Fixating on celebrities’ appearances obscures the larger, deadlier return of extreme thinness as a cultural ideal.
The release of the second Wicked movie has reignited debates about body image and Hollywood’s glorification of extreme thinness. On social media, viral posts dissect Ariana Grande’s apparent weight loss, as well as that of several of her female costars, implying she is suffering from an eating disorder.
Grande has dismissed health concerns and asked the public not to comment on her body. Her defenders have shut down criticism by framing it as “body shaming.”
Yet both sides are missing the point. While talking about individual celebrities’ appearances is harmful, we can’t afford to look away from changing beauty norms in our society, and how they are fueling eating disorders.
In recent years, we have seen the convergence of a number of dangerous trends—including the rise of “wellness culture,” whose focus on clean food can often veer into disordered eating; social media platforms’ inaction in cracking down on pro-anorexia content; and conservative influencers promoting a thinness as the feminine ideal.
The increased popularity of weight loss drugs have only supercharged this phenomenon. While GLP-1s have important medical benefits, some companies are using celebrity endorsements and other marketing tactics to position them as a way to shed a few pounds, and nearly half of online pharmacies selling the medicines are doing so illegally.
It’s a recipe for disaster—fueling eating disorders and making recovery more difficult.
“The landscape of things now, with the prominence and normalization of weight loss drugs and the thin ideal standard of beauty can both create issues in people who have underlying genetics and temperament for an eating disorder, because they’re seeing all this normalized and for people who already have eating disorders,” Jennifer Rollin, an eating disorder therapist based in Maryland, told me.
“What I hear from a lot of clients is that when they are trying to recover from their eating disorder in this society, it almost feels wrong, because ‘everyone around me is talking about Ozempic,’ and ‘all the celebrities are talking about their big amount of weight loss.’”
… While it can feel cathartic to criticize or distance ourselves from prominent women who seem to be conforming to dangerous beauty standards, that criticism is harmful and does not bring us any closer to addressing the problem.
As a millennial woman, this feels like a rewind to my pre-teen and teen years in the early 2000s and 2010s when societal expectations of thinness dominated. Like many of my peers, I was deeply impacted by the dialogue around female celebrities’ weight. From celebrity magazines sharing unflattering photos of female actors and singers who had “let themselves go,” to the casualness with which movies like the Bridget Jones series and The Devil Wears Prada made their leading women’s weight a punchline, the message was clear: You needed to be thin. (If you were already thin, you should still lose more.)
In recent years, we saw some progress. Body positivity became trendy. Suddenly, influencers of all sizes started popping up in my social media feeds. Brands like Victoria’s Secret and Abercrombie—previously some of the top offenders in promoting a rail-thin aesthetic—started embracing diverse models with fuller bodies. Although these efforts were often performative and still excluded many body types, it was a step forward. I felt hopeful that perhaps Gen Z was growing up in a world that wasn’t telling them that being thin was the only way to be happy and loved.
Now, it seems like we’re right back where we started.
With its cast of very thin leading female actors, Wicked is emblematic of this change. But while it can feel cathartic to criticize or distance ourselves from prominent women who seem to be conforming to dangerous beauty standards, that criticism is harmful and does not bring us any closer to addressing the problem.
It’s time we name the trend we are seeing for what it is: the perpetuation of a beauty ideal that is not only dangerous but deadly. One-fifth of women diagnosed with anorexia die from the disorder. We must speak out against this trend at large.
We must also advocate for policies that bring change on a larger scale. That includes holding social media companies accountable for promoting dangerous pro-anorexia content. Despite being aware of this problem for years, young users on platforms like TikTok are still being pushed content advocating for extreme weight loss. It also includes punishing companies that are using misleading advertising techniques to sell weight loss drugs and pharmacies selling those medicines illegally.
There isn’t an obvious one-size-fits-all solution, but by naming the issue—rather than getting lost in harmful debates about individual celebrities’ bodies—we give ourselves a chance of finding ways to turn this trend around.
