One of the cartoon show South Park's greatest strengths is its constant mockery of elitist culture, and its new special, “The End of Obesity,” does a great job of that: With a healthy dose of politically incorrect rants, Colorado teens highlight the hypocrisy of the elites and the lies they tell about new weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegobee.
Celebrities like Mindy Kaling, Christina Aguilera, and Jessica Simpson have all shed more than a few pounds in the past year, and all claim they did it through lifestyle changes alone. Aguilera claims to follow the “rainbow diet,” in which she eats only foods of certain colors every day. Simpson credits walking and cauliflower for her dramatic 100-pound weight loss after giving birth to her third child. If 10,000 steps and cruciferous vegetables were all it took, I'd look like Marissa Miller circa 2008.
When one of the “South Park” moms compliments the “MILF,” who flaunts her svelte figure in short-sleeved shirts throughout the episode, she responds, “Yeah, I just work out a lot. I do pilates and stuff.”
I'm not a gambling guy, but I'd bet on the fact that celebrities like the MILFs from South Park are using the dramatic, immediate GLP-1 agonists Ozempic and Wegobi (aka semaglutide). Instead of shedding a few pounds, they're losing weight so rapidly they seem to lose it out of control. Late last year, Sharon Osbourne warned about the downsides of the drugs, saying she'd lost too much weight and expressing concern they could encourage unhealthy habits in young women. “It's just too easy,” she told the Daily Mail.
Alexis Conason, a licensed psychologist in New York City who specializes in eating disorders, says she has seen anorexic-like behavior in people who take popular weight-loss drugs. [clients] “You start to eat so few calories a day that you become anorexic,” she says. She's concerned about what the DSM calls “atypical anorexia,” which is a condition that shows all the criteria for anorexia, except that despite significant weight loss, the weight remains within or above the normal range.
After her dramatic weight loss, Oprah finally confessed that she had been using drugs to lose the weight. She said she no longer felt embarrassed about doing whatever it took to shed the excess weight, saying willpower alone was not enough, reinforcing the idea that obesity is a disease.
That's a good admission, but we don't know if her motives were altruistic. A Reuters analysis found that Novo Nordisk, the pharmaceutical company that makes both Ozempic and Wegovee, paid at least $25.8 million in weight-loss drug-related fees and expenses over a decade, specifically targeting an elite group of obesity doctors who insisted on giving the powerful, expensive drugs to tens of millions of Americans. It's not far-fetched to speculate that Oprah was a recipient of similar spending.
Her popular weight-loss show last December, “Shame, Blame, and the Weight-Loss Revolution,” was essentially an ad for drugs, and she quit Weight Watchers, citing a possible “conflict of interest.” The popular weight-loss company recently launched a new membership program that prescribes Ozempic and Wegobee to customers.
Kelly Clarkson also recently came clean about her use of weight loss drugs after publicly denying it. In a recent interview with Whoopi Goldberg, the talk show host said she had no idea she'd gained so much weight. Goldberg agreed, saying the drug is “great for people like us who have problems.” If you're looking for a woman who doesn't have a “problem” with losing weight, I'll introduce you to one who really loves eating raw kale!
Rules for you!
All this is brought to you by the same peers who previously denounced society's diet culture and obsession with women's bodies. They are always telling us to be happy with our bodies and not be ashamed of not fitting society's beauty standards. “You don't have to be skinny to be happy,” they say. “Just be yourself!” they shout. And then they're quick to inject their bodies with drugs, plastics, and god knows what else to turn them into an imitation of their younger selves.
Kaling was at the forefront of the body positivity movement, telling women several years ago that “any body is a bikini body!”
In her healthier years, Aguilera told People magazine that she “has to be a strong, powerful, confident woman,” and that “as long as I feel good about myself, that's enough.” [sic] That's the confirmation I need.”
“I've spent the last 10 weeks in classes with Eckhart Tolle, studying his books, and New EarthI know for sure that it is not my body.”
Elites in every field, from entertainment to politics, are paid millions to lie. Everyone knows they are duplicitous, yet they persist in promoting one thing in front of the cameras and acting in the exact opposite of the narrative they support. They lower the standards for everyone else while continuing to strive for status, wealth, achievement, and of course, thinness. As Eric Cartman points out, “The rich get Ozempic and the poor get body positivity.” This is comically illustrated by a new drug called “Lizzo.”
Honesty is the best policy
I don't have a problem with people who want to lose weight or take Ozempic or other fast-acting weight-loss drugs. Healthy behavior should be celebrated. The fact that some women feel betrayed by other women who have lost weight, like Adele, is absurd. Do I think GLP-1 has a negative impact on society as a whole and sends the wrong message to people young and old? Yes. But as with everything else, I'm not in the business of preventing others from falling into drug addiction. (Unless they push it on their kids, which is starting to happen with the new weight-loss tools.)
Doctors make it clear that people will need to take these medications long term, possibly for life, to maintain their weight, implying that obesity is an uncontrollable disease. But this is not the case. Like many chronic illnesses, it can be more complicated for some, but for most people, their health can be dramatically transformed if they commit to making informed lifestyle changes. Medications like semaglutide often simply mask the symptoms of eating disorders and body image without addressing the underlying medical condition.
Despite knowing all this, I can honestly say that I have thought about injecting myself with these quick fixes. I have never struggled with my weight, but I have struggled with my perception of my body. However, my feelings are Terribly It doesn't line up with reality. I care about my health, and I am healthy by any objective standard. I know there are no shortcuts, and I know that the long-term damage of taking medication would be greater (pun intended) than the short-term self-satisfaction I might gain from going from a size 6 to a size 4. So logic trumps my insanity.
But if there's one thing celebrity culture encourages, it's insanity. The elite, with all the resources at their fingertips, are rarely models of self-restraint or critical thinking. Their money protects them from experiencing the consequences of the terrible ideas they espouse. They get to create an alternate reality for themselves, while most others live with the cost of their poor decision-making.
So they tell women to love their bodies the way they are, yet enthusiastically advocate for young women who are dissatisfied with their bodies to mutilate themselves in an impossible attempt to change their gender. Which is it? Self-love or self-hatred? No wonder they're confused. Nothing they say is based on empirical truth.
I would respect them more if they were honest about reality. Humans enjoy beauty, whether it be a majestic mountain or a woman's healthy physique. We celebrate discipline, excellence, and ingenuity. We all have an innate fear of death and pain, and we will go to extreme measures to avoid the fall into oblivion.
Instead, the elite live behind a veil of lies that, thanks to exaggerated body-transformation stunts and the genius of “South Park,” more people see through every day.
