The Ozempic Obsession with Jia Tolentino (ARCHIVE EPISODE) [VIDEO]

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Speaker 2 Hey, what's going on, WhatNow listeners happy new year to you and yours from everyone here at the what now team i hope the new year is already looking up for you we've got so many great episodes planned for you in 2025 but today because the team is taking some time off some much deserved time off we decided to bring you an episode that we loved probably one of our favorite episodes from the season the episode about ozempic you know weight loss our culture's obsession with diet and physical appearance i mean we got as much feedback about this episode as any episode we've done so far far.

Speaker 2 So, for now, take a listen. And once again, Happy New Year.

Speaker 2 I'm not a scientist, and none of this is actual advice. Please take everything.
Imagine I'm an idiot who has stumbled into your village. Now you can listen to me.

Speaker 2 This is What Now

Speaker 2 with Trevor Noah.

Speaker 2 Christiana, nice to see you in person. Good to see you.
This is so much fun, friend. I haven't seen you in so like this.

Speaker 1 I know. In the flesh.
We used to do this every day. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Remember? Yeah. We used to make a show every day.
Every single day of our lives.

Speaker 2 I was like, I loved it. You liked it so much you quit and left us.

Speaker 2 Oh, man.

Speaker 2 I'm excited to have this conversation today because

Speaker 2 I mean, I'm excited for all conversations, but like this conversation is one that I don't even think we'll be able to complete today, which I think all good conversations are, strangely enough.

Speaker 2 And this one in particular intrigues me because everybody's talking about Ozempic, right?

Speaker 2 And we're not talking about Ozempic, the product today. I think that's going to be important for everyone to understand.

Speaker 2 We're just going to use that as a name for, you know, these weight loss drugs because it's Ozempic, Monjaro, Zepp bound, Wego V, you name name it.

Speaker 2 The point is we're talking about inject,

Speaker 2 lose weight, apparently feel great. This is the, that's my catchphrase, by the way, if they want to buy it from me.

Speaker 2 I'm available, Eli Lilly. I'm available and Novo Dorsk Dorsk.

Speaker 2 I never know how to say their name. Yeah, I can't say that.
But yeah,

Speaker 2 I feel like we were at an interesting inflection point in society where

Speaker 2 There was a point when this would have just been would have been shunned completely. Do you know what I mean? People would be like, like, this is trash.

Speaker 1 You're cheating. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then now it's slowly, we're like, you know, it's like Republican, Democrat. It's like 50-50 now.

Speaker 2 Basically, I'm almost like, hmm. Yeah.
Where do you stand on this?

Speaker 1 Oh, my God, Trevor. You can't ask me that at the beginning of the thing.

Speaker 2 That's exactly where you start at the beginning.

Speaker 1 I am pro-choice when it comes to Zempic.

Speaker 2 Oh, I like this. I am pro-choice.

Speaker 1 I'm pro-choice.

Speaker 2 That's what I am. Yeah.
So you have no moral judgment or opinion on it?

Speaker 1 No. I have seen friends and family members on the drug and see how it seen how it's changed their life.

Speaker 2 Okay. And so this is what I'd love to know.
Changed their lives in what way?

Speaker 1 Beyond the weight, they seem more comfortable in their body. Some of them had like back and knee issues.
You know, some people, it was just like they were struggling.

Speaker 1 Some people was like, it's kind of regulated their appetite. They're drinking less.
So when you see it from that perspective, it's been like, oh, wow.

Speaker 1 So I'm pro the choice, but I'm not pro the societal pressure that I think some people feel to take.

Speaker 2 Okay. Okay.
Okay. Well, let's bring in our special guest today.

Speaker 2 I wanted to bring in a writer, a cultural critic, and somebody who I think has some of the most informed and then fantastic personal opinions on this topic because she has written about it.

Speaker 2 You know her work probably from the New Yorker if you read. If you don't read, then maybe you don't know her.
And this will will be your introduction to her. Gia Tolentino, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 3 Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 Are you kidding me? Thank you for joining us. I'm going to apologize in advance for all the ignorance I'm going to bring to this conversation, but I feel like it's my purpose.

Speaker 2 As my mother used to say when I was young, be of service.

Speaker 2 Be of service. So if I'm surrounded by two brilliant, smart people, I have to now balance the conversation the other way around.
I think you heard the question I asked Christiana.

Speaker 2 So let's start from your personal, just like purely personal, no scientific, no nothing point of view.

Speaker 2 Where do you stand when it comes to these Ozempic type drugs?

Speaker 3 I think I think about Ozempic the way I think about a lot of cultural phenomena, which is I have a lot of thoughts about it at a sort of macro level.

Speaker 3 And then in terms of anyone's individual use or not use of it, other than I have a group chat where my friends sometimes send pictures of celebrities and to like to make fun of the fact that I never know who it is because everyone looks so different.

Speaker 2 But yeah, I mean,

Speaker 3 I'm pro-choice too, you know? Like,

Speaker 3 it's none of my damn business what anyone's doing with their own body.

Speaker 2 You know, it's interesting you bring up the thing about celebrities because like I've noticed now, there's a, there's a, you know, we talk about the shame game and the blame.

Speaker 2 There's like this, there's this game now where people see someone and they're like, oh, that's Ozempic. Oh, that's Ozempic.

Speaker 2 I've noticed with me, depending on like how someone takes a picture of me, someone will be like, you want Ozempic? I've never lost weight. But then sometimes I go, like, it seems like it's become,

Speaker 2 in a way, it's almost become a bit of a slur or like an insult. It's like, oh, I see you're on Ozempic.
Ah, you're one of them. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Trump is the only one that you really need to, because the Republican party is on Ozempic. Everyone calling him

Speaker 1 Ozempic Trump. They're calling him Ozempic Trump.

