Since Serena Williams announced that she’s taking weight loss medication, four days ago, the online world has behaved as you would imagine – with vigour, venom, and a refusal to acknowledge any kind of middle ground. People are either rushing to defend Serena or lamenting that she is single-handedly setting back the body positivity movement. If you’re looking for a similar hot take, a pithy soundbite that condenses complexity into a quick caption, this isn’t the place for you. The conversation is hugely complex, and in a climate that so quickly tears women down, I think Serena deserves our thoughtful consideration. I think every woman does.
We cannot spend our days talking about the necessity of kindness online, only to jump headfirst into every debate with our big declarations. I often think about how we change the torrid climate online, and part of it is acknowledging our own behaviour. Also, please believe me when I say, I will never, ever, contribute to the public stoning of women. Womanhood is hard enough as it is, and I will always offer any woman the benefit of the doubt.
That’s not to say we can’t have a conversation about Serena’s decision. It’s got us all thinking and pondering, but we’re going to have it calmly and carefully, without condemnation. I’m not interested in holding Serena Williams responsible for all our insecurities about weight loss, nor do I think it’s fair to put the entire body positivity movement on the shoulders of one woman.
Yes, the greatest athlete of all time is now part of Ozempic culture, in a big way. Actively promoting and sponsoring GLP-1s, which is very different from casually mentioning that she takes weight loss medication. It seems to be a conscious choice. Now I don’t care how much of that choice was to do with money. It’s honestly the least interesting part of this conversation, and as far as I’m concerned, women are allowed to amass as much wealth as they want. Especially black women who have historically been, and still are currently, excluded from financial independence and economic empowerment. But what I did consider was that maybe she made that choice because she really believes in it. Maybe it has transformed her life, and maybe she does feel incredible now, and maybe she just can’t stop talking about it.
I signed up to the Zoe method a couple of years ago, and I have been annoying in my insistence that everyone in my life does the same, because it’s been so transformative for my health. I understand the desire Serena might have to share in the same way. We have to consider the possibility that Serena believes she is helping people. Changing attitudes. Making life easier for women. And maybe she is.
I also find the soundbite currently being parroted around – ‘if the GOAT is on medication for weight loss, what hope do the rest of us have’ – a useless argument. I don’t mean to sound harsh here, but since when were you comparing yourself to Serena Williams? Since when did you think she was your metric? A world-renowned professional athlete, the winner of 23 grand slams, a woman with an estimated net worth of $300 million, does everything differently to you. We are not the same as Serena, and the sudden comparison as a way to highlight a point we’re trying to make feels arbitrary.
That’s not to say I don’t understand why some people are upset; I do. The greatest athlete of all time promoting weight loss feels, on the surface, like a reinforcement of everything we’ve been trying to fight against for so many years. Serena is also beloved, and therefore, for some, it feels like a painful betrayal, a reevaluation of the woman we thought we knew and adored. But I don’t think it is. I think Serena is allowed to change.
Our idols are not beholden to us, and nor should they be stuffed into time capsules, their beliefs frozen in order to soothe our nervous systems. Serena’s body is also allowed to change. The body she needed to win consecutive grand slams is not the body she needs in retirement. She isn’t moving anywhere near as much as she used to, so of course, she’s going to get smaller. She doesn’t need that muscle mass anymore. She doesn’t need to have as much power in her body anymore. She doesn’t need the extra weight she gained birthing and nurturing a tiny human. She needs a different body for the different stage of life she’s in.
She’s also a 43-year-old woman and might be starting to experience symptoms of perimenopause. Her body is probably dramatically changing, slowing down, not reacting the way it used to. Her thyroid is probably working at a snail’s pace. I’m 37 and already I can already feel my body altering. I don’t lose the weight I gain as quickly. Everything takes longer. I’m more tired than I ever used to be, but I sleep more than I did. My body is changing shape and texture, and the entire process is uncomfortable, jarring, and downright rude. And I’m nowhere near where Serena is. I imagine this is only going to get worse. I will become slower. More alien to myself. And no amount of body positivity affirmations or self-love will make it feel better, because the body you have spent a lifetime trying to love, or successfully loving, suddenly changing feels like starting all over again. I’m allowed to be dismayed when my body doesn’t react the way it used to, as are you, as is Serena.
I also want to explore the point that sometimes you do need to lose weight. Of course, you’re beautiful at any size, and of course, your worth isn’t tied to the number on the scales, but sometimes, for a myriad of health reasons, you do need to lose weight, and we seem to leave that part out of the conversation. The body positivity pendulum has swung so far in the opposite direction that it can feel uncomfortable to say that out loud, but we are living in a time of unprecedented obesity, and it affects the quality of life people can have and their independence. In the UK, 64% of adults are overweight, and in the US, it’s 73%. Love your body always, but that includes looking after and nurturing it.
