Serena Williams built her legacy on defiance. Why lend it to Ozempic culture? | Serena Williams
WHen Serena Williams was presented in a history of People magazine Thursday morning by discussing her weight loss of 31 lb, the deployment had all the characteristics of a draped advertisement in the slim veil of an exclusivity of all the captains.
Vogue social networks have amplified their own access, NBC’s TODAY show gave it an individual segment and it has published a carefully excited interview in which Williams said that it wanted to break the stigma around weight loss drugs, each of them in locking with what seemed to be a hard press discomfort at 9 a.m. This vintage Jill Smoller Quadrafecta was not a spontaneous confessional; It was a media blitz coordinated at the US Open, the American tennis event, which starts on Sunday.
However, for all the precision and the varnish, it was undoubtedly an advertisement. The product was not only the refined physique of Williams, already the subject of speculation of several months among its 32 million followers on social networks. It was a TV service called RO – a company on the board of directors of which her husband, Alexis Ohanian, is conveniently, a disclosure of the press release at least made the courtesy of inclusion in a footnote – promoting access to GLP -1 GLP -1 weight loss drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Zepbound.
Williams is not just silent in Spon Con. Its partnership with RO is a campaign of multiple panels promised through display panels, digital platforms and television spots. In the first of them, she looks at the camera and said: “After the children, it is the medicine my body needed.” The CEO of RO, Zach Reitano, explicit why it had been chosen: precisely because some will say that it does not need GLP-1. “This is why she is perfect for that,” he said. In other words, the aim of putting Williams in the announcement is to normalize weight loss drugs as life products for people who are not typical patients.
Today, Williams has presented himself as something other than a cup-cen. “As an athlete and as a person who did everything, I just couldn’t make sure I had to be in a healthy place, and believe me, I don’t take shortened,” she said. She remembered running and walking for hours after giving birth to her daughters, only to set the same number on the scale. The interview with her sharpened this story: Williams spoke of 30,000 days, four -hour summer training sessions and her coach raising concerns about her weight in the HBO documentary series being Serena. “I needed to try something different,” she said. “Sometimes people do everything, and it doesn’t work.” Her message was clear: she had done the job and the medication was only the missing piece.
The public response to Twitter tennis and entertainment blogs has generally been divided. Some fans have expressed their resignation: If even the biggest athlete of his generation needed medication to lose weight, what chance does someone else do? Others were angry that a global sports icon, formerly celebrated to challenge toxic beauty standards, lends its name to a pharmaceutical fashion already criticized to be too prescribed. And then there were those who raised their shoulders that Williams had always represented the family business. Just like Taylor Swift appearing on Travis Kelce’s podcast is less like an event than skillful cross promotion, Williams’ link with RO is not only a question of personal health – these are #couplegoals on a macro scale.
Many have seen the collective messaging on Thursday not as a franchise but as publication: a personal struggle being formulated as stealthy marketing. At a time when the public is used for celebrities that weave mental health confessions or fitness “trips” in trade agreements, Williams’ campaign was less interpreted as an opening than the strategy. The insistence that GLP-1 is not an “easy spell” do not have criticisms as silent as much to underline the wider concern: that even someone as disciplined as Williams needed pharmaceutical help to be deemed “healthy”, supported on the very culture of the slimming it resisted. For many of his admirers, it was more than a sponsorship agreement – it looked like a decrease in his athletic heritage, a Suggestion that all titles and training were not yet enough in a society where appearance prevails over success.
This contrast is striking because the career of Williams has been built on the challenge and being the ultimate overseas. Witness of Black Jehovah of Compton, she kicked in the doors of a country sport with pearl braids and an inflexible game, to undergo years of skepticism, mockery and outright racism. However, she exploited these pressures in domination, winning 23 titles of simple Grand Slam and redefining power, athletics and the statement of female tennis. For millions of fans, it was proof that success did not need to comply to reduce the ideals of beauty or femininity. She folded a sport and an industry to her will, embodying strength and resilience during generations of black women who saw in her an avatar of possibility.
By aligning with RO, Williams went from the embodiment of the resistance to help grow an industry based on narrowed bodies. The woman who once made a superpower of her double burden – to be born a woman and to be born in America – chose to strengthen the very culture which sought to erase it. Critics argue that it is particularly dissonant given its own story of almost dying twice – once a pulmonary embolism after walking on broken stained glass, once from a resumption of traumatic cesarean – experiences that have exposed the structural failures of American health care, especially for black women. If someone could crediblely use their platform to request a systemic reform, it was it. Instead, it has lent its name to a for -profit company that markets weight loss drugs to those who can already afford concierge drugs.
And don’t be mistaken: that is part of a more important push. Between 8% and 10% of Americans now take GLP-1, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. RO has already carried out a controversial metro campaign showing an injected belly and signed the former NBA star, Charles Barkley, to inject the camera. The competitor Hims and his have splashed for a Super Bowl advertisement. All caught fire: politicians who complained of sautéed side disclosure, activists who saw the propaganda of shame and doctors worried about malnutrition. Unlike traditional pharmacy, tele-resident companies in the United States do not have to execute long risk readings. They can present drugs such as lifestyle accessories. And now they have a real American hero as the most bankable face in the gold rush for the market share.
Williams is not alone in this area. She joins an increasing list of celebrities that have become public about the use of GLP-1, including Oprah Winfrey, Whoopi Goldberg, Meghan Trainor and Amy Schumer. But if others have generated curiosity, Serena brings legitimacy. Few recommendations could report more clearly that weight loss drugs have moved from Hollywood whispers in the brilliant dominant current.
The question of money persists uncomfortably. Williams is not a retired athlete who rushes in matters of relevance. She is married to a founder of Uber-Riche technology and has amassed her generational wealth, but her mentions of recent years have been following more and more with the aesthetics of the wealth of Silicon Valley and an organized commercial domesticity, a shouting turn for someone formerly defined by the rebel.
As a black woman in the eyes of the public, Williams has always faced a level of disproportionate control on her body – her musculature, her curves, her choice of clothes – a control that her white peers have rarely endured in volume and in scale. Chris Evert wrote to him an open letter condescending doubtful of his commitment. Pat Cash said it failed it (in 2007!).
This dark story helps to explain why many of her fans in friendly spaces like the comments of the nuances room responded with empathy, recognizing both the hormonal struggles she described and the impossible double binding that she has experienced: both a legend that redefined beauty and power, and a tireless woman for the body that made her great. But still others moved the disappearance of the muscular body which she defended and suspected that she is reshaping, and her brand, to integrate into this conventional mold.
GLP-1 drugs can change the lives of people with obesity or diabetes. But they also underline grotesque inequality. The rich Americans spend thousands a month to stop the snacks. But the supply of pharmacies and insurers refuse the coverage. For criticism, the glamor of Williams’ practice, once the living refutation of these hierarchies, deepens inequalities. The size of Williams in the court exceeds any credible litigation. But his embrace of GLP-1 culture is a reminder that even the most untouchable legends Can be co -opted and that in a society obsessed with narrowing, even our icons are made to disappear.
