Tracee Ellis Ross: 'There Are Things About My Body That I Don't Love'

"I always had a thin frame, but when you hit 40 and eat french fries three days in a row, it's like, 'What happened?,' " Tracee Ellis Ross tells Glamour

Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty

Tracee Ellis Ross doesn’t feel the need to look “perfect.”

“One minute we’re supposed to be flat-chested, the next we’re supposed to have big butts. Who the f–k can keep up?,” says Tracee Ellis Ross in the October issue of Glamour. “It’s a different picture every day, and it teaches us to be so focused on achieving the standards other people set that we have no time left to put toward giving ourselves the life we want.”

While she doesn’t feel the need to fit into a certain ideal, the Black-ish star, 42, admits she sometimes feels self-conscious about her body.

“I always had a thin frame, but when you hit 40 and eat french fries three days in a row, it’s like, ‘What happened?,’ ” she says in the issue. “There are things about my body that I don’t love, but I’m not trying to look perfect every day – I’m trying to look like me!”

Exactly what that looks like has changed over the years – and Ross is okay with that too.

“My weight fluctuates,” she says. “I have years where I wear a size 10, and years where I wear a size 4.”

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However, she wasn’t always okay with having to wear a bigger size.

“On Girlfriends I kept complaining to the costumer, saying, ‘The cleaners are shrinking all my clothes.’ Finally she said, ‘I know that’s what you keep saying, but I want to be clear with you: Your body has changed, and we need to buy you bigger clothes,’ ” recalls Ross. “It took me out for a minute.”

The actress realized a lot of her anxiety about her weight was coming from working in the entertainment industry, and she had to take a moment to reevaluate what was really important to her.

“In the context of our world, sizes 8 and 10 are teeny, but not for Hollywood,” she says. “I had to ask myself, ‘Do I want to be somebody who worries about what I’m eating? Or do I want to find a balance where I can be healthy and not consumed by that and maybe have to buy some larger pants?’ I bought new pants.”