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In a world where slimness is marketed as success and bodies are battlegrounds, we may have finally stumbled upon our so-called miracle drug or at least, that’s the narrative being pushed by pharmaceutical giants, Hollywood influencers, and tech tycoons. Ozempic, a drug originally developed to manage type 2 diabetes, has been glamorised and rebranded into a sleek new avatar, the ultimate weight-loss shortcut. Its pharmacological siblings such as Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound trail closely behind, each promising to shrink waistlines and expand confidence.
But behind the glossy magazine covers, red carpet whispers, and billion-dollar endorsements lies a more sobering reality is one of medicalisation, fatphobia, capitalism, and the moral values we continue to attach to bodies and weight. In selling thinness as science, we’ve bought into a dangerous illusion.
A Medical Breakthrough, Misused
There’s no denying that semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy represents a real medical advancement. By mimicking the gut hormone GLP-1, it slows digestion and reduces appetite, offering a critical intervention for people grappling with type 2 diabetes and certain obesity-related conditions. For many, these drugs have been life-altering, even life-saving.
But increasingly, this drug originally meant to manage a chronic illness has found its way into private clinics and luxury wellness routines. Healthy individuals, often already within or near medically normal weight ranges, are being prescribed semaglutide for cosmetic weight loss. What was designed to regulate blood sugar is now regulating public perception of beauty, control, and health.
The $100 Billion Body: When Capitalism Meets Weight Loss
The global market for weight loss drugs is projected to exceed $100 billion by 2030, and Big Pharma is not just profiting from scientific innovation it’s profiting from our collective discomfort with fatness. In an age where identity and desirability are increasingly visual commodities, weight loss is no longer just a goal it’s a currency. And semaglutide has become the latest form of capital in a body-obsessed economy.
But here’s the catch: what looks like a solution is also a symptom. We’ve turned a complex socio-cultural phenomenon of body image into a pharmacological fix. With the stroke of a prescription pad, often given without rigorous medical need, we’ve medicalised insecurity. The syringe has replaced the selfie filter. We are not healing a condition; we are numbing a collective neurosis.
Who Gets Left Behind?
The global fascination with Ozempic obscures an uncomfortable truth: this isn’t a health revolution, it’s a class divide. In the United States, surging demand has led to widespread shortages, leaving actual diabetic patients scrambling for access. In India, where semaglutide costs upwards of ₹15,000–₹25,000 per month, the drug is available only to the ultra-privileged. Meanwhile, a dangerous parallel market of counterfeit and unregulated knock-offs thrives, preying on aspiration and desperation.
The drug is also being positioned as the answer to the so-called obesity epidemic without acknowledging the socioeconomic and racial dimensions of that term. The poorest communities, disproportionately affected by systemic inequalities in nutrition, healthcare, and mobility, are being sidelined in favour of those who can afford aesthetic control. The result is a biomedical caste system, where access to thinness and the health halo attached to it is determined not by need, but by wealth.
A Lifetime Lease on Thinness
Weight loss through semaglutide is not permanent. Once you stop the drug, the pounds return often with vengeance. What this creates is not a cure, but a lifetime subscription to body management. Health, or at least its visual proxy, becomes something you rent month by month. You don’t own your wellness you lease it, if you can afford the price tag.
This raises serious ethical concerns. Have we simply replaced one form of dependency (on diet culture, on gym routines, on calorie-counting apps) with another, more profitable one? If the only way to maintain a body that society deems worthy is through a $1,000-a-month injection, what does that say about the nature of health in the 21st century?
More Than Just Side Effects
Let’s not overlook the medical trade-offs. Semaglutide can cause nausea, vomiting, fatigue, muscle loss, and even increase the risk of thyroid tumours and gallbladder disease. While these risks may be weighed against the benefits for someone with diabetes or severe obesity, they become murkier when the primary goal is to shed ten vanity kilos before a vacation.
But perhaps the most insidious side effect isn’t physical. It’s psychological. If we continue to send the message overtly or subtly that worthiness is needle-deep and measured by the number on a scale, then we’re not medicating a medical issue. We’re medicating shame.
Health Is Not a One-Size-Fits-All Fantasy
The real danger lies in the mythology surrounding these drugs. Semaglutide has not only been medicalised it has been moralised. We equate weight loss with discipline, thinness with goodness, fatness with failure. Now, that morality has a molecular formula. We celebrate people who lose weight on Ozempic as success stories, and we ignore the systems fashion industries, healthcare biases, social media algorithms that made them feel unworthy to begin with.
Fatphobia is not a medical condition. It is a cultural construct, and it cannot be injected away. If we are truly invested in building a healthier, more equitable world, we must move beyond pharmaceutical quick-fixes and instead confront the deeper, systemic inequalities that shape body politics.
The Real Cure Is Structural
True health equity does not look like a thinner population. It looks like universal access to nutritious food, compassionate healthcare, accurate public health information, and freedom from stigma regardless of size. It looks like dismantling the industries that profit from our self-loathing and building systems that honour bodily diversity, dignity, and autonomy.
Until then, the so-called weight loss drug revolution may be little more than a capitalist illusion thin on ethics, heavy on profit.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.