Little Mix are too intimidating for men to sexually harass them, the group’s Jesy Nelson has said.
The pop quartet, who rose to fame when they won The X Factor in 2011, told of how they have not faced any of their own #MeToo moments of sexual misconduct across their seven-year career.
Nelson told The Times Magazine men are “too scared” and “intimidated by us”.
Her bandmate Jade Thirlwall, 25, added: “When we walk in a room, we’re a force to be reckoned with.
What an honour! Thank you @TimesMagazine for having us 📰 Make sure you pick up your copy tomorrow!! #LM5 the girls x pic.twitter.com/kUGjAURBXV
— Little Mix (@LittleMix) November 16, 2018
“We exude so much power, nobody would even try it.”
The group, made up of Nelson, Thirlwall, Perrie Edwards, 25, and Leigh-Anne Pinnock, 27, also said they struggled after first finding fame and were not prepared for it after The X Factor.
Nelson, 27, said: “They don’t prepare you at all. When we shared a room in the early days, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as online articles.
“A friend texted me: ‘Have you seen what someone is saying about you?’ Then I read horrific things about me that nobody had ever said to my face. It’s awful, because you feel insecure at that age anyway.
“We were lucky to be in a group, if we had gone through all of that on our own we would be f*****.”
She added: “I completely get why people start self-harming. There’s so much pressure.”
Speaking of the first day after winning The X Factor, Edwards said: “You literally don’t have a moment to take it in.
“We went back to the hotel and I said to Jade ‘I don’t know if I want to do this’. I had just seen me mam and I felt really young, I didn’t feel I should be taken away from her.
“I started to panic. And everyone was going at me ‘well, it’s a bit late now’.”
The #STRIP video is out now! This is so special to us, from the amazing women we worked with, to the message of the song. It’s EVERYTHING we wanted LM5 to represent! Thank you @rankinphoto, @youtubemusic for helping bring our vision to life 📸 the girls xhttps://t.co/MgCsxcmHaA pic.twitter.com/L99J1NGYMb
— Little Mix (@LittleMix) November 16, 2018
Pinnock added: “We always say we still feel like children because we never made it to uni.”
Little Mix have just released their fifth album, LM5, along with a new music video for their song Strip.
The body-positive video sees the foursome celebrate different body types as they sing: “Jiggle all this weight, yeah you know I love all of this.”
The clip, which shows them with words including “ugly”, “slutty”, “weak” and “stupid” scrawled over their bodies, has been widely praised by fans and has been viewed more than 1.6 million times in less than 24 hours.