Adele has lost weight. It shouldn’t be news, but it is. She was pictured last week sitting on a chair, beaming in a black velvet dress, looking beautiful because she is beautiful, and looking thinner than she ever has before. She has, she says on Instagram, replaced crying with sweating.
So Adele is thin now. Or thinner than she used to be. She has discovered working out and the joys that come from endorphins. She has also probably discovered the joy that comes from slipping into clothes which were always too small for you, or people checking you out on the street and compliments from friends. Raised eyebrows and the words ‘I know I shouldn’t say this, but you look amazing’. All the standard, glorious fare that comes from getting thinner.
I’ve been there. You probably have too. That moment when you really get the bit between your teeth and shrink your body in a noticeable way, in a way that people want to praise. You spend evenings dancing around the house in clothes that you stashed at the back of the wardrobe and gazing at your form in the mirror. You run your hands over your body when you wake up in the morning, working out whether you’ve shed another half a pound in the night.
It’s a magical, heady, intoxicating feeling. Adele is not to be blamed for celebrating her body at any size. It would be unreasonable to feel anything other than joy for Adele who is living her best life after a divorce. But when someone you admire because they have a similar body to yours gets smaller, it’s almost impossible to be reasonable.
The concept that women have a responsibility to be a role model because they’re in the public eye is utterly pointless and often used to punish women for transgressing. But it’s unavoidably true that famous women do become focus points for the rest of us, especially when we’re young.
Once upon a time Nigella Lawson was my hero. Her body was my solace, proof that you could be sexy if you weren’t thin. Admittedly she was a lot older than I was, and I didn’t really want to wear pencil skirts and scoop neck jumpers, but still. She was a lifeline. And then she lost weight.
I realise it is entirely, completely, unquestionably unreasonable to expect a complete stranger to stay at a higher weight than they are happy with because it’s hurtful for you to see them shrink. But as illogical as it sounds, it’s also how it feels sometimes. When the person who reflects your own body back at you in a way that you can feel love for decides to change that body, it’s difficult not to feel like it’s a rejection.
What you do with your body – gain, lose, pierce, tattoo, tan, enhance, inject – is entirely your choice. It’s not fair or right to look at another person’s weight loss and regard it as a kind of rejection. But it’s still pretty normal. Especially in a world where there are so painfully few mid- and plus-sized female women in the public eye.
It’s not easy when a friend loses weight, either. At least when it’s a celebrity you can chalk it up to personal training and nutritionists. Watching someone with a body much like your own and all the same resources that you have being ‘improved’ by weight loss is the ultimate headfuck, and the guilt that you feel for being secretly unhappy about the whole thing doesn’t help either. Every time I notice a friend looking thinner and resent them for it I’m filled with guilt. Why can’t I be a nicer person? Why do I have to see weight loss as a personal slight or a competition?
Some of it is jealousy, of course. However body-positive we try to be, we live in a world that reveres thinness, and that’s an impossible lesson to unlearn. You can know in theory that weight has no moral value and that you are worth more than the number in the back of your dress, but knowing something isn’t the same as feeling it. So if you look at celebrity weight loss, or the weight loss of someone you love, and your happiness for them is tinged with something far darker and less charitable, know that you are not alone.
If you are struggling with your relationship with food and weight, you can contact the eating disorder charity BEAT****.
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