Hoda Kotb as soon as confronted office body-shaming. Now, she’s opening up about it.
Although Hoda is leaving The In the present day Present, she nonetheless has time to drop some laborious details.
The unnamed particular person body-shamed Hoda, suggesting that she use a “treadmill.”
On the December 2 episode of The In the present day Present, Hoda Kotb spoke in regards to the holidays but in addition a couple of troubling encounter at work. (Picture Credit score: NBC)
Why did somebody body-shame Hoda Kotb?
On Monday’s episode of In the present day with Hoda and Jenna, titular hosts Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager mentioned how actor Timothee Chalamet’s profession noticed quite a few delays over his physique sort.
Timmy, as his followers and admirers typically affectionately name him, has a slender physique. Over the previous dozen years, movie and tv have targeted upon hypermuscular builds.
Some blame this on superhero movies, but it surely extends to seemingly each style. Too many networks and studios appearing as if different physique varieties, even historically enticing ones, usually are not price showcasing. And sure, actors like Timothee have misplaced out on roles, whereas beefier actors remodeled their our bodies eternally even for easy recurring TV roles.
Timothee Chalamet attends the Warner Bros. Photos world premiere of “Wonka” at The Royal Competition Corridor on November 28, 2023. (Photograph Credit score: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Photographs)
This subject is how Hoda Kotb introduced up that she, too, as soon as had somebody telling her that she was “not right for” her personal job.
“I still remember I had just started working at a small market,” she recalled. “And I played basketball in high school, so I always assumed I was in shape even though literally after college and stuff, I wasn’t.”
Hoda shared: “I still remember my boss going to me, ‘Hey, Hoda,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah?’ He goes, ‘Hey, I got an idea — maybe you might wanna try to get on the treadmill.’”
Like the remainder of us, Jenna expressed shock on the body-shaming of Hoda
“No!” Jenna Bush Hager exclaimed.
“Yeah,” Hoda acknowledged. “He said it like that, and I go, ‘What?’ Like, you know when you have a perception of yourself that is not the perception in the real world?”
Jenna chimed in that the man will need to have had “reverse body dysmorphia.” Physique dysmorphia is when somebody has a distorted picture of their very own physique. Jenna’s suggestion was that this boss was experiencing a kind of by-proxy model, the place he had a warped view of different our bodies.
The In the present day Present with Hoda & Jenna’s titular hosts, Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush- Hager, discuss on the December 2, 2024 episode. (Picture Credit score: NBC)
“Yeah, so I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’” Hoda narrated. “But, if you don’t fit, they want you to wear something a certain way, cut your hair a certain way, speak a certain way.”
Although dialect will not be the identical as body-shaming, Jenna admitted that she had additionally been requested to keep away from saying “y’all,” a folksy contraction of “you” and “all” most prevalent within the southern United States, when she started on In the present day.
‘You start losing who you are’
Hoda clearly understood Jenna’s determination to talk in a way that feels pure to her.
“I think you know when you’re pretending deep down and no matter what it is, you start losing who you are,” she properly opined.
Although Hoda did permit that there are “sometimes” areas the place folks have to alter to “fit into a work environment.”
Hoda Kotb hosts the In the present day Present in mid-February 2024. She needed to clean issues over, as she had a cohost — however not the one which she had anticipated. (Picture Credit score: NBC)
To be clear, there’s no indication that Hoda was describing anybody at NBC. In reality, she has solely labored for NBC for the previous 26 years.
After her Virginia Tech commencement in 1986, Hoda Kotb labored at an area CBS affiliate in Mississippi. The ’80s had been, imagine it or not, a fair crueler time to be a girl in some ways than the 2020s are. Even when American girls arguably had extra rights when Hoda graduated faculty than they do now.
Whether or not the office body-shaming that she describes occurred there or elsewhere is anybody’s guess.
