Trigger Warning: This conversation contains discussion of eating disorders, nutrition, and body dysmorphia. Please take care of yourselves as you listen and avoid if these topics might be triggering for you.
Everyone please welcome my friend and acting consultant Jen DiBella to A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations! Jen is an actor, acting coach, and acting career consultant. I’ve been working with Jen since 2020, and not only is she a wonderful human being, she’s also an insanely talented actor and knows exactly what she’s doing when it comes to helping actors.
Jen approaches our conversation through her lens as both an actor and a coach. She spoke about her own body image story and shared how she brings what she has experienced in this industry into her coaching sessions and career consultations to help better support the actors she works with. Jen is incredible, and I cannot wait for you to hear our conversation!
Below, I’ve selected a few excerpts from our conversation for the blog. If you’d like to listen to the full talk, you can hit play above or listen on Apple Music or Spotify.
When I was younger in dance classes, we had this dance teacher who was notorious for (I mean, rightfully so) coming up to someone going, “Are you okay? Are you eating?” this and that, and it almost became a goal to me and my best friend – and we were young, maybe 12 or 13. We wanted to have a talk with that dance teacher. We wanted that dance teacher to say, “Are you okay? Are you eating?” Because we thought that that was a spotlight being shown on us. Like, “We're thin. We're thin.” How unhealthy is that?
- Jen DiBella
Megan Gill: It's also funny asking people, “Hey, do you want to get coffee with me and talk body image?” How fun! Can this be the norm?
Jen DiBella: I feel like so many people in LA would be like, “No.”
Megan Gill: “You want me to divulge all of the weird things that my brain thinks about my body?”
Jen DiBella: And, like I said earlier to you while we were off record, it is something, my relationship to my body, my relationship to body image, is not only something that has shaped who I am as a person, but also an artist. In this industry, I've had to work with different tools to make me feel more secure when I'm feeling insecure. I think now as a consultant and talking to actors every day, of all shapes, sizes, colors, whatnot, there's more perspective for me to get outside of my own self and to hear what other people are concerned about, and then look back into the mirror going, “Okay, you just told that person they have nothing to worry about. Why are you worrying about this?” And I just think it's really important especially as a consultant and coach who just wants the best things for actors.
Megan Gill: And for the actors that you love and that you work with and that you just see the good in them.
Jen DiBella: I know I'm partial, but everyone I work with, I'm just like, “You're amazing! You can do this! You succeed at everything you do!” And I'm so proud of them, and so, it hurts my heart when someone gets a breakdown for a character and they go, “Oh, but they're gonna want someone like this. They're gonna want someone like this,” physically. I'm like, fuck that.
Most of the time, no one knows what they're looking for, so give them the best option that they can find, and you're not going to be ignored. And second of all, just get out of your own way, I think is really what it comes down to. Just get out of your own way. You have no idea what they're looking for. You're limiting yourself.
Now, you could say that, but then I'd do the same shit to myself, and I'd have to catch myself and go, “Okay, well, walk your walk,” you know?
Megan Gill: Which is just so hard to do. It's so easy to sit here and compliment your friend.
Jen DiBella: Yes!
Megan Gill: It's hard to look in the mirror and compliment yourself.
Jen DiBella: Yeah.
Megan Gill: And isn't that just really sad?
Jen DiBella: Because when it comes to seeking validation from partners, from friends, just having this conversation and prepping to think about certain things that did shape me with body image, when I was younger in dance classes, we had this dance teacher who was notorious for, I mean, rightfully so, coming up to someone going, “Are you okay? Are you eating?” this and that, and it almost became a goal to me and my best friend – and we were young, maybe 12 or 13. We wanted to have a talk with that dance teacher. We wanted that dance teacher to say, “Are you okay? Are you eating?” Because we thought that that was a spotlight being shown on us. Like, “We're thin. We're thin.”
Megan Gill: Right, like that's the goal.
Jen DiBella: How unhealthy is that?
Megan Gill: Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. And it's wild, too, because that teacher was probably – good on that teacher for checking in with the students, absolutely. But the educator doesn't understand how that, then, affects the other students who are not having that conversation, or who are not being pulled aside. It's like, whoa, the psychological gymnastics of that then trickles out.
