Sinéad O'Connor is accustomed to shocking people. The Irish singer has been a natural-born attention getter since she first gained fame over 20 years ago, when she was as recognizable for her shorn head and fiercely outspoken opinions as she was for her haunting voice and arresting beauty. So when she turned up to perform at Ireland's Bray Music Festival over the weekend, it was inevitable that she'd create an uproar. The latest wild stunt from the woman who once defiantly ripped up a picture of the pope on "Saturday Night Live"? Getting older and gaining weight. The horror! 
 
 Sporting a short dark bob, eyeglasses, a belly-revealing mesh top and a more ample figure than fans remember from her "Nothing Compares 2 U" heyday, the 44-year-old dared to appear, as Inquisitr helpfully noted,"No Longer Bald or Skinny." ABC News asked, "Sinéad O'Connor, Is That You?" and ran the inevitable slide show of celebrity weight-loss ups and downs, while E! crowed that O'Connor went "from looking like Natalie Portman in 'V for Vendetta' to your dorky self in high school" and did its own slide show of "shocking transformations." 
 
 It's not entirely surprising that the image of a bald, white-clad waif would be so indelible in the public mind. O'Connor has lived largely out of the spotlight for several years now, and has not released any new music since 2005. Even her own website is conspicuously riddled with photos of her more familiar doe-eyed and pixie-ish image. Yet the Internet outpouring of astonishment mixed with glee over her changed appearance has been the truly unpleasant sight in all of this. On People.com alone, there are hundreds of comments -- many on the theme of what a "shameless blimpo" "pig" she's become, and many others flat out refusing to believe that the photographs are truly of O'Connor. 
 
 Anyone who is old enough to have had a moment of disbelief regarding the Facebook friend request of a long-lost pal knows that time does not march equally over everyone. The changes we barely notice on the people we're around all the time don't register as dramatically as those on the faces and bodies of those we don't see regularly. The urge to contrast then and now, to check off either the "still got it" or "let themselves go" boxes in our minds is powerful. It's the subtext that drives high school reunions and the Googling of ex-lovers, the reason former Clash guitarist Mick Jones once musically bragged that among his accomplishments, "Somehow I stayed thin while the other guys got fat." And for the legions of detractors O'Connor has amassed over her outspoken career, perhaps there's a strange satisfaction in seeing evidence that she's no longer the head-turner who could rock a chrome-dome and still be gorgeous. Bet you're not so high and mighty now, missy! 
 
 Yet as Carrie Fisher recently remarked of her long-ago golden bikini heyday, "I swear when I was shooting those films I never realized I was signing an invisible contract to stay looking the exact same way for the rest of my existence." So Sinéad is likewise no longer the woman she was in 1990. And yes, big shoulder pads and see-through tops are a sartorial misstep on almost everyone. But is any of that really a cause for such a conspicuous outpouring of schadenfreude? O'Connor is now a mother of four who has been open about her struggles with bipolar disorder. In 2007, she told Oprah Winfrey, "I actually kind of died and got born again as a result of taking the meds." And as some of O'Connor's more charitable online defenders have noted, many of the medications used to treat bipolarism also cause weight gain. 
 
 "Shocking" though O'Connor may continue to be to others, the singer, who claims she "really enjoyed" her recent Bray set, seems to have in recent years become far less scandalous to herself. In 2008, she genially told an Australian newspaper, "I am not a pop star as I was ... so I am not having to deal with that kind of attention. Then I was young and now I am old and ugly and a bit fat ... I'm entitled to have a belly." She's also entitled to change her hairstyle, haters. 
 
 As it happens, this morning on the way to a doctor's appointment, I passed by a neighbor I hadn't seen in a while. I almost didn't recognize her, because she too has transformed of late. She was thinner and paler, and on her head she wore the telltale headscarf of a woman going through chemo. So in case anybody out there needs a reminder, here it is: To be able to grow older is a gift. To be on medication that can save your life is a blessing. A little thickening around the middle seems like a small price to pay. Though much has changed in the more than two decades since Sinéad O'Connor was that volatile, beautiful rock star, many things have improved with time. The once-suicidal girl now admits that "It doesn't matter if things aren't perfect." And tempered by life and experience, that clear, achingly lovely voice has only become more poignantly astonishing. ||||| Annie Lennox has called for support for Sinead O’Connor after the singer posted a video revealing she has wanted to kill herself for the past two years. 
 
