It is a balmy evening in early July. I have finally managed to get both of my small children to sleep and I am engaging in what has become a new and unhealthy ritual: scrolling through Instagram and trying to work out which of the people behind accounts I once followed for their body positivity content are now taking weight-loss drugs. I take a break from scrolling to pinch layers of fat between my thumb and middle finger, willing them – as I have since I was a child – to disappear. My fingertips trace the folds of skin that have appeared between my hips and ribs since my youngest son was born last summer, then over the raised red zigzags that have emerged all over my tummy since I first began growing children in 2021.
By the time my partner has made his way up to our room, I am sobbing. His face bears the slightly pained but loving expression of someone who has seen this all before. Without a word, he draws me in for a hug before taking the phone from me. “I just … ” I say between sobs. He nods as I finish my sentence “… wish it were me.”
You’d be forgiven for finding this melodramatic. But at 37, I can count on one hand the years I have spent free from anxiety about the shape and size of my body – and two of them I spent pregnant. The rest of my time on the planet has involved either outright hating my body or – more recently, in the shadow of the body positivity movement – trying to accept and maybe even love it.
But something is changing. Gone are the days when there was a deluge of messaging that told us to love our bodies no matter their size. When brands were falling over themselves in the who-can-shout-self-love-the-loudest Olympics. When Vogue, once a shrine to the skinny, declared three plus-size women were the new supers and plastered them on the cover. Instead, in a change I’d never have believed possible just two years ago, we have somehow been thrust back into a noughties-level skinny worship culture that is bringing up the same feelings I’ve been running from since I was a girl.
If first there was Hot Girl Summer, then Brat Summer, I reckon we are now living through Shrinking Girl Summer. I say this with no judgment or malice, but simply to hold up a mirror to a pervasive trend. Quietly, everyone seems to have been getting smaller and smaller.
For Alex Light, a British body-positive influencer, things had started to change even before the arrival on the mass market in the UK and US of GLP-1 inhibitor drugs used exclusively, via prescription, for weight loss (before this they were used mainly to treat symptoms of type-2 diabetes, including obesity). “For a while there were subtle signs,” Light says. “Fewer size-inclusive launches, less campaign imagery, more brands quietly reducing size ranges and a shift in which kinds of bodies were getting visibility and praise … but weight-loss drugs have made this shift impossible to ignore.”
The signs are everywhere. Dozens of A-list women who were once (intentionally or not) symbols of what it means to rebel against diet culture are now changing shape dramatically. First Adele. Then Rebel Wilson. Lizzo. Meghan Trainor. Kelly Clarkson. Serena Williams. Mindy Kaling. And although some of these attribute their weight loss to strict diet and exercise, others are openly using the jabs: plenty of once overweight A-listers have been explicit about how much they’ve benefited from using the jabs, with Robbie Williams calling them a “Christmas miracle” in a 2023 interview. Others, such as Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness and Oprah Winfrey, have spoken openly about their use – not, they say, in the pursuit of skinniness, but to get to what they feel is a healthier, more comfortable weight.
Given this is such a personal and emotive subject for many, it is obvious the reasons for using these drugs to slim down aren’t always black and white. But it is also clear there’s a grey area between “feeling fat” and being fat. And with stories of already-slim fashion editors queueing up to microdose the drugs in the run-up to fashion week, and celebrities using them to maintain skinny physiques, it’s almost impossible to find an exit to the moral maze of who should use them and how.
What is increasingly evident is that the lessons we’ve been taught in the past 10 years – you can be healthy in a bigger body, and some bodies are genetically meant to be larger – are being replaced with the old-fashioned idea that health equates with thinness. Over on TikTok, the SkinnyTok hashtag – on content praising thinness and starvation in the pursuit of it – was banned in June because of a surge in its popularity and glamorisation of disordered eating. Coupled with a return of a familiar prejudice that fat people are just lazy and greedy – a problem that needs solving, for the sake of the NHS – it feels bleaker than it has for a long time to be overweight.
As a perennially plus-size woman, I am happy for anyone who manages to lose weight and keep it off. But, yes, I am also consumed with a furious jealousy, because I wish it were me. And it almost was – because I am not simply an observer of this sudden collective sprint towards thinness, but someone who actively tried to participate in it. Reader: I took the drugs, too.
My experience with being bigger than I ought to be started as a child. I cannot say for sure when I was first made aware of my “problem”, but by the age of 10 I could confidently tell you how many calories were in a slice of Hovis versus Sainsbury’s own bread, and was a whiz at inputting my school dinners into the Weight Watchers calculator I carried around in my pocket.
