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Mel C (real name Melanie Chrisholm) revealed she was sexually assaulted the night before her first live performance with the Spice Girls. The 48-year-old singer, known as Sporty Spice in the popular girl group, wrote about the unfortunate incident in her new memoir. The Sporty One: My Life as a Spice Girland go into more detail on the Tuesday (September 13) episode of How to fail audio files. “What happened to me, I kind of buried in an instant,” she explained on the show. “And because I didn’t deal with it at the time, I realized I’d let that lie buried for years and years.”
The British pop star said the attack took place in Istanbul in 1997, just as the Spice Girls were preparing for their first concert in front of a live audience. To treat herself, Mel C, then 23, booked a massage with a male masseuse the night before the show. “It happened to me the night before the Spice Girls’ first live performance,” Mel C said on the podcast. “And we’ve never held a long concert before, so obviously, we’d been practicing for weeks before that – the costumes, the makeup, the hair – everything was headed to the top. high of all that I wanted to do and ever wanted to be. “
“And what motivates me is being on stage, being a performer, so here we are the eve of the first Spice Girls show, so I treat myself to a cool- far in the hotel. And what happened to me, I kind of buried it right away, because there were other things to focus on. You know, I don’t want to make a fuss, but I don’t have time to deal with it either. “
The decision to keep the attack a secret stayed with her until she began working on a new memoir. Mel C explained on the podcast: “It comes to me in a dream, or I wake up and it’s already on my mind. “And I said, ‘Oh my gosh, I hadn’t even thought of having that in the book.’ Then, of course, I had to think, ‘Well, do I want to reveal this?’ And I just thought, really, it’s important for me to speak up, and ultimately deal with it and deal with it. “
While she didn’t go into details of the assault, she added, “I suppose, in one version of sexual assault, it’s a mild version, but I feel violated. I feel I feel very vulnerable I feel embarrassed And then I feel uncertain – did I get this right? What’s going on? I’ve been in an environment where you take your pants off. your shirt with this pro. So there were a lot of thoughts and feelings, and I just felt, you know, I wanted to talk about it because it affected me. But I hid it. , and I’m sure a lot of men and women do.”
Mel C’s new memoir The Sporty One: My Life as a Spice Girl will be released on September 27th.
