Are GLP-1 Weight Loss Drugs Reinforcing Diet Culture or Revolutionising Healthcare?
Are GLP-1 weight loss drugs reinforcing diet culture or revolutionising healthcare?
By Professor Phillippa Diedrichs, PhD
2 June 2025
⏱ 7 mins
“In a world where beauty bias is rampant and thinness is rewarded, the pressure to join the GLP-1 surge is immense - even for those without medical need.”
GLP-1s for weight loss
The rise of GLP-1s weight loss injections, like Ozempic and Wegovy, has exploded into group chats, newsfeeds, social media, and clinical guidelines. For some, these medications are a breakthrough: a lifeline for people facing chronic health conditions such as Type 2 Diabetes, or, a glimmer of hope for those burdened by decades of weight-related shame. For others, they feel like déjà vu: a glossier, injectable reincarnation of society’s enduring obsession with thinness as a symbol of beauty, success, and willpower.
So, are these drugs a medical marvel or just another tool for body shaming and culture’s never ending quest to make us smaller?
As with most issues involving bodies and billion-dollar industries, the answer is uncomfortably complex.
Let’s unpack the nuances, explore the ethics, and ask what it means to shape a future where health doesn’t come at the cost of body shaming and inequalities.
The Case for GLP-1s
Reinforcing Diet Culture
The Cult of Thinness Disguised as Health and Wellness
Diet culture isn’t just about kale and crunches. It’s a belief system that equates thinness with virtue, worth and control. In this worldview, smaller is always better and health and wellness is often wielded as a smokescreen for appearance-driven ideals that reinforce gender stereotypes, fat phobia, and health inequities.
Enter GLP-1 weight loss drugs - glucagon-like peptide 1 agonists - known colloquially as “weight-loss jabs” or branded with names like Ozempic Wegovy and Mounjaro. Without ethical marketing, inclusive narratives, or social media guardrails, these medications risk becoming another way we repackage thinness and beauty ideals as health and wellness.
And while they can indeed lead to weight change, the reality is more nuanced than most headlines suggest. A 2025 review of 47 scientific studies with over 20,000 people found that the average weight loss was just 4.57kg, and often temporary - without ongoing medication or lifestyle support, the weight often returns.
But in a culture that glorifies thinness, even modest loss becomes gold dust. And the fantasy of a ‘quick fix’ is hard to resist.
The Allure of the “Quick Fix” and Its Mental Health Risks
The demand for GLP-1s is soaring, fast enough for sales to affect national economies, shift national drug policies and disrupt global supply chains. People outside of prescribing guidelines are seeking them out. Social media is full of hacks for bypassing BMI thresholds. Underground markets are booming. In fact, in 2024 the World Health Organisation issued a saftey alert following a series of deaths linked to counterfeit Ozempic pens.
Experts are clear: GLP-1s are not recommended for people with a BMI under 30, as the risks outweigh the benefits.
Yet the pressure to conform, to achieve the ‘right’ kind of body, can override caution. In many cases, people are trading long-term wellbeing for short-term aesthetic wins. And the fallout lands hardest on those already vulnerable.
Weight Bias and Body Shaming on Social Media
The GLP-1 noise on social media is deafening: influencers flaunting “after” photos, celebrity headlines that act as public weigh-ins. The implication – often unspoken but internalised – is that not joining in on the GLP-1 trend is a missed opportunity.
Especially for women and those in marginalised fat bodies, the message is clear: shrink, or be judged.
But, shrinking the ‘right’ way is complex.
There’s a growing trend of body shaming GLP-1 users with accusations of “taking the easy way out”, as if “will-power” is the only legitimate path to weight loss. We’ll save a deep dive into the myths around weight, behaviour, and biology for another post.
“When we focus on weight-loss alone as a method for achieving health and self-esteem, we risk fueling body dissatisfaction, disordered eating and weight-based discrimination.”
Health Inequity? Who gets access to GLP-1s?
