CMAT Shares ‘Deep Sadness’ Over Body-Shaming Comments Following BBC Radio 1 Big Weekend Performance: ‘I Simply Have to Sit Here and Take It’

Irish star CMAT has shared a statement responding to misogynistic body-shaming comments following a performance at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend.

Writing on Instagram on Thursday (May 28) the musician, born Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, said she felt “compelled to wade in and speak for myself” following the abuse posted about her weight and body following a performance at the festival in Sunderland, England on Sunday (May 24).

“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.”

She added that she is “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.”

In her statement, she shared screengrabs from a Substack essay from Front Row Feels which “summed up a lot of what is causing my deep sadness.” CMAT also wrote that she had deleted much of her access to social media following ongoing abuse; in 2024, the BBC closed comments on a performance clip by CMAT at the Big Weekend event in Luton following similar abuse. 

She concluded, “With all that being said, I am at the same time very very happy and grateful every day to have the job that I have. the feeling of seeing all your dreams come true after so many years of constant grinding towards them….. chefs kiss. but the success is increasingly becoming tarnished by the fact that I would be allowed to enjoy it so much more if I was thin.”

A number of stars including Olivia Dean – who performed after CMAT at the event – showed support on the Instagram post. Brandi Carlile commented, “Been a while since I was in a bar fight but I’d have one over CMAT.”

“Take A Sexy Picture of Me,” a song from her third album Euro-Country touched on the subject of body image; the LP won the best album prize at last week’s Ivor Novello Awards (May 21).