Does celebrating Adele's weight loss encourage body-shaming? Expert believes it 'inspires' people
Singer Adele has been making headlines for her drastic weight loss, which she posted a picture on social media on her 32nd birthday earlier this month. It was evident from the picture Adele had shared that she had worked incredibly hard to shed some pounds.
She had shared a picture featuring her in a black dress showing off her incredible weight loss results. Her weight loss sent fans into a frenzy with many commenting on her new look. Many fans and even other celebrities were beyond impressed with her weight loss with the likes of Chrissy Teigen commenting, "I mean are you kidding me," and Rita Ora writing, "Looking gorgeous!"
While the 'Someone Like You' singer has received a lot of compliments, with people calling her 'unrecognizable' and 'stunning', a few reports have pointed out that complimenting and celebrating weight loss in such a way could be problematic and encourage body shaming.
It is believed that these compliments can also be a reflection of the commentators' own insecurities on the person they're celebrating. Dr Tracy Thomas, an emotional sensitivity expert, spoke to MEA WorldWide (MEAWW) exclusively and said this is not necessarily the case.
"While there may be some small segment of the population sending her some shade that way, I think that more so people are just very inspired and attracted to people who are living their potential on all levels. Humans are wired to be attracted to health and wellbeing and they are attracted to 'attractiveness' as an evolutionary process that happens so that the more attractive of our species keeps reproducing itself," she says.
Dr Tracy believes that while Adele is a beautiful creative artist with many fans, she is also an emotionally sensitive person who has been "struggling with her emotions (more than her weight), and her weight is the reflection of that sensitivity and her inability to harness all of her emotions effectively. While she’s clearly channeled so many of her emotions into her incredible artistry that we all love her for, the weight issues she’s had were significant and we’ve all been on that journey watching her painful struggle with her own body."
"So when the world is witnessing one’s inability to control what they eat because their emotional sensitivity is so great, then when the person begins to direct their emotions into intentional eating and intentional exercise, this is something that is actually really inspiring to people," she added.
Emotional scientist and psychologist Dr Tracy also says this kind of behavior (compliments on Adele's weight loss) actually shows how much people want to see others at their healthiest and most attractive.
"The reality is that we’re tired of seeing the same old story where some of the world's most emotionally sensitive artists have this whole struggle of emotional sensitivity in the background and how there is always this suffering going on with these highly driven emotionally sensitive creative people. What people want more of is to see these brilliant geniuses getting to live their full potential so that people can be inspired to live their full potential too," Dr Tracy explains.
"People want to see these incredible people channel their emotions into health and happiness the way they channel their emotions into their music or their art, the way Adele has done," she adds.
When asked about if the popular singer's weight loss could be due to industrial pressure, Dr Tracy says it can be but had that been the reason behind her weight loss, she would have done so a long time ago.
"More so, it seems like Adele has done some internal work on herself that occurred in addition to the training process she did for her body. As an emotional scientist and an emotional strength trainer, the process of training oneself towards a set of outcomes is a very powerful thing. It’s a conditioning process that can reshape a person and their whole life depending on how extensively they train themselves into a new way of being."
"My assessment is that Adele did some emotional strength training in order to get to a place where she could go through such a significant training regime for her body as well."