Figure 9's lead singer Krishna Deshpande has always been outspoken about mental health. Despite expressing reservations about becoming a poster child and about using his platform as a pop artist to bring more awareness to issues surrounding depression and anxiety, he has worked consistently to talk about his experiences as well as difficulties he has witnessed others go through.

"I've always been a skinny guy," said Deshpande in a recent interview in America. "I'd look around at other boys, at older boys, and see that they were bigger. Of course they were bigger. They were older. But I saw them and it made me fixate on how I looked because it seemed to me just another way I was different. It was my skin color and my accent and my clothes and my family, and then it was that I was a skinny weakling who couldn't do the stuff that other kids could in PE. It was depressing as fuck, and isolating." He admitted that he tried weight lifting to remedy his physique but that "it did the opposite of what [he] wanted."

The 23-year-old singer continued, "Ironically, though, the more I fixate on stuff the more anxious I get about it. When I get very stressed out I can't eat, my stomach's all in knots. So it became a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, I suppose. At school there were compounding issues, like the fact that after Second Form I brought my lunch to school, and I felt very self-conscious about that because my meals looked quite different from most everyone else's. I was ashamed of that, but I also hated that I was ashamed of it. I'd wind up skipping lunch a lot as a way to not have to deal with it at all."

As he got older, anxiety continued to impede his ability to eat regularly, but he shared that he "gotten better at calming [himself] down" and making use of his "great support network."

Deshpande speaking out about his difficulties opens up an important dialogue about male body issues and eating disorders, which aren't discussed enough, considering studies have shown that 31% of British men aren't happy with their body image, and 10 million men in the US will suffer from a clinically significant eating disorder at some time in their life.

The openly gay pop star also recently spoke to Owen Jones about his battle with anxiety and depression, describing the struggle of growing up gay "in a straight world." He also released a statement with recent video "Desire" about the importance of celebrating queer bodies, identity and sexuality.

Credits Text Lula Ososki
Photography via WikiCommons

Topics: news, music, beauty, krishna deshpande, figure 9, body image