I Tried Ozempic and Failed
The drugs didn’t work on me … but then again, neither did the patriarchy
I’m not sure what you were up to in the winter of 2021-22, but I was mostly sitting inside, watching MSNBC, and slowly losing my sense of purpose and hope. Covid round something had been raging since Christmaskuh, he-who-shall-not-be-named was still seeding doubt in the democratic process, and my kids were on their third round of lice in under two months. (The post-Covid lice epidemic in Brooklyn is something I feel never got the full media attention it deserved.)
It was around this time I noticed that I had been yelling at my kids. More than usual. I was getting really stressed out about the world around us and clearly, so were they, because it seemed like every time we got in the car, all they did was scream as loudly as possible.
That was on trend at that time. Screaming. People were screaming into the void. People were loudly and enthusiastically pretending to be excited about a Biden presidency. Many people were canceling winter vacations. And many, many people were — well, not screaming, exactly, but — whispering loudly about Ozempic, which The FDA had approved in June 2021.
I was, initially, not interested in this conversation. I was struggling really hard to exist in and raise children in New York City. I was constantly feeling like they were not getting enough of what they needed. (For instance, I hadn’t taken them to the dentist in over a year because both times I tried the parking was so stressful and the screaming in the car stuff I mentioned earlier was so stressful I just went home.) I just didn’t have time to be thinking about the size of my body.
I know that as a woman I am supposed to say “I don’t care about how I look” and then secretly spend all of my time and effort on my looks. But I don’t want to. I find it boring and dull. It’s like when someone starts talking to me about finance jobs or their Rolex watch and my brain just checks out like “nope, not accepting information on this topic at this time.” To me, the size of someone’s body is the least important or interesting thing about them, right up there with how much money they have or how many important people they know.