CMAT Responds to Body-Shaming Following BBC Radio 1 Big Weekend
The Irish singer-songwriter CMAT has publicly addressed the ongoing abuse she has faced regarding her body and weight after her recent performance at BBC’s Big Weekend festival.
Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, known professionally as CMAT, took to social media on Thursday to express her feelings after discovering the negative comments directed at photos of her on stage at the Sunderland event on 24 May.
“It is literally so boring for me, a gorgeous genius, to keep having to yap on about how horribly I am treated because of my body,”
she wrote.
“I would love to stop but I cannot because it keeps happening, at an accelerating and worsening pace as I become more famous.”
CMAT shared screenshots from a Substack essay authored by a music fan known as Front Row Feels, which she said
“summed up a lot of what is causing my deep sadness.”
The essay highlighted the contrasting treatment of CMAT compared to fellow Big Weekend performers Zara Larsson and Olivia Dean, noting that the latter artists did not face similar levels of online abuse.
“What struck me most while scrolling through those toxic comment sections was the glaring disparity in how different women on that same lineup were treated,”Front Row Feels wrote, adding that Larsson and Dean
“were granted a level of grace and basic humanity that was completely denied to CMAT.”
CMAT addressed comments from well-meaning individuals clarifying that her body size is not a matter of choice.
“I am not being defiant. I am not choosing to look like this or weigh this much as some kind of punk rock act of liberty. I simply have a body, one that I would of course like to change in order to fit in and avoid all of this abuse, but I have had extreme difficulty in doing so. I don’t get a say in whether or not I want to be brave, I simply have to sit here and take it.”
She expressed gratitude for her success but acknowledged the toll the abuse has taken.
“There is no relief from this – nobody can protect me or save me from this, and all that is demanded of me is more and more work as every environment I am placed in becomes more hostile,”she wrote.
“It is increasingly becoming tarnished by the fact that I would be allowed to enjoy it so much more if I was thin.”
Last year, CMAT released a song that criticized the intense scrutiny women face regarding their bodies and appearance.
Currently, she is on tour, including a sold-out headline show in Dublin scheduled for Saturday.
