There’s No Good Way to Talk About Celebrities and Eating Disorders
There’s No Good Way to Talk About Celebrities and Eating Disorders
谈论名人与饮食失调，从来没有一种“好”的方式
Content warning: This piece includes descriptions of eating disorders that may be triggering to some readers. 内容警告：本文包含对饮食失调的描述，可能会对部分读者造成心理触发。
Viral discourse about celebrity women becoming frighteningly thin has become inescapable on social media. 在社交媒体上，关于女性名人变得瘦骨嶙峋的病毒式讨论已变得无处不在。
There are images showing the most shocking evidence of weight loss, “before and after” compilations, and widespread speculation about covert GLP-1 usage. A lot of the conversation is being held under the guise of concern, but experts tell WIRED many of these posts—even if well-intentioned—misinform the public about eating disorders and can even serve as unhealthy inspiration or trigger those in recovery. 网络上充斥着展示体重减轻的惊人证据、对比照片，以及关于她们是否私下使用 GLP-1（减肥药）的广泛猜测。许多讨论打着“关心”的幌子进行，但专家告诉《连线》（WIRED），这些帖子中有许多——即便初衷是好的——也会向公众传达关于饮食失调的错误信息，甚至可能成为不健康的“灵感来源”，或触发处于康复期人群的心理问题。
The discourse has reached a fever pitch after Ariana Grande released a music video for her new single and album “Petal,” which features her auditioning endlessly for a table of misogynistic male studio executives who urge her to “lose a few [pounds]” and “get some work done.” Nearly every comment on the video expresses concern for Grande’s health because of her thin appearance. Other celebrities like Jameela Jamil have spoken up, writing that the video was irresponsible for glamorizing a “deeply damaging image for her young fans.” 在爱莉安娜·格兰德（Ariana Grande）发布新单曲及专辑《Petal》的音乐录影带后，相关讨论达到了白热化。视频中，她不断向一群厌女的男性高管试镜，对方催促她“再减几磅”并“去整整容”。视频下方的评论几乎都在因她消瘦的外表而表达对她健康的担忧。贾米拉·贾米尔（Jameela Jamil）等其他名人也公开发声，称该视频美化了一种“对年轻粉丝极具破坏性的形象”，是不负责任的行为。
Following the public reaction to the video, Grande’s team announced that she would be pulling out of a planned theatrical run on London’s West End and “taking a much-deserved break from public-facing work and appearances, which has led to endless, ongoing public scrutiny” after she wraps up her Eternal Sunshine Tour. But that statement prompted even more critical discourse, with commenters arguing that they were being villainized for caring about the pop star’s health and influence. 在视频引发公众反应后，格兰德的团队宣布，她在结束“Eternal Sunshine”巡演后，将退出原定的伦敦西区戏剧演出，并“从公众工作和露面中休息一段时间，因为这导致了无休止的公众审视”。但这一声明引发了更多批评性讨论，评论者认为，他们仅仅是因为关心这位流行歌星的健康和影响力，却被妖魔化了。
It’s understandable why people are concerned, both for and about Grande. The renaissance of the unhealthy “heroin chic” beauty standard, following the rise and apparent fall of “body positivity” in the 2010s, coincided with an alarming increase in the number of young people seeking treatment for eating disorders, which can be life-threatening. 人们对格兰德的处境感到担忧是可以理解的。在2010年代“身体积极性”（body positivity）运动兴起又似乎衰落之后，不健康的“海洛因时尚”（heroin chic）审美标准卷土重来，与此同时，寻求饮食失调治疗的年轻人数量出现了惊人的增长，而这种疾病可能危及生命。
Posting about eating disorders—celebrity or otherwise—can be an earnest attempt to save people from them. Images that highlight Grande’s thinness have become unavoidable, though, even for people who are actively trying to avoid being triggered by them. Their ubiquity is exacerbated by social media algorithms that show people increasingly extreme rabbit holes of the same kind of content they previously engaged with. 发布关于饮食失调的内容——无论是针对名人还是其他人——可能是一种试图拯救他人的真诚尝试。然而，那些强调格兰德消瘦的照片变得无法回避，即使是那些极力避免被触发的人也难以幸免。社交媒体算法加剧了这种现象，它们将用户推向越来越极端的“兔子洞”，不断推送用户之前互动过的内容。
“I feel pretty comfortable saying that sharing these specific images of [Grande], including ‘before and afters,’ is both unhelpful and harmful,” says Allison Logue, a family therapist with a decade of experience treating patients with eating disorders. She said that sharing comparison pictures is common among people with eating disorders. Some of the viral posts about celebrity women’s appearances are indistinguishable or even come directly from pro-anorexia or “pro-ana” spaces where at-risk individuals use them as inspiration and to compete with each other for a similar appearance. “我可以肯定地说，分享这些（格兰德的）特定照片，包括‘对比照’，既无益又有害，”拥有十年饮食失调治疗经验的家庭治疗师艾莉森·洛格（Allison Logue）表示。她说，分享对比照在饮食失调患者中很常见。一些关于女性名人外表的病毒式帖子，与那些支持厌食症的“pro-ana”空间发布的内容几乎无法区分，甚至直接来源于这些空间——高危人群将这些照片视为“灵感”，并以此相互攀比，追求同样的外形。
