Grande said that she was struggling with health issues at the time that some older photographs of her were taken. “I was on a lot of antidepressants and drinking on them, and eating poorly, and at the lowest point of my life when I looked the way you consider ‘my healthy,’ but that, in fact, wasn’t ‘my healthy.’”
Grande’s comments provided an insight into the pressure celebrities face over their appearance, no matter what their body shape, and the extent to which individual photos can be misinterpreted to draw conclusions without any wider context.
“There are many different ways to look healthy and beautiful,” said the singer, who is working on a movie adaptation of the musical “Wicked.”
“I think we should be gentler and less comfortable commenting on people’s bodies, no matter what,” she continued. “If you think you’re saying something good or well-intentioned, whatever it is — healthy, unhealthy, big, small, this, that, sexy, not sexy,” she said. “We just shouldn’t. We should really work toward not doing that as much.”
The singer has opened up about her health struggles before. In 2019, she shared images of what appeared to be a scan of her brain to highlight her history of post-traumatic stress disorder, following a deadly terrorist attack on her concert in Manchester, England, two years earlier. Twenty-two people died in the attack.
Grande is not the only celebrity to speak candidly about the discrepancy between public perceptions of what looks healthy and their actual health.
Last month, fellow singer Selena Gomez also spoke out following negative comments she had received about her body, explaining that medication prescribed for lupus — an autoimmune condition that can cause damage to organs and led to the singer undergoing a kidney transplant in 2017 — caused her weight to fluctuate.
“I just wanted to say and encourage anyone out there who feels any sort of shame for exactly what they’re going through and no one knows the real story,” Gomez said.
