Actress and Food Network host Valerie Bertinelli has publicly called out a body shamer and gained the support of her loyal fanbase after a netizen trolled her, assigning to her body description a less-than-complimentary adjective: “chubby.”
Responding to a Feb. 17, 2020, tweet from the Food Network Kitchen promoting Bertinelli’s upcoming cooking demonstration, a commenter responded with a mean-spirited one-liner.
Bertinelli, 59, graciously disguised the commenter’s name but responded in a mature, enlightened manner. “Wow,” she wrote on Twitter. “Someone is always there to remind me to tidy up my negative thoughts some more.”
“Thank you for reminding me I’m so much more than my body,” Bertinelli added. “Have a blessed day.”
Singer Kelly Clarkson, who has herself been targeted by body shamers over the years, was quick to come to Bertinelli’s defense. Just hours after the Food Network host’s original post, Clarkson, 37, took to Twitter to offer her famous friend some support.
“True power is recognizing the projection of others’ negativity & punching it square in the face w/all the positive, remarkable, intelligent, beautiful light that seeps from ur pores,” Clarkson wrote. “Pity people that speak ill of others because while some of us r dancing, the others r too afraid.”
To date, Clarkson’s empowered response to the cruel comment has over 2,900 “likes.”
It wasn’t long before Bertinelli’s tweet and Clarkson’s response attracted a slew of additional support from fans. “Beauty comes from the inside,” wrote one netizen. “You my friend are beautiful inside and out. The person who wrote that comment needs to give her insides a makeover!”
“And look how nice you are to cross out their name so they don’t get pummeled,” wrote another. “Stay classy Valerie! Positivity is contagious and we need it right now.”
Bertinelli has been open in the past about battling to maintain a healthy weight. “I still struggle with my weight,” Bertinelli explained, as per Parade. “I have good and bad days.”
The actress has also long had to deal with cruel comments in public. “I hear people in the grocery store say, ‘I thought she was a lot prettier than that,’” Bertinelli told People back in 2007. “And I’m like, ‘I’m right here!’”
Then, Bertinelli lost both her parents between 2016 and 2019, and openly admitted struggling to fill the void.
Bertinelli shared her perspective that when taking care of others, one often forgets to take care of themselves, making life very challenging. She turned to food as a way to ease her sadness and stress, which in turn only makes her feel worse about herself.
“One of my personal mottos is ‘choose happy,’” Bertinelli wrote. “But sometimes that choice is really challenging.”
Bertinelli made a name for herself by appearing in the sitcom “One Day at a Time” between 1975 and 1984. She reappeared in “Touched by an Angel” in 2001, and played the role of Melanie Moretti in “Hot in Cleveland” from 2010 to 2015.
Following her passion for food into hosting and cooking demonstrations for the Food Network, Bertinelli won a brand-new fanbase and was even awarded two Daytime Emmy Awards for her popular weekly series, Valerie’s Home Cooking.
“[A]s I begin a new year, a new decade and prepare to turn 60 in April [2020],” the actress explained to Today, showcasing her trademark positivity, “I’m on a mission: to know what true joy inside and out feels like.”
“Finding pure personal joy is a challenge in this world where there are always things slapping us upside the head,” Bertinelli continued, “but we have to figure out a way to find it through all of that.”
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