X Factor Girl Uploads Video of Herself Singing on Youtube After
Westward hen Jesy Nelson was 19 and working behind the bar at a pub in Dagenham, Essex, she remembers watching The X Factor on TV, and thinking: "I know I could win that." In 2011, she did just that, every bit office of the girl grouping Little Mix – and idea: "This is the worst day of my life."
Competing in Simon Cowell'south singing competition unleashed incessant criticism of her advent and weight (although rarely her voice). "All I cared nearly was what people were saying nigh me," she says now.
Winning offered no respite. When Little Mix were crowned, the starting time Facebook message she saw was from a stranger. It read: "You are the ugliest thing I accept ever seen in my life. Y'all exercise not deserve to exist in this girl band, you deserve to die."
"I should accept 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 similar: 'No, this isn't.'"
Little Mix went on to go the biggest British girl grouping since the Spice Girls, but Nelson was consumed past the trolling and abuse on social media. Within ii 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 Three documentary, Jesy Nelson: Odd 1 Out. Before shooting it, she says, she had never spoken publicly about her struggles in the spotlight.
When we meet in a corner of BBC Broadcasting House in central London, Nelson, now 28, is friendly and glamorous, dressed in a double-breasted tangerine adapt. It is the eighth anniversary of her X Factor debut and #8YearsofLittleMix has been trending on Twitter all forenoon, thanks to their fans, the "Mixers".
Within minutes of sitting downwardly, she says that, had she known the consequences of actualization on The X Factor, she wouldn't accept done information technology: "I don't think anything is worth your happiness, and it was a lot of my life that I won't go back."
As a kid growing up in Romford, Essex, Nelson was intent on becoming a performer, be information technology singing, dancing or acting. "I didn't really have any reason to not be confident," she says.
In mid-2011, she auditioned for The 10 Factor as a solo entrant, and was somewhen placed in a group with 3 others: Pinnock, Perrie Edwards and Jade Thirlwall, all anile between xviii and 20.
Back then, social media was not as inextricably linked with reality TV every bit information technology is now. In fact, that eighth series was the start where applicants could upload their audition videos to YouTube; Nelson didn't even know what YouTube was. She remembers being wowed when all the contestants were given new Samsung phones and told to get on Twitter to build their fanbase.
On the first live show 12 weeks in, Footling Mix (then Rhythmix – the proper name was changed later) performed Nicki Minaj's Super Bass to gushing praise from judges Louis Walsh, Gary Barlow and their mentor Tulisa Contostavlos. It was "the best feeling in the globe", said Nelson through happy tears on phase.
That nighttime, off-camera, the contestants gathered to lookout man themselves on YouTube. Someone pointed out the comment section. "I was very naive," says Nelson. "I idea information technology would be people giving their opinion on our operation. But nearly every comment was almost the way I looked: 'She'south 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 – "considering no one knew what to practise or how to react".
"I felt a rush of anxiety, considering I'd never experienced anything like that in my life. People were saying my face was plain-featured – just the virtually horrific things. I felt like I was heartbroken. I remember ringing my mum and saying: 'Mum, I want to go abode, I don't want to do it.'"
At about 1am, a member of The X Factor team establish Nelson crying alone and asked why she was and so upset. A couple of days later, she was asked to explain again – on camera. She didn't desire to do it. "They told me it wasn't recorded, and information technology was."
A few weeks later, the prune of Nelson in tears over "a few nasty comments" was broadcast earlier Little Mix'due south performance, the reality Idiot box playbook of "sad piano" switching to upbeat pop music when Thirlwall comforts her: an uplifting moment of daughter power. From so on, that was Nelson's public narrative.
She does not concord that clip, or the producers, responsible: "I recall it would have e'er happened – that simply added fuel to the burn down." From the start, relatability had been billed as a primal tenet of Little Mix'south appeal. Contostavlos introduced them every bit "the girl group to represent ladies in this country"; she framed Nelson'due south tears equally testify of Petty Mix having "the same insecurities every bit every other girl".
Nelson, however, was the merely member even remotely close to the average UK woman at size 16. Although the 4 bandmates have always been friends – "that'due south why we're all the same together" – she felt singled out. "I was with three other girls to exist compared to. I don't think it would have been as bad if I'd been on my own."
After the clip presented her as Piddling Mix's weakest link, the corruption snowballed. "It was similar every bit before long as people knew that it was actually affecting me, they wanted to do information technology more than." Nelson had been bullied at school, to the betoken of stress-induced alopecia – "but this wasn't playground stuff".
She was shocked by the cruelty from adults – some conspicuously parents. "Evidently anybody sits in their living room and will come across someone on TV and brand a comment. Just to actually pick upwardly your phone and go: 'I'thousand going to make certain this girl sees it' – even if they didn't think I was going to see it – you have no idea the effect that ane comment volition accept."
Nelson became "obsessed" with reading criticism. The praise didn't annals. "It only got worse when I got Twitter. And that led to the Daily Mail, and reading the [beneath the line] comments – the worst you tin can read near 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 almost myself. I'd blazon in the search bar: 'Jesy fat', or 'Jesy ugly', and run across what would come up up. Sometimes I didn't even need to exercise that, I'd only write 'Jesy' and then I'd run across all the horrible things. Anybody told me to ignore information technology – but it was like an addiction."
At one event, Nicola Roberts of Girls Aloud – who had seen the clip of her crying – took Nelson bated. "She said: 'Tin I just requite you one bit of advice? Please don't read stuff about you. It's the worst thing you could exercise.'"
