Serena Williams Ozempic Ads Are Unethical - Right?

Greetings Spendthrifts,

I’ve had more on my mind than in my shopping basket this month, so today’s newsletter contains lots more writing than links - a smorgasboard of opinions on recent cultural happenings I’d have covered in my Grazia column if timings had allowed (on which note - my column on the BAFTAS n-word fiasco really seems to have resonated with people, judging from the DMs I’ve had since).

So what opinions lie therein? Well - per the subject line - I wanted to expand on the column I wrote about Serena’s weight loss drug ads (which also prompted some pretty interesting DMs and conversations) as I had a lot more to say than my word count allowed for. I saw Wuthering Heights and I too have an opinion on it. On the fashion front, I’ve been feeling incredibly smug about finding the perfect pair of smart-but-also-casual-enough-for-daytime trousers for only £70, and I also have my beady eye set on a few more spring-forward bits now that our 40 days and nights of rain is supposedly at an end. Plus, a newly opened vintage interiors store I can’t wait to visit.

First up though - let’s get into the Serena of it all.

TW: weight loss discussion – if that’s not your bag, feel free to scroll onto the next section.

I’d been aware of Serena’s ambassadorship for a telehealth company that prescribes weight loss drugs since it was announced last summer amidst a flurry of press - interviews, photoshoots, Oprah co-signs… the works. At the time I didn’t think about it too much, simply filed it away as Not Good.

Then her Super Bowl ad dropped last month (you can watch it here) and social media was once again flooded with commentary – most of it critical – about her choice to a) take GLP-1s and b) promote them. An obvious choice for my column, and I already knew what stance I’d take: one of the greatest athletes of all time, a woman whose body had carried her to a record-breaking number of Grand Slam wins and who had seemingly managed to rise above the torrent of negative commentary on her physique over the years (too big, too muscular, too masculine, too Black), in the process becoming an inspiration for millions of Black women the world over, suddenly pivoting to shill …weight loss drugs? Surely that was a bad thing - right?

But as I sat down to make my case, I began to question exactly why my instinctive response had been negative - because as I wrote in my column: