How is the body positivity movement surviving in the age of Ozempic
Gemma White
What will happen to body acceptance and self-love in an era science claims to have ‘cured’ the very concept of ‘fatness’?
You need to be really tough and have thick skin to be a plus-size girl in this world,” declares Ameni Esseibi, the 25-year-old body positivity advocate and MENA’s first curvy model, who has taken the fashion world by storm. “People think body positivity is about big girls accepting themselves and that it’s a trend to make them feel normal,” she says. “I completely disagree. Body positivity is accepting who you are – no matter your weight, what you look like, or your skin colour. It’s embracing the imperfections you have, loving how your body looks and being grateful for that body.”
Gratitude and acceptance loom large in Esseibi’s world. Not for nothing does her Instagram bio state, “It’s all about confidence, Habibi.”
The Tunis-born, Dubai-based model has, along with her fellow body-positive advocates, disrupted the status quo, not just through fashion and social media, but by actively living the message that it’s okay to be different shapes, sizes and weights. A message that, even in its seventh decade, still has the power to shock – and disgust – some.
Self-love and social media
Body acceptance has been the cornerstone of the body positivity movement since its inaugural wave back in the 1960s. The second wave would come in the 2010s, a long-simmering backlash against the waif look and “heroin chic” of the ‘nothing tastes as good as thin feels’ ’90s. Both would bring forth hitherto unheard-of phrases like “fat acceptance” and “body shaming”, adding them to the modern lexicon.
The third wave is perhaps the most fascinating, coming in 2012, when Instagram – just two years old at the time – forever altered the social media landscape by upending, rewriting and redefining how people presented themselves – or rather, the idealised version of themselves that they wanted the world to see.
In 2013, size 22 US model and feminist Tess Holliday launched the hashtag #EffYourBeautyStandards. The sentiment quickly gained global traction, resonating with millions of people tired of the relentless goalpost-shifting of #bodyinspo and who did not see themselves or their bodies represented in the pages of fashion magazines, in filtered social media images, or in the latest body iteration the Kardashians were promoting that week.
Eleven years on from Holliday’s hashtag, the landscape has shifted once again. This time, it is caused by a drug called semaglutide, more commonly known by the brand names Ozempic, Mounjaro and Wegovy.
“Drugs in the semaglutide group have been under development over the past six years,” says Dr Khalid Shukri, an anti-ageing and regenerative medicine physician at Wellth. “They lower blood sugars by mimicking the effects of GLP1 agonists, naturally occurring hormones that stimulate insulin secretion and lower glucose secretion from the liver. They can lower the risk of heart attack and stroke, and help patients with type 2 [diabetes] and blood vessel disease. They are a powerful tool for obesity management and people who struggle with weight loss through lifestyle changes.”
“Why should weight loss be hard?”
Inevitably, the arrival of semaglutides immediately began rubbing up uncomfortably against the messaging of body positivity, leading advocates to wrestle with what the movement looks like when, to use brutal parlance, science claims to have ‘cured’ fatness.
“Without Mounjaro, I don’t know where I would have ended up,” says Sara Rafaghello, a Dubai-based creative director and mother of two. After welcoming her second child in 2012, Rafaghello struggled to lose weight despite exercising four times a week and eating just 800 calories a day, a situation exacerbated by PCOS, thyroid issues and insulin resistance. Since she started taking Mounjaro last year, she has steadily lost weight and lowered her blood pressure.
“When you think about body positivity, it should be about health, not about being thin,” she says. “There’s been a lot of unnecessary shame around taking these weight loss medications because the societal expectation is that you should lose weight by yourself – and if you don’t then you’re cheating.”
“For people who’ve always been thin or enjoyed a certain level of health or weight stability, it’s like a badge of honour – and they don’t want to share it,” she adds. “I think that’s why a lot of people don’t admit they’ve been using Ozempic or Mounjaro, because we’ve been taught that weight loss has to be hard and you have to suffer for it.”
Instant gratification or last resort?
