Sam Smith has revealed they had liposuction surgery after being ‘brutally’ bullied at secondary school about their weight.
The singer, who is non-binary and uses gender neutral pronouns, explained how their weight, and not ‘my queerness which was something that I could handle,’ was ‘the hardest thing’ to handle as a teenager.
Speaking on the Podcrushed podcast, Sam, 33, admitted ‘weirdly my weight was the thing I probably got teased the most about,’ during their years at a Catholic high school in Hertfordshire, leading to the decision to have liposuction on their chest at the age of 13.
‘I had surgery on my chest when I was 13 years old, because I had a growing chest,’ Sam explained on Wednesday’s episode of Penn Badgley’s podcast.
‘There were all sorts of reasons why, 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.’
Sam explained that their parents were ‘hugely supportive of the whole thing, because they just saw how much it was crippling everything about me.’
But the surgery wasn’t a success because, as Sam explained, ‘I just love food.’
‘The liposuction, it worked, but it was also a nightmare because they gave me a bandage,’ Sam said.
‘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,” and then I’d just get first at lunch… so the surgery never really worked.’
In 2023 Sam revealed they have the ‘opposite of body dysmorphia’ after finally learning to love their figure.
Speaking to The Sunday Times Sam revealed a gruelling 2018 tour forced them to reevaluate their thoughts and is now ‘happier than ever’ in their own skin.
‘[Following the 2018 tour] Every time I went to the pool I felt self-conscious, but I forced myself to take my top off’.
‘It paid off because I now have the opposite of body dysmorphia. I look fabulous. I’m finally getting a tan. I’m burnt in places I’ve never been burnt.’
Adding: ‘My mum says that, as I’ve got older, I’ve stopped caring what people think as much. She tends to be right.’
Sam recently completed their month-long To Be Free New York residency shortly after releasing their new single of the same name.
Sam returned to an intimate venue for the Brooklyn residency after revealing how they had had to ‘work back up to arenas’ after suffering a panic attack onstage on South Africa seven years ago.
‘It was the first time I was ever not able to do my job because of my anxiety,’ Sam explained. ‘So I had to go back home and I had to have therapy and figure out how to overcome this otherwise I wouldn’t be able to sing on stage again. ‘
Sam revealed that through therapy they were diagnosed with OCD but after years on medication ‘I just felt like I was living with an illness and I wasn’t mastering it.’
‘And so then I tried a different route of therapy with a different therapist and I stopped all my medications and I basically started to describe myself instead of saying, I have OCD I’ve started to describe myself as a flow person that I am very much like water.
‘In terms of my, my gender expression, my music tastes. The way that my body fluctuates my mental health is just like water. My mental health is always moving up and down.’
‘So now when I’m feeling anxious and if I’m getting a wave of anxiety or panic attacks and things like that, I think of it all as weather.’
