What the GLP-1 era means for body positivity
A cultural shift toward downsizing fueled by a GLP-1 drug boom and slimming celebrities is destabilizing for people trying to achieve acceptance, mental health experts and body positivity advocates tell Axios. Why it matters: Still, the body positivity movement, advocates say, is an ongoing fight that won't shrink with the trends. "Our brains must see evidence of body diversity," says Zoë Bisbing,
"Our brains must see evidence of body diversity," says Zoë Bisbing, a psychotherapist and the founder of Body-Positive Therapy NYC. If we don't, "our brains clock our bodies as wrong."
But now, the pendulum seems to be swinging back toward media highlighting ultra-thinness, aided by access to GLP-1s and spotlighting celebrities who have slimmed down quickly.
"It hurts my heart because of all the work that I personally poured in, as well as all my friends and my colleagues and people who came before me," she said. "They're kind of disappearing."
She emphasizes, "Real people's bodies aren't a trend."
She continued, "We fought the system [with body positivity], and now we need to come back and do that again."
Systemic barriers to weight management are nothing new, he notes: "Health has been a privilege for those who are socioeconomically affluent for a very long time."
Samhita Mukhopadhyay, a body positivity proponent and contributing writer at The Cut, told NPR that "our obsession with celebrities taking them has created an environment where we are not actually evaluating these drugs for their real value."
The drugs also carry side effects, including nausea, headaches and fatigue. In rare cases, there is an increased risk of GI disorders such as pancreatitis.
Health experts have argued the language we use to describe these drugs should frame them as a tool to treat a chronic disease rather than a vanity product. It's part of a broader growing awareness that the language clinicians use language to describe their patients can impact health.
But the visibility of the weight-loss craze, she says, "brings up all this comparison and second-guessing of our bodies, especially for people who were starting to maybe feel OK ... Now they're questioning, should I be doing more? Should I be smaller?"
