Hayden Panettiere claims she got body dysmorphia from a tabloid’s criticism

I’m kind of surprised that Hayden Panettiere has managed to find a way to stick around Hollywood, maintaining her name-recognition celebrity status (to a certain degree) while avoiding most major scandal-pitfalls. Like, has Hayden ever been arrested for a DUI? No, she hasn’t. But I think she’s been arrested while protesting for animal rights. So maybe that’s how she’s been able to maintain some kind of credibility – she actually cares about stuff other than “being famous for being famous” and “going clubbing with Lindsay Lohan”. Anyway, Hayden got herself another TV show – she’s costarring in Nashville, opposite Connie Britton, who is the lead of the show. It’s a chance for Hayden to shine as supporting character, doing strong dramatic work against one of the finest television actresses out there today. Will she be able to handle it?

So Hayden is on the cover of Women’s Health to promote her new show. She ends up talking about body image, diet and exercise, of course. And she claims she got body dysmorphia from a tabloid.

Growing up in the spotlight hasn’t always been easy for Hayden Panettiere. When she was just 16 years old, a tabloid magazine published a photo of the Heroes star’s backside with the word “cellulite” plastered across the image.

“I was mortified,” the Nashville actress, now 23, tells the October issue of Women’s Health. “It gave me such body dysmorphia for so long. But I remember reminding myself that beauty is an opinion, not a fact. And it has always made me feel better.”

Even so, Panettiere’s profession has made the 5-foot-1 actress keenly aware of how her body looks on camera. To stay in shape, Panettiere regularly takes the stairs and often attends Bikram yoga classes. And though she loves eating healthy foods like egg whites and strawberries, the Whaleman Foundation spokeswoman doesn’t follow a particular diet. “Eating healthy is a constant battle. I love chips,” Panettiere tells the magazine. “I find when I’m overly concerned about what I eat, I stress out my body and put on weight.”

Perhaps most importantly, Panettiere says she looks her best when she feels her best.

“People can tell when you’re happy with being you and when you’re not. It’s only cheesy because it’s true,” she tells Women’s Health. “As I’ve gotten older and grown into my body, I’ve started realizing that the way you carry yourself and that light coming out of your eyes are the most attractive things about you.”

[From Us Weekly]

I know what she means, and I am sympathetic (I have cellulite… as do most women). But I feel like she’s being kind of ditzy about it, like “I got body dysmorphia from seeing my body criticized in a magazine once!” She might have actually had a body dysmorphic disorder, but I think it’s disingenuous for her to say that she had the disorder (“for so long”) because of one tabloid’s awful criticism once. It’s a serious issue, and I think Hayden is using “body dysmorphia” when she means “I felt really bad about myself and it gave me a complex about my legs and I dealt with it over time, and body-snarking sucks.”

Photos courtesy of Women’s Health.

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43 Responses to “Hayden Panettiere claims she got body dysmorphia from a tabloid’s criticism”

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  1. Jules says:

    She’s annoying. I hope saying that does not cause her any long term damage. Sheesh………

    • smythe says:

      I agree with Hayden, she has a strange little body.

      (If you don’t have anything nice to say, come hang out in response box #1)

    • Garrnish Utley says:

      Cough! Bullshirt! Cough!

      The stumpster had a weird little body years before she was famous.

      If it got weirder, it was because she had a giant lying on top of her, boning her.

      • I.want.shoes says:

        So what next? She’s going to start throwing the word ‘bullying” around too?

        And yes, her body IS weird. She’s got t-rex arms going on.

  2. cmc says:

    I will always have a soft spot for her because of the Remember the Titans role. Leaaaave Hayden ALLLOOONNEEE!!!

  3. Amelia says:

    It sounds like she’s just throwing the term around. The picture may have triggered or contributed to her body dysmorphia, but the odd body snark doesn’t just *cause it*. She really should have phrased that a little more clearly.

