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STREAMING:Jameela Jamil
is the breakout star
of Neflix’s The Good
Place, and she’s
on a mission to
make women
feel great about
themselvesFACT: JAMEELA JAMIL’S CHARACTER, TAHANI,getsthe
best lines onThe Good Place. Tahani, a vain, pretentious British
socialite who has gone to “the good place”, ie heaven,
along with Eleanor (Kristen Bell) and an omnipotent God-like
creature played by Ted Danson, has a penchant for name-
dropping and frequently delivers gems like, “I am an expert at
mediating conflict. Like when my friends Scary, Sporty, Posh,
and Baby had an issue with my other friend Archbishop
Desmond Tutu.” Or, “You know, sometimes a flaw can make
something even more beautiful. Like with Cindy Crawford and
how short she is.” But possibly the best Tahani line, the one
everyone remembers, is this: “You know, I haven’t been this
upset since my good friend Taylor was rudely upstaged by my
other friend, Kanye, who was defending my best friend,
Beyoncé.” It’s Jamil’s favourite Tahani line, and it happens to be
the one quoted back to her by none other than the actual
Beyoncé, whom Jamil met at a party recently. “She told me
she’d seen the show, and I almost died,” says Jamil. “I had to run
away. I apologised to her, you know, because my character is
so obsessed with her. But she was very sweet, very direct.”
Direct is exactly what Jamil is, too. The Brit, who spent eight
years presenting TV and radio in the UK before landing her first
acting role in Netflix’sThe Good Place, has become something
of a social media revolutionary with her Instagram account,
@i_weigh. Sparked by her frustration with women posting their
weight online and tabloid magazines documenting celebrities’
weights, Jamil invited her followers to post pics of themselves
with all the things that made up who they really were, their true
“weight”, in other words. Jamil’s included “lovely relationship”,
“great friends”, “financial independence”, a job she loves,
“bingo wings” and more. The account has more than 104,000
followers and, so far, has posted more than 1,000 women’s
alt-descriptions of their weight. “I’ve never seen the kind of
community I’ve built with @i_weigh,” she says. “It’s so uncommon
to see no trolling at all, everyone is so kind and supportive.”
She tells me the story of a woman who was too timid to post anactual picture of herself, instead simply posting her words.
“I explained that in the caption, and she got hundreds of
messages and eventually posted her pic. It’s really incredible to
see women starting to embrace their bodies differently,
starting to take pride in themselves.”
Jamil’s own journey to self-acceptance started at 17,
when she was hit by a car after trying to dodge a bee on a busy
London street. The car rammed her straight into another car,
and left her with spinal damage that would result in two years of
bed rest and learning to walk again with a Zimmer frame.
But ironically enough, the crash changed her life in a way she
could never have imagined. “I’d had anorexia since I was 14
because I internalised tabloid culture completely,” she says.
“I’ll never forget reading about this one actress who told
a magazine she ate naked in front of the mirror, to make sure she
didn’t overindulge. So I didn’t eat. I thought I had to be like that.”
Scouted as a model just before her accident, things got even
worse. “Modelling confirmed to my stupid teenage brain that
I didn’t need to eat, I shouldn’t eat. And then I got hit by a car,
couldn’t move for a year and gained 70 pounds (about 31
kilograms).” For someone who had “complete body
dysmorphia,” she says, it was traumatic, but it also smacked herWords: Lauren Sams. Photography: Sela Shiloni