Sarah Michelle Gellar covers the October issue of Health to promote her new television show, “Ringer,” in which she plays identical twins. If the show succeeds, this will be her first successful return to television since the conclusion of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” in 2003 after a grand total of 145 episodes. In keeping with the “mirror image” concept of her latest show, Gellar has admitted that she’s not always comfortable with her own body when she catches a glimpse of her own reflection. So basically, she’s just like the rest of us, right?
On Her Body Image: I’m a female! I totally have body dysmorphic disorder. I think most women do. A make-up artist friend once said “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look in a mirror.” I’m surrounded by them all the time – you sit in hair and make-up – so I guess I just have this mechanism where I tune it out. So every once in a while, I’ll look and I’ll be like, “Wait, that’s what I look like?” I just have to remember that I’m human, and I’m a mom. Being a parent changes the vanity at least a little bit. It has to. Your priorities are different.
On Going Into Labor At The Gym: It was funny, too, because I was getting cranky, and I said to my trainer, “I’m just cranky today.” She was like, “Maybe it’s because you’re going to give birth!” And I was like, “Nah, not yet.” It turned out I was in labour, I didn’t realise.
On Teaching Healthy Habits To Her Daughter: Well, we’ve already taught her to love healthy food. I think it’s important at a young age to enjoy different tastes. And we make this green juice for her. It’s basically everything but the kitchen sink. We go to the farmers’ market and buy everything and just put it in the juicer: kale, Swiss chard, carrots, celery. You name it. And now we’ve all started drinking it, and we’ve all been healthier.
On Dutchess Kate & Pippa Middleton: It seems like people are worried that Catherine’s stressed. I feel like 10 years ago, it would have been like, “Oh, she looks incredible.” Whereas you look at her sister, who has such a fabulously athletic body. . . I think there’s this movement now, where more women, finally, want to look like that.
[From Health Magazine]
Oddly, I had close to the same experience as Gellar with my early stages of childbirth. Perhaps I got lucky and had it easier than most, but I honestly expected much worse and didn’t realize that I was in labor until about eight hours after the process started, and I nearly got to the hospital too late. In addition, I also agree with her that most women in contemporary society have some degree of body image issues although they may or not be clinically described as having body dysmophic disorder itself. Still, Sarah Michelle has a pretty great body, and she seems fairly grounded in life. She’s been married to Freddie Prinze Jr. for nine years, and she’s finally returning to television. Let’s hope she sticks around for awhile.
Photos courtesy of WENN
that’s kind of a misleading headline, eh? she’s not “confessing” anything, but just kind of dropping a reference in conversation to something that may be an actual disorder she has OR just the way she perceives her own attitudes. strikes me as a little disrespectful to people actually suffering from this kind of thing….
I’m rooting for her!
Really like her new show! Hope it continues…..
I’m probably biased because I’m a HUGE Buffy fan, but I’ve always been impressed by the fact that she’s flown under the radar, never got into the trashy young actor habits (that tend to wreck a career) and has stayed married for so long.
I have never thought she’s a super-gifted actress–there are others who are more naturally talented I think–but my sense from things I’ve read is that she works very hard, tries til she gets it right, has a solid work ethic, and is 100% reliable.
I watched the Ringer the last two weeks and really loved it–the suspense is so much fun! I hope it succeeds. (I’m also rooting for Giles, aka Anthony Stewart Head, who’s in the new Hank Azaria show, Free Agents).
She comes off so likeable in this interview. I always kind of nothinged her, but I like her now.
I was making breakfast when I went into labor. I finished making breakfast and ate it before I decided to go to the hospital.
I fins SMG so refreshing. She seems like someone you could easily be friends with and that if you ever met her, she wouldn’t be pretentious. And @Bedhead, you ARE lucky…I had nearly 24 full hours of horrid labor with my little girl. She turned around while I was 3cm dilated and my epidural didn’t take. I had to have an emergency c-section. Worth it though to have such an amazing little princess in my life now though.
@ marie: my thoughts exactly.
She’s probably 10-15 lbs heavier than when she was in Buffy. She was a TEENAGER for a lot of that, and in her early 20s. It’s not fair to judge our adult, women, post-childbirth bodies to what we looked like in high school or college.
Sarah Michelle – you look AMAZING. You are aging so beautifully. Thank you for helping the “rest of us” be a little kinder to ourselves.
I really like SMG, I really, really do.
Wwhen Buffy was on, SMG was my girl crush and it just so happened Freddie was my heartthrob crush. Them getting together was like THE perfect couple (a la Zack and Kelly).
