Alison Brie Finds Her ‘GLOW’ Nude Scenes Empowering
Women all over the world battle the little voice in their heads which says that our bodies aren’t good enough. Even celebrities aren’t immune to this. Alison Brie, who plays a super-strong lady wrestler on GLOW, has dealt with insecurity and body dysmorphia most of her life. However, her role in the show is giving her a new perspective on body issues, including nude scenes.
Alison Brie found the nudity in ‘GLOW’ to be ’empowering’
Brie had never done a nude scene before her role in Netflix’s GLOW. But once it finally happened, the actress found the process empowering. The difference all came down to how the show handled the nudity and the human body.
“I hadn’t been anti nudity,” Brie explained to People why she’d always remained clothed through the first decade of her acting career. “I just really took a strong stance in wanting to find a project that I felt merited the nudity it wanted me to do. I hadn’t really found that project until GLOW.”
The drama doesn’t focus on women’s bodies in a sexual way. Instead, it’s all about the amazing things they’re capable of. GLOW is the story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (which is what the name GLOW stands for), a professional women’s wrestling circuit in the 1980s. So, when they’re showing women’s bodies, it’s about what they can do, more than how they look.
Brie said GLOW‘s creators wanted to showcase women in “every type of way.” So, nude scenes are naturally going to be a part of that. But because of the way it’s handled on the show, Brie feels really comfortable with the process.
“Even the nudity on the show, to me, has been very empowering,” she said. “It kind of [reminds] myself that I love my body and I’m not ashamed to share it in a non-sexual way… To show nudity as a representation of female friendship and their closeness and their intimacy, was very exciting to me and very true to who I am.”
Alison Brie used to struggle with body dysmorphia
Embracing the human form, and her naked body, isn’t always something that Brie has been super comfortable with. In fact, she used to, and still does to some extent, struggle with body dysmorphia. Brie explained how it affected her in an interview with Women’s Health.
“I go back to red carpet photos where I thought I looked so horrible,” she said. “And there are somewhere I now think, ‘God, I looked beautiful.’ And I’ll remember an hour before that I was in tears; I thought I was so disgusting. I think it’s something I’ll probably be working through me whole life.”
However, preparing for her role in GLOW required Brie to really get in shape. After all, she had to perform the extreme wrestling moves that her character is famous for, including lifting other women and hurling herself from the high corner ropes of a wrestling ring. She worked with a trainer and has seen a huge transformation in her body. That, in turn, helped Brie come to love her physique.
“It helped me with my relationship to my body times a million,” she said. “Before, I always felt at odds with it; I wanted it to be something it wasn’t.”
Alison Brie helped Dave Franco understand that body dysmorphia is a real thing
In 2017, Brie married fellow actor Dave Franco. She calls him a “wonderful, open person,” but claims that he didn’t really understand body dysmorphia before living through its effects on his new wife. Luckily, Brie claims that the pair have great communication skills, so they’re able to really talk through their issues and understand one another.
“It’s been funny talking with him about [body dysmorphia], Brie told Women’s Health. “He said, ‘Before I knew you, I’m not sure I believed body dysmorphia was a real thing.'”
But after talking about it with Brie, Franco came to understand more about the issue. He realized after seeing his wife’s amazing body and hearing what she truly thought it looked like, how out of sync those ideas were. Now, Franco gets what so many people have to deal with on a daily basis.
