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 things that get reported upon.
CMAT pointed out to “well-meaning” commenters that her body size was not a choice: “I am 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.”
She said that though she was grateful for her success, it is “increasingly becoming tarnished by the fact that I would be allowed to enjoy it so much more if I was thin”.
The Guardian – you know, national newspaper – is running a story on how big girl says it’s unfair how she gets called a big girl.
Ho Hum.
Modest too:
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,
“I am not choosing to look like this or weigh this much …”
Are you doing anything to change it?
Perhaps she should take a lead from those US ‘pop stars’, who, after telling us for so long just how beautiful and happy they were when obese, are now proud to tell us how much more beautiful and happy they are after going on Wegovy or Monjaro and losing a shitload of weight.
She can’t wear a dress or she’d look like a circus tent.
Lizzo and that Aussie bird Rebel Thingy, not to mention Adele did something about it.
Wait! Are we sujre it’s in the Graun and not some deepfake AI? There’s no mention of Climate Change or 14 years of Tory calorie boosting…
If obesity is a perfectly valid lifestyle choice, why do the prods and killjoys call it a pandemic?
Oddly it’s with an artist who campaigns for Free Palestine, trans rights, abolish the Met Police, ban private schools, and take Churchill off the five pound note… So the Gruaniad really missed a trick.
https://www.hotpress.com/music/12-interviews-of-xmas-cmat-on-the-church-sinead-oconnor-transphobia-irishness-and-crazymad-for-me-23000100
https://www.timeout.com/london/music/cmat-2025-interview
“The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. […] Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”
It’s nobody else’s business. The world is too full of prodnoses keen to tell other people how to live their own lives.
Fatty O’Bingowings wants to make it your business. This is a very performative and shopworn virtue-crying routine whereby a crap celeb with obnoxious politics plays the victim and demands that you agree she is stunning and brave.
It’s all so tiresome.
+ 1000!
If you’re talking about CMAT, I understand the reason for the article was that when the festival footage was streamed, the BBC had to turn the comments section off because everyone was talking about how fat she was instead of the music. Journalists asked her what she thought of that, and she told them.
While it’s true that she follows some very obnoxious politics (the young and arty follow the fashions and play to their audience – I don’t think she understands much about what it’s about), the interviews give the impression of someone who doesn’t care and doesn’t take anything seriously and just wants to play music and have a laugh.
Society puts pressure on you to look and act a certain way. She’s aware of what you think, and like most people would like to change just to fit in, but has found it hard, and isn’t going to. So mostly she’s taking the opportunity to tell all the prodnoses who think it’s their job to advise her on her appearance and think slimming is easy to fuck off. But she doesn’t want to claim any victimhood points for her bravery or her norm-breaking rebelliousness against the ‘thinocracy’. She just wants a successful music career, happens to be the ‘wrong’ shape for it, and thinks it’s unfortunate that along the way she has to put up with obnoxious people being obnoxious about stuff that’s none of their business instead of listening to the music.
I’d never heard of her before this, and the music is not much to my taste, but she sounds like fun.
I’d never heard of her so I went and looked up some photos. Fortunately Mrs Ltw doesn’t check my browsing history 🙂
On the chunky side, maybe, but cute with it and with nice tits. She’s very far from obese. Tell people who criticise to fuck off and get on with your life.
Tats again. 🙁
Which is a shame.
She scrubs up wekl, but some outfits are bloody awful.
Surprised you rate the tats as a bigger problem than the jewels-on-the-teeth look.
I’m a bit agnostic on tats. They don’t do anything for me, but unless they’re ridiculously ostentatious they don’t bother me either.
The angle of the dangle depends upon the heat of the meat. In my distant youth I worked with a smallish bloke who was into big chicks, big-time. Naturally his behind-his-back name in the office was Porky. (He fucked pigs.)
What’s the complaint here? It is the Radio 1 Big Weekend after all.
Take her fork.
CMAT pointed out to “well-meaning” commenters that her body size was not a choice
Yes it is you fat cow. People who can’t control their body size rack disciprine, which is a failure on their part.
It’s got nothing to do with your Vorsprung durch Technik, you know.
That’s what a lot of people still believe.
But after Covid, (and stomach ulcers, and infection control, and colds being caused by cold weather, and leeches, and bloodletting, and tooth worms, and phrenology, and lobotomies, and wandering wombs before it) why are we still taking the doctors’ word for it, eh?
Non sequitur.
