JoJo opened up about her 500-calorie daily diet as a teen, and it speaks volumes about the industry

JoJo was one of the youngest artists to ever have a number-one song, but it wasn’t always easy — especially when she was pressured to uphold a 500-calorie daily diet.

The entertainment industry, as it stands, often prioritizes looks and idealized body standards over other values, and that is very obvious after watching a recent interview with pop and R&B singer JoJo. An incredible performer, JoJo was subjected to warped ideas of body image that bled into her own self-worth at a young age.

Speaking with Uproxx, JoJo brought up the fact that the president of her former label, Blackground Records, wanted her to be “healthy.” The problem? She already was. As JoJo points out, she wasn’t “unhealthy” to begin with.

“I actually look like a healthy girl who eats and is active,” she explained. “And I don’t think this is about my health. I think that you want me to be really skinny.”

She went on to talk about how the label got her a nutritionist who put her on a diet of 500 calories per day, and how, from there, they got her shots that suppressed her hunger so she wouldn’t go over. The biggest problem, which is not even scratching the surface, is that it bled into JoJo’s own body-image issues because of the “note” from the president.

“Let me see how skinny I can get, because maybe then they’ll put out an album,” she recalled thinking. “Maybe I’m just so disgusting that no one wants to see me in a video and they can’t even look at me.’ That’s really what I thought.”

It’s a terrifying realization that so much of the world doesn’t care about women and their health, just about what they look like. Their idea of healthy, for women, is someone who is stick thin without an ounce of fat on her body. And that can permeate into how she views herself and her own health, which isn’t good for anyone.

JoJo is someone who came out of that situation with a renewed sense of herself, but some are not so lucky. Seeing Jojo’s strength through it all is amazing, but we need to do better for other young women in the entertainment industry. No one should be forced to starve themself for the sake of their career.

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