Dove Cameron is opening up about something she’s never discussed before: her struggle with anorexia.
Chatting to StyleCaster Dove revealed that she struggled with the disorder when she was younger.
“I’ve never said this before, but I had such a bad case of anorexia. I was so badly down that hole. I was not eating for days sometimes. But it was because I thought I needed to be absolutely tiny to be loved. I genuinely thought I needed to be as skinny as I possibly could to be loved and appreciated and good enough.”
She added how she quickly was discovering that friends in Hollywood were also battling the disease, saying, “I started to watch some people that I knew personally go so far down the not-eating hole of trying to be so skinny. Because that’s such a thing in Hollywood. We never want to say it, but it’s such a big thing. Girls try to be as thin as possible. Not all of them, but a lot of them.”
At one point, Dove revealed that she reached breaking point when those girls were giving health advice to fans.
“They were telling little girls that if they just watch what they eat and run that they will look like that and that they should look like that and that that’s the picture of health. It made me so personally upset. That’s a blatant lie. That’s not OK. That’s not a role model. I realised that if I was going to be a role model then I needed to live like the girls that I needed when I was young,” Dove said.
Now, Dove works hard on a healthy lifestyle and doesn’t give a damn about what people think of her appearance.
“I’ve worked really hard to maintain health and a normality. And if someone wants to go on my Instagram and tell me that I am not as thin as I used to be, or I have a zit here, I don’t care about what that angry person has to say. What’s important is the freedom and the quality of my life. As long as my life is happy and healthy, so is my worldview,” she concluded.
Amen sister.
If you or someone you know is battling an eating disorder, you can speak confidentially to a trained professional at Beyond Blue on 1800 33 4673.
If you or someone you know needs help, you can speak confidentially to a trained counsellor 24 hours a day at headspace.org.au or Kids Helpline: 1800 55 1800.
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