If you’ve been on the Internet in the last few weeks, you’ve seen photos of Ariana Grande’s extremely thin body. You’ve likely seen comment sections full of people crying out for something to be done, think pieces debating whether we should be commenting on her body at all, and statements from her team that she’s ‘happy and healthy’.
But that’s not the real story here.
The comments on her body are a product of something far more sinister than her size: the belief that women’s bodies are public property, up for criticism and debate by the entire world.
That impacts far more than just Hollywood, and we need to talk about what that means for millions of women and girls around the world.
Ariana Grande is the latest scapegoat in the body wars; the example that’s being held up as the problem for when beauty standards go too far. The trend toward extreme thinness has expanded beyond celebrities, and we’re looking for who to blame. We saw the same thing with Lizzo when body positivity was trending, and the Kardashian’s are regularly held up as the example of ‘everything that’s wrong with the world’.
But at its core, this was never about what individual women choose to do with their bodies – it’s the manifestation of a bigger societal problem.
Women’s bodies are treated as though everyone is entitled to an opinion about them; whether that opinion is dressed up as concern, outright judgement, or praise.
Celebrities magnify this entitlement so that we can see it play out on the world stage, but it’s happening closer to home too. We see it in the husband who buys his wife a gym membership after she’s had a baby, to help her ‘bounce back’. The mother who points out that her daughter has gained weight. The friends who tell their shrinking friend that she’s “looking amazing”, without knowing the cause of that weight loss. The Instagram troll comments on strangers’ photos, picking apart their appearance or calling them names.
It’s a core part of the female experience – feeling like your body is up for analysis, judgement and debate. Yet it’s one that causes a huge amount of damage, and we’re not talking about that enough.
Genuine concern doesn’t need an audience. If you’re truly worried about someone, talk to them directly – not in a comment section, or by writing a think piece. Publicly speculating about a woman’s body, however it’s framed, isn’t truly looking out for her wellbeing.
Eighty per cent of Australian women are unhappy in their bodies, and over 1 million Australians are living with an eating disorder. The consequences of body judgement and shame are playing out right before our eyes.
If someone has a difficult relationship with their body, their brain often tells them that everyone is watching them and thinking about how their body looks. They can never fully relax around other people, because they’re constantly worried about what others see when they look at them. As a body image educator and coach, I spend a lot of time trying to undo this belief with women, helping them realise that – most of the time – people aren’t that caught up on thinking about your body at all.
Yet every time a woman in the public eye has her body put under the spotlight, it teaches women that the world is paying attention to each other’s bodies, and we are judging them. This belief confirmation is incredibly damaging for the millions of women out there witnessing the public commentary and applying it to their own body struggles.
When almost every conversation about a woman centres on her body or appearance, it reinforces the idea that appearance is the most important thing about us. Our value lies inherently in the way that we look, rather than in our minds, personalities, or qualities. This self-objectification comes at a real cost. Women start seeing themselves as an object to be looked at rather than a person living their life, and that shift alone is linked to more body dissatisfaction, more disordered eating, and women feeling unhappier overall.
With eating disorders on the rise and body dissatisfaction rife, this isn’t about ignoring the women who are struggling or caring less about their wellbeing. It’s about changing the conversation to focus on that: their wellbeing, not their bodies.
As a society, we need to stop making any one woman’s body the entry point to a conversation about her or her wellbeing. Instead, we need to redirect our energy towards the systemic issues that are destroying our relationships with our bodies and selves: societal beauty standards, image-based pressures, and the belief that a woman’s worth lies in her appearance.
Australia is experiencing a body image crisis, and if we want the next generation of girls to grow up with positive, nourishing relationships with their bodies, we need to draw a line in the sand right now: women’s bodies are not up for discussion.
Ariana Grande’s body isn’t the headline. It’s the reminder to all of us to do better for the millions of women and girls who are watching.