Oprah Is Ready to Atone
In a new WeightWatchers special, she acknowledged that she’s been “a major contributor” to diet culture.
On Thursday night, Oprah opened her WeightWatchers virtual event livestream — a three-hour conversation aimed at “dismantling the current diet culture” — with something close to an apology. Entering the studio to a standing ovation, the country’s “dieter-in-chief” stood in front of the live audience in a pink silk pantsuit. “I want to acknowledge that I have been a steadfast participant in this diet culture,” she said. “I’ve been a major contributor to it. I cannot tell you how many weight-loss shows and makeovers I’ve done.”
Recalling her infamous wagon of fat — when, on a 1988 episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, she wheeled out 67 pounds of animal fat to represent the weight she lost on a starvation diet — she said the moment was ”one of my biggest regrets.” She recounted her heartbreaking 1985 appearance on The Tonight Show, where Joan Rivers implored her on national television to lose 15 pounds. “It’s really hard to love your body when the whole world tells you it’s not worth loving,” she said, as the women in the audience nodded along. “Tonight, that changes.”
The event was billed as a follow up to Oprah’s prime-time ABC special Shame, Blame, and the Weight Loss Revolution, which aired in March — and she made clear throughout the night that she’d heard the criticism. Acknowledging that “some people said it felt like an infomercial for weight loss drugs,” Oprah said she did the special because she wanted to be honest about her own use of weight loss medication and how it’s been helpful for her. (To avoid a perceived conflict of interest, she even gave up her seat on WeightWatchers’ board ahead of the program). Like much of the coverage around Ozempic, the special framed weight loss drugs as “revolutionary” and a path to ending shame and weight stigma. Yet the stories it highlighted seemed only to reinforce the status quo — that the sole path to happiness is weight loss. One woman recounted being so ashamed of her body that she barely left the house. She said she felt her kids were treated worse when she was heavier. Changing her body by taking injectable semaglutide is presented as the only solution to weight shame and discrimination. At another point, Oprah exclaimed, “You’re going to the prom!” to Maggie Ervie, a teenager who spoke to the Cut about her experience using weight loss drugs. The implication was that this high school rite of passage was only possible for her now that she’d slimmed down.
Unsurprisingly, the special did not go over well with the body positivity community, who were disappointed by its celebration of weight loss. After the special aired, body acceptance advocate Katie Sturino observed that WeightWatchers CEO Sima Sistani — who appeared as a guest on the show — had stopped short of apologizing on behalf of WeightWatchers. “She came so close to saying, We really got this wrong and we’re sorry for saying that it was just willpower or that one body is worse than the other,” Sturino said in a video posted to Instagram. Sistani subsequently apologized, and Oprah kicked off her second special by inviting them both on stage to hash it out.
Explaining the impetus behind the marathon livestream, Oprah said it felt like we’ve reached a “pivotal moment in the way we talk and the way we think about our bodies,” and promised that the night’s conversation would include perspectives from “all sides.” Sturino wasn’t the only critic of Oprah’s prior Ozempic coverage invited to take the stage. The night’s long roster of guests included Rebel Wilson, Busy Philipps, and Tressie McMillan Cottom, a sociologist who wrote that the ABC special showcased “Oprah’s trademark: turning big political questions into a personal narrative of freedom and triumph.”
Accordingly, this program took a markedly different tone and approach. Unlike the first special, Oprah didn’t make weight loss drugs a focus until the final hour, and she also did not feature any big pharma CEOs. Partway through the night, she introduced the audience to Jill, a mother of five from Texas, who said that while she wanted to learn to love her body, in reality she found herself avoiding going out with friends because she didn’t want to be the biggest person in the room. While Oprah’s previous special took for granted that the solution to weight shame is to shrink your body, a theme of the livestream was that you don’t have to let self-loathing and body dissatisfaction derail your life. On stage, Busy Philipps recalled reading a HuffPost article, “Why Moms Are Never In Family Photos,” when her daughter was two. “I had gained a lot of weight with my pregnancy, I had lost a job afterwards because I still had the baby weight, and I would hide in pictures,” Phillips said. “I sent [the article] to every woman in my family and I said, We are getting in the picture.” Oprah knows a good sound bite when she sees one: “Jill, get in the picture!” she shouted. The night culminated with the audience encouraging Jill not to lose weight, but to stop putting her life on hold as a result of shame.
But for a special that brought together conflicting views, the night progressed with surprisingly little friction, carried along by Oprah’s charisma and singular gift for intimate conversation. Despite Cottom’s unsparing New York Times review of Oprah’s previous Ozempic special, their conversation ended with the two hugging, Cottom wiping tears. “You were the only version of me on television when I was growing up,” Cottom said. The audience — largely made up of WeightWatchers employees, members, and partners — was rapt. There were lighter moments, too. After an audience member shared that she was inspired to stop wearing Spanx, Oprah shook her head. “Giving up the Spanx, oh my God… I can’t go that far,” she said, lifting up a silk pant leg to reveal her shapewear.
Yet it was hard to see past the irony that all these conversations towards “dismantling diet culture” were taking place alongside the words “WeightWatchers” projected on the wall. The cognitive dissonance was not entirely lost on Oprah. After the CEO admitted that “WeightWatchers led and contributed to diet culture,” Oprah retorted: “Okay, so then what’s the point of WeightWatchers now?” Winking at the audience, she laughed: “I’m no longer on the board y’all, so I can ask that question.”
The least convincing part of the night was Sistani’s mental gymnastics to explain WeightWatchers’ marketing pivot. Invoking the term “weight health,” Sistani stressed that the new WeightWatchers was not about vanity, but rather offering “a spectrum of solutions.” “We provide nutritional advice, we provide health habits, we provide movement, we provide community, and that is a great need for people,” she said. And yes, they also provide medical teams that can prescribe weight loss medication — a new revenue stream for the company which they no doubt hope to be extremely lucrative.
When Oprah asked Sutrino what she made of WeightWatchers’ change of tune, her response was surprisingly rosy. “I think everyone is allowed to evolve and make changes and the truth is, especially women, we do need a resource, we do need a place to go for health.” While Sistani said the company’s philosophy is now that “weight is just one metric” of health, it still strains credulity that people would sign up as WeightWatchers members without some intention to lose weight. Dismantling diet culture is a tall order, and the night made clear that not all of the baggage has been left behind. During a self-affirmation exercise where audience members were asked to write down qualities that made them remarkable, one virtual audience member held up a note reading: “I lost 85 pounds.”
Still, every woman in attendance I talked to after the show was gushing. Linda Parkinson, who had flown in from California, had seen Oprah live three times before. “She’s a great speaker, and I just think she’s a great person to open this subject up,” she said. “I was very emotional,” said Lisa Shaub, who’s worked for WeightWatchers for 17 years. “It made me hopeful. Maybe it’s not that realistic to think how much seismic change could come from one event, but really, she has influence, so maybe it does shift the conversation a tiny bit.”
As for WeightWatchers, Keasha Dixon, a TikTok influencer and nurse from Texas said, “I feel like everything that they’re doing now is to atone.” But it sounds like they won her over: “I feel like they’re doing a great job, actually.”
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