Transcript: Fashion loves Ozempic. Should we talk about it?

This is an audio transcript of the Life and Art from FT Weekend podcast episode: ‘Fashion loves Ozempic. Should we talk about it?’

Lilah Raptopoulos
Welcome to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos. My colleague Jo Ellison has been around the fashion world for years. She was the features editor at British Vogue and the fashion editor here at the FT. She’s now editor of our luxury magazine HTSI. And that means she’s sat at many fashion shows during many fashion months and knows intimately just how much this industry hates fat. Thinness has been the goal in fashion for as long as anyone can remember. It’s the goal for supermodels, of course, but for editors and stylists, too. What Jo noticed during this fall’s fashion month, though, is that her colleagues didn’t just want to be thin, they were thin, and no one was talking openly about why. Jo wrote a column about this recently, suspecting that these colleagues are mostly secretly on Ozempic or Wegovy, a tool used to fight diabetes and obesity, which is also now being used by people to shed a few pounds. She thinks the fact that we’re struggling with how to talk about this speaks to how we think about bodies more broadly. So she’s joining me today from London to talk about it. Hi, Jo. Thanks for being here.

Jo Ellison
Hi, Nice to be here.

Lilah Raptopoulos
So let’s just start with what happened. You’re just back from a marathon fashion month. What did you see? What did you hear? What made you want to write about this?

Jo Ellison
I think it was just a general trend I noticed both on the catwalk and off it that people are getting smaller. People that I’ve known for, you know, more than a decade, people I’ve kind of sat next to and work with. I mean, I’m not saying like every single person I know before anyone thinks I’m about to name and shame all these people who haven’t done it. But there’s just a definite like, there was definite slimming down of certain individuals that looked sort of shocking or like very significantly noticeable amounts of weight loss, which you can’t help but sort of assume is attributable to something other than their exercise regime because you’ve known them 10 years and, you know, they do a lot of exercise and it has thus far been that significant. But I then think that on another level, there’s obviously a huge number of people on the front row who are kind of celebrities, actors. And I think in that industry, the use of Ozempic is just becoming really commonplace because I think they are just trying to keep their weight under control. So it’s not about people who are obese taking Ozempic or other kind of weight loss drugs in order to kind of combat obesity or help heart disease. It is because they want to be as thin as they possibly can. And that I found just kind of quite disturbing in 2024.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, for sure. So it’s not just people who are already very thin or people who are obese. It’s this sort of like these people in the middle who maybe have been trying to lose 15, 20 pounds.

Jo Ellison
I think, you know, like we all are. Most people, I think we probably say they were carrying four or five extra pounds that they’d rather not, especially as they get older. And it’s just the fact that I think that now exists, this kind of magic pill whereby you can and whereby your appetite is controlling what you do and see your weight loss becomes significant. And it’s been just this kind of extraordinary thing and we haven’t really seen the effects of it until now where people have been on it for say, a year or a year and a half and now they’re out and about. So we’re really beginning to see this kind of cultural effect of Ozempic take place. And I think also on the catwalk, I noticed the models have become extremely emaciated again, having been through this whole body inclusivism, body positivity, collective embrace of kind of all shapes and sizes that we went through maybe four or five years ago. There seems to have been this complete kind of revolt fast, where we’re now back into this age of a very, very kind of low BMI, very, very, very kind of like dangerously rail-thin aesthetic on the catwalk that I mean, I really thought we’d kind of got beyond. So I just feel like we’ve kind of moved out of the cycle once again back into something which, you know, fashion’s always very comfortable with very, very thin and prepubescent-looking women, which is depressing.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right, Right. But just recently, Jo, the fashion industry was starting to, as you’re saying, starting to talk about body diversity, starting to include bigger models going through this reckoning. Do you feel like that’s just gone now?

Jo Ellison
I think it’s difficult to sort of talk about because I think culturally as well, you know, there was a long period of time, I think, where fat became this word, which people were trying to kind of embrace. It was all about, yeah, reclaiming body dynamism. You know, you are who you are. Love yourself, whoever, whatever shape you are in. And it was all part of a kind of broader narrative about not judging other people and, you know, owning your own story and all of this kind of thing. And now you’ve got this drug which kind of combats obesity. And we’ve seen obesity levels maybe even peaking in America or even beginning to go into a decline. So now suddenly the narrative around weight has become a kind of health issue again and fat is possibly becoming bad. And the kind of words around it and the telegraphing around it is becoming maybe negative again. So it’s this very, it’s just a very strange evolution, as far as I can tell, because culture still seem really uncomfortable around bigger people.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. And we’re in such an in-between time, which is why it’s so interesting.

