Oprah Winfrey Once Felt ‘Too Fat’ to Attend Party, Recalls Weight Being Mocked In ‘Living Color’ Skit

Oprah Winfrey no longer holds on to the shame she has around her weight, but the media mogul and television personality hasn’t forgotten being mistreated.

Winfrey, 70, continues to speak to the toxicity of diet culture and fatphobia, and on the inaugural episode of podcast The Jamie Kern Lima Show, she tackled how it was publicly acceptable to make fun of her weight.

Winfrey shared that the shame was sometimes self-inflicted, and admitted to not attending a party hosted by Miami Vice actor Don Johnson. At the time, Winfrey’s weight had fluctuated.

“The week before Christmas, I remember Don Johnson–the Don Johnson of Miami Vice–was having a party and had invited me and some members of my show to come, and I wouldn't go because I thought I was too fat to go,” Winfrey admitted.

“I'd gone from 145 [lbs.] on the day of the show,” she said, adding, “I think I was 157 [lbs.] in the course of, like, a week and a half or two. And the shame started again.”

Winfrey also revisited perhaps the most offensive remark made about her weight, written by late critic Richard Blackwell, who gave her the title of “bumpy, frumpy and downright lumpy” on a TV Guide cover. “I ingested that, I swallowed it like it was a pill designed just for my body and I took in all the shame,” said Winfrey. “And I accepted that this thing that people have labeled me with–being fat, being overweight, being unable to control my willpower, not having any willpower–that's my shame. That's it. They're right, they’re right.”

Winfrey added that for “25 years” her weight was regularly made fun of on media platforms, and called out a particularly triggering skit from former variety comedy show In Living Color.

"In Living Color had done a skit where the woman was doing something, and she just kept eating and getting fatter and fatter and fatter and the comedy bit was that eventually she just exploded,” Winfrey said, referencing the skit where she was portrayed by Kim Wayans. “The whole audience fell out [laughing] and the woman was me.”