“Give him my regards did you take Ozempic?”
By leaving this innocuous comment on Melissa McCartney’s Instagram post, Barbra Streisand broke a social norm – from one celebrity to another, she said the quiet part out loud.
Social norms and social conformity are fascinating areas to explore, especially through the lens of celebrities' use of Ozempic. Social norms are one of the four types of biases associated with heuristics (essentially mental shortcuts), alongside ambiguity aversion, loss aversion, and status quo preference. They are the unwritten rules that guide us on how to behave when we lack expertise or knowledge in a particular area. Consciously or unconsciously, we often follow other people’s examples as shortcuts for decision-making.
One Size Fits All
In media, the pervasive standard of beauty has been thinness. Fat characters are a frequent butt of jokes and often being portrayed as unattractive on TV and in movies (think “Fat Monica” from Friends or Gwyneth Paltrow’s character in Shallow Hal). They are only lovable when they are thin.
A preference for thinness remains a social norm in the Anglophone West. Ozempic reveals much about our morals, values, identity, and our obsession with thinness. Weight loss is a complex topic, and while body positivity is increasingly embraced, 55% of women and 47% of men in the US want to slim down. These numbers have barely shifted in the last decade. As fad diets, flat tummy teas, and plastic surgery dominated celebrity culture in the last 30 years, the discourse has shifted to Ozempic.
The Ozempic Revolution
2023 marked the beginning of the GLP-1 revolution – a far cry from the fen-phen of the 1990s. Semaglutides like Ozempic, Wegovy, tirzepatide, Mounjaro, and Zepbound have changed the face of weight loss medication (I’ll just use “Ozempic” as a shorthand for the whole group). A recent Pew Research study revealed that about three-quarters of Americans have now heard either a lot or a little about Ozempic and other semaglutide drugs.
The initial wave of Ozempic coverage mainly focused on the celebrities rumoured to be taking it, rather than its medical benefits or mechanisms. This set the tone for the subsequent Ozempic conversation; many heard about these weight loss drugs because of celebrities, rather than from medical experts. The perception set in that celebrities taking Ozempic are just rich, vanity-driven “cheats”, taking the easy way out.
The Shame of Social Stigma
Shame has become a focal point in the Ozempic conversation, and many celebrities deny using the drug. Oprah, for example, denied using weight loss drugs until her recent special Shame, Blame, and the Weight Loss Revolution. A teary Oprah tells her audience that with the use of drugs like Ozempic, we can learn “to stop shaming other people for being overweight or how they choose to lose or not lose weight and, more importantly, to stop shaming ourselves. […] For 25 years, making fun of my weight was national sport”. In one of her 1988 shows, she famously used a red wagon loaded with fat as a symbol for the 67 pounds she lost on a liquid diet. Oprah mentions in the special that the day after that episode, she started gaining weight back. Two years later, the cover of TV Guide labelled her as “bumpy, lumpy and downright dumpy.”
Will Ozempic be a long-term weight management solution for Oprah? While often lauded as a ‘miracle drug’, most people usually don’t continue using Ozempic for more than a year – largely due to side effects and high costs. What is being touted in the media as the solution to fatness and levelling the playing field, semaglutides are neither equalising nor sustainable. Due to the high costs and negative cultural associations of Ozempic rather than its medical risks, the use of semaglutides remains stigmatised and underutilised in the general public. In return, weight stigma and self-stigma have their own physical and mental health issues; those who experience stigma are more likely to avoid or delay medical care.
In a society deeply entrenched in the ideals of wealth, beauty, and thinness, could we reimagine medications like Ozempic as health tools accessible to everyone, regardless of their socioeconomic status?