Jen DiBella: But also, something that I hadn't thought about until you invited me to have this conversation – it’s interesting because, again, trigger warning for eating disorders, anorexia specifically. I think that these thoughts are there with you at a pretty young age and if you are – I don't want to say vulnerable to them. I don't really know where it comes from, but starting in dance classes, real young, I can remember looking in the mirror, because we all have to wear our leotards (hat was the uniform, obviously) and just thinking, “Oh, my legs are thicker than theirs. Why do I have a butt, and why don't they?”
Megan Gill: Yeah, me too, girl.
Jen DiBella: And then it was also just kind of like, “I'm so pale. I need to wear blush all the time.” Like, it also did develop into other things, and guess what? I'm still so pale. But it led to other things, but at a young age, thinking, “Okay, I look different in a leotard.” That was one thing.
I booked my first commercial, maybe one of my first commercials, in seventh grade, and it was this big deal. I got to take Amtrak to a different location. I got to go with my mom, obviously. And they needed my sizes, and me and this – so I was probably 13 or 12, in seventh grade, right? Something like that? And the other girl, who was +18 to always play younger. She was 20, I think, and it was me and her in this commercial playing high school students or something. And she was a size zero. I remember they asked for numbers. Numbers is what always what it came back to you for me. So, she was a size zero. I was a size six slash eight. And I just remember, “But she's so much older than me. Like, why am I so young with this larger number?”
Megan Gill: Oh, god, yeah. Yeah.
Jen DiBella: And then trying on the pants that wardrobe got for me, also, let's just keep in mind, all sizes are not uniform. Every single brand that is mass produced, it's still a frickin’ struggle to find jeans that fit me correctly, for most people. And so, yes, a size six in whatever brand I was wearing, I was six. Whatever brand wardrobe got, I did not fit in the six. So they had to go out shopping and get it, and then all of a sudden I felt guilty for that because they had to go get me a different size. I also felt, “Why did I have another number that was larger than my co-worker?”
And what's really sad – oh god, I feel like this is where my childhood kind of died. In a way. Oh my god, in a way. I had such a beautiful childhood. I love my family so much. But on the way to the shoot on Amtrak, my mom and I were so excited and like I got a Frappuccino from Starbucks and I got a big cookie for the train. And then on the way back from the shoot, my mom was like, “Do you want to get Frappuccino? Do you want to get –?” and I wouldn't have anything. And this is where it starts because I felt like I inconvenienced wardrobe that they had to go get a different size. First of all, props to wardrobe. They always have multiple sizes.
Megan Gill: Right, yes. For this reason.
Jen DiBella: They were not mad at me.
Megan Gill: Yeah. No, no, of course not.
Jen DiBella: They were like, “Oh, we need to go up a size. That’s fine.”
Megan Gill: When you’re that young and this is your first experience with it, it's a big moment, and you don't really know what's going on, and you're taking it all in, and you're learning.
Jen DiBella: So that's where the awareness started, and Seventeen magazine at the time, I just mentioned Frappuccinos, and they had some kind of article, “Are You Drinking Your Calories?” I think it was Seventeen magazine. I can't say. I loved Seventeen magazine,.
Megan Gill: Oh, there was a lot of that stuff. A lot of diet culture, beauty industry baked right on into those magazines, yeah.
Jen DiBella: Yeah, so then I was suddenly very aware of what I was putting into my body. Cut to two years later, I was a freshman in high school, and my best friend passed from cancer. That's a really young age, obviously, to have that happen, to have you try to wrap your head around what was happening. My friend was there, and then he wasn't.
And so, I didn't know that this happened until I was in therapy but because I didn't have control of the death, I did have control of how much I worked out and how much I ate and how much I didn't eat. So, it became anorexia.
____________
Megan Gill: Something recently that came up for me is like, I am a fit model, so I'm getting measured all the time. This week I was measured way under what I normally am and I was like, “What the hell is going on? This is wild. But my brain instantly went, “Okay, we're going to go have pizza for dinner!” Like, no, no, no. We're not doing that. Like, yes, we are having pizza for dinner, but not because we are – yes, smaller. Like, no, no, no, no. And we can, we're allowed to eat the pizza. It's like, no, fuck no. We're always allowed to eat the pizza, and we should eat the pizza. It's still so difficult and hard to constantly keep up with that.
Jen DiBella: Because we are in these industries, too. It's like, in general, I have so much sympathy for – and we touched on this before we started recording – body dysmorphia, too. And how your best friend can look at you and be like, “You're crazy. What are you talking about? You look amazing,” about whatever it is. But when you're looking in the mirror, that's when that voice is like, “Oh, this area of your body doesn't look normal,” or “This is not proportionate,” or whatever it is. We can be so mean to ourselves, but again, it's that voice, and sometimes you're just gonna be like, “Girl, bye.” Like, “No, not today. I'm busy. I don't have time.”
