Speaker 1: From The Australian. This is the weekend edition of The Front.
Speaker 1: I'm Claire Harvey. Ariana Grande is a thirty three year
Speaker 1: old superstar who is vanishing before our eyes. Am I
Speaker 1: allowed to say that? Is it okay for the rest
Speaker 1: of us to have opinions about the body of one
Speaker 1: of the world's most photographed women by expressing concern or
Speaker 1: something else about someone who looks so unwell? Are we
Speaker 1: making things worse projecting our own problems and hang ups
Speaker 1: on the most talented among us. One of the Australian's
Speaker 1: own brilliant young women, Bianca far Marcus, has strong feelings
Speaker 1: about who should be saying what.
Speaker 2: I want to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Loved her on Victorious. That's probably my first introduction.
Speaker 3: I'm juggling and then I'm going to sing a song from.
Speaker 2: Me, and then I kept in the loop with the albums.
Speaker 2: The songs are always chart topping, so you can't really
Speaker 2: you can't miss her.
Speaker 1: She's phenomenally successful. She has everything from fragrance lines to
Speaker 1: a beauty company to a healthy business doing sponsored posts
Speaker 1: on social media, but her main job at the moment
Speaker 1: is kind of in film theater and as a touring
Speaker 1: musical artist, where she's absolutely massive. Her fans are young,
Speaker 1: and they've kind of stayed young throughout her career, aren't they.
Speaker 1: It's kind of preteen girls, teenage girls, maybe the women
Speaker 1: who are growing up with her. Who do you think
Speaker 1: is Ariana Grunde fan.
Speaker 2: I would agree with you in the sense that they've
Speaker 2: always been in that sort of young teen, late teen bracket.
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously I've stayed somewhat loyal, but the Wicked
Speaker 2: era kind of bored me to tears just too much.
Speaker 2: I had to pivot. It's just so annoying. After a while,
Speaker 2: I did, and I like, I love Wicked when I
Speaker 2: was twelve, and I was happy to leave it there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting. She plays Glinda, the good Witch from
Speaker 1: the Wizard of Oz in this adaptation Wicked, which is
Speaker 1: a stage and now screen phenomenon.
Speaker 2: Alphaba, They're coming for you. Just look at me, not
Speaker 2: with your do you know what I think? What was
Speaker 2: so interesting about the Wicked thing is that it reminded
Speaker 2: everyone the breadth of talent, Like, you can't just reduce
Speaker 2: her to a pop star anymore.
Speaker 3: People into your lives for reason, here's a plan for
Speaker 3: I have no plan, well, I do.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank god, they brought in this whole kind of
Speaker 2: more innocent aur to her, that she was this sweet,
Speaker 2: very musical, theater bound kind of geeky person, which is
Speaker 2: exciting for fans because you're rediscovering someone who, at a
Speaker 2: certain point in her career was very much known for
Speaker 2: these like vengeful, like sexy breakup albums, which were all
Speaker 2: but then you get this new side to her, and
Speaker 2: I think it created this incredible spectacle which has very
Speaker 2: notably started to sour.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Wicked movies, there were two of them, and
Speaker 1: they were filmed together a few years ago and then
Speaker 1: released separately over the past two and a half years.
Speaker 1: And it's on the press tool for those two movies,
Speaker 1: the press tools that she has appeared in public as
Speaker 1: a very thin person, a suddenly very thin person. Someone
Speaker 1: who was always kind of slim and gorgeous is now
Speaker 1: skaletaly thin, and the world has reacted, has not been
Speaker 1: able to cope, No, not at all with this. So
Speaker 1: how would you characterize the way the conversation's.
Speaker 2: Gone, I would say so, I mean, yes, it's exactly
Speaker 2: what you said, right, Like, she was always petite, everyone
Speaker 2: knew that and she had this kind of athleticism in
Speaker 2: this pocket rocket We love a pocket rocket pop star,
Speaker 2: especially in this country with Kylie Hah, perfect example. But
Speaker 2: then from there you start seeing this uncomfortable sort of
Speaker 2: look at what's coming out that you see someone who
Speaker 2: is visibly emaciated. I think it's very fair to say that,
Speaker 2: and I know we're currently in this post body positivity
Speaker 2: era where you can't really say that about someone because
Speaker 2: it's not right to comment on someone's body. But it's
Speaker 2: just undeniable, like you can't deny that someone who is
Speaker 2: on camera, which famously adds ten pounds, already looks like
Speaker 2: a shell of their petite self. So it starts with
Speaker 2: you know, I guess I can't even remember when it crystallized.