Eat zero calories a day, and you will lose weight.
Take her spoon, too.
If you eat less, you lose body fat. Especially if you stay away from sugar and carb snacks.
For a while. Then the metabolism adjusts to compensate.
Pre-modern man was subject to widely varying food availability. Sometimes food was plentiful. Sometimes there were famines, or bad harvests, or people got pushed into infertile areas. And yet energy input has to balance energy output to within about half a percent to maintain a stable weight. The only way this could work is that when food is short, the energy expenditure is cut to match the energy input.
Weight is controlled by biochemistry. It’s mostly genetics, followed by age, followed by factors like gut biome, general nutrition, and metabolic diseases of the energy management system. That’s how/why drugs like Ozempic work.
If you stop eating, the body goes into famine mode. First it loses water. Then it makes you hungry. Then it starts burning fat. Then muscle protein. Then it shuts down the more expensive bits of the metabolism like the immune system. Eventually you die. Biochemically, the body sees diets as famine/starvation, which is what a fat store is designed to help you survive. Frequent diets are interpreted as frequent famines, needing bigger reserves. So you can lose weight temporarily, but if your biochemistry thinks you ought to be heavier, you will either eventually put it back on, or be forced to intensify the diet until you become ill from malnutrition.
Billions of years of evolution (or God, if you prefer) designed a sophisticated system with hundreds of biochemical signalling pathways to precisely manage energy storage and expenditure in the face of irregular famines and gluts, but the authors of diet books know better, eh?
Weight is controlled by biochemistry. It’s mostly genetics
Candidly, this is nonsense. Your weight is controlled by what you put in your mouth. Exercise helps, but only a little. The only diet that ever works is restraint.
The modern obesity epidemic isn’t a result of people’s genetics suddenly getting fat. People weren’t fat in the 80’s.
Sorry Steve… there are genetic factors involved…
Some girls and lads are simply built like plough horses, instead like Twiggy’s or Barbie Dolls..
Late sis-inlaw of mine was built like a plough horse, and gained weight by *looking* at a glass of water, let alone touching it..
Ladyfriend of mine more or less the same…
Runs in the families involved, so they were definitely not the odd ones out..
And they ate less and more “healthy” than I did…
Mind… being Plough Horses, they weren’t …blubbery… There was serious muscle under that padding…. Some solid bones as well…
Completely different from a small(-ish) frame covered in blubber and flab…
*That* one’s indeed a matter of unrestrained food inhalation…
Yes, I’m not talking about husky farm girls or burly blokes who lift roofing timbers for a living.
I’m taking about how there’s young women these days with arms like defrosted Christmas turkeys. And strangely round people of annoyingly indeterminate gender, because weebls are mysterious that way. Pork-lords sweating over the canteen counter. And miscellaneous offenses the fats have committed against yoga pants.
Sorry Steve… there are genetic factors involved…
Involved with what? The topic is weight vs intake. Genetics is a cop out. An excuse. As would be environmental factors.
People have different metabolisms. So it is in fact “easier” for some to lose weight than others. But that changes nothing with the energy in/out construct. “It’s not fair” is not an excuse. “It’s so hard,” is tough shit.
We learn as children that we must manage intake and appearance. Some decide high intake and bad appearance. Their personal decision. All else is intrigue.
The topic is intake minus output is (ignoring water and protein metabolism) proportional to *the rate of change of* weight.
The “rate of change” bit of the equation is important. It means this is a *differential* equation.
And then input is related to appetite as well as environmental availability, and output is related to metabolism, which is a function of weight. There’s a feedback control loop, here. The appetite and metabolism adjust to keep the weight within bounds centred on a set point, which depends on genetics, age, and environmental factors.
It’s possible to override the feedback control, like you can override the controls that keep your blood oxygen at the right level by holding your breath. But the further you get from the weight biochemistry is aiming for, the harder and more uncomfortable it gets.
You have a thermostat in your house that keeps the temperature close to a set point. You can turn the heating off, or open all the doors and windows, but the system will fight you. Or you can change the thermostat setting. In one sense, the temperature is determined by the equation setting heat input minus heat output proportional to the rate of change of temperature, with input and output themselves subject to further causal inter-relationships. In another sense, the temperature is determined by the number on the thermostat dial.
Boo hoo.
Energy balance rules.
Ummmm Gamecock… What do you think lies at the base of those differences in metabolism?
Biochemistry.
What is the underlying blueprint for biochemistry?
