Kerry Washington Opens Up About The Source of Her Struggles With Body Image

When it comes to beauty and style, it doesn’t get much better than Kerry Washington. The Little Fires Everywhere actress joined the likes of Kelly Rowland and Halle Berry in the pages of PEOPLE’s coveted 2013 Most Beautiful issue. But lately, Washington has been opening up about her struggles with an eating disorder – something she revealed in her new memoir, “Thicker Than Water.”

In an October 1 conversation with Gabrielle Union at LA’s Palace Theater, the Scandal actress noted that although she hails from the same Bronx neighborhood as J.Lo, she didn’t have nearly the same confidence in her backside as Jenny from the Block.

Washington said the ongoing issues with body image she discusses in her book are rooted in her experience attending a private school on New York City’s Upper East Side in the 1990s, a part of town a million miles away from her multicultural neighborhood where white women typically define the standard of beauty.

“Jennifer’s butt was being celebrated everywhere,” Washington told Union. “But that wasn’t what I was interpreting as beautiful. Because I was spending nine hours a day at Spence, where Gwyneth Paltrow went. I’m not body shaming Gwyneth Paltrow, but...there was one area that I was sort of being told was the direction to pursue.”

Washington and Union’s conversation addressed the myth that “Black women and girls don’t experience disordered eating or experience body dysmorphia,” and drove home the point that when it comes to positive body images, representation matters.

“These are stereotypes, but the ways that their moms and the women in that world looked was so different from the women that I grew up with,” Washington said “And all the messages I was getting from Hollywood and from this environment was that thinner is better. And that success looked like thinness.”

Washington was also quick to point out that Paltrow’s ex Ben Affleck might not mind a little booty, as he seems to be pretty damn happy with J.Lo these days.