It feels as if everywhere you look, the same kind of body is being celebrated. Scrolling through social media, flipping through a magazine or watching an actress on the big screen, it’s always the same ideal: thin, smooth, airbrushed, filtered. No curves, bumps or imperfections.
In today’s culture, real, unfiltered bodies are often deemed flawed, while the thin ideal continues to dominate social media feeds and celebrity culture. As this skinny lifestyle is glorified, the pressure to conform only increases and people are now turning to prescription drugs, like Ozempic, to do so.
With the increase in popularity of Ozempic as a weight loss drug, even the people once celebrated for embracing authenticity are now conforming to the unrealistic standards. Society is slowly erasing the acceptance of real bodies and replacing it with a sneaky, artificial strategy to alter appearances.
And this poses some questions: why does it feel so hard to find a real, natural looking body in the media? And why does it seem so rare to find a public figure comfortable in a body that doesn’t fit society’s narrow standards?
There was a time when celebrities, influencers and everyday people celebrated their natural bodies, embracing curves, stretch marks and cellulite. Yes, skinny culture has always been prevalent, but there were public figures, for example, Meghan Trainor, out there working against this norm, showing it’s okay to embrace your natural body. It gave everyday people someone to look up to.
But with the increased use of Ozempic and other weight loss drugs, it feels like we’re going back in time.
And beyond the surface of this trend lies a deeper cultural issue: it feels as if no one is truly comfortable in their body anymore.
Ozempic is made to manage Type 2 diabetes. It helps your pancreas produce more insulin when your blood sugar is high, helps prevent your liver from making and releasing too much sugar and slows down food leaving your stomach, according to the Ozempic website.
Ultimately, Ozempic helps manage diabetes by mimicking a natural hormone in your body that lowers blood sugar. The side effect of this hormone, GLP-1, is that it slows digestion and increases fullness.
However, the website clearly states, “Ozempic may help you lose weight. Ozempic is not a weight loss drug.”
Despite this disclaimer, Ozempic has quickly become the latest symbol of society’s obsession with body image. A medication designed for diabetes management is now being repurposed as a shortcut to thinness and joining the skinny culture obsession. Plus, it’s discreet, efficient and becoming socially acceptable.
What makes the shift particularly concerning is how normalized it has become.
When Ozempic is used by people who don’t medically need it, it turns a legitimate health treatment into a beauty product. Like any other viral social media trend, once a celebrity promotes a new way to alter appearance, the ripple effect is inevitable. People follow and aspire to be the same. And now all of a sudden, what used to be a medical option is suddenly a standard of beauty.
Equally troubling is how dishonesty has become part of the normalization. Public figures often underestimate how much influence they really hold
and how much trust their audience puts into what they preach.
When a public figure undergoes a major body transformation and credits it to wellness, clean eating or working out, while secretly using weight loss medication, trust is broken in your audience. This sends two harmful messages: that your body needs to change to be worthy and that a drastic change is achievable through discipline alone.
In 2020, TikTok influencer Janelle Rohner went viral for her all-natural weight loss journey. She built an entire brand on healthy weight loss lifestyle tips, recipes and guides and was selling it to her audience, preaching that you could look like me if you follow my steps. In 2024, her audience started noticing drastic weight loss and began speculating if she used Ozempic; however, she continued to preach about her all-natural weight loss.
Finally, after intense speculation, Rohner came out with a YouTube video where she admitted to using GLP-1 as a weight loss medication. She lost a lot of followers and support after admitting this as audiences felt misled and scammed.
It is exhausting to live in a world where natural bodies are seen as wrong. For young girls growing up online, this view is especially detrimental. Constant exposure to skinny culture and unnatural transformations is shaping a generation that will overanalyze every perceived flaw, believing their worth will come from looking like these celebrities and influencers.
Of course, there are some influencers promoting authenticity and showing off unfiltered bodies. But even so, it feels like for every one of them, there are a handful more of public figures shrinking themselves to fit into beauty’s narrow definition.
It makes you wonder, when will natural bodies ever be enough for society?
Ultimately, it is crucial to stop shrinking yourself to fit into beauty’s narrow definition. Bodies don’t need to be chemically altered to be beautiful, and whether or not the internet reflects that, it is time to start living for the love of our real, unfiltered selves.
