A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - The Celebrity Ozempidemic (with Aubrey Gordon)

00:00:00.000 hello hello and welcome back to a bit fruity i'm matt bernstein and i am so happy that you're here

00:00:12.800 this is going to be thorny this is going to be a thorny one is that how i want to start it do i

00:00:17.780 want to scare people away not really oh zempic the word that brings up a million and one feelings

00:00:25.900 from everybody at this point. It means something bigger than itself. It's like the way that Google

00:00:31.940 is to search and Kleenex is to tissue. Ozempic means a whole number of things and it's weight

00:00:38.560 loss, it's inequality, it's celebrity culture, it's capitalism. Today I just want to jump into

00:00:46.900 the deep end and see how we fare. Quick content warning before we get into today's episode. Today

00:00:54.360 we're going to be talking about obviously ozempic we're going to be talking about weight loss drugs

00:00:58.800 and body image and diet culture and eating disorders and if that is something that for

00:01:04.620 whatever reason is not safe for you to listen to an hour of content about totally understand

00:01:10.360 take care of yourself we will see you at the next one there is nobody who i would rather talk about

00:01:16.300 this with than the one and only aubrey gordon who is here with us today i am so so excited

00:01:24.080 Aubrey is an author.

00:01:26.100 She has written two books.

00:01:27.320 One is called What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat.

00:01:30.880 And the other is You Just Need to Lose Weight and 19 Other Myths About Fat People.

00:01:35.880 She is very notably to me a podcaster at her show Maintenance Phase.

00:01:41.780 The critically acclaimed Maintenance Phase.

00:01:44.820 Maintenance Phase is a podcast that if you've never listened to before,

00:01:48.860 I am jealous of you because you can go and listen to all the episodes for the first time.

00:01:52.840 It's a podcast about, you know, debunking diet culture, wellness fads, and listening to Maintenance Phase, which I started doing a couple years ago, is really, and I have not told Aubrey this, but it's really, like, the reason that I wanted to make a podcast.

00:02:07.120 Oh, my God.

00:02:09.020 I didn't know that a podcast could be so well done.

00:02:13.180 And to me, Maintenance Phase continues to be, like, the North Star of this medium.

00:02:18.020 I'm so happy that you're here today.

00:02:19.260 I'm so delighted to be here and to be, like, lavished with praise. That was incredible. Thank you so much. And, uh, yeah, I'm, like, over the moon to be here.

00:02:31.620 Aubrey, today we are talking about, as I've mentioned, the drug and cultural phenomenon of Ozempic.

00:02:40.620 first and foremost when i say the word ozempic what first comes to mind to you on this afternoon

00:02:52.260 in june of 2024 i mean i would say less than coming to mind more coming to body is just like

00:02:58.620 full body clench the thing that comes to mind at this point i would say a lot of like internet

00:03:05.560 spats come to mind. A lot of sort of body surveillance comes to mind. There's a lot of

00:03:12.100 speculation about who is and is not on Ozempic and whether that is or is not a virtuous way to

00:03:18.700 lose weight. And I think more than anything else, Ozempic, like any sort of like, quote unquote,

00:03:25.680 miracle weight loss drug or quote unquote, miracle diet or whatever, any sort of weight loss method

00:03:31.600 just becomes a gigantic screen for all of us to project our assumptions and beliefs and judgments

00:03:38.900 onto. And I feel like that's the moment we're in right now is everyone's projecting hardcore and

00:03:44.360 we haven't stepped back enough to say, Oh, wait a minute. Some of this might be my stuff.

00:03:50.160 We know this is a thorny topic. I emailed Aubrey and I was like, I would like to do an episode

00:03:56.380 about ozempic and the celebrity ozempic discourse and the first thing that she responded to me was

00:04:02.460 I will do it with you but you have to know this will get a million and one reactions and you have

00:04:08.660 to be prepared for it I think that I am I also think that you know I was thinking about how this

00:04:14.360 podcast has come together and one of the first episodes that I did was about the politics of

00:04:20.620 taylor swift taylor swift is another person who not to compare directly taylor swift to ozempic

00:04:27.200 but like you mention taylor swift and it's just so charged and people similarly have a million

00:04:35.260 and one opinions and i was so scared of approaching the politics and feminism of taylor swift with any

00:04:42.860 sort of like firm point of view that i just did that episode it's the one episode that i regret

00:04:47.460 not not doing but doing in my opinion kind of a disservice because it is fascinating and I think

00:04:54.260 I was so scared of getting any sort of backlash about it that I just listening back to that 0.79

00:05:00.000 episode I was like damn this was such an interesting topic and I wish I had the balls at the time to

00:05:06.060 just like say how I felt about it and you know added something to the conversation and so that 0.95

00:05:10.880 is that's what we're going to try to do here I'm here for it I know you famously don't hold back

00:05:16.460 i have been known for saying a lot of things and sometimes more than i uh maybe would have been

00:05:24.680 well advised before we enter the the messiness of the celebrity discourse i feel we must establish

00:05:30.860 what is ozempic wagovi manjaro submaglutide i think everybody knows that these are like

00:05:37.680 code names for an injection that makes you lose weight but on like a basic scientific level

00:05:43.400 could you explain what is going on here? Ozempic is a brand name. It seems important to start out

00:05:49.040 with real basics. Ozempic is a brand name for one specific medication that is diagnosed for

00:05:54.900 people with type 2 diabetes. It was designed and first brought to market for people with type 2

00:06:02.040 to manage their blood sugar. And the findings around that initially were that for folks who

00:06:09.080 had diabetes and sort of high blood sugar that was resistant to other forms of medication and

00:06:14.840 treatment, this one actually really, really, really did the trick for folks. So when folks

00:06:20.880 talk about sort of a miracle drug on the diabetes front, they are not lying. It's a humongous

00:06:26.980 breakthrough in diabetes care. The active sort of ingredient in each of these are what are called

00:06:33.240 GLP-1s, glucagon-like peptide one, just to get real boring on the language real fast.

00:06:41.300 It's fine. We're going to be talking about the Kardashians soon,

00:06:43.640 but you have to sit tight for the science for one minute.

00:06:45.760 You have to hear me say glucagon. Yeah.

00:06:51.220 So there are a number of these. They're called GLP-1 agonists. Ozempic is one. Wegovi is the

00:06:57.660 version that's sold for weight loss uh on that one rebelsis monjaro victosa there are lots and

00:07:04.200 lots and lots of these but basically if you're hearing about an injection for weight loss it's

00:07:08.700 probably one of these glp1 agonists right essentially what they do um is uh they adjust

00:07:16.520 your hormones sorry let me take that again oh that's like the grinder notification sound

00:07:21.100 Is there really? Essentially what GLP-1s are doing is they are addressing a hormonal shift

00:07:30.480 for diabetic people, but also for people who are seeking to lose weight now that essentially

00:07:36.780 prompts your brain to think you are full earlier than it would have prior. It's a big shift in

00:07:44.040 weight loss. That weight loss, I think it's important to note, is a side effect of a treatment

00:07:47.860 that was designed for diabetes. I'm sure we'll get into that. But yeah, that's essentially what

00:07:54.980 they are. And the thing to know is that since WeGoV was introduced for weight loss and these

00:08:01.620 GLP ones were sort of beginning to be acknowledged as weight loss drugs, they have been pretty

00:08:06.940 consistently in shortage for people who have diabetes. So the rush of people who are excited

00:08:13.700 about weight loss led to selling out of WeGoV and the sort of on-label use versions of the drug.

00:08:20.300 And that started spilling into folks getting prescriptions off-label for Ozempic and for

00:08:25.240 the versions that are approved for diabetic people. It has been a big hullabaloo on a cultural

00:08:31.020 level, on a sort of care provision level, and on a celebrity level. Boy, oh boy, we get this like

00:08:38.740 perfect storm right of sort of making medications available the sort of excitement around a new

00:08:45.520 pharmaceutical and around the dream of becoming eat whatever you want and still stay thin right

00:08:52.180 it's like every 80s infomercial all over again right which this isn't even that this isn't

00:08:56.820 actually an eat whatever you want and continue to lose weight drug this is as you mentioned this is

00:09:01.240 a drug that makes you less hungry and i think the other thing is this is like a common misconception

00:09:05.480 that persists around Ozempic is that folks, I think, think that you can take it, get down to

00:09:11.260 your goal weight and then stop taking it and stay at that goal weight. Just to be really, really

00:09:16.280 clear, if you would like to sustain weight loss on any of these sort of injectables, that means

00:09:23.520 according to all the research we've got for pretty much everybody, that means taking them forever,

00:09:28.380 that when you stop taking these drugs, the weight comes back. And I think one of the other things

00:09:34.020 that has been very sort of front and center in this conversation is that they are medications

00:09:38.600 that are not without side effects, right? That for folks who take these medications,

00:09:43.320 the nausea, the vomiting, the sort of GI side effects can be really significant. That combined

00:09:49.660 with the cost can be real drivers for folks to drop off of these meds.

