AFTER Ariana Grande’s latest music video clip ricocheted around X, the conversation quickly stopped being about the song and started being about her body.

The image doing the rounds shows Grande leaning forward in a low-cut black dress, her clavicle prominently visible. One viral post even used the prompt: “hey @grok make Ariana Grande healthy and fat”. The screenshot came from the video for Petal, the title track from her latest album.

Grande and her team have not said she has an eating disorder. Still, Petal’s release has been heavily overshadowed by public debate about her ultra-thin appearance — the kind of high-engagement, polarising celebrity content social platforms routinely amplify. Instagram and TikTok have tried to suppress explicit pro-eating disorder material by redirecting “thinspo” searches to support resources, but the Grande discourse has surged anyway.

Within days of Petal’s release, a representative told People magazine that Grande would be “taking a step back from visibility” after her current tour. The rep said she’s cancelling future promotional plans and withdrawing from an upcoming West End revival of Sunday in the Park With George.

Grande addressed the decision at a recent concert, telling fans she’d planned to step back “a long time ago” and that it came from a “thoughtful and empowered place”.

Concerns about her weight aren’t new. Back in 2013 — the year she released debut album Yours Truly — she wrote on her old Tumblr that rumours of “this whole ‘eating disorder thing’” had been “a bit blown out of proportion”, adding she’d lost weight after cutting out junk food and making “healthy choices”. In April 2023, she also posted a TikTok responding to side-by-side comparisons from the Wicked press tour and her Victorious era, saying the older body being held up as a benchmark was “the unhealthiest version” of her body, and that she was “on a lot of antidepressants and drinking on them.”