Paulini: Australian Idol’s infamous 2003 ‘fat shaming’ moment goes viral

Australian Idol’s notorious ‘fat-shaming’ incident from 2003 has been blamed for causing a generation of women to suffer from body-image issues.

Footage of the moment judge Ian ‘Dicko’ Dickson told contestant Paulini Curuenavuli to ‘choose more appropriate clothing and shed some pounds’ went viral this week, prompting a wave of outrage from women on social media.

Paulini was just 21 at the time, and had chosen to perform her song in a show-stopping gold dress.

Celebrity podcast Shameless posted the footage to Instagram on Tuesday, and captioned it: ‘This is why every millennial woman has body-image issues now, episode two: that time Australian Idol was actual trash.’ 

The post was soon flooded with comments from women, including outspoken celebrities such as feminist author Clementine Ford.

‘It’s wild how much this was just the norm then,’ Ford wrote.

‘I mean, it still happens obviously. But it was so blatant then. No wonder we all hated ourselves,’ she added. 

Former Gogglebox star Evie Jones agreed: ‘I hated this moment so much! I thought (and still do) @paulini_curuenavuli looked absolutely stunning in this dress.

‘Record labels have so much to answer for. Men would make comments like this constantly to female artists. Hideous and dangerous.’  

Model Steph Claire Smith meanwhile commented with a simple face-palm emoji. 

But it was Paulini  herself who had the last laugh, commenting: ‘And I’ve made many gold dresses look even better since that night in 2004.’ 

Paulini, now 38, told Woman’s Day magazine in 2014 that Dicko’s words affected her tremendously at the time, admitting: ‘[It] really hurt my confidence. I went backstage and started sobbing.’

She later told News Corp that Dicko would never have been able to get away with his comments if the segment was filmed in a more recent setting.

‘I think it has changed a lot – there’s no way anyone could do that today. People would just be outraged. There’s no way,’ Paulini said.

‘And anyway, they shouldn’t be able to; these are often young kids standing up there being judged. We have so many problems with young girls who don’t think they’re skinny enough.

‘There’s so much pressure about this mould that you have to fit into – it’s all cr*p,’ she continued.     

Dicko finally expressed his regret in 2017, however, saying on breakfast radio: ‘I was trying to be nice at the time, can you believe, but I’m glad that you’ve gone on to do such great things.’