Are you “beach body ready”? For many of us, that question will conjure up the same image: a svelte woman standing uncomfortably straight in a bright yellow bikini, her eyes sharp if a little vacant, reflecting everything that’s wrong with our own bodies right back at her.
With the aforementioned question in bold lettering positioned behind her, it was an advert released in 2015 by Protein World, a meal replacement brand peddling its weight loss supplement. And it caused a major stir, sparking viral outrage and a spate of copycat campaigns turning the messaging on its head (“every body is beach body ready”) as well as getting banned in the UK due to concerns over the implication that taking Protein World’s supplement would boost weight loss.
At the time, the outrage was encouraging. Few women weren’t rattled by such reductive, archaic branding, one that’s entirely predicated on female insecurities. Strip away the pomp and pageantry, and the message of the campaign was simple: if you don’t look like this (aka very slim, very muscular, and with impossibly rounded perky breasts), you can’t be seen in a bikini and should take our supplement so that you can. It was reassuring to see how little time anyone was willing to give such a sentiment.
The body positivity movement gathered pace, ensuring women of all shapes and sizes felt confident being in their bikinis. There were social media campaigns. Viral essays. Hashtags. For a while, it felt as if the beauty standards were diversifying and making room for a wider range of body types. We hadn’t solved everything by any means. But we were certainly making progress.
Now, a decade on, it seems like that progress has been stilted.On social media, a narrative of slimming down for summer has become increasingly pervasive, whether it’s through “hot girl summer” workout tips, “bikini booty” programs, or “summer diet” tips. Often, this kind of thing is cloaked by wellness culture; the party line is that you’re doing this to be healthy, a conveniently admirable guise few will criticise. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised to see another iteration of the “beach body ready” ad plastered all over Trafalgar Square, except the product being sold wouldn’t be Protein World, it would be Ozempic. The weight loss drug is one of many aimed at diabetics due to its active ingredient of semaglutide, which regulates blood sugar and suppresses appetite by mimicking the body’s naturally occurring hormone, GLP-1.
There are restrictions on who can and cannot take these drugs. But that hasn’t stopped thousands of people from finding various loopholes to take it off-label, resulting in quick and easy weight loss they didn’t need to lose in the first place. It has proven a disaster for those with eating disorders, and an increasing number of alarming side effects are emerging.
In the US, more than a dozen lawsuits have been filed on behalf of weight loss drug users who claim they’ve caused a loss of vision. Meanwhile, earlier this month, scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that tens of thousands of Americans have ended up in the emergency room after taking semaglutide, with symptoms including nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, and diarrhoea.
And yet, people still seem to be desperate to get their hands on the stuff. Why? Because it will make them thin, an objective apparently so important that it’s being prioritised over physical and mental health. Meanwhile, rumours of which celebrities have and haven’t been taking it to shed the pounds have been percolating online relentlessly for the last two years. Some have taken aim at the Kardashians, a family once famed for inspiring others to embrace curvier body types that many believe have since wildly slimmed down. On the runways, there has been talk of how non-existent body diversity has become, with a large majority of the models maintaining the same singular, very slim body shape. And then there’s just the way people talk about their bodies among friends, particularly at this time of year.
Of course, a little bit of self-consciousness is normal. But the noise around it seems louder than ever before, with many people feeling pressured to slim down so they’re in line with the new Ozempic-branded beauty standards. On TikTok, users are referring to it as “bikini tax” and sharing videos of their various workout routines and diet regimes to illustrate all of the work they’re putting into being “beach body ready”. If it’s not that, it’s videos promoting the “summer cut”, aka someone’s restrictive diet in anticipation of the summer, or it’s their “summer body prep”, another subsection of TikTok with countless videos.
The message is the exact same as that advert: be slim and be beautiful. Be anything else, and accept that your social value will decrease so significantly that you don’t even deserve to put on a bikini and lie in the sun. It sounds extreme but let’s be honest, that’s what all of this is telling us, isn’t it? Would weight loss drugs with potentially fatal side effects be so popular if it wasn’t?
We might be 10 years on from Protein World’s ad. But if anything, when it comes to what society validates as beautiful, it feels like we’re right back there in 2015. Or possibly even earlier.
