The owners of Plus Bus Boutique, a Los Angeles consignment shop that buys and sells plus-size fashions, noticed something odd this past summer.
“We’ve had an alarming amount of the larger sizes coming in,” says co-owner Marcy Guevara-Prete.
Jen Wilder, Plus Bus’s other owner, isn’t entirely surprised that customers have been emptying their wardrobes.
“There’s been a lot of talk (among their clientele) about getting smaller,” she says. And the reason, they both agree, is likely Ozempic. “The drug is making a big impact,” says Guevara-Prete.
There’s been similar news across the retail industry.
Poshmark, a second-hand fashion platform, announced in August that they’d had a 103% increase in plus-size clothing listings, and a 78% increase in new items with the phrase “weight loss” included somewhere in the description.
Impact Analytics, a retail forecasting company, suggested that the 12% increase in sales for XXS, XS, and S sizes and 11% decrease in sales for XXL, XL, and L sizes could only be explained by “the Ozempic phenomenon.”
Ozempic — or any of the GLP-1 class of diet drugs that includes Wegovy and Mounjaro — hasn’t just changed our nation’s waistline.
It’s changed the foods we eat, the ways we celebrate, and exercise, and travel, and dress, and talk about health and beauty.
In the last year alone, Ozempic has been a sponsor at the Paris Olympics, a sensation at July’s Berlin Fashion week—a model went down the runway wearing an “I love Ozempic” T-shirt — and the reason big-box chain Walmart claims that grocery sales have declined. The injectable drugs are sending a message that ultra-thin-is-back-in, a throwback to the “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” era of the 1990s.
GLP-1 drugs have been around in some form since 2005, originally introduced as a type 2 diabetes medication.
But as a July report from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, detailed, patients taking drugs like Ozempic for weight loss have more than doubled between 2011 and 2023, while those taking the drug for diabetes have dropped by 10%.
Among young people, GLP-1 prescriptions are up almost 600% since 2020.
According to a 2024 Gallup poll, 6% of Americans, or 15.5 million people, have used or are using the injectable medication for weight loss.
We’ve come a long way from when Jimmy Kimmel teased the audience at the 2023 Oscars with, “I can’t help but wonder, is Ozempic right for me?”
Over the last year, celebs from Rebel Wilson and Tori Spelling to Kelly Clarkson and Tracy Morgan have publicly admitted to taking the drugs to shed pounds.
Katy Perry, who’s denied using the drug, passed out mini-syringes labeled OzempiKP (as a joke) at her recent 40th birthday.
Even Oprah Winfrey has come out of the Ozempic closet, claiming she’s “done with the shaming.”
The rise of Ozempic — a name that’s become so ubiquitous, it’s now to GLP-1 drugs what “Coke” is soft drinks — has spawned its own language.
There’s “Ozempicmaxxing,” when weight loss happens with alarming speed; “food noise,” the constant thoughts about food that Ozempic alleviate; “Ozempic burps,” the sulfur-smelling burping reported by many users including Elon Musk; and “Ozempic face,” the sunken eyes and gaunt cheeks that often come with sudden weight loss.
As Ozempic has become more normalized, it’s changed the shape of the fashion industry. Size inclusivity is on the decline, with just three out of 65 fashion brands hiring at least one plus-size model this season, according to a Vogue Business report.
(That’s a drop of more than half since 2023.) Even the ones who’ve remained have noticed a less accepting atmosphere.
Candice Huffine, a plus-size model for Victoria’s Secret and Lane Bryant, claims she was randomly offered Ozempic by her doctor, despite not bringing up weight loss at all. “I was shocked,” Huffine said in an interview.
Food sales were the next to feel the repercussions of Ozempic culture.
A 2023 study from Morgan Stanley found that over the past year, patients using GLP-1 drugs visited fast food restaurants 77% less frequently and pizza joints 74% less.
They also consumed 62% less alcohol, and 22% said they stopped drinking booze altogether.
With the firm predicting that 24 million people could be using diet drugs by 2035, those losses could soon become catastrophic.
Restaurants that continue to push over-the-top portions won’t last long as Ozempic continues to change the way Americans eat, says Hank Cardello, a former food corporation executive who now teaches consumer health at Georgetown University, and author of “Stuffed: An Insider’s Look at Who’s (Really) Making America Fat.
“I don’t believe Ozempic will kill off the food industry, but it may, however, hurt the companies that don’t adapt.”
