Kim Kardashians Met Gala Dress

If you’ve been on the internet this morning, you’ll be aware that last night it was the Met Gala, a large party where attractive, renowned people wear clothing worth more than you’ll earn this year, take loads of photographs and then get drunk inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, all for charity. They get to dress up and show off; we get to assess their ensembles from the comfort of our own home, quite possibly while still wearing the non-matching pyjamas we slept in.

But now the Met has another, thrilling element to it. Not only can you roll your eyes at the reductive choice of couture, you can participate in an entertaining game of “who is on Ozempic?”.

Ozempic, not that you’ll need me to explain, is a weight-loss drug originally developed to help treat diabetes, now extolled as a miraculous means to reduce your body without much effort. General consensus is that Hollywood is over its “all bodies are beautiful” phase and returned to its previous obsession with thinness.

Taking Ozempic is a tad like doing cocaine. We all know that scores of people are doing it, but it’s not the done thing to confess to using it. Apart from a smattering of personalities like Oprah and Sharon Osbourne, who have discussed their experience on the weight-loss drug, there’s a veil of secrecy around Ozempic which has created a sort of Agatha Christie mystery before every red carpet. Who’s going to come up thinner than they’ve ever been? Will they refute it? Are there clues?

Obviously we don’t actually know who’s on Ozempic, other than those who confess to it, but last night’s Met Gala red carpet was like the conveyor belt at Yo Sushi, only instead of mid-priced fish dishes it was women who are thinner than they’ve ever been.

X (formerly Twitter) users have nicknamed the Met Gala the “Ozempic Olympics” because the body measurement of celebrities seems to be consistently smaller than ever before, like a type of buccal fat recession. Lana Del Rey, who had previously acquired weight, is now the same size as she was when she emerged onto the scene in her twenties. Kim Kardashian’s midriff belongs in a Victorian museum of strict lace. Even women who have always been slender seem to be even leaner. Various celebrities are being accused online of having so called “Ozempic Face”, a condition (if we can call it that) where rapid weight loss makes your facial skin seem less rigid.

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One of the most fascinating aspects about Ozempic, as far as I’m concerned, is that it’s a remarkably egalitarian substance. Famous person thinness used to hinge on having trainers, dieticians and the kind of will power which is verging on unachievable without a financial incentive. But semaglutides, which is the umbrella term for these weight-loss injections, are remarkably simple to get hold of. In the UK you can get a private or NHS prescription, depending on your weight. Friends of mine who aren’t even overweight have been able to get a prescription by simply falsifying about their BMI.

The accessible nature of Ozempic and its companion drugs means that the whodunnit nature of the drug extends way outside of the celebrity world. A couple of weeks ago on a bachelorette weekend, an acquaintance of mine inquired conspiratorially whether I’d taken Ozempic to lose weight after I had my daughter. And honestly, I was delighted. However hard I strive to be a body positive feminist, I was reared in the Noughties, idolising Nicole Ritchie and the Olsen twins. No matter how much therapy I have, “have you lost weight?” will always be the utmost conceivable commendation. So while my 35lb weight loss was actually the “too sad to eat” diet, post marital dissolution, I’m profoundly flattered at any suggestion to the contrary.

It all sounds fairly dreadful, I confess. But on balance I’m not convinced that the Ozempic Red Scare, where everyone’s accusing everyone else, is really any unhealthier than any other period for celebrity body image. The Rachel Zoe skeleton era was terrible, the era where we all feigned that we didn’t care about being slender and said “strong not skinny” while foregoing meals was bad. Using a weight-loss drug when you’re not overweight is harmful.