Trigger Warning: in our conversation, we discuss themes around body image, diet culture, and weight loss. Please take care of yourselves as you listen and avoid if these topics might be triggering for you.
Everyone please welcome Alena Acker to A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations! Alena is another wonderful actor and human that I met through Amy McNabb’s The Spark Membership, and I was so thrilled to sit down and chat with her. I’m so grateful to Alena for her kind heart and vulnerability in our conversation to share some opposing ideas when it comes to body image and general health, prevention, and wellbeing, in hopes that it reaches someone who needs to hear it. Alena also shares a pretty incredible perspective on being a fat actor and hoping to be the representation for others that she needed when she was younger. I know you’re going to enjoy hearing about her body image story, and just get ready to soak in all of the wisdom she shares in our conversation.
In our conversation, we discuss…
Reclaiming the word “fat” and not demonizing it
Weight cycling and the impacts of the generational weight loss cycle
Alena’s choice to stop dieting and accept her body after experiencing the loss of her dad
The tie between Alena’s acceptance of herself and her acting career taking off
Being the representation on screen that she needed when she was a kid (that we ALL needed when we were kids)
The inundation of cultural ideals we’re almost brainwashed by
The nuance of accepting your body now, in this moment, and still taking the steps to prevent predisposition to heart disease by way of GLP-1
The fear, as an actor, of your body and appearance drastically changing, and how that could affect your career
Doing what is best for you and your body, and trusting yourself when it comes to knowing what’s best
I cannot wait for you to hear our conversation!
“I want to be around for a long time, and I want to be able to tell these stories. And if my body becomes different, then it’s just, you know, a different body type that I’m representing. And I’ve always felt like sort of a weirdo and an oddball, and I still get to represent the weirdos and oddballs in the world at any weight. It’s been an interesting challenge because we think of loving ourself at any weight, or any shape or any size, as having more to do with if we get larger, if we get older, you know? But it’s like if you’re gonna do it, then you have to do it all the way, no matter what direction your body changes in.”
- Alena Acker
Below is a text insert of our conversation that stuck with me, starting at around the 1-minute & 52-second mark:
Alena Acker: It’s interesting. When I was younger, people would say, “Oh, you’re not fat,” or “You’re not that fat.” And what they meant was “You’re not a bad person. I don’t think that you’re lazy or undisciplined or bad,” because those are often – or at least back then in the eighties and nineties, especially, those were things that came along with the word fat. So yeah, it’s one of those things where I’m I think it’s okay to be fat, and I think it’s okay to say that you’re fat. And that it, yeah, just shouldn’t be negative.
Megan Gill: Right. I absolutely agree with you. I saw this post recently about the belly and how it’s also demonized in a similar sense. Whereas, if you have a soft belly and if you have a soft body in general, that you are seen as weak or not disciplined enough. And it’s very much still a theme today. As deep as it went, in the nineties and early two thousands, it’s no, it’s still present here with us today. Yeah.
Alena Acker: It is. Yeah, it is. It feels we’re in a rough moment with this right now because it did seem I don’t know, a few years ago, five, ten years ago, this movement – at least in my perception of things – it seemed oh, there’s this movement that’s really gathering steam, that’s all about body positivity and body diversity and, you know, being able to love yourself and your body regardless of the size and shape of it. Now it feels we’re sort of, I don’t know, regressing a little bit, and we’re in a moment where it seems there’s a big moment that’s sort of trying to get rid of all the diversity in our country. It’s really, really sad. It’s really awful. And, you know, I think body diversity is, you know, a part of that too.
Megan Gill: I absolutely agree, and it is really scary. We are in trying times, and it’s sad because, in terms of body liberation, it’s like we have come so far, and yet we aren’t able to fully live freely within that because, here we are again, yet having to fight back at the patriarchy and fight back here and fight back there. The conversation’s being had because we’re still in the cycle of the fight instead of just being able to live, which is frustrating because it did feel like, for so long, within the last span of ten years, I’d say, and during the pandemic body positivity and body neutrality were becoming such big important liberating movements and now it’s just hard to see it…
Alena Acker: And it was so inspiring for me to see younger people than myself, because I’m middle-aged, you know, just really embracing and sharing these ideas and being like, “Oh, wow. What a different and wonderful way to think,” and it helped me to sort of look at and face some of my own internalized fatphobia, you know? So yeah. So it’s a real bummer that we’re kind of in, you know, one of those sort of valleys of the fight, I guess. You know, things go up and down, and it feels like we’re in a bit of a down spot right now, which is rough.
