Celebrities, Keep Your Diet Tweets to Yourselves

Twitter makes miscommunication pretty easy: We can’t see people’s facial expressions or body language, we can’t hear the tone of their voices, and we can’t receive immediate clarification about something confusing. Lady Gaga was Twitter’s latest victim when she tweeted on Tuesday, “Just killed back to back spin classes. Eating a salad dreaming of a cheeseburger #PopSingersDontEat #IWasBornThisWay.”

While Gaga probably thought this was a funny and innocent remark, it has not been received that way. Many fans responded negatively to the post, and the National Eating Disorder Association even weighed in, tweeting back, “Huh? This is the same person who recently implored girls to stop dieting?”

While some think Gaga is making light of eating disorders, it doesn’t really add up when you consider that the pop star has openly discussed her own struggle with bulimia and her desire for young women to be healthy and happy with their bodies. But the lesson for celebrities is clear: Stop tweeting about your diets. It never ends well.

Take Miley Cyrus. She tagged a picture of herself smelling a bag of fast food, tweeting, “I can’t eat it. So I’m just gonna smell the shittttt out of it! My mouth is LITERALLY watering.”

This tweet caused so many people to speculate on her eating habits and wonder if she has an eating disorder that Cyrus tweeted again the next day, “For everyone calling me anorexic I have a gluten and lactose allergy. It’s not about weight it’s about health. Gluten is crapppp anyway!” (Cutting gluten, by the way, is not a great way to lose weight; see our recent post on the subject.)

If social media has taught us anything, it’s that everything—no matter how innocent—can be misconstrued. Why celebrities haven’t seemed to learn this yet is beyond me. I think it’d be a stretch to argue that Gaga and Cyrus endorse eating disorders based on their tweets alone, but the fact remains that, taken at face value, that’s exactly what they seem to do.

Perhaps someone should come up with a hashtag like #joking or #calmdownpeopleitsajoke so everyone gets the punchline. At the very least, celebs should take Mom’s sage advice and think before they tweet. And tweeps, maybe we all need to lighten up—just a little.