This article contains references to disordered eating and eating disorders.
Welcome to the latest instalment of Body Talk, our monthly column written by journalist, author, and GLAMOUR's Website Director, Ali Pantony. Ali has written extensively about her own journey with body acceptance and eating disorders for GLAMOUR, but still feels there’s so much to be said on this topic. Despite the millions of #bodypositive TikToks, the societal pressures we face as women have never really gone away. In her monthly column, Ali explores the journey to accepting our bodies in a society that has always taught us otherwise.
You'd be forgiven for thinking that unrealistic body ideals were beginning to slowly die. For a while there, it seemed as though we were edging slowly – hobbling, in languid desperation – towards some vague semblance of cultural body acceptance. Often, this amounted to your favourite fast-fashion brand employing a few fat models, or your local gym frantically ripping up their ‘get beach body ready!’ posters (only to replace them with something mildly less offensive, like ‘feel your best self in time for summer, you fat bitch!’).
Look, it was a step in the right direction. One that countless women like me – for whom growing up in the thin-obsessed ‘90s and early ‘00s totally obliterated our body image and left many of us with eating disorders – desperately needed. People were calling out the diet industry and fatphobic discourse; influencers were influencing about accepting our stretch marks and cellulite; and people wrote actual bestsellers about how to improve our body image. We told our grans to stop food-shaming us around the Christmas dinner table. We wore the non-high-rise bikini on holiday, stomach jiggles be damned. We just bought the jeans in a bigger size. We finally started to believe, after all those years being utterly terrified of the word ‘fat’, that it was OK to gain weight.
And then Ozempic happened. Almost as quick as sticking 0.5g of semaglutide in your thigh, the heroin chic hellscape was back. The normalisation (and mass usage) of a drug that suppresses your appetite and makes you shed pounds like Leonardo DiCaprio sheds girlfriends reignited something we had long been told: that being fat is the worst thing you can be. That being skinny is a status symbol. Headlines decorated it with a term often reserved for cancer medications – a ‘miracle drug’; not for its antidiabetic properties, but for its ability to make you lose weight.
Suddenly, Y2K nostalgia – with its impossibly thin, white poster girls – was back, and plus-size representation was out. You only have to look at recent runways to see how noticeably fewer curve models are walking this season, and the blatant regression to size-zero ideals.
I was prescribed Wegovy and Orlistat online with few checks.
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To all the people who will inevitably pipe up with, ‘Why even give this air time?’, I say: Because this shit matters. For my previous column, I went undercover to obtain a prescription for semaglutide and fat-dissolving diet pills orlistat. I was prescribed both by lying about my weight and my history of eating disorders and disordered eating. It was easy. Anyone with half-a-dozen brain cells and a basic understanding of photo editing apps could do it – which is why thousands of women and girls across the UK are doing it. I spoke to doctors who had seen a sharp rise in young women suffering life-threatening complications from taking these drugs – none of whom were obese – including inflammation of the pancreas gland and alterations in blood salt levels. It’s only a matter of time before someone dies.
Like Lottie Moss almost did. On Thursday 12th September, the 26-year-old model revealed she was rushed to hospital after taking a high dosage of Ozempic. “A few months ago, I was not feeling happy about my weight,” the younger sister of Kate Moss said on her podcast, revealing she obtained Ozempic through a friend.
“It was from a doctor, but it wasn’t like you go into a doctor’s office and he prescribes it for you, takes your blood pressure, and takes tests,” she said. Lottie increased her dose because of her desire to lose weight, and ended up in the emergency room. She suffered a seizure caused by dehydration. Lottie describes her “face clenching up,” that her “whole body was tense”, and that it “was honestly one of the scariest things that has ever happened to me in my life.” She adds that she would “rather die any day than take it again.”
Lottie Moss dropped from 60kg to 53kg in just two weeks.
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The same day, it was announced that Kourtney Kardashian's “wellness” brand, Lemme, is launching a weight loss supplement. The appetite and weight management capsules are, the brand claims, an “all-natural” form of GLP-1, the hormone found in drugs like Ozempic. Despite being called ‘GLP-1 Daily’, the capsules do not actually contain any GLP-1 (note to self: Google ‘marketing and advertising guidelines’) but instead use lemon, saffron and orange extracts to mimic its affects.
This from a woman who, in the months since welcoming her fourth child, seemed to somewhat dismantle the Kardashians' long-held position of toxic body ideal perpetrators. She shared messages of postpartum body positivity and called out body-shaming comments on social media. “I've finally reached my goal weight of don't fucking care. My body is the least interesting thing about me,” read one quote she shared. Three months later, and Lemme stands to make a boat-load of cash – the supplements will cost $72 (£55) for one month's supply – profiting from women's body insecurities.
We know that women's bodies are not one-size-fits-all. So many factors – from genetics to economic privilege – dictate how fat or thin we are. Most of us know this. So why do so few of us accept it? It won't happen until body acceptance becomes a societal shift, rather than a trend. Until we all feel comfortable just buying the damn jeans in a bigger size. Until we finally stop being terrified of the word ‘fat’.
For more from GLAMOUR’s Website Director and Body Talk columnist, Ali Pantony, follow her on Instagram @alipantony.
For advice or information on the topics mentioned in this article, contact Beat, the UK’s leading eating disorder charity, on 0808 801 0677.
