Jia Tolentino on the Celebrity Obsession with Ozempic

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

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4.3 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 27 March 2023

⏱️ 19 minutes

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Summary

The prescription drug Ozempic was designed to help people with Type 2 diabetes manage their disease, and, under the name Wegovy, to treat obesity. But it has been embraced recently as a tool for weight loss, and many celebrities are rumored to use it in order to shed pounds. Known generically as semaglutide, the drug gives users the feeling of satiation—even to the point of uncomfortable fullness. “One doctor I spoke to compared it to a turkey dinner in a pen,” the staff writer Jia Tolentino tells David Remnick. Tolentino recently reported on the use and misuse of the drug, and what its prominence among celebrities says about our relationship to thinness today. After some years in which body culture seemed to become more accepting, Tolentino fears the drug will wind the clock back to the brutal insistence on thinness of decades past. “Like any technology, it’s very complicated,” she says. “For some people, this drug might save their lives. For others, it does not make sense to be used in any casual way.”

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1:12.6	This is the political scene, and I'm David Remnick.
1:20.9	At the Oscars recently, Jimmy Kimmel had a line about a drug that seems to be coming up a lot these days.
1:32.4	You look great.
1:33.6	Everybody looks so great.
1:35.0	When I look around this room, I can't help but wonder, is Ozzympic right for me?
1:40.8	To listen to some people talk about Ozempic, you'd think we're walking into a sci-fi future of universally trim bodies all achieved without sweat or tears.
1:52.7	And if you turn your brain back on, you'll think it's probably a lot more complicated than that.
1:58.6	Staff writer Gia Tolentino has been reporting on the use and misuse of
2:02.9	OZempic and what it says about our relationships to our bodies today.
2:10.7	Gia, let's start with the drug itself. Let's start with OZMPIC. What is it supposed to be used for
	...

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