Kyle Richards Says Her Daughters 'Don't Feel Pressure of Being Thin' Thanks to J.Lo, Kardashians
Kyle Richards got real on Tuesday’s Real Housewives of Beverly Hills as she reflected on how stars like Jennifer Lopez and the Kardashians have helped women — including herself and her four daughters — feel more comfortable with their bodies.
The topic came up during a fun camping trip with costars Erika Girardi, Lisa Rinna, Dorit Kemsley, Teddi Mellencamp Arroyave, Camille Grammer and Denise Richards.
While the ladies were on their way home, Kyle, 50, reflected on negative things trolls say online — admitting that, despite their criticism, she feels more confident these days in her changing body.
“It has changed a bit with J.Lo and the Kardashians,” Kyle said. “Now if you’re fuller, it’s different. I’m like, ‘Okay, my butt looks big in this … yay!’ ”
Lopez and some of the Keeping Up with the Kardashians stars — namely Kim Kardashian, Khloé Kardashian and Kylie Jenner — are known for their curves (specifically, their derrières).
And their popularity has helped rid Kyle and her daughters — Farrah, 30, Alexia, 22, Sophia, 19, and Portia, 11 — of any pressure to be thin.
“My daughters don’t feel that pressure of being thin like I did growing up because the body type has changed,” Kyle said. “It used to be Marilyn Monroe, that’s what was sexy. And then they got super skinny, like Kate Moss — and that’s unrealistic. My girls don’t feel that.”
A post shared by Kyle Richards Umansky (@kylerichards18) on Mar 10, 2019 at 9:35am PDT
Rinna, 55, also had feelings about the subject — having guided her daughters, Delilah Belle, 20, and Amelia Gray, 17, through some of those pitfalls.
“It’s not an easy time growing up,” she said. “Imagine being a teenager and having to deal with social media? We had a mirror to deal with, basically. Your image was in a mirror. You saw yourself and you judged yourself off of that, or your friends.”
“It’s hard out there. It is not easy,” she said. “The pressure’s a lot to be perfect. Have my girls had a rough time with it? Yes. All I’ve tried to do more than anything is to teach my girls self-love and how to love yourself. No matter what. No matter how you looked.”
This isn’t the first time body image issues have come up on RHOBH this season.
In an episode that aired in February, Rinna’s model daughter Amelia Gray got candid about her ongoing battle with anorexia and admitted to her mother that her struggle with the eating disorder got so bad that at one point, she “could have died.”
“No matter how many deaths anorexia causes, no matter how much blindness, no matter how much hair loss, all I cared about was the skinniness,” Amelia confessed. “It’s hard.”
“I hope people in the entertainment industry can stop putting up this facade of being perfect because we all have s—. Probably we’re all way worse than everyone else,” she added. “Literally, every single one of my friends, and I’m sure every single one of your friends, they think about how many calories they’re consuming in a day. When they sit down for a meal, they look at the bread basket and they think, ‘Holy s—.’ “
RELATED: Lisa Rinna & Harry Hamlin’s Model Daughter Amelia Gray Opens Up About Her Struggles with Anorexia
Amelia — whose father is Harry Hamlin — went public with her personal battle in April, penning a lengthy Instagram message beside two bikini photos of herself: one from 2017 and another taken shortly before her posting.
She explained in that post that her eating disorder was connected to problems she was experiencing with her mental health at the time, but didn’t know how to address it. Eventually, she decided to stop “sabotaging” her health and seek help, learning to “try to love myself for me.”
Though she said in her Instagram post that she has “health complications” from her eating disorder, Amelia noted that she was doing much better. Still, she told her mom on RHOBH that this was a battle she was likely to never be over.
“I don’t want what happened to me to happen to other people …,” Amelia said. “There’s so much that I need to say about anorexia because I get so many girls commenting like, ‘Help me, I can’t believe you got out of it. How did you do this?’ But I’m not out of it. I’m never going to be out of it.”
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills airs Tuesdays (9 p.m. ET) on Bravo.
If you or someone you know is battling an eating disorder, please contact the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) at 1-800-931-2237 or go to NationalEatingDisorders.org.
