Tiziano Ferro and Emma overwhelmed by body shaming: the body of artists is still the easiest target (and eclipses talent)

Tiziano Ferro is back in the stadiums, but part of social media has chosen to look elsewhere. Not the setlist, not the emotion of returning live, not the relationship with an audience that has followed him for more than twenty years. No. The target has become the body. The tour started on Saturday 30 May from the Guido Teghil Stadium in Lignano Sabbiadoro, but after the first photos online the discussion moved from the performance to the singer’s physical appearance. Weight, shape, image. As if those who go on stage also had to present themselves to the aesthetic tribunal of those watching on their phones.

Then came the second front: the voice. A clip of Xdono was used to argue that Ferro was no longer what it once was. According to many fans, however, that song came at the end of the setlist, after over thirty songs. A less precise part of a long concert has become material for a public trial. And there the criticism changes skin: no longer evaluation, but the desire to strike. The voice has become a pretext, the body the real battlefield. Criticism of a performance is fine. Body shaming, no. They are two different things, even if many on social media pretend not to understand it.

Shade says it without beating around the bush

It was Shade who intervened, who photographed the climate well on X:

Madonna, of course on this social network people are obsessed with the bodies of singers, who knows what unresolved dramas you have to comment with so much malice as if they had done something personal to you.

Paolo Giordano, journalist and music critic, also arrived under his post with a note on the inconsistency of those who insult and then become indignant when the insult touches their idol:

Almost all people who say the worst things here but then get indignant at other people’s jokes, of course.

And this is where the discussion stops being about just Tiziano Ferro. Because the point is not to defend a famous singer from all criticism. The point is to understand why, as soon as an artist changes physically, gains weight, loses weight, ages, gets tired, the public feels authorized to measure him as exhibited goods.

A wound that does not arise today

In the case of Tiziano Ferro the question weighs more because the relationship with the body has never been a marginal detail. The album title 111 it harked back to the weight gained as a teenager, and within that story there was bullying, shame, fatigue, acceptance. Reducing everything today to a joke about weight means ignoring a biography that the singer has already transformed into music. When an artist talks about a wound, the audience applauds. When that wound becomes visible again, a part of the same public uses it as a target.

Emma Marrone and that “go on a diet”

In the same hours, Emma Marrone also returned to respond to those who thought it best to comment on her body. One user wrote to her: “Go on a diet, right?“Emma replied:

Yes Anna, send me yours! Meanwhile I run towards the vastness that I don’t care about the obsession you have for my body.

When the user tried to reduce everything by talking about simple observation, Emma closed the discussion: “There is nothing innocent about criticizing people on social media“.

Well, this sentence would be enough. Because the problem is all there: certain comments are disguised as opinions, as advice, as irony, as brutal sincerity. But there is no sincerity in telling a woman to go on a diet under a video. There is only the ancient habit of considering the body a public place, an open room where anyone enters and can say what they want.

Emma is no stranger to these attacks. Over the years they have commented on her legs, her weight, her abdomen, her physical shape. When she lost weight, other insinuations arrived, including those about Ozempic. At that point the trap becomes perfect: if you gain weight you are neglected, if you lose weight you have to justify yourself.

Noemi, Arisa, Pausini: same script

But those of Tiziano Ferro and Emma are unfortunately not isolated cases. Noemi, guest of Beastshad told how much a meme born in Sanremo 2018 had hurt her, in which she was compared to Michelle Hunziker: “They made fun of me on social media, there was a photo of me being overweight next to a beautiful Michelle. I cried a lot, I felt hurt“. First the body was “too much”, then when it changed other suspicions arrived, other judgements.

Arisa ended up in a similar but reversed dynamic: no longer “too fat”, but “too thin”. First the body was judged because it did not adhere to a certain model, then because it seemed to adhere to it too much. The message remains identical: the artist’s body never completely belongs to those who inhabit it. In recent months, social media has relaunched comments such as “It is clear that he is not well“, “Too thin in a short time” and insinuations about Ozempic. She replied with dry irony: “Accused by whom? I didn’t know anything“.

Laura Pausini was also read through the filter of the body. When she appeared to have lost weight, the change immediately became a public topic: curiosity, insinuations, the need to know “how”. She explained that she relied on a dietician, training and a path followed over time, without punctures or shortcuts. But the mechanism remains the same: a woman changes and her body becomes news even before her voice.

Music is not weighed on the scales

Tiziano Ferro, Emma, ​​Noemi, Arisa, Laura Pausini: different names, same script. The body changes, the gender changes, the career stage changes, but the judgment goes back there. To the belly, the face, the arms, the thinness, the weight gained or lost. As if music was never enough.

There’s no need to preach. Just look at the reflection: we are very good at saying that certain things are no longer done, then as soon as an uncomfortable photo appears we start again from the beginning. With new words, new platforms, very old wickedness. Body shaming today no longer has just one direction. It doesn’t just affect those who gain weight. It affects those who lose weight, those who change, those who age, those who show tiredness, those who no longer resemble the image that the public had stored in their heads.

We never learn

The Tiziano Ferro case, Emma Marrone’s response, the wounds recounted by Noemi, the accusations against Arisa, the questions to Laura Pausini say the same thing: the artists’ bodies continue to be treated as an extension of the show. But no. A concert can be criticized. A rumor can be discussed. You may or may not like a performance. But the body is not a review. The fact that it still needs to be said in 2026 is perhaps the most tiring part of this whole story.

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