Lili Reinhart revealed that she went through a recent mental health “spiral” as a result of battling with body dysmorphia while filming the latest season of Riverdale.
Throughout her career, the 26-year-old actress has been outspoken about her struggles with body image. She did, however, admit to Dr. Daniel Amen for his interview series Scan My Brain that she had recently been in a “poor headspace” after seeing her shape change on television.
“I’m continuously exposed to photographs of myself on social media, on my show, pictures of me on my show, which began when I was 19 years old. So I’m constantly comparing how I appear today to how I looked when I was 19, a child “She stated. “Basically, I’m comparing my body to my own body and am terrified of the changes that have occurred.”
Reinhart went on to claim that the resemblance to her younger self has caused her “a war” with herself. “It’s me vs me. Me from a few years ago vs. me now, and wondering how I can get back to that. How am I going to look like that again? “She elaborated.
It becomes increasingly difficult for her to live with as she grows older and her body changes.
“It’s been a difficult couple of months, especially coping with more significant weight gain than I’ve ever had in my life while also being on camera. So shooting my show [Riverdale] and having that weight increase practically documented on camera, episode by episode, week by week of my life, my weight fluctuation, was a great experience “She stated. “It felt like I was scarcely thinking about anything else because this big problem was taking up truly 90% of my mental capacity. Every thinking was about my weight, about what I was eating, about how I could lose weight, about how I don’t look like I used to, about how everyone around me looked, about how I don’t look like them. All of my thoughts were about my body, and I was in a very overpowering and unpleasant headspace.”
Reinhart stated that, while she is “coming out” of that rough period, she still struggles with negative body image on a regular basis after experiencing body dysmorphia at the age of 13.
“My skin was pretty awful, so I started dealing with it, not with my body, but with my skin. I was doing my makeup in the dark since I didn’t want to wake up and turn on the fluorescent lights in my bathroom to stare at my acne, so I did it in low light. I didn’t want to look at myself, but I was obsessively looking at myself to see how I looked from different angles, to look at the acne from different angles, and it’s kind of like a ‘I hate looking in the mirror but I have to’ obsessive component there,” she explained, adding that even today, if “something’s wrong cosmetically, I’m very attached to it, obsessed with it, have to look at it all the time.””
She also admitted to “obsessively glancing in the mirror at my physique” in recent months as she gained weight and felt self-conscious about her job’s public nature.
“My point was that it was really difficult to be in film while that was occurring because it was one of the worst small chapters of my life that I wasn’t able to experience in privacy,” she explained. “Going through something so intimate in such a public setting made me feel very vulnerable. It was quite difficult.”
Reinhart has also struggled to feel confident in her efforts to convey positivity on her platform since she has such a negative attitude toward her physique.
“It’s difficult when I try to promote the idea of liking and accepting yourself, and you don’t have to fit a one-size-fits-all image in your life, especially as an actor,” she explained. “As if it’s okay that I don’t look like everyone else. On the inside, I feel like I need to look like those folks, which is a bit hypocritical. I sometimes feel like a fake, like I’m lying to myself or my followers who look up to me, since I’m trying to push these body-positive ideas while still learning them myself.”
While Reinhart is a proponent of body positivity, she has been open about her challenges, speaking out when she has a terrible day with her body image and even holding other celebrities accountable for how they contribute to the discourse. She eventually aims to normalize those basic feelings while in the spotlight.
“[Body positivity] isn’t something I’ve mastered, and I don’t wake up every day thinking, “Oh, it’s OK that I don’t look like that.” There are brief periods when I feel this way, and when I do, I feel empowered to talk about it and be vocal about it. But the other 90% of the time is the difficult part “She stated. “I want it to happen and I want to totally believe it, but I’m still struggling with it on a daily basis.”