Jesy Nelson spent years hating herself, fuelled by vile comments from online trolls calling for her to die because of the way she looked.
The Little Mix star has since opened up about how her spiralling mental health, exacerbated by the sick taunts on social media, nearly left her dead after she deliberately took too many tablets.
Luckily her boyfriend at the time saved her life and called an ambulance, after which Jesy deletedTwitterand refused to re-open her account.
But the singer, now 28, felt she was never allowed to speak of her desperation after the suicide attempt, until she was approached by the BBC to make a documentary about her experience.
Speaking candidly in the special TV show about how she became a nervous wreck hours after the show, Jesy revealed how cruel messages started flooding in as soon as Little Mix were announced the winner ofX Factor2011.
“I had about 101Facebookmessages in my inbox, and the first one that came up was from some random man, saying: ‘You are the ugliest thing I’ve seen in my life, you do not deserve to be in this girl band.
“It became the worst time of my life. I wasn’t just known as one of the singers in Little Mix, I was known as ‘the fat, ugly one’. “
Jesy, who worked as a barmaid until auditioning for the reality show, had never had a problem with her body image until she found fame.
And while she should have been living her dream, the talented singer said the disgusting feedback she got from trolls made her want to end it.
When the band were invited back on The X Factor in 2013, Jesy starved herself for a week in a bid to look thin enough that she wouldn’t be targeted.
But the comments still came rolling in, crueler and nastier than ever.
“I was sat in bed crying, thinking, ‘This is never going to go, I’m going to feel sad for the rest of my life, so what is the point in being here? ‘
“It was like the more people knew it affected me the more they wanted to do it.”
Convinced everyone hated her, Jesy’s mental health got so bad it started affecting her Little Mix work commitments.
” I would leave halfway through a photoshoot, because I couldn’t bear looking at myself or being in front of a camera. I used to feel disgusted in myself, “she said.
“And if the stylist hadn’t got the right size for me – by accident – I used to go into a meltdown and think, ‘It’s not just because I’ve got the wrong size clothes, it’s because I’m too fat to be in them ‘. “
In 2017, Jesy embarked on a health kick which saw her lose weight and show off her figure in more revealing clothes.
She also gave fans a peek into her workouts with gym selfies and videos of her training with her PT.
Jesy was rumored to have had a helping hand when it came to her face , with fans noticing how her lips had got bigger as though she’d had fillers.
The structure of her face also looked different, with surgery experts speculating that she could have had fillers injected along the contours of her cheekbones.
Whatever she had done, it seemed to boost Jesy’s confidence and the star appeared to own her new feisty identity.
In a post shared recently onInstagram, Jesy revealed that she’d only just come to terms with the way she used to look.
She published a throwback picture of herself just after winning X Factor, writing next to it: “6 months ago this girl was someone I just wanted to forget. wanted to erase her from my mind and everyone else’s memory. I didn’t see her as Jesy I saw her as ‘the fat one from Little Mix’.
“Up until now I hated her not because she’d ever done anything bad but because I was made to hate her by endless amounts of trolling.
” Since filming my documentary for@ bbconeand@ bbcthreeI’ve learned so much more than I ever expected to. “
She went on: “Thanks to all the inspirational people I’ve met on this emotional journey, I now love the girl in this photo. I’ve made this documentary for 2011 Jesy and for anyone who might be feeling like she did.I refused to speak about how I was feeling for so long. I was embarrassed and scared to. But I was so wrong to feel that way. Please if you are feeling how I did, SPEAK ABOUT IT. Talk to your family, speak to your friends, there’s always help out there.
“If you’d have told that girl one day you won’t feel sad anymore, I’d never have believed you …. and here I am. Now when I look in the mirror, I don’t see Jesy the fat one, I see Jesy the happy one! “She added.
If you’re struggling and need to talk, you can contact the Samaritans for free at any time of the day or night on 116 123, or email [email protected].
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