No celebrity can be a body image icon

A lot of famous people are losing weight or getting buff. Some are celebrating their plus-size bodies. None of it has anything to do with the rest of us.

Note: As you might guess, there are links to celebrity weight loss pictures and stories all over this piece. Consider skipping it if those are not things you care to see.

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Adele, who has lost almost 100 pounds, told Oprah in November: “It’s not my job to validate how people feel about their bodies.” 

“My body has been objectified my entire career — I’m too big, I’m too small, I’m hot or I’m not,” she said. “I feel bad if anyone feels horrible about themselves but that’s not my job. I’m trying to sort my own life out.” 

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. They rage when someone they’ve upheld as a “relatable” icon exercises bodily autonomy to an end they don’t personally appreciate. Famous people, though, can never be relatable where body image is concerned because they have inordinate money, resources, time, and incentive to manipulate their bodies. Stop going to the well of celebrity for any kind of guidance on how to feel about your own body. There’s no water there.

“Your feelings about celebrities’ bodies are not about them, they’re about you. This is not an indictment. You should have feelings about your own body.”

It is madness to take celebrity body change personally. There is no sense in having positive or negative feelings about their bodies, even if they never change, because their motivations, abilities, and agendas — as well as the implications of their actions — exist on an entirely different plane of reality. Your feelings about celebrities’ bodies are not about them, they’re about you. This is not an indictment. You should have feelings about your own body. Do the work of determining how you personally feel about fatness, thinness, muscularity, body change, and body image without inviting people with personal chefs on call to the party. 

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Celebrity weight loss or fitness stories are published when their subjects’ stars are rising. Look at Rebel and Doja’s Wikipedia pages — or those of any other famous people who’ve lost weight recently, like Mindy Kaling, Tiffany Haddish, Jessica Simpson, and Lil Ray Howery — and you’ll see a slew of new projects, BAFTA and Oscars hosting gigs, Grammy wins, and book launches. It seems apparent that many celebrities lose weight as they become more famous.

This will happen for any of three reasons:

• Celebrities are incentivized, if not mandated, to stay on top of image-based trends, and body shapes “trend” too. Trendy body shapes right now are all about the extreme or the overt: Overt muscularity (Nicole Kidman; superhero movie stars), thinness or low body fat (Julia Fox, Emily Ratajkowski), or curviness/an hourglass shape (Beyoncé, the Kardashians, anyone who’s gotten a Brazilian Butt Lift).   

• Mechanisms for weight loss and body change are more accessible to celebrities, so regardless of their motivations (hewing to trends, personal health, both) they shoulder less difficulty and risk than the average person. 

• Since celebrities face fewer barriers to weight loss, they’ll do it — unless being a larger person will be more beneficial to their current personal brand than losing weight will.

Author and activist Virgie Tovar said in a recent piece about celebrity weight loss:

"I think there is a fatphobic belief that no fat person would choose to be fat if they had the so-called 'right' amount of resources. So, when plus-size celebrities reach a certain level of fame and begin to lose weight, it can confirm for some people that this harmful belief is actually true."

But for many celebrities, it is true. It is entirely unsurprising that any famous person — particularly any famous woman, given how much less allowable our culture and Hollywood in particular finds a fat female body than a male one — would choose to lose weight when their status makes weight loss easier, and they face relentless weight loss pressure. Being fat is exceedingly difficult in this world. That this life is unjust in myriad ways for fat people necessitates the existence of body acceptance and liberation movements, after all. It’s undoubtedly worse for hyper-visible celebrities subject to the abuse of the body-shaming public across multiple social media platforms. They experience a specific flavor of torment about their body image. No one should have to acquiesce to body change pressure (and that it exists is its own problem) but I see no point in being frenzied into uproar if they do.

We might pause to consider why we care so much. I can admit why I’ve cared about a celebrity or anyone else’s body before: Grappling with my own body image makes me insane, I’m insecure and emotionally and psychologically damaged about my body, and it can be a relief to fire some of that energy outward. Now that I know that, the real work begins, and I cannot involve anyone else’s body or my thoughts about it in that work. It’s just me and my brain, fighting the good fight every day.

