Anti-fatness in the Ozempic era: State of the landscape and considerations for future research

ABSTRACT

The recent popularity of a new type of drug – semaglutide, brand named Ozempic or Wegovy – for fat loss has created significant public interest and garnered social media attention. The fat loss effects of Wegovy, Ozempic, and similar semaglutides are being hailed as miracles, allowing for the elimination of fatness – a goal severely aligned with anti-fatness and severely misaligned with the lives and politics of many fat people and their allies. Recent attention to Ozempic and similar drugs is shrouded in fatphobia and likely to shift discourses of anti-fatness for years to come. I outline specific areas in which discursive tensions between critical fat perspectives and Ozempic era discourses have emerged and point to these as emerging areas of focus for fat studies research. Specifically, I point to tensions between fatness and disability, as the use of Ozempic for fat loss has reduced access to this diabetes treatment among people with the condition. I point to socioeconomic oppression and fatness, as privileges of racial, gendered, geographic, and other natures will shift the permeability of fatness among those who benefit from these privileges and influence fatphobic discourses. Finally, I point to the morality surrounding fatness and how this morality might shift in the Ozempic landscape. I suggest that researchers in critical fat space could attend to these and other areas of discursive tension in the contemporary context in order to understand how Ozempic and similar drugs will reify and shift anti-fat discourses and to protect the future of fatness.

KEYWORDS:

• Social media
• weight loss
• fatphobia
• morality
• medicalization

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Flora Oswald

Flora Oswald an Assistant Research Professor at the University of Connecticut in the Department of Psychological Sciences. She received her PhD in 2023 in the dual title program in Psychology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Penn State University.