Hi, my name is Louise, and I am a survivor of the Kate Moss era of skinny-chic in the nineties. I came of age in a decade that told me a woman's highest achievement was disappearing, and I absorbed that lesson with uncritical enthusiasm. I also had a dream in those years to write for Heat magazine or People because I was obsessed with the celebrity commentary industrial complex. Who wore what better. Who had the audacity to appear on a beach with cellulite. Who was too thin this month, accompanied by a helpful circle drawn around the offending area of their body. Vapid, yes. But a girl could dream. Then came body positivity, and I was made to feel ashamed for having had opinions about bodies at all. Suddenly all bodies were beautiful, representation arrived in magazines, and for a brief and genuinely moving period I saw people who looked like me in editorials (Thanks, Lizzo! Wait, is she still canceled?) Because then body positivity was reframed as promoting unhealthy lifestyles, and the conversation shifted again before anyone had time to digest their full-fat latte. Now we have weight loss injections that nobody admits to taking while simultaneously insisting that all bodies are valid, which they are, but also some bodies are now apparently more valid than others, specifically thinner ones, but we are not saying that; we are just saying we are making healthy choices. I think. It is genuinely a lot to keep up with. And then, right on cue, the celebrities got thin again. Not just thin. Thin in a way that is making people frightened. And here is where it gets truly complicated, because we are standing at a crossroads that nobody built a signpost for. If we say something, we are doing the thing we were told never to do again, which is commenting on a woman's body without her permission. If we say nothing, we may be withholding concern from someone who needs it. The rulebook that body positivity wrote does not have a chapter for this, and Ariana Grande's current tour is forcing the conversation, whether anyone is ready for it or not. Jamie McCarthy / Getty Images Entertainment Grande is 5 feet tall, or 152 centimeters, aka TINY. Can we crucify this woman for her fairy-like genes? Seems like we are trying to. A healthy BMI for that height is between 44 and 64 kilograms, or 97 to 141 pounds, and right now, her weight is estimated at 47 kilograms. A nearly 50 lb health window is roughly a third of a person's body weight at that height. So, have we all just forgotten what skinny could look like? I dare any of us to sing, dance, and travel the way she does. Hell, I’m tired after one karaoke number. The problem is that the moment anyone puts numbers in a sentence next to a famous woman's name, the conversation collapses into exactly the thing it was trying to avoid. So let us try a different angle. The question worth asking is not whether Grande is too thin. The question is whether we have simply lost our calibration after years of deliberately expanding our definition of normal, and whether the discomfort people feel looking at her photographs is real clinical concern or just unfamiliarity with a body type that predates the body positivity era. Both things can be true at the same time. Marti Noxon, the filmmaker who made To The Bone, a Netflix film about anorexia, has been watching this conversation unfold. "As a person who nearly died from anorexia as a young woman, I find the images upsetting on a number of levels. My reptile brain gets the message. My higher brain and activist side reacts with alarm." She is careful to maintain her general position that opinions should stay off other people's bodies, and then she arrives at the exception: "Hers is a case so undeniable it's reignited an important conversation. What's our responsibility as entertainers?" That question does not have a clean answer, which is why it keeps being asked. In an August statement, Ariana’s reps confirmed that she would be taking a step back. “Ariana will be taking a step back from visibility after she completes the Eternal Sunshine Tour. She looks forward to finishing the tour and ending it on a high note, both healthily and happily, and then taking a much-deserved break from public-facing work and appearances, which has led to endless, ongoing public scrutiny. This tour has been a beautiful experience for her. She loves her fans and has loved every minute of this tour so much.” Is she running away from us, or running towards her healing journey? Is that the same thing? arianagrande When the music video for Grande's new single 'Petal' dropped, the response it generated had very little to do with the song (a certified earworm btw). Screenshots circulated across social media faster than actual news that matters, zoomed in, timestamped, compared to older footage, presented as evidence. Evidence of what, exactly, shifted depending on who was posting them: concern, alarm, morbid fascination, something harder to name. Fans reported feeling clinically triggered by the images' omnipresence. Others expressed frustration that the outcry had made those images impossible to avoid. Here is the psychological reality of what that circulation is doing, and it is not what the people sharing the screenshots imagine. Daria Zalivnova, a psychologist with training in neuropsychology, told Bored Panda more about the dangerous mechanism behind it all. "When you have an eating disorder, the brain becomes obsessed with visible proof of