Paulini says I’m A Celebrity helped her heal after ‘gold dress’ comments

Paulini has revealed how criticism of a gold dress she wore when she was a contestant on Australian Idol affected her for many years.

It has taken nearly two decades in the public eye for Paulini Curuenavuli to learn to love herself.

Plagued by insecurities and self-doubt since rising to fame as a contestant on the first season of Australian Idol in 2003, it has been a long journey for the now 38-year-old.

“I always thought that I needed to be a certain way, to walk and look a certain way,” she told The Daily Telegraph.

Singer Paulini Curuenavuli in Pyrmont. Picture: Toby Zerna

“Obviously looking a certain way, looking thinner, having straight hair and trying to fit into the mould of what people think you are supposed to look like, those are things I’ve struggled with my whole career.”

Three weeks in the Australian ‘jungle’ on I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here! provided Curuenavuli the time and space she needed to get to this point.

Talking to fellow contestants like Grant Denyer and Toni Pearen helped.

Curuenavuli’s body has been the subject of much commentary since Idol, when judge Ian ‘Dicko’ Dickson questioned her choice of a figure-hugging gold dress in a performance.

At the time, he said: “This is really hard for me to say, but it’s the real world, you should choose more appropriate clothes or shed some pounds. I’m sorry.”

He has since apologised but those words stayed with Curuenavuli for many years.

Singer Paulini Curuenavuli as a contestant on Australian Idol. Judge Ian Dickson criticised the gold dress she was wearing.

“It was always implied,” she said. “Things you see on TV, everything around you says that you have to look a certain way and if you don’t look like that, then you are not quite right. Now I finally realise that me being natural and me being who I am is the best thing ever.”

Curuenavuli’s weight issues were most evident. She would eat just breakfast and starve herself the rest of the day, with the exception of “a couple of lettuce leaves”.

“When touring with the Young Divas, I was hardly eating and working out like crazy,” she recalled. “I may have been between a size eight and 10. I was so unhappy.”

As for her hair, Curuenavuli said she had often felt pressure to look “more European”.

“More caucasian, definitely,” she said. “Because when I looked on TV, every black woman that I’d see had straight hair and was thin and had a nose job or a bit of work done. That is how I wanted to look. When that is all you see on TV and in magazines, you want to become that and you think, ‘if I do look like that, that is going to sell’.”

Paulini on I'm A Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here!

Paulini at the Sydney Opera House. Picture: Christian Gilles

Earlier this week on the reality show, Curuenavuli spoke for the first time about another issue that has hung over her head for the past few years.

On Monday she addressed the “really silly” decision she made to bribe a government official in 2017.

She was given a six-month suspended sentence for unlawfully obtaining a drivers licence after pleading guilty to the offence 14 months after she paid a Roads and Maritime Service (RMS) customer service worker $850 for an unrestricted NSW licence.

“It was just such a shameful thing,” she said. “My family got me through that. I made a stupid mistake and I absolutely regret it.”