Nelson rolls her optics self-mockingly. "Simply did I listen? No."
Contestants had been told help was available if they were struggling, but Nelson had learned that talking but fabricated the problem worse. "I don't think any of the team actually knew how upset it was making me – it'due south simply become-go-go, from the automobile into hair and makeup, and then rehearsals."
Information technology was also a popularity competition. "Nosotros just wanted to make anybody happy, and we wanted everyone to like usa."
In December 2011, Little Mix became the first group to win The X Factor. Their debut single entered the charts at No 1 seven months afterward; Deoxyribonucleic acid, their first anthology, was released in November 2012. Scrutiny of Nelson just increased amid the force per unit area to maintain momentum.
Although she tried not to discuss it, she feels the abuse came to ascertain her public image. "I'd go a chip of a joke. People would make memes, chopping my head off in a grouping photo and putting a monster or ET on there. I'd exist in live Q&Every bit and these things would pop upwardly and I'd have to just sit in that location."
Interviewers asked her how she dealt with it; fans said they looked up to her. She was depressed and in denial: she refused antidepressants, and therapy didn't help. "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."
Meanwhile, in public, she was "giving speeches about being confident". Trivial Mix, every bit the guardians of girl power, were not just supposed to stand for every adult female, just defend every woman.
"I felt I had to be this person who was like …" Nelson juts her jaw, sashays from side to side, a facsimile of her sassy music-video persona: "'I don't care what people are maxim most me, I'thousand this strong woman.' That was the role I had to take on in the group, when really I was an absolute mess."
In the lead-up to TV performances or video shoots: "I'd starve myself … I'd drinkable Diet Coke for a solid iv days and and so, when I felt a bit dizzy, I'd eat a pack of ham because I knew it had no calories. And so I'd binge consume, then detest myself."
However she did not come across herself as having an eating disorder. "I could meet that I was losing weight and sometimes I'd encounter a few good comments and that spiralled me to exist similar: 'This is how I need to stay.' No one cares whether your operation was good, or if y'all sounded bang-up."
Nelson started skipping events where she knew she would be photographed. On one magazine shoot, the wrong size clothes were provided. "I had a meltdown. I cried so much, I had to wear sunglasses. I did one photo, then left." She hid her misery well, she says now. "I think people just thought I was a miserable bitch."
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 inquire why."
In Nov 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: "Package Mix take even so got a chubber in their ranks. Less Fiddling Mix. More than Pick n Mix."
Increasingly, Nelson felt trapped. "I felt that I physically couldn't tolerate the pain any more than." She attempted suicide.
Nelson'southward family, her management and the rest of the group knew – merely "in one case information technology was spoken near, it wasn't ever spoken virtually again", she says. She was offered time off, but once more was also frightened of drawing attention to herself to accept it.
The turning indicate came in February 2014, when Niggling Mix spent half-dozen weeks travelling across North America, opening for Demi Lovato. One 24-hour interval, on the double-decker, 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 olfactory organ in. She finally deleted her account.
"It was a long, hard procedure, because I didn't want to assistance myself. But information technology wasn't until I deleted Twitter that everything changed for me and I slowly started to experience normal over again." Through more regular therapy and talking to friends and family unit, somewhen she was able to stop reading manufactures most herself, and distance herself from her public prototype even every bit Fiddling Mix's star connected to climb. In 2016, Glory Days became their commencement No ane album in the UK.
Since February, Nelson has been dating the 2017 Dearest Island contestant Chris Hughes, who has defended her publicly from online trolling and who she says is a positive influence on her feelings about fame: "It's nice to be around someone who doesn't requite a shit virtually all that stuff."
Making the documentary besides contributed; she lights up while talking near coming together a body-prototype specialist, Liz Ritchie, to help her empathise her relationship with social media and the "mask" that she had developed to withstand the spotlight. Part of this involved going over footage from The X Factor, which was a difficult feel, but ultimately empowering.
"Don't get me wrong, I yet have days when I feel shit in myself but instead of beating myself up about information technology and being miserable, I think: 'OK, I'm going to accept my moment of being lamentable, and I'll be over information technology.' Before, I didn't let myself exist pitiful."
Talking to other immature people who have experienced online corruption fabricated her feel less alone. "A lot of people think 'stop moaning', but until you've experienced information technology, information technology'south hard to empathize – and it doesn't just happen to people in the limelight. In that location's so many people struggling with social media and online trolling. People need to know about the effects it has."
The turnaround in five years, she agrees, is remarkable: now, as Piddling Mix work on their 6th album, Nelson is less conscious of her weight, her appearance, what she's eating – fifty-fifty 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 nearly me, simply it's because I don't look for it – and also, I. Don't. Intendance," she says, leaning forward in her chair.
"Now I'm mentally a lot happier, I just think people are ever going to take an opinion. But I but care virtually 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.
Jesy Nelson: Odd One Out will exist available on 12 September from 10am on BBC Three on iPlayer and on BBC One at 9pm.
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In the Great britain, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 and the domestic violence helpline is on 0808 2000 247. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 fourteen and the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. In the Us, the suicide prevention lifeline is one-800-273-8255 and the domestic Violence hotline is ane-800-799-Safety (7233). Other international helplines can be constitute at www.befrienders.org
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/sep/08/little-mixs-jesy-nelson-on-surviving-the-trolls-people-were-saying-horrific-things
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