We Need to Talk About Chrissy Teigen and Ozempic

Late last week, Chrissy Teigen, never one to shy away from an overshare, did what few celebrities before her have done: Admitted to using Ozempic. On her podcast, Self-Conscious With Chrissy Teigen, she detailed the period in 2020 after a miscarriage, when her “body felt completely stuck.” By turning to GLP-1s, she says, she was “finally able to lose the weight that was so reminding [her] of the baby that [she] had lost.”

Having lived through one gazillion cycles of both skinny-chic and body positivity, I find the Ozempic era complicated. I have seen first-hand the good it can do, and, as a woman (person?) with a body, the idea of turning off the “food noise” feels not only liberating but eye-opening. Imagine all the things we could get done if we weren’t obsessing about that muffin we just inhaled?

But it also feels weird to live in a world where Chrissy Teigen needs to take weight-loss-promoting medications. I follow her closely enough on social to know when she’s purchased a new sofa, and I have never seen her looking anything other than glamazon-svelte. Then there’s the issue of her food empire: How does a cookbook author and self-proclaimed anti-dieter do her job while not feeling hungry? To be fair, Teigen addresses this head-on, saying she felt she was not being truthful with her audience, and hence that it was “time to talk about that dirty little buzzword."

At the end of the day, it’s this transparency that I appreciate. I don’t have any moral absolutism when it comes to Teigen’s—or anyone’s—Ozempic-use. But when we see size-two supermodels noshing on cheesy chicken Milanese, it’s helpful to know that it’s not all genetics or self-restraint keeping them so skinny.