Ciara Mary‑Alice Thompson, known professionally as CMAT, received body‑shaming abuse online after her performance on the main stage at Radio 1's Big Weekend in Sunderland on Sunday evening.
Photos taken on 24 May of Thompson on stage were the subject of abusive comments about her weight, and she said the fallout left her with "deep sadness." Thompson reminded the crowd during her Sunderland set of the "very nasty comments" made about her physical appearance after she played Big Weekend in 2024, and on Thursday she said she felt compelled to wade in and speak for herself on Instagram.
Thompson shared screenshots of a Substack essay by a fan called Front Row Feels that compared the treatment of CMAT with fellow Big Weekend acts Zara Larsson and Olivia Dean. "What struck me most while scrolling through those toxic comment sections was the glaring disparity in how different women on that same lineup were treated," Thompson wrote, quoting the essay.
She told followers she is exhausted by the cycle. "It is literally so boring for me, a gorgeous genius, to keep having to yap on about how horribly I am treated because of my body," Thompson wrote, and added that the abuse has continued as she becomes better known: "I would love to stop but I cannot because it keeps happening, at an accelerating and worsening pace as I become more famous."
Those posts pulled a rare, visible action from Radio 1: the broadcaster disabled comments on videos of CMAT's Big Weekend performance on its Instagram, while keeping comments enabled on posts about other artists. Thompson noted the same move was taken in 2024 when the disabled comments on a video of her Big Weekend performance in Luton.
The contrast on social platforms is part of the wider point Thompson and the fan essay raised about unequal scrutiny of women on the same bill. Thompson performed on the main stage on Sunday before headliner Olivia Dean; the fan essay argued that different women on the same lineup received "glaringly different levels of grace and basic humanity." Thompson said the insults she endured after last year’s Big Weekend in Luton inspired her song "Take a Sexy Picture Of Me."
Thompson was frank about the personal toll. "There’s no relief and nobody can protect me," she wrote, adding, "There is no relief from this – nobody can protect me or save me from this, and all that is demanded of me is more and more work as every environment I am placed in becomes more hostile." She told fans: "I don’t get a say in whether or not I want to be brave, I simply have to sit here and take it."
The abuse, the disabled comments and the Substack essay landed as Thompson continues to tour her third album, Euro‑Country. She has said the backlash has intensified with visibility; yet she is not stepping away from the stage. Thompson has a sold‑out headline show in Dublin on Saturday, and the record shows she intends to keep performing despite the criticism.
That determination answers the most immediate question: Thompson will not let the online abuse cancel her tour. She has acknowledged the cost — "I would of course like to change in order to fit in and avoid all of this abuse, but I have had extreme difficulty in doing so" — and still, with a Dublin show scheduled, she is going on.
