NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Monica Hesse of the Washington Post about the cultural conversation around Ariana Grande after she appeared extremely thin in a recent music video.
Transcript
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Last week, pop star Ariana Grande released a music video for the title track of her new album called “Petal.”
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “PETAL”)
ARIANA GRANDE: (Singing) Tryin’ to feel something real to cry again. They say the artist needs tears to write again.
KELLY: The video had the internet buzzing but less about the song, more about the way Ariana Grande looks. She appears extremely thin, sunken cheeks, her ribs and her collarbones protruding from her chest. Widespread commentary about her health ensued, and within days, Grande announced she will be, quote, “taking a step back from visibility” after she completes her summer tour, although, she later added this was planned a long time ago. It does all prompt an uncomfortable question. Is Ariana Grande’s body any of our business? Monica Hesse asked just that in a column for The Washington Post, and she joins us now. Hi there.
MONICA HESSE: Hi. Thanks for having me.
KELLY: Start with the question as you frame it. Is Ariana Grande’s body our business?
HESSE: So this is a conversation I would so rather not be having, I’m sure you would rather not be having because, in general, I think that the safe and reliable answer is that, no, nobody’s body or the way they appear is any of our business. It doesn’t affect us. But this video, which had a shocking appearance, caused such a groundswell of support or confusion or defensiveness or alarm that it’s clear this is a conversation that we want to have, even as we’re not sure how to have it.
KELLY: You had a line in your piece where you write, her body isn’t our business – I’m paraphrasing – but how it affects us, how we react to it, that is our business.
HESSE: Yeah. I mean, the way that I think of it is Ariana Grande is an artist, and art is designed to provoke reactions and conversation in people. The troubling part is that part of her art is her body and the way that she presents it to us, and that just leads to a really thorny mess.
KELLY: I mean, she is – as I noted – she’s a massive pop star. She’s had No. 1 singles. She stars in both “Wicked” movies. Does that factor into the conversation? Should it factor into the conversation – the message that her appearance may be sending to other young women for whom she’s a role model?
HESSE: I think that it does. We all know that society and culture go through trends in terms of what we view as the ideal body or an appealing body, from the more voluptuous supermodels of the ’80s to the heroin chic models of the ’90s to Kim Kardashian tiny waist, big booty of the 2000s to these discussions that we’re having about Ozempic. So I think that it is normal to wonder whether Ariana Grande’s body, which, to say off the bat, we have no idea what’s going on with her size, with her health, with anything that’s prompted the way that she appears, but we do know that we, as a culture, go through cycles that are influenced by the people that we look up to.
KELLY: Just to elaborate on that, she has not come out and commented on what’s going on here. So as you note, we don’t know what’s happening. Does she owe the public an explanation?
HESSE: I don’t think that she does owe the public an explanation, but given the fact that her career and her livelihood is built by her fans, I don’t think that it’s reasonable for her to ask that people have no opinion on her physical appearance and on how she presents. And I also think that, in a vacuum of information, people will create the stories that make sense to them about what might be going on.
KELLY: I mean, I have to ask, would we be talking about this if a male pop star dropped a video and looked really, really thin?
HESSE: You know, I was thinking about that a little bit in the context of Chadwick Boseman, the star of “Black Panther,” who had become just extremely thin before his death. Of course, he passed away, and we later learned that what had been going on is he was very ill. He had cancer and chose not to share that with us publicly. We really do never know what’s happening with anyone’s body. At the same time, women’s bodies are held up for public consumption on a level that is just eons greater than male bodies are held up for public consumption. Historically and currently, we still have a much more judgmental attitude towards women’s bodies, and we feel much freer to comment on them.
KELLY: Monica Hesse – she’s a screens critic for The Washington Post. Thank you for having an uncomfortable conversation.
HESSE: We’ll all muddle through it together.
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