What to Know
Is it just us or does anybody else kind of feel as though we’re living in the early 2000s again? There’s non-stop talk about people’s bodies both online and in person which takes us to a very uncomfortable and murky place as a society. Plus, it’s pretty hard to ignore the ones in the public eye who are looking drastically different these days. It’s all a cause for concern.
Speaking of which, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill’s daughter, Gracie McGraw, has opened up about how taking Ozempic, which is an injectable GLP-1 medication that people often use when they have diabetes or want to lose weight, brought back her eating disorder. She also shared how struggling with health issues caused her to ultimately submit to “skinny culture,” which turned out to be a very unsafe route for her to take.
Gracie shared how being on Ozempic for three years ‘brought back’ her eating disorder.
According to Page Six, 29-year-old Gracie McGraw, who just so happens to be the daughter of country superstars, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, posted a story on her Instagram on August 3, that immediately got people talking.
She reflected on how she felt as though she had gave into “skinny culture” by starting a GLP-1 treatment in 2022 following a diagnosis with polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, or previously known as PCOS. PMOS is related to one’s hormone health and it can cause irregular periods and infertility, per the Cleveland Clinic.
Gracie shared that at the time she thought it was “the best decision [she] ever made,” but things have drastically changed her opinion down the line. Though she “finally lost weight and got skinny” and a lot of her symptoms were under control, she called going on the injectable medication “also brought back [her] ED (eating disorder) and negative views on [her] body.”
She called it ‘one of the worst things’ she ever done to herself.
In her Story, Gracie went on to discuss how she became “way too skinny,” but didn’t realize it at the time due to “skinny culture.” She can look back on things now and see how people even looked at her “differently on the streets” and in her personal life, and yet, when she finally took a step back, she realized that she had been “feeding into [her] eating disorder this whole time under the guise of this miracle shot.”
“I think it was probably one of the worst things I’ve ever done for myself, looking back,” Gracie said. She noted that the culture that we’re currently in is just watching people get “smaller and smaller.” Gracie is now off the GLP-1 drug, but she can see “how much losing all of that weight actually affected” her.
She also discussed how she’s been someone who has struggled with her body image practically her whole life, even comparing herself to her sisters and famous parents. “I’ve been called fat and ugly my entire life, whether that had been from magazines or the internet,” she shared. As far as her eating disorder is concerned, she is currently “doing so well,” but still has “slip-ups from time to time” when it comes to her body image.
Ultimately, she felt it was important to discuss what she’s gone through in a time when openness about these kinds of things is often glossed over. “But, telling people to not speak on this is incredibly wrong and damaging. It’s promoting created thinness as [a] goal not as danger. We are at a time when we need to be taking care of ourselves and our people,” she said.
The online discourse surrounding Gracie’s experience with the GLP-1 drug is mixed.
This Reddit thread is chock-full of a variety of opinions from people who can both see the harm that can come when someone with an eating disorder using a GLP-1 medication and things get out of hand while others explain that the injectable can also work to improve one’s health.
One person shared, “I love how defensive reddit comment gets when people say they had a bad experience with GLP-1s lol. Like any prescription medicine, it’s simply not for everyone and will in fact be harmful to some people even if it’s helpful to many others. People with histories of restrictive EDs are famously bad candidates.”
Another person wrote, “Seriously, it wasn’t made for everyone to use and lots of people who are on it have no business being on it (sorry if that sounds harsh).” On the other side of things, someone in the thread shared their thoughts on how the GLP-1 injectable isn’t all bad. “I think the issue is there’s an extremely prevalent negative narrative that sort of frames Ozempic as the rich, thin person’s vanity drug when people are really being helped with major medical issues by it.”
What are your thoughts here? Is it the toxic’skinny’ culture timeline that we’re living in that’s the problem or does there perhaps need to be better monitoring in place for those who are prone to eating disorders who take the medication?
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