Three years ago, Ariana Grande posted a video to social media with a clear message to fans: Whatever thoughts they had about her weight loss were best kept to themselves.
“The body that you’ve been comparing my current body to was the unhealthiest version,” she said, addressing a flood of concerned comments in response to photos of her during the production of the movie “Wicked.” 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 cautioned.
Grande has been under an even brighter spotlight in the years since. She earned her first Academy Award nomination for “Wicked,” hosted “Saturday Night Live” twice, released a critically acclaimed album and, in recent months, embarked on an arena tour. Then, on Sunday, a representative for Grande said she would soon be taking a break from public life, citing “endless, ongoing public scrutiny.”
The announcement seemed intended to quiet the cycles of online discourse about Grande’s physical appearance, which have intensified since she tried to calm concerns in 2023.
The conversation about Grande that results after the release of social media posts, paparazzi shots, fan-posted tour clips and music videos tends to be a tangled web of concern and speculation, with fans and observers arguing over diet culture, privacy and the age-old fixation on the bodies of female celebrities.
“On the one hand, there is a lot of concern and care,” said Lucy Bennett, a researcher who studies music fandom, “but perhaps the collective effect has been overwhelming for her and has overtaken the discussion of the music.”
Grande, who has spent the summer performing across the country, has rarely addressed the concerns about her weight since her 2023 video. But the statement from her representative gestured toward them, saying that the singer looked forward to “finishing the tour and ending it on a high note, both healthily and happily.” Representatives for Grande declined to comment further.
In an age of parasocial fandom, the teenage television actor turned pop star is far from the first to bristle when feeling that members of the public have overstepped.
While performing onstage in 2013, Fiona Apple exploded at a heckler who had shouted “get healthy,” referring to concerns about her weight.
“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.”
In recent years, celebrities have attempted to set boundaries for their adoring, sometimes obsessive fans. Doja Cat once bluntly told them, “I don’t even know y’all,” while Chappell Roan has spoken passionately against “creepy” fan behavior. Both singers have drawn backlash after offending some of those who help fuel their success.
Constance Grady, a senior cultural correspondent at Vox, said fans seem to have been influenced — and perhaps felt empowered — by the success of the Free Britney movement. After fans of Britney Spears raised the alarm about the conservatorship that long oversaw her life and finances, Spears spoke out against the arrangement, which a judge ultimately terminated. The singer thanked her fans for the role they played.
The effect, Grady said, has been a sense among some superfans that “part of the way I demonstrate my love for this person is thinking about their health and their safety and trying to take care of them.”
“There’s this tantalizing possibility,” she said, “that maybe you’re not just intruding, but you’re correct.”
Concerns for Spears did not end with her conservatorship. In 2023, fans called the police to check on the singer after she posted a video of herself dancing with what appeared to be kitchen knives. Spears chastised her fans and clarified that they were props. She recently pleaded guilty to reckless driving involving alcohol and drugs after the authorities found unprescribed Adderall and an empty wine glass in her car during a traffic stop.
For years, fans of Grande, 33, have seized on any detail they can glean about subjects such as her love life (a relationship with another “Wicked” actor, Ethan Slater, provided plenty of mileage). But her physical appearance has long been a particularly sensitive subject.
Rules for a channel devoted to her on Reddit declare that any posts about weight loss, among other subjects, will be removed by moderators. Some consider it tabloid gossip that can only do her harm, pointing out that she has been healthy enough to deliver strong performances amid a physically taxing tour. Others view it as a subject that should not be completely ignored, particularly because Grande is an influential public figure who is an idol to many preteen and teenage girls.
“I don’t know where the line is,” Megan Mansell recently said on her podcast, “The Edge Breakfast.” “I want to respect somebody’s privacy, and I also need to acknowledge the cultural impact of what millions of people are seeing.”
Lyrics on Grande’s newest album, “Petal,” which had a successful debut last week, have been interpreted by some to be grappling with the fraught relationship she has with some segments of her fan base.
“Is it really my fault you all gave me your hearts of your own accord?/I don’t really think so,” she sings on the album’s lead single, “Hate That I Made You Love Me.”
A vintage Hollywood-themed music video for the album’s title track shows Grande playing a character who is repeatedly deemed “not good enough” by a panel of men. The character then kills them all with a chain saw.
The news that Grande would temporarily withdraw from public life after her tour ends in September was met with an outpouring of well wishes from fans, many of whom supported the choice to prioritize her well-being, even if it meant less content for them to parse. It was no small decision for a celebrity whose career has been at full throttle.
With that decision came the announcement on Sunday that she would no longer star alongside Jonathan Bailey in a new stage production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park With George,” which is scheduled to open in London next year. And it is unclear how involved she will be with this fall’s release of “Focker-In-Law,” a “Meet the Parents” sequel in which she stars alongside Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro.
In an interview during the press tour for “Wicked” in 2024, Grande grew emotional when she was asked how she coped with society’s beauty standards, saying she had felt like a “specimen in a petri dish” since she was a teenager.
“I do know what the pressure of that noise feels like,” she said. “It’s been resonant in my life since I was 17. And I just don’t invite it in anymore. It’s not welcome.”
