad thing?

Sarah Plenge: Yeah, and how much of my life did I spend, I don't know, not appreciating that gift that was given me. And, like I said, I pay for it now in a lot of ways, and it kind of sucks, but it also has taught me to just appreciate like the capabilities I do have.

“ Before I go down this rabbit hole of freaking out because a certain pair of jeans doesn't fit Like what can I do to be like, “Hey, actually I don't want to wear this outfit because it's really uncomfortable, and that's fine.” Some days the jeans fit, and sometimes they don't, and that's fine and super normal. It really sucks that our education system does not involve an aspect of talking about how our bodies fluctuate and change.”

- Sarah Plenge

Sarah is a California-based artist working primarily in the mediums of photography and writing. As both an environmental advocate and a visually-oriented creative, she strives to promote the narrative that nature is for everyone, everywhere.

After earning her undergraduate degree, she went on to pursue a career in nonprofit program coordination and partnerships management. She has since migrated beyond the development world and is primarily available for contract creative work.

Sarah is honored to have been featured in a number of different publications and exhibitions. You can find her work with Daybreak Magazine, Photoworks San Francisco, and Emocean. She shared wall spaces with talented artists at the Orange County Fair, the Film Scouts store, and at the High Tides Sessions in Southern California. She also shot her first commercial brand campaign for Lasso Surf, a surf goods company from her hometown.

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.sarahplenge.com

Substack: “Blue Wine” at sarahplenge.substack.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/senditblondie

Stay tuned for Sarah’s anthology of her poetry coming soon!

“On Pain” by Khalil Gibran

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While I’m not a licensed therapist, registered dietician, or medical health professional and cannot speak to body image topics from a clinical, trauma-informed place, I am an expert of lived experience. I’m an academic of my own body, and I’m passionate about facilitating conversations with other humans about their relationships with their bodies. I believe it’s important to continue conversations about healthy body image in creative spaces as a means to heal individuals as well as the collective whole. But just know the information presented in this medium is not professional mental health advice or medical advice, and any questions or concerns you have should always be directed to your health providers.

Everyone please welcome my long-time friend, hairstylist, style coach, and overall style icon Geena Mericle to A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations! Geena is one of the most authentic and beautiful humans I have ever met in my lifetime, and she’s a true rainbow in human form. Not only is she one of my dear friends, but she’s also an expert personal stylist who’s had a direct impact on my personal style and how I express myself in the world. (She once told me I shouldn’t wear black because black clothing does not reflect my personality - I took her wisdom to heart, and I wear a whole heck of a lot more color now.)

In our conversation, Geena speaks about feeling stifled in clothes that didn’t properly represent who she is on the inside, her core top value of expression, and how discovering your personal style can change how you show up in the world. I cannot wait for you to hear our conversation. Geena’s lens on clothes and self-expression is one I hold in high regard, and her views on supporting older women in expressing their true inner selves is one the world needs more of. Enjoy my continued conversation with the lovely Geena Mericle!

“ Those moments, I've never taken it for granted getting to be in those intimate spaces with my clients and really understanding how they view themselves. And I can't do a lot, but I try in a two-hour session to at least turn the boat around a little bit to get them to start seeing and connecting with themselves again.“

- Geena Mericle

Megan Gill: I feel like through our conversations about the work that you do, as far as, I call it helping people discover their personal style, I know we've had a couple conversations where you've been like, “Meg, shouldn't be wearing black. Don't ever wear black. Your personality does not match with black clothing. It's not the same vibe,” and honestly, I've really taken that with me. And I was very resistant to it at first, and now here I am in my mauve. I’ve found what works for me.

Geena Mericle: Yes.

Megan Gill: There’s something to this work that you do, so I'd love if you could share a little bit about it and how you've grown since maybe we've even last spoken about it.

Geena Mericle: Yeah. Yeah, so I help women discover their authentic style, and I like to think of it as it's their self-expression. It's their inner self that's coming out on the outer surface for people to see and experience who that person is on an individual level. And it started with my own journey into this and working in an environment where I'm a hairstylist. And so, I worked in a salon where we wore all black and it was just a very fashion forward, edgy way of being in the beauty industry. And so, I didn't really question it, and I did it for years, and it was seen as professional. And so, that's where I was when I discovered this other thing of like, “Oh, well, if I actually dress to who I am and let that self-expression show, that resonates and that ripples out to other people,” instead of hiding and instead living to these old standards of beauty and rules that have just been created for over many years.

The shift for me happened in 2016. Just being able to step back and really critically think about it, I've always been someone that has been interested in taking some sort of personality test and like, “Oh, like, I wonder what I am!” And just from a psychology standpoint just understanding myself a little bit better. I always had a desire to understand like other people too.

And so, I was already doing things like that just in my personal life. And so, then when this frame of, “Oh, well, how you express yourself is also an extension of who you are,” that hit hard because I was like, “Oh, I've been totally –,” not ignoring it. I obviously was working in the world of beauty, but I didn't understand the power behind it until walking it out, understanding it for myself, and then turning around and teaching other people and helping other people. But that journey definitely started with me for myself first.

And just over the years, probably since I've seen you, I've definitely grown into really honing in, not just what the framework is for, because I think it's for everybody to look at and understand. But I specifically am really passionate about aging and beauty, and over my life and my career, I have experienced clients and mentors of mine that have all, you know, said these things to me about how they view their own age and how they view themselves. And that has always been a part of me. But in the business I'm in today, that is who I'm running after is older women and showing them that they have a place in this conversation of beauty and they're not invisible. They deserve to feel fully expressed and authentic to who they are just as much as someone that's 21 and doing that naturally. I think each generation has their version of what that self-expression looks like. But if we follow the aging process, at some point, it’s been taught to you that once you reach a certain age, you're invisible, the world no longer sees you, and you kind of just need to give up, and I am here to dismantle those beliefs and help women really see their beauty again.

Megan Gill: Ugh, I love that. We are not subscribing to that. I'm right there with you. As an actor and someone who is using my body to tell stories, I am very passionate as well about older women being able to show up as themselves and not feeling like, as an older actor, they need to get the Botox, and they need to fix themselves because that's not a proper representation of our actual world. So I'm right there with you, and I think that's really powerful work, and really impactful, and I'm just so glad that you're doing what you're doing.

As I'm sitting here listening to you, I keep coming back to this piece of, well, if we are properly representing ourselves, our true authentic selves, who we are on the inside, outwardly, isn't that where our confidence really thrives and isn't that where we can truly be our best selves in the world because we're not hiding and because we're not feeling insecure and in maybe clothes that we don't relate with or clothes that – I know when I was wearing a lot of black, I was living in Chicago at the time, kind of like right before you told me all this. And I kind of had this, not bad bitch energy about me, but I was kind of closed off to others, and it was from a place of insecurity and from a place of, “Don't see me because I'm scared. I'm scared for you to see me. I don't want you to see me.”

And so, I think that even in your simple comments to someone like me about exploring different color palettes even in the clothing that I'm wearing has really helped me shine, helped who I am as a person shine on the outside, and It's very fun because – and not to make this about me. But just as an example, I have just been hearing a lot more feedback from people around me lately about how vibrant I am and how much they love my laugh and all of these things that I really have to truly attest some of this feedback that I'm getting and some of how I'm showing up in the world today to something as simple as opening my eyes to see a different way of presenting myself to the world.

And I really just thank you for, however many years ago, that was (five, six, seven years ago) for even just sitting down with me and opening my brain up to some of these concepts and to the work that you do, and I just think it's so important. And yeah, I just also wanted to share that about me because it's really cool and it feels really good to finally feel that confidence and even just in a place of I'm putting myself out there more which is scary. It's scary to put yourself out there and be vulnerable in any setting. And granted, I am 32 years old, so I can imagine if you're 52 years old or 62 years old, that it only compounds and gets more and more maybe daunting to kind of put yourself out there in a world where you maybe feel like you can't keep up as much.

Geena Mericle: Again, to give people an insight of our relationship, we did meet in college, and I went and visited you in 2019. I came out to LA, so that's what we're talking about when I had this conversation with you.

Megan Gill: I remember I came to Ladybird, which you are still working with them today, which is very cool, in kind of a different capacity.

Geena Mericle: Yes!

Megan Gill: But I remember I came and you did my hair, and that's the first time that you kind of told me about all of this. And I think that was 2018, right before you came out here.

Geena Mericle: You’re so right! You're right, because I probably would have told you then about my own transformation, all that. Then I remember coming out in 2019 to visit you, and we'd had these conversations around your image. You were working in a fitness environment at the time, and I know you were just kind of struggling in that as well. And we’d had so many just in-depth, personal conversations through that week. I literally came home, got off the plane, and there was a double rainbow happening. I'm not kidding you. I got home. I have pictures of it on my phone. I don't even know if I ever shared that with you.

Megan Gill: You probably did.

Geena Mericle: But I I just remember I saw those rainbows, and it was a pivotal moment both of us, but I just knew that something amazing was coming out of that weekend together.

Megan Gill: Oh, my gosh. Me too. I think about it often, and obviously how much I miss you and just wish that we were closer proximity wise, in general. But yeah, it was really impactful. And I even remember we went to Malibu one day, and you inspired me to wear like these bright red pants with a white and red top and a red bow, which is funny because I wore that shirt on Valentine's day. It says “girls run thangs.”

