Tova Leigh is not the type of woman who stays quiet when people come for her online. The London-based author, comedian, and body positivity advocate recently made the decision to publicly call out the trolls flooding her comment sections with hateful messages. With over 414,000 followers across her social media platforms, she has built her presence around honest conversations about women’s experiences, desires, and rights. And when a wave of particularly vicious comments started piling up, she chose to shine a light on them rather than delete and move on.
Among the messages Leigh shared with her audience were comments like “you’re damn ugly” and “such an ugly woman,” along with even more vulgar insults that she noted were too offensive to repeat without context. She observed that these kinds of attacks tend to spike specifically when she posts about women’s desires or women’s rights, which she found telling. Rather than feeling silenced, she felt it was important to document and expose what women who speak openly online are regularly subjected to. Her decision to go public with the hate mail quickly resonated with her community.
“I’m sharing a few comments I recently received,” she wrote in her post. “Some were about women’s desires, some about women’s rights.” She went on to express genuine fascination at how agitated certain men become when women talk openly about their own lives and experiences. “Of course, not all. Many listen and learn. But some attack,” she added, making clear she wasn’t painting all men with the same brush while still refusing to minimize what was happening to her.
Leigh was equally direct about what she believes the insults are designed to do. “Words like ‘ugly’ are written as if they will make us retreat and stop speaking,” she said, before making it clear that for her, the effect is completely the opposite. “I’m not scared. I’m not offended, and I don’t measure myself by their approval.” Her words struck a nerve with thousands of followers, and the post quickly accumulated more than 3,000 likes and over 300 supportive comments from people encouraging her to keep going and affirming that troll behavior is a textbook example of online hate speech.
This is not the first time Leigh has chosen to publicly expose the hateful messages she receives. In earlier posts, she has shared similar content, sometimes even including the names of those who sent the messages. She has explained her reasoning before, saying that the words don’t hurt her because they don’t come from anyone who matters to her, because she feels genuinely comfortable in her own body, and because she has come to understand that cruelty online usually stems from the insecurity of the person sending it. That perspective has helped her turn what could be demoralizing moments into fuel for continued visibility.
Perhaps the most powerful part of her latest response came when she wrote about her daughters. “I am a mother of girls,” she said. “I don’t want my daughters to ever believe that they should feel less worthy because of some man’s opinion about their body, their age, or their lifestyle.” She made clear that she refuses to shrink herself to make others comfortable, and she expressed hope that her willingness to remain visible and unapologetic sends a message to every woman who has ever been told to take up less space. “I stand here, visible, unapologetic, and I hope every woman who has ever been told to make herself smaller hears this: No. Just no.”
The body positivity movement, which gained significant cultural momentum in the 2010s, advocates for the acceptance of all body types and challenges the unrealistic beauty standards promoted by media, advertising, and social platforms. It draws on a longer history of fat acceptance activism that dates back to the late 1960s in the United States, with organizations like the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance being founded as early as 1969. The movement has since expanded beyond size to encompass disability, skin conditions, age, and gender expression, arguing that all people deserve to feel represented and respected regardless of how their bodies look. Online spaces have become a major battleground for these ideas, with influencers like Leigh playing a significant role in bringing these conversations into everyday public discourse. At the same time, the visibility that social media offers also exposes advocates to concentrated waves of harassment, making the choice to speak out publicly a genuinely courageous one.
Share your thoughts on Tova Leigh’s response to online trolls in the comments.