Megan Gill: “I'm so busy. I don't have the mental energy and I don't have the space in my brain to dedicate to you!” Yeah. Because I don't know about you, but I spent way too much fucking time dedicating my life to that voice.
Jen DiBella: Yeah, so then, for ourselves and the industries that we have picked, to be in entertainment, to be a fit model, oh my goodness, to just have a measuring tape anywhere. I mean, at this point now –
Megan Gill: I know I understand that can be triggering.
Jen DiBella: Yeah, and also on casting sites, you have the list of sizes. I never feel confident about putting one size up on there since because, you know, back to day one with that commercial being like, “I said I was a size six and clearly I wasn’t.”
Megan Gill: Give a nice healthy range. Six, eight, ten, somewhere in there. Something will fit!
Jen DiBella: “It depends!” But, now I trust wardrobe even more to, you know, pull up and and pull down sizes too. But, with all that being said, the industry that we're in, yes, there's the little girl who was trying to micromanage how much she was eating for whatever reasons. But then you go back to, okay, how does that apply to today? And even just the last decade of being in LA and pursuing this industry, you get these breakdowns, and then you assume, they want someone who's stick thin and looks like a model. Or, you know, talking about what my clients go through as well, We just naturally will limit ourselves if we read a breakdown (a character description). If we read a breakdown and it says, “She is a thin, natural beauty,” or something like that. And all of a sudden I'm like, “Well, am I thin? Am I not?” Or “She's relatable, real. We don't want any models.” I get that all the time where it's just like, “Let's have her quirky face, and she cannot be a model!” I'm like, “All right. Jesus!”
Megan Gill: Got the memo!
Jen DiBella: “Okay, a real person!” So, you know, there's that too, but then, on the other side of things, I have some clients who have expressed how frustrated they are about the lack of sensitivity when there is a breakdown for plus size, how there are certain breakdowns out there (character descriptions or a description of a role) that will be “overweight.” Like, “They are overweight.”
Megan Gill: That's the descriptor that they're using.
Jen DiBella: Yes, they're using the word “overweight” or “chubby.” They are, you know, like, whatever. And it's kind of – I don't have the answers of how that should be written. But should there be more sensitivity? I laugh because some of the ones that I've read for clients I'm like, “Jeez. Okay.” I just think that there's a different way that we can be describing real people.
Megan Gill: Absolutely, and describing real bodies.
Jen DiBella: Just real bodies in general, yeah, because people, like we all – oh my god, it's just, it's gotten so much better in the time since the Seventeen magazine days where, I don't want to name one iconic actress or model, but there were times where it was like, “How thin can you get?” And there were times in my life where I was like – and it's not too long ago – I was like, “I think I've reached the thinnest I can. I don't know how to get thinner. I don't know how to do it unless I starve.” And it's gotten better in the sense that I do see what I would say normal bodies are, which is just so crazy. I just saw an interview with Kate Winslet when she was doing the press tour for Titanic.
Megan Gill: I saw this too.
Jen DiBella: You know, like, the press was literally ripping her apart for being overweight. And Jennifer Lawrence, when she first came out too, when she got, what was the big one? What was Katniss again?
Megan Gill: Hunger Games.
Jen DiBella: Hunger Games. When she got Hunger Games, they were telling her to lose weight because she was plus size.
Megan Gill: I'm also just, like, what constitutes being “overweight?” Like, what?
Jen DiBella: What are you talking about?
Megan Gill: Yeah, it's wild. It’s really wild.
Jen DiBella: Oh, my gosh, and press in general, I can't imagine. Because I did come to LA when I was 16. And I am so grateful, at this time now, even though at that time, it was another SAG writer's strike, and nothing was actually happening too much. It wasn't that busy. But I came out here. There was a Disney/Nickelodeon casting director that really loved me, and was like, “Oh my god, we just need to scoop you up and put you on a set.” If that actually happened, if that worked, when I was 16-year-old me, very much still in the trenches of eating disorders, oh, my goodness. I just feel like it's so dangerous. I think it's so dangerous. You're not fully developed yet, and then as a young kid, if I had one experience on a set that something didn't fit, oh, my gosh, I can't imagine as a kid – and then you welcome the public opinion, it can be a very scary, unhealthy place.
