Marie Osmond highlights how damaging it can be to comment on someone’s appearance.
The 63-year-old singer and television personality told Page Six of the New York Post that a producer once scolded her about her weight while she was filming the popular 1970s variety show “Donny & Marie,” in which she and brother Donny Osmond starred as teenagers.
“It was on that lot that I was taken back by a head of the studio – and I’m about 5 [feet]5 [inches] and about 103 pounds,” Osmond said, recalling her weight at the time. And he basically said, “You’re a disgrace to your family.” You are fat.'”
The message, she said, was that “250 people would lose their jobs because you can’t keep food out of your fat face.”
Then extreme dieting became a “real deal for me,” she said, and she dropped to “about 92 pounds.”
But she later had an “aha” moment that taught her that “body dysmorphia is real.”
“I was in [a] changing room, bent over putting on my pantyhose, and there was a girl getting changed who was just an emaciated skeleton with skin on her,” Osmond told Page Six. “And I just thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s so sick,’ and I got up and realized I was that girl.”
Despite making it through “those really tough years” with the help of her parents, Osmond is still heavily involved in diet culture. She has been a spokesperson for Nutrisystem for years, and recently launched a weight loss program with the company for women over 55 years of age.
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