The Ozempic Obsession with Jia Tolentino (ARCHIVE EPISODE) [VIDEO]

Summary

Podcast Summary: "The Ozempic Obsession with Jia Tolentino"

Episode: The Ozempic Obsession with Jia Tolentino (ARCHIVE EPISODE)
Release Date: January 2, 2025
Host: Trevor Noah
Guests: Christiana, Jia Tolentino
Duration: Approximately 50 minutes

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1. Introduction

Trevor Noah opens the episode by revisiting a previously popular discussion on Ozempic, a weight loss drug. Due to the team’s time off, he opts to feature this archive episode, highlighting the significant feedback and ongoing cultural debates surrounding weight loss medications and society's fixation on physical appearance.

Trevor Noah [00:00]: "This episode is about Ozempic, you know, weight loss, our culture's obsession with diet and physical appearance."

2. The Cultural Obsession with Ozempic

Trevor introduces the main topic: the widespread attention Ozempic has garnered, not just as a medication but as a cultural phenomenon. The conversation centers on how these drugs are perceived, their societal implications, and the shifting attitudes towards weight loss solutions.

Trevor Noah [03:17]: "We're talking about inject, lose weight, apparently feel great. This is the catchphrase."

3. Personal Perspectives on Weight and Society

Christiana shares her pro-choice stance on weight loss drugs, emphasizing that individual choices should be respected without societal pressure.

Christiana [03:53]: "I'm pro choice. I've seen friends and family members on the drug and seeing how it's changed their life."

4. The Role of Celebrities in Shaping Body Image

Gia Tolentino discusses the influence of celebrities on public perceptions of beauty and weight loss. She highlights how media figures like the Kardashians set trends that dictate societal standards, often perpetuating unrealistic beauty ideals.

Gia Tolentino [14:26]: "We have this really kind of insidious arms race between digital enhancement and then technological alteration to match digital enhancement."

5. Structural Factors Affecting Obesity and Health

The conversation delves into the structural issues contributing to obesity, such as access to healthy food, safe recreational spaces, and socioeconomic factors. Christiana points out that societal design often ignores these root causes, opting instead to address symptoms through medications.

Christiana [10:48]: "It's so encoded in our culture that there are mothers and fathers who are just like, you need to lose weight."

6. The Impact of Ozempic on Self-control and Society

Trevor Noah explores the broader implications of Ozempic use, suggesting that the drug's effectiveness in controlling appetite might reveal deeper societal issues related to addiction and self-control.

Trevor Noah [24:29]: "These Ozempic type drugs have exposed this underbelly of addiction that we've all allowed."

7. The Future of Weight Conversations and Health Metrics

Gia advocates for redefining health beyond weight, proposing metrics like VO2 max to assess well-being. This shift would help disentangle health from societal judgments about body size.

Gia Tolentino [21:26]: "There are so many other metrics to talk about health that have nothing to do with weight."

8. The Intersection of Beauty Standards and Moral Judgment

The discussion highlights how beauty standards are intertwined with moral judgments, particularly against women. Trevor and Christiana examine how societal expectations enforce thinness as a marker of success and morality.

Christiana [17:08]: "Women's salaries are pegged to what they weigh. If you lose weight, your salary goes up."

9. The Double-Edged Sword of Body Positivity

The guests critique the body positivity movement, arguing that while it aims to celebrate all bodies, it often fails to address entrenched biases and structural inequalities. They discuss the backlash celebrities face when altering their bodies, revealing the superficial underpinnings of body acceptance.

Gia Tolentino [35:42]: "It seemed like, no, like actually beauty is this arbitrary assignation based on people's conformity to market forces."

10. Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Trevor Noah wraps up by reflecting on the ongoing cultural shifts and the uncertain future of weight-related conversations. He highlights the need for more empathetic and health-focused dialogues that transcend superficial judgments.

Trevor Noah [39:50]: "Can you live your life the way you would like to? Do you feel good in your body? We need a healthier conversation."

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Trevor Noah [03:17]: "We're talking about inject, lose weight, apparently feel great."
• Christiana [03:53]: "I'm pro choice. I've seen friends and family members on the drug and seeing how it's changed their life."
• Gia Tolentino [14:26]: "We have this really kind of insidious arms race between digital enhancement and then technological alteration to match digital enhancement."
• Christiana [10:48]: "It's so encoded in our culture that there are mothers and fathers who are just like, you need to lose weight."
• Trevor Noah [24:29]: "These Ozempic type drugs have exposed this underbelly of addiction that we've all allowed."
• Gia Tolentino [21:26]: "There are so many other metrics to talk about health that have nothing to do with weight."
• Christiana [17:08]: "Women's salaries are pegged to what they weigh. If you lose weight, your salary goes up."
• Gia Tolentino [35:42]: "It seemed like, no, like actually beauty is this arbitrary assignation based on people's conformity to market forces."
• Trevor Noah [39:50]: "Can you live your life the way you would like to? Do you feel good in your body? We need a healthier conversation."

Key Takeaways

• Cultural Influence: Celebrities and media significantly shape societal standards of beauty, often promoting unrealistic and narrow definitions.

• Structural Issues: Socioeconomic factors, access to healthy lifestyles, and systemic biases play a critical role in obesity and health, often overlooked in favor of quick fixes like medications.

• Redefining Health: There is a growing need to shift the conversation from weight-centric health metrics to more comprehensive indicators that promote overall well-being without judgment.

• Body Positivity Critique: While the body positivity movement aims to celebrate all body types, it sometimes fails to address deeper structural inequalities and can be co-opted by market forces.

• Societal Pressure and Morality: Thinness is often unjustly linked to moral and professional success, perpetuating weight bias and discrimination, particularly against women.

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This episode of What Now? with Trevor Noah offers a multifaceted exploration of the societal obsession with weight loss drugs like Ozempic. Through candid discussions with Christiana and Jia Tolentino, the podcast delves into the intersection of health, beauty standards, structural inequalities, and the pervasive influence of celebrity culture. The conversation calls for a more empathetic and holistic approach to health, free from judgment and societal pressure.