And so, I got the lay of the land when I was here when I was 16 for a couple months. My mom was with me, and she did too and she's like, “You're gonna go to college and get a head on your shoulders and then you can come back.” And that's what I did. I did stay in college. I went to Fordham in New York. I was dreaming of LA the whole time. So, a month later after graduating I did come here. But knowing what I went through, late teens and early twenties, just growing up in general, oh, my god, if – everything happens for a reason as far as when something doesn't land. I don't think I – oh, my gosh, I know that mentally that would have been detrimental to my life, I think, if something happened around that time because I was not equipped for it.
Megan Gill: I can relate in my own ways. My body image stuff really didn't come to a head, until I was in college, really. That’s when it got pretty bad. So it's funny because I'm relating with you. I needed to go to college in order to move to a city, move to a big city. I needed that experience. I needed to come into my own and grow as a person – which, I just say it's funny because that's where the body image issues really became very clear and where I was controlling my eating and I had, like,
Jen DiBella: Is there something that had triggered it originally?
Megan Gill: Just growing up in the arts, growing up in dance, growing up in theater. But I agree with you on that, because I think that we are, as young people, so impressionable, and we don't frickin’ know. And having an experience – was it four years at Fordham?
Jen DiBella: Mm-hmm.
Megan Gill: Same for me, four years at Wichita State. I needed those four years to learn how to human so that I could then move to the city and actually be okay and not let myself get eaten up by the industry or let the industry tell me that I was “fat” or “too big” or “couldn't do this.”
Because when I left high school, the messages I was receiving from people that cared about me, which I don't blame them for, was, “You're never going to be able to pursue Broadway if your body looks like this.” So I think I also would have just gotten eaten alive, and I wouldn't be here in LA acting. I don't know that I would be on the trajectory I'm on right now if I did just move to the city to pursue the thing. So I feel you on that.
Jen DiBella: You know, it's interesting too because I went to high school with one of the best dancers I still know to this day, and she's a little shorter than the typical professional dancer, whatever the hell that means.
Megan Gill: I know.
Jen DiBella: And she's on Broadway.
Megan Gill: Slay! Slay Queen!
Jen DiBella: And we had a teacher that was basically like, “You're too short. “You're too short.”
Megan Gill: God. Yeah.
Jen DiBella: And who's to say that one opinion if everyone listened to that one opinion, that one naysayer they had in their past, we'd all give up by now. Forget it.
Megan Gill: Oh, totally.
Jen DiBella: I also – oh, my god, I just thought about this. Okay, so, I don't know why this always comes up in my life, but I think it's a fun fact. I auditioned for Zenon. So not the Xenon as in her role, but Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century. We love Zenon.
Megan Gill: I was just talking about Zenon on Friday with some girlfriends! I freakin’ love Zenon.
Jen DiBella: So I did not audition for that role, but I think it was Zenon III. It was some kind of sequel, which I don't know if anyone ever watched, but I was auditioning for, I wanna say, her cousin, and I was 11 or 12. Oh, my god, I remember – like, this is sad. Everything's fine, but it's sad that this is such a core memory at this point.
So I had this little, teal tank top on when I was going to practice with my acting coach at the time. I am 11 or 12, tiny, tiny.
Megan Gill: God, I’m not ready for this.
Jen DiBella: I had this little, teal tank top that, I don't know, showed some kind of belly, I guess – not showed belly, but I had a little belly, I guess. And we do the scene, and we're in the lobby, and oh my gosh, thank god for my mother. My mother was also dragged into this. I was like, “Mom! I want to be on the box!” which was the TV. And she tried to ignore me for the longest time. And I was like, “Mom! I want to be on the TV! I want to be on the box!”
Megan Gill: “I want to be on the stage! I want to be on the box!”
Jen DiBella:And she's like, “Mkay, whatever,” and she signed me up for a musical theater class, and that was literally this little community thing. And of course, there was this touring production that came casting. They took my mom into the office being like, “We want to cast your daughter on this tour for the next year,” and she's like, “What? She’s 11.” She's like, “Ugh, I was just trying to get her to shut up!”
So, with that being said, now cut to I started going out for TV/film things, and I'm in this acting coach’s whatever. This older woman, and we do the scene, we go back to the lobby, I'm with my mom, and in front of me, she goes, “She's just a little chubby, so she has to lose some weight.” I must have had just like baby fat. There was no way I was overweight. I'm just trying to paint the picture that there was no right for this woman to say this, and my mom was like, “I think she's perfectly healthy, but thank you so much.” She just shut it down.