Geena Mericle: Yes.

Megan Gill: I’m very single at the moment, so I was like, “Yes, it's red. Galentine's Day, let's go.” So I still have it, and that’s so much more of how I'm dressing in my daily life too, which is just so wonderful. And it's almost like I've known that you've had this impact on me, but I don't know that I've even got to express it to you in these ways. This also feels special to be able to kind of recall and realize like, yeah, that weekend was really, really pivotal for both of us, for sure.

Geena Mericle: Yeah, and I think, switching back to the conversation of you wearing all black, and you were kind of projecting this image of, “Don’t mess with me Don’t look at me. I’m a badass bitch,” or whatever you said. It’s like that, I think you have to go through that journey of self-discovery too, right? You could look at a kid who is naturally expressing themselves and they're at a young age, and it would be so beautiful for them to grow up always expressing themselves and always knowing their truth and being authentic to who they are. But I think you also have to go through those stages where you're very distant from your authenticity, you're very distant from how you actually want to live and feel those seasons of anxiety, those seasons of depression. Those also teach you a lens that, when you do have it, you can see it, you can feel it. It is this internal feeling that your body can physically feel you’re showing up differently. You are attracting different people to you. These are all signals that you’re walking out into who you authentically are. This like resonant signal is being put out into the world, and it's returning back to you.

I think where I'm at today, those hard seasons make me see when I am connected, it is something I've always dreamed of or something, you know, I've always – and it's not for other people. It's for me. It's for me to internally feel that way. And I think that with clothing and our bodies, you want to talk about body issues. People think being a personal stylist is probably such a fun job and it's exciting, you get to play dress up all day long. Okay, you're working with women in an intimate environment, and a majority of the time it's about their body and them feeling good in their clothing, and I could say, more times than not, it's about that. And Just being around that, being in those rooms with people has helped me just have that level of empathy.

I have always been a plus-size person, and a majority of the time, I wouldn't say it ever really got to me in a crippling way. But just seeing people of any size experience the same thing, that's when it's like, okay, this isn't just a conversation around, “You're above this size. You must feel this way.” No, it could be someone that's a double zero still feeling that same exact way. And being in a dressing room with a woman, there's nothing more intimate and vulnerable than that space. And I even saw that for myself.

I have a sister, and my mom was a single mom. And me and my sister were raised together. And I remember, oh my god, swimsuit shopping. It was always going to end in tears. It was always going to end not great. And same thing for prom dress shopping, any type of special occasion. The three of us would be jam-packed into the Sears dressing room trying on things. And, you know, I did grow up in a house where my mom never forced a diet on me, never said I needed to be a certain size and even just did nurture that side of me and didn't make it about my weight, and I really appreciate that. And the three of us, I mean, we change in front of each other. We walked around as it was because we're women growing up together. But dressing rooms specifically, for the three of us, I could put us all three back into a dressing room, trying on certain things, and just, you know, one of us is gonna end up crying. One of us is gonna end up in this desperate place.

And, especially as someone that loves color and I have loved it since I was a kid, prom dress shopping, there were no color dresses for Geena, and I was only a size 14 at the time. I had to settle on wearing a David's Bridal bridesmaids dress that was navy blue.

Megan Gill: Oh my gosh, which is just heartbreaking too. How are there not more options? And granted, it was like 15, 16, 17 years ago, but even still. I know that we still have these issues today with there just not being enough options for that plus-size range, which is just not okay.

Geena Mericle: Yeah, so there's my personal journey. And then, becoming a hairstylist, that is also a very vulnerable place that you're in with – I work with everybody, but a majority women, and that is, again, a very vulnerable place to be. You're often wearing a black cape. Your hair is wet. You know, you don't look your best until after the service. And so, those moments, really, I've never taken it for granted getting to be in those intimate spaces with people, with my clients, and really understanding how they view themselves. And I can't do a lot, but I try, in a two-hour session, to at least turn the boat around a little bit, turn it around to get them to start seeing and connecting with themselves again.

Megan Gill: Mm-hmm.

Geena Mericle: And then layering, you know, now being a style coach and working with clothing, that has only amplified. It's only helped me see that window into self-image, into self-expression. That's the biggest thing that if I was to write down my values, that is definitely in the top three is when you don't express, when you don't listen to the inner voice, and I'm not just talking on like a visual place, when you don't express that, that is where depression creeps in. That is where you start to disconnect from yourself because you are avoiding really bringing that inner self outward in any way, any capacity. Maybe it's with your words, maybe it's with your clothing, maybe it's with how you're showing up at your job. That is all a form of expression. And I think it's our job as individuals to just, even if you can't be your hundred percent every day, it's like, you got to take that little micro step to it. And you wearing black seven years ago, there was no way you would have jumped to like rainbow dressing. There isn't. And I think there is a lot of resistance in that for many reasons, but it's my job to not force you to that place you're not ready for, but just to give you like a little telescope to be like she is there. I can see it, and I can see it off into the distance, and maybe one day I'll be there, but I'm here right now.

And like with anything in your life that you're looking to change, you know, eating habits, your sleep habits, whatever, we know you can't just swing from one to the other. It has to be those small, little habits that build on top of each other, and expressing yourself through your clothing is that.

Sometimes it's a hair barrette that starts or a pair of earrings or a pair of shoes, and maybe that's what you're really known for, and you love to express yourself in those small ways. But then it'll kind of build upon itself into, you know, maybe one day it's a full outfit. But even those small, little things that are just for you, that just show the world a little bit of who you are, that is just as important as having a closet full of clothes that are that perfect wardrobe for you. It's those little things that kind of add up to each other.

Megan Gill: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because it's in those little tweaks that it feels more sustainable. And it's even in the the slow-game journey where it feels that's where sustainability lies. And that's also, I think, just letting your authentic self discover those things at a slower pace is, I think, gonna just lead you to where you're truly supposed to be instead of making these rash decisions like, “Let me throw out all my black clothes and get all new clothes.” No, we don't have to do that. We don't have to do that. Maybe just rack your closet and where's the color, because there's probably some in there somewhere, which is what you and I had done. And it is, wow, yeah, really cool to just even reflect for myself on how that journey went.

I just had chills throughout everything you were just saying, too. Even being in the dressing room and being with women through these extremely vulnerable moments. And I think it's really lovely how you said if you can do one thing with your clients, it's to redirect the boat and get them to see differently because something that I've been noticing in my own self-work with body image is that I now see differently than I did pre-pandemic, I'll just say. Because it was 2020 when my personal body image journey really started to kick in and when I really started to take a look at myself and what exactly I'd been through.

And I know at this point, I'm not working with clients on this level yet, but even in my friendships and in my interactions with women, especially in the modeling world and in the acting world, it is just kind of like how you said, it's those really vulnerable moments. These are two really vulnerable professions where your body and your self-image is so baked into it that I feel very similarly as you, just on a personal level. If I can like say one thing to my co-model on this job, if she starts like going there, you know, down the rabbit hole of the spiral about self-image and body and eating and exercise or whatever it may be, if I can just say one thing to help them see a little bit clearer and be like, “It doesn't have to be like that,” coming from the place of, “I was there. I was in your shoes. But it can be different.” And I understand that it's a slow-game journey because of that. And because, for me, it's now taken five years to really gain a lot of clarity around this body stuff for me and around what I went through.

So I just think it's really, really lovely and important to hear that you are so aware of these things and understanding that you're in vulnerable settings with your clients, and I'm just so glad that you are doing this work and that the people you're working with have you and that you're so gentle about it. It's just really cool and wonderful.

I'm wondering your journey from when you were working in the salon and kind of dressing to this standard of professional in the beauty industry, which is also funny, to kind of pulling yourself out of that and allowing yourself to express the fact that you love color and you love all of these fun clothes. I'm just curious how your relationship to your own body, if it shifted at all, how it kind of shifted throughout that specific process.

Geena Mericle: Mm, absolutely. Yeah. I think what's so interesting is, again, I’ve been plus size pretty much my whole life, athletically built. And I remember as a hairstylist, prior to the work I do now, I would do a lot of fashion events just as what you're talking about, so working with models. Whether it's a photoshoot, whether it's backstage at a runway show, and that was pretty present in how I got to collaborate with other artists and get that creativity outside of the salon. I would just always be so excited, and then I would find myself like in the staging area getting ready, and that is really the only time I would start to compare my body to other people's. And I don't know if it was like picking up on them and what they were saying, what their conversations were having, were happening, or it was just watching them, you know, a designer tweak everything and measure and everything is focused, of course, on their body. And so, it’s like there’s this whole energy that happens in that backstage. And I can remember in those moments feeling pretty low about my own self-esteem. And again, we had to wear black T-shirts that said the salon name on it. I don’t love T-shirts anyways. So it never was like, “yeah, I’m so excited to wear this.” But those were the moments where I would walk away and I would just be like, “Ugh. Oh, I’ve just got to focus on like what I did creatively and not think about all that other stuff.”

