Can you stomach it? A content analysis of TikTok videos and comments about weight loss with Ozempic

Medications containing semaglutide, like Ozempic, have recently gained popularity due to their ability to help people lose weight quickly and effectively. The hashtag "#Ozempic" has been viewed hundreds of millions of times on TikTok, making the social media platform a useful place to analyze the discourse surrounding medical weight loss. In this study, I conduct a content analysis on sixteen TikTok videos and their accompanying comments to compare how people discuss weight loss with Ozempic and weight loss with more traditional diet methods through the example of WeightWatchers. This analysis reveals that, in many ways, people discuss Ozempic in a manner that resembles discussions about traditional diets. For instance, people using Ozempic share their specific biometric information on TikTok to compare the amount of weight they have lost on the drug with others, and they share tips on how to lose more weight with the medication. However, there are some key differences, including the reliance on a medical framing of fatness to justify using medication for weight loss. While people participating in the WeightWatchers program can employ a variety of framings to explain their desire to lose weight, people using Ozempic rely almost exclusively on the framing of obesity as a disease, illustrating how the use of medication for weight loss is only seen as acceptable when it is explicitly related to health, and not to vanity. The medicalization of fatness plays a critical role in how people discuss Ozempic, providing insight on how medical weight loss might change the way people talk about the relationship between weight loss, health, and beauty.