Speaker 2: It really started because they started in Australian twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: Everyone saw it and was like, okay, this is noticeably
Speaker 2: different to who we knew. And then there were the
Speaker 2: rumors that the cast was sort of engaging in this
Speaker 2: competitive under eating because the rest of them started to
Speaker 2: look extremely thin. And it was very much this discourse
Speaker 2: happening online or in quiet spaces, but not something that
Speaker 2: was being so addressed so publicly which makes us to
Speaker 2: now because I feel like we've really finally stopped looking
Speaker 2: at it like it's something to be speculated on and
Speaker 2: seen it visibly without a shadow of a doubt for
Speaker 2: what it is. And this is someone who is it emaciated,
Speaker 2: is inexcusably shockingly and very complicatedly thin in a public
Speaker 2: spotlight that is also on the top of their game.
Speaker 2: And it's I think it's very confusing for people to
Speaker 2: see that right now.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting as a woman and a kind of feminist,
Speaker 1: isn't it to talk about these things. I had Niki gammelr,
Speaker 1: film critic in here to talk about Wicked, the second
Speaker 1: film in the Wicked series, and I said to her
Speaker 1: in the interview that we did. Ariana Grande and Cynthia
Speaker 1: Erevo have transformed since the movie was short to now
Speaker 1: on the priest tool they're both very thin. And Nikki said, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: but we don't about women's bodies. And Nikki is, like me,
Speaker 1: a feminist of a certain age, and I totally respect
Speaker 1: her view. And that's one view of feminism that it's
Speaker 1: not right to talk about what women look like at all,
Speaker 1: so just leave it. But as the mother of a
Speaker 1: daughter and someone who has lots of younger women around
Speaker 1: me who I care deeply about, and I was once
Speaker 1: a young woman. I wonder do we have as women
Speaker 1: an obligation or a rite or a duty to speak
Speaker 1: about what you say a visibly starving person.
Speaker 2: I find it a very interesting conversation that it's kind
Speaker 2: of like this, Oh, you can't say that. That's like,
Speaker 2: that's mean or it's disparaging. This is not mean or disparaging.
Speaker 2: I think you can equate it to numerous other things
Speaker 2: that people have suffered from in the public eye, and
Speaker 2: that conversation is very warranted because it's seen as a
Speaker 2: vice or it's something that you're doing. This is a
Speaker 2: health concern, And I mean, I don't really like pinning
Speaker 2: it all on Ariana Grande, you know. I think she's
Speaker 2: become very much the unfortunate face of what is like
Speaker 2: a completely wider and a very systemic issue happening right now.
Speaker 2: Of we're just seeing body shit completely again, and the
Speaker 2: main change is how rapid it's happened. That's what bothers me.
Speaker 2: I don't really care about what people look like. I
Speaker 2: don't normally comment on what people look like. What I
Speaker 2: do comment on is when it is absolutely everywhere. It
Speaker 2: is so visible and it's so visceral that to me
Speaker 2: screams at a wider issue and a reminder that no
Speaker 2: matter what we'd like to think, no matter how far
Speaker 2: we'd like to think we've come, we will continue to
Speaker 2: think that starving yourselves for a public image is more
Speaker 2: important than cultivating just a reasonable sense of self and
Speaker 2: a healthy sense of self around it. I think with
Speaker 2: every generation there are waves of when we know that
Speaker 2: we're taking things too far in terms of body image,
Speaker 2: and there is kind of that rebuttal to what should
Speaker 2: be deemed healthy or what should be deemed appropriate within
Speaker 2: the realm of body and beauty. And then there's the antithesis,
Speaker 2: which is thin is back in, and it comes by
Speaker 2: every single generation. Then we find the new thing to
Speaker 2: blame for that, and it's never just this kind of
Speaker 2: conversation of like, okay, well, like we can acknowledge that
Speaker 2: there is a certain beauty standard that will always exist
Speaker 2: and or continue to perpetuate, but how are we actually
Speaker 2: speaking to people about what is reasonable for who you are.
Speaker 2: We're not people in the public spotlight, we're not celebrities.
Speaker 2: How do you divorce the fact that every single one
Speaker 2: of them are now currently in this shrinking cycle and
Speaker 2: not have that effect young people that are observing that
Speaker 2: and may think that's normal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it. How even in the past,
Speaker 1: let's take my adulthood, from the nineties through to now,
Speaker 1: there's been heroin chic, which everyone kind of blamed on magazines.
