Love Island’s Molly-Mae Hague has been always been subject to online abuse, so much so she says she’s become ‘desensitized’ to it. But in the last few weeks, the relentless trolling of her body has become the subject of national attention.
It began with a social media post showing pictures of her on holiday in Ibiza with boyfriend Tommy Fury, followed by screenshots from the pit of despair that is the Daily Mail comments section. ‘Looks lardy, out of shape and needs to loose that flab,’ one reader commented (misspelling included). ‘She needs to take some of those diet pills she markets,’ another added with a sprinkling of fake news since Molly-Mae doesn’t market diet pills.
Sharing the screenshot to highlight the abuse, Ella Kingsley, Sunderland, called out the vile body shaming to which Molly-Mae quickly agreed. ‘I would genuinely love to know who writes these comments?’ she tweeted. ‘Like how can you actually write shit like that and sleep at night? Beyond me.’
With near 300,000 likes and tons of celebrity support, it seems many share Molly-Mae’s bewilderment at how people can be so horrendous. And yet, the trolls continue. Last night, she shared an Instagram DM where one follower called her a ‘fat cow’ adding that she was ‘shallow, vacuous and useless to society’.
‘My DMs are honestly so wild,’ she said. ‘I’ve become so desensitized to reading this kind of stuff.’ Telling followers she was ‘all good’, Molly-Mae put a brave face on before sharing more images of her from her holiday. But the sad truth is, watching Molly-Mae’s holiday vlogs you can see she is anything but ‘all good’ with the endless trolling.
Last year, the influencer opened up about her relationship with her body, telling OK! Magazine she was ‘extremely underweight’ while appearing on Love Island and was much healthier six months after the show. ‘‘I was a stone and a half lighter a year ago but that’s because I was at the gym twice a day, and was obsessed with my diet,’ she said. ‘All I was eating was couscous and rice. It was probably unhealthy, and I was extremely underweight for my height.’
And yet in her most recent vlog, Molly-Mae talks repeatedly about how she was on a ‘health kick’ to try and get back to her Love Island body. She films sunbathing with Tommy in a bikini, but days into the holiday she admits switching to swimming costumes after seeing the paparazzi pictures and told viewers they were changing their day plans to go somewhere paparazzi couldn’t find them.
‘They’ve been getting some really flattering pictures of me in my bikini, NOT,’ she said. ‘It’s just really annoying because I’ve been working so hard the last two months to really get in good shape and lose a bit of weight that I gained coming out of the show and when you get papped you’re unaware you’re being papped… even though I look out for it all the time cause I’m always cautious of it.’
In almost every video Molly-Mae posts on her YouTube, she pre-empts negative comments in a way even viewers have caught on to. ‘She’s so worried about what people will think of her and it’s honestly so sad I feel terrible for her,’ one YouTube user commented to thousands of likes. ‘It’s so horrible the way she has to explain everything she does,’ another added.
So while Molly-Mae might be handling the trolling well on social media, it’s evident from her behaviour and vlogs that the disgusting comments on not just her weight but every aspect of her personality and life are impeding her daily life. Not even six months after the #BeKind movement called for an end to senseless trolling, the treatment of Molly-Mae shows there is still much work to do.
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