Without fail, my daily Instagram feed is filled with posts promising the key to mental health and clarity. Actor and singer Gracie Lawrence sees them, too, and on Monday, May 18, she joined Cosmopolitan editor-in-chief Willa Bennett at the third annual Women’s Health Lab, hosted by Hearst Magazines in partnership with Northwell’s Katz Institute for Women’s Health, to discuss finding self-care that works for you and how she speaks up about these topics as a woman in the music industry.
“Luckily, I’m in a band with my brother, so I’m fortunate to be in a pretty open creative environment,” Gracie said. “But I think the music industry tends to reward these big messages of self-love, these songs that are just about loving yourself, with no difficulty. I’m really interested in why songs that, for lack of a better term, where you shit on yourself can be hard [to sell]. I think those are important and I think there’s space for that.”
Gracie highlighted Carole King as a songwriter who accomplishes this complexity. “[She’s] probably my favorite songwriter of all time,” she gushed. “It’s all about the conflict of being a woman. She didn’t feel beautiful, but she found so much confidence in her creativity, which I find really inspiring.”
Gracie explained that these vulnerable portrayals of the many sides of self-love feel necessary in an online world filled with guidance about being happy. “I think a lot of girls go through the world trying to find this perfect recipe of how to be,” she said. “They have a nine-step morning skincare routine and think that’s what mental health is when, in actuality, there are a lot of different versions of it. So many people wake up every day not feeling good about themselves, and that doesn’t mean they’re unwell or they’re not going to be successful. It’s important to normalize not feeling awesome about yourself every second of the day.”
Where some people may feel like the best version of themselves while waking up early and going for a run, Gracie knows firsthand that those solutions aren’t one-size-fits-all: “I’ve never been that girl,” she said. “I’ve been a really creative person my whole life. I’ve written songs at 2:00 in the morning that have cured me.”
While Gracie emphasizes that she doesn’t have everything figured out—“I shaved my legs in the sink this morning,” she joked—she knows the one message she wants to convey to young women: “[You might see] one specific way to be healthy on the internet. But there are a million ways to do it.”
The rest of the day was filled with this same level of vulnerability and wisdom: Laura Dern opened up about being an interstitial lung disease caregiver, Jessica Capshaw discussed listening to your body and knowing when burnout is actually something deeper, and Keke Palmer and Gayle King dug into what it means to own your health. I’m already adding next year’s date to my calendar.
The third annual Women’s Health Lab was hosted by Hearst Magazines in partnership with Northwell’s Katz Institute for Women's Health. Lilly served as title sponsor, with additional sponsors including Altra, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Ipsen, L’Oréal Paris, Organic Valley, and WaterWipes.
