Valerie Bertinelli has confidently responded to critics who body-shamed her after posting a selfie in her lingerie on social media.
On Monday (December 2), the 64-year-old One Day at a Time star shared an intimate message about body positivity on Instagram, as she posed for a mirror selfie while wearing a black two-piece underwear set.
“At some point I will talk about the madness my body has been through this year,” she began in the caption. “But right now every lump, bump, wrinkle, and saggy part of me just feels acceptance and simple appreciation to be standing in front of a mirror in a hotel bathroom in downtown Manhattan ready to color my roots late on a Monday night.”
Bertinelli’s post was met with an outpouring of support from her followers, as many people thanked her for motivating them to love their bodies too. However, her picture was also the target of several crude remarks from people attempting to break her confidence.
Instead, the Golden Globe winner followed up her post with a second message, calling out the critics who continued to pass judgment on her figure.
“First of all, to those of you who felt a connection to my prior post and identified with what I was talking about, (empowering ourselves to focus on our own self-acceptance and self-love), thank you and thank you for your kindness,” she wrote in her subsequent Instagram post shared on Tuesday.
“I see you. We are in this together,” Bertinelli continued. “To all of you that would sit in judgment of my body, the photo, and my reason for posting it, I hope you find a place in your heart to not judge yourself as harshly as you judge others.
“I have dealt with judgment my entire life starting from when I was a young girl. It has taken me a long time to realize that my judgment, with patient discernment, is the only judgment that counts,” the Hot in Cleveland star said. “I have no power over someone else’s judgment of me and now I have no interest. Finally.”
She added: “It’s taken me almost three years of emotional labor to get to this point mentally and for the first eight months of this year I had physical setbacks. I don’t care what you think of my body. I don’t care what you think about my posting about it.”
Bertinelli went on to admit she “hated” her body when she was 20. Now, she said she wishes she didn’t have that perception back then.
“Yes, it was a very different body than the one I now inhabit, but it hadn’t yet been through the journey I needed to go through,” she noted. “Even as challenging as it’s been and is, I am grateful for this journey and I wouldn’t trade this body for my 20-year-old body any day. Ever.”
Back in May, Bertinelli opened up about another personal topic to her Instagram followers; she revealed that she knew her ex-husband Eddie Van Halen — with whom she welcomed her 33-year-old son Wolfgang Van Halen — wasn’t her “soulmate.”
In her post, the actor admitted that her relationship with the late rocker, who died in 2020, was somewhat of a whirlwind romance. Although they were together for more than 26 years, Bertinelli said their love “rapidly declined into drugs, alcohol, and infidelity” after their initial honeymoon period when she was 20.
Ultimately, it became clear these behaviors didn’t “scream soulmate.”
Bertinelli and Van Halen tied the knot in 1981. They announced they were separating in 2001 before officially getting divorced in 2007. She remarried Tom Vitale in 2011, but the pair announced their split in 2022.
