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Adele recently put up a picture of herself after having lost a lot of weight. Revenge bod or depression, why must her weight bother everyone so much?
Adele recently put up a picture of herself after having lost a lot of weight. No matter what the reason, why must her weight bother everyone so much?
Hello from the other side, Adele always looked just fine.
The internet was abuzz after the 31-year-old posted a picture from her Christmas party where she looks like she lost a lot of weight. News outlets were quick to come up and say that while she looked ‘beautiful’ and ‘unrecognisable,’ she was celebrating her ‘revenge body.’
This isn’t the first time tabloids were talking about Adele and her weight loss. It was at Drake’s birthday bash that people started talking about her weight loss. She recently divorced from her husband of three years, Simon Konecki. People believe that this motivated her to go on a weight-loss spiral, which is famously quoted as ‘revenge body.’
But the issue is that Adele has always been beautiful. The fact that people are celebrating her weight loss without considering that weight loss can be caused due to depression goes on to show that the society has a fixation with smaller bodies. And with that comes the age-old debate: ‘does talent matter only when the person in the limelight is conventionally attractive?’
One can take up a list of famous people, look through them and realise that attractiveness is probably the first thing on that checklist. It would be unfair to say that being conventionally good looking only affects women because men are subjected to the scrutiny as well.
But let’s focus on the female singers for now. Adele’s contemporaries- Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande are all conventionally pretty with smaller bodies that most of us. While Adele is, in no way shabby looking, she has always been attractive. However, it is this fixation with attractiveness that is dangerous.
The argument to this being that people only want to see attractive people on their TV, that they want someone to look up to as some unachievable standard. But the truth is that singing shouldn’t really have anything do with how the person looks. Adele has a voice that is instantly recognisable, her songs have a way in our hearts and yet a lot of it was pushed to the side while people spoke of her weight loss.
As a society, we equate weight to the attractiveness of a person. Most of us would love to be as ‘beautiful’ as those Victoria’s Secret Angels. Pop culture shapes our imagination, tells us what is acceptable and what’s not. To be someone like Adele, coming in the scene in a much larger body than the world is used to is seen as unconventional and bold. It should just be normal.
To look at people and decide their worth based on their weight completely invalidates what they have done to reach where they are. To say Taylor Swift is just a pretty face invalidates her business and lyric writing capabilities. Demi Lovato faced a lot of struggles with eating disorders and body image issues because of the scrutiny she faced for being in the public eye and a body that deviates from the norm a bit.
To say that attractiveness shouldn’t be a factor in things is very idealistic. However, we can start by not commenting on the way that people have decided to live their lives, and not linking one’s work to their body. We can start by not telling ourselves that we are not worth something just because of how we look.
The only way to break free from the conditioning is to condition yourself into believing in yourself and accepting your body for what it is. In the end, it is important to address that no matter how much Adele weighs she will always remain herself. Her laughter will still echo through our ears and her personality will still amaze us.
To believe that someone is more than just a body to be commented on is the first step to healing yourself. Adele will be our role model for many reasons and not just weight loss. I am eagerly waiting for her new album.
Meanwhile, we can listen a little more to Lizzo and Jameela Jamil and forgive our bodies for looking the way that they do and start loving then.
Cause you can never find someone like you.
Picture credits: Screenshot from one of Adele’s performances.
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