The recent noise around Adele’s body is like music from a neighbour’s 80s-themed house party – disruptive, unwelcome and aggressively retro.
This week media outlets flooded our newsfeeds with headlines and articles critiquing the award-winning musician’s body, with tabloid publications and respected news outlets alike all offering up extensive coverage marvelling at “Adele’s impressive weight loss” and declaring that “she looked sensational after shedding a whopping 19 kilograms.”
With every headline, article, tweet and Facebook post that was put out into the world, the messaging around the 31-year-old singer’s body became clearer than a glass of dry gin on a summer’s day.
We are now supposed to see her appearance as a triumph that deserves to be publicly celebrated with more lashings of attention and flowering prose than any of her previous big award show wins or chart-topping album sales were ever afforded.
The narrative around Adele is that months after announcing her divorce from husband and father of her young son Angelo, Simon Konecki, she made a reappearance at musician Drake’s recent birthday party “flaunting her incredible weight loss to celebrity pals,” as more than one publication so succinctly worded it.
Listen to Mamamia’s Entertainment Editor and host of The Spill podcast Laura Brodnik talk about why the headlines around Adele and her body are so confronting.
And while the news coverage around Adele and her body is about as welcome as an overly chatty Uber driver, it’s also not entirely unexpected.
News outlets are businesses that monetise our clicks and views for revenue and so teasing pictures of “Adele’s stunning body transformation” was always a surefire way to catch your attention during a routine Facebook scroll and therefore lure you over to their outlet.
Top Comments
While it's 'disappointing' to over-weight women across the world-to see less diversity of body-shapes in the world stage; perhaps Adele found her groove, her experiment and doesnt want to be held up as some icon for the 'tricky/and or contentious figure' symbol...?
Isn't that, symbolising her, a bit cheeky?
I just hope she feels awesome!
And agree with comments mentioning-over-eating to the point where obesity becomes reality - - is a subjective phenomena for each of those folks; comprised of their emotions, feelings, sensations (or not) hormones, bodily systems, and then the impacts of relations/relationships/attachment/ care/love/hate/influence/education/support,
I imagine in a country like AU-dig deep and persistenlty enough and your are likely to access the support and guisdance needed, good luck...
I'm sorry "Guest" but lazy logic will not make a better argument.
Obviously we all feel sorry for the testing, selfless work and it's impacts on nursing staff - but heaping shame onto sick obese people with torturous health journeys is displaying a terrible attitude.
There's plenty of education in our society about nutrition and "taking responsibility" but obesity still happens and always will.
The hospitals need to step up and provide equipment & strategies to deal with this problem -
expecting small nurses to lift large bodies is ridiculous and negligent.
Obesity IS a disability all on it's own regardless of how it happened.
No-one wants to be obese, no-one dreams of being obese when they grow up or when they're supposed to be in the prime of their life or when they're very old.
Many people have fallen victims to huge billion-dollar weight-loss companies whose agenda is selling cheap, crap food - not human wellness.
We can always trawl through magazines and view TV shows where the ignorance and vanity of those obsessed with being skinny and more valuable is on display.
This is too complicated a subject for us to wrangle over so I simply ask you - please talk with the hospitals, and please endeavor to see the patient behind the obesity and show some care and understanding.