On Sunday, Ariana Grande announced that she “will be taking a step back from visibility,” suspending her future appearances after her current summer tour ends. The pop star had just released the music video for her latest single, “Petal,” which showed her always petite frame ridged with shadows of the bones of her chest. Fans, critics and consumers of celebrity news responded with a chorus of dismay or alarm.
The announcement, delivered by her representative in an exclusive to People magazine, is unlikely to stop the discourse about her thinness and health, which has been going on in one form or another since the singer, now 33 years old, was a teenager — and, for other people in the public eye, far longer than that.
A representative for Grande declined to offer further comment.
No one outside Ariana Grande’s personal circle knows the reason, if any, that she appears to have lost weight. Her health is private; her image is visible everywhere. The space between those two premises is filled with speculation, and with arguments about whether it’s right or wrong to speculate.
What is the audience’s business? What is it culpable for? It’s been 43 years now since the platinum-selling singer Karen Carpenter died at the age of 32 of heart failure brought on by anorexia and bulimia. Fans by the thousands had watched her dwindle away over the years.
