It sounds like the plot of a work of science fiction: the elite have become secretly addicted to a mad scientist’s cure for achieving effortless thinness, a kind of eternal beauty and youth accessible at the click of a button, when the rest of the population must fight every day to remain attractive. The latest Netflix series that’s a hit? Stephen King’s new book? No, because this story is very real.
It all starts in 2022, when observers begin to raise their eyebrows when they realize that many stars are rapidly disappearing. Usually endowed with generous curves, Kim Kardashian showed up at the Met Gala in New York faxed in a narrow dress that Marilyn Monroe once wore. Same change in silhouette for Adele and Oprah Winfrey. Clearly, something was going on behind the scenes. “I arrived in town and every time I saw old friends, they were half as small,” says contemporary artist Joel Mesler in an article in The Cutthen back in New York after settling in the countryside. Very quickly, the rumor began to circulate that a miracle product was behind this epidemic of shrunken waists. Hollywood’s worst-kept secret, as some call it, is Ozempic, a drug normally prescribed for patients suffering from diabetes.
What is Ozempic?
Launched in 2017 by the Danish company Novo Nordisk, the treatment is an analogue of GLP-1 allowing blood sugar to be regulated, but whose corollary effect is to reduce the body mass of patients by up to 15%, by intervening on the brain’s reward circuit: the feeling of fullness comes sooner, so the urge to overeat magically disappears. It is also easy to administer yourself, consisting of a pen allowing you to inject a weekly dose.
The stars pointed out deny using this holy grail of pharmacies, but too late, once the name of the messiah is revealed, social networks become a sounding board. The hashtag #ozempic has hundreds of thousands of publications on TikTok. A crowd of people concerned about their weight are jumping on the medication, even though it requires medical prescription. In the United States, one in eight people have used it to lose weight. “Novo Nordisk has also made available a version of the Ozempic dosed differently and dedicated to patients wishing to lose body mass, the Wegovy, but this is only accessible on medical advice and by fulfilling certain conditions, informs Tinh-Hai Collet, associate physician in the Department of Endocrinology, Diabetology and Nutrition at HUG. To save time, many rush to the Ozempic instead, sometimes in a roundabout way.”
But what had to happen happened: shortage. Suffering from regular stock shortages due to the enormous demand motivated by the desire to lose weight easily – a 3,300% increase in prescriptions in five years… – the treatment, the best on the market at the moment for patients – those suffering from type 2 diabetes, are lacking for those who rely on it to survive.
“At the HUG, access to Ozempic is strictly reserved for diabetic patients,” points out Tinh-Hai Collet, “but elsewhere, some doctors are more open-minded. I know that lists of practitioners inclined to easily prescribe it are circulating under the radar.”
Birth of the “Ozempic” face
Beyond the health problem it causes, the race for Ozempic bears witness to a real cultural revolution in progress, the end of what, ultimately, was perhaps only hypocrisy: the era of body positive. After the years 2010 and the beginning of 2020 marked by a benevolent discourse towards extra pounds, calling for us to love ourselves as we are and to detach ourselves from the gaze of others, everything is collapsing, with thinness not being no longer an unattainable goal. Many stars or influencers who gave these speeches of self-acceptance began to follow the same path, losing weight one after the other and sporting what American doctors have nicknamed the “Ozempic face”, this face emaciated with loose skin due to rapid weight loss.
Even more spectacular consequence, extreme thinness seems to have once again become the ideal of supreme beauty in our societies. The last Fashion Weeks have thus seen the return of legions of starving and pale models on the catwalks, signs of the creeping ozempization of fashion. The so-called plus size models, briefly celebrated, are on the verge of disappearing. A t-shirt inscribed with a very eloquent “I love Ozempic” and worn by a top model during the Namilia brand fashion show even appeared as a standard of this wave of neo-twig.
A twig that becomes more refined without even the impression of depriving yourself or starving yourself, far from the food galleys of the catwalks of yesteryear. This lack of effort to lose weight – apart from a shot every week – is also transforming society. In the United States, sales of books devoted to diet, nutrition and fitness fell by 15% between 2022 and 2024, according to the newspaper The Economista record poor performance for the publishing world. Already, many imagine themselves letting go of the chore of sport.
Side effects and consequences
Proof that we have moved for good into the era of slimming assisted by an injector pen, several other pharmaceutical labs are preparing their own anti-obesity miracle drug, lured by the immense market that has just appeared. However, gray areas remain. Ozempic or Wegovy can cause side effects, “transit disorders, abdominal pain, vomiting, but also sometimes pancreatitis, a rare but serious complication,” explains Tinh-Hai Collet.
And we still do not know the possible harmful effects of administering this treatment in the long term when we are in good health. Because yes, to become slim and stay that way, you have to inject this product every week. to eternal life“the effects disappear as soon as the treatment is stopped if it is not accompanied by appropriate monitoring,” confirms the doctor. As in Cinderella, the carriage becomes a pumpkin again at the end of the spell.
Above all, the so-called Ozempic miracle does not remove the reasons why we have a pathological relationship with our weight in our Western world: anxiety and stress, a sedentary lifestyle, overconsumption… Not to mention the morbid injunctions to lose weight. If we suddenly discovered devastating side effects of this product, this era of slimming on command could only be an ephemeral fairy tale… With the obligation, once again, to roll up our sleeves to fight against our modern demons.
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