Pop star Halsey is no longer willing to pretend "everything's perfect" after struggling for years with endometriosis pain.
The Him & I singer went public with her health crisis in early 2016, revealing she had been misdiagnosed for years before doctors determined she was battling the condition, which causes inflammation outside of the uterus, and can lead to pelvic pain, fatigue, nausea, and possible infertility.
She has since undergone "multiple terrifying surgeries" to treat her ailment, and on Monday (19Mar18), she was honoured for speaking out about the issue by officials at the Endometriosis Foundation of America.
Accepting the 2018 Blossom Award at the organisation's ninth annual Blossom Ball in New York, Halsey admitted she still deals with the painful symptoms on a daily basis, something she frequently hides from fans in public - but she won't be covering up her problems just to save face going forward.
"I can't pretend any more," she told the crowd at the event, where she was supported by her rapper boyfriend G-Eazy.
"I can't pretend that just because I'm a pop artist and I'm touring, that everything's perfect and everything's all good and my skin's always great and I'm always fit and my outfits are always perfect."
Halsey, 23, confessed some of her toughest episodes have occurred while on tour.
"Sometimes I'm bloated, I'm on an I.V. (intravenous drip), I'm sick, I'm on medicine, and I'm backstage, terrified that I'm going to bleed through my clothes in the middle of my show," she shared. "That's the reality of it."
She now plans to use her platform to draw more attention to the illness in an effort to break the taboo surrounding the discussion of periods and "reproductive illness", revealing addressing her struggle in public actually won her a few new famous friends and fellow sufferers in dancer/actress Julianne Hough and Modern Family star Sarah Hyland.
"When you're meeting another woman, it's almost like you've been through the same thing together," Halsey said.
"It's an immediate bonding experience and you get to look at that peer, that contemporary and think, 'I know what you've been through' and you get to really admire them for how strong they are and all the things they've achieved. You know they're dealing with illness."
Halsey, Hough, and Hyland are just some of the celebrities who have battled endometriosis - actresses Roselyn Sanchez, Tia Mowry, and Jaime King have also shared their struggles with fans, while Girls creator and star Lena Dunham recently took drastic action and underwent a total hysterectomy in her hopes of overcoming the medical condition.
