Singer, songwriter and total superstar Adele has been on a social media hiatus since December of last year, but she resurfaced this Wednesday, on her birthday, to share a little message with fans on Instagram. In addition to thanking fans for the birthday love and including a message of support for frontline healthcare workers, Adele also posted a photo of herself in a black dress, waving, surrounded by a wreath of pale, pink flowers.
It seems innocuous enough–famous people posting benign things on Instagram is like wallpaper–but that one photo has dominated social media discourse for the day because of Adele’s weight.
In the photo, Adele looks notably slimmer, and is waving happily. If you dare wade into the comments, what lies inside is a revealing and exhausting look at how the subject of a woman’s weight absolutley can’t go unmentioned. There are high-profile blue check marks commenting that she looks wonderful, followed by other high-profile blue check marks commenting that she’s always looked wonderful, followed by thousands and thousands of users exhausting themselves into a debate on body image that has always been driven by a society clinging to outdated standards of measuring beauty.
Adele is the top Google search for the day, and as of this writing, there have been close to a quarter of a million tweets about her. I haven’t checked Facebook, but I’m sure it’s hitting that platform hard as well. This all begs the question, why can’t we just let women be?
It makes sense then that Adele has stayed off social media and avoided the public eye for several months, because no one deserves this kind of scrutiny. Everyone has an opinion on her weight, but maybe those opinions don’t need to be shared with the rest of the world. Body image is a deeply personal thing, and shouldn’t be held up to the scrutiny of the masses. We do this with men too, Jonah Hill being a prime example, but women historically face much greater inspection.
Adele made whatever decisions felt right for her, but we can’t stop judging them as good or bad, as some kind of reflection on our own values and choices. Either she is empowering herself to look and feel better, according to some, or she is caving to unrealistic standards, according to others. The result is a long, exhausting and unproductive discourse that just underlines one, irrefutable fact: we still care far too much about what women weigh.
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