Speaker 2 Donald Trump on Ozempic.

Speaker 1 Allegedly. Please, MAGA, don't come for me, please.
Allegedly.

Speaker 2 Wow. He looks different.

Speaker 1 I believe it.

Speaker 2 Damn. I can see him now.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 3 I, you know, this I do have thoughts on, you know, I think that one of the things that our whole fascination with Ozempic is based on is, and it's interesting, you know, Christian, I wonder if you have thoughts with little kids, right?

Speaker 3 Part of beauty is thinness as it's taught to you from a really early age, like fatness, queerness, darkness, all of these things are like coded as signs of deviance.

Speaker 3 Like you, you learn as a really young child in Disney movies, in anything, like beauty is really coded as morality. And there's this Protestant work ethic thing, right?

Speaker 3 It's something that you should achieve through hard and punitive work and discipline, right? And when people use Ozempic, it's like, you cheated. You skipped the hard work part, you know?

Speaker 3 And so you got the thing we demanded of you, but now we find this a vaguely immoral thinness.

Speaker 2 Like you worked hard to achieve the right thing.

Speaker 2 Okay,

Speaker 2 I hear what you're saying. It's funny because I don't know how it was for you growing up, but so I've had an interesting journey with weight and how I perceive it and fatness, etc.

Speaker 2 Because I grew up in South Africa. Genuinely growing up, this is such a weird thing to try and explain to people.
In South Africa, you did not get made as much fun of if you were fat.

Speaker 2 Like, so like a fat person, you'd just be like, I mean, I don't even remember if we had that many names, but I remember all the ones for skinny people were Sticksmanzanza.

Speaker 2 That was my favorite one.

Speaker 2 Sticks Manzanza.

Speaker 2 Skinny Manili.

Speaker 2 There were all these names where it was just like you're a twig, you're thin. And it was a sign there of

Speaker 2 a lack of having.

Speaker 2 If you got married and you didn't gain weight, people would say that your marriage is not going well.

Speaker 2 Literally, they'd be like, is your wife not treating you well? Ah, man,

Speaker 2 look at you. If I would come home.

Speaker 2 from the States and like many times I would I come back from America and I gain weight and so whenever I go home people were like ah you're looking good man you're looking good America's treating you well.

Speaker 2 You're looking Trevor Norman. You're looking good.
Look at your cheeks. You're looking good.
And then, and, and, and so, where I grew up, fatness was considered like sort of a choice.

Speaker 2 And then being skinny was like, oh, your life is not going well and you're not making the right choices. For sure.
So it's interesting how it flips, you know, and I'm sure it's time as well.

Speaker 3 But in both cases, it's about wealth, right? I mean,

Speaker 3 in both cases,

Speaker 3 like the thing that is valued is always the thing that's correlated with wealth.

Speaker 3 And I feel like that's been the case you look through art history right the the fuller figures are valued at a time when it's you know right yeah

Speaker 1 signifying plenty and now it's signifying you know i got a trainer i gotta cook i gotta you know i mean it's funny that you mention the childhood stuff that it brings up because recently it was approved for children oh it was yeah

Speaker 1 and there are parents who are making the decision to i don't know about that i mean trevor that's your instinct it's like very visceral you're like giving it to kids.

Speaker 2 But I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why.
I do not think that these types of drugs should be approved for children.

Speaker 2 I personally believe that there are still a whole host of things that you can do to get that child.

Speaker 2 Like, if you're giving them this drug, I'm assuming it's because their weight is really detrimental to their health. Otherwise, it's weird.

Speaker 2 Like, you're just trying to make like a sexy kid or something. That's weird.

Speaker 1 It's so crazy, but I meet mothers, a lot of older girls who are like preteens and teenagers, and they'll show you pictures of their daughter and be like, oh, but this one needs to lose weight.

Speaker 1 You know, like mothers, it's so encoded in our culture that there are mothers out there and fathers out there.

Speaker 1 You need to lose weight. I mean, most people's relationship with food don't come from themselves.
They often come from their parents and their families.

Speaker 3 It's so interesting that all of this concern about what creates health for kids always comes down to food and weight. Right.
And it's like, there's so much other stuff. It's like, it's housing policy.

Speaker 3 It's like, it's, it's food stamp policy right it's all of these things and it's like funding for recess and you know and and for like physical activities and for and for all these things because you know there are there are levers you can pull to change your body certainly during childhood and that you know like it's it's not to say that lifestyle and the what you eat doesn't affect it but you know there are i talk to doctors that are you know they're the patients are their kids are in food deserts and they have nobody that can take them outside and they it's not safe to be outside where there are so they they are just kind of sitting in a room you know all day because of you know this myriad of structural factors and so the the only lever to pull for these complicating conditions is a drug like this and this is everywhere in the world but america in particular is very very good at treating the symptoms and not the cause yeah like very very very very good yeah you know what i mean like like america will find

Speaker 2 yeah america will find a lot of money to like imprison homeless people but then won't find ways to stop people from becoming homeless. Yeah, for sure.
You know what I mean? America.

Speaker 2 Would you enrich the private prisoners? Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 So, how would we?

Speaker 2 So, this feels like one of those situations again where it's like we are going to now approve a drug for children, but not ask ourselves why these children would need that drug in the first place.

Speaker 2 Because I don't know, was Nigeria the same?

Speaker 2 What was weight like in Nigeria? It's really interesting.

Speaker 1 There is this cultural

Speaker 1 the body that's idealized is quite hard to get. So, it's like big hips, tiny waist, and big boobs, and a big bum, which is pretty impossible to get, right?

Speaker 1 Most people don't have it naturally, and you're not probably going to have that after you have kids.

Speaker 1 I was always considered a bit too skinny. Like, my grandma was like, I remember she was saying to me once, she was crying, and my mum was like, why are you crying?

