Janet Jackson has been candid about
her lifelong struggle with weight, but — as you can see in this new photo from
her Nutrisystem ad campaign — she appears to be winning the battle. The
45-year-old singer, whose weight has yo-yoed up and down during her long career
— debuts her much trimmer figure in a curve-hugging orange dress.
In a new commercial for the weight
loss company, which debuted yesterday, Jackson shows off her "after"
body in form-fitting black pants and a white top, declaring, "This is what
success looks like," before launching into details about the Nutrisystem
plan, which is based on a low-glycemic diet. Jackson's body has transformed so
dramatically in both the commercial and the photo that there's already been
Internet chatter from commenters that her image was digitally altered.
Jackson doesn't indicate exactly how
many pounds she has shed on the program and previously told USA Today
that she doesn't intend to. "I'm not viewing this as a diet," she
told the paper. "I'm not putting a number on it. I don't look at the
scale. I'm going about it in a different way this time." However, during
an appearance on The Tonight Show in January she told Jay Leno that her
heaviest weight was 180lbs in 2006. That was the year she famously appeared on the
cover of Us Weekly showing off her skinnier body.
In her 2011 book True You,
Jackson opened up about being an "emotional eater." She has said
she's suffered from an unhealthy body image since she was a girl and it was
made worse by her brother, the late Michael Jackson, making fun of her for it.
"I was always made to feel like a fat kid by Michael," she told the
UK magazine Q. "He'd say, 'This is what your butt should look like'
and show me a picture from a magazine. He was such a happy kid, but then when
he became a teenager he got issues. That's when he became an introvert and
projected all that onto me. He called me brutal names, like 'Fat Butt.' Though
he says it was meant affectionately, it really affected me."