Little Mix's Jesy opens up about attempting suicide due to online abuse

[Gimme More 35,410]

When Little Mix were crowned the winners of X Factor 2011, the first Facebook message she saw was from a stranger. It read: “You are the ugliest thing I have ever seen in my life. You do not deserve to be in this girl band, you deserve to die.”

“I should have been on cloud nine,” she says. “I had Leigh-Anne [Pinnock, also of Little Mix] in my room being like: ‘This is the best!’ and I was like: ‘No, this isn’t.’”

Little Mix went on to become the biggest British girl group since the Spice Girls, but Nelson was consumed by the trolling and abuse on social media. Within two years of the finale, she had depression and an eating disorder and had attempted suicide.

The downward spiral and her eventual, slow recovery are the focus of an intensely personal BBC One documentary, Jesy Nelson: Odd One Out. Before shooting it, she says, she had never spoken publicly about her struggles in the spotlight.

“I thought it would be people giving their opinion on our performance. But nearly every comment was about the way I looked: ‘She’s a fat ugly rat’; ‘How has she got in this girl group?’; ‘How is the fat one in this?’” She remembers the air being thick with tension – “because no one knew what to do or how to react.

“I felt a rush of anxiety, because I’d never experienced anything like that in my life. People were saying my face was deformed – just the most horrific things. I felt like I was heartbroken. I remember ringing my mum and saying: ‘Mum, I want to go home, I don’t want to do it.’”

“It was like as soon as people knew that it was really affecting me, they wanted to do it more.” Nelson had been bullied at school, to the point of stress-induced alopecia – “but this wasn’t playground stuff”.

She was shocked by the cruelty from adults – some clearly parents. “Obviously everyone sits in their living room and will see someone on TV and make a comment. But to actually pick up your phone and go: ‘I’m going to make sure this girl sees it’ – even if they didn’t think I was going to see it – you have no idea the effect that one comment will have.”

Nelson became “obsessed” with reading criticism. The praise didn’t register. “It only got worse when I got Twitter. And that led to the Daily Mail, and reading the [below the line] comments – the worst you can read about yourself. It was like I purposely wanted to hurt myself.”

“I had a routine of waking up, going on Twitter, searching for the worst things I could about myself. I’d type in the search bar: ‘Jesy fat’, or ‘Jesy ugly’, and see what would come up. Sometimes I didn’t even need to do that, I’d just write ‘Jesy’ and then I’d see all the horrible things. Everyone told me to ignore it – but it was like an addiction.”

Although she tried not to discuss it, she feels the abuse came to define her public image. “I’d become a bit of a joke. People would make memes, chopping my head off in a group photo and putting a monster or ET on there. I’d be in live Q&As and these things would pop up and I’d have to just sit there.”

“Our schedule was so gruelling. I was going to see a therapist at six o’clock in the morning, crying, and then going to a photoshoot.”

In the lead-up to TV performances or video shoots: “I’d starve myself … I’d drink Diet Coke for a solid four days and then, when I felt a bit dizzy, I’d eat a pack of ham because I knew it had no calories. Then I’d binge eat, then hate myself.”

Yet she did not see herself as having an eating disorder. “I could see that I was losing weight and sometimes I’d see a few good comments and that spiralled me to be like: ‘This is how I need to stay.’ No one cares whether your performance was good, or if you sounded great.”

Her lowest point was in the lead-up to Little Mix’s second album, Salute, in 2013. Her mum, Janice, increasingly desperate, told her she had to quit the band. Yet Nelson worried that leaving – or even taking a break – would draw more attention to herself. “Everyone’s going to ask why.”

In November 2013, Little Mix returned to The X Factor to perform their new single, Nelson notably slimmed down. Coverage centred on one tweet from Katie Hopkins: “Packet Mix have still got a chubber in their ranks. Less Little Mix. More Pick n Mix.”

