I Don’t Feel Pressure to Be Thin, Kelly Clarkson Admits

As fans must know, Kelly Clarkson was never the one to comply to the current standards of beauty in showbiz, and that refers both to her style and to her weight. Always the rebel with a very powerful personality that shone in whatever she did, it’s been long that Kelly gave up the fight with the tabloids that criticize her weight, and that’s because she has learned to accept herself as she is, the singer admits to Us Weekly.

With her new album out and still wrecking havoc in the charts and on air, the last thing that Kelly can be bothered with right now is her weight, the singer reveals to the mag. It’s not really that she wants to “let herself go,” as some have described her recent weight gain, but rather that she refuses to starve herself to please others. Her focus is on her health, the singer explains, and she plans to have it that way for much longer from now on.

“I run when I feel like I need to run.” Kelly says when asked about her workout routine these days. At the same time, the original “American Idol” also admits that she’s always been “a little bit thicker,” but she has learned to live with that and is more than happy to see that people have come to understand this as well. Moreover, it’s not like she’s morbidly obese, the star says – she’s just heavier than most Hollywood stars but, as long as she’s happy and healthy, she’s not going to change a thing about that.

Fans must also remember that Kelly’s weight attracted similar controversy not long ago, when an appearance of hers on “American Idol” prompted the media to speculate that she might be pregnant. Although Kelly did not personally refute the report, several media representatives, such as Margarita Bertsos of Glamour magazine, put in writing just what they thought of the “controversy”: the public and the critics need to stop obsessing on weight and pay more attention to what’s important.

“I keep reading headlines in the papers and from fans online speculating – ridiculously – on whether Kelly is pregnant. Why? Because of her curves. Um, am I the only one who thinks her ‘baby bump’ looks more like a big lunch than a set of twins? Her reps have squashed the rumors, of course. But when I read comments on the Web like this one: ‘She’s gotten huge! I just saw her on SNL. Lay off the Twinkies, or you’re going to have a lot of new material about guys breaking up with you,’ I can’t help but sympathize. My two cents on the subject: She’s not on America’s Next Top Model. Her body = her business. Our business? Her music! And I’m no doctor, but I think Kelly’s curves hardly qualify for the nation’s obesity intervention.” Bertsos was writing at the time.