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As some people describe it, this is where the world is now headed due to the discovery of weight loss drugs. In the three short years since the US Federal Drug Administration approved these drugs, their use has increased rapidly. Novo Nordisk, the maker of Ozempic and Vegovy, has become Europe’s most valuable company. Eli Lilly, which makes Monjaro, was one of the best US performers last year. And celebrities including Oprah Winfrey and Kelly Clarkson have emerged slimmer and leaner almost overnight.
Morgan Stanley, a bank, estimates that 9% of Americans will take brand-name versions of weight loss drugs by 2035. This is just the tip of the iceberg. The demand for versions of these medicines is continuously increasing. On the subway in New York, Ro, a health care startup, advises riders to “skip the loophole” and gain access to cheaper versions for as little as $99 a month. Instagram is full of ads from her and firms like Eden. Which target youth by using lower-case brand names and soothing color schemes. In September Kourtney Kardashian, a socialite, began selling a capsule through her supplement company Lemme, which also offers vaginal probiotic gummies and anti-cellulite pills.
The most important result of the discovery of medicines is well understood: they will improve the health and lives of most people who have access to them. But the understandable joy over the health benefits has, in some circles, been tempered by fears that the drugs will encourage society’s worst aesthetic impulses: that they will bring about an even more intense expectation that everyone conform to contemporary beauty standards. A trend that can come with its own health burdens in the form of mental-health conditions and disordered eating.
People are eager to take weight loss drugs for aesthetic reasons as well as due to health concerns. This is not mere arrogance. Evidence of discrimination against obese people is widespread. In Sweden and Mexico, where it is common to include a photo with a CV, researchers manipulated images to make similar hypothetical job applicants appear fat or obese. They found that their chances of being granted an interview were quite slim. Petter Lundborg of Lund University and John Cawley of Cornell University compared the salaries of thin and obese women in Europe and the US, adjusted for education, experience and other factors, respectively, and found that women with an obese BMI made about 10% of their counterparts. % earn less. peers. The implication is clear: For an obese woman, the impact of gaining $80,000 on Ozempic may be more economically consequential than any ultimate savings on her health bills.
Will weight loss drugs make discrimination worse? New York Times columnist Tracy MacMillan Cottam has argued against the notion that Ozempic will “fix the moral crisis of fat bodies that refuse to get thin and stay thin”. The underlying promise of the drug is that “it can fix what our culture is broken.” (Her preferred solution: Instead of solving obesity with drugs, society should stop stigmatizing fat people.) “Ozempic has won, body positivity has lost. And I want no part of it,” The Guardian. Rachel Pick, a writer, expressed regret.
Such concerns are fueled by the fact that the “body positive” movement, which emphasizes the idea that everyone should strive to meet the same body ideal, is gaining ground. Retailers offer more sizes. It has become common to see clothes displayed on larger women while shopping online. John Galliano of Maison Margiela, a luxury fashion house, used models of all sizes in a show in Paris.
It’s natural to think that, in the short term, weight loss medications might encourage prejudice against obese people. Until now they have been available mostly to the wealthy, Mr Cawley says: “If being able to lose weight is something that is highly correlated with a person’s income, then there is a risk that obesity will be driven by having a lower income.” “Can be seen as a sign.” But mass adoption is underway and will change things.
signal and scale
Primitive humans first invented tools. Then he invented jewellery. Archaeologists have discovered beads of shells, believed to have been necklaces or earrings, that are 150,000 years old – older than the evolution of language. The desire to use your appearance to signal that you are different from others is one of humanity’s oldest impulses.
People have sent different signals across time and cultures. Sometimes the impetus for change was the discovery of a new, shiny material: snail shells were replaced by gold beads, and later diamonds. High-class beauties of the Renaissance were sensual women painted by Rubens. Then the Industrial Revolution made food more affordable for the masses and a lean look became more desirable. If Malthus – who predicted in 1798 that the population would soon be endangered by food shortages – had been correct, obesity would certainly still be prevalent.
Weight loss drugs will probably be responsible for the next big change, and it won’t be the creation of a Stepford dystopia. Thinness is now desirable because it sends a signal: that the person has time to exercise, money to afford healthy food and the education to know what diet to follow. In low-income countries such as Malawi and Uganda, where food is scarce for poor people, obesity is more desirable, as it was in the pre-industrial West. A study conducted in these countries by Elisa Macchi of Brown University manipulated images attached to loan applications and found that applicants who looked obese had better access to credit.
The economics of signaling were best expressed by Nobel laureate Michael Spence. In 1973 Mr. Spence developed a simple model of how the labor market works. There are two types of job candidates: good, high-productivity ones and bad, lazy ones. Potential employers don’t know which is which. Applicants can obtain a degree, but it is difficult; Bad candidates are unlikely to be able to do this. Even for good people, getting a degree is expensive; It takes time and money. In this model, even if there is no real benefit to education, good candidates will pursue degrees as a signaling device to let employers know they are strong candidates.
Before Mr. Spence’s paper, the thinking was that employers valued education because it improved productivity. Mr Spence shows there may be more to it. Would you go to Harvard, take classes, make connections—and never make it out? Or would you prefer to have a piece of paper saying you went? A similar question reveals the truth about body type. Would you like to look slim and toned? Or would you really like to be healthy?
With their presence, people are sending signals that matter in the job and marriage markets. But what if one didn’t have to be rich or disciplined to be slim? A signal is useful only when it sends the right message. In Mr. Spence’s model, the signal only works when university education is difficult to obtain and is obtained only by strong candidates.
Consider another example to see how quickly a signal can lose value. When email was new it was clear that, if someone addressed you by name in the subject line or text, a real person was trying to get your attention. After all, he prepared a message just for you. It then became possible for senders to easily check the names of a long list of people. For some time, email users were deceived: they clicked, expecting an important message, and instead received a generic advertisement. Yet he soon learned.
A change in the perception of thin people is already underway in gossipy corners of the Internet. Posters on the “NYC Influencer Snark” subreddit, a forum dedicated to decrying the bad taste of D-list TikTok stars and Instagram influencers, blame anyone and everyone. Often it’s useless nonsense, but sometimes they provide evidence (or “receipts”). Two months ago “nickandercover”, a habitual poster, published a screenshot of Serena Kerrigan, who has 217,000 Instagram followers, standing in front of her fridge. “Not that any proof was needed, but she’s not even bothering to hide her Ozampic use now,” he said, pointing to the tell-tale cap of the GLP-1 pen Image marked with a red arrow Written above.
Since the drug must be kept cold to be effective, kitchen photos and bruises on the stomach (the common injection site) have become a way for Internet sleuths to find out who is taking the drug. Perhaps not surprisingly, these posters are not implying good will or flattering drug users for their new figures. This is a memorable moment. In the jargon of economics, they are revealing that the signals the person is sending from their body are false. They didn’t lose weight the hard way.
Ozempic will not fix society and rid it of the status game. Signaling that you are unique or better than others is inherent in human nature. However, the idea that it could be easy to be thin suggests that thinness will lose some of its hold on the popular psyche. Something else will undoubtedly take its place. Perhaps it will be a fixation on muscles, which are more difficult to show off. Or perhaps the truly elite will be those who signal that they are above all this, doing so with soft, medium body types, anyway.
In many ways, this can be a blessing. The pursuit of thinness, especially for young girls, has come at a high cost. Contrary to what many people think, by making it easy for almost anyone to slim down, Ozempic may not only fix America’s weight problems – it may also fix America’s weight problem.
© 2024, The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved. From The Economist, published under license. Original content can be found at www.economist.com
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