Days of Our Lives’ Alison Sweeney and Arianne Zucker Share Their Shock Over Social-Media Body Shaming: ‘I’m Not Getting Into an Argument With Someone on Instagram About Whether or Not I’m Pregnant!’
Body positivity for the win!
Aging is for the birds. None of us like it, but it’s something we can’t avoid. Fortunately, one benefit that does come with it, is a growing wisdom and — hopefully, at least — a growing acceptance of ourselves and our wonderful bodies. This is what Days of Our Lives’ Alison Sweeney (Sami) and Arianne Zucker (Nicole) talked about on Zucker’s podcast, Inspiring Women Revolution.
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One aspect in particular of this wisdom and acceptance is learning how to deal with folks who ask irksome questions — like whether or not the ladies are pregnant.
“I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I’m not getting into an argument with someone on Instagram about whether or not I’m pregnant,” Sweeney exclaimed. “It’s getting awkward.’
“A question, by the way,” she continued, “that you would never ask someone in person, right? Why on social media is that okay, when in real life you would just not say something until the person announces it, because that’s polite.”
Above: Sami and Nicole may be all too eager to tear each other down, but in real life, Sweeney and Zucker are all about building each other up!
Credit: Jill Johnson/JPI
For Zucker, there could be any number of reasons why she looks different on any given day that prompts that frustrating question.
“It could be just menopause,” she notes with a fatalistic shrug, “or I just had a burrito. Your body changes and I’m just not the way I was when I first started.”
She’s learned to deal with it with a bit of humor, though, saying that “it’s funny and I’ll laugh, and I’ll just say, ‘No, I just had too much rice today.’ It’s not necessarily self-deprecation, because that’s not super healthy either, but it’s okay that those things in our bodies are happening.”
Sweeney agreed 100 percent, saying that this wasn’t a conversation that they would have been able to have 20 years ago. And that makes it good that they didn’t have to deal with pressures like social media and inappropriate questions back then. Though that’s something the actress acknowledges she thinks about a lot when it comes to “the mental health of the young people today.”
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“There’s something about growing up a little bit and maturing,” Sami’s portrayer mused, “and facing some of those things that you can’t change, or you can’t un-ring that bell, you can’t get those years back, the wrinkles off your face or whatever it is, that helps you come to terms with it in a way that I would have not been so comfortable to handle it when I was in my 20s.”
“If there was one thing I could give myself 20 years ago,” she concluded, it would be that, “‘Someday you’re gonna be so much more comfortable.’”
Amen to that. Now if only she could give that same advice to Sami, because we feel like Sweeney’s alter-ego never quite learned how to be comfortable and secure in her own life. If she had, maybe she wouldn’t keep battling it out with Nicole or bouncing between EJ and Lucas! That last thing is something she’s been doing for a long time, as you can see if you check out our gallery deconstructing the never-ending EJ/Sami/Lucas triangle!
