Observing a public figure refuse to express distress about their own body has a subtle allure. That’s what Lana Condor has been doing for years, long before it became the standard response and long before the conversation caught up to her current position.
Naturally, the internet took notice. Comment sections lit up when Condor showed up at public events a few years ago, looking very different from her To All the Boys era. Photographs were analyzed by fans. Threads on Reddit were lengthy. A few were nice. Some weren’t. And the whole discussion revolved around a query she had already discreetly addressed: does her body require an explanation?
It doesn’t. Furthermore, she never really implied that it did.
Condor’s relationship with her own physical narrative is unique in Hollywood because she had to learn it the hard way. When she was just 21 years old in 2019 and had just become well-known due to the Netflix romantic comedy, she sat down with Elle Canada and said something uncommon. She was familiar with the symptoms of eating disorders. She experienced body dysmorphia firsthand. As a ballerina with classical training, she had lived in one of the world’s most body-conscious environments, where bodies are not only observed but also graded, corrected, and measured in mirrors.
When attempting to comprehend why public criticism of Lana Condor’s weight gain seems especially out of place, that history is important. This is not a person who developed body image issues after becoming well-known. Before the cameras caught her, she carried them inside.
She became more straightforward by 2021. She admitted on Instagram that she had put on a little weight and that she had developed an unhealthy obsession with it. The part that’s worth listening to is what she said next: she began exercising to clear her head rather than to change her shape. It’s not a rebranding. That’s someone who is genuinely trying to figure something out.
Her physical changes over the years have been met with an odd mirror reaction on the internet. Her fuller figure was praised by some fans as evidence of her well-being. Others rushed to praise the loss when she looked thinner at Coachella, as tho the diminutive version merited more praise. Every time her body moves in either direction, a fan base that professes to support her unintentionally displays its own prejudices.
Condor appeared to be aware of this trap. She talked about meals, ate on camera, posted openly about food, and subtly challenged the notion that a number on a scale represented anything worth measuring.
Next was Pretty Lethal. She revealed something refreshingly candid to PEOPLE at the 2026 SXSW Film Festival in Austin: six months before filming, she was, in her own words, “incredibly out of shape.” She had to play a ballerina convincingly for the movie, which included weight training, five days a week of ballet, dietary changes, and the entire arc. She put in a lot of training. She was pleased with the change. Furthermore, it was evident from the way she expressed everything that she didn’t think either state—the unfit or the fit version—called for an apology or a press tour.
Her apparent lack of concern may be what causes people to feel uneasy about this. We’re so used to celebrities portraying physical change as either tragedy or victory that it seems almost radical to be honest about a body doing commonplace things like gaining weight, losing fitness, growing stronger, or fluctuating.
She has stated that dressing shouldn’t be contingent on a size. She never looked at the number.
Holding that position is more difficult than it seems. It was not intended to be supported by the industry she works in. However, Lana Condor appears to have come to the conclusion that it is not really her responsibility to make other people comfortable with her body.
