When it comes to self love, actress Gina Rodriguez, has no shortage.
The 37-year-old actress got candid about her battle with her body image over the course of her career in Hollywood.
Rodriguez recently talked with Rachel Bilson and Olivia Allen on their podcast, “Broad Ideas,” namely about her battle with Hashimoto’s disease and why she practices self-love.
The “Jane the Virgin” alum noted how her autoimmune disease, a disorder that affects one’s thyroid and leads to hormonal changes, influenced her physique.
“I got an actor’s curse because it directly affects your metabolism, you know, you’re not producing the hormone that your body needs,” she said.
Rodriguez continued, “So you, at times, it can feel like you have a loss of communication with this thing, that spacesuit that you’re in, and you’re just like, ‘Why don’t I have a grasp on shifting what this physical being is?’”
Rodriguez revealed she then started giving herself positive affirmations in the shower “four or five years ago” as a result of her bodily changes.
“As I bathe being like, ‘I love you,’” Rodriguez went on to say about staying comfortable in her own skin. “‘I love you, elbow. I love you, tetas.I love you, neck.’ I just started touching my body in an appreciative manner.”
She also pointed out that Hollywood is still a hard place to find your footing in, as beauty standards are always evolving and hard to meet.
She also shared that she has a heart-shaped birthmark on her thigh and why she chose not to cover it up during her days on her hit CW show “Jane the Virgin.”
“To others, it may seem like an imperfection, right? And on ‘Jane,’ it would always be like, ‘Hey, can we get makeup to get that thing on her leg?’ I would always be like, ‘No! It’s my birthmark! No, it’s a birthmark! No, it’s fine! You could just leave it, it’s fine, it’s a birthmark.’ Yeah, but I would make a joke. I’m like, ‘I’m sure somebody’s going to say something about the birthmark. Gotta cover the birthmark,’” she said.
Rodriguez previously discussed body image and her career in a 2017 interview with Shape, saying there are “many pressures to look a certain way and fit into a sample size.”
“I’ve got to embrace the fact that when I’m shooting ‘Jane,’ I can’t work out as much,” she explained at the time. “My body is going to look different, and that’s OK. I’m not willing to wring the joy from my life to kill myself in the gym.”
