Clarissa, 25, has been an Ariana Grande fan for years. She grew up watching the singer evolve from Nickelodeon mainstay to global superstar, as Grande put out albums, navigated public relationships and most recently, starred in the blockbuster Wicked adaptations. So when Grande released her latest music video for her new single “Petal,” Clarissa expected to watch it. Instead, she skipped it.<\/p>\n
“I saw pictures, and I’m like I’m not even gonna look at this video,” she tells Yahoo. “I think I just need a break from this content.”<\/p>\n
For months, both images and conversation about Grande’s appearance have dominated social media. Tour footage, paparazzi photos, and most recently, stills from the music video have ping-ponged around the internet and fueled widespread speculation about the singer’s noticeable weight loss over the last few years. A familiar debate is playing out online: are people cruelly commenting on one woman’s body or are they raising a necessary alarm? What is the right thing to do? The discourse intensified again after Grande’s team announced this week that she planned to step back from public-facing work<\/a> after her “Eternal Sunshine” tour, though the singer later clarified to\u00a0fans at her show that the decision had been long-planned and wasn’t a response to recent speculation.<\/p>\n Clarissa isn’t stepping away because she’s stopped loving Grande’s music or because she’s trying to make a statement about the singer. She realized she just couldn’t keep consuming the content \u2014 the endless takes paired with close-up photos of Grande’s body \u2014 without it affecting how she felt about herself. Though she hasn’t struggled with body image in the past, she knows she’s not immune to societal pressures. Lately, it’s felt unsettling. “I’ve worked so hard to get to a place where I feel healthy,” she says. “I’m happy with how I look, and even then, I’m like, maybe it’s not enough.”<\/p>\n She’s not alone. Instead of adding to the discourse, some Grande fans are making a different choice: to log off. They’re unfollowing social media accounts,<\/a> muting keywords, skipping related videos and, in some cases, even selling concert tickets.\u00a0<\/p>\n They don’t want to punish or protest Grande, but they know they need to protect themselves from the noise. And experts say learning how to navigate social media at a time when celebrities’ weight loss has become a relentless topic of discussion is a skill many of us could benefit from learning.<\/p>\n Unsubscribing from the discourse\u00a0<\/p>\n Fans who are stepping away say they still care about Grande and want her to succeed \u2014 but they don’t want to repeatedly confront images they find distressing. Clarissa, in addition to avoiding the new music video, has unfollowed Grande on social media, as well as her brand account, r.e.m. beauty. She’s curating her TikTok algorithm to avoid related content. “I’m not saying we should criticize her body. But I need to set a boundary somewhere,” says Clarissa. “I just don’t want to be exposed to this.”<\/p>\n One licensed clinical social worker, who specializes in treating people with eating disorders and asked to remain anonymous for privacy reasons, found herself making a decision she never expected: selling the tickets she’d bought to Grande’s “Eternal Sunshine” tour. “I was sad, but ultimately relieved,” she tells Yahoo.\u00a0<\/p>\n She describes feeling conflicted as both a fan of Grande and a therapist. She admires the singer’s work and wants to champion her, but going to see her in-person no longer feels right.<\/p>\n “It brings up grief as a fan because I want to support her incredible talent, but I don’t want to cosign her clear malnourishment,” she says. It’s changed the way she interacts with Grande online, too. “I feel conflicted when I see her posts. I feel conflicted about liking them.”\u00a0<\/p>\n That tension is one that others are describing online. “Recently, I just cannot interact or even listen to her music knowing she’s going through this,” read one comment on a TikTok <\/a>discussing Grande. “I had to unfortunately block all things Ariana because my 7 year old told me she didn’t want to eat so she can look like her,” said another commenter<\/a> on another video. There are also threads on Reddit<\/a> where users say they’re triggered by the star and note that it takes a while for social media algorithms to stop suggesting<\/a> related content.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Grande herself has not commented directly on her weight or appearance since a TikTok she posted in 2023<\/a>. “I think we should be gentler and less comfortable commenting on people’s bodies, no matter what,” she said then. The statement from her team announcing her break noted that she looked forward to finishing her tour “both healthily and happily.”<\/p>\n For Jessica Singh<\/a>, an eating disorder specialist and author of Nourishing Desire, the constant dissection of Grande’s body is harder than being exposed to the images. “Some of the commentary can be more harmful because it invites further scrutiny of someone’s body,” she says. “I don’t think at this point anyone’s really adding to the conversation. \u2026So it’s safe to disengage.”<\/p>\n A longtime Grande fan herself, Singh tells Yahoo that she’s among those who started muting accounts and pulling back from consuming videos about Grande. “I could just tell it was maybe taking up more of my brain space than was healthy for me,” she says. “Starting to bring back those feelings of needing to compare myself with others or scrutinize my own body size.”<\/p>\n Those feelings came as a surprise. Singh has been in recovery from her own eating disorder for 20 years. “It’s been a long time of pretty good physical and mental health for me,” she says. “So to have things like that come back up\u2026 I was like, okay, I have to step back.”<\/p>\n It’s bigger than Ariana<\/p>\n Though Grande is at the center of the firestorm right now, experts say this is bigger than any one public figure.<\/p>\n Katherine Metzelaar<\/a>, founder of BraveSpace nutrition, says all the focus on celebrities’ bodies often become stand-ins for people’s own anxieties about health, beauty and belonging. “People may think they’re talking about Ariana, but underneath that are questions like, ‘What does this mean about health? About thinness? About what bodies are supposed to look like?'” Metzelaar tells Yahoo. “That’s part of why these conversations become so emotionally charged.”<\/p>\n Repeated exposure to extremely thin bodies, she says, can normalize that as the standard or the ideal, while the discourse surrounding them makes it seem acceptable to constantly evaluate another person’s body.\u00a0<\/p>\n “The commentary can be just as triggering as the images themselves,” she says, noting that clients report feeling like they’re being pulled back into a culture they worked incredibly hard to heal from. “At the same time, we’re seeing celebrity bodies become entertainment again. We’re analyzing them, speculating about them and debating them in ways that reinforce the idea that a person’s body is something for public consumption.”<\/p>\n I often remind clients that curating your social media isn’t avoidance. It’s a form of self-protection.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Katherine Metzelaar<\/p>\n For people recovering from eating disorders \u2014 or simply trying to maintain a healthy relationship with their own self-image \u2014 that can have real consequences. “I often remind clients that curating your social media isn’t avoidance,” says Metzelaar. “It’s a form of self-protection.”<\/p>\n She encourages people to mute or unfollow content as soon as they notice themselves comparing more, body checking<\/a> more often or feeling worse every time the content appears. Clarissa did just that when she found herself watching certain clips of Grande on loop to analyze how parts of her body looked as she moved.\u00a0<\/p>\n “This cannot be good for me,” she recalls thinking. And even with most content now blocked, she hasn’t stopped caring. “I want to disengage. But at the same time, it’s almost like you’re hoping there’s some sort of resolution.”<\/p>\n Metzelaar says that’s not uncommon. “People naturally want closure,” she says. “We don’t like uncertainty, especially when we’re worried about someone.”<\/p>\n But no one else’s body can ever provide the reassurance people are actually looking for. Instead, Metzelaar encourages people to redirect their curiosity inward. “The more helpful question isn’t, ‘What happens to Ariana?'” she says. “It’s, ‘Why might her body changing be affecting me so deeply?'”\u00a0<\/p>\n If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, please visit the National Eating Disorders (NEDA) website at nationaleatingdisorders.org<\/a> for more information.<\/p>\n\n