The Bold and the Beautiful (BB) star Karla Mosley came clean about suffering from an eating disorder last year, but now offers so much more about the experience from an African-American point of view.
In a very personal piece she penned for Glamour, Mosley shares what it was like to be an African-American growing up with such a disorder.
“The first time I really felt that there was something ‘wrong’ with my body was in high school, when I wanted to dance,” Mosley recalled. “I had been involved in the school theater productions, but there was a wall into the dancing world that seemed built upon the notion that I needed to be an entirely different person to get through.”
Mosley felt that there was a standard of beauty around her that she’d never be able to achieve, especially as an African-American growing up in a predominantly white neighborhood.
“And while I knew I’d never be blond or white, as my thighs grew bigger, my hips curved, and my butt and stomach rounded, I felt I could—or should—control that.
“I attempted to make my body like the other girls I saw, because I believed I wasn’t enough. I remember flirting with boys in class, but when they were around their friends, they would act like we’d never spoken.
“When it came time for a school dance, they would inevitably ask one of my white classmates instead. I always assumed this was because there was something wrong with me. So I would binge to comfort myself and then exercise to try to make myself into who I thought they wanted me to be.”
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“My disordered eating was focused on the bodies I saw around me and on TV.”
An employer saw what Mosley was going through and handed her some tough love, telling her to either get help or leave a show she had joined. “That was 15 years ago, and the specialist I agreed to speak to then and there saved my life,” she says.
Therapy and maintaining a spiritual connection with a higher power helped Mosley become more grounded.
“Beauty comes from inside,” Mosley adds. “As does blackness. And I now know that, without changing a damn thing, I have both.”
The Bold and the Beautiful (BB) airs weekdays on CBS. Check local listings for airtimes.
Video Credit: Daphine holland
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