If this is a compliment, we’re terrified of her insults.
Barbra Streisand is facing backlash after she left a pretty awkward comment on Melissa McCarthy’s latest Instagram post.
On Monday, the actor and comedian shared a photo of herself with director Adam Shankman at a gala in Los Angeles. Everything about the photo and its caption were relatively normal — but a quick gander at the post’s comments revealed a bizarre remark from the legendary singer and “Yentl” director, who is friends with McCarthy.
“Give him my regards,” Streisand said of Shankman before taking a weird pivot by asking McCarthy: “Did you take Ozempic?”
The remark, which has since been deleted, was captured by the Comments by Celebs Instagram account, however.
People on X, formerly Twitter, had mixed reactions to the comment. Some found it offensive while others thought maybe Babs meant to send that sentiment via DM and accidentally posted it publicly. One person even made a joke about the Streisand effect, a term the EGOT winner inspired, which describes instances in which high-profile people unintentionally draw more attention to information they’d wanted to keep quiet when they try to wipe it from the public domain.
On Tuesday, Streisand responded to the fiasco in a statement posted to her social media accounts.
“OMG,” she began her statement. “I went on Instagram to see the beautiful flowers I’d received for my birthday! Below them was a photo of my friend Melissa McCarthy that I sang with on my Encore album. She looked fantastic! I just wanted to pay her a compliment. I forgot the world was reading!”
McCarthy has not responded to the situation. HuffPost reached out for her comment but did not receive an immediate response.
But our guess is that McCarthy is indifferent to Bab’s remark because the star of “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” doesn’t seem to subscribe to the idea that her worth as a human being is linked to her size.
When Refinery29 noted to the “Bridesmaids” actor in 2019 that she appeared to have “recently lost a bunch of weight,” McCarthy shrugged off the superficial observation.
“I have [lost weight], but I’ll be back again,” she said at the time. “I’ll be up, I’ll be down, probably for the rest of my life. The thing is, if that is the most interesting thing about me, I need to go have a lavender farm in Minnesota and give this up.”
She added: “There are so many more intriguing things about women than their butt or their this or their that. It can’t be the first question every time, or a question at all.”