Cheryl Burke has had enough of the comments, the assumptions, and the constant speculation about her appearance. The Dancing with the Stars alum took to TikTok recently to directly address what she called “the elephant in the comment section”, followers claiming she looks different, speculating everything from Ozempic use to illness to surgery.
In her video, Cheryl calmly wiped off her makeup while confronting the rumours head-on. She captioned it: “I’m not on Ozempic. I’m not sick. I didn’t get a ‘new face.’ Stop dissecting women’s bodies like they belong to you. This is YOUR reminder: I don’t owe you an explanation for my healing or for anything, quite frankly. Let this be the last time I have to say it”, reported Page Six.
And she didn’t hold back in the video either. She acknowledged how draining it is to have to keep defending herself against strangers’ opinions. “These assumptions are just exhausting as hell,” she said.
What really stung for Cheryl, though, was where some of the criticism was coming from. “The accusations are completely cruel, and the fact that so many of them are actually coming from women, that’s what is so shocking and hurtful to be quite honest.”
Cheryl has been in the public eye since she was 21, and she’s not shying away from the fact that her appearance has changed over time. But for her, it’s not about vanity — it’s about life. “My body has changed over the past 20 years, my face has changed because I’ve changed,” she said. “I’ve experienced so much trauma, divorce… Soberity, burnout, reinvention, I’ve healed, I’ve lost, I’ve grieved like anybody else.”
For context, Cheryl went through a divorce from Matthew Lawrence in 2022 after three years of marriage. She’s also spoken publicly in the past about her journey with sobriety and self-discovery topics that still shape her today.
“And yeah, maybe it shows, but I’m not sorry for it, not one bit,” she added. She stressed that she’s still the same person underneath it all, and that just because people expect a neat ‘before and after’ transformation with healing, life doesn’t work like that.
The takeaway from Cheryl’s message was loud and clear: women don’t owe the internet an explanation for how they look, especially not when it comes to healing — inside or out.