Adolescence can be a difficult time for many teens, and for singer Sam Smith, it was marked by painful physical changes and bullying. Smith discussed their experiences as a young teenager on the latest episode of Penn Badgley’s podcast “Podcrushed.”
“I had surgery on my chest when I was 13 years old, because I had a growing chest,” Smith told Badgley, referencing a procedure they first discussed publicly in 2019. “There were all sorts of reasons why, but mainly, I was just getting so teased, I couldn’t go swimming in school, and getting changed in the locker room was hell. So I got liposuction when I was 13 years old.”
Smith, who identifies as nonbinary and queer, praised their parents for being “hugely supportive of the whole thing, because they just saw how much it was crippling everything about me.” Smith described the “brutal” years attending Catholic school at age 12, saying they were “so obviously gay,” popular, “really chubby, round and pink,” and comfortable with their queerness after coming out to a female friend at age 10.
Despite this, Smith said their weight was a constant source of distress. “My queerness was something that I could handle and could have a grasp on, but my weight as a kid was the hardest thing for me in school and, weirdly, the thing I got teased most about,” Smith said.
Smith recalled struggling with food and body image. “The liposuction, it worked, but it was also a nightmare because they gave me a bandage,” Smith said, describing a bra-like garment they were supposed to wear for a month during recovery but ended up wearing for nearly a year. “If I wore the bandage, it meant that I would get to the front of the lunch queue,” Smith said. “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 and I’d eat more and eat more and eat more… so the surgery never really worked because I just love food.”
Smith has spoken publicly about body image struggles before, including in a 2019 social media post in which they described avoiding photos without a shirt early in their career. “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,” Smith wrote at the time, adding that support from fans has helped them be more open about these issues.
Smith is scheduled to begin a 12-show “To Be Free” residency at the Warsaw in New York City on Nov. 26, followed by a 20-night residency at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco.