![Oprah Winfrey, Kim Wayans](https://www.vibe.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Untitled-design-2024-06-27T092344.841.png?w=910&h=511&crop=1)
Oprah Winfrey continues to open up about the dangers of diet culture and her own experiences with weight shaming and fatphobia. While recently appearing on The Jamie Kern Lima Show, the 70-year-old recalled the many times her weight was mocked for entertainment, and also feeling too ashamed to attend public events.
While mentioning a time that she skipped out on a party hosted by Miami Vice actor Don Johnson, Winfrey admitted, “I wouldn’t go because I thought I was too fat to go.” At the time she said her weight had fluctuated from “145 [lbs.]” while filming her show to “157 [lbs.] in the course of, like, a week and a half or two.”
According to the multi-hyphenate icon, her weight became a joke to many, including the sketch comedy show In Living Color.
“In Living Color had done a skit where the woman was doing something, and she just kept eating and getting fatter and fatter and fatter and the comedy bit was that eventually she just exploded,” she recalled the 1990 episode where Kim Wayans portrays Winfrey’s talk show days. “The whole audience fell out [laughing] and the woman was me.”
See below.
The Color Purple actress also recalled a time when she felt most “offended” by a TV Guide magazine issue. Winfrey recalled late critic, Richard Blackwell, dubbing her “bumpy, frumpy and downright lumpy” on the October 1990 cover.
“I ingested that, I swallowed it like it was a pill designed just for my body and I took in all the shame,” she reflected. “And I accepted that this thing that people have labeled me with–being fat, being overweight, being unable to control my willpower, not having any willpower–that’s my shame. That’s it. They’re right, they’re right.”
Winfrey, who has found a way to “bury the shame” of her weight-loss journey, added that for “25 years” her weight was the butt of jokes. Since then, she has championed medicinal assistance in shedding pounds, although she has not confirmed exactly what she uses.
Last year, she talked about obesity and weight-loss on the televised program: An Oprah Special: Shame, Blame and the Weight Loss Revolution, where she called an unnamed “medically approved prescription for managing weight and staying healthier,” a “gift.”
“I’m absolutely done with the shaming from other people and particularly myself,” she asserted.
Take a look at her full sit-down with Jamie Kern Lima below.