This week in feminist madness: Celebrating Adele's weight loss is fatphobic and misogynistic

[Metaphor]

British chanteuse Adele, the singer-songwriter behind the highest selling album of the 21st century, has recently lost about 7 stone (44.5 kilos or over 100 pounds), and she looks fucking fabulous.

But, of course, instead of celebrating this achievement with Adele (and an achievement it is: Adele did the work that not even her hundreds of millions of pounds net worth can get her out of), feminists are instead kvetching that it's misogynist and fatphobic to celebrate it.

Da'Shaun Harrison's take

TW/CW: This article discusses weight change, dieting, eating disorders, and fatphobia.

Adele “lost” (more) weight. I say “more” because when she revealed herself for the first time in a long time for Christmas, many people celebrated for days about how much weight she’d “lost.” Then people celebrated again at the beginning of February when photos and videos surfaced of her at Laura Dockrill’s wedding, wherein she announced that she would have an album coming in September of this year.


Now again, at around 12:30 AM on Wednesday, she posted a picture on Instagram thanking friends, fans, and loved ones for all the birthday wishes. That brought a lot of people a lot of joy and happiness. Not the celebratory post about her birthday, but the fact that she had “lost” even more weight. When I saw her latest Instagram post, however, the first thing I said to myself—and on Twitter—is “I hope she’s okay.” Because when I see someone lose a drastic amount of weight, especially while in the midst of experiencing what has become a very public trauma, I immediately think about the impact the trauma is likely having on their body.

Of course, the fact that Adele's weight loss could be the result of hard work hasn't crossed Harrison's mind. And, of course, the author has assumed Adele's divorce is 'traumatic'. Divorces are never great but, apart from Adele handing over a shit ton of money to her soon to be ex-husband, there's no evidence it's "traumatic".

Adele hired a trainer back in 2016 and has reportedly been working out ever since. However, it wasn’t until a post she made in October 2019 that people began to pay more attention to this “loss” of weight that seemed to happen almost overnight. That post revealed no more than her face, but it was clear that she had become thinner than she once was. But in January of this year, one of Adele’s trainers revealed the diet Adele was on that was helping her “lose” so much weight. The diet is called the “Sirtfood diet.” This is a two-phase diet that lasts for three weeks. The creators claim that it turns on a “skinny-gene,” that causes rapid weight “loss,” and prevents diseases. The first phase is three days long. For those three days, you are only allowed to intake 1,000 calories. This means that for three days you consume three green juices a day and only one meal “packed with sirtfoods.” For the following four days, two green juices and two sirtfood-packed meals. For the two weeks after that, you eat three meals (a day) and one green juice. Then the diet is complete. By then, you’re expected to have “lost” a lot of weight, and the rest is dependent on the upkeep of your diet following.

I cannot understand the author's repeated scare quoting of "losing" weight, as if indeed it somehow cannot be lost. Well, it can. It's breathed out in carbon dioxide and then it's gone from the body.

According to the experts, however, the Sirtfood diet is a fad. Just as statistics show for dieting in general, this diet either does not work or is a short-lived success. However, this piece is not about the failings and oppressiveness of diet culture; I’ve already written that. Instead, this is about my deep concern for how we engage (drastic) weight “loss.” I continue to place “loss,” “lose,” and “lost” in quotations because, not only am I certain that this new Adele isn’t a product of surgery, but you don’t “lose” weight. It is not lost. Unless the reason for why you’ve “lost” weight is an illness, weight “loss” is usually intentional. To describe it as something that is “lost,” or that is a “loss,” would be to suggest that it is dead; that it cannot be recovered; or that you had such a deep connection to it that you had an interest in finding it in the first place. None of which is usually ever true for intentional weight “loss.” Statistically, the weight almost always returns, and no one has the intent to “lose” something they value.


So how is Adele to feel after witnessing all of this celebration around her changing body?

I bet she feels fucking fantastic.

And how is she to feel should she ever gain this weight back? Considering the fact that the anti-fat patriarchy under which we live teaches women that their bodies belong to men, even after they’ve left them, is Adele supposed to feel comforted in the idea that she made this choice to “lose” weight to spite or get “revenge” on the man she’s divorcing? More to the point, the celebration of her “new” body is deeply anti-fat and misogynistic.

And here's the crunch: an absolutely insane claim (my bolding) followed by baseless garbage (though yes, people generally don't like fat bodies and would not choose to be fat if it were easy to avoid).

While none of us know this for certain, it seems that Adele’s weight “loss” is intentional. She’s spoken about her desire to “lose” weight before, even going as far as saying she wanted to “lose” weight to see if the reason for her fame was her weight—a theory that makes very little sense with an experiment that makes even less sense—and later saying that it’s for her son’s sake.


Be that as it may, whether intentional or not, weight “loss” can be exacerbated by stress and trauma, and has been named as a result of eating disorders. This is not an intention to diagnose Adele—I am no psychiatrist and no physician. Rather, this is to say that how we respond to weight and weight “loss” is determined entirely by how we are taught to view fatness. It’s necessary for us to seriously assess and wrestle with why we see weight “loss” as inherently good—so much so that we celebrate what is so clearly drastic weight “loss” even after knowing how much trauma a person has suffered prior to the weight “loss.”

