By the time Remi Bader, who built her career as a plus-size influencer with over 2 million followers on TikTok, went on Khloé Kardashian’s podcast to address her smaller body, it had been subject to nearly a year and a half of speculation.

Fans were certain Bader had betrayed them, but exactly how and in what way was up for debate: Had she pumped the body positivity movement for cash and then turned her back on it by getting thin? Was the real problem that she owed it to her followers to explain how she had lost the weight?

On Khloe in Wonderland, Bader revealed that she had undergone weight-loss surgery for numerous mental and physical health reasons, including a binge-eating disorder, a 100-pound weight gain, and chronic back pain. She also shared what she describes as the “brutal” recovery experience after getting a bariatric procedure known as SADI-S, or single anastomosis duodeno-ileal bypass with sleeve gastrectomy. The procedure caused weeks of incessant vomiting and even led her to contemplate suicide.

These harrowing revelations failed to stop the backlash; indeed, it had only just begun.

For better or worse, the way we discuss weight loss has changed dramatically. Historically, shedding pounds garnered an automatic congratulations (see Oprah and her wheelbarrow of fat in 1988, or Valerie Bertinelli’s Jenny Craig ads almost two decades later). But a conversation that morphed with the body positivity movement of the 2010s — finally cheering women for the bodies they already had — has only grown more complicated with the rise of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic.

The use of these Type 2 diabetes medications for weight loss has sparked ethical concerns regarding access to the drug for people with diabetes. It’s also prompted an even louder panic around what it means to be a certain weight. For many, the drug’s popularity signals a return to the narrow beauty standards of the ’90s and 2000s and a reversal of more recent attitudes. While thinness has never truly gone out of style, the previous decade saw the rise of BBLs and a certain type of curvy body being celebrated in mainstream culture.

Now, in a phenomenon born out of rightful frustration that impossible beauty standards are making a comeback, people have seemingly never been more comfortable interrogating people’s bodies and the choices they make for them.

When a body belongs to........

© Vox