The end of thin
When everyone can be a size 10, does anyone even want to be any more?
The first person I knew who took Ozempic was a fashion journalist. It was 2023 and within a few months she has slimmed down from a size 16 into a neat little 12, slipping back into clothes that had gathered dust in the back of her wardrobe since 2017.
‘A friend recommended it who lives in LA,’ she told me. ‘As long as you do a bunch of exercise as well, you look great.’
Everyone was floored by her seemingly effortless transformation. Including me.
Within a few months others in the same social circle were similarly flat packing their ‘new’ bodies into clothes they had more or less given up on. Some took ‘the jab’; whilst others slipped a little pill under their tongue each morning called Rybelus (like Ozempic, Rybelus is a semaglutide, typically used to manage diabetics’ blood sugar levels but also effective for weight loss in those who do not have diabetes). Within the year around 60 per cent of the women- and a few of the men in this most fashionable of cliques were slim as water reeds.
The rich and rich-adjacent, have always been good at ‘thin.’ Eating disorders, amphetamine-guzzling, exercise addiction, liposuction….it has often been the pursuit of the moneyed.
Without over-simplification of a complex issue, bodies generally rise and fall in accordance with wealth and class. (I once saw a brilliant comment on Reddit that said: ‘The rich have Ozempic, the poor have body positivity”). I can walk into a party with a W11 postcode for example and the collective BMI index will instantly drop by 10 per cent. I can go back to my hometown of Salford meanwhile and the pubs are filled with cuddly middles and bottoms you can rest your Guinness on.
But the general point is this: poor people can afford to eat bad food. Rich people can afford to eat nothing. The richest people I know for example, have always lived off the fewest calories- dehydrated snacks, spiralized vegetables, the leanest cuts of meat and gluten-free, calorie-free crackers made of seeds and air. Carbs rarely touch the mouths of the rich; whilst sugar is a bigger sin than infidelity.
Before the turn of the last century, thinness conveyed poverty whilst girth was the true measure of status and wealth. Big, sensual bodies with marshmallowy folds and dimples were the height of fashion and attractiveness as painted by leading artists such as Titian and later Rubens. Fast forward to the middle of the last century however and ‘fat’ was out; thin was in. (I am being deliberately provocative with the term fat here, since the very word has taken on a dark, prejudicial resonance over the years.)
Skinniness as leisured pursuit as opposed to genetic/health predisposition is an unfashionable thing to point out, but it is true. It is why books such as The Park Avenue Diet and How the Rich Get Thin (A New York Times best-seller no less) exist, and why people like Wallis Simpson felt she was stating the obvious when she said: You can never be too rich or too thin. (But presumably she meant you should ideally be both.)
Being thin beyond your 40s- at a biological age when your body is literally protecting you from procreating by filling out waists and giving you the silhouette of a battlefield tank- is hard work. It requires money —a PT several times a week, say; meals that are prepped and planned and most of all the luxury of time.
In other words- thin is not for the masses. Which is exactly why it has been so ferociously coveted for so long. Except Ozempic and its like (mainly Mounjaro, which everyone I know is taking) have changed all that. Novo Nordisk, the company who manufactures Ozempic and its weight-loss running mate Wegovy, cut the price of its ‘wonder’ drugs by more than 50 per cent back in March for Americans who pay for it without insurance, taking it from almost $1400 a month to just under $500. (In the UK a month’s supply can be as little as £180 a month- not cheap by any standard but also not prohibitive.) Cheap, black market Ozempic versions meanwhile are being sold through social media and beauty salons at even cheaper prices.
But has the over night democratisation of thin actually ended up reducing its appeal? At a time when anyone can now theoretically be slim, does anyone even want that any more? When slim is no longer a result of hours in the gym, expensively-prepared meals and a stoic approach to body maths, but instead a quick jab to the guts; do the status signifiers associated with it disappear?