Chelsea Handler talked about her evolving relationship with body image on the March 4 episode of The Jamie Kern Lima ShowShe said she used to “weigh myself 15 times a day” and avoid going out if she weighed too muchNow, she says, “to a degree, I still care” but she’s more accepting of her cellulite and body overall
Chelsea Handler is comfortable with her nude body — a stark change from how she felt about herself when she was in her 20s.
Handler — who’s promoting her new book, I’ll Have What She’s Having — broached the topic of body image while explaining why she skis in a bikini every year on her birthday during a March 4 appearance on The Jamie Kern Lima Show.
“Sometimes I’ve been topless,” Handler, who turned 50 on Feb. 25 said of her tradition of skiing down Whistler Mountain in British Columbia, Canada — a tradition she’s adjusted at the request of her nieces and nephews, who have “pointedly said, ‘Can you please not be topless?’ ”
“It is slightly vulgar,” Handler conceded, before backtracking, saying, “But it’s not vulgar — it’s freeing, it’s freeing.”
Chelsea Handler skiis in a bikini to celebrate her 48th birthday in 2023..
Chelsea Handler/Instagram
“I understand where they’re coming from (but) … to me (it’s) the essence of who I am. Me skiing down a mountain with a joint in one hand, a margarita in the other … in a bikini is exactly who I wanted to be when I grew up.”
Lima mentioned how, if you look at the data, “When it comes to body … 91 percent of girls and women literally will opt out of meaningful activities when they don’t like how they look or their body,” adding that thinking “about even my own life for decades, the amount of experience that I missed out on because I was like self-conscious. Have you ever dealt with body image?”
“Yes, of course. I’m a woman,” Handler replied. “I’ve done the same thing in my 20s. I would weigh myself 15 times a day. If I weighed a certain amount, I wouldn’t go out that night. I would exercise. I would run for two hours on the beach and then come back and weigh myself to see how much water weight I lost.”
“Such a waste,” she called that time in her life, explaining “I’ve wasted so many hours about my body image.”
Chelsea Handler as a guest on The Jamie Kern Lima show.
Courtesy of The Jamie Kern Lima Show
“I hate that every woman in this world deals with that,” she continued. “I hate that our society hasn’t embraced (moving forward). Even though we’re beginning the conversations, it’s going to take another thousand years for girls to understand everyone is different. You all have different parts. So yes, I am a victim of the very same thing.”
Now, at 50, Handler says, “I still care about what I look like in a bathing suit. I’m much more freer about the fact that I do have cellulite and it’s not shameful.”
She continued: “I also take really good care of myself because I want to look my strongest and my healthiest. I want to be powerful. I lift weights because I want to be strong and I want to be able to ski like a badass, you know? I train all the time because I want to be strong for skiing.”
As she admitted, “I also want to look good. I’m not somebody that you can excise from that argument and say that I don’t feel that way. I do care about the way I look and I wish we had an answer, but I don’t have the answer for that. I don’t know.”
The Jamie Kern Lima Show is available on YouTube and all major podcast platforms.
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