Adulting - Let's Talk About... Ozempic

Episode Date: July 20, 2024

Welcome back for the second episode of Let’s Talk About, a conversation between me and you, about whatever we’re dying to discuss that week.  The idea is, I guess, a broadening of Adulting... where that was about all of the things we never got taught in school, this is almost like seminars on life; where my audience (that's you!), get to chat anonymously about things they couldn't necessarily discuss over lunch with their friends, or feel like they don't have anyone to talk to about whatever it may be.  To get involved, follow me on Instagram @oenone, where every Tuesday we vote on a topic and every Wednesday we dig deep.Let’s Talk About… Skinny being back with the rise in Ozempic use, and feeling the pressure to be thinner.My Substack mentioned in the episode, https://open.substack.com/pub/oenonef/p/on-desire-beauty-and-ozempic?r=1ucxow&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. Hello and welcome to Adulting and welcome back for the second episode of Let's Talk About, a conversation between me and you about whatever we're dying to discuss. The idea, I guess, is a broadening of adulting where that was all about the things we never got taught in school. This is almost like seminars on life where we all get to chat anonymously, well, me, less so anonymously, about things we feel like we couldn't necessarily discuss over lunch with friends or just topics that we have so many thoughts and feelings on but don't always have the time to get into it. So to get involved,

follow me on Instagram at Anoni where every Tuesday we vote on a topic and every Wednesday we dig deep. This week, let's talk about skinny being back with the rise in a Zen pic use and feeling the pressure to be thinner. Before we get into the conversation, just a couple of things I wanted to flag. First of all, a trigger warning. There is a lot of conversation around disordered eating. And so if that's something that might be uncomfortable or upsetting for you, this might not be one for you to listen to. And the second thing is I use the word a Zempik kind of as an umbrella. I know that that's only kind of one brand and one use, but just for ease, I kind of talk about it always as a Zempik, just to flag that. We did touch on some people who have been prescribed a Zempik for medical

conditions such as diabetes or endometriosis. However, the conversation is less about the drug when used in a medical context and more about how prolific it has become for people already in straight-sized slim bodies using it to get extra thin, sort of like double zero, noughties, catwalk thin, especially in celebrity circles. But it is definitely now trickling down into the lay public. And actually, some of my followers sent in messages to say that they had bought it due to wanting to lose weight. Some reported positive impacts, others reported negative impacts. But the focus of this conversation is really going to be about whether or not this rise in a Zempic use is kind of the calling card for the harking back to that

naughty's physique, that heroin chic era, or whether it's ever gone away really, or whether it's something else started it and this is just feeding into it. Once again, the content gods seem to be aligning because I had written a piece on desire, beauty, and a Zen pic for my sub stack, and it was sitting in my drafts on the day that this topic got chosen and I swear I have no hand in the subjects you guys will submit them you will vote and so that piece is now live on my sub stack again I will link it in the show notes I'm just going to give you a quick definition or explainer on a Zen pick because just in case I've lifted this off the internet this is not my incredible medical knowledge but a Zenempic is a once weekly injectable

medication formulated to help adults with type 2 diabetes manage their blood sugar although not officially a weight loss drug research suggests that people who take a zempic may lose modest amounts of weight while on the medication and in fact the active ingredient in a zempic known as semaglutide is FDA approved at higher doses for treating individuals living with obesity and other weight related medical problems under the name Wegovi. So that is kind of what the drug is. The way that it works in really kind of rough layman's terms, as I understand it, is it

creates a sense of fullness. You kind of feel nauseous. It means that you don't necessarily want to eat as much and so the weight drops off it's basically like so completely suppresses your appetite I think it can also be used to help people suffering with um alcohol addiction because it also creates nausea or sickness feeling when you consume alcohol so there's loads of worthy reasons why people would be using this drug however I'm sure that if you ever happen to end up on the Daily Mail sidebar of shame or any kind of like pop culture publications,

