14 DAY TRIAL // If Lady Gaga is so passionate about bullying and finding ways to make it stop, it's because she comes from a place of experience. Back in high school, after years of being bullied, she became a bulimic to cope with peer pressure, she reveals.
In a recent interview cited by the Huffington Post, the hitmaker says she's always been a dreamer, always wanted and knew she'd become a star, always been a loner.
Inevitably, this made her the perfect target for bullies. All throughout high school, she was bullied and she only mustered the courage to confront her main bully in the final year.
By that time, though, the damage was already done: Gaga was bulimic and had very low self-esteem.
“I used to throw up all the time in high school. So I’m not that confident. And maybe it’s easier for me to talk about it now because I don’t do it anymore,” she says.
“I wanted to be a skinny little ballerina but I was a voluptuous little Italian girl whose dad had meatballs on the table every night,” the singer recalls.
“I used to come home and say, 'Dad, why do you always give us this food? I need to be thin.' And he’d say, 'Eat your spaghetti.' It’s really hard. But… you’ve got to talk to somebody about it,” Gaga muses.
She's healthy now, but she still has weight issues.
Whatever these might be, Gaga doesn't say, but she does make it a point of telling all her female fans (and not only) that they should not trust their eyes as far as magazine photos go.
Again, she's speaking from experience.
“Every video I’m in, every magazine cover, they stretch you’ they make you perfect. It’s not real life. I’m gonna say this about girls: The dieting wars have got to stop. Everyone just knock it off. Because at the end of the day, it’s affecting kids your age. And it’s making girls sick,” Gaga says, making a passionate plea for health and improved self-esteem.