Finger-grabbing. Sudden tears. Endless reaction photos and videos. If you had internet access in 2024, you likely remember the Wicked press tour. It dominated cultural conversation for months. I, for one, am still deeply committed to the now-iconic Cynthia Erivo line: “I didn’t know that was happening.”
But beyond the dramatics of the two leading ladies, something else became prime social media fodder: the noticeable thinness of Erivo and Ariana Grande, along with their costar Michelle Yeoh. All three women have always been slender, but during this press cycle, they appeared markedly gaunter. Social media was quick to respond, posting zoom-ins and red circles around collarbones and exposed ribs. The conversation oscillated between concern and admiration.
This isn’t a conversation about the cast of Wicked, necessarily. It’s about a broader cultural shift: the reemergence of extreme thinness as an aspiration, regardless of the harm required to achieve it. In recent years, we’ve seen the revival of the early-2000s “heroin chic” aesthetic, when hyper-thinness was not only normalized but glamorized. Scroll through any red carpet recap and the pattern is difficult to ignore: collarbones sharpened, silhouettes narrowed, ribs on full display. It feels as though a culture that briefly flirted with body positivity has circled back to the standards of the Y2K era.
These physical changes are one thing. The emphasis Hollywood has placed on them is another. I was genuinely uncomfortable in the theater watching the costume department of Wicked: For Good (the 2025 sequel) place gemstones along Ariana Grande’s fully exposed collarbones. It isn’t healthy for every outline of someone’s bones to be visible, and it’s even more troubling when a film then spotlights those bones as a fashion statement.
And this is where the discomfort sets in.
Conversations about other people’s bodies feel inherently taboo. It feels deeply wrong to critique another woman’s body for any reason, because the prevailing belief is that criticism equals cruelty. Sometimes, that’s true. But it also feels wrong to pretend nothing is happening — to act as though it’s normal to watch once-healthy-looking women diminish into nearly nothing. Especially when it seems as though every woman in Hollywood, regardless of her starting point, is now shrinking before our eyes.
So what is driving this?
The easiest culprit is the rise of GLP-1 medications. Drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro, originally developed to treat type 2 diabetes, are now widely used for weight loss and increasingly accessible to those who can afford them. Celebrities who once championed body positivity have quietly shifted their messaging as a pharmaceutical solution entered the mainstream. Meghan Trainor, for example, who built part of her brand on rejecting the size-2 ideal, now appears markedly thinner than the image she once publicly celebrated.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with these medications in isolation — I don’t mean to dismiss their legitimate medical benefits. People, especially women, have the right to make decisions about their own bodies. The problem arises when the choice no longer feels individual. When nearly every woman in Hollywood begins losing weight at the same time, it stops feeling like a choice and starts looking like trend adoption. Whether the cause is GLP-1 use or a resurgence of an eating disorder is almost beside the point.
And women’s bodies have always followed “trends,” regardless of the sour taste that statement leaves behind. For example, during production of The Wizard of Oz, child star Judy Garland was pressured to survive on cigarettes and black coffee to shrink her dress size, and body standards have hardly improved since. Ultra-thin was “in” during the early 2000s, later replaced by the Kardashian-esque curvy silhouette, marked by exaggerated proportions and surgically enhanced figures. Now, we’ve come full circle, and thinness is back on top. Celebrities who once embodied those curvier ideals are quietly reversing their procedures. The aesthetic may shift, but the message stays the same: women’s bodies must always align with whatever is currently deemed desirable.
What drives these trends? Most likely, whichever industry stands to profit most from them. In the early 2000s, diet culture reigned supreme, and tabloids made enormous profits splashing “fat” headlines about female celebrities across their front pages. The cosmetic surgery industry saw a surge in revenue as celebrities leaned into implants and enhancements. Now, the pharmaceutical industry stands to gain enormously from a renewed cultural fixation on thinness. As the ideal body shifts, the money follows. The only difference is who benefits, and it’s never the women themselves.
But for the women watching, this cycle is exhausting. The body you were told was ideal ten years ago is now supposedly overdue for “fixing.” It’s difficult not to internalize that message.
The responsibility for these shifts doesn’t fall on any individual woman. I don’t believe Erivo, Grande, or any other newly angular celebrity is to blame for the conversations surrounding their bodies. They’re part of an industry that has long rewarded conformity to its preferred silhouettes, operating under the same pressures as every other woman — just under harsher lighting and far more scrutinizing eyes.
Watching the spectacle of Wicked and its sequel made me concerned for the upcoming generation of teenage girls. I feel fortunate not to have internalized body issues in my own youth, so the shrinking of the cast didn’t make me question my body or consider drastic measures. But I know I’m an anomaly in that sense. For impressionable girls already dealing with constant body comparisons on social media, seeing a bone-thin woman in a pretty gown with bejeweled, jutting collarbones could easily become something desirable.
It’s not that thin women shouldn’t be on screen — they always have been. And it’s not that bodies can’t change — they always will. The issue is the glamorization of unhealthy skinniness. When Hollywood frames this degree of frailty as the beauty standard, it causes harm — both to its celebrities and to the women watching from home. Suddenly, it feels like there’s no space untouched by these standards: social media algorithms, red carpets, and the cinema all reflect the same image. It becomes a feedback loop, creating a goal that is only attainable through the suffering that comes with starvation.
The goal of these conversations isn’t to shame any individual woman or her body. It’s to critique a culture that has long prioritized women taking up as little space as possible, often at the expense of their health. By redirecting the focus to the systems at play, we can maintain empathy for the individuals caught in them while still confronting the broader problem. Women deserve to be seen as whole, complete people, not projects constantly in need of resizing to fit whatever aesthetic is currently in style.
Until that changes, the cycle will continue. And so will the damage.