Speaker 1: You know, it was like, well, this wouldn't be happening.
Speaker 1: Kate Moss wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't the
Speaker 1: edit for the editors of the magazines who were putting
Speaker 1: on the front. Then it was it was the global
Speaker 1: runways that showed women and men looking extremely thin. And
Speaker 1: then there was kind of a few revolutions that the
Speaker 1: victorious secret kind of angel body came along and it's like,
Speaker 1: suddenly it's great to be very slim but also kind
Speaker 1: of voluptuous. And then the advent of women in hip
Speaker 1: hop kind of led these kind of junk in the trunk,
Speaker 1: gorgeous natural woman's body, womanly bodies are great again. And
Speaker 1: then it was body positivity, so it was like people
Speaker 1: actually called themselves fat activists and were very vocal about
Speaker 1: how it was important, and you could be fat and
Speaker 1: fit and fat and healthy, and then Ozempi came along.
Speaker 2: Straight out the window. So I came of age in
Speaker 2: the tumbler era and the body positivity eras two very
Speaker 2: divergent things where it was very cool privately to post
Speaker 2: pro anorexia content on your blog, and it was images
Speaker 2: now that I think were unforgivably shocking, though we're proliferating
Speaker 2: that space, and in the same length mid twenty tens,
Speaker 2: everyone was very happy to celebrate their bodies. I think,
Speaker 2: and I don't say this with any sense of glee
Speaker 2: or joy, but I think the body positivity movement has
Speaker 2: completely failed, mainly because it was a political movement with
Speaker 2: no teeth that everyone jumped the bandwagon because it was
Speaker 2: suddenly chic to embrace your natural self. There was no
Speaker 2: real kind of thought to it, and there was no
Speaker 2: real galvanization for that to be a sustaining force because
Speaker 2: we accepted the fact that there was maybe one fat
Speaker 2: model in every campaign, there was occasionally an overweight person
Speaker 2: on the cover of a magazine, and then the second
Speaker 2: that anything else could take you back to the standard
Speaker 2: of beauty that has been reinforced for generations. It was
Speaker 2: like it never happened genuinely. I think it was such
Speaker 2: a toothless movement in actuality and very much a kind
Speaker 2: of virtue signal for five years.
Speaker 1: Maybe if that.
Speaker 2: I think we're in an era of excess, and the
Speaker 2: relationship I've seen that have with various generations with physicality
Speaker 2: has always sort of been like this push and pull.
Speaker 2: So the eighties it was the commercialized as everything was
Speaker 2: in the eighties, but it was a commercialization of the body,
Speaker 2: like okay, we've got an ideal now. Everyone aspired to this,
Speaker 2: like you can do it too, and it was energetic
Speaker 2: and fun. You had like aerobics and you had anorexia,
Speaker 2: and you could do one publicly and one privately. And
Speaker 2: you know, I know she's fallen out of vogue now,
Speaker 2: but Naomi Kleins, the Beauty Myth, wrote about this, and
Speaker 2: I think part of her genius was framing it through
Speaker 2: the eyes of like, what would we be saying if
Speaker 2: dozens and hundreds of young men were throwing food off
Speaker 2: their plate and doing that daily, Like we couldn't see
Speaker 2: that was an issue yet. Then the nineties was you know,
Speaker 2: the ideal is still extremely thin and it is still
Speaker 2: extremely stuck in this small physicality. But your low waisted
Speaker 2: jeans will look amazing and the world might end with
Speaker 2: Y two UK, but will look hot doing it.
Speaker 1: I think about that time Who Weekly magazine had an
Speaker 1: annual half their size edition. God do you remember that? Yes,
Speaker 1: it was like, I mean, let's be honest. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm so conditioned that I believe it when people do
Speaker 1: look amazing when they shd you know, yeah, tenkulos. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like getting a ten. I still think you look
Speaker 1: better with it.
Speaker 2: I know I said that ghostly pale right now, I
Speaker 2: can't wait, But now I think what we're looking at
Speaker 2: now in post COVID, there was an insane loneliness that
Speaker 2: fell upon the world, which is an enormous trigger to
Speaker 2: the way people perceive their bodies. And there's been so
Speaker 2: many studies regarding that that it can trigger something as
Speaker 2: extreme as an eating disorder, but also something as subtle
Speaker 2: as like reimagining the way you look at I think
Speaker 2: where we've had eras of physicality that's rooted in glamorization, aspiration,
Speaker 2: you know, commoditization. Now it is ritualization because it is
Speaker 2: so much easier quote unquote to be thinner and it is.