My memory is hazy about precisely when the weight-loss conversation was first opened with me, but I know it has never been closed. The word “conversation” is a stretch, given it has generally travelled in one direction only: towards me. The usual protocol is me receiving opinions about my body from people who, in either a personal or professional capacity, ask if I’ve ever considered losing weight, before gently suggesting I might want to, or demanding I do. This will come with recommendations to try this one thing this thin person determines is the reason for their svelte physique, never admitting their genes might have something to do with it. And my role in this little dance has been to swallow the shame I feel about my body, while apologising for the awkwardness my size seems to present for everyone else.
And so the explosion of the so-called body positivity movement, on our social media feeds, fashion websites, catwalks and deodorant adverts worldwide, came as a shock to me. Having spent my whole life trying to be or stay thin, its messaging was at odds with my internal programming. While it felt amazing to see someone like Tess Holliday on the cover of Cosmo, and curvier mannequins in Nike’s flagship Oxford Street store, it also felt at times like two steps forward, one step back. I wasn’t surprised to witness fatness become the latest target of the rightwing press’s war on “wokeness”, or explicit fatphobia, normalised by columnists “debating” what they saw as the glorification of ill health. And while I loved the idea of appreciating your body regardless of its shape or size, I also knew deep down that I would probably never be able to do so myself.
Nonetheless, I gave it a good go. I wrote fat-positive pieces, shared posts on Instagram with body positivity hashtags and enjoyed the availability of bigger clothes in brands I had longed to wear: Valentino, D&G, Ganni, Reformation. I fell in love with the fat influencers’ “big is beautiful” message. I loved seeing people celebrating their bodies, especially their perceived flaws. I even wondered whether I had actually managed to love my body in its overweight (and later clinically obese) state, but this illusion of acceptance would always unravel at the merest perceived criticism – from online trolls or well-meaning people in my life trying to help solve something I’d never identified to them as a problem.
A few things did change for the better for me. Where once my internalised fatphobia had prevented me from believing fat people could be attractive, now seeing gorgeous curvy women in ads and on catwalks stretched my own definition of beauty to include people in bigger bodies. Another is that I fell in love with exercise, once it stopped being something gatekept by the skinny and muscular – with special admission granted for fat people only if they were explicitly trying to become thin. Instead it became much more common to see women above a size eight enjoy exercise for the sake of exercise – in my case, kickboxing, running and swimming.
The last big shift was that, for the first time in my life, I was able to believe that, despite my inability to be thin, I was deserving of real and unconditional love, which allowed me to crack open a little door just enough to let a person enter who would become my husband and the father of my children. I am much more able to accept my body’s appearance than I ever was before I met him.
When GLP-1 inhibitors first came along, I instinctively felt afraid. And curious. Afraid because when Meghan Trainor was singing about how it’s all about that bass and Lizzo was casting only plus-size dancers for her tours, I had allowed myself to imagine a future in which the issue of weight wouldn’t be such a big deal. Curious because, well … I wondered if the drugs could help me.
After having my second baby last summer, I gained weight. I was exhausted, moving less, eating more, and I felt out of control. So when articles started appearing around Christmas about how easy the injections were, how much weight you could lose and how few side-effects they produced, an idea started to form in my mind: maybe they could be the thing that slammed the door shut on conversations about my weight once and for all, and cut out the dreaded “food noise” – a near-constant barrage of thoughts about food, even when not physically hungry, that had an obsessive grip on my psyche. The idea of removing that from my life wasn’t just tantalising, but almost unthinkable. Imagine what I could do with all that extra brain space.
I took the inhibitors and they worked – almost too well. I lost my entire appetite and about 15kg in a scarily fast time. Simultaneously, I experienced a resurgence of crippling anxiety (a known side-effect of Wegovy), leaving me foggy-headed, sweating profusely, sleepless and unable to think rationally or be fully present with my tiny children. It was truly miserable for me and my partner, who found it heartbreaking to see his formerly happy and engaged wife spiral back into the postnatal obsessive compulsive disorder we had both worked so hard to help me recover from after our first son’s birth.
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Not for the first time in my life, the choice of being thin and mentally unwell, or overweight and mostly contented, presented itself. There was only one viable answer: I needed to be well for my children, and if that meant mostly tolerating body dissatisfaction, then better the devil you know, right?
