In case you haven’t heard the story yet, here are the main bullets: On Sunday, Gwen Stefani tweeted this photo of herself from 1983:
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Her caption: “chunky me 1983. getting @officialsting autograph backstage.”Instead of talking about the obvious takeaways of this photo—that Sting hangs out on a motorcycle when he’s backstage and that the guy on the far left is wearing bowling shoes—some are calling her out for body shaming and sending “an unintended message to her followers” about her supposed negative body image issues.First of all, “body shaming” is the wrong term here. If anything, this is closer to fat talk, which everyone is guilty of. What human being hasn’t made a self-deprecating comment about a photo from their awkward phase? Exactly.Unlike most celebs in the sick body club, Stefani has always been quite candid about how hard she works for her abs et al. She told Elle UK in 2007, “All my life I had to work hard to stay in shape. I’ve always struggled with it. I was a little chubby when I was younger, and I didn’t want to be that person forever.”Like many women, Stefani, after spending her childhood looking one way, now works out a lot so she can look different (in her case, fit and healthy) in her adulthood. There’s nothing wrong with that.One of the coolest things about social media is that we get to “hang out” with our idols and creep a peek into their “human” side. They shouldn’t be held to some ridiculous standard that discourages authenticity. I, for one, hope Gwen doesn’t stop sharing her photos because of this overreaction.
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