Every summer the internet holds the same trial: a pop star walks into the sea and comment sections decide whether she was allowed to. Camila Cabello has been the defendant more than once. In July 2021 she answered a set of park photos with a TikTok, and in April 2022 she answered a set of Miami beach photos with an essay that is still the best thing anyone has written about this whole tired genre, including us. Here is what she actually said, and why “weight gain” was never the headline.
The TikTok from the park: “so last season”
The first round was not even a beach. In July 2021 Cabello filmed herself in the passenger seat of a car after a run and explained what had happened. “I was just running in the park, minding my own business trying to be fit, trying to keep it healthy,” she said. “And I am wearing a top that shows my belly, and I wasn’t tucking it in.” Then came the photos, and her own first reaction: “And I was like, ‘Damn.'”
The turn is the part people remember. “But then I reminded myself, being at war with your body is so last season,” she said. “I am grateful for this body that lets me do what I need to do. We are real women with curves and cellulite and stretch marks and fat. And we gotta own that, baby.” The caption was four words: “i luv my body.” My read: the honest bit is the “Damn.” Anyone can recite an affirmation; admitting it took a second to get there is what made millions of people watch it.
The Miami essay: “I held my breath from my sun chair to the ocean”
The second round was longer and sadder. On April 2, 2022, Cabello posted a carousel on Instagram: a selfie and a screenshot of a long note about a day at a Miami beach club. “Somehow when I check in paps know and get me in my bikini and every time I’ve felt super vulnerable and unprepared,” she wrote. She admitted she was not above it: “I’m a single woman in her 20s in the middle of a s—t ton of promo and i want to feel like I look ‘good’.”
Then she described the day itself, and no paparazzi caption has ever matched it. “I held my core so tight my abs hurt and didn’t breathe and barely smiled,” she wrote. “I tried to pretend they weren’t there but I couldn’t and I held my breath from my sun chair to the ocean.” She watched “a group of toddlers giggling with excitement at the waves knocking them over,” and said she had “never had a worse time at the beach.”
Her diagnosis was about the culture, not about her body. She wrote about “a culture who has gotten so used to an image of what a ‘healthy’ woman’s body looks like that is completely not real for a lot of women,” and named the tools: “Photoshop, restrictive eating, over exercising.” Then she asked the question this site should have asked in 2022: “what is health if you are so fixated on what your body looks like that your mental health suffers and you can’t enjoy your life?” I have read plenty of statements written by publicists; this one clearly was not.
“Not yet at the point”: why she did not pretend to be fine
The line I keep coming back to is the least triumphant one. “I’m not yet at the point in my journey where I can not give a f—k,” Cabello wrote. “Intellectually, I know what I look like doesn’t determine how healthy, happy, or sexy I am. Emotionally, the messaging i get from our world is loud in my own head.” She ended with the child she used to be on the beach: “I’m mourning her today. Happy, silly, breathing, pretending to be a mermaid, FREE.”
She had said a version of this even earlier, in 2019 Instagram Stories: “We have a completely unrealistic view of a woman’s body. Girls, cellulite is normal, fat is normal. It’s beautiful and natural.” Three statements over three years, and the message never moved. The comments did not move either, which tells you who was stuck.
A correction of our own: an earlier version of this page treated “she lost those extra pounds” as a happy ending. We do not track anyone’s weight from paparazzi photos.
Shawn Mendes, the Miami beach, and the years since
Many of the 2021 beach pictures that started the chatter showed Cabello with Shawn Mendes, her partner on “Señorita.” The two announced their split in November 2021 in a joint statement, were seen together again at Coachella in April 2023, and did not stay a couple. Cabello’s music moved on loudly: “Familia” came out in April 2022, and “C,XOXO,” the platinum-blonde album with Drake, Lil Nas X and Playboi Carti among the guests, arrived on June 28, 2024.
Her relationship with Henry Junior Chalhoub, which went public in early 2025, ended in June 2026 after more than a year, according to TMZ and People; neither of them has commented. In April 2026 she turned up at Coachella and sang “Havana” with Young Thug, which is a better use of a desert than anything a long lens has ever produced. A fifth album is in the works, but she has not announced a title or a date.
My verdict
The “Camila Cabello weight gain” search still brings people here, so here is the answer: a woman went running, went to the beach, got photographed both times and told us exactly how that felt. The only thing that needed to change was the audience. I hope next summer she gets her mermaid day, and that the photographers get stuck at the valet.
Sources
- Camila Cabello on Instagram, October 2026
- Camila Cabello on Instagram (@camila_cabello), essay posted April 2, 2022
- ET: Camila Cabello’s TikTok about “curves, cellulite, stretch marks and fat” (July 2021)
- TODAY via NBC Miami: Camila Cabello posts essay about body insecurity following paparazzi photos
- TODAY: Cabello’s TikTok and 2019 Instagram Stories note
- Billboard: Camila Cabello’s “June Gloom” and the Shawn Mendes reunion talk (2023)
- Rolling Stone: Camila Cabello details new album “C,XOXO”
- E! News: Camila Cabello and Henry Junior Chalhoub break up
- Hola: Camila Cabello performs “Havana” with Young Thug at Coachella 2026
