30 Celebrities Who Refuse to Lose Weight for Their Careers

30 Celebrities Who Refuse to Lose Weight for Their Careers

Here’s what they say about finding success without compromising their positive body image.

When you’re in the spotlight, there’s the added pressure to meet Hollywood’s near-impossible beauty standards. Most of the time, that involves extreme dieting and brutal workouts to lose weight. There are, however, several prominent figures who refuse to change their bodies for an acting role, modeling contract, or some other job opportunity. See what these celebrities have to say about how and why they say no to losing weight for their careers.

Gigi Hadid

“No, I don’t have the same body type as the other models in shows,” she shared in an Instagram post in September 2015. “Yes, I have boobs, I have abs, I have a butt, I have thighs, but I’m not asking for special treatment. Your mean comments don’t make me want to change my body. If I didn’t have the body I do, I wouldn’t have the career I do.”

Pink

“I am perfectly fine, perfectly happy, and my healthy, voluptuous and crazy strong body is having some much deserved time off,” the singer tweeted in April 2015. “Thanks for your concern. Love, cheesecake.”

Kirsten Dunst

“It’s so much harder when you’re 35 and hate working out,” she told Variety in May 2017. “I’m eating fried chicken and McDonald’s before work. So I’m like, ‘We have no options! I’m sorry I can’t lose weight for this role.’”

Jennifer Lopez

“They’d say, ‘You should lose a few pounds,’ or ‘You should do this or do that,’” she told InStyle in May. “It finally got to the point that I was like, ‘This is who I am. I’m shaped like this.’ Everybody I grew up with looked like that, and they were all beautiful to me. I didn’t see anything wrong with it. I still don’t!”

Ashley Benson

“I feel good,” she told Health in March 2016. “I don’t want to lose 20 lbs., because I don’t need to. I’m a size 2, but I think that size 4 is healthy. I think that all of these sizes are healthy.”

Ashley Graham

“Just for the record — I work out to: stay healthy, feel good, get rid of jet lag, clear my head, show big girls we can move like the rest of em, stay flexible & strong, have more energy,” she shared in an Instagram story posted in October 2017. “I don’t workout to [lose] weight or my curves, [because] I love the skin I’m in..”

January Jones

“I have never dieted,” she told Allure in May 2011. “I just listen to whatever my body craves. I don’t deny myself anything. I don’t crave sweets or unhealthy things very often. But when I do, like if I’m in a bad mood and I’m in traffic, I’ll stop at McDonald’s and get a strawberry shake and fries and not feel guilty at all, because I deserve it.”

Jameela Jamil

“We aren’t supposed to all look the same,” The Good Place star wrote in an article for HuffPost UK in February, calling for women to stop valuing themselves by the number on the scale. “And nothing good ever comes of self hatred. It will never further you. It will always hold you back.”

Adele

“I would only lose weight if it affected my health or sex life, which it doesn’t,” the she told The Guardian in 2007 after facing criticism on YouTube.

Kristen Bell

“I was like, ‘I have a baby. Do you know how awesome that is? It’s so radical! Why on earth am I going to be so concerned with my pants size?’” the actress told E! News, shortly after giving birth to daughter Lincoln in 2013.

Kate Winslet

“There’s a big part of me – now, more than ever before, actually – that feels a sense of responsibility for how other women view themselves,” she told Harper’s Bazaar UK in February 2015. “Take having the baby, for instance. Have I actively been on a diet to lose my baby weight? No, I haven’t. I genuinely bloody haven’t.”

Kelly Clarkson

“No one actually cares about your health. They just care about aesthetics,” she told Redbook in November 2017. “It’s when I’m fat that I’m happy. People think, Oh, there’s something wrong with her. She’s putting on weight. I’m like, ‘Oh, no! I’m sorry, but that represents happiness in my emotional world.’”

Gina Rodriguez

“I’m OK in both of those,” she told Self of her fluctuating weight in February. “I’m not less than because I’m 10, 15, 20 pounds more.”

Hilary Duff

“I’d rather have someone pull my fingernails off than hunker down and go on an actual diet,” she told Shape in 2015. “It’s so hard for me! My sister Haylie and I once considered doing a baby-food diet, but it just sounded too disgusting.”

Tyra Banks

“She put a pen in my hand and she said, ‘You write down every client that likes ass. Your ass. Because it’s growing and there’s nothing wrong with that, and I’d be damned if my baby starves for this industry,’” she told Business Insider of how her mom reacted when she was told to lose weight. “Goodbye high fashion, hello ‘girl next door.’”

Liv Tyler

“I’ve been told that if I lose weight, I’d have more work, but I refuse to submit myself to Hollywood standards,” she said in 2003, according to the Chicago Tribune. “To the rest of the world I am slim, and I like the way I am.”

Jennifer Lawrence

“I can’t work on a diet,” she told Vanity Fair in February, admitting she dieted for the first time for her film Red Sparrow. “I’m hungry. I’m standing on my feet. I need more energy.”

Patricia Arquette

“I remember a director telling my agent that it would be great if I could lose 10 pounds as long as my boobs didn’t get smaller,” she told Fortune in September 2015. “I didn’t want to lose 10 pounds and I didn’t. There were times I turned down movies when I needed work financially, when I had a newborn, because the roles were inappropriate, or the director was inappropriate or unethical. That is another reason I feel the way I do about gender pay equality.”

Amy Schumer

“The only change was that it was explained to me before I did that movie [Trainwreck] that if you weigh over 140 pounds as a woman in Hollywood, if you’re on the screen it will hurt people’s eyes,” she said on the U.K.’s The Jonathan Ross Show in October 2016. “I didn’t know that so I lost some weight to do that but never again.”

Rihanna

“Well, I actually have had the pleasure of a fluctuating body type, where one day I can literally fit into something that is bodycon, and then the next day — the next week — I need something oversized; I need a little crop here and a high-waist there to hide that part, you know?” she told The Cut in October 2017. “I really pay attention every day when I go into the closet about what’s working for my body that morning.”

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