One of the five Spice Girls, Melanie Chisholm got everyone’s attention when she put on a lot of weight after the famous girls parted their ways. Sporty Spice, as she was known, had an unpleasant experience with the media and talking about her weight gain, Melanie once said: “I turned to food for comfort. That’s when the binge eating became a problem and I gained all that weight. Do you know how big I was when the first newspaper report called me fat? I was a size ten (U.S. size 6). It’s a very unhealthy image that is put through the media.”

During her Spice Girls days, Chisholm was very slim and thin and she still feels that weight issues are quiet unpredictable and should not be commented upon. Discussing about her thin body, Melanie Chisholm is quoted by ContactMusic.com as saying: “The weight thing is a complex issue for me. I lost a lot of weight when I was in the Spice Girls. I would have probably have been classed as an anorexic. I was a size six to eight. I was extremely thin, but people just thought that’s naturally how I was”.

Melanie is among those who blame the industry and the media’s obsession with celebrities for her weight issues and previous bout with anorexia. Describing one of her low moments in life, while she was a Spice Girl in the 1990s, Melanie said: “I went to the gym and trained constantly. I wasn’t eating properly. I wanted to get as perfect as I could, knowing perfection is impossible, and that got me very sick”.

She added: “My mum assumed my tiny body was a result of being busy with the band and working out regularly.”

Knowing how brutal the media can be, she was determined to keep a slim figure. “I’d hammer the gym for three hours a day. It was a way of running away, not thinking. I felt like a robot. Then I started to control my eating. I cut out whole food groups like carbs and dairy,” she said. “By the end of the Nineties I was living on steamed veg and fresh fruit. I’ve no idea how I kept going. When the papers started calling me ‘Sumo Spice’, I was only a size 10. But I was so upset by all the criticism, it got worse and I went up to a size 14.”

The 36-year-old, who is also known as Mel C, had to bear a bitter lashing from the British press, which made her even more determined to speak her mind on the issue of body image. “Thankfully, there are more voluptuous women who are successful and hopefully that can change people’s ideas,” she said. “Young girls need to look at beautiful, successful women like Beyonce Knowles who aren’t super-skinny”.

Many celebrities feel pressured to be thin because of their jobs. We ask, is the size 0 obsession responsible for eating disorders?

Other celebrities who have battled eating disorders include  Jane Fonda, Calista Flockheart and Oprah Winfrey.

Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MelC2006.jpg;
Author: Keven Law