Ozempic, weight-loss drugs target angry body-positive influencers for marketing

Virgie Tovar has been a fat activist for more than a decade, so when she started receiving email after email from wellness companies offering weight-loss drugs, she thought it was spam.

It wasn’t until she saw other creators share screenshots of communications from marketing companies and medical spas that “it started to register” that it was a “widespread” phenomenon, she told the Washington Post.

In an effort to thwart the unwanted offerings, Tovar posted a photo of herself on Instagram holding a piece of paper reading: “I don’t want Ozempic.”

“Throughout 2023 and now in 2024 I have been offered free Ozempic for weight-loss by influencer marketing companies and others,” wrote Tovar, who has been offered as much as $2,000 to promote the medication, per Yahoo News. “I know I’m not the only one.”

Similarly, plus-sized Peloton instructor Ash Pryor also shared a screenshot of an email she received offering her $1,500 of weight-loss medication treatment in exchange for monthly content, to which she wrote online in response: “F–k all the way off!”

Fashion blogger Sarah Chiwaya told Yahoo News that she has received similar emails for months and still receives them every day.

“I got the first paid semaglutide [the active ingredient in medications like Ozempic and Wegovy] partnership offer in September 2023 from a marketing company called Patient Acquisition, and I’ve received multiple a month from various agencies ever since,” she said.

It seems counterintuitive after years of promoting body acceptance by major retailers, A-listers and influencers alike, but the the popularity of celebrity touted injectables such as Ozempic and Wegovy has spurred an uptick in demand for the jabs and the proliferation of dangerous counterfeits, too.

“I find that these companies are targeting the people most outspoken about body acceptance in hopes of converting or silencing us. These offers are attempting to undo decades of work, growth and self-love,” male model Zach Miko, IMG’s first plus-sized model in the agency’s “Brawny” division who has not received offers for weight-loss drugs, told Yahoo News.

“The weight-loss industry is a multibillion-dollar industry that will go belly up if people love themselves.”

Novo Nordisk, the pharmaceutical company that manufactures Ozempic and Wegovy, is valued at more than $500 billion.

The mass marketing for the sought-after drugs — which Tovar believes is a symptom of widespread “fatphobia” — has created a “wasp’s nest” in the body-positive community, Kara Richardson Whitely, the CEO of the GORGEous Agency, told the Washington Post.

“It’s an affront for people who have worked so hard to come to a place of body acceptance or body appreciation and debunk diet culture,” she said.

Jessie Diaz-Herrera, a plus-sized fitness instructor, warned her community that she, too, had received email offers for the injectable drugs — and it made her angry enough to want to “throw [her] computer.”

“If some of your favorite fat influencers start doing paid campaigns for this s–t, it’s because they sold themselves into diet culture, period,” she said in a video posted to Instagram.

Last month, popular weight-loss and maintenance company WeightWatchers — which acquired the telehealth platform Sequence to connect dieters to prescription injectables — flew content creators to Los Angeles for the “GLP-1 House,” a play on the GLP-1 receptor agonist drugs.

Creators — such as Jake Beaven-Parshall and Kiki Monique, both of whom have been transparent about their use of weight-loss medications — were paid to create content on the trip, which was covered by WeightWatchers. While Beaven-Parshall’s attempts to “humanize” his weight-loss journey were met with positivity online, Monique lost some followers as a result.

“Body positivity is about being comfortable in your own skin,” she told the Washington Post. “I started this because I wanted to feel good. I don’t care if I stay a size 18 as long as my back doesn’t hurt.”

Amanda Tolleson, the chief marketing officer for WeightWatchers, told the outlet that their goal is to help customers “reclaim their health” without bias, shame or stigma of discussing weight loss and medications.

However, some body acceptance advocates have raised concerns about the creators’ lack of medical degrees, after all, “influencers are not doctors” said body positive activist and author Regan Chastain, who raised questions about the “ethical issues” with the marketing strategy.

“It just feels [the weight-loss industry] is like, ‘By any means necessary, we are going to change your body, we are going to take the money out of your pocket or we’re gonna pay you to do it,’ ” Tovar told Yahoo News. “It speaks to the fact that there’s this fundamental belief that there’s no world in which I don’t want to be thin.”