What Is With... all the talk about Ariana Grande’s body?

SINGAPORE – The enduring image of Ariana Grande’s new music video is a still of the pop star leaning forward in a low-cut black dress, her clavicle and sternum protruding.

Chatter around that picture and what it portends for a culture already silly for skinny has overshadowed much of the short-lived promotion for Grande’s latest album, Petal (2026).

In early August, days after its release, she announced a hiatus from public activities, to commence after her Eternal Sunshine tour wraps in September, citing intense public scrutiny.

The conversation has split into two camps: those horrified by her extreme thinness and those who insist that all comments on weight are damaging and must be shut down.

Amid swirling concern for the singer, Grande’s body – and how to talk about it – has become the focus of a wider cultural anxiety about beauty standards.

The tension feels irreconcilable. On the one hand, women are scared. The prevalence of ultra-thin celebrities signals a slide back into a world where 1990s heroin chic is aspirational again and, thanks to weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic, easier to attain.

In the last two years, Hollywood has been a parade of jutting bones and sinewy arms, with the drastic weight loss of actresses Demi Moore, Emma Stone and other members of the Wicked cast – Cynthia Erivo and Michelle Yeoh – also drawing alarm. It is a tonal shift from the mid-2010s, when the body positivity movement celebrated all sizes.

On the flip side, the overt attention paid to the rightness or wrongness of women’s bodies is what landed people here in the first place.

The idea that women’s bodies are not up for evaluation was a reaction to the cruel and misogynistic 2000s-era tabloid discussion of celebrity figures. In the body positivity years, it crystallised into a blanket prohibition against talking about women’s weight. In short, a woman’s body is nobody’s business but her own.

The right to privacy complicates the issue further. Celebrities have repeatedly begged fans to leave them alone.

In 2023, Grande posted a video on social media in response to a tide of comments about her weight loss while filming Wicked (2024). “The body that you’ve been comparing my current body to was the unhealthiest version,” she said. She explained that when she was the weight that many fans considered “healthy”, she had been “at the lowest point” of her life.

“I think we should be gentler and less comfortable commenting on people’s bodies, no matter what,” she added.

In 2013, singer Fiona Apple fired back at a heckler who shouted “get healthy” while she performed on stage.

“I’m healthy, and I shouldn’t even have to say any of that,” Apple later told Pitchfork. “What makes me unhealthy and puts me in danger is that kind of scrutiny itself.”

There is a sense, then, that talk about the thinness epidemic might be a case of the cause masquerading as the cure.

But what if someone is obviously suffering?

It is true that comments about weight hit hard, that the public never has all the facts and that women are very often unfairly judged for the adequacy of their physique. But it is also true that eating disorders depend on secrecy and denial – conditions enabled by well-meaning indifference.

The more urgent matter is that, whether the concern is justified or not, celebrity women shedding kilos are watched and worshipped by millions.

Writing for The Guardian, journalist and former bulimic Emma Madden reports that on private pro-anorexia message boards, users have found recognition in Grande’s public statements.

Her “don’t worry about me” and “the old me was sad and unhealthy” are the refrains of a sick person dodging interventions.

On the pro-anorexia internet, Grande’s body is both hailed as aspirational and a huge trigger for relapse, Madden writes.

Probably, there is no right way to discuss a woman’s body, and even with the utmost care and respect, it is difficult to quell the discomfort of what is essentially the act of rejecting another woman’s appearance.

Yet an imperfect conversation is better than an endangering silence. The skinny epidemic has yet to reach Singapore’s shores, but naming it is also a way of recognising the trend as a problem.

Ultimately, it is unlikely that any of this talk can materially help Grande, yet maybe it can get through to her adoring public.