Jade Thirlwall, former member of British pop group Little Mix, spoke to the Guardian about her Middle East advocacy, her fondness for her former band and her struggles with an eating disorder.
Thirlwall told the British newspaper that she had gotten in to some trouble for making social media posts against British strikes on ISIS terrorists in Syria.
“I got in a bit of trouble for that,” she admitted. “But I felt very passionate about it. I’m no expert in politics but I’ve always taken an interest. Around 9/11 I saw first‑hand the Islamophobia that my grandad experienced, and as someone of Arab heritage I’ve seen people turning a blind eye to the Middle Eastern tragedy. What’s quite funny is that we didn’t have individual Twitter accounts, and we each had to sign off tweets from the Little Mix account with our name. So I did my tweet about Syria and ended it with ‘xxJadexx.’"
Thirwall also expressed her disappointment in Matty Healy for not taking a stronger stance on the Middle East conflict, telling the Guardian, “I don’t think you can be a pop artist and cover your eyes. I saw Matty Healy say that he doesn’t want to be political, which I found disappointing. It’s very easy for someone who’s white and straight and very privileged to say that. Good for you, hun!”
Eating disorder struggles
She explained to the Guardian that she developed a deep empathetic connection with other ethnic minority groups, and became particularly impassioned by the Black Lives Matter movement, over her experience of racism at her secondary school. It was this experience that would later cause her to develop an eating disorder, she said.
It was only a few months after she had been released from hospital, when her weight reached an acceptably healthy level, that she auditioned for the TV show X factor and where she would later get her big break.
She explained that there were a number of people suffering from mental illness competing on the show but that she was careful to keep her eating disorder private and not make it apart of her onscreen personality.
“They’d always try to fish for a sob story, but I didn’t want that to be my identity. I was starting afresh. I thought, OK, this is a huge opportunity for me, it’s a chance to change my life,” she claimed. “...I wanted to do music more than anything, and if the only way to achieve that was to be healthy, that’s what I had to do. It was the ultimate motivation.”
While Thirlwall said her music career had been a dream come true and the ultimate motivation to overcome anorexia, being in the public eye came with a lot of triggers. Online commenters are quick to point out her weight changes, she said, and Thirlwall now struggles against joining the list of celebrities using Ozempic for weight loss.
“Little Mix fans were all about empowerment and celebrating your body however you look. Now I’m in my 30s and the healthiest I’ve ever been, but every time I post a picture, there are comments saying, ‘She must be pregnant.’ The sad thing is that it’s usually women. But people are used to seeing me in a group environment five or 10 years ago when I was stick-thin because I was in my early 20s with an eating disorder.”
“I have a daily battle with myself not to go on Ozempic,” she said. “I don’t judge people that do, but because I have a history of eating disorders, I don’t know where taking something like that would end for me.”