Megan Gill: Yeah, absolutely. As an actor, I’m curious, as someone who is using your body as your instrument onstage, on screen, probably daily in auditions, and just having it be such a forefront of your life’s work in that sense and your career, I am curious – and this is also kind of a convoluted question here – but how your relationship to your body has influenced your work and your career and your journey as an actor?
Alena Acker: Yeah, what a wonderful question. I’m going to take it way back to when I was a kid, because I kind of always knew I wanted to be an actor. It was like I was taken to the touring company production of Cats as a 6-year-old, and I was like, “Hold on. Are you telling me there’s a job where you can act like a cat, and people come and watch you do it and applaud that? Sign me up!” You know, “This is definitely what I want.” But as a young person, I really only focused on theater. I really only thought I could do theater because I just didn’t see hardly any women, especially with my body type, on screen. So it was just, it was I thought these were facts. I was like, “Oh, well, I can’t do film or TV because fat people can’t be on film or TV, so I’m gonna do theater!” And, you know, it didn’t even occur to me at that point that it was a possibility. And, you know, weight has, has kind of always been a part of my life.
My mom put me in a kid’s – I’m getting emotional thinking about this. She put me in a kid’s weight loss program when I was 12 years old. And I’m someone who has weight cycled about five different times in my life, so what I mean by that is I would lose a significant amount of my body weight, let’s say 20-25%, and then gain it back, you know, and then lose it again, and then gain it back. And so, you know, it started at that super young age, and you know, my mom had her own struggles with this, and she was doing what she thought was the best thing for me to help me, you know, to help my health, to help me perhaps not make what she perceived as mistakes that she had made.
And I’m also a lifelong vegetarian. I was a really picky eater as a child, so I think she was also just like – she kind of was like, “What do I feed this kid? I don’t know how to –.” She just kind of didn’t know what to do. And luckily for us, we’ve since had conversations in adulthood where I’ve said, “I need to know that I am okay no matter my weight and no matter the size and shape of my body. That I know you were trying to help me. But what you did was make me feel there was something fundamentally wrong with me.” And that’s, you know, that’s a very harmful thing for a person to feel. And, you know, I can only imagine how much worse it is when you’re at the intersection of if you’re fat and queer and a black or brown person. It’s not great to grow up thinking that you have this deep, deep flaw.
So it was something that I, you know, just didn’t even think about film or TV. My body’s been many different shapes and sizes and weights over the years, but after coming to New York, I started to find a little bit more success in that on-camera world. And I think the industry also just started to open up in those years, and you started to see more people with a wider variety of shapes and sizes. And so, it was like, “Oh, oh, this is something I could do.”
Megan Gill: Wow. Yeah.
Alena Acker: And I eventually reached a point where I started to feel like, you know what?
I’m okay the way that I am. And that, you know, comes from a lot of therapy, a lot of talking to other friends who are fat, just learning, experiencing things.
But I got to a point, I had lost a bunch of weight again in like 2019, and then in 2021, my dad passed away. And it was during the experience of that happening that I gained the weight back because it was it stressful, and nobody wants to sit there and count calories when someone very important to you is dying.
Megan Gill: Wow, yeah.
Alena Acker: And so, it was after that point that I was like I’m done. I’m done with diets. I’m done losing weight and gaining it back again. This is just gonna be it, and what I’m really gonna work on now just accepting who I am no matter what, you know, and sort of unpacking what have these feelings from youth about myself and about having something wrong with myself, just where do they come from and why are they there, and when are they popping up, and how can I reframe them for myself. And so, I really got to this point where I was like I don’t care about that anymore. I can have confidence. I can love myself. It’s normal for a person’s body to change over the course of their life. And I started to see my career take off a little bit more at that point.
