Rihanna is the latest female celebrity to be body-shamed: Here's why it needs to stop

Another day another celebrity being body-shamed. This time it was the turn of pop superstar Rihanna.

ICYMI blogger Chris Spags wrote a controversial post questioning Rihanna’s weight after photos of her looking pretty fierce in an off-the-shoulder shirt surfaced in New York over Memorial Day weekend.

The post, titled “Is Rihanna Going To Make Being Fat The Hot New Trend?” was published to Barstool Sports on Tuesday and gems from the unpleasant extract include accusing the singer of “rocking some new high key thickness” and claiming it is “time to worry if you’re not a guy who fancies himself a chubby chaser.” Nice.

But sadly this isn’t a one-off and Rihanna isn’t the only one to have been on the receiving end of some really quite unacceptable body-shaming of late.

Early this year, Lady Gaga was taken to task for her Superbowl performance in which she strutted her stuff on stage in some skimpy, glittery hotpants. Her body crime? Showing off the teeniest (need-a-magnifying-glass-to-spot-it) belly paunch. Seriously, it was so tiny, it feels wrong even describing it a paunch, but it didn’t stop the fat shamers of the Internet letting her have it.

“Tried to enjoy ‪@ladygaga’s performance, was distracted by the flab on her stomach swinging around,” one pleasant person tweeted.

“Lady Gaga needs to work on her abs, all I can look at is her belly flop around,” added another.

Kim Kardashian hasn’t escaped the body-shaming baton either. Earlier this year pictures of her unairbrushed but still bootilicious bottom almost broke the Internet and sparked a tirade of hurtful bum-bashing comments.

And women aren’t just being shamed for their curves, female celebrities are also being skinny-scrutinised too. Just this week Lily James opened up about the criticism she faced in the media about her weight.

The actress said that when she when she was promoting Cinderella, the press were calling her out for being what they deemed to be ‘too thin’.

“The press were saying I was a bad role model but I have always been healthy,” she told GQ. “I eat! I do have a tiny waist and quite big hips so it looks in proportion, you know? I have an hourglass shape.”

Likewise, Modern Family actress Sarah Hyland was forced to hit back at body-shaming trolls online by penning a dignified eight-page letter about her health.

Sick and tired of being told she is ‘too skinny’ and should ‘eat a burger’ or her head is ‘too big’ for her body, the 26-year-old actress decided to open up about her ‘tough year’ and, in turn, silence the thin-shamers.

In a two-part essay posted to Twitter, Sarah said that she’d had a difficult year that has caused physical changes to her body.

The star – who underwent a kidney transplant in 2012 – alluded to having experienced more health issues and explained that she’s been on bed rest, unable to exercise and losing muscle mass. She also added that she is “not in control” of how she looks.

It was a poignant and dignified response, but the fact that it was even necessary was an issue in itself because women’s bodies shouldn’t be up for discussion in the first place.

No one’s body should be but the fact is that aside from a few high profile examples like Wentworth Miller, this type of body speculation is almost exclusively reserved for female celebrities. And it needs to stop!

Blog posts like the one written about Rihanna, only perpetuate unrealistic beauty standards which suggests that anything less than perfect is unacceptable. What’s more, that can only have a detrimental affect on how women see themselves and their bodies.

A recent survey conducted by Yahoo! Health revealed that “it takes women half their lives to achieve half the level of body self esteem as the average teenage male.”

So by the time women are fully grown up, they will still only feel half as much body-love as a teenage boy! Not quite self confidence and self-love we want for our daughters is it?

And that’s not the only worrying statistic all this body-shaming is likely fuelling. A further survey revealed that by the age of 10, a third of all children surveyed in a UK primary school said their body was their number one worry. Their number one worry! Not exams, not friendships, the way their body looks.

Oh and if you were wondering the average age children begin dieting? The answer is an equally horrifying 10 years old. Unbelievable.

The body-shaming of female celebrities has to own up to playing a huge role in this lack of body confidence our daughters are feeling. Placing so much emphasis on the body and scrutinising female celebrities weight is leading to increased body dissatisfaction among women and we have to do something about it.

In the end the post attacking Rihanna’s body was taken down after it was slammed by her fans on social media. The site’s founder issued what some have referred to as a ‘non apology’, which focused more on the writer’s lame jokes than the fact he was criticising someone’s weight.

“To be honest I don’t think the blog was as bad as many are making it out to be, but I’ll tell you this,” the founder of Barstool wrote. “It wasn’t that funny either and I could have told you with absolute certainty that feminists would hate it …”

The fact is that both he, and the blog’s author’s seem to be missing a very important point. If you’re questioning why someone may or may not have put on weight, you’re fundamentally saying that putting on weight is a problem. And that is body shaming, plain and simple!

Though Rihanna has yet to respond personally to the shaming, some of her fellow female celebrities who have also found themselves on the end of body scrutiny have some pretty on point responses to their own shaming incidents. And that’s certainly one way to call-out the shamers.

RiRi’s fans, however, have decided to speak out on her behalf and are using #Thickanna to prove that there’s nothing wrong with gaining weight, and in fact it is often something to be praised particularly in African, African-American and Latin cultures where ‘thickness’ has always been celebrated.

So while the very fact that the blog was written proves that body shaming is a real issue, particularly for women, around the world, the response of Rihanna’s fans give us hope that one day fat and skinny shaming will continued to be called out for the damaging demon that it is and that one day women’s bodies will be of no concern to anyone other than themselves.

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