Why we should think before having a conversation about Ariana Grande

0:01Sky News, the full story first.

0:11We should think before we have a conversation about Ariana Grande. And this is why.

0:22Hello, Ed Conway here. Here is what might sound like a slightly random question. What do AirPods, bananas and a pair of shoddily made running trainers from the 1970s have in common? On the surface, not very much. But on my podcast, Stuff Matters, I will uncover the deeper stories behind each of them. You will see how, together, they tell a fascinating new story about the world we live in. The first full series of Stuff Matters is out now. Just search for it on your podcast app and follow.

1:02Ariana Grande has said she will withdraw from upcoming public appearances and she won't star in an upcoming theatre show in London due to public scrutiny. This is what she said to fans in Chicago last night. I heard that Mac fans were worried that negativity was ruining things for me, But I just have to say, that could not be more f***ing opposite. Boundaries can need to be set. Human beings can need a break sometimes. As well as her choice to step back from public life, the release of Grande's new single, Petal, sparked a backlash as some of the outfit choices accentuate her tiny frame and the bones visibly poking out of her chest and shoulders.

1:48Grande's physical appearance and health have long been a topic of speculation in recent years. But is that justified? She has a huge following of young, potentially impressionable fans. Or is it just body shaming? And where's the line between voyeurism and genuine concern? I'm joined by journalist and author of Toxic, Women, Fame and the Noughties, Sarah Dytum. And a warning, this episode contains references to eating disorders. I think it's really, really important that we leave open a space where we can point out as, you know, as a public, as onlookers, when somebody with a public profile looks manifestly unhealthy.

2:36and the complicating thing is that there is this long history of women being really scrutinized and criticized for their appearance of being talked about in a really quite cruel way and of course like there is an element of that cruelty in the way that ariana has been talked about but at the same time we can't let that foreclose a discussion of somebody who really does seem to be pretty unwell and whose influence as a public figure is really strong, especially with very young girls. You're right. Young girls adore Ariana Grande, which is why a lot of people are concerned, because her fan base is so vulnerable in many cases.

3:23When it comes to the speculation on her health, are we making unjustified assumptions about her health or do you think it's plain for all to see i think if you watch any of the recent videos of her and to be honest the first time that i felt sort of personally concerned was watching some of the footage from the wicked publicity tour where she really did seem very thin very frail um and now watching some of the videos that she's put out to promote her Eternal Sunshine tour and her new album. It's concerning. We don't know the ins and outs of her private life and her health. We only know what she has said.

4:09But we can see it is clearly visible that she is a very, very thin person. She is not a healthy weight. And all of her statements about her health in response to fan concern has been to diminish that concern to say that this is actually her at her healthiest which I think is not a reflection of the reality that people can see and is not a responsible way for somebody with her influence over very young girls to talk about her health and her body. I mean if we look at some of what her representatives have said, they've said things like she performs a very physical show. There's a lot of athleticism involved.

4:55She performs healthily and successfully at a very high level night after night. And then the likes of Jamila Jamil, for instance, have come out and basically said that those comments were thoroughly irresponsible. What's your take on that and the messaging from some of her team? um they're obviously protective of her although there has now been the decision for her to withdraw from touring and from public life for a while she has given up her role in a in a western musical so there has there is obviously some concern um on her own end about her health and or at least about her image if you look at someone like taylor swift when she was performing the eras to a very physical like three and a half hour show is really very very demanding and she made quite a big deal actually in her publicity for that about the fact that she had stepped up her strength training and that she was you know stepping up her her food intake to match the you know essentially the nightly marathon that she was doing just to play devil's advocate up for a second.

6:10Some people would argue that we are commenting on Ariana Grande because she is, in quote marks, too thin, but we are not commenting, for instance, when people are too large. Why is, in inverted commas, skinny shaming okay, but fat shaming isn't? Do you see what I'm getting at? I do see what you're getting at. I don't know if what you're saying was ever completely true i definitely think that in the sort of post the zen pic world we don't have quite the same attitude around body positivity that we formerly did um a lot of body positive advocates like lizzo for example have slimmed down dramatically whether that is or is not down to a zen pic um i think lizzo has said that it's that it's healthy eating but at the same time It was never that there was no criticism of people who had bigger bodies in public.

7:08And I've certainly written pieces where I've made the same point from the opposite direction. When women are presented as images of the physical ideal and the physical ideal they're presenting is one that is dangerous for other women to pursue. I think we should critique that. It's not a matter of saying that this is a bad kind of body because it's unattractive. It's a matter of saying that this is a body that reflects, in all likelihood, disordered eating. And if it's presented as an ideal for other women to follow, especially young women, then that is promoting disordered eating to those younger women.

7:51Do you recognise this phenomenon from the research and the work that you did for your book Toxic? I mean, you explored celebrity culture, I suppose, as well in the noughties and women in the spotlight. Is some of this familiar to you? There were women like, for example, Nicole Richie, whose eating disorder was very publicly visible. And during the noughties, that was really treated as a joke. It was not treated at all compassionately. I think you look back on some of the commentary from that period and it is deeply, deeply shameful the way that women's bodies were being talked about. both the cruelty towards women who are perceived as being too thin and unwell and the sort of savagery around you know quote-unquote imperfections like muffin tops or cellulite or things like that there was this really vicious scrutiny around women's bodies and I do think that that has left the mainstream to some extent that doesn't mean that that scrutiny doesn't still go on, certainly in social media, certainly in celebrity watching forums.

