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Yesterday we talked about E!’s Giuliana Rancic addressing the criticism that she’s too thin. Giuliana blamed her tiny frame on medication she’s taking to keep her cancer at bay. (She suffered breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy in 2011.) She also claimed that she eats “a very robust, healthy, balanced diet and dessert almost every night” and that she eats “more than any of my friends.” As I mentioned in that story, Giuliana has expressed a preoccupation with diet and fitness in the past. While many people have great sympathy for her as a cancer survivor, it’s hard to accept her explanation for why she can’t gain weight.

People is parceling out more stories with Giuliana because she’s promoting her new memoir, Going Off Script: How I Survived a Crazy Childhood, Cancer, and Clooney’s 32 On-Screen Rejections. (Is she including the tequila incident in those 32 rejections?) In a new article, she discusses her childhood battle with scoliosis and how it left her feeling inadequate, unattractive and preoccupied with her appearance.

The E! personality, 40, reveals in her new book, Going Off Script that for over a decade she suffered from scoliosis, a curvature of the spine that if untreated can lead to permanent deformity.

“The thing about scoliosis is it’s a different kind of ugly for a young girl,” says Rancic, who was diagnosed at 13. “It’s one thing to hate your hair or to have bad skin, but those are things you can hopefully treat. [Scoliosis] is very hard to camouflage and it’s all you think about all day, every minute of the day.”

Because of the severity of her curve, one of Rancic’s hips was inches higher than the other. “I always wore baggy clothes,” she says. “And I trained myself so I always looked like I was leaning on something.”

The memories are still difficult to recall for the mom of Duke, 2, (with husband Bill. “[As a teen] I tried to enter pageants and audition for movies and model, because I think I was hoping someday someone would tell me I was pretty. I just wasn’t. I was crooked.”

Corrective surgery at 21 straightened Rancic’s spine, but left her with a permanent scar and markedly “bony” shoulder blades, which were the focus of a heated weight debate when she wore a strapless dress at the Golden Globes in January.

“That was very hurtful to me because it was the first huge backlash about my weight,” Rancic explains. “And the thing is I’ve lived with my back and the way it looks since I was a little girl. My shoulder blades protrude as a result of scoliosis. Even if I gained 20 pounds, my bones would still look the way they do.”

But despite all the criticism, Rancic sees a positive outcome from her years of heartache. “I was called ugly my entire life but it made me who I am,” she says. “I always tell girls, whatever struggles you go through as a young woman, those are the things that become your power later. Even though it’s painful to think back on, I wouldn’t change a thing. Because everything I went through as a child got me to where I am today.”

[From People]

This story from Giuliana is very similar to what she said yesterday: that her low weight is due to a health problem, that she can’t help it, and that people are being unfair to point out that she looks severely underweight. (Of course I’m paraphrasing.) I feel for her for having gone through scoliosis. That sounds awful, and must have been so difficult to endure during adolescence. It sounds like it affected her self image so negatively during a key time in her youth.

I also think Giuliana is incorrect in claiming that even if she gained 20 pounds, her bones would still look that way. If you look at older pictures of her, that’s not the case. She looks much different in older photos. Maybe she’s just referring to her shoulder bones though. I do hope she’s ok and that she can gain weight to get her health back on track. Yesterday she seemed to indicate that this would be a priority for her.

This is Giuliana in 2009. Note that this was before she started undergoing fertility treatments.

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