you will have noticed that there's been a stark rise in especially sort of like female celebrities and pop stars having a huge drastic weight loss in quite a short amount of time. And the rumor mill is spinning and lots of accusations are being thrown around of people using a zen pick and a zen pick has just suddenly become part of our lexicon kind of almost everyone knows what it is um there was obviously huge articles last year about how many diabetes sufferers were unable to get their hands on the drug because so many people were purchasing it for weight loss and it actually created a shortage and i think since then there has been now sort of like more privatized with lots of different companies procuring the drug so that they can sell it

privately and it doesn't impact the supply. And so we've heard less of that, but we're definitely hearing more rumors, seeing more stories of people taking a Zempik. And I actually, the other week or maybe last month was just in a bit of a funk and just in a very silly, I wasn't meaning it. I looked up a Zen pick and was horrified and shocked to find out just how easy it is to order it in the UK. And you can order it online. You can order it from Superdrug. Some of the websites really ask very few questions. It is pretty expensive, but I mean, to some people and me being one of them at one point in time being able to have a quick fix to fat loss is priceless really because of the society that

we live in and this is kind of the conversation that we started having where off the back of what I would say was quite a good run a sort of anti-diet culture rhetoric the body positivity movement and the fat liberation movement coming to the fore, both of those movements being grassroots and something that is championed by usually people that exist in very marginalized bodies in society. So completely out of the size range that we would deem to be societally acceptable. But those incredible activists then kind of managed to change the tide slightly in the lay public's perception of which bodies were acceptable and which aren't. And obviously, it didn't go far enough.

But I definitely even felt the impact myself. I felt that models definitely looked less skinny. And if I would see an image of a catwalk model from the noughties, I'd be quite shocked at just how thin they were. And I personally felt like I felt less insecure in my body. I feel like there was lots of movements on social media, lots of people kind of sharing very normal body things like cellulite and, you know, not having a thigh gap, whatever it might be. It then became quite on the nose and everyone kind of got a bit sick of it. And it felt like actually we were coming to a place of sort of real body neutrality. Fast forward and suddenly, like with fashion, like with trends, as the trousers started to

get more low rise and the eyebrows started to get thinner again, the bodies started trying to match. And, you know, we've come right back around to that y2k kind of very skinny look and a zen pic is kind of the cherry on top because I guess at least for a lot of people myself included at 30 now I've been through those cycles of dieting I've tried to get very thin sometimes I've succeeded but eventually I've realized that the level of effort and the amount of restriction and the impact on my life to get to that body shape is not worth it in terms of how I want to live my life. I don't want to dedicate my whole life to being that thin. What a Zen pick does, I guess, is removes that barrier and with not an inconsequential amount of money, you can actually get that body. And I think this is kind of what is fucking everyone up, to put it plainly. One of the messages I received read, don't have the cash to take a Zempix. I

haven't really considered it, but it's crazy how much the idea of a miracle cure to fatness appeals. I'm a healthy fat person, can run, gym, swim, do everything my thin fans can. Yet I think about losing weight every single day of my life. Losing weight is my Roman empire. I'm currently dieting and it's making me so tired and grouchy, but the aesthetics of my body getting thinner is all that matters. Plus the way the world is set up for thinner people, the way fat people are perceived, seats on trains and planes less comfy, etc. It literally all comes down to aesthetics for me and I have such a bad relationship with my self-image because of it it's horrible I wish I could just unlearn this and focus

on my health over the way that I look I think what's so insidious about a zen pic for fat loss is that a lot of the people that have been using it actually report to say that they feel more sickly and more unwell because it is something that probably needs to be taken alongside medical advice or at least someone who can help with nutrition because it can zap calories so fast because you're not consuming enough that your muscles start to wear away that you can feel very weak the nauseous symptoms can be extreme and so it just shows how much as a society we value thinness over health and again something that feels a huge shame because we did have these conversations around health at every size there were these big campaigns to stop trying to judge people on