Some are adapting, like snack and beverage company Smoothie King, which just introduced “GLP-1 Support smoothies” to their menu.
In September, Nestlé unveiled a line of products called “Vital Pursuit,” including cauliflower pizza and chicken fajita melts, marketed to GLP-1 users.
The frozen meals — inspired by a YouGov study showing that 36% of Ozempic users prefer frozen options — are high in protein and low in portions.
GNC, the health and nutrition retailer, announced that it will soon be dedicating entire sections in their 2,300 stores nationwide to vitamins, protein shakes, and supplements created specifically for customers taking GLP-1 medications.
As some new store displays have teased: “You’re dealing with GLP-1 side effects. Now what? We can help.”
This type of marketing can be a minefield, especially if companies don’t want to run afoul of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), says Lauren Handel, an attorney for food, beverage, and dietary supplement businesses.
“The FDA considers products to be drugs if they are intended to alleviate side effects of drugs,” she says. Suggesting that a food or supplement could be used as part of a treatment program could be “risky,” Handel says.
But that hasn’t stopped GNC, or Herbalife, who market their protein shakes on Facebook as nutritional support for people “using a GLP-1 weight-loss drug.”
In January, the vegan meal delivery service Daily Harvest began selling a line of “re-portioned, calorie-conscious meals” for Ozempic users, with the not-exactly-nebulous name “GLP-1 Support.”
Another health market getting a boost from Ozempic are gyms and health clubs. A Morgan Stanley survey found that people’s commitment to weekly exercise jumped from 35% to 71% in a post-Ozempic world.
Some fitness club chains are doing more than just signing up new members.
Life Time Fitness launched a weight loss clinic last year, with doctors who can prescribe GLP-1 medications.
And Equinox, with more than 100 clubs nationwide, introduced a GLP-1 protocol for members, promising to help them “retain and build muscle during the process.
Travel has also been affected by Ozempic, and not just because airlines could save $80 million per year on fuel costs if passengers drop 10 pounds, according to recent analysis.
Since 2022, US bookings are on the rise for vacations that favor physical activities over food, booze, or sitting.
Hiking and camping trips are up 52%, nature walk excursions are up 55%, and bike tours are up 46%, revealed a TripAdvisor’s Viator report tying the trend to weight-loss medication boom.
Even the negative side effects of GLP-1 use, like the dreaded “Ozempic Face,” has led to its own cottage industry.
Dr. Paul Jarrod Frank, a cosmetic dermatologist who coined the term, says biostimulatory fillers are usually enough to fix the problem, but notes that it has stopped a rising tide of companies from marketing supplements and vitamins to Ozempic patients, promising more than they can deliver.
And then there’s surgery.
“I’ve seen a 30% jump in surgical body procedures over the past year due to GLP-1,” says New York plastic surgeon Dr. Darren Smith.
It’s becoming its own field of cosmetic surgery, he says, called the “Mounjaro Makeover,” named for the GLP-1 brand and designed to help patients using weight loss drugs who’ve lost skin laxity in “aesthetically sensitive areas,” Smith says.
The most problematic change, however, can’t be measured in profits.
Krass, the podcast host, has noticed that “the pendulum feels like it’s swinging more toward toxic diet culture again.”
The body positivity and “weight-neutral” approach to health and fitness that was taking over the mainstream just a decade ago — even Weight Watchers rebranded as a “wellness” company called WW in 2018 — is being replaced by the “slim beauty standards” of the early 2000s, Krass says.
It’s no coincidence that The New York Times’ list of 2023’s Most Stylish People doesn’t include even one overweight person. (2022, by contrast, had Lizzo and Beanie Feldstein.)
Some health-watchers aren’t surprised.
“The dumpster fire of diet culture has been burning all around us for decades,” says Jessica Setnick, a registered dietitian and expert in eating disorders.
“These medications didn’t create the fire, they just kept it burning.” While it’s tempting to lay the blame at the feet of big pharma, Setnick says the long-standing cultural lie that “starving and shrinking solves all our problems,” is the real culprit in creating Ozempic culture.
At LA’s Plus Boutique, co-owner Guevara-Prete isn’t sweating Ozempic too much. “We’ve seen people get weight loss surgery and get smaller clothes, and they almost always gain it back,” she says. “There have been fat people since the beginning of time and there always will be.”
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