These viral headlines about Rachel Riley’s “jaw-dropping” or “huge” size aren’t really about her at all—they’re about how the internet manipulates language to provoke fast reactions and turn women’s bodies into clickable drama.
A normal photo, a certain angle, lighting, or a moment in time gets framed as shocking on purpose, using loaded words meant to stir judgment before thought. Photos don’t need to be fake to be misleading, and real bodies naturally change, but online culture treats anything outside a narrow ideal as a flaw to attack. What follows is predictable: rushed opinions, disguised cruelty, and accounts farming outrage for clicks while pretending it’s “honesty.” At the core is a deeper problem—the habit of treating women as public property, grading their appearance as if it’s open for debate.