And when I transitioned to working with, you know, my business partners that were in the personal styling field, I thought at first that type of thing would follow me, like I would still do photo shoots and runway shows and be able to express outwardly in that way. And I did it for probably about a year, but I kept feeling the same ways. And I was working with two women who, on the surface, someone might say, “Oh, well they're in the fashion world.” But again, I was a part of these conversations and in these dressing rooms with real women who were hiring us for this service, and I was like, “Okay, we're not here because of fashion. We're not here because this is what's trendy.” We were kind of showing up as the anti to all those things.

And I think being around them was the thing that just really opened my eyes to fully stepping away from that sphere and honing in on what it is that we were doing. And it did relate to how I was viewing myself. It was like creativity was fully unleashed in my clothes. I look back at photos from, you know, those beginning years, and I'm like, “Oh, my God, what was I doing?” But you’ve got to also look at it and be like, “I was freely, freely creating, freely expressing.” I was working with people that were not putting restraints on me in those ways as long as, you know, I looked put together to some degree, it was fine. They didn't care in that sense.

And so, I think being around that environment just helped me shed all of that feeling that I needed to still be connected to that sphere because I was getting the joy of collaborating out of it for people. But what I was walking away with was low self-image, low self-esteem. So why would I keep putting myself into that position, you know? And I think that that does correlate with how I showed up, you know?

Megan Gill: I just think it's, there's also something to be said about this like standard that you were experiencing at the shows and how you were showing up at the shows and how you felt you had to show up and also how systemically impactful that was to you and I'm sure to many other women and people in general, and I feel like that's also such an issue. And it's so lovely that the work you're doing and the space that Ladybird has created is so anti because I think that's, again, another step towards shifting these spaces over here, where it's like, “Okay, why does it have to be this way? Why does it have to be like that?” Because it's hard to hear that you felt like you were in those darker places or that this space over here led you to that darker mental space about your self-image and your body. And how if you were able to show up more as yourself, maybe you wouldn't have felt those feelings. And isn't that like the ultimate goal, I think, through like the work you are doing, and then also like through my lens of helping people relate better to their bodies. I want to shift those spaces.

So I think also just pointing that out that you were there and you were experiencing it firsthand and then you grew away from that and realized it doesn't have to be like that and are now helping people to, hopefully, also see that it doesn’t have to be like that. Because even just in our culture and society at large, these trends and, my god, the fact that low rise jeans are coming back around. As a fit model who works with a lot of young, hip brands like Wild Table at Target, they are back, baby, and I'm fittin’ ‘em. And I have lowkey PTSD. But it's in this world that makes you think that this is how it is. And like, “Oh yes, this is trendy, so I must.” I think just helping others to have the discernment to realize, “Take what's for you, leave what's not, and just be true to yourself,” is such an important piece of everything that you were saying as well.

Geena Mericle: Well, and I think just to go on that, definitely during that time I discovered high-waisted jeans, and I was like, “Oh my god!” I hated wearing jeans up until that point and was like, “Oh, this is an option?”

Megan Gill: Honestly, same.

Geena Mericle: Because low-rise jeans ruined everything for me.

Megan Gill: Me too. Literally, me too. And same, I remember, I was never mad at my mom, not her fault, but just being like, why didn't someone tell me there was another option? Granted, it was –

Geena Mericle: Well, they were being bullied because of their mom jeans! So we weren't going to listen to them.

Megan Gill: That's so true. That's so real. All I want for the rest of my life are mom jeans.

Geena Mericle: Mm-hmm. That’s what I’m saying! Every generation has their thing, and then it's like that almost gets weaponized against you, and you're like, “But that is true to who that person is,” you know? And I just want to see a world where, generationally, it doesn't matter if you're 50 and you want to cut your hair, or you want to have long hair, or whatever, it's like do it because you want to do it, you know? Stop living for your daughter's approval on your image or your husband's approval on your image. It’s like, “No! What do you want? What do you want for yourself?” That's the work to be done.

And I think that we are turning a corner where women of all of ages are being able to see themselves in this way. I think it is being modeled through Hollywood in these actresses that are, Maybe they haven't even worked in years and they've come back. Pamela Anderson, I just look at her journey and I'm like, “Yes! You have full ownership of how you're showing up, and that is incredible, and that is the story to tell.” Like, mm.

Megan Gill: Amen. Agreed. That is a word if I ever did hear one. And another one for me is Kate Winslet in discussing just her whole journey and even the way she's showing up as an actor now, I think is extremely empowering. And it seems that she hasn't had work done and that she is embracing her naturally aging face and body, and that's what we need on screen. That's what we need more of, because hopefully that then empowers the women you're working with to see, “Hey, that's me, and it's okay for me to rock my wrinkles.” It's okay because it's being portrayed in the media and in Hollywood at these levels.

Geena Mericle: And I think we are gonna get there. We are gonna get there in our generation. And I'm like, if I can help change this narrative ahead of that conversation, I want to be a part of that. And this is a different lane, but studies on women are being done more than they ever have. Perimenopause is being talked about. And again, these are all things that I've not yet participated in. But I'm like, man, I'm so glad that this conversation is happening, so when I do get to that point, there's just going to be a lot more information. There's going to be a lot more we are openly talking about as women.

Megan Gill: Right, and just the education around it too that we haven’t had before, yeah.

Geena Mericle: Yes! So I would say that's my selfish goal is that I'm like talking to my future self and, like, “You're gonna get there, and you better let what you're saying today really sink in when you get there and those wrinkles start to show up and, you know, my gray hairs are already coming in.”

Megan Gill: Mm-hmm. Mine too, girl.

Geena Mericle: So it’s like you’ve gotta walk the walk if you're gonna talk about it.

Megan Gill: I agree. Thank you for bringing that up because I have been checking myself a lot with that as well. I will just say that, as an actor and a model, I've always said it's really important to me to not do work on my face and body as far as Botox and like altering certain things. I'm very grateful that my hair is lighter, so you can't necessarily see my grays. But my hair is natural. I'm trying to embrace the natural curls these days. Like, “Let's do it!”

The one thing is I am currently writing a piece about laser hair removal, but it's for more than just a beauty reason. In certain areas I'm just having skin issues. But so I will point that out and just say that I'm not 100 percent here, but I do think it's really, really important to say, “Hey, I'm not going to get worked on on my face, and I'm going to stick to that,” and I know it might be hard, give myself 10, 15 years, and it might be really effing hard. But it's really important to me, and I agree with you. If I'm going to be in this realm and be preaching kind of a similar thing as you are, as far as, “Embrace your skin and your face and your hair as you age as an actor and a performer,” in this space, then I also need to walk the walk. And I think it's a really good way to hold ourselves accountable to that because I also believe that this is where the impact is. And again, no shade to anyone who wants to do what they want to do. That is totally on you. I think it's also just important to me, and it sounds like to you as well, to just empower women to know that you don't have to. And if you want to do it, but if you don't, don't.

Geena Mericle: That is where I leave it. Because, absolutely, I work with people that get Botox, and I am of the camp that if that truly helps you, please do it. What I don't want anyone to ever feel like they have to do is because someone else is setting a standard for them. I'm someone that – I like purple in my hair. I'm not going to be fully granola crunchy ever probably, you know? So it's like, I'm not saying don't do anything.

Megan Gill: Right.

Geena Mericle: I'm just saying it from a point of don't let someone else set your standard. Don't let someone else put that on you. I mean, I could tell so many stories, and this is bringing it up to mind is I have had clients over the years that, again, they went to a plastic surgeon for something, and then it's often a man, and it's often a man who wants to tell you what else you can fix. And I’ve watched women go in and change these things about themselves because, again, that is being projected onto them from somebody else. And so, they could have gone into it with just a simple request or a simple thing they wanted to do, and then they left with, “I have to do all these other things to feel beautiful.” And that is what we're talking about here.

Megan Gill: Absolutely.

Geena Mericle: It's not the act of going and doing something. It's the act of someone else putting their standard on you.

Megan Gill: Absolutely. And even in the acting world and the performance world, I think a lot of it is sometimes very subconscious. And if I'm an actor pursuing this thing and I'm watching television, and I see all of these actors who are very clearly in their like thirties/forties with no movement in their forehead, it's like, “Well, shit, if I'm going to book TV, I better get Botox because all of these actors on TV –,” I say all very loosely, “-- clearly have it too.”

So, yeah, I think that this messaging can come at us through many different channels, and it can be dangerous. And I fully agree with you just as far as having the discernment to know the difference and to stay aligned with your True North for you, which I think is hard, especially as women who, I mean, just will never quite be at that same level as men are and who always feel like we have to be bettering ourselves and trying our darndest and wanting to just do whatever we can to get there and to be the best, especially when competing against men in certain fields, or whatever it is. Yeah, I think it's really just important to have enough awareness and confidence in yourself to be able to be discerning when making these decisions.

Geena Mericle: Yeah. Yeah.

Megan Gill: Oh, gosh.

Geena Mericle: Like, look at Dolly Parton.

Megan Gill: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, totally.

Geena Mericle: I love her, and she could do no wrong in my eyes.

Megan Gill: Same.

Geena Mericle: And so, I'm just like, I don't think she ever – from documentaries and things I've heard about her, she never did it for other people. She wanted to feel that way.

Megan Gill: Yeah. Which is so fair.

Geena Mericle: So that's what I think the difference is.

Megan Gill: Yeah, absolutely. For sure. And it’s so nuanced. So much about this conversation is extremely nuanced.

