Weight-loss injections are undoubtedly a genuine game-changer for people whose obesity is due to hereditary factors. Excessive or mutated genes associated to fat mass, or hormonal imbalances that affect the body's ability to regulate appetite can lead to weight-gain. In these circumstances, it's beyond the individual's control. Without fault, and any other solution, weight-loss injections truly are a game-changer to remove a genuine health risk and burden: they'll prevent further health conditions like type-2 diabetes, heart disease or certain cancers, whilst relieving individuals from a restrictive lifestyle.
However, genetics are certainly not the only cause of obesity, as personal lifestyle choices, like excessive calorie consumption, or limited physical activity, also significantly cause an increase in weight. Weight-loss injections in these cases may be seen as a quick fix.
" As attention spans and critical thinking skills continue to decline, weight-loss injections, become a poignant reminder of our incessant desire for ease and efficiency in an age of technological control."
But this self-improvement is prevented by introducing weight loss drugs, evoking a sinister question surrounding our personal agency, particularly prevalent within our contemporary, 'brain rotted' culture. As attention spans and critical thinking skills continue to decline, weight-loss injections, become a poignant reminder of our incessant desire for ease and efficiency in an age of technological control.
On the other hand, these lifestyles are sometimes unchangeable due to financial difficulties, exposing an unjust economic reality behind the use of weight-loss drugs. In the UK, the overweight and obesity percentages are highest in those living in the most deprived areas (71.5% and 35.9% respectively). They are lowest in the most affluent areas (59.6% and 20.5% respectively). Weight gain is thus nuanced with a welfare imbalance between the classes, whereby those with money can afford healthier products than the more affordable processed options with high fat, sugar, and calorie content. They're also quick and easy, meaning not only are they the cheapest, but most convenient option for full-time working-class households, who do not have the luxury to spending time cooking. Thus, when the financially disadvantaged are instead told to utilize weight-loss injections for their weight gain, this 'game-changer' sinisterly enables a disregard towards the unjust welfare disparity between class factions. Weight-loss injections become a false economy: as individuals are falsely promised the eradication of their obesity and buy into weight-loss injections Leaving systemic welfare imbalances unresolved and maintaining a cycle of economic injustice.
"They're a money-making commodity functioning within the healthcare economy."
As a price placed onto these weight-loss injections, another layer of economic exploitation is added. They're a money-making commodity functioning within the healthcare economy. The latter in itself has inherently unethical foundations, built upon capitalizing from people's health issues. Thus as overweight individuals spend significant amounts of money on weight-loss drugs, businesses promoting products that supposedly improve our health, wellbeing and lifestyle, profiting from the personal struggle of millions. No-matter the cause of their obesity, social, self-induced, or hereditary, the price put on weight-loss drugs make them another poignant reminder of the ongoing capitalist climate, another lie in its exploitative web, falsely promising health through commodity.
This commodification also means people who are a perfectly healthy weight are buying into these weight-loss injections too. They may be a medical game-changer, but culturally they're also a harmful tool promoting the unrealistic body standards permeating society. Whilst media is historically guilty for setting unrealistic body standards, in our particular age of social media, the pressure to have the perfect body is amplified by endless access to 'god-like' influencers, and the expectation to display ourselves online in the same way too. Media has conditioned us into an obsessive concern with our appearance, and how our bodies look. Weight-loss injections endorse this by encouraging users to alter their bodies, thus enabling them to conform to societies previously impossible body standards, justifying and reinforcing them through their new attainability, subsequently intensifying the pressure to meet them.
" It seemed society was making progress towards liberation from its own unrealistic standards."
This also dishearteningly signifies a recent cultural reversal from the "Body Positivity" movement that emerged in the 2010s. With the rise of social media and influencers, a greater appreciation towards bodies of all sizes and shapes grew within the mainstream media. In the last decade, they've been significantly represented in campaigns, advertisements and modelling shoots alike. It seemed society was making progress towards liberation from its own unrealistic standards. But Kate Moss walking the runway with only her water bottle currently floods Instagram, and the figure of the Pilates princess is haunted by those of 80s, cardio-aerobic workouts (soft pastels are the new neon). Weight-loss injections have appropriately arisen alongside, and thus signify, this recent cultural regression to the skinny culture that dominated media in the 80s, 90s and 2000s. Alternatively, they could poignantly expose it never having left, only momentarily submerged, revealing the sheer strength of this mentally damaging narrative as it remains a permanent presence within the cultural imaginary. Either way, the popularity of weight-loss injections not only signify this revival, but sinisterly endorse it too, encouraging people to lose weight by providing them with an easy, readily available option to do so.