Thursday, January 30, 2025 - Hollywood Actress, Jennifer Love Hewitt, has reflected on being sexualized as a teen and having “grown men” make jokes about her breasts during her appearance on a new episode of “Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown” podcast.
“There were grown men talking to me at 16 about my breasts
openly on a talk show, and people were laughing about it. It was a culture that
was fully accepted, but when you sit, and you look at where we are now versus
then, it is really mind-blowing,” Hewitt, now 45, said.
“It was a culture that was fully accepted, but when you sit,
and you look at where we are now versus then, it is really mind-blowing,”
Hewitt said.
“In hindsight, it was really strange, I think, to become a
sex symbol sort of like before I even knew what that was,” she continued. “I
didn’t know what being sexy meant.”
The “Client List” star also recalled random men coming up to
her and making sexually charged comments about her 1999 Maxim cover when she
was 17.
“People would openly walk up and be like, ‘I took your
magazine with me on a trip last week,'” Hewitt said, admitting that she would
just laugh off the remarks.
“I didn’t really know what that meant,” she added. “It’s kind
of gross.”
“When the movie came out, everybody said, ‘Oh, I know what
your breasts did last summer,'” the actress recalled of starring in 1997’s “I
Know What You Did Last Summer.”
“Everybody would laugh, so I would laugh. It was supposed to
be funny, I guess,” she said.
Later in the episode, Hewitt remembered how jokes about her
breasts became normalized after starring in “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”
“When the movie came out, everybody said, ‘Oh, I know what
your breasts did last summer,’ and that was like the joke,” she explained.
“And, again, everybody would laugh, so I would laugh. It was supposed to be
funny, I guess. It didn’t register with me that this is a grown man talking to
me about my breasts on national television.”
However, the actress said she doesn’t “blame” anyone who was
cracking those jokes at the time.
“It was a culture that was fully accepted. They were allowed
to believe that that was appropriate, and I answered the questions, laughed
right along with them, ” she admitted.
“I really wanted people to walk away from the movie going,
‘That’s a really good actress,'” she said. “And instead … it was always about
my breasts.”
The “Party of Five” alum said at times she would try to
downplay the attention on her breasts.
“I had bigger boobs for a smaller person, and so it was
embarrassing. I didn’t want to be looked at by a 40-year-old in Pizza Hut,” she
said, adding that she “always wore big clothes” to cover up her figure.
Once she starred in “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” she
recalled being “so mad” that her chest became the main topic of conversation.
“I had worked so hard trying to be good in a horror movie,
and I really wanted people to walk away from the movie going, ‘That’s a really
good actress,'” Hewitt said.
“And instead, every headline — and I’m not e ven joking — for
10 or 12 years after that … it was always about my breasts, always first. …
That was heartbreaking for me.”
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