Ireland Baldwin reveals that modelling triggered her body image issues: ‘It ruined my brain’

Ireland Baldwin has opened up about anxiety, panic attacks, and body image issues as the model and her Oscar-winning mother, Kim Basinger, guest starred on Red Table Talk. The Facebook Watch series is hosted by Jada Pinkett Smith, her mother Adrienne Banfield Norris, and daughter Willow Smith.

During Wednesday’s (27 April) episode, Baldwin — who is also the daughter of actor Alec Baldwin — sat down with Willow Smith to discuss their shared experience with anxiety. Baldwin revealed that her panic attacks were often triggered by her modeling career.

“It ruined my brain,” Baldwin told co-host Smith when asked if modeling had triggered her anxiety.

The 26-year-old explained that she already struggled with her body image prior to modeling, having suffered from anorexia and bulimia. But at the beginning of her career in 2013, she often found herself asking: “Why am I even doing this?”

“I was going to be the model, actress that people wanted me to be, you know?” Baldwin added. “But I would go to these big events and I’d be like, ‘What am I here even promoting? Why am I here?’”

Throughout her career, Ireland Baldwin has had to face “criticism and comparisons” to her mother in a way that was “extremely toxic” for Baldwin. She also acknowledged that she would never have been “scouted as a model if it weren’t for who my parents are.”

Baldwin’s anxiety has put her in the hospital over 20 times due to her diagnosed cardiophobia, a type of anxiety disorder that is characterised by the fear of dying from a heart attack.

Red Table Talk airs Wednesdays on Facebook Watch.