Speaker 1 She was just like, she calls me by the name Amma. She was just like, who's going to marry Amma? She's got bones.

Speaker 1 You know, you know, if you actually go to West Africa in particular, you see a lot of body diversity.

Speaker 1 So you see like really tall women, really muscular women and like in nigeria i think the most the biggest indicator about how bodies naturally are is that does your tribe have a fattening room which is like before a woman gets married she has to go to a room instead of fattening room they call it a fattening room where you have to become fat because the girls are just naturally quite muscular especially in like in the southeast quite muscular and live you know what i mean So you know what that means.

Speaker 1 Fatness is supposed to be good, a sign of fertility. But then again.

Speaker 2 But how long do you stay in the room?

Speaker 1 Till you get fat.

Speaker 2 I love this. Yeah, oh, I don't know.
I don't know about that. Oh, wait, okay, depends on how they're making you fat.
Is it like

Speaker 2 fargo?

Speaker 1 They're giving you yams and thick, thick food, carbohydrates, basically, and lots of meat to make you bigger.

Speaker 2 They're not like force-feeding you, you're just eating.

Speaker 1 I mean, the girls didn't want to get fat or get married, so it was kind of

Speaker 2 all right. Like, once again, a fun Christiana story.
I'm sorry, guys. Ends with a pressure.
It gets dark, it always gets dark.

Speaker 2 Well, I want to know, Gia, like, when did you, when and why did you start writing about Ozempe?

Speaker 2 Because you were one of the first people writing about this, you know, before it became the wave, before it became the trend. I remember there was a moment pre-Ozempic, it just wasn't a thing.

Speaker 2 And then there were whispers. Yeah.
And then all of a sudden you heard Elon Musk was on it. And you're like, wait, what's happening here? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Well, I think of, I kind of think of the Kardashians as, you know, the sort of weather vein for what the winds of sort of capital

Speaker 3 and, you know, like deeply punitive, technologically based beauty standards you know that you can literally see written upon their bodies what women all across the country are going to then do you know in this really kind of amazing terrifying way and so you know i i think i it was it was like that no one had ever heard of it and then you know i started to hear about there was this shot that was intended for treating um

Speaker 3 chronic conditions caused by type two diabetes that women in holly like you know some women in hollywood were taking and their bodies were suddenly visibly changing.

Speaker 3 And it was interesting to me to begin with because,

Speaker 3 you know, like I grew up in, you know, the 90s, the early 2000s in

Speaker 3 sort of very conservative Houston, Texas, like deep within this hegemonic, like white dominated, the age of sort of the only people that are beautiful are like Paris Hilton, you know, and Britney Spears.

Speaker 3 And that was the body prescribed. And then we had the sort of Obama era, you know, grand democratization of culture, which included,

Speaker 3 you know, people started to have open dialogue about how you could be healthy at every size, which you can, right? And that all sorts of bodies are beautiful.

Speaker 3 And I always felt a little skeptical of the sort of dove ad body positivity thing for reasons we can get into later. But I thought, okay, finally, like we have reached a new era.

Speaker 3 Maybe it will unlock the sort of hold that white diet culture has had on America since the 20s, basically. And then this happened, and it was like, oh, oh, no.

Speaker 2 Oh, no, we're swinging.

Speaker 3 I mean, that was my initial interest. I was like, I thought we had already changed, that we were going to stay on this train of, of,

Speaker 3 you know, openness. And

Speaker 3 I don't know. And, and, and the sharp swing back

Speaker 3 and what that meant for the way people talked and thought about beauty, I thought was extremely interesting. And then so I just started tracking it.
So here's the thing.

Speaker 2 I, I wonder, though, do you, do you think that utopia can ever exist?

Speaker 2 And,

Speaker 2 you know, because I mean, like, I don't know, sometimes I'm a little simple in this thinking in that I go, we're still animals and animals also judge each other based on some physical aspect

Speaker 2 and we're no different.

Speaker 2 I just think what happens to us that's particularly different is there are tastemakers that exist in different spheres who sort of like pull the levers to decide like how we define where the, you know, the Overton window of beauty actually exists and where the one of health is.

Speaker 2 Do you think that our conversations these days lie in beauty or do they lie in health? Or is it people using health to masquerade their views on what they think beautiful is? Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think it's like the latter, right?

Speaker 1 And I think even if we were in this utopia where we accepted everyone's bodies, like I think The Economist did a piece about talking about the fact that like women's salaries are pegged to what they weigh.

Speaker 1 Yes. And if you learn, if you lose a certain amount of weight, your salary goes up.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So it's just like the market forces for whatever reason, we know the reasons, reward being skinny.

Speaker 2 And by the way, did you see the opposite is true for men?

Speaker 1 Interesting.

Speaker 2 The more a woman gains in weight, the more her salary goes down. And with men, the bigger they get, like the rounder.
I guess it's like because you look like King Richard or those vibes.

Speaker 2 You're just like

Speaker 2 Henry. Yeah, yeah, it's like those vibes.
Like,

Speaker 2 to all my subjects, the more like bulbous you become, your money actually, like, people don't penalize you at all. They're just like, yeah, this dude knows what he's talking about.

Speaker 2 He ate a pig that had an apple in it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and I think for women, it's always going to be you are judged that connection between morality

Speaker 1 and beauty and health. I think people just collapse it into one, they don't see them as different things, even if they use a language like, Don't you want to be healthy?

Speaker 1 Right, you know, when that, but they're saying to someone, don't you want to lose weight? And I think it's going to be harder for women to escape that, unfortunately.

Speaker 2 So, okay, let me ask this question now. Um,

Speaker 2 is there a moral way for people to engage in conversations about weight, weight loss, health, and how it pertains to people? Like, Gia, you know, you've done a lot of research in this, Christiana.

