Kate Hudson reflects on being body shamed by tabloids in early 2000s: 'It felt so unjust'

Kate Hudson can't shake her early experiences with tabloid culture.

In a conversation for the Sirius XM podcast Let's Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa, the How to Lose a Guy actress reflected on the scrutiny she faced during her rise to fame.

"There was so much tabloid stuff. Like when I got really famous there was so much, there were so many lies. And it was so weird because in my mind it felt so unjust and it was like, this is unfair," Hudson explained. "It was like harassment, eating away at me. It was so negative."

She noted that her popularity peaked in the early 2000s, when celebrities didn't have the ability to control their own narratives via social media — and were instead subjected to the harsh words that tabloid covers would project onto them.

"They were so mean to women," she recalled. "I mean, the body shaming from being too skinny to too fat, to then going up your skirt, and from the cellulite."

In October 2005, Hudson's appearance was described by the British edition of the National Enquirer as "way too thin" and looking "like skin and bones." She claimed the allegations were "blatantly false" in a subsequent libel damages lawsuit, which she won.

In a 2014 interview with U.K.'s Red magazine, she explained why it was so important for her to put up that fight. "If there is one thing I will never have, it is an eating disorder. I won’t have girls — even if it is just one or two who care — thinking that. Because it’s a serious sickness, not something to plaster on the cover of a magazine. And I am the opposite," she said at the time. "These (gossip) magazines really, really want women to look bad."

And that, she also explained to Ripa, extends beyond body shaming.

"I mean, it’s almost like I couldn’t speak to a man without being partnered with him. Like, literally I couldn’t sit and say hello to someone," Hudson said. "There was so much of it at such a rate that I … couldn’t in any way comprehend, that I just realized, I need to figure out how to, like, not care about any of this."

Turning her attention away from the headlines was something that she learned to do early on in an effort to protect her peace. "You just realize that you’re letting them win the more you feel bad," she said. "If I’m going to let this negative energy get into me, then they win."

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