The Virtue of Thinness

why ozempic won't be the end of the weight loss industry

In an elevator in 2010, I was nine years old and in the incubation stage of what would soon develop into an earth-shattering eating disorder. I watched the floors tick by, remembering all the times I had been told that a little swap like “just taking the stairs” would be all it took to ensure that one never had to cross over into the unsightly world of fatness. I may be fat because I didn’t take the stairs today, I thought. But I knew that we lived in a modern world full of modern solutions, and so I turned to my mother and asked, out of curiosity, “is there a pill someone can take that would make them be skinny?”

She answered while looking straight ahead. “Not yet,” she said, sighing. “But if there were, it would probably make a hundred bajillion dollars. It would make more money than a cure for cancer.”

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We’ve arrived at the brave new world. There’s no cure for cancer, but we now have injectable medications that promise us speedy, hassle-free weight loss. Some see it as the apex predator of the weight loss industry, as Weight Watchers (sorry, the re-branded WW…) and MyFitnessPal clutch onto their points and apps and programs for dear life. Some have even suggested that the rise of drugs like Ozempic are signaling the end of food.

Among the Ozempic hysteria, there is one salient point that I do agree with: these drugs are changing how we think about weight loss and food in dramatic ways. But the idea that semaglutides are providing a simple roadmap by which someone could go from a fat person to a thin person (with all the socially rewarding accoutrement) is misunderstanding the moral weight we attach to those categories. Someone may lose enough weight on these medications to fit into straight sizes, sure. But the medically-assisted, newly thin people do not immediately get access to the category of being spiritually thin. This is the one thing that taking Ozempic cannot grant you: the glory of having suffered for beauty.