Geena Mericle is a style coach and hairstylist dedicated to helping women feel empowered by discovering their authentic personal style. Whether she’s curating a wardrobe that truly reflects who they are or finding the perfect hairstyle to match their vibe, Geena’s goal is to make her clients feel confident and radiant. She believes that when we embrace our own unique beauty and show up as our true, authentic selves, magic happens.

Email: [email protected]

Work With Geena at Ladybird: www.ladybirdstyling.com

Get Your Haircut by Geena: www.luminesalon.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/geenamericle

“I want to see a world where, generationally, it doesn't matter if you're 50 and you want to cut your hair, or you want to have long hair, or whatever it is. Do it because you want to do it. Stop living for your daughter's approval on your image or your husband's approval on your image. It's like, “No, what do you want? What do you want for yourself?” And that's the work to be done.“

- Geena Mericle

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While I’m not a licensed therapist, registered dietician, or medical health professional and cannot speak to body image topics from a clinical, trauma-informed place, I am an expert of lived experience. I’m an academic of my own body, and I’m passionate about facilitating conversations with other humans about their relationships with their bodies. I believe it’s important to continue conversations about healthy body image in creative spaces as a means to heal individuals as well as the collective whole. But just know the information presented in this medium is not professional mental health advice or medical advice, and any questions or concerns you have should always be directed to your health providers.

Trigger Warning: This conversation contains discussion of eating disorders, nutrition, and body dysmorphia. Please take care of yourselves as you listen and avoid if these topics might be triggering for you.

Everyone please welcome my friend and acting consultant Jen DiBella to A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations! Jen is an actor, acting coach, and acting career consultant. I’ve been working with Jen since 2020, and not only is she a wonderful human being, she’s also an insanely talented actor and knows exactly what she’s doing when it comes to helping actors.

Jen approaches our conversation through her lens as both an actor and a coach. She spoke about her own body image story and shared how she brings what she has experienced in this industry into her coaching sessions and career consultations to help better support the actors she works with. Jen is incredible, and I cannot wait for you to hear our conversation!

Below, I’ve selected a few excerpts from our conversation for the blog. If you’d like to listen to the full talk, you can hit play above or listen on Apple Music or Spotify.

When I was younger in dance classes, we had this dance teacher who was notorious for (I mean, rightfully so) coming up to someone going, “Are you okay? Are you eating?” this and that, and it almost became a goal to me and my best friend – and we were young, maybe 12 or 13. We wanted to have a talk with that dance teacher. We wanted that dance teacher to say, “Are you okay? Are you eating?” Because we thought that that was a spotlight being shown on us. Like, “We're thin. We're thin.” How unhealthy is that?

- Jen DiBella

Megan Gill: It's also funny asking people, “Hey, do you want to get coffee with me and talk body image?” How fun! Can this be the norm?

Jen DiBella: I feel like so many people in LA would be like, “No.”

Megan Gill: “You want me to divulge all of the weird things that my brain thinks about my body?”

Jen DiBella: And, like I said earlier to you while we were off record, it is something, my relationship to my body, my relationship to body image, is not only something that has shaped who I am as a person, but also an artist. In this industry, I've had to work with different tools to make me feel more secure when I'm feeling insecure. I think now as a consultant and talking to actors every day, of all shapes, sizes, colors, whatnot, there's more perspective for me to get outside of my own self and to hear what other people are concerned about, and then look back into the mirror going, “Okay, you just told that person they have nothing to worry about. Why are you worrying about this?” And I just think it's really important especially as a consultant and coach who just wants the best things for actors.

Megan Gill: And for the actors that you love and that you work with and that you just see the good in them.

Jen DiBella: I know I'm partial, but everyone I work with, I'm just like, “You're amazing! You can do this! You succeed at everything you do!” And I'm so proud of them, and so, it hurts my heart when someone gets a breakdown for a character and they go, “Oh, but they're gonna want someone like this. They're gonna want someone like this,” physically. I'm like, fuck that.

Most of the time, no one knows what they're looking for, so give them the best option that they can find, and you're not going to be ignored. And second of all, just get out of your own way, I think is really what it comes down to. Just get out of your own way. You have no idea what they're looking for. You're limiting yourself.

Now, you could say that, but then I'd do the same shit to myself, and I'd have to catch myself and go, “Okay, well, walk your walk,” you know?

Megan Gill: Which is just so hard to do. It's so easy to sit here and compliment your friend.

Jen DiBella: Yes!

Megan Gill: It's hard to look in the mirror and compliment yourself.

Jen DiBella: Yeah.

Megan Gill: And isn't that just really sad?

Jen DiBella: Because when it comes to seeking validation from partners, from friends, just having this conversation and prepping to think about certain things that did shape me with body image, when I was younger in dance classes, we had this dance teacher who was notorious for, I mean, rightfully so, coming up to someone going, “Are you okay? Are you eating?” this and that, and it almost became a goal to me and my best friend – and we were young, maybe 12 or 13. We wanted to have a talk with that dance teacher. We wanted that dance teacher to say, “Are you okay? Are you eating?” Because we thought that that was a spotlight being shown on us. Like, “We're thin. We're thin.”

Megan Gill: Right, like that's the goal.

Jen DiBella: How unhealthy is that?

Megan Gill: Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. And it's wild, too, because that teacher was probably – good on that teacher for checking in with the students, absolutely. But the educator doesn't understand how that, then, affects the other students who are not having that conversation, or who are not being pulled aside. It's like, whoa, the psychological gymnastics of that then trickles out.

Jen DiBella: But also, something that I hadn't thought about until you invited me to have this conversation – it’s interesting because, again, trigger warning for eating disorders, anorexia specifically. I think that these thoughts are there with you at a pretty young age and if you are – I don't want to say vulnerable to them. I don't really know where it comes from, but starting in dance classes, real young, I can remember looking in the mirror, because we all have to wear our leotards (hat was the uniform, obviously) and just thinking, “Oh, my legs are thicker than theirs. Why do I have a butt, and why don't they?”

Megan Gill: Yeah, me too, girl.

Jen DiBella: And then it was also just kind of like, “I'm so pale. I need to wear blush all the time.” Like, it also did develop into other things, and guess what? I'm still so pale. But it led to other things, but at a young age, thinking, “Okay, I look different in a leotard.” That was one thing.

I booked my first commercial, maybe one of my first commercials, in seventh grade, and it was this big deal. I got to take Amtrak to a different location. I got to go with my mom, obviously. And they needed my sizes, and me and this – so I was probably 13 or 12, in seventh grade, right? Something like that? And the other girl, who was +18 to always play younger. She was 20, I think, and it was me and her in this commercial playing high school students or something. And she was a size zero. I remember they asked for numbers. Numbers is what always what it came back to you for me. So, she was a size zero. I was a size six slash eight. And I just remember, “But she's so much older than me. Like, why am I so young with this larger number?”

Megan Gill: Oh, god, yeah. Yeah.

Jen DiBella: And then trying on the pants that wardrobe got for me, also, let's just keep in mind, all sizes are not uniform. Every single brand that is mass produced, it's still a frickin’ struggle to find jeans that fit me correctly, for most people. And so, yes, a size six in whatever brand I was wearing, I was six. Whatever brand wardrobe got, I did not fit in the six. So they had to go out shopping and get it, and then all of a sudden I felt guilty for that because they had to go get me a different size. I also felt, “Why did I have another number that was larger than my co-worker?”

And what's really sad – oh god, I feel like this is where my childhood kind of died. In a way. Oh my god, in a way. I had such a beautiful childhood. I love my family so much. But on the way to the shoot on Amtrak, my mom and I were so excited and like I got a Frappuccino from Starbucks and I got a big cookie for the train. And then on the way back from the shoot, my mom was like, “Do you want to get Frappuccino? Do you want to get –?” and I wouldn't have anything. And this is where it starts because I felt like I inconvenienced wardrobe that they had to go get a different size. First of all, props to wardrobe. They always have multiple sizes.

Megan Gill: Right, yes. For this reason.

Jen DiBella: They were not mad at me.

Megan Gill: Yeah. No, no, of course not.

Jen DiBella: They were like, “Oh, we need to go up a size. That’s fine.”

Megan Gill: When you’re that young and this is your first experience with it, it's a big moment, and you don't really know what's going on, and you're taking it all in, and you're learning.

Jen DiBella: So that's where the awareness started, and Seventeen magazine at the time, I just mentioned Frappuccinos, and they had some kind of article, “Are You Drinking Your Calories?” I think it was Seventeen magazine. I can't say. I loved Seventeen magazine,.

Megan Gill: Oh, there was a lot of that stuff. A lot of diet culture, beauty industry baked right on into those magazines, yeah.

Jen DiBella: Yeah, so then I was suddenly very aware of what I was putting into my body. Cut to two years later, I was a freshman in high school, and my best friend passed from cancer. That's a really young age, obviously, to have that happen, to have you try to wrap your head around what was happening. My friend was there, and then he wasn't.

And so, I didn't know that this happened until I was in therapy but because I didn't have control of the death, I did have control of how much I worked out and how much I ate and how much I didn't eat. So, it became anorexia.