What I will add is that the way we live feeds the problem. We’re mainly stagnant, sitting in offices all day working ungodly hours, to then come home and sit on the sofa watching TV because we’re too drained from the commute. Fresh produce is extortionately expensive, access to fitness equipment is scarce, or costs the same as your mortgage each month, and even if we can afford it, we don’t always have the time or headspace. I don’t see governments making concerted efforts to subsidise fruit and vegetables the same way they subsidise meat, and nor do I see corporations encouraging a better work-life balance to sustain health and fitness. They’re also not offering free gym memberships.
Nothing about the way we live encourages a healthy lifestyle or addresses the obesity problem, which is another reason why I won’t ever shame anyone who watches Serena Williams inject herself with a weight loss drug and decide that’s what they’re going to save their money for. We seem to have accepted that our attention spans are shot to shit, and we can’t watch anything over a 90-second video, yet we demand unrivalled focus when it comes to our ability to lose weight independently.
I also don’t think it’s fair to expect Serena Williams to be the perfect role model for us at all times. Our inability to take the good things that inspire us and leave the rest is more an indictment of us. Serena has paved the way for girls in tennis. For women in sport. She’s offered hope and inspiration. She’s given her entire life to the game and subsequent players. She doesn’t have to be a paragon of perfection. She doesn’t have to give us everything. She’s also entitled to her privacy, and her decision to take GLP-1s may be based on things she isn’t sharing with us. Again, she’s allowed to do that. She doesn’t owe us anything. She has given us great game after great game for decades. How much more will we ask of her?
Can I also add that I find the outrage around Ozempic culture, but the normalisation and acceptance of injectables in the beauty industry, outrageously illogical. We’re at a point where it’s fine to inject God knows what into our faces to look younger, with no real understanding of what the lasting health consequences will be, but the idea of a woman injecting weight loss medication into herself is apparently where we draw the line. The hypocrisy of it irks me something terrible.
As does the idea that we get an opinion about what a woman, who has been at the heart of scrutiny, racism, misogyny, criticism, and bias for decades, does with herself. Serena Williams has lived life under a glare that is unimaginable to you and I. We have no idea what demons she battles every day. Nor can we comprehend the state of her mental health, and what it takes to sustain physical excellence for so many gruelling years. We do so love to talk about mental health in hindsight, once we’ve broken down our celebrities, ruined them in the glare of public backlash and media diatribe, only to mournfully sigh about the importance of discussing mental health when something awful happens. Let’s not forget that you’re still upset about that one time a boy in the playground called you fat when you were six. You’ve held onto that all your life. Imagine for one moment what Serena has faced, and tell me, could you face it with the same grace and determination?
There is also a part of me that gave one big eye roll when this argument started raging. I find myself increasingly impatient with people online for buying so wholly and completely into everything, just because it’s on the internet. There has to be a level of personal accountability. We’re not a mass of lemmings, herded to our deaths without independent thought and cognition. That’s literally what makes us different from animals. Our ability to apply reason and logic, to puzzle through things and find answers. Do your research. Understand your own health needs. Apply critical thinking. Don’t be swayed by the braying mass of online voices. You’re better than that. The notion that because one celebrity endorses a product, it’s now robbed the next generation of their bodily love is lazy. Be discerning. Have conversations. Share perspectives. Make better choices.
It seems to me that Serena Williams isn’t the problem here, but she’s definitely a convenient punching bag for people unwilling to look at the bigger picture. When a woman is being lambasted in public, it’s never really about her. It’s about control and power. Bias and misogyny. Sometimes, it’s about our own rage and insecurity. It’s definitely not about Serena Williams, a woman entering a new phase of her life, and trying some new stuff out. What an extraordinarily lovely thing to be able to do.
May we all have the ability to try different things with our bodies throughout each glorious iteration of ourselves. May we always have the means and the space to change our minds and our bodies. May we constantly be in flux, fluid in our beliefs and our waistlines. May we always grant each other the grace to change and grow, in whatever direction we deem necessary at the time.
The best is yet to come. The best is yet to come. Say it with me, the best is yet to come.
🌺The weight loss conversation is always hilarious to be for its lack of any form of nuance. It’s always white and black, one way or the other and it’s so wild. We will escape the prison soon. Thank you Salma as always
If the GOAT is working to take of her body and exploring ways in the process of aging how to improve herself, I hope it’s a success for her. I cannot imagine Williams would opt without careful considerations. People need to stfu.
A better “weight loss” alleged expert we ought to be going after is a woman who sold her soul to a racist / grapist president, body shamed people for years and was allowed on CNN. Le sigh.
Our bodies are sacred and learning how to navigate these waters in a man’s world aiming to tear us down is never easy.