America is a land of contradictions; while we’re known as a nation that loves to eat, we also live within a culture that has long valued thinness as the utmost beauty standard.
Of course, a culture oriented around consumption doesn’t necessarily align with that kind of body type, and for some people, tying self-worth to one’s weight grew increasingly untenable as diet culture and media messaging leaned harder in one direction: be thin or be nothing at all.
Over the last several years the body positivity movement has pushed back on that notion. It helped lead to more inclusive advertisements and models, larger size ranges for clothing, and a larger push for people to accept themselves at every size. But then came a new class of weight-loss drugs.
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The new “miracle” weight-loss drugs
As the new class of weight loss drugs, called GLP-1s, sold under the names like Wegovy and ZepBound hit the market, they immediately became a huge success among Hollywood celebrities, and regular people who wanted to shed weight with less difficulty.
The drugs work by mimicking a hormone that increases satiety and decreases food intake. Though many of them were initially intended for diabetes patients, and can have some serious adverse side effects, the impact of these weight-loss drugs has already been demonstrable. Many of the more popular name brands have faced shortages amidst high demand, and for good reason. Patients have reported losing weight easily and quickly, without having to make drastic lifestyle changes, or even exercise. Some have hailed it as a “miracle” drug.
An uncertain future for body positivity
There is a lot of noise, particularly for women, around what it means to have a healthy body. Plenty of social energy is devoted to debating the value of cardio, or carbohydrates, and which new fad diet might finally work.
But at the end of the day having a “healthy” body has been most synonymous with being thin. Body positivity activists have long challenged that notion with the slogan of “Healthy at any Size.”
But New York Magazine contributing writer Samhita Mukhopadhyay grapples with the possible future of a movement like this in her recent article, “So Was Body Positivity All A Big Lie?”
Mukhopadhyay, who describes herself as a body positive feminist, recounted her own experience after taking the weight-loss drug Mounjaro for a year for her own health purposes, and how she sought to understand her relationship to her own body afterwards.
“I think that the celebrity obsession and our obsession with celebrities taking them has created an environment where we are not actually evaluating these drugs for their real value,” Mukhopadhyay said in conversation with NPR’s Juana Summers.
“That they are a medical intervention, a necessary medical intervention for a country that is grappling with the diseases that are related to obesity and to the size of our bodies and frankly, like the kinds of foods and activity that we have access to. And I think it’s really easy to conflate that medical intervention with the demand of compulsory thinness, which is still part of the culture that we live in.”
For more on the ever-evolving conversation on health, size and whose business that is, listen to the full episode by tapping the play button at the top of the page.
Transcript:
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UNIDENTIFIED VOICE ACTOR #1: Arby’s – two for seven bucks every day.
UNIDENTIFIED VOICE ACTOR #2: Now you can supersize your McDonald’s Extra Value Meal with a supersize order of our golden fries.
UNIDENTIFIED VOICE ACTOR #3: For about the same price, 7-Eleven’s Big Gulp gives you the freedom to enjoy a bigger Coke.
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Americans love to eat.
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UNIDENTIFIED VOICE ACTOR #4: There’s nothing better than a Subway Series footlong, except when you add a new footlong Sidekick.
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UNIDENTIFIED VOICE ACTOR #5: What do you call a Crunchwrap with double the seasoned beef, a crunchy taco and a large drink for just $5?
SUMMERS: And big food and restaurants have been there and are there to meet the demand. But…
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UNIDENTIFIED VOICE ACTOR #6: Hydroxycut – America’s No. 1 weight loss brand helps you lose weight your way.
UNIDENTIFIED VOICE ACTOR #7: Let MMC Weight Loss and Wellness design a medically supervised program which will help you to meet your weight loss goals.
UNIDENTIFIED VOICE ACTOR #8: SlimFast – pick a date, lose the weight.
SUMMERS: At the same time, American culture prizes a certain kind of body…
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Jane Fonda admitted that she was bulimic in the ’80s, and I think we have to learn from this that it pays off.
SUMMERS: …One that’s not always compatible with eating a lot of highly caloric food. But for the last several decades, there’s been a counterpoint to the idea that being thin is all that matters. In the 1960s, it was the fat activism movement. That movement evolved over several decades into the current body positivity movement.
