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Penn Badgley is talking about how he sees himself. The You star recently talked about his early days as a kid actor and his challenging struggle with "body dysmorphia."
In an April 16 interview with The Guardian, Penn stated, "I know that I hated my body and simply wanted a different one."
Additionally, he gained weight as a result of the loneliness he experienced following his parents' divorce, which increased his body dysmorphia, a mental health disease in which a person obsesses over perceived flaws or defects in their appearance, according to the Mayo Clinic. The 38-year-old actually mentioned that the shift ended up affecting his mental health at work.
"There was a time when, after emerging from depression and loneliness, I was both willingly and unintentionally plunging into this world where the more conventionally attractive I appeared, the more successful and valuable I might be," Penn added.
Since our culture praises this effort, he continued, "there is 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."
The former Gossip Girl star also discussed how he believed the 2007–2012 season of The CW, which also featured Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, and Chace Crawford, perpetuated society's unfavorable emphasis on appearance.
Apart from aesthetics, what else was that show? "The way we all looked was its thing," he remarked. "The shallow celebrity element of how I was viewed wasn't something I particularly enjoyed."
Penn, who has a 4-year-old son named James and a 15-year-old stepdad named Cassius, along with a 40-year-old pregnant wife named Domino Kirke, attributed his perseverance in his acting career to his spirituality despite the challenging beauty standard.
He clarified, "That is what enabled me to endure the disappointment and everything I had been struggling with, and then return to it all, hopefully with some sort of internal change."
What has Penn been concentrating on lately? According to him, it's "the basic things in life, like having a family, meaningful relationships with my friends.”
