Camila Cabello talks about her body after criticism 0:41
(CNN) — Singer-songwriter and actress Camila Cabello shared a text on Instagram reflecting on the criticism she’s receiving about her physical appearance and how it’s affecting her mental health.
The Cuban-American singer, who recently starred in a new version of Cinderella, opened up about the pressure her body takes from being in the spotlight.
“I wore bikinis that were too small and didn’t pay attention to how I looked. Then I saw the photos on the internet and the comments and they bothered me so much,” she wrote in a caption posted to Instagram on Saturday. She explained that being constantly photographed by paparazzi and criticizing her body made her feel “super vulnerable and unprepared.”
The emotional post comes after a day at a Miami beach club, Cabello said, as she felt pressure to look her best knowing paparazzi were snapping her. “I tried to pretend they weren’t there, but I couldn’t,” he said.
“I knew I would look ‘good’ in the photos and I would get it, yet I’ve never had a worse time at the beach,” she wrote.
“I remember how shocked I was when I realized I was thinking in other people’s thought culture and not my own,” Cabello said. She also criticized a “culture that has become accustomed to an image of what a ‘healthy’ woman’s body should look like that, for many women, is not at all real”.
The post had garnered almost 900,000 likes as of Sunday morning.
The singer, who has been nominated for three Grammy Awards, is no stranger to using social media to show her feelings. In fact, she posted a TikTok last year encouraging women to love their bodies.
“Waging war with your body is so last season,” he said in the video, which racked up more than 5 million likes. “We’re real women, with curves, cellulite, stretch marks and fat.”
As she explained on Instagram, her body image struggle has continued ever since. “The news I get from society rings loud in my own head.”
“Ironically all the therapy and inner work is trying to make me feel like my 7 year old self on the beach again,” Cabello wrote at the bottom of the Instagram caption. “Today I mourn her loss. Happy, silly, breathing, pretending to be a mermaid, FREE.”