Transcript

[Trevor Noah]

Hey, what's going on? What now listeners? Happy New Year to you and yours from everyone here at the what now team. I hope the new year is already looking up for you. We've got so many great episodes planned for you in 2025. But today, because the team is taking some time off, some much deserved time off, we decided to bring you an episode that we loved. Probably one of our favorite episodes from the season, the episode about Ozempic, you know, weight loss, our culture's obsession with diet and physical appearance. I mean, we got as much feedback about this episode as any episode we've done. So. So for now, take a listen and once again, happy New Year. I'm not a scientist and none of this is actual advice. Please take everything. Imagine I am an idiot who has stumbled into your village. Now you can listen to me. This is what now with Trevor Noah.

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[Trevor Noah]

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[Christiana]

Good to see you.

[Trevor Noah]

This is so much fun, friend. I haven't seen you in so like. Like this.

[Christiana]

I know.

[Trevor Noah]

In the flesh.

[Christiana]

We used to do this every day.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Christiana]

Remember we used to make a show every day.

[Trevor Noah]

Every single day of our lives. That was. I was like, I loved it.

[Christiana]

You liked it so much you quit and left us.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, man. I'm excited to have this conversation today because, I mean, I'm excited for all conversations, but like, this conversation is. Is one that I don't even think we'll be able to complete today. Which I think all good conversations are, strangely enough. And this one in particular intrigues me because everybody's talking about Ozempic, right? And we're not talking About Ozempic, the product today. I think that's. That's going to be important for everyone to understand. We're just going to use that as a name for, you know, these weight loss drugs, because Ozempic, Mounjaro, Zeppelin, Wegovy, you name it. You know, the point is, we're talking about inject, lose weight, apparently feel great. This is the. That's my catchphrase, by the way. If they want to buy it from me, I'm. I'm available. Eli Lilly, I'm available. And Novo Dorschric. I never know how to say their name.

[Christiana]

Yeah, I can't say that, but, yeah, it's.

[Trevor Noah]

I feel like we were at an interesting inflection point in society where there was a point when this would have just been. Would have been shunned completely. Do you know what I mean? People would be like, this is trash.

[Christiana]

You're cheating.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. And then now it's slowly, we're like, you know, it's like Republican, Democrat, it's like 50, 50. Now basically, everyone's like, yeah, where do you stand on.

[Christiana]

Oh, my God, Trevor, you can't ask me that at the beginning of the thing.

[Trevor Noah]

That's exactly where you started at the beginning.

[Christiana]

I am pro choice when it comes to Zenpea.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, I like this.

[Christiana]

I'm pro choice. I'm pro choice. That's what I am. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

So you have no moral judgment or opinion on it?

[Christiana]

No. I've seen friends and family members on the drug and seeing how it's changed their life.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay. And so this is what I'd love to know. Changed their lives in what way?

[Christiana]

Beyond the weight. They seem more comfortable in their body. Some of them had, like, back and knee issues. You know, some. Some people, it was just like they were struggling. Some people was like, it's kind of regulated their appetite. They're drinking less. So when you see it from that perspective, it's been like, oh, wow. So I'm pro the choice, but I'm not pro the societal pressure that I think some people feel to take.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay, okay, well, let's. Let's bring in our special guest today. I wanted to bring in a writer, a cultural critic, and somebody who I think has some of the most informed and then fantastic personal opinions on this topic because she has written about it. You know, her work, probably from the New Yorker. If you read. If you don't read, then maybe you don't know her. And this will be your introduction to her. Gia Tolentino. Welcome. Welcome to the podcast.

[Gia Tolentino]

Thank you. For having me.

[Trevor Noah]

Are you kidding me? Thank you for joining us. I'm gonna apologize in advance for all the ignorance I'm gonna bring to this conversation, but I feel like it's my purpose. As my mother used to say when I was young, be of service, Be of service. So if I'm surrounded by two brilliant, smart people, I have to now b, balance the conversation the other way around. I think you heard the question I asked Christiana. So let's, let's start from your personal. Just like purely personal, no scientific, no nothing point of view. Where do you stand when it comes to these Ozempic type drugs?

[Gia Tolentino]

I think, I think about Ozempic the way I think about a lot of cultural phenomena, which is I have a lot of thoughts about it at a sort of macro level and then in terms of anyone's individual use or not use of it, other than I have a group chat where my friends sometimes send pictures of celebrities and like to make fun of the fact that I never know who it is because everyone looks so different. But yeah, I mean, I'm pro choice too, you know, like, it's. It's none of my damn business what anyone's doing with their own body.

[Trevor Noah]

You know, it's interesting you bring up the thing about celebrities because, like, I've noticed now there's a, there's a. You know, we talk about the shame game and the blame. There's like, there's this game now where people see someone and they're like, oh, that's Ozempic. Oh, that's Ozempic. I've noticed with me, depending on like how someone takes a picture of me, someone be like, you want Ozempic? Like, I've never lost weight. But then sometimes I go like, it seems like it's become, in a way, it's almost become a bit of a slur or like an insult. It's like, oh, I see you're on Ozempic. Ah, you one of them. Trump is the only one that you really need to, because the Republican Party doesn't.

[Christiana]

He's on Ozempic. Everyone calling him, they're saying Ozempic. Trump. They're calling him Ozempic. Trump.

[Trevor Noah]

Donald Trump on Ozempic.

[Christiana]

Allegedly. Please, Maga, don't come for me, please. Allegedly. Wow, he looks different. I believe it.

[Trevor Noah]

Damn, I can see him now. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Ozempic.

[Gia Tolentino]

Well, I, you know, this, I do have thoughts on. You know, I think that one of the things that our whole fascination with Ozempic is based on is. And it's interesting. You know, Christiane, I wonder if you have thoughts with little kids, right? Part of beauty is thinness, as it's taught to you from a really early age. Like fatness, queerness, darkness. All of these things are, like, coded as signs of deviance. Like you learn as a really young child in Disney movies in anything. Like, beauty is really coded as morality. And there's this Protestant work ethic thing, Right? It's something that you should achieve through hard and punitive work and discipline. Right? And when people use those epic. It's like, mm, you cheated. You skipped the hard work part. You know, and so you. You got the thing we demanded of you, but now we find this a vaguely immoral thinness.

