Tallulah
Willis on
people making fun of her
face ‘It was so painful’
The other day I saw a meme on Reddit that read “I’m so glad I grew up in the 80s and 90s. I said and did so much stupid sh*t, and there’s no record of it anywhere.” That’s what usually comes to mind when I see a story about the younger Willis girls, Tallulah, 20, or Scout, 23. I thought Tallulah was the one who was protesting Instagram’s no-nipple policy by going topless, but that was Scout. I get those two confused. Scout was also the one who was caught drinking underage.
I guess we haven’t talked about Tallulah much, but we are now because she has taken part in the What’s Underneath Project by Style Like U. The project features women stripping down to their underwear to “honor how style is not the clothes you wear, it is comfort in your skin, it is your spirit, it is What’s Underneath.” The most recent episode features a fashion designer named Rachel Fleit who has alopecia and has been bald since she was a child. I thoroughly enjoyed watching her video, she’s funny and her, interview was deep. Some of the things she said about not accepting herself and about learning to feel comfortable in her skin really touched me.
In Tallulah’s What’s Underneath interview, she talked about self esteem and about suffering from an eating disorder. She said she was diagnosed with **** dysmorphia “with reading those stupid f–king tabloids when I was like 13 and feeling like I was ugly, like always.”
Tallulah was very matter-of-fact and outspoken. At first I thought she was babbling, but overall she made sense and I found myself coming around on her. (It’s NSFW as there are F-bombs.) Tallulah said that she dressed provocatively when she was younger and that she starved herself to feel better about her image. She also said that she felt inadequate because she didn’t have a talent like so many of her peers. She’s only 20! E! did a nice job of transcribing what she said:
The 20-year-old admitted that she was diagnosed with an eating disorder and had trouble living her life in the public eye due to her famous parents.
“I struggled a lot when I was younger. Like I’m diagnosed with **** dysmorphia with reading those stupid f–king tabloids when I was like 13 and feeling like I was ugly, like always. I believed the strangers more than the people that loved me because why would the people who loved me be honest?”
For every question that the green-haired fashionista answered, she was asked to remove an article of clothing (of her choosing) while on camera.
“That made me start to dress showing off my boobs and my butt and showing offthose things that I was getting attention for…It took me until like a year ago and I remember specifically one day outing on a button-up and buttoning it all the way up to my neck and putting on pants that weren’t tight. And feeling so beautiful and the fact that all the attention was on my face was so scary for me because I always wanted to distract people. I felt like I was trapped in this **** and I hated that I was sexy. ”
Willis continued, “I started starving myself and losing a bunch of weight and I got down to like 95 pounds. When I lost my curves and when my boobs shriveled up into like nothing and I had no shape…It put me in even more of a cage.”
[From E! Online]
I feel for Tallulah for having an eating disorder and for having to find her place in the world while under so much scrutiny. Honestly it was hard for me to relate to most of what she said. I’m double her age and I’m so far removed from this stage. I’m sure I sounded just like this when I was 20, though. You know, I take back what I wrote in the intro. Now that I’m much older, I would love to see a video of myself talking about life and self esteem at 20 years old. I just wouldn’t want it to be on the Internet.
One thing Tallulah said which got to me was that she was most insecure about her face. She said “That’s where my diagnosis came into play. I would see these things on the Internet and I would be like ‘why would someone write that if there wasn’t some basis for truth there?’ Ok cool, I have a good **** and that’s attractive to people… so they just want this [gestures to ****] and they’re going to ignore this [gestures to face]… It was so painful, like rippling painful… it’s pretty much plagued me since I was 13.”
There are going to be people who bash Tallulah still, but I give her so much credit for admitting this, and for participating in this project. She’s not Scout, I know that now.
Here’s a link to the video. Her shoes! Maybe they’re comfortable.
Cele|bitchy | Tallulah Willis on people making fun of her face ‘It was so painful’