The online company that had prescribed me the drugs with an eerie lack of checks and balances was stumped when I reported my side-effects, and told me to stop taking them. By this point I was so desperate to feel like myself again that the 3kg I regained pretty quickly, simply by eating more than nothing at all, barely registered. But as I felt more and more like myself, a new, almost grief-like feeling settled in the pit of my stomach; I felt defeated. The life raft on which I had pinned all my hopes of saving myself from a life of body hatred had arrived, and I had fallen spectacularly off it. It confirmed that the chronic lack of self-esteem I knew was likely the underlying cause of my mental health issues wasn’t ever going to be magically solved. And that I would probably never be free of a life spent oscillating wildly between two extremes: happy or thin.
You may be wondering where this all leaves me. Like many others, I suspect, it’s extremely complicated. Do I, an obese person, wish I could tolerate the drugs better and lose a phenomenal amount of weight like seemingly everyone else has? Yes! Do I feel foolish for believing this one thing might solve all my problems? Absolutely.
But there’s another niggling sense, too: a feeling that I have been lied to, tricked into hoping an alternative world could exist in which people were more accepting of each other’s bodies. I felt foolish for not recognising that what I will now refer to as fat-washing had only served one purpose: to make companies more money.
I feel disappointed that the same people who told me I was beautiful despite my size have jumped at the first chance to be thin – and it makes me question their past sincerity. As Light says, “When a creator builds a platform based on inclusivity and body acceptance, their followers see that as a safe space. When that same creator’s body visibly changes, it can feel like a betrayal.”
This has made me question my own integrity. I was out there spreading the good word of self-acceptance, too. Did I really believe what I was saying? I certainly wanted it to be true, and hoped it would be for others, and maybe that’s the same thing. But I know if I had the opportunity to be thin, even if it meant upsetting others, I’d say yes, every single time, because I’m so bone-achingly tired of the feeling of not-enoughness (or too-muchness) that has lingered since I was a girl.
Siobhan Murphy, a plus-size influencer whose @ interiorcurve socials focus on fashion and interiors, knows this predicament well. She was “so nervous” to share her use of Mounjaro, a GLP-1 inhibitor, because she’s “always been a loud and proud advocate” for plus-size women. “I worried people might feel let down or think I’d changed sides,” she says. “But this wasn’t about how I looked – I’ve always loved my body. It was about how I felt in it. My back kept bothering me, my knees were aching, my skin was dull, my eyes puffy … I made the decision to prioritise my health, and I’m glad I did.”
Despite her apprehension, Murphy’s followers “have been incredibly kind and understanding. I think many were just happy I was transparent. There’s such secrecy around this topic.”
In an online environment, a lack of trust can quickly morph into something more sinister, encouraging people to look at everyone and wonder if they’re on it, too, in a weird cat-and-mouse game that breathes life into an old habit of commenting on women’s bodies that, as a society, we’ve fought to move on from. And as someone who’s been round the block when it comes to weight gain and loss, body dysmorphia and the rest, I can tell you nothing makes you feel worse about yourself than scrutinising the appearance of others.
As I scroll Instagram, seeing Shrinking Girl Summer in full bloom, I can’t help but pine for what could have been: a smaller body and what I assume would be an easier existence than one spent feeling the need to justify and defend myself all the time. But I find reasons to be hopeful when I see new body positivity pioneers pushing back against this fresh era of fatphobia. Women such as Lena Dunham, Meg Stalter, CMAT and Lola Young, who are all having their moment in the sun, without feeling the need to shrink in order to do so.
Murphy says she sees the community at a crossroads. “A new wave of medical intervention is changing the conversation and it has raised many questions about what body positivity truly means. For me, it was never just about size – it’s about acceptance and kindness toward yourself and others. Whether you stay the same size, gain weight or lose it, the core message should remain the same: your worth isn’t defined by your body.”
I am pretty committed to losing some weight; not a lot, but some. More than anything because I want to feel better in my body. My pursuit of being smaller is not motivated by a belief that being big and being beautiful are mutually exclusive. Maybe it will always be something I can appreciate as being true for others rather than myself, but in the meantime, I’ll do all I can to embed in my children’s own programming the notion that their weight really is the least interesting thing about them.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from having kids, it’s that the best way to teach them something is to embody it. I’ve never felt a stronger urge to step away from the scroll hole and build more solid self-esteem from the inside out. Maybe I’ll never learn to love my body fully, but that doesn’t mean I’ll give up trying.