OPINION - The price of weight loss drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic is far too high

It’s usually about this time of the year that fashion writers expose themselves as advocates of the body fascist ideals that still permeate. They start answering questions that no one asked — how old is too old to wear a bikini? Are shorts okay above a size 12? They might become aghast that in many brands that size 12 swimsuit is categorised as a L (large).

There will be a discussion of short or skirt lengths with throwaway lines about covering up one’s knees if they don’t meet a coded level of thinness. There may be much talk of cardigans over sundresses — cover up those bingo wings! Reader beware. Needless to say, I don’t subscribe to this line of thinking. Life is far, far too short to worry about, well shorts.

But a heatwave and its related flesh exposure opportunity brings out the judgmental aunt in many. As women we’re always doing ourselves a disservice, we critique our bodies and pour that scorn onto others, too. We find “problem” areas and spend hours in changing rooms trying to cover up the fleshy bits we don’t like. We try to find things that are “flattering” which is basically a dupe word for “not looking fat”.

Not long ago, my daughter came home from school with a story about some children in her class who pointed out the size of another girl’s legs. She was six. The seed of body hatred is planted young, and usually it comes externally. Girls will be told what their body is and where it fits into the scheme of our cultural castigation far before they’ve taken the time to appraise it for themselves.

The line “beach body ready” has recently re-emerged. It was, as you may recall, the subject of a tedious Tube advert by something called Protein World around a decade ago which was pilloried and the subject of endless think pieces and social media movements instigating a predictable knee-jerk that all bodies are beach body ready, etc. Doctors have resurrected this phrase in response to the hospital admissions they are seeing thanks to young women needlessly injecting themselves with weight-loss drugs, or Wegovy — one of the brand names which has gone viral.

The World Health Organisation has just issued a global alert over fake versions of these products, the originals of which are easily available via online pharmacies and beauticians. That girls and women with eating disorders would find a way to access appetite-suppressing medications, if need be by lying on online applications, was glaringly obvious from the hyped get-go. That there has not been more caution and control over how these drugs are accessed is abysmal. Fat-phobia is incredibly lucrative.

Anorexia nervosa is far too complicated an illness to be squarely dumped under merely wanting to be thinner. I offer no judgment to those who are taking weight loss injections for their own perceived health issues. When a friend quietly admitted to me that she was on it, after years of self-loathing and existing in a world which deems your body wrong, I could understand why it was tempting.

But one thing we can try to do better at is the low-level derision we hurl at our own bodies and those of others, the background noise of covering up arms and legs in the name of shame rather than false modesty, the tutting microaggressions against all bodies being bikini wearers, the nicknames given to fleshy thighs and tummies. We must stop planting these seeds of negativity, it is a dangerous weed with too-far reaching roots and consequences.

Main image: a look from Tona The Label’s swim collection - which runs to a size 20. Victoria Moss is Fashion Director of the Evening Standard and ES Magazine