‘We are all f***ing exhausted’: Jameela Jamil on beauty standards, body image and why she’s taking the power back
Activist and actor Jameela Jamil has blasted unrealistic beauty standards, and why she refuses to ‘deliberately inflict pain on myself’.
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It’s fitting that Jameela Jamil named her Substack – a platform in which she writes essays about topics spanning beauty standards to her Hollywood career – A Low Desire To Please.
“That’s how I feel,” the British activist, presenter and actor tells Stellar.
But the origin of the title came from a much less personal place.
“My dog was sent to training school … and the report card came back saying he’s very smart but he has a ‘low desire to please,’” the 39-year-old says, speaking from her home in Los Angeles.
“And I thought, god, that really is my child that came out of my vagina. That’s my boy! It really resonated with me and I thought, that’s how I feel.
“I think that’s where I’m at in life. The older I get, the lower that desire becomes, and I have a very high desire to please myself.”
Jamil – who has lived in Los Angeles for a decade and found fame in the US series, The Good Place, and Marvel miniseries, She-Hulk – has amassed a huge following online for her frank and forthright commentary about body image, her experience with an eating disorder, sexism, mental health, and women’s rights.
“I would describe myself as a menace to society,” Jamil says with a laugh, on the eve of her first trip to Australia for a speaking tour.
“I started [writing] to get women talking about it – the pressure, the fallacy, and the fact that deep down, we are all f***ing exhausted, and done. We’re tried of it. This life is for us as well, it’s not to please and placate men.
“The way that women are treated is a scam. All the things we’re told, all the hoops we jump through don’t lead anywhere, they just lead to your own misery – and you spending money, being in pain, suffering and missing out on your life.
“That makes you feel quite rebellious. Your world becomes smaller, you start to find the people that actually matter. You hopefully, by this age, like yourself and also you realise as you get older, you don’t like very many people either.
“So why should they all have to like you? I don’t enjoy most people so why … should I expect them to enjoy me?”
In 2018, Jamil founded I Weigh, a movement that raised awareness for mental health, climate justice and representation for marginalised communities (it is now known as Move For Your Mind).
Throughout her career, she has spoken out about “homogenous” beauty standards and refuses to buy into trends such as fake nails – or what Jamil calls the “onslaught that came after the pandemic” particularly, from the cosmetic surgery industry.
“Fox-eyes, deer-eyes, no nose, bigger lips, dissolving here and adding here, weight loss injections, bum injections – the onslaught was the worst I had ever seen,” Jamil says.
“We don’t have to live in constant deprivation … I never get my nails done ever because it takes an hour and a half and it’s f***ing expensive.”
“Those nails scare me. The last time I had them done, I didn’t poo for like two weeks because I was so scared.
“I was like, catwoman wiping her a**. I was looking around the salon, and I was thinking, ‘gosh, we’re spending so much money in here.’
“Some people love to get this stuff done … I love makeup, I love a little bit of hair, but I like things that can come off. That I can play around with, that I can treat as like a party on my face.
“I treat makeup the way I treat an outfit. What am I going to add?
“Not what am I going to cover up. But I refuse to have any interference with my face.
“Why would I inflict deliberate discomfort on myself?”
Jamil, too, says she won’t have procedures to alter her looks.
“Everyone laughs at me because I won’t get facials, I won’t get manis and pedis, I won’t get this that and the other done, and I don’t workout”.
“People just think I am brave, which is so gross. It’s not f***ing brave to live exactly the same way that my boyfriend does. No one ever calls my boyfriend brave for these same things.”
But does she ever feel pressure to conform – especially in Hollywood?
Jamil responds: “Yeah, there is pressure – and part of the reason I spend time away from Los Angeles is that I need to spend time around women whose faces move.”
“And I don’t mean that in an unkind way. It’s really f***ing weird to be on TV here where every woman, when they cry, they look like they are trying to do a sh*t.
“Whereas in England, the actors – because we do a lot of period [drama] work – you can’t have an 1800s woman with filler in her lips. You have to have a normal face. And I prefer that to be perfectly honest.”
Though Jamil believes the tide is shifting – and women hold the power to rally against unrealistic beauty standards.
“We know that quick fix diets don’t work,” she tells Stellar. “We know that filler lasts forever sometimes. We know that BBLs [Brazilian Butt Lifts] can kill you. We couldn’t have more information now.
“Now, we have to go, ‘why are we choosing to participate in our own demise?’
“In the 90s, we could because we didn’t know any better … but this is the age of information.
“We do know better. We have to say at some point – when are we going to take back control?”
See Jameela Jamil at An Evening With Jameela Jamil – in Melbourne on April 26, Brisbane on April 27, and Sydney on April 28.
For more about Jameela’s community, Move For Your Mind, click here.
Originally published as ‘We are all f***ing exhausted’: Jameela Jamil on beauty standards, body image and why she’s taking the power back
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