Hollywood might be less inclined to brush off the growing public alarm over the ultra-thin appearance of some young stars if it spent time in the online spaces where those images are being processed in real time.
‘I’m so so triggered by Ariana Grande,’ one anonymous user recently wrote on a Reddit forum focused on eating disorder discussions. ‘She’s everywhere and it makes me feel like s***. I don’t want to eat anymore every time I see her.’
Another poster described a similarly troubling reaction: ‘I’m years into recovery and I’m becoming obsessed with looking at photos of ariana [sic] looking so ill – it’s like i [sic] don’t want to see it, but at the same time, i [sic] can’t look away.’
A third person wrote that they had only recently begun to make peace with their body before feeling pulled backward by what they saw as a renewed obsession with extreme thinness. ‘I had a very brief point of accepting my body before it became a trend to be gravely skinny,’ the user shared. ‘Now im [sic] back to square one.’
I am not claiming to know the medical reality behind any celebrity’s appearance, and I have no interest in diagnosing anyone from afar. But the distress in these posts is hard to ignore, and so is the visual shift many viewers believe they are witnessing.
Ariana Grande, Jenna Ortega, Emma Stone, Demi Moore and other prominent actresses have all faced public comment about appearing strikingly thin — a conversation that may be uncomfortable, but cannot simply be waved away.
Even Kaia Gerber, the 24-year-old daughter of supermodel Cindy Crawford, has acknowledged the current fixation on thinness in Hollywood. Speaking in the September issue of Vogue, she said: ‘We’re clearly in one of those cycles right now where people are very, very, very thin.’
An anonymous Reddit user recently wrote that they felt ‘so so triggered by Ariana Grande’ in a forum dedicated to eating disorder discussion
‘We’re clearly in one of those cycles right now where people are very, very, very thin,’ Kaia Gerber said in the September issue of Vogue.
Gerber, now starring in the Hulu hit The Shards and says that she has battled ‘disordered eating.’ Her surprising candor came barely a week after concerns over the appearance of Grande hit a boiling point.
In the music video for her latest hit, Petal, Grande’s ribs and collarbones protrude from her thin frame. It was no wonder why the video drew references to singer Karen Carpenter, who died in 1983 from heart failure caused by her years-long struggle with anorexia.
It’s important to note that Grande has never said that she has an eating disorder. But I don’t think videos like Petal can be ignored, even though some wish they would be.
When activist and actress Jameela Jamil wrote on Instagram about Grande, ‘This poor woman is probably dying right in front of us,’ and slammed the singer’s team for being, ‘thoroughly irresponsible for not guiding her away from this deeply damaging image for her young fans to see so glamorized,’ it was Jamil who received the backlash.
Jamil, who says anorexia nearly killed her, was accused of ‘body shaming,’ but she has not backed down.
On August 2, Grande announced that she’d be taking a temporary hiatus from public life as a consequence of what her representatives called ‘endless, ongoing public scrutiny.’
We’ve been down this road with Grande before. Back in 2024, while promoting her film Wicked, critiques of her physique were common. She responded then in an Instagram post saying that comments on the appearance of others was ‘uncomfortable and horrible.’
Fans were shocked by the appearance of Wednesday actress Jenna Ortega, who was featured in a recent Esquire interview (pictured)
Jamil, who says anorexia nearly killed her, was accused of ‘body shaming,’ but she has not backed down
Grande is hardly the only star whose slim frame has sparked scrutiny. Fans were shocked by the appearance of Wednesday actress Jenna Ortega, who was featured in a recent Esquire interview and photo shoot. In the article, the 23-year-old former child star admits to working on TV production sets ‘all day without eating, drinking’ during her younger years.
Emma Stone, Olivia Wilde and Demi Moore are among others who have raised concerns. Photos of Moore’s tiny frame during recent appearances at the Cannes Film Festival and Paris Fashion Week have only reinforced the unease.
Like Gerber, 63-year-old Moore has been open about the pressures Hollywood places on actresses to be thin. During her acceptance speech for her 2025 Golden Globe award she spoke of ‘moments when we don’t think we’re smart enough, we’re pretty enough, we’re skinny enough,’ to meet the industry’s standards.
In an interview with People magazine the same year, Moore was even more frank. ‘I mean [I did] crazy things [with] diet and exercise… because I placed so much value on what my outsides looked like,’ she said. ‘I did torture myself.’
If Hollywood can concede that even world famous actresses feel pressured into adopting unhealthy lifestyles, they must acknowledge that ordinary women and girls can feel it too.
Olivia Wilde recently caused concern during an appearance in San Francisco
Grande announced earlier this month that she’s taking a temporary hiatus from public life
Photos of Moore’s tiny frame during recent appearances at the Cannes Film Festival and Paris Fashion Week have only reinforced the unease
There is now a revival of pro-anorexia ‘ana’ forums of the 1990s and 2000s online, as girls on social media share starvation tips and pictures of women with skeletal body shapes. I’ve seen pictures and videos of Grande captioned with words like ‘thinspo’ or ‘bonespo,’ slang terms for perverse forms of inspiration. This should be setting off alarm bells.
Anorexia is the deadliest eating disorder and the second lethal psychiatric disorder behind opiate addiction, according to an analysis cited by the National Eating Disorder Association. Young women aged 15-24 are 12 times more likely to die if they have anorexia, according to studies.
So, what can be done?
For one, Hollywood can stop casting extremely thin women in prominent roles which potentially encourages other actresses to lose weight to fit some imagined ideal. But, perhaps more important than anything else, the blanket of silence thrown over any discussion of unhealthy body images must be lifted.
Of course, I do not believe that anyone should be ridiculed for their appearance, but the hurt feelings of celebrities should not be used as a justification for censorship.
I, for one, refuse to stay silent as young women around me are fed a dangerous new standard of beauty.
