Melanie C first opened up about her struggles with depression and an eating disorder in an essay she penned for The Guardian in 2020. But the singer felt it was “so important” to write about the topics in her recently released memoir Who I Am, saying, “The deciding factor in writing this book was the benefit that it could bring to other people.”
While she grew up dancing and was “very physical,” Mel C said she had “been around other people with eating disorders and had “been in a place where there was a certain esthetic that was aspired to,” her own struggle with the disease didn’t begin until someone criticized her appearance during the start of her music career.
“I thought, ‘Oh, my goodness, do I not look the way I need to look to achieve this dream?'” she explained. “So that was the first little chink in the armor.”
And, after The Spice Girls became one of the most popular bands in the world, the 48-year-old said it became more about “control” because “if you are lucky enough to have success like that, your life isn’t your own anymore.”
“You stick to the schedule. When everything else in your life is out of your control, you try to control some of the things,” she explained. “That would be food, exercise and also my behavior.”
Given their level of success, Mel C admitted she was “petrified” to make a mistake, “so I just shut down emotionally. I just became very quiet. And that was my life. That was my coping mechanism. I think each member of the band found their own way to deal with this incredible but quite unnerving thing that was happening to us.”
