What People Are Saying On Social Media About Adele Versus What They’re Googling Says A Lot

This weekend, Adele hosted Saturday Night Live (SNL) for the first time, reminding all of us that she’s not only a vocal legend, but a comedic one too. Of course, given the publics insatiable obsession with how much weight Adele’s lost, many of us lamenting the commentary waited with gritted teeth as tweets rolled in about her performance.

But what awaited us, in the most part, was not endless comments on her weight loss, or Adele’s before and after pictures – which seem to be shared every time she posts anything on Instagram – but instead, a ton of people rebuking that very narrative and refusing to talk about anything but her hilarious quips and effortless renditions of her best hits.

Seeing our timelines filled with Adele love, with only a hint of a comment on Adele’s ‘new weight’, it felt like a real turning point after over a year of eye-rolling whenever her figure makes headlines. And then, we turned to Google and realised… nothing has changed.

This morning, Google Trends showed that ‘Has Adele had plastic surgery?’, ‘Why did Adele lose weight?,’ ‘Adele before and after diet’ and ‘Adele new weight’ were all trending, alongside a bunch of other keywords about her weight loss. As breakout search terms, it means everyone was newly searching for information and pictures of Adele before and after her weight loss.

What does this tell us? Well, that while everyone has learned not to share their every thought about Adele’s weight loss on their social media feeds, they’re still more than interested in it. And frankly, after a year of her displaying her ‘new weight’ on numerous occasions, we can’t understand why. What is it about Adele’s weight loss that makes people scramble to Google, asking every question under the sun about her diet, more than 12 months after the narrative began?

'I think it's an intersection of so many things, a society obsessed with weight first,' says journalist Rhiannon Evans. 'But also that it's such a huge change in a short period of time, not like a reality show person being all like, "Oh I've lost four pounds (and will probably put it back on again next week and talk about that too)".

'Also that Adele has always been one of the very few larger women out there and seemed always to not be bothered about that,' she continues. 'Adele is such a "relatable" character, all her songs are so everywoman, her swearing, her jokes, her whole presence, that anything that happens to her would've probably led to some introspection from a lot of women who always felt they identified with her.'

Lockdown too has likely heightened all of that.

'At the moment, we’re all sad, stressed, and especially vulnerable,' writer Daisy Buchanan told Grazia when this obsession resurfaced a few months ago. 'I wonder whether our dramatic reaction to Adele’s weight loss is connected with the fact that many of us are increasingly self-conscious about our own weight gain during the lockdown period.

'I want to "stop talking about women’s bodies", and be a good, Twitter friendly feminist – but I fear that if we shut down that conversation we’re closing a space where women can explore their identities, their dreams and their pain. Over the last 18 months, I’ve lost a significant amount of weight. I’ve found it hard to face the scrutiny of my small, loving, well-meaning gang of family and friends – so I can barely comprehend the volume of what Adele is up against. But I do know that the people I love were more fascinated by my changing body than the details of the rest of my life. I didn’t blame them, I was fascinated too.'

Perhaps then, in our attempt to be 'good, Twitter friendly feminists', as Buchanan says, we've moved the conversation off social media and began secretly discussing it, googling it and going to our group chats instead of offloading our opinions online.

It might be that actually, Twitter doesn't reflect the social mood as much as it used to as we all take a greater effort to be, or at least appear, better to each other online. And while it may still be somewhat depressing that the conversations are still being had, the fact that people aren't jumping to share their thoughts on another woman's body online is perhaps the best outcome we could hope for.

Not seeing the celebrations of her weight loss, not seeing the Adele before and after pictures, that can do tons of good for women who are already more than aware that the world places far too much value on their weight.

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