control. The illness feeds on metrics. When the internet starts circulating proof screenshots, zooming in on collarbones, or dissecting someone's appearance frame by frame, it doesn't sound like concern to the person's disorder. It sounds like success. It interprets all that viral noise as confirmation that the transformation is working." danaemercer The dark paradox Zalivnova identifies is the one that makes this conversation so structurally impossible. The more the public expresses alarm, the more the disorder feels rewarded. Concern and disgust, indistinguishable from the outside, are both metabolized as validation. The people sharing the screenshots believe they are raising awareness. The eating disorder, if that is what is present, hears something entirely different. A study of a demographically diverse group of undergraduates found that exposure to weight loss content was associated with lower body appreciation, greater fears of negative appearance evaluation, and more frequent binge eating. The screenshots are weight loss content. The outrage surrounding them is weight loss content. The article you are currently reading is, in a structural sense, weight-loss content, and the writer is aware of that irony and has no clean resolution to offer. arianagrande Zalivnova draws a line that is worth committing to memory. Real empathy, she says, is about the person, not their reflection. "Genuine worry sounds like, I hope she has safety and support in her life right now. It centers on her human wellbeing, and it stays quiet. We cross into body policing the moment we feel entitled to someone's medical reality just because they are famous. When worry turns into obsessive zooming, timeline comparisons, and diagnosing a stranger online, it isn't compassion anymore. It's just a socially acceptable way to control and dissect a woman's body under the excuse of caring." Three-quarters of US adults, 76%, say that the media promotes an unattainable body image for women. That figure rises to 81% among people over 55, the generation that lived through the original heroin chic moment and knows exactly where it leads. The number of people globally with disordered eating has more than doubled in the past two decades, according to the National Eating Disorders Association. It is no longer just people we have heard of through the grapevine. Many women around you, or even you, are fighting this battle. bitsofbanter, Danielle Waltzer, Jaxuikauz Whitney Totter, CEO of Project Heal, a non-profit supporting people with disordered eating, makes the connection explicit: "As the cultural ideal continues to shift toward extreme thinness, we're seeing the consequences reflected in people seeking support. For someone vulnerable to an eating disorder, pressure from social media, celebrity images, or the growing visibility of GLP-1 medications can reinforce restriction and the belief that their body is somehow not small enough. We have to recognize that these images aren't simply a matter of aesthetics. They can have very real consequences for mental health and eating disorder risk." The GLP-1 point is one that Noxon also raises in The Hollywood Reporter, and it reframes the entire conversation about the apparent collapse of body positivity. The celebrities who became symbols of self-acceptance and larger body representation did not, for the most part, have a change of heart. Many of them had access to weight loss medication that their fans did not. "Body size becomes even more of a class issue," Noxon writes, "and the message seems clear: thin is in." The inclusivity of the body positivity moment was real for the people who lived it. Its ending has been a little devastating for the same people, and the devastation is not being discussed with anything like the attention it deserves. kellyosbourne If the Ariana Grande conversation is complicated, the Kelly Osbourne one is the same but with different clothes on, and it is much less comfortable to have. Osbourne's weight loss journey, which she has been open about, including the role of gastric surgery, was largely met with celebration. She had struggled publicly with her weight since her teenage years on The Osbournes, and her transformation was framed as a health story, a success story, a redemption arc. People were happy for her. What people were actually expressing, at least in part, was relief that the fat girl had fixed herself, which is not the same thing as happiness, and the distinction matters. Then Ozzy Osbourne died, and Kelly's grief was visible in her body. The internet turned cruel. The concern wore a thin veil, but Kelly was not fooled by the costume. "There is a special kind of cruelty in harming someone who is clearly going through something," she wrote on Instagram. "Kicking me while I'm down, doubting my pain, spreading my struggles as gossip, and turning your back when I need support and love most. None of it proves strength; it only reveals a profound absence of compassion and character." In a September interview with HELLO! magazine, she was asked how she had navigated the public commentary during the worst period of her grief. "I didn't navigate it," she said. "I wasn't well. How can you navigate something so cruel when you're so sick?" The honest question the Kelly Osbourne situation forces is whether the people who expressed concern were mourning her health or mourning the loss of the role she had been assigned. The token fat girl who made it