Adele’s Right, It’s Not Her Job To Validate How Other People Feel About Their Bodies – But Hearing That Might Sting

Who do our bodies belong to?

If you reckon that’s a stupid question, you’re lucky. But I suspect most of you, if you really think about it, will feel an elastic snap of anxiety, or resentment, or shame. Rare is the body that is allowed to exist without query or comment. Most of us have been criticised for changes in our bodies – for changes we feel we have no control over, and for changes we have chosen. Our bodies betray us; in turn, we’re made to feel we’ve been made to betray everyone who has ever taken an unsolicited interest in them.

I have an unsolicited interest in Adele’s body. Logically, rationally, I know her body is none of my business. However, my emotions would have me believe otherwise. We talk too much about women’s bodies. I’m not helping, here. And yet, the very first time I saw Adele singing, I felt affirmed. Here is a beautiful women, with a beautiful voice – and yet, her body is not unlike my body. We are on the same team. She exists, and the world loves her, and I feel better. Now, for many of us, that nebulous connection has been severed. This week,Adele told Oprah she will ‘always be body positive’ but added ‘It’s not my job to validate how people feel about their bodies. I’m trying to sort my own life out.’ For some of us, this will sting. Adele does not owe any of us anything. But I suspect it’s going to be difficult to address how and why so many of us were depending on that validation.

Millions of us listen to Adele’s music, and we feel as though we know her – and that she must know us, in a spiritual and cellular way. Her talent is transcendent. It’s not just that her voice is beautiful, it’s that she seems to understand our most raw and private pain. I can still remember the exquisite agony of hearing Someone Like You coming on the car radio, at the end of a truly awful relationship. I stuck my head out of the window and howled, like a dog. We feel as though she has witnessed our darkest and most private moments. Adele is able to describe our heartbreak with laser-like accuracy. I wonder if this is why we think we are entitled to insights about how she feels about her body, and what it’s like to live in it. Is her dramatic, external change evidence of an internal shift?

When someone is in the public eye, it’s easy to decide they owe us their bodies, in return for our attention. Most of us don’t know Adele and have almost nothing in common with her. However, we thought we could ‘relate’ to her body, and maybe, irrationally, we believed she might ‘relate’ to ours, right back. We struggle to understand that a person with her privilege and power isn’t also using her body to make a branded statement.

At a different point in my life, I might have felt betrayed by Adele’s transformation. Or I would have been desperate and insistent for her to reveal her process. She’s bared her soul to us all through song! Surely she can tell me whether she cut out carbs or did a lot of hot yoga. However, like Adele, I have been trying to sort my own life out, and my body has changed in the process. On a much smaller scale, I’ve heard a range of reactions. I’ve been surprised by the number of people with unsolicited opinions about it. Lots of people have been kind and encouraging, and a few have been envious, angry or confused. Everyone wants to know my ‘how’. Practically, I decided to drink less alcohol, to make more of an effort when I cooked, and to savour food I loved the most, instead of drugging myself with it when I felt sad, mad or bored. But truthfully – it has meant entering an emotional shit show as performer and audience. Sitting with the things that scare me the most. Making peace with the fact that my appetites and desires are huge, and I’m learning to let myself want instead of silencing myself with food. For me, losing weight has been a side effect of huge emotional gains. It’s about so much more than my body. Adele’s comments make me think that perhaps for her too, the greatest transformation is private and intimate - something we can’t see.

However, that’s not to say that it’s wrong to have a response to Adele’s body, and her words. If I was at a point in my life where her change made me feel confused and betrayed, I hope I’d see it as a prompt. Not to embark on a weight loss regime of my own, but to gently and compassionately ask myself why I felt so strongly. To find out why I needed someone like Adele to help me love, like or simply accept myself, and look at the ways I could begin to do it on my own. And most of all, to acknowledge that if I did want to change, that the desire to do so was valid. That the size of my body, whether it seemed ‘big’ or ‘small’ doesn’t matter as much as the size of my hopes. Because living in the way you think other people want you to is the quickest way to shrink your dreams.