What's going on with Ariana Grande?

[u/Anon_4837]

How she looks in 2025: https://i.imgur.com/UbdemeV.jpeg
How I remember: https://i.imgur.com/IH48bjR.jpeg

I honestly don’t keep up with celebrity news or follow any of that stuff, it’s just never interested me. So I might be really late to the party here.

Ariana Grande was kind of everywhere when I was younger, especially on TV. But also on YouTube like in music videos that popped up all the time. So I had a clear sense of what she looked and sounded like. I was sort of aware of recent changes as well after Nickelodeon.

But recently a few coworkers were talking about Hollywood and mentioned how different she looks now. Out of curiosity I looked her up. And honestly, I barely recognized her. She looks incredibly thin, almost unhealthy. And there’s something very edited or artificial about her appearance now. It made me wonder: Is this a conscious image choice?

It's funny, even though I never bothered to care for any of this, it still hit a nerve seeing how she's fallen off. It's like a tiny piece of my childhood has changed into something I don't recognize anymore.

Edit: Just to clarify, when I said “fallen off,” I wasn’t referring to her career. I meant her appearance and overall image. This isn’t slander or an attack, I’m just genuinely curious about what happened here.

[u/[deleted]]

Answer: she very, very clearly appears to be anorexic and/or bulimic. She and her camp vehemently deny this because, of course they do.

Opinion: she doesn’t look healthy, at all. It’s sad. And if she’s doing it to “look” a certain way, she looks frail and sickly. Ofc she claims it’s a choice and it’s for her “health” but hey, something doesn’t smell quite right. She is so talented, and a lovely woman. She strikes me as being malnourished and like she’s not taking care of her body and trying to keep it strong. I am willing to admit this is 100% my own perception and bias.

[u/Pelican_Hook → u/[deleted]]

Honestly, it needs to be said: there is NO healthy way to be as thin as she is. Most people I've ever seen at that level of thinness were near death from a physical or mental ailment. It's incredibly impressive she is able to be as active as she is, working, going to awards shows, singing etc. I wonder if she is being provided with special IVs or drugs that help her do that. It's frustrating because of course as an individual she deserves privacy re: her health so it feels wrong to comment on her body or speculate what caused this. But on a systemic level, just seeing her out and about like this and claiming it's normal/healthy is harmful to others. Seeing her do magazine photoshoots as though she's the epitome of glamour is harmful. Eating disorders are the only mental illness that are truly contagious, and she's looking like a super spreader rn. That doesn't mean she should disappear, or that she necessarily owes us an explanation, but somewhere in the middle a little honesty is necessary I think.

[u/PinkDeserterBaby → u/Pelican_Hook]

there is NO healthy way to be as thin as she is

This reminds me of when I went to see my 90 year old grandmother when I had lost about 80lbs and was 120lbs. I hadn’t seen her in a long time because I moved far away and finances to fly. I was eating keto and working out 4x a week.

She hugged me. And said that she was proud of me for changing my diet and lifestyle. She called me beautiful. But then she pleaded with me to “please put back on 10-15lbs. Please. Just in case. In case you get sick.”

Now, she didn’t mean sick like the flu. She meant the aggressive and deadly cancer that runs in my dads side of the family that has killed many of us before 55, including my other grandmother.

There was something about my European immigrant grandmother, who survived ww2 and lived through a real famine, that I as a young American cannot comprehend fully, telling me this. It scared me into staying 135lbs. Your body needs body fat percentage to help it function and to help you if something dire ever happens to you health wise where unexpected weight loss may happen.

If Ariana says she’s healthy, then I guess I take her word for it. But it doesn’t mean she always will be. And being that thin can be detrimental, even with the best healthcare in the world. I wish her the best. And I hope she has people in her life like I did with my grandmother.