So I started booking more commercials, and I got this role in an off-Broadway play. It was a revival of Tennessee Williams’ The Night of the Iguana. And in this play, I had to wear a 1930s, 1940s-style bathing suit onstage for pretty much the entire time. And I felt okay about it, you know? It was really – it was so cool. I was like just like, “Oh, yeah!” And I have, you know, this cellulite on my thighs, and I’m running around. And part of what made that okay for me is that I was like this character does not care. This character gives zero fucks about what anybody else thinks of her. I’m playing a pair of obnoxious tourists, so it was really fun to play this role where she’s just laughing maniacally and running around and driving everybody nuts and just wearing this bathing suit. And it was, I mean, an incredible experience for many reasons.
I got to work with some of my heroes and get to know them, and I now get to call them friends. And these two wonderful actresses who I really think I was put in that dressing room with them because they are both so unapologetic and so wonderful at standing up for themselves. So that was a really wonderful experience. And one of the things that has helped me a lot when I have these moments, because we all have a moment, you know, when you are in a TV show, when you’re on a commercial, you’re not controlling the camera angles, you know? It’s not your own personal Instagram where you’re you know, doing your poses, working your angles. You get to pick out, you know, the best. And even with headshots and things, you get to pick the ones that you before you share them with people to help you decide. So we all have these moments of, “Oh, god, is that what I look like?” Or, “Oh…”
Megan Gill: Yeah, and not to mention when you’re seeing yourself reflected on camera, which, what’s the age-old trope? “The camera adds ten pounds,” or whatever people wanna say, you know?
Alena Acker: Right, I mean, it’s a flattening of a three-dimensional being into two dimensions. So you’re gonna look – it also can feel weird to us to hear our voice recorded back, to sort of see things in this different way than they go on from – than they feel in our own bodies, you know?
Megan Gill: Yeah. Right, yeah.
Alena Acker: But the thing that has really helped me in those moments is to remember that we want to show all of humanity in our TV shows, on our commercials, in the art that we make. That it’s we want to represent everyone, or at least I think the best art that’s out there does that.
Megan Gill: I agree.
Alena Acker: And so, if I’m like, “Oh my god, had no idea I had so many chins,” I can say to myself, “What if there’s somebody out there who sees this, and for a minute, they feel like, “Oh, well that lady on that commercial looks me, so maybe I’m not so bad,” or “So maybe it’s fine,” or “Maybe the way I look is normal,” you know? There could be someone out there who’s excited see me on camera. There could be somebody out there – thankfully, I don’t think it’s quite the way it was when I was a kid, but in a way, I get to be that person that I didn’t really see –
Megan Gill: Oh, that you needed!
Alena Acker: – when I was little. You know?
Megan Gill: Oh, my god, yeah.
Alena Acker: So that feels really exciting to get to represent people who may feel underrepresented in media or to get to reflect back to someone something that feels, you know, representative of them. That’s really exciting. And so, that’s been a really powerful reframe for me is just being able to, anytime I catch myself in one of those moments, be like, “Well, somebody’s gonna feel happy to see someone who looks like me exactly as I look in this particular frame, in this particular project.
Megan Gill: Yeah. That’s so powerful. And someone’s gonna feel seen in seeing you in this way, which is…
Alena Acker: Exactly, exactly.
Megan Gill: Ah, and just even hearing you say that you are being the person on camera, or on screen, who you little-you needed to see. And I think that sometimes the reframes are just so needed to pull us out of our own heads too and to just remind us why we’re doing this thing in the first place.
Alena Acker: Yeah.
