Kate Winslet Praised Younger Generations For Pushing Back Against Fat-Shaming

Kate Winslet is praising younger generations of women for calling out harmful body stereotypes. The Mare of Easttown star recently opened up about how glad she is to see young actors speaking out about fat-shaming, especially after she herself was bullied and objectified about her body. And it’s really nice to see the tides finally turning a little.

Winslet spoke to Hoda Kotb on TODAY ahead of the release of her new HBO series The Regime, and had an interesting response when Kotb called her a “champion of women” in her career, even though things might not have started out that way. “It’s really interesting how much it has changed,” the mom of three replied. “And I think about the moments I did have to kind of say, ‘Well look, I’m going to be myself. And I have curves. And this is who I am.’”

She went on to credit a younger generation of actors for calling out the “fat-shaming” that was so common in the early days of her own career. “That has changed. And it’s changed because young women now, they’re born with a voice. They have a voice, they’re learning how to hang on to it, they stand up for themselves,” Winslet enthused. “They know that they matter. They count for something. They’re great together.”

While it would obviously be a step too far to imply that body shaming has gone away completely, Winslet felt that young actresses were benefitting from support that she might not have had access to when she was first starting out. “It's an exciting time, I think, for younger actresses to be coming into an industry like this one, which is huge. But to feel held, supported, nurtured, it's changed so much. It's wonderful,” she told Kotb.

Winslet, who is mom to 23-year-old daughter Mia with ex-husband Jim Threapleton, 20-year-old son Joe with ex-husband Sam Mendes, and 10-year-old son Bear with husband Edward Abel Smith, has really become outspoken in recent years about all kinds of social injustice. She spoke passionately about the detrimental effect of smartphones and social media on children in 2023, admitting that she told her own kids they couldn’t have smartphones because “I want you to enjoy your life. I want you to be a child. I want you to look up at the clouds and not photograph them and post them on your Instagram page and decide whether or not the clouds were worth looking at because someone else thought that they were rubbish.”

Much like the younger generation of actors she admires, Kate Winslet has certainly found her voice.