While celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Jennifer Lopez have faced criticism for promoting an unrealistic body standard, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Kyle Richards has a positive view of the effect they’ve had on her daughters.
In Tuesday’s all-new episode of the Bravo reality show, Richards reflected on the impact a new generation of celebrities has had on daughters Farrah, 30, Alexia, 22, Sophia, 19, and Portia, 11, while on a camping trip with co-stars Lisa Rinna, Dorit Kemsley, Teddi Mellencamp, Erika Girardi, Camille Grammer and Denise Richards.
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When the topic of beauty standards came up, Richards said, “It has changed a bit with J.Lo and the Kardashians. Now if you’re fuller, it’s different. I’m like, ‘OK, my butt looks big in this … yay!’”
“My daughters don’t feel that pressure of being thin like I did growing up because the body type has changed,” she continued. “It used to be Marilyn Monroe, that’s what was sexy. And then they got super skinny, like Kate Moss — and that’s unrealistic. My girls don’t feel that.”
Rinna, whose 17-year-old daughter Amelia Gray has been open about her struggle with anorexia, also weighed in on the influence of celebrities, but appeared to have a not-so-optimistic view about the rise of social media and the celebrities who have come up on those platforms.
“It’s not an easy time growing up. Imagine being a teenager and having to deal with social media,” she said. “We had a mirror to deal with, basically. Your image was in a mirror. You saw yourself and you judged yourself off of that, or your friends.”
“It’s hard out there. It is not easy,” she continued. “The pressure’s a lot to be perfect. Have my girls had a rough time with it? Yes. All I’ve tried to do more than anything is to teach my girls self-love and how to love yourself. No matter what. No matter how you looked.”
Earlier this season, Amelia herself opened up about the effect modeling and being in the entertainment industry had on her self-image while in the darkest parts of her eating disorder.
“No matter how many deaths anorexia causes, no matter how much blindness, no matter how much hair loss, all I cared about was the skinniness,” Amelia confessed. “It’s hard.”
“I hope people in the entertainment industry can stop putting up this facade of being perfect because we all have s—. Probably we’re all way worse than everyone else,” she continued. “Literally, every single one of my friends, and I’m sure every single one of your friends, they think about how many calories they’re consuming in a day. When they sit down for a meal, they look at the bread basket and they think, ‘Holy s—.’”
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Bravo.
Photo credit: Instagram/Kyle Richards
