I haven’t seen Ariana Grande in a while. She’s been working hard, just off my radar. She’s got her makeup line out and she’s doing some music. Mostly she’s filming Wicked with Cynthia Erivo. What I love is it looks like she and Cynthia really dig each other. Not only is that important for the Glinda/Elphaba Relationship, I love when work Relationships become close friendships. Anyway, Ariana has been keeping up on her social media, I just haven’t been paying attention. But I guess others have because they’ve been giving her a hard time. People have been concern-trolling Ari about eating disorders and other health issues based on her figure. It’s gotten so bad, that Ariana recorded a rare message to TikTok suggesting that we should all be less comfortable commenting on other people’s bodies. I am really sorry Ariana was forced to do this, but I love what she said.
Ariana Grande hopes that by being open and vulnerable about her body some good might come from it.
On Tuesday, the “thank u, next” singer took to TikTok to speak about comments she has received about her appearance.
“I just wanted to address your concerns about my body and talk a little bit about what it means to be a person with a body and to be seen and to be paid such close attention to,” she shared. “I think we could be, I think we should be, gentler and less comfortable commenting on people’s bodies, no matter what — if you think you’re saying something good or well-intentioned, whatever it is, healthy, unhealthy, big, small, this, that, sexy, nonsense — we just should really work towards not doing that as much.”
“I know personally, for me, the body that you’ve been comparing my current body to was the unhealthiest version of my body,” she continued. “I was on a lot of antidepressants and drinking on them and eating poorly. And at the lowest point of my life when I looked the way you consider my ‘healthy,’ that in fact wasn’t my healthy.”
The Nickelodeon alum also pointed out that even comments meant to be complimentary aren’t ideal because you “never know what someone is going through.”
“Even if you are coming from a loving place and a caring place, that person probably is working on it or has a support system that they are working on it with and you never know,” she said. “So be gentle with each other and with yourselves.”
Grande pleading with fans to rethink how bodies are talked about speaks to a larger societal issue. As Janet Lydecker, professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, previously told Yahoo Life: “Just the preoccupation that Americans have with weight, and with weight being part of attractiveness, and a source of power, particularly, but not exclusively for women, there’s a lot of pressure that we all feel in this culture to manipulate our bodies.”
I posted Ari’s full TikTok below. We’re starting to talk about this more, about not commenting on weight either losing it or gaining it. It is, dare I say shocking, exactly how comfortable people are discussing weight. I had a person I know solely from waving at them as we pass each other on our morning walks stop me to ask me how much weight I’d lost. Then they called their wife over to tell them my answer. I know they thought they were complimenting me, but what happens when I gain the weight back? I included the comment above from Janet Lydecker because she nails it so precisely. So much is attributed to how we wear weight, it’s no wonder we cannot break the cycle of abuse we put our bodies through in the attempt to obtain what someone else told us we should look like.
Ari’s point about not knowing what the ‘compliment’ is supporting is important. As she said, the figure others wanted her to have was when she was at a low point. Kelly Clarkson said the same thing, only in reverse. When she’s skinny, she’s usually unhappy. To hold a silhouette as that woman’s ideal reinforces all the wrong things for her. Not to mention – who they hell cares whether they have the waistline you want them to have. Ariana is filming Wicked. I assume it’s physically intense, she’s probably in top form right now. Plus, this is a career high for her, so way to take her light. I thrilled for her. She looks happy and lovely. Again, I’m sorry Ari had to make this video. But she really hit her mark, here.
@arianagrande ♡
Photo credit> Instagram and B4859/Avalon