If you quickly look through all the different major forums of media, whether that be social media, broadcast news or magazines, it won’t be long before you come across some sort of discussion about a celebrity—more often than not, about their appearance. Sometimes its small digs about their outfits or hairstyle, sometimes it surrounds the quality of their makeup, however, I have noticed an increase in direct insults about body and face appearances of these individuals.
It used to be the images celebrities were putting out on the internet of their looks would cause an increase in body image insecurities, especially among young women. While that can still be a problem with all the editing and alterations made without accountability happening these days, it seems to be it is no longer directly these celebrities’ appearances causing these insecurities; it’s the comments left by us, the consumers of this media.
It is impossible to talk about the discourse surrounding celebrity body image in the media without talking about arguably the biggest medium for these conversations, X (formerly Twitter). X is such a large platform to harbor these discussions, and notoriously a platform where people think they can speak their mind without repercussions.
I recently came across a post comparing two photos of Selena Gomez, one from around 10 years ago and one posted recently, paired with the caption “name a bigger downgrade… i’ll wait.” Despite this being an objectively rude thing to say, it also completely disregards the fact that Selena Gomez has Lupus, an autoimmune disease that is treated with medications that can result in weight fluctuations.
The shallow and ignorant nature of many comments made like this on social media inevitably sparks a larger scale of conversation among individuals, both sharing feelings supporting and condemning these comments. Although there are thousands of people coming to the defense of Gomez and other celebrities who have noticeable body changes, there are also thousands of comments poking fun or talking down on their looks—comments that these celebrities oftentimes see.
An important lesson that the internet and society as a whole seemingly have a hard time learning is an easy one: you never know what is going on in someone’s life. Case and point, the story of Chadwick Boseman, the beloved actor in the movie Black Panther. At the beginning of 2020, there was an uptick in discussions on social media about his appearance, as he had lost a significant amount of weight. The comments on social media were scathing, with many people mocking him for losing his “manly Marvel physique”. On August 28, 2020, Boseman died from colon cancer, a battle he kept private.
As I am sure many people reading this article can relate to, it is an objectively bad feeling to look in the mirror and not look the same as you used to look. The idea that celebrities are immune to these feelings as well is extremely ignorant and close-minded. While many argue that celebrities “signed up for that level of scrutiny”, I too believe that is just a convenient excuse for people to take out their own insecurities on people who happen to be under the microscope of the public.
Many celebrities have come forward about having body image issues or even full-blown eating disorders, such as Taylor Swift, Jane Fonda, Lady Gaga, Nicole Scherzinger, Zoe Kravitz, and so many others. The notion that body image issues are “women issues” is also not true, with male celebrities like Elton John and Zayn Malik coming forward about their eating disorders.
Social media can be a great outlet for people to keep in touch with friends, follow the news or pop culture and stay in touch with the latest happenings with their favorite celebrities. However, it can also be a cesspool of unnecessary and out-of-touch commentary by many frustrated and insecure individuals to take out their feelings on innocent people who are celebrities. Not only are these comments damaging to the public figures they are targeted at, but they can also contribute to the detrimental effect that many social media pages and posts have on young men and women’s body image.
It is more important than ever nowadays to keep this in mind when scrolling on social media, because while many pictures of bodies we see on social media are edited and altered, a lot of them are not and took a lot of courage and confidence to share. Social media should be a place that’s main purpose is sharing, not shaming.