Cheryl Burke Defends Weight, Rails Against Critics

Dancing With the Stars' Cheryl Burke is a fine-looking woman.

She's also an athletic woman - making her living as a dancer. So you can imagine her reaction to recent critics who claim she's gotten fat.

"I was like, maybe I should just starve myself for four weeks just so people would shut up," she said on Friday's Ellen DeGeneres Show.

"But at the end of the day ... I'm an athlete. I like to eat, I like to work out, and I like to feel healthy, and I feel healthy."

Cheryl Burke is hot. But Earlier this week, Dancing with the Stars Season Six contestant Louis Van Amstel - and dancer Maksim Chmerkovskiy - both spoke out, negatively, about her weight gain as well as that of newcomer Lacey Schwimmer.

"Criticizing a woman's weight ... is just a wrong statement to make ... for women, and it's dangerous," Cheryl Burke said.

"You don't have to be a size zero to be beautiful," she added. "In the world that I live in right now, you don't have to be skin and bones. You can be healthy and beautiful, and you need to accept that about yourself and feel secure about it."

When Burke admitted that she is a "size four in a dress," DeGeneres praised her: "That is a normal body and that's what most people - if they're lucky - look like. I think most people would probably trade you for that body."