Camila Cabello Calls Out Paparazzi Culture

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In Cabello’s long Instagram post, she touched on paparazzi culture in general, going into how troubling it is for people’s mental health to constantly be scrutinized for how their bodies look. She wrote that so often she’ll feel OK with how she looks, but when she sees paparazzi shots later, she’ll change her tune. “I reminded myself when It impacted myself esteem [sic] that I was thinking the culture’s thoughts and not my own. A culture who has gotten so used to an image of what a ‘healthy’ woman’s body looks like that is completely not real for a lot of women,” she wrote.

On this particular day, Cabello said she was excited about her new bikini, her “whole fuckin cute outfit” and her day at the beach, but it was all ruined by how much thought and energy she felt herself putting into trying to look good for the inevitable paparazzi photos. “I knew I looked 'good' in the pictures and thought I would feel accomplished and yet I've never had a worse time at the beach,” she wrote. “I felt the emptiness and sadness of our culture’s thoughts that became my thoughts. I wanted to talk about this because we see pictures of women and praise them for looking good, for looking fit or 'healthy,' but what is health if you are so fixated on what your body looks like that your mental health suffers and you can't enjoy your life ?”

She ended by lamenting about when she was a child and could freely go to the beach and just enjoy herself without worrying about what she looked like or who might be taking pictures.

​None of these thoughts are new for her, though — she’s called out body-shaming in the past after being picked on for what she looks like. Last summer, she responded to people who made fun of what she was wearing on a run — as in, while she was exercising — and shut down their disgusting comments. She said at the time, “I am grateful for this body that lets me do what I need to do. We are real women with curves and cellulite and stretch marks and fat. And we gotta own that, baby." She also added that “being at war with your body is so last season,” and we can’t help but agree.

Photo via Getty/ Gilbert Carrasquillo/ GC Images