I told my mum I wanted a boob job. ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ she cried. ‘If you think they’re saggy now, wait until you have two kids like I have!’ She joked about it, but soon realised how serious I was and how down I felt. We’d go shopping and I’d stand miserably in the changing room because clothes didn’t hang right or like I wanted them to. She eventually agreed to come with me to meet a doctor at Transform, the plastic surgery clinic. He explained the process and showed me photos – I think Mum was secretly hoping that would put me off, but it didn’t at all. I was determined… and so I did it. Just before my 22nd birthday I got my old boobs back(!) and moved to Mum’s while I recovered from the surgery.
It was part of my career to do photoshoots in a bikini – that was a big part of how I made my living. I couldn’t cover up and I didn’t want to feel crappy about it. So I didn’t – and still don’t – regret having them done for a moment. I immediately felt like the old me again. I didn’t do it for anyone else, I did it for me. To make me feel good, because my body had changed shape and I wanted to feel confident again.
When I was 22, I met Premier League footballer Marcus Bent and we started dating. It was my first ‘high-profile’ relationship. I was naïve about what that meant at the time and so was totally unprepared for the press interest. During the time I was working with the lads’ mags, I tried to remain as unaffected by the press coverage and constant analysis of my life and looks as possible. When I hadn’t been living in the heart of the tabloid loop, it was easy-ish… but that all changed when I met Marcus. There were articles guessing how long it would last, wondering whether we were going to move in together, get engaged or have a baby. We’d be snapped when we were out and people would comment on what I was wearing or whether there was something wrong if we weren’t together.
We got engaged in 2008, a few months after I got back from filming I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, but split later that year, just before my 24th birthday in November. I found it incredibly tough, even though it was my decision. Marcus was extremely kind and caring, but something just wasn’t sitting right. Yes, I could have stayed in an okay relationship and had no financial worries due to his profession, but I’d grafted my whole life to get where I was (moving out to live on my own at 17), so I had my own money and besides, that’s never been a driving factor for me in a relationship. I wanted the little things money can’t buy – glances across a crowded room and loving Post-it notes left on a mirror. I remember Mum saying, ‘Gem, do you see yourself with this person forever?’ and I said, ‘I don’t know’, and she said, ‘Well, you categorically cannot marry him then because with the right man, you wouldn’t think twice about answering yes to that question.’ That was it, I knew I had to end it.
I was devastated. It can be as hard to break up with someone as it is to be broken up with, especially when that person has done nothing wrong. You’ve got this overwhelming sense of guilt and then the worry over whether you’ve done the right thing. I’d wake up in the morning and for a split second feel fine… then I’d remember what’d happened and feel physically sick. I was walking hunched over because if I stood upright my stomach would hurt. I couldn’t eat much and so lost even more weight. Then the weirdest thing happened. People started telling me how great I looked! My eyes were hollow, I was shaky and anxious, my skin was grey and my hair was lank, yet just because I was skinny, people said, ‘Oh God, you look fab! What’s your secret?’ I wanted to reply, ‘Heartbreak and misery, pal’, but of course I didn’t. I said, ‘Thank you’, while thinking, ‘Do you really think I look good? Because I feel like absolute crap. What does that say about what you think looks good?’
I was dealing with all of that, plus the split was being played out all over the media. It was surreal. Especially when every article focused on what I must have done wrong – that there must have been something wrong with me. It all added to my stress, anxiety and self-doubt.
I was filming the live-action segment for the game Command & Conquer around this time and you could see my ribs in pictures. There’s a promotional image of me in the uniform and my hands dwarf my waist, my legs look like drainpipes and my cheekbones are nearly cutting my skin. The thing is, it is a glamorous photo – I’m all made up and posing like a professional. You could look at it and think, ‘She looks nice,’ but because I know how I felt when it was taken, I see it now and think, ‘I never want to look like that again’.
At the time I said to Mum, ‘God, if I feel like this every day, life’s going to be horrific’. She said, ‘Oh Gemma, I’ve got news for you. This won’t be the last time you go through heartbreak, but it also won’t be the last time you get over it. You will get through it. And then you’ll get heartbroken again and get through it again.’ It’s totally true, but when you’re in that state yourself, you can’t see it or hear it. You think it’s the end of the world – that you’re going to end up an old spinster living alone with ten dogs.
While everyone was being so complimentary about how great I looked all I could think was, ‘Hang on, if I look great now, didn’t I look good before?’ and the insecurity cycle cranked up again. That’s when it struck me, how twisted it all was – that the only reason I looked supposedly ‘great’ was because I wasn’t eating or sleeping and felt horrendous. How is that something to aspire to?
It dawned on me that I’d rather feel good than look a certain way. I could try to get over the break-up, sort myself out, and yes, be a bit heavier, but be happier and healthier. I thought, ‘Sack what I look like – I just need to feel happy again’, because yes, people can look a certain way, but you have no idea what they’re going through below the surface. It’s like, ‘Your insides are rotting, but you look great! Heartbreak’s the secret! Just get shat on and you’ll look lovely!’
With my mum Sandra and stepdad Peter. Holidays with them are still so much fun.
Heartbreak is something most people have gone through or will go through. My mum and dad divorced when I was ten and my mum has told me since that it was the hardest thing she’s ever had to do. She said, ‘I would have left sooner but you were so young. I couldn’t do that to you.’ But I said, ‘What about yourself, Mum? Why would you stay with Dad if you weren’t compatible any more?’ She said, ‘When you have kids yourself you’ll understand.’ And some of my friends have stayed with men that weren’t right for them and I’ve thought, ‘But you’re miserable and wanting to kiss other lads at the weekend when you’re drunk because you’re so unhappy. How can that be better than leaving? Isn’t it better for kids not to live with two sad parents?’
Bottom line is: we have no idea what anyone’s going through or dealing with. People could look at pictures of me at the time and think I was on top of the world. Work was going well, I looked ‘great’, I was young, single and free. Supposedly. When actually I was incredibly unhappy.
When things weren’t getting any better, my sister Nina sat me down and said, ‘You lost Dad five years ago and you dealt with that – and that’s the hardest thing any young girl can deal with. So who the hell is an ex-boyfriend in comparison to Dad?’ I thought, ‘Oh my god, she’s right! If I can get through losing Dad – a man who loved me unconditionally and who I assumed would always be around – I can get through losing a guy I’ve spent two or three years with.’ It made me realise that I was stronger than I knew. That although I might think, ‘I can’t cope with this’, I can. I’ve got through 34 years of both my best and my worst days and I’m still standing.
I had to channel those thoughts again when things kicked off in the press in exactly the same way after I called off my engagement to Liam Richards in 2013. Actually, that time was worse because they now had two ‘failed engagements’ to pin on me. Liam and I were together for three and a bit years, but split because we were both working so hard we rarely saw each other during the last year. The headlines screamed: ‘She has the career, she has this and that,