Osher Gunsberg is seriously pissed off. He’s feeling emotional and humiliated and angry. He’s also shocked. Because he’s been body shamed, and that’s not something that happens to blokes.
After paparazzi took unflattering photos of him on a beach in Bali and wrote mockingly about his ‘Bali belly’, one of the Mamamia team told me about it and I immediately texted him to send my love.
I adore Osher. He's one of the really really good guys. A feminist. A champion of women's rights. A fierce advocate for us. Always has been, as long as I've known him. He often sends me links to stories he sees on his Internet travels that he thinks could be of interest to Mamamia readers and he's always bang-on.
I assumed he'd seen the story and the photos. He hadn't. "What story?" he texted me back. Ugh.
I knew it was going to cause him pain to see them. I know he's struggled with his weight in the past and has also struggled with mental health issues around anxiety. I've certainly been there. Having nasty stories about you in the media certainly doesn't help with anxiety, as you may imagine.
Osher speaks to Mia Freedman on No Filter. (Post continues after audio.)
But that's not the crux of the issue here. This is about body shaming, how rarely it happens to men and how shocking it is when it does.
Osher made some great points when he spoke about it openly and emotionally on the radio yesterday.
"I’ve never been paid to be the hot guy. There’s a reason I didn’t sing on Idol and a reason I don’t have my shirt off on The Bachelor," he said.
What he was saying was this: my body is not my currency. I'm not a model or someone who has ever traded of his abs. So how dare you mock me for how I look.
Top Comments
This story has really responated with me. I work at a supermarket where I do back to back late nights and then early mornings. When I get up at 5am having only left work 7 hours earlier, the last thing on my mind is a face of make up and making my hair look great.
At work one morning, two of my male coworkers were talking about a new girl in the workplace when one of them described her as a lot more attractive than myself right in front of me. Unbeknownst to them, I was already dealing with an unwanted pregnancy at the time so I was already very emotional and anxious. Their comments really hurt me because I go to work to replenish stock and serve customers, not look hot. A male wouldn't be subjected to that treatment in the work place so why should I have been?
Isn't it mostly women's magazines who publish the sort of tabloid "beach belly" paparazzi "journalism" anyway?