Oprah Winfrey Opens Up About Decades of Body Shaming, Shame, and Finding Freedom

Oprah Winfrey has spoken candidly about the decades of body shaming she endured from comedians and tabloids, revealing how deeply it affected her sense of self and her relationship with food.

Winfrey returned to daytime television on The View for a wide-ranging interview to promote her new book, Enough: Your Health, Your Weight, and What It’s Like To Be Free, co-written with Dr. Ania Jastreboff. During the conversation, she reflected on the early years of her career, when public commentary about her weight was relentless.

She recalled feeling that the ridicule was deserved. At the time, Winfrey said she blamed herself for being overweight and accepted jokes at her expense because she believed others were right. “I felt embarrassed every time I put the weight back on,” she explained, adding that shame became a normal part of her life.

One moment that stayed with her came from a 1985 appearance on The Tonight Show, then hosted by the late Joan Rivers. Winfrey described spending her entire paycheck on clothes and shoes for her first appearance, only to be publicly scolded about her weight on air.

Rivers, she said, told her she should be ashamed for not losing weight and suggested she could return to the show if she dropped 15 pounds. At the time, Winfrey didn’t feel angry — instead, she felt motivated to meet that expectation, seeing the criticism as justified.

For years afterward, tabloids mocked her body week after week. Eventually, she said, she grew to accept ridicule as simply “a way of being.”

Later in the interview, Winfrey discussed her experience using GLP-1 medications, which she has publicly supported in recent months. She described living for years with what she calls “food noise” — a constant mental loop of calorie counting, guilt, and worry about burning food off.

That noise, she said, was exhausting and unending until she learned how to manage it with medical help. Winfrey emphasized that obesity should be treated as a chronic disease and argued that these medications need to be accessible to those who need them most, including through insurance coverage.

The conversation also turned to her early acting career, particularly her role in The Color Purple. Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg reflected on working together on The Color Purple, directed by Steven Spielberg and based on the novel by Alice Walker.

Winfrey said she felt more comfortable in her body playing Sofia than she ever did as herself, because the character fully owned her strength and presence. “The only time I ever felt comfortable was when I wasn’t myself,” she admitted.

Goldberg agreed, calling the film a turning point in both of their lives. “It was the first time people saw us,” she told the audience.

Now, decades later, Winfrey says she finally understands that her struggles were never a personal failure — and that realization, more than any number on a scale, is what freedom feels like.