When Layla Taylor, the 25-year-old Utah influencer and member of MomTok, went public with her use of the GLP-1 drug Tirzepatide in the latest season of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, her pain was palpable. “I’m so exhausted all the time because I don’t eat,” Taylor shares with two cast-mates during a spa day. “My body hurts every night when I go to bed. When I lie down, if my knees are touching, it hurts because I don’t have enough fat on my body.”

Here was a young woman on reality television, clearly struggling with her mental health as she admits, “I don’t know how to stop.”

Were the producers unimpressed? Because, aside from a quick follow-up of Taylor seeking treatment for her eating disorder, her story mostly fades, cast aside as a minor detail amid the show’s on-again, off-again torture of other cast members. Perhaps even more unsettling were the ads for Ro, the telehealth company, that played throughout the season, specifically highlighting its “weight loss expertise”—even as one of the show’s central figures opened up about her issues with GLP-1s.

The result, for viewers, could feel sensationally callous; Taylor herself has said that she was disappointed by how little airtime her admission received. But the show’s treatment of Taylor reflects a culture where GLP-1s are ubiquitous and normalized, even when their use sometimes leads to extreme and troubling results.

Hulu did not respond to my questions about how it handled Taylor’s GLP-1 story. But Sabrina Strings, a professor and author of Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia, who had not seen the show, imagined that for its executives, “You can see the importance of not spending too much time lingering on the issue.” By welcoming the advertisements, the overall message became: “Yes, [Layla] may have a mental health concern, but that’s separate from the excellent quality of these drugs—and you need to take them too.”

Backing up a little: How was a reality television star with open body image struggles able to get Tirzepatide in the first place? Taylor, who, since the season finale, says that she has stopped using the drug, revealed that it was a plastic surgeon in Utah who wrote the prescription. “They just handed it to me without ever having an appointment with me,” Taylor told Allure. “They got me a prescription, and it was at my house the next day.”

Compounded GLP-1s continue to proliferate, with little oversight over the drugs themselves and the popular pathways for accessing them.

Most Americans might not have plastic surgeons to hit up for weight-loss concerns. But they do enjoy unfettered access to telehealth companies and medspas that offer........

© Mother Jones