Consider also that celebrities are also playing the weight loss, nutrition, and exercise game on Easy Mode because of their resources, access, and time. You don’t need Kardashian-level resources to change your body in some ways if you want to (I have my Easy Mode privileges but I certainly don’t have Kim’s) but it sure as hell helps. Can we really be shocked that they run at weight loss when they face immense pressure about it and full support for it? Can we really be shocked if they choose to change their bodies when changing their bodies is easy and encouraged? These realities and choices aren’t inherently “good,” but in the world of celebrity they are typical.

“No celebrity of any body size or shape has a relationship with their own body image that is not affected by or driven in some way by public perception. That’s not the case for most of us. It shouldn’t be the case for any of us.”

With regard to a celebrity’s “body brand,” I believe that two things can be true: They can operate from a place of intrinsic motivation with regard to their well-being (plenty of people choose to make changes to their bodies for personal health, not only for looks) and feel happy or peaceful about their bodies for reasons that have nothing to do with the public, but they also are hyper-attuned to how their choices about their bodies will look, because everyone’s looking at them. The public gaze necessarily influences how they live and what they do.

Some celebrities leverage an “I’m not skinny” message into brand success. It’s an abundantly positive thing that they can do this, as it simply was not done in the mainstream even a decade ago. Lizzo drops songs about how she’s a thick bitch and produces a television show called “Watch Out For The Big Grrrls.” Beyoncé’s new album features an ode to her ass getting bigger (following a history of discussing the diets she’d go on to lose weight ahead of performances and movies). Back in 2014, Megan Trainor sang about not being a size two and having junk in the right places (she’s since talked about losing 20 pounds). It’s helpful for a lot of people when celebrities uplift their choice to not worship at the altar of thinness. It’s also a very on-trend thing to do, even if you’re not a plus-size person. Celebrities and their teams know this. No celebrity of any body size or shape has a relationship with their own body image that is not affected by or driven in some way by public perception. That’s not the case for most of us. It shouldn’t be the case for any of us.

And we’re smack in the middle of another “body trend,” too: As a woman who came of age entrenched in what Anne Helen Petersen calls the Millennial Vernacular of Fatphobia, I can observe now the opposing but concurrent trends in body image: It’s more okay to not be thin, or to be muscular as a woman, but we’re simultaneously in a nascent era of early-aughts thinness devotion, part deux. As far too many things seem to do, it begins and ends with the Kardashians. When the most famous woman in the world brags about losing 21 pounds from her already small frame (16 of them in three weeks) and publicly celebrates having 18% percent body fat, you don’t have to put your ear to the ground to hear the thundering approach of the “thin is back in a big way” cavalry.

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“It seems like high time for the adults in the room to choose to extricate themselves from allowing people who are essentially aliens to affect their body image and dictate their behavior.”

The celebrities who aren’t choosing to leverage plus-size positivity into their brand are likely choosing to utilize their abundant resources to be on-trend in the opposite direction. In an ideal world, these would not be choices the modern celebrity would have to make. In an ideal world, we’d have more positive representation of fat and other marginalized bodies in Hollywood and our culture would have different beauty standards. Also in an ideal world, there would be no modern celebrity. They’re too famous, too visible, too accessible. Many of them are tormented by their fame, and many people are clearly tormented by what they do or think or suggest. The entire system is sick. We need to divest. 

Celebrities are influential, of course, which is why Kim Kardashian talking about starving herself to fit into a dress so thousands of young women can try the same thing is problematic. But it seems like high time for the adults in the room to choose to extricate themselves from allowing people who are essentially aliens to affect their body image and dictate their behavior. Recognize that Kim can lose 16 pounds in three weeks under the close supervision of experts and her physical health probably didn’t suffer because she has enough money to never truly suffer. You probably couldn’t do the same thing, you shouldn’t want to, and you’re not going to get fawning headlines and greater personal brand value even if you did.

Spread the good word, especially to any young people in your life, that celebrities are not just like us, we should ignore the odious truism that body types always have and probably always will “trend,” and our heroes are always going to disappoint us. Unfollow everyone famous and work to find peace with your own body image by way of efforts that apply to your life. You’re the one who doesn’t have a state-of-the-art home gym and a cosmetic surgeon who understands discretion. You’re the one who has to live with yourself.

Ultimately, celebrity bodies change because the more famous and wealthy you get, the more choices you have. Regular people don’t have as many. We can choose, though, to not allow ourselves to feel bummed out or bolstered by anything today’s famous people do with their bodies. We can simply choose not to care.