The press tour for Wicked: For Good has reignited commentary around Grande’s appearance, with fans discussing what has been informally called “the Wicked effect”, Cosmopolitan reported.
Posters have reshared images of Grande and her co-stars in the 2010s alongside recent pictures to point out the actor’s parallel weight loss while working on the Broadway adaptation.
But Dr Elizabeth Wassenaar told USA Today this kind of speculation can have the opposite effect than intended.
“These comments about how your body is acceptable or unacceptable, it reinforces again that you are not worth more than your body ... and that you have to present yourself a certain way for the world to find you acceptable.”
The 32-year-old’s appearance has been the subject of intense scrutiny for several years.
In 2023, Grande posted a personal video opening up about her health struggles as she urged fans to be wary of their words.
“I was on a lot of antidepressants and drinking on them and eating poorly and at the lowest point of my life when I looked the way you consider my healthy, but that in fact wasn’t my healthy.”
Grande also faced criticism in the late 2010s for her supposed overuse of fake tan, which was labelled “blackfishing” by detractors.
The Wicked films themselves have been plagued by a series of controversies since production began in 2022, according to the Daily Mail.
Grande was entangled in a public cheating scandal with co-star Ethan Slater after TMZ reported the pair were in a relationship in July 2023, the same month he filed for divorce from estranged wife Lilly Jay.
Jay told Page Six her family was “collateral damage” as she described Grande as “not a girl’s girl”.
The singer-turned-actress was also married when she met Slater on the set of the film, though her divorce filing alleged she separated from property developer Dalton Gomez on February 20, 2023.