00:09:53.700 Okay. So I want to, let's just get into the fun stuff. We don't have to like,

00:09:57.220 we don't have to stay in science forever. That never did anybody any good.

00:10:02.520 when do we get to talk about kardashians exactly we all know why we're here

00:10:07.760 no aubrey you know i'm kidding

00:10:12.080 listen i'm here to talk about chloe kardashian i'm not done exercising my feelings about revenge 0.61

00:10:22.480 body so the boom of ozempic has yielded some pretty fucking wild claims conclusions advertising

00:10:31.100 discourse um and so one of the things that i was like all right it's podcast time for this topic 0.93

00:10:36.780 is i was scrolling fuck me i was scrolling on instagram and you know how sometimes like between

00:10:45.080 instagram stories you'll get ads i get this one from i guess a gay oriented men's health clinic 0.97

00:10:51.000 here in new york advertising ozempic and are you ready for this probably not but let's go

00:10:56.200 it's a rainbow pride flag in front of a picture of a shirtless torso with this man holding his

00:11:02.200 stomach weekly ozempic shots be your leanest for the parade half off ozempic per injection

00:11:09.120 during pride months gotta get that parade body

00:11:12.120 you know how in the community we're all talking about everyone's body at the parade yeah i'm like

00:11:20.840 god can we like can we just can we leave the parade alone basically so yes there's the there's

00:11:28.460 the pride discount for ozempic which i'm a 25 year old gay man i have struggled with my body image

00:11:36.500 and you know my relationship to all of these things for as long as i've been an adult and 0.53

00:11:41.020 even before that and this just felt like the newest and most bizarre iteration of like you're

00:11:47.140 making me think about something i don't want to think about happy pride month 90 injections i

00:11:52.680 would absolutely take the like postmates bottom friendly menu over if we're going for pride

00:11:58.540 promotions if if i knew two years ago when the postmates bottom friendly menu came out for pride

00:12:06.060 that two years later we'd have pride ozempic honey i would have never complained about the

00:12:11.000 the bottom. That's right. That makes me sad. And also feels like predictable. I read an article

00:12:21.300 for the show at one point, really surprisingly sort of fantastic reporting and analysis from

00:12:26.620 Christianity today. And it was about sort of this tendency in contemporary evangelical spaces to

00:12:33.160 have like, bod for God, or like, what would Jesus eat? Or any of the sort of like workout and diet

00:12:40.460 programs and the closing of this story was like does this have anything to do with theology or

00:12:46.260 your religious beliefs or is it just a workout that somebody slapped a jesus sticker on it really

00:12:51.640 seems like just a workout that somebody slapped a jesus sticker on and i feel that way about sort 0.58

00:12:56.640 of like queer promos for ozempic where i'm like yeah they're trying to sell it everywhere all the 0.56

00:13:02.660 time to everyone so just by the rules of probability sometimes it will show up with a 0.85

00:13:09.180 rainbow flag slapped on i hate that there are enough queer promos for ozempic that you have 0.76

00:13:13.980 a feeling about them if you're gonna if you're gonna advertise ozempic just leave the gaze out 0.98

00:13:22.760 of it please we didn't ask for this actually sorry a lot of us did whoops oh god damn it

00:13:29.640 oh the meat of the episode i feel like as in many issues especially in america where we just have 0.75

00:13:36.200 this fixation on celebrity because we don't have the royal family we have the kardashians i feel

00:13:41.540 celebrities become these like fictional characters that we project our anxieties and all of our

00:13:49.380 cultural tensions onto you know we're talking about lana del rey's body and we're talking about

00:13:54.400 oprah's body and we're talking about the chloe kardashian's body instead of talking about our

00:13:59.260 own and that's just one example but it's like we talk about the world and how we feel about it

00:14:03.920 through these like little chess pieces in hollywood never has that been more true than with

00:14:09.760 the issue of ozempic i feel really similarly about ozempic or about any sort of like miracle

00:14:15.540 weight loss quote-unquote method is it just becomes this giant screen for people to project

00:14:22.220 their conflicted feelings onto and their weird misunderstandings about weight loss onto and

00:14:28.740 their judgments about that people onto and their judgments about thin people onto right that it

00:14:33.420 just becomes like project fest 2024 is where it feels like we are right now um between the sort of

00:14:41.200 amount of projecting that happens through weight loss discourse and the amount of projecting that

00:14:45.160 happens through celebrity discourse it's a real situation we're in we're in a real little pressure

00:14:51.360 cooker over here i think a lot about the 2000s i mean that was such a heightened aggressive time

00:14:57.900 for like celebrity media culture

00:15:00.000 with the advent of like Perez Hilton

00:15:02.260 and the paparazzi and Britney Spears.

00:15:04.260 And like, I think all the time about how like

00:15:06.480 someone like Britney Spears' body

00:15:08.760 or Jessica Simpson's body in the mom jeans was discussed.

00:15:12.180 And it's, we look on that as a culture

00:15:14.240 with so much disdain now.

00:15:16.020 And we're also doing the exact same thing in real time 0.90

00:15:20.220 over and over again to like every woman. 1.00

00:15:22.500 It's Renee Zellweger getting hounded for her looks for years 1.00

00:15:25.980 and then allegedly getting plastic surgery

00:15:28.160 and now getting hounded for people's belief 0.94

00:15:31.360 that she got plastic surgery, right?

00:15:33.140 Like, it is the sort of colossal no-win

00:15:36.860 that, like, anybody who's not a gender-conforming cis dude gets.

00:15:41.800 And honestly, frankly, 0.99

00:15:44.340 plenty of gender-conforming cis dudes get that garbage too. 0.99

00:15:47.340 Even then, Travis Kelsey is getting body shamed. 0.99

00:15:50.760 I mean, if Taylor Swift's hot football player's

00:15:53.340 cis white dude boyfriend is getting body shamed,

00:15:55.240 what does that leave for the rest of us we're going to organize the following conversation

00:15:59.600 into a few different micro case studies with different celebrities and their experiences

00:16:06.060 with people discussing them and ozempic at great length i was like doing research for this episode

00:16:11.000 and there's like so many listicles about like everything every celebrity has said about ozempic

00:16:17.560 this is not going to be that like i don't care what every celebrity has said about ozempic 0.54

00:16:21.640 i read a couple of those in advance of this i was like oh shit i have not been paying attention to

00:16:28.100 the celebrity side of this so i should like look into the celebrity side of it and what came up

00:16:33.380 was like page after page after page of these listicles of just like gabrielle union being

00:16:38.120 like i don't take it and then sharon osborne being like i took it too much mark walberg being like

00:16:46.440 it's fine but get in the gym and you're like so everyone's just saying the thing that they always

00:16:51.100 say? Okay, got it. I'm glad Mark Wahlberg's position on Ozempic has been clarified. The

00:16:57.880 episode is over. Roll the credits. It would have been confusing. You would have been like, wait a

00:17:02.640 minute, does he think you should get in the gym or not? It is a pretty well understood and

00:17:08.620 unfortunate fact at this point that if you are using the internet, your data is going somewhere

00:17:13.440 that you are not aware of. That newsletter or discount opportunity that you signed up for with

00:17:18.220 your email honey your email was being sold to a hundred different companies when you did that

00:17:23.240 and that is why you are getting spam emails forever until you die but what if you could

00:17:28.240 get a friend who would go to all of those different companies and data brokers and ask

00:17:32.380 each of them to remove your information from their system which is something that you have

00:17:36.500 the right to do but if you tried to do it on your own would take like the rest of your life to

00:17:41.920 attempt what if there was a service that could do it for you i wish i had known about such a service

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00:17:58.560 United States of America. While I was in the market for said health insurance, some devious

00:18:02.960 company out there had my information and saw my web history and knew that I was looking for health

00:18:07.880 insurance. And they reached out to me and sold me scammy health insurance. There is a much longer

00:18:13.900 story there that i have considered making a whole episode about long story short i gave 500 of my

00:18:19.440 dollars that i will never get back to a homophobic christian health share ministry to this day i am

00:18:25.860 both embarrassed and angered about this but you know what could have prevented it if i had incogni

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00:18:51.340 of those data removal processes are going. It is shockingly easy to use in my experience. I just

00:18:56.460 signed up with my email and Incogni got to work on making sure that I do not fall for another health

