Kelly Clarkson Nails The Thing About Weight People Never Talk About
Kelly Clarkson is just fine with her weight, thank you very much
Kelly Clarkson is a phenomenal talent, and so down to earth you could totally picture her as your mom BFF. But because she put on some weight in the public eye, she’s constantly needing to answer questions about her body image. It’s pretty annoying. We don’t do this to women who fit the size 4 to 8 mold. We just don’t.
When you move through the world with a little more weight than some deem acceptable, people feel entitled to comment on your body constantly — and it’s exhausting. Clarkson just did an interview with Redbook where they asked her how fans would react if she lost weight. It’s a weird question for sure, but Clarkson used her trademark honesty to nail what is so wrong with focusing on a woman’s weight — particularly extra pounds.
Specifically, she brought up something people rarely talk about — how sometimes our “thinnest” times are when we are the most miserable.
“No one actually cares about your health. They just care about aesthetics,” Clarkson told Redbook. “It’s when I’m fat that I’m happy. 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 internet is full of people who love to concern-troll women when they gain weight. But where are those people when they are really needed? When women are dieting to starvation and working out to exhaustion to fit a mold they may never have been meant to fit? Where is the concern-trolling then?
Anyone who has spent precious years of their life struggling with diets or fixated with numbers on a scale can tell you that thin does not necessarily equal happy. Clarkson has addressed these issues before. Last year she was asked how she felt about the constant criticism of her body after she didn’t lose weight immediately after the birth of her second child.
“I think it’s important to tell girls that Photoshop is not reality, that’s not what we look like, that’s not what we want people to see,” she said. “This [her body] is real, and this is what’s happening right now, this is what I’m rocking. I’m just gonna do me and I’m gonna go at my own pace and I’m gonna do my thing, and if I’m skinny one day or bigger one day, that ain’t gonna change how I sound. I still sound pretty dang good. And my talent is why I’m here.”
Clarkson owns who she is, and constantly reminds people that our weight is probably the least interesting thing about us all. And we need to stop being so fixated on it.
“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,” she says. “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.”
