Kate Winslet has been an advocate for portraying women with a healthy body since she hit the screens years ago.
One of her latest films, Little Children, in which she plays a mother of two, had her doing a couple of nude scenes. She remembers thinking, "'How am I going to pull this off? The belly is certainly not what it was. The boobs are certainly not what they were.' You do think, 'Oh, God!' but at the same time, I was playing a mother, and it's so important to me to have those things look as real as possible."
Although she fears she will sound like a cracked record, with all that she says about positive body image, she won't stop talking at length about the subject. "More than ever now, I believe it's so important to look as real and true to life as possible, because nobody's perfect. I seem to be on a mission, but I don't want the next generation, your daughters and mine, growing up thinking that you have to be thin to look beautiful in certain clothes. It's terrifying right now. It's out of control. It's beyond out of control."
She is appalled by the magazines that publish photos of emaciated women on their covers "And then express faux concern for them. If you're really that concerned, don't do it. Don't put those pictures where young girls will see them."
Accepting her responsibility as a role model for the younger generation (and everyone else!), she says, "For a long time that seemed like a huge responsibility, but if I am that to some young women, then that's great. I'm tremendously flattered to be looked up to in that way, and I feel an enormous responsibility to stay normal and true to myself and not conform and all those things. You know? To be healthy. And normal. And to like to eat cake."