Gee @5, I’m totally with you. She seems refreshingly down to earth. And she made an adorable cameo on All My Children yesterday (I’m watching it for old times sake this week, it’s the final week, RIP).
They gave her some funny lines and it was nice to see her (and some others who have gone on to prime time and film success) paying tribute to her soap beginnings.
Definitely does not have BMDD and neither do most women. BMDD typically has little to do with body weight — instead people focus on parts of their body unrelated to weight and view it in a completely warped way. For example, believing you having a haggish witch nose when you really have a cute button nose. Often it will cause great distress and lots of time is spent focusing on covering up the “flaw” and hiding it from others. People who can afford to do so may have surgery to try and fix flaws that don’t exist. It’s a pretty serious disorder and throwing it out there and saying “many women have it” is pretty problematic I think.
@petalfrog,
I agree. Casually throwing out that all women have BDD is reckless. Now are we all supposed to think it’s normal to hate ourselves and always think we are fat??? It’s NOT normal! We need to love ourselves.
I do like SMG though and wish her the best.
I like her a lot too, but agree w/ petalfrog too. Big difference between normal insecurities and BDD.
I love love love SMG from her Buffy days and probably always will! Agree with posters above, i like how different she was and continues to be from most young starlets. Esp love that her nose is not ‘typical’ and she never did anything to change it
She’s soo pretty!
I don’t feel like she was saying it seriously, though. And maybe I’m wrong about that, but it seemed like a flip comment (though still maybe a little insensitive). I think the word “confesses” in the headline is even more problematic, as well as misleading. Eh.
What an unfortunate title to this thread.
Combined with the magazine cover, where it talks about losing belly fat and looking 10 pounds thinner, this whole thread is misleading.
I’ve just started juicing and I’ve definitely been feeling a lot healthier with more energy. I’d recommend it to anyone! Juicing all sorts of different vegetables tastes better than you’d expect. My favorite combo as far as vegetables go is carrots, beets, parsley, and lime. Simple things like pure apple juice still blows my mind. It is delicious!
http://jointhereboot.com/
-Ed note: several of you have reported this comment and we appreciate it so much when you do that. This is not spam. This is a well known commenter with a long history who is just sharing what works for her. The link is to a non-profit juicing site-
I lurvvve SMG – I am a huge Buffy fan so she can do no wrong in my eyes!
Ringer starts nextx week and I am sooo sooo excited to watch it 😀
Good for her. She’s right. Kate’s thinness is unattractive. Makes her not pretty to me. No one is that thin without a problem. Sorry.
Here’s what wikipedia says: “Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is a disorder in which the affected person is excessively concerned about and preoccupied by a perceived defect in his or her physical features (body image). The sufferer may complain of several specific features or a single feature, or a vague feature or general appearance, causing psychological distress that impairs occupational and/or social functioning, sometimes to the point of severe depression and anxiety, development of other anxiety disorders, social withdrawal or complete social isolation, and more. It is estimated that 1–2% of the world’s population meet all the diagnostic criteria for BDD (Psychological Medicine, vol. 36, p. 877).” So, not all women have it. I think it’s pretty natural to feel a little bloated sometimes or not like your nose, tho. I think all women (and alot of men, too) do that. In a society that puts so much emphasis on outward appearance, and every advertisement is beautiful skinny people, and plastic surgery is the norm it’s normal to sometimes feel we’re not beautiful ‘enough’.
I’ve used the term “body dysmorphic disorder” for over a year now, altho my mindset is probably not quite as severe. I’m 32yrs old, and other than during my pregnancies I’ve been around the same weight and size since I was 16 or so. But, ever since I got pregnant with my daughter last year I have had a hate/hate relationship with the mirror. I KNOW that I’m back to a size 10 (I’m 5’10”), but when I look in the mirror I literally SEE a body that’s enormous and disgusting. My poor husband is really struggling too, because everyday it’s a struggle for me to just get dressed and out of the house without sobbing. I miss the days when I looked in the mirror and the worst I felt was, “I wish I could lose 5lbs. But eh, I’m too lazy. Good thing I have great boobs!”
SMG got scary skinny during the Buffy run, so she may actually have BDD.
I heart her daintiness.
@danielle – Or, you know, it was a physically demanding and stressful almost non-stop job that took its toll. I’d be very hesitant to diagnose anyone’s skinniness in those circumstances, much less attribute it to BDD.
