Mama June Shannon is as real as it gets.
That’s what she insists regarding her latest turn on reality TV, denying that she would EVER wear a fat suit in order to better her storyline.
Of reports that she did exactly that on Mama June: From Not to Hot, she says, “I don’t know what the hell people were thinking, but no.”
“I would never do that,” Shannon insists.
Shortly after the WE tv series debuted, fans speculated that the Here Comes Honey Boo Boo matriarch was wearing a fat suit or prosthetics.
What motive would she have to do that? In order to exaggerate her weight loss and make it look all the more impressive is the theory.
June insists that this is simply not the case.
“If people look back at my picture [pre-surgery], like a couple of years ago, umm, I was fat!” she said with a laugh at her own expense.
Part of the reason people are skeptical, Shannon concedes, is that she’s been out of the spotlight for a time, so it seems more drastic.
But she says it’s been a work in progress:
“This journey started a long time ago.”
“We started filming a little bit and then through the process, we had stopped and there’s nothing … no, hell no, you’re seeing me for me.”
“If you look back,” she goes on, “you’re seeing me at the doctor’s office, you’re seeing me this and that, so that’s actually me being me.”
“I mean, I guess now that people are seeing the transformation happen, they’re like, ‘Woah! That didn’t happen that fast!"” June says.
But TV fans are seeing it condensed, of course: “I’ve been going through this journey since May of 2016, so it has been a little while.”
Shannon says that to be honest, she prefers not to look back at photos from previous years because she they don’t look like her at all:
“I don’t really even look at them, honestly.”
“I don’t feel like that’s me,” the reality star says, “and that all comes back from me mentally picturing myself as being a smaller person.”
Mama June Shannon’s weight loss surgery, combined with exercise and changes in her diet, helped her achieve these results, she says.
When it comes to her daughter, Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson, June wants to send a simple, profound message of body positivity.
“I mean …I want her to love herself for her, and love her for her, and not give a s–t what anybody else says,” June said of Alana, 11.
“But [I do tell her], ‘I need you to know that you need to worry’ because her dad, and her grandmother, does have diabetes and stuff.”
June, incredibly, is only 37 herself.
Check out the newly-slimmed-down reality star out among this gallery of celebrities we can’t believe are the same age …
