Ever since she was born, people kept telling Tallulah Willis that she looked just like her father. Many said it affectionately, but others made it sound like a sentence.
Her mother, Demi Moore, was one of the most admired women of her generation, and Tallulah grew up convinced that her face, which looked more like Bruce Willis’s, was “masculine”. From then on, she began to think of herself as ugly and believed no one would ever be able to love her.
“I punished myself for not looking like my mom”
There was never any rivalry between them. Demi has publicly defended her against people who comment on her body; the conflict was with the mirror in a famous family. From the age of 13, Tallulah read what people said about her face. In 2014, she confessed: “I believed strangers more than the people who loved me”.
But there was much more: depression, addictions, ADHD. At 25, anorexia nervosa set in. In the spring of 2022, she weighed around 38 kilos, was always cold, and needed IV fluids at home. She was afraid to walk around her neighborhood without somewhere to sit down and catch her breath.
The cruelest part: the thinner she got, the more praise she received. At first, people told her she looked incredible, but later they looked at her with concern and asked if she was okay.
After years of treatment, relapses, and a struggle she herself acknowledges will probably stay with her all her life, Tallulah began to understand that recovery didn’t mean achieving a perfect body, but rather stopping the punishment of herself for not having one.
“I’m more attractive than ever because I love myself”.
Now she understands that she never needed to become a younger version of her mother or erase the features she inherited from Bruce. Her greatest triumph wasn’t learning to feel beautiful every day. It was discovering that, even on the days when she can’t see herself that way, she is still worthy of nourishment, of taking up space, and of being loved.