@scarlet, I identify 100% with your struggles. I’m a size 2 or 4 depending on the brand, I work out 5 days a week and have a personal trainer. I can benchpress 135 lbs, which is more than I weigh (120 lbs), but I am disgusted with my stomach. I have a diastasis (seperation of the rectus abdominus muscle) as a result of pregnancy. It’s small, but I feel as though it makes my stomach protrude. My husband is sick of hearing me complain about it and thinks there’s nothing wrong. I intend on fixing it surgically as soon as I’m done having children (I’m 5
months post partum with my second son). I’m anxious to try for the last one when
my little guy is a year old because I cannot stand looking at this stomach every day. After my first child I starved myself down to 105 lbs (at 5’7″) in an attempt to make my stomach appear flatter. I was still nursing and lucky my milk didn’t dry up. At the very least I know I have a disordered relationship with food and exercise, if not BDD. Anyway, thank you for sharing. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one.
Also, I love SMG and I’m a huge Buffy fan. However, Ringer is quite bad 🙁
@Ruby Red, are you outside of the US? Because they just aired the second episode on Tuesday. I have to prepare you for the boat scene in episode 1. It’s supremely bad. So much so that “The Soup,” mocked it.
I like her and her style. Ringer has bombed so far though….
@Cerulean: There are people who are that thin that don’t have problems. There are people for whom that kind of thinness is their body type – some of them are even pretty tall – and they are healthy.
It does look like Kate might weigh a little less than what would be in her weight range, but sometimes you can’t tell these things just from looking at someone.
Even though I believe that people who are perceived as very beautiful like SMG have some sort of insecurities about their looks, in no way it can be compared to people who are actually suffering from body dismorphyc disorder.
I knew someone who told me she lost most of her hair during her teens and was afraid to go out, to date, go to school. She was extremely depressed and even thought of killing herself. She couldn’t look into the mirror, sought out dark places in the room so people wouldn’t notice the way she looked. it took years of treatment to build up some sort of self esteem, that she was worthy as a person.
I felt so bad for her and I promised myself never to whine or complain about small things about my looks, because those of us who just have “small flaws” are the lucky ones.
Her face looks different. That’s too bad that people fiddle with their money-maker.
@ Morticians, Yes I’m not in the USA, I’m across the pond 🙂
Oh no, I had such high hopes for Ringer…will look forward (or maybe not) to the boat scene. Is the show a slow burner or is the general consensus that its awful and likely to be cancelled???
I am a complete Buffy nerd and it’s refreshing to know she actually is that cute and ramble-prone. I really hope this TV venture of her’s works out… I think she has real TV staying power. You never get bored of her and she’s so damn likeable… sorry… my Buffy nerdom runs deep!
The fact that she goes so far as to avoid mirrors seems like she has more than “insecurities” even if it doesn’t qualify as a disorder.
Like other moms on here, I have a hard time “seeing” myself after the baby. And like SMG, I went into labor while working out (I was at yoga). I haven’t owned a full length mirror since college, just to avoid the self-criticism, even though I know I am an attractive, healthy-on-the-small-side weight.
She may have put on a few pounds but she looks very good. The fact is that there are only so many hours in a day; introduce a child and something’s got to give. For some of us, it’s the extra bit of working out that got us to “fighting weight” (but which no one else truly notices).
I’m sorry to hear so many women suffering with their body image. We need more realistic images. Photoshop is making things even worse for women-now we must literally glow and magically shave off the COMPLETELY NATURAL curves of our hips and thighs. I feel so powerless against to stop the body images presented by advertisers. Not even the most beautiful models and actresses look like those pictures. 🙁
I love her and hope her new show succeed!
@ruby red, I’ve read quite a few reviews on Ringer and it’s looking bleak. Could be a slow burner, so I’m sticking it out. “The Soup,” if you aren’t familiar, picks clips of shows to poke fun at (mostly reality TV like the real houswives franchise or soap operas). However, it poked fun at the boat scene in Ringer and, at least one other review, said SMG plays the twins the same and that she looked “dead in the eyes.” 🙁
@Wresa, “Photoshop is making things even worse for women-now we must literally glow and magically shave off the COMPLETELY NATURAL curves of our hips and thighs.”
ITA. I often compare myself to such images ie Victoria Beckham. Who’s older, had two more children than me, and looks perfect and waif thin a mere month after giving birth. I think, it must be attainable if she can do it.
in the first sentence alone she has reinforced the stereotype of negative female body image AND underplayed the seriousness of an actual illness that tortures both males and females. it bothers me when people make such generalized uneducated statements. officially on my eff-you list.
This chick has no idea what BDD really is.
she looks great. i am a huge “buffy” fan and so i love SMG.
i’m freaked out by the cover shot of health magazine – that should be going in photoshop disasters. perspective anyone? they pasted her face on to….something else.
So she sees herself as bigger than she is? No wonder, she looked almost-anorexic on Buffy’s later seasons. Too bad that TV and media do not help our body images. at all.