The world is kinder when you are thin

Collage by Easton Clark, Photo Editor

A recent opinion piece in The Panther criticized the rise of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs and what they say about society’s obsession with women’s bodies. I understand that concern. But as someone who recently started taking a GLP-1 medication, my experience has revealed something uncomfortable: the world treats you very differently when you become thin.

For as long as I can remember, my body set me apart.

From the time I was a little girl, I was always well above the average weight for my height and age. In school photos, I noticed it. At birthday parties, I noticed it. At clothing stores where my friends could walk straight to their section while I scanned racks hoping something might fit, I noticed it.

Other people noticed it too.

As I got older, I began hearing the advice people often give to girls whose bodies do not match society’s expectations: love yourself the way you are.

The message was supposed to be empowering. In theory I understood it. If the world imposes narrow beauty standards on women, the brave thing to do is reject them.

But there was always something about that advice that didn’t sit right with me.

Because loving myself did not change how the world treated me.

I could tell myself I was beautiful. But when I walked into a store and nothing in the entire place came in my size, that affirmation felt hollow. I could remind myself that my worth had nothing to do with my body. But when thinner girls around me were treated like queens, complimented constantly, flirted with openly and welcomed easily into social spaces, the contrast was impossible to ignore.

People were simply kinder to them.

For years I tried to believe that learning to love my body at a larger size was the right response to a culture obsessed with thinness. But there was always a question underneath that belief that I rarely heard anyone answer honestly.

Why should I have to be the one person who suffers to prove a point?

Last year, I made a different decision. I started taking a GLP-1 medication.

For most of my life, losing weight had felt impossible. I tried diets, exercise routines and every version of the “just try harder” advice people offer when they assume weight is purely about discipline.

Nothing worked.

When I started the medication, something changed. For the first time in my life, the scale began moving in a direction I had never seen before.

The physical changes were dramatic. My knee pain disappeared. My back pain faded. Exercise became easier. The exercise-induced asthma that had followed me for years improved. I had more energy and was no longer exhausted all the time.

Even small, everyday experiences changed. I could sit comfortably in an airplane seat. I could walk into a clothing store and immediately see things that fit my body.

But the most striking changes were social.

Suddenly people treated me differently.

Strangers held doors open for me more often. Salespeople were friendlier. At restaurants, people seemed warmer in subtle ways that are hard to prove but easy to feel.

Compliments appeared everywhere. People told me I was beautiful. Photos I posted online drew dozens of comments praising how I looked. Men began flirting with me on the street. Women who had never seemed particularly interested in getting to know me suddenly wanted to be friends.

It felt like the world had quietly flipped a switch.

Part of me enjoyed the attention. But another part of me could not stop thinking about what it revealed.

The person inside this body had not changed.

I was still the same person who had grown up in a larger body. I still remembered exactly how it felt to move through the world being treated as less desirable, less visible and sometimes less worthy.

Now when people casually make jokes about “fat people” around me or say they would never date someone overweight, it still stings. The only difference is that now they assume those comments do not apply to me.

But they do.

Because while my body has changed, part of my identity has not. I will probably always feel like someone who understands what it is like to live in a body that society judges harshly.

The conversation around GLP-1 medications often frames them as a cultural surrender. Critics argue that instead of changing our bodies, we should challenge the systems that pressure women to be thin in the first place.

In theory, I agree. The beauty standards imposed on women are narrow, unrealistic and often cruel.

But in practice, I have come to see something clearly.

Loving myself did not dismantle those systems.

It did not make clothing companies expand their sizes. It did not stop strangers from making assumptions about my health or worth. It did not erase the way society rewards thinness with attention, kindness and opportunity.

Self-acceptance is powerful. But it cannot single-handedly undo systemic bias.

Taking a GLP-1 medication did not mean I suddenly believed those beauty standards were fair. It meant I finally had access to a tool that improved my health and allowed me to move through the world more comfortably.

I still believe our culture should become more accepting of different body types. But I no longer believe that individual women should be expected to carry the full burden of that change with their own bodies.

In a perfect world, body size would not determine how someone is treated.

But until that world exists, people deserve the freedom to make decisions about their own bodies without being told those decisions are morally suspect.

My body has changed.

What has changed even more is my understanding of how deeply appearance shapes the way we move through society.

The lesson is not that thinness solves everything.

It is that the world still treats thin people differently.

And pretending otherwise does not make it less true.