Dancing with the Stars judge Carrie Ann Inaba drew viewer fury after telling Olympic skater Amber Glenn to ease back on visible muscle, critics called the note body-shaming.
The Sun reported that Inaba delivered the remarks on live TV during Week 4’s Mariah Carey Night, right after Glenn and pro partner Pasha Pashkov finished a Rumba to “Hero.”
The pair earned a standing ovation in the ballroom. Fellow judges Derek Hough and Bruno Tonioli each scored the dance an 8. Inaba gave a 7, for a total of 23.
Glenn, an Olympic figure skater built like the elite athlete she is, answered host Julianne Hough softly and kept her focus on the floor.
“Great, I’m just excited to hopefully keep dancing,” she said.
Viewer votes kept Glenn and Pashkov alive. Ciara Miller and Brandon Armstrong went home. That did not stop the online pile-on aimed at the longtime judge.
Inaba did not mock Glenn’s size or weight. She praised the power first, then asked for less of it.
“You are powerful, and you are like divine in the way you move, like I see every muscle that’s working. I would like for you to pull back just a hair,” Inaba said on air.
She added a second note that echoed her prior-week advice to Jenna Dewan, a former pro dancer also competing this season: breathe more, and find a hair more energetic connection with the partner. Movement quality still drew praise before the thought trailed off.
That is standard ballroom coaching language, control, phrasing, partnership, not a lecture on looks. On social media platform X, large parts of the audience heard something else.
One user wrote that the muscle line was out of line because Glenn is an athlete and “her muscles are going to be showing,” then asked why the same standard is not applied to shirtless men on the floor.
Another called the comment “absolutely disgusting and uncalled for” and insisted it was body-shaming rather than constructive criticism, claiming the hurt showed on Glenn’s face and tying it to a past body struggle the fan alone asserted.
A third told Inaba to “well and truly f*** off” and demanded the show stop body-shaming stars. A fourth snapped, “Sorry she’s an athlete? Get this judge out of my face,” and complained that “every week it’s something new with her.”
The outrage treated a technical trim, pull back a hair on visible effort, as an attack on a woman’s body. Glenn’s own reply stayed gracious and forward-looking. The scoreboard and the votes backed her more than the loudest posts did.
Inaba had already drawn boos earlier that Tuesday for coming down hard on Guillermo Rodriguez’s performance. The pattern is familiar to anyone who watches the show: one judge plays the toughest grader, the crowd boos, and the internet turns the clip into a referendum.
This season’s field has been stacked with recognizable names from the start, from the Season 35 lineup reveal through fresh faces still finding their feet in the ballroom.
Glenn’s path looks steadier than some. Other cast stories have already turned on injuries and early exits, including coverage of Giada De Laurentiis injuring a toe in rehearsals before the premiere push.
Julia Stiles joined the same celebrity crop, another reminder that the show mixes actors, athletes, and personalities under the same bright lights and the same judging panel.
Even the decision to stay or go has become content, as when Britt Stewart weighed an exit after an early elimination. Not everyone wants the gig; Andy Cohen has said he turned down DWTS and felt fine about it.
Glenn is still in it. She took the note, took the 23, and took the voters’ support. Inaba’s job is to judge dancing, not to pre-clear every adjective for social media.
An Olympic body shows muscle because it was trained to. Asking a Rumba to soften and connect is coaching. Turning that into a morality play says more about the audience’s hair-trigger than about the score.
When every critique of an athlete’s power becomes “body-shaming,” honest judging dies and only flattery remains.
