Hollyoaks’ shares ‘awful’ post-pregnancy ordeal and overcoming it
Actress Gemma Atkinson has revealed her struggles with body image, particularly after giving birth, as she encourages a change in perspective. The soap star, known for her role as Carly Hope in Emmerdale and Lisa Hunter in Hollyoaks, opened up about her emotional journey through pregnancy and C-sections.
Sharing her experience on her podcast, The Overshare, she recounted the moment that brought her to tears: “When I was pregnant with my daughter, Mia ended up being an emergency C-section, you don’t look at your scar for a good few days, they change the dressing and whatever.”
“And the first time when I got home, because I was in hospital for a week, I came home I remember peeling off the C-section bandage and standing in the mirror. It was so swollen and so bruised, I physically started crying thinking, ‘oh my god this is awful, this big cut on my body’.”
Now a mother-of-two, having given birth to her second child Thiago also by C-section, Gemma’s outlook has transformed. Despite her initial reaction of ‘shock and upset’, she expressed a newfound admiration for what her scars represent.
“Now, I’ve had a second C-section again, not an emergency one but a necessity, because Thiago decided to poo inside me while I was trying to get him out,” she quipped. “I now look at it as that’s where my children gained their life. How capable was my body?
“The first time I looked at it, the shock and the upset, I now feel a bit ashamed of, that I viewed it that way when it did such an amazing, wonderful thing.”

Gemma was also candid about various other physical changes she experienced, including gaining over three stone, the development of ‘loads of cellulite’ and numerous stretch marks. Despite feeling self-conscious at first, her husband Strictly pro Gorka Márquez ‘couldn’t get enough’.
She went on: “When I was pregnant, I put on three-and-a-half stone, and I developed loads of cellulite and I was like, ‘oh my gosh!’ Gorka wasn’t bothered, he was like, ‘more the merrier’, he couldn’t get enough.
“He was like, ‘you look beautiful’, and he loved it. It was in my own mind. My stretch marks now on my backside are going to be known as my tiger stripes. I have tiger stripes because I’ve grown, housed and delivered two children.”
At 40, Gemma feels more confident and fit than ever. In conversation with Women’s Health, she emphasised her focus on having a ‘functional’ body, adding: “That’s always my aim with training. It’s never, ‘I need to fit into a certain size,’ it’s ‘How can I remain strong?’
“Especially going into your forties; perimenopause will kick in…I want my body to be functional.” However, she encouraged people to be aware that everyone’s path to fitness may look different.
On the podcast, she added: “I’m asked a lot on my socials how many calories I eat a day. I mean, it’s a lot, I eat a lot of food but I’m doing a lot of expenditure. I’m walking, I’m training. If you put someone who’s five-foot-two who works in an office nine hours a day on the same calories as me, they would have completely different results, because it is all dependent on the person.
“And that’s another thing, I think there is not enough awareness. Everyone assumes one-size-fits-all.”