What Kate Winslet's Teaching Her Daughter About 'Bums' and Body Image

Kate Winslet (FilmMagic)
Kate Winslet (FilmMagic)

Kate Winslet's 14-year-old daughter Mia might have grown up around the world of celebrity, but her famous mom is making sure the teen has realistic views about women's bodies.

"I stand in front of the mirror and say to Mia, 'We are so lucky we have a shape. We're so lucky we're curvy. We're so lucky that we've got good bums," the Oscar winner revealed on an episode of the adventure reality series Running Wild With Bear Grylls Tuesday. "And she'll say, 'Mummy, I know, thank God.' It's paying off."

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Winslet, who's also the mother of two sons, 11-year-old Joe and baby Bear, 1, explained that there's a very good reason for pep talks with her daughter.

"I was chubby, always had big feet, the wrong shoes, bad hair," the red carpet beauty shared. "When I grew up, I never heard positive reinforcement about body image from any female in my life. I only heard negatives. That's very damaging because then you're programmed as a young woman to immediately scrutinize yourself and how you look."

Winslet has long been outspoken about body image. Way back in 2003, she called out the U.K. edition of GQ magazine for making her legs appear slimmer than they were on the cover.

"The retouching is excessive," she told the magazine then. "I do not look like that and more importantly I don't desire to look like that. I actually have a Polaroid that the photographer gave me on the day of the shoot... I can tell you they've reduced the size of my legs by about a third. For my money it looks pretty good the way it was taken."

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The British star is so passionate about modeling a realistic look for others that she's admitted it's often motivated her to take off her clothes in movies such as Titanic and The Reader.

"I look like the people that walk down the street," she told The Sun in July 2012. "I don't have perfect boobs, I don't have zero cellulite — of course I don't — and I'm curvy. If that is something that makes women feel empowered in any way, that’s great."