Speaker 2: It is omnipresent the way to lose weight now, like
Speaker 2: there are so many options. I've heard more about golp
Speaker 2: ones in the past week than I think I've heard
Speaker 2: about any sort of conversation about mental health, any sort
Speaker 2: of conversation about things that actually are important, Like it
Speaker 2: is just rooted in weight loss. And you're even seeing
Speaker 2: people who were absolute icons and absolutely celebrated for showing
Speaker 2: physicalities that were different to the norm be the faces
Speaker 2: of these drugs, like they are like Oprah, like Serena Williams,
Speaker 2: who I absolutely idolized, that was like a leading figure,
Speaker 2: top of her game, and now she's the face of
Speaker 2: an OZM pig variety.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm on row. They say golp ones, her weight
Speaker 1: loss is a shortcut. It's not it's science.
Speaker 2: Like what does that say to you? What does that
Speaker 2: say to anyone? So I look at now, at the
Speaker 2: wicked girls, I can't blame them, Like it just makes
Speaker 2: me so upset. Why wouldn't you fall into that?
Speaker 1: Coming up? So where does this conversation go from here?
Speaker 1: So back to Ariana Grande. You wrote your piece about
Speaker 1: what a remarkable kind of person she has been throughout
Speaker 1: her career. Famously, the Manchester Arena bombing, where many young
Speaker 1: fans died, was one of her concerts, Police later confirming
Speaker 1: a suicide bomber had killed twenty two in injured hundreds.
Speaker 1: So how did you overcome all of that and get
Speaker 1: back on stage?
Speaker 3: Well, I think just looking at my fans and the
Speaker 3: way that they're responded to it, and like, of course
Speaker 3: the city of Manchester and how they responded to it
Speaker 3: with so much like unity and strength and love and fearlessness.
Speaker 3: And I just never really seen anything like it.
Speaker 1: And she's such an interesting woman. She's clearly so talented.
Speaker 1: She's obviously suffering. She's withdrawn from a stage production that
Speaker 1: she was going to be in because of this discourse
Speaker 1: about her body. What do we owe Ariana Grunde. What
Speaker 1: should we be doing? Should we be expressing these opinions?
Speaker 1: Should we be staink.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because I mean she's not a normal person,
Speaker 2: that's the thing. And I did make it very.
Speaker 1: Clear she is the face of this issue.
Speaker 2: I think when it comes to talking about this on
Speaker 2: a personal scale, you know, it's very hard to have
Speaker 2: this conversation with someone because they probably don't realize or
Speaker 2: they're probably very defensive, but she is unfortunately a face
Speaker 2: with three hundred and sixty million fans worldwide watching her.
Speaker 2: Everyone's observing it. Whether you like to accept it or not.
Speaker 2: When you're a public figure, you do have a bit
Speaker 2: of this, this unfortunate reality that people will comment on things.
Speaker 2: I think the cruelty people have shown to her is
Speaker 2: just God, it's appalling.
Speaker 1: But are we ever surprise?
Speaker 2: I think when we talk about these things, we do
Speaker 2: need to look at it from a broader cultural lens,
Speaker 2: which is she is probably the most famous face of
Speaker 2: it at the moment, but she's not the only one,
Speaker 2: and she's not the only thing that's driving it. I
Speaker 2: think the main thing actually when we talk to her
Speaker 2: about her in particular, is the absolute shamefulness of the
Speaker 2: people around her. That you will ring this person out
Speaker 2: who is unbelievably talented to their last bone to make money.
Speaker 2: Whoever decided that music video that came out with her
Speaker 2: looking like walking skeleton was appropriate should be absolutely ashamed
Speaker 2: of themselves. And it would have taken dozens, if not
Speaker 2: hundreds of people to have looked at that and thought
Speaker 2: that was okay.
Speaker 1: But I don need someone to save this music. Well,
Speaker 1: it's such a great conversation. I think we'll keep talking
Speaker 1: about it. Thanks Vianka, Thank you. Bianca far Marcus is
Speaker 1: The Australian's Content Director of Culture. This episode of the
Speaker 1: Front was hosted by me Claire Harvey, produced by Kristin
Speaker 1: Amiot and edited by Lead Samma Gloo. Thanks for joining
Speaker 1: us on the Front this week. Our team also includes
Speaker 1: Tiffany Dimack, Joshua Burton and Jasper Leek, who also wrote
Speaker 1: our theme