Ben Adams "too ‘chubby’ to be allowed to go without a vest" in boyband A1

Nineties boyband member of A1, Ben Adams has been hitting the charts over the last three decades, with chart topping hits like Caught In The Middle and Take On Me.

With UK shows planned this year, as well as a joint tour in 2020 with fellow 90’s boybands Five, 911 and Damage, the band are back together and joining the string of nineties boyband revivals.

Ben Adams has also turned this hand to theatre over the past few years, taking on leading roles in Flashdance and The Rocky Horror Show, as well as writing the successful musical Eugenius.

This week, Suzanne Moore write an article for The Guardian titled ‘Sorry, guys, you can’t be an actor and moan about body image’ in which she said “actors moaning about having to maintain their image is a bit like me moaning that I have to write sentences”.

Ben posted this picture on social media with the quote “Guess who was too ‘chubby’ to be allowed to go without a vest”, showing that nothing has really changed over the last twenty years and both men and women are still being made to shape up in order to be in the public eye – giving the world the view that in order to be successful you must look a certain way.

Ben said “I was always chubby at school. So much so that my nickname was ‘bubble 0’7’. But going into the public eye at such a young age was another level of scrutiny and even had reviews coming in from various concerts saying ‘despite Ben having put in a lot of weight, he was still favourite among the girls’, and articles coming out in papers being included in the line up of ‘stars secretly piling on the pounds’. Didn’t make me feel great, BUT I did have someone come up to me more recently saying they were shocked at how I looked now as they preferred me when I was ‘bigger’ coz it showed even bigger people could be sex symbols and gave him inspiration.”

The Good Place actor, activist and founder of the body positivity Instagram movement “I Weigh,” Jameela Jamil is balancing the scales in favour of women. After noticing a toxic trend of pop-culture media judging women by their size, she took it upon herself to flip the script and measure women by the weight that really matters— that of their accomplishments.

Her new YouTube channel I Weigh has kicked off with an in-depth interview with singer Sam Smith to talk about fame, body image and the daily practice of self acceptance. Check it out.

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