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The new photo that Adele published on Instagram where she celebrates her 32 years gone viral. What’s so special about it? Adele, as she done in the past few months, presented herself in a body different from the one we known her. A thinner body.
The first comments immediately concerned the fact that Adele now is really beautiful and although for some (even in good faith) this wanted to be a compliment, there are some problems in judging bodies (especially of a woman) in this way.
Adele: Being fat, beautiful and valid
The first, more superficial, problem is that it seems that Adele could not have been beautiful before and that only through a diet she reach beauty. Well, it’s not: fat people can be beautiful and it’s not necessarily through weight loss that they will be. Of course, if society continues to spread an idea of beauty based on extremely restricted standards and the representation of beauty is not inclusive of various types of bodies, we will hardly be able to recognize it.
The second, more serious, problem is the idea that we still consider beauty as the price to pay (especially for a woman) to be in the world. But people, women, have value even if they are not beautiful, whatever are the aesthetic standards we wants to refer. Being beautiful cannot be the most important thing for a person. Adele won Grammys, an Oscar, but we can’t wait to comment on is how thinner she is. Not when his new single or album comes out. That is the problem!
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Losing weight doesn’t mean disappointing fat people
Some fat people might feel disappointed that Adele, who represented a successful model regardless of her body, cheated on fat people by losing weight.
But as Body Positivity says, people’s value has nothing to do with the size of their body. All people with any body type have equal value. Adele had value with the body she had before and has value with the body she has now. There is no ranking.
Despite this, however, Adele’s weight loss could be yet another opportunity (for those who hate fat people) to say that no one wants to be fat and everyone prefers to be thin.
But if the body belongs to the person who has it and she only can decide what to do with it, instead of focusing on her body, wouldn’t it be better to focus on her happiness? If Adele is happy in that body, I should be interested in that, not if she is fatter or thinner.
Life puts everyone in the condition of not always having the same body. Our body may vary over time. So despite the fact that society keeps telling us that people can be happy only if they are thin, wouldn’t it be better to focus on happiness regardless of what the body is look like?
If people are not happy in their body, they have the right to change it. It’s not a crime. Sure, it’simportant that this change derives from a personal choice, and not from the pressure and constraints that society or the (unachievable) canons promote. Otherwise nothing will change. But this is exactly what Adele’s weight loss should teach us.
Judging weight changes
Obviously, while we wait for these pressures on bodies will disappear, people may feel overwhelmed by those external things. No man is an island. For this reason, we cannot judge what is happening to the body of people. Because we don’t know their journey.
We don’t know why Adele lost weight. We don’t know if he had health problems. We don’t know if he had aesthetic pressures due to her celebrity status. We don’t know if her change comes from a trauma (she is a woman who divorced at 30 … are we her friends to know that everything is fine with this?).
For this reason, weight changes should not be judged. Because we have to give respect to the person, to his/her journey, to what he/she has potentially been able to pass and that we don’t know. Don’t remind constantly! And this is what it means to really care about people’s health.
