The singer\u2019s thin physique is sparking discussions<\/p>\n
\u201cIs Ariana Grande\u2019s body any of our business?\u201d asked Monica Hesse in The Washington Post. Facing a deluge of commentary about her apparent weight loss, the 33-year-old pop star and actress recently announced that she\u2019s stepping away from public life after her current tour concludes. Her \u201cemaciated\u201d appearance in a new music video for her song \u201cPetal\u201d escalated years of speculation that she has an eating disorder. The camera shows sunken cheeks, a protruding clavicle, arms that look like \u201csinew on bone,\u201d and spindly legs. A former child actress and superstar, she has \u201cdefined beauty standards\u201d for young women for years. But Grande has experienced trauma even beyond the pressure cooker of youthful stardom: A suicide bomber killed 22 fans at one of her concerts in 2017. Should we explain to kids and teens that \u201cthis is a body born of deprivation?\u201d Do we tell them that \u201cmost women\u2019s bodies will not naturally look like this unless something is very wrong?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe images of Grande really are alarming,\u201d said Emma Camp in The Wall Street Journal, but \u201call this concern starts to feel like rubbernecking.\u201d Grande\u2019s early celebrity and her various \u201cromantic entanglements\u201d have made her a hate object for some online critics, and her skeletal frame enables them to portray her as a bad role model while enjoying \u201cthe thrill of watching someone self-immolate.\u201d But \u201csharing another scary screenshot\u201d of her bony body \u201cwon\u2019t stop others from starving themselves\u201d\u2014and indeed, the public attention \u201cmight encourage those with eating disorders to keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n
As someone who suffered from an eating disorder, said Emma Madden in The Guardian, I can tell you \u201cthere\u2019s no right answer\u201d about how to respond to Grande\u2019s worrisome weight loss. The body positivity movement preached \u201cdon\u2019t comment on women\u2019s bodies\u201d in reaction to \u201cmisogynistic tabloid treatment of celebrities in the aughts,\u201d but perhaps that was \u201can overcorrection.\u201d Eating disorders \u201cthrive in secrecy and denial,\u201d so we shouldn\u2019t ignore \u201cvisible suffering.\u201d Grande maintains she\u2019s healthy, said Scaachi Koul in Slate, but it\u2019s hard to avoid comparisons to Karen Carpenter, the 1970s pop singer who died of anorexia at 32. In this Ozempic\/Wegovy era, our culture is strongly pushing women \u201ctoward winnowing,\u201d and Grande is \u201cseemingly suggesting the same\u201d by example. We\u2019re left with \u201can unsavory choice\u201d: \u201cthe complicity of silence or the complicity of judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n
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