CMAT calls out body shamers following BBC Radio 1 Big Weekend set

CMAT performed during Radio 1's Big Weekend at Herrington Country Park in Sunderland on May 24. (Katja Ogrin/Redferns/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

Irish musician CMAT has shared her “deep sadness” about being body shamed after a live appearance last weekend.

The singer-songwriter, whose real name is Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, has said there is “no relief” from how she is treated online because of her body shape and that she has had a “difficult” few days following her appearance at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Sunderland, northern England, on Sunday.

In post she shared on Instagram on Thursday, she said she’d deleted social media apps Instagram, TikTok and X from her phone “for the preservation of my mental health,” but now feels “compelled to wade in and speak for myself.”

“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.

She said she would “love to stop” but cannot as the abuse continues “at an accelerating and worsening pace” as she becomes more famous.

CMAT shared screen grabs of a post written by a fan of hers called Front Row Feels, which the singer said “summed up a lot of what is causing my deep sadness.”

CMAT released a song called “Take a Sexy Picture of Me” last year in which she called out the criticism women face over their appearances.

The blogger behind Front Row Feels wrote of CMAT’s performance: “She wrote the song about the cruelty. She explained the cruelty. She stood on stage singing directly about the cruelty. And the machine just kept going anyway.”

The anonymous writer described the “glaring disparity” in how social media users responded to other female artists such as Olivia Dean and Zara Larsson who also both performed in Sunderland.

“Their comment sections were not warzones,” the writer said. “They were granted a level of grace and basic humanity that was completely denied to CMAT.”

CMAT said on Instagram that, contrary to what some “very well-meaning people” might think, her appearance is not a result of her “being defiant.”

“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 dont get a say in whether or not i want to be brave, i simply have to sit here and take it,” she said.

CMAT added that she is “very very happy and grateful” for her job but that her “success is increasingly becoming tarnished by the fact that i would be allowed to enjoy it so much more if i was thin.”

The post has been liked more than 60,000 times. Among those to respond was BBC radio presenter Lauren Laverne, who said: “Sometimes it feels like so little has changed in the past 20 years. It’s infuriating. You are brave - not because of anything to do with how you look, but for how you use your voice.”

Meanwhile, singer Sophie Ellis Bextor commented that she hadn’t realized “how little things have changed.” She added: “You are blazing a brilliant trail and young girls (and old women like me) look to you as someone being brilliant and completely true to themselves).”

By Lianne Kolirin, CNN