I Gained 25 Pounds. Why Are People Acting Like I’ve Committed a Crime?

Confession: I feel like fraud writing this story. The main reason being that in the past two years, I have won 25 pounds – the most important amount I have known in my adult life, but I am probably still perceived by most as a thin person. It is a social privilege that I know and that I want to be transparent. In truth, an unclavected part of me is probably even relieved.

And yet.

When I look at myself in the mirror these days, there is a new flesh in a stomach that no longer chatted to a textbook of manuals, the thighs that strike together where there was once hollow. I am disconnected from this body and I can not help feeling a strong feeling of embarrassment and loss by its expansion since the beginning of the twenties; The way some clothes I found once joy in wearing no longer correspond. Against all rational discourses and the therapy for adjacent self -image problems – you have gone through an unhealthy relationship; You have moved to a new city; You were stressed at work; You know that all the bodies are magnificent; You never speak to a friend in this way – something deep inside always gives the impression of having committed this blatant and immoral act. Which makes me piss off, even through my hot shame.

You do not have to search from afar to understand why me and countless other women who have experienced weight gain – regardless of the size or real difference of the scale – has been affected by it, especially now; Just take out your phone and scroll through social media. In 2025, it is almost impossible to open a major application without meeting news from certain celebrities, influencers or advertisements praising the spectacular results of GLP-1 inducing weight loss, Ozempic being the brand name generally used as a whole of overall cultural foliage.

It is little help that the movement of bodily positivity which ruled to a peak in the years 2010 was reduced to the sweetest of groans, replaced by the #Skinnytok recently prohibited and a general consensus on which “thin” is back. This time, however, our media regime of losers-five-breakfasts and “look, I lost the weight!” The content is incessant and insidious.

Before social networks, if you did not want to consume weight loss content, you simply replaced this magazine in its support by the grocery line.

Now the use of the almost constant phone makes this idea of ​​almost comical mental and emotional escape. Sprinkle with our increased audacity to publicly comment on friends, family members, and even the bodies of foreigners – just in the living room, I blocked myself a little as a woman, but demanded that his stylist provide intimate details on the way he has lost visible weight – and it is logical to know why many of us are left in question from where our community value comes from.

Even Meghan Trainor recently changed the words of his hymn of self -esteem 2015 “All about that bass” of “It’s quite clear, I have no size 2” to “It is quite clear, I had new breasts” to reflect the changes in his body after a self -cleared diet and exercise overhaul – while doing activities on Mounjaro, an engineer that uses a different ingredient. And although it is barely worthy of interest to note that thinness has long been assimilated to the opportunity and attractiveness, this growing prevalence of the drug of choice of the higher level sends a surprising message: to lose weight, because it has never been easier. If you take this injection or swallow this pill, you can look like us.

Let me be clear: I don’t want to be ashamed of people who take Ozempic or any other GLP-1, moreover-for health reasons or not. These drugs can clearly be a useful tool for those who have trouble losing weight due to a range of chronic conditions, from type 2 diabetes to obesity. My beef is with the crushing that the constant presence in line and advertising IRL of drugs (seriously, I cannot even escape it on the train) puts women of forms, sizes and circumstances of endless life to shrink in a hyperspecific mold which is only becoming more and smaller. Not to mention the gap of moral superiority, he widened in the conversations between the thin and the not slim enough.