Demi Lovato on Pressures of Celebrity

Demi Lovato has spilled the beans on the pressure of being a teen star to US ABC. Her brutally honest account of the lead up to her 3-month rehab stint is a harsh warning of the pressure that girls are under on a daily basis, magnified to extremes when you are under the media spotlight.
Demi, 18, reveals her weight issues started when she was called "fat" as a 12-year-old. This bullying led her to an eating disorder and then cutting."By the time I was 15, I was only eating two meals a week but I wasn't losing any more weight," she adds, "I decided maybe I should start throwing up. At my worst, I was doing it five times a day. I threw up so hard...it was just blood in the toilet."
Harrowing and horrific and so very brave to buck against the Hollywood way of denial, denial, denial. Demi goes on to explain that she started to slash her wrists at age 11. At the time, her Hollywood reps blamed the scars on rubber bracelets! She now says: "it was a way of expressing myself of my own shame, of my own body." Whilst she says she didn't think the cutting was about wanting to kill herself, yet if it had gone to far...she says, she wouldn't have cared.
To talk about these things with your friends or family is hard, almost excruciatingly so, but to do so in the pubic eye, is beyond brave. Eating disorders and self harm are topics not talked about yet they are both conditions that afflict young people, especially young girls, on an increasingly escalating level. Incredibly brave to talk about something that is so taboo.
Yet talk about it we must.Most stars would consider it career suicide to reveal just how much pressure there is to look a certain way and the extremes taken to achieve that. Demi is taking a very bold stand in sharing her own personal struggles to help other girls. All girls should inspiration from her to reach out to someone and talk about any pressure you are facing, or anything you are doing that is a cry for help.
I hope that girls reading her story will be able to see the dangers of trying to attain an image that is simply not natural...not you. There is no benefit, yet so much danger, in putting the pressure on yourself to be something you are not. It is time we embrace ourselves for who we are, love ourselves for what we look like, and celebrate in girls like Demi, who are sharing their very personal struggles to help other girls.
We heart you Demi and send you positive vibes in your recovery.