Schumer has a message
Amy Schumer talks about letting go of her body image issues and how her new film ‘I Feel Pretty’, out on Thursday, is a message to women to do the same
Amy Schumer looks at herself in the mirror. She is nearly naked, save her bra and the nude Spanx she has on to flatten her belly. As she stares at her reflection, her eyes begin to fill with tears. She doesn’t say anything, but what she is thinking is very clear: “I’m disgusting. I hate the way I look. Who could ever love me?”
Although this describes a moment in Schumer’s new movie, I Feel Pretty, it’s a scene we all know — facing your mirror image, completely devoid of confidence and overwhelmed by a crippling self-hatred.
I know it, anyway. I know it so well that lately, as I head through my early 30s, I avoid looking at my reflection at all — in elevator mirrors, glossy windows — except for when I’m applying makeup to cover my flaws. It’s not easy to admit that. I know, for a fact, that I am not an ogre and that I possess many qualities more valuable than my looks. I am a successful journalist who recently managed to write a New York Times best-selling book and keep my dog, Riggins, alive and thriving.
And yet, I still worry that when people look at me, all they see is my double chin.
This is part of why I’ve felt connected to Schumer ever since I met her in 2015 when she was promoting her first movie, Trainwreck. Here was a woman whose body looked a lot like mine, and she was starring as a romantic lead in a major studio comedy.
Since then, our relationship has evolved into something more of a friendship than a traditional interviewer/celebrity rapport. I wasn’t, like, chilling with her and J-Law at her recent wedding or anything, but we message a lot, and she wrote a really nice blurb for my book, which is about The Bachelor.
Which is why when I wound up at the fancy house where she was staying in Beverly Hills, our conversation about I Feel
Pretty became less of an interview and more of a heart-to-heart.
When I walked in, Schumer’s husband, chef Chris Fischer, had just finished cooking lunch.
There were a couple of stylists wandering around, unloading heels and dresses for the I Feel
Pretty press tour, so she suggested we move to the backyard to talk. I told her I wanted us to candidly discuss body image, as well as the backlash to the new movie.
When the first trailer for the film was released this spring, it made a lot of people mad. In the movie, Schumer plays Renee, a thirtysomething with low self-esteem who yearns to be what she describes as “undeniably pretty.” One day, during a SoulCycle class, she falls off her bike and hits her head, and when she comes to, it appears her wish has been granted: She looks in the mirror and sees everything she’s always dreamed of.
On Twitter, critics argued that the premise was tone deaf. Schumer is “blonde, white, ablebodied, femme and yes, thin ... society’s beauty ideal,” so how are those even further outside of traditional beauty norms supposed to feel about themselves if Schumer is considered ugly?
But while Schumer doesn’t think it’s fair to “say who you do and don’t think should be insecure,” she understands why the story makes some people uncomfortable.
“I don’t know that the country really has an appetite to hear the story of a white, blonde woman with a belly,” she admitted. “I get it. I personally feel woken up about inequality for women and people of colour in a way I didn’t before seeing Get Out and Hamilton and
Atlanta — and all these police shootings and the election. I thought things had gotten better. But I had no idea. I just grew up thinking everybody was equal, and that’s not enough. I need to do something, otherwise I’m just part of the problem.”
But she also thinks the message behind I Feel Pretty is important. She wants women to feel “empowered to live up to their full potential” — to not be held back by the fear of being perceived as fat or ugly.
Which, are, in fact, things she says she’s been called since the moment she entered Hollywood. After watching the trailer for Trainwreck, one award season blogger argued that there was “no way she’d be an object of heated romantic interest in the real world” given her “wide facial features” that made her look like a “blonde Lou Costello.”