Ariana Grande urges fans to be ‘gentler’ after social media scrutiny
'You never know what someone is going through'
By Joe Goggins
Ariana Grande has asked for fans to refrain from body shaming after recent social media scrutiny of her appearance.
In a video on TikTok, the thank u, next singer asked for fans to be “gentler”, as well as “less comfortable” passing judgement on the appearance of others. Some users of social media had been commenting on apparent weight loss by Grande.
Addressing it, she revealed that she had previously mixed alcohol and antidepressants and considers herself to now be in a healthier place, saying: “I was on a lot of antidepressants and drinking on them and eating poorly and at the lowest point of my life when I looked the way you consider my healthy, but that in fact wasn’t my healthy.”
“I know I shouldn’t have to explain that,” she continued, “but I do feel like maybe having an openness and some sort of vulnerability here will [mean] something good might come from it. I don’t know but that’s the first thing. Healthy can look different.”
“The second thing is, you never know what someone is going through,” she went on. “Even if you are coming from a loving place and a caring place, that person probably is working on it or has a support system that they are working on it with. You never know. So be gentle with each other and with yourselves.”
Reiterating that even “well-intentioned” remarks could cause harm, she said: “There are ways to compliment someone or to ignore something that you see that you don’t like, that I think we should help each other work towards. We should aim toward being safer, and keeping each other safer.”
It comes weeks after Selena Gomez faced similar scrutiny of her appearance, and also took to TikTok to encourage gentler conduct from her fans, explaining that her lupus medication caused her to retain water.
“We have days where maybe we feel like shit but I would much rather be healthy and take care of myself, and my medications are important and I believe they are what helps me. So, yeah, [I’m] not a model, never will be.”