Lady Gaga surprised an LA school with a visit this week, coinciding with a conference for young women.
She spoke to Maria Shriver about her experiences at high school, and revealed that pressures led her to extreme measures to try and be thin.
Gaga told the audience:
"I used to throw up all the time in high school. So I'm not that confident. And maybe it's easier for me to talk about it now because I don't do it anymore.
"I wanted to be a skinny little ballerina but I was a voluptuous little Italian girl whose dad had meatballs on the table every night. I used to come home and say, 'Dad, why do you always give us this food? I need to be thin.' And he'd say, 'Eat your spaghetti'…
"Every video I'm in, every magazine cover, they stretch you; they make you perfect. It's not real life. I'm gonna say this about girls: The dieting wars have got to stop. Everyone just knock it off.
"Because at the end of the day, it's affecting kids your age. And it's making girls sick."
Are you glad Gaga's speaking so candidly about her experiences?