[Trevor Noah]

Like, you worked hard to achieve the right thing. Okay, I hear what you're saying. It's funny because I don't know how it was for you growing up, but. So I've had an interesting journey with weight and how I perceive it and fatness, et cetera, because I grew up in South Africa, genuinely growing up. This is such a weird thing to try and explain to people. In South Africa, you did not get made as much fun of if you were fat. Like, so, like a fat person, you'd just be like. I mean, I don't even remember if we had that many names, but I remember all the ones for skinny people were Stixmanzanza. It was. That was my favorite one. Styx, Manzanza, Skinny, Manili. It was like there were all these names where it was just like, you. You. You're a twig. You're thin. And it was a sign there of. Of a lack of having.

[Christiana]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

If you got married and you didn't gain weight, people would say that your marriage is not going well. Literally, they'd be like, is your wife not treating you well? No, man. Look at you. If I would come home from the States, and, like, many times I would. I'd come back from America, and I gain weight. And so whenever I go home, people be like, ah, you're looking good, man. You're looking good. America's treating you well. You're looking Trevor Noem, and you're looking good. Look at your cheeks. You're looking good. And then. And. And. And so where I grew up, fatness was considered, like, sort of a choice.

[Christiana]

Mm.

[Trevor Noah]

And then being skinny was like, ugh, your life is not going well, and you're not making the right choices for sure. So it's interesting how it flips, you know, And I'm sure it's time as.

[Gia Tolentino]

Well, but in both cases, it's about wealth, right? I mean.

[Christiana]

Oh, yeah, for sure.

[Gia Tolentino]

Like, the thing that is valued is always the thing that's correlated with wealth. And it's. I feel like that's been the case. You look through art history, right? The fuller figures are valued at a time when it's, you know, the wealthy signifying plenty. And now it's signifying, you know, I got a trainer, I got a cook. I gotta. You know.

[Christiana]

I mean, it's funny that you mention the childhood stuff that it brings up, because recently it was approved for children.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, it was?

[Christiana]

Yeah. And there are parents who are making the decision to.

[Trevor Noah]

Ooh, I don't know about that.

[Christiana]

I mean, Trevor, that's your instance. It's, like, very visceral. You're, like, giving it to kids.

[Trevor Noah]

But. Okay, I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. I do not think that these types of drugs should be approved for children. I personally believe that there are still a whole host of things that you can do to get that child. Like, if you're giving them this drug, I'm assuming it's because their weight is really detrimental to their health. Otherwise, it's weird. Like, you're just trying to make, like, a sexy kid or something. That's weird.

[Christiana]

It's so crazy. But I meet mothers, a lot of older girls, who are, like, preteens and teenagers, and they'll show you pictures of their daughter and be like, oh, but this one needs to lose weight. You know, like mothers. It's so encoded in our culture that there are mothers out there and fathers out there who are just like, you need to lose weight. I mean, most people's relationship with food don't come from themselves. They often come from their parents and their families.

[Gia Tolentino]

It's so interesting that all of this concern about what creates health for kids always comes down to food and weight, right? And it's like there's so much other stuff. It's like, it's housing policy. It's like, it's food stamp policy. Right? It's all of these things. And it's like funding for recess and, you know, and for, like, physical activities and for all these things. Because, you know, there are. There are levers you can pull to change your body, certainly during childhood. And that, you know, like, it's. It's not to say that lifestyle and the. What you eat doesn't affect it, but, you know, there. I talk to doctors that are, you know, the patients are. Their kids are in food deserts and they have nobody that can take them outside. And they. It's not safe to be outside where they're. They are just kind of sitting in a room, you know, all day because of, you know, this myriad of structural factors. And so the only lever to pull for these complicating conditions is a drug like this.

[Trevor Noah]

And this is everywhere in the world. But America in particular is very, very good at treating the symptoms and not the cause. Yeah, like, very, very, very, very good. You know what I mean? Like. Like America will find a lot more money that way. Yeah, America will find a lot of money to, like, imprison homeless people, but then won't find ways to stop people from becoming homeless.

[Christiana]

Yeah, for sure.

[Trevor Noah]

You know what I mean? America will find.

[Gia Tolentino]

You enrich the private prison.

[Trevor Noah]

Exactly. So this feels like one of those situations again where it's like, we are going to now approve a drug for children, but not ask ourselves why these children would need that drug in the first place. Cause I don't know. Was Nigeria the same? What was weight like in Nigeria?

[Christiana]

It's really interesting. There is this cultural. The body that's idealized is quite hard to get. So it's like big hips, tiny waist, and big boobs and a big bum, which is pretty impossible to get. Right. Most people don't have it naturally, and you're not probably going to have that after you have kids. I was always considered a bit too skinny. Like, my grandma was like. I remember she saying to me once, she was crying and my mom was like, why are you crying? She was just like. She calls me by the name Amma. She was just like, who's going to marry Amma? She's got bones, you know? You know, if you actually go to West Africa in particular, you see a lot of body diversity.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Christiana]

So you see, like, really tall women, really muscular women. And like, in Nigeria, I think the most. The biggest indicator about how bodies naturally are is that, does your tribe have a fattening room, which is like, before a woman gets married, she has to go to a room.

[Trevor Noah]

You said a fattening room.

[Christiana]

They call it a fattening room where you have to become fat because the girls are just naturally quite muscular. Especially in the Southeast, quite muscular and lithe. You know what I mean? So you know what that means? Fatness is supposed to be good, a sign of fertility. But then again, how long do you.

[Trevor Noah]

Stay in the room till you get fat? I love this.

[Christiana]

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know about that.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, wait. Okay. It depends on how they're making you fat? Is it like. Is it like foie gras?

[Christiana]

They're giving you yams and thick, thick food, carbohydrates and lots of meat to make you bigger.

[Trevor Noah]

They're not like force feeding you. You're just eating.

[Christiana]

I mean, the girls didn't want to get fat or get married, so it's kind of crazy.

[Trevor Noah]

All right, like, once again, a fun Christiana story.

[Christiana]

I'm sorry, guys.

[Trevor Noah]

Ends with oppression.

[Christiana]

It always gets dark.

