NEWSJennifer Love Hewitt Recalls Being Sexualized by 'Grown Men' at Age 16: 'It Is Really Mind-Blowing'
Jennifer Love Hewitt said 'grown men' would discuss 'my b------ openly on a talk show' when she was only 16 years old.
Jennifer Love Hewitt reflected on the inappropriate way people talked about her body when she was a minor.
On the Tuesday, January 28, episode of “Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown” podcast, The Client List alum, 45, recalled people making jokes about her chest when she was a teen.
Jennifer Love Hewitt said people would often make jokes about her b------ after starring in 1997's 'I Know What You Did Last Summer.'
“There were grown men talking to me at 16 about my b------ 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,” the mom-of-three remembered.
“In hindsight, it was really strange, I think, to become a s-- symbol sort of like before I even knew what that was,” she added. “I didn’t know what being s--- meant.”
Hewitt noted how people became hyper-fixated on her bust, especially after she starred in I Know What You Did Last Summer.
“When the movie came out, everybody said, ‘Oh, I know what your b------ did last summer,’ and that was like the joke,” she recollected. “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 b------ on national television.”
The Ghost Whisperer star added that random men would also come up and make sexual comments after she was on the 1999 Maxim cover at age 17.
“People would openly walk up and be like, ‘I took your magazine with me on a trip last week,'” Hewitt recalled, noting she would laugh off the remarks. “I didn’t really know what that meant. It’s kind of gross.”
'It was a culture that was fully accepted,' Jennifer Love Hewitt said of people making jokes about her chest when she was younger.
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Though she looks back at the public’s behavior with disdain, she doesn’t necessarily “blame” anyone who made the wisecracks.
“It was a culture that was fully accepted. They were allowed to believe that that was appropriate, and I answered the questions and laughed right along with them,” she confessed.
Jennifer Love Hewitt said 'every headline' about her for '10 or 12 years' referenced her chest.
Hewitt said she often tried to avoid the attention she was getting for her figure.
“I had bigger b---- 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 explained, adding she “always wore big clothes” to cover her body.
She remembered being “so mad” that her bust became the topic of conversation instead of her talent.
“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 shared.
Jennifer Love Hewitt said having having a larger chest was 'embarrassing' when she was younger.
“And instead, every headline — and I’m not even joking — for 10 or 12 years after that … it was always about my b------, always first. … That was heartbreaking for me,” she stated.
