DUBAI: This week, Jameela Jamil posted a ten-year-old photo of herself alongside a lengthy, heartfelt caption on Instagram.
The “The Good Place” actress shared a throwback magazine editorial with her 3.3 million Instagram followers, revealing that she was struggling with body dysmorphia and an eating disorder at the time, and thought she looked “too fat” in the picture.
“I had starved for three weeks and worked out compulsively before this shoot,” wrote Jamil on Instagram. “Eating disorders are a terrible and upsetting thing,” she added.
Body dysmorphia is a mental health disorder in which a person perceives flaws in their appearance that are not observed by others.
“This is why I bang on and on about diet culture, because it was my slippery slope to losing all sense of reality and all of my time, energy and joy,” she continued, before adding “P.S. A big old (thumbs down emoji) to the Navajo princess caption. I was not remotely in control of the editorial. This was 10 years ago and I’ve not seen this magazine make similar comments in recent years.”
The British-Pakistani-Indian actress is an avid champion of body autonomy, which is a person’s right to do what she or he chooses with their body, without having to face judgment.
“If you want to change your body, to get bigger or smaller or more muscular, then you do you,” she said, adding “But do it slowly, carefully, fully informed by healthcare practitioners and certified experts. No quick fixes. You aren’t broken, and lasting change happens incrementally and sensibly.”
Jamil, who became a household name with her activism and role as Tahani Al-Jamil on NBC’s “The Good Place,” routinely takes to her platform to encourage people to respect their bodies.
The 34-year-old, who often gets candid about her struggles with eating disorders and body dysmorphia, revealed that her eating disorder started when she was 12.
“Being weighed at school was truly the minute my eating disorder started at 12. I can trace it back to that exact day,” she tweeted in August.
Jamil is also well known for her body positivity organization “I Weigh,” which encourages people to weigh themself by their positive attributes, as opposed to numbers on a scale.
