Riona O Connor: ‘I was counting points on Weight Watchers when I was 15'

Irish Times

2 days ago

'Skip the bread, get ahead.'
'Summer bodies are made in winter.'
'Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.'
Just thinking about slogans such as these makes Riona O Connor shudder. 'My brain is horrible,' the Kerry-born comedian says over a video call from her home outside London, as she reflects on the words beamed to her over the years from television shows, women's magazines and celebrity interviews.
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'My brain is a sh*t storm. The line 'Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels' – I bought that hook, line and sinker. But I share that with a lot of people because we were brought up in the 1990s with diet culture.'
No more. These days, O Connor still hears prescriptive media messaging, particularly in summer, but she doesn't let it dictate to her. In defiance of Instagram 'thinspiration' beauty standards, O Connor has become famous for her photos and videos on the social media platform where she poses in a bikini or swimsuit but does not contort herself to suck fat in or twist her body to find sharper angles or use filters to smooth out wrinkles. O Connor faces forward and speaks frankly, persuasively and hilariously to her followers about her body, and the ridiculousness of not just wearing a bikini or swimsuit whenever you want to wear one, without feelings of shame or insecurity.
O Connor is sparky, funny and warm. She has more than a million followers on her social media platforms. She receives constant feedback from fans who appreciate the empowerment messages she's offering, particularly now the pendulum seems to have swung back from a period in the 2010s where body positivity and 'glow-ups' were in vogue, to a new era where #SkinnyTok is driving the agenda to such a degree that European regulators recently convinced TikTok to ban the term as a search option.
'I do so many different things – sketches and comedy – and it just seems that, for whatever reason, me talking about how my brain works in a bikini seems to be resonating with a lot of people,' she says. 'I didn't realise people were so self-punishing. I thought people were a lot further down the road. But apparently we're all trying to figure this out together.'
Riona O Connor. Photograph: Lissette Arenas
O Connor is a graduate of LIPA, the performing arts institution in Liverpool co-founded by Paul McCartney. A talented singer, she arrived in England with the dream of making it in musical theatre. She landed a role in Roddy Doyle's The Commitments in the West End in 2013. But the long days and nights of musical theatre were incompatible with raising a family: O Connor has two young sons. 'It's eight shows a week, six out of seven nights. I didn't want that lifestyle.' So she turned to social media. 'It started off with me wanting to scratch the itch and sing and do sketches and share that part of myself. I started writing songs, and a lot of those songs were about the pressure to bounce back after you have a baby, and how I felt that pressure.'
Growing up in Tralee, O Connor was often on a diet. 'I never had a little bum or small legs. I never fitted into that paradigm of what makes you, quote unquote, 'attractive'. I was counting points on Weight Watchers when I was 15. I was doing Slimming World. I didn't lose a pound at Slimming World because I wasn't weighing the potatoes.' She laughs. 'My ancestors were survivors. Our DNA said, 'Hang on to every bit of fat, you're going to need it to get through the war'.'
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Summer bodies: Your body is not a 'before'. It's not a problem to be solved
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But a point came when she realised enough was enough. She didn't want her energy taken up with worrying about food or weight. And she didn't think other people needed to be so burdened either.
'Have you ever done exposure therapy?' she asks. 'I originally did exposure therapy for my arachnophobia, because it was so horrendous. But in the live shows I do, I do a whole section on exposure therapy.' In this case, the 'exposure' is O Connor putting on a bikini and learning that the world continues to turn. 'We discover in the show: nobody's dying at the sight of my size. Everyone is alive: everyone is okay,' she says, laughing. 'It's just a person in a bikini, it's just a body. Exposure therapy is the way forward: the more we see people in different bodies, the less we're going, 'Oh my God, they're so brave!''
No matter what any algorithm spams you with, says O Connor, you can train yourself towards a healthier self-image and it will bring benefits. 'The voice is there, but you don't have to listen to it. I've found [being] brutally vulnerable and honest about my body is freeing. It's given me confidence because I don't have to pretend to be something I'm not.'
Follow Riona O Connor on Instagram
@rionaoconnor_
and
facebook.com/mrsrionaoconnor
, where details for her spring 2026 shows in Ireland will soon be announced.
The
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