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Shonda Rhimes Says People ‘Saw Me As a Person’ After Weight Loss

Shonda Rhimes. Photo: Mike Coppola/Getty Images

Shonda Rhimes, as in the showrunner who controls most of the airwaves on Thursdays, wrote in her Shondaland newsletter how people started to treat her differently when she began to lose weight.

The Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal creator began to lose weight for health reasons and wrote, “there is nothing fun or interesting or great about it. I hated losing weight.” After she lost the weight, people began to see her differently.

Women I barely knew gushed. And I mean GUSHED. Like I was holding-a-new-baby-gushed. Only there was no new baby. It was just me. In a dress. With makeup on and my hair all did, yes. But … still the same me,” she wrote. “And men? They spoke to me. THEY SPOKE TO ME. Like stood still and had long conversations with me about things. It was disconcerting. But even more disconcerting was that all these people suddenly felt completely comfortable talking to me about my body. Telling me I looked ‘pretty’ or that they were ‘proud of me’ or that ‘wow, you are so hot now’ or ‘you look amazing!’”

Aside from people feeling they could speak about her body candidly (never a comfortable interaction), she realized she had become human to people because she had lost 150 pounds.

I discovered that NOW people saw me as a PERSON,” she wrote. “What the hell did they see me as before? How invisible was I to them then? How hard did they work to avoid me? What words did they use to describe me? What value did they put on my presence at a party, a lunch, a discussion? When I was fat, I wasn’t a PERSON to these people. Like I had been an Invisible Woman who suddenly materialized in front of them. Poof! There I am. Thin and ready for a chat.”

Shonda Rhimes: People ‘Saw Me As a Person’ After Weight Loss