- Rebel Wilson is putting it all out there in her new memoir, Rebel Rising.
- The 44-year-old is sharing plenty of intimate details about her life so far.
- That includes opening up about losing her virginity at age 35.
Rebel Wilson is putting it all out there in her new memoir, Rebel Rising, and the 44-year-old is sharing plenty of intimate details about her life so far. That includes opening up about losing her virginity at age 35.
And before writing about her experience discovering her sexuality, she’s never told anyone how old she was when she lost her virginity.
“It’s like this shameful little secret I’ve kept,” she writes. “I’m a LATE BLOOMER.”
In her book, Rebel details her experience losing her virginity, writing, “part of the reason I waited so long to have sex is because I felt that as a big girl, no one would ever find me sexually attractive.”
She writes, “When it came to physical intimacy, I was terrified. I’d kissed more people on-screen than I’d ever kissed in real life. And seeing as I’d waited this long, I wanted to really love the person I was going to sleep with.”
After some hilarious near-misses—Rebel shoots her shot with a tech billionaire and is invited to spend the weekend with a prince—something happens in her personal life that makes her realize that she wants to “experience love.”
Rebel recalls helping her mother through breast cancer treatment. “Life IS short,” she writes. “I didn’t want to live my life without experiencing sex…I was going to feel the fear and just do it.”
A Pitch Perfect co-star sets her up with a man named Mickey, Rebel shares. The two take things slow. “I’m almost at my highest weight, but this great guy finds me desirable,” she writes. “It feels amazing.”
“And I know that there’s a lot of people out there who put off sex and relationships until they lose weight—’I’ll lose ten pounds and THEN I’ll look for love in summer”—but I think that desirability has nothing to do with size or weight and everything to do with the confidence you project…I had used my weight as an excuse to avoid intimacy for so many years and now I wish I hadn’t. If someone’s into you, then they’re into you. You’re a whole package—not just a number on a scale. At least now I had learned that lesson.”
The Senior Year star told People that she wanted to share her story to let people know that “not everybody has to lose their virginity as a teenager.”
“People can wait till they’re ready or wait till they’re a bit more mature,” she said. “And I think that could be a positive message. You obviously don’t have to wait until you’re in your thirties like me, but you shouldn’t feel pressure as a young person.”
Rebel said she tried to avoid the topic as much as she could as a teenager, although she once told her best friend, “Oh yeah, I just did it to just get it over with when I was like 23,'” she said. Rebel said that she would usually just leave the room when people talked about sex and losing their virginity.
“And then the people that said, ‘Oh, at 24, it’s so late.’ And then I’m sitting here thinking, ‘Oh my God, my number’s 35. What the hell? I’m going to look like the biggest loser,’” she said.
But Rebel told Today that she’s “so glad that I lost my virginity on my terms.” She added, “I mean, I was more than ready by that age.”
Rebel told People that she thinks her experience with sex would have been different if she had been born 20 years later.
“I probably would’ve explored my sexuality more. I just knew I was attracted to men, and that was the normal thing,” she said. “And so when I started opening myself up probably more after my father’s death and realizing, oh, even though I’d seen marriage as a terrible thing and waste of time, I started opening myself up to that. And then only years later, meeting women and having feelings for a woman, and that, I just think it’s a sign of where society kind of was.”
Rebel told Today that she’s heard from a lot of people on social media who said they were also “late bloomers.” She added, “Young people don’t need to feel pressure to be sexualized at a young age.”
Korin Miller is a freelance writer specializing in general wellness, sexual health and relationships, and lifestyle trends, with work appearing in Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Self, Glamour, and more. She has a master’s degree from American University, lives by the beach, and hopes to own a teacup pig and taco truck one day.
