And yet here is the thing: Oprah Winfrey can do whatever she wants. She owes us absolutely nothing. Like all of us, she is under no obligation to be perfect. She is allowed to mess up, to succumb to dodgy diets and the pressure to take Ozempic.
As her friend Maya Angelou used to tell her frequently: “When you know better, you do better.” And she is doing the best that she can, publicly, in a landscape of scrutiny so punishing that most of us cannot even begin to imagine what it is like.
And I can’t stop thinking, here, about the Princess of Wales, also currently the subject of fevered speculation and judgement. This, despite Kensington Palace making clear that she had undergone abdominal surgery and would not be back at work until Easter (that’s still over a week away, in case you hadn’t noticed).
The pressure on women to behave impeccably and look smiley and happy and perfect is still ludicrous… and I think it’s pretty unbecoming of us as a society, given that it’s 2024.
Winfrey ended the broadcast by saying “let’s stop the shaming and blaming, there is no place for it”. Sadly, certain quarters of social media and the internet will let her know what they think of that.
But let us hope that for now, we can leave a 70-year old woman alone and focus on what really matters.
For the record, it’s not her weight.
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