If there’s one thing to take from Gemma Collins’ documentary series, it’s that Gemma Collins is a completely different entity to “The GC”. The latter is the public-facing version of the Essex reality star, who came up from the world of The Only Way Is Essex over a decade ago to become a household name and the star of countless reaction memes. But it is Collins who is the subject of this four-part project: sensitive, softly spoken and fiercely protective of her loved ones. Although it’s refreshing to be introduced to someone unfamiliar, it’s Collins’s inability to fully address her past that prevents the film from reaching its potential.
In Gemma Collins: Self-Harm and Me, she begins a journey of acknowledging and understanding her 20-year habit of cutting her wrists in times of overwhelming stress. Though she hasn’t self-harmed with cutting since her early thirties (she’s now 41), Collins wants to ensure the tendencies don’t return as she prepares to start a family with fiancé Rami Hawash. The very first scene offers a shocking description of her first memory of hurting herself in this way, and it’s genuinely alarming. Yet she wants everyone to know that it’s not a celebrity sob story: “Do not get the violins out for me,” she caveats.
Vulnerability isn’t something that comes easily to Collins, and in many ways, putting on a strong front is probably what’s kept her (and The GC) in the industry for so long. Another scene reveals some of the hurtful remarks directed her way after the documentary was announced. One article commenter accused her of attention seeking, while another cruelly wondered: “Is being a big fat glutton self-harming?” Collins’s response? She shakes her head with a smile and shrugs: “People are weird, aren’t they? [It] don’t bother me.”
Though this “sticks and stones” mentality is admirable, this reflex of making sure nothing penetrates her smiling exterior proves a recurring issue in her life: she brushes off her fiancé’s declarations of love and rubbishes the idea that her parents were unsupportive of her issues when she was younger. Occasionally, she speaks about the self-harm as if it weren’t something to do with her at all. At times, this sense of detachment is frustrating: if Collins shies away from going beneath the surface, there’s only so much this project can explore – and, more than making the documentary feel more fulfilling, you want Collins to engage with the roots of her issues so that she can heal for herself.
Despite her plea for viewers not to feel sorry for her, it’s inevitable when you glean where the impulse to perform through the pain originates. Though proud of how her daughter has made a living through her confidence and charisma, Gemma’s mum Joan refuses to accept that Gemma’s cutting, at least in part, was a result of stress and pressure to be happy as a child, even when she wasn’t. “The problem is with you – it wouldn’t be from your home life,” Joan reasons. “You had everything; you were happy.” Since her own mother is in denial about the real hurt Gemma faced, it’s understandable that she’s unable to engage with it herself.
In some ways, the fact that Gemma’s working this out as the programme goes along is useful proof of how long it can take for emotional wounds to heal. There are hints of a breakthrough when she speaks to someone at a self-harm help centre who has recovered from cutting, as she’s encouraged that she won’t relapse in the future. It gives viewers hope that the next episodes will result in Gemma getting the closure she needs, or at least coming closer to it. It’s true: recovery for an issue that’s plagued half her life might not be succinctly wrapped up in four hours of TV. But for all the necessary awareness that she aims to bring to the issue, the documentary can’t go deeper than she is willing to go herself.
If you have been affected by this article, you can contact the following organisations for support: actiononaddiction.org.uk, mind.org.uk, nhs.uk/livewell/mentalhealth, mentalhealth.org.uk
