Working with tiny pop stars fed my bulimia, reveals Fearne
PRESENTER Fearne Cotton has told how she developed an eating disorder because working with skinny pop stars made her feel fat.
The former Top Of The Pops host opened up about her battle with bulimia, saying that being in the public eye from the age of 15 affected her “very, very badly”.
Cotton, 38, revealed she felt out of place next to “tiny pop stars”.
Speaking on Joe Wicks’ podcast, the former Radio 1 DJ said it contributed to her having bulimia at age 19.
She said: “I was thrust into this weird world. I was a normal kid going to a state school in London and the next minute I was sat next to these tiny, tiny pop stars on inflatable sofas in a TV studio going ‘God, I don’t look like that, I don’t fit in here’.
Relentless
“I was a teenager with puppy fat, like all teenagers have, and looked very regular and normal.
“But as perfectly fine as I was, I instantly had that comparison disease where you sit and look at other people and think ‘Oh God, I don’t fit in here, this is awful’.
“I felt like that for a long time...I dipped into this world of bulimia from the age of 19 and looking back I disregarded bulimia for a long time and didn’t see it as a mental health illness, I just saw it as a weird thing for me to be doing.
“Now I really honour that it was me looking for coping mechanisms because I didn’t feel mentally strong enough to deal with what I was dealing with in my career and I was looking for an outlook. I had moved out, I had been independent for a very long time at that point, I was juggling Top Of The Pops Saturday and Top Of The Pops – it was pretty relentless.”
Being in the spotlight from a young age also made her an “easy target” for criticism.
Cotton said: “When you’re in the public eye at the age of 15 relentlessly until you’re the age I am now, as I’m hurtling towards 40, you get a lot of people saying a lot of ****** things about you.
“A lot of people are naysayers, don’t agree with what you’re doing or just don’t like you for no reason... you become a very easy target.
“I’ve had some really tough times.”