00:19:02.200 insurance scam, which yes, maybe part of it was my fault, but part of it wasn't. At least that's what

00:19:08.120 I have to tell myself to not lose any more sleep over this one. Anyway, if you would like to try

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00:19:34.640 so just a couple months ago in april lana del rey headlined coachella she wore this like beautiful 1.00

00:19:44.220 sequin blue dress she entered on a motorcycle which was so fucking kind she she played this

00:19:50.700 like iconic greatest hits performance billy eilish had a cameo it went totally viral a million times 0.82

00:19:57.060 over she sounded great she looked beautiful almost all of the discourse around this performance was 0.98

00:20:02.160 about her weight. Lana Del Rey, like any woman who's been in the public eye for more than a few

00:20:08.160 years, which she has been for over a decade now, her body has changed a number of times. There is

00:20:14.980 always attention drawn to that and whatever. The point is, she came out at this performance and she

00:20:20.060 was thin. Thinner than she has been in previous years. Looked similar to how she did when she

00:20:25.400 came into the public when she was in her early 20s. Whatever. Who cares? A lot of people. There 1.00

00:20:30.740 were immediately all of these tweets which i don't know this probably was surprises nobody who's been

00:20:35.440 on the internet ever but there were immediately all these tweets who were like this is a this is

00:20:39.900 a quote from one particularly viral tweet lana is skinny again we are so back that's a normal

00:20:46.520 amount of pressure to put on the appearance of one person's body and there were also just a lot

00:20:51.660 of like a lot of commentary of like she looks great again you know she looks lana looks beautiful

00:20:56.900 again and it's like okay lana del rey has looked the same the whole time the one variable here

00:21:02.440 is her weight so it's like what are we talking about really yeah i mean the degree to which and

00:21:07.440 the readiness with which people tell on themselves around weight loss stuff is really through the

00:21:14.140 roof where you're like yeah there's one difference we can all see the one difference it's not this 0.98

00:21:20.120 is not sort of like you're not covering your ass the way that you think you might be covering your 0.93

00:21:24.280 the the conversation though immediately as with any celebrity weight loss over the last like two 0.97

00:21:31.200 years has been it immediately becomes like well is she or isn't she on ozempic and it becomes this

00:21:37.400 like really weird witch hunt that we've all seen if you're listening to this podcast you've seen

00:21:42.240 this play out in some way or another whether it's with friends in real life or on twitter or

00:21:46.600 instagram in the comments everybody's talking about is she on ozempic and as this discourse

00:21:52.100 is happening around her body for no reason lana del rey posts you know like a photo dump on 0.94

00:21:59.360 instagram as the kids say she posts a bunch of unrelated pictures and one of those pictures is

00:22:04.740 a selfie where she's wearing a sweatshirt and it has the dog pound logo on it dog pound is like

00:22:11.320 it's just a workout class basically it's like a chain of workout like luxury workout classes

00:22:16.320 the fact that she was wearing a sweatshirt with the workout class logo on it sparked discourse

00:22:21.540 of its own that then like people online and also like people writing articles like lana del rey

00:22:27.300 clarifies how she lost all that weight boy oh boy oh boy i want to send you a tweet i just opened

00:22:34.760 another thing that i thought was you and it's not it's an ad for flavored oxygen

00:22:39.060 not me but we could talk about that in the next episode it's apparently it's pink grapefruit

00:22:49.060 flavored i am looking at what appears to be an instagram post from lana del rey's instagram 0.97

00:22:55.300 account and her torso in a sweatshirt that says dog pound on it just an aggressively normal outfit

00:23:01.700 that anyone might throw on on any given day along with that picture there is a tweet that says 1.00

00:23:06.960 she's shutting down the ozempic allegations she said no bitch i did that and then there are three 0.53

00:23:14.400 flexing emojis yeah yeah and i'm tired what's what's what's your reaction to this well this 0.87

00:23:21.760 isn't a person shutting down anything it's a person wearing a shirt we're in this really weird

00:23:27.060 sort of moment where it feels like people are watching celebrities like instagram posts and

00:23:33.780 they're watching tabloid coverage like they're watching like i don't know what stranger things

00:23:40.140 And they're looking for like Easter eggs or something where they're like, someone must have planted something in here for me to find that will unlock the whole mystery.

00:23:49.060 And I'm like, no, no.

00:23:51.000 Lana Del Rey is a human person who hasn't answered a question because you haven't asked it of her.

00:23:57.800 Maybe if you had a direct conversation, you could get things sorted out. 0.99

00:24:02.160 And also don't have a fucking direct conversation. 1.00

00:24:06.100 Her body just is what it is. 1.00

00:24:08.440 Leave people alone. 1.00

00:24:09.500 this is an intense amount of pressure to put on one person's appearance outfit choices all of that

00:24:16.360 sort of stuff what do you make of this like congratulatory tone because the idea and i'm

00:24:21.300 sure you've seen this with like a bunch of celebrity ozempic discourse maybe is that there's

00:24:25.960 this like this idea of like beating the ozempic allegations because you did it the real way

00:24:31.000 yeah it's the same reason that the biggest loser became a big hit for such a long time

00:24:36.240 right which is you're literally beating me at my own outline i have oh no is it in your outline

00:24:41.720 it is in my no you aubrey you're so intuitive go go uh the distinguishing characteristic between

00:24:51.220 losing weight quote-unquote the right way and losing weight quote-unquote the wrong way

00:24:54.620 is just how much do people see you suffering yeah that's it that's literally the only

00:25:01.200 distinguishing characteristic and people get very resentful of the idea that anyone but particularly

00:25:08.940 fat people could become thin or could lose weight or frankly could not lose weight and could not

00:25:16.160 become thin and could do all of that without performing for thin people and that is like a

00:25:23.040 thing that people who are not fat are used to is being sort of the audience for a performance

00:25:28.560 from fatter people and thinner people alike about how our bodies came to be, about how much

00:25:36.060 suffering and work went into it. We wait for a bunch of beats around people's Protestant work 0.87

00:25:42.120 ethic. We wait for a bunch of beats around people's wearing a hair shirt and suffering 0.98

00:25:48.280 for their weight loss. And if that doesn't happen, we treat it like it doesn't count.

00:25:54.240 right? Because in our sort of cultural imagination, weight loss isn't a measure of what your body

00:26:01.760 looks like or how much it weighs. It's a measure of how tenacious are you? Is your work ethic what

00:26:08.640 we think it ought to be? All of that sort of stuff. We're constantly sort of heaping character

00:26:13.840 judgments onto just looking at someone else's body. And when we don't see that person ordering

00:26:21.360 salads apologizing for what they're eating constantly working out to the point of physical

00:26:27.500 exhaustion or collapse we assume that they have sort of skirted their responsibility to torture

00:26:33.400 themselves on some level for other folks benefit yeah i mean it's that's literally what i wrote 0.98

00:26:38.800 down so fuck me but it's like the moralizing of suffering itself it's the no pain no gain 0.97

00:26:46.100 mentality which yeah I've talked about it in like in different episodes of this podcast of like 1.00

00:26:51.660 queer people's anger towards other queer people about like having easier coming out processes

00:26:56.420 and whatever and you know in this case it's like well did you lose weight you know by suffering

00:27:01.200 for it or did you lose weight by an injection that your doctor gave you and it's just like

00:27:04.320 there's nothing inherently noble or moral about suffering it's just a bad thing that happens

00:27:11.400 Well, and also, listen, just to cast the cultural memory back a little bit, the discourse that we're having about Ozempic right now is almost indistinguishable from the discourse that we had around weight loss surgery and gastric sleeves and gastric bands in the sort of early to mid 2000s.

00:27:31.800 right? Star Jones, who was a personality on The View was hounded, hounded about how she

00:27:39.340 lost weight or whether or not she, I mean, she was like the cover of tabloids for like months

00:27:45.040 and months and months of people just speculating on like, did she have surgery or did she quote 0.52

00:27:51.060 unquote do it the right way? And it was this absolutely astonishing sort of pop culture

00:27:58.840 moment that is like not surprising, but deeply demoralizing every time it happens where you're 0.93

00:28:04.280 like, oh, neat, you found a fat black woman and you decided to make her body the headline and 0.77

00:28:11.300 speculation about her body, the headline for months, for months and months and months and 0.99

00:28:18.000 months and months. Right. So in a lot of ways, it really does feel like an everything old is new

00:28:22.820 again, because again, people just need to feel like someone else is hurting for whatever reason.

00:28:27.900 That is, like, a mandatory part of our discourse around weight loss.

00:28:31.400 Speaking of this, like, moralizing of, you know, different ways to lose weight,

00:28:35.720 Khloe Kardashian, ah, she's arrived.

