Ozempic vs body positivity: The big 'skinny jab' debate 

Ozempic is being hailed as a breakthrough drug for obesity, but could its success undermine the body positivity movement?

Ozempic Insulin injection pen for diabetics and weight loss.

Finally, a magic pill. A solution to obesity which doesn’t tell people to just eat less and move more — because if this worked, obesity wouldn’t exist. Hence the hype around Ozempic, and its stablemates Wegovy and Mounjaro. The satiety-altering drug has been described by Cambridge neuroscientist Clemence Blouet as “the first safe anti-obesity drug” and by genetic epidemiologist Tim Spector as “the holy grail".

Ozempic’s active ingredient, the satiety hormone semaglutide, has been used by diabetics since 2005 for managing blood sugar levels, with little ill effects — and the drug is also thought to reduce the risk of stroke and heart attack by 20%. But for now, it’s all about weight loss - at last, a successful treatment for those suffering from a chronic progressive relapsing disease culturally associated with greed and laziness, bias and discrimination, and a ton of internalised shame. (Little focus has been given to the main underlying cause — the industrialisation-for-profit of our food chain, resulting in the cheap, ultra-processed, addictive and highly calorific food-like substances filling our shelves and swelling and poisoning our bodies, which makes Ozempic a manmade solution to a manmade problem, but here we are.)