Admit it or hide it? In Hollywood, stars who inject themselves with Ozempic – or a similar prescription drug – melt before our eyes and almost all keep quiet the secret of their hyper-rapid weight loss.
Oh, I walk the streets of New York a lot, explains this pop singer discovered at American Idol, who also pilots his daily talk show. Ah, I work out five times a week and I wear sweat clothes, pleads a member of the extremely famous Kardashian family, whose body image has been screwed at the center of her entire career in fashion and the media.
Between their last two seasons, several Californian reality TV wives The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills have lost weight at lightning speed. Their miracle thing? Easy. Stop drinking alcohol and experiencing menopausal hormones. The words Ozempic, Wegovy, Rybelsus or Mounjaro, four appetite suppressant drugs first designed to treat type 2 diabetics, were never uttered.
Of course, what the stars consume (or not) is up to them. The problem lies in the lies.
These secrecies create unrealistic expectations among their fans, in addition to establishing a standard of “body beauty” that is even less achievable since the normalization of plastic surgeries and injections of cosmetic products such as Botox.
In the documentary The sting of thinness, which the Crave platform is launching on Thursday, singer Nathalie Simard does not hide it: she has been injecting Ozempic for two years. After a first bariatric surgery in the spring of 2019, she regained weight and her doctor prescribed this popular medication to prevent her from regaining the lost pounds.
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The singer Nathalie Simard in The sting of thinness
“I didn’t want to tell lies. I didn’t want to tell people that I had a great diet,” says Nathalie Simard in this program which lasts an hour.
Ozempic, marketed by the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, causes nausea, diarrhea and vomiting. The highest dose costs around $400 per month, and the Régie de l’assurance santé du Québec (RAMQ) does not reimburse so-called cosmetic use of Ozempic.
On social networks like TikTok and Instagram, influencers have trivialized the use of Ozempic and praised its almost instant weight-loss effects, which caused a stock shortage last year. The shortage has since been resolved in Canada.
It’s still crazy that a medication for diabetics, which is administered with the help of a plastic pen, becomes a global viral phenomenon. In the United States, it’s downright madness. Well honestly, seeing the drastic results before and after Ozempic, anyone who has issues with the scale would want to try it.
Even host Oprah Winfrey, who has been talking about her fluctuating weight for decades, has been caught in the net of this pharmaceutical trend. At the end of February, Oprah stepped down as a director of WeightWatchers and bequeathed all of her shares in the company to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. For what ? Because Oprah Winfrey, like Elon Musk, Sharon Osbourne and Whoopi Goldberg, has revealed that she is a fan of these new weight loss drugs.
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The Quebec Health Insurance Board does not reimburse the so-called cosmetic use of Ozempic.
Subsequently, it is difficult to promote restrictive diets and other calorie counting programs.
In addition to Nathalie Simard, the documentary The sting of thinness de Crave gives the floor to three other Ozempic users, including a family doctor from Sherbrooke, Lucie Couture, who lost a third of her weight with the drug and who undertook a rigorous physical training program to stay in shape .
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The entrepreneur Pascal Chrétien in The sting of thinness
Entrepreneur Pascal Chrétien got rid of 90 pounds in nine months with Ozempic. In May 2022, he published a video on TikTok explaining the effects of the drug on his physique, a video which still earns him abundant mail today.
The director and screenwriter of The sting of thinness, Émilie Ricard-Harvey, advocates awareness and education to prevent, in advance, the use of these so-called “magic” drugs. She herself struggles to “deprogram herself from the prejudices that fatphobia [lui] instilled,” she confides.
Of course Émilie Ricard-Harvey, who lives with excess weight, is right, even if her posture is more idealistic than realistic. Beauty and health have been associated with thinness for ages.
Women, and now many men, spend their lives analyzing everything that enters their mouths. How many times have you said to someone, without malice or bad intention, “Wow, you look good!” Have you lost weight? »
At the same time, the “body positivity” movement, which advocates the media representation of all silhouettes, is gaining followers. But between self-acceptance and Hollywood thinness (or thinness?), which trend will prevail?
With the rate at which movie and TV stars are racking up likes on their increasingly slim photos, the future looks bright for pharmaceutical companies.
Because once the medicine is out of the syringe, it is impossible to put it back inside.