At the moment, these drugs are expensive and access often follows familiar lines of privilege: income, race, geography. What begins as a medical tool can quickly become a symbol of affluence and status, another way for wealth to buy ‘health’, or at least, the appearance of it.
Let’s not ignore the power dynamics. Are people choosing GLP-1s or are they choosing them to be chosen - for jobs, relationships, or social acceptance?
Positioning GLP-1s as miracle cures feeds the fantasy that lifelong wellbeing is just a few injections away. It sidelines the broader work needed to improve population health: access to affordable healthcare, unprocessed food, and environments free from stigma, discrimination and problematic beauty ideals.
If health becomes something we can buy, who gets left behind?
The Case for GLP-1s
Innovating Healthcare
A tool not a magic bullet
For people with chronic health conditions like Type 2 diabetes, GLP-1s can be life-changing. Benefits include improved blood sugar control, lowered risk of heart disease, and even better sleep.
These aren’t vanity metrics, they’re quality-of-life milestones.
When prescribed responsibly with sufficient patient knowledge about their risks and benefits, and when used in tandem with behavioural and psychological support, these medications can be part of a holistic healthcare plan.
Shifting the health conversation
Supporters argue this isn’t about aesthetics, it’s about biomarkers. It’s stepping away from treating weight and fatness as moral failures, and moving towards treating weight as one piece of a broader health puzzle.
Used appropriately, GLP-1s could challenge the toxic, over-simplified narrative that willpower equals health, offering new avenues for patient autonomy and compassionate care.
So, where do we go from here?
The Problem Isn’t the Drugs, It’s the Narrative.
In a world where beauty bias is rampant and thinness is rewarded, the pressure to join the GLP-1 surge is immense - even for those without medical need.
“We must ask: are we expanding access to health, or reinforcing the idea that only one kind of body deserves respect?”
Reframing What Health Looks Like
A healthier future for all means moving beyond weight as a sole measure of well-being.
That means:
Prioritising mental health alongside physical outcomes
Fostering body acceptance across all sizes
Building systems and environments that support health at every size, for everyone
Questions Worth Asking
Are GLP-1s treating root causes of poor health, or symptoms of a broken culture?
How do we ensure access for those who need them, without commercialising them as a wellness trend?
How do we protect young people and vulnerable groups from misinformation and exploitation?
Can we support individual choice while challenging a system that equates thinness with social value?
Health Equity, Not Aesthetic Equity
At EVERYBODY Consulting, we believe health is a collective responsibility centred on equity and inclusivity. That means calling out diet culture and championing equitable access to evidence-based healthcare. It means challenging shame-based marketing and supporting innovations that improve lives.
We don’t need a war between medicine and body positivity. We need a new conversation grounded in science, empathy, and social justice.
Revolution, Rewritten
GLP-1 weight loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy are not inherently good or bad. They’re tools.
The question is: who has access to them and for what purpose?
If the narrative of health and wellness remains tethered to weight loss as central to self-worth, we risk deepening existing harms. But if we use these tools with care, equity, and transparency, they could support a more inclusive, person-centred model of healthcare.
Because the real wellbeing revolution doesn’t come in a syringe or a pill.
It comes in the stories we tell, the systems we rebuild, and the choices we make together.
Learn More about GLP-1s from our experts:
Dr Nadia Craddock covers the science of weight stigma on her podcast co-hosted with Honey Ross, The Body Protest.
Professor Phillippa Diedrichs chats about the psychological aspects of GLP-1s on an episode of Should I Delete that with Alex Light and Em Clarkson.
Meet Phillippa
Professor Phillippa Diedrichs, PhD, is a social scientist on a mission to ensure no one is held back by how they look, their gender or identity. She’s a global expert on body image, mental health and inclusion, working with leading brands, governments, women and young people to drive meaningful social change.
Phillippa is the Founder of EVERYBODY Consulting and a Professor of Psychology at the Centre for Appearance Research.
