Don't police people's bodies unless they're hot

A word on hypocrisy.

instagram.com/emrata

Apparently I have a lot to say about celebrity body stuff lately.

The latest: Emily Ratajkowski posted a video of herself on Instagram, and Halsey commented “what’s the routine,” to which Emily replied: “Just eating good! skipping no meals! Happy girl.”

Does this response annoy you? Put a pin in that.

It certainly annoys Jezebel, which published a whole-ass article about the sheer unbelievability that Emily doesn’t exercise.

The author does “respect that Ratajkowski doesn’t want to glamorize fitness-slash-grind-culture,” (the implication being that if someone says they exercise, it’s necessarily “glamorizing” a fitness “culture,” which is summarily lumped in with grind culture for no discernable reason. Let me be very clear: You can exercise without that practice necessarily being of a piece with The Toxic Culture Du Jour, for the love of god, sometimes people just do things) and says we need more influential celebrities emphasizing the importance of not skipping meals.

So, OK—what is the problem? From the article:

But I don’t know whether it helps to pretend her extreme abs just occur in nature, without a trainer or extensive fitness regimen, or whether it helps to simply pretend that all of the wellness resources exclusively available to ultra-rich celebrity models simply don’t exist.

While it is without question true that ultra-rich celebrities have access to myriad resources [read my piece, “No celebrity can be a body image icon”] I have some heartbreaking news: Some people are genetic outliers who can look a certain way just by having lower body fat, which is not always and necessarily achieved by not eating/supplements/extensive exercise. Emily is blessed with the bodily gifts our culture so reveres, and if she has low body fat—which many people have more easily and naturally than others—she’s going to look how she looks.

It’s pretty simple: Everyone has abdominal muscles, and if you have less fat covering them, they’re going to be more evident. This is different from having a bulky and chiseled eight pack of Marvel superhero abs. The article assumes she is “pretending” based on nothing but incredulity. All any of us knows is the answer she gave to a question that was asked of her, and the answer was not about skipping meals or losing 16 pounds in three weeks or doing two hours of cardio a day. What more do we want?

Her response might rankle us because it can be annoying when someone who enjoys the spoils of having a socially revered body does so without admitting to the challenges of attaining such a body. I get it. But there are some people for whom having such a body isn’t so challenging. Either way, we’re irritated that she’s hot and hot people get to make money off their looks and live a better life. That’s it. It’s not a moral failing to be verklempt that life is unfair, but that feeling does not necessitate an article dripping with suggestion that its subject is a liar.

What kills me dead from the Jezebel piece:

And some, like Jonah Hill and Rebel Wilson, have made it unequivocally clear they don’t want questions or even compliments about their figures. As I’ve previously written for Jezebel, even “complimenting” celebrities—or anyone—on their weight loss or thinness can have the same impact as body shaming. It seems best to take a page from Hill and Wilson and just… not make invasive, bodily commentary at all.

Don’t make invasive bodily commentary at all, everyone, unless it’s about conventionally attractive people, I guess? Time and time again I see the same people who ride hard for not remarking on people’s looks or bodies doing the very same to people who get shredded in the gym, or lose weight, or who are just naturally thin—if I had a dollar for every time someone online made fun of Timothée Chalamet’s physique, I’d be able to buy Twitter back from Elon. We do not advance the cause of bodily acceptance by affording it only to some people. We’re going to have to afford it to people who don’t look the way we like them to, or who make us feel some kind of way about our own bodies, too.

The Jezebel article takes issue with Emily’s post last year that said: “(almost didn’t post this bc I knew the controversy it would stir up but hey it’s my body and I’m not going to lean into the shaming! God bless!).”

“The implicit suggestion was that she expected to be ‘skinny-shamed’ (lol),” the author writes. Listen, the idea of “skinny shaming” being on par or even close to fat shaming is laughable; people who are not fat are not shamed or humiliated or ostracized the way fat people are, full-stop. But to pretend that no one has anything negative to say when celebrities post their bodies online is ridiculous. As I’ve written:

But people have a way of projecting their own body baggage onto celebrities. They feel “bummed” or betrayed by Adele just as they have by Ashley Graham or Lena Dunham or Kumail Nanjiani. They body shame and concern troll celebrities who’ve lost weight recently, like Rebel Wilson and Doja Cat.

Emily gets to acknowledge that people have nasty shit to say about her body, too, because people online have nasty shit to say about everyone’s body. We make so little space for anyone who does not suffer as much as others to express introspection about themselves and their challenges, even if those challenges are a pittance compared to the challenges of Real People. But I find it compelling and critical for everyone to discuss their body image woes, especially if they have experienced life far differently than the rest of us. I want to know what things are like for the Very Hot People! What a fantastically alien life they must lead! That’s why I enjoyed Emily’s book, even if I didn’t understand or agree with everything in it.

A comment on the article sums this all up nicely:

What I heard: person whose success is based solely on her being a genetic exception and fully acknowledges that her success is based solely on being a genetic exception refuses to say she’s not totally a genetic exception like I want her to.

And so you heard it here first: Any time I’ve been in my feelings about someone else’s body for simply existing, it’s because I’m envious, it’s because I’ve felt it a great injustice that they “get” something I don’t have, it’s because I understand that our culture places a premium on looking a certain way and that way is not achievable for me or most people without a great many expensive or time and money-consuming interventions or cosmic blessings.

I’ve had to realize that these feelings come from what I’ve been taught—that a predetermined idea of beauty is the most important thing about me—and that it will likely not be the case in my lifetime that this unfair reality will change. Some people just get all the luck. All I can do is work to unlearn what I’ve been taught and divest from the idea that a celebrity’s body has anything to do with mine.

To publish a missive that casts aspersions and suspicion on someone who provided an answer we would applaud if it came from anyone other than a supernaturally gorgeous model? It’s not a good look. It does nothing to advance the idea that when it comes to other people’s bodies we must accept that we know, and are owed, absolutely nothing.