When Ozempic dulls desire, what happens to luxury?

There is a question that has been keeping me awake, beyond the headlines about miracle weight-loss drugs and pharmaceutical market projections. What happens when we switch off desire? Desire is one of the oldest drivers of culture, commerce, and connection. Entire industries, including luxury, are built on its cultivation. A weekly injection is already dampening it for millions of people. And we are still telling the story as if it were only about weight. What we got wrong about weight loss When the GLP-1 conversation enters boardrooms, it usually does so through disruption narratives: collapsing snack categories, declining alcohol sales, shifting fashion demand. But we don’t start there. We start with a real woman — let’s call her Sarah, for the purposes of anonymity. Sarah is 50, and she has been fighting her weight since she was 13. She was called fat at school, overlooked by boys she liked, and made hyper-aware of her body long before she had the language to understand why it mattered so much. She tried every diet. Joined gyms she rarely went to. Cried in changing rooms, surrounded by bodies that seemed to belong more easily in the world than hers. She was passed over for promotions she had earned because, as a manager once let slip, she “didn’t have the right executive presence.” I cannot claim this story as my own. I was a ballerina. My body aligned early with what the world rewards. But Diana and I both know Sarah, and once you listen closely to stories like hers, a pattern emerges that is hard to ignore. At its core, the dynamic is one of punishment rather than discipline. Eight months ago, Sarah started taking tirzepatide, a diabetes and weight-management medication. She lost 60 pounds and has never felt more disconnected from herself. “I got what I wanted,” she says. “And I don’t want anything anymore.” This is the part of the story we are not telling. Attention gravitates toward visuals, celebrity validation, and market forecasts, rather than what the transformation actually produces. The real story emerges in forms that are far more unsettling. It lives in what happens when we pharmaceutically suppress desire, and in why so many people are willing to do exactly that. The economics of body punishment To understand why people are making this choice, you have to understand what they are running from. Sarah’s experience is not an outlier. It is structural. The evidence is consistent. Long-running analyses from the University of Michigan show that obese women aged 51–61 hold roughly 40% less net worth than their normal-weight peers, even when controlling for health and demographics. Men do not face the same penalty. Some studies show no income loss for overweight men at all. Workplace data reinforces this lived reality. A 2023 SHRM survey found that 12% of U.S. workers say they have felt unfairly treated due to their weight at some point in their career, and 72% of those affected said they considered leaving their jobs. In a well-known Swedish field experiment, economist Dan-Olof Rooth sent identical job applications with different photos; candidates perceived as obese received significantly fewer callbacks. Legal protection against weight discrimination remains limited. Michigan is one of the few U.S. states with explicit height and weight protections, and only a small number of cities have followed suit. In most jurisdictions, bodies remain fair game. Taking that first injection became a way for Sarah to reclaim professional legitimacy, confidence, and ease of movement through the world, including the right to be seen as competent. This is where the conversation becomes uncomfortable. Obesity is still widely framed as a personal failure, a lack of discipline disguised as a health concern. But when shame becomes structural and lifelong, the appeal of these drugs has very little to do with vanity. The promise is relief. Pharmaceutical companies understand this and frame these drugs around belonging and social legitimacy. From miracle to correction economy The GLP-1 phenomenon sits uncomfortably between two cultural poles, which may explain the intensity of the reaction it provokes. Medications like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro promise transformation without discipline or surgical trauma. They became Hollywood’s worst-kept secret. Nikki Glaser opened the 2025 Golden Globes by calling it “Ozempic’s biggest night.” Celebrities from Kim Kardashian to Oprah and Elon Musk fueled the frenzy. A diabetes medication became pop-culture shorthand. But the shine is fading. Recent reporting shows 64.8% of people without type 2 diabetes discontinue GLP-1s within a year, and around 84.4% stop within two years. The reasons stack up: nearly $1,000 monthly bill without insurance, persistent nausea and gastrointestinal distress, rapid facial fat loss now labeled “Ozempic face,” and the uncomfortable reality that the drugs function only as long as they’re used. Stop the medication, and the hunger returns. Within a year, patients typically regain two-thirds of the weight they lost. The irony is difficult to miss. The same wellness influencers who built platforms promoting GLP-1s are now pivoting to help people get off them. The shortcut created its own correction economy. Each intervention generates demand for the next. This is Horseshoe Maximalism in practice: pharmaceutical extreme and natural extreme bending back toward each other, both promising transformation, neither offering permanence. Why luxury should be paying attention This reaches luxury faster than most leaders realize, because luxury operates inside the pleasure economy. Food, wine, travel, fashion, beauty, and hospitality are built on desire as a source of motivation and meaning. GLP-1s do not simply reduce consumption. They alter the emotional relationship to pleasure itself. Clinical trials published in JAMA Psychiatry show that semaglutide reduces alcohol craving in patients with alcohol use disorder. Consumer spending analyses show GLP-1 users spending less on sweet and salty foods and snacks while reallocating toward protein, fitness, and functional nutrition. This moment reflects a broader cultural recalibration in which desire is increasingly treated as noise and pleasure as inefficiency. For industries built on indulgence, this should feel existential. Which brings us back to Sarah and to the cost we rarely name. Rather than dismantling systems that punish bodies, especially women’s bodies, we are asking individuals to chemically adapt. The burden shifts to individuals, who are expected to adapt to discrimination rather than see it dismantled. This story is rooted in fear, survival, and the trade-offs people are willing to make to stop being punished. So what? For luxury leaders, the GLP-1 moment is not primarily a health story. It is a signal that desire itself is being renegotiated. If pleasure begins to feel risky or excessive, brands built on indulgence must articulate why desire is still worth choosing. Intentionality and emotional return come to define value, reframing the question around what is worth desiring. The correction economy should also give pause. Shortcuts generate downstream demand for repair, recalibration, and aesthetic or behavioral correction. The opportunity lies in designing offers that hold up over time, physically, psychologically, and culturally. Finally, luxury brands are operating inside a psychological economy whether they acknowledge it or not. Consumers are managing shame, exhaustion, identity, and control. Brands that continue to sell fantasy without addressing these undercurrents will feel increasingly hollow. Brands that help people rebuild a healthier relationship with desire will shape the next phase of relevance. But the real questions remain: What happens when pleasure becomes a privilege? When thinness becomes infrastructure? When belonging requires pharmaceutical intervention? These stop being distant theoretical problems and start reshaping the landscape beneath us. When desire is no longer assumed, luxury is forced to earn it again, fundamentally rewriting the contract. Carlotta Rodben is a luxury innovation specialist and author of “Beyond Luxury: The Promise of Emotion.” She previously led innovation at Chanel and now advises luxury brands on strategy and transformation. Diana Verde Nieto is a Argentine-British entrepreneur and CEO of Edify Collective. Diana is globally recognized for her work at the intersection of sustainability, ethical business, AI-driven performance, and the future of work. She brings a critical lens on pleasure, productivity, and the systems that shape contemporary consumer behavior to this conversation.

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When Ozempic dulls desire, what happens to luxury?