the way that their body looks and actually looking at their lifestyle we had finally got to a place where we accepted that there wasn't a one-size-fits-all visual on what was healthy and that people in many varied size and shapes of bodies were able to be healthy, not to mention that BMI is a completely redundant metric. But I wanted to share a positive message from someone who's on WeGoV. They say, I'm on WeGoV and it feels like a total gift. For a decade plus, I've struggled with weight, lost 10 plus kilos at a time and been starving. So, so much time and energy spent on resisting food. WeGoV has taken that struggle away and I'm so grateful that I have it. Also grateful to be in the UK where it's 160 quid a month versus the US where

it's around 800 US dollars plus type figure. First of all, I'm really happy for this person. And I think we have to be careful as I'm getting into this, I'm starting to realize that this is just so layered because it spans across so many different vectors and factors. There will be individuals whose lives will be changed for the better because there are lots of different reasons why people can't lose weight and why it might be important for them to do so for medical reasons whether that's thyroid issues whether it's other kind of illnesses for those individuals i do believe that an assistance through a drug especially if it's

given to you via a medical professional can can be amazing. And a concept that came up time and time again was just the sheer amount of energy and time and mental load that we put into thinking about our bodies. Is there something to be said for the fact that if a drug can alleviate all of that stress, even if it means paying a lot of money, even if it means you might have to be really careful in how you manage yourself going forward so that you don't lose too much weight, is that going to put us in a better place mentally? Because we cannot ignore the fact that the world is set up for people who are thinner, that people are kinder to people who are thinner, that life is easier. There's been statistics on people finding it easier to get work if they're thinner, people are paid more if they're thinner, thin privilege is a real, real thing. And so I

never want to take away an individual's agency or choice on that. However, what I guess I sometimes think about this, and it's difficult to do so, it's also a societal issue. It is a large problem that we need to deal with. There's so many facets to it so on the one hand we have this issue that the people who struggle with their weight who and that impacts their health if it's outside of a medical issue often it can be down to things like socioeconomic factor or stress or things outside of their control, which are actually could be helped by collective help from public health initiatives, from the NHS being better funded, from us funding public spaces and parks and making sure that fruits and vegetables are affordable, from making

it easy to access a healthy lifestyle because certain things are easy to access. Sure, going on a walk is free, but if you're a single mother with three kids and you're working two jobs, when have you got time to do those things? Where are the benefits helping you to give you that time to put your oxygen mask on first? So much of illness in our westernized society is actually a product of this disparity in wealth, of living under austerity, of not having the access, the ability, the frame of mind, the mental space in order to actually look after yourself, whether that be through having time to cook food, whether it be having the money to buy food that's going to be nourishing. And so I guess I definitely think that a Zen pick should be available to

individuals that need it and that sometimes we have to do things on an individual level. I guess one of my fears with it is a drug is ostensibly something to cure the symptom, right? But we want to fix the cause, root of the symptom. And in this case, the root of the symptom is society. And it's not only the fact that society just doesn't accept fat bodies that's one aspect of it people should be allowed to exist and live in a fatter body irrespective of whether they're healthy really it's absolutely nobody's business anyway um and so we shouldn't feel this much pressure anyway but also it should be that we get much more help that people are able to access things that they need in order to live healthily.

It's a premium to go to fitness classes and go to the gym and to buy certain health foods. It's really expensive. It's a luxury, which I really don't think that it should be. So I'm constantly trying to be really cognizant of the fact that there's an individual level problem where if an individual's life and standard of living is going to be improved enormously through taking this drug, then absolutely, I think they should be able to do it. My worry is that having a drug like this, which costs money, which can be bought through private healthcare, is going to take some of the pressure off us, pressuring the NHS and the government to fund the NHS, public health funding, community spaces, outdoor