Speaker 2 I know you've talked about this for years, but like, where do you think we find

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 2 sweet spot?

Speaker 3 I think it exists. And I think probably the people that are the best at it are fat people.

Speaker 3 You know, I think that there are a lot of people that have been, that have spent, you know, that it's been like this cultural discursive work in the last 15 years to establish a whole vocabulary for how we could be talking about these things, right?

Speaker 3 And it's incredibly difficult in reporting this piece, even and in talking to people. Like, I think that the fear of fat and the bias against it is, it would come out quite casually.

Speaker 3 I'm sure it's built into me in some way, you know, in the way that I think about it. But I think that there is a way to get some basic facts on the table, right?

Speaker 3 That BMI is based on, you know, like BMI is like a racist, you kind of eugenicist standard and, and like, and, and there can be serious conditions that correlate with obesity, but that doesn't mean that, you know, obesity or

Speaker 3 excess weight is in itself

Speaker 3 harmful, you know, and so much of this is really arguably down to physician bias as well, right? Like there are, there are OBGINs that won't treat women over a certain BMI.

Speaker 3 There's so many, so many, like statistically doctors self-report, you know, beliefs about patients that are quote unquote overweight or obese. And, you know, they, they, they treat them differently.

Speaker 3 They underdiagnose, they undertreat. They attribute all health problems to you need to lose weight in ways that are never sort of suspected about people of different sizes.

Speaker 2 And, you know, there's like, yeah, I think there was a story I read. It might have been one of your stories, actually, where there was a woman who was struggling to breathe.
Yeah. And blood.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 That was like, oh, you're like, your lungs are simply fat.

Speaker 2 You know, she's just dying. You know, like, yeah, and she actually had, did she have lung cancer? Blood clots, I think.
Oh, she had blood clots. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 But I think, you know, you mostly find the healthy way of talking about it in people who have had to advocate for themselves against all of these things for a long time.

Speaker 3 I also think fundamentally, probably the healthiest way to talk about health is to kind of set weight aside altogether, right? And talk about other metrics like

Speaker 2 VO2Max. And

Speaker 3 yeah, I don't know what that means.

Speaker 2 No, no, no, really. No, I hear VO2 Max is the gold standard.
That's actually, they say VO2.

Speaker 2 So VO2 Max is your body's ability to withdraw or to extract oxygen from every breath. There you go.
I love that. Apparently, that's it.

Speaker 3 There are so many other metrics to talk about health that have nothing to do with weight.

Speaker 3 And probably that would be the healthiest way of talking about weight is having it be just sort of an incidental byproduct of all these other lifestyle factors.

Speaker 2 We're going to continue this conversation right after this short break.

Speaker 2 Let's talk a little bit about the drugs themselves, like the actual way that the drugs work.

Speaker 2 I was lucky. I had a conversation with the CEO of Eli Lilly and some of the scientists who worked there because I wanted to understand what is this thing.

Speaker 2 I'll break it down. And G, I know you're the expert, so please jump in.

Speaker 2 A few decades ago, there was a scientist who discovered that there was a, essentially a hormone that was released into your body that told your body you were full, right?

Speaker 2 And they wanted to study what this, this, this thing was, GLP-1, they called it, because they never called it easy things like Patrick, which they should, because then it would help us.

Speaker 2 If scientists were just like, we're going to call this Patrick, then we all know what Patrick is.

Speaker 2 But anyway, scientists found GLP-1, this is something that makes your body feel full, makes you feel satisfied, I think is a more important word. And they wanted to study it, but they couldn't.

Speaker 2 They're like, all right, how do we figure it out? They found a lizard. They always find a lizard.
And they're like, we can reproduce this.

Speaker 2 You fast forward, they realize that this drug can help people who have diabetes. Then they're like, okay, this is for diabetes.
This is for diabetes.

Speaker 2 But then someone goes, wait a minute, it's not just diabetes. People are losing weight.

Speaker 2 And they're like, huh. And then, like, all drug companies,

Speaker 2 the same way they did with Viagra, they were like, we're trying to help people with their blood pressure. And they're like, have you noticed that all these people are getting erections?

Speaker 2 And they're like, everyone, stop.

Speaker 2 We don't give a shit about blood pressure. We've just struck gold.
But what I found most fascinating about this is to what you said, Christiana, when we started the conversation.

Speaker 2 If we have the conversation about weight loss, I feel like we're missing something bigger that we're discovering right now.

Speaker 2 And these drugs are helping us understand something about self-control and how it has been robbed from us.

Speaker 2 Because people take Ozempic, Zeppa, whatever, right? The first thing they do is they don't eat as much. We knew that would happen.
Okay, fine, it's working.

Speaker 2 But then people go, oh, I don't drink alcohol the same way anymore.

Speaker 2 I don't watch as much TV. I don't use social media.
I'm not even on my phone as much. I don't gamble as much.
And you're just like, wait, wait, wait, wait, what is.

Speaker 1 Compulsive shopping.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I heard about that. Someone stopped them compulsive.
And so, you know, I almost wonder if, in discovering this solution,

Speaker 2 have we now exposed all of the poisonous problems that society has unleashed upon itself? Does this make sense?

Speaker 1 Yeah, we don't judge gambling or drinking or online shopping in the same way that we do weight. So that was what the person was fixated on.

Speaker 1 I got on Ozempic to lose weight, but they discovered all these other parts of themselves. All they were awakened to, like, I actually spend too much money.

Speaker 1 Like a woman said she was going through Target and she wasn't putting things in her class

Speaker 1 in the same way. And I found that so interesting.
We don't see like excessive shopping the same way we see excessive eating.

Speaker 1 And I think that's the most interesting part of the drug.

Speaker 3 Well, this is taking it in a slightly different direction.

