a letter about semaglutide, kinda

An exclusive letter for Pocket Observatory members. If you're not into digital ephemera, I get it! Scroll down to read the web version.

From the Pocket of Meg Conley

Dear Fellow Observer,

What I've observed lately: There are still so many places where I let certainty restrict my field of vision. And perhaps never moreso than when I am trying to protect other people from whiteness.

A recent example. I've been publicly critical of already thin, rich, white women taking semaglutide to become ultra-thin. A certain kind of thinness is an expression of white supremacy. White women are the backbone of white supremacy. Badabing, badaboom. So to speak.

I've also been publicly wary of the way the drug will be used against people. I am worried that semaglutide will be used to further stigmatize fat people. I've already seen some proponents claim that the drug will get rid of fat people. And that's eugenics! I am also worried about medical professionals telling people they need to use the drug to lose weight, instead of treating them for the actual real conditions they have!

Also, of course, there is the problem of accessing the drug. Many people who need semaglutide can't afford it. Or they can't get their insurance-approved brand because of weight-loss-related shortages. You can't talk about this drug without talking about the problem of U.S. healthcare, generally.

But I've let my criticism about thin white women inform my reaction to the drug itself. And isn't that just letting white women set the narrative again?

In March, I posted an IG that was essentially a long eye roll about Ozempic Chic at the Oscars. A long-time internet friend reached out to gently chide me for my flippancy. She had medical conditions that semaglutide could treat. She wasn't a rich white woman. And still! The discourse around semaglutide - much of it coming from white women - was really having a negative affect on her.

I felt so ashamed! Because she was so right. I'd messed up. I promised to write about what I learned when I knew better. And I will. I am just not all the way there yet. So this is kind of a moment in the middle of that learning more process.

The next part will seem like it's a tangent, but it's not.

I’ve bitten my nails until they bleed since I was a kid. I gnaw through every single nail-biting cure you're about to suggest. I chew through bandages and lick up bitter tasting polish. I've tried to keep my nails manicured, so that I wasn't triggered by rough nail edges. But I am not triggered by rough nail edges, I am soothed by them. So I bite through every manicure.

Someone once told me to replace biting my nails with another stim. I ended up biting my nails while doing that replacement stim for years afterward. I will always, always bite my nails.

Last week, my right index finger became so infected I couldn’t type with my right hand. This has happened before. You see, you can be a very clean person with very clean hands! But if the tops and sides of your fingers are constantly shredded, they’re going to get infected occasionally. Even when they’re not infected, my fingers hurt. I’ve hard to learn how to type in a way that keeps my fingertips from hitting the keyboard.

The other day, I read that semaglutide continues to be a promising treatment for people suffering from obsessive behaviors - including nail biting. And I don’t know…I felt a kind of embarrassment then. Like. My fingers don't bleed because I bite them. My fingers bleed because I need help. And if that help exists, in a form that makes sense for my life, isn't that ...okay?

Why did I have such sweeping, self-righteous judgment about the drug initially? I don't know. Maybe I was so busy trying to be on the right side of the weight discourse that I forgot to be on the side of people. And people need and want different things. Semaglutide is probably like almost everything else, a weird cocktail of the good, bad, and benign. That doesn't mean there's nothing to interrogate. It just means certainty is a bad place to start the interrogation.

I am not getting on semaglutide, by the way. Not that you need to know. But my reasoning is totally divorced from the discourse. I am just not up for the side effects or risks. For now.

I took antibiotics. My right index finger is better now. But as I type this, two of my fingers on my left hand are bleeding. I bit them every time I paused to think of another sentence. 

So I'll wrap this up before I pause again.

Wishing you a very uncertain week,

A Fellow Observer