Is It Ozempic or Is It Your Marriage?
Because anti-fatness and patriarchy are till death do us part.
For a feature in this week’s New York Times Magazine, journalist Lisa Miller1 interviewed more than two dozen people about their experiences taking weight-loss drugs while in romantic relationships. I’m paraphrasing, but the near-universal consensus of the couples she spoke with is: One partner getting skinny sure can eff everything up.
The piece focuses on the story of Jeanne and Javier, both 53, and married 15 years. Although they’ve both always been bigger, Javier is a stay-at-home dad who rides his Peloton bike for two hours a day, “maintains a resting pulse of 45, and doesn’t mind his belly, as long as he is strong.” Jeanne, on the other hand, has been gaining and losing as much as 70 pounds for as long as they’ve been together; she also has the corporate career that pays for their life with their teenage son. After “decades of grueling dieting, boot camps and triathlon training,” Jeanne decided to start Zepbound injections. Less than a year later, she is significantly thinner. And very, very angry.
Because GLP-1s are the “what’s new” angle here, the story frames these drugs as cause of Jeanne and Javier’s problems. “It never occurred to me to ask, Well, what does this mean for us?” Javier says of his wife’s decision to start a medication that ostensibly should be only for her own body. Now, Miller writes: “They are grappling, minute by minute, with a reconsideration of what they love about each other, how they feel when they look in the mirror, what turns them on. They haven’t had sex since she started Zepbound.”