Sam Smith opened up about getting liposuction at just 13 years old.
Sam — who uses they/them pronouns — revisited the subject this week on Penn Badgley’s Podcrushed podcast, when asked about some of the issues they experienced growing up. Sam said, “For me, it was always my weight.”
“My queerness was something that I could handle and I could have a grasp on it,” said the “Stay With Me” singer, who first came out to a friend at age 10. “But my weight as a kid was the hardest thing for me.”
Sam said they attended a “brutal” Catholic school, and after being bullied for their “growing chest,” they made the decision to get lipo. “There were all sorts of reasons why,” Sam shared, “but mainly, I was just getting so teased, I couldn’t go swimming in school, and I couldn’t — like, getting changed in the locker room was hell. So I got liposuction when I was 13 years old.”
According to Sam, their mom, a banker, and their dad, who stayed at home, were both “supportive” of the decision. “They were hugely supportive of the whole thing because they just saw how much it was crippling everything about me.”
“It just was all a struggle with food and stuff,” Sam continued. “And the liposuction, it worked, but it was also a nightmare because they gave me a bandage, which is like a bra. I was only meant to wear it for a month … [but] I kept this bandage on for nearly a year.”
“If I wore the bandage, it meant that I would get to the front of the lunch queue. So I just kept this bandage on for nearly a year, and I’d be like, ‘Oh, don’t come close to me,'” Sam laughed, feigning pain. “And then I’d just get first at lunch and I’d eat more and eat more and eat more… so the surgery never really worked because I just love food.”
Sam first spoke about their experience getting liposuction in a 2019 interview with Jameela Jamil, describing how it came after a doctor found their body was storing excessive amounts of estrogen in their chest.
“I fully had breasts,” Sam said. “At the time, I think I was very happy about it. It didn’t really change anything. I think I put the weight back on in like two weeks because I hadn’t figured out my relationship with food.”
As an adult and public figure, Sam has learned to embrace their body — as seen in 2019, when they posted a shirtless selfie to Instagram. Sam wrote in the post, “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 taken the picture down.” But that time, they “decided to fight the fuck 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.”
Love that so much, Sam! ❤️