Megan Gill: Oh, thank god for your mom.
Jen DiBella: But then we went to the grocery store right after, and I remember looking at reflections in an aisle, kind of like, I don't know, like maybe some plexiglass or something, trying to see if I had a stomach.
Megan Gill: It's so damaging! It's so damaging!
Jen DiBella: I was so little, and I still have the tape that we did for Zenon somewhere, and when my parents found it in 2020, I was like – I was in this space suit that we found from Goodwill. It was amazing. She did not get cast.
Megan Gill: Iconique. Iconique.
Jen DiBella: So good. She did not get cast. But She really tried. She wore the space suit. So, with that being said, It's like this little stick girl. I'm like, “What the hell? Why does he even say that?” Because it stuck.
Megan Gill: And I think this also goes to just retouch on the fact that it doesn't matter what your body looks like. We all, I believe, have some semblance of these similar feelings about our bodies, and we all receive certain messages from people, society, whoever the hell it is, diet culture, whatever it may be. We are all receiving messages no matter what your body looks like.
So I think that the narrative that your body has to look a certain – if your body isn't – if you have a slender body that you can't relate. I don't know, I feel like people like to be like, “Oh, well –.” Like you said earlier, before we started recording, people would always tell you that like, “You're fine. You're good. Your body's good. Don't worry. You have nothing to worry about.” But it's like, “Little do you know.” So let's not jump to those conclusions. I just want to point that out too because it's like perfect fucking example.
Jen DiBella: But it's also an example of, you know, a lot of people just struggle with their weight if they're under, if they're at weight, or if they happen to be overweight. It's all inclusive as far as, you know, if you have body dysmorphia one way or the other, if you believe something's wrong, then game over, you know? But when, when you're talking about, you know, we're constantly given this – I forgot how you just put it. We're constantly given an opinion…
Megan Gill: Messages from the world.
Jen DiBella: Yes, yes!
____________
Jen DiBella: Before we started recording, I told you just last week, it might've been like two weeks ago, but I had an audition come through that the breakdown, I mentioned to you, I just immediately assumed, “Oh, they want a model. Oh, they want a model for this.” And, let's dissect what model means in my brain, when I was thinking that: they want someone stick skinny, so strong-looking, again, going back to the typical Victoria's Secret model back in the day – not back in the day, they still exist. But yes, that is what I was thinking of. And also gorgeous, and blah, blah, blah. And my brain was like, “You're not that. But let's proceed anyway.”
So I decided to audition for it anyway and give it my all but also put my personality into it. When it comes to no one else can do what you do, no matter how you look, I was like, “Okay, I'm going to put my Jen spin on this, and I'm still going to give it my all.” I did, and it was one of those things where I was like, “Oh, it's probably embarrassing that I sent that.” The day after when I didn't hear anything, I even had a thought of, “Oh wow, that must have been really embarrassing to watch.” I was like, “Shut up. Just shut up.” The next day, I was on avail for it, so I came down to the last two. If people don't know what avail means, it's usually you're down to two or three people.
And so, I did not wind up, actually booking it. But even getting that far, I had messaged my agent, “This was a major confidence boost.” And he didn't understand. He goes, “Oh, this is great news no matter what,” and I was like, “Okay, nevermind.” I wasn't going to go into detail. And guess what? They might have not been looking for what my mind put onto it. They did not say any of the things that my mind said. I just read a breakdown, saw this type of role, and went, “Ah, they're going to want X, Y, and Z.” They didn't say that. Why am I limiting myself?
Megan Gill: And I think it's so hard when part of the job is when we're taping we're thinking, “What am I wearing? Am I doing my makeup? Am I doing my hair? How am I doing my makeup? How am I doing my hair? Am I wearing jewelry?” All of those elements are appearance based. It's so easy to jump right into that and to get caught in that time and time again, tape after tape after tape after tape. And then to self-criticize and maybe not feel good enough or not feel pretty enough time and time and time again, and it's like, oh, god. I don't want anyone to be in that position Yet, I think that so many of us are.
Jen DiBella: Yes, and I definitely want to just keep saying I just want to include all perspectives on this when I think of my clients who happen to be considered plus size. And when they show me these insensitive breakdowns, they get these insensitive breakdowns and then they have to tape it, almost like putting on this thing of acceptance that, “I'm going to accept that I'm overweight, and that's why I'm taping.”
