Medical decisions are personal, but when those who’ve broken through glass ceilings finally give in, all of us lose, writes Kate Demolder
At a time when disordered eating is on the rise, and pro-thin messaging has co-opted every facet of society, women like Serena Williams — strong, powerful, glass-ceiling-shattering — seemed, with their non-conforming physiques, like the last bastion of hope. Picture: AP/John Minchillo

Last Thursday’s People magazine read thus: Serena Williams Reveals She Lost 31lbs Using Weight-Loss Medication: ‘I Feel Great’ (Exclusive).

Soon after, others followed: American Vogue, NBC’s Today, and Elle all hit publish on equally packaged productions that said the same thing: the world’s greatest female tennis player has shrunk in size, and she’s thrilled about it.

The ad in question was for the direct-to-patient telehealth service, Ro, a company that promotes access to GLP-1 weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic, and on whose board Williams’ husband, Alexis Ohanian, sits.

It sees Williams speak directly to the camera. “I trained at the highest level, ate a clean diet, pushed myself, and still, after having kids, my body just wouldn’t respond … After kids, it’s the medicine my body needed.”

The ad, according to the brand’s press release, is simply the first of its kind. Williams is set to lead a multi-year campaign to normalise the use of GLP-1 treatments for weight management, according to Ro.

In fact, she was chosen specifically because many will deem her a person — one of enormous determination, will and athleticism — who doesn’t need medication to help her lose weight.

“She has more willpower than most people on the planet and is the perfect example that weight is not just a matter of ‘diet and exercise’,” Ro’s chief executive Zachariah Reitano tweeted following the ad’s release.

In other words, the point of choosing Williams as ambassador is to normalise weight-loss drugs as lifestyle products for people who aren’t typical patients. In short, we could all lose a few pounds. Even elite-level athletes.

The public response to the ad has been generally divided. Some were angry about the status quo claiming one of the most powerful women in sport. Others were upset about the blatant hawking of the family business, a kind of co-opted “couple goals” appearing as a sheep in wolf’s clothing. Some credited her “courage” for coming forward about a topic so marred with shame.

However, the collective response sat somewhere between despair and exhaustion. At a time when disordered eating is on the rise, and pro-thin messaging has co-opted every facet of society, women like Serena Williams — strong, powerful, glass-ceiling-shattering — seemed, with their non-conforming physiques, like the last bastion of hope.

To many, this felt less like stealth marketing and more like a realisation marketeers have been pushing us to hear since the early 90s — that appearance will always trump achievement.

For Williams, it’s a pivot that’s striking because of her resolutely defiant career. It is said that black women in the US are born with a double burden — ”the most unprotected person in America is the black woman,” according to Malcolm X — and yet, Compton-raised Williams set her sights on the whitest stage in America, and claimed it.

With this obvious difference came mockery, prejudice and outright misogynoir, much of it centring around her appearance. Instead of faltering, she used that scepticism as fuel for ascendency, often leaving culture-shifting commentary in her wake.

“It’s me, and I love me. I’ve learned to love me,” she told Good Morning America in 2015, referencing her career’s body shamers. “I am a full woman and I’m strong, and I’m powerful, and I’m beautiful at the same time.”

Serena Williams at the 2025 Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in May: Even with four Olympic Golds, 23 Grand Slams, two healthy children, worldwide influence and a worldwide understanding that you are the greatest of all time… nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. Picture: Angela Weiss / AFP via Getty Images

With this, she bent an industry that tried to shut her out to her will, daring to push boundaries in ways that felt utterly intoxicating for women crippled by stay-in-your-lane mentalities.

As such, seeing Williams align herself with Ro feels less like a destigmatisation of medical needs and more of a restigmatisation of fat.

In one fell swoop, she has gone from embodying defiance to prioritising conformity. And, in turn, has allowed those who sought to keep her out to take the final bow.

Williams, of course, is not alone in this. She joins a growing roster of celebrities who have admitted to GLP-1 agonist use, from Sharon Osbourne to Amy Schumer to Oprah Winfrey.

She is also, of course, not to blame. The forces that envelop women in the spotlight are particularly malicious, and the choice for anyone to do what they want with their bodies, particularly medically, is something we have fought for for decades.

It is, however, the reinforcing nature of this ad that lingers uncomfortably: if Serena Williams, a woman routinely labelled the greatest of all time, is deemed not enough, who are we to stand a chance?

It goes without saying that GLP-1 drugs can be life-changing for the people who need them. For people with obesity or diabetes, they have the ability to give them the life and health they deserve.

But the glamourisation of these drugs allows us to view fat and weight-gain not as biological facts, but moral choices. There is, too, a growing and horrifying understanding that certain body shapes and ideals are flowing in and out of fashion in recent years, without consideration for health.

For those who commit to this, will they eventually feel let down when, in five years, curvier bodies are back in vogue?

Furthermore, Ro’s ad also acts as a reminder that altering one’s appearance in a society obsessed with shrinking is more important than equality. Amid ongoing shortages, reserved stock went to wealthy Americans looking to slim down rather than those who struggled to survive without them. (A previously ongoing GLP-1s shortage for those who needed it, like diabetes patients, resulted in 10 alleged deaths and 100 hospitalisations.)

At this stage, it feels impossible to imagine a universe in which fat and weight-gain are discussed with medical and societal empathy, one which understands the knot of genetics, behaviours and external forces that go together to make obesity a growing issue in Western civilisation.

In so many ways, the introduction of medications like this was supposed to be positive, a game-changing move for the people who needed it. Instead, it has been flipped to reveal greed, inequity and a renewed fixation that women should be thin.

As referenced by Terry Prone in these pages on Monday, fat on the human body brings out the critic in us all. We have been socialised that way.

Fat, to marketers, the fashion industry, and now pharmaceutical companies, is a sign of poor willpower, lacklustre habits and ultimate failure. Though work has been done by several excellent sources to prove that fat is not the worst thing in the world — your brain, which is approximately 60% fat, requires it to survive — Ro’s campaign with Williams has given us leverage to reconsider.