Would you be brave enough to show the world YOUR cellulite?

Actress Nadia Sawalha did – in a bold bid to break the ultimate body taboo. And as she tells the Mail: when will women abandon the tyranny of unattainably perfect skin?

NADIA SAWALHA’S phone has been ringing and pinging incessantly this week, with friends, colleagues and social media followers saluting her bravery.

‘When people say I am “so brave” it makes me think: “In what way?”’ admits the former East-Enders actress and star of Loose Women.

‘Is it brave because they know what other people are going to say about me? Is it brave because we all like to pretend to be something we are not? Or brave because my career could be finished?’

What on earth has she done? Well, something a lot of women her age (or any age, really) would rather die than do. She stood in her bra and pants in her living room, and let her husband photograph her from behind, her 55-year-old bum and thighs displayed to their best (or worst?) advantage.

These weren’t your normal destined-for-Instagram pictures of a more-attractive-than-average celebrity in her prime. These were raw. The lighting was particularly bright and uncompromising, deliberately so. The angle was unflattering, leading to the cellulite looking uncompromisingly corrugated, with every dimple, crease and lump highlighted.

She shuddered at the results — then posted the images on social media, along with pictures taken with much more flattering lighting (hello, suddenly smoother thighs!), and invited comments.

What sort of masochist would do that?

‘A woman who has had enough,’ she says. ‘A woman who has realised that she’s spent a ridiculous chunk of her life worrying about her wobbly bits and trying to stop anyone seeing them — even her own husband.

‘Maybe now they are out there, I can move on. We can all move on.

‘For so many, cellulite is the bug-bear. We can’t admit we have it. We are so ashamed of it. We spend hours, days, months of our lives being repulsed by it. We women could have found a cure for cancer if we’d put the same brain power into that.’

Nadia tries to think of how much of her own energy she has invested in fretting about her thighs. All those hours as a teenager squishing her (then non-existent) lumpy bits and trying to assess, with the help of Jackie magazine, how bad the problem was.

‘It was Grade 1 cellulite if you could see it when you squished the flesh,’ she remembers. ‘My sister and I would leave ourselves black and blue. If you could see it clearly without pressing down, it was Grade 3, which we were told would “require surgery”.’

She gives a dirty, rattling laugh. ‘Surgery! As if there even is surgery! It’s bloody ridiculous — and all for something that is perfectly normal. It’s dimpled flesh, for God’s sake.’

On Instagram alone Nadia has had more than 2,000 comments. Some have been of the ‘put some bloody clothes on, woman’ ilk but, mostly, her pictures have been received with a loud cheer.

‘One woman said she was crying as I made her feel normal,’ says Nadia. ‘Another said I was the friend every woman needed, which made me cry.’

Nadia was inspired to get her thighs out when another Instagram influencer, Dubaibased health writer Danae Mercer, did a similar thing.

Danae is one of those lithein-a-bikini types who spends her life posting jaw-dropping images of her own body. Yet, to highlight the smoke-andmirrors nature of what she does, she posted two images, taken seconds apart.

One was flattering; one was not. The images went viral.

Now cellulite is having a moment. Nadia holds her hands up to an unhealthy dependence on her beach cover-up. Pretty much every holiday has been characterised by a fierce refusal to drop her sarong and ‘just get in the damn pool’ when she wants to swim.

‘So many women are like that,’ she says. ‘I’m a grown woman, a clever woman, and yet I allowed myself to get in a state about it.’

She is half-laughing, halfweeping about her ‘stupid bloody sarongs’, but also admits that her wider issues with her body image have affected her whole life, including her career. Those lumpy thighs (or her terror of them being deemed such) held her back, she argues.

This is definitely a feminist issue — but she holds women to blame for much of it.

‘We judge other women, we just do. My friend Kaye Adams [the broadcaster, and another Loose Women panellist] is one of those rare beings who doesn’t have cellulite. I don’t