9:08What hasn't changed is the way that eating disorders themselves function. It is one of the most socially contagious behaviours that exist. And when you say socially contagious, what do you mean by that? I mean, it's something that is learnt by imitation. And that's why there is such a flourishing of what are referred to as pro-Anna content through social media. So it's really accessible. There have been really serious cases where social media sites have been pulled up on the fact that this has been promoted and pushed into young users' own feeds. And part of the reason there is so much of that content is that when a person becomes obsessed with the idea of being thin they will seek out more content they will seek out friendships and relationships that are built around the idea of thinness and it then becomes a competitive dynamic um and that's always been the case for eating disorders and when someone is in a very high profile public position and they are apparently dealing with an eating disorder um then all of those currents are really magnified.

10:23Their influence is magnified and also the degree to which they are getting feedback about their own thinness and their own appearance is magnified. And I think it's deeply, deeply irresponsible to take the position that we just shouldn't say anything when this appears to be happening in front of us. Do women in the public eye, in your opinion, have a responsibility to consider what images they're showcasing, sharing of themselves? I think when we're talking about individual women and the choices that they are making as individuals. I think you have to be really compassionate and you have to approach this from the perspective that, you know, everyone, everyone who posts a picture of themselves on social media is potentially contributing to someone else's disordered idea of themselves and potentially projecting their own disordered idea of themselves.

11:15Famous women are not any different to that. A celebrity of the sort of standing of Ariana Grande has you know she has consultants she has stylists she has managers she has people she works with day in day out whose job is to look after her image and also theoretically to protect her and it's those people who are failing when we are seeing what of you know concerning images And it's also a failure of social media because social media companies do have a duty of care not to be pushing imagery that is potentially promoting of self-harm. And again, not to make this all about Ariana Grande, but in the broader sense of the pro-Anna style content that I was talking about, Social media sites do have a responsibility to make sure that that stuff is not being surfaced, especially not in the feeds of young users, especially not young female users.

12:20So, Sarah, what is ProAna? um so pro anna is short for pro anorexia and it's a kind of catch all for um any content that is um either inspiration for extreme skinniness or strategizing for extreme skinniness so um it might be um sort of quote unquote inspiration pictures of very unhealthily thin women or it might be communities that offer kind of crowdsourced guidance about how to conceal your disordered eating or suppress hunger pangs.

13:06Hello, Ed Conway here. Here's what might sound like a slightly random question. What do AirPods, bananas and a pair of shoddily made running trainers from the 1970s have in common. On the surface, not very much. But on my podcast, Stuff Matters, I will uncover the deeper stories behind each of them. You will see how together they tell a fascinating new story about the world we live in. The first full series of Stuff Matters is out now. Just search for it on your podcast app and follow.

13:42Let's stick with Ariana Grande because there's been a lot of talk about her new music with a particular music video called Petal. It's alluding to a disillusionment with fame, with her celebrity status. It's certainly a very dark, sad record. And it seems obvious from the outside to put that together with the images we're seeing. And to see this as somebody who is unhappy and who is potentially struggling in a really profound way and she has used her music to make personal statements before I think one really notable example is she's on the remix album for Charlie XCX's Brat on a version of Sympathy as a knife and one of the lines she's saying is that it's a knife when they dissect your body on the front page so she has used music before to confront her public image and the way that she feels she's been mistreated.

14:40I think you can go too far in interpreting this stuff, but I would certainly say at a minimum, there's not much reason to read anything positive about her feelings about fame and celebrity and public image as things stand. Sarah, a number of concerned fans have been making a comparison between Ariana Grande and Karen Carpenter, a singer from the 70s who died of anorexia in the end. Do you think that kind of comparison is helpful or do you think it's a bit of an overreach? I think it's hard to avoid. I mean, essentially, Karen Carpenter is the reason that we know as much about anorexia as we do.

15:25She was such a public and visible sufferer of anorexia and if you watch any of the interviews that she went through at the time you can really see how much ignorance and really unkindness there was around the condition um you know there are a lot of interviews where people just said why don't you eat more but at the same time there was this um you know fascination about watching her get thinner and thinner and seeing what would happen next karen carpenter is the obvious comparison to look to and an important comparison because obviously she died of anorexia and it happened on the public stage.

16:05And I think it is worth remembering that the end point of this disease is very often death for the person who's suffering from it. And we should take that extremely seriously. I mean, you mentioned some of the tone of the commentary around Karen Carpenter at the time. And I can't help but feel the same way about some of the social media content about Ariana Grande. To me, it feels slightly morbid. Yes, some of it is genuine concern, but some of it feels quite, almost like a fascination, a voyeurism. I think, you know, the nature of public relationships with celebrities is that we often don't see them as completely real people, right?

16:53We see them as sort of puppets about which we can say pretty much what we like, you know, no harm done. Obviously, it's horrible to be the person at the centre of that. Just finally, there will be people who will say that the more we talk about Ariana Grande, that's doing more harm than good. I mean, when it comes to this, what is the trade-off between protecting young girls and women, and of course men too, from some of this content, and also respecting somebody's privacy, somebody's artistic choices. I think there is inevitably, there are going to be people who become aware of the discourse around Ariana's thinness because of this kind of conversation that we are having now.

17:44And some of those are going to be people who are susceptible to eating disorders. There isn't a way that you can prevent that without completely forestalling the conversation. And if we completely forestall the conversation, then what we're left with is a really alarmingly thin young woman and not being allowed to point out the obvious, which is that she appears to be very, very unwell. and that her unwellness is going to have, you know, a toxic influence on the, you know, essentially children in a lot of cases who look up to her, who admire her and who see her as the kind of ultimate image of beauty.

18:26And if we can't talk about that, then, you know, all of that dangerous influence is just allowed to prosper regardless. Thank you so much. Thank you.

19:33Transcription by CastingWords about the world we live in. The first full series of Stuff Matters is out now. Just search for it on your podcast app and follow.