Rescripted

Women's Health, Your Way

Ask & Search With Clara

Welcome to a new standard for women's health answers.

GIRLHOOD / GLP-1s Will Get You a Job and a Boyfriend, Says Science (...

GLP-1s Will Get You a Job and a Boyfriend, Says Science (We Already Knew That)

GLP-1s Will Get You a Job and a Boyfriend, Says Science (We Already Knew That)

In the most recent GLP-1 news, a new study out of Harvard found that women are more likely to land a job and find a partner while on the drugs — because of course they are.

I don't say that to be snarky, more that weight has never really been just a health thing for women. It's always doubled as currency, whether we wanted it to or not, and now there's a paper with Harvard's name on it more or less proving it.

Economist Rebecca Diamond tracked thousands of women through the Understanding America Study and found that single women starting a GLP-1 for weight loss were 29 percentage points more likely to be married or living with a partner within a year and a half, and women who weren't working when they started were 27 points more likely to be employed by then. Call it confidence, or call it exactly what Diamond's paper is called: "the female obesity penalty."

But what didn't change is the part that's hard to shake: already-partnered women got no upgrade, already-employed women got no raises, and none of them got healthier. Self-reported health, depression, and loneliness barely moved. The shift wasn't internal; it was other people, deciding differently, the moment there was less of her to see.

Which makes me wonder, do you have to be Ariana Grande for people to notice there's a problem here? Her body has become its own headline, and we're told not to comment on women's bodies until you're actually worried about one.

This study didn't tell us anything new — it just proved we were never being paranoid.

More from GIRLHOOD

If you've ever felt the very specific discomfort of having to pee thirty seconds after you just went, welcome to Girlhood. The burning, the urgency, the sense that something is... Read more
There's a big part of the fertility journey that doesn't get enough credit, and spoiler alert: it's everything that happens before IVF.When I first got diagnosed with PCOS (now PMOS,... Read more
I was an athlete my whole life — softball, basketball, cheerleading, more softball, with a theater-kid detour in between. Most of my best friends came out of team sports, the... Read more
My friends like to make fun of me because many of my relationships over the last decade or so have started with book clubs. Here's how it goes: I form... Read more
My co-founder Abby sent me a clip of Sara Bareilles talking about her new song, and it instantly brought tears to my eyes.I've always said that sitting in the waiting... Read more
I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Gabrielle Union-Wade, which, as someone who was a high school cheerleader in the early 2000s, was a major fangirl moment for... Read more
Anyone who knows me well knows I rarely take anything seriously... until I do.Infertility? Serious as a heart attack. Breast cancer? I lost my best friend to the disease at... Read more
Dolly Parton and Gloria Steinem died eight days apart this month, and admittedly, I didn't know much about either of them beyond the headlines — Dolly's rhinestones, "I Will Always... Read more
Call it PMS, or call it my complete inability to engage in small talk, but somehow I often feel lonely amongst a large group of friends.You would never know it.... Read more
If you've been here any amount of time, you already know I'm a voracious reader. I spent the early part of my career in publishing, and I truly believe there's... Read more