In 2024, I noticed something strange on r/antidiet: a post about someone’s weight loss on Ozempic. The subreddit r/antidiet was created to push back against dieting culture and encourage members to accept their bodies, but here I found a post advocating for a medical intervention to lose weight. The post follows the typical script of body positivity messaging: Ozempic had helped the user accept their body more, and she felt happier than she ever had. And yet, I immediately recognized that something was off.
I came to this subreddit for mental health support related to body image issues. Forums like r/antidiet and r/bodypositivity helped me feel that I didn’t need to take the drastic measures I had in the past to lose weight. But with this post, I started wondering whether this miracle drug could finally help me achieve my desire to drop below that particular goal weight. After seeing the first post, I started to notice them everywhere. Under #EffYourBeautyStandards, I saw a post calling GLP-1s empowering. On r/bodypositivity, I saw a post comparing Ozempic to Wegovy. Comments on GLP-1 posts across forums and hashtags were overwhelmingly positive; only a few questioned whether GLP-1s belonged in the discussion.
GLP-1s are killing body positivity — but not in the way you think. While these medications can offer real health benefits, they are flooding and redirecting every conversation away from body acceptance to body improvement. People are now putting mental health aside in exchange for fitting into an ideal.
As time went on and I watched as familiar body positive figures like Megan Trainor and Rebel Wilson lost substantial weight, I began to see people online lauding the death of body positivity. I remember coming across a Twitter thread claiming body positivity was a movement that promoted unhealthy lifestyles, and that GLP-1s were both making people healthier and women hotter. Around this time, New York Fashion Week quietly reduced the number of plus-size models by 70 percent. All around me, the decline of body positivity was seen as a win for America.
I remember looking at myself in the mirror and feeling uneasy; I had seemed so skinny just a few months ago, so why did I now feel so full? I wondered for a moment: Was this truly the death of body positivity? Maybe I needed to suck it up and just get on Ozempic. I could post progress pictures and tell everyone how happy I am, and everyone would tell me how beautiful I was.
For Christmas, I was at my parents’ house in Rhode Island. In the process of trying to buy Wegovy off of TrumpRx.gov, I overheard something that made me pause. My father was talking to one of his old military friends down the hall; in the war in Afghanistan, his friend had earned a Purple Heart, which he said “did little to offset [his] missing pair of legs.” My father asked his friend if he had seen anything about a new style of prosthetic on a veteran forum. His friend replied, “I don’t go on the forums; half the posts are about Ozempic.”
That afternoon, I asked him what he meant by that comment. He told me — rather innocuously — that when you retire from the military, you “stop exercising and you get fat,” which explains why the forums are dominated by discussions about Ozempic. His explanation was reasonable enough, but it made me wonder again if something is lost with the death of online body positivity. I began to do some research.
I started browsing general body positivity forums, not limited to specific physical conditions. Post after post on Reddit, Instagram and Facebook were about GLP-1s. When I really dug, I found people asking for advice on acne scars, baldness and cerebral palsy, but it was all buried under a mountain of Ozempic.
I then began looking at condition-specific groups. On a forum about dwarfism, I saw a fierce debate raging about the efficacy of Human Growth Hormone therapy in making little people look “more normal.” This seemed unusual, but I wasn’t sure. So I decided to reach out to a friend of mine. At age 21, he had shaved his head in response to what he called “the Norwood reaper” — also known as advanced male pattern baldness. I asked him if his decision was informed by any advice found online. He told me that he didn’t look for advice online anymore, because in the last two years, it had gone from advice about existing as a bald man to advice about saving for Turkish hair transplants. Clearly, these spaces are not what they used to be.
These online forums are losing the values of positivity and acceptance they once promoted. Let Ozempic serve as a warning — online forums increasingly reward insecurity and self-modification. Instead, the conversation should center on something far more valuable: supporting each other’s mental health rather than pressuring each other to fit an ideal.
There are two ways to tell the story of GLP-1 drugs. In one story, they are making lots of people healthier. In the extended story, GLP-1s are ending body positivity. As fat acceptance declines, spaces where people with all sorts of conditions looking for body positive support are dying off. They’re left with no community. Meanwhile, medical procedures to “fix” people’s bodies are becoming more common, and people with eating disorders are trying to use these drugs to worsen their conditions. All the while, Ozempic is screwing everyone from young men going bald to amputees.
We need spaces for body positivity, which isn’t necessarily just a movement about obesity, but rather a movement tackling mental health. I encourage everyone who reads this to find groups they can join that promote body positivity. Above all, I hope that when you look in the mirror, you lοve your body.
Grace Rutherford PO ’28 doesn’t go on Reddit anymore.
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