JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Tennis legend Serena Williams is making headlines again, but this time, it's not about her dominance on the court. It's about her decision to take a GLP-1 weight loss medication. Williams revealed last week that after struggling to shed postpartum weight, even with intense training and healthy eating, she turned to a GLP-1 treatment. According to People magazine, she says she lost over 31 pounds. Along with her decision, she was announced as the new face of a national campaign for the telehealth company Ro. Her husband also serves on that company's board. And this has all sparked a sometimes-tense conversation about the scrutiny of women's bodies, weight stigma and body autonomy.
Chrissy King has been writing and talking about these topics for some time. She's the author of "The Body Liberation Project: How Understanding Racism And Diet Culture Helps Cultivate Joy And Build Collective Freedom," and she joins us now. Chrissy, welcome.
CHRISSY KING: Oh, thank you so much, Juana. I'm excited to be here with you.
SUMMERS: Excited to talk with you. Chrissy, can you just start by telling us what was your first reaction when you saw that Serena Williams had - was announced that she was going to be sort of a new face of these GLP-1 weight loss drugs, at least for this one company, Ro?
KING: I think when I first saw it, I had, like, a myriad of emotions at one time. I think there was definitely a little bit of, like, an element of surprise but also an element of, like, oh, actually, I could totally see this. And I think my biggest initial thought is, like, oh, I can see how this is going to spark massive conversation. And it's such a nuanced topic that needs to be handled with so much care, and I can see how that's going to be missed in a lot of places.
SUMMERS: Yeah. You've written about the history of how Serena Williams has been very specifically body-shamed over the years, even as she kept winning Grand Slams, picking up Olympic medals, stunning the tennis world. Can you talk a little bit about that sort of constant public scrutiny that she's faced over the years and why it matters in this conversation?
KING: Having her be this high-performing athlete that is achieving all of these things and is doing so much, but her body is still being the topic of conversation to the fact that she's being called a gorilla and has always been hypersexualized - all of those things play a really important part in the conversation we're having. And so I think that when we're talking about this conversation of her usage of GLP-1s to make her body smaller, I also can see why that's not surprising if your body has always been talked about in this way.
SUMMERS: Yeah.
KING: And now you finally feel like you can achieve this thing that maybe could silence all this conversation about, you know, your body once and for all. And I think, ironically, it's done the opposite - right? - because now we're talking about it more than ever.
SUMMERS: I mean, we know that the discourse, when we talk about our bodies, about Black women's bodies, we know that the discourse is different. So it does make me wonder, Chrissy, do you think if the new face of these drugs had been a white woman rather than a Black woman, the discourse, the reaction would be different?
KING: Actually, yes, I very much do think it would be different. And I think about the fact that, like, Charles Barkley has been a spokesperson for this drug for quite some time. And I've really heard no conversation about that, right? And so I think it goes into play about the intersection of sexism, of racism, of fatphobia and being a Black woman that lives at the intersection of all those things, that you almost are held to this higher standard - right? - and this - you have this higher responsibility, it feels like, that people hold you to a different standard. And I do think that if this weight loss drug had have been - if anybody else had been the face, if it had have been a white woman, if it had have been somebody else, we would be having an entirely different conversation.
I think that - it's the part that I do find most frustrating - is because when you're a Black woman that has been harmed by sexism, by fatphobia, by racism, you've had to, like, already face all of those things in your life. And now you are somehow seen as the antagonist of this situation that's occurring when really you've been the victim of this, all of these systems of oppression the entire time.
SUMMERS: Chrissy King is author of "The Body Liberation Project: How Understanding Racism And Diet Culture Helps Cultivate Joy And Build Collective Freedom." She also writes the weekly Substack newsletter The Liberation Collective. Chrissy, thank you so much.
KING: Thank you so much for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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