Megan Gill: Because it’s so easy – especially when our bodies are the forefront of our work. It’s so easy to – I know from experience, as well, being an actor. We hyper-fixate, over-obsess about what we look like and try to control every little thing, and it’s hard to let go of control and to accept and to say, “Nope. Yep, I I’m gonna show up –.” I’m in my mid-thirties, but I am really, really trying to not give into Botox, so I’m like, “Yeah, yeah, no, it’s okay,” seeing my crow’s feet and my forehead wrinkles. I just got headshots taken a couple weeks ago and got ‘em back, and I was like, “Wow, never seen these forehead wrinkles,” the way I had in that shoot. But I’m doing a similar reframe as you like, yes, no, but for me, and for my mission as an actor, this is good because this is what happens when you age. This is normal for someone in her mid-thirties to have them. We’re gonna roll with it because that’s what we’re doing right now for us. That might not work for somebody else, but yeah, the reframe is really powerful, so thank you for sharing that.
Alena Acker: Yeah, because it’s like how can we get to a point where people feel less pressure to do these things unless they can see an example of what it is, too.
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Alena Acker: And these kinds of decisions are up to people as individuals and what they need to do, but I do feel it’s like people need to know what the alternative looks like. These sort of brainwashing “ideals” that we are inundated with.
Megan Gill: Yes. And what’s interesting is that the way in which we are inundated with them is via the media, and yet here we are in the media trying to counteract that. So it’s just this interesting opposition and nuance that we’re holding here with wow, it all exists under the umbrella of the media. But also I do think it’s really cool and powerful, as actors, to be able to show up in that way and to kind of try to fight back and counteract all of that brainwashing. If we can do anything here during our time as artists, how cool is that, right?
Alena Acker: I mean, I think it’s very cool.
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Alena Acker: And so, it’s interesting though, because I do have a little bit of a curve ball for you.
Megan Gill: Okay, great.
Alena Acker: All of this kind of said. So I’ve gotten to this place where I’m like all right, I can represent people, and I can be happy about that and proud of that. And I can accept my body the way it is now, in this moment, and accept myself for who I am and love myself. And it’s always, I think, gonna be an ongoing thing of remembering to do that, remembering that it’s like, “Okay, I love me. I’m okay the way I am.” You need those reminders. It’s not like you just become cured.
Megan Gill: Yeah, it’s ongoing work, for sure.
Alena Acker: It is ongoing work. But my curve ball is this, which is that a few months ago I found out that I have a genetic predisposition for heart disease. So it’s called Lipoprotein(a). It’s a subfactor of your LDL cholesterol, or a sub-particle, and it’s sticky. So it sticks to your your blood vessels, and it makes you more likely to develop cardiovascular disease, heart disease, stroke, heart attack, you know, things like that, which are serious concerns. Because heart disease kills more people in our country than all the cancers combined each year.
So I found this out, and I saw a cardiologist, and he was like, “So this is a thing that, at this point in medicine, there’s nothing we can do about. There are no medicines or therapies that can change this thing.” And so, when you have this, you really need to attack your other risk factors. And so, he and I, after much discussion and debate, decided to put me on a GLP-1, which I’ve been on for about six weeks now. So this has been a very – it was a really difficult decision. And, you know, this is something where I don’t feel that people have to justify these decisions to anyone.
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Alena Acker: But the reason that I wanna go through it or explain it is that maybe it’ll help somebody else. And I just feel like that’s a pretty hard left turn, right, to go from, “I’m great at any weight,” to “And now I’m taking this weight-loss drug.”
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Alena Acker: And I was just sort of like, “Oh, my god. Do I want to do this? Is this a betrayal now, then, of fat people that I love in my life, the women and people that I’m representing on screen?” it really felt like – I’m like I’ve just gotten to this place where I feel cool, and now I’m gonna change my body again? It was really tough. And it brings up all these things around, well, am I gonna book fewer roles because I’ve sort of experienced this career uptick at a higher weight, and is that gonna affect the way people cast me and the way people see me and all of the little, logistical – you know, I’m gonna need new headshots, and when am I gonna tell my reps.
Megan Gill: All the things.
