Oprah Winfrey is discussing the effects of her weight being a huge topic for a good portion of her career.
As Winfrey turns 70 in January, the star told PEOPLE she was “blamed and shamed” about her weight while she had a hit TV talk show.
“It was public sport to make fun of me for 25 years,” she told the publication. “The things that were said about me, said to me, around me, the jokes that were made. You could not get away with it in the slightest sense today.”
Winfrey recalled a particular hurtful situation when she appeared on a magazine.
“I was on the cover of some magazine and it said, ‘Dumpy, Frumpy and Downright Lumpy,’” she remembered.
“I just accepted that as that’s what it is, and I didn’t feel angry. I felt sad. I felt hurt. I felt shame. But it didn’t occur to me that I could even feel angry,” she said. “I swallowed the shame, and I accepted that it was my fault.”
Winfrey went on to say once she accepted obesity being a disease and reconciled the science, she was able to release her “own shame about it.”
She’s consulted a doctor and was prescribed a weight-loss medication.
"The fact that there's a medically approved prescription for managing weight and staying healthier, in my lifetime, feels like relief, like redemption, like a gift, and not something to hide behind and once again be ridiculed for. I’m absolutely done with the shaming from other people and particularly myself,” she said.