Remember when Adele started off her music career and was an instant hit?
How could she not be? She’s always had her beautiful vocals and profound, heartfelt lyrics that get our eyes all misty. Over a decade later, she’s still a queen.
However, when the singer recently resurfaced on social media after being MIA for months to thank essential workers at the frontlines and everyone who wished her happy birthday, the internet was only focusing on one thing. Yep, you guessed it. Her weight.
We understand you can’t exactly ignore it; it is a somewhat drastic change. But why are we discussing Adele’s weight again when she herself hasn’t commented on it? Oh right, because that’s what the internet’s been doing to her since she was 19.
For years now, people have been comfortable judging her on the one thing that has nothing to do with her talent: her body. She’s been at the receiving end of fatphobic comments and jokes like ‘she turns her weight into Grammys’ throughout her career; anytime her weight fluctuates, there are new memes. Like a human being is expected to stay one size forever
Unsurprisingly, this time around though, it’s all compliments. And it’s rather irksome the way it’s being celebrated over social media.
For people to say she’s ‘finally’ beautiful, as if to place all her value and worth on her figure, to imply it as her biggest achievement is an insult to the past decade that was her successful career. As if her old body was wrong.
Not to mention, celebrities who succumbed to different illnesses – both physical and mental – come out better but comparatively overweight, definitely don’t get the same kind of affirmation.
Lets be honest, people don’t care about Adele’s glow-up in the context of her own happiness and well-being, they just care that she’s skinny.
The past few years have seen an increase in discussions around body positivity and acceptance but there’s still a lot more ground left to cover. We have set unrealistic and damaging standards of beauty and weight by using this odd label of ‘thin’ as healthy and anything above that as unhealthy when that’s just not the case. It’s time we acknowledge that weight loss isn’t always warrant celebration or praise and while it can be a positive thing, that isn’t always the case.
For now, let us just say that while we’re happy for Adele (who’s smiling and sounds well!), we’d rather not see all her worth placed on that alone. And from previous conversations that shehas had, we can assure you that neither does she.
In her own powerful words: “I’ve never wanted to look like models on the cover of magazines… I represent the majority of women and I’m very proud of that.”