Speaker 3 But what this part of the conversation makes me think of and what I think this thing that was in the back of my head when I was writing and thinking about it was that

Speaker 3 like one of the reasons that I,

Speaker 3 you know, on a macro level, find it really sad when people who are extremely thin

Speaker 3 take this to become much thinner, right? Is that like what it is to be human, like we're made up of our appetites, right? Like that, that's one of the defining

Speaker 3 things of what we seek and what we literally physically hunger for. And,

Speaker 3 you know, like our desire for pleasure and relief and excitement, right?

Speaker 3 These things are important and they

Speaker 3 make us human.

Speaker 3 And back to the conversation about kids, it's like so much of the rise of obesity in children seems directly related to the fact that people are so afraid of fat children in the first place, right?

Speaker 3 Like that children are taught to fear their appetites and fear the snack drawer. Like the idea of just kind of natural pleasure in our appetites seems to be the thing that

Speaker 3 might possibly lead to the healthiest relationship with them in all cases, right? To not need to like indulge and have guilty pleasures and sort of secret little things, right? That

Speaker 3 if these appetites, if we could sort of have a treat them normally in all respects, and like it seems like American consumerist culture just blows all of these kind of compulsions sky high because of this fear we have of appetite.

Speaker 1 Well, honestly,

Speaker 1 I think my slight pushback to that is like being a Brit in America is that it's actually very hard to have a regulated relationship with the pleasure of food when there are very few pleasures.

Speaker 1 So food is like a very obvious

Speaker 2 pleasure.

Speaker 1 Like it's, I think that's okay if you're like in a country where it's like, there's a park down the road. I can play tennis for free.

Speaker 1 Like it's just like you get get pleasure and that humanity is everyone

Speaker 1 but in this country i feel like food and alcohol are the only cheap accessible pleasures but like if if we were in a more balanced i guess culture then i'd be like sure enjoy the pleasure of food because then you can regulate that pleasure because you're getting pleasure everywhere but people don't get touched

Speaker 3 they don't have community they don't have any other pleasures but that's what i mean right if we could if we could like honor our need like like what we were saying out outside time and safety yeah and like the whole labor market being organized differently so that it's not like you have to squeeze all your pleasure into like two-minute micro installments, like, you know, six times a day, right?

Speaker 3 Like, I think we would have a very different relationship to compulsion and appetite and pleasure and relief if, you know, if American society were set up in such a way that would like honor people as like beings that need these things.

Speaker 1 Also, this isn't unique to America. I don't want to, because like England, like

Speaker 2 pretty tough right now.

Speaker 2 So we're seeing similarities. I think too.
I think something we also have to consider is this. One of my biggest beefs is that

Speaker 2 corporations have found ways to create messaging that tricks people into making the corporation's problem their problem.

Speaker 2 In the same way, oil companies scammed us into thinking that recycling was our job.

Speaker 2 Right? And they make it about individuals.

Speaker 2 You need to recycle. Yeah.
No, no, no, no. Let me tell you something.
Recycling is not our job.

Speaker 2 The job is to not make the thing in the first place. We take for granted how many times and we ignore how many times we get tricked into believing that it's us.

Speaker 2 And I think the same thing has happened with food and indulgence in America and in the rest of the world. Yeah.
Is where, you know, to your point, Gia, is like.

Speaker 2 People have been made to feel guilty about their appetites and about their indulgence and about their, and then we create this world where we now fight with each other.

Speaker 2 Why are you letting your kid eat so much? Well, I can't, well, it's my child. It's their appetite.
I don't want to stop. I I don't want to make them guilty.

Speaker 2 And no one seems to be asking, not no one, but like, I think sometimes we forget to ask the question:

Speaker 2 like, wait, why is it impossible for your child to stop eating those chips?

Speaker 2 If we live in a society where we blame people for the addiction catching them, but don't ask who is imposing the addiction upon them, then I feel like we're playing a game of whack-a-mole telling everybody in society that they need to be better when, in fact, we're ignoring the fact that you know, yeah, for sure, these ozempic-type drugs, as much as we're focusing on them as the conversation, I feel like they've exposed this underbelly of addiction that we've all allowed.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think, Trevor, what you're getting at is that we've always thought all of these things are just a question of willpower. Yes.

Speaker 2 And it's never about responsibility.

Speaker 1 And G, I think your piece touches on that as well. It's not about

Speaker 1 no, it's not willpower. Like the system is basically working against all of us, and some of us are able to resist better than others.

Speaker 2 And resist some of it, by the way.

Speaker 1 Some of it, but I think it's caught all of us in a way.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I feel like that's the whole story of the entire conversation around weight, right? Like, it's who is making the money off of them and who's making the money off of the cure.

Speaker 2 Always follow the money. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
So let's talk a little bit about,

Speaker 2 you know, if we move beyond appetites per se and we come back to the world of these drugs, what they're doing and how people are

Speaker 2 using them.

Speaker 2 Have we now entered

Speaker 2 a new world, you know, Gia, to what you were saying,

Speaker 2 where

Speaker 2 this will become another instance

Speaker 2 of the haves being able to escape another ill in society?

Speaker 2 It's almost like we've put a price

Speaker 2 on people being able to evade this thing, this net of addiction that has been cast upon everybody.

Speaker 1 Also, I think, Gia, just to hop in, it's like we're talking about Azempic so much because people lose weight and we think losing weight is the better thing to do.

Speaker 1 And now it means that there will be a class of people that can do that and not have to go through the cruelty of fat phobia.

Speaker 1 And it's going to be the people with money that can perhaps escape that everyday cruelty. And then the people that don't can't do that.

Speaker 3 Well, yeah, I think one of the things that does seem maybe meaningfully new about this is that the beauty standards of the last decade seem to me to be this really

Speaker 3 kind of insidious arms race between like digital enhancement and then technological alteration to match digital enhancement.

