Hollywood Struggles With Ozempic Shame: Why Hardly Anyone Admits to Taking the Trendy Weight-Loss Drug
Awards season will be in full swing at the Emmys on Sunday, and with it comes a new wave of heightened speculation about who got suddenly skinny for the red carpet — and whether they used Ozempic to get there.
The pressure on celebrities about their looks is nothing new and neither are medical methods to improve them. But the popularity of Ozempic and the rapid, dramatic results it creates has fueled a debate over a kind of reverse body-shaming — did she or didn’t she Ozempic? — and some are pushing back.
“It’s the last acceptable bias,” Oprah Winfrey, a veteran of the weight-loss wars, said during her recent TV special on the topic. She parted ways with her longtime sponsor Weight Watchers after revealing she was using an unspecified weight-loss drug. “Let’s stop the shaming and blaming. There’s no place for it.”
“The entire culture is built around shaming and being horrible, especially to women who are overweight,” Busy Philipps, star of “Girls5Eva,” said earlier this year on a podcast when asked to comment on “body positivity.”
“All of a sudden Ozempic comes along and people are like, ‘Oh, that’s a f–king big deal.’ Like, ‘We can’t have that.’ What in God’s name do you think has been happening?” Philipps exploded. “People hate women so much. We didn’t create the system that we live in.”
Social media has of late sunk its teeth into celebrities from Christina Aguilera to Jesse Plemons to Kelly Clarkson over their radical weight loss. Case in point: When Clarkson went public with using medication to lose 60 lbs, it was described as a “weight-loss confession,” while Plemons’ slimmer appearance was called out on Reddit as possible “Ozempicmaxxing.” In each case the celebrity has had to make a choice about whether to discuss using medication, or not.
Much like the “natty or not” social media accounts that speculate on whether a star’s muscles were created naturally (“natty”) or with steroids, there are people weighing in on celebrities’ weight loss, like Beverly Hills surgeon Daniel Barrett via his “Ozempic or Exercise” social media posts.
Barrett concluded that Christina Aguilera’s recently slimmed down look was thanks to exercise. A different surgeon, responding to a TikTok that said “someone needs to investigate” the singer’s new look, speculated in a video analysis that she had used Ozempic and also had an endoscopic facelift. Even worse, an X user mocked up a fake “before and after” ad in which Aguilera appeared to be promoting Ozempic.
Representatives for the singer declined to comment on this article. But Aguilera, 43, told Glamour magazine last month that after 25 years of commentary on her body, “I just don’t give a f–k about your opinion.”
But most stars do care.
“It’s like a Goldilocks effect. You can’t be too heavy and you can’t be too thin. Marking that exact right point is extremely difficult,” Julie Albright, a sociologist and author, told TheWrap about the scrutiny that women face on a daily basis.
“You can think of this as weight wars for women and it’s really a no-win situation,” Albright said.
Omerta and Ozempic
It’s the rare female celebrity who will admit to having help in maintaining a red carpet-ready body. But the ubiquity of the FDA-approved Ozempic has heightened the debate over body positivity and the shaming of celebrities who turn to medication to achieve dramatic results.
As TheWrap recently reported, steroids experts have accused male stars in Hollywood of failing to come clean about using testosterone or other performance enhancers to achieve superhero-like physiques, like Hugh Jackman’s in “Deadpool & Wolverine.”
Ozempic is similarly a topic with a kind of omertà.
Dolores Catania, a star on “Real Housewives of New Jersey,” told Sherri Shepherd in May that she didn’t understand why people are “very, very quiet” about taking the drug. “There’s no shame in it,” she said. “I’m going to be honest, because it’s right.”
While Weight Watchers parted ways with Winfrey over her admitting to taking a weight loss drug, the company has since changed its approach and started making Zepbound, the weight loss brand name of Tirzepatide (aka Mounjaro), available to members.
“We are the most clinically tested, evidence-based, science-backed behavior change program, but we were missing the third prong, which was biology,” Weight Watchers CEO Sima Sistani said during Winfrey’s special. “Our new philosophy is to help people live longer, happier lives with weight healthcare.”
Said Albright: The “ubiquity of the camera,” fueled by camera phones, “creates a feedback loop which serves to drive this extreme focus on the body, and particularly women’s body, and things like weight and aging and how your face might look.”
