Glee’s Amber Riley Is Feeling All The Feelings About The Weight-Shaming In Hollywood

Amber Riley is barely on Glee anymore so she needs to stay relevant somehow. And in lieu of landing endorsements like Lea Michele or getting film roles like Dianna Agron she’s feeling all the feelings on MTV’s couch in an interview about the racism and body-snarking in Hollywood. The 26-year-old explains: ‘Hollywood is a very hard place to be in. It really is. Being the person I am, you know, the size I am, being a woman, being a black woman, there’s not a lot of roles for us… After I did St. Sass, I kept on auditioning [but] I was being offered [roles like] ‘the girl who sits in the corner and eats all day,’ ‘the girl who wanted to commit suicide because she was fat.’ It was never anything that I felt had a good ending. I never wanted to play a character that hated herself. I wanted people to know that those aren’t the only kind of roles for women like me… normal girls. Going to auditions and having the casting director say: ‘I think you need to lose a little weight,’ I didn’t understand why people couldn’t accept me for who I was. And the rejection started wearing on my self-esteem. And that’s when me and my mom decided to stop. I’m not going to conform and hurt myself and do something crazy to be a size two…I’m a healthy person. And I think that’s the key to life… make your own path, set your own rules because there is no set rule, there’s no set look. There is no set anything. You make your own rules in your life and you make your own decisions.’ You can watch video of her interview for MTV’s This Is How I Made It, here.

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