After a week of deep diving into Taylor Swift’s rerelease of Red, I thought I was ready for a change of emotional pace. I’d put the kids to bed, grabbed a box of tissues, and was settling in for a night of letting Adele help me get deep into my feelings. After a six-year wait, my patron saint of sad fall music was back and I was so ready to hear what a more mature, freshly divorced Adele would sound like. Was it going to be a "Screw you, I’m a free woman" vibe? A "drowning in my sadness, will I find love again?" moment? Either way, I was ready to have a drink, listen to some new music, and maybe have myself a little cry.
And then I made the mistake of looking at the internet.
First there was the headline from the New York Post that proclaimed that "Adele’s Oprah concert proves she didn’t lose her voice with those pounds." Then there was another that promised a deep dive about "How and Why She Lost Weight" that didn’t even mention the title of her new album, despite being published on the very day that album came out. There were the clips of her interview with Oprah, who apparently couldn’t resist asking the singer about her recent weight loss. It was almost as if the album, which is one of her best and filled with the emotional highs and lows that capture her life as a newly divorced mom, hadn’t come out at all. Instead, it was all about her newly smaller shape.
Suddenly, I wasn’t in the mood to cry anymore. I was too pissed off.
As someone whose weight has fluctuated over the years, I’m familiar with the fact that strangers and friends alike often feel all too comfortable making comments about the changes that they might see. Even when the comments are meant to be complimentary (because everyone loves to praise a fat girl when she loses some weight), it can be exhausting to spend emotional energy on conversations about something that is both really personal and, well, really boring.
Conversations about weight loss ignore what really makes Adele interesting.
I’m all about Adele doing whatever she wants when it comes to managing her mental and physical health. Dealing with a divorce and being a mom and making banger songs like Easy On Me is a lot, and if working out helps her manage all that stress, cool! But honestly, her weight is the least interesting thing about her.
We’ve loved Adele for years because she is talented as heck while also being cheeky and charming. The things that made her albums 19, 21, and 25 hits had nothing to do with her weight, so it’s so annoying to see so much of the conversation around 30 centering on her body over her talent.
The focus on Adele’s weight loss is a manifestation of diet culture, and it is toxic.
Diet culture tells us all that weight loss is a victory and that having the idealized thin but curvy body should be every woman’s goal. All of these articles make it seem like Adele’s biggest success was losing weight, not making another masterpiece of an album while also going through significant life changes.
Interestingly, although Adele has handled the questions about her weight loss with grace and her trademark humor, after listening to her album several times, I don’t hear her mentioning it in her music. Instead, I find reflections on love and loss, on wanting to be a good mom, on finding your footing after heartbreak … otherwise known as the things that actually fricking matter.
We are all more than our bodies.
One of the most frustrating things about the sidelining of Adele’s musical success in favor of talking about her body is that it is another reminder that even fame doesn’t make a woman safe from people deciding that bodies are more important than talent.
The truth is that 30 would be magnificent no matter what Adele weighs. So can we please talk about her talent and not her thighs?
