TW: This article discusses issues surrounding mental health and eating disorders.
Demi Lovato has shared her own experiences of being a child star, specifically around the lengths Disney would go through to control her diet, and it honestly sounds like hell.
Over the past decade a lot of information has come out over how controlled, planned, and just plain messed up a child star’s life can be. Just recently, iCarly star Jennette McCurdy released a book called ‘I’m Glad My Mom Died’ with a whole bunch of crazy bombshells, and Demi just piled some more info on that growing pile of vileness that is child stardom management.
There is so much out-of-line shit that Demi reveals on the 'Call Her Daddy' podcast that we don’t even know where to start.
There was one week in school where her classmates all signed a ‘suicide petition’ asking for ‘Demi to kill herself’, all because Demi - who wasn’t even a teenager at this point - got a photo with pop singer JoJo and her friend didn’t -WTF?!
Classmates - who host Alex Cooper believes were jealous of Demi’s success - also called Demi fat, among other things, which led to her developing an eating disorder.
“The reasons that they gave me for bullying were, ‘you’re a slut, you’re a whore,” and they were like ‘you’re fat,” the soon-to-be 30-year-old explained.
“They started calling the house saying they were from Jenny Craig and they wanted Demi. And so I was like ‘I guess that’s their reason for me being hated so much, I guess it’s because I’m fat,’ and I developed an eating disorder at 12.”
Demi said that once she got on to Disney, appearing on classics ‘Camp Rock’ and ‘Sonny With a Chance’, what she ate was completely out of her control. She originally had a ‘sober companion’, which Demi admitted helped, but then Disney started controlling her food consumption.
“For someone in recovery from an eating disorder, that’s so dangerous,” she said. “It actually exacerbated my eating disorder to the point where I became bulimic again.”
There was one point where she snuck out of her hotel room to ‘binge and purge’, which is when someone eats a lot of food and then vomits it back out. She said she did so because of the strict rules set on her.
“They didn’t let me have phones in my hotel room because they didn’t want me to call room service. I didn’t have food in my hotel room, like snacks and the mini bar because they didn't want me to eat the snacks,” she said.
Once she told her team about the binge and purge, they took more extreme measures to make sure Demi wouldn’t do it again.
“After I told them what had happened, my security guard was made aware that they had barricaded me into my hotel room, they put furniture outside of my door so that I couldn’t get out,”
“It was that level of controlling when it came to my food, which just made my eating disorder worse.”
Disney even fired a personal chef of Demi's after they revealed the company would track her bank statements to see if she was buying snacks or whatever from places like Starbucks.
WTF?!?!
We’re happy Demi is okay now, but jeeezus she’s been through some messed up shit. Honestly, listen to the whole interview, she covers a whole lot more stuff.
If you or anyone you know are struggling with the issues discussed in this article, please use the resources below:
Eating disorder helpline:
EDANZ – improving outcomes for people with eating disorders and their families. Freephone 0800 2 EDANZ or 0800 233 269, or in Auckland 09 522 2679. Or email info@ed.org.nz.
National helplines:
Need to talk? Free call or text 1737 any time for support from a trained counsellor.
Lifeline – 0800 543 354 (0800 LIFELINE) or free text 4357 (HELP).
Suicide Crisis Helpline – 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO).
Healthline – 0800 611 116
Samaritans – 0800 726 666
Helplines for children and young people:
Youthline – 0800 376 633, free text 234 or email talk@youthline.co.nz or online chat.
I AM HOPE - FREE TEXT OR CALL 1737 - available any time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They also provide funding for young people aged 05-24yrs to get counselling.