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ANDREA HOWAT: Every version of you has been a good version. The version of you with stretch marks and the version of you without, the version of you with acne, the version of you that wore smaller pants, the version of you that wore 10 sizes bigger than you do now – all those versions are good.
SUMMERS: But that message to accept and praise bodies of any shape and any size has been challenged in recent years by a new class of weight loss drugs, GLP-1s, that are sold under names like Wegovy and Zepbound. They mimic a hormone that increases the feeling of fullness and decreases food intake.
HEATHER GAY: And it’s disappointing to sad to know that body positivity was all a big lie because it’s better to not be overweight.
SUMMERS: That’s Heather Gay, star of “The Real Housewives Of Salt Lake City,” talking to ABC’s “Nightline” about her decision to go on weight loss drugs. Did she say the quiet part out loud?
CONSIDER THIS – body acceptance activists have been trying to change American attitudes toward being overweight for generations. In recent years, they’ve gained a measure of success. Now that there’s a so-called miracle drug for weight loss, could that mean the end of the body positivity movement?
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SUMMERS: From NPR, I’m Juana Summers.
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SUMMERS: It’s CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. There is a lot of noise, particularly for women, around what it means to have a healthy body, how you get it and how you keep it. Don’t eat carbs. Don’t eat fat. Do eat protein. Run, do yoga, lift weights. But at the end of the day, having a healthy body has been synonymous with one thing – being thin. Yet, in recent years, that idea has been challenged by body positivity activists who have preached a message of healthy at any size.
And now, with the arrival of a new class of weight loss drugs, often referred to as miracle drugs, is the body positivity movement at risk of fading away? It’s a question that New York Magazine contributing writer Samhita Mukhopadhyay grapples with in her recent article, “So Was Body Positivity ‘All A Big Lie’?” She joins me now to talk about her article.
So I want to start by talking about this idea that being healthy and being thin are the same thing, which is one of the main things that you get into in this article. Let’s start there. How do you see it?
SAMHITA MUKHOPADHYAY: The conventional wisdom has long been that, you know, no matter what your health problem is, if you go to the doctor, the doctor is going to tell you to lose weight, right?
SUMMERS: Yeah.
MUKHOPADHYAY: Like, irrelevant of, you know, how your blood work may be or how your mobility issues are or your fitness level. And in the last couple of years, starting with body-positive activists, but then also, you know, there’s been quite a bit of research on this in medical science, they are seeing that the relationship between the size of your body and your health is not as linear as we have long thought, right? And so, your fitness level really matters. Your proportions matter. Your bloodwork matters. And I think that one of the things that, you know, we’re really grappling with in this moment is that we’re still a culture that loves thinness, right? And so it’s really hard to separate that from health. We have so internalized this idea that if you’re fat, you’re unhealthy, and if you’re thin, you’re healthy.
SUMMERS: I mean, as you’re talking, I’m sitting here thinking about so many interactions I have had with health care professionals over the years where you come in with an ailment, and it’s like, well, how many calories are you burning or are you active enough or what did – what’s your normal lunch or dinner routine look like? And it can just be so frustrating. How do you think it is that we got to a point culturally where these two things are so intertwined in what I think many would argue could be a problematic way?
MUKHOPADHYAY: You know, we have a culture that worships thinness, right? And so, you know, Hollywood reinforces this. The media reinforces this. And it’s really always been the, like, thin at any cost, right? Like, we’ve never criticized what people have to do to get thin or how healthy that may be, whether that’s physically healthy or healthy from a mental perspective, from, like, a psychological perspective, right?
But I do think that, you know, both this media reinforcement of a type of, you know, what is considered the ideal body size really fused with also this idea of taking, you know, weight and our health, which – let’s be honest, there are personal factors that lead to our health outcomes, but a lot of them are systemic – right? – like access to healthy food, having grocery stores in your neighborhood…
SUMMERS: Yeah.
MUKHOPADHYAY: …Living in an environment where you feel comfortable going for a walk – right? – like, all of these things that are really systemic issues that impact health outcomes. I do think it’s both this internal process of, you know, we judge ourselves if we gain a little weight, you know, where, oh, I’m, like, losing control. I’m not eating right. I need to do this.
