Latest news with #CateCampbell
Sky News AU
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sky News AU
Four-time Australian Olympian Cate Campbell slams social media trolls who claimed she looks 'too old for 32' in candid video
Four-time Olympian Cate Campbell has issued a no-nonsense response to trolls who criticised her appearance, saying she looks "too old for 32". The Malawian-born Australian swimmer sparked the cruel commentary after sharing a bare-faced, makeup-free video on Instagram last Friday. "I am 32 years old, and I have no idea what I'm supposed to look like," Campbell said in the clip, filmed after a light jog. Unfortunately, the post received numerous negative comments, many of which included unsolicited advice. "Girl, I'm sorry but you do look at least 10 years older- start using SPF," one commenter said, racking up more than 500 likes (at time of writing). Another added: "In the nicest way possible, I'd say you look around 40." On Wednesday, the eight-time Olympic medallist-turned-media-presenter returned to Instagram to address the backlash in a second video, skewering both the overtly cruel trolls and the so-called "concerned" commenters. "There was your run-of-the-mill basic b**** trolls, which I kind of expected," she said. "You look terrible … you look more like 60, 50, 40. "Then came the 'concerned trolls'," she explained- the ones who tried to justify their disapproval with health advice. "They couched their horror in concern," Campbell said. "I got told that I had too much sun exposure, that I should wear SPF, not drink alcohol, avoid sugar, stay in the shade, take antioxidants, live an active lifestyle." She was even asked whether she smoked, to which she replied: "Um, no." The swimmer pointed out how this kind of commentary reflects what she believes is a deeper societal problem: the belief that ageing is avoidable if one just tries hard enough. "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 added. The Brisbane-based swimmer said she refuses to "subscribe" to rigid beauty standards, and thanked her trolls for motivating her to "keep doing all the things that I love". "This is just my take," she concluded, "and it's that we somehow now view ageing as a choice. And it's just another thing that women have to work very, very hard to avoid." Her message was met with a flood of praise, with media personality Gus Worland commenting: "You're awesome." Another supporter added: "I would like to request a new segment – Cate tells it how it is, unfiltered, sweary, and gives a 'middle finger' to those that deserve it!" Campbell has previously spoken openly about her body image struggles and experience with disordered eating. In April, she told The Courier-Mail that during her early career, "it was skinniest is best". "I would see other coaches discussing other athletes, saying 'so-and-so's come back from a break- geez, she's looking heavy'," she said. "I can remember girls getting told to eat off smaller plates and open discussion around what skinfolds were, and girls having to weigh themselves on pool deck in front of other people." Campbell, who once kept a calorie-counting diary, said she's worked hard to shift her mindset and focus on healthy living. "If I am struggling with other things in life, my instinct and desire to control what I eat comes back. "But I recognise it and I'm like, 'you need more than a carrot for dinner'," she said. has contacted Campbell for further comment.
Daily Mail
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Swimming great Cate Campbell blames CAPITALISM for making women feel bad about their looks as she hit back at trolls who slammed her over her appearance
Australian swimming legend Cate Campbell has taken aim at capitalism for driving unrealistic beauty standards for women while hitting back at trolls who have targeted her over her appearance. The four-time Olympian, 32, has been spending a lot of time in front of the camera doing media appearances since she retired from competitive swimming last year. Cate explained that she loves the work, but seeing herself on screen so much has made her more aware of how she looks. 'Suddenly I've felt all my insecurities creeping back,' she said in an Instagram post. 'So much of society is about what we look like and the people who are on camera look a very certain way... '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.' Campbell's candid post was met with a wave of positivity from her followers, but it also attracted some attention from online trolls. The swimming great fired back at them with a second video, noting that her post was 'not a critique on anyone's personal choices, rather an interrogation of the beauty standards our capitalist society has created for us.' 'There was your run-of-the-mill basic bitch 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.' Campbell explained that she also received comments from people who she called 'concerned trolls'. '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.' Some trolls even wondered if she smoked cigarettes and suggested that the former Olympian should 'lead an active, healthy lifestyle'. 'Do you know what one of the biggest, contributing factors to aging is?' Campbell said. '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.' Campbell went on to say that she's realised society views aging as something we can avoid if we try hard enough, rather than a natural part of life. '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 added. 'And I'm just not sure that I want to subscribe to that.' She thanked all those who had sent messages of support - and then also addressed the negativity she's copped. 'I want to give a bigger shout out to the trolls or to the people who were writing in and giving me advice,' she said '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'.