  4. QQ says:

    Well yeah scandal free except for those huge huge awful rumors about her/her family life/bf/bedroom preferences…Aye

    • Brown says:

      That’s what I was thinking. Weren’t there some pretty raunchy blinds about Hayden involving her fam, sex, etc? Maybe I’m getting confused. I can’t remember exactly what they said, but for some reason, I’m linking them with her.

    • normades says:

      Yeah, those rumors are harsh and I was afraid for her when she was hanging out on boats in sunny Cannes with shady people. Hopefully this role has given her better things to do and she can get away from the toxic folks in her life.

    • beyonce's bump says:

      I wish when yall talk about rumours of celebs, you guys actually are not so vague and state what these rumours are for us who are not that “current” but are nonetheless very interested in these juicy gossip bits!

      Anywho I love Hayden

      • littlestar says:

        beyonce’s bump! I’m surprised you didn’t hear the Hayden Panettiere rumour – it came out earlier this summer, but no big gossip magazine picked it up (probably because it’s hard to prove if it’s true and mainly because it’s disgusting). Apparently her father sexually and physically abused her, to the point of her supposedly liking it eventually. And so much that she got her future boyfriends to beat the sh*t out of her for kicks. Also, there is this rich woman named Diane Jenkins who apparently prostitutes out celebrities, and Hayden is one of them. This Jenkins woman had a coffee table book out (I think it’s called Room 23, or something like that, google it) that was nothing but pictures of the celebrities – the rumour was that it was basically her “black book” and that the celebrities in the book were the celebrities she was prostituting out. Hayden’s in it, and so was her former boyfriend, that Ukrainian boxer.

      • normades says:

        But this all came out from the Himmm/CDAN thing which was exposed as a fraud. The poster was a fraud, but that doesn’t mean all the rumors are true or untrue. There was another blind that another A list star “saved” her in Cannes. Let’s hope that one is true.

        If you want a sick read google the Himmm/Room 23 thread on lipstick Alley. That is some sick stuff. It’s so hard I don’t like to repeat that stuff.

      • beyonce's bump says:

        @ little star, whoa, that IS pretty cray if true!

  5. Jane says:

    Well she didn’t say she has/had body dysmorphic DISORDER…. But is that what she is implying? Or is she just saying she had a skewed view of how she actually looked? I suffered from diaganosed BBD for many years and it’s truly debilitating. Years of therapy and meds and Ive now been recovered for several years (yay!). If she did suffer from BBD I’d love to hear her story as to how she recovered.

    • Amelia says:

      Congrats on getting healthy and happy Jane 🙂

    • MommaK18 says:

      Yea all those blind items about her family life and parents is a pretty big scandal…..

      I dont know what to think of her. Then again, I’d think if those rumors were true she would be behaving more like a Bynes or Lohan.
      Hard to be ‘normal’ after such a torrid past.

    • emmieapricot says:

      I agree… BDD can be a very serious, debilitating condition (which is usually treated with anti-depressants and intense therapy). People can suffer from various degrees of the illness but Hayden is talking about it in such a casual way that I doubt she had true BDD diagnosis. It seems she was just dealing with a self-confidence issue.

  6. Kim says:

    My cousin has anorexia and her doctor traces the onset of the disorder to an incident involving an unflattering pic which led to dieting than to purging.

    • Nina says:

      An unflattering photo or an embarrassing incident can be a trigger but not the cause; there has to be other things going on to prompt a person to react in such an extreme way. If a bad angle or crap lighting was all it took, everyone would develop an eating disorder.

      I can’t speak to your cousin’s situation but many eating disorder suffers have abuse in their background, either emotional, physical or sexual abuse. They tend to be perfectionists with low self-esteem who feel their lives are chaotic. Strictly manipulating how they look and what they eat is an unhealthy coping mechanism that they employ to feel like they have some sort of control in their lives.

  7. Sookie says:

    All the Hollywood kids are screwed up to some point. Her battles seem to be minor on the scale of a lot of others(Amanda Byrnes, lohan, Leann rimes, Kim k, Paris, Jessica and Ashlee Simpson, Kelly Osborne, etc)

  8. Hakura says:

    I don’t have anything against her.