Speaker 3 And then you digitally enhance more and then use technology to further sort of shape, inject, discipline, whatever. Like the thing that really scares me is

Speaker 3 the idea that an unaltered body or face is aberrant or deviant and sort of unacceptable.

Speaker 3 That's the thing that I find

Speaker 3 really like existentially terrifying.

Speaker 2 Damn. Yeah.
It's almost like in those,

Speaker 2 you know, when you watch those cyberpunk future movies where like people are judged because they don't have cybernetics now, you know, so everyone has, yeah, and that's that's an interesting way you've just put it now.

Speaker 2 It becomes judgment because, like, well, why aren't you making yourself better? Yeah.

Speaker 3 And I think plenty of people who are fat and healthy and perfectly happy in their lives are now hit with this sort of unbearable wave of like, well, why don't you just get the little jab?

Speaker 2 You know, because now it seems like you're actively making a choice to not be healthy or

Speaker 3 why wouldn't you, why wouldn't you conform, right?

Speaker 2 Like, it's so here's a question I do have. I'm going to throw a few things at you.
And everybody

Speaker 2 trigger warnings. Everybody, trigger warning, everybody.
Gia, trigger warning. And feel free to plead the fifth.
No one needs to speak. I don't wish to bring anybody down with me.
All right.

Speaker 2 I'm the pilot who will tell you to jump out of the plane before I take it on this dive. So

Speaker 2 let's get messy with a few of these moments and these conversations.

Speaker 2 Sometimes it feels, and I'm speaking for people, and because I generally don't think I struggle with this as much myself, but I do know that there's a little inconsistency or what people perceive as a as a flipping of a narrative when a celebrity let's just deal with celebrities celebrities will come out they go i love my body my body's great they build fans based on that body and that body being great fans are like we love your body your body's great we're all with you and then the celebrity pops out like after six months they've just disappeared and they come back and they've got a completely new body and then they're like hey i've got a new body yeah and then people are like yo what the wait what what just happened here and they're like no i love this body because actually I wasn't healthy and I wasn't happy and my knees were hurting me, whatever it might be.

Speaker 2 And then they get a level of backlash from the people that were body positive who are now sort of anti-body positive because now their body's gone a different way.

Speaker 2 Does this make sense? And it almost feels like...

Speaker 2 In the same way, everything else in society has become like a cult.

Speaker 2 It's like it sometimes feels like we are not working towards a place where people can be the way they wish to be, we're working to a place where people can be the way we wish them to be, and then if they deviate from that, we kick them out.

Speaker 2 You get what I'm saying? Like, look at how many people were angry at Adele for losing weight. Yeah, angry at her, Jennifer Hudson, angry at her, for sure.
Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 You know, not to speak on behalf of fat people or fat women at all, but I think there's

Speaker 1 so little imagery of women that had perhaps Adele's old body or Jennifer Hudson's old body.

Speaker 1 There was something very comforting for people to see a fat woman who's thriving and have this incredible career. Right.

Speaker 1 And there's like this disappointment or resentment when that celebrity then changes their body. I speculate some of that.

Speaker 3 I mean, I mentioned earlier, like the old dove, every, you know, everyone is beautiful, like

Speaker 3 the beginning of the sort of corporatized body positivity movement.

Speaker 3 It seemed dangerous to me immediately because it seemed like, no, like actually beauty is this sort of arbitrary assignation based on people's conformity to market forces.

Speaker 3 It's not like it's not like a spiritual moral good. Like it was this whole thing that it was really important to say that everyone was beautiful, as if to say everyone is good.

Speaker 3 And it was like, no, no, no, everyone is good and worthy, but perhaps that has nothing to do with beauty.

Speaker 2 Oh, wow. That's fascinating.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 And it seemed to me like perhaps it is just much more important to say like everyone is worthy and beauty is not as important as we ever thought it was at all like it's just this thing right to dumb that down in a way it's it's almost like what you're saying is it's body neutrality yeah i like that as a that's i never i never thought of that actually it just seemed like oh this is a thing that people are gonna make a lot of money off of

Speaker 3 now we're trying to get to we're still trying to get to beauty okay hold on there's this click hole article from 2016 that the headline is this plus size model was inspiring but then she lost a hundred pounds which was also inspiring even though she was already perfect before, but she's also perfect now.

Speaker 2 You know what it was like?

Speaker 3 Like it's, it's like this very like, like, and it's like, this is the sort of circular hamstring wheel that you get into when it's like, everyone's beautiful, but also health is good, but also we love you no matter what you do, but also some choices are socially weighted and it's just so

Speaker 2 here.

Speaker 1 I just wanted to throw Tressie in.

Speaker 2 Oh, Tressie McMillan Cotton.

Speaker 1 Brilliant sociologist. She talks about structural ugliness, right? This the thing about like how beauty is like this structural concept.

Speaker 1 and like even though you can feel beautiful on an individual level structurally if you are dark skinned fat and

Speaker 1 ideas you're seen as ugly and I think what a Zempic is getting at is just like it's this cure to that structural ugliness of weight. That's interesting.

Speaker 1 And that's what a lot of thinkers are trying to resist that like why have we made being bigger structurally ugly?

Speaker 2 So you know, I So there's two things. Okay.

Speaker 2 First of all, I think we shouldn't forget, and this is why it's hard to have these conversations in society, society, I believe, because people weaponize certain parts of conversations and use it as a cudgel against others.

Speaker 2 Let's take it to like athletes. LeBron James had to lose a lot of weight, or he decided rather.
LeBron James decided to lose a lot of weight.

Speaker 2 LeBron said, if I want my knees to take the pounding that they're going to take, me jumping, it is easier if I carry less weight. It is easier for me to run across a court if I carry less weight.

