Sarah Michelle Gellar Apologizes After Thanksgiving Overeating Joke Is Slammed as Fat-Shaming
After an Instagram post in which she jokingly reminded herself not to overeat on Thanksgiving sparked cries of fat-shaming, Sarah Michelle Gellar is saying sorry.
“It’s come to my attention that some people think I was ‘fat shaming’ with this post. That could not be further from my intentions,” she said in a statement obtained by E! after the Saturday post garnered thousands of comments.
The post included a series of lingerie photos from a shoot with Maxim in 2007 which Gellar, 41, captioned: “I’m just going to pin these up all over my house as a reminder not to overeat on Thursday.”
One user wrote: “you KNOW that this is a sensitive subject and it may hurt your followers.”
Echoing that, another said, “Your caption is problematic and I suggest you do some research on eating disorders, the mental health issues that go along with them, and how diet culture is harmful to women. Girls look up to you, and you should be mindful of the message you’re sending.”
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But another said, “You are gorgeous and you have the right to post whatever you want. I applaud your hard work to look like you do and should be able to joke around. People need to stop caring so much about what you post or say about yourself and focus on themselves.”
Gellar said she was strictly thinking of herself.
She said in her statement that while she loves Thanksgiving, “unfortunately my eyes are often bigger than my stomach, and I tend to eat so much I make myself sick.”
“This was a joking reminder to myself not to do that,” she continued.
“I’m terribly sorry that people were offended by my attempt at humor,” she added. “Any one that knows me, knows I would never intentionally ‘shame’ any one on any basis. I am a champion of all people.”
Since the hub-bub, Gellar has not been distracted from her Thanksgiving plans with her family (husband Freddie Prinze Jr., 42, daughter Charlotte, 9, and son Rocky, 6). On Wednesday she updated her Instagram story as she explored a cookbook, captioning one shot, “Yum!”
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