00:28:38.280 If you were listening for Kardashian discourse, we're here.

00:28:41.660 Khloe Kardashian, Khloe Kardashian.

00:28:46.160 She of the revenge body.

00:28:47.940 She of the revenge body.

00:28:50.360 Her body has always been the subject of discussion in a way that I'm not envious of at all. 0.90

00:28:55.120 And, you know, she's a complicated person. 0.99

00:28:57.380 occupies a complicated place in public life but she you know had the ozempic allegations levied 1.00

00:29:05.480 against her and she said quote let's not discredit my years of working out i get up five days a week

00:29:13.500 at 6 a.m to train please stop with your assumptions i guess new year still means mean people just

00:29:19.460 sounds so similar to what oprah said on her ozempic tv special that i know which was just like just

00:29:26.020 are we getting there if we're just getting i mean i okay why did i even outline aubrey

00:29:30.920 why did i even it sounds so much like that same kind of framing that oprah used in her special

00:29:39.680 because we are in what our shared friend michael hobbs calls a transitional moment in our discourse

00:29:45.760 around weight and weight loss we sort of know and have established that diets don't really lead to

00:29:51.240 long-term weight loss. We sort of know and have established that exercise isn't a major driver of

00:29:57.880 weight loss, but we're still really attached to those two things being the vehicles for not just

00:30:05.220 weight loss, but for a character worth having, a work ethic worth having, all of that sort of stuff,

00:30:11.080 right? So we're in this weird moment where people are pushing back against the idea that any of

00:30:16.980 these sort of drugs or more medicalized treatments are like, quote unquote, taking the easy way out, 0.99

00:30:21.000 which is like bullshit. Don't talk about people that way. That's not cool. But people still feel 0.99

00:30:26.180 compelled because the sort of cultural conversation part hasn't shifted to catch up with the science

00:30:33.100 part of this. People still feel compelled to say, but also I run five miles a day and also I count

00:30:40.320 my macros and also I do all of this stuff that we know doesn't really do much, right? So it just

00:30:47.040 feels like what we're seeing in moments like this is just like public figures getting caught in the

00:30:52.500 tensions that exist more broadly in our culture around weight and weight loss and we're weirdly

00:30:57.940 looking to like chloe kardashian to resolve those tensions which is boy that's a mission that is

00:31:05.080 gonna not pay off you know my feelings about celebrities and ozempic have really ebbed and

00:31:12.700 flowed. A lot of that ebb and flow has been a result of like what the general public has to

00:31:18.620 say about it, because sometimes I feel it goes too far in one direction or another. And I'm just

00:31:22.720 like, okay, I don't know. I just feel like so many famous women have been shamed for their entire

00:31:29.660 careers about their bodies and about needing to get thinner. And then they take Ozempic and they 0.94

00:31:36.120 get shamed for taking ozempic and i think there are valid reasons like you were discussing about

00:31:42.840 like shortages access to the drug who really needs it when taking this and then advertising it

00:31:48.700 engenders fat phobia to the general public but then there's just the like well she took the easy

00:31:54.180 way out and like i think that's what a lot of people are actually angry about that like radicalized

00:32:00.560 me in the other direction where i was like oh now i don't care what chloe kardashian like now i don't

00:32:04.600 care if chloe kardashian takes a zempick because like everyone's being too annoying about it in

00:32:08.240 the first place listen annoying is the word right like i think this feels like a big weighty important

00:32:15.500 conversation no pun intended sure but you know pun intended you know it feels like a really

00:32:21.860 important conversation to get right and i think that means that a lot of us end up sort of uh

00:32:28.600 tripping over our words and getting really careful to really nail every moment of it

00:32:32.360 and that means that i can start to feel petty to say the true thing which is everyone is being

00:32:37.840 their most annoying around this discourse do you know what i mean like including me including me

00:32:44.300 everyone is being their most annoying i think the celebrity stuff is like a really good example of

00:32:49.940 that right where you're just like oh neat we went right back to the like body surveillance panopticon

00:32:56.040 that sort of like took a couple years off there or at least sort of cloaked itself in something else

00:33:01.480 right but like we're right back to everyone's paying attention to everyone else's bodies

00:33:06.340 whether or not chloe kardashian or oprah or lana del rey sees your comments about their size other

00:33:12.580 people you know will uh and they will feel a real intense pressure to meet whatever standards you

00:33:20.520 set forth in your comments so like just like everybody be included let's all just be less

00:33:26.380 annoying you don't have to be not annoying just less annoying we can have these bigger conversations

00:33:31.220 about like the cultural effect that like a popular weight loss drug can have without being like the

00:33:38.240 problem here is deciding whether or not lana del rey is taking it totally i think it's about and

00:33:43.340 something that i've learned from you is like challenging institutions versus individuals 0.90

00:33:48.320 it's all the shit that came out about i'm swearing so much excuse me oh my god you can i don't even 0.62

00:33:53.840 turn on the monetization thing on youtube anymore you can say whatever you want bless you thank you 0.97

00:33:58.920 it happens i mean it feels so similar to the um adele stuff from a few years ago right that is

00:34:09.640 sort of like this idea that if you're a public figure you signed on to whatever anybody has to

00:34:16.220 say about you at all times which first of all it's not the greatest crisis of our time and it's not

00:34:22.540 the biggest way that we're dehumanizing people but that is a way that we are dehumanizing people

00:34:27.240 is when you decide to like stop caring about people's boundaries and their needs and their

00:34:31.200 human experiences. So like pump the brakes on that one team. Part of it is that people think

00:34:35.640 that like every public figure's body and especially public figures that aren't men

00:34:41.160 have bodies that are sort of up for public discussion at all times. But also what that

00:34:47.860 does, part of what doing that accomplishes is it invites folks back into commenting on other

00:34:55.360 people's bodies as well, right? It gets folks back in the habit, Sister Act 2, back in the habit

00:35:01.240 of commenting on other people's weight loss and speculating about how big they are and how big

00:35:07.540 they should be. And did they actually get too skinny or are they too fat now? How much longer

00:35:11.940 should they stay on this drug? All of that kind of stuff, when it's aimed at other people or when

00:35:19.060 it's aimed at ourselves, really does end up meaningfully contributing to a culture of

00:35:24.260 anti-fatness that hurts and harms fat people all the time so like that stuff is all worth paying 0.98

00:35:30.200 attention to and even if you don't care about all that stuff don't be the jerk who's telling 0.94

00:35:35.800 Lana Del Rey or Adele or Kelly Osbourne or Star Jones or anybody what they should or should not 0.93

00:35:45.700 do or have done with their bodies well speaking of Kelly Osbourne we are doing a like I want like a

00:35:54.140 cool sound effect here kelly osborne interlude boo not really but okay yeah not really i mean

00:36:03.560 lower everyone lower your excitement because it's about to get really fucking weird kelly osborne 0.80

00:36:08.500 loves famously uh uh you know you thought you ate that kind of moment you know if you kick every 0.99

00:36:15.860 latino out of this country then who is going to be cleaning your toilet donald trump oh that's 0.65

00:36:20.760 in the sense that you know what i mean like what i'm saying there's more there's more jobs to be

00:36:24.880 in la they always she she often thinks she eats and unfortunately she has given us another kelly

00:36:32.660 osborne moment oh lord let me play it and then we'll discuss what's interesting is she so she's 1.00

00:36:38.960 on a red carpet with uh purple hair and she actually looks kind of like an ai generated 0.92

00:36:44.080 lana del rey she looks in this video like if someone tried to draw lana del rey from memory

00:36:49.520 oh okay okay this is the image she does look like lana del rey right she really looks strikingly

00:36:56.760 like purple hair lana del rey she was asked here uh basically just what she thought about

00:37:01.620 ozempic and people taking it and celebrities in particular taking it and here is what she had to

00:37:06.580 say i think it's amazing and i think it's great for them there are a million ways to lose weight

00:37:11.540 why not do it through something that isn't as boring as working out people hate on it because

00:37:17.040 they want to do it and the people who hate it on the most the people who are secretly doing it or

00:37:21.640 pissed off that they can't afford it she had me in the first half totally when she said why not

00:37:29.000 lose weight in a way that's less boring than working out i'm like that points were made all

00:37:35.920 right points were made fine absolutely fine i i think that that is kind of the antidote attitude

00:37:42.340 to everything we were talking about about moralizing suffering like she ate in the first half and then

00:37:47.980 she kept talking which tends to be the issue with kelly osborne it's so tricky my memories of kelly

00:37:55.120 osborne are now intrinsically tied to her comments about her ex's trans woman that she was cheated on

00:38:02.160 with do you know about this no oh baby it's really peak you really thought you had

