Op-Ed: We Have No Idea How to Talk About Ariana Grande

Monica Hesse's Washington Post column about Ariana Grande comes with an unusual caveat: "After six years of writing about gender and a year of writing about our relationship to screens, and after more than four decades as a woman—after all that, what I'm left with is that I still have no idea how to talk about Ariana Grande." As Hesse notes, the singer-actress's increasingly frail appearance has triggered both alarm and the usual chorus of "mind your own business." Grande's body is indeed her own business, and the rest of us "have absolutely no idea what's going on" there, writes Hesse. Therefore, we should all butt out, right? Right. Except.

Grande is also an international superstar and a role model to young fans. If she is indeed ill, a case can be made that she owes an explanation about all this to say her body is not a healthy one to emulate. It's an endless, exhausting loop. What "if the career we gave her was also the pressure cooker that caused pounds to drop off of her petite frame, whether because of illness, stress or societal pressure?" asks Hesse. "And what if hearing discussions of her physique in the public sphere is further deleterious to her health? And what if those discussions save someone else's life?" The questions are difficult, the answers more so. "We have no idea how to talk about any of this," writes Hesse. "And maybe we never will." Read the full column.