spaces, all of those kind of things. And will the problem fall even more into disrepair if government bodies believe that we have this miracle drug? Because a miracle is never really a miracle as we know. Sorry, that was a very long-winded answer. So now to move away from people who will kind of maybe benefit on a health-wise or who exist in larger bodies taking the drug and zone in on more the impact that it's having, I guess, on people that already exist in straight-sized bodies whose bodies are socially acceptable, who perhaps have a history of disordered eating, who have maybe overcome that. And now with the rise of a Zen pit, the rise of heroin chic again, are now finding those demons coming back because I think this is the other side of the coin. I mean, everything that's created medically often then ends up being cosmetic. Cosmetic surgery was born out of

the fact that they'd learned how to create skin grafts and to fix injuries. And then it was then realized that you could use it for something else. Viagra was first invented to help with blood flow. And then we realized that we could use it to help with erections. All medicine is kind of often created to fix a problem. And then it's used for created problems, in this case, being achieving an unrealistic idealized body standard. A message that I received off the back of someone saying that they weren't going on their girls holiday this summer because they just felt too embarrassed in their body because they gained weight and someone responded saying as someone in my mid-30s one of my biggest regrets of my 20s

is all the time I missed out on with my friends because I didn't feel worthy of having those experiences at the size my body is. And someone responded to that saying, I love this. No one on their deathbed wished they'd spent time dieting and missing social events to go to the gym. My mum has spent her entire life valuing being thin. She's tanned and a size four, I'd say. It's affected me so much. Her whole worth is how her body looks. Despite presenting as the ideal body type, she is the unhealthiest person I know. She also got very ill last year and had to have surgery and has lost so much confidence from her scars and aging. You have to like yourself beyond that, but there is so much responsibility on all of us to elevate all women

and challenge people who say big isn't as desirable. Shit changes, people get ill, you have to love the soul. Beauty isn't physical too. I know people who are not conventionally societally attractive and I think they're beautiful because their personality and attitude is just infectious. So many generations of women, including the young women who are growing up now, have been impacted by this terrible infliction, which is for us to believe that our bodies are our most important asset. And it's so interesting because I wrote this sub stack and I called it on desire, beauty, and a Zen pick because desire and beauty and body image, especially for women, are so wrapped up and I'm much more eloquent in the piece. Also, I'm so

sorry, I'm quite coldy and I'm worried that I sound really bunged up. But anyway, if you want to know a bit more about that, read the piece. But I'm going to expand a little bit here because so much of our time and our energy and our power is given up in order to make ourselves physically smaller, to make us more diminutive, more submissive. It eats away at us. It takes over our lives. And imagine the power we would have if we weren't spending all of this energy on, I don't know, literally working out to the excess or starving ourselves, which will literally impact our brain function. And then spending hours upon hours just thinking about how we look and whether or not we're good enough, letting it hold us back from holidays and job interviews. It's actually kind of just sickening.

And I think why the Zen pick thing is just so painful to swallow is that there are lots of people who have dedicated their lives to staying a certain size or to looking a certain way so many people that I speak to so many women have their own sort of really specific eating disorder which isn't even an eating disorder anymore it's just habit it's routine they found a way to restrict continuously daily so much so that it doesn't even feel like restriction anymore because it's just part of who they are. It's part of how they live. And a really insightful message that I received read, I just wanted to say that I had an eating disorder for 10 plus years and it was only once I was recovered that I had the headspace for anything else. My recovery

coincided with learning about and engaging with social justice and intersectional feminism and I just wish that that had been sooner. It's astounding how much food noise, body obsession limited my capacity, education and life in general. I still find myself with gaps in knowledge that I should have learned in my teens and early 20s but completely missed due to my eating disorder. I think a lot of people underestimate how much of their headspace is going towards food, body, beauty standards. I still find myself doing this, so no shame or judgment towards anyone at all. And I always wonder how much power and collective change we could make if we spent even 20% less time thinking about those things in relation to

us as individuals and instead focused it outwards on a wider scale, social justice, etc. Enjoy the number one feeling, winning, in an exciting live dealer studio, exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. In my memoir, Bad Influence, I wrote about a conversation I had on this podcast, actually, with poet and author Charlie Cox, where I admit something which I'd never told anyone, but that one of my sort of daydreams when I was at school, when I was sat in a lesson at break

