Do celebrities need to share their weight loss journey? And why do we care?

But can celebrities like Winfrey admitting that they are on these medications help to combat the stigma that comes around weight (both loss and gain) in any way? Do celebs owe us an admission? Though they are in the public eye, celebrities are—just like us—still entitled to medical privacy. Same goes for a celebrity’s decision to get cosmetic surgery; though we are collectively obsessed with mulling over the ‘did they or didn’t they’ (just look at all the IG accounts devoted to just that), they are under no obligation to divulge that information. Winfrey is someone who has been historically transparent about her weight over the years, publicly chronicling various diet plans and fitness routines, and also, as an investor in Weight Watchers, profiting from it. But the goal by sharing her choice now likely comes from wanting to reduce bias around this choice of treatment more generally, Stanford suggests.

While Ozempic may now be a Bravo plot point and frequent comedic punchline, there is still plenty of judgment around the decision for real people. Rebecca Puhl, PhD, deputy director for the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity, thinks a celebrity disclosure can be helpful in some cases in helping to raise awareness, counter false beliefs, and generate support for others going through similar experiences. It’s the celebrities offering skewed information about how they lost weight (similar, say, to those who suggest olive oil is the secret to a lineless face) that can be the problem. “This can mislead people to develop disordered eating strategies and put them at risk of making inappropriate choices for themselves in trying to emulate their favourite celebrities,” she says. When people think that a celebrity’s shifting body shape came from exercising and dieting, it can result in compulsive behaviors and shame, adds Erlanger.

While any celebrity’s candor about taking these medications as a means of weight loss may go far in reducing the stigma around them, it would be really groundbreaking to see more speaking up to reduce the stigma around bigger bodies. “I believe that as long as we label body size as a disease and ask individuals to change their weight despite evidence that it won’t make them healthier long term, we are perpetuating the stigma of being in a bigger body,” says Erlanger. That the rise of these medications coincides with the body positivity movement and the arrival (finally) of bodies of different shapes and sizes in mainstream media is a tough pill to swallow. The stigma we should be more focused on isn’t the one around taking medications to lose weight, but this phobia of bigger bodies that is a constant presence and injustice in our society, says Mara Gordon, MD, a primary physician in Camden, NJ. Because while people’s bodies may be becoming thinner, what isn’t disappearing is the phobia we have of the ones they are shedding.

Can you be in a bigger body and be healthy? Yes. But our culture has made it challenging for some to be in that bigger body and be happy. When we are laser-focused on weight, when it becomes a metric or determinant for success, when it’s synonymous with self worth, when someone like Winfrey, whose achievements are countless, is remembered in great part for her weight fluctuations, what does that say about all of us? In this #Ozempic age, changing a body you aren’t content in seems like more of a possibility than ever before (at least for those for whom these medications are safe and accessible). And, yes, these drugs can serve as a powerful tool in that transformation, but are they also perpetuating our fixation on thinness? They may be radically changing our bodies, but the real question is whether they can ever change our minds.

This story first appeared on vogue.com