Kelly Clarkson Reveals She Was Body-Shamed & Felt ‘More Pressure’ When She Was Thin

Kelly Clarkson is happy in her own skin. But when she was at her thinnest, the singer was pressured to be as skinny as women on the cover of magazines, who she was asked to ‘compete’ with.

Kelly Clarkson has never been afraid to speak out about the pressures she’s had when it comes to her weight while working in the music industry. In a new interview, the 38-year-old reveals that even when she was tiny, the stress was still upon her to lose even more weight. She says that sadly, other female singers have had the same problem. “I’ve had this discussion with many females in the industry. I felt more pressure from people actually when I was thin, when I was really thin and not super healthy because I just was worn out, just working so hard and not keeping healthy habits,” Kelly tells Glamour UK in an interview published on June 16.

“But I felt more pressure. It was more of magazines shoved in front of you and, ‘This is what you’re competing with and we’ve got to compete with it.’ I can’t compete with that. That’s not even my image. That’s not who I am. That’s who they are. We’re all different and it’s okay,” she continues.

“I fought more when I was thinner than I do now, because now I just walk in and I just look at them like, ‘I dare you to say something. I’m happy in my life. I’ll work on me in my time!” the talk show host, pop superstar and mother of two young children proclaims. Kelly confesses that some of the magazine covers she was given as a comparison to how she should look involved nude models.

“Naked! There would be a chick naked on the cover. I’m not joking, literally naked. I was like, ‘unless I’m doing an SNL skit and this is a comedy thing, I’m never going to pull it off!’ Even in my thinnest, most fit moment, it’s just not my personality to be naked on the front of a magazine,” Kelly explains.

Fortunately, Kelly’s immense talent — from singing to relating to guests on her talk show — has always won out when it comes to her work. “Honestly, at my heaviest point, I was hired to be on The Voice. I got on the number one television show at my heaviest point, because it was right after I had kids and it was like they didn’t care,” Kelly confesses. After having her two child, daughter River Rose, six, and son Remington, four, with now-estranged husband Brandon Blackstock, Kelly lost 40 pounds in 2018. But she did it through a slow and healthy process, and never got “skinny.”

The “Stronger” singer also credits NBC executive Paul Telegdy for looking at her skill set as opposed to her “sex appeal” when it came to hiring her for The Voice, and later for her own syndicated daytime talk show. “Paul hired me from NBC because he loved my personality, he loved that I connect with people and I’m really raw and real. It had nothing to do with my sex appeal or my look aesthetically. It had to do with me as a person. I think it’s really up to artists to force people to have that mentality.”