Will Ozempic shape body and beauty standards?

[enterthechair]

Not sure where to post this, but I feel like thin is back, and I'm scared.

I'm happy weight loss and diabetes drugs exist, and I'm happy they're helping people. At the same time, I worry in 10 years, how it will affect body positivity, when literally everyone will have access to them. Celebrities will be thin, and people will starve themselves to be like them.

In a world where everyone is super super thin, is a totally normal and healthy mombod or dadbod going to be considered hideous and obese?

Are we going back to 2004? Will all women need to be a size 2-4 again? Will all men need to have <12% bodyfat?

 

[Movingforward10]

I have used it and I like it. For me, ittgetting healthy. Even though I have run marathons, my weight has gone up. So I am fit but need more help to maintain a good weight.

I feel like the beauty standards are there anyway.

And the impact of obesity on all sorts of health issues is large, with these weight loss medications helping to reduce a lot of those additional complications.

Like with everything, there will be good and bad.

Influencers are already offering unattainable lifestyles for children and teenagers. I personally don't think that adding weight loss medications into the mix is any worse than whatever else is out there , as it's all out there anyway.

 

[Sideways]

Are we going back to 2004? Will all women need to be a size 2-4 again? Will all men need to have <12% bodyfat?

Personally? I don’t remember 2004 being like that at all.

There’s been phases where being very thin has been more in, but it ebbs and flows. And for all the media hype (like the media panic over ‘heroin chic’ in Kate Moss’ heyday), super thin has always been peripheral. It’s never been the statistical norm.

The thing making the front of Vogue, or the most trending posts on Insta, isn’t actually reality for the overwhelming majority of folks.

In a world where everyone is super super thin

I can’t see this happening. For a number of reasons. Some of those reasons are good (there’s too much of the population that prioritises health over weight loss - once you’re outside a certain age bracket, weight loss tends to drop away as even rating as a priority at all), some not so good (too much of population is living below the poverty line, and the idea that the poorest will prioritise a weight loss drug doesn’t line up with what we know about discretionary spending in the poorest parts of our society).

But mostly? People tend to like food. People tend to like eating. People tend to love eating food together, and it’s been this way for millennia. I honestly can’t see poor body image becoming so overwhelmingly pervasive (or affordable) that those biological drives get overridden for a meaningful portion of the population.

Maybe be curious about the things that are influencing your perception of what’s ‘normal’ right now. Is it a group of people you know? Is it the media you’re consuming? ‘Super thin’ isn’t even considered attractive by great big chunks of the population. ‘Super thin’ is more advertising campaign than reality or aspirational for the majority of the population.