Increasingly, Nelson felt trapped. “I felt that I physically couldn’t tolerate the pain any more.” She attempted suicide.  'I just remember thinking, "I just need this to go away, I’m going to end this". 'I remember going to the kitchen and just took as many tablets as I could. Then I laid in bed for ages and kept thinking, "Let it happen. Hurry up"'. she had 'confessed' to her partner what she done, with an ambulance then swiftly dispatched.

Nelson’s family, her management and the rest of the group knew – but “once it was spoken about, it wasn’t ever spoken about again,” she says. She was offered time off, but once more was too frightened of drawing attention to herself to take it.

The turning point came in February 2014, when Little Mix spent six weeks travelling across North America, opening for Demi Lovato. One day, on the bus, the dancers pulled her aside and told her she had to quit Twitter, likening it to a book filled with “loads of nasty things” that Nelson always had her nose in. She finally deleted her account.

“It was a long, hard process, because I didn’t want to help myself. But it wasn’t until I deleted Twitter that everything changed for me and I slowly started to feel normal again.” Through more regular therapy and talking to friends and family, eventually she was able to stop reading articles about herself, and distance herself from her public image even as Little Mix’s star continued to climb.

The turnaround in five years, she agrees, is remarkable: now, as Little Mix work on their sixth album, Nelson is less conscious of her weight, her appearance, what she’s eating – even what is being said about her. To shoot the documentary, she returned to Twitter, and discovered some new slurs. “I didn’t even know some people said that about me, but it’s because I don’t look for it – and also, I. Don’t. Care,” she says, leaning forward in her chair.

“Now I’m mentally a lot happier, I just think people are always going to have an opinion. But I only care about mine.” She flashes a smile from beneath all her hair, happy but defiant – and for a moment she looks exactly like the girl in the music videos.

Source: The Guardian - full article: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/sep/08/little-mixs-jesy-nelson-on-surviving-the-trolls-people-were-saying-horrific-things

I'm so proud of how far she has come 

please do not leave any hate comments or say 'who', this is about a serious topic.

For anyone interested in the UK the documentary airs at 9pm on September 12th on BBC1 and will be available online on BBC iPlayer and BBC3

[melon 3,593]

people can be so spiteful and mean  

proud that she feels confident in herself, she ought to, she is gorgeous and so talented!

[Gimme More 35,410]

 

[Dilwyn 4,090]

that's a shame, jesy is super talented and seems like a nice girl.

[Celloo Deng 55,193]

I'm glad she's happier now, people can be so cruel 

[Enzo 37,977]

my poor baby  

she's gone through a lot

great to see her being confident now  

[Ryusei 61,110]

Just now, Yukia said:

She's the worse of all 4

 

[LeJudas 6,490]

Balegdeh

[Enzo 37,977]

Just now, Yukia said:

She's the worse of all 4

reported  

[Bloody 64,631]

27 minutes ago, Yukia said:

She's the worse of all 4

change your signature to fulltime asshole

[Alphaz 7,958]

She's not my favs out of the four, because she tend to over sang.

She maybe thicc, but she's definitely far from ugly. I bet those ugly comments come from people who are uglier, inside out.

 

[Levine 23,699]

My god this is terrible, I felt terrible just reading that, I can't imagine living it.

She's beautiful and has a great voice, I'm glad she's fine now.

 

 

[Gimme More 35,410]

1 hour ago, Levine said:

My god this is terrible, I felt terrible just reading that, I can't imagine living it.

She's beautiful and has a great voice, I'm glad she's fine now.

 

 

i remember back in 2011 as soon as she appeared on X Factor she got SO much abuse, it was insane! i've literally never seen someone be so cruelly attacked based on their appearance so much!  people still say horrible stuff about her now, which is disgusting! i think she looked amazing then and amazing now 

i'm just so proud of her, she's came so so far! 

[Nightwing 518]

People can be so evil. That's why I hate when people say "it's just the Internet." Like, how stupid can you be?

Glad she's doing well now! She deserves all of the happiness in the world.

[Gimme More 35,410]

the trailer:

@Enzo jade is so supportive 

this is going to be a sad watch!