Speaker 2 I think the thing we shouldn't take for granted is, is like, I almost wish there was a world where we could all go into good, uh, good faith conversation land, yeah, you know, where we can talk about health, but it not be used against somebody else in like a shitty way.

Speaker 2 Yeah, a doctor can say, Hey, you do want to try and work out as much as possible because it's good for your heart, but then someone's not going to point at someone and go, You see, you piece of trash, yeah.

Speaker 2 But it is important for people to know, like, the lifting of weights, just like just like resistance training has been shown to be one of the most important factors in longevity.

Speaker 2 And not, I'm not saying living long, I'm saying living as a functional person for as long as possible so that's that's like the one okay so I agree with you but I think and Gia you'll probably understand what I say here as a woman in those spaces sometimes it is so hard to just disconnect the pursuit of longevity and health for the pursuit of a body that especially in a city like LA New York or London I'm with you completely people won't disapprove trust me with men it's not exactly the same yeah but we also and I I'm not saying it's exactly the same because we don't get judged the same but I know as guys

Speaker 2 there's also a difficulty. You're standing in the gym and you're going, I'm here to look healthy, but also, man, I'm so far from marble body.
Yeah,

Speaker 2 I'm so far from it.

Speaker 1 You know, I don't know like Chris Evans.

Speaker 2 I'm so far from America.

Speaker 3 I think back to the LeBron thing, though, it's like, you know, he has very specific needs for physical performance for his body, but that, that, that many of, but that. all of us do not.

Speaker 3 But I think it's an interesting thing to bring up because the question is, how does he need to live in and or change his body to do the things that he wants to do with it right even that as a way that people would talk even that would be just a really nice it would be amazing right about

Speaker 3 like it's like and for people like it's if weight was incidental to that it was like can you do the things in your life i love that you want to do you know do you feel like i love that i actually love that and it's like that is probably the foundation that you know that that could be the start that's amazing whatever we need to healthier we need to get that somewhere yeah because i feel like that could make a meaningful difference it's it's It's like, hey, can you do?

Speaker 2 Can you lift your overhead luggage in the plane comfortably? Can you lift your child comfortably? Can you move a couch? But it's only the things you do.

Speaker 2 Can you live your life the way you would like to?

Speaker 3 Yeah, and like, do you feel good? Do you feel good in your body, right? I think that's what I was thinking about, the appetite and pleasure thing, right? Like, if that was valued, right?

Speaker 3 Like, people just feeling good in the body.

Speaker 2 Oh, man. I really love that idea.

Speaker 3 Like, it seems extremely health conducive, right?

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 We need to get D'Angelo to come back and do a remix. And this one will be like, how do you feel?

Speaker 2 That's what it will be.

Speaker 2 Don't go anywhere because we got more. What now after this?

Speaker 2 You know what? I also realize as we're speaking about this,

Speaker 2 whether we like to admit it or not, humans are generally judgmental, right? We hold and cast judgments upon other people

Speaker 2 because it either makes us feel like we are doing well or it makes us, whatever it is, there's reasons we do it, right?

Speaker 2 I think we shouldn't ever take for granted the fact that fatness is one of the few things that somebody can see on you that tells them something about you in some way, shape, or form.

Speaker 2 You don't know what it's telling you, but you can see it. Yeah.
But like, think of it this way: if somebody has a gambling problem or likes gambling or whichever way you want to put it,

Speaker 2 that person, you can't tell.

Speaker 2 If somebody drinks a lot of alcohol, is addicted to alcohol or likes alcohol or drinks occasionally, you can't tell. Do you get what I'm saying? Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I think what's strange about fatness is it is one of the few things where people from far can just assume many things about you because they can like sort of see it from the outside.

Speaker 1 And not just make judgments, but express those judgments.

Speaker 1 But I think with fat people, we're very prescriptive.

Speaker 2 We are.

Speaker 1 Like, and sometimes it's the well, and we see that body as like, this is a sign of

Speaker 1 like, are you sure you want to eat that?

Speaker 1 Is a thing said to people who are fat, or like, I saw a TikTok, a woman was like, being fat and exercising is people on the street going, Go you, I'm so proud of you.

Speaker 2 And she's like, I'm just on a ride.

Speaker 1 Like, why do you feel this need to like encourage me?

Speaker 1 The people trying to be nice, but like, what's under that is like, you're someone that should be pitied and needs my encouragement in a way that's kind of infantilizing you.

Speaker 1 And I think that's the thing about fat phobia. We just feel like we can say anything to people who are fat.

Speaker 1 And it's often really cruel.

Speaker 2 That's actually a really good point.

Speaker 3 Well, there was a, there was a thing, there's like Harvard does this implicit bias study.

Speaker 3 And I think I mentioned it in that piece that I think it was, I'm going to get the dates wildly wrong, but it was maybe sort of from a point in the mid-2000s to a point in recent years, they analyzed sort of 10 vectors of bias about age, about skin color, about like gender, about

Speaker 3 these various things. Every single implicit and explicit expression of bias went down in that sort of like Obama era period, except for bias against weight.

Speaker 3 And that went up, I believe, both implicit and explicit.

Speaker 2 So everything went down except. I'm not surprised by that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, everything went down.

Speaker 3 Everything went down of the 10 things tested in this particular Harvard study. That's interesting.

Speaker 2 Well, that's really fascinating. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Look,

Speaker 2 I think, you know, as we said in the beginning of this conversation,

Speaker 2 this feels like

Speaker 2 an inflection point and a moment where the conversations we have going forward are going to continuously evolve because now there's been a new agent that's been introduced.

Speaker 2 I feel like we're at that point now with these Ozempic type drugs is they're now making us ask questions. that go far beyond the questions that we've sort of been comfortable living in for a while.

Speaker 2 And those questions are: what is health? Are we trying to promote health or are we trying to promote our moral superiority upon other human beings?