time, at lunch, anytime, I think it'd be so nice if I could just get into an accident where I was then sort of bedridden and couldn't eat where the obstacle of food, of desire, of hunger was taken away from me. And I used to come up with all these different scenarios because one, I didn't have any knowledge of food. I didn't understand about calories. I was terrified to exercise because I was already at such a young age, embarrassed of my physicality and of my body and when I look back I was tiny it just makes me feel kind of sick I was just a little girl and so I would try and think what scenario could possibly happen to me where I didn't have to action starving myself or making

myself sick I didn't have to do any of that it would just happen and the thing that I remember I used to hone in on was okay imagine I'm in'm in a car crash. This is awful, but this is what I used to think. Imagine if I got in a car crash and something like went in my stomach or something, so I couldn't swallow or eat. And I got fed through a tube and I had to live in a bed in a hospital for weeks or however long. And what happened, what that meant was I was literally just getting enough to keep me alive, but I'd get really thin. And that used to bring me so much comfort. I honestly used to think that is the only way that I'm going to be able to get there. I used to think my life wasn't worthy of starting, that I wouldn't be able to fall in love, that I couldn't do X, Y, Z until I'd reached this thinness, which I obviously had

body dysmorphia. So many of the girls in my year at school also had the same issues as me. And all of us were just little girls. We were starving. I had a massive appetite. I constantly was hungry because you're growing and you're running around school and you're expending brain power on your school books. And I just, when I look back and I think that, God, it actually makes me want to cry. But it also makes me think how grateful I am that a Zen pick has come at this time in my life because having been through the mechanisms of a diet which basically includes restricting restricting restricting until you get to the point where you feel like god I look great and then you suddenly have to start again so you start eating normally because you're in such a big calorie

deficit the weight comes back on the insecuritiesurities come back. You sometimes put on more weight, the diet starts again, and it's a cycle. I now understand that if I did something like a Zen pick, one unsustainable, couldn't be on it forever. I would be putting myself in that cycle again. Sure, I might get this rapid weight loss. Sure, it might be easier than starving myself, but the end result is going to be the same. I would always end up in that same place, that same cycle that I've spent so long trying to get out of. But a Zen pick is that thing that I was trying to imagine, a thing that would offer me a respite from my own desires to eat, to eat food. I was like, God, it killed me. I felt embarrassed that I wanted to eat. I had friends at my school who were

either very athletic and sporty and so could eat loads and would see no impact. Other people just are naturally slim, especially young women. So they would be really slim. But the people that I was jealous of the most were the girls who were able to be so restrained with what they ate at lunch. And I went to a school where our lunches were amazing. There's loads of food available. You could go out for seconds. I freaking love custard. I constantly wanted to have like four of whatever the tart was piled with custard. And I would have it often. And which is why I ended up being bulimic and making myself sick for such a long time because I was so jealous of those people with that control that could put, you know, a chicken breast and a piece of broccoli on their plate and have some grapes. Because when I saw food, because I was in such a toxic relationship with it, because

I wanted it so much, it was like punishment. And I would often get home from school and if my mom went out, I would eat the whole fridge. I would binge everything in that fridge. I can sometimes forget how all-cons consuming and how life-changingly devastating it can be to be in that frame of mind. And I'm one of the lucky ones I got out. I think anorexia is one of the biggest killers of any mental illness. And so to have this drug available to a generation or generations of women, which all thought like me that have all been through those

same things but maybe haven't been as fortunate to have gotten to the point on their journey where I am where I have these niggling feelings about my body but really fundamentally I'm happy where I am I eat well and I eat whatever the hell I want I can't remember the last I had a binge because if I want a pizza I'll eat a pizza if I want a chocolate bar I'll eat a pizza. If I want a chocolate bar, I'll eat it. It was that idea that I wasn't allowed it that made me consume it to such extents. So that's why the availability of a Zempic and the rise in people who are in straight-sized bodies who probably more likely do not have history of eating disorder, it scares me so much because I think it's either going to drag us back into the depths of a really scary place or it might even create new

