Last week Lily Allen revealed what’s been painfully obvious to me for some time: she isn’t eating properly.
Speaking on her BBC podcast Miss Me? – which she co-hosts with her TV presenter best friend Miquita Oliver –39-year-old Lily said food had become ‘a real issue’ over the last three years and hunger signals ‘are not going from my body to my brain’. The mum-of-two added: ‘I am really not in a great place at the moment, mentally.’
Having suffered from anorexia myself – an eating disorder characterised by an obsessively strict diet – her words seemed frighteningly familiar. Lily’s problems have been clear to many who follow her for quite a while now.
Having been massively famous since her teens, the Smile singer stepped away from the spotlight around 2019. She’d battled the eating disorder bulimia in her early 20s and suffered tragedies – a son stillborn and a miscarriage – before the birth of her two daughters. Then a divorce from the girls’ father Sam Cooper.
Her 2018 album, No Shame, was critically acclaimed but missed the mark commercially.
Lily dumped her management and parted ways with her record label a year later. Then she married again – to Stranger Things actor David Harbour.
When Lily reappeared in the summer of 2021 to promote the West End play she was starring in, 2:22 A Ghost Story, she was visibly changed.
Her performance was praised. But it was hard not to notice her new, extraordinarily slender figure and angular cheekbones.
She looked so different. Not like Lily Allen any more, somehow.
Then began a seemingly endless stream of skinny selfies posted on Instagram, where she has 1.7million followers.
The images – which she claimed were showcasing her outfits – seemed often to highlight her protruding ribcage, shoulder bones and concave abdomen.
As the months went by, she seemed ever more fragile. It set off alarm bells in me and fans commenting on the photos begged her to get help. ‘Worried about you Lily,’ wrote one. ‘I feel like we’ve grown up together and I’ve never seen you this thin.’ Lily responded: ‘You’ve never seen me two years completely sober, not smoking and exercising every day.’
As if to prove it, in between the body shots are pictures where she appears to eat generous plates of spaghetti and fancy sandwiches.
But judging by Lily’s recent admission, there may have been little other food consumption going on.
The whole thing made me so angry. When I was in the throes of my eating disorder in my early 20s – and in denial of how ill I was – I would obsessively seek out pictures of similarly thin stars.
Anorexia is a disease of sick competition: images of models and celebrities with sharp collarbones, protruding spines and hollowed cheeks can represent a ‘goal’ for those in the midst of it.
They also normalise an unhealthily thin aesthetic. I’d look at those women and think my own malnourished body wasn’t ‘that bad’.
They are glamorous, successful and rich – and similarly underweight. It was aspirational, in a very toxic sort of way.
Paradoxically, some of the stars I was most fixated on also promoted food and cookery – creating this poisonous illusion that it’s possible to be skeletal while also eating healthily. It was hard not to look at Lily’s output in this kind of light. And that made me mad. Because I knew how damaging it could be to vulnerable young women, like I used to be.
But over the last couple of months I’ve changed my mind.
As a regular listener of Lily’s podcast, I noticed she began to drop hints that she was struggling with her mental health. There were several references to a ‘rough time’ she’s currently going through.
Then came the latest revelation. I listened to Lily’s words and felt so sad. If I’d have been in the room, I’d have given her a big hug. And I realised she may not have been aware of what she was doing. I know I wasn’t. I was transported back a decade, when I was distracting myself with ridiculously long work days on an empty stomach and pretending I didn’t have a problem. I remembered how, to begin with, I spoke of my diagnosis in vague terms – telling friends I had a ‘hunger problem’.
Ultimately, calling it what it was – anorexia – saved my life, leading to medical treatment.
Sharing the messy details of my recovery online, via a blog and articles in this newspaper, has kept me accountable. It’s also helped me find support from a community of people who’ve been through similar experiences – and offer that support to others.
I believe these are the reasons for my strong and enduring recovery. Because eating disorders thrive in secrecy. The symptoms often hide in plain sight, dismissed as ‘being on a diet’ and simply careful or picky eating.
The tragic result of this is that patients don’t recognise the problem and get help until it’s too late. Only half of anorexia patients make a full recovery, but the odds are best for those who start treatment within two years of the onset of symptoms.
So, I applaud Lily for her honesty and bravery. Her willingness to share experiences like these is rare among high-profile people. Celebrities seem comfortable to detail their battles with more palatable illnesses such as depression, anxiety or ADHD. But not bulimia or anorexia.
Fearne Cotton is one example. In 2019 the broadcaster and health guru, then 38, admitted she had suffered bulimia in her 20s. She had kept it a secret for at least a decade, in which time she’d gone public with her experience of anxiety and panic attacks.
I wrote a column in response to her admission, pleading with celebs to ‘come out’ about these illnesses. I argued that not all mental health problems can be summed up in a cheery selfie.
If celebrities want to be honest about psychiatric health, do it properly – warts and all. For eating disorders, that means a long and complicated recovery, involving multiple specialists and, sometimes, a stint in hospital. There might be physical complications, such as fertility problems and bone thinning, as well as embarrassing gut symptoms as the digestive system kicks back into action.
I hope Lily Allen continues to bare all on this subject. It won’t be easy. But she should know not only how much her honesty will help her, but what it will mean to the 1.2 million Brits who battle this wretched disease.
It reminds us we’re not alone and that we’re worthy of recovery. And, most importantly, that we have nothing to be ashamed of.
