JANE GREEN: The shameful truth about Barbra Streisand’s acid-tongued attack on Melissa McCarthy’s weight – and why her cruelty proves WOMEN are always the biggest bullies

Melissa McCarthy attended a gala in LA this weekend in a glamorous mint green dress, looking newly slim and fabulous.

Melissa is clearly proud of this lighter look and posted photos of her and choreographer Matthew Bourne on her Instagram. But one A-lister wasn’t willing to give her her moment:

‘Give him [Bourne] my regards, have you taken Ozempic?’ Barbra Streisand’s official account commented below the photo.

Fans rallied behind McCarthy, baffled by the Oscar winner’s cruelty, by her lack of discretion and, frankly, by the apparent bitchiness of the question.

Unsurprisingly, the comment was subsequently deleted, with Streisand later taking to Instagram again to insist that McCarthy was a “friend” and that she was just “trying to give her a compliment.”

“I forgot the world is reading!” she added.

It’s certainly at least possible that Streisand, 82, tried to message McCarthy privately and simply made a mistake. How many older people do we all know who are complete Luddites when it comes to technology?

It reminds me of the many times my 80-year-old mother has forgotten to hang up the phone and turned to my father while the line was still active. “Jane is completely crazy,” she said last week.

But if Streisand’s explanation is to be believed, she clearly hasn’t fully understood that the world has changed. That comment about weight is simply no longer acceptable – private or not. That we instead say, “you look beautiful,” and leave it at that.

To go further betrays not only a lack of compassion, but also a lack of good manners.

In an increasingly crowded market, celebrities and people with public profiles naturally have to share more and more of themselves online. They have to find new and often shocking ways to keep followers engaged, encouraging fans to watch their latest movies, begging them to buy their books, or even their fancy new jams.

And it’s easy for the rest of us to think that we know these people, that perhaps we have the right to ask invasive questions, pass judgment, or seek answers in the comments section that we would never dare demand in real life.

In many ways, we all have a hard time feeling sorry for the rich and fancy. They know the game, the deal they made with the Hollywood devil.

But we are all entitled to some degree of privacy – and weight in particular is a vulnerable issue for women, especially women of a certain generation.

Growing up in the 1970s — as McCarthy, 53, did — I was raised to believe that anything other than staying thin was unacceptable.

So-called ‘body positivity’ did not exist. Everywhere you looked, front pages, magazine covers and TV ads were proclaiming that diets were the only path to happiness – and we believed it.

I remember my mother putting me on a three-day “grape diet” in an attempt to reduce what she called my “substantial thighs” and “round stomach.” I was eight years old.

Shame around our weight has paralyzed many of us. No matter how confident we appear as adults, we always carry with us insecurities that we learned as children.

Conversations about weight, about hating our bodies, hating the lack of self-control that leads to binge eating, about punishing self-restraint, are kept private, if at all.

It’s why so many suddenly slim celebrities now won’t admit they’re on Ozempic.

I applaud people like Sharon Osbourne – who has been radically honest about her recent dramatic weight loss – but I completely understand why so many other famous women have chosen to remain silent about their use of fat-burning drugs.

Yet Streisand’s apparent Instagram suggestion goes deeper than just a search for the truth about McCarthy’s alleged use of Ozempic.

Her rather unsisterly comments got me thinking about a recent interpersonal friction of my own.

A few days ago I made a joke on my own Instagram account about having a “midlife crisis.”

I am currently, and painfully, separated from my husband, and we are beginning divorce proceedings. There is still deep love and friendship there, but we are on very different paths.

Not that many people know that – we handled our divorce privately. But when I made the lame joke, I heard it from an old friend I’ve known for almost 25 years and thought I loved him.

“I’m so sorry you’re throwing away your marriage because of a midlife crisis,” she wrote lightly.

I was stunned by her rudeness, by her lack of compassion, by the fact that someone I thought was a friend thought it was acceptable to send such a thoughtless, heartless message.

I wrote back to her saying she had no idea what happened behind closed doors, no idea of ​​the reasons for our divorce, and that her sheer rudeness was a stunning betrayal.

It went back and forth for a while, but there was absolutely no remorse from her, no understanding of how much she had upset me.

The “fourth wall” of social media has emboldened far too many bullies, safely hidden behind their keyboards and iPhones, who find it acceptable to pass judgment and spew venom, as if the digital divide makes it any better.

But there is also one woman problem here. Streisand, my former boyfriend… women can really be so cruel to other women.

Jealousy is indeed a green-eyed monster – and one that has ruined far too many female friendships. The “perfect” bodies, the enviable vacations, the small portions of expensive salad that women show off in social media posts by women apparently at war with each other make it all much worse.

It’s not easy to be a lady in today’s world where plastic surgery and perfection are held up as constant mirrors.

But the truth is, we all share the same insecurities, the same worries about not being good enough, pretty enough, thin enough. It’s time we stop judging each other and instead recognize that when women support each other, we all rise together.