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Demi Lovato: “For The First Time In My Life, I Actually Feel Like [Role Model]“

Demi Lovato Ellen Ellen DeGeneres Sonny With a Chance

1:03 pm, September 17th, 2011

(Warner Bros.)

Demi Lovato talks with Ellen DeGeneres about her recent travails (and comeback) in an “Ellen” interview slated to air on Tuesday.

The former “Sonny with a Chance” star, who stopped performing and entered treatment for “emotional and physical issues” last year, is now speaking out about the pressures behind her collapse and what she hopes to do now.

“So many things were going great in my life and then all of a sudden my personal life just went down at crazy speeds,” recalls Lovato. “I had a negative breakdown and it changed my life forever.”

She adds, “But I’m glad that it did, because if I had never gone into the treatment… I don’t know if, one, I’d even be sitting here today, [or] two, if I’d be alive today.”

The “Skyscraper” singer explains that body image issues had a lot to do with her downward spiral.

“One of the reasons why I became so outspoken when I decided to come out of treatment and talk about my issues was because when I grew up I was dealing with the pressures to be thin,” says Lovato.

She explains, “It was the time in the tabloids when very, very skinny girls were on the cover of every magazine and that’s what I was looking up to. That’s what I had to idolize. I don’t want that for young girls to idolize.”

Lovato now want to use her status as a public figure to combat the “very unhealthy” habits she once followed.

“There was nobody out there for me to look at and say, maybe this is unhealthy. Maybe starving myself isn’t the answer,” she says.

“So I want to be that for a 13-year-old girl at home deciding whether or not to eat dinner, or an 18-year-old deciding whether or not to keep her breakfast down. There needs to be a role model out there, and for the first time in my life, I actually feel like one.”

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