This week, Esquire released a video interview with Jenna Ortega. It was an honest and well-produced piece where she talked about her career, how quickly she became famous as Wednesday Addams, and the weight of early Hollywood fame. The interview showed a lot of thought. What people said online wasn’t really about the interview. Within hours, the comments on Instagram and YouTube were full of a completely different kind of talk. One that was more about how she looked than what she said.
Esquire’s Instagram video had a comment that got over 124,000 likes. It just said, “Why does everyone look so skinny?” Weird and direct, that one line seemed to open a door that could never be closed again.
The speed with which public concern can turn into something more invasive is something to think about. A lot of the commentors seemed genuinely worried. Someone on YouTube wrote, “She is such a nice and smart girl.” “My heart hurts in an unimaginable way… Jen, I hope you’re OK.” Others were not as kind, saying that she looked “deeply concerning” or “skeletal.” Right now, it’s very easy to cross the line between care and scrutiny.
To be clear, Jenna Ortega hasn’t said anything about her health in public. She hasn’t said that she has an eating disorder, an illness, or any other health problem. Right now, there is a lot of speculation that is quickly spreading on X and Instagram. However, speculation is not a diagnosis. Fans might be seeing things that are real. You could also say that they are projecting. It’s possible for both to be true.
In this moment, it feels like we’ve seen this before because many people are already comparing it to Ariana Grande. People have been talking about Grande’s looks for years, and when her latest music video came out in late July, the worry became so loud that her representatives confirmed she would be stepping away from public life, citing the stress of constant attention. The comparison to Ortega is strange, and it may be done on purpose. A lot of people are wondering if we’re seeing the start of something similar: another young woman in show business caught in the strange middle of fame and being seen by a lot of people.
Ortega said something during the Esquire interview that I think is important to note. When asked about the mistakes she made early in her career, she said she went whole days on set without eating or drinking because she didn’t want to bother anyone. “Maybe that was my mistake,” she replied, “was not actually looking after myself.” She was talking about her childhood and how a young actor tried to blend in with the background by making friends with everyone. In this conversation, tho, those words have a different meaning.
Ortega has had a job since she was eight years old. Wednesday was already ten years into a career that most adults never make it thru when she became famous around the world. From the outside, it’s hard to fully understand the pressure that comes with being that visible, especially for a woman in her early twenties. People in the audience seem to forget that there is a real person taking it all in.
No one outside of Jenna Ortega’s close friends and family really knows if she is sick in a medical sense. Her representatives haven’t said anything. It’s clear that the online conversation is about more than just one actress. It’s about how the public is fixated on women’s bodies in Hollywood, and it goes thru different faces and doesn’t usually lead to anything helpful for the person at the center of it.
Right now, being honest about this is the only thing that makes sense: the worry may be real, the facts aren’t there, and the scrutiny itself is just as important to look into as anything else.
