Trigger Warning: in our conversation, we discuss themes surrounding body image, the beauty industry, and diet culture. Please take care of yourselves as you listen and avoid if these topics might be triggering for you.
Everyone please welcome Mallory Gonyea to Continued Conversations! Mallory and I met through The Spark Membership (shoutout Amy McNabb for bringing us together!), and I’m so grateful she was willing to sit down with me for a body image conversation.
In our conversation, we discuss…
Existing at the intersection of being an artist and an athlete
Rebuilding trust with your body after an injury
How to manage when our work/sport is so closely tied to our identity, and the ability to execute our work/sport is stripped from us
Mallory’s journey growing up a tomboy and connecting to her femininity and working to appreciate her body
Because of today’s beauty standards (especially in Hollywood), Mallory grappling with the feeling like she has to choose between her career and a healthy body
Working out and lifting weights for bodily longevity and strength as we age
The implications of weight loss drugs on our whole system
Representing your body type in this art form in hopes of showing a young person out there that their body, too, is good
Mallory’s thoughts on how current female superhero roles are cast
Taking up space as women, in our lives and in our art
Helping other women see that strong is beautiful
Mallory is a Nashville-based actress who recently started her own production company. She also used to be a semi-pro soccer player, so her understanding of her body and self-image runs deep. Mallory dropped so many incredible tidbits in our chat - I was blown away by her knowledge of the body, and I cannot wait for you to hear our conversation!
“My grandmother, at the end of her life, she was bedridden because she did not take care of herself physically. She didn’t lift weights. She had had a stroke, and she didn’t do the rehab and the physical therapy that she needed. And I’ve seen that, and I can’t unsee that. And that’s what’s so concerning to me about this emphasis on becoming smaller as women, not just to take up less space, but it’s like we need muscle. When we’re in our thirties, we start losing muscle and collagen and all these other things that are so important, so quickly. And if we are not strength training, if we are not trying to be strong, we are gonna lose independence. I’ve seen it happen, and it takes off years of your life. And so, I’m always having to grapple with, do I have to choose between my career a healthy body. And it’s like I don’t want to do that, right? It’s like, how do we find space for both??”
- Mallory Gonyea
Below is a text insert of our conversation that stuck with me, starting at around the 4-minute and 32-second mark:
Megan Gill: To call yourself an athlete, and then to have your body betray you in this way, and have something completely, like you said, out of your control happen to your body and then have to have to grapple with that is, I can only imagine….
Mallory Gonyea: Like I said, it’s something that you build your identity on, right? And it’s like, I know this about myself. I know I am strong. So when you are no longer strong, when you’re stripped of that, you’re like, okay, this thing that I found value in the thing that I found my worth in is gone. You’re like, well, how do I – where’s my value? Where’s my worth, then?
I came out of the womb an athlete, very strong. If you look at my baby pictures, I had muscle definition, right? And being a woman, back when we were – I was born in ‘97, so grew up in the 2000s, right, where skinny was seen as beautiful. And it was the time where it was like, what do they call it, “heroin chic” was the in thing, right? And so, I was growing up where I’m just naturally strong, naturally a muscular woman. And I had to do a lot of learning on how to find that beautiful. And so, when that gets taken away, you’re like, well, what am I now, right?
So that’s kind of been just a whole journey for me, like my whole life growing up, of grappling with finding my identity and being strong, but also still not that being the accepted thing. And so, when that is taken from you, when that is your crutch of like, well, I’m gonna lean into being a strong woman, an athletic woman, and then that’s stripped away as well, it’s just huge mind – you know?
Megan Gill: Oh my gosh, yes. It’s like not only have you – and I don’t mean to speak for you, but I’m curious about all of the work you did with yourself mentally to accept your physical body, your athletic body as an athlete, and then to have put in all of the work to get to a place with that. But to have done all of the mental gymnastics, to get to this place of like, ah, okay, this is my body, and I am an athlete and I can play this incredible sport with my body. And then to have it, like you said, stripped away and then to have to like do mental gymnastics times two. What was that journey like for you coming out of that?
Mallory Gonyea: Well, yeah, to be completely vulnerable and honest with you, I was never like this girly girl, or this, you know, little princess, and I found my identity and my worth in what my body could do, not necessarily what it looked like. So I really leaned into the tomboy-ness of it and the, well, I don’t have to look pretty if I’m a strong athlete, right?