Speaker 2 Are we trying to, you know, run around shaming people because it makes us feel better? Why do we even feel, as you said, Christiana, that we have the right to do these things?

Speaker 2 And then with children, what does it mean for the future? Because again, the big thing I think we also have to include in this is

Speaker 2 we don't know what the very long-term effects of these drugs are because they're so new.

Speaker 2 I mean, if you think about mass adoption for a long period of time for people who haven't had insulin issues, for people who don't have diabetes, we don't know.

Speaker 2 And I think that's something people always have to be careful of: is realizing that we don't know. What we do know is how we can treat people today.
And so, Gia, what now from your perspective?

Speaker 2 I'll break it down in two parts.

Speaker 2 What do you think we're going to see now?

Speaker 2 And then what would you hope we would see now

Speaker 2 that maybe we wouldn't and maybe we will?

Speaker 3 What I thought originally about the best case sort of

Speaker 3 cultural effect of this, you know, the fact that this technology exists could be is that we could kind of remove the moral valences from every part of this conversation possible, right?

Speaker 3 That we could understand that metabolism and the hormonal preset that leads your body to be a certain weight and that all of it is much more sort of arbitrary and

Speaker 3 kind of morally neutral. And like you said, Christiana, like a sign of just all of the other things environmentally that you're swimming in.

Speaker 3 Like, I think that is the best thing that something like Ozempic can do is just lead people to the understanding that if you can radically change people's relationship to fullness by one injection, then maybe it wasn't something that everyone should have been judging people.

Speaker 3 You know, then very clearly it's not something that

Speaker 3 deserved decades of moral, a century, like a full century of moral condemnation by like the entire beauty industry, right?

Speaker 3 Of course, it doesn't seem to have led there at all. And I think,

Speaker 3 I mean, I have no real predictions other than the fact that, you know, one thing about GLP-1 drugs is you,

Speaker 3 in the vast majority of cases, as soon as you stop taking them, you're

Speaker 3 the... your body reverts to how it was before.
So the weight loss lasts as long as you take them basically.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 2 you gain more fat.

Speaker 3 You gain it back. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So this is because this is something we've learned about bodies. I think from the starvation experiments back in the day, the only ones we really have on like weight is.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 3 Dieting slows your metabolism. And that's one of the reasons that fat phobia leads to obesity very directly.

Speaker 3 And so, you know,

Speaker 3 I think we have yet to see the wave of what happens when people come off of this and reckon with the sort of exit plan if there is one or the sort of lifetime use for the for the for for the sort of like beauty use case, you know, and I don't know what that'll look like.

Speaker 3 I don't know how people will talk about it or how open it'll be. Um,

Speaker 3 it still doesn't seem like this is something that people talk about frankly when it comes to their own use of it. And I don't know, it'll be interesting to see if and when and how people ever do.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's that's that's a really um, I think, a very honest way to look at like all the potential outcomes for what it could or might or should be as we move forward.

Speaker 2 I will throw in like a random prediction. Okay.
I think, and this is a crazy thing to say, I think at some point the American government is going to shut these drugs down

Speaker 2 because these drugs, if they get to like a point where they are extremely effective, because right now they don't work for some people.

Speaker 2 But when they get to the point where like these drugs are just nailing it, and I mean just nailing it, I think they might get shut down. Interesting.

Speaker 2 Because what is America if people are not addicted to social media, people are not addicted to fast food, people are not addicted to junk food?

Speaker 2 A lot of America has been built on corporations getting people addicted, not giving them something, but getting them addicted to things.

Speaker 2 And I wonder if, and I know it's like almost conspiracy theory level, but I go like, I wonder if at some point these corporations and these CEOs are going to phone people in Congress and go like, hey, this one drug

Speaker 2 is shutting down a lot of how American companies make their money. You need to shut it down.
And I don't think that that's impossible, to be honest with you.

Speaker 1 I agree with you. I have a working theory.
I think that, like,

Speaker 1 as there is this kind of like anti-wokeness thing happening and people are swinging to the right, I think the obsession with thinness is also an expression of that.

Speaker 1 And as long as we're kind of in this kind of right-wingish, populist, conservative era, people are going to long to be thin.

Speaker 1 Because I think that when people talk about, when people like use woke as a slur, they'll mention people, they'll mention movements, they'll control

Speaker 1 mention DEI, they'll mention body positivity, they'll mention transness, all of these things that for a brief moment for about

Speaker 1 two to seven years were coming into mainstream, almost acceptance. They weren't quite acceptance, they were coming into it.

Speaker 1 And I think that this thin, white, blonde, ideal Barbie movie, guys, it's not a coincidence.

Speaker 1 It's not a coincidence that, like, Mattel made an ad and we were like, oh, we should get an Oscar. But it's just like

Speaker 1 all of that being ascendant and like the Kardashians, if you say, rejecting like the curvy body, as long as that's the case, people are going to want to be thin. Damn.
And I think...

Speaker 3 And the Kardashians remembering their white men. Women

Speaker 1 and being white and even dating white men, something's happening.

Speaker 1 And then, like, until it swings, and people are like, we don't mind Kirby bodies, we don't mind brown skin and full lips, and people, the politics feel different.

Speaker 1 I think the thinness in the Ozimpic is here to stay.

Speaker 2 Well, as they say at the end of every great epic movie that's about to begin, really,

Speaker 2 end of part one.

Speaker 2 Gia, thank you very much for taking the time. Thank you for joining us, and I hope we see you again.

Speaker 1 Thank you, Gia.

Speaker 3 Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Spotify Studios in partnership with Day Zero Productions. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin and Jodi Avigan.

Speaker 2 Our senior producer is Jess Hackle. Irina Henke and Claire Slaughter are our producers.
Music, Mixing and Mastering by Hannes Brown. Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker 2 Join me next Thursday for another episode of What Now.