On ‘After Bedtime,’ the Hosts Explore Why 90% of All Women Hate Their Bodies—And What Can Be Done About It

Body image. Two words that instantly stir up memories, feelings, and sometimes a lifetime of struggle. For many women, that struggle isn’t just an occasional bad mirror day—it’s a near-constant hum in the background of their lives. On After Bedtime with Big Little Feelings, hosts Kristin Gallant and Deena Margolin don’t shy away from that reality. They delve into why this struggle feels so universal and what shifts—big and small—can actually start to make a difference.

This isn’t another conversation about “loving yourself” or cheesy affirmations. Gallant and Margolin’s conversation is raw, messy, sometimes funny, and completely relatable. They share their own histories with body image while examining the cultural forces that shaped them—and continue to shape all of us.

As Margolin puts it, sometimes neutrality is the goal, and gratitude—not perfection—is the path forward. 

The staggering reality of body dissatisfaction

Gallant grounds the episode in stark numbers. “So 91 percent of women actually report body dissatisfaction. That is an alarming, alarming amount of us.” She also points out that “70 percent of moms say that postpartum worsened it.” It gets heavier. Gallant adds that the fear of being “fat” starts by age 10 for 81 percent of kids.

That’s not just a generational problem—it’s a cycle that starts in childhood and can last a lifetime if it’s uninterrupted.

Why do women carry the heavier burden?

Margolin jumps in with her own Google-assisted perspective: Only 10 to 30 percent of men show body dissatisfaction, compared to 90 percent of women. That difference, she notes, highlights just how deeply cultural conditioning hits girls from the start. “You almost can’t win or be satisfied with your body as a woman. And no wonder that’s going to leak into girlhood because it starts there. It starts there, and it never ever ends until the day you die,” she says. 

Gallant agrees, pointing out how beauty expectations were “mostly curated by men” and how women absorb the subtle (and not-so-subtle) pressure from every corner of culture. From glossy magazine covers to TikTok algorithms, the message is the same: smaller is better.

When body image starts young

Gallant shares one of the episode’s most vulnerable moments. “I can remember back to 13. I remember learning this stat that if you just didn’t eat for three days, eventually the pain of it goes away. And I was like, you know what? Let me see if I’m strong enough to do that. And did,” she says.

That confession underscores just how young and impressionable girls are when disordered thinking takes hold—and how those patterns can linger well into adulthood. But it also serves as a testament to the hosts’ resilience and their journey towards healthier perspectives.

Margolin remembers seeing girls in her own high school “splitting one side of rice three ways” at lunch, living proof that the diet culture messaging of the ’90s and early 2000s was hitting its mark.

The postpartum minefield

For Gallant, pregnancy was surprisingly freeing. “The one time in my life where I really started to be more okay with my body, funny enough, was when I was pregnant,” Gallant says. But postpartum became much harder. She remembers her husband trying to console her: “I was like venting about, oh my body’s so different. And he’s like, ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be able to go back to the gym in just a few weeks.’ And I was like, that is the problem.”

That exchange reveals a truth so many moms know too well—the pressure to “bounce back” often overshadows the awe of what their bodies just accomplished.

Shifting toward gratitude and neutrality

What does it look like to break the cycle? For Margolin, the turning point was learning to simply say, “Thank you, body. Thank you so much for all you’ve done. Who cares if it’s changed? Who cares if we have stretch marks now?” She admits her weight has “gone up and down and mostly up” over her whole life, with constant commentary from her mom and, later, from strangers on social media. But instead of spiraling, she’s leaning into compassion and neutrality: “My body is my body. Thank you, body. And maybe I’ll try to be a little bit healthier now that we’re getting back into a routine with school.”

Gallant echoes the shift, saying she’s proud to finally be in a place where she trains “just to be as strong as I can be” instead of worrying about getting too small or too big.

Modeling something new for the next generation

The most poignant part of the episode is when the hosts discuss what they want their kids to see. Gallant explains, “They will never hear me look in the mirror and be like, ‘Ugh, my arms look terrible.’ Or like, ‘Ugh, I shouldn’t be eating this.’ When we sit down at the dinner table, we are not discussing how much food we are eating. We are not talking about the food and the impact. We are talking about our day. We are laughing together. We are enjoying the food. And that is exactly what I want them to see. I want them to love their bodies.”

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