Jo Ellison
And I think it’s also this strange dialogue about: Is there a good way in a bad way to lose weight? Are you cheating if you’re on Ozempic or are you just . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
I think that cheating is huge. Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about cheating. Tell me.

Jo Ellison
Well, I think thinness in modern society and in the cultural dialogue is still sadly associated with morally more positive attributes. So thinness equals discipline, rigour, self-control, that you work hard, that you take care of yourself, whereas people who are of a bigger BMI are somehow irresponsible and slovenly. And this is so ingrained in our cultural conversation that despite all the effort we’ve gone to, it implies that, you know, fat is still a bad thing. And so then when we see people who even people who we’ve known, who have always been larger, the fact that they may have taken some easy route means they’re still a fat person in a thin’s body. So it’s this weird moral judgment we make on weight loss and like who’s deserving of it and who isn’t deserving of it, which I just find really gross, to be honest.

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Lilah Raptopoulos
You know, part of the reason that I was excited to talk to you about this is because you obviously have a unique view in the fashion world. And this industry cares so much about image and defines image so much that I feel like whatever’s happening there around weight and fitness and wellness inevitably does trickle down to us if it hasn’t already. And so we’ve touched on some of this, but I was hoping we could unpack some of the assumptions with you.

Jo Ellison
Yeah.

Lilah Raptopoulos
So the first to me is very obvious, but like thinness is clearly very desired in fashion. I don’t mean to sound totally naive, but why?

Jo Ellison
I think if you were to ask a designer, the standard answer is clothes look better on a thin person. I mean, in a very kind of incredibly basic way, there’s this idea that if you look like a hanger and clothes hang off you, then they follow as the designer intended. I mean, OK, so the designer is probably imagining a fairly scrawny prepubescent body and there’s always been a kind of precedent for that. I think on a sort of broader level in terms of like the business explanation, there are sample sizes, sample sizes are used throughout the industry. They are kind of circulated to every magazine who is shooting that garment and it is cut to fit one body size. And so that size is typically very small because you’ll use less fabric. You, you know, it’s smaller to package etc, etc, etc. So there’s a kind of industrial explanation for why sample sizes are always teeny tiny. And then there’s also a kind of more cultural and aesthetic assumption. And, you know, I think a lot of people would talk about the fact that a lot of designers are men. They’re looking at women, they’re objectified in a slightly different way. And this is all ancient, decades-old historical objectification of the female body and boobs are not cool in fashion. I mean, they’re just you very rarely see. So I think that kind of very small, flat-chested, hipless body is something which has existed probably since the ‘20s and 100 years later, and it hasn’t really changed.

Lilah Raptopoulos
It’s wild that it hasn’t changed.

Jo Ellison
I mean, I say that obviously there were kind of huge variations in it. There was the pin-ups of the ‘40s, but these weren’t probably women who were on a catwalk. I think there’s always been a thing between the haute couture figure which has this kind of very long lean line and the kind of slightly more curvaceous sort of Hollywood bombshell body. But both of them are very, very hard to achieve and kind of, you know, wildly aspirational body types where one’s probably just as dangerous as the other, but they’re dangerous in different ways.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Yeah. Jo, I’m thinking about this also in terms of like, OK, so there’s people who sort of these people in the middle who have maybe average-sized bodies and have always wanted to lose like five to 15 pounds in the fashion industry. And there, you know, there is like an incentive to take Ozempic and lose it. I wonder what will happen with the rest of us who just live in the normal world. Like, I’m kind of curious what that does to pressure, right? Like, there’s this thing that people have felt for their whole lives they really didn’t have full control over. If we’re now suddenly — in the near future or now as it becomes more available and cheaper, etc — able to have control over our weight, like how does that change our relationship with our weight?

