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The week in the patriarchy

The talk show host's acceptance of the weight-loss drug threatens to destroy our enduring association of weight and morality

You get Ozempic! You get Ozempic! Everyone gets Ozempic!

Big news in the weight loss world this week: Oprah Winfrey is leaving WeightWatchers. The talk show host has been the public face of the company for nearly a decade, but is stepping down from the board and donating all of her shares to a charity “to eliminate any perceived conflict of interest related to taking weight loss medications.”

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There's no prize for guessing the weight loss drugs she's talking about. Almost all celebrities and wealthy women (and some men too, including Elon Musk) appear to inject GLP-1 drugs. These medications – the best known of which is the diabetes drug Ozempic – prevent hunger and can lead to dramatic weight loss. They are considered an uncomplicated way to lose weight.

Winfrey's departure from WeightWatchers isn't just a professional transition — it marks a broader cultural shift. The diet industry of old is officially dead. As GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic become more popular, the idea of ​​relying on willpower to lose weight is becoming obsolete. This also applies to society's short-lived flirtation with body positivity: thinness is dangerously in fashion again.

By the way, WeightWatchers is well aware of this. There's a reason the company has been around for six decades: it has constantly changed its positioning to reflect changing attitudes towards health and beauty. For example, in 2018, amid the wellness craze, the company changed its name to WW and updated its mission to “Wellness that Works.” Now it's moving away from wellness and towards drugs, drugs, drugs. I'm not sure why Winfrey's use of weight loss drugs is portrayed as a “conflict of interest” considering WeightWatchers has been entirely focused on GLP-1 drugs. Last year, the brand acquired a digital health company that allowed its members to receive prescriptions for weight-loss medications and grandly announced that it had become a “digital health company.”

GLP-1 drugs are booming and becoming increasingly popular. Even though they're common in celebrity circles, not everyone shouts from the rooftops about their habit. Taking the medication is associated with a certain level of reluctance because it is viewed as “cheating”, so to speak. In fact, Winfrey has previously said that she initially shied away from taking weight-loss medications because it felt like an “easy way out.”

Of course, it's silly to talk about “cheating” when it comes to losing weight. We all have different brains and bodies. Some people are naturally more inclined to be thin than others – cheat codes are embedded in their DNA. But this kind of language and the judgmental response to Winfrey's GLP-1 use shows how closely weight is tied to morality in society. It makes it clear that we associate thinness with virtue. The fact that losing weight is now something you can easily take medication for has the potential to massively disrupt this relationship.

“[This is a technology that will reorder society,” Paul Ford wrote in Wired last year in a piece about how Mounjaro (a similar drug to Ozempic) had changed his life. “I have been judged as greedy and weak since I was 10 years old – and now the sin is washed away. Baptism by injection.”

I’m not cheerleading GLP-1 drugs here, I should note. Far from it. They may be killing off one form of diet culture, but as the obsession with Winfrey’s recent weight loss shows, they’re simply ushering in another. Women are still very much judged by how much space they take up – technology is advancing a lot faster than our attitudes.

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