Original air date: June 22nd, 2023
It seems like everywhere you look these days – on TikTok, on the sides of buses, in news headlines – you see Ozempic. The drug originally created as a diabetes treatment is now being used as a weight loss method, and is in incredibly high demand.
While Ozempic may just be the next in a long line of get-thin-quick fads, it’s already causing a lot of issues, many of which are especially felt by racialized communities.
In this episode of Don’t Call Me Resilient, host Vinita Srivastava speaks with fat and disability studies professor at Carleton University, Fady Shanouda, who examines anti-fat bias in medicine. He fills us in on the history of racism in relation to body size and how fatness – as a standard human variation – has come to be negatively associated with unintelligence and immorality. Shanouda says these associations gravely impact the quality of health care fat people receive and supports their exclusion from social and cultural spaces.
Show notes: https://theconversation.com/listen-widespread-use-of-ozempic-for-weight-loss-could-change-how-we-view-fatness-206457