The controversial marketing campaign by pharmaceutical firm Novo Nordisk to talk “with out filters” about weight problems has reignited a deep societal dilemma: how weight problems is perceived and the way it suits, within the period of Ozempic, with the body-positivity motion. The rise of anti-obesity medicine and the expansion of on-line communities that promote thinness have put growing strain on actions advocating for physique variety and self-acceptance.
The Novo Nordisk marketing campaign in Spain was shortly met with sturdy backlash on social media, being labeled fatphobic, “tasteless,” and “indecent” — and even prompted the intervention of the Spanish Ministry of Well being, which requested “clarifications” over considerations that it could represent covert promoting.
Novo Nordisk itself, the maker of medicine like Ozempic, defended the marketing campaign — which warned in daring capital letters that weight problems is “a illness” that “can kill” — saying: “The dialog about weight problems is loaded with filters that, in an try to keep away from offending sensibilities, supply a distorted actuality that stops individuals from making sound well being selections.” The corporate’s place was clear: “We need to separate weight problems from aesthetic traits or the body-positive motion to create actual public consciousness concerning the significance of seeing a health care provider.”
Thinker Magdalena Piñeyro, activist and creator of Cease Fatphobia and Subversive Bellies, felt focused by the controversial advert: “Plainly this so-called ‘unfiltered’ speak is a response to the supposed strain or censorship that activists like us are putting on those that pathologize and discriminate in opposition to us. It jogs my memory numerous the entire ‘snowflake technology’ accusation and the standard conservative complaints that ‘you may’t say something anymore.’”
Novo Nordisk additionally argued in its marketing campaign that weight problems shouldn’t be about aesthetics, however about well being. Nonetheless, Azahara Nieto, a medical nutritionist, sees flaws in that premise: she argues the marketing campaign is “populist, and it penalizes and pathologizes bigger our bodies no matter their precise well being. It denies physique variety. An individual can weigh extra and nonetheless be wholesome.”
When requested about how these medicine could also be reworking physique beliefs and undermining conversations about physique acceptance, nutritionist Azahara Nieto argues that the present wave of enthusiasm for weight-loss medicines is shifting the main target away from physique variety: “All these actions in protection of physique variety are being pushed apart by the cult of thinness and the self-discipline of the physique.” On the similar time, nonetheless, she sees a rising response from “the fats liberation motion that emerged within the Nineteen Seventies and continues to struggle in opposition to the pathologizing of fats our bodies.”
Diego Bellido, president-elect of the Spanish Society for the Research of Weight problems (SEEDO), doesn’t imagine that the rise of Ozempic and related medicine has reversed the progress of body-positivity or self-acceptance actions. Nonetheless, he acknowledges that these medicines have unfold the concept losing a few pounds is simple, and warns of the hazards of trivializing their use. “It’s not only a matter of prescribing the drug,” he says. “A affected person may be losing a few pounds on the expense of muscle mass, and that’s not a achieve in well being — it’s a loss.”
Rethinking the medical view of weight problems
Within the ongoing reshaping of how society views weight problems, the medical and scientific perspective performs a central position. The World Well being Group classifies weight problems as a continual illness, however amongst consultants, there’s nonetheless ongoing scientific debate about whether or not it must be outlined as an sickness in itself or slightly as a bodily situation that will increase sure well being dangers.
A latest research printed within the BMJ medical journal additionally challenges the standard medical strategy to weight problems, which has primarily targeted on way of life interventions to attain weight reduction. The analysis argues that this technique has “little to no impact on sustained weight reduction and no profit on arduous outcomes reminiscent of cardiovascular occasions or mortality.” It additionally warns: “A deal with weight reduction might contribute to discrimination and internalized stigmatization.”
Piñeyro has so much to say concerning the medical perspective. “The principle purpose why chubby individuals cease going to the physician is discrimination, not being heard, and diagnostic errors,” she says. She factors to examples such because the absence of tailored infrastructure — like examination tables and wheelchairs that match bigger our bodies — or being denied remedies and surgical procedures primarily based solely on BMI.
Skinnytok and the cult of thinness
The controversy and paradigm shift triggered by the Ozempic increase has coincided with a resurgence within the cult of thinness and a revival of the early-2000s “heroin stylish” aesthetic.
“We’re seeing it on social media. We’re again to Skinnytok, to thinness and perfection. We’re returning to bodily neoliberalism,” warns Azahara Nieto, a medical nutritionist. On platforms like TikTok, communities glorifying thinness as an emblem of success are thriving, with influencers like Liv Schmidt main the cost — her model of web house, based underneath the hashtag #skinnytok, options white, skinny ladies giving recommendation on how one can keep skinny.
Nieto cautions that these narratives, which put thinness again within the highlight, are resulting in “a surge in consuming issues (EDs).” Cristina Carmona, medical psychologist at Hospital Sant Pau, agrees: “We’re seeing once more that persons are growing a destructive view of weight problems. If just a few years in the past thinness was seen as a magnificence supreme, now it’s seen as a well being commonplace. Many individuals develop an ED simply because they need to be wholesome — they suppose consuming little is wholesome.”
In the direction of physique neutrality?
Within the face of what might be a regression within the social acceptance of physique variety, Nieto proposes a special narrative: embracing physique neutrality as a substitute of physique positivity. Each actions advocate for self-acceptance, however physique positivity nonetheless emphasizes look — it promotes magnificence at each measurement — whereas physique neutrality shifts focus towards appreciating the physique for its performance, not aesthetics. Ideally, the strategy can be well being in any respect sizes,” she concludes.
Bellido, nonetheless, disagrees with this concept: “I don’t imagine in metabolically wholesome weight problems. A affected person with extra fats will all the time have comorbidities, even when it takes time to see the harm.” Nonetheless, he does agree that “focusing solely on weight is dangerous observe” and advocates for evaluating each fats and muscle to get a extra correct well being profile than outward look alone can present.
The ideological undercurrent
Beneath the broader debate round social perceptions of weight problems and shifting physique beliefs lies a deeper ideological stress. In each the criticisms and defenses of Novo Nordisk’s controversial marketing campaign, there are political undertones — notably in references to “woke tradition,” which champions social consciousness and sensitivity towards variety.
Nieto hyperlinks this again to neoliberal ideology: “We’ve gone from ‘you’re poor since you need to be’ to ‘you’re fats since you need to be — since you might repair it with medicine and train.’ The sense of bodily self-discipline and management is a false type of self-mastery, despite the fact that not everybody begins from the identical place. And for those who can’t attain it, it’s framed as a failure.”
Piñeyro provides: “We will’t neglect that on this fatphobic society, thinness is related to self-discipline and self-control — ethical virtues held up as aspirational and central to self-creation (this concept of ‘the profitable self-made man’). That morality typically borders on eugenics — and is, after all, deeply neoliberal and individualistic — erasing the social, cultural, and financial contexts that form individuals’s lives and our bodies.” So long as thinness is applauded as a reward for particular person effort, she argues, “we’ll proceed feeding the harmful concept that some persons are value greater than others.”
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