Kelly Clarkson, the Role Model Next Door

So they said ...

Arun Nevader/WireImage

Kelly Clarkson performing in May.

THE other night, Danielle Travali, 25, was listening to Kelly Clarkson’s new album, “Stronger.” Ms. Travali has fought her brigade of demons and then some, describing herself as an eating-disorders survivor.

“I am not a schmaltzy type,” said Ms. Travali, who edits an online women’s magazine in Fairfield, Conn., during a phone interview. But as Ms. Clarkson sang “The War Is Over,” she said, “tears were rolling down my face. As someone who has struggled with low self-esteem and body image, I have such a strong appreciation for powerful women who sing their truth. Kelly’s songs are not just about failed relationships with others, but failed relationships with ourselves. Boom! I’m learning here: What did I do to hurt me?”

For a decade, Ms. Clarkson has been belting power-pop hits like “I Do Not Hook Up” and “Since U Been Gone,” and dismissing withering criticism of her weight. As a result, her fans have built a distinctive relationship with her: less that of conventional adulation than of identification and admiration.

“You get a sense that she’s one of us,” Ms. Travali said.

That connection has been reinforced by “Stronger,” released last week, which the singer describes as her own journey of empowerment, addressed directly to fans. On one song, “You Can’t Win,” Ms. Clarkson, 29, sings, “If you’re thin/Poor little walking disease/If you’re not/They’re all screaming obese/If you’re straight/Why aren’t you married yet?/If you’re gay/Why aren’t you waving a flag?”

The bond was apparent Thursday, at a Manhattan taping of “VH1 Unplugged: Kelly Clarkson,” which has its premiere Nov. 18. Ms. Clarkson’s appeal reached across generations of women.

Linda Scott, 52, who traveled with her husband from Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, said that her daughter, 24, was also a passionate fan. Celebrating joint birthdays at the taping were Jolie Rosen, 14, and her mother, Cynthia Kroning (who gave her age as “old enough to be her mother”) of Norwood, N.J.

“Kelly’s not afraid to discuss anything,” said Mrs. Kroning, a fan by dint of driving teenage girls around with the car radio blasting. Referring to a cut on “Stronger,” she added, “ ‘What Doesn’t Kill You (Stronger),’ should be an anthem.”

At the taping, Ms. Clarkson’s genial unflappability came across from the get-go. Finishing a bluesy cover of Carrie Underwood’s “I Know You Won’t,” she glanced down at her red body-hugging sheath dress. She laughed and tugged at the top.

“Oh, my God!” Had she been spilling out of her dress the whole time? she asked.

That poise has gotten her through years of sometimes-harsh jabs. On the video for her first single, “Mr. Know It All,” Ms. Clarkson looks skeptically at a wall papered with news clippings that have sniped at her weight, challenged her sexuality and ridiculed her rebellion against music-label executives. Then she tears an opening through her paper wall of shame and jauntily steps into a sun-soaked landscape.

At the taping, she stepped into a powerful “Mr. Know It All,” mother-and-daughter fans bobbing and lip-syncing. Afterward, Ms. Clarkson shook her head, abashed.

“I flubbed the lyrics, damn it,” she said. “And I knew it when I was doing it, too. So why didn’t I just stop? It’s just like my relationships!”

The makeup people dabbed at her face. As they turned away, Ms. Clarkson wiped her lips, mouthing to the audience, “Too much!”

In an interview, Courtney E. Martin, author of “Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters,” said, “There’s so much talk about Taylor Swift being the girl next door” — the role played by the singer in her video for “You Belong With Me”— “but she’s tall and blond, the girl that the girl next door wants to be. But with Kelly, you sense that she really is the girl next door. She acknowledges more complexity than most stars talk about.

“For any woman to not only own her body size at an average woman’s weight is amazing, let alone to own weight gain without shaming and stigmatizing it publicly. It’s a difficult line to walk because Kelly’s private. She doesn’t want to be known as the fat activist pop star. That’s not her mantle.”