On July 31, in the final days of the North American leg of her tour, Ariana Grande released the music video for “Petal,” her newest single from an album of the same name. The video instantly reignited the years-long discourse over Grande’s body into something of a new low, with many presenting the video as irrefutable evidence that the singer is suffering from an eating disorder.

Reactions to those opinions, by turns emotional and censorious, have been intense. They revealed questions about a public unable to cope collectively with a woman’s body. Are such comments inherently sexist? Do well-meaning instructions warning us to refrain from speculation ever have exceptions? What does it mean to express “concern” for someone in the public eye whom we don’t personally know? How does the frenzied discourse land for people with eating disorders?

I reached out to Dr. Rebecca Boswell, a director at Penn Medicine Princeton’s Center for Eating Disorders, to explain the complications of navigating these fraught conversations, and what patients with eating disorders often hear when a celebrity’s weight makes headlines.

There’s been intense debate about the politics of talking about people’s bodies. On one hand, such commentary is often sexist; we aren’t privy to larger dynamics that may be going on with someone. But do we have a responsibility to acknowledge that some appearances may not be healthy?

Many things can be true at the same time, and there’s truth in all sides of this debate. The media has a long history of idealizing and visually showcasing thin bodies in a way that can be extremely harmful to young, vulnerable people and to folks with eating disorder histories or active eating disorders. We know that media coverage and celebrity coverage can play a role in the development and maintenance of eating disorders, and that it’s a major risk factor for the development of body image concerns.

“Every time there’s a media story about someone losing weight or being on a GLP one, therapists hear about it.”

That context makes it important to have responsible reporting around other people’s bodies, especially because so much of this discourse centers around women and women’s bodies. It’s a bit of a Goldilocks phenomenon: What’s too hot? What’s too cold? What’s too big? What’s too small? That can leave folks feeling like there’s no right way to exist in a body. That being said, when there are really concerning things happening or........

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