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Manchester Evening News
Manchester Evening News
Entertainment
Mollie Quirk & Katie Fitzpatrick

Former EastEnders Lucy Beale star turns down OnlyFans as she celebrates her 'wobbly bits' and inspires body confidence

Former EastEnders star Melissa Suffield has ruled out joining the subscription site OnlyFans after inspiring fellow mums with her body confident social media posts. The 29-year-old, who played Lucy Beale in the BBC soap, is known as 'the confident mama' on Instagram, sharing video clips of herself dancing joyously in her underwear while celebrating her body after welcoming her two-year-old son River.

Alongside one video of a radiant Melissa shaking her 'wobbly bits' for the camera she wrote: "Just 12 seconds of a body jiggling, wobbling, shaking it all about- because guess what?…WE ALL HAVE WOBBLY BITS"

And she continued: "Whatever your wobbly bits are, however you got them, whether you’re ok with them yet or not- you’re TOTALLY normal and totally fabulous and you do NOT need to feel shame over them. F*** that noise. You deserve to move through life having as much fun and feeling as much joy as possible and you need to keep telling yourself this."

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lucycrook told her: "You are actually INCREDIBLE." x_abunker_x said: "You look incredible and your REAL body and grounded attitude is so positively inspiring - thank you! Xx" And kathrynthompson7277 wrote: "Thank you for making it normal for normal woman to be themselves, not cover up and hide away. You’re a real inspiration and I’m glad my girls are growing up in a world with women like you as role models."

Melissa, who played Lucy the daughter of Ian and Cindy Beale in EastEnders from 2004 to 2010, told the Daily Star that although she is "totally on board" with people on sites such as OnlyFans, which is known for its adult content, it isn't for her.

"It's just not for me, mainly because I don't want to charge people for my content," she explained. "I don't want people to pay to learn confidence.

"I don't want to charge people who have actively said to me 'your content helps me and I needed this today'. I do not want to make them pay to get confidence. That feels a bit gross to me anyway, to me, to my content."

Melissa says she's trying to break the taboo that "women in underwear is for sex only." "I'm trying very hard to be the complete opposite spectrum of that," she explained.

In another uplifting post she told other mums: "You’re magic. At what point do we stop viewing our bodies as amazing and start viewing them as used up and broken?

"Why do we see these postpartum bodies as such a thing we have to overcome and make our peace with? The goal is always to return to the exercise plan, the jeans, the pre baby figure (once a doctor signs you off), but you’re not the same person you were anymore. So it’s ok that you look a little different too."

.She added: "We’re changing constantly, in so many ways. Imagine if we lived in a world that hadn’t taught us to beat ourselves up when it happens?!

Melissa as Lucy Beale in 2010 (BBC)

"Imagine if we just continued to move through our lives finding joy and fun, and working to be the best versions of ourselves. Imagine if when we looked down and saw a stomach like mine, we didn’t immediately think ‘gross’ and instead thought ‘normal’.

"Because it is. It IS normal. There are SO many types of bodies, and each and every one of them is a normal and beautiful thing. Only you can tell yourself enough times that you believe it."

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