In a personal essay penned for Glamour, LeAnne Rimes shares the details behind her lifelong issue with the skin condition psoriasis, one that at times has led to flare ups that cover 80 percent of her entire body. To illustrate her story, Rimes goes bare in a series of photographs taken by her husband Eddie Cibrian, that reveal the extent of her stress related outbreak.
While Rimes has been vocal in the past about the psoriasis that she’s lived since she was six years old, she says she’s also been able to keep the skin condition at bay for years with an injectable treatment that she eventually phased out over time.
“And then the beginning of this year happened,” she writes. “All hell broke loose in the world—and inside of me, as I’m sure it did for so many other people amid this pandemic. Suddenly I went from doing what I love, and being surrounded by people, to just hanging around the house in sweats. Stress is a common trigger for psoriasis, and with so much uncertainty happening, my flare-ups came right back.” Rimes says she’s been in hiding since.
Going public with these images today to celebrate World Psoriasis Day is something the singer says has been a cathartic experience. “My whole body—my mind, my spirit—needed this desperately. I honestly thought these photos were going to be challenging to look at. It’s one thing to see yourself and judge yourself in the mirror; I thought it would be even harder in a photo, which is why in the past I never let people take pictures of me during flare-ups. Being in our own bodies, we judge ourselves so harshly. But when I look at these photos, I see so much more than my skin.”
