LOS ANGELES — Actress Jameela Jamil has criticized what she described as “scarily thin” appearances among women at the BAFTA Awards, warning that the trend promotes a damaging beauty standard with serious consequences for impressionable audiences.
The actress said the images reminded her of her childhood, when extreme thinness was widely normalized. She expressed concern that the industry continues to reinforce what she called a fragile and unhealthy ideal.
“The women at the BAFTAs were scarily thin, in a way that reminded me of watching when I was a kid. Where everyone looks like they could snap. It’s a specifically fragile type of thin. I resent this beauty standard being pushed on everyone, I resent the obedience of my industry, and fear the impact on the impressionable people at home thinking that this is the only way to be accepted,” she wrote on Instagram.
Jamil said the current moment calls for strength rather than frailty, urging women to resist what she sees as a narrowing of acceptable body standards. She argued that there is a deeper motivation behind promoting physical weakness among women.
“Here is a deliberate POLITICAL reasoning behind wanting women and girls to be frail, hungry, tired and easy to hurt,” she wrote, adding that collective resistance could force change. “If we all collectively refused to starve ourselves, they would have to bend to us. But we rush to bend first, at any cost to our mental and physical health, and that of the next generation watching.”
She encouraged women to focus on physical strength rather than size. “Be whatever size you wish but please try to be as strong as you physically can. Please be difficult to steal, to beat, to break. They want us easy to carry, to chase, to batter. The war on women requires fighters,” she wrote.
Jamil also addressed potential criticism of her remarks, urging readers not to accuse her of “skinny shaming,” noting that she herself is a slim woman. (Source: IANS)
