An AFL WAG has revealed the heartbreaking reason she decided to retake her wedding photos just six months after tying the knot.
When Chloe Pink shared her wedding photos in April, she never imagined it would lead to being body-shamed for six months straight.
The 25-year-old married her childhood sweetheart, North Melbourne AFL player Toby Pink, in an intimate ceremony in April.
The wedding photos were re-shared on Facebook, and Ms Pink’s wedding day celebration turned into a cesspit of body-shaming.
In the days after her wedding, Ms Pink wasn’t enjoying wedded bliss; she was at home crying and deleting and blocking messages from people calling her a “pig” and “fat”.
The 25-year-old recently decided to retake her wedding photos because she was sick of looking at them and being reminded of the mass trolling.
“When we got married, we shared those photos naively,” she told news.com.au
Ms Pink said when she looks at her own wedding photos, she doesn’t think about her beautiful wedding day.
Instead she thinks about having to rebuild her self-esteem after being body-shamed so intensely it became a national story.
“I look at those photos now and there is no real connection because they are associated with articles and negative comments,” she explained.
The young bride said it wasn’t her idea to retake the photos; it was actually influencer Stephanie Claire-Smith’s.
After appearing on her podcast and discussing being body-shamed over her wedding photos, Stephanie reached out to Ms Pink and offered to pay for a photographer to retake their wedding photos.
Ms Pink said she immediately thought it was a “lovely idea” and a really positive way to reclaim her wedding.
“We are so happy we did it,” she said.
The couple wore the same outfits they did on their wedding day, and Ms Pink even styled her hair the same way.
She didn’t want to change how she looked on her wedding day; she wanted to change how she felt when she looked at the photos.
“We will eventually share a few photos, but now we have photos for ourselves that are private,” she said.
“We can put them up in our home and keep these beautiful photos for us.”
The 25-year-old said it is nice to have something just for them, and some photos that won’t be stained by online commentary.
Six months later, and Ms Pink is still dealing with the wedding body-shaming fallout. She can’t really post anything online without something hideous being said.
When she recently attended AFL’s Best and Fairest Awards night, she was body-shamed online again; for example, someone on Instagram asked whether she was “charged extra” for the fabric of her dress.
When she posted photos from her honeymoon, yet again, the same horrible and cruel thing happened.
“I uploaded a video of us on our honeymoon, at the beach, and someone said, ‘Finally the whale is in her natural habitat’,” she told news.com.au.
Ms Pink said the body-shaming is relentless and, no matter what she posts, a loud minority will make fun of her weight and appearance.
“It is so bad. I think everyone thinks it is fun now,” she said.
“It is the same stuff, and no one has anything negative to say about who I am, but it is about the way I look.”
Even when she shares reels talking about her heartbreaking experience of being body-shamed and how upsetting it is, someone will comment and say that if she doesn’t like being “fat”, she should lose weight.
It is the kind of cruelty that she finds hard to ignore, forget about or even block out because it is so mean.
Ms Pink previously told news.com.au that she is constantly being told to ignore the comments but it is not that simple.
“You don’t get it if you’re not in this position and you don’t know how it feels,” she explained.
“Everyone says to ignore it, but it is not your body getting criticised.”
