There are few rules that I stick to harder and faster than this one: I will not read weight loss ads.
I will not read them for a million billion trillion dollars. Not from a reputable company. Not from the lens of actually this is just about health/hormones/fill-in-the-blank. Not in a car; not on a train; etc. I will not.
Advertising is a necessary evil of trying to make a thing consistently and well for a long period of time that you’d like to offer people for free. Because of that, I read the ads for all kinds of products, most of which I do actually like.
But I will not read weight loss ads of any kind for any reason because I think of Pantsuit Politics listeners as people I’ve invited into my living room. We might talk about all kinds of random shit in my living room: You got a presidential candidate for 2028 you like? How about a lip gloss/multi-vitamin/pair of socks? It’s fine. I would never, in my living room, say, “so how’re you feeling about your weight? How’re you feeling about mine? In fact, how about we take a pause right here just to remind us both that we carry around pounds? I bet you don’t already do that 900 times in the course of an afternoon.”
Women are currently encouraged to talk about our weight but only if that talk is prefaced, informed, and constrained by personal disclosure. If I am to write an essay about the size of my body, I am to include a full and detailed journey, complete with measurements, sizes, what I’ve tried to lose weight and what’s worked for how long and what hasn’t worked and how I feel about all of that working and not-working and what I’m currently trying, because I am of a size where I’d better be currently trying.
If I don’t include those details, it must be that I’m too ashamed. And really I should disclose the precise nature and source of my shame and what I’m doing to alleviate it, all while reassuring the audience that I definitely feel an adequate supply of it.
It must be that I’m ashamed. It couldn’t possibly be that somewhere along the way, I let the statistics and dates and point systems and disgusting Jenny Craig-wrapped “desserts” sail away in the breeze. It couldn’t be that I’ve decided my attention is better spent elsewhere.
The body positivity movement was important to me because it showed me pictures of bodies like mine living in the world. It showed me bodies like mine in bikinis, in evening gowns, on basketball courts, in clothes that perhaps I’d like to buy. For what felt like five minutes, some brands were actually marketing to me. That was nice.
This is how weird it is to have a large body. You actually feel excluded from capitalism.
I appreciated the concept of health-at-any-size. It, again, felt like I was finally invited to spend money in places where everyone else has been spending lots and lots of money.
As with all things, the “body positivity movement” got interneted. Now it’s fodder for a thousand essays attacking it, defending it, musing on just as I am right now. Rest in the cache, body positivity movement. I knew you when.
I do not want to talk about GLP-1s in my living room because I am in a body of a certain size. How on earth could I talk about GLP-1s without explaining whether I’m on one currently, and, if not, why not?
That question is rhetorical. The answer is that what I am and am not doing in my body is exactly no one else’s business. Same for you and you and you.
I could just talk about GLP-1s. I could.
But of course, I talk in public, on the internet, where someone will see a clip of me saying literally anything I could possibly say about these drugs, and that person will immediately raise an eyebrow and then search for additional photos of me to see if I’m in an approved container to be able to discuss this issue.
I’m sure this happens about everything I discuss, including and especially sex, which I do talk about on tomorrow’s episode of Pantsuit Politics. I can handle it on some topics, especially topics about which I know I have something to contribute, something that makes these mental calculations and risks worth it.
For a discussion about a medication that I feel nothing and everything about all at once, so much feeling that I can’t even put words around the feelings? Pass.
My daughter and I watched an Instagram reel over ice cream this week. The reel suggested replacing “what do you do for a living?” with “who’s the villain in your life?” as a get-to-know-you question. I didn’t have to think twice about who the villain in my life is. It’s a person who used my body to punish me.
(Pausing here to ask whether I really want to share that I had ice cream this week. That’s what this whole conversation does to us.)
I will not read weight loss ads, and this post is likely the first and last time I will type the letters G-L-P together on any keyboard. It is likely the first and last time I will say anything about my weight or anyone else’s online. No one needs to be reminded to think about this. We have nothing but reminders. For many of us, maybe most of us, the whole world reads as a series of post-it notes reminding us of our physical inadequacies.
I have been tempted at the beginning of every paragraph to do some form of disclosure, to tell you about my diet and exercise and lifestyle and conversations with my physician and my overall health, perhaps to throw in my resting heart rate and cholesterol numbers. I have been tempted to use these data points to try to earn your approval and maybe even your affirmation, although of course your approval and affirmation in this context are completely uncomfortable for you and for me. You’d probably agonize over what you could say that doesn’t sound any-kind-of-way that makes me or anyone else feel something because we all feel so much about our bodies.
THE HOURS OF OUR LIVES WE HAVE SPENT LIKE THIS.
It is nonsense. It is wasteful. It is reinforcing all of this tremendously toxic shit that makes us entirely too obsessed with ourselves.
So this is my one and only disclosure: I’m doing my best in this very body that I have to let some of this self-obsession die with me.
P.S. If you wonder where on earth this is coming from, I don’t blame you! This post is a follow-up to a conversation that Sarah and I stumbled into at the end of our regular Thursday Live conversation.
“THE HOURS OF OUR LIVES WE HAVE SPENT LIKE THIS.” Amen! We cannot have them back but we can work to prevent them from being siphoned off in the future. Thank you, Beth!
It had never even *occurred* to me that Pantsuit Politics might feature weight-loss ads, because to do so would just feel so incongruous with what I experience here. So thanks to the whole team for being so true to who you all are.