Unhealthy? Angelina Jolie — Super Thin, Sub-Zero Size

Why was everyone talking about Jolie's weight?

Concern about Angelina Jolie's weight has been a recurring feature of the entertainment press for years, but photographs taken at public appearances in 2011 intensified the conversation, with multiple observers noting that she appeared significantly thinner than at any previous point in her career and expressing open concern about whether she was healthy.

What's contradictory about the coverage?

The response to such coverage involves its own set of contradictions. Celebrity culture has spent decades transmitting impossible body standards while simultaneously publishing concern-trolling articles about celebrities who appear to have met those standards through means the same culture refuses to name directly. The performance of worry about thinness operates in parallel with the celebration of thinness that incentivized it.

What can actually be said?

What can be said without pretending to a medical knowledge no journalist possesses: Jolie has been consistently thin throughout her public life, but the 2011 photographs represented a visible departure from her previous appearance, and visible dramatic weight loss in adults is a clinical sign that warrants medical attention regardless of who is doing the losing.

The variables that produce dramatic thinness in adults are numerous and include both benign and concerning causes — stress, grief, medication changes, digestive issues, metabolic conditions, and conditions that carry more serious implications. Without information about which of these applies, speculation is merely that.

What's the real story?

What the situation illustrates is the persistent double bind women in public life navigate around their bodies: too heavy and they are criticized for letting themselves go; too thin and they are criticized for dangerous behavior. The criticism arrives regardless of what they do, which suggests it was never really about their health.