Team USA rugby player Ilona Maher is letting it be known that having a “bigger body” is just fine.
On Feb. 25, the 28-year-old posted a video on TikTok, encouraging body positivity while social media continues to be saturated with “thin” celebrities and weight loss aids.
“I feel like every time I open up social media nowadays I’m hit with an ad for a weight loss supplement or I see a thin celebrity is even thinner,” she said in the clip. “Or recently I’ve been getting before and afters where the before is a gorgeous gorgeous girl and the after is also a gorgeous girl but almost making it seem like that before wasn’t worthy.”
“And here I am with another gentle but firm reminder that it is okay to exist in a bigger body. A lot of us are not meant to be small. I’m not meant to be small. This big old frame, I’m supposed to be 200 lbs., which is what I am now,” she continued. “I just think we’re getting this messaging that this is what’s right, this is what’s beautiful and it’s just not the case. There’s beauty in so many shapes and sizes.”
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“I know I share these messages a lot but I just don’t see a stop to this,” she added. “I think it’s gonna be constant so I encourage you all to take the brave step and really appreciate your body and maybe dive deeper into how you think it should be and what it means to take care of it.”
Back in July 2024, the Olympic medal-winning rugby star went viral for shutting down a commenter who criticized her weight and BMI.
“I bet that person has a 30% BMI,” wrote one commenter — who has since deleted their account — on one of Maher’s TikTok videos.
“Hi, thank you for this comment,” the athlete began her response video. “I think you were trying to roast me, but this is actually a fact. I do have a BMI of 30. Well, 29.3 to be exact.”
“I’ve been considered overweight my whole life,” Maher said, sharing that she’d been categorized as overweight from elementary school into high school. “I chatted with my dietician… We talked about BMI, and we talked about how it’s really not helpful for athletes.”
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Body Mass Index — or BMI — is a formula where a person’s weight (in kilograms) is divided by the square of their height (in meters), and that number is used to sort people into four categories: underweight, healthy, overweight or obese.
However, the use of BMI is controversial among healthcare workers as it was developed in the mid-19th century based on problematic racial and societal biases and does not consider a person’s ethnicity, gender or body makeup.
“BMI doesn’t tell you what I can do. It doesn’t tell you what I can do on the field. How fit I am. It’s just a couple of numbers put together,” Maher continued. “It doesn’t tell you how much muscle I have, or anything like that. So yeah, I do have a BMI of 30. I am considered overweight.”
“I’ve said it before, I’m 5-ft.-10-in., 200 lbs, and I have about — and this is an estimate — about 170 lbs of lean mass on me. Do that math in your head. You probably can’t.”
Maher ended her video with a final message to the critic: “Alas, I’m going to the Olympics — and you’re not.”
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