Olympian Cate Campbell responds to trolls who criticised her looks

Cate Campbell has responded to online trolls who have shared negative commentary about her looks. 

The former Olympic champion, 32, has recently spent a significant amount of time on camera making more TV appearances with Channel 9’s Wide World Of Sport and other media opportunities following her retirement from professional swimming.

Seeing herself more often on camera, Cate explained in a recent Instagram post, has made her acutely aware of her own insecurities.

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“I am 32 years old and I don’t know what I’m supposed to look like and when I’m on camera and watching myself back all I can see are these wrinkles around my eyes or the puffiness or my eyelids or these lines on my forehead,” she revealed, noting a lot of people on TV and online appear “airbrushed”. 

Her vulnerability was mostly met with positivity but she also copped cruel comments from some online trolls. Campbell addressed this negativity in a follow up video she posted this morning. 

Watch the video above.

“Predictably because it is social media and the internet, there was the negative side,” she said after thanking those who had shared kind messages. 

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“There was your run-of-the-mill basic bitchh trolls, which I kind of expected. ‘You look terrible’, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you’re 32, you look more like 60, 50, 40’ and that was pretty predictable.” 

There were also those, Campbell explains, who masked their criticism as faux concern. 

“They looked at me and they still thought that what I looked like for my age was unacceptable, but they couched their horror in concern and started trying to rationalise and figure out why I would look the way that I look at the age that I am,” she continued. 

“I got told that I had too much sun exposure, that I should wear SPF, that I should not drink alcohol or eat sugar, that I should stay in the shade, that I should have all kinds of antioxidants.”

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They even told the four-time Olympic gold medallist that she should “lead an active, healthy lifestyle”.

“Do you know what one of the biggest, contributing factors to aging is?” Campbell later added. 

“It is stress and let me tell you, going to four Olympic Games is very stressful. So maybe that has something to do with the wrinkles on my face,” she posited, alluding to the unsolicited advice she received online.

The commentary, Campbell explains, led her to reflect on the impossible beauty standards upheld by society, particularly online.

She notes this extreme beauty standard expects individuals to avoid the appearance of aging – whether that be through beauty procedures or lifestyle choices – and not living up to that expectation can be seen as a failure.

“All of these things make me realise that we view aging not as a natural part of life but as a choice and it’s something that we can avoid if we try hard enough,” she said. 

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“It feels like we are unable to look at people and see their value based on what their faces look like because we look at them and if it doesn’t fit into a very small, narrow beauty standard, we think that they should have tried harder,” she later added.

“And I’m just not sure that I want to subscribe to that.” 

Campbell continued to share a heartfelt thanks to those who shared kind messages. 

“You really kind of gave me confidence and allowed me to believe that it was OK to look how I look, and you weren’t going to turn off the screens because you were horrified at my face and at my wrinkles,” she said. 

She then turned her attention to the negativity. 

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“I want to give a bigger shout out to the trolls or to the people who were writing in and giving me advice, telling me to stay inside, to put on SPF, to stay in the shade, to drink more water, to get more sleep who made me feel like what my face was doing was a failing on my behalf, was because I wasn’t trying hard enough or doing ‘the right things’,” she said.

“I wanna say that you have inspired me to keep doing all the things that I love … [and] to not let myself be made smaller by trying to fit into this very, very narrow way of how we as women are supposed to look, and therefore how we are valued, because so much of our value is based on our face.”

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