Tara Reid isn’t letting body-shamers bring her down.
The “American Pie” alum exclusively told Page Six recently she is “doing great” despite the comments she continuously receives about her weight.
“I’ve always been thin,” Reid, who turns 46 Monday, maintains. “So these stories are kind of crazy because it’s like there’s nothing that has changed for forever.”
Last month, the “Big Lebowski” actress got a lot of flack for a black-and-white photo she posted of herself in a bathing suit on Instagram.
Some of the followers wrote “too thin” or noted that the photo was simply “concerning.”
“This is who I am, this is what I am, this is what I’m [aspiring] to be,” Reid told us.
The “Van Wilder” star said that because she accepts herself the way she is, “hopefully that will change the minds of bullies,” but if it doesn’t, she’s “OK with that.”
“I’ve gone through it for so many years that, you know, sometimes I feel bad for them because if they’re that miserable writing things at home, what are they doing?” she said. “That’s negative. You know, it’s hurtful.”
“Love will always beat hate,” Reid added. “It’s just so hard to find love because you’ve got to find it in yourself first.”
The “Josie and the Pussycats” star, who first rose to fame in the late 1990s and early 2000s, said she experienced a different kind of bullying when she was younger via the toxic tabloid culture of the era.
“I don’t think people really knew the real story about so many girls that were going through so much pain, and this wasn’t something that, you know, you could really talk about the time,” Reid said.
“And now, we’re so lucky that we’re developing to this stage where we can talk about it and we can talk about our feelings and we can make it better.”
Reid acknowledges that she “didn’t get it together,” though, until she was a lot older.
“I finally got it together,” she said, looking back at her 20-plus year career. “I definitely feel like I came into my own and I’m just really excited to be a part of understanding more about life in a much deeper way that’s not so superficial.”
Reid said she plans to continue to make films as an actor and is even producing some of her own. However, her latest venture — a fashion handbag co-created with designer Kuluva called the “Kura” — is her latest creative outlet following a soul-searching trip to Sedona.
“The bag has so much energy,” she said of the black cactus leather purse, which is accessorized with a semi-precious gemstone charm.
“You can tell it’s just really made out of love … if the stones don’t like each other, they’ll break … I feel like it’s a bag of love, a bag of protection.”