By Johanna Ferreira
September 24, 2026
The recent wave of public speculation and commentary regarding Jenna Ortega’s physical appearance has been difficult to watch—not because her body requires any public explanation or defense, but because the intense response demonstrates just how acceptable society still finds it to discuss women’s bodies as though they are public property. Day after day, public figures and private citizens alike treat women’s frames as open terrain, completely free for observation, intrusive assessment, and harsh criticism.
Having spent most of my life relatively thin, I am well aware that the passing comments I receive about my body do not equate to the systemic judgment, barriers, and discrimination experienced by people in larger bodies. Still, this year served as a stark reminder of how deeply ingrained our culture is in treating weight as public information. After I unintentionally lost a noticeable amount of weight while struggling with Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO)—a painful condition that at times left me entirely unable to digest more than a single small meal a day—neighbors and acquaintances began congratulating me on the change. Their praise reflected a culture so profoundly committed to thinness that visible weight loss was automatically interpreted as good news, even when it was a physical manifestation of illness and an indicator that I simply wasn’t well.
It is hardly any wonder that so many women struggle perennially with complicated body image issues and debilitating eating disorders. During a candid interview in July with Jay Shetty, actress Camila Mendes opened up about her own historical struggles with bulimia, body image, and the crushing weight of perfectionism during her time on the television series Riverdale. Mendes described the deep confusion she felt when people showered her with praise and compliments after she lost weight because of her eating disorder. That misplaced praise effectively reinforced the deeply toxic idea that she looked her absolute best at her thinnest, even during periods when she was deeply unwell and suffering physically and mentally.
That, ultimately, is the inescapable reality of moving through the world as a woman: No iteration, size, or shape of our bodies ever seems to truly escape commentary. We are perpetually deemed either too thin, too fat, or not curvy enough. People always seem to find something to observe, question, praise, criticize, or worry about. Being on the receiving end of that relentless scrutiny is profoundly exhausting, turning something as simple as existing in a physical body into a full-time performance for an invisible audience.
For Latinas, that pervasive scrutiny often begins at an exceedingly young age. Many of us grow up embedded within families and broader cultural environments where unsolicited comments about women’s bodies are so thoroughly normalized that we do not always recognize them for what they truly are: blatant boundary violations. One relative will casually tell you that you’ve gotten far too skinny, while another is just as quick to point out that you’ve managed to gain weight. A tía will unhesitatingly offer her thoughts on your thighs or the exact shape of your waist. Throughout my own upbringing, my girl cousins frequently told me that I was far too skinny and desperately needed to gain weight. Within my own family, one of my enduring nicknames has always been flaca. While it was almost always used as a term of endearment, the underlying reality remained complicated; losing even a few pounds could suddenly transform a term of affection into a source of genuine worry and interrogation. While jokes and comments about my thinness rarely bothered me personally, and I always knew they fundamentally stemmed from a place of love, loving intentions do not magically erase the underlying message being communicated: that my physical body is perpetually available for others to evaluate and critique.
What makes this cultural scrutiny particularly complex and frustrating for Latinas is the sheerly contradictory nature of the expectations placed upon us. On one hand, we are implicitly and explicitly told to be thin—yet cautioned never to be too thin. We are expected to be wonderfully curvy, but never labeled as “fat.” Society demands that we be feminine and voluptuous, provided that our stomachs remain completely flat and our waists stay remarkably tiny. We are encouraged by our cultures to eat and celebrate food, only to be immediately criticized the moment we gain any weight. Conversely, we are praised when we drop pounds, only to be instantly met with anxious questions about whether we are eating enough—a contradictory line of questioning that I have personally heard echoed my entire life. No version, variation, or stage of our bodies is ever simply allowed to just exist.
That exhausting dynamic is precisely 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 reminding the public that Jenna “doesn’t owe anyone an explanation” for her body or her appearance. The underlying truth here is fundamentally simple: Women should never have to explain why their physical forms look the way they do, whether that appearance is the result of genetics, lifestyle, a busy work schedule, or underlying health struggles. And yet, here we are in 2026, and we are still forced to state these basic boundaries out loud. A woman’s body is not a public question that she is ever required to answer.