____________

Megan Gill: Something recently that came up for me is like, I am a fit model, so I'm getting measured all the time. This week I was measured way under what I normally am and I was like, “What the hell is going on? This is wild. But my brain instantly went, “Okay, we're going to go have pizza for dinner!” Like, no, no, no. We're not doing that. Like, yes, we are having pizza for dinner, but not because we are – yes, smaller. Like, no, no, no, no. And we can, we're allowed to eat the pizza. It's like, no, fuck no. We're always allowed to eat the pizza, and we should eat the pizza. It's still so difficult and hard to constantly keep up with that.

Jen DiBella: Because we are in these industries, too. It's like, in general, I have so much sympathy for – and we touched on this before we started recording – body dysmorphia, too. And how your best friend can look at you and be like, “You're crazy. What are you talking about? You look amazing,” about whatever it is. But when you're looking in the mirror, that's when that voice is like, “Oh, this area of your body doesn't look normal,” or “This is not proportionate,” or whatever it is. We can be so mean to ourselves, but again, it's that voice, and sometimes you're just gonna be like, “Girl, bye.” Like, “No, not today. I'm busy. I don't have time.”

Megan Gill: “I'm so busy. I don't have the mental energy and I don't have the space in my brain to dedicate to you!” Yeah. Because I don't know about you, but I spent way too much fucking time dedicating my life to that voice.

Jen DiBella: Yeah, so then, for ourselves and the industries that we have picked, to be in entertainment, to be a fit model, oh my goodness, to just have a measuring tape anywhere. I mean, at this point now –

Megan Gill: I know I understand that can be triggering.

Jen DiBella: Yeah, and also on casting sites, you have the list of sizes. I never feel confident about putting one size up on there since because, you know, back to day one with that commercial being like, “I said I was a size six and clearly I wasn’t.”

Megan Gill: Give a nice healthy range. Six, eight, ten, somewhere in there. Something will fit!

Jen DiBella: “It depends!” But, now I trust wardrobe even more to, you know, pull up and and pull down sizes too. But, with all that being said, the industry that we're in, yes, there's the little girl who was trying to micromanage how much she was eating for whatever reasons. But then you go back to, okay, how does that apply to today? And even just the last decade of being in LA and pursuing this industry, you get these breakdowns, and then you assume, they want someone who's stick thin and looks like a model. Or, you know, talking about what my clients go through as well, We just naturally will limit ourselves if we read a breakdown (a character description). If we read a breakdown and it says, “She is a thin, natural beauty,” or something like that. And all of a sudden I'm like, “Well, am I thin? Am I not?” Or “She's relatable, real. We don't want any models.” I get that all the time where it's just like, “Let's have her quirky face, and she cannot be a model!” I'm like, “All right. Jesus!”

Megan Gill: Got the memo!

Jen DiBella: “Okay, a real person!” So, you know, there's that too, but then, on the other side of things, I have some clients who have expressed how frustrated they are about the lack of sensitivity when there is a breakdown for plus size, how there are certain breakdowns out there (character descriptions or a description of a role) that will be “overweight.” Like, “They are overweight.”

Megan Gill: That's the descriptor that they're using.

Jen DiBella: Yes, they're using the word “overweight” or “chubby.” They are, you know, like, whatever. And it's kind of – I don't have the answers of how that should be written. But should there be more sensitivity? I laugh because some of the ones that I've read for clients I'm like, “Jeez. Okay.” I just think that there's a different way that we can be describing real people.

Megan Gill: Absolutely, and describing real bodies.

Jen DiBella: Just real bodies in general, yeah, because people, like we all – oh my god, it's just, it's gotten so much better in the time since the Seventeen magazine days where, I don't want to name one iconic actress or model, but there were times where it was like, “How thin can you get?” And there were times in my life where I was like – and it's not too long ago – I was like, “I think I've reached the thinnest I can. I don't know how to get thinner. I don't know how to do it unless I starve.” And it's gotten better in the sense that I do see what I would say normal bodies are, which is just so crazy. I just saw an interview with Kate Winslet when she was doing the press tour for Titanic.

Megan Gill: I saw this too.

Jen DiBella: You know, like, the press was literally ripping her apart for being overweight. And Jennifer Lawrence, when she first came out too, when she got, what was the big one? What was Katniss again?

Megan Gill: Hunger Games.

Jen DiBella: Hunger Games. When she got Hunger Games, they were telling her to lose weight because she was plus size.

Megan Gill: I'm also just, like, what constitutes being “overweight?” Like, what?

Jen DiBella: What are you talking about?

Megan Gill: Yeah, it's wild. It’s really wild.

Jen DiBella: Oh, my gosh, and press in general, I can't imagine. Because I did come to LA when I was 16. And I am so grateful, at this time now, even though at that time, it was another SAG writer's strike, and nothing was actually happening too much. It wasn't that busy. But I came out here. There was a Disney/Nickelodeon casting director that really loved me, and was like, “Oh my god, we just need to scoop you up and put you on a set.” If that actually happened, if that worked, when I was 16-year-old me, very much still in the trenches of eating disorders, oh, my goodness. I just feel like it's so dangerous. I think it's so dangerous. You're not fully developed yet, and then as a young kid, if I had one experience on a set that something didn't fit, oh, my gosh, I can't imagine as a kid – and then you welcome the public opinion, it can be a very scary, unhealthy place.

And so, I got the lay of the land when I was here when I was 16 for a couple months. My mom was with me, and she did too and she's like, “You're gonna go to college and get a head on your shoulders and then you can come back.” And that's what I did. I did stay in college. I went to Fordham in New York. I was dreaming of LA the whole time. So, a month later after graduating I did come here. But knowing what I went through, late teens and early twenties, just growing up in general, oh, my god, if – everything happens for a reason as far as when something doesn't land. I don't think I – oh, my gosh, I know that mentally that would have been detrimental to my life, I think, if something happened around that time because I was not equipped for it.

Megan Gill: I can relate in my own ways. My body image stuff really didn't come to a head, until I was in college, really. That’s when it got pretty bad. So it's funny because I'm relating with you. I needed to go to college in order to move to a city, move to a big city. I needed that experience. I needed to come into my own and grow as a person – which, I just say it's funny because that's where the body image issues really became very clear and where I was controlling my eating and I had, like,

Jen DiBella: Is there something that had triggered it originally?

Megan Gill: Just growing up in the arts, growing up in dance, growing up in theater. But I agree with you on that, because I think that we are, as young people, so impressionable, and we don't frickin’ know. And having an experience – was it four years at Fordham?

Jen DiBella: Mm-hmm.

Megan Gill: Same for me, four years at Wichita State. I needed those four years to learn how to human so that I could then move to the city and actually be okay and not let myself get eaten up by the industry or let the industry tell me that I was “fat” or “too big” or “couldn't do this.”

Because when I left high school, the messages I was receiving from people that cared about me, which I don't blame them for, was, “You're never going to be able to pursue Broadway if your body looks like this.” So I think I also would have just gotten eaten alive, and I wouldn't be here in LA acting. I don't know that I would be on the trajectory I'm on right now if I did just move to the city to pursue the thing. So I feel you on that.

Jen DiBella: You know, it's interesting too because I went to high school with one of the best dancers I still know to this day, and she's a little shorter than the typical professional dancer, whatever the hell that means.

Megan Gill: I know.

Jen DiBella: And she's on Broadway.

Megan Gill: Slay! Slay Queen!

Jen DiBella: And we had a teacher that was basically like, “You're too short. “You're too short.”

Megan Gill: God. Yeah.

Jen DiBella: And who's to say that one opinion if everyone listened to that one opinion, that one naysayer they had in their past, we'd all give up by now. Forget it.

Megan Gill: Oh, totally.

Jen DiBella: I also – oh, my god, I just thought about this. Okay, so, I don't know why this always comes up in my life, but I think it's a fun fact. I auditioned for Zenon. So not the Xenon as in her role, but Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century. We love Zenon.

Megan Gill: I was just talking about Zenon on Friday with some girlfriends! I freakin’ love Zenon.

Jen DiBella: So I did not audition for that role, but I think it was Zenon III. It was some kind of sequel, which I don't know if anyone ever watched, but I was auditioning for, I wanna say, her cousin, and I was 11 or 12. Oh, my god, I remember – like, this is sad. Everything's fine, but it's sad that this is such a core memory at this point.

So I had this little, teal tank top on when I was going to practice with my acting coach at the time. I am 11 or 12, tiny, tiny.

Megan Gill: God, I’m not ready for this.

Jen DiBella: I had this little, teal tank top that, I don't know, showed some kind of belly, I guess – not showed belly, but I had a little belly, I guess. And we do the scene, and we're in the lobby, and oh my gosh, thank god for my mother. My mother was also dragged into this. I was like, “Mom! I want to be on the box!” which was the TV. And she tried to ignore me for the longest time. And I was like, “Mom! I want to be on the TV! I want to be on the box!”

Megan Gill: “I want to be on the stage! I want to be on the box!”

Jen DiBella:And she's like, “Mkay, whatever,” and she signed me up for a musical theater class, and that was literally this little community thing. And of course, there was this touring production that came casting. They took my mom into the office being like, “We want to cast your daughter on this tour for the next year,” and she's like, “What? She’s 11.” She's like, “Ugh, I was just trying to get her to shut up!”

