Is it just me, or has Demi Moore seemed really sad lately? I mean, of course she’s sad, she’s going through a pretty public divorce and a cheating scandal, and she now has to face the fact that she married a douchebag, but it seems like there’s something more than that going on, right?
In this interview done between Demi and her good friend, Amanda de Cadenet, just after Thanksgiving, Demi starts to talk about it, just a little. See, Demi and Amanda are producing this new show for Lifetime called The Conversation, which features “strikingly frank discussions” with people like Lady Gaga and Gwyneth Paltrow, provides “a forum for women to talk honestly about the challenges they face in their daily lives,” and focuses on “the universal themes in women’s lives.” I guess this interview with Harper’s Bazaar is a sort of precursor to the show, which debuts in the spring, but either way, it’s interesting to hear what Demi has to say.
On her body image: I have had a love-hate relationship with my body. When I’m at the greatest odds with my body, it’s usually because I feel my body’s betraying me, whether that’s been in the past, struggling with my weight and feeling that I couldn’t eat what I wanted to eat, or that I couldn’t get my body to do what I wanted it to do.
I think I sit today in a place of greater acceptance of my body, and that includes not just my weight but all of the things that come with your changing body as you age to now experiencing my body as extremely thin — thin in a way that I never imagined somebody would be saying to me, “You’re too thin, and you don’t look good.”
I find peace when I don’t see my body as my enemy, when I step back and have appreciation and look at all that my body has done for me. It’s allowed me to give birth to three beautiful children, allowed me to explore different roles as an actor, allowed me to be strong. You can’t look at yourself in the mirror and tear your body apart. You have to look at it and go, “Thank you. Thank you for standing by me, for being there for me no matter what I have put you through.”
On guilty pleasures: Watching Jersey Shore, because it’s such a train wreck. It’s excessive behavior being rewarded, which in truth is painful to watch, but you just can’t look away! And it’s guilty only because I think guilt constitutes knowing that you’re doing something that’s probably not good, but you’re enjoying it anyway. My real, other guilty pleasure, and it’s totally stupid, is those long-distance flights where you are able to change into those pajamas they give you without ever leaving your seat and nobody can see your body exposed. It is an absolute guilty pleasure in the sense that I derive pure joy and some weird sense of accomplishment over being able to do it.
On her greatest fears:I used to think that what scared me was the idea of being abandoned until someone said to me, “Only children can be abandoned. Adults can’t be abandoned because we have a choice. Children don’t have a choice.” So I started to rethink. “Okay, it’s not that. What’s the underlying thread that really scares me?” I think what scares me is not having the courage to reach my full potential, which means that I would allow fear, insecurity, and doubt to rule me and that I would ask for only a little of what is actually there for me. It would mean that I would be settling.
And so for me, it’s not just about reaching my potential in terms of my career. It goes more to the idea of being whole, of loving oneself. And I think there is no way to reach your fullest potential if you don’t really find the love of yourself. If I were to answer it just kind of bold-faced, I would say what scares me is that I’m going to ultimately find out at the end of my life that I’m really not lovable, that I’m not worthy of being loved. That there’s something fundamentally wrong with me. And that I wasn’t wanted here in the first place, so the fight against gravity for me is to find that love for myself that gives me the courage to reach my fullest potential, to actually receive this abundance that’s really there. I also think that what scares you goes back to being a kid; what really scares you is not knowing. What scares me the most is not knowing and accepting that just about everything is not in my control. That makes me feel unsafe.
On what freedom means to her: Letting go of the outcome. Truly being in the moment. Not reflecting on the past. Not projecting into the future. That’s freedom. Not caring more about what other people think than what you think. That’s freedom. To not be defined by your wounds. Somebody wrote something to me that said, “Don’t let your wounds make you become someone you’re not.” That’s really powerful. And not taking life too seriously.
So I think Demi’s going to be just fine after all this Ashton Kutcher nonsense, don’t you?
“…a forum for the airing of women’s issues featuring people like Demi, Gwyneth and GaGa….” I’m trying to think what kind of issues those women have in common with me and the other 99% of women in the U.S. What shoes go with which Louis Vuitton bag? Where to hire a great personal trainer? What SPF level is the best for St. Bart’s, Kaui and Aspen? Bitch, please.