Harry Potter actress Evanna Lynch recently wrote a
personal essay on body image, the obsession over which she considered her personal Boggart. Evanna, who plays ethereal Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter series, went into detail about negative body image and how she considers it a personal body bind, of sorts.
The actress discussed this particular topic as she had
suffered from anorexia nervosa for two years in her youth, but with the aid of J.K. Rowling and the
Harry Potter series, she was able to overcome the ailment. Highlights of the story can read below; the full article can be found at
HP Alliance.
Quote:
Unfortunately so, so many people are letting their own Negative Body Image be another type of body-bind that prevents them from living their life to the fullest. We feed ourselves negative thoughts about our body, thoughts like “I’m too fat”, “I’m too short”, “I’m too ugly.” Very quickly we glumly accept them as the truth, and thus we become imprisoned in our own body. We use them as excuses NOT to fulfill certain ambitions and lock ourselves into a cosy self-contained prism of isolation and fear.
Quote:
If you don’t use your body to its full potential, as a means of achieving your dreams, you are wasting it. You are no better off than someone who is locked in a total body bind curse. At the same time I realise how difficult it is to overcome this state of mind, and I know what a firm, unrelenting grip these thoughts can get on you.
A few years ago I was haunted by destructive, negative thoughts like these. I used to get so angry and frustrated because I felt my mind didn’t match up with my body and that it prevented me from things I knew I was capable of doing. It took me a while to realise that all of this was an illusion. If I continued to abuse my body by giving in to my negative thoughts, I didn’t deserve to have the health and fitness I was blessed with.
Quote:
Do whatever it is you have to do to make yourself feel beautiful. If that’s keeping fit and healthy then go for a walk or run in the mornings and be determined to keep it up. Do your makeup, or if you’re bored and want to change your appearance, then dye your hair a different colour. Eventually, by doing these little things and feeling more beautiful, you will break through all the self doubt and find the negative obsession fading away.
Don’t get lazy and tell yourself there’s no point; it’s important! Nowadays I know what I need to do to be happy with my appearance: I spend a few minutes in the morning picking out an outfit that will make me feel confident, and then I have the rest of the day, free from the old destructive thoughts, to pursue my creative pursuits – the most important thing!! But I know that if I didn’t take care of my body, I would get really down and feel incapacitated to do even the most menial everyday tasks.