Daily Mail
22-04-2025
- Sport
- Daily Mail
Aussie swimming great Cate Campbell reveals the shattering moment that made her feel like a 'fraud, a fool and a failure'
Aussie swimming great Cate Campbell has opened up on the moment her glittering career ended in heartbreak as she failed to qualify for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. The 32-year-old is one of Australia's most decorated swimmers and was on the cusp of making history as the first Aussie to swim at five Olympic Games. Having captained the Australian team at the Tokyo Games in 2021 - while also competing in Beijing in 2008, London in 2012 and Rio in 2016 - the four-time gold medallist had worked all her life to achieve extraordinary things. But it came crashing down when Campbell, who also holds a Bachelor's Degree in Communication from the Queensland University of Technology, failed to qualify for the Olympic swimming team in June 2024. She placed seventh in the women's 50m freestyle at Australia's Olympic selection trials in Brisbane, with Shayna Jack and Meg Harris - who went on to win silver in Paris - both being selected for the Games. Campbell had broken down in tears in the pool after missing out on qualifying. She had also missed out qualifying for the 100m freestyle final by one-hundredth of a second earlier in the week. Campbell said she was 'heartbroken' by the moment, having come so agonisingly close to making history as the first Aussie swimmer to appear at five Olympics 'I was heartbroken and I was devastated,' Campbell told the Courier Mail, reflecting on the agonising moment. 'To be honest, I felt foolish. I felt like a fraud. I felt like a failure. I felt like I had wasted the past two years of my life training to this point. 'I was ashamed, I was embarrassed, and it was all of those things because that's what happens when you're out there and you do something vulnerable and it doesn't work out. Then there was the disappointment that this is the end.' Despite the disappointment, she finished her Olympic career with eight medals, including four golds. Those titles accompany her already bursting trophy cabinet, with Campbell having also won six gold medals at the Commonwealth Games and 37 major international medals. Amid the pain she added that there was a sense of 'relief' around the moment. 'There was relief that I could let go and stop fighting,' she added. Much of her life has been devoted to training to help her strive for excellence in the pool. Campbell admitted that she now is excited about the future, and was excited to have her weekends back, she did have some regrets from her career. 'It's the full stop, the closing of the chapter in the book on a career which I'm very happy with and very proud of, but there are regrets and mistakes that you secretly hoped that you could have changed… it's the complete knowledge that part of my life is over.' One of those regrets related to missing out on winning gold in the women's 50m final Rio. Amid the disappointment of that result, she took a break from swimming the following year before bouncing back at the Commonwealth Games, winning gold while also breaking the world record for the women's 4x100m relay alongside her sister Bronte. Campbell, a former chair of the Australian Olympic Committee Athletes' Commission, is now forging a new journey and says she is enjoying the 'ordinary' things in life.
The Guardian
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Cate Campbell: ‘I think people who have no regrets in life haven't lived exciting enough lives'
A tall, familiar figure is walking towards me near Bulimba Ferry on the south side of the Brisbane River. It is Cate Campbell, the Australian swimming legend who announced her retirement last June. She is carrying a slight limp. She assures me that walking is fine, as long as she stays on a hard surface, off the grass. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. We set out along the boardwalk over the river's edge. Scales of late afternoon light reflect off the brown snake, muddied by ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred. A darter fishes in the shallows, undeterred. 'I like to be next to the water,' Campbell says with a quick, self-conscious giggle. In a recent Instagram post, Campbell told her followers that after 20 years chasing the black line at the bottom of the pool, she was trying to work out where the water ended and she began. Retirement, she says, means 'doing all the things I haven't been able to do – like Friday night drinks, and the discovery that a weekend was two full days, instead of one and a half.' In January, she and her partner took a skiing holiday at Mount Kenashi in Japan. He was an experienced snowboarder; she was a novice. As it turned out, it wasn't for her. 'Everyone says it's good to step outside your comfort zone. I now have a little asterisk on that saying, rupturing your ACL [anterior cruciate ligament] also happens outside your comfort zone.' Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Hence the limp. Campbell is now two months into a 12-month recovery, and not thrilled about it. 