 Fears have grown for the Irish songwriter since she posted a 12-minute video on her Facebook page tearfully explaining she has been “fighting for her life” and living in a Travelodge motel in New Jersey. 
 
 O’Connor, who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, said she had felt alone since losing custody of her 13-year-old son and revealed she is suffering from three mental illnesses but has been left isolated. 
 
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 The 50-year-old, who had a worldwide hit with “Nothing Compares 2 U” in 1990, said her doctor and psychiatrist were the only thing “keeping her alive”. 
 
 Fellow singer Lennox said she had been distressed by O’Connor’s video and questioned why the singer did not have close friends or family to help her when she was in such a difficult vulnerable position. 
 
 “I just watched this truly distressing call for help by Sinead O'Connor, from a motel room in New Jersey, where she says there's no one there to help her, with the exception of a psychiatrist and a doctor,” the Scottish four-time Grammy-winning artist said in a post on her Facebook page. 
 
 “I realise that Sinead has some serious mental health issues, but she appears to be completely out on a limb and I'm concerned for her safety,” she continued. 
 
 “Are there no close friends or family who could be with her to give her some loving support? It's terrible to see her in such a vulnerable state.” 
 
 O'Connor, who lost her mother when she was just 19, said: 
 
 “I’m fighting and fighting and fighting like all the millions of people. 
 
 “If it was just for me I’d be gone. Straight away back to my mum ... because I’ve walked this earth alone for two years now as punishment for being mentally f**king ill and getting angry that no one would f***ing take care of me.” 
 
 The singer, who has been married four times, is mother to four children from four different relationships and became a grandma for the first time in 2015. After the singer lost custody of her youngest child, she made suicide threats, telling Ireland’s Child and Family Agency they would have “a dead celebrity on their hands” if they refused to overturn their decision. 
 
 “I’m all by myself, there’s absolutely nobody in my life,” she told viewers. “I’m now living in a Travelodge motel in the arse-end of New Jersey. 
 
 “[No one] except my doctor, my psychiatrist – who is the sweetest man on earth who says I’m his hero – and that’s about the only f**king thing keeping me alive at the moment. The fact that I’m his bloody hero ... and that’s kind of pathetic.” 
 
 O'Connor said she had spent the last two years “wandering the world alone”. 
 
 “If it was just for me I'd be gone. Straight away back to my mum... because I've walked this earth alone for two years now as punishment for being mentally f****** ill and getting angry that no one would f****** take care of me,” she said. 
 
 “I'm a 5ft 4in little f****** woman wandering the world for two years by myself.” 
 
 The musician, who has recorded ten solo albums, has opened up about her struggles with suicidal thoughts in the past and has posted distressing videos on Facebook. In 2007 she told Oprah Winfrey she had been diagnosed with bipolar and tried to kill herself on her 33rd birthday. 
 
 In her recent video, she said she hoped that opening up about her mental health problems would help others in similarly vulnerable positions. She said she planned to get through and survive her latest crisis. 
 
 “I hope that this video is somehow helpful,” she said. “I know that I’m just one of millions and millions of people in the world that suffer like I do that don’t necessarily have the resources that I have.” 
 
 O’Connor sparked a police investigation and desperate search last June after she disappeared from a suburb of Chicago after going on a bike ride with friends. Alarm bells were raised about her well-being but she was found safe in the end. 
 
 For confidential support on mental health call the Samaritans on 116 123, email jo@samaritans.org or attend a local Samaritans branch.
– Catch those new photos of Sinead O'Connor performing in Ireland? (See the video in the gallery at left for a sample.) She is, gasp, no longer the slim, bald 20-something who captivated fans, and the Internet has not been kind in pointing this out. Lay off, write Mimi Turner at the Hollywood Reporter and Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon. O'Connor, now 44 and the mother of four, "has always turned her back on the conventions of beauty that are apparently necessary for media acceptance," writes Turner. "The prickly distaste that she still manifests for a prototypical feminine style seems remarkably unchanged from the attitudes she held in her youth." O'Connor also has battled bipolar disorder for years, and the antidepressants she takes can cause weight gain. "To be able to grow older is a gift," writes Williams. "To be on medication that can save your life is a blessing. A little thickening around the middle seems like a small price to pay." Besides, O'Connor still has that amazing gift that made her a once-in-a-generation talent: "Tempered by life and experience, that clear, achingly lovely voice has only become more poignantly astonishing," writes Williams.