CMAT shares ‘deep sadness’ over body-shaming after BBC Radio 1 Big Weekend performance | CMAT
Irish singer-songwriter CMAT has responded to the abuse she has received about her body and weight after appearing on BBC’s Radio 1 Big Weekend program last week.
The musician, whose real name is Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, wrote: instagram On Thursday, she said she felt “forced to come in and speak for myself” after learning of the abuse directed at photos of her on stage at the Sunderland festival on May 24.
“It’s really boring for me, an amazing genius, to babble about how badly I’m treated because of my body,” she wrote. “I would love to stop but I can’t because it just keeps happening at a rate that gets faster and worse as I get more famous.”
CMAT shared screenshots of a passing music fan’s Substack post Front Row FeelingThis “summed up much of what caused my deep sadness,” he wrote.
The article compared her CMAT treatment to Big Weekend performers Zara Larsson and Olivia Dean, who did not appear to face the same level of harassment online.
Front Row Feels wrote: “What struck me most as I scrolled through these toxic comment sections was the glaring disparity between how different women in the same cast were treated,” adding that Larsson and Dean were “given a level of grace and basic humanity that CMAT completely rejects.”
CMAT pointed out to “well-intentioned” commenters that body size is not a choice: “I’m not a challenger. I don’t choose to look like this or be this heavy as some kind of punk rock act of freedom. I only have one body, of course I’d like to change it to fit in and avoid all this abuse, but I’ve had extreme difficulty doing so. I don’t have a say in whether I want to be brave, I just have to sit here and accept it.”
Although he was grateful for his success, he said he was “increasingly dimmed by the fact that I would have been allowed to enjoy it so much more if I had been thinner.”
“There is no escape from this; no one can protect or save me from it, and as each environment I am in becomes more hostile, all that is required of me is to work harder,” he wrote.
Last year the singer-songwriter released Take a Sexy Picture of MeShe criticized the scrutiny women faced on their bodies and appearance.
He is currently touring his third album, Euro-Country, including a sold-out headline show in Dublin on Saturday.
