Is It Ever Okay to Comment on Someone's Appearance Online?
Whether positive or negative, there's an argument that gets recycled every time a public figure speaks out about body commentary online. It goes something like: You put yourself out there. You wanted the fame. You can't pick and choose which parts of public life you accept. It's delivered with a kind of shrugging logic, as though fame were a contract signed in fine print, one that includes surrendering your right to exist in a body without commentary from strangers.
It's worth sitting with that argument for a moment. Not to immediately dismiss it, but to actually examine what it's claiming. Because on the surface, it sounds almost reasonable. Public figures do invite scrutiny. Their work, their decisions, their public statements, these are fair game for discussion and criticism. That's part of what it means to operate in public life. But somewhere along the way, we collectively decided that “public figure” meant “public body,” and those are not the same thing.
The Line We Keep Pretending Doesn't Exist
A person can choose to release music, act in films, or build a following on social media. They cannot choose the body those things happen inside of. And yet the internet has developed an almost reflexive habit of treating that body as part of the content, something to be evaluated, speculated about, praised, and picked apart with the same casualness we'd apply to critiquing an album tracklist.
The surge of commentary around Ariana Grande's body during the Wicked press tours of 2024 and 2025 and during her current Eternal Sunshine Tour became one of the more visible recent examples of this. As soon as the first day of tour kicked off and videos surfaced the internet, Grande's appearance became a topic of conversation, with fans and media outlets focusing consistently on her weight rather than her vocals (being the strongest and most impressive it’s ever been). This isn’t a one-off moment, it is the latest chapter in years of public commentary on her body that she has had to navigate while simultaneously doing her job.
During the London leg of the Wicked press tour, Grande reflected on the criticism surrounding her body over the course of her career: “I’ve heard every version of it, of what's wrong with me, and then you fix it, and then it's wrong for different reasons.”
This is the treadmill that public figures, particularly women, are placed on. There is no version of their body that escapes commentary. They are too thin, then too much, then aging, then changed. The specific criticism shifts; the commentary never stops. Grande described what she sees as a troubling social pattern: a level of comfort with commenting on others’ physical appearance, health, and presentation that she called “really dangerous.” Throwback to the Rain On Me era and comments on how she had gained weight and looked unhealthy.
People in the public eye could be dealing with personal health issues and it’s not their responsibility to outwardly talk about it. There are plenty of celebrities that are vulnerable and open about their struggles and they can be looked at for awareness. Albeit, this doesn’t stop comments from coming in.
The case of Nessa Barrett makes the stakes even harder to look away from. Barrett, the singer and TikTok creator who has been open about living with BPD and an eating disorder since her teenage years, has faced years of relentless body commentary from her audience, an audience that, in many cases, genuinely believes it cares about her.
In November 2024, days after releasing her sophomore album Aftercare, Barrett addressed the commentary directly in a video on TikTok. “I’ve been dealing with an immense amount of hate for like six months now. I had an album coming out. I was so stressed and anxious all the time I started losing weight, and then everyone started to comment on it.”
The comments didn't exist in a vacuum. They landed on a person already navigating enormous pressure, and they became part of what she was fighting against. Then, once she began recovering, people continued commenting on how sick she looked, even as she was actively getting better. “This takes time,” she said. “I'm going to deal with it for the rest of my life”.
This is the cruelty that hides inside even the concern-coded comments. Are you okay? You look so thin. I'm worried about you. Wrapped in the language of care, these comments still do the same thing: they centre the person's body, remind them that it is being watched, and, critically, they don't actually help. They are not private messages to a friend. They are public declarations, often posted for the approval of other commenters, attached to the profiles of real people who will read them.
Barrett has spoken about her eating disorder since she was a teenager, she told Seventeen magazine that it was one of the things she'd been most ashamed of since middle school, and that opening up about it was part of her commitment to authenticity with her fans. That vulnerability was not an invitation for her recovery to be publicly monitored.
She's publicly stated that even positive comments about her body are triggering — and yet, as she openly shares her recovery journey, comment sections still flood with she looks so healthy and body tea.
The “Concern” Defense
Much of the discourse around celebrity body commentary wraps itself in the language of concern. People will say they're not criticising, they're worried. And it's worth acknowledging that sometimes, this is true. There are fans who genuinely care about the people they follow, who see visible changes and feel something real.
But concern expressed as a public comment on someone's post is not, actually, concern. It is observation dressed up as care. Real concern looks like supporting someone's own words about their experience, not adding another voice to a chorus they've already said is hurting them. When a person has directly told you that the commentary is making things worse, as both Barrett and Grande have done, repeatedly, explicitly, continuing to post that commentary is no longer concern. It's something else.
The “they're a public figure” defense also breaks down the moment you follow it to its logical end. Public figures have told us what impact this has on them. They've been specific and vulnerable about it. At a certain point, “I was just worried” doesn't hold up against the evidence of what that worry, multiplied across thousands of comments, actually does.
What the “Public Life” Argument Actually Asks Us to Accept
The claim that public life forfeits bodily privacy asks us to accept something fairly extreme. We don't say that teachers, who serve the public, must accept comments about their bodies from students. We don't say that politicians, who actively court public attention and power, have therefore agreed to have their weight discussed in their mentions. But we apply it routinely to individuals who make music or dance on the internet.
While Ariana Grande and Nessa Barrett are “underweight”, Tate Mcrae is “plus sized”, Sam Smith is “clearly unhealthy”, and Justin Bieber is “scary”.
So, Is It Ever Okay?
For most cases, the answer is simpler than we want it to be: ask what the comment is actually for. Public figures have families, friends, coworkers, therapists, people in their lives who can be honest with them in private. Our parasocial relationships aren't serving them when millions of strangers can read the same comment we're framing as concern.
If you or someone you know is struggling with disordered eating, support is available. In the UAE, you can The Lighthouse Arabia at +971-4-380-2088. In the UK, Beat Eating Disorders can be reached at +44-808-801-0677. In the US, you can reach the Alliance for Eating Disorders Awareness helpline at +1-866-662-1235.