Genetics.
Genetics isn’t a “cop-out”. It’s an actual scientific explanation of those differences between people, including basic metabolism.
That people abuse “genetics” as an excuse for the results of their lifestyle, just as a gambler will blame the fact that he’s piss poor on “Bad Luck”, is another matter.
Amen. No energy in, your body metabolizes what it can.
So simple, yet people believe other things.
Yeah. When I was 20, I ate over 4000 Calories a day and was stable at 12 stone. No diet. No effort.
Twenty five years later, I levelled out at 14 stone on a crash diet of about 600 Calories a day, and then gave it up when I started fainting.
I’ve met a lot of people who had no difficulty staying thin when they were young, but found themselves much heavier on much fewer Calories when they got to middle age.
It depends on both energy in and energy out. The bad assumption is that energy out is a constant, and isn’t dependent on energy in. Climate science does the same thing with heat in and heat out. These are *feedback control loops* and are *stable* to variations in input.
Amen. Until I was 28, I ate all I wanted and didn’t gain a pound.
At 77 now, I have to eat like a bird.
Some people were fat in 1566.
And in 1508.
https://www.artchive.com/artwork/portrait-of-a-woman-titian-1508-1510/
There is no ‘obesity epidemic’. It’s partly statistical shenanigans, partly that people live longer, partly that with better nutrition people have been getting bigger and taller. When food is plentiful, evolution switches body plans to make you bigger and stronger to defend the fertile territory you’re on. When food is short, people become shorter and lighter to use less energy. You remember those photos from WWI of the enlisted men being inches shorter than the officers? The taller body plan is also chunkier.
Go ask Chris Snowden about the statistical malfeasances involved in ‘obesity’ statistics. It’s as bad as climate science!
e.g.:
https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Briefing_The%20Fat%20Lie.pdf
Here’s a better one: https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2019/04/there-is-no-childhood-obesity-epidemic.html
There were no “fat kids” in the 80’s. The fattest boy in our school was merely husky.
Now, you see children with double chins and pot bellies. This is not normal beyond toddler stage.
There is no ‘obesity epidemic’.
Correct. Last time I checked in SC, maybe 10 years ago, public body weight data came from a state survey of 30,000 people. Self-reported weights. No verification of any of it. Processed by people had a stake in the outcome. Actual “adjustment” algorithms for race, sex, etc.
In other words, the data was scientifically useless.
But reported.
OH MY!
That’s one of the reasons that I think it’s exercise, and not diet (there is also a genetic aspect, but it’s not the big thing).
Back in the 1970s, women generally walked or took the bus to work. If they went to church, they walked. If they wanted a small thing, they walked to the local shop. Bigger things, they’d take a bus to town, which meant at least a little walking at each end. When their children went to school, they walked the to school and back, twice in a day. If you lived half a mile from school, like we did, that’s 2 miles of walking per day, even without everything else.
2 miles of walking burns about 200 calories. That burns off the equivalent of a Mr Kipling Almond Slice and a couple of teaspoons of sugar in your tea. If you want a 4oz steak instead of 4oz of chicken, it’s about 120 calories, or around 1 mile of walking.
And that’s why women got fat. Once they got second cars, they use them all the time. They drop kids at school, go to work, then pick kids up, supermarket and home. If they’re not going to the gym or for a swim, they’re getting almost no exercise.
There’s also data about US cities vs more rural areas with obesity. New Yorkers are far less obese than average. Same when you ride the tube in London, they’re thinner than average people in the UK.
That’s one of the reasons that I think it’s exercise, and not diet (there is also a genetic aspect, but it’s not the big thing).
Sorries. No. You would have to walk six hours to burn enough calories to lose a pound. Caloric intake is 6X more important. Yes, exercise can work, but it is GROSSLY INEFFICIENT in weight control.
Getting trim isn’t about losing a pound a day. It’s stopping a fraction of a pound per day. You are not putting on a pound by eating an almond slice. You need many of them. And if you aren’t burning some off, it stays on.
It’s stopping a fraction of a pound per day.
There is no such rule.
And yet, if you look at films or photos of just about any crowd, anywhere, before maybe the 1980s, you’ll struggle to find fat people. What changed?
I don’t know. I can see them.
I can see about 7 ‘chunky’ people in this picture.
The two on the left here.
Yes, if you look at pictures of *young* people, at concerts and festivals and things, they do tend to be thinner. But then when I look at pictures of young people today, I still see thin people.