'I was looking forward to not doing rehab exercises or spending time in physio clinics, and now I'm doing a lot of those. Except now I'm doing it on my own dime, whereas before I was inside a well-supported sporting institute and could access those facilities for free.' If that sounds privileged, consider the price Campbell's 32-year-old frame has paid for those 20 years in the water (she also had surgery on her left shoulder, last October). As the end of her career neared, she could see her teammates doing things she no longer could. 'I'm hyper-aware of the aging of my body, and the toll that elite sport has taken on it.' She wryly paints a picture from shortly after the knee surgery, when her limitations got the better of her. Stricken with cabin fever, she lurched out of the house, on crutches. 'I hobbled down to the end of the street. My knee was too sore to keep going, and to add insult to injury, my shoulder was really sore from having to use the crutches.' She hobbled back. When she announced her retirement, following a failed bid for last year's Paris games at the Australian Olympic trials, she tallied up her career: over 35,000km, more than 19m strokes, four Olympic Games, eight Olympic medals and seven world records. She still holds one of those world records – for the short-course 100 metres freestyle, set in 2017. Campbell's first Olympic appearance was at Beijing in 2008, when she was 16. Had she qualified, Paris 2024 would have been her fifth Olympiad – something no Australian swimmer has ever achieved. She admits there was relief when it was all over. 'I was so tired by the time we got to those trials, and my body had been breaking down continuously.' There is a curious suspension of disbelief involved in elite sport. Athletes have to mentally back themselves to perform, even when every fibre of their being is telling them: enough. Physically, Campbell was cooked. Yet she still willed herself back into the water, as though spitting in the face of her sporting mortality. She likens it to a delusion, but that's not so unusual, she says: 'We all have to lie to ourselves, all the time, to continue to move through the world. If we truly understood the risks of walking out your front door, you wouldn't do it. And if you set yourself big, ambitious goals, they require imagination. Imagination is a form of delusion, right?' We pause for a moment. Campbell reminds me , matter-of-factly, 'I never reached the pinnacle of my sport.' She is regarded as one of Australia's greatest relay swimmers, with four gold medals, one silver and one bronze, and she has a tray full of World Championship records. But an individual Olympic gold medal eluded her to the end. It kept her hungry. Does it still burn? 'Oh, I think that you can look back with regret, and not let that regret tarnish your whole experience. I think people who have no regrets in life haven't lived exciting enough lives … I'm not going to define my whole career by not having that in my trophy cabinet.' Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion Besides, she says, the view might have looked different from the summit. 'I've obviously seen and spoken to a lot of people who have – and sometimes it isn't everything they hoped or dreamed for, or the emotions aren't what they expect.' Campbell hardly presents as a fish out of water. She is relaxed and confident. She is studying an Australian Institute of Company Directors course, and is already a regular on the speaker's circuit. A career in sports media would be the easy route, and is hers if she wants it; she loves the idea of 'bringing athlete's stories into people's living rooms'. But not now, not yet, not while she is trying to disentangle herself from her old life and establishing a new one. Asked if she is in any hurry, her answer is a crisp, one-word 'No'. Some habits die hard, though. Having lived her life with military discipline, she still needs structure. After swearing she would never set an alarm again once she retired, she still gets up at 5.30am every morning. She reads, plays a little piano – something she's just taken up – then does her rehab exercises, before turning her attention to the day ahead. We're back at the ferry terminal now. Commuters are rushing past, not seeing us, thinking only of home. I ask Campbell about hyperfocus. 'I don't have anything to hyperfocus on now, which is interesting, because it's probably close to the first time in my life that I don't have something to aim for.' And with that, she sounds free. 'We always tell athletes to separate the person from their performances, but the nature of high-performance and elite sport is all-encompassing, so of course your identities are going to merge. I think a lot of athletes get to the end of their career and they berate themselves for not feeling like they're accomplishing or achieving anything. 'I am giving myself grace in terms of being able to unpick that, instead of berating myself for that real loss of purpose and identity. But also, I'm really proud of what I've managed to achieve. That will always be part of me.'
