Not even an international holiday and weight loss can save any Australian woman from being body-shamed. Just ask Jackie O.
You’d have to be living under a rock not to realise it has fast become the year of Jackie O.
The radio star been spotted at Fashion Week, attended Taylor Swift’s concert with Pip Edwards, the lover of wet-looking hair, and is still killing it in the ratings alongside her on-air partner, Kyle Sandilands.
She’s also lost a substantial amount of weight, at least 18kg.
Jackie O, 49, has now pulled a Lindsay Lohan and is partying in Mykonos alongside her best friend and business partner, Gemma O’Neill.
She was seen in a stripy two-piece swimsuit, enjoying the sun. She looked great.
The commentary online, however, about her body has been disgusting and disappointing, with people cruelly criticising her figure.
So, how did Jackie O end up here?
She’s done the thing that is usually rewarded. She’s thinner, yet she still can’t avoid being body-shamed.
The online comments – mostly made by men – aren’t worth repeating, but they send a glaring message to other women.
If Jackie O, who is thin, white and blonde, isn’t seen as good enough, what hope do the rest of us have with our cellulite and regrowth?
If you’re a woman, you are either too fat or too thin. Too muscular or too flabby. You are never enough, there’s always something you could do to improve yourself.
If you’re a famous woman, well, then you get to be used in either of two ways.
As an example of what other women should aspire to be or as a warning about what other women don’t want to become.
Jackie O has spent most of the year being heralded for losing weight and projected to other women as inspirational.
“Look, she’s a single mum in her late forties, and she’s gone on a health journey and has never looked better,” has been the takeaway message.
This also isn’t just a media narrative created for her. Under every Instagram photo she posts, someone compliments how much better she looks “now”.
It’s pretty offensive to pretend Jackie O didn’t always look good, but it’s also hurtful to all women who look more like she did two years ago.
Now, she’s facing a whole new type of commentary. People online are scrutinising her body because she dares to have a normal one.
The term normal is problematic because what even is normal? All bodies are standard, but objectively speaking, she’s hitting some classic beauty standards.
But the moment a woman steps out in a bikini and doesn’t look airbrushed, the horrifying comments will start rolling in.
Look, I’m sure Jackie O will recover from this. She’s been in the fame game for a long time, and she knows that for every compliment she gets online, there’s usually an insult coming her way.
It doesn’t make it right or fair, and it certainly doesn’t mean she deserves it, but hopefully she’s learned how to deal with it.
But what about the rest of us? Who once again have to digest the news that another woman’s body is seen as worth ridiculing.
Then we internalise it and it just makes us worry more about our own.
No matter how blonde and thin you are, no woman is safe from being ridiculed, and that is a national shame.