In fitness and in health

Ozempic, the It-pill of movie stars, is an injectable for diabetics that creates the happy side-effect of shedding kilos fast (other complications of nausea and in some cases, pancreatitis, be damned). Kim Kardashian is rumored to have been on Ozempic to fit into her Marilyn Monroe gown at the 2022 Met Gala. While it’s not approved for weight management, Instagram is flooded with ads for it and on Facebook groups, thousands of members have proudly posted before-and-after Ozempic images. (Such is the demand that US physicians are beseeching the overweight to stop hoarding it, creating shortfalls for the diabetics who actually need it.) In India, it can be prescribed by an endocrinologist, the cost of each injection being approximately Rs 5,000.

Some wise and wry genius once observed, men think it’s every woman’s dream to find the perfect man; actually, every woman’s dream is to eat without getting fat. Truer words were never spoken. It’s no fun practising moderation or logging 10,000 steps daily. Finally, the pharmaceutical industry has delivered a magic potion that promises to conquer pretty much the last frontier of effort — the weighing scale. (Now all we need is a pill for happiness and lo and behold, jannat is here.) However, it is worth thinking about the larger implications of a pill that offers injectable skinniness to the moneyed.

We know (all too bitterly) that money can buy everything but so far, a fit body could not be bought, it had to be earned. There’s a certain respect a taut and strong physique commands because it requires work. In that sense fitness is a great equalizer — a lithe body in the cheapest Uniqlo T-shirt will outshine blubber in the fanciest Armani suit — no two ways about it. It seems almost unfair that it’s possible to throw down cash and gain shapeliness.

The dystopia Yuval Harari envisioned in Sapiens is already here, that as science advances, the rich will accrue disproportionate advantages of wealth.

The one per cent will become bionic, AI-assisted, genetically-perfect humans leaving the masses behind in everything — even in BMI. Or, will the construct of beauty profoundly change once willpower is out of the equation — because, when everyone looks like a cookie-cutter supermodel, does anybody? We place a premium on originality which explains why facial fillers have lost their lustre. Women of a certain status in New York-London-Delhi have invested in tumescent lips and botox to look identically ageless but eerily the same. The sheer ubiquitousness of this alarmingly perfect, wrinkle-free face triggered a reverse snobbery of sorts, and suddenly the aesthetic ideal no longer worships at the altar of youth.

For thousands of years, mystics and philosophers have propagated the idea that we inch towards clarity via the meandering path of thwarted ambition, struggle and sorrow, otherwise deemed “experience”. We don’t receive wisdom, as Marcel Proust noted, we must discover it for ourselves after a journey no one else can take for us or spare us. Apply that to the temporary hype of a revolutionary drug that promises to render one slender while on it; as with anything else, to sustain results requires the old fashioned route of pain and penance.

The writer is director, Hutkay Films