Media mogul Oprah Winfrey has insisted making fun of her weight became “a public sport.”
The TV icon — who will celebrate her 70th birthday next month — has reflected on her body journey over the years and said she was frequently “blamed and shamed” for the way she looks.
“It was a public sport to make fun of me for 25 years,” she told People. “The things that were said about me, said to me, around me, the jokes that were made … you could not get away with it in the slightest sense today.”
Winfrey recalled a magazine cover that branded her “Dumpy, Frumpy and Downright Lumpy,” admitting she felt conditioned to not be “angry” over the offensive tagline.
“I was on the cover of some magazine, and it said, ‘Dumpy, Frumpy and Downright Lumpy’,” she explained. “I just accepted that as ‘that’s what it is,’ and I didn’t feel angry. I felt sad. I felt hurt. I felt shame. But it didn’t occur to me that I could even feel angry. I swallowed the shame, and I accepted that it was my fault.”
Over the summer, she joined a panel discussion with weight-loss experts and clinicians as part of Oprah’s “Life You Want” series.
She described the “State of Weight” talk as an “aha” moment in her life.
“I had the biggest ‘aha’ along with many people in that audience,” Winfrey said. “I realized I’d been blaming myself all these years for being overweight, and I have a predisposition that no amount of willpower is going to control … obesity is a disease. It’s not about willpower — it’s about the brain.”
She went on to be prescribed a weight-loss medication which she uses when she feels it’s necessary “as a tool to manage not yo-yoing.”
“The fact that there’s a medically approved prescription for managing weight and staying healthier, in my lifetime, feels like relief, like redemption, like a gift, and not something to hide behind and once again be ridiculed for,” Winfrey added.
