Although she maintains that her statement had been taken out of context and blown out of proportion, fashion critic Zaihani Mohd Zain admits that it was a mistake for her to write a rather misleading statement on her Facebook recently.
She said that she did not intend to body shame anyone, but the Facebook status was just her way of airing her dissatisfaction with a rather insensitive man who was seated next to her at a fashion show held in Kuala Lumpur.
“He was actually manspreading throughout the evening and that action had made me uncomfortable when his leg was brushing against mine during the show.
“Unfortunately, I didn’t know that it was called ‘manspreading’ and had wrongly described the situation, which led to people misconstruing my statement,” said Zaihani.
Earlier this week, she came under fire after attending a fashion show and writing: “If you weigh more than 60kg, please don’t attend fashion events, as your huge thighs would take so much room causing people seating beside you to be uncomfortable.”
Her elitist comment drew flak from netizens as well as fashion designers and celebrities.
The news was even picked up by UK-based The Telegraph.
Fashion designer Datuk Tom Abang Saufi also regretted her old friend’s statement. Sharing her experiences with Zaihani on Instagram, Tom said size had never been an issue in fashion shows.
“We’ve been to fashion shows around the world and to date, I’ve never come across any critic making an issue out of models’ body sizes,” she said.
Zaihani is currently a mentor on Astro Ria’s reality show called Gen F which seeks to discover new talents in the Malaysian fashion designing industry.