Anger about Adele: What our response to Adele’s weight loss can teach us about the body image movement

Adele’s weight loss has “broken the internet” - or at least, that’s what my social media has been telling me. This perhaps comes as a surprise, because stories about celebrity weight loss are as old as time. So, why the fuss, and why now? 

My blog post today is less concerned with Adele’s weight loss per se, and more concerned with reflecting on what the commentary about Adele’s weight loss says about the trajectory of the body image movement - where we have been, where we are now, and where we are going.

*Disclaimer: I do not speak for the entire community of body image advocates, and I will be the first to acknowledge that I anticipate there to be many perspectives out there that are different from mine. As an advocate, and as a person - I am most definitely still learning, changing, and growing. If there is anything in this post that does or does not resonate with you - I am always ecstatic to hear from you :)

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The different camps of commentary 

At first glance, there appear to be two main camps involved in the commentary about Adele: the people who are applauding her weight loss, and the people who are criticizing this applause. However, a conversation with one of my Banter-bassadors, Katie, led me to consider that there is actually one more camp: the people who feel personally attacked by those who are criticizing the applause. Through our conversation, we discovered that there is a group of people out there who are wondering, “Why are people so angry at people who lose weight?” and more importantly, “Do people who lose weight automatically become enemies of the body positivity movement?”

So, is the body image movement against weight loss?

Contrary to what you might have expected my response to be, I would argue that the answer to this question is no - not really. The reason behind this answer is that I believe that the body image movement is ultimately not about bodies, or weight at all. Throughout my growth as a body image advocate, I have come across different terms that have been used to describe the ultimate stage of achieving a state of body peace, namely, “body acceptance” and “body neutrality” (you can learn more about these terms in our Banter Basics series). What these terms are getting at is that perhaps, there is more than one way to build a peaceful relationship with our bodies; that perhaps it is less about feeling good about our bodies all the time, and more about taking the emphasis off the body as the sole prerequisite for feeling good, altogether. 

From my perspective, what body image advocates are really trying to say is that no matter what we do with ourselves, with our bodies - these decisions should come, first and foremost, from a self-respecting, self-honoring place. Whether we lose weight, gain weight, maintain weight - it simply doesn’t matter. In my opinion, Adele’s weight loss is not what we should be challenging, but rather, why it is that so many of us tend to focus on weight as the most important outcome of a person’s efforts to begin a journey of self-honoring, or why we applaud weight loss before we take the time to examine other possible reasons for their weight change (e.g., an illness or medical condition).

All that being said, I also wanted to acknowledge that mistakes were undoubtedly made along the way.

Along the way of our growth as body image advocates, many of us have likely made the mistake of shaming people for their weight loss, for sending the message that if people intentionally change their bodies, they are automatically deemed enemies of our movement.

I do, however, want to point out that these mistakes were important stepping stones in the growth of our perspectives as body image advocates. Those of us who have ever been touched by diet culture will understand that this belief system leads us to believe that our bodies are everything - that they represent the entire cores of our beings, and that if we can just make them look the way that we wish they would, our lives would be perfect. Those of us who have ever been touched by harmful belief systems will understand that a necessary first step to unlearning beliefs that have hurt us for a long time is anger and rebellion, which often requires targeting these beliefs at the very basic, surface level. 

In the case of diet culture, a crucial first step to unlearning is getting angry at messages that have told us that weight loss is necessary for happiness, that we must become smaller to be better.

We must first entirely reject the idea that weight loss is necessary and good, before we can examine the beliefs that lie under this assumption. It is often only later in our unlearning journeys that we are able to acknowledge that even this perspective, of being angry at weight loss, is placing weight at the center of the argument - that even when we focus on criticizing weight loss, we are giving weight-centric beliefs space that they do not deserve in our minds and our lives. It is only later, when we have fully rejected the idea that we need to lose weight, that we can begin to question why we are even talking about weight at all. Why does weight always take center stage in our conversations about wellbeing? Why is our language so limited when we try to talk about definitions of health that come from an individualized, internal place, and so superfluous when we use definitions that are dependent on the outsider’s gaze? Why are compassionate dialogues about respecting individualized definitions of health few and far between, while critical commentary about bodies everywhere that we turn? 

The bottom line is this: the goal of body image advocacy, in my perspective, has never been to shame people for their decisions about their bodies.

Instead, I define body image advocacy as helping people understand that they are so much more than their bodies, and only they get to have the final say as to what health and wellbeing mean to them. If I have learned anything during my own struggle with an eating disorder, it is that no one but myself could ultimately convince me to pursue recovery. I needed to learn that my body, my mind, my self were all ultimately my own responsibility, and that the person who would ultimately live with the consequences of my decisions was me. I could look healthy, even believe that I was healthy, and still not actually be healthy, if I put the responsibility of defining health on someone else.  

The conversation about Adele’s weight change was troubling to me at first, but upon further reflection, I find that I am incredibly excited about this conversation - I am thrilled that it is happening. To grow as individuals, as advocates, and as a community, we must acknowledge our anger, dare to put language to our opinions, and engage in open dialogue.