Dawn French: Women ‘b****red up’ equality fight pursuing perfection

Dawn French has hit out against the modern beauty standard of looking like Jessica Rabbit, made popular by the likes of Kim Kardashian.

The comedian, 64, believes the trend has set women back in the pursuit for equality with men.

“After all the fights women have had to be anywhere near equal to men. We’ve kind of gone and buggered it all up at the last minute by becoming Jessica Rabbits,” she said.

“I cannot entirely love perfect people.

“I cannot understand why people only want to show us how perfect they are."

Thousands of young women, inspired by reality TV stars the likes of the Kardashians and Jenners, are now aspiring to have the anatomically impossible curves similar to that of the iconic cartoon character from the hit animated 1998 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Jessica Rabbit famously had large breasts and impossibly cinched in waist and curvy hips which, today, has seen thousands of woman try to copy via cosmetic surgery.

French, who has made no secret of her lifelong battle to lose weight, added that she felt sorry for girls succumbing to the pressure to fit into this beauty mold.

She added to the Joe Black Meets podcast: “I feel for my own daughter and Jennifer’s [Saunders’] daughters, and all the daughters feeling like they’ve got to have the big lips and they’ve got to be orange and that they’ve got to have lashes on all the time.

“And that they’ve got to have Kardashian shapes. Impossible stuff."

"I feel bad for all the daughters who feel they need to have orange skin, big lips, and constantly applied eyelashes whereas their flawed real beauty is just heavenly – it’s bliss. It’s bliss.

“I would love us to creep back to that.”

French, who has daughter Billie, 30, with her ex-husband Sir Lenny Henry, also opened up about having to fight to be taken seriously in publishing.

She said she had to push against suggestions that she have “girly” front covers featuring cupcakes or kitten heel designs on her books.

The star, who is the author of four novels said: “That was not what the writing was. And that’s not who I am either.

“So I fought and fought to have very plain covers with one plain little image.

“It’s an effort to say, ‘Take me seriously’. Some of this book will be funny, but take me seriously.”

Despite pushing back against societal expectations of how women should present themselves, French has tried to cut a trimmer figure.

However, she has insisted this was due to fears that her weight put her at risk of uterine cancer.

She lost more than seven stone from her 19 stone frame when she split up with comedian Henry in 2014 after undergoing a strict regime of low-calorie meals and exercise.

However, she now admits that she's regained the weight and has declared she "doesn't give a f***".