Lady Gaga Says Pop Singers Don’t Eat

Lady Gaga got a lot of negative attention from an irresponsible tweet last week. The pop star wrote, “Just killed back to back spin classes. Eating a salad dreaming of a cheeseburger #PopSingersDontEat #IWasBornThisWay.”

There are a few ways to look at this. The first is that it’s interesting to see a celebrity admit the lengths to which she has to go to look the way she does. For a lot of people, being as stick-thin as Lady Gaga would be impossible without extreme dieting and exercise. It turns out this is also true for Gaga herself, which isn’t surprising since she has spoken publicly about struggling with her weight in the past, saying she wanted to look like a ballet dancer but instead was a “voluptuous little Italian girl.” Most celebrities don’t discuss how hard they work to maintain Hollywood standards of beauty, and Gaga’s candor could be considered refreshing.

Could have been, that is, if her tweet hadn’t made it sound so glamorous. Gaga knows that she is a role model for adolescents, and she is enormously influential—over 20 million people follow her on Twitter and many more received that tweet after the media picked it up. Hearing “pop singers don’t eat” sends a very clear message to any kid who dreams of fame (which is probably most kids, at one time or another): Starving yourself goes with the territory. It’s especially sad because Gaga is famous for being so spectacularly creative and disciplined, not because she’s skinny. Her body isn’t as interesting as the outrageous clothes she puts on top of it. You want a celebrity like her to inspire girls to pursue their own unique talents and interests, not the lowest possible body mass index.

Of course, it’s not just pop singers who aren’t eating these days. Crash diets and “cleanses” are quickly becoming as casual as getting a manicure or having your hair done. The New York Times recently did a highly disturbing story about brides who go on radical diets before their weddings. One woman decides to use a feeding tube for eight days instead of eating before she goes shopping for her wedding gown. Seeing her gazing serenely off into space with a feeding tube going up her nose is shocking, but it’s also sad. After all, she’s not doing this by herself; she’s just an extreme example of a culture that really believes nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.