If the Brit Awards have become synonymous with anything in their nearly 50-year history, it’s musicians making arses of themselves. But when the 2024 Brits ceremony rolled around on Saturday 2 March, with a record-breaking night for singer Raye and a seriously impressive performance by legend Kylie Minogue, it was an arse itself that dominated online discourse. Yes, the cheekiest performer of the night was award nominee CMAT, who got tongues wagging with her unusual cut-out dress.
CMAT – AKA Irish singer Ciara Marie-Alice Thompson – was up for her first Brit for International Artist of the Year, following on from the release of her acclaimed sophomore album Crazymad, for Me. She might have lost out on the night to SZA, but still managed to create one of the biggest watercooler moments of the eve thanks to her outfit.
From the front, there was nothing immediately shocking about the dress. Still, it was by no means your standard little black dress, with its ruched detailing and exaggerated puffy sleeves. But when the 28-year-old turned around, it exposed another side of the dress and, well, the singer. The back featured a huge backless panel from the neck down, the edges of the cut-out lined with fluff and exposing the top half of CMAT’s bum.
CMAT’s behind caused quite a stir on the night, even gatecrashing one televised segment co-host on screen. Luckily, Amfo and the night’s guests were 'loving it', CMAT said during an interview on Woman’s Hour on Monday 4 March; in fact, people were even asking for photos with her bum. The entire thing was, after all, meant to be 'fun', she told host Emma Barnett, adding, 'I didn’t want anyone to accuse me of being in poor taste.'
But the internet being the internet, this was not the case. On social media, CMAT was light-hearted about the whole thing, joking that she was 'feuding' with ITV for editing her bum out of re-runs (in a report by the Mail Online, her bum crack was pixellated). But trolls quickly lashed out at the singer, saying the stunt was one of 'desperation' and hurling insults at her.
'The backlash was crazy,' CMAT said. 'I had a lot of people that were very angry about the fact that I would do such a thing. They were horrified, and people were really angry and really aggressive in comments… telling me that I had to go to the gym.'
Of course, bums on the red carpet are nothing new. Trend cycles get shorter every year, with headlines asking whether butts are 'the new boobs', like body parts can be in fashion, pop up every few. So what was the difference between CMAT’s bum and others? That she wasn’t a model? That the dress wasn’t designed to be sexy in other areas? That she dared to be confident?
The difference, CMAT argued, was that people only cared because her bum was 'larger'. 'I think mine caused a stir because it’s big and because I’m a size 14 as opposed to a size six, which I suppose is commonly what we do see on television,' she said, pointing to the skinny starlets of the 00s who last rocked the look.
But everything about the dress was as methodical as the response was predictable. CMAT didn’t want to give people reason to hit out at her, and the dress had a lot of 'rules' to ensure tastefulness was kept to the max. One decreed that the amount of bum on show 'had to be corresponding to the average amount of cleavage that you would show on the front… This is accepted and this is common, but this bit isn’t.'
Yet, as CMAT also pointed out, celebrities wore dresses like this in the 90s and early 2000s. Now, people are doing it again’; the return of Y2K fashion and low-rise jeans has brought back, whether we like it or not, the exposed thong 'whale tail'. Kim Kardashian has rocked this look, just like Ice Spice, Kylie Jenner, and Julia Fox. And that’s just the top of the bum being bared! Red carpets have been dominated over the last few years by sheer 'naked dresses', with fellow Brit star Dua Lipa combining the two in a 2023 Instagram post that showed the top of her thong peeping out of a low-cut sequin dress.
But noughties style, including 'bum cleavage' wasn’t going to return without dragging along the era’s unhealthy attitudes towards weight with it. For all the talk about body positivity we’ve heard in the last few years, the return of these styles suggests that was temporary. If these styles aren’t for women with bodies like CMAT’s, they’re only meant to exclude, and the reaction shows that to be the case. 'I was right, I couldn’t have been more right,' she said.
It’s interesting, in a bleak way, that the backlash to CMAT’s dress comes at a time when the internet has been dominated by discourse about men baring their bums on camera. All the male stars are doing it; so why would we celebrate Barry Keoghan for his Saltburn dance, yet shame CMAT for sharing far less skin. I say, if we’re going to free the nipple, we ought to free the bum too. It would be downright cheeky not to…