"I think sometimes what happens is that all of this feeling out of control manifests itself in trying to control your body; whether it's an eating disorder or talking about getting your nose fixed, as if that's going to be the solution to all the pressure"
About this Quote
Sarandon is naming a modern survival strategy: when the world feels unmanageable, the body becomes the nearest lever you can pull. It lands because it refuses the glamour of “self-improvement” talk and frames dieting, cosmetic tweaks, and disordered eating as variations of the same bargain with anxiety. Not vanity, not weakness, but a desperate bid for jurisdiction.
The line’s quiet sting is in “as if that’s going to be the solution.” She’s puncturing the fantasy that pressure is personal and therefore fixable through personal renovation. Hollywood sells the idea that if you correct the surface, the noise will stop. Sarandon flips it: the noise is the point. The pressure is structural (industry scrutiny, the public’s entitlement, the gendered demand to be perpetually pleasing), and the body is where that pressure gets converted into a project with measurable milestones and visible “results.”
Her phrasing keeps the net wide: “whether it’s an eating disorder or...getting your nose fixed.” That “whether” collapses the moral hierarchy we like to build, where surgery is chic and illness is tragic. She suggests they can share the same emotional root: a craving for control disguised as choice. The subtext is compassion without absolution. You can hear the warning to younger women in the industry, but also to anyone marinating in feed-driven perfectionism: control is seductive precisely because it feels like relief. It rarely is.
The line’s quiet sting is in “as if that’s going to be the solution.” She’s puncturing the fantasy that pressure is personal and therefore fixable through personal renovation. Hollywood sells the idea that if you correct the surface, the noise will stop. Sarandon flips it: the noise is the point. The pressure is structural (industry scrutiny, the public’s entitlement, the gendered demand to be perpetually pleasing), and the body is where that pressure gets converted into a project with measurable milestones and visible “results.”
Her phrasing keeps the net wide: “whether it’s an eating disorder or...getting your nose fixed.” That “whether” collapses the moral hierarchy we like to build, where surgery is chic and illness is tragic. She suggests they can share the same emotional root: a craving for control disguised as choice. The subtext is compassion without absolution. You can hear the warning to younger women in the industry, but also to anyone marinating in feed-driven perfectionism: control is seductive precisely because it feels like relief. It rarely is.
Quote Details
| Topic | Mental Health |
|---|
More Quotes by Susan
Add to List