[Trevor Noah]

Well, I want to know, Jay, when and why did you start writing about Ozempic? Because you were one of the first people writing about this, you know, before it became the wave, before it became the trend. I remember there was a moment pre Ozempic, it just wasn't a thing. And then there were whispers.

[Christiana]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And then all of a sudden you heard Elon Musk was on it. And you're like, wait, what's happening here?

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah, well, I think of. I kind of think of the Kardashians as, you know, the sort of weather vane for what the winds of sort of capital.

[Trevor Noah]

Hilarious.

[Gia Tolentino]

And you, like, deeply punitive technologically based beauty standards. You know, like, you can literally see written upon their bodies what women all across the country are going to then do, you know, in this really kind of amazing, terrifying way. And so, you know, I think it was like that no one had ever heard of it. And then, you know, I started to hear about there was this shot that was intended for treating chronic conditions caused by type 2 diabetes that women in Hollywood, like, you know, some women in Hollywood were taking, and their bodies were suddenly visibly changing. And it was interesting to me to begin with, because, you know, like, I. I grew up in, you know, the 90s, the early 2000s, in. In sort of very conservative Houston, Texas, like, deep within this hegemonic, like, white dominated the age of sort of the only people that are beautiful are, like, Paris Hilton, you know, and Britney Spears, and that was the body prescribed. And then we had this sort of Obama era grand democratization of culture, which included, you know, people started to have open dialogue about how you could be healthy at every size, which you can. Right. And that all sorts of bodies are beautiful. And I always felt a little skeptical of the sort of Dove ad body positivity thing for reasons we can get into later. But I said, okay, finally, like, we have reached a new era. Maybe it will unlock the sort of hold that white diet culture has had on America since the 20s, basically. And then this happened, and it was like, oh, oh, no.

[Christiana]

Oh, no.

[Gia Tolentino]

We're swinging I mean, that was my initial interest. It was like, I thought we had already changed, that we were gonna stay on this train of, you know, openness and, I don't know, and the sharp swing back. And what that meant for the way people talked and thought about beauty, I thought was extremely interesting. And then so I just started tracking it.

[Trevor Noah]

So here's the thing. I. I wonder, though, do you. Do you think that utopia can ever exist? And, you know, because I. I mean, like, I don't know, sometimes I'm a little simple in this thinking in that I go, we're still animals, and animals also judge each other based on some physical aspect. And. And we're no different. I just think what happens to us that's particularly different is there are tastemakers that exist in different spheres who sort of, like, pull the levers to decide, like, how we define where the, you know, the Overton window of beauty actually exists and where the one of health is. Do you think that our conversations these days lie in beauty, or do they lie in health? Or is it people using health to masquerade their views on what they think beautiful is?

[Christiana]

Yeah, I think it's like, the latter. Right. And I think even if we were in this utopia where we accepted everyone's bodies, like, I think the Economist did a piece about talking about the fact that, like, women's salaries are pegged to what they weigh.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes.

[Christiana]

And if you learn, if you lose a certain amount of weight, your salary goes up.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Christiana]

So it's just like the market forces, for whatever reason, we know the reasons reward being skinny.

[Trevor Noah]

And by the way, did you see the opposite is true for men.

[Christiana]

Interesting.

[Trevor Noah]

The more a woman gains in weight, the more her salary goes down. And with men, the bigger they get, like, the rounder. I guess it's like, because you look like King Richard or those vibes. Henry.

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah, yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

It's like those vibes, like, to all my subjects, the more, like, bulbous you become your money, actually, like, people don't penalize you at all. They're just like, yeah, this dude knows what he's talking about. He ate a pig that had an apple in his mouth.

[Christiana]

Look at that. Look at that. Yeah. And I think for women, it's always going to be, you are judged. That connection between morality and beauty and health. I think people just collapse it into one. They don't see them as different things. Even if they use a language like, don't you want to be healthy? You know, but they're saying to someone, don't you want to lose weight? And I think it's going to be harder for women to escape that, unfortunately.

[Trevor Noah]

So. Okay, let me ask this question now. Is there a moral way for people to engage in conversations about weight, weight loss, health, and how it pertains to people like Gia? You know, you've done a lot of research in this, Christiana. I know you've talked about this for years, but, like, where do you think we find the. Where do you think we find the sweet spot?

[Gia Tolentino]

I think it exists. And I think probably the people that are the best at it are fat people. You know, I think that there are a lot of people that have been. That have spent, you know, that's been like this cultural discursive work in the last 15 years to establish a whole vocabulary for how we could be talking about these things. Right. And it's incredibly difficult in reporting this piece even, and in talking to people. Like, I think that the fear of fat and the bias against it is. It would come out quite casually. I'm sure it's built into me in some way, you know, in the way that I think about it. But I think that there is a way to get some basic facts on the table, right, that BMI is based on, you know, like, BMI is like a racist kind of eugenicist standard. And, and like, and. And there can be serious conditions that correlate with obesity, but that doesn't mean that, you know, obesity or excess weight is in itself harmful. You know, and so much of this is really arguably down to physician bias as well. Right? Like there, there are obgyns that won't treat women over a certain bmi. There's so many, so many, like, statistically, doctors self report, you know, beliefs about patients that are quote unquote overweight or obese. And, you know, they, they, they treat them differently. They under diagnose, they under treat. They attribute all health problems to you need to lose weight in ways that are never sort of suspected about people of different sizes. And, you know, there's like.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, I think there was a. There was a story I read, it might have been one of your stories, actually, where there was a woman who was struggling to breathe.

[Christiana]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And.

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah, it was blood.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was.

[Gia Tolentino]

You're like, oh, your lungs are simply fat. You know, she's dying, you know, like. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And she actually had. Did she have lung cancer?

[Gia Tolentino]

Blood clots.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, she had blood clots. Yeah. Yeah.

[Gia Tolentino]

But I think, you know, you mostly find the healthy way of talking about it in people who have had to, like, advocate for themselves. Against all of these things for a long time. I also think fundamentally, probably the healthiest way to talk about health is to kind of set weight aside altogether. Right? Talk about other metrics like VO, VO2 max and. Yeah, I don't know what that means.

[Trevor Noah]

No, no, no. Really? No. I hear VO2 max is the gold standard. That's actually. They say VO2.