Some people have used Ozempic “as a jumping off point to change their lifestyle, but there are people who are taking too much of it,” Cary Deuber, a former “Real Housewives of Dallas” star who is also a registered nurse and beauty expert, told TheWrap. “I saw someone the other day and I gave them a hug and they just felt so frail.”
Pressure to be thin is even worse for women
Winfrey’s TV special showcased different women of different ages and backgrounds who had been ruthlessly mocked for being overweight and whose lives were transformed by the drug. Of course, that kind of scrutiny and judgment for anyone in the public eye is only more intense, but taking weight-loss drugs is still considered taboo in Hollywood.
“The pressure [to be thin] for women in media is much different than [for] men in media,” Padma Lakshmi said in 2023 at the Time100 Gala. “We have to look good, we have to sound good, we have to be strong but not too strong, we have to be vulnerable but not too weak. It can feel like a really dichotomous, tall order.”
Philipps noted a double standard around men who privately use HGH (Human Growth Hormone) or testosterone to prepare for superhero roles that have not endured the same kinds of criticisms as women who were suspected of using weight-loss drugs.
“I never saw one f–king Time magazine cover about [HGH],” she said, referring to the fact that Ozempic has prompted cover stories in Time, New York magazine and The Economist, as well as articles in The New York Times.
Whoopi Goldberg is one of the few stars who has admitted to having help to lose weight. “I am doing that wonderful shot that works for folks who need some help, and it’s been really good for me,” she told Kelly Clarkson in May. “I’ve lost almost two people,” quipped “The View” co-host, who said that Mounjaro was “one of the things that’s helped me drop the weight” when she approached 300 pounds in 2022.
Clarkson, who was diagnosed with prediabetes earlier this year after hitting more than 200 pounds, said she’d also been taking a weight-loss drug “because my bloodwork got so bad… My doctor chased me for two years, and I was like, ‘No, I’m afraid of it.’”
But for reasons that are unclear the singer and talk show host wouldn’t say which drug she was taking. “Everybody thinks it’s Ozempic, but it’s not. It’s something else,” she told Goldberg cryptically.
“Killers of the Flower Moon” star Jesse Plemons sparked rumors at this year’s Oscars when he hit the red carpet 50 pounds lighter than he looked in the Martin Scorsese movie, but he quickly said he’d used intermittent fasting, not drugs, to slim down.
“It’s really unfortunate that I decided to get healthy when everyone decided to take Ozempic,” Plemons told the L.A. Times in June, adding that, despite his disclaimer, “Everyone’s going to think I took Ozempic anyway.”
Former “Hills” star Spencer Pratt said he wouldn’t use semaglutides because he doesn’t want to “get Ozempic face” or show up on a gossip page, “getting papped and looking all Skeletor spooky.”
Downsides of Ozempic and similar drugs
Ozempic, known generically as semaglutide, was approved in 2017 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in adults with type two diabetes.
When its rapid weight-loss properties became apparent, the appetite-curbing drug became so popular that it prompted Danish manufacturer Novo Nordisk to create Wegovy, a version for non-diabetics. That hasn’t stemmed the tide of demand, however, with reports of nationwide shortages for diabetics who actually need the drug.
Besides what is referred to as “Ozempic face” — that deflated-balloon look that can came from any form of rapid weight-loss — there are other serious side effects.
Ozempic can lead to bowel blockages and nutrient deficiency, Dana Hunnes, a dietitian at UCLA, told TheWrap. “I don’t think the dangers are being overstated because we’ve seen patients come in because they are having micronutrients malnourishment, where they’re not getting all the vitamins and minerals they need, because they’re not eating very much,” Hunnes said. “Or we’ve seen people come in with a bowel obstruction, because [Ozempic] slows down how quickly your digestive tract works and that can be very dangerous.”
But the drug can also have positive side effects.
Ernst von Schwarz, a cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, confirmed that doctors in his field warmed to the drug after a 2016 study showed the use of semaglutide significantly reduced cardiovascular death and strokes, a finding confirmed by another study published last year.
However, von Schwarz said he won’t prescribe the drug to anyone, such as a recent “skinny, beautiful 40-year-old woman,” who want Wegovy or Ozempic simply to drop a few pounds.
“I’m not prescribing anything if there’s no medical indication, if it’s just for pure cosmetic reasons,” said the cardiologist. “I personally would not prescribe the medication just because someone wants to lose three more pounds to fit into their black dress for an event.”
Read Part One: ‘It’s All One Giant Charade’: Steroids and Hollywood’s Drive for Super(hero)-Perfection
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