Jo Ellison
Well, it also becomes another subject of privilege, isn’t it? Because the pricing of all of these things is completely different. Like in America, the prices of Ozempic, their priced extravagantly more than, for example, people who are taking it in Germany or the United Kingdom, because I think American pharmaceutical industry can charge more because they can. And so there’s this terrible price differential which then takes you into, as with all things, wealth and equity. So it’s become now an expression. Another expression of wealth was always that you could be thin because you can kind of afford to do all these things. And again, Ozempic is another expression of the same thing. So obesity will be forced into, you know, the stereotype that exists already will be compounded by the fact it will probably be people among the kind of like lower working class that can’t afford drugs like that and probably aren’t going to be, it’s not going to be kind of available to them via their insurance or they’re not going to have the insurance to be able to get it. And so it will be another story of us and them in like, everything that happens. So that’s the other kind of problem now is that, you know, anyone can be thin who can afford it. And I think that’s a very old historic mantra, but I think it’s now more so than ever.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Like we would look at celebrities and say, well, they have like, you know . . . 

Jo Ellison
Access to 20 staff and a full-time personal chef and they can have a, you know, they’ve got a personal gym and they can swim 50 laps a day and all those things. And it’s like, well, they can afford a $360-a-month drug for the rest of their lives and there’s no objective. But there was also really fascinating study in America recently about people because they haven’t done long-term studies on the use of Ozempic and other drugs like it. But also they haven’t been able to study when people can and can’t afford it and when the shortages are. So people are kind of coming up with their own methodologies as to when to take it and how much to take, and then they’re breaking from it and then they’re going back home when they can afford it again. So all of this long term, we don’t have any idea what this is going to look at like in terms of the health effects. So that’s the other thing. We’re also in completely uncharted waters.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah.

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Lilah Raptopoulos
So, Jo, what do you think about Ozempic at the end of the day? Do you see it as bad? Do you see it as good?

Jo Ellison
I think I’m part of the camp . . . I’m a very late adopter to anything. I’m always very untrusting and I like to see the research. And I think when people I know have told me that they’re using it, my initial reaction was to sort of shudder and gasp and be like, oh my goodness, but you don’t know the effects! And I kind of assume it’s going to be really bad for them in the long term because nothing can be that easy. So I guess I am part of that terrible collective of judgmental people who think it’s cheating. (Laughter) Truth be told, there must be a catch. I think that’s my take. But I love that I . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
There’s a difference between cheating and there must be a catch, I think.

Jo Ellison
I think well, I’m half of me is like yeah I guess I don’t begrudge anyone wanting to change the way they look because they’re unhappy. I mean fair enough and no judgment. But yeah, I do kind of slightly worry about the fact that five years from now there might be sort of some awful repercussion that we didn’t know.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, I worry about that too. What about culturally?

Jo Ellison
Oh God. Yeah. Culturally, I think it’s quite dangerous because I think we’re going to see a lot of extremely thin people. You know, I mean, I can think of few actual culture examples. Like I saw Missy Elliott interviewed on television that day and she was so changed physically, I didn’t actually recognise her. So we can just say . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Kelly Clarkson, too.

Jo Ellison
Yeah. And I mean, God knows whether they say they have and haven’t taken it. But I think when you get less diversity of representation in the public sphere, it’s just a sad state of affairs because the world should be made up of all types and shapes and sizes. And I think if we get this kind of classic Ozempic body, which I suspect we’ll see more and more of, it’s just compounding every kind of ghastly stereotype about women’s bodies, or men’s, that have persisted for decades and they’re just going to get worse.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Yeah. I’m curious where you hope it will go. I kind of hope — I’m going to try and make the point that it has been in my head for a while — I kind of hope that, in an ideal world, because there’s a drug now that gives you the option to be thinner if you want to, and I’m not talking about obesity, I’m talking about this sort of in between because there’s a drug that gives you an option because suddenly it now is a choice for people, that it can actually release the pressure to take it. Like in the same way that like, you know, I . . . 

Jo Ellison
It’s your . . . like it’s a choice?

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right? Like, it’s like because you could have a nose job and have the option to change your nose, but, you know, you choose not to because you like your nose. Or like, actually, OK, OK, you know this thing I wanted to lose 10 pounds my whole life, I could have it with this drug. Maybe actually that means, like, I don’t want it. Maybe I do like my body. Like, maybe it could allow people to sort of . . . 