Weight loss is inherently good, if you are overweight to begin with.

Said differently, we are only so quick to celebrate a person’s “lost” weight because we are taught that the weightiness of fat peoples’ bodies are inherently burdensome; cross-bearing; back-breaking; onerous.

It is.

Not on fat people, but on the people who surround us. Therefore, there’s no regard for whether or not a person is well when they “lose” weight because our societal desire—our only desire—is to not have to concern ourselves with the Ugliness of fatness; it doesn’t matter how it’s misplaced or “lost.” For me, however, I choose to see fatness as valuable; as part of my wellness.

Your fatness is the result of too many calories and is only harming your wellness.

So the celebration of “lost” weight feels more like a celebration of thievery; theft of a fat person’s ability to see themselves as someone who matters; theft of a person’s right to see their body as neutral rather than inherently bad; a breach of consent on how a person enters into a relationship with their fat body.

You don't enter into a relationship with your body. You are your body.

The only way to undo this is not to merely dive into who is and is not “losing” weight for “all the right reasons,” but rather to devalue weight “loss” entirely. Return to fat people the life you’ve earnestly and jubilantly stolen.

That's right, fatphobes! You are some kind of fat-targeting vampire who steals the essence of life from fat people!

Our fatness deserves to be ours to have, to hold, to value, to love. And for fat women, in particular, their weight is not a weapon of war and revenge for them to throw away after divorcing a man. There is no “glow” or “snatched waist” necessary for a fat woman to acquire to prove she is happy or better off without a man.

And I'm going to celebrate Adele's weight loss. Adele did the work and you did the kvetching.

Meanwhile, over at the women's pages of The Telegraph. I'ma just put this here without comment except for highlighting a few choice sentences.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/photo-new-slimmer-adele-makes-women-like-feel-uncomfortable/

I woke up this morning to a stream of messages from my girlfriends on Whatsapp. Usually this means a celebrity has died or someone we haven’t seen for the better part of a decade has got engaged. But in this case the messages all started with a picture of a very pretty, slim girl in a short black dress. An unrecognisable Adele – along with dozens of comments.


"She looks amazing"; "She’s so beautiful now"; "I didn’t recognise her"; "Her body is insane"; "Her cheekbones could cut glass"; "Good for her"; "Well done".

She would probably be receiving slightly less praise if she had found an overnight cure for Covid 19.


As a society, we are supposed to have progressed beyond noticing what a woman weighs. The A+ feminist reaction to her reported seven stone weight loss would be to have no reaction at all. But while I would dearly love to pretend that I saw the photos and moved on with my day, I didn’t. I saw the photos and my heart sank. I felt personally affronted, as if Adele had done something deliberately to hurt me.


My body looks similar to Adele’s ‘old’ body. Medium sized. Plump. Not the kind of large that you’d stop to look at on the street, but definitely not thin. My body is the body that Adele didn’t want to have anymore, and clearly spent a lot of time and effort trying to change.






Back when she would arrive at awards ceremony, a size 14/16, wearing a beautiful beaded gown and industrial quantities of eyeliner, I felt a kinship with her. She looked lovely in the same way that I can look lovely, if someone spends lots of time doing my hair and make-up, and I wear Heist bodysuit underneath a well cut dress. But Adele doesn’t look like me, or the average (size 16) British woman anymore.


It’s not just the weight loss itself, either. It’s the reaction to her weight loss. Thanks to this new set of photos I will spend the coming days hearing people talking about how amazing Adele looks, with a heavy subtext of ‘she looks better now that she’s thin.’


Every single time someone marvels at Adele’s body, it reinforces the message that bodies look better when they are smaller. That people are worth more when they are smaller. A particularly hard message to receive at a time when so many of us have gained weight in lockdown.


When I’ve spoken previously about the sense of betrayal that I get when someone who used to have a body like mine loses weight, people have been quick to accuse me of jealousy. And those people are quite right. There is an undeniable aspect of jealousy in my reaction to Adele’s weight loss, just as there has been every time someone I know in real life goes from having a body like mine to a body like a Love Island contestant.






I envy the ability to transform, I envy the joy of having a teeny-tiny body and I envy the stream of compliments. I am absolutely jealous. I’ve been raised in a society that regards a small frame as the ultimate female achievement – how could I be anything other than jealous of those who manage to achieve what I myself have failed at so many times?


There are plenty of people online who claim we should say nothing about Adele’s body; that her weight is none of our business. And while I think that sentiment is admirable, it’s just not realistic. As mid-sized women have so little representation in the public eye, Adele’s body is fraught, political ground. Of course, I don’t blame her for wanting to sunbathe in the approval that comes with weight loss, especially after spending a decade in an industry which celebrates conventional beauty, and shoved her into a Poncho during the early years of her career when she was at her physical biggest.