00:38:12.320 something there but i know for sure did not it's it's bad yeah i mean sure take ozempic do whatever

00:38:20.480 you want the second okay so oh my god no aubrey i don't mean to stress you out sort of pre-exhausted

00:38:27.240 by all of this by the kelly osborne of it and by the ozempic of it do you know what i mean like

00:38:33.260 it's a real it's a real bleach and ammonia combo we got going here can i can i tee you up here 0.98

00:38:38.300 because I tell me my reaction this this went like really viral online and people were like fuck 0.92

00:38:43.680 Kelly Osbourne for saying that so she says the only people who are mad about it are the people 0.98

00:38:49.180 who are secretly taking it or who can't afford it which is obviously a really grotesque thing

00:38:53.920 to say on so many levels but I've included it here because I think it's also like how a lot

00:38:59.740 of people think about it and yeah I just think that most people have more tact than Kelly Osbourne

00:39:05.900 and most people know not to say that but i do think that it's like a prevailing thought of like

00:39:10.900 well anyone who could afford to take this would yes absolutely that the rational thing right that

00:39:16.660 people are embarrassed about their own desires but these are the rational desires to have right

00:39:22.080 i also think this is like a weird jedi mind trick thing that people do uh when they are in positions

00:39:29.700 of privilege where they'll do like sort of very strange emotional jujitsu of figuring out how to

00:39:36.060 blame a marginalized community oh yeah for their own circumstances right that's like any critiques 0.97

00:39:42.760 from predominantly fat people from predominantly feminists from predominantly like sjw's whatever

00:39:50.460 all get chalked up to you're just jealous you're just a hater you're just a hater and you're just

00:39:58.320 jealous and it feels to me very much like the like mid-2000s like larry craig ted haggard sort

00:40:05.760 of discourse that was like uh the biggest homophobes are actually queer themselves where

00:40:12.020 i'm like how did you manage to blame gay people for homophobia yeah how did we get here how do

00:40:17.160 we get here right and like this feels a little bit like that right which is like i don't have 0.64

00:40:22.240 to listen to anything you're saying now because actually you are just a hater you are just jealous

00:40:28.960 you just wish this was your life and this was your body and all of that sort of stuff truly

00:40:33.840 merylstreet.gif groundbreaking to say fat people are jealous of thin wealthy people

00:40:42.340 flaming valid critique on on haters for spring groundbreaking

00:40:47.300 but can i ask you in this vein though because what what do you make of the idea that like

00:40:54.900 anybody who could take this would i think that's not true i am a person who could take it and is

00:41:01.240 not taking it there are lots of people who could take it and who are not taking it right

00:41:05.860 i think that what that is ultimately actually saying is we all know that thinness is the right

00:41:12.280 choice thinness is a choice that's always available to you and anyone would anyone in

00:41:16.880 their right mind would choose it and anyone who's not is just justifying their own bad behavior

00:41:22.920 their own binge eating their own lack of self-control right it all sort of comes back

00:41:28.560 to this like set of character judgments sort of thing a cultural discourse especially a

00:41:33.980 cultural discourse around fatness really loves to act like there is one correct choice for everyone

00:41:40.040 to make and like that should get your hackles up everybody like that should you should be suspicious

00:41:45.980 if someone goes yeah man everyone would want this right it just feels like just straightforwardly

00:41:52.740 an articulation of like a cultural mandate to be thin and that feels like again nothing new

00:41:58.120 nothing new so we've arrived in the outline we've arrived at oprah goodbye kelly osborne and hello

00:42:04.420 oprah is torture no am i torturing you with like the greatest hits of cultural figures and

00:42:11.300 weight loss? No, it's listen, Oprah. I grew up on Oprah. I've got four decades worth of Oprah

00:42:21.580 to talk about here. I'm ready to go. Your loins are girded. Yeah, that's right.

00:42:29.620 I would like to take a quick, quick break from the show to give a shout out to the sponsor of

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00:43:52.280 Now let's get back to the show. Aubrey and I just took a bathroom break because we needed

00:43:57.700 to collect ourselves before we talk about oprah so for decades oprah has as as everyone knows

00:44:06.160 oprah's been a fixture in the national conversation about weight loss oprah has been very publicly a

00:44:11.840 victim of the same diet culture and weight loss culture that she has contributed to she's also

00:44:19.380 profited heavily from it as the spokesperson for and longtime board member of Weight Watchers.

00:44:26.720 In 2015, she acquired a 10% stake in Weight Watchers. So she was like on a personal and

00:44:33.300 professional level has like long and a public level long been like embedded in this conversation

00:44:38.720 in this industry. I know that you have extensive thoughts and feelings about Oprah and her place

00:44:44.560 in all of this, which has become even more complicated over the last few months. But

00:44:48.580 before we even get to the ozempic stuff like what have your what what are your high level

00:44:54.620 feelings about oprah leading up to the year 2024 i would say top lines about oprah one and a really

00:45:01.920 important place to start is there is no part of me that envies the position that she has been put

00:45:06.640 in culturally her body has been the subject of headlines talk shows all manner of things i think

00:45:13.900 anybody with a body feels like that body is being scrutinized at one point or another.

00:45:18.740 But like, even as a public figure, like if I'm honest with myself, if any of us are honest with

00:45:24.520 ourselves, we have not faced what Oprah has faced, right? We have not faced the full court press of

00:45:31.200 people being like magazine covers saying that her partner is going to leave her because she's so fat

00:45:35.900 and so on and so forth, right? Like, it's a real meat grinder that she has been put through around 0.56

00:45:41.900 her size and it's garbage. And I think there are a couple of things that happen when people 0.88

00:45:49.500 experience that sort of level and kind of abuse in public. One is that, of course, it creates like

00:45:56.980 a profound wound, a great deal of trauma to deal with, all of that sort of stuff. And the other

00:46:02.980 thing that happens is that you get really good at doing it to other people. And both of those

00:46:07.600 things, right? Inside you, there are two wolves, right? These are the two wolves that all of us

00:46:12.560 have. If you have experienced weight stigma, you have both learned the lesson of how much

00:46:17.360 that's terrible, how much it hurts and how many harms it can cause. And you have also picked up

00:46:22.940 some pointers along the way. And I think Oprah is a real interesting distilled case study of

00:46:29.100 both of those things, you know, that, uh, she not only sort of made it her mission to become

00:46:35.180 thin she also sort of made it her mission and one of her profit centers to tell other people

00:46:42.800 how to also become thin it felt like a real if you can't beat them join them yeah yeah which is

00:46:49.480 i've waited my whole life to say circling back to chloe kardashian

00:46:54.260 but chloe kardashian i feel similarly about yeah it's it's one of these many such cases

00:47:00.660 cases, right? I mean, it does feel like there's a kind of class of celebrity who experiences

00:47:06.600 body shaming and body scrutiny that I wouldn't dream of or wish upon my worst enemy. And then

00:47:13.340 they, you know, jump to the other side of the equation.

00:47:16.320 There is sort of this well known and well discussed trope in fat spaces. And I think

00:47:21.100 it comes from very real experience from folks that weight loss is only part of how you sort

00:47:26.440 of attain the privilege of being a thin person. The other way that you do that is by socially

00:47:32.760 distancing yourself as much as possible from fat people. And you do that by outwardly judging fat

00:47:40.040 people, right? Making public comments, saying that you would never do what they're doing,

00:47:45.480 talk about the mistakes that they're making in their workout form, or talk about the mistakes

00:47:50.400 that they're making and what they're eating or all of that sort of stuff. And I think, again,

00:47:54.140 And Oprah has really, really learned that lesson that like the size of your body is only part of it.

00:47:59.440 The other part is you align yourself real hard with thin people and you distance yourself real hard from fat people.

00:48:07.920 And it should be noted.

00:48:09.560 This feels like another moment of like, ah, we figured out how to blame fat people for anti-fatness.

00:48:16.440 And I just want to be super real.

00:48:19.260 That pressure does not originate with fat people, right?

