Poor Liam Payne has been getting a bit of a battering on social media for apparently putting on a bit of weight. 'Why are Chris Brown and Liam Payne trying to copy Rob Kardashian by getting fat,' asked one user @ruversace. Or, as @zaynintorrinca put it: 'I'm so fat when I twerk I turn into Liam Payne.' Nice, huh?
While it would be tempting to say it's good to see that it isn't just female stars who get vitriolic commentary on their body shape, fat-shaming isn't cool when it's directed against either gender.
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Which is why we've got to salute Liam for deciding to do something about it – in a typically Liam way that shows just how immature any public commentary on fatness really is. He's responded to the accusations that he’d put on a bit of weight by posting a picture of himself on Instagram with his cheeks all puffed out and a padded stomach with the caption: ‘I mean OH MY GOD I'm just so fat these days I think I need help! Quick someone take the cookie jar.'
And he didn’t stop there – he further took the fat-shamers to task by showing he was a ‘normal weight’ according to British standards with a BMI of 22.8. 'Is it wrong to be normal? Or do I have to look like an Olympic swimmer just to get your approval into the cool kids?’ he said, while sharing his BMI reading with his 2.1 million Instagram followers.
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Now if that's not a reason to add Liam – the 1D-er we'd previously taken to referring to as the Gary Barlow of the band (ie: boring) – to your Instagram feed, we don't know what is…
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.