The singer admits it took a lot of 'courage' for him to share a shirtless photo from his latest beach photo shoot.
Sam Smith is getting candid about his past struggles with body image.
The 26-year-old singer took to Instagram on Tuesday, sharing a shirtless pic of himself on the beach with a powerful caption about having "courage."
"In the past, if I have ever done a photo shoot with so much as a T-shirt on, I have starved myself for weeks in advance and then picked and prodded at every picture and then normally [have] taken the picture down," he began. "Yesterday I decided to fight the f**k back. Reclaim my body and stop trying to change this chest and these hips and these curves that my mum and dad made and love so unconditionally."
"Some may take this as narcissistic and showing off but if you knew how much courage it took to do this and the body trauma I have experienced as a kid you wouldn't think those things," he continued, thanking the photographer. "Thank you for helping me celebrate my body AS IT IS @ryanpfluger I have never felt safer than I did with you. I'll always be at war with this bloody mirror but this shoot and this day was a step in the right f**king direction."
Last January, Smith sat down with Sarah Jessica Parker for a feature published in V Magazine, where he opened up about his dramatic slim-down.
"When I was shooting my first music videos, I just wasn’t happy with the way I looked, so I was trying to control the way the camera moved. I got a bit obsessive," he confessed. "I was constantly looking in the mirror, pinching my waist, weighing myself every day. Now, I've gotten to a place where I really love my stretch marks and I just enjoy my body."
"My job is very self-indulgent: I have to listen to my voice daily, I make decisions on what tour posters or album covers look like, I look at my face while sitting in the makeup chair. I get kind of sick of myself, so I trust my team," she added. "But my body image is always going to be an issue. I need to constantly train myself to watch the right sort of films, to not look at certain ads and think that’s how my stomach should look. It’s something that I’m fighting every day. I think men should talk about it more."
Read the full highlights from the interview here, and watch the video below for more on Smith.
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