eating disorders for people that never went through that in the first place because the obstacle the thing that is really hard because your body doesn't want to be starved we need food for nourishment it's not only going to maybe draw people back in but it's also going to undo all of the things that we have learned another message i received reads, honestly, I absolutely hate the way the world is going. This is an epic situation just as not helping women and girls. I struggled so much as a teenager. I'm now a slim person, but I'm nowhere near as skinny as I was then. I found myself yearning to be that girl when I'm now successful in my job, fit and healthy, do lots of running, including marathons, have a boyfriend who adores me. Why is it never

enough? I find it so triggering seeing all these celebrities just so unattainable. In my youth, if you'd offered me a Zumpic, I would have taken it, no question. But now I hope I love myself more than that. The longer term impacts are so unknown. I worry for the girls of the future. This feels like there was a time when I would kind of get really, when I was working in the fitness industry and when my posts were all about fitness about fitness I got really really fed up about talking about women's bodies because it felt like no matter which way you looked they were the pinnacle and the central point of every conversation maybe now that I'm slightly more removed I suddenly realize why it's so important and why it's so complicated because I also have empathy for those celebrities that now live in a hyper-surveilled

world that are going to be photographed at every event from every angle that have now, we have people like the Kardashians who are literally creating new body trends where they're taking elements from different ethnicities and races and kind of mixing them together to create this kind of cyborgian idealized body shape and then suddenly just dropping it the minute that they feel like it's not in fashion anymore like we saw the rise of the bbl the brazilian butt lift where you have fat injected into your bum so that it gets bigger which was one of the most dangerous surgeries in its inception i think it got slightly safer towards the end which has now kind of completely gone out of fashion but

for the women that exist with naturally big bottoms and big hips or whatever, their body isn't a fashion style. And yet we have come to a place where we've accepted that our bodies are going to cycle through trends at the pace with which fashion is now cycling through trends. So I have this really difficult feeling where women who have access, who are being photographed constantly, who are being criticized and watched, is it really any wonder that they're going to fall foul of something which they have the access to and can afford and are probably encouraged to do? And then on a personal level, I feel conflicted because I just wish that so many of these women wouldn't do it because it impacts me and how I feel about myself. And so it's always this push and pull between the collective and the individual.

And fundamentally the issue, again, as I came back to before, is the huge, bigger powers at play that just dictate that women constantly have to be at mercy of how they look and have to be ready to change. And it isn't just women of course but I think we are disproportionately affected that being said I do think that sort of like beauty modifications for men and male body image has definitely got worse and there's been lots of pieces and statistics and investigations into how shows like Love Island impact male body image and actually I've said all of that when, ironically, I was just reminded of when I was writing that substat piece a bit that I kind of cut out, was about how much we ignore

male disordered eating because of the way that it's dressed up. So if a man is doing a paleo diet or a keto diet, or he's doing some new really intensive workout thing, it's always kind of pitched as fitness. And we haven't quite got round to the egalitarian frame of mind of realising that so many men do suffer with disordered eating. But because women and food is such a historically famous subject, men, it's always assumed that they have much more control, that they are doing things from a health point of view, and that they don't have those same body image issues and actually they very much do and as I'm getting older I'm having more conversations with the men in my life and the men in my friends lives who now kind of openly admit in hindsight maybe I did have those same

body hang-ups but they just weren't viewed in the same way and maybe the pressure wasn't exactly the same as it is for women but it definitely is perhaps more universal than we allow ourselves to believe. Okay, I'm going to read out one last message and give you my thoughts on that. And then I'm going to wrap up because I'm feeling quite ill and I'm really proud of you if you made it this far because I'm sorry. I feel like it's annoying how bunged up I am. But the message reads, I feel strongly that feminism and being socially aware must go beyond what serves yourself. It's normal people get into these things

through personal experience, but through some conversations with white friends, it feels like they fixate on beauty and diet culture because that's what affects them and are less engaged and passionate when it comes to international or other related structural issues. There is defo a place to talk about this and I'm really glad that you are but sometimes I've had convos

