‘So sick to make money out of body distress’

Williams’s husband’s investment in a telemedicine company with the capacity to supply the GLP-1 drugs tells another side of the story. This is the explicitly economic side of the family of miracle drugs that are yielding huge revenues for the Danish economy and the big pharma companies that endeavour to provide this drug in pill form rather than as an injection – which will ensure even greater reach, uptake and profits. Payment for these drugs requires a monthly subscription plan, somewhat like a mortgage that never ends. And just like inhabiting a new home, the result of taking these medications provokes spending in allied industries as the body house is rehabbed with cosmetic surgeries and treatments needed to plump the now-sagging faces, thighs and buttocks which have turned into empty sacks.

The longed-for uniform lean body is paradoxically being revived just as women in particular were beginning to feel they could occupy more diverse body forms – with Williams, for many, being an exemplar of female body strength and beauty. The 50-year struggle for body diversity to resist the endless thin aesthetic which presses in on all of us – and especially on girls and women from eight to over 80 – and to accept their appetites and their body of whatever shape, size, height and hue is thus eviscerated in one fell swoop. The psychological and political fight inside almost every woman to dare to give up the screaming criticisms that come from inside and out is nullified. We can all live the (body) dream if we have the money.

If only. But I am not so sure. What might happen to the complex longings which were encoded in women’s protest against size and hunger restrictions if they are to disappear? How might women express their discontent and their refusal to conform? For sure, some of the pain would be diminished, but what about the cost of conformity? What about the confusing body dysmorphia which accompanies individuals as their body shrinks to a size that may have been wanted but was unconsciously feared for years? Will women be able to take for granted body contentment, or will we see a complicated disjuncture between having a wanted thin body – which is at the same time a body that doesn’t feel quite real and stable? Will we be content to have a truly birdlike appetite as opposed to the apparent birdlike appetite many have feigned in public?

Right on the mark, to avoid embarrassment and a loss of revenue, is the ingenuity of restaurateurs keen to keep their custom by embracing the new smaller orders in these days of vanishing diners. Otto’s on Gray’s Inn Road, London, now offers a “Menu for one, small appetite”. New York’s Clinton Hall Sports Bar offers the Teeny-Weeny Mini Meal while the Bedford Stone Street in the Financial District offers mini martinis.

The food companies too are working hard to develop new irresistible products for those on these drugs whose appetites now require much more intense flavours to encourage them to reach for pre-prepared foods and snacks. Because muscle loss is a danger with these meds, so-called foods – protein-rich manufactured foods – are being developed to be succulent for those with reduced appetites. This is stimulating a hungry food industry into even more inventively processed territory.

We could say all very well and good – but it isn’t quite so simple. A radical transformation of appetite through medication sidesteps what has contributed to confusions and preoccupations around eating and body size. Making money out of body distress will continue in this new form. Let’s hope a fear of not being able to pay the subscription costs of GLP-1 doesn’t become a new and disturbing preoccupation.

Susie Orbach has been writing and campaigning about food, bodies and diversity for 50 years, from Fat is a Feminist Issue to Bodies. She is a founder member of AnyBody UK.

Photograph by Ellis Parrinder/The Observer