So, with that being said, now cut to I started going out for TV/film things, and I'm in this acting coach’s whatever. This older woman, and we do the scene, we go back to the lobby, I'm with my mom, and in front of me, she goes, “She's just a little chubby, so she has to lose some weight.” I must have had just like baby fat. There was no way I was overweight. I'm just trying to paint the picture that there was no right for this woman to say this, and my mom was like, “I think she's perfectly healthy, but thank you so much.” She just shut it down.

Megan Gill: Oh, thank god for your mom.

Jen DiBella: But then we went to the grocery store right after, and I remember looking at reflections in an aisle, kind of like, I don't know, like maybe some plexiglass or something, trying to see if I had a stomach.

Megan Gill: It's so damaging! It's so damaging!

Jen DiBella: I was so little, and I still have the tape that we did for Zenon somewhere, and when my parents found it in 2020, I was like – I was in this space suit that we found from Goodwill. It was amazing. She did not get cast.

Megan Gill: Iconique. Iconique.

Jen DiBella: So good. She did not get cast. But She really tried. She wore the space suit. So, with that being said, It's like this little stick girl. I'm like, “What the hell? Why does he even say that?” Because it stuck.

Megan Gill: And I think this also goes to just retouch on the fact that it doesn't matter what your body looks like. We all, I believe, have some semblance of these similar feelings about our bodies, and we all receive certain messages from people, society, whoever the hell it is, diet culture, whatever it may be. We are all receiving messages no matter what your body looks like.

So I think that the narrative that your body has to look a certain – if your body isn't – if you have a slender body that you can't relate. I don't know, I feel like people like to be like, “Oh, well –.” Like you said earlier, before we started recording, people would always tell you that like, “You're fine. You're good. Your body's good. Don't worry. You have nothing to worry about.” But it's like, “Little do you know.” So let's not jump to those conclusions. I just want to point that out too because it's like perfect fucking example.

Jen DiBella: But it's also an example of, you know, a lot of people just struggle with their weight if they're under, if they're at weight, or if they happen to be overweight. It's all inclusive as far as, you know, if you have body dysmorphia one way or the other, if you believe something's wrong, then game over, you know? But when, when you're talking about, you know, we're constantly given this – I forgot how you just put it. We're constantly given an opinion…

Megan Gill: Messages from the world.

Jen DiBella: Yes, yes!

____________

Jen DiBella: Before we started recording, I told you just last week, it might've been like two weeks ago, but I had an audition come through that the breakdown, I mentioned to you, I just immediately assumed, “Oh, they want a model. Oh, they want a model for this.” And, let's dissect what model means in my brain, when I was thinking that: they want someone stick skinny, so strong-looking, again, going back to the typical Victoria's Secret model back in the day – not back in the day, they still exist. But yes, that is what I was thinking of. And also gorgeous, and blah, blah, blah. And my brain was like, “You're not that. But let's proceed anyway.”

So I decided to audition for it anyway and give it my all but also put my personality into it. When it comes to no one else can do what you do, no matter how you look, I was like, “Okay, I'm going to put my Jen spin on this, and I'm still going to give it my all.” I did, and it was one of those things where I was like, “Oh, it's probably embarrassing that I sent that.” The day after when I didn't hear anything, I even had a thought of, “Oh wow, that must have been really embarrassing to watch.” I was like, “Shut up. Just shut up.” The next day, I was on avail for it, so I came down to the last two. If people don't know what avail means, it's usually you're down to two or three people.

And so, I did not wind up, actually booking it. But even getting that far, I had messaged my agent, “This was a major confidence boost.” And he didn't understand. He goes, “Oh, this is great news no matter what,” and I was like, “Okay, nevermind.” I wasn't going to go into detail. And guess what? They might have not been looking for what my mind put onto it. They did not say any of the things that my mind said. I just read a breakdown, saw this type of role, and went, “Ah, they're going to want X, Y, and Z.” They didn't say that. Why am I limiting myself?

Megan Gill: And I think it's so hard when part of the job is when we're taping we're thinking, “What am I wearing? Am I doing my makeup? Am I doing my hair? How am I doing my makeup? How am I doing my hair? Am I wearing jewelry?” All of those elements are appearance based. It's so easy to jump right into that and to get caught in that time and time again, tape after tape after tape after tape. And then to self-criticize and maybe not feel good enough or not feel pretty enough time and time and time again, and it's like, oh, god. I don't want anyone to be in that position Yet, I think that so many of us are.

Jen DiBella: Yes, and I definitely want to just keep saying I just want to include all perspectives on this when I think of my clients who happen to be considered plus size. And when they show me these insensitive breakdowns, they get these insensitive breakdowns and then they have to tape it, almost like putting on this thing of acceptance that, “I'm going to accept that I'm overweight, and that's why I'm taping.”

Megan Gill: Or “I got the audition because they think that I'm overweight”? Excuse me. I'm honestly still processing that. I'm beside myself that that's a thing.

Jen DiBella: Yes, and I also have clients who, you know, let's say that they're due for new headshots. And I'll have clients who want to wait three more months, or four more months, or whatever it is, because they're like, “Well, I just want to lose weight. I want to lose weight.” I was like, “These are headshots. It's your face,” and I don't want to take anything away from them, but I'm almost so passionate about being like, “You're so wonderful as you are, and waiting three or four months, sure, whatever you want to do for your business, but I don't want it to be, ‘Maybe I can lose weight from my face.’”

Megan Gill: Yeah. Yeah.

Jen DiBella: That's the stuff that I'm going to let everyone, obviously, it's their own career. They can make their decisions, but I wish that I could take that concern away from them and just not make it a concern, I guess because I relate. Because we can be mean. We can be real mean to ourselves. And we had also said before, because I want to be so transparent, that every time I do a full body slate, I'm like, “Don’t look at my body.”

Megan Gill: Same, and then I find myself putting on jeans or clothes that hug my body. I'm challenging myself lately to just put on the baggy jeans and full body slate in the fucking baggy jeans, because why do we have to like appear small?

Jen DiBella: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Megan Gill: I hate it. So I just want to throw that in there too because I'm with you.

Jen DiBella: Man, as a real challenge to myself I did start doing that. I started going, “No, I'm going to wear the clothes that I feel comfortable with. I'm not going to wear the skinny-ass jeans that I literally can't breathe in.”

Megan Gill: Right, or the clothes that are appropriate for the character or the role also.

Jen DiBella: Yep, one thousand percent. And let's just say it's similar to wearing makeup or not wearing makeup for a role. I personally love the weird hackers, the really intelligent scientists, the blah blah, who, guess what? The way that I'm doing that character, they don’t give a fuck about what they look like.

Megan Gill: Exactly, yeah.

Jen DiBella: And so, that person doesn't like playing with makeup. Jen DiBella likes playing with makeup, loves all of the things and watches all the YouTube videos. But that character, they don't care. They're like, “I'm literally cracking the code for X, Y, and Z, get out of my face,” you know?

So, I love when a character like that comes along because I have no problem going there. I've only recently found out there are certain actors who are like, “I will never not wear makeup for a tape.”

Jennifer Lauren DiBella is a SAG-AFTRA actress originally from Long Island, New York. You may know Jennifer from her recurring role in Grey's Anatomy or other credits such as 9-1-1, and CSI: Vegas.

She received her BA in Performance from Fordham University at Lincoln Center. During her time at Fordham, Jennifer studied abroad at the London Dramatic Academy where she trained in classical theatre. Splitting her time between LA and NY, Jen has appeared in various TV shows as well as commercials. She has continued her training at places such as John Rosenfeld Studios, Scott Sedita Acting Studios and The Groundlings School of Improv.

Passionate about the business side of the industry, Jen also acts as a Career Consultant and Acting Coach.

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.jenniferlaurendibella.com

Biz Instagram: www.instagram.com/jdactingconsultant

Personal Instagram: www.instagram.com/jendibella

“My relationship to my body and my relationship to body image is not only something that has shaped who I am as a person but also an artist. In this industry, I've had to work with different tools to make me feel more secure when I'm feeling insecure. I think now as a consultant talking to actors every day of all shapes, sizes, colors, whatnot, there's more perspective for me to get outside of my own self and to hear what other people are concerned about, and then look back into the mirror going, “Okay, you just told that person they have nothing to worry about. Why are you worrying about this?”

- Jen DiBella

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While I’m not a licensed therapist, registered dietician, or medical health professional and cannot speak to body image topics from a clinical, trauma-informed place, I am an expert of lived experience. I’m an academic of my own body, and I’m passionate about facilitating conversations with other humans about their relationships with their bodies. I believe it’s important to continue conversations about healthy body image in creative spaces as a means to heal individuals as well as the collective whole. But just know the information presented in this medium is not professional mental health advice or medical advice, and any questions or concerns you have should always be directed to your health providers.

Everyone please welcome my friend and fellow fit model Jas NaTasha Anderson to A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations! She’s an actress, model, and fit model in Los Angeles. Jas and I met on a fit job in the summer of 2024, have kept in touch ever since.