out. The person whose body gave other people permission to feel okay about their own. When that body changed, the permission felt revoked, and the response was dressed up as worry but was really something closer to abandonment. Osbourne is recovering, she says, with professional support and the friends who stayed. She should not have had to say any of it publicly. Polina Tankilevitch / Pexels Zalivnova's advice on how to respond when a public figure's appearance is causing distress is the most honest prescription available, and it asks for something the internet is structurally disinclined to do. Turn the lens inward. Ask why the image is producing such a strong reaction. "Psychologically, we are only deeply disturbed by things that resonate with something already existing inside us," she says. "If a topic has no personal trigger point, your mind simply scrolls past it." The practical steps she recommends are equally unglamorous. Mute the keywords. Unfollow the commentary accounts. Walk away from the conversation. "The most compassionate thing you can do for a public figure in distress is to take away your view." Not share the screenshot. Not add your diagnosis to the comment section. Not repost with a heavy heart emoji and a caption about how worried you are. Simply look away, which is the one response the engagement economy is designed to make feel impossible. Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any mental health condition. It is a psychiatric illness first, a visible symptom second, and the visibility is part of the pathology. Talking about it in the terms the internet favors - the zoomed screenshots, the weight estimates, the before and after comparisons - validates the symptom without addressing the illness. It tells the disorder that it has been noticed, which is not the same as telling the person that they are loved. The distinction is everything, and the internet cannot currently make it. Shannon Watts, activist and author, offered the line that cuts through all of it: "There is an enormous difference between policing a woman's body and caring enough about someone to help save her life." We do not know Ariana Grande. We cannot help her, and we absolutely cannot decide if she actually needs help. The most useful thing most of us can do is to stop performing concern in a format that the illness she may or may not have will experience as applause. Whether we are capable of that is a different question, and the answer, based on the last week of the internet, is not encouraging. Kirsty Leanne is a plus-sized content creator who has been sharing her life, her health, and her body online long enough to have developed a forensic understanding of how public concern actually operates. She has Type 2 diabetes and hearing loss, conditions she discusses openly, and the openness has taught her something about the nature of the attention it generates. "This always opens me up to other people's opinions on what I should do with my body," she told Bored Panda. "I often say in my posts what my boundaries are, but for the most part these seem to go ignored." "Any comments on my health would be something I'd consider to be policing my body in one form or another," she says. "While I do share a lot about my health online, no one but me and my doctor has a clear enough picture to make informed comments on what is best for me or my body, even if they are well-intentioned." The exhaustion she describes is not the exhaustion of someone who does not understand that people mean well. It is the exhaustion of someone who understands it perfectly and has learned that good intentions do not make the volume any quieter. "When you combine people who care with people who are also critical, it can definitely become overwhelming." The two categories are harder to separate in practice than they are in theory, which is the experience that the armchair diagnosticians in Grande's comment section are not having because they are not the ones receiving it. Leanne's support system is deliberate and specific. She has content creator friends who have experienced similar scrutiny and can receive her frustration without needing it explained. She has weekly therapy, which she considers non-negotiable for someone with her level of public visibility. "Making sure I talk about it with others who understand is important," she says. Not with the followers who are worried about her. With the people who know what it feels like to be the subject of that worry, which is a different thing entirely. So is there a constructive way to guide our 'concerns'? "I am definitely one of those people who believe we should leave bodies out of it. I think the general rule should be if someone in the public eye doesn't mention it themselves, it's none of your business." She is not dismissing the concern. She is locating it correctly. The concern belongs to the person feeling it. What they do with it, specifically whether they direct it at the person they are concerned about, is a choice, and it is almost never the helpful one. I write this having just logged every calorie on my phone to a stupid little Raccoon. Just before I hop in the pool and take a selfie that I will probably never share online because "what will people think?" Sad, but true. And the reality at the end of the day is that it is only my opinion that matters. And my voice should be the loudest. Except for my mother's, because you know she will always have an opinion.