00:48:22.640 That pressure originates with a culture and a media that thinks that people's bodies are up for sort of public discussion. That pressure originates from, I would argue, predominantly thin people who do not know what it actually takes to lose a large amount of weight and assume that their own quote unquote normal and therefore invisible to themselves decisions are the quote unquote right decisions to make in order to be a thin person rather than

00:48:52.320 recognizing that this might be a case of being born on third and thinking you hit a triple right

00:48:57.360 just feels like oprah is a really interesting and distilled example of like all of that right

00:49:03.980 exactly because the kind of confluence of like the personal and social impulse to like distance

00:49:09.040 yourself from fat people and then the professional impulse to like how much can i profit off of this

00:49:14.440 machine it's just kind of a nasty concoction totally and again that doesn't take anything

00:49:20.240 away from oprah's personal experience that doesn't you know mitigate like the many many many things

00:49:26.380 that have been said about her that should not have been said or done about her and boy oh boy

00:49:31.480 what a tangled web she weaves what a tangled web she weaves all the way to the bank all the way

00:49:38.160 to the bank correct the bank i mean she she is you know a billionaire which i don't know i feel

00:49:43.540 like i talk about billionaires enough on this podcast and i complain about them enough in the

00:49:48.740 same way every time i talk about them that i feel like i just need like a billionaire siren or like

00:49:53.180 a billionaire like sound effect like wee woo wee woo we're talking about billionaires now

00:49:57.240 i think it should just be a recording of you going wee woo wee woo just saying those words

00:50:04.800 billionaire alert billionaire alert we should say oprah whatever people know this oprah's body has

00:50:12.580 fluctuated over the decades as literally anyone with a body who lives for decades that happens

00:50:18.600 She has had some pretty stunning moments, including the red wagon. Would you like to

00:50:25.600 describe the wagon? You know, I'm 25. I did not know about the red wagon of fat until I heard you

00:50:31.140 talk about it, actually. Yeah. So in the 80s, Oprah went through very, very, very public weight

00:50:39.180 loss, which she has since discussed as, I think, A, being pretty profoundly unhealthy for her,

00:50:44.920 mostly achieved through what's called a VLCD, a very low calorie diet, which usually means

00:50:50.740 under 600 calories a day is usually about the threshold that folks are talking about.

00:50:55.540 Yeah, it's been it's been described as a starvation diet, basically.

00:50:59.300 Yeah, it's a third of what a toddler needs. Yeah. Just let that sink in. Just let that one sink in

00:51:07.100 a third of what a toddler needs. But because the pressure was so relentless for her to lose weight, 0.99

00:51:13.400 she sort of went to whatever lengths she needed to go to to lose that weight and that for her meant

00:51:19.180 this sort of quote-unquote starvation diet she was also a person who was on tv and as any stand-up

00:51:25.100 will tell you you don't get to go on stage looking different without saying something

00:51:29.360 about how you look different now and she uh did a whole episode on her major weight loss that 1.00

00:51:36.800 opened with her walking out on stage in a tight black turtleneck tucked into Calvin Klein jeans 1.00

00:51:44.500 and she was dragging a red radio flyer wagon full of I believe it was beef and pork fat 0.84

00:51:51.820 just like raw white meat fat the sort of intended effect was to gross people out about how much fat 1.00

00:52:01.680 had previously been on her body. And she has sort of revisited that story in recent months

00:52:08.440 to say, essentially, like, even on the day that I did that show, I was already gaining weight back.

00:52:15.300 Yeah. But it was just like instantaneous. And this we know and have known from research for

00:52:20.520 a long time, right? That this is sort of the cycle of weight loss is that for many, many,

00:52:26.020 many methods of weight loss pretty much anything involving diet or exercise folks can lose weight

00:52:32.700 in the short term they lose less weight in the midterm and then they usually gain that weight

00:52:38.300 back and often more in the long term so she was going through like a very predictable cycle that

00:52:44.720 has been observed and documented many times but yeah the wagon of fat listen for for me as a fat

00:52:51.540 kid and as someone whose parents watched oprah you know would have oprah on at home and all of

00:52:56.960 that sort of stuff it was a figure that really loomed large and i think it was less about the

00:53:02.580 wagon and more about seeing the people in your life respond to the wagon with such overt and

00:53:08.500 sort of proud disgust yeah it was a bad time what's so interesting too is like again i was

00:53:15.720 like drafting up notes for this episode and I wanted to revisit a picture of the fat wagon

00:53:22.200 and so I googled it and the first things that came up were like Oprah's top 25 moments like

00:53:28.460 it's still in all of these listicles as like times Oprah made history like it's I don't know

00:53:34.020 there's like still lingering cultural appreciation for the fact that she did this yeah totally and I

00:53:41.500 think this is another place where we're in like a transitional moment right around talking about

00:53:45.700 this stuff where you will find things that are like she really did that she pulled that wagon

00:53:51.880 of fat out right you will also find write-ups of it that are people being like this was a real

00:53:57.120 inflection point of horror show body stuff for many many people and oprah is expected to hold

00:54:05.420 space for all of those things just because it's her body that's being talked about which i'm like

00:54:10.360 Oh, team. Oh, team.

00:54:13.200 Right. I mean, it's what I was saying at the top of the episode about celebrities becoming

00:54:16.700 fictional like book characters onto whom we can project all of our messy feelings about this

00:54:22.100 stuff. Like I don't yeah, I don't think there's anyone who has had more projected onto her

00:54:26.080 than Oprah.

00:54:27.380 I think with this celebrity discourse stuff, part of the projection that is happening is

00:54:32.380 that we are seeing ourselves in these sort of the discourse around celebrities bodies as well.

00:54:37.640 So people get involved in this as if with the sort of like emotional intensity as if it is their body and it is actually someone else's body.

00:54:47.600 We must talk about the Ozempic of it all.

00:54:49.480 We must. 0.99

00:54:50.260 Oprah revealed in December 2023 that she was taking a weight loss drug.

00:54:56.380 I don't think she named which one she was taking, but it is presumably Ozempic, Wegovin, Manjaro.

00:55:01.460 and along with this because people were like well wait what about like everything that you spent

00:55:06.200 decades advertising for Weight Watchers she was like oh and I'm not running for re-election to

00:55:12.420 the Weight Watchers board so that's over she rebranded along with this her position in the 0.85

00:55:16.780 weight loss space to like wanting to end the stigma around taking weight loss drugs like you 0.98

00:55:23.620 mentioned she hosted an ABC special a few months later called Shame Blame and the Weight Loss

00:55:29.200 revolution where she said notably in the intro for 25 years making fun of my weight was a national

00:55:35.700 sport and so she really talked candidly at points about kind of like retrospective reflection she

00:55:42.360 has having been the center of the national weight loss conversation for decades the special's main

00:55:47.500 theme was kind of just like it's okay to take ozempic and you know we need to shed the shame

00:55:52.640 and the stigma and all this stuff around weight loss drugs which i think we've talked a little

00:55:56.660 bit about that like is true she really interestingly she had two doctors on the special to talk about

00:56:02.780 Ozempic neither of them were in the least bit critical of like who is this for how expensive

00:56:08.440 is it the side effects well both of them acknowledged on the show that they're paid for

00:56:14.900 they are on the payroll as consultants of Novo Nordisk and possibly also Eli Lilly who are the

00:56:20.480 biggest manufacturers yes yes they were they were they were both paid consultants for the drug

00:56:26.020 companies who make ozempic and it's like okay oprah we're doing this totally and like listen

00:56:33.520 our sort of pharmaceutical industry in the u.s is broken in a lot of different ways

00:56:38.960 such that it's really not uncommon for researchers to be paid by big pharma companies that's a thing

00:56:46.940 we ought to change we ought to change that ideally so it doesn't necessarily mean that

00:56:54.280 everything that they said was like false or suspect or whatever, but it was a truly wild

00:57:01.420 moment to like have this sort of play out on screen and have Oprah ask the most perfunctory

00:57:08.660 and sort of hollow version of a conflict of interest question, which is just like, Hey,

00:57:14.180 so you're on the payroll with these guys. What does that mean? And I, one of the doctors said

00:57:18.280 something to the effect of, well, they're looking for our expert opinion on how to provide the

00:57:23.900 highest quality care and i was like that is an answer devoid of substance that doesn't mean

00:57:31.380 anything that means moving right along i appreciate your word salad it was delicious but did not

00:57:38.760 satisfy you know most salads she kind of ended this special i'm gonna read a quote that i pieced

00:57:45.720 together she said for people who feel happy and healthy and celebrating life in a bigger body

00:57:50.500 and don't want the medications I say bless you and for all people who believe diet and exercise

00:57:56.800 is the best and only way to lose excess weight bless you too if that works for you and for the

00:58:02.560 people who think that this could be the relief and support of freedom that you've been looking

00:58:06.420 for your whole life bless you because there is a space for all points of view I'm just curious

00:58:11.680 about your thoughts on the whole special and her kind of like new position as like breaking down

00:58:17.000 the stigma of taking these drugs? Well, two things. One, I would say there's not a specific

00:58:22.320 stigma or system of oppression set up around people losing weight, right? So just to be super

00:58:30.360 duper clear, when we're talking about the stigma that people face for taking Ozempic, I would argue

00:58:35.640 it's not stigma per se. It's essentially runoff anti-fatness. It's because you are not suffering

00:58:41.740 in the way that folks want to see fat people suffer in order to lose weight, right? And I think,

00:58:47.440 you know, it's a nice thing to say, hey, there's space for everyone. It's a very different thing

00:58:52.720 to say when that's embedded in what is functionally like an infomercial for weight loss

00:58:57.360 drugs, right? That like, you're sort of saying like, hey, everyone is welcome here as long as

00:59:03.300 you buy this one product, right? And like all of these different sort of opinions are welcome. I

00:59:08.780 I mean, I think one of the other things that really, really stood out to me about the special

00:59:12.320 that I found really, really disheartening is that they sort of flip back and forth

00:59:17.860 in this special between social and interpersonal, quote unquote, benefits of weight loss

00:59:23.580 and medical, quote unquote, benefits of weight loss.

