By Johanna Ferreira
September 24, 2026

The recent wave of public speculation and unsolicited commentary regarding Jenna Ortega’s physical appearance has been deeply disheartening to witness. This discomfort does not stem from a belief that the young actress’s body requires any public explanation or defense, but rather from the grim realization of how acceptable society still finds it to discuss women’s bodies as though they are public property—openly available for observation, constant assessment, and unrelenting criticism.

Having spent the majority of my life relatively thin, I am well aware that the casual comments I receive about my own body do not equate to the systemic judgment, marginalization, and discrimination experienced by people inhabiting larger bodies. Yet, this past year served as a stark, personal reminder of how deeply ingrained our cultural habit is of treating weight as public information.

After unintentionally experiencing significant weight loss while grappling with a severe bout of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO)—a debilitating health issue that at times left me physically unable to digest more than a single meal a day—neighbors and casual acquaintances began offering warm congratulations. Their well-meaning compliments reflected a culture so profoundly committed to thinness that any visible weight loss is reflexively interpreted as good news, completely bypassing the reality of whether the person in question is actually well or suffering.

It is hardly any wonder that so many women struggle intensely with body image and eating disorders in an environment with such distorted metrics of health. During a candid interview in July with Jay Shetty, actress Camila Mendes opened up about her own historical struggles with bulimia, body image, and perfectionism during her time on the television series Riverdale. Mendes described the immense confusion she felt when people showered her with praise and compliments upon losing weight, even though that weight loss was driven entirely by her eating disorder. That praise served to reinforce the toxic idea that she looked her absolute best at her thinnest, actively validating her illness even when she was fundamentally unwell.

This dynamic speaks to a broader, exhausting reality for women: no version of our physical forms ever seems to escape public commentary. We are routinely deemed too thin, too fat, or conversely, not curvy enough. Society always manages to find something to observe, question, praise, criticize, or express unwarranted worry over. Being on the receiving end of this constant microscopic scrutiny is mentally and emotionally exhausting.

For Latinas, that scrutiny frequently begins at an extraordinarily young age. Many of us grow up embedded in family environments and cultural contexts where remarks about women’s bodies are so heavily normalized that we do not always recognize them for what they truly are: boundary violations. One relative will pull you aside to tell you that you have gotten far too skinny, while another is quick to point out that you have gained weight. An tía will casually comment on the size of your thighs or the shape of your waist.

Throughout my own youth, my girl cousins frequently told me that I was entirely too skinny and desperately needed to gain weight. Within my family, one of my enduring nicknames has always been flaca. While it was almost always deployed as a term of endearment, the underlying implication remained persistent; losing even a few pounds could suddenly transform into a major source of family-wide concern. While the jokes and remarks about my thinness rarely bothered me on a personal level, and I understood they generally stemmed from a place of love and familial affection, those loving intentions do not magically erase the underlying message being communicated: that my body is fundamentally available for others to evaluate and critique.

What makes this pervasive scrutiny particularly complex and frustrating for Latinas is the sheerly contradictory nature of the cultural expectations placed upon us. We are explicitly told to be thin—yet cautioned never to be too thin. We are expected to be curvy, but under no circumstances should we be considered "fat." We are encouraged to embody a feminine and voluptuous ideal, provided our stomachs remain entirely flat and our waists impossibly tiny. We are encouraged to eat heartily during family gatherings, only to be criticized immediately afterward for any resulting weight gain. We are praised for losing weight, and in the very next breath, anxiously asked whether we are eating enough—a persistent question I have personally heard echoed throughout my entire life. No single version of our bodies is ever simply allowed to exist on its own terms.

That precisely is why the recent public reaction to Jenna Ortega’s body felt so painfully familiar. The discourse surrounding her appearance prompted her younger sister, Aliyah, to step forward and voice support for a fan’s message. That message served as a vital and timely reminder to the public that Jenna "doesn’t owe anyone an explanation" for her body, a statement that remains unequivocally true.

The underlying principle here is fundamentally simple: women should never have to justify or explain why their bodies look the way they do, whether due to genetics, health struggles, stress, or personal choice. And yet, looking across the cultural landscape, we find ourselves still needing to state the obvious. A woman’s physical body is not a public question that she is required to answer.