Penn Badgley reveals previous battle with body dysmorphia: 'I hated my body and wanted a different one'
Actor Penn Badgley candidly shared his childhood and ongoing challenges with self-acceptance regarding his looks.
In an interview with The Guardian, the You star revealed that he experienced body dysmorphia as a child, a mental health condition that causes significant distress due to preoccupation with perceived appearance flaws. Although he was not officially diagnosed by any doctor or psychologist, he stressed that he was not happy with how he looked at the time.
"I know that I hated my body and simply wanted a different one," Badgley said.
According to him, he started to put on weight following the divorce of his parents and being isolated due to moving to the "middle of nowhere" in Washington state. Amid all this, he started to idolize the men he watched in films and felt as though he needed to look like them.
He noted, however, that this "just seemed like an impossibility."
And when he entered the showbiz industry at the age of 12 and went on to have a prolific career in Hollywood, the pressure to conform to traditional male beauty standards made his struggle even worse.
"There was just a period where, coming out of depression and isolation, I was jumping wilfully into, but also being thrust into, this world where the more conventionally beautiful I seemed, the more successful I might be, the more value I might have," Badgley shared.
"There’s no way to get past the superficiality of this work, and if you recognize that, you can’t help but recognize the superficiality of our culture, because of the way it rewards this work," he continued.
He particularly cited his work on the teen drama series Gossip Girl, where he played outcast and straight-A student Daniel "Dan" Humphrey.
"What was that show other than aesthetic? That was its thing, the way we all looked," Badgley, admitting that while the show brought him success, he "didn’t particularly love the superficial celebrity aspect" of how he was perceived.
He told the news outlet that by his mid-20s, he had come to the realization that "success, money and celebrity were not going to sustain him."
It came to a point where he considered leaving his Hollywood career behind, but he eventually found solace through his spirituality as a member of the Baháʼí Faith.
"That is what allowed me to persevere through the disillusionment, all the things I’d been grappling with, and then come back to it all, but with hopefully some kind of inner transformation," he said.
According to the outlet, praying and meditating has "helped him maintain his sanity," along with "the simple stuff of life, like having a family, meaningful relationships with my friends."
Badgley is set to star in the fifth and final season of You, which is scheduled to be released on April 24.
