{"id":508436,"date":"2026-05-29T09:39:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T09:39:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/508436\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T09:39:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T09:39:22","slug":"cmat-shares-deep-sadness-over-body-shaming-after-bbc-radio-1-big-weekend-performance-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/508436\/","title":{"rendered":"CMAT shares \u2018deep sadness\u2019 over body-shaming after BBC Radio 1 Big Weekend performance \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Singer-songwriter CMAT<\/a> has responded to ongoing abuse she has received about her body and her weight following an appearance last week at BBC\u2019s<\/a> Radio 1 Big Weekend.<\/p>\n

The musician, whose real name is Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, wrote on Instagram on Thursday that she had felt \u201ccompelled to wade in and speak for myself\u201d after learning of the abuse being directed at photos taken of her on stage at the Sunderland festival on May 24th.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt 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,\u201d she wrote. \u201cI would love to stop but I cannot because it keeps happening, at an accelerating and worsening pace as I become more famous.\u201d<\/p>\n

CMAT shared screengrabs of a Substack essay by a music fan going by Front Row Feels, which \u201csummed up a lot of what is causing my deep sadness,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

The essay compared the treatment of CMAT with fellow Big Weekend acts Zara Larsson and Olivia Dean<\/a>, who didn\u2019t appear to be subjected to the same level of abuse online.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat struck me most while scrolling through those toxic comment sections was the glaring disparity in how different women on that same lineup were treated,\u201d Front Row Feels wrote, adding that Larsson and Dean \u201cwere granted a level of grace and basic humanity that was completely denied to CMAT\u201d.<\/p>\n

CMAT pointed out to \u201cwell-meaning\u201d commenters that her body size was not a choice: \u201cI 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\u2019t get a say in whether or not I want to be brave, I simply have to sit here and take it.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said that though she was grateful for her success, it is \u201cincreasingly becoming tarnished by the fact that I would be allowed to enjoy it so much more if I was thin\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"CMAT:CMAT: ‘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.’ Photo: Joseph Okpako\/WireImage <\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no relief from this \u2013 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,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

Last year, the singer-songwriter released Take a Sexy Picture of Me, which criticised the scrutiny women face on their bodies and appearance.<\/p>\n

She is now touring her third album Euro-Country, including a sold-out headline show in Dublin on Saturday. – The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Singer-songwriter CMAT has responded to ongoing abuse she has received about her body and her weight following an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507737,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[268],"tags":[3412,434,14867,52,18,117,19,17],"class_list":["post-508436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-bbc","tag-celebrities","tag-cmat","tag-dublin","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116657204432214557","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}