It almost happened just a few short years ago, when in these pages we were commenting on the lamentable obesity of the young in our country. The mantra then was “Fat is Beautiful!” And body-shaming was the new Jim Crow.
Then the GLP drugs came along, and everybody effortlessly slimmed down! Fat was no longer beautiful, apparently.
I just saw a commercial touting the fact that the GLPs, are now covered by Medicare. It features a fat woman lamenting that she has had to think about her weight all her life, every day (#metoo!) and now at last she’s FREE of that obsession.
Then I read an article on the free online magazine Aeon, “The Fog of Hunger”, wherein a female doctor says that women’s obsession with weight control has actually retarded and damaged our cognition! She isn’t exactly shilling for Ozempic, but she does mention that patients who are on GLPs report sharper and less distracted mentation once the cognitive “noise” of self-deprivation is silenced.
The self-discipline which was formerly commended and regarded as virtuous is now on a level with whalebone corsets, foot-binding and that white lead-based cosmetic the geishas used which resulted in facial tumors! Weight watchers’ “program”? It’s on a level with MKUltra.
But, after finding this merely confounding, just another rotation in the human wheel of folly, I stumbled on the truth:
dieting, “willpower”, self-control, now HAS to be villainized and proscribed, because otherwise, it threatens the market for the GLP drugs.
What do you dear polymaths think?