The explosion of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs has provided a temporary fix for many struggling with body image issues, but these pharmaceutical solutions do little to address the root causes fueling the obesity epidemic. The food, beauty, and fashion industries continue to profit off stoking anxieties around appearance, while the medical establishment appears all too eager to prescribe these “quick-fix” medications.
Psychotherapist and social critic Susie Orbach has been examining these troubling dynamics for decades. She argues that the proliferation of GLP-1 drugs merely papers over the troubled relationships many people, especially women, have developed with their bodies. These medications may reduce cravings and facilitate short-term weight loss, but they do nothing to “re-educate people’s appetites” or tackle the underlying drivers of disordered eating.
Orbach traces the origins of this crisis back to the food and beauty industries, which have long “targeted appearance as crucial to girls’ and women’s identity and their place in the world.” The rise of social media has only amplified these unrealistic beauty standards, leading to a surge in “troubled eating” behaviours induced by the promise of pharmaceutical solutions.
Yet as the accessibility and popularity of GLP-1 drugs grows, with oral formulations soon to hit the market, Orbach warns that the true “meanings of troubled eating” will be “bypassed and erased.” The industries responsible for creating this distress will be able to continue peddling their products without scrutiny, as the medical establishment rushes to treat the symptoms rather than the underlying causes.
Orbach calls for a more holistic, “whole-body approach” that begins in early childhood, fostering a healthy, pleasurable relationship with food and the natural changes our bodies undergo. Only by challenging the power of the industries “hellbent on inducing body anxieties” can we hope to find a sustainable solution to the obesity crisis.