You know, and those might be true, also, right? Like, we know when we’re not being our best selves and we’re not taking care of ourselves. But the way that the systems, kind of both our society, our culture and the medical system, continue to reinforce that, I think, has made it very hard to disentangle those two things.
SUMMERS: You’ve written in this piece and in others about your decision to go on Mounjaro. You’ve described it as a choice that you struggled with. And you’ve now been off of that medication for months. And I’m curious, how do you personally think about that? How has that experience changed, if it has, the way you feel about your body?
MUKHOPADHYAY: Yeah. It’s been really hard. You know, the medication does a lot of different things. You know, you don’t crave food as much, right? Like, your relationship to food really changes. So fried food is really hard to digest. If you eat too many sweets, you get really sick. And so there were certain things that happened while doing it where my body would have a really exaggerated reaction to something that I would have normally just eaten and been like, oh, my God, I’m being so bad. And it was like, no, you’re being real bad, girl. Like, stop eating this (laughter). You know?
And so that did force me to eat fresher foods and more vegetables and more fruit, and I was craving – like, I always wanted something crunchy, so I, like, wanted crunchy salads and things like that. And that did actually have an impact on my behavior, even coming off the medication. And without it, I can tell how I feel when I’m eating well or I decide to indulge, which I do. I’m human. I love food. I’m…
SUMMERS: Same.
MUKHOPADHYAY: …You know. You know? And I’m the child of immigrants. We have delicious food. Like, you know, I eat rice, like, all of these things, but really figuring out how to kind of balance that. And what my doctor had originally said about increased mobility was true. I had gotten to a point where, for me and for my body, the size of my body was impacting my mobility in very subtle ways, but they were painful, and as I get older, I was feeling knee pain and ankle pain. And as I started to move more, I mean, really, all I did was I started walking. Like, I started going on these, like, 5 to 7-mile hikes and walks.
And that mobility really changed my outlook. It changed my mental health. It changed my body. And so, even as I’m, you know, gaining back some of the weight, I’ve been – I’ve managed to maintain some of the lifestyle changes. And I think that that’s, like, a really key piece of this that we don’t talk about as much, which is, you know, how can this actually be used strategically to support people that do want to take better care of themselves?
SUMMERS: You’ve been open about this. You’ve written multiple times about your experience on Mounjaro and since then. What has that experience been like for you?
MUKHOPADHYAY: It’s been really hard (laughter). It took me, like, two months to write this piece, and I think part of it is it is very hard to color within the lines that have been drawn for us in this conversation, right? It’s either that you completely support it, you want to take it, it’s a great medical intervention. We should all want to be thin, right? That’s the dominant narrative. But then the counternarrative is also that, like, we accept our bodies as we are and, as I write about in the piece, a lot of pressure, you know, within the community to say that, like, any move towards weight loss is perpetuating, you know, this idea that thinness is the ultimate ideal. And so, you know, part of what I wanted to – I was like, this is messy.
I don’t even have all the answers, but I just know that the way that I am navigating this as somebody who is a feminist, someone who is committed to body positivity, but also somebody who was facing some serious health-related concerns that I wanted to address and get ahead of – I could not be alone in this experience. And so, yeah, it’s been challenging. But it’s been overwhelmingly positive in terms of the outreach that I’ve gotten and how many people have shared their own personal stories.
I mean, my DMs are paragraphs and paragraphs of, like, heartbreaking, you know, gutting stories of people going to the doctor, the experiences that they’ve had or you know, mobility issues or just so many different experiences that people have had, or even celebrities have reached out to me and said, you know, I was feeling really judgmental about these drugs, and, like, this really helped me understand, like, you know, how I should really be thinking about it. So it’s been good.
SUMMERS: Samhita Mukhopadhyay is a contributing writer with New York Magazine. Her latest article in The Cut is, “So Was Body Positivity ‘All A Big Lie’?” Thank you so much.
MUKHOPADHYAY: Thank you so much.
SUMMERS: This episode was produced by Marc Rivers with audio engineering by Neil Tevault. It was edited by Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.
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SUMMERS: It’s CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. I’m Juana Summers.
