Alicia Silverstone reflects on being body-shamed as Batgirl in new TikTok video
Alicia Silverstone is reflecting on the body-shaming that she faced when she starred in the 1997 film Batman & Robin by reacting to a TikTok video of someone demanding that media outlets apologize for calling her "Fat girl" as a play on her role as Batgirl.share
The 45-year-old actress duetted a video in which the young woman says, "I want justice for Alicia Silverstone. Y’all had her f***ed up," as she pulled up a screenshot of a specific Entertainment Weekly piece titled "A Weighty Issue." In the story, Silverstone, who was 19 at the time of filming, was compared to Babe the pig and said to be "slimming fast for her role as Batgirl."
The 1996 article is one of many that Silverstone has addressed in previous interviews, sharing with Vanity Fair that the ridicule made her want to step away from acting.
"When I was having my crazy moments post-Clueless, I was being called ‘Fat Girl,'" she told the publication in 2018. "It didn’t make me think, Oh yes, I’m going to try really hard to be [what you think I should be]. My response was, 'Hell no.' I had no interest in being famous or maintaining any kind of fame. If you told me that acting meant I was going to be called fat and have to do things a certain way, then I was like, 'F off.'"
She shared similar sentiments during a 2020 interview with the Guardian, recalling that people would "make fun of her body" just as she was hitting the height of her career. "It was hurtful but I knew they were wrong," she said. "I wasn’t confused. I knew that it was not right to make fun of someone’s body shape, that doesn’t seem like the right thing to be doing to a human."
Even now, with the recent TikTok video from user @foreversymone, Silverstone is thankful for the support.
"They were obsessed with her weight. All she did was breathe. And as a fat woman who grew up obsessed with Clueless who grew up obsessed with this movie that’s pure camp, it just makes me very frustrated to know that she was barely, what, she couldn’t have been more than 130. And they were like straight-up ripping on her constantly over this," the TikTok user said. "People, US Weekly, everybody. Say you’re sorry, say you’re sorry to Alicia Silverstone."
"Justice for Batgirl!" Silverstone wrote in her caption, while saying "thank you" in her video.