Alena Acker: Even stuff as wild as I shot this pilot, a small role, a couple of scenes in a pilot back in October, and I don’t know if it’s gonna be picked up to series, and I don’t know if I will be invited back if it does get picked up to series, but I could, because my character is in the workplace of one of the main characters. And so, it’s this thing of, “What if they ask me back, and I look completely different, and then I lose the opportunity because of that?” I really was just sort of spiraling out about how much this is going to change, or could change things. But, ultimately, I just felt this is something I need to do for my health. It’s something where I want to be around for a long time, and I want to be able to tell these stories. And if my body becomes different, then it’s just, you know, a different body type that I’m representing. And I’ve always felt like sort of a weirdo and an oddball, and I still get to represent the weirdos and oddballs in the world at any weight.
It’s been an interesting challenge because we think of loving ourself at any weight or any shape or any size as having more to do with if we get larger, if we get older, you know? But it’s like if you’re gonna do it, then you have to do it all the way, no matter what direction your body changes in.
Megan Gill: Right. Which is hard work, regardless.
Alena Acker: Yeah, it’s an interesting position that I find myself in.
“As a young person, I really only focused on theater. I really only thought I could do theater because I just didn’t see hardly any women, especially with my body type, on screen. So I thought these were facts. I was like, “Oh, well, I can’t do film or TV because fat people can’t be on film or TV, so I’m gonna do theater!” And it didn’t even occur to me at that point that it was a possibility.”
- Alena Acker
Alena Acker is a New York-based actor who often plays characters that seem ordinary at first but are surprisingly complex once you dive deeper. She’s the shy nerd who stands up for herself, the wacky teacher who might actually teach you something, the pious innocent who’s anything but.
TV credits include NBC’s Law and Order, HBO Max’s And Just Like That (The Sex and the City Reboot) and the upcoming FX Pilot Disinherited from Better Call Saul Showrunner Peter Gould.
She has graced international stages performing in plays and musicals - favorite credits include The Off Broadway Revival of Tennessee Williams’ The Night of the Iguana at the Signature Theatre, starring Tim Daly, Daphne Rubin-Vega and Lea DeLaria, directed by Emily Mann; as well as Drama Desk nominated the Ryan Case 1973 and the role of Typhoid Mary in The Trial of Typhoid Mary with Live-In Theater. She also performed at the Gyeonggi English Village theme park in South Korea, delighting family audiences as a clumsy witch, a cheerful unicorn, a menacing pirate and everything in between.
LA Comedy Festival, the NY Fringe Festival, UCB and the PIT audiences know her from Mother Eve’s Secret Garden of Sensual Sisterhood, a musical self-help satire in which she played Rhododendron, a timid woman with low self-esteem who gains confidence and learns to love herself–not without plenty of laughs along the way.
Alena has performed her original character comedy with Characters Welcome, at The PIT and at Second City NYC and has appeared in numerous commercials for well-known brands.
A graduate of the University of Michigan with a double major in Theatre and German Language and Literature, she spent her junior year abroad and speaks fluent German.
Alena lives with her husband and cat Sophie and is a New York City triathlon finisher.
A couple of notes to ensure this is a safe space for my guests to share their intimate and vulnerable body image stories in:
It can be easy to feel alone on your journey of existing in a body. I welcome the connection and support of one another in this space through considerate and curious comments.
These conversations are quite nuanced, complex, and oftentimes very vulnerable. Remember that everyone has their own body image story, and while someone else’s might look differently than yours, I encourage you to keep an open mind and stay empathetic.
Thank you for being here. By sharing this type of content, my hope is to inspire personal reflection and cultural questioning. Thank you and supporting me in exploring the effects of our culture’s beauty norms and body standards on human beings existing in today’s world.
Do you have a friend, family member or peer who might love this too? I’d be honored if you could help me spread the word about my writing and body image conversations!
While I’m not a licensed therapist, registered dietician, or medical health professional and cannot speak to body image topics from a clinical, trauma-informed place, I am an expert of lived experience. I’m an academic of my own body, and I’m passionate about facilitating conversations with other humans about their relationships with their bodies. I believe it’s important to continue conversations about healthy body image in creative spaces as a means to heal individuals as well as the collective whole. But just know the information presented in this medium is not professional mental health advice or medical advice, and any questions or concerns you have should always be directed to your health providers.