Nowadays, the numbers would be nearly reversed.
Better lenses.
“For a while. Then the metabolism adjusts to compensate.”
There is something to that. When I eat less, my body decides to adjust to the changed energy budget by sleeping more. As I also like a nap in the afternoon, I have to force myself to get up and be active to avoid ballooning up. On the other side, sleeping more reduces my hunger, and reduces my food bills. 😉
My cat sleeps all the time and still costs me a fortune in food.
I have noticed that since I had an immune system problem a few years ago, I have developed certain intolerances. Nightshade is one thing that poisons me, but I have also noticed that if I eat starchy and carby things ( bread, pasta, sweet potatoes ) I start retaining water. My legs and feet swell and I dramatically gain weight. Because of the heat, I am eating salads and my legs have returned to their Kate Moss like elegance. The rest of me is a disaster zone, by the way.
Yeah, but cats and dogs also get intense exercise.
My dog sits around about half the day, then comes to me with her frisbee in her mouth and bolts around the garden catching it until she’s completely worn out. It’s like 20 minutes of intense cardio. Then there’s the running after birds and squirrels, and a daily walk.
It’s not that simple Steve. Currently Mrs Ltw is on a losing weight mission, and doing it sensibly. Good diet and the treats are hidden in my office, at her request. At the same time I’m trying put on weight, I’ve dropped way below where I should be.
I’ve long been a proponent of the best weight is one you can easily maintain without worrying about it too much. That does differ from person to person. My sweet spot is around 75kgs, which is why I’m a little worried that I’m down to 66kgs. Hers is, well not sure, more than that, but we’ll find out.
If you get too far from the equilibrium that works for you, bad things happen. Stable is better than swinging back and forth.
Friends of mine are both large ish but a hell of a lot healthier than I’m going to be in the near future.
Women find it more difficult to lose weight because their hormones prioritise fat retention. But the main reason anyone finds it difficult is because diets don’t work.
It’s going in with the wrong mentality, diets are seen as a temporary thing. But maintaining the weight you desire through adulthood requires a different mindset, a permanent adjustment to different eating habits. And for most people who aren’t climbing scaffolding all day or doing triathlons on the regular, we need to eat far less than we think we do.
Hunger strikers and supermodels are rarely fat, knowhatImeanarry?
Stuff like Atkins (horribly unfashionable now?) or even the dreaded injections can help tho. Because we’re human. Sometimes we need a cheat code, to show ourselves that we are capable of losing the pounds. People who have lived with chunkiness often need that as a bit of wind behind their backs. When they start losing their first stone they gain confidence, you love to see it.
I don’t think normal people should worry too much about their weight either. Just try to be healthy. Nothing wrong with being over the official healthy BMI, which is set at starving waif level. But we can and do choose how fat we are. It can feel like that’s impossible but it’s true. It’s what you eat.
Do *not* mention BMI in my sight – it is dimensionally unsound (OK for the inhabitants of “Flatland”, but we live in a three-dimensional world). When I was young and fit the BMI calculator said that I was underweight, now that I am with a “spare tyre”, the BMI calculator says I am in the middle of healthy weight category although I know I should lose a stone or two. In contrast any good Rugby forward will be deemed obese.
The “official healthy BMI” may be set at starving waif level for you but it’s far above that for me.
insert “old” after “now I am”
If I stuck to official BMI recommendations I’d be a sad spindly stick man. Instead of a “bear” according to gay guys. I think bears are good? They eat a lot of salmon and organic hikers. A man needs meat on his bones.
Can’t see there being much meat on organic hikers though….
And the way most of them look…. probably very bitter…
Of course it is that simple. CMAT, if that’s her real name, eat’s too much. PERIOD.
I think the same. I consider my ideal weight to be 80kg or 12 1/2 stone. I am a bit over that now, but I spent quite a few years dramatically under and was at just over 10 stone at one point. I felt terrible.
Since I hit the range 80-82 kg range I feel absolutely great again.
ps I weigh myself in metric, because I can’t handle looking at more than three digits in the mornings.
rack disciprine
You turning Japanese? I really think so.
She’s big but I’ve seen bigger.
“I am not choosing to look like this or weigh this much…” Don’t they have Wegovy in Ireland?
Novo Nordisk, the maker of Wegovy, is building a factory in Ireland to make it in tablet form, so there’ll be lots there next year. Eli Lily, their major competitor has already got major manufacturing plant there.