Telegraph
23-02-2025
- General
- Telegraph
I cheated, should I come clean? The questions therapists are asked after an affair
An infidelity can feel like the worst betrayal imaginable. In fact, only one in three people feel their relationships could continue after an affair. Yet many relationship therapists advise that it can be the beginning of a whole new chapter and that couples can not just survive but thrive as a result. If it happens in your relationship – whether you're the sinned against or the sinner – what can you do to salvage it, and how can you be sure you really want to? Here, experts answer the most commonly asked questions: Will we ever get over it? 'I quite often say to couples, just forget about [forgiveness], because actually this might be something that is unforgivable,' says Cate Campbell, a British Associate of Counselling and Psychotherapy [BACP] accredited sex and relationship therapist. 'What [the injured party] might do, rather than forgive, is look to adjust to this new reality, and to choose to go forward.' According to Susie Masterson, a BACP-registered relationship coach: 'Forgiveness is really tricky because it requires us to go back to the point of the pain. You have to accept that it's a process and that it doesn't have to happen overnight, it doesn't have to be black and white, and you can learn to forgive in a way that separates the behaviour, once you understand it, from the person.' If that sounds like a big ask to you then you are not alone. Jess*, 48, says: 'We were already on the path to splitting up when my then husband decided to confess that he had a year-long affair 10 years earlier, only two years into our relationship. I was devastated and have never felt so angry in my life. I behaved completely out of character and threw a glass of wine in his face. I refused to ask for any details. At that point I just didn't want to know. I think mainly I was angry about all the lies I'd been told both at the time and then because he had been keeping it to himself over all those years. We split up soon afterwards.' When it comes to anger, Campbell says it's important to understand that sometimes anger stands in for grief – people feel anger instead because they feel so vulnerable.'Anger is easier. But the problem is, if you are in a relationship where you're trying to stick together, anger tends to end it because there's no way around it. Some people cannot let go of it.' She adds: 'You must not think, I'm never going to let you forget you did this. I mean, you might not be able to forgive, but if you're going to just keep going on and on and on about what's been done to you, you'll kill the relationship.' Why did they cheat? 'The most common thing that people say in therapy sessions is 'I don't know why I did it. I don't know what came over me,'' says Campbell. Rather than asking 'why', she explains that as the therapist she would ask the guilty party 'what did you get out of it?' in order to determine what was missing from the marriage. Masterson adds another demand to this already uncomfortable issue. 'Whether we felt at the time that we were aggrieved or not, what we need to accept is that this relationship wasn't working right,' she insists. 'If we don't accept that there was a rupture or it was broken, how can we possibly repair it?' Accepting this is possibly easier said than done. But the consensus is that after all the apologies, if you do want to try and stay together there definitely needs to be an understanding of what caused the affair in the first place. First, of course, it can be because of the inevitable demise of the honeymoon period. Campbell explains that when we are in the early stages of relationships we are full of hormones, some of which are so strong they can disguise any negative feelings, adding, 'we don't talk to people about the disappointment when the honeymoon period wears off'. Surprisingly, she says, this isn't the sole preserve of newish relationships but can be deferred for many years. 'What people do is distract themselves with planning the wedding, having babies, throwing themselves into work, and then when the children leave, another crisis point, they think, 'Oh, I still feel disappointed', and that's when they start looking around for someone else.' Another extremely common trigger for affairs is being unsettled by an increased commitment. Campbell says: 'When you talk to partners, whether they're having problems with their sex life, or whether it's an affair, there was very often some kind of increased commitment just before it happened – getting pregnant, moving in together, getting married, even increasing their mortgage or moving to a bigger house.' And for others, the spur is fear of intimacy. 'Some people get to a point in their relationship where they feel really close and intimate,' says Campbell. 'It scares them that they'll lose that person, so they distract themselves with another relationship.' One thing that is 'incredibly common' for a one-off affair, says Campbell, is a man who is highly stressed but cannot talk to his wife about it. 'Men have this feeling that they should be able to manage things and not have to confide in partners – they need to protect their partner.' Instead what can happen is that he confides in someone else, often at work, and that this leads to an affair they weren't originally looking for. 'It's very clear what's wrong with that relationship: they need to be able to confide in their partner, and their partner needs to be able to welcome those confidences and be supportive.' Finally, Campbell says that sometimes infidelity is simply an 'exit affair'. She explains: 'People think that the relationship is over, and so if I do this thing, it will upset my partner enough that they'll throw me out.' Did my partner have an affair because our sex life was dwindling? There is much discussion about how an affair isn't just about sex, although this seems to be pretty much the defining factor. But Campbell says it's complicated. 