Joy's picture and her body image profile after the cut.
Though her svelte form might make women jealous now, Joy Bryant loathed her body when she was growing up in the South Bronx. "It was not cool to be so skinny. My 'best friend' would tell me I looked like a boy. I wore my cousin's hand-me-downs — who was a boy."
A scholarship to a prestigious Connecticut boarding school reshaped her perception. "These girls were telling me my body was amazing, which made me feel okay," she says, though not for the healthiest of reasons. "Some of them had eating disorders because of pressure from their own mothers to be thin." The psychological yo-yoing only continued after she began modeling at 19 and was told that her athletic build was too big. Then came a move to Hollywood, where guys would suggest she should eat a cheeseburger. "But I was the same weight as always," says Bryant.
With age came a few pounds and, for Bryant, peace of mind. "I'm not 25. I'm 35. I'm 10 years heavier and I'm married," says Bryant, who wed stuntman Dave Pope in June 2008. "I'm not going to lie and say, 'Oh, I'm so secure in who I am. I don't let things bother me,'" she continues. "There are times when we're at our weakest. But maybe it's not your body. It's your mind playing tricks."
Or, sometimes, other women. "Women are the harshest critics of other women. There needs to be a greater acceptance individually and collectively or nothing's ever going to change," she says. "You'll never be thin enough, blonde enough, black enough. So enough is enough."
