Content warning: this article discusses body image and eating disorders and may be distressing to some readers. If you are in need of support, please contact the Butterfly Foundation.
If you thought we’d moved past the days of pregnancy speculation, deliberately unflattering paparazzi shots, and general scrutiny when it comes to female celebrities’ bodies, think again.
It might be 2024, but the obsession with A-listers’ sizes has found a new home, away from the pages of trashy tabloid magazines, and amongst the battlefield that is TikTok.
The latest to fall victim to this new breed of vitriol? Lady Gaga.
The TikTok rumour mill went into overdrive when the singer was photographed at her sister’s wedding last week, with trolls quickly suggesting she was displaying a ‘baby bump.’ Things got so bad that Gaga was forced to respond, taking to the app with her own video, where she wrote: “not pregnant – just down bad [crying] at the gym” – a reference to Taylor Swift’s recent hit, ‘Down Bad.’
Then, proving she really is a girl’s girl – and that she sadly knows exactly what it’s like to be the subject of this kind of body scrutiny – Taylor Swift herself showed up for Gaga in the comment section.
“Can we all agree that it’s invasive and irresponsible to comment on a woman’s body. Gaga doesn’t owe anyone an explanation and neither does any woman,” she clapped back.
While no doubt Taylor’s support for Gaga is sincere, it likely also signals that she’s seen comments of a similar kind circling the app about her own body in recent weeks. Since kicking of the European leg of her Eras tour, various videos of Taylor performing in Lisbon, Portugal, have been making the rounds on TikTok, with comments ranging from backhanded compliments (“It’s the happiness chub,” one user wrote, referring to her new relationship with Travis Kelce), to straight-up insults (“omg she is pregnant”).
Making comments on social media – particularly when they relate to celebrities – can sometimes feel as though you’re talking into an endless void, separate from reality. Taylor’s response, then, should be a sobering reminder that there are real people, with real emotions, on the other side of the screen.
What makes this general insensitivity even more baffling is Taylor’s previous candour about her struggle with body image and disordered eating. In her 2020 Netflix documentary, Miss Americana, the singer revealed just how much of a toll public speculation around fluctuations in her size really took.
“It’s not good for me to see pictures of myself every day because… I tend to get triggered by something, whether it’s a picture of me where I feel like I looked like my tummy was too big or like someone said that I looked pregnant or something,” she said at the time. “And that will just trigger me to just, starve a little bit. Just stop eating.”
The singer also revealed how seemingly ‘complimentary’ comments can be just as damning.
Speaking to Variety in 2020, she explained, “I’d walk into a photo shoot and be in the dressing room and somebody who worked at a magazine would say, ‘Oh, wow, this is so amazing that you can fit into the sample sizes. Usually we have to make alterations to the dresses, but we can take them right off the runway and put them on you!’ And I looked at that as a pat on the head.”
Despite all this, more than four years on, it seems we haven’t learned anything from our mistakes. And while the onus really shouldn’t really fall on the celebs themselves to call out this kind of behaviour, we think Taylor put it best: “it’s invasive and irresponsible to comment on a woman’s body.” Let’s not.