that feel like therapy for one person it's like what's the wider perspective on this you know? Also it's an easy thing for magazines to commission on to tick the social justice box without engaging in the wider role that they play. Sorry I realize this comes off as dismissing the whole topic but I mean more how can we as people with privilege take our justified problems with this and connect it to the ways that beauty, purity, health have always been used in racist, colonial and transphobic ways, etc. And my response to this was, no, I get you. I think that's why it's complicated and actually really crucial to the feminist conversation because it is a distraction. It keeps privileged women especially occupied. If we could see beyond beauty and our bodies and free ourselves from the traps of beauty and desirability,

we'd be so powerful, which is partly why I believe the traps exist. They keep the status quo. And so as much as I've had some incredible messages from people who have struggled with binge eating to a debilitating extent and are really overweight and are really benefiting from a Zen pick, and I'm really happy for them, I also think that we do have to acknowledge that eating disorders are created and created by capitalism, by the patriarchy, by billion-dollar industries, by the beauty industry. And as this person rightly points out, all of the people that fall into different intersectionalities, if they're not a white, thin, privileged woman who's looking to get that bit thinner um if they have more

marginalizations then they are even more greatly impact every time we step further into our privilege in terms of succumbing to these beauty ideals we're always disadvantaging someone else in a different place much like i was saying i feel impacted by those celebrities every single time we keep keeping up with the joneses keeping up with appearances it's a is a distraction it b is is an investment of money it means the we're feeding into that the economy of beauty and the economy of diet culture um and it can be really difficult in an ever increasingly individualistic society to not do things that make us feel good and feel safer and feel better in a very fraught society where it does feel like it's everyone out for themselves

and so that last message really gave me pause for thought because I do think this topic is really important it's very close to my heart I could honestly talk about this for hours and I've kind of had to edit so much of this because my feelings are so complicated I'm so concerned about dismissing or undermining anyone's personal experiences or wants or needs because I do go through these conflicts every single day with how much of my time and energy and my power do I want to be giving up to making sure I look desirable when that's such a waste of my energy. But on the flip side, it's also beneficial to me, especially in my line of work. If I look hot, you know, I'll get more work, I'll post more pictures, I'll feel more comfortable posting videos.

It's part of the reason why I'm really enjoying doing this podcast again and why I love writing substaxes. It's got nothing to do with the way I look. I can be invisible. I can write in my room. I can write in my pajamas. I actually find the visual aspect of my job very draining, specifically because it feeds into this narrative that I have to invest in my beauty. If you don't already listen to my other podcast, by the way, called Everything is Content, which I do with Ruchira Sharma and Beth McCall, we did some deep dives on beauty and aging, which go into this more and especially our kind of personal hypocritical conflicting feelings that we have on it all I'm going to wrap this up here because I really feel like I can't breathe and I don't want to be too annoying in my ears I feel like there's so much more to say on this and I hope that I have tried to give a

bird's eye view on the topic because it is very complicated and I'm sure there'll be more to talk about I will put all of the messages that I read out and the others that I didn't read out onto a I view on the topic because it is very complicated and I'm sure there'll be more to talk about. I will put all of the messages that I read out and the others that I didn't read out onto a highlight on my page so you can read them back. As I said last week, I would love to hear your feedback on this episode, love to hear your thoughts, always open to carrying on the conversation. And if you do have any other things you want to say on my Instagram, I've posted the image for this episode and you're more than welcome to carry on in the comments carry on the discussion and I'm sure people will have a conversation with you

there as well thank you so much for listening and next week hopefully I'll be less nasal more able to breathe and we'll be coming back for another conversation on we don't know what yet. So be there on my Instagram on Tuesday to submit the topic you'd love to discuss. Please do leave a five-star rating on review. Please do DM me your thoughts. I'd love to hear from you, and I'll see you next week. Bye. We'll be right back. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Select games only.

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