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My heart sank when I saw some of the comments left on an article about Camila Cabello, who was pictured on a boat in Italy wearing a cute little orange string bikini and having what appeared to be a great time on holiday. She shouldn’t have even been pictured, of course – she should be left alone to chill without paparazzi hunting her down in the hopes of getting a bikini snap, but that’s another issue for another time.
One comment read: ‘I just threw up in my mouth’, while another called her ‘hideous’. Unfortunately, they weren’t the only negative remarks; the article has garnered almost three thousand comments, with the majority centring around her appearance.
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The singer’s cellulite was a big topic (because WOW, god forbid a woman, let alone a *celebrity*, has cellulite, right?!), with many seemingly horrified that she dare not have perfectly smooth thighs – ‘Enough cellulite to insulate an average-sized home. Yuck,’ – read one particularly nasty comment. The obsession with the fact that this woman has cellulite is really wild to me because between 80 and 90 per cent of women have cellulite (but less than 10 per cent of men… Convenient?!).
Cellulite is a totally normal part of a woman’s anatomy – it’s also normal if you don’t have it! Both absolutely fine – and something that is totally harmless… It wasn’t even given a word to define it until the 60s, when it became a new way for women to hate their bodies and companies saw a new way to make money (anti-cellulite cream, anyone?). The vast, vast majority of women have cellulite, so, please, can society quit the cries of horror whenever we happen to catch a glimpse?!
The comments made me feel sick to my stomach. Body shaming has NEVER been acceptable, but especially now, in 2022 and with so much knowledge and education around the damage it does to body image and self-esteem, it feels particularly insidious that it’s still happening – and so overtly.