Jade opens up about "awful" body shaming comments since leaving Little Mix

4 July 2025, 16:40

By Abbie Reynolds

Former Little Mix star Jade Thirlwall has spoken out about the awful body shaming comments she's had since going solo.

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Trigger warning: This page includes sensitive topics including body image and eating disorders.

Little Mix star Jade Thirlwall, now just known as JADE, launched into her solo career last year with her provocative hit 'Angel Of My Dreams' which she used to encapsulate her love-hate relationship with the music industry and fame.

And, even before Little Mix's hiatus began in 2021, JADE has never shied aware from sensitive topics, first opening up about her struggle with anorexia in 2016. Now, in an interview she has addressed being body shamed since starting her solo career.

Read more: Jade makes her Capital's Summertime Ball solo debut with epic Little Mix medley

Jade Thirlwall attends the 2024 Rolling Stone UK Awards. Picture: Getty

JADE first opened up about battling with anorexia as a teenager in Little Mix's book 'Our World' back in 2016. Now, nine years later on the podcast G Spot, she said: "In [Little Mix] I was incredibly skinny – sometimes unhealthily so.

"So I think the public think that’s just what I looked like. Now I’m healthier and in a better place, but the main critique I see online is about how I look. Being ‘fat’, or ‘Is she pregnant?’. All these awful comments."

She went on: "For the most part, it doesn’t get to me. But I think what gets to me the most is, I know I’m writing great music, I’m a great performer, I work incredibly hard, and it’s annoying when that’s what the focus ends up being instead of the work you’re doing."

Jade performing at Wembley. Picture: Global/Shutterstock

Explaining how it does sometimes get to her, she said: "Especially because I know my journey with my weight. As a teenager I had anorexia, that came back in [Little Mix], and I think now I’m in a much better place.

"It’s sad that when I’m in the healthiest stage I’ve ever probably been in, that’s when people pick me apart the most for how I look. The tea is, whenever I was the skinniest, I was always the most miserable. So I know it doesn’t bring me joy."

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Elsewhere in the interview, Jade addressed the pressure she feels amid the rise of weight loss medications like Ozempic. She said: "As someone with a history of eating disorders, every day I’m battling this idea of not caving into doing that. That’s not to knock anyone; everyone’s got their reasons for going on those sort of things.

"But for me, it’s my own inner battle of giving into the pressures of fame or judgement and people saying how I look. I feel like if I was to do something like that, it’s like I’ve let myself down when I’ve got myself to this really healthy part of my life."

Little Mix went on a hiatus in 2021. Picture: Getty

When she first addressed battling with an eating disorder in 2016, she wrote: "I was about 13 when I got anorexia. I think it was the culmination of a lot of stuff, not just the bullying. My mam and dad were arguing a lot and my Grandad Mohammed, who I was really close to, died.

"At 13, you're at that age when you don't really have control over anything, and I felt as if the only thing I could control was what I was eating. I started skipping meals and stuff like that. I would look in the mirror and it wasn't that I'd think I was fat, I just had it in my head that I wanted to be really, really skinny."

JADE revealed that things became so bad she lost her period, developed depression and was warned if she continued she "was going to die".

Now at 32 years old, Jade is living a full and beautiful life and creating art that we all get to enjoy - and that's more important than any number on any scale.

If you are struggling with any themes in this article the helpline Shout is available 24/7 as well as BEAT who are specialists in eating disorders.