The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. This is a non-exhaustive and totally subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy, discontent, or curiosity. Happy holidays.
My Instagram algorithm has decided that I am a woman, and, therefore, I must want to lose weight.
In 2025, that meant it was impossible for me to scroll through my feed without being visually assaulted by ingratiating marketing campaigns, encouraging me to shed those last few pesky pounds via drugs, specifically off-label GLP-1.
For a brief moment, companies found it profitable to showcase physical diversity and promote the idea of loving your body just the way it is. Not so anymore.
In one ad, I am being pitched “looser jeans.” In another, I am being patronized by a cake: “PSA for the girls,” states shoddily Photoshopped frosting. “You don’t need to be obese to start a GLP-1.”
In practice, though, you do—at least according to the US Food and Drug Administration, which has only approved GLP-1 drugs for people with clinical obesity or Type 2 diabetes and for people who are overweight with weight-related comorbidities. The companies that manufacture the name-brand GLP-1s like Ozempic, Zepbound, and Wegovy haven’t meaningfully tested the drugs on people with BMIs lower than 27.
The sponsored ads that bombard my feeds, from telehealth companies like Willow, Noom, Fridays, EllieMD, and Midi Health, are technically promoting another product: compounded GLP-1 injections and tablets. These are not FDA-approved; they are custom-made by pharmacists and usually include small doses of semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic, along with other ingredients. EllieMD, for example, offers a “longevity microdose” that includes B12.
The FDA has been clear on this. “Compounded drugs should only be used in patients whose medical needs cannot be met by an FDA-approved drug,” states an FDA release warning against the use of unapproved GLP-1 drugs for weight loss.
But the ads I’ve seen overwhelmingly focus on cosmetic changes, not improved health. Some discuss quickly dropping a handful of pounds before a big event, like a wedding. To obtain a prescription, you still need to talk to a doctor, who is tasked with assessing your medical history and needs. Willow’s website is explicit about the end game here: “Proven medicine that powers fast cosmetic weight loss.”
Willow, Noom, Fridays, and EllieMD did not respond to requests for comment. Midi Health told me it takes a medically focused, clinician-led approach to prescribing GLP-1 medications. “When our clinicians prescribe these therapies, it is because there is a clear medical benefit and as part of a comprehensive care plan focused on a woman’s overall health. GLP-1s have FDA-approved indications beyond obesity, including diabetes, sleep apnea, and long-term weight maintenance…We also recognize that BMI is an imperfect tool designed for research, not individualized medical care,” said Midi Health.
To be fair, it isn’t just the off-label drugs that are getting backed by an aggressive marketing push. In 2023, when Ozempic went mainstream, more than 4,000 semaglutide ad campaigns flooded the internet. That same year, print ads for “a weekly shot to lose weight” swept the New York City subways. Ro, the company behind that campaign, now has a series of video ads with Serena Williams. It was depressing to have my TV-watching experience interrupted by a close-up shot of the indomitable tennis star injecting a drug that can cause muscle loss and fatigue.
All these ads are nauseating because they traffic in the assumption that weight loss is a universal goal; the question is just whether you’d like to lose 5, 10, or 50 pounds. But I do not want to lose weight. I have spent more than half of my life trying to squash my urge to lose weight—and be free of the deeply inscribed messaging that thinner is a better, more desirable form. It’s been many years since I’ve restricted calories or purged after a meal, habits I picked up before I was even through puberty. Still, sometimes I falter. I’ll find myself redownloading MyFitnessPal or using my finite attention to perform caloric mental math, calculating the damage done by a tablespoon of cooking oil or the splash of milk added to my morning coffee.
This disordered history probably makes me the perfect demographic for receiving targeted GLP-1 ads. It’s very possible that my attention lingers, subconsciously, when I come across them on my feed. And if that’s the case, the algorithm has almost certainly noticed, and taken it as an invitation to send me more—despite all of the times I’ve clicked “not interested.”
To research this piece, I decided to see if I’d actually be eligible to microdose the GLP-1 being promoted to me. I filled out two online quizzes from the companies Noom and Hers. I lied about past eating disorder history by checking a box.
Hers—a women’s telehealth company that launched in 2018 with a focus on sexual wellness and skincare and has since become better known for offering weight loss drugs—warned me that my prescription would not be “evaluated for safety, effectiveness, or quality by the FDA.” It asked me harrowing questions such as, “How disruptive would vomiting, constipation, and diarrhea be to your daily life?” And then, thank God, Hers told me I didn’t qualify.
Noom let me right in. After it thanked me for taking the “important (and hard) first step” of sharing my current weight, it prompted me to buy my “personalized plan” for shedding 10 pounds in seven weeks.
There’s still a lot we don’t know about the long-term side effects of GLP-1 drugs, but they do appear to be beneficial for those who medically need them. I am not one of those people. And as the multibillion-dollar semaglutide market explodes across the globe, it’s disappointing to see it stamp out the last remaining shreds of the mid-2010s “body positivity” movement.
For a brief moment, companies found it profitable to showcase physical diversity and promote the idea of loving your body just the way it is. Not so anymore. The resounding message—on social media, on TV, in the goddamn subways—is that thin is back in. And companies are doing what they’ve always done best: exploiting our insecurities to cash out.
This post has been syndicated from Mother Jones, where it was published under this address.