[Christiana]

What is that?

[Trevor Noah]

So VO2 max is your body's ability to withdraw or to extract oxygen from every breath.

[Christiana]

There you go.

[Trevor Noah]

I love that. Apparently, that's it.

[Gia Tolentino]

There are so many other metrics to talk about health that have nothing to do with weight. And probably that would be the healthiest way of talking about weight is having it be just sort of a incidental byproduct of all lifestyle factors.

[Trevor Noah]

We're going to continue this conversation right after this short break.

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[Trevor Noah]

Let'S. Let's talk a little bit about the drugs themselves, like the actual way that the drugs work. I was lucky. I had a conversation with the CEO of Eli Lilly and some of the scientists who work there because I wanted to understand, yeah, what is this thing? So I'll break it down and g, I know you're the expert, so please jump in. A few decades ago, there was a scientist who discovered that there was a. Essentially a hormone that was released into your body that told your body you were full. Right. And they wanted to study what this. This thing was. GLP1, they called it because they never call it easy things like Patrick, which they should, because then it would help us if scientists were just like, we're going to call this Patrick, then we all know what Patrick is. But Anyway, scientists found GLP1. This is something that makes your body feel full, makes you feel satisfied, I think is a more important word. And they wanted to study it, but they couldn't. They're like, all right, how do we figure it out? They found a lizard. They always find a lizard. And they're like, we can reproduce this. You fast forward. They realize that this drug can help people who have diabetes. Then they're like, okay, this is for diabetes. This is for diabetes. But then someone goes, wait a minute. It's not just diabetes. People are losing weight.

[Christiana]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And they're like, huh? And then like all drug companies, the same way they did with Viagra, they were like, we're trying to help people with their blood pressure. And they're like, have you noticed that all these people are getting erections? And they're like, everyone stop. We don't give a shit about blood pressure. We've just struck gold. But what I found most fascinating about this is to what you said, Christiana, when we started the conversation, if we have the conversation about weight loss, I feel like we're missing something bigger that we're discovering right now. And these drugs are helping us understand something about self control and how it has been robbed from us. Because people take Ozempic, Zeppa, whatever, right? The first thing they do is they don't eat as much. We knew that would happen. Okay, fine, it's working. But then people go, oh, I don't drink alcohol the same way anymore. I don't watch as much tv, I don't use social media. I'm not even on my phone as much. I don't gamble as much. And you're just like, wait, wait, wait, wait. What is that?

[Christiana]

Compulsive shopping. I read about that. Someone who stopped them.

[Trevor Noah]

Compulsive shop. And so, you know, I almost wonder if in discovering this solution, have we now exposed all of the poisonous problems that society has unleashed upon itself? Does this make sense?

[Christiana]

Yeah. We don't judge gambling or drinking or online shopping in the same way that we do weight. So that was what the person was fixated on. I got on Ozempic to lose weight, but they discovered all these other parts of themselves or they were awakened to, like, I actually spend too much money. Like, a woman said she was going through Target and she wasn't putting things in her car.

[Trevor Noah]

This is what I mean.

[Christiana]

And I found that so interesting. We don't see, like, excessive shopping the same way we see excessive eating. Um, and I think that's the most interesting part of the drug.

[Gia Tolentino]

Well, this is. This is taking it in a slightly different direction. But what. What this part of the conversation makes me think of and what I think this thing that was in the back of my head when I was writing and thinking about it was that, like, one of the reasons that I, you know, on a macro level, find it really sad when people who are extremely thin take it to take this to become much thinner. Right. Is that, like, what it Is to be human. Like, we're made up of our appetites, right? Like that. That's one of the defining I things of what we seek and what we literally physically hunger for. And, you know, like our desire for pleasure and relief and excitement, right? These things are important, and they make us human. And back to the conversation about kids. It's like, so much of the rise of obesity in children seems directly related to the fact that people are so afraid of fat children in the first place, right? Like that children are taught to fear their appetites and fear the snack drawer. Like, the idea of just kind of natural, natural pleasure in our appetite seems to be the thing that might possibly lead to the healthiest relationship with them in all cases, right? To not need to indulge and have guilty pleasures in sort of secret little things, right? That if these appetites, if we could sort of treat them normally in all respects. And it seems like American consumerist culture just blows all of these kind of compulsions sky high because of this fear we have of appetite.

[Christiana]

Well, I think my slight pushback to that is like being a Brit in America is that it's actually very hard to have a regulated relationship with the pleasure of food when there are very few pleasures. So food is like a very easiest pleasure. I think that's okay. If you're like, in a country where it's like, there's a park down the road, I can play tennis for free. It's just like, you get pleasure and.

[Trevor Noah]

That humanity is one of the dopaminers.

[Christiana]

But in this country, I feel like food and alcohol are the only cheap, accessible pleasures. But, like, if we were in a more balanced, I guess, culture, then I'd be like, sure, enjoy the pleasure of food, because then you can regulate that pleasure. Cause you're getting pleasure everywhere, but people don't get touched.

[Trevor Noah]

That's a really interesting idea.

[Christiana]

They don't have community. They don't have any other pleasures.

[Gia Tolentino]

But that's what I mean, right? If we could honor our need, like what we were saying, outside time and safety and the whole labor market being organized differently so that it's not like you have to squeeze all your pleasure into like two minute micro installments, like, you know, six times a day, right? Like, I think we would have a very different relationship to compulsion and appetite and pleasure and relief if, you know, if American society were set up in such a way that would, like, honor people as, like, beings that need these.

[Christiana]

Things Also, this isn't unique to America. I don't want it because, like, England.

[Gia Tolentino]

Of Course, Pretty tough right now.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Christiana]

So we have seen similar things.

