Demi Lovato, who used to cut herself and constantly battle eating disorders, feels “unbroken” at 19 but told Ellen DeGeneres that when she was younger, “There was nobody out there for me to look at and say, maybe this is unhealthy. Maybe starving myself isn’t the answer.”
Lovato told DeGeneres in an interview which will air Tuesday that she wants to make sure other young girls don’t give in to the same societal pressures that she gave into as a result of idolizing “skinny girls” she saw on the cover of magazines. She wants to empower young girls facing issues similar to her own: “I want to be that for a 13-year-old girl at home deciding whether or not to eat dinner, or an 18-year-old deciding whether or not to keep her breakfast down. There needs to be a role model out there, and for the first time in my life, I actually feel like one.”
“One of the reasons why I became so outspoken when I decided to come out of treatment and talk about my issues was because when I grew up I was dealing with the pressures to be thin,” the
Skyscraper singer said. “It was the time in the tabloids when very, very skinny girls were on the cover of every magazine and that’s what I was looking up to. That’s what I had to idolize. I don¹t want that for young girls to idolize.”
The former Sonny With a Chance star emphasized the importance of seeking treatment in order for her to grow and move on with life in a healthier fashion.
She even goes so far as to say that she’s actually grateful for her “meltdown.”
“So many things were going great in my life, and then all of a sudden my personal life just went down at crazy speeds,” Lovato said. “I had a negative breakdown and it changed my life forever.”
Lovato admits, “But if I hadn’t gone into treatment, I don’t know if, one, I’d even be sitting here today, [or] two, if I’d even be alive today.”
