(personal underlines)
Heroin Chic Is Back
Awards season officially kicks off today with the Golden Globes, and millions of us will gather—not to watch who will win an irrelevant trophy, but rather to judge who wore it best. But now, in the age of Ozempic, it’s all under scrutiny: the gowns, of course, but also the faces, the bellies, the butts. Hollywood’s addiction to weight-loss drugs means today’s red carpet creatures are thin to the point of emaciation.
Watching the parade of skeletons, it’s clear that “fat empowerment” was always a farce. And the “body positivity” movement, which is meant to celebrate all physiques no matter how big or small, was built on wishful thinking.
With Ozempic, most Americans who have the money and means now have a choice about whether to be fat or thin, and no one is choosing the belly rolls. Just consider People magazine, which published a piece entitled “Stars Who Love to Celebrate Their Curves” just before the Ozempic craze took off in December 2022. Number one celebrity on the list? Lizzo, who once said “I like being fat” and created a reality show that heralded “big grrrls.” In 2024, Lizzo took a vacation to Bali to lose weight—not through drugs, she says, but through diet and exercise—and emerged significantly lighter.
But even if Lizzo isn’t benefiting from GLP-1 agonists—the class of weight-loss drugs known by the brand names Ozempic, Wegovy, or Mounjaro—many others are. Celebrities who confess to having used it include Chelsea Handler, Sharon Osbourne, Boy George, Elon Musk, Tracy Morgan, and Whoopi Goldberg. Even Oprah Winfrey took it, then resigned as a WeightWatchers board member to work on a TV special about the rise of prescription weight-loss drugs.
One Los Angeles entertainment lawyer told me, “Everyone in L.A. is on it. Every. One.”
But this easy slim-down solution has a dark underbelly. After attending Fashion Week in Paris last September, ’90s supermodel Veronica Webb told me: “Heroin chic is back. All because of Ozempic. There are no more different body types on the runways anymore—it’s all extremely thin. It’s disturbing.”
The body positivity movement started out in the protest culture of the 1960s and reemerged in the 1990s as a backlash to heroin chic. By the height of #MeToo, it became a feminist statement to embrace bigger bodies, and in many ways, it was refreshing to see a more voluptuous figure embraced. (In 2016, Sports Illustrated put the beautiful, curvy Ashley Graham on the cover and turned her into a star.) But, like all activist movements, it got swept away by its own power, hectoring us to adhere to the new orthodoxy, with hashtags like #CelebrateMySize and #HonorMyCurves telling us to fall into line. Even the medical profession, which should know better, has promoted some of these beliefs in the name of “inclusion.” And in December, San Francisco hired Virgie Tovar, author of You Have the Right to Remain Fat, to consult with the city’s Department of Public Health on “weight stigma and weight neutrality.”
But the current iteration of the movement is built on falsehoods, which everyone is aware of but is too afraid to admit. They include:
Being obese is healthy! (Never mind the heart disease, diabetes, and shortened life spans that come with a heightened BMI.)
Don’t criticize or question celebrities who appear dangerously thin! (Even if your teenage daughter is starving herself to look like that celeb.)
How dare you talk about anyone’s body? Just focus on your own! (Never mind that humanity has evolved by judging other people—and that will never change.)
Now let’s be clear here. I am not anti-Ozempic. Obesity and its related issues are the leading cause of death worldwide. GLP-1 is a miracle drug for the many people who can’t shed the weight, no matter how hard they try. And as a perimenopausal woman who can’t lose the 20 pounds that mysteriously appeared on my thighs and stomach over the past year, despite diet and exercise, I am not against using GLP-1 to get back to a “normal” weight.
The problem is, the people taking the drug aren’t just 20 pounds overweight. Women who were once merely svelte now seem to be wasting away. Take, for example, Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo’s bizarre press tour for Wicked. When journalist Tracy Gilchrist rambled on about “holding space,” Grande—whose size 0 corset dress hung loosely on her body—showed support by gently holding Erivo’s forefinger with her delicate hand, probably since that was the only part of her she had the strength to support. Neither Grande nor Erivo have said they are taking Ozempic, but that hasn’t stopped the rumors—or the concern. Even in our body-positive universe, some people are saying the unsayable:
“I’m usually ariana’s biggest defender when it comes to her weight but she’s actually starting to look VERY sickly this cannot be healthy,” one fan of Grande’s commented on X.
“I am actually worried now about ariana grande. She looks wayyy too thin. i hope she is ok. ❤️,” another wrote.
Grande, however, immediately labeled anyone who criticized her as a “dangerous” body shamer. And, weirdly, the media went into full-on gaslighting mode. In an “exclusive,” the Daily Mail revealed “the real reason Ariana Grande looks so different” is because she had dyed her hair from dark to blonde, bleached her eyebrows, and stopped using a self-tanner.
After almost a decade of fat positivity, we are now caught in a weird hinterland, completely confused about what we can and can’t say about people’s bodies, when none of it is baffling at all: When bodies are overweight or underweight, it’s not healthy. So why should we pretend it is? In the past, heroin chic died because the media pointed out it was dangerous. But now, no one will call out the risks of being overly fat—or thin.
Meanwhile, online pharmacies such as Hers, Winona, Noom, and others aimed at women’s “health” have multiplied like cockroaches, promising that we will “lose 15% to 20%” of our body weight and get fast and easy approvals for online prescriptions. All you have to do is fill out a simple questionnaire, lie about your weight, and have a GLP-1 drug prescribed by an online “nurse” for $150.
The way we’re going now, most of the population could soon end up looking like no-ass, fat-free freaks—and no one will be brave enough to say how crazy we all look. Meanwhile, don’t be surprised if tonight, the dresses are wearing the women rather than the other way around.
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