Keep Your Opinions Off Celebrities’ Bodies (Unless It’s Time to Intervene)

Last awards season, the gossip around town, salacious and disturbing in equal measure, was that hotel suites all over Hollywood were populated by tailors taking in gowns coming straight off the runway. Those sizes vary from size four all the way down to zero, but even the zeros weren’t small enough. Wasp waist? Wasps are huge! Give me a gnat waist. A flea waist. An amoeba waist.

In 2026, handwringing over certain physical standards feels passe. We know that those bodies — lush boobs and booty, itty bitty everything else — are rarely found in nature. And it feels like the battle may be lost on this one. As reality TV helped normalize plastic surgery, more people than ever are having it. With liposuction being the number one ask, breast augmentation third and Brazilian butt lifts pulling up the rear. So to speak. Related Stories Music Ariana Grande Granted Expedited Subpoena in Lawsuit Over Leaked Music Music Madonna, Taylor Swift Lead 2026 VMA Nominations

Lately, the talk behind closed doors is about extreme thinness. Who looks good? Who looks scary? Who’s flaunting their skeletal frame and who hides a bit behind a couture wall of feathers? Often it seems we’re judgmental and envious. As a person who nearly died from anorexia as a young woman, I find the images upsetting on a number of levels. My reptile brain gets the message — Check your thigh gap! Do the chicken arm test! — while my higher brain and activist side reacts with alarm.

Much of my work has addressed harmful beauty standards and I consider myself well-versed in media literacy concerning body image. So in recent years I was heartened when it seemed we were headed in the right direction, even if it was just baby steps. But with the advent of GLP-1 drugs, many fat people (I use that language, as it’s generally the preferred term among fat activists) we admired as models of self-acceptance suddenly made red carpet appearances looking like every other thin actor, singer, comedian, etc. How is this affecting all those people who felt seen and accepted by growing inclusivity? And what about young people coming of age in this new era? When people choose to take the drugs when not medically necessary, because they can afford it, they chose ultra thinness. Body size becomes even more of a class issue and the message seems clear: Thin is in.

Ten years ago I was shooting my film, To The Bone , about a young woman struggling to overcome anorexia. The movie is based not just on my own battle , but the struggles of people with all types of disordered eating. When looking for financing, we were told time and time again that it was “too small a subject” for a feature. We managed to make it. Netflix bought it. And to date it’s had tens of millions of views worldwide. Not such a small subject at all. According to the National Eating Disorders Association, the number of people with disordered eating has more than doubled globally in past two decades. And that’s just reported cases.