By rights, the 33 year-old singer-songwriter and actress Ariana Grande should be at the peak of her profession. She won acclaim for her performances in the Wicked films – the first one of which she was Oscar-nominated for – and has consistently released successful albums, including last week’s new record Petal, Grande. Under normal circumstances she would be looking forward to continuing her world tour, Eternal Sunshine. And next year, she was slated to make her London stage debut opposite her Wicked co-star Jonathan Bailey in Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday In The Park With George.
There is, however, one rather significant issue with this, which has been discussed in the media with a mixture of prurience and genuine concern. Grande, not to put too fine a point on it, is frighteningly thin, leading many to suggest that she is suffering from bulimia, anorexia or some other illness that has led her to take on near-skeletal proportions. When she released her latest music video, ‘Petal’, recently, commentators were less struck by the VistaVision-shot cinematography than they were the spectacle of Grande looking deeply unwell.
None other than Jameela Jamil – herself no stranger to controversy – weighed in by saying on Instagram that “This poor woman is possibly dying right in front of us. This outfit is designed to accentuate the thinness for discourse. Her team are thoroughly irresponsible for not guiding her away from this deeply damaging image for her young fans to see so glamorized.”
Grande’s team have responded by putting out the defensive statement that “Ariana will be taking a step back from visibility after she completes the Eternal Sunshine Tour. 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. This tour has been a beautiful experience for her. She loves her fans and has loved every minute of this tour so much.”
She will no longer be appearing in Sunday In The Park With George, which will now be recast. If her publicists and management had hoped that this would quell the speculation around her health, they will be disappointed. It has, predictably enough, done the exact opposite.
Any A-list star, particularly the female ones, will know that there will be endless speculation about their weight. This might be an unfair and misogynist preoccupation of the entertainment industry, but it is also a fact of life. There is a reason why actors and musicians are in thrall to dieticians, personal trainers and the gym, and that is because they are expected to fit into figure-hugging and expensive couture outfits at all times, to act as inspirational and aspirational figureheads for clothing brands and the beauty industry alike, and to assume near-superhuman qualities while they do so. Those who refuse to play the game, or believe that they can have their literal or figurative cake and eat it, will soon find that their careers implode and that their place will be taken by someone else.
“I would even go so far as to say that, for once, I agree with Jameela Jamil.”
Yet in the case of Grande, it seems painfully obvious that a young woman at the peak of her profession is being mercilessly exploited by those around her who need her to carry on at the A-list apogee of her success. She might have been allowed not to appear on the London stage next year – something that, as Rachel Zegler learnt when she appeared in Evita, is likely to bring critical kudos rather than big bucks – but she is still on a draining and exhausting tour, and no doubt she will be expected to promote the Meet the Parents sequel Focker-in-Law, in which she stars, when that appears in cinemas in late November. That she would be allowed a much-needed rest is an impossibility.
The musician-actress has not been silent about her perceived health issues. In 2024, she stated in an interview that “From what you are wearing, to your body, to your face, to your everything – there is a comfortability that people have commenting on that that I think is really dangerous. I think it is dangerous for all parties involved.” She also sang the same year that ‘It’s a knife when they dissect your body on the front page / It’s a knife when they won’t believe you, why should you explain?’
There will be those who claim that we should simply let her alone, that her appearance is the result of choices that she has made and that it is not our places to body-shame her. Fine. But as the father of a ten-year old girl, who loved watching Grande in the Wicked films and listens to her music voraciously, I am also concerned that the image that she – and those profiting from her – is projecting to her young fans is a deeply unhealthy and worrying one. I would even go so far as to say that, for once, I agree with Jameela Jamil. The irresponsibility of those exploiting her shames an entire industry and might even be endangering a young woman’s life. That is the truly wicked thing.
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