00:59:26.880 So they talked to a teenager at one point and they're like, her blood sugar is down

00:59:32.260 and she went to prom.

00:59:34.200 And you're like, so one of those is medical, guys.

00:59:37.080 I think that, though, is so much of Ozempic discourse in general. I think so much of when people talk about Ozempic, it's their anti-fatness couched in like, but isn't this a medical miracle? It's like, how often do you see people truly thrilled about like medical breakthroughs?

00:59:57.120 It's just I find it hard to believe that people's excitement, especially thin people's excitement about Ozempic is entirely because they're just like thrilled about the medical benefits of this drug.

01:00:09.900 It just seems a lot more likely to me that they're like this idea that we can end fatness now.

01:00:14.560 Yes. I mean, like, listen, part of the reason that I have that full body clench that we were talking about earlier is that the discourse that I feel like I'm experiencing right now as a fat person is on another planet from the discourse that I feel like a lot of people who are not fat think that they're contributing to, which is I think people are thinking genuine, like, scientific miracle. I'm on the side of science. This is great. Yay. Look at all this stuff. We don't have to have all these health care problems.

01:00:40.880 I would say a couple of things. One, that's born of decades of scapegoating fat people for the cost

01:00:47.720 of private insurance, right? That's born of news stories that really, really decontextualize a

01:00:55.120 bunch of what we know about fat people's health and well-being and all of that sort of stuff.

01:00:59.780 And I think for the last, you know, 10 or 15 years, we sort of had this moment where people

01:01:07.380 who weren't fat could see themselves as maybe being, whether or not they intended to maybe

01:01:13.260 being part of the villain in a fat person's story, right? And carrying around some guilt around that

01:01:19.840 or wanting to exercise that guilt in some way or what have you. And what feels like it's happening

01:01:26.100 right now is all of that feeling of like, however fleeting it was, that feeling of accountability

01:01:33.320 to fat people just really seems to be melting away. And people are just openly celebrating

01:01:39.420 their belief that we're about to live in a world where they don't have to look at fat people so

01:01:43.980 often. Yeah, I mean, I read these pieces about like, is Ozempic the end of obesity?

01:01:50.160 No, it's not for so many reasons. But the thing that jumps out to me about them,

01:01:56.140 the hand wringing about like body positivity is body positivity like null and void now.

01:02:01.000 and it's just like okay so you can stop pretending like you ever cared totally and again this is a

01:02:07.220 real all of the stuff that's like oh no was body positivity all a lie to me really reads as like

01:02:13.880 oh nobody asked a fat person oh no nobody asked a fat person because i feel like as a fat person

01:02:21.140 i could tell you people changed the way that they couched their feelings but their feelings about

01:02:26.380 fatness and fat people didn't change, right? Like there wasn't a point at which it was like

01:02:31.680 super cool to be the fattest person in the room. There wasn't a point at which there were simply

01:02:37.640 too many thin people rushing to the defense of fat people. None of that materialized for fat

01:02:44.980 people in like a meaningful way. I think in a lot of ways, the sort of discourse around body

01:02:50.420 positivity was much more a self-soothing story that people who weren't fat told themselves

01:02:55.000 about their role in anti-fatness, right, that sort of allowed them to think that there'd been a

01:03:00.480 bigger and more meaningful shift than there had. And if you ask fat people, you know, same day,

01:03:06.800 same stuff, you know, here we are again. Natalie Contrapoints, who I've had on the show a couple

01:03:11.780 times and who I reference often, she made a comment, it was in a completely different context,

01:03:17.220 but she said something in one of her YouTube videos where she was basically like,

01:03:20.300 shallow understanding creates shallow acceptance and I think that's true in the body positivity

01:03:26.940 conversation I think it's also been true I think about that a lot in the context of like 1.00

01:03:31.640 the last 10-ish years of queer rights which are so rapidly being eroded because it's like 0.98

01:03:36.900 when you change what you're allowed to say but never actually interrogate what you feel deep

01:03:42.480 down yeah and you know definitely not changing you know like laws and institutions that marginalize

01:03:49.460 these groups of people, you're just making it so for the second that it is no longer fashionable to

01:03:53.980 be like, quote unquote, more polite to fat people, queer people, people of color, then we just stopped

01:04:00.840 doing that and nothing meaningful ever changed, which is something that people who belong to

01:04:05.000 these groups knew the whole time. Yeah, totally. And I also feel like in this sort of moment around

01:04:10.160 Ozempic, I feel like what I'm observing more often than not is both a sort of thank God we don't have

01:04:16.960 to think about that anymore is one of the, one of the sort of underpinnings that happens here, 0.52

01:04:22.300 right? The other one that feels like it's sort of at play here is that folks are trying to

01:04:27.880 hang on to their deep desire for thinness, which is rooted in wild and pretty terrible judgments

01:04:34.420 about fat people. Those two things are linked in a way that you can't really disentangle.

01:04:39.940 So folks are trying to hang on to their deep and longstanding desire to be as thin as possible

01:04:46.020 because of the ways that we judge thin people differently than fat people.

01:04:51.060 That means that they want to hang on to their anti-fatness,

01:04:54.320 but they've also recognized now that fat people have a negative experience of the world,

01:05:00.320 often at the hands of thin people.

01:05:02.900 So people are like really trying to have it both ways, right?

01:05:07.020 They really want to hang on to their anti-fatness,

01:05:09.660 but they also really want to be sort of the heroes in fat people's stories.

01:05:13.460 And I think that all of this sort of stuff around like it's actually a scientific breakthrough and it's really good for people's health becomes just like a return to I'm just concerned with your health sort of concern trolling as a fig leaf for folks pretty deep and pretty uninterrogated anti-fatness.

01:05:31.660 One of the things that we know for sure and for real is that when folks are in pursuit of a thinner body and they engage in what are called body checking tendencies, they're checking their own bodies and specific features against other folks, that those folks report a great deal of relief at seeing someone my size because they think at least I'm not that fat, at least it hasn't gotten that bad.

01:05:55.380 So if folks are not doing that kind of plumbing the depths of where they're at and what's motivating their weight loss, like that uninterrogated stuff is just going to keep replicating itself. And usually the place that it's going to keep replicating itself is in folks treatment, whether they clock it or not, of people who are fatter than them.

01:06:16.580 It feels like a really tricky moment where in the absence of thinner people being able to hold space for and plumb their own sort of psychological depths on this issue, that work sort of falls to fat people in order to just like get through our day, right?

01:06:32.560 Do you think the booming popularity of these drugs and the ensuing discourse that plays out on the celebrity level and also on a personal level, do you think it has made fatphobia worse?

01:06:46.580 Listen, I think anti-fatness is a super multifaceted thing.

01:06:51.540 In doctor's offices, no question.

01:06:53.640 There's just no question that as a fat person, I now have to steal myself for a whole new

01:06:58.320 layer of conversations about like, why am I not going to take the drug that makes you

01:07:02.900 throw up all the time for people for people for whom it does that?

01:07:06.940 I have to like come up with a PowerPoint about like why I don't want to vomit five

01:07:12.180 times a day, right?

01:07:14.940 Radical.

