(CNN) — The singer-songwriter and actress Camila Cabello shared a text on Instagram in which she reflected on the criticism she receives about her physical appearance and how they affect her mental health.
The Cuban-American singer, who recently starred in a new version of “Cinderella,” spoke out about the pressure she has been receiving on her body from being under the spotlight.
“I’ve worn bikinis that were too small and didn’t pay attention to how I looked, then I saw the photos on the internet and the comments and they bothered me so much,” she wrote in a caption she posted on Instagram on Saturday. She explained that being constantly photographed by paparazzi and having her body criticized made her feel “super vulnerable and unprepared.”
The emotional post comes after a day at a Miami beach club, Cabello said, when she felt pressure to look her best, knowing paparazzi were photographing her. “I tried to pretend they weren’t there, but I couldn’t,” she said.
“I knew I’d look ‘good’ in the photos and I’d get it, and yet I’ve never had a worse time at the beach,” she wrote.
“I remember how shocked I was to realize that I was thinking in the culture of other people’s thoughts and not my own,” said Cabello. She also criticized a “culture that has become accustomed to an image of what a ‘healthy’ woman’s body should look like that is not at all real to many women.”
The post had received nearly 900,000 likes as of Sunday morning.
The singer, who has been nominated three times for the Grammy Awards, is no stranger to using social networks to show her feelings. In fact, last year she posted a TikTok in which she encouraged women to love their bodies.
“Being at war with your body is so last season,” he said in the video, which received more than 5 million likes. “We are real women, with curves, cellulite, stretch marks and fat.”
As she explained on Instagram, her fight over her body image has continued ever since. “The messages I get from society ring loud in my own head.”
“Ironically, all the therapy and all the inner work is trying to get back to feeling like my 7-year-old self on the beach,” Cabello wrote at the end of the Instagram caption. “Today I’m mourning her. Happy, silly, breathing, pretending to be a mermaid, FREE.”