How the proliferation of Ozempic in pop culture has furthered unrealistic body standards and restricted access for those who need it the most.
“When I look around at this room I can’t help but wonder, ‘Is Ozempic right for me?’ ” Jimmy Kimmel joked in March 2023, at the Academy Awards. In the following months, women across the country asked the same question, more so than ever before. But Ozempic isn’t the glamorous solution pop culture has portrayed it as. In truth, Ozempic’s rise in popularity has exacerbated the consequences of negative body image ideals in society, threatening another round of the ’90s and early 2000s “thin is in” craze.
Ozempic has been on the market since 2017 when the FDA approved it for use in adults with type 2 diabetes. The drug is intended to be used long-term and has been effective at lowering blood sugar. While Ozempic itself isn’t approved for weight loss, its active ingredient, semaglutide, is. Due to the FDA’s approval of semaglutide for chronic weight management, Ozempic can essentially be marketed and prescribed for weight loss under the name Wegovy. Wegovy is a once-weekly injection made by the same company as Ozempic. The differences between the drugs are their concentrations of semaglutide and their intended uses: Wegovy contains a higher dose of semaglutide and is designed for weight loss, while Ozempic contains a lower dose of semaglutide and was intended specifically for type 2 diabetes patients.
Weight loss drugs, such as Wegovy, which was approved by the FDA for weight loss in 2021, were once used to treat weight loss in only those with obesity and chronic weight management issues—but gained popularity in the general drug market as supermodels and celebrities turned to it. Now, Ozempic has become the catch-all term for semaglutide and similar drugs that cause weight loss.
Television personality Sharon Osbourne has openly discussed her experience with Ozempic, sharing that in under a year, she lost 42 pounds. Osbourne delivered a warning with her story, saying “I can’t put any weight on. I want to, because I feel I’m too skinny… I don’t want to be. Be careful what you wish for.” She said Ozempic was “easy to become addicted to” and cautioned against its use in teenagers.
The warnings and cautionary messages delivered by Osbourne (among others, including Amy Schumer) seem to do little to combat the support for the drug delivered by other celebrities.
Oprah and Elon Musk have shared their support for Ozempic, crediting their weight loss to it (and competing drugs). Oprah said the drug was “a relief, a redemption and a gift,” while Musk posted on X that Wegovy helped him get “fit, ripped and healthy.” On social media, #Ozempic and #Wegovy have grown in popularity over the last few months on TikTok, according to company analytics.
Golnesa Gharachedaghi, a television personality and social-media influencer, took it a step further when she posted a video on Instagram showing viewers how to use and inject Ozempic. In the video, Gharachedaghi also shared speculation that people getting skinny “so fast all of a sudden” are “most likely, just doing the shots.” “We know who you are. We see how skinny y’all are getting,” she said.
As the demand for weight loss drugs became more widespread, patients who need the drugs the most are having more trouble obtaining them, as fewer insurance companies are considering them to be for medical use. “The reason why it’s not covered is because there is a perception that obesity is considered a cosmetic issue as opposed to a chronic disease,” Dr. Peminda Cabandugama, an endocrinologist at the Cleveland Clinic, told NBC News.
CNN Health reported that “some insurance companies in the past have reportedly refused to cover Wegovy,” citing a story published in The New York Times about a woman being treated for obesity whose insurance company charged her $1,500 a month for weight loss medication—classifying it as a “vanity drug.” Healthcare professionals treating obesity and chronic weight management issues found discrepancies in the pricing of drugs with the same active ingredient (semaglutide). The price of Wegovy, originally marketed as a weight loss drug, was around $1,350 per month, while the price of Ozempic, originally marketed as a diabetes drug, was around $892.
“That means the same drug costs 51 percent more if it is used to treat obesity than if it is used for diabetes,” The Times reported.
It is estimated that seven million women have eating disorders, and the prevalence of weight loss drugs isn’t helping—and neither is its prevalence in society. The glorification of weight loss drugs by celebrities and influencers has rampantly increased the direct advertising by the companies creating them and profiting from their use and has eased barriers for the general public to access the drug—but it hasn’t done the same for those with a medical need for these prescriptions. Some communities—most notably Black and Hispanic patients—still face accessibility barriers. According to Epic Research data, while Black people are much more likely to suffer from obesity and diabetes, white people are four times more likely to receive a prescription.
Jessica Setnick, a registered dietitian and expert in eating disorders, said that as weight loss drugs become trendy and more widespread on the internet and social media, they’re adding another “flame in the dumpster fire” of diet culture, TIME reported.
Longstanding research suggests that “understanding vulnerability to images and values imported with media [is] critical to preventing disordered eating,” so the normalization of Ozempic and related drugs in media, without sharing the fine print to users, furthers the dangerous values that unrealistic body images and expectations impose on women.
Science.org reported that images of thinner women make women (even healthy women) less satisfied with their own bodies. In the age of Ozempic, this cyclical phenomenon essentially promises that the Ozempic craze will get continually worse, the more women turn to it.
Dr. Calvin Smith, a primary care doctor at Meharry Medical Group, said physicians need to make carefully informed decisions about whom they prescribe weight loss medication to, noting that alternative medications for weight loss can be considered for people not living with diabetes. The more these drugs are advertised, the more they’re being used by people who do not have a medical need for them—largely menopausal women. Women in their 40s and 50s often gain weight due to experiencing hormonal changes attributed to menopause, and an increasing number of them are turning to Ozempic.
Researchers have noted that most of the general public using this drug isn’t fully educated about it. Many don’t know how to use it safely, causing some to adjust doses to cater to specific results and even overdose on the drug. America’s Poison Centers recently reported that between January 1 and November 30, 2023, at least 2,941 Americans reported overdose exposures to semaglutide, according to The Los Angeles Times. Many also don’t know about Ozempic’s terms and conditions—which require a lifetime commitment to see intended results.
Type 2 diabetes patient, Barbie Jackson-Williams, taking Ozempic to help her lose weight and manage her condition, noted that the drug isn’t a “solution” on its own. She said that taking the drug has helped her make health-positive changes, such as substituting food choices and eliminating those detrimental to her health.
“People are just taking it just to get skinny and that’s not true,” she said. “You have to do the work, and people don’t realize that.”
Long-term use may be required even if long-term weight loss isn’t the picture, healthcare professionals and researchers have suggested.
Side effects of Ozempic include severe nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and constipation. Dr. Veronica Johnson, an obesity medicine specialist at Northwestern Medicine, told Good Morning America that temporary use of the drug or a break in use could worsen side effects and even lead to weight gain.
It’s easy to put people on Ozempic, but far harder to get them off. Many ask if it’s even physically possible to get people off the long-term drug safely, given the potential of worsened dangerous side effects. The bioethics of prescribing drugs that may hold this lifetime commitment have been questioned by many, including journalist Jessica Grose.
Jessica Grose, in an opinion piece published by The New York Times, questioned if informed consent includes telling people they may have to take a drug forever. She discussed the topic with Arthur Caplan, the founding head of the division of medical ethics at the N.Y.U. Grossman School of Medicine’s department of population health.
Grose reported that Caplan called for more and better quality studies of drugs—but said there were incredibly few “long-term registry studies of the sample of the population” because of how expensive they can be, and how few incentives there are for drug companies to do them. Because of how little we know about Ozempic, it may not be safe to take people off of it.
Is Ozempic really a “solution” to losing weight? Or is it the newest fad for big pharma and celebrity endorsers to pocket more money while making women more insecure?
