Weight-loss drugs have their first global ambassador: Serena Williams. The tennis great has signed on as the face of Ro, a telehealth company prescribing GLP-1 weight loss drugs, and where her husband, Alexis Ohanian, is a board member.
Announcing the partnership, she told Women’s Health: “I am a very good use case of how you can do everything – eat healthy, work out to the point of even playing a professional sport and getting to the finals of Wimbledon and US Opens – and still not be able to lose weight.”
That quote stopped me in my tracks. This is a woman who has spent decades redefining what female strength looks like: powerful, muscular and unapologetic. A 23-time Grand Slam winner. And yet, she frames her body as having failed her – not because it couldn’t dominate world sport or bear children or inspire millions, but because it wouldn’t shrink on demand. It is a brutal reminder that even the most accomplished women remain trapped by society’s obsession with thinness.
Here’s something else I can’t shake about her statement: if even at this point, after years of peak training, discipline and sacrifice, Serena “couldn’t” lose weight, maybe that’s because she wasn’t supposed to. Maybe that was simply her body operating as and where it was meant to. The idea that natural biology is a problem to be solved is precisely what keeps us all – and let’s be honest, mainly women – stuck in relentless cycles of correction.
Serena won’t be the last celebrity to front a weight-loss drug campaign, but she is the first of her magnitude to do so. With 18.2 million followers on Instagram alone and a global reputation as one of the most successful athletes of all time, her influence is seismic. To see her now enlisted to normalise and promote medical weight-loss drugs, complete with a glossy photoshoot showing her injecting the jab into several places in her body, feels like a cultural turning point.
The sight of Serena, whose body has long symbolised defiance of narrow beauty ideals, promoting weight-loss injections, compelled me to speak out in a recent video. The video resonated: so many people messaged me with concerns, confusion, even despair – what does this mean for progress? But it also drew criticism. Serena is a Black woman, and I can never fully understand the scale of misogynoir – the specific blend of racism and sexism – that she has endured in her career. Some argued that her decision to front this campaign must be understood within the context of a lifetime spent under the uniquely harsh scrutiny of her body.
This context matters immensely. The pressures Serena has faced are both universal to women and uniquely intensified by racism. Yet acknowledging this complexity doesn’t negate the broader cultural implications of her new role.
The rise of GLP-1 drugs has been meteoric and astonishing. Originally designed for diabetes care, they are now prescribed at scale for weight loss. And society celebrates them, because thinness is seen as universally desirable, something we should all pursue at any cost. So while individual choice and bodily autonomy must always be respected, we also need to be clear: these medications are drugs, not beauty aids or lifestyle accessories. They carry risks, have often serious side effects, and their long-term safety in non-diabetic populations isn’t fully known. Clinical evidence suggests that without addressing a user’s underlying relationship with food and body image, these medications may actually intensify preoccupation with weight and eating.
This unfolds against a backdrop that once seemed hopeful. For a while, it felt as though the tide was turning when it came to beauty standards: fashion campaigns featured bigger bodies, the media embraced body diversity, and conversations about self-worth and liberation from diet culture were breaking into the mainstream. But the pendulum has swung back with force: restriction is in and thinness is once again being loudly celebrated – except this time, it’s being sold through syringes.
The risk is clear: older generations who carry the scars of diet culture are being pulled back into old patterns, while younger generations are watching their idols casually endorse injections to stay slim. They may be savvier, more outspoken about mental health, and more prone to critical thinking than their elders, but they are also vulnerable to these cultural pressures.
So what can we do? We can protect our body image fiercely while questioning the messaging that surrounds us and remember that health, worth and beauty are not synonyms for thinness. Most critically, we must teach the next generation that their bodies are not lifelong correction projects.
Serena Williams is a sporting legend and always will be. But this partnership points to something alarming: a future where medical weight-loss drugs are marketed as casually as make-up and where thinness is no longer an aspiration but an expectation, enforced by a prescription. We have to resist that future. We have to protect ourselves and the next generation from a culture that reduces our worth to our body size and sells weight loss as the ultimate goal.
Alex Light is the author of You Are Not a Before Picture and co-host of the podcast Should I Delete That?
