The actor Penn Badgley confessed that during his childhood he fought against the body dysmorphia. The star of You38, he explained that, although he was not officially diagnosed, he had difficulty accepting his appearance when he was just a child.
“I know I hated my body and that I simply wanted a different one”he revealed to the British newspaper The Guardian. Badgley admitted that, in response to the divorce of his parents and social isolation, he began eating in excess and fat. At that time, he idolized the men he saw in the movies and felt that he should resemble them.
However, becoming an actor brought extra pressures. “There was a period in which, after leaving depression and isolation, I got fully into a world in which the more conventionally beautiful it seemed, the more success I could have, the more value it could have.”he said. “There is no way to overcome the superficiality of this work and if you recognize that, you cannot avoid recognizing the superficiality of our culture, because of the way this work rewards.”
This feeling was extremely frequent during the time he played Dan Humphrey in Gossip Girl. “What was that show beyond the aesthetic? It was just that, the aspect we all had,” he said about the teenage drama. “More than anything, I did not like the place of superficial celebrity, the way they perceived me,” he added.
During the interview, Badgley said that at a given time It was proposed to leave the performance, but that finally he could overcome the struggles he appeared with his spirituality. “That is what allowed me to persevere through disappointment, all the things I had been fighting with, and then return to everything, but with the hope of some kind of internal transformation,” he explained.
-In addition to praying and meditating every day, the actor said he relies on “The simple things of life, such as having a family and forge significant relationships with my friends.”
Body dysmorphia is a Anxiety disorder, the spectrum of obsessive disorders that need the intervention of a psychiatristand many times use of medication and psychotherapy. There are few celebrities who suffer from this disorder, probably due to the public overexposure of their body image.
“Body dysmorphia can be generalized or focused. That is, the person can have a general rejection of his body image or can be focused on some detail that he perceives as a defect. From the size of his nose, the shape of his shoulders, his hips or another part of his body. As the person has an obsessive disorder, that supposed defect becomes the object of his obsession. It is the only thing he sees in the mirror. Corrective that far from reverting the perception of the problem, they increase it, ”Juana Poulisis, a professor at the Favaloro University and author of the book, the new eating disorders.
“Through a treatment that often includes antiobseous or antidepressant and psychotherapy psychotropic drugs they can reconsider these values and gradually encourage themselves to greater exposure to that fear that makes them suffer so much. And they manage to leave behind that disorder that conditions them the ability to enjoy and relate,” Pouleisis added.
In addition to Badgley, other celebrities who have acknowledged suffering from body dysmorphia are Megan Fox, Robert Pattinson, Billie Eilish, Demi Lovato, Uma Thurman, Lili Reinhart and Sam Smith.
