😲 Lettuce, GLP-1s, and Ariana Grande, Oh My!

Community Happenings

⭐ Did you know that on the second Sunday of every month, there's free live music at Sunnyside Mall? The next one is August 9!

⭐ This Saturday, join the Ravenswood Feel Good Fest to meet local health and wellness practitioners at Clark and Sunnyside, from 11 AM to 5 PM.

⭐ Until August 23, you can see Nathanial Mary Quinn's first solo museum show at the National Public Housing Museum. From the website: "Consider humanity in all of its complexity by processing our lived experiences through a lens of artistic innovation."

🎉 Happy Friday, Friends! 

We’re pretty familiar with what happens when we have a cultural fear around food (thanks, lack of regulation on a federal level!), every ad is about weight loss, and one of the most famous pop stars in the western world has a terrifyingly thin public image. It all paints a sinister picture that says “get as small as possible.” In the next couple of weeks, I’ll be addressing the cultural impact of these things individually.

Let’s start with Ariana. First of all, I want to say that I’m not coming at this from a place of fandom. I don’t care about the music or the movies (if you do, that’s great! Just not for me). But I have noticed some troubling shifts in the discourse surrounding her image. 

Entitlement when it comes to commenting on people’s bodies
Okay, let’s go ahead and say that Ariana Grande doesn’t seem… happy. She doesn’t look well. Since the Wicked movies, the light has gone out of her eyes. She looks sad. We’ve seen dramatic weight loss, a strange shift in her demeanor, more and more public scandals. Tons of reasons to think something’s not right. But are these good defenses for talking about her body?

I say no.

Think about what people say about her.

💬 “I’m worried about her health.”
💬 “She can’t move or function the way she used to.”
💬 “Clothes don’t look right on her anymore.”

Are these not familiar phrases? Don’t we hear things like this about people in larger bodies, too?

The comments are the same. The entitlement, too, is the same. It might feel like we’re reclaiming body positivity, but at the end of the day, we’re just acting like we know what someone’s complete health situation is without knowing them personally or coming from a medical perspective. 

It’s okay to say that things seem different and to remind ourselves not to take her image as an example to follow, but I draw the line at diagnosing and deciding what her problem is. Not to mention blaming her for other people’s health concerns. Eating disorders are serious, and using them to criticize a famous person just contributes to the stigma and might even make it harder for someone like her to get help.

The fact is that we don’t know the details. She might be suffering from a physical health condition that makes eating disorder recovery harder. She might have an illness that causes weight loss. She might even already be in recovery. We just don’t know.

It goes deeper, too. Saying someone “looks anorexic” can have a counterproductive effect when they’re coming from a place of concern. “Looking anorexic” can be a point of pride for someone who’s not well. Saying it over and over only solidifies the relationship between the disorder and the person’s identity.

That’s why the gold standard is not to comment on people’s bodies or weight loss in any form. Especially when they are a stranger to you.

Next time you hear someone talk about Ariana Grande’s body, try pointing out some of these nuances. Let’s see if we can change the conversation.

With you as we keep it compassionate,
Dana