A famous actress standing in front of a magazine and bluntly stating that she is the heaviest she has ever been is disarming. No breakdown with tears. Not a big reveal. It’s just a quiet, slightly irritated honesty that most women in their forties will likely recognize right away. Because of this characteristic, Rebekah Elmaloglou’s remarks regarding her weight gain stood out from the typical celebrity body narrative.
Elmaloglou had been portraying Terese Willis, a powerful businesswoman on Neighbours, for four years when she spoke with New Idea in 2017. Moving from Sydney to Melbourne with her husband Kane and their son Kai was a major life change that came with the role. It was the type of disruption that appears simple on paper but is anything but in reality.
As she described it, the weight increased subtly. Three dress sizes and about 10 kg over those four years. Like many others, she became aware of it by feeling wrong rather than by stepping on a scale. She claimed that the initial symptom was an odd and enduring tiredness. She characterized herself as someone who seldom sits still, moves quickly, and talks nonstop. All of a sudden, she was having trouble taking her son to the park after work and was craving naps in the middle of the day.
It’s possible that everything else happened after the fatigue. Elmaloglou attributed the physical changes to several factors, including the hormonal changes brought on by the impending menopause, the disruption of moving, long workdays, and the unique challenges of being a working mother with no clear time off. “I take my hat off to women who have more than one child and work full time,” she said. “I just don’t know how they do it.” The remark was one of weary respect rather than blame.
Being 1.5 meters tall, she was open about the math involved. She was aware that the camera would accentuate rather than soften the effects of even a few extra kilograms on a smaller frame. At one point, she reported feeling bigger than she had been soon after giving birth, weighing 68 kg and wearing a size 14. That specific line felt very human and specific, the kind of information you only divulge when you’ve come to terms with it enough to say it out loud.
Any indication of pressure from the production was conspicuously missing from her account. Producers had never brought it up with her, she claimed. She made it apparent that she was the one who was worried, not because she was conceited but because she knew she had gone beyond a healthy weight range for her height and wanted to take action. She signed up for a gym. Instead of discreetly fixing it in the background and presenting a slimmer version of herself without any justification, she discussed it candidly.
Particularly for women in their forties navigating menopause while juggling careers, children, and the accumulated weight of everyday life, there seems to be some benefit to this kind of candor in the broader discourse about women’s bodies. Elmaloglou did not describe it as a failure or a crisis. She presented it as something that had occurred, something she knew what caused it, and something she planned to deal with on her own terms.
Her life was complicated off-screen. She has recently discussed the effects of her husband Kane’s bipolar disorder diagnosis on their family, including the fear, loneliness, and lack of support for carers. Maybe it puts the tiredness she talked about during those Neighbours years in perspective. Seldom does life come in tidy, distinct categories.
In the end, what she presented to the public was not a tale of transformation. It was more akin to a progress report from someone who was still figuring things out. Usually, that is the more truthful version.
