How Tracee Ellis Ross learned to love her curves

— -- It has taken Tracee Ellis Ross years to finally embrace her curves.

"I love my butt in a way I didn’t growing up," the "Black-ish" star and Golden Globe winner, 44, said in the April issue of Health magazine. "I really didn't like it growing up. It was so much bigger than everyone else's, and I wanted jeans to look the way they did on everyone else, and mine didn't."

"I've been -- to a certain extent —- at odds with my body for many years, wanting it to be something other than it was, wanting myself to be something other than I was," Ross confessed.

Ross, who is the daughter of legendary singer Diana Ross and music manager Robert Ellis Silberstein, said she has finally made peace with her backside.

"The comfort in my skin is so much better," she said. "I spent so much of my life, culturally, seeing myself through others because I just didn't always have the confidence to look at the world through my own eyes."

These days she's grateful for the body she has and maintains it with regular workouts, clean eating and just a few vices -- "French fries, olives, shopping."

"At 44, I work really hard for this!" she told Health. "I am on TV, and I don't want to lie to anybody. I'm not at my skinniest, I'm not at my fattest, but I live my life. This is my body. Health and the functionality of my body are more important than what it looks like."