The head-turning Game of Thrones actress Gwendoline Christie is a towering 6ft 3in tall and admits she often felt she couldn’t relate to women on the big screen because of her Amazonian frame, but is now relishing the opportunity to play a tough, fierce warrior in the medieval fantasy drama.

She said: “It’s really vitally important to me the way women are portrayed. As someone who has always felt at times pretty genderless because of my size, it interests me to challenge ideas of prejudice and femininity, and what it is to be a woman.”

The towering actress reveals that she had numerous setbacks in her career before landing a prized role as Brienne of Tarth in the hit show, adding: “I found it so frustrating, particularly at the beginning, because I would be told, ‘Sorry love, you’re too tall.’ At one stage I was like, ‘I’ll give this another six months and if this persists, ‘I’ll become a nun.’ “

For her role as warrior Brienne, Gwendoline trained how to fight with swords and ride horses and says it’s “empowering” to know she can “break a man’s nose with my elbow.”

"I do all my own stunts and come away with bruises and scratches. After one scene I was absolutely covered in bruises all down one leg and up one arm. But it’s worth it. It’s quite fun. I enjoy knocking around with the boys."

Right this minute, there is someone going through chemotherapy shopping at your grocery store, buying popsicles and ice cream to help their sore mouth, and worrying what the cashier is going to think. There is someone on hemodialysis buying white bread instead of whole wheat, trying to keep their phosphorus levels reasonable between appointments and hoping for the best. There is a person attending intensive outpatient treatment for their eating disorder who has been challenged by their therapist to buy a Frappuccino. There are dietitians picking up a dozen different candy bars to eat with their clients, who feel ashamed and guilty about enjoying them. There is someone who just doesn’t have it in them to cook right now, and this frozen pizza and canned soup will keep them going. There are people recovering from chronic dieting and semi-starvation who are buying chocolate and chips at their deprived body’s insistence. All around us are people listening to what their bodies need and attempting to make the best possible choice within a context of overwhelming food pressure. All of their choices are valid, and every single one of these foods is “real.”

Michelle @ http://www.fatnutritionist.com (via onherplate)

Romanticisation of Mental Illness, Kelsey Weaver

I am sorry for filling you with beer and bad thoughts and then asking you why you shook. I am sorry for pinching you, for hitting you, for bruising the thin-skinned parts of you. I am sorry for the names I called you when we were fighting. You are not ugly. You are not useless. You would not be better off gone. I’m sorry for almost throwing you out into the street because my sadness was too much for me. I’m sorry for carving my fingernails into your thigh and then resenting the way people asked, “How’d that happen?” I’m sorry for plucking you and nicking your calves with drugstore razors. I’m sorry I let some people see you in the moonlight. They didn’t deserve to know the color of your hips like I do. I’m sorry for leaving you convulsing over a toilet bowl over some boy. I’m sorry I did not thank you for simply trying to take me where I wanted to go. I’m sorry I screamed at you to shrink, shrink, shrink when all you could do was grow. I’m sorry that this apology is ten years too late. I’m sorry that it will probably come again. I’m sorry that I do not treat anybody else as poorly as I have treated you. I’m sorry that I am constantly learning how to love you, when you have never once doubted how you feel about me. I’m sorry in ways I have not yet learned to communicate.

An Apology to My Body | Lora Mathis (via lora-mathis)

I destroyed my body for a peace of mind I never got.

Unknown  (via menticides)