Jas’ openness and vulnerability throughout our conversation brought us both to tears, and our connection over what it was to grow up in the ‘90s and early 2000s in an era where small bodies were prioritized has led us down a path of deep unlearnings to embrace our bodies at whatever size they may fluctuate to be. Jas said she never lost a job because she was bloated one day, and I couldn’t agree with her viewpoint more. I hope our conversation inspires you to discover the confidence within yourself no matter the current shape/size of your body!

“It’s been empowering to be this size and to be booked as this size. To be bookable at this size is empowering because even though my mind still goes there, I can check myself and be like, ‘You’re gonna show up however you look tomorrow, and you’re still hired to be there for looking exactly how you look.’ You don’t have to do the whole charade.”

- Jas NaTasha Anderson

Jas NaTasha Anderson: So, for example, right now I'm a size 16, like 14/16 but I'm scaling closer to 16. Being hired for that all, my mind in general, just like whenever you have a booking, my thought process is like, “Let me detox. I'm going to stop eating at five this day. I'm gonna, you know, only have soup and salad this week.” I did that all last week –

Megan Gill: No.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: – because I had a runway show on Tuesday. And so, I ate like crazy over the holidays.

Megan Gill: As we should!

Jas NaTasha Anderson: As we should! No, and I didn't hold back, you know?

Megan Gill: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Like, I'm back in The South. I had Bojangles. I had like, you know, all this stuff. But with that in mind, knowing that I have to be in swim, I was like, I know that I'm definitely like, at least ten pounds over. And so, I did do like a little weekly detox, and I dropped the ten, and it wasn't actual fat loss, you know, it's just crap.

But anyway, I'm saying that to say that like I still kind of have that in my mind sometimes where I'm just like, “Oh, yeah. I booked something tomorrow. Let me start myself today,” and then it's like, “But you were booked to be the size that you are right now.”

Megan Gill: Mm-hmm, and why is that so ingrained in our head from this culture that is obsessed with being smaller than – just being small in general. Oh My god, yeah, I appreciate you sharing that, truly.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Yeah, but it's been empowering to be the size and be booked as the size. To be bookable at this size has been empowering because even though my mind still goes there, I can check myself and be like, “You're going to show up however you look tomorrow, and you're still hired to be there for looking exactly how you look,” which we talked about before.

Megan Gill: Yeah, and therefore you don't have to not eat or drink –

Jas NaTasha Anderson: You don’t have to do the whole charade.

Megan Gill: Yes, yes, the charade! That's exactly –

Jas NaTasha Anderson: You don’t have to do it. That is a fucking choice.

Megan Gill: And that there's a world in which we don't do it. And I'll share that I don't know how – I really don't know how that I’ve gotten to this place, and I know it could very well be a temporary place. But I've given up the charade, and I'm never ever gonna go back to it because of my, now, awareness of how it impacted me mentally.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Yeah. That's amazing, though.

Megan Gill: And it feels weird to say that because I just – I don't know. Again, I think that how would I feel if I were on like the upswing, and how would I feel if I were like 20 pounds heavier, like I was two years ago or whatever? Would I feel the same way I do now, and like is the freedom correlated to the fact that I've been able to maintain the same – my body hasn't changed much in the last year or so, and is that because of the freedom? Or is that just because I'm not obsessing about it anymore? Or is it just chance? Is it honestly just like – I don't know, I guess these are just like questions that go through my brain, because I've fully given up the charade. And what I want for all of us is to fucking give it up.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Completely.

Megan Gill: And so, it's really awesome to hear that you're at least like, like – of course those thoughts are gonna pop up. They pop up for me too, don't get me wrong.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: But just don't entertain them.

Megan Gill: Yeah, we're not doing it. And granted it sucks because you're right. Ugh, at the end of the day, this is our job, and we technically have to be within a range of like this specific body that this client is booking. But truly how much is – so I understand when you're like, “I need to get back to this place.” It's also like – agh, agh! This is the part that I'm grappling with. It's like how do we still maintain work in this field and just not…

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Have those fears?

Megan Gill: Yeah, and not put ourselves through that, or not even have to “get back,” even though we maybe know. It's like, ugh! And I feel like it's systemic. It's the industry at large. I don't know that we can control anything about that, but if I could shift anything, I feel like that's what I would want to shift.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Yeah, I think that I'm so appreciative of the whole, you know, body positivity movement because the industry is a totally different one than, you know, what so many people grew up in and what we saw growing up and, you know, we have representation. We never had that, you know, before.

And so, I think that I'm thankful that we are in it now where bodies are celebrated and where they are booking models that look like real people, and I really appreciate that. I don't know that I would have a job if, you know, if it was not that.

Megan Gill: Same, girl.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Yeah. So, yeah, I really contribute a lot of that to just where the world is now and people speaking out about it and wanting to see real people and reflections of themselves, and we need to have representation.

Megan Gill: Absolutely.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: But I think what has helped me a lot is, like I said, I signed with my agency at a size 12, and now being a size 16, having that fear of, like, “Oh, they're going to drop me,” you know? And they just check in, “What's your size right now? What are your measurements?” and then they submit me for that. And then, “What are your measurements? Okay, we're gonna submit her for this now.” And that in itself has just been so beautiful, and I so appreciate them for that.

Megan Gill: Oh, god. Yeah, dude.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Because there's real fear of, like, “Shit, I'm not gonna book anything anymore.” And it's been the opposite! My bookings have actually gone up, and it's been amazing!

Megan Gill: Hell yeah! And how incredible to, again, to be able to prove to yourself in that way of like, “Oh my god, I really truly can be myself and embrace who I am.”

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Yeah, at any size, whatever is going on. Yeah,

Megan Gill: And also I'm so glad you shared that about your agent just fully supporting you through that and not even making it a thing. Yep. I had a similar experience where I've been with my fit agency for five years now. When I first moved to LA, or when I first signed with them, I was pretty – right now I’m 8/10-leaning. When I first signed with them, I was about the same, a true 8/10-leaning, in there. And then, about a year later, the pandemic hit, of course, and I gained weight, and I was terrified to tell her.

Megan Gill: And I remember I was still going in for castings for – I was, like, 10/12, maybe 12-leaning at that point, and I was still going in for castings for like specs for size 8.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Yeah.

Megan Gill: And I was so terrified of just having that conversation with her from like past trauma with people in like positions of authority and power that I didn't even want to bring it up. But the second I did, and I was like, “Hey, Katie, I need to be remeasured! I've gone up a size or two or I don't know.” And she was like, “Totally cool. All good.” And kind of similar thing, she didn't make it a thing. We remeasured, and we moved on, and that's when I started to get more clients on my roster as well.

I carry that with me every single day. The gratitude that she, in this very specified industry, where our measurements are what are getting us the castings and ultimately booking us the job, that she, like your agent, didn't even freaking think twice. Like, thank you.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Yeah. And it's just like, “Okay, cool, now we know what to submit her for.”

Megan Gill: Yep, yep, yep, yep. It’s that simple, and that's how it should be.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Because I think there was a world where that was not the case. And so, even though, I mean, I wasn't in the industry at that time, but of course you know, and you hear. And so, there are these fears that are just kind of there.

Megan Gill: Yeah, and honestly, even with other agencies who knows what's going on? Thank god for these two specific agencies, but who knows what's going on at other agencies?

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Oh, yeah, I don't know, and I really hope that they also, you know –

Megan Gill: Have that grace?

Jas NaTasha Anderson: – have that experience, yeah. I'm definitely thankful.

Megan Gill: Me too.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: I think that we lucked out in getting, you know, with just really good people that are genuinely just really kind, really lovely people.

Megan Gill: Yeah, and just like us because of us. Like sure, yeah, we're bookable, but it's cool that you've now seen that you are bookable at this size and this size. And same for me. It's like, “Oh cool! This is amazing.”

Jas NaTasha Anderson: And they're just so excited to submit you and, you know, book you out.

Megan Gill: Yeah, it's like what a lovely experience to kind of debunk some of that beauty-standard, diet-culture bullshit we've been fed our whole lives.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Yeah, oh, my gosh. Yeah.

Megan Gill: Yeah. It's so weird because this whole thing for me, this exploration of what is it to move the conversation away from centering what we look like and centering the shape of our bodies and all of the stuff, moving it away from that. Yet, at the same time, the importance of having the representation and the fact that we can't really escape it.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Yeah.

Megan Gill: I'm having this, like – I don't know. I don't think it's escapable, I guess. So it's like how do we start to make these shifts for ourselves and talk about this more so that hopefully if someone's listening to this and they're, like, “Oh, my agent made me feel like shit because I went up a size,” hopefully they can now have the discernment to, in that next conversation, advocate for themselves, and/or maybe get a new agent, I don't know but, you know?

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Yeah, exactly. Or that because that probably needs to happen if they're judging them for that. Like, no one's body is perfect. We're not machines. It's not going to stay the same ever. Like you said, you're going to fluctuate. And some more than others. I feel like I've fluctuated all my adult life, you know? But, yeah, I don't know.

Megan Gill: I hear you. Do you find with fitting specifically, because they're only taking photos internally, do you find that when you show up, sometimes it's like, maybe you, like, don't have makeup on, or, like, for me, I have some – and this is so silly and cosmetic, and 'm working on it, but I get some acne on my back, and sometimes if I'm in certain garments, fitting brings up these little insecurities that maybe are only brought up because I'm on display in front of people that I'm all of a sudden insecure about. Do you ever come up against things like that?