I don’t have to try to be feminine. I can just be me, and it can be focused on what I’m good at.
All my teammates growing up, they loved going shopping for makeup and they loved doing all these girly things, and I just never identified with that, or I don’t think I ever felt safe to. I didn’t feel comfortable in my femininity. And honestly, I’m still on this journey. I’m still learning how to love this body that I’m in. It’s been a whole journey of never quite feeling like I fit anywhere. But if I can be really good at something and if I have something to bring to the table, well, then that’s fine. It doesn’t matter how I look.
But then when you pivot into the acting industry, when you find out that that’s completely different, that the whole industry is based off of looks right, and you grow up and you see all these movies that are about athletes. Well, if you look at the ones that are about male athletes, they’re ripped. They’re very strong. They’re shredded. You look at these female athletes, they don’t match what I’m seeing in the real world, right? I always was between a size two and a six, and I still felt too big to play an athlete on screen. I didn’t see myself represented in the women who were playing athletes on screen. And I think we’ve gotten better, but we’re still a long ways away from that, right? It’s like, “Oh, well she shouldn’t be too muscular because we don’t want her to be too bulky.” Where it’s like you look at any of the women athletes in the world, they have muscle. They have to have muscle to be doing the things that they’re doing. And for some reason, Hollywood has equated thinness with being athletic, and that’s just not true.
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Mallory Gonyea: And so, I have found myself in a battle recently of like, okay, I’m no longer a competitive athlete, but I’m still an athlete, and I’m still constantly – even at my fittest, when I was a size two or four and really lean, I still felt like I needed to lose ten pounds. Like, “If I lose ten pounds, this will help me get cast,” or, you know, I see all these young, pretty, thin girls are the ones that are getting cast. And it’s like how am I super fit and super, you know, proud of my athleticness, but also wanting to not be that way.
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Mallory Gonyea: So it’s a constant battle of how do I stop myself from feeling like I need to be something other than myself.
Megan Gill: Right. Gosh, because as actors, it’s so important, in my opinion, to bring ourselves to the work that we do obvi – whether you are producing, directing, acting (especially when you’re acting) because that character that’s being brought to life through you is only the way that they are because it’s you, because you are the one playing the role. And that’s the beauty of humanity. That’s the beauty of being able to act and why everybody brings something different to like the same role or the same character.
Mallory Gonyea: Absolutely.
Megan Gill: And if we are so disconnected from ourselves in that sense and just trying to fight who we naturally are, it’s so not beneficial.
Mallory Gonyea: I would have to quite literally be malnourished to ever get to some of these sizes that we have glorified as a society, right? And I don’t want to do that. Me, personally, my grandmother, at the end of her life, she was bedridden because she did not take care of herself physically. She didn’t lift weights. She had had a stroke, and she didn’t do the rehab and the physical therapy that she needed. And I’ve seen that, and I can’t unsee that. And that’s what’s so concerning to me about this emphasis on becoming smaller as women, not just to take up less space, but it’s like we need muscle.
When we’re in our thirties, we start losing muscle and collagen and all these other things that are so important, so quickly. And if we are not strength training, if we are not trying to be strong, we are gonna lose independence. I’ve seen it happen, and it takes off years of your life. And so, I’m always having to grapple with, do I have to choose between my career a healthy body. And it’s like I don’t want to do that, right? It’s like how do we find space for both? And I do think that we are getting better. We’re starting to see more stories of women of all shapes and sizes, and we’re starting to see stories of actual athletic women, which is great, but it is concerning that we still always somehow circle back to thinness and smallness.
Megan Gill: Yeah, I could not agree more with all of that. And, my god, just thank you for sharing that about your grandmother as well, because I know that that’s a really hard truth to reckon with, and to watch somebody that you love and you’re close to and is a part of your family, go through that and to have the rude awakening of like, I don’t want that for myself and the people that I love, and it starts now, it starts when we’re young – yeah, yeah. There’s a lot in that.
And I can also very much relate to that for myself. I move my body now because it feels good to do that. It helps me mentally. But also because I don’t want to be in my sixties and seventies and fall and hurt myself, you know?
Mallory Gonyea: Right. Yeah, a lot of older people, they end up with broken hips because they don’t have that muscle, or they fall and they can’t get themselves up. A squat, right? That is that movement of sitting down and getting up, you know? Or, god forbid, having grandkids one day and not being able to pick them up. People don’t realize that is not just for aesthetics, right?
