Among the wildfires, floods and devastating war in the Middle East, Ariana Grande’s body has somehow been one of the topics of the year. As she’s embarked on her Eternal Sunshine tour, which followed a busy two years promoting Wicked and coincided with the release of her eighth album, Petal, the discourse has been inescapable.
In 2023, when Grande already appeared to have lost weight in Wicked, she publicly said that she was “the healthiest I’ve ever been” and encouraged people to stop commenting on her body. Three years later, she looks thinner than ever. The central question occupying many column inches and causing much handwringing among pop fans has been: should we be talking about this, or not?
And so, naturally, the conversation has raged on and on and on, images circulating, theories emerging, fans fighting and moral high grounds being occupied left, right and centre, the internet awash with both legitimate concern and sickening scorn.
But you don’t need to look at Grande’s body, let alone comment on it, to get a sense of how she is feeling. It is easy to forget among all the Instagram reels that we are talking about an artist who expresses herself through an audio medium, not a visual one. It was her appearance in the video for “Petal”, the title track for her new album, that most recently caused a stir – but it’s all there in the lyrics of the album, too.