[Trevor Noah]

I think something we also have to consider is this. One of my biggest beefs is that corporations have found ways to create messaging that tricks people into making the corporation's problem their problem. In the same way oil companies scammed us into thinking that recycling was our job. Right. And they make it about individuals. You need to recycle. No, no, no, no. Let me tell you something. Recycling is not our job. The job is to not make the thing in the first place. We take for granted how many times. And we ignore how many times we get tricked into believing that it's us. And I think the same thing has happened with food and indulgence in America and in the rest of the world is where, you know, to your point, Gia, is like, people have been made to feel guilty about their appetites and about their indulgence and about their. And then we create this world where we now other. Why are you letting your kid eat so much? Well, I can't. What's my child. It's their appetite. I don't want to stop. I don't want to make them guilty. And no one seems to be asked. Not no one, but like, I think sometimes we forget to ask the question. Like, wait, why is it impossible for your child. Your child to stop eating those chips? If we live in a society where we blame people for the addiction, catching them, but don't ask who's imposing the addiction upon them, then I feel like we're playing a game of whack a mole, telling everybody in society that they need to be better, when in fact we're ignoring the fact that, you know.

[Christiana]

Yeah. For sure.

[Trevor Noah]

These Ozempic type drugs, as much as we're focusing on them as the conversation, I feel like they've exposed this underbelly of addiction that we've all allowed.

[Christiana]

Yeah. I think, Trevor, what you're getting at is that we've always thought all of these things are just a question of willpower.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes.

[Christiana]

And it's not about. And responsibility. I think your piece touches on that as well. It's not about. It's not willpower. Like, the system is basically working against all of us. And some of us are able to resist better than others and resist some.

[Trevor Noah]

Of it, by the way.

[Christiana]

Resist some of it. But I think it's caught all of us in a way.

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah. I feel like that's the whole story of the entire conversation around weight. Right. Like it's who is making the money off of them and who's making the money off of the cure. Follow the money.

[Trevor Noah]

Always follow the money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's talk a little bit about, you know, if we move beyond appetites per se, and we come back to the world of these drugs, what they're doing and how people are using them, have we now entered a new world, you know, Jia, to what you're saying, where this will become another instance of the haves being able to escape another ill in society? It's almost like we've put a price on people being able to evade this thing, this net of addiction that has been cast upon everybody.

[Christiana]

Also, I think, Gia, just to hop in, it's like we're talking about Ozempic so much because people lose weight, and we think losing weight is the better thing to do. And now it means that there'll be a class of people that can do that and not have to go through the cruelty of fatphobia. And it's gonna be the people with money that can perhaps escape that everyday cruelty, and then the people that don't.

[Gia Tolentino]

Well, yeah. I think one of the things that does seem maybe meaningfully new about this is that the beauty standards of the last decade seem to me to be this really kind of insidious arms race between digital enhancement and then technological alteration to match digital enhancement, and then you digitally enhance more and then use technology to further sort of shape, inject, discipline, whatever. Like, the thing that really scares me is the idea that an unaltered body or face is aberrant or deviant and sort of unacceptable. That, like, that's the thing that I find really, like, existentially terrifying.

[Trevor Noah]

Damn. Yeah. It's almost like in those. You know, when you watch those cyberpunk future movies where, like, people are judged because they don't have cybernetics now, you know, so everyone has. Yeah. And that's an interesting way you've just put it. Now it becomes judgment because it's like, well, why aren't you making yourself better?

[Christiana]

Yeah.

[Gia Tolentino]

And I think plenty of people who are fat and healthy and perfectly happy in their lives are now hit with this sort of unbearable wave of, like, well, why don't you just get the little jab?

[Trevor Noah]

You know, because now it seems like you're actively making a choice to not be healthy or to be.

[Gia Tolentino]

Why wouldn't you conform? Right? Like, it's.

[Trevor Noah]

So here's a question I do have. I'm gonna throw a few things at you and everybody trigger warnings. Everybody trigger warning. Every Gia trigger warning. And feel free to plead the fifth. No one needs to Speak. I don't wish to bring anybody down with me. All right, I'm the pilot who'll tell you to jump out of the plane before I take it on this dive. So let's get messy with a few of these moments and these conversations. Sometimes it feels. And I'm speaking for people because I generally don't think I'd struggle with this as much myself. But I do know that there's a little inconsistency or what people perceive as a flipping of a narrative when a celebrity. Let's just deal with celebrities. Celebrities will come out. They go, I love my body. My body's great. They build fans based on that body and that body being great. Fans are like, we love your body. Your body's great. We're all with you. And then the celebrity pops out, like, after six months, they've just disappeared, and they come back and they've got a completely new body. And then they're like, hey, I've got a new body.

[Christiana]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And then people are like, yo, what the wait? What just happened here? And they're like, no, I love this body. Because actually, I wasn't healthy and I wasn't happy and my knees were hurting me, whatever it might be. And then they get a level of backlash from the people that were body positive who are now sort of anti body positive because now their body's gone a different way. Does this make sense? And it almost feels like in the same way, everything else in society has become like a cult. It's like it sometimes feels like we are not working towards a place where people can be the way they wish to be. We are working to a place where people can be the way we wish them to be. And then if they deviate from that, we kick them out. You get what I'm saying? Like, look at how many people were angry at Adele for losing weight. Angry at her. Jennifer Hudson, angry at her for sure. Do you know what I mean?

[Christiana]

You know, not to speak on behalf of fat people or fat women at all, but I think there's so little imagery of women that had perhaps Adele's old body or Jennifer Hudson's old body. There was something very comforting for people to see a fat woman who's thriving and have this incredible career, right? And there's, like, this disappointment or resentment when that celebrity then changes their body. I speculate some of that.

[Gia Tolentino]

I mean, I mentioned earlier, like, the whole Dove, everyone is beautiful. Like the beginning of the sort of corporatized body positivity movement. It seemed dangerous to me immediately because it seemed like, no, like actually beauty is this sort of arbitrary assignation based on people's conformity to market forces. It's not like a spiritual moral good. Like it was this whole thing that it was really important to say that everyone was beautiful as if to say everyone is good. And it was like, no, no, no, everyone is good and worthy. But perhaps that has nothing to do with beauty.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, wow, that's fascinating.

[Christiana]

Yeah.

[Gia Tolentino]

And it seemed to me like perhaps it is just much more important to say, like, everyone is worthy and beauty is not as important as we ever thought it was at all. Like, it's just this thing. Right.

[Trevor Noah]

To dumb that down in a way. It's almost like what you're saying is it's body neutrality. Yeah, I like that as a. That's. I never, I never thought of that actually.

[Gia Tolentino]

It just seemed like, oh, this is a thing that people are going to make a lot of money off of now.

