Why Gen Z women like me aren’t jumping on the Ozempic bandwagon

By Erin Deborah Waks

A ‘skinny’ pill that keeps your weight down without you having to exert any effort of your own? No diet, no regimented gym schedule, no need to forgo any of the little pleasures - cheese, wine, chocolate - so many of us love? It sounds like everyone’s - every woman’s - dream.

Fat jabs and pills including Ozempic, Mounjaro and Wegovy, have been hailed as miracle cures for obesity and related illnesses. Indeed, celebs and normal people alike have been keen to join the trend. With high-profile fans including Oprah, Sharon Osbourne and Amy Schumer, examples of people exhibiting impressive weight-loss and newfound slimmer bodies are everywhere we look. It seems watching celebs who have struggled with their weight all of their lives all of a sudden fit the archetypal ‘beautiful’ body type - read: slim - has served as inspiration for women across the world to ditch the diet talk and take the seemingly ‘miraculous’ cure that promises to fix all your problems overnight. With over 1.45 million Ozempic prescriptions issued in 2023-24, and one in 10 women now taking the drug, it is clear how many are desperate for a ‘cure’ for their ‘fatness’.

And, while it is currently available prescription-only, the growing black market for such drugs is undeniable. It is only a matter of time before it becomes as easy to get hold of as other over-the-counter drugs. 

But I, like many of my Gen Z friends, are not so keen.

When I was a teenager, I would have given pretty much anything for a ‘skinny pill’. I would have traded my good grades to be a size six; being thin was the be all and end all for me. My struggles with weight eventually led me down a dangerous path to anorexia, an eating disorder that dominated my teenage years. Between the ages of 16 and 20, I stopped at nothing to lose more weight - from fad diets to gruelling exercise regimens, I tried it all. I truly believed being thinner would make me happier. 

Like many who are attracted to the idea of weight-loss drugs, I had no physical need to lose weight. I have always been on the slimmer side and don’t have diabetes or any other health issues, and was invested in losing weight purely for aesthetic reasons, a desperate need to feel more beautiful. I wanted to fit society’s mold. And the society in which I grew up had taught me that being thin, as a woman, was the ultimate goal, the definition of beautiful. Growing up in the social media age, I watched endless streams of women who did not look like me, gradually seeping away my belief in my own beauty. Coupled with my own insecurities, this meant I gradually learned to equate my worth with my weight. Naturally, I assumed this meant if I were thinner, things would be better. I would be happier. 

So I decided, aged 16, that the best way to feel good about myself was to be thinner. This, as many others who have recovered from eating disorders will echo, is a blatant lie. Fast forward eight years and I can say I learned the long way around that I was so, so wrong. The thinner I got, the more weight I wanted to lose. The less I ate, the more I focused on that number on the scale. The more pounds I dropped, the more miserable I became, resulting in an endless cycle of believing I would be happier when I lost another 5kg. Eventually, when I reached my lowest weight of my teenage years, I was a shell of my former self.

I worry if we herald Ozempic as a miracle cure for weight loss, we will be reinforcing the narrative many Gen Z women are trying to shatter: that thinner does not mean better. Many of us grew up with relatives who were victims of diet culture themselves - ‘almond mums’, as the TikTok trend so aptly describes it. 

For me, learning to accept my body the way it is - for what it can do, rather than how it looks - was an integral part of the building of my self-esteem. Had I taken a skinny pill at 18 to drop the weight I felt was making me unlovable, unhappy and unworthy, I would have remained stuck in the mindset that my body was somehow wrong, that something needed to change, for me to like myself.

I had to learn to accept the imperfections in my physique as a part of accepting myself for who I am. I had to learn to enjoy my life at any size - to go swimming with my friends even if I felt uncomfortable in my bikini, to wear shorts in the summer even while I was worried about showing my thighs. I had to detach my innate worth as a person from the number I saw on the bathroom scales. I had to dig deep to figure out precisely why I was so unhappy, without blaming external physical factors for the bulk of problems that were entirely emotional. I’m better off for it. 

If I had taken such a drug, I would likely have spent most of my life believing that I was worth more because I was thinner. I still worry about my weight from time to time, in truth, and the temptation of a drug like this, even for someone who has experienced first hand the dangers of our obsession with thinness, is evidence of just how tempting a quick fix can be.

I hear and believe the arguments that Ozempic helps people with issues such as binge eating, sugar addiction, alcohol consumption and food noise, but I believe learning to grapple with such problems by myself made me a stronger, more resilient person. Being able to understand and deal with the emotional reasons behind these issues taught me to better handle the underlying emotional causes, rather than putting a plaster on the issue temporarily.

While I do not deny the necessity of such drugs to combat serious health issues including obesity and diabetes - indeed, it is a potentially life-changing cure for many - I do worry its popularity has begun to undo the body-positive movement that has taken the world by storm over the last decade. Rather than berating themselves into losing weight like our mothers and grandmothers, trying every diet under the sun, many women in my generation are learning to embrace our bodies. I also recognise my privilege in fitting a certain beauty and weight standard - I am aware this may have made my challenges easier in the face of society.

A skinny pill simultaneously reinforces the notion that ‘thinner is better’ and allows us to live our lives entirely focused on our appearance, and problematic standards of beauty.

Young, impressionable men and women will see countless bodies transformed almost overnight as a result of fat jabs. What effect will this have? Will we undo all the ‘health at every size’ positivity and return to the era of heroin-chic, back when Kate Moss professed that ‘nothing tastes better than skinny feels’? I sincerely hope not. I can list a million things that taste better than skinny feels. Least of all, happiness.