America Ferrera Is Calling Out Hollywood for How Her Body Was Wrongly Perceived
In a recent interview with Elle for the 2023 Women in Hollywood December/January issue, America Ferrera spoke up about how her body type was wrongly considered “curvy” when it was simply normal. Here’s what the Barbie star had to say.
Ferrera, praised and known for her roles in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and Ugly Betty, has often been a topic of discussion when spoken about curvy women. In the interview, she had some insightful things to say.
The 39-year-old actress said, “What’s so insane is, you go back and look, and I had a very average-size body. And so the idea that people were looking at me and saying, ‘That’s curvy’ is crazy. Not that I care, but it’s like, that’s insane that we thought that was so groundbreaking.”
The Superstore lead continued, “I was Hollywood’s version of imperfect, which seems so ridiculous.” But that’s not it. Ferrera for a fact knew that other women had been given the same label. She stated, “I don’t feel alone in that either. There are so many women who were called brave, just because they are people in bodies.”
By sharing her experiences, the Latina actress wants just one thing: change within the industry. Same, America!
She revealed, “What I continue to wish for my career, and women’s careers and people of color’s careers, is that we don’t have to exist inside of these boxes or these lanes—that we don’t have to be relegated to represent just the thing that the culture wants us to represent.”
“I want to be more of who I am as a person,” the Golden Globe award winner continued, “and make art that…isn’t about the dominant conversation people have wanted to have about me because I’m a woman who doesn’t fit into stereotypical Hollywood.”
In 2002, Ferrera starred in Real Women Have Curves. In the movie, she played Ana, a chubby, Mexican-American girl who is fighting against cultural norms to fulfill her dream. While the movie did well and brought her immense success, Hollywood continued to typecast her in roles that needed “curvy” or “ugly” girls, with projects like Ugly Betty.
In 2007, Ferrera made history as the first Latina to win an Emmy as a lead actress, winning the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her performance in Ugly Betty. In the same year, she also won a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Most recently, the star was seen in Barbie, a movie that fights stereotypes and shares a prominent message on body image. Ferrera when asked about her role in the film, she explained “I’m just really overwhelmed by the fortune I’ve had to get to be a part of so many beautiful, meaningful stories, and it still just makes me think about how far we’ve come, but also how far we have to go and how important it is that we’re paving the path so that more of our stories can be told, more of our lives can be celebrated and we can see ourselves represented in our culture.”
