By following hashtags like #ozempicchallenge and #ozempicjourney on TikTok you will be catapulted into a grotesque (and somewhat dysfunctional) digital undergrowth made up of syringes, leaflets, chill backgrounds, endomorphic bodies and smiles for the camera. The plot is always the same: the tiktoker on duty shows off his pack of Ozempic (a drug used as a treatment for type 2 diabetes mellitus), takes out a syringe from the blister, turns the selector to the desired dosage and proceeds injection: the most popular is the one via the abdomen, but there are those who prefer to focus on the thigh or upper arm. The challenge consists in showing the progress achieved over the weeks by exploiting one of the effects of the drug, namely inappetence: the active ingredient of Ozempic, semaglutide, in fact acts in a similar way to GLP-1 (a hormone naturally produced by the intestine ), increasing the amount of insulin produced by the pancreas.
From puncture to puncture, waists and hips become thinner, the thigh gap widens exponentially and faces begin to wear out. There are those, like Aisling Oleary – @spelltris – claiming the 23 pounds lost within 12 weeks and those, like Cassie (@_life.of.cassie_), celebrating the milestone of 75 kilos after the fifteenth week of injections. In the United States, the use of semaglutide (under the trade name Wegovy) as a weight management remedy was cleared in 2021, when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allowed its off-label use. To avoid confusion, it should be noted that the two drugs are practically identical: they contain the same active ingredient and are both distributed by the Danish company Novo Nordisk. The differences concern the commercial name and usability: Wegovy is approved for obesity problems, Ozempic can only be prescribed for type 2 diabetics.
Regardless of the nomenclature, when it comes to this drug the salient fact is above all one: overseas, semaglutide has succeeded in colonizing the collective imagination. Paul Jarrod Frank, founder of the PFRANKMD beauty center, in an interview with Vogue He explained that “With the exception of Viagra and Botox, I have not seen any other drug so quickly become part of the social vernacular of modern culture”. Frank’s idea rests on fairly solid foundations of reality: the “miraculous” properties of this needle believed to be able to reduce thinness to a goal within reach of a needle have penetrated the dreams of American society, unleashing a sort of interclass fascination that has attracted everyone like a magnet, from the top systems of the star system to the plethora of petty bourgeois tiktokers eager to align themselves with the weight in view of the costume rehearsal.
In short: Semaglutide has entered the pop culture space in its own right. The uproar aroused by the provocative (and beautiful) cover of the New York Mag of February, which dedicated the cover story to the ways in which Ozempic is eradicating “the appetite of high society”. The semaglutide craze has stimulated reflections that touch several levels, starting from the most superficial and gossipy: some have focused attention on the fame that Ozempic and Wegovy would enjoy within the restricted circles of Hollywood and Silicon Valley (No wonder, given that Californian tech moguls have never hidden a certain propensity for prolonged fasting). One of the drug’s most prominent promoters was Elon Musk, who has admitted to use Wegovy to maintain her enviable condition and stay «fit, sculpted and healthy». Semaglutide is also at the center of conspiracy theories that appear when a celebrity loses weight in a somewhat suspicious way. From this point of view, the champion to look at is the Kardashian family: Kim was accused – in the absence of any evidence – of having followed an Ozempic-based treatment to slip into the tiny dress with which Marilyn Monroe sang in 1962 «Happy birthday, Mr. President» to John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Khloé of owe to the drug the silhouette sported in the January cover shoot for the magazine Sorbeta Dubai quarterly.
Even the promotional factor has contributed to the consecration of Ozempic in a costume brought: up vox, Emily Stewart has identified in the virality of the spot devised by the company one of the reasons for its success: «Long before I knew what Ozempic did (…) I knew Ozempic’s song inside out», she explained. An easy-going advertisement which, mimicking the Pilot’s Magic melody, transformed the refrain “Oh, oh Ozempic” into a catchphrase, making the drug known to everyone, diabetics and non-diabetics. This is one of the aspects that remains in the background when you try to decode the phenomenon from an external point of view: overseas, the health market works a little differently than it does in European Union countries, where advertising is prohibited direct-to-consumer use of medicinal products requiring a medical prescription.
In contrast, in the United States, the direct-to-consumer paradigm is overwhelmingly dominant, accounting for 32 percent of all health advertising. This laissez faire makes the advertising to consumers of goods which, in Europe, we consider extraneous to the logic of the free market, such as psychopharmaceuticals, perfectly normal. Then there is a pragmatic aspect: semaglutide covers 25 percent of the global market for diabetes treatment, and is a fundamental element for the health of millions of people: a disproportionate increase in demand inevitably puts it availability is in danger. In several countries, such as Canada for example, the only drug available is Ozempic, which can be prescribed without a prescription and is potentially accessible even to non-diabetic patients. On 16 February, with an official note, the Australian government invited health professionals to prescribe the drug only to patients with type 2 diabetes.
In Italy, due to a mix of demographic factors (the rather advanced average age) and legislative factors (the aforementioned advertising restrictions), until a few weeks ago, very little was heard of Ozempic. On March 6, however, the picture changed: Aifa, urged by Novo Nordisk itself, published a note inviting doctors to allocate the drug only to diabetics. The other fear is that the customs clearance of semaglutide will exacerbate the prejudice against overweight people. Always on vox, Julia Belluz outlined a dichotomy that sees two opposing fronts: on the one hand the “rationalist” side of doctors and researchers who, encouraged by the FDA’s opening choice, consider semaglutide an epochal turning point in the treatment of obesity; on the other, the “idealistic” one of the promoters of the Health at Every Size approach, contrary to the belief that body weight can be considered an indicator of health and reluctant to use drugs which, according to them, would medicalize obesity unnecessarily , perpetuating a dangerous culture that would idealize thinness and weight loss at all costs. Other questions touch the raw nerve of social justice: for example, how will the gaps in access to semaglutide play out in a country where the states with the highest rates of obesity are often also the states with the lowest rates of obesity? health insurance coverage? Perhaps, at least in the States, thinness is destined to remain an ideal within the reach of the rich.