    I agree that she probably meant she got a skewed inaccurate opinion/view of her body after reading an insulting critique in the magazine. Does that count as body dysmorphia, when you leave the ‘disorder’ part off?

  9. SmokeyBlues says:

    BDD makes it impossible to be “keenly aware of how your body looks on camera”. It makes it impossible be aware of how your body looks at all, even standing in front of a mirror. I’ve had episodes with it and it’s a horrifying experience. I would have no concept of what my body actually looked like, it makes living a normal life very difficult. It’s painful and sad. I think she does not know what she is talking about when she says it so casually.

    • Jacq says:

      That’s what I was thinking. It’s like saying I had schizophrenia once. No, Hayden, we are talking about a serious medically-treated condition that follows you for life.

  10. Mooncake says:

    She has a strong resemblance to Honey Boo Boo Child! LOL

  11. Mia 4S says:

    Huge red flag for me was her blaming the police for “overreacting” after her Dad was arrested for domestic violence for hitting her Mom. Even more than the body issues, that shows some emotional issues that need to be dealt with.

  12. dref22 says:

    I love Hayden, Clairebear! <3

  13. lem says:

    I can kinda see what she means because I know exactly what picture she is talking about. It was recirculated dozens of times in different mags for quite some time. So it wasn’t really just a one time body snark– that pictures followed her around for quite some time.

    • cat says:

      I never saw the picture but I agree CB is being much too hard on her. Imagine a young (or ‘old’ er) person (especially a female) who is gaining her self esteem or whatever, and a national MAGAZINE – not just gal herself looking in the mirror – says something like this about you. You (reader or writer) have to take into account not just you – now you is person who is reading or writing this – but other people and how they may react to something, not just YOU who are saying this could never be so because it would not affect YOU this way, and so it must not be true. ?

      I worry for her because of some of the sad things I’ve read about her family but there seems like there is an ‘inner’ so to speak light to her and I appreciate her support of animal issues!

  14. Jacq says:

    I guess the reason the isn’t talking about the photos of her horrible boob-job is cause she’s not owning the work? Cause they looked wayyyy worse than a little cellulite.

  15. lucy2 says:

    I’ve never liked her much, but it must be awful to be a teenager and have tabloids do crap like that.
    I do think she needs to not throw around medical condition terms like that though.

    Looking forward to Nashville solely for Connie.

  16. V says:

    As I recall, she was supposedly the childstar sold, aswell as used, as a sextoy, by her parents.

    Going to go ahead and assume that fucks up your bodyimage hell of a lot more than comments from a tabloid.

    Might actually watch her new show, quite like her and would be interesting to see her in such a role.

    • Hakura says:

      I hadn’t heard anything about all this mess until now, the sexual abuse ect. You’re right that it could definitely ruin your perception of yourself, physically & emotionally…

      I also want to give her a chance with this new show *shrugs*

  17. Schnikes says:

    Bring It On 3 (or whatever installment she was in) is so astoundingly terrible it’s hard to believe she ever found work again outside of her Room 23 exploits.

  18. mar says:

    she protested for the whales and dolphins that are being slain in Taiji , Japan, so to tell you the truth, she is one of my fave celebs.

  19. TheOneAndOnlyOnly says:

    The BDD issue aside, not impressed with her and don’t think she has much talent and she sure isn’t that bright. Another lalaland starlet.

  20. Birdie says:

    No big scandal? Her dad beating her mom? Room 23? Prostitution? Abuse? There are very scary and disgusting rumors about her, worse than every DUI.

  21. Isa says:

    Nowdays, everyone reads a psychology book and diagnoses themselves with something.
    “I’m OCD!” No, you’re just a neat freak.
    “I’m bipolar!” No, you have mood swings.

    And when I read this, I thought that she was going to talk about her weird torso and arms.