[Trevor Noah]

We're trying to get to. We're still trying to get to be.

[Gia Tolentino]

Okay, hold on. There's this Clickhole article from 2016 that the headline is, this plus size model was inspiring, but then she lost 100 pounds, which was also inspiring, even though she was already perfect before, but she's also perfect now, you know, and it was like, like, it's like this very like, ugh. And it's like this is the sort of circular hamster wheel that you get into when it's like everyone's beautiful, but also health is good, but also we love you no matter what you do. But also some choices are socially weighted and it's just, just so here. Okay.

[Christiana]

I just wanted to throw Tressy in. Oh, definitely. Cottam, brilliant sociologist. She talks about structural ugliness. Right. The thing about like how beauty is like this structural concept and like even though you can feel beautiful on an individual level, structurally, if you are dark skinned, fat and emotional, you're seen as ugly. And I think what Ozempic is getting at is just like, it's this cure to that structural ugliness of weight that's interesting and that's what a lot of thinkers are trying to resist. That like, why have we made being bigger structurally ugly?

[Trevor Noah]

So, you know, I. So there's two things. Okay. First of all, I think we shouldn't forget and this is why it's hard to have these conversations in society, I believe, because people weaponize certain parts of conversations and use it as a cudgel against others. Let's take it to like athletes. LeBron James had to lose a lot of weight. Or he decided, rather LeBron James decided to lose a lot of weight. LeBron said, if I want my knees to take the pounding that they're gonna take me jumping me, it is easier if I carry less weight. It is easier for me to run across a court if I carry less weight. I think the thing we shouldn't take for granted is like, I almost wish there was a world where we could all go into good faith conversation land, you know, where we can talk about health, but it not be used against somebody else in like a shitty way. A doctor can say, hey, you do want to try and work out as much as possible because it's good for your heart. But then someone's not going to point at someone and go, like, you see, you piece of trash. But it is important for people to know, like, the lifting of weights, just like resistance training has been shown to be one of the most important factors in longevity. And I'm not saying living long. I'm saying living as a functional person for as long as possible. So that's like the one side.

[Christiana]

Okay, so I agree with you. But I think, Gia, you probably understand what I say here. As a woman in those spaces, sometimes it is so hard to disconnect the pursuit of longevity and health for the pursuit of a body that especially in a city like LA, NY or London.

[Trevor Noah]

I'm with you completely.

[Christiana]

People won't disapprove of.

[Trevor Noah]

Trust me, with men, it's not exactly the same, but we also. And I'm not saying it's exactly the same. Cause we don't get judged the same. But I know as guys, there's also a difficulty. You're standing in the gym and you're going, I'm here to look healthy. But also, man, I'm so far from Marvel body. Yeah. I'm so far from.

[Christiana]

I don't look like Chris Evans, Captain America.

[Gia Tolentino]

I think Back to the LeBron thing, though. It's like, you know, he has very specific needs for physical performance for his body that many of that all of us do not. But I think it's an interesting thing to bring up because the question is, how does he need to live in and. Or change his body to do the things that he wants to do with it. Right? Even that as a way that people would talk, even that would be just a really nice.

[Trevor Noah]

It would be amazing, right?

[Gia Tolentino]

Like, it's like for people, like, if weight was incidental to that, it was like, can you do the things in your life that you want to do? You know, do you feel?

[Trevor Noah]

I love that. I actually love that.

[Gia Tolentino]

And it's like that is probably the foundation that, you know, that could be the start.

[Trevor Noah]

That's amazing.

[Gia Tolentino]

We need to healthier conversation.

[Trevor Noah]

Get that somewhere. Because I feel like that could make a meaningful difference. It's like, hey, can you do, can you lift your overhead luggage in the plane comfortably? Can you lift your child comfortably? Can you move a couch? But it's only the things you do. Can you live your life the way you would like to?

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah. And like, do you feel good? Do you feel good in your body? Right. I think that's what I was thinking about the like appetite and pleasure thing. Right. Like if that was valued. Right. Like people just feeling good in the way you feel.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh man, I really love that idea.

[Gia Tolentino]

Like it seems extremely health conducive. Right? Yes, sure.

[Trevor Noah]

We need to get D'Angelo to come back and do a remix. This one will be like, how do you feel? That's what it will be. Don't go anywhere, cuz we got more. What now? After this. You know what? You know what? I also realize as we're speaking about this, whether we like to admit it or not, humans are generally judgmental. Right. We hold and cast judgments upon other people because it either makes us feel like we are doing well or it makes us. Whatever it is, there's reasons we do it. Right. I think we shouldn't ever take for granted the fact that fatness is one of the few things that somebody can see on you that tells them something about you in some way, shape or form. You don't know what it's telling you, but you can see it. Yeah, but like, think of it this way. If somebody has a. Has a gambling problem or likes gambling or whichever way you want to put it, that person, you can't tell if somebody drinks a lot of alcohol, is addicted to alcohol or likes alcohol, drinks it occasionally. You can't tell. Do you get what I'm saying?

[Christiana]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And I think what's strange about fatness is it is one of the few things where people from far can just assume many things about you because they can like sort of see it from.

[Christiana]

The outside and not just make judgments, but express those judgments.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes.

[Christiana]

I think with fat people we're very prescriptive.

[Trevor Noah]

We are like.

[Christiana]

And sometimes it's the.

[Gia Tolentino]

Well, and we see that body as like, this is a sign of a lot. Yeah.

[Christiana]

But like, are you sure you want to eat? That is a thing said to people who are fat. Or like I saw a TikTok a woman Was like, being fat and exercising is people on the street going, go, you. I'm so proud of you. And she's like, I'm just on a ride. Like, why do you feel this need to, like, encourage me? The people trying to be nice, but like, what's under that is like, you're someone that should be pitied and needs my encouragement in a way that's kind of infantilizing you. And I think that's the thing about fatphobia. We just feel like we can say anything to people who are fat, you know, and it's often really cruel.

[Trevor Noah]

That's actually a really good point.

