Was Amber Rose Body-Shamed for Her Curves on ‘Dancing with the Stars’?
Last night, perhaps audience members were expecting some fireworks between Amber Rose and Julianne Hough, since Rose said she felt body-shamed by Hough last week. But the two wound up resolving their issues.
Quick recap: Last week, after Rose’s dance, Hough said she felt “a little uncomfortable,” and Rose took that as body-shaming. “For her to say it’s uncomfortable, that’s not fair,” Rose said to her dance partner, Maks Chmerkovskiy. “‘Cause all these girls are half naked. No one says anything to them.”
Rose took serious offense, taking to her podcast, “Loveline with Amber Rose,” to slam Hough. “You know, all the beautiful professional dancers that are on ‘Dancing With the Stars,’ I mean, they dress very sexy and they do the splits and they grind up on these guys and they look absolutely stunning and get a standing ovation,” Rose said. “And me, and my body, my hips, my ass, my breasts made her uncomfortable.”
Before last night’s show, Hough told E! News that she didn’t mean it that way. “To be clear, that was a produced package, not live coverage and they can put those sound bites anywhere,” she said. “My ‘uncomfortable’ comment was about the fact that I felt like I wanted more out of the performance—when someone is doing a hot, sexy dance like that without the right amount of energy that is required, it can be uncomfortable to watch. Trust me, I’m all for a sexy booty dance. We all know that! And any kind of body-shaming goes against everything I believe in.”
Last night, Hough clarified her feelings for all the world to see. “The thing that I love so much about dance is that dance is a universal platform for people to express themselves, any person, whether that is age or height, body shape, ethnicity, sexual orientation it is something that people can express themselves to do,” she said. “And for me, I am a huge supporter of that … and as a judge on this show I am here to solely judge you and everyone else in this competition for only the dancing.”
“When you said that, I felt very embarrassed,” Rose said, “and I felt like you weren’t talking about my dance, but if I misunderstood then I apologize.”
Regardless of what Hough did or didn’t mean, Rose embraced herself and her curves fully last night, telling Chmerkovskiy, “This week I’m just going to embrace my sexuality and not apologize for it,” which is just what we’ve all come to expect from Rose. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.
