Janet Jackson has revealed that her brother Michael used to bully her about her weight beginning when she was 11 and he was an adult.
Via The Daily Mail, she spoke about this ugly period in the new documentary Janet, which airs on January 28th and 29th on Lifetime and A&E. She said her weight began to change after she was cast in Good Times at the age of 11. “I’m an emotional eater, so when I get stressed or something is really bothering me, it comforts me,” she recalled. “I did Good Times and that’s the beginning of having weight issues and the way I looked at myself.”
Her stresses were exacerbated by her famous older brother, who would have been about 19 years old at the time. As her weight fluctuated, “There were times when Mike used to tease me and call me names. ‘Pig, horse, slaughter hog, cow,’” she said.
“He would laugh about it and I’d laugh too, but then there was somewhere down inside that it would hurt. When you have somebody say you’re too heavy, it affects you.”
Janet was filmed over a five-year period, and will be broadcast simultaneously on Lifetime and A&E. Elsewhere in the documentary, Jackson said that Michael was one of her closest siblings, although that changed after the release of Thriller, and she dove into the emotional turmoil caused by the child abuse allegations against him. “Guilty by association,” she said. Check out the trailer below.
Last year, The New York Times Presents unveiled their own documentary, Malfunction: The Dressing Down of Janet Jackson. It dove into the fallout from the 2004 Super Bowl Halftime Show, and included the news that CBS head Les Moonves demanded a personal apology after her nipple became exposed.
