Miracle cures and moral panics: British media coverage of celebrity weight loss in the age of the GLP-1 medications

This paper examines how British newspapers construct celebrity weight loss narratives around GLP-1 receptor agonists (Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro). Through thematic analysis of 148 articles from five British newspapers (November 2023–October 2024), we investigate how celebrity pharmaceutical weight loss coverage reinforces medicalization and moral judgment whilst creating new focuses of spectacle. Highlighting Sharon Osbourne and Oprah Winfrey’s weight loss stories, our analysis demonstrates contrasting media approaches that construct health paradoxes, positioning women’s bodies as simultaneously too large and too small for social acceptance. We identify moral frameworks around “earning” weight loss that position pharmaceutical use as disrupting established narratives about willpower and discipline, which generates concerns about deservingness and distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate users. Our research suggests that these narratives transform pharmaceutical weight loss into entertainment, which encourages audiences to engage with transformation stories while maintaining superiority through distance. Media coverage introduces moral evaluation centered on perceived legitimacy of weight loss methods, reinforcing class-based hierarchies around deservingness and positioning pharmaceutical interventions as lifestyle choices for the economically privileged. Through a critical fat studies lens, this paper demonstrates how celebrity weight loss discourse reinforces hierarchies around body size, self-control, and deservingness while obscuring structural factors contributing to weight stigma and pharmaceutical harm.