Breathe
By Frida Mendoza
Reading about it seems miraculous, without risk. The Wizard of Oz...empic is increasingly everywhere. If Kim Kardashian and Elon Musk used it, how many other celebrities who are losing weight fast are also using it? "How much does it cost?" "This does work!" "It wasn't body positive, it was just lazy dieting" and many more phrases can be read everywhere you turn. In my mind I can't stop thinking about The Substance movie and this altered reality.
Before we go any further, be warned: movie spoilers are coming and also information related to dysmorphia and eating disorders (EDs).
"She wear Ozempic, try to be different, try to be a newer woman, nah," is heard on the song BACKR00MS by Playboi Carti featuring Travis Scott, ex-partner of Kim Kardashian's sister Kyle Jenner. Both, it is presumed, have consumed Ozempic.
But to understand this story it would be worth going back in time because in early 2023, it was precisely Kim Kardashian who shocked with a drastic change in her image wearing a Marilyn Monroe dress and consequently, generated a stir in Hollywood and the public to know what she had taken to lose weight so soon. I will not forget that very wise people in trends, health and aesthetic violence knew that it was time to set off the alarms: was a new wave of TCAs and a drastic change for the body positive coming?
Weight-loss drugs were not a novelty. That same 2023 I wrote for Malvestida an article in which, in addition to presenting a series of interviews on the subject, I shared my own experience with a drug whose purpose was not to lose weight but which doctors come to prescribe, metformin.
Let me summarize the story: I was 19 years old, I went to the gynecologist for a consultation for a urinary infection and I left with a prescription to take metformin every day so that I could "lose a little weight while I was at it". I had not asked for it, just by seeing me the doctor thought I could "be healthier" and lose the famous extra kilos. I immediately had side effects and could not stop vomiting, so my mother, my blessed mother, told me why take something like that and I stopped taking the medication in less than a month. Besides the obvious criticism of an unnecessary prescription, at what cost do we seek to lose weight?
It goes without saying that that publication caused a stir in networks and the comments in networks, cruel as they can be, judged me and attacked me harshly assuming my weight and that "my health was decadent for them to prescribe me something", "they told me that for a reason", what a fatphobia. But no, I may be over "my ideal weight" but I did not have any medical complication, I try to eat balanced, enjoy food a lot and be active (an explanation that I really owe to no one). But above all, neither then nor now do I have a diagnosis of diabetes, since the main purpose of that medication is for that disease... and that was also the initial objective of Ozempic.
And then we came to 2024 and at the same time that -at the cinema or at home- we were watching the movie The Substance starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, we witnessed how a wave of plus size artists and celebrities started to lose weight drastically.
Why do I link fiction with reality? Because while The Substance addresses dysmorphia from age, it also shows unhealthy behaviors with food. A body horror film of course shocks if the protagonist looks in the mirror and hates herself because she doesn't feel enough (and is told so), of course it generates horror if the only scenes in which she eats the food are grotesque and part of a "punishment for the body". In the story, the substance of The Substance was an opportunity to be everything beautiful that the industry and people expect you to be, "your best version".
The reality substance (Ozempic) is expensive -approximately 5 thousand pesos per month- and just like in the movie you need to keep using the necessary doses every month in order to get the results you expect because if you don't, the appetite returns.
I am not a doctor and while I know my limitations to talk about health, I can speak from my concern as a journalist about how we communicate it and the younger generations see in various media and social networks the socially accepted use of a drug for which there are still no conclusive results about its long-term effects.
We had advanced, a lot or a little I don't know, but suddenly having a big body and being curvy was a little more respected, a little less judged. And honestly, I was very excited that the new generations were growing up like that, unlike mine that at the peak of adolescence the "ana y mía" blogs proliferated, that you could not have a TCA but you did not feel pretty because you were not in the standard of the hegemonic body.
The reports on Ozempic are starting to pile up and I am very concerned that even from the New York Times the angle is mostly positive and addresses the "concern" of the ultra-processed industry to keep its customer base captive. the "concern" of the ultra-processed food industry to keep their clientele captive who are losing their appetite because that's just what happens with that drug, you eat less. But among the other side effects are possible damage to the pancreas and gall bladder.... at what cost?
It matters a lot how we communicate it. It matters a lot the choices of angles around a topic that is in development and that since 2023 remains trending upward in Google Trends. It matters a lot if it's a drug that is flourishing on the black market Are we advertising or investigating a consumer phenomenon in which people with diabetes once did not have their medication and now 7 million Americans use it without knowing if they will continue to afford it in the future or if they will have some "rebound effect" or something else? It matters if fat-phobic discrimination prevails.
Trends move forward and so while we see derogatory comments against women who suddenly lose weight, those who do not and continue with their lives, decide to get married and propose (yes, I am referring to the wave of terrible hate that La Fatshionista received for declaring her love that is well reciprocated), are also judged. A fat person does not deserve to be happy? How much aesthetic violence do we have to put up with?
It worries me to read those who claim that body positive never existed because it is not about one size being valid, but about remembering that validation comes from within and that bodies will always be diverse.
Is it necessary to lose weight at all costs, even "if it was not necessary"? How much is genuine concern and how much is genuine fatphobia? Where is the love and respect for all sizes? How much is said from the media and what impact does it have on society?
I have more questions than answers but I am also very clear that if we are going to cover this phenomenon it has to be with caution because we don't know everything yet.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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