Kate Winslet Doesn't Understand Ozempic, Laughs in the Face of Diet Culture

If you’re just as exhausted by the Ozempic craze as I am, I implore you to read Kate Winslet’s recent interview in The New York Times. Winslet is no stranger to the thin-obsessive vitriol bubbling just under the surface of show business, her come-up having occurred at the height of the 90s supermodel craze and low-rise jeans empire of the early aughts. After Titanic, “public scrutiny of her body was so chronic and exacting that it threatened to consume her.” Now, she admits that it led her to struggle with an eating disorder.

“I never told anyone about it,” she said. “Because guess what—people in the world around you go: ‘Hey, you look great! You lost weight!’ So even the compliment about looking good is connected to weight. And that is one thing I will not let people talk about. If they do, I will pull them up straight away.”

At this point, the interviewer “wondered aloud” about “the impact of Ozempic on all this.”

“I actually don’t know what Ozempic is,” she said, and that’s when I exhaled, having not realized I was holding my breath. I’ve always loved Winslet precisely for this ordinariness—this matter-of-fact, lack of care about the seediest aspects of her industry. It’s why she’s so good at portraying complicated women: because she is one, and she doesn’t try to hide it.

She continued, “All I know is that it’s some pill that people are taking or something like that.” The interviewer explained it in more detail, but she still didn’t get it.

“But what is it?” She asked, her mouth apparently “full of pastry.” When she was told the medication suppressed hunger, she “looked appalled” and said, “Oh, my God. This sounds terrible. Let’s eat some more things!” and ate more pastries.

I don’t know if I can emphasize enough the impact of a middle-aged actress at the height of her career unabashedly eating pastries, laughing in the face of diet culture masquerading as wellness. Especially this woman, whose early career was the frenzied fodder of the tabloid press, a phenomenon that has ruined the lives and careers of countless women like her. Now, she looks at images of her younger self and remarks, “Look how thin I was,” not out of admiration but sadness and tenderness. Things were different for women in Hollywood then, when “to object, especially for young women, was to risk a ruined reputation.” Not complaining was something she internalized.

“People can call me fat. They can call me what they want. But they certainly cannot say that I complained and I behaved badly. Over my dead body … I would not have known how to do that without people in power turning around and saying ‘Oh, Jesus Christ, you know, her again, that complainer. I would rather suffer in silence than ever let that happen to me, even still today.”

This is where her complexity comes into full view: she says she’d rather suffer in silence today, but I look at her and I don’t see suffering or silence. I see a normal woman existing in the world, messy as it is, doing her best to rise above the mess and doing it honestly. What else is there?