Irish singer-songwriter CMAT has expressed her "deep sadness" regarding the relentless body-shaming abuse she received online following her recent performance at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend. According to a report by the BBC, the country-pop musician experienced an incredibly difficult few days after taking the main stage in Sunderland due to toxic online commentary focused entirely on her weight.
Opening up about the abuse in a candid Instagram post, the musician, whose real name is Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, stated that she felt the need to wade in and speak for herself. She noted that it is incredibly tedious to constantly have to address how horribly she is treated because of her physical appearance, but explained that she cannot stop talking about it because the hostility keeps happening at an accelerating and worsening pace as her fame grows.
Thompson emphasized that she does not choose to look or weigh a certain amount as some kind of punk rock act of liberty, but that she simply has a body. The singer added that there is no relief from the vitriol, describing the environments she is placed in as increasingly hostile despite the immense workload demanded of her.
This is not the first time the artist has faced fat-shaming following a festival appearance. In 2024, the BBC was forced to disable social media comments on a video of her performance at Big Weekend in Luton. Following her recent Sunday evening slot in Sunderland, where she performed just before headliner Olivia Dean, Radio 1 once again disabled comments on videos of her set, a protective measure not applied to other artists on the lineup.
Radio 1 issued a statement fully supporting the artist and condemning the toxic commentary, highlighting that her set received an amazing reaction from the live crowd. Thompson reminded the Sunderland audience during her set of the nasty comments from the previous year before launching into her hit track, "Take A Sexy Picture Of Me"—a song directly inspired by the 2024 insults that calls out the extreme and unrealistic beauty standards women face.
