Ariana Grande will step back from the public eye after spending the past year promoting a second “Wicked” film, touring for the first time in six years, releasing her eighth studio album and ending a three-year relationship. The 33-year-old actress and pop star has also faced frequent, often cruel commentary about her appearance, with social media onlookers speculating about her health and weight.
Who Gets Watched, Who Gets Judged
“Ariana will be taking a step back from visibility after she completes the Eternal Sunshine Tour,” a representative for Grande said in a statement to USA TODAY on Aug. 2. “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.” That statement lays out the basic arrangement with brutal clarity: one person’s body becomes public property, and the crowd gets to act like a tribunal.
Grande isn’t the only celebrity being dragged through this machinery. The article said more celebrities are undergoing major body transformations, and the online discourse keeps circling back to thinness, health and control. In May, actress Jameela Jamil said a “scarily thin” beauty standard “has taken hold of our society,” echoing comments circulating on social media. The language is familiar. So is the pressure.
Grande has spoken out before about how appearance commentary can hit hard. In a December 2024 interview, she said, “Commenting on others' looks, appearance, what they think is going on behind the scenes or health, or how they present themselves – from what you're wearing to your body, to your face, to your everything – there’s a comfortability that people have commenting on that I think is really dangerous.” That’s the whole ugly ritual in one sentence: strangers deciding they’re entitled to inspect, diagnose and judge.
The Body Hierarchy
Samantha DeCaro, director of clinical outreach and education at The Renfrew Center, which specializes in eating disorder treatment, said, “When a body type is consistently centered, elevated or showcased in glamorous and aspirational ways, or associated with status and success, it can contribute to a hierarchy of bodies.” She added, “That hierarchy can fuel body dissatisfaction, perpetuate weight stigma and elevate risk for eating disorders. Thinness doesn’t have to be explicitly praised or celebrated to be idealized.”
That’s the apparatus at work. Not a single insult, but a whole social order built from repetition, status and comparison. Dr. Sarah Gupta, psychiatrist and medical director at mental health service platform Modern Health, said part of the tension now is that after years spent moving toward body positivity and body neutrality, it feels like society is going in a drastically different direction. The article said society is experiencing a retreat from the 2010s wave of size inclusivity that prompted brands to showcase more diverse bodies, increased conversations about fat acceptance and the normalization of imperfections like cellulite and stretch marks.
Some comments on Grande’s appearance may be, in part, due to fear of returning to the toxic diet culture and beauty standards that prioritized thinness in the ’90s and 2000s. That fear doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from memory, from a culture that keeps trying to reinstall the same old hierarchy with a fresh coat of gloss.
What They Call Concern
DeCaro said, “even the most well-intentioned comments about appearance often do more harm than good.” She said, “Whether it's meant to be a compliment or a critique, a comment about someone's body sends that message that it has been noticed, assessed and judged.” She added, “Even when comments come from a sincere place of worry and genuine concern, focusing on appearance is not as powerful or supportive as focusing on their inner experiences and overall wellbeing.”
Lizzy Pope, an associate professor at the University of Vermont who researches diet culture in popular culture, previously told USA TODAY that online, there’s “a return to the outward profession of the desire to be skinny, whereas for a while it's been, ‘I want to be healthier, I want to engage in wellness,’” and said, “What I'm seeing is a return of that language being accepted.” The language changes. The pressure stays.
Gupta said the goal isn’t to ignore these concerns, but “to have the conversation in a way that supports health without creating more pressure.” She suggested keeping the focus on broader patterns rather than one person, including “the rapid rise in the visibility of medications like GLP-1s and the messages they send when used outside of current clinical guidelines.” She said, “When the focus stays on individual bodies, even with good intentions, it can quickly become toxic and harmful.”
Gupta also suggested avoiding comments on body shape or size, considering the bigger picture including how drug companies market GLP-1s, who can and can’t access them and the role social media algorithms may play in their popularity, and remembering that what people say can affect how others feel about their own bodies, especially young people. DeCaro added that body size alone is an “unreliable diagnostic tool” for medical and mental health conditions, including eating disorders, and said, “While changes in weight can be a sign that someone is struggling with eating or body image, people can gain, lose and maintain weight for a wide variety of biological, medical, environmental and psychological reasons.”
The article ended with a note that if anyone is struggling with body image or eating concerns, the National Eating Disorders Association’s toll-free and confidential helpline is available by phone or text at 1-800-931-2237 or by click-to-chat message at nationaleatingdisorders.org/helpline, and for 24/7 crisis situations, text “NEDA” to 741-741. Even the help line sits inside the same system that produces the harm, but the need is real. So is the damage.