Parenting & Family Quote by Jamie Lee Curtis

Curtis is slipping a grown-up confession into the disarming wrapper of a kids’ project, and that’s the point: children’s literature becomes a socially acceptable place to talk about adult pain. A “book on self-esteem” sounds wholesome, almost decorative, until she admits it was also a private repair job. The line “shed the shame” reframes self-esteem as something you don’t simply build; you excavate it from under years of judgment, dieting culture, tabloid scrutiny, and the particular surveillance that comes with being a woman who ages in public.

The intent is two-directional. She’s working inward, trying to name and unload a feeling that thrives on secrecy. At the same time, she’s working laterally, aiming at “women my age” who’ve been trained to treat self-critique as normal hygiene. That “probably” does a lot of work: it’s a gentle assumption that builds solidarity without grandstanding, inviting readers to recognize themselves without being told what they must have felt.

Subtext: shame is not a personal quirk; it’s a shared atmosphere. Curtis doesn’t position herself as a guru dispensing empowerment. She positions herself as a peer, using a culturally “safe” genre to smuggle in a message about bodies, worth, and visibility. In a celebrity ecosystem that rewards perpetual youth, the quiet audacity is admitting vulnerability while refusing to make it a spectacle. The project isn’t just for kids; it’s an intergenerational intervention, giving younger readers language before shame calcifies, and giving older women permission to stop treating self-loathing as the cost of admission.