If you are struggling with body image or disordered eating, help is available via The Butterfly Foundation Support Line. Call 1800 33 4673.
Pointing her phone camera toward the mirror, Roxy Jacenko would angle her hips and adjust her active wear, making sure her flat stomach was fully visible for the post. The PR entrepreneur’s Instagram followers lapped it up.
“Goals.”
“Gorgeous.”
“What a body!”
Comments like these, along with the thousands of likes, gave the mother-of-two “a kick”. But it wasn’t enough. Because the truth behind the ‘fitspo’ posts from early 2017 was that she was struggling. Deeply.
“Out of control is an understatement,” Roxy told Mamamia‘s No Filter podcast. “I mean, anyone who looks at my Instagram from two years ago and sees a 49 kilo human… like, it’s not normal. I didn’t eat, I was taking drugs, I was drinking myself into a stupor.”
Jacenko would go to a restaurant with friends and order nothing but caprioskas. She would publicly brag about subsisting on a diet of mini tuna sushi rolls.
“I look back now and I’m embarrassed,” she said. “I thought it was an achievement. It wasn’t an achievement, it was sick in the head.
“But you know, it was applauded.”
The Sweaty Betty PR founder was, at that time, on the brink of a mental health crisis. She’d been treated for breast cancer in July 2016, a diagnosis came just three weeks after her investment banker husband, Oliver Curtis, was jailed for insider trading.
In the months that followed, Jacenko found herself contending with Oliver’s betrayal, being a single mother, her booming business, the scrutiny, survival. She became obsessed with diet, with her weight; one thing she could control in an otherwise chaotic life.
But on a Saturday afternoon in 2017, another day spent at the office, it all came undone.
Watch Roxy on No Filter… (Post continues below.)
“I was driving home along New South Head Road [in Sydney’s eastern suburbs],” she said. “The children were at home with baby sitter, and I passed by the Rose Bay Marina and I remember ringing my mum – she was in Israel – and I said to her, ‘I’m having a nervous breakdown.
“It was a feeling like I’ve never experienced in my life.”
Jacenko phoned her doctor, and asked him to admit her to a clinic; “He said to me, ‘I don’t want to admit you to a clinic because you won’t come out.'”
Instead, with the help of medication and therapy, Jacenko realised what needed to be done to reclaim control over her health, her life.
“I needed to eat. I needed to clean up my lifestyle. I needed to put a focus back onto what was important,” she said.
“Because I’m lucky. Very lucky.”
To hear more from Roxy, including what happened when her husband came home from prison, you can listen to her full interview with Mia Freeman above or subscribe to No Filter in you favourite podcast app.
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Top Comments
Oliver's "betrayal"? He didn't rip her off - not sure why she had to suddenly mentally tussle with the idea he was a crook - those charges were not out of the blue or news to her.
If my husband's illegal activity rendered me a single parent for a couple of years Id feel pretty betrayed. I cant stand Roxy but Im not sure we should assume that she knew what he was up to.
The allegations he was eventually convicted of were openly and publicly known before they even had children. She made the decision to align with a crook and stick by him.
She knew exactly what he was accused of. The insider trading Oliver Curtis was convicted of occurred in 2008. His partner in crime, John Hartman, pleaded guilty and was charged in 2010. Roxy married Curtis in 2012. Justice finally caught up with Curtis in 2016. Like I said, Roxy was not "betrayed" - she knew about his criminal past, and chose to marry him and have kids with him regardless.
I wonder if anyone did make comments about her looking unhealthy, though. Often if someone does, they will be shouted down as ‘skinny shaming’ or being jealous and judgemental. Some Instagram types will delete ‘negative’ comments. I suppose the point this article is trying to make is that we never know what is going on in someone’s private life, that social media only shows an edited version of real life. And that’s absolutely true. But talking about people ‘applauding’ and ‘lapping it up’ also sounds like they are trying to criticise her followers for... not calling her out, I guess? The whole Instagram/influencer world is a little confusing to me, but perhaps this is a reminder that we all need to be a little more thoughtful about who and what we’re giving attention to, that appearances aren’t always reality. I’m glad Roxy has sorted things out, hopefully it will help others to hear what she has to say.
Of course there were contrary comments. All deleted, and written off as trolls or just jealous people who envied her lifestyle. More the fool her.