There are a legion of uncomfortable things I would rather do than talk about women's bodies.
Raw dogging a flight without the blissful comfort of watching Crazy Rich Asians quickly comes to mind.
Being stuck next to someone at a dinner party who describes a dream they can't quite remember in vivid detail runs a close second.
Hell, I'd even take the sweet sting of applying fake tan to a freshly shaven leg because I managed my time poorly over a conversation that centres on women's bodies.
Unfortunately, we have yet to reach a place in time where a woman's body does not define how she is treated, so ignoring the conversation is much like trying to find sense in Donald Trump's ramblings. It's frustrating, and ultimately pointless.
Recently, two famous women's bodies made headlines for different reasons, and not by their own design.
Lizzo, who has long been sharing exercise and movement videos on her Instagram account, shared a screenshot of a comment left by a fan who questioned what was really responsible for her changing body — and if it was linked to the use of a weight loss drug.
It's a theme that has dominated the comments section of the Grammy winner's social accounts for months. In this instance, Lizzo shared a video of herself mouthing the TikTok sound "it's like a reward," along with a caption that read: "When you finally get Ozempic allegations after five months of weight training and calorie deficit."
Days before, the musician had posted two different videos of her body on Instagram that highlighted her changing body, accompanied by a caption that read: "FINE BOTH WAYS".
Listen to The Spill hosts explain the dangerous conversation around Lizzo and Florence Pugh.
Meanwhile, in a cover story for British Vogue this week, actress Florence Pugh was asked how she navigates negative commentary about her body.
"It's so hard," the Oscar nominee told the publication. "[The internet's] a very mean place. It's really painful to read people being nasty about my confidence or nasty about my weight. It never feels good. The one thing I always wanted to achieve was to never sell someone else, something that isn't the real me."
There is a common thread here that knits the stories of Lizzo and Pugh together. They are both women in the public eye who earn a living through art and performance, and the byproduct of that is that their bodies automatically become part of the public conversation — whether they want to talk about it or not.
It's a tale as old as time that a famous woman's body will somehow become a talking point as her career escalates. The rippling red flag that should catch your attention during this particular wave of the news cycle, though, is how different the public reaction has been to these stories.
And these bodies.
With Lizzo, the simple act of her existing in a bigger body means that conversations around her are always centred on two types of extreme emotions.
On the one hand, the videos she shared this week were met with accusations that she was cheating the system by using weight loss medication. On the other was the commentary — that Lizzo was letting people down by showing off her changed body. By doing so, they argued, she was somehow inferring that this was an improvement to her body.
In this case, Lizzo was directly addressing her body, her weight loss, and the commentary around it. So, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that people would feel compelled to follow a conversation thread that she started.
Yet, something that Lizzo would be deeply aware of is the fact that it doesn't matter if she invites the conversation in or not — the comments will make her body a topic of discussion regardless.
Lizzo's body has been at the centre of the conversation for years. Whether she's posting images of her holidays, her performances, her friends, or her brand, people have something to say about her body.
And many mentions of Lizzo are followed by a hesitation, and then a 'but'.
… "but it is promoting an unhealthy lifestyle to be that size."
… "but she is letting people down by positively promoting weight loss."
… "but if she is using a weight loss drug she should be honest and let people know."
Yes, there are comments that praise her body and her words, and even call for the comments about her looks to cease, but the collection of voices around her existence are always combative, and never pulling in one unified direction.
On the other side of the spectrum, the reactions to the headlines about Florence Pugh's body this week didn't clang together like a set of broken bells. Instead, the voices found a way to come together and form one resounding resolution.
The comments concluded that Pugh's body shouldn't be up for debate. They found it ridiculous that anyone would question the prettiness of her nipples while clad in a sheer dress, or that anyone would wonder if she looked fit enough to portray a leading lady in the Marvel universe.
(Yes, both of these conversations have taken place in the past.)
When it comes to Lizzo and Pugh, both women's bodies have been shown off through their creative projects over the years in some way. When it comes to their lifestyles, we also have identical knowledge about how they live, in the sense that we don't have any information about their health, and you cannot determine how healthy a person is just by looking at them.
Yet when Florence Pugh's body has been brought into the conversation over the years, people instantly spring into caretaker mode. In the case of Lizzo, her body will always be seen as a launching pad for a wider conversation which can at times turn aggressive.
While I'm sure both of these women would prefer that their bodies were never a topic of conversation in the first place, the overwhelming influence of weight stigma in this conversation cannot be ignored.
When it comes to the conversation around conventionally thin bodies, we instantly defer to a thought process that is black and white, yet when it comes to bodies that exist outside this convention, people feel they need to stay in the grey.
This is the result of weight stigma, a practice where people are devalued or discriminated against based on their body size. It's a thought process that can manifest in many ways, and in this case, it's the idea that a larger body is somehow wrong and therefore becomes a public issue instead of a private one.
While a conversation about famous women such as Lizzo and Florence Pugh might feel like it has no bearing on our everyday reality, or feel dangerous to bring to the surface because of the uncomfortable topics it forces us to face, the way we view bodies in the public eye flows down to how they are treated in our world.
And to ignore a conversation about weight stigma only seeks to ignore the people who have to push against it every day.
I, much like everyone else, long to live in a world where bodies and weight (and nipples) are no longer public fodder. But we are not there yet and until we reach our destination we must continue to challenge the way different bodies are treated.
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Laura Brodnik is Mamamia's Head of Entertainment and host of The Spill podcast. You can follow her on Instagram here for more entertainment news and recommendations.
Feature Image: Getty.