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Yeah, that's a really good question because you literally are, like, standing there in front of sometimes a group of ten people, and they're all just, like, staring at your breasts or staring at your –

Megan Gill: Butt! [Laughs]

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Yeah, and it's like, this is really invasive! [Laughs] It's like every day when you get dressed in the morning, you don't have ten people in your house watching you get dressed. But that's what this job is.

Megan Gill: Mm-hmm.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: And so, I think in the beginning, I did have a little anxiety about that and insecurity as far as – I can't think of any specific insecurities that would come up, but definitely the feeling of, “Ahh!” Like, “Oh no! They're gonna find something!” you know? Or, you know, just the constant fear of, “Oh, this is going to be my last time here because I'm too fat or too whatever,” you know?

And then when they're like, “How do you feel? Is it okay? Is it digging anywhere?” And then, especially if you're exactly what they're looking for as far as measurements, then I'm like, “Hey, you know what, this actually can be let out,” and then you kind of take charge, and they're giving you that platform to do that. And you're like, “Okay, this should be like this, or this arm loop is too far.” And so, then I feel like I found my confidence in that because, again, we are there to be ourselves, and we're there to be the size that we are to help them sell a better product.

And so, I think what it was is the last one that we did together, the swim one, having everyone just turning you around and, you know, you're truly on display.

Megan Gill: Yeah, in a bathing suit. And there were men –

Jas NaTasha Anderson: There were men there.

Megan Gill: – there with that account. A lot of times there aren't, so I feel like that also, for me –

Jas NaTasha Anderson: I think that was my first time having a man in the room.

Megan Gill: Like, “Ahh, why is this extra weird?”

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Yeah, it was a little…

Megan Gill: They're very, very respectful, like the sweetest, but it's just a little bit like eek.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Yeah, it’s a little – yeah. I think that just naturally you feel more comfortable in front of women. Like, especially when you are, you know, having any insecurities about that. But I'm trying to think of what it was. Oh, yes. Insecurities, right.

So I have an insecurity about my legs are longer and my torso is shorter. So normally that's something that, in a swimsuit or in something where I might feel kind of awkward, but as they're asking me questions and stuff now, I'm just like, “This doesn't need to be taken up. My torso is shorter, so don't worry about that.”

Megan Gill: Yes, I experience the same thing!

Jas NaTasha Anderson: “It fits on me a little bit differently than it would on the normal size 16.” And they're like, “Oh, okay, great. Thank you,” or like, “In here, I'm like, oh, I'm a little more narrow here, so you don't have to let this out or anything.” And so, that has kind of helped me to take control over it and not mind those insecurities.

Megan Gill: Mm-hmm, embrace them instead.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Embrace them because, again, you're helping people. You're helping everyone. Everyone wants to feel beautiful when they wear this thing.

Megan Gill: Absolutely, and there are going to be people, women, whoever is wearing the garment, truly, that have those longer legs, and there are going to be people that have shorter legs and have this and that. It’s like so all of our bodies are so different. So I love that you're bringing this up, because I'm like, “Yes, yes, yes!” I've also been right there with you.

It's been really an empowering way for me to embrace my body and everything about her because I'm so grateful to be this person chosen to fit this for everyone in America that's going to go to Target and buy these clothes. Like, god, that's just really cool.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: And be honest about it, and be honest about like, “Hey –.” Because in the beginning, I felt uncomfortable speaking up about things. And so, there were certain things that didn't necessarily fit right, but I'm like, “Oh, that feels okay.” And then like hearing the other more experienced girls say like, “Well, it doesn't feel…,” and I'm just like, “Oh, they can talk to them like that? I didn't know that was a thing.”

Megan Gill: Yeah, same.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Not that they're rude, but just very direct. And so, now I'm like, “Hey, this can go here.” Like, “I need more coverage on the butt.” And I'll be like, “Is this supposed to be this cheeky?” And they're like, “Oh, no.” And I'm like, “Okay, let's bring it down a little bit,” you know? It has been such a positive experience. And I didn't know what it would be, but I'm really happy that it was a really positive one.

Megan Gill: Oh, my gosh. Yes, truly, and same. It's like I have to attest this work to the place I am in as far as how I'm relating to my body and my body confidence and all of that stuff now, too. Because I'm just sitting here thinking all of these things, even like you were saying, your general confidence. I was like, you know? I've always been like a confident person, but there's a different air about my confidence now, and I think a lot of it is being able to like is because I've learned, in a fitting setting, to be able to speak up and advocate for the fit, and therefore I'm now learning how to advocate for myself in my life and use my voice to speak up for myself in other areas of my life. And it's like how does that compute, but it makes sense because we're just practicing it so much over here in this space that and in these spaces that of course it’s translating over here, and how cool is that?

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Yeah, it really is. I definitely feel that. Like that confidence showing up in all other areas as well, yeah.

Megan Gill: Oh my god, this is just so fun to talk about! I've never spoken about this stuff with another model before!

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Yeah, I know, because, I mean, I feel like models don't talk about this, But then also, I feel like I've connected with the girls who I feel like I'm, like, friendly or friends with, but, you know, we don't hang out that often on a one-on-one basis.

Megan Gill: And divulge into all of this nitty gritty. Oh my gosh, okay, one other thing that you said earlier, I felt this hit me. When you were, like, we equate being bigger to not getting the job or not being hirable or –

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Less than.

Megan Gill: Mm-hmm, being literally less then. And I just can't with that, and I just hate that that's what our experience is, what society has conditioned us, and a lot of it probably is when we were – the era we grew up in, too.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: A hundred percent. Like, everyone was like a double zero.

Megan Gill: Oh, my god, yes. And then I mean, in middle school and high school, a lot of times in my dance classes, at school, I was a taller, bigger kid. And it was like, “But why don't I look like that?” And so, all of this, the years and years of this conditioning, it's like, well, yeah, it makes sense that this is showing up for us in this work, that we're in these rooms thinking, “Oh my god, if I get any bigger, they're not going to want me.” Because how many times has that –

Jas NaTasha Anderson: And that thinking contributes to you getting bigger because you're now stressed.

Megan Gill: Yes, and hyper focused on it.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: And hyper focused, and maybe you're, you don't cope well with that. And you might be overeating, or like doing whatever, and yeah.

Megan Gill: Or restricting, and then it's making the problem worse, and actually – yeah, yeah. Yep. Oh my god, yes. And it's just devastating for me to – not for me, but it's just devastating.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Yeah, I definitely can relate.

Megan Gill: I can't handle how devastating it is that that's like what so many of us – and I have to believe that it's in a lot of different shapes and sizes, just innately what we believe about ourselves.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Oh, of course. Yeah.

Megan Gill: And I feel like we are moving away from that as a society, which is really cool.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Yeah, we are.

Megan Gill: And go Gen Z! All of these young kids, I can't stop thinking about them as well. It's like I want them to have a different experience than we had, right? So that they're not dealing with this shit now in their adult life.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: Yeah, I feel like they already kind of are because there is so much representation, but then obviously there's like the whole other side of social media, and that's a whole other thing. But I feel like they definitely are seeing more bodies than we did. I remember being, like, 12 and 5'7 and everyone else was still, you know, 5 feet, and, again, double zero, and little, teeny, tiny, teeny boppers. And I always felt out of place and big because I was tall. I wasn't overweight, but you kind of mentally think that, you know, if you are just much taller than everyone else. So yeah, it definitely started then.

I was thinking about this yesterday. I was watching a podcast; I don't know if you've seen it. Raven-Symoné has a podcast with her wife.

Megan Gill: I haven't, but I love this.

Jas NaTasha Anderson: I don't know her wife's name, but it's such a great podcast.

Megan Gill: Okay, I'll have to check it out and yeah, share it!

Jas NaTasha Anderson: God, I forget her name, but anyway, this comedian was talking to her about how, you know, she was like, “I don't have to work as hard or do as much because of you, because you walked so that we can, you know, fly.” And it's so effing true, and I commented under saying that I literally am in LA pursuing what I am because I saw Raven. I saw someone that looked like me, and I saw that she was not a size zero. “She looks like me, and she's on TV, and she's on Disney, and she's doing all the things that I have always dreamed of doing!” And so, that was just such a beautiful moment of remembering that yesterday and, wow, I actually am here because I saw that and believed that I could. And so, to think that I can also have that impact on someone, anyone, just one person, you know?

Jas NaTasha Anderson is an actress and curve model based in Los Angeles, CA. She’s represented by Luxe Fit Models and Brand Models and Talent. She’s an ambassador for the brands Yitty and MICAS and was most recently seen in the impactful “Hims and Hers” commercial for Super Bowl 2025.

Email: [email protected]

Instagram: @iamjasnatasha

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While I’m not a licensed therapist, registered dietician, or medical health professional and cannot speak to body image topics from a clinical, trauma-informed place, I am an expert of lived experience. I’m an academic of my own body, and I’m passionate about facilitating conversations with other humans about their relationships with their bodies. I believe it’s important to continue conversations about healthy body image in creative spaces as a means to heal individuals as well as the collective whole. But just know the information presented in this medium is not professional mental health advice or medical advice, and any questions or concerns you have should always be directed to your health providers.