Adele has every right to do what she likes with her body. But she’s a global megastar, and that means that what she does with her body has a knock-on affect for the rest of us.






Back in 2012, when Adele was around a size 16, she told US TV show 60 Minutes "I represent the majority of women, and I’m very proud of that." She then vowed never to become a "skinny Minnie." Of course Adele shouldn’t be expected to live with a body she dislikes because she promised eight years ago that she wouldn’t get thin. But the people on the internet who claim we should all ignore the changes to her physique seem to have forgotten that Adele was adopted as the emblem for mid-sized women a long time ago, and seemed happy and comfortable with that body-positive role.


Adele owes me (and the rest of the women struggling with her weight loss) nothing – least of all her dress size. She’s a newly single mum, she’s been through a ‘£140 million’ divorce in the last year, and was recently pictured getting extremely upset at Heathrow airport, so it seems like she’s probably got enough to be coping with, without adding the body image woes to strangers to her list.


But in a world with so few mid-size role models, it can hardly comes as a surprise that her defection to team skinny from team ‘do you have this in the next size up?’ feels hurtful for women like me.






It’s okay to feel a sting when people say how ‘great’ she now looks. It’s okay to mourn seeing pictures of someone your own dress size being beautiful on a red carpet. And it’s okay if the combination of lockdown weight gain, juxtaposed with Adele’s ‘stunning new body’ has made you feel sad. It doesn’t make you a bad feminist, or a bad person – and you’re certainly not the only one who is feeling that way.

 

[Jarhyn]

This just in, some people are stupid and crazy and Metaphor likes letting these people live inside his head rent free.

It's not hard to comment or say "that's fucking stupid, if someone succeeds at a goal, say "good job". They wanted something for their body and they accomplished it. I would say Good Job to the woman who finally hit their gainer goal of 400 lbs as much as I compliment Adelle on losing the weight she didn't want.

But I'm not going to give some psychotic free rent in my brainmeats.

 

[Trausti]

Sailer's law of female journalism.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Looks like someone needs a hug. *hugs Metaphor*

 

[Jarhyn]

Looks like someone needs a hug. *hugs Metaphor*

I wouldn't. You don't know where that's been.

 

[J842P]

This just in, some people are stupid and crazy and Metaphor likes letting these people live inside his head rent free.

It's not hard to comment or say "that's fucking stupid, if someone succeeds at a goal, say "good job". They wanted something for their body and they accomplished it. I would say Good Job to the woman who finally hit their gainer goal of 400 lbs as much as I compliment Adelle on losing the weight she didn't want.

But I'm not going to give some psychotic free rent in my brainmeats.

Haha, see, there ya' go. Giving credence to Metaphor's OP.

Those two things are not equivalent, and they shouldn't be treated the same way.

 

[TSwizzle]

I think Metaphor has cabin fever.

 

[Jarhyn]

This just in, some people are stupid and crazy and Metaphor likes letting these people live inside his head rent free.

It's not hard to comment or say "that's fucking stupid, if someone succeeds at a goal, say "good job". They wanted something for their body and they accomplished it. I would say Good Job to the woman who finally hit their gainer goal of 400 lbs as much as I compliment Adelle on losing the weight she didn't want.

But I'm not going to give some psychotic free rent in my brainmeats.

Haha, see, there ya' go. Giving credence to Metaphor's OP.

Those two things are not equivalent, and they shouldn't be treated the same way.

I really think they should. I support people in accomplishing their goals and their "perfect" body image. Even if that image is something I would not personally enjoy looking at

 

[Trausti]

 

[krypton iodine sulfur]

I've never seen you and I find you utterly unfuckable. Don't think I could stomach even a casual date. Not a put down; just a simple fact. One would have to think that's based on inner qualities, not outer. And yet, I still don't have x-ray vision. Weird.

 

[Trausti]

I've never seen you and I find you utterly unfuckable. Don't think I could stomach even a casual date. Not a put down; just a simple fact. One would have to think that's based on inner qualities, not outer. And yet, I still don't have x-ray vision. Weird.

Well, he's dead now. Your opportunity has passed.

 

[J842P]

This just in, some people are stupid and crazy and Metaphor likes letting these people live inside his head rent free.

It's not hard to comment or say "that's fucking stupid, if someone succeeds at a goal, say "good job". They wanted something for their body and they accomplished it. I would say Good Job to the woman who finally hit their gainer goal of 400 lbs as much as I compliment Adelle on losing the weight she didn't want.

But I'm not going to give some psychotic free rent in my brainmeats.

Haha, see, there ya' go. Giving credence to Metaphor's OP.

Those two things are not equivalent, and they shouldn't be treated the same way.

I really think they should. I support people in accomplishing their goals and their "perfect" body image. Even if that image is something I would not personally enjoy looking at

Right, so you are the *perfect* example of what Metaphor is talking about. So you can't at the same time dismiss this as "just a few crazies".

 

[Random Person]

It appears that the body positivity movement only allows for weight gain. Weight loss for for traitors.