Katie Hopkins Has Finally [Sort Of] Admitted Fault

Former British reality TV contestant and notorious weekly columnist for The Sun Katie Hopkins may have finally eaten her words. Pun intended. Hopkins, who is known as "the wicked witch" in the U.K. for her many controversial comments on obesity, gained 50 pounds and then tried losing it quickly. You know, to make a point about how "simple it is to lose weight if you really want to." But as it turns out, the star had to admit she was wrong. Kind of.

Hopkins documented her weight gain and loss for a TLC show My Fat Story. (Great job coming up with an original and non-offensive name, TLC.) The "journey" all started when Hopkins appeared on This Morning (a British morning show) alongside Sonia Poulton, Philip Schofield and Holly Willoughby to discuss child obesity. Hopkins made the comment: "Behind every fat kid is a fat mom who should take responsibility," at which point Poulton argued that parents who tell their children that they're fat are bullies. But Hopkins, who doesn't appreciate other POVs besides her own, quickly turned the discussion into a "slinging match," ending the conversation by telling Poulton, "I'd like to know what happened to you as a child to make you so ugly." And, of course, she kept referring to being fat as an inherent "problem" all the way through. So, yeah, always a real gem.

About a year later, in a conversation about My Fat Story with ET reporter Brooke Anderson, Hopkins proclaimed that she would never hire a fat person. She told Anderson that "overweight people are lazy," whilst admitting to telling a woman she thought she was "disgusting and overweight [that] she was killing herself." The woman she verbally abused actually reported the hate crime to the authorities.

For this special, though, Hopkins reportedly ate over 6000 calories a day and "laid around the house" in order to gain weight. Once she gained 50 pounds, she went to work losing it again. She spent days outside running, taking spin classes and eating a mere 1500 calories a day.

The entire process took six months, but Hopkins did return to her original pre-show weight in the end. In an almost apology that still manages to be extremely anti body-positive, she said, “It actually turned out to be a real ordeal. I understand that when you are fat, you don’t want to put your trainers on and go running out the door because you think people will laugh at you.”

So... Never mind that this was Hopkins's job or that she was getting paid to do the whole journey. Never mind the struggles of those who have overcome a lot to be proud of where they are — overweight and beautiful; thin and fit; overweight and fit; any size and beautiful. And never mind the complete other side of this debate — the one that delves into the harms of eating disorders and the dangers associated with body dysmorphia. I guess the only reason people stay at a higher weight is because they think others will laugh at them if they run outside, right? The notion that anyone could actually be happy whilst also being larger still baffles Hopkins, it would seem.

As Chris Powell pointed out in an interview with Good Morning America, "She’s focusing so much on the physical aspect of weight loss and she’s totally ignored the psychological and emotional component of it."

So, what more is there to say, really? I'll let Anne help me out on this one:

Image: Getty; Giphy