When celebrities receive an outpouring of attention based on their weight loss, it may encourage some individuals with eating disorders to try to imitate that appearance and seek out that same concern, Logue adds. The broad obsession with celebrities’ weight also reinforces the idea that everyone is paying attention to and judging how you look, which can exacerbate the fears of people with eating disorders. 洛格补充说，当名人因体重减轻而受到大量关注时，可能会鼓励一些饮食失调者去模仿那种外表，并寻求同样的关注。这种对名人体重的广泛痴迷也强化了一种观念：每个人都在关注并评判你的外表，这会加剧饮食失调者的恐惧。
While Logue told WIRED that Grande’s appearance is concerning—and has been for years—she says that as a stranger, she cannot say for sure whether Grande is struggling with an eating disorder. She notes that the media’s overwhelming focus on individuals with lower weights obscures the reality that people of any and all sizes can have eating disorders. 虽然洛格告诉《连线》，格兰德的外表确实令人担忧（而且这种情况已经持续多年），但她表示，作为一个局外人，她无法确定格兰德是否患有饮食失调症。她指出，媒体过度关注体重较轻的人，掩盖了一个事实：任何体型的人都可能患有饮食失调症。
When a patient is seeking treatment, Logue says, she does not use their appearance to express concern or as a motivator, because there are always other contributing factors. With a public figure, Logue says, we don’t have real insights into these factors. Instead, most people focus on what their body looks like. 洛格说，当患者寻求治疗时，她不会用他们的外表来表达关心或作为激励手段，因为总有其他促成因素。对于公众人物，洛格认为，我们无法真正洞察这些因素。相反，大多数人只关注她们的身体看起来是什么样。
Although a lot of commenters say they’re less worried about Grande individually and more concerned about the impact she may have on her young fans, Logue says focusing our efforts on celebrities’ appearances also doesn’t meaningfully combat aspirational thinness in our day-to-day lives, either. 尽管许多评论者表示，他们担心的不是格兰德个人，而是她可能对年轻粉丝产生的影响，但洛格认为，将精力集中在名人的外表上，并不能有效对抗我们日常生活中对“瘦”的盲目追求。
“Talking about how you look fat, engaging in fatphobia, it’s all these things that are so normalized. And when I work with clients, that is the dangerous stuff,” she says. “I’ve never had a client sit down and say, ‘I got an eating disorder because I heard Demi Lovato had an eating disorder.’” “谈论自己看起来很胖、参与肥胖歧视，这些事情已经变得太常态化了。当我与客户工作时，这些才是危险的东西，”她说。“我从未遇到过有客户坐下来对我说：‘我患上饮食失调是因为我听说黛米·洛瓦托（Demi Lovato）患有饮食失调。’”
One big sign that the viral posts about celebrities aren’t helping people with eating disorders is that almost none of them share resources, such as links to groups like the National Eating Disorder Association. And many of the posts contain an undeniable strain of snark, cruelty, and carelessness. There are viral compilations of celebrity women with captions like “it’s not just Ariana,” most of which exclude celebrity men entirely. Some people have used AI tools to edit images of these women to make them appear obese and used them as memes, while others have analyzed every part of their bodies in photos to declare them too skinny. 关于名人病毒式帖子对饮食失调患者毫无帮助的一个重要迹象是，几乎没有帖子分享相关资源，例如“全国饮食失调协会”（National Eating Disorder Association）等组织的链接。许多帖子中不可否认地带有讽刺、残忍和漫不经心的意味。网上流传着女性名人的合集，配文如“不仅仅是爱莉安娜”，其中绝大多数完全排除了男性名人。有些人使用人工智能工具编辑这些女性的照片，让她们看起来肥胖并将其制作成表情包，而另一些人则分析照片中她们身体的每一个部位，断言她们“太瘦了”。
Women in various stages of eating disorder recovery are actively grappling with the issue. Natália Franz, a Slovak actress, commented on one video about celebrities and eating disorders to say, “I wish more people were worried about me when I was not eating rather than normalizing it.” 处于饮食失调康复不同阶段的女性正在积极应对这一问题。斯洛伐克女演员娜塔莉亚·弗朗茨（Natália Franz）在一段关于名人与饮食失调的视频下评论道：“我希望在我绝食的时候，有更多人关心我，而不是将这种行为常态化。”
Franz tells WIRED that she’s concerned about the influence celebrities have over their fans, and she’s hoping that the discourse can change the culture for her own daughter. She also says that her body image issues started at home and that parents need to be careful with how they talk about food and appearance around their kids. 弗朗茨告诉《连线》，她担心名人对粉丝的影响力，并希望这种讨论能为她自己的女儿改变这种文化。她还表示，她的身体形象问题始于家庭，父母在孩子面前谈论食物和外表时需要格外小心。