01:07:16.440 I would say on a cultural level, to me, it just feels like it's brought it back to the surface,

01:07:21.420 which it was slightly beneath for a short time. Do you know what I mean? It doesn't feel like a

01:07:28.520 meaningful change in people's attitudes. It just feels like a change in how loudly they're willing

01:07:33.780 to shout them. That people were using their inside voices for a while, and now they're just

01:07:38.200 shouting it from the rooftops. Speaking of, I was reading this article that I thought was great

01:07:42.720 called Ozempic Can't Fix What Our Culture Has Broken by Tressie McMillan Cotton. So yeah,

01:07:49.520 she was writing this article about basically how, I mean, it's said in the title, Ozempic Can't Fix

01:07:53.840 What Our Culture Has Broken, how, you know, these conversations of Ozempic and fat phobia

01:07:59.560 can't be untangled. And we can't expect Ozempic to fix the problem of fat phobia for it to go

01:08:05.900 anywhere for a whole number of reasons, you know, cost, health insurance, but also just like the

01:08:10.200 framework of fat phobia in every, you know, part of our society. She wrote specifically about an

01:08:15.420 interesting experience where she went to the doctor and her doctor took her blood work because

01:08:21.000 the thing with health insurance is that it will tend to cover drugs like Ozempic if you are

01:08:26.640 diabetic, but not for weight loss if you're not diabetic. And so the doctor took her blood work,

01:08:31.760 she was totally healthy. And the doctor was like, well, we could run it again to try to see if

01:08:37.780 you're diabetic so that we could get health insurance to pay for this for you and tressie

01:08:41.500 was like no what i'm healthy i i don't need this my version of this was having a tech attempt to

01:08:49.660 take my blood pressure it was either three or four times in a row because they just couldn't believe

01:08:55.680 that it was like in a normal range and they thought that something was wrong with the cuff

01:09:00.460 so they went to go get another cuff and then they but right that this is like a very very common

01:09:04.980 thing that fat folks experience, which is even when our sort of like blood work is where doctors

01:09:12.760 want to see it, even when our health is sort of in range by all other measures, even healthcare

01:09:20.360 providers can't really bring themselves to believe that we might actually just be okay

01:09:25.580 and just be fat, right? It's a heartbreakingly common scenario, I will say, in surveys of fat

01:09:34.740 people, they find that the two most common sources of anti-fatness, first of all, an overwhelming

01:09:40.340 majority of fat people experience profound anti-fatness on a daily basis, right? And the

01:09:46.380 two most common sources are our family and friends. That's source number one. And source

01:09:52.720 number two is healthcare providers are the top places where stuff like this comes up. And those

01:09:58.320 are not things like saying, hey, you ought to pay attention to your blood work, or hey, I have a

01:10:03.600 doctorly thing to say to you as a doctor that's things like saying if you don't lose weight no

01:10:08.760 one's going to want to marry you and that's things like saying you know what i mean like

01:10:11.980 really hefty steps outside of any kind of professional role boy yeah boy one of the

01:10:18.940 things tressie wrote at the end of this article which i'm just going to read a quick quote she

01:10:22.560 wrote the mere existence of ozempic and the like encourages millions of people to self-diagnose

01:10:28.360 in a way that stigmatizes if they walk into doctor's offices begging to be classified as

01:10:33.320 medically vulnerable it's not for some provision from the state like housing or food they want a

01:10:38.800 drug that can help them manage an environment that works against their aspirations that is a

01:10:43.600 condemnation of our culture yeah yep it's a real weird time to be fat uh so many people are trying

01:10:52.100 to get classified as fat in order to sort of access a bunch of drugs to make them less fat

01:10:57.440 it's super weird Tressie nailed it sometimes I feel like we you know in the Hunger Games have

01:11:02.880 you seen the Hunger Games or read the Hunger Games I sure have and read all the books you know and

01:11:07.620 like how Katniss goes to like one of the first like capital parties I think it's before her first 0.77

01:11:12.620 Hunger Games and she's like they would drink poison to make them throw up so that they could

01:11:17.580 eat more do you ever have those moments where you're like oh we're just in the capital right

01:11:22.240 this is roman vomitoriums no joke right like this is like the classic tale as old as time

01:11:28.720 barf and then eat more food uh oops sorry it's an eating disorder but like yes we're totally in

01:11:36.600 that sort of realm right now again it's just the promise of the 80s infomercials swearing up and

01:11:44.020 down you can eat whatever you want never gain a pound we're just living that right now and it's

01:11:49.780 very odd nothing changes we just see it on smaller screens that's i think that was the slogan for

01:11:58.160 quibi uh well it's all we have time for now i don't know where this leaves us do we have any

01:12:08.540 positive parting words for people that's a great one sorry oh my god i'm i'm making aubrey gordon

01:12:17.060 and this on a refrigerator magnet i'm like come up with something come up with something for like

01:12:21.980 a hallmark card that's what makes you beautiful that's right be yourself because everybody else 0.58

01:12:32.100 is already taken did you know when you say something's gay like that you're saying it's bad 0.98

01:12:37.580 coming next week to a bit fruity hillary duff when you say that's so gay do you realize what 0.99

01:12:45.320 you say knock it off here's the thing this is all incredibly complex it's incredibly layered there 0.63

01:12:51.820 are big feelings at play and that can make it feel really hard to figure out how to move forward in

01:12:58.360 any meaningful way in the conversation but there are really simple things that we already know how

01:13:02.860 to do that we can do one if someone's speculating on someone else's body changing and how that change

01:13:10.220 came to be, tell them to knock it off. It's weird. It's rude. It's being a mean person.

01:13:17.240 Tell them to stop it. Honestly, if anybody's commenting on anybody else's body, period,

01:13:23.200 even just observations about weight fluctuations, think about how you feel and how long you carry

01:13:30.280 it with you when you hear someone else say something about the size or shape of your body.

01:13:35.720 Think about the half-life of how long that lives within you, right?

01:13:40.560 And work on not only not being that for someone else, but also heading that nonsense off at

01:13:48.020 the pass when it shows up, right?

01:13:50.960 I think there's real meaningful work to do here in just committing to saying, this is

01:13:57.020 behavior that's out of bounds and I'm not going to stand for it. 0.99

01:13:59.960 And I think with the Ozempic discourse, we have so much behavior that is so out of bounds. 0.99

01:14:08.840 My mom is peeking in.

01:14:11.820 Hi, Mrs. Gordon.

01:14:14.540 Yes, yeah.

01:14:15.520 Hi, she's waving.

01:14:17.400 So there you go. 0.63

01:14:18.580 A mom cameo to end on. 1.00

01:14:21.060 Yeah, I guess the thesis is we should all shut the fuck up. 0.99

01:14:25.880 I say on my podcast. 0.97

01:14:29.960 i'll record in i feel like i've done so much promo for you but where can people find more

01:14:38.520 of you support you i want people to find more of you like you all need to just listen to what

01:14:44.080 this woman has to say please it is in your best interest this is so kind of you uh you can listen

01:14:49.200 to maintenance phase wherever you get podcasts you can read my couple of books wherever you get

01:14:54.100 books. You can watch a documentary about me and the mom who just cameoed at yourfatfriendfilm.com.

01:15:03.200 There you have it. This is such a joy. I feel like it's been months in the making. And I'm so

01:15:08.240 happy to actually be here and talking to you. What a treat.

01:15:12.000 I know, I know. And you, your voice and your laugh have been living just like, I don't know,

01:15:19.860 i've been building a parasocial relationship with you for years and for the parasocial relationship

01:15:25.820 to be jumping into actual social relationship is so surreal for me i feel like i'm having an

01:15:31.280 out-of-body experience and um i just i love i love you so much can i confess my love for you

01:15:36.540 and podcasts is that weird let's do it because i feel the same way about you what a joy oh my

01:15:42.180 gosh it's very 2024 confessing love on a podcast if you uh addressing the listener now if you

01:15:53.540 have made it this far in the episode uh i love you so much i'm so happy that you could be here today

01:15:58.340 i i am truly eternally grateful i hope you know shed some new insights maybe you were challenged

01:16:04.540 maybe you think this is worth sending to a friend maybe you want to go take a nap i'd support any

01:16:10.880 of those things uh if you would i should have said this at the top of the episode very bad at

01:16:16.420 promoting myself very good at promoting other people if you would like to support the show

01:16:20.480 if you would like more of the show you can do that over on patreon the link will be in the

01:16:23.980 description uh currently working on a multi-part series over there about the legacy of the james

01:16:31.100 charles tati westbrook vitamin homophobia by sister scandal which is my personal roman empire

01:16:37.560 I could never stop talking about it, which is why I don't ever stop talking about it.

01:16:42.180 Yeah, I need a life is basically what I'm trying to get at.

01:16:45.620 I'm subscribing to your Patreon right now.

01:16:48.520 If there's a multi-part series on James Charles, on Bye Sister.

01:16:53.920 I got the Aubrey Gordon endorsement.

01:16:55.880 Yeah, it's happening.

01:16:56.860 This is my next step.

01:16:58.260 And with that, wow, I have nothing else to say.

01:17:00.140 And with that, I love you so much.

01:17:01.720 I will see you next time.

01:17:03.180 And until then, stay fruity.

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - June 20, 2024

The Celebrity Ozempidemic (with Aubrey Gordon)

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Transcript