did see you how much weight she lost?

and other shitty questions we've all asked or want to

I’ve been circling around writing this for awhile, and to be totally honest I can’t say with certainty which direction it’s about to go; maybe many directions, maybe nowhere concrete at all. Maybe I’m just inspired by cryptic callouts on social media, the type of post where you know someone is talking about something or someone specific but they won’t just come out and say what or who and it’s probably to drive engagement or protect beneficial relationships and really, who can blame them? I get it, but I’m also so thirsty for gossip that I find myself lying flat in bed with the shades drawn watching a 10 minute abstract takedown while muttering “say it with your fucking chest.”

Unfortunately the topic I’ve been wanting to name and dissect is kind of the ultimate exercise in figuring out how to say something without really saying it, the cultural manifestation of eyebrow raises and side glances and whispers in the corner at a party and a snarky little text message sent with invisible ink. If you read this and think it’s about you, or me, or your favorite TikTok influencer, or any specific person or situation you’ve been wondering about, you’re both correct and probably totally off base — this is about all of the above, but also nothing in particular — it’s something that just is, and maybe never wasn’t, and perhaps just kind of always will be.

I am, of course, talking about fat people losing weight, and probably (maybe? did she?) using semaglutides to do so.

The thoughts I’ve been trying to get on paper aren’t really about the individuals you’ve noticed getting skinnier, the gradual and then maybe not-so-gradual changes that creators and celebrities and coworkers are experiencing right before your eyes, their well-lit bodies shrinking day by day until suddenly you realize they look nothing like they did six months ago (or did they? you probably have to scroll back and check. ok, you scrolled, we always scroll. yep, that’s crazy how different she looks.) The actual decision-to and process-of a person losing weight is kind of the least interesting part of it all — I believe a person should do whatever is right for them, for their body and overall happiness. What’s revealing itself as truly bizarre is the collective shift in how we talk about weight loss now: How it’s presented to us, how we react, and how it makes us feel about ourselves. As someone who started writing about these topics over a decade ago, when it felt like the conversation was headed in a completely different direction (even if, maybe, it actually wasn’t), it’s at the very least a compelling plot twist.

Here’s an example.

The other day, a friend of mine sent me picture of an advertisement on the subway. The ad showed a thin woman in a black bikini checking herself out in the mirror, and a fat version of her in the same black bikini looking back.

LOSE UP TO 20% WITH WEEKLY SKINNY SHOTS. STARTS AT $99 A WEEK. FEEL FULL FASTER, LONGER. SCAN HERE TO UNLOCK $100 OFF FIRST MONTH.

I cackled to myself about the ad copy and the decision to not qualify what, exactly, you’d be losing 20% of (maybe they just mean your income?) Another thing that struck me is that the thin woman is the one in “real” life, and the fat woman is the one stuck in the mirror — the implication being that she already took the skinny shot plunge and left her fat self through the looking glass, and whoever is looking at the ad should probably hurry and catch up.

A decade ago, an ad like this would have gone viral for being oppressive and problematic and writers at every women’s digital media outlet would have penned a think piece about it that would inevitably be the top traffic performer for the week. I know this to be true, I was probably one of the people writing about it. And now, here we are in 2024 confronted with the sort of retrograde advertising sentiment we thought was long-dead, a relic of historical thinspiration from the lost city of Fatlantis we’d tricked ourselves into believing we’d never explore again.

Here’s where I’ll stop and say that I personally don’t believe we ever completely stopped exploring it; mostly it was just better hidden. In the years where body positivity and fat acceptance were the topic du jour, the pressure to lose weight was still there, but it was shrouded in gobbledygook about empowerment and living your best life and loving yourself enough to put down the pizza and go to SoulCycle. The business of diet culture was still very much thriving; marketers just had to get clever about the framing of it all so as not to overtly harm the nascent, radical idea that hey, maybe all fat people shouldn’t hate the shit out of themselves. Now, though, we’ve not so much evolved beyond that advertisement as we have warped it even further, in a way that’s somehow more insidious. I’m no longer just supposed to be a fat person standing in front of a mirror wishing to be thin: I’m a fat person trapped in stasis while the promise of my thin self lies just beyond a barrier that only a weekly $99 can break.

And that advertisement is just one of many warped iterations of what feels like our formerly fat-loathing life in the age of Ozempic(s). Our favorite creators and celebrities are losing weight, and it feels like it’s all anyone can talk about without saying much of anything, really. I’ve observed careful conversations about people who’ve lost weight, with both parties initially dancing around the issue only to descend into a full gossipy almond mom state of speculation — and a few times I’m embarrassed to admit, I’ve been one of those people. I’ve browsed through countless comments sections on creator pages, wondering to myself if it’s actually so bad that hundreds of people are telling that creator how amazing they look and how inspiring they are, even if the reason behind that influx of comments appears to be extreme weight loss. Just this week, I noticed an influential media sort who’s built a prestigious career platforming inclusivity proudly announce a corporate role “navigating the weight health landscape” at… Weight Watchers. I’ve wondered if I only feel comfortable about naming this because it’s such a strange, masterful manipulation of messaging (as opposed to the implicit messaging I receive from influential people doing the same thing but not naming it — is that worse? Better? I truly don’t even know anymore.

Ultimately, it all feels something many people are both talking about and circling around, reacting to and avoiding, critiquing and afraid to critique. I also know that there’s no telling where it goes from here, and the uncertainty raises some uncomfortable questions — namely, if it becomes universally “easy” to get skinny, what do we lose by not having to interrogate why we want to in the first place? What does our society do with a fat person who has a magic bullet, but doesn’t want to use it? How do we reckon with a collective slim-down while also holding on to the idea that losing weight isn’t the key to happiness? If getting thin becomes something that’s actually simple to do, why wouldn’t everyone want to do it?

Like I said, I still haven’t really worked out where I stand with all of this — how it makes me feel, what I want for myself, what I see happening for others, my honest reaction to all of it versus the reaction that comes as a result of all the programming and deprogramming and reprogramming and utter brain rot of just being a fat person on the internet. But, I do know one thing: It’s not just fat we’re losing. The plot seems to be gone as well.