People are clamoring to take weight-loss drugs for aesthetic reasons, as well as for health reasons. This isn’t just vanity. Evidence of discrimination against fat people is widespread. In Sweden and Mexico, where it’s common to include a photograph on a CV, researchers manipulated images to make identical, fictitious job applicants look fatter or obese. They found they were far less likely to get interviews. Petter Lundborg of Lund University and John Cawley of Cornell University compared the salaries of thin and fat women, adjusted for education, experience and other factors, in Europe and America respectively, and found that obese women with a BMI earned about 10% less than their peers. The implications of this are clear: for an obese woman earning, say, $80,000, the financial impact of stepping up to Ozempic could be more significant than any savings she might make on her healthcare bills.
Tressie McMillan Cottom, a columnist for the New York Times, has spoken out against the idea that Ozempic will cure “the moral crisis of fat bodies that refuse to get thin and stay thin.” The whatsapp number list drug’s implicit promise is that it “can fix what our culture has broken.” (Her preferred solution: Instead of solving obesity with drugs, society should simply stop stigmatizing fat people.) “Ozempic has won; body positivity has lost. And I want no part of it,” complained Rachel Pick, a writer, in the Guardian.
Such concerns are fueled by the fact that the “body positivity” movement, which rejects the idea that everyone should strive for the same body ideal, is gaining traction. Retailers offer multiple sizes. It’s become common to see clothes displayed on larger women when shopping online. John Galliano of Maison Margiela, a luxury fashion house, used models of all sizes in a show in Paris.