[Gia Tolentino]

Well, there was a, there was a thing. There's like Harvard does this implicit bias study, and I think I mentioned it in that piece that I think it was, I'm going to get the dates wildly wrong. But it was maybe sort of from a point in the mid-2000s to a point in recent years, they analyzed sort of 10 vectors of bias about age, about skin color, about, like, gender, about, you know, like these various things. Every single implicit and explicit expression of bias went down in that sort of like Obama era period, except for bias against weight. And that went up, I believe, both implicit and explicit.

[Trevor Noah]

So everything went down.

[Gia Tolentino]

Except I wasn't surprised by that. Yeah, everything went down. Everything went down. Of the 10 things tested in this particular Harvard study.

[Christiana]

Yeah. Interesting.

[Trevor Noah]

Well, that's, that's, that's really, really fascinating. Yeah. Look, I think, you know, as we said in the beginning of this conversation, this feels like an inflection point and a moment where the conversations we have going forward are going to continuously evolve because now there's been a new agent that's been introduced. Yeah, I feel like we're at that point now with these ozempic type drugs is they're now making us ask questions that go far beyond the questions that we've sort of been comfortable living in for a while. And those questions are, what is health? Are we trying to promote health? Or are we trying to promote our moral superiority upon other human beings? Are we trying to, you know, run around shaming people because it makes us feel better? Why do we even feel, as you said, Christiana, that we have the rights to do these things? And then with children, what does it mean for the future? Cause again, the big thing I think we also have to include in this is we don't know what the very long term effects of these drugs are because they're so new. I mean, if you think about mass adoption for a long period of time for people who haven't had insulin issues for people who don't have diabetes, we don't know. And I think that's something people always have to be careful of is. Is realizing that we don't know. What we do know is how we can treat people today. And so, Gia, what now, from your perspective, I'll break it down in two parts. What do you think we're going to see now? And then, what would you hope we would see now? That maybe we wouldn't? And maybe we will.

[Gia Tolentino]

What I thought originally about the best case, sort of cultural effect of this, this, you know, the fact that this technology exists could be, is that we could kind of remove the moral valences from every part of this conversation possible. Right. That we could understand that metabolism and the hormonal preset that leads your body to be a certain weight and that all of it is much more sort of arbitrary and kind of morally neutral. And like you said, Christiana, like a sign of just all of the other things environmentally that you're swimming in. Like, I think that is the best thing that something like Ozempic can do is just is lead people to the understanding that if you can radically change people's relationship to fullness by. By one injection, then maybe it wasn't something that everyone should have been judging people, you know, then very clearly it's not something that deserved decades of moral. A century, like a full century of moral condemnation by like the entire beauty industry. Right. Of course, it doesn't seem to have led there at all. And I think, I mean, I have no real predictions other than the fact that, you know, One thing about GLP1 drugs is you, in the vast majority of cases, as soon as you stop taking them, your body reverts to how it was before. So the weight loss lasts as long as you take them, basically, and you.

[Trevor Noah]

Gain more fat, you gain it back.

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

So this is. Cause this is something we've learned about bodies, I think, from the starvation experiments back in the day. The only ones we really have on the, like, weight is right.

[Gia Tolentino]

Dieting slows your metabolism. And that's one of the reasons that fat phobia leads to obesity very directly. And so, you know, I think we have yet to see the wave of what happens when people come off of this and reckon with the sort of exit plan, if there is one, or the sort of lifetime use for the sort of like beauty use case, you know, and I don't know what that'll look like. I don't know how people will talk about it. Or how open it'll be. It still doesn't seem like this is something that people talk about, frankly when it comes to their own use of it. And I don't know, it'll be interesting to see if and when and how people ever do.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, that's a really, I think a very honest way to look at all the potential outcomes for what it could or might or should be as we move forward. I will throw in like a random prediction, I think, and this is a crazy thing to say, I think at some point the American government is gonna shut these drugs down. Because these drugs, if they get to like a point where they are extremely effective, cause right now they don't work for some people. But when they get to the point where like these drugs are just nailing it, and I mean just nailing it, I think they might get shut down. Interesting, because what is America if people are not addicted to social media, people are not addicted to fast food, people are not addicted to junk food. A lot of America has been built on corporations getting people addicted. Not giving them something, but getting them addicted to things. And I wonder if, and I know it's like almost conspiracy theory level, but I go like, I wonder if at some point these corporations and these CEOs are gonna phone people in Congress and go like, hey, this one drug is shutting down a lot of how American companies make their money. You need to shut it down. And I don't think that that's impossible, to be honest with you.

[Christiana]

I agree with you. I have a working theory. I think that like, as there is this kind of like anti wokeness thing happening and people are swinging to the right, I think the obsession with thinness is also an expression of that. And as long as we're kind of in this kind of right wing, ish, populist, conservative era, people are gonna long to be thin. Because I think that when people talk about when people use woke as a slur, they'll mention people, they'll mention movements interesting, mention dei, they'll mention body positivity, they'll mention transness. All of these things that for a brief moment, for about two to seven years were coming into mainstream almost acceptance. They weren't quite accepted, they were coming into it. And I think that this thin, white, blonde, ideal Barbie movie. Guys, it's not a coincidence, it's no coincidence that like Mattel made an ad and we were like, oh, we should get an Oscar. But it's just like all of that being ascendant and like the Kardashians as you say rejecting the curvy body. As long as that's the case, people are gonna wanna be thin.

[Trevor Noah]

Damn.

[Gia Tolentino]

And I think and the Kardashians remembering.

[Christiana]

Their white and being white and even dating white men, something's happening and then like until it swings and people are like, we don't mind curvy bodies. We don't mind brown skin and full lips. And people, the politics feel different. I think the thinness and the Ozempic is here to stay.

[Trevor Noah]

Well, as they say at the end of every great epic movie that's about to begin, really end of part one. Gia, thank you very much for taking the time. Thank you for joining us and I hope we see you again.

[Christiana]

Thank you, Gia.

[Gia Tolentino]

Thank you so much.

[Trevor Noah]

What now with Trevor Noah is produced by Spotify Studios in partnership with Day Zero Productions. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin and Jodi Avigan. Our our senior producer is Jess Hackel. Marina Henke and Claire Slaughter are our producers. Music, mixing and mastering by Hannis Brown. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next Thursday for another episode of what Now.