The singer was diagnosed with the skin condition at age 2.
LeAnn Rimes is baring it all! In honor of World Psoriasis Day on Thursday, the 38-year-old singer took to Instagram to share nude photos of herself that clearly show the psoriasis covering her back.
According to the Mayo Clinic, psoriasis is "a skin disease that causes red, itchy scaly patches, most commonly on the knees, elbows, backside and scalp." Kim Kardashian West is another celebrity that has been open about having the skin condition.
"So much of my journey, both personally and within my creations, my new chant record and podcast coming out soon, has been excavating pieces that I’ve been hiding and bringing them to the light," Rimes captioned the pics. "It’s been and still is a journey of allowing them out and welcoming and reintegrating those fragments back into wholeness. Music has been my gift, and why I’m here."
Rimes continued by stating that the photos were one way in which she was hoping "to give a voice to these other pieces" of herself.
"I want to give a voice to what so many other people are going through. This is finally my time to be unabashedly honest about what psoriasis is and what it looks like," she wrote. "You know when you say something you’ve been holding in for so long, and it’s such a sigh of relief? That's what these photos are to me. I needed this. My whole body -- my mind, my spirit -- needed this desperately."
In an accompanying essay for Glamour, Rimes reveals she was diagnosed with the skin disorder at age two when "about 80 percent of my body was covered in painful red spots." The diagnosis came at a time when there weren't "commercials about psoriasis on TV or open discussions about skin conditions."
Rimes writes that she "tried everything" to treat or hide the spots, but didn't find a regiment that helped until she entered her 20s. Eventually, Rimes writes that she "felt comfortable" easing off the shots, until she completely went off them two years ago.
But, with the turbulence of 2020, her condition once again flared up, as stress is a trigger for her psoriasis. While she's previously only discussed her psoriasis when her skin was clear, Rimes wanted to do so during a flare up because "when you’re hiding your physical body, there’s so much that rolls over into your emotional and spiritual mental health."
"I now feel like I’m at a point in my life where I just want to break out of that cage. We’re at a moment in time right now when we’re all being stripped of everything we thought we needed -- and now we can see how worthy and good enough we are without all of the bulls**t," she writes. "We’re worthy without the makeup and the artifice. We’re worthy of love without having to work for it. And that’s why I’m tired of hiding."
Despite being ready to show off her skin and be unashamed, Rimes was still worried about seeing the photos of herself for the first time.
"It’s one thing to see yourself and judge yourself in the mirror; I thought it would be even harder in a photo, which is why in the past I never let people take pictures of me during flare-ups. Being in our own bodies, we judges ourselves so harshly," she writes. "But when I look at these photos, I see so much more than my skin."
"Before this shoot, my husband would look at me like, 'I don’t even see that,' which I obviously didn’t understand," Rimes continues of her husband of nine years, Eddie Cibrian. "I’d think, 'How can’t you see it?! It’s all over me!' I think I see what he sees now."
Rimes concludes her essay by encouraging others who've kept themselves hidden to proudly be who they are.
"When you finally allow yourself to step outside of what you’ve been caging in, the whole world opens up. There’s freedom in even just putting one foot outside the door," she writes. "I hope anyone who also kept themselves small has the courage to step outside of that cage. When we allow ourselves not to be held in, our lives come back to us."
Watch the video below to see ET's latest interview with Rimes.
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