was it all a lie?
GLP-1s bum me out.
Seeing bodies like mine on the internet has been truly life-changing in healing my own relationship with my body. Hearing others talk about confidence, their self-love journeys, and rejecting cultural expectations of beauty continually encourages me, even 10 years into this whole body positive journey. When I first started questioning things like beauty standards and diet culture, I looked to people like Katie Sturino, Jonathan Van Ness, and Jess Connolly, clinging to their words and hoping I could one day accept myself in the same way they seemed to. I even enjoyed following Remi Bader, who’s humor blended with her midsize style was effortlessly encouraging. I listened to their podcasts, bought their books, liked all of their videos. At least in my algorithm, they were some of the first that preached partnering with your body, finding movement you loved, and rejecting the lies that culture continuously spews. (Lies like thin = beautiful, healthy bodies are small bodies, and food is only ever fuel.) And now…I feel like a lot of my them have lied to me.
We all know that GLP-1s are trying to take over the world. Heck, I can’t even watch an episode of Psych with my husband without a commercial for Mounjaro or Ozempic popping up. There are so many reasons that the rise of this “easy fix” weight loss medication makes me sad and mad, so many reasons we should probably worry. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been wrestling with how voices that once said “your body is good” are now saying “your body should change.” These four in particular, Katie, Jonathan, Jess, and Remi, have all talked about their use of GLP-1s. They each have their reasons, but all I hear is that they didn’t truly believe in their message, in loving exactly who you are, in embracing your body as it is today. That was just a convenient message, helpful in masking their insecurities and building their audience. They don’t need it anymore, now that they can lose the pesky weight that always kept them from becoming who they really wanted to be.
Were they lying to me when they said that I could love the skin I’m in? Did they really mean it when they preached that body neutrality and even body love were possibilities for me no matter my weight? It seems to me that body positivity was only important to them until their fantasies of adhering to a skinny ideal could be realized. It makes me feel like thinness was what they wanted all along. And that makes me so, so sad.
I know from experience that even if you get to your consistently idealized “goal weight,” you’re still stuck with yourself. If you hated your body when you were 180 lbs, you’ll still hate your body when you’re 140 lbs. If your inner critic likes to berate your eating habits, your appearance, or your style right now, it will certainly do the exact same things even after the shot. GLP-1s may temporarily shed some weight, but they won’t make you love yourself. They won’t help you to treat yourself with the respect and care your body deserves. (They’ll probably actually do the opposite.) They only change your outer appearance, and will never address the underlying causes of self hate, body dysmorphia, and diet culture.
I don’t pretend to know exactly why those who once embraced body positivity are now going on the weight loss shot. As a girlie who’s struggled with loving myself for forever, I have my theories. It makes me sad that even the most seemingly confident among us can’t always resist the quick-fix, the pull towards fitting into a beauty standard you spent years fighting against. I’m sad and I’m not surprised.
Beauty standards are freakin’ pervasive, cultural messaging about our bodies is everywhere. And even in the Ozempic-lypse, I believe the bolder, better option is to continue to pursue self-love, to accept your body just as it is today. The goal is to see my body as good right now, to nourish it joyfully, to move as I want. I like to enjoy feasting with friends and napping on Saturdays without guilt and playing ping-pong with my husband after work, to bake a cake for a friend’s birthday, to buy new jeans when mine are a little too tight, and to go to the waterpark in an xl bikini. GLP-1s could steal some of these moments from me, and I just won’t let them.
Those who have chosen to go on the weight loss shot may have been lying to me, I don’t know. What I do know is that, if we don’t ever heal our relationship with our body from within, it won’t matter how much work we do on the outside.
I’m never quite sure who decided that “skinny” was the ideal. I grew up in a culture where a fuller body was often associated with abundance, prosperity, and having enough to eat, while being thin was linked to poverty. I was bullied for being skinny, so I’ve experienced the other side of the beauty standard.
That’s why I think conversations about body image shouldn’t swing toward either extreme. Both chronic undernourishment and obesity carry real health consequences, and neither should be romanticized.
The more we fixate on our bodies, the more disconnected we can become from our relationship with them. My concern with GLP-1 medications isn’t simply weight loss—it’s that appetite suppression can make it harder to stay in touch with hunger, fullness, and other internal cues. And while they may change a body, they don’t necessarily change body dysmorphia or heal the beliefs someone holds about themselves.
Body positivity is a very important part of the conversation around GLP1 use. However, I would not say they "only change your outer appearance." There are many health benefits from better sugar and cholesterol levels, to less sleep apnea, to less kidney disease, to better function in heart failure and arthritis patients.
What is becoming more adopted in obesity-medicine is the body positivity aspect. Decreasing shame, using patient-preferred language.... but we do have a long way to go to fully understand and improve this aspect.