Jo Ellison
I think that’s a very hopeful (laughter), a very hopeful outcome. The majority of people I know who have taken it are like, I’m on this for life. Nothing’s changed. I’ve never felt better. I fit in at all my clothes. I feel like how I should feel. This is how I should feel. I deserve to feel as good about myself as I was never able to. And so I think that’s what’s fascinating about it. I also think they’ve done quite interesting studies on how it affects like addictive personalities, and they’re increasingly thinking about using this for alcoholism and drug addiction.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Oh wow.

Jo Ellison
Because it stops this impulse . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Craving.

Jo Ellison
. . . to do something that you’ve done repeatedly in a kind of very obsessive manner. I think that will be really interesting moving forward. I think we’ll see all of these things being used in a far broader and more interesting way once we work out quite how to use them effectively and responsibly. But also, is it true that all this weight piles back on the second you stop taking it, as all the reports seem to suggest it does? And when that does happen, are we going to have a lot of like, really, really weird, hugely flabby muscle wastage, sort of strange new mutant posters and big people wandering the earth, which will terrify people to such an extent that they’ll stop taking it. I mean, that’s the other thing.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Like a lung on the front of a cigarette pack.

Jo Ellison
Yeah, well, at the moment we’re, yeah, exactly at the moment we’re in that smoking phase, aren’t we, where it’s like, it’s good for you, guys, take it. There’s no downside. You just lose this way and you look amazing and you feel nothing. And it’s like, well, 10 years’ time, yeah, there might be some horrible little photo on the side or the back here, you’re like, oh maybe not. So I think we need to know more about it before we all jump on the bandwagon.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, it’s true. Jo, my last question is, you know, I feel like we’re in this funny place where we’re between these things. Like we’re talking about body positivity still a little and wellness versus thinness still a little. But we’re also taking Ozempic and, you know, doing more Botox earlier and injecting our lips more and using seven serums on our faces. And they’re sort of like defiance against our image, sort of like clashing up against obsession with our image in this super hyper swipe-swipe Internet chaos way. I’m curious, like what we do with that in this time, how you think about that? Like I’m hoping that it just sort of relaxes.

Jo Ellison
I wonder whether we, as individuals, do we hold these contradictions inside ourselves. Like, do I sit there and think I am, you know, at the age I am, I’m approaching a major birthday, should I be getting Botox? Am I using seven serums? Am I kind of thinking about taking or is it more of a cultural thing that is more particular to certain demographics than others because, you know, with everything that you see, you also see the opposite on the other side? So I definitely . . . I feel very confused by it because, on the one hand, I’m constantly told, oh my God, everyone’s got injections, everyone’s doing lips, everyone’s having boob jobs. It’s like, are they? I don’t know anyone who’s doing this. Who are these people? (Laughter) But then you do meet a lot, so there’s so much judgment. I still think there’s a huge contingent of people who think all these things are kind of morally reprehensible and you know, for them filler and Ozempic and anything which is, let’s call it cheating, but also you can call it just an assistance. Yeah, you know, a little tweak here and there. There’s a whole contingent of people who I think find that just utterly disgusting and that you should just let nature take its course and just do nothing. There must be somewhere in between. And at the end of the day, do what feels right. You know, God it’s like the oldest, old, hackneyed shadow thing in the book. But you got to do what feels right for you. And if having butt implants and, you know, and increasing your lip size five times is what floats your boat, then off you go. I think that’s fine. But there is a kind of, we are suffering some sort of collective body dysmorphia for sure.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. And I think the other thing that your answer sort of makes me think is that like there really is no everyone.

Jo Ellison
There is no everyone. Exactly. I mean, there never was. There never was. But I think we had fewer choices and no opportunity before. So we just had to accept our fate (Laughter).

Lilah Raptopoulos
Jo, this is so interesting and just wonderful. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Jo Ellison
Thanks so much.

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Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s the show. Thank you for listening to Life and Art from FT Weekend. Take a look through the show notes. We have a link to Jo’s column and a few other relevant stories on FT.com. Every link there gets you past the paywall. Also in the show notes are link to a discount to a subscription to the FT and places to find me on email and on Instagram. I’m @LilahRap and love chatting with all of you about culture.

I’m Lilah Raptopoulos and here is our exceptional team. Katya Kumkova is our senior producer. Lulu Smyth is our producer. Our sound engineers are Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco with original music by Metaphor Music. We had help this week from Joe Salcedo. Topher Forhecz is our executive producer and our global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Have an excellent week and we’ll find each other again on Friday.