CMAT shares ‘deep sadness’ over body-shaming after BBC Radio 1 Big Weekend performance

The Irish singer-songwriter CMAT has responded to ongoing abuse she has received about her body and her weight following an appearance last week at BBC’s Radio 1 Big Weekend. The musician, whose real name is Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, wrote on Instagram on Thursday that she had felt “compelled to wade in and speak for myself” after learning of the abuse being directed at photos taken of her on stage at the Sunderland festival 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 screengrabs of a Substack essay by a music fan going by Front Row Feels , which “summed up a lot of what is causing my deep sadness,” she wrote. The essay compared the treatment of CMAT with fellow Big Weekend acts Zara Larsson and Olivia Dean, who didn’t appear to be subjected to the same level of abuse online. “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 pointed out to “well-meaning” commenters that her body size was not a choice: “I am not being defiant. …