One of the most blunt and honest celebrities in all of Hollywood, Kelly Clarkson is an open book. For years, she’s been criticized for everything from her weight to musical genres, but if her success tells you one thing, “miss independent” doesn’t have time for anyone or anything that’s going to get her down.
In the 15 years since winning American Idol, fans and critics have watched as Clarkson released album after album, eventually got married, and publicly suffered through two very difficult pregnancies. And while being in the public eye is part of becoming famous, it seems people have forgotten that celebrities are people, just like us. Their weight fluctuates, they sport messy buns and they, too, have internal struggles that can only be seen from within.
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Still, Clarkson is no stranger to people calling her “fat” and making harsh assumptions about her weight. But through the years, she’s discovered herself better than anyone, and rather than taking the negative judgments of body-shamers, Clarkson turns it into “rocket fuel.”
“No one actually cares about your health. They just care about aesthetics,” Clarkson said in an interview with Redbook Magazine.
She told the publication that, contrary to popular belief that skinny equates to healthy and attractive, Clarkson actually feels better about herself when she’s not counting calories.
And can you blame her? We were created to LIVE life, not count our way through the calories of life.
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“It’s when I’m fat that I’m happy,” she said. “People think, ‘Oh, there’s something wrong with her. She’s putting on weight.’
“I’m like, ‘Oh, no! I’m sorry, but that represents happiness in my emotional world.’ For me, when I’m skinny is usually when I’m not doing well,” the pop star-turned R&B explained.
For Clarkson, her weight isn’t so much about physical health, but rather mental and emotional health. At her skinniest, she was severely depressed.
“When I was really skinny, I wanted to kill myself. I was miserable, like inside and out, for four years of my life. But no one cared, because, aesthetically, you make sense,” she told Attitude Magazine earlier this year.
What it all boils down to is this: Only you know how to be your healthiest-self. And if Clarkson is a testament to anything, it’s that allowing others to tell you how to look, what to eat, how to succeed, will only lead down a dark and vicious path of negativity.
“If you gauge your life on what other people think, you’re going to be in a constant state of panic, trying to please everyone,” insists the 35-year-old. “People should just concentrate on their own lives and their own health and their own happiness, and whatever that looks like for you, be happy with it.”