'Important research has shown that, to men, the emotional connection is more important than the sexual connection. What can sometimes happen, if the emotional connection isn't there, is that [a man] will go out and meet someone, and [he'll] suddenly be surprised by the strength of [his] feelings, because [he's] been pushing those feelings down for years and years.' And of course, there's an imbalance between new sex and old sex. Campbell explains: 'I think it's important for couples to know that in long relationships, it's more common for 'responsive desire' [as opposed to 'spontaneous desire'] to kick in. At about 10 years into a relationship, many men and most women don't feel desire until they're actually aroused [either physically or, for example, by erotic content]. That can seem like lots of loss of libido. Also, when women hit the menopause, they don't have that spike in desire at the middle of the month when they ovulate, and so they think they've lost their desire, but they haven't.' How do I know my partner won't keep doing this? Short answer: you can't ever be sure. But there is a personality type for someone who has serial liaisons as opposed to a one off affair. Campbell says it can be about power. 'It's often quite narcissistic – people who don't feel that they'll get their needs met unless they manoeuvre for them. Maybe their needs weren't met in childhood, and so they think you have to trick people to get your needs met.' It comes back to self-esteem. 'They don't feel good enough. I mean, they may not know they don't feel good enough. They may think they're great. But they need to keep having that reconfirmed, and that's usually why they keep having the affairs.' So can there ever be any hope for a serial adulterer? Campbell says: 'Well, there is hope if they don't want to be serial adulterers – but most of them do.' I had an affair, should I tell my partner everything? Campbell says: 'I would never, ever advise somebody to [blurt it out] because you have responsibility for what you've done. I mean, the idea that you should confess everything is a bit daft, because how does it help if you maybe snogged somebody at the office party? You were drunk, you wouldn't do it again. It was a moment. And why do you need to tell your partner? It could induce a crisis that isn't necessary.' But if it is serious enough to come out, avoid raking over it endlessly. Masterson says: 'I call it doing a forensic accounting of an affair, to understand every minute detail, which is just our defence mechanisms going into overdrive because we are out of control, because we've had this bombshell, and we're seeking to make sense of it by controlling every aspect of it.' However tempting, this is not a good idea. Instead, you guessed it, it's time to light up the halo and try to understand the other person and why they did what they did. How do we move on? 'Quite often what happens after an affair, there is a lot of sex and a lot of talking, and people do feel very close,' observes Campbell, 'and then suddenly, after a few weeks of that, the wronged partner thinks they're exposing themselves to the possibility of this happening again, panics and doesn't want any sex or any closeness, in case they're putting themselves at risk.' This is natural but unhelpful. 'You cannot future-proof your relationship. It's impossible because you don't know what's going to happen. You have to accept uncertainty and accept that you have to stay on the ball.' That doesn't mean spying on the person to make sure they don't do it again, but making an effort (time for that halo again). 'Relationships are very, very hard, and most of us don't make the effort that relationships need. This is because we're sold the lie that relationships are romantic and if you love somebody it will be fine, and you don't need to make any effort. That is rubbish.' Masterson advises: 'I think date nights and time together is really important. Scheduling intimacy is really important as well. And I think actually opening up a whole conversation about intimacy can be really important because there are a lot of assumptions about sex and intimacy and how we show love in relationships that get brought into sharp focus when someone has been unfaithful. But actually it's a real opportunity for you to have a conversation about what turns you on and what doesn't turn you on.' Can we go back to how it was before? 'If infidelity has happened but you want to stay together you have to see it as an opportunity for growth. It can really change your relationship. It could be a wonderful thing – or it could be a disaster. You know, you don't know until you check it out,' says Campbell. She says relationship guru Esther Perel puts it like this: 'Would you like a second marriage? Because your first marriage is over. The way that was has ended.' Masterson adds:'The bedrock of every relationship is rupture and repair, because every relationship goes through a rupture, and what I'm really invested in is how to help people repair, whatever the transgression is.' And Campbell reveals: 'People say things to therapists, like we just want to go back to the way it was before. Absolutely not. No, you don't, because the way it was before was what led to this. What do you want? What needs to be different? So I try to engender in my clients a sense of excitement about the future.' Should we make new rules in the relationship? Yes. Masterson advises setting parameters and conditions, which people often don't do right at the beginning of a relationship. 'So it could be really important to say, 'If this happens I need to tell you what my position is going to be.' That's having agency, and that can be really strengthening.' Another strategy she recommends is regular relationship audits, with couples scheduling time to check in on the relationship, to have a conversation about what's going on for each other, and to make space to do that. That is different to and as well as scheduled intimacy (meaning sex or physical closeness) which also key. Overall, says Masterson: 'We have to start to be a lot more contrived to rebuild a relationship, and it will be weird at first, but often, when I set homework for my couples, they tell me that weeks into it, they forgot about the origin of it. They just know that that thing has improved their relationship' She concludes: 'There's always blame on both sides. There's fault on both sides. There's agency on both sides. There's things that could be improved on both sides. It doesn't really matter about the language. It's about how do we make it work for both of us?' *Name has been changed