Megan Gill: Or “I got the audition because they think that I'm overweight”? Excuse me. I'm honestly still processing that. I'm beside myself that that's a thing.
Jen DiBella: Yes, and I also have clients who, you know, let's say that they're due for new headshots. And I'll have clients who want to wait three more months, or four more months, or whatever it is, because they're like, “Well, I just want to lose weight. I want to lose weight.” I was like, “These are headshots. It's your face,” and I don't want to take anything away from them, but I'm almost so passionate about being like, “You're so wonderful as you are, and waiting three or four months, sure, whatever you want to do for your business, but I don't want it to be, ‘Maybe I can lose weight from my face.’”
Megan Gill: Yeah. Yeah.
Jen DiBella: That's the stuff that I'm going to let everyone, obviously, it's their own career. They can make their decisions, but I wish that I could take that concern away from them and just not make it a concern, I guess because I relate. Because we can be mean. We can be real mean to ourselves. And we had also said before, because I want to be so transparent, that every time I do a full body slate, I'm like, “Don’t look at my body.”
Megan Gill: Same, and then I find myself putting on jeans or clothes that hug my body. I'm challenging myself lately to just put on the baggy jeans and full body slate in the fucking baggy jeans, because why do we have to like appear small?
Jen DiBella: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Megan Gill: I hate it. So I just want to throw that in there too because I'm with you.
Jen DiBella: Man, as a real challenge to myself I did start doing that. I started going, “No, I'm going to wear the clothes that I feel comfortable with. I'm not going to wear the skinny-ass jeans that I literally can't breathe in.”
Megan Gill: Right, or the clothes that are appropriate for the character or the role also.
Jen DiBella: Yep, one thousand percent. And let's just say it's similar to wearing makeup or not wearing makeup for a role. I personally love the weird hackers, the really intelligent scientists, the blah blah, who, guess what? The way that I'm doing that character, they don’t give a fuck about what they look like.
Megan Gill: Exactly, yeah.
Jen DiBella: And so, that person doesn't like playing with makeup. Jen DiBella likes playing with makeup, loves all of the things and watches all the YouTube videos. But that character, they don't care. They're like, “I'm literally cracking the code for X, Y, and Z, get out of my face,” you know?
So, I love when a character like that comes along because I have no problem going there. I've only recently found out there are certain actors who are like, “I will never not wear makeup for a tape.”
Jennifer Lauren DiBella is a SAG-AFTRA actress originally from Long Island, New York. You may know Jennifer from her recurring role in Grey's Anatomyor other credits such as 9-1-1, and CSI: Vegas.
She received her BA in Performance from Fordham University at Lincoln Center. During her time at Fordham, Jennifer studied abroad at the London Dramatic Academy where she trained in classical theatre. Splitting her time between LA and NY, Jen has appeared in various TV shows as well as commercials. She has continued her training at places such as John Rosenfeld Studios, Scott Sedita Acting Studios and The Groundlings School of Improv.
Passionate about the business side of the industry, Jen also acts as a Career Consultant and Acting Coach.
Email: jenlaurendibella@gmail.com
Website: www.jenniferlaurendibella.com
Biz Instagram: www.instagram.com/jdactingconsultant
Personal Instagram: www.instagram.com/jendibella
“My relationship to my body and my relationship to body image is not only something that has shaped who I am as a person but also an artist. In this industry, I've had to work with different tools to make me feel more secure when I'm feeling insecure. I think now as a consultant talking to actors every day of all shapes, sizes, colors, whatnot, there's more perspective for me to get outside of my own self and to hear what other people are concerned about, and then look back into the mirror going, “Okay, you just told that person they have nothing to worry about. Why are you worrying about this?”
- Jen DiBella
Subscribe to the A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations newsletter + sign up for a paid plan to support me in creating more of this content for you!
While I’m not a licensed therapist, registered dietician, or medical health professional and cannot speak to body image topics from a clinical, trauma-informed place, I am an expert of lived experience. I’m an academic of my own body, and I’m passionate about facilitating conversations with other humans about their relationships with their bodies. I believe it’s important to continue conversations about healthy body image in creative spaces as a means to heal individuals as well as the collective whole. But just know the information presented in this medium is not professional mental health advice or medical advice, and any questions or concerns you have should always be directed to your health providers.