Megan Gill: Right.
Mallory Gonyea: It’s for being able to do the everyday things that you want to be able to do into, hopefully, your seventies and your eighties. I mean, I still want to be moving in my nineties, maybe resting a little bit more, but still wanting to be able to move, not needing to ask for help to go to the bathroom. It’s the simple things, right?
Megan Gill: It’s so true. It’s like we are taught to work out to look smaller, to look thin, when in reality, we should be taught to work out for mobility purposes, for longevity, for our general health and wellness and strength. And I think that a lot of what I’ve been doing recently is literally rewiring my brain in terms of that because we were just so inundated and conditioned, especially in the heroin chic era. And I grew up in the nineties and two thousands as well, and just all of the messages we’ve received as small children, and just it takes so much to undo that.
And it is really sad to see, like what you were saying, how now Hollywood, as an industry, is very small, and a lot of the women are just shrinking before our eyes. I feel like this is just a known fact at this point, unfortunately, and it just hard to see because it’s like, god, we went through – okay, the millennials and gen Z people went through this. We went through the ringer. And I would hope that like the kids growing up today would have more of a different experience. And I do think in some ways, like you were saying, they’ll have a different experience than we did in some positive ways. But at the same time, it’s like, god, now they’re watching the Oscars and seeing all these teeny, tiny actresses. We are – we’re somehow all the way back at square one. And then I’m just like fearing for the people growing up now and fearing that they’re gonna be in their twenties and thirties having to decondition themselves of all of the shit that we have to decondition ourselves of too you know? And it’s just really hard to sit with that. It’s really heartbreaking.
Mallory Gonyea: You’re like, “Oh, do I need to also opt into that in order to be cast? Is that now the new standard?” And I’m like, I don’t want any part of that. Because what they don’t tell you about the drugs that everybody are taking to get that thin is that it’s not stripping you of fat, it’s stripping you of – I mean, yes it is stripping you of fat, but it’s stripping you of muscle as well. And we need muscle to function and to live. And I do believe that there is a place for those medications in a medical setting because they were designed for that. But when they become commercial and public use to – what’s the word I’m looking for – to promote and advertise thinness, it’s scary and yeah. I’m like, okay, what are we doing here? You know, even sitting in that two-to-six range. And I go back to growing up, they told Kate Winslet – stunning, beautiful, never fat – that she was fat. And I’m like what are we doing here? It’s just – yeah, it’s very concerning.
“ You grow up, and you see all these movies that are about athletes. Well, if you look at the ones that are about male athletes, they’re ripped, they’re very strong, they’re shredded. You look at these female athletes, and they don’t match what I’m seeing in the real world, right? I always was between a size two and a six. I still felt too big to play an athlete on screen. I didn’t see myself represented in the women who were playing athletes on screen. And I think we’ve gotten better, but we’re still a long ways away from that, right? It’s like, “Oh, well she shouldn’t be too muscular because we don’t want her to be too bulky.” It’s like you look at any of the women athletes in the world they have muscle, they have to have muscle to be doing the things that they’re doing. And for some reason, Hollywood has equated thinness with being athletic, and that’s just not.”
- Mallory Gonyea
Mallory Gonyea is an award winning actress, writer, and producer based out of Nashville, Tennessee. As a former semi-pro athlete, she has built a career centered around strong, complex female characters, bringing a unique blend of physicality, emotional depth, and authenticity to her work. She is also the founder of Eden Pictures, and independent production company focused on creating bold, female centered stories. Outside of filmmaking, Mallory embraces loving her body by training in CrossFit and Boxing and is passionate about encouraging women to embrace strength, confidence, and overall wellness.
If you want to be a part of the conversation… either reach out to me via email at themegangill@gmail.com to schedule a conversation or fill out this form to share your body image story anonymously.
A couple of notes to ensure this is a safe space for my guests to share their intimate and vulnerable body image stories in:
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.
That being said, I welcome your support of my guests in the comments. Please be kind and considerate with your words.
Thank you for being here. By sharing this type of content, my hope is to inspire collective reflection and cultural questioning. Thank you for supporting me in exploring the effects of our society’s beauty norms and body standards on human beings existing in today’s world.
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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.
