Jane Fonda reveals a lifetime of self-doubt, trying to be the “perfect”; woman in an essay written for Lena Dunham’s Lenny newsletter.
The 78-year-old actress writes that she was taught to believe that the ideal woman was “thin, pretty, having good hair, being nice rather than honest, ready to sacrifice, never smarter than a man, never angry.”;
“When I hit adolescence… all that mattered was how I looked and fit in,”; writes Fonda. “One of my stepmothers told me all the ways I’d have to change physically if I wanted a boyfriend. Almost everything interesting about me scooped itself out and took up residence alongside the empty, disembodied me.”;
The Oscar winner reveals she soon developed an eating disorder, to help fill the “emptiness.”;
“It’s hard to be embodied if you hate your body,”; she explains. “Given that it was, at least partially, an inauthentic me that I presented to the world, I instinctively chose men who would never notice because of their own addictions and “issues.’ Ah, but they were interesting, charismatic, alpha men, and they validated me.”;
It went so far as to affect her financial career. Fonda admits to accepting lower wages than her male counterparts because she believed she didn’t “deserve more.”; She admits it took a long time to believe in herself. She was 60 years old when she decided to find self-empowerment and embrace feminism.
“I had gone from believing that women’s issues were a distraction… to the realization that women are the issue, the core issue,”; she writes. “We will fail to solve any problem — poverty, peace, sustainable development, environment, health — unless we look at it through a gender lens and make sure the solution will be good for women.”;
She ends her essay on a positive note, however, leaving others with a timeless message: “It took me 30 years to get it, but it’s OK to be a late bloomer as long as you don’t miss the flower show.”;