THE Beautiful AND THE Damned

How GLP-1 drugs like MOUNJARO and OZEMPIC are redefining the debate about size, weight loss and PRIVILEGE

- by JESUS MESA

SAMHITA MUKHOPADHYAY WASN'T expecting shame to come from a photo. The longtime feminist writer and former Teen Vogue editor had just moderated a panel at a media conference. She was dressed in a skirt and printed top she felt good in—until she saw a candid image someone had posted online. “It was devastating,” she told Newsweek. Mukhopadhyay took Mounjaro, an antidiabetic medication also used for weight loss, and saw dramatic results—losing 15 percent of her body weight over 18 months. She was feeling physically better, sleeping more soundly and even considering a wardrobe overhaul. But the cost of the drug forced her to stop. “I knew better,” she said. “As a feminist writer and committed proponent of body positivity, I'd spent years trying to love my body at any size. And yet, here I was, agonizing over a picture of myself.

That contradiction, she said, was the real heartbreak—not just for her, but for the women who long-embraced the body positivity messaging themselves. “Taking something for weight loss made me feel like I was being vain, that I didn’t have the willpower to lose weight, eat better or exercise,” she said. “It felt like a violation of an unspoken norm.”

Hollywood's Open Secret

IN RECENT YEARS, MOUNJARO AND SIMILAR GLP-1 DRUGS like Wegovy, Ozempic and Zepbound have redefined how America thinks—and talks—about weight. What began as a diabetes treatment has become a billion-dollar industry fueled by off-label use, celebrity whispers and red-carpet transformations.

As the 2025 Hollywood awards season kicked off with the Golden Globes in January, so too did another round of jokes, speculation and sponsorships linking the industry to the use of GLP-1 medications for weight loss by A-list celebrities. Comedian Nikki Glaser, host of the Globes, dove right in at the start of her opening monologue: “Good evening, and welcome to the 82nd Golden Globes—Ozempic’s biggest night,” she began.