Shailene Woodley on Love & Activism for SHAPE Magazine

With a new fiancé and a mission to save the planet, Shailene Woodley is gracing SHAPE’s July/August issue, where she opens up on her partnership with Karün to reimagine ocean plastics into sunglasses through her own collection, on creating a healthy headspace and her whirlwind romance.

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• On her emotional connection to saving the ocean: “I don’t want to save the ocean because my mind says it’s the right thing to do. I want to save the ocean because I can feel that she’s suffering. I can feel that turtle drowning from the plastic in its belly. I can feel the temperatures rising on the algae that is killing other species. For me, everything is based in feeling and emotion. I’m a progressive, and I want to change the world—I feel a responsibility to try to do everything I possibly can to make things feel a little better.”

• On working with Karün to create change: “Those microplastics—there’s no way we will ever clean them up,” she says of the enormity of recouping the millions of metric tons estimated to be floating in the Atlantic’s top layer alone. “No matter how many eyeglasses we make. No matter how many other material goods we create using them.” “What we can change is consuming that plastic in the first place. I’m always much more focused on the human side of the environmentalist mission, because until we address that, nothing will happen.”

• On how empathy plays a role in everything: “I was raised by two psychologists, so empathy was a big deal in our household. Everything was about trying to understand everyone else’s experience. Not necessarily agreeing with it, but having empathy for whatever they were going through.”

• On getting sustainability to stick: “So much of what people are doing today is fighting against, and standing against, something. That’s important obviously because it helps educate us and helps awareness. But what I’m really interested in is: What if we completely take ourselves out of the narrative of ‘I’m against oil and gas, and I’m against these things,’ and just start building new systems and new foundations that are in alignment with all the things we want to create. I believe that offers more inspiration and easier, quicker access to the change we all seek.”

• On her moves for a healthy headspace: “One thing I really prioritize is sleep, and it has changed my life genuinely. Another is focusing on how I can nurture and help my self-talk. When I notice negative self-talk happening, how I can sit with it and be friends with it instead of constantly feeling I’m in this rat race of not good enough, not this enough. Becoming a witness to it instead of a victim to it has also dramatically improved my health.”

“The issue is available for purchase on June 11th”
 

[Photo Credit: Thomas Whiteside/Shape Magazine]

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