As with many medications, there will be those who take semaglutides unnecessarily or buy it without a prescription. In his opening monologue at the 2023 Academy Awards, host Jimmy Kimmel joked: “When I look around at this room, I can’t help but wonder, ‘Is Ozempic right for me?’”, lifting the lid on what was by then Hollywood’s worst-kept secret to staying thin.
As the drugs made headlines and the likes of Amy Schumer, Sharon Osbourne and Oprah Winfrey all publicly admitted to taking Ozempic, global stocks ran low, resulting in headlines about obese patients, diabetes type 2 sufferers and those with high blood pressure being unable to get the medication their lives depended on at the expense of those who wanted to get or stay thin.
“I’ve been anorexic and morbidly obese,” says Abu Dhabi-based health, wellness and fitness trainer, Suzi Curtis, 42. “Having been on such extreme ends of the spectrum, my take on body positivity is that it’s about loving the skin you’re in regardless of size and what you look like.” For Curtis, the influence of social media’s ‘I want it now’ mindset has blurred the line where body positivity meets weight-loss drugs.
“I feel Ozempic is another quick fix,” she says. “Like gastric sleeves and stomach balloons and the whole keto phase, everyone’s looking for a quick fix. Ozempic is that. I’m not a fan of taking drugs to lose weight. I think it needs to come down to the natural way and that’s a big part of the body positivity aspect. Ozempic goes against the true definition of body positivity as you’re not loving what you are.”
Ameni adds: “People have been taking Mounjaro and Ozempic as if it’s Panadol, which is very sad. I have friends who are already healthy and they want to take Mounjaro to achieve a ‘summer body’. It’s so dangerous.”
A spotlight shift
As with many online movements, the transition from relentless headline-making to continuing advocacy work out of the limelight is inevitable. Just as with the beauty industry in which the negative-sounding “anti-ageing” is being increasingly replaced by the more reassuring “active ageing”, so too has the body positivity movement pivoted. Discussions are now frequently centred around “body neutrality” and “body acceptance” – positivity being perhaps too optimistic a term to feel achievable.
“Ticking other people’s boxes” is how three-time British short-track speed-skating Olympian Sarah Lindsay views today’s obsession with having the ‘perfect’ body. “Ozempic is a quick fix, but I completely understand why people are trying different things,” says Lindsay, who’s also the founder of Dubai’s Roar Fitness. “For overweight or obese people who have health-related issues, if it’s prescribed by a doctor, then obviously there’s no shame in that at all. But it’s the abuse of it that worries me, by thin people trying to be thinner.”
There’s no denying that the notion of body positivity has thrown up more questions than are currently answers. To wit: Does body acceptance enable unhealthy habits? Is ‘health at any size’ actually possible? Why did messaging overwhelmingly centre able, white bodies?
It also remains true that self-love, particularly when it comes to bigger bodies, is still seen as inherently radical as if it couldn’t possibly be true that anyone over a size 14 could like themselves.
Dubai-based photographer Waleed Shah, whose book of photographs Rock Your Ugly saw him invite a wide spectrum of people into his studio in an examination of attitudes to the human body, credits the project with helping him reflect on people’s relationships with themselves. “I think the main thing is that it’s never about the body itself, but rather about society and the pressures society puts on us to look and feel a certain way,” he says. “To me, body positivity and Ozempic can definitely co-exist. I believe in whatever works for you, that there’s no correct answer and no shameful path. If you’re not happy with what you look like, then change what you feel like changing, but don’t do it to follow a trend.”
Monetised and politicised, the commodification of #bodypositivity might have been co-opted and misused, but then so are many other trends. In our online age, it’s up to the individual to look beyond the headlines and noise to make their own decisions about their body.
If body positivity can survive – in fact, it must as a beacon to current generations – and with Ozempic not going away, it needs to be seen as an ally, not an enemy.
The movement can evolve and thrive, starting by shifting the message away from weight to become about so much more than body fat. Disabilities, scars, psoriasis, hair loss, skin colour, surgeries, acne… The list of ‘shameful’ things that deserve to have the spotlight shone on them is as long as the human body is fascinating.
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