The Bluestocking, vol 296

a “low-key dinner” (The chicken is $54.)

Happy Friday!

As regular readers will know, I’m fascinated by the potential of Ozempic and other GLP-1 agonists—this new class of weight-loss treatments that seem to actually work, unlike almost all diets. But fatness and thinness aren’t just medical states, they are social ones, so I wanted to explore how people feel about the idea that some people in their friendship group might suddenly lose 30lb, and how people themselves navigate the social side of weight loss. The first link below is to my new Atlantic piece on the subject.

One of my interviewees said something that the fat positivity movement has always struggled against: that people do treat you better when you’re more conventionally attractive—and in our society, that means thin: “I always had the feeling of being outside everything, like there was a velvet rope. And there is.”

Helen

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Illustration by Jasjyot Singh Hans for the Atlantic

The Other Ozempic Revolution (The Atlantic)

Even many Ozempic enthusiasts are coy about disclosing why they’re looking slimmer. Nathan, a 41-year-old Redditor who asked to be identified only by his first name to discuss his medical history, told me that he lost 40 pounds on Rybelsus, another brand name for semaglutide. He began to notice that he could once again wear his favorite rings, button his collar, and cross his legs. His family and friends were supportive, as was his pastor, he told me via email. “Even at church, one of my priests saw me at the communion rail and she said: ‘This is the Body of Christ … BTW—you look great.’ Talk about validation.”

Not long after his pastor complimented his weight loss, Nathan received a text from a longtime female friend. He was on vacation, on a guided tour, and didn’t respond immediately. So the friend messaged again, Nathan recounted, “saying my silence and not texting her back fast enough was me thinking I was too important to talk to her. She actually said: ‘I’m so glad your life is getting fuller and you’re getting thinner, and now you want to cut me out of your life.’” They had never discussed his weight loss, or the methods he was using. “All I can figure is she saw my photos and side-by-sides on social media.”

Nathan decided to block her number, reasoning that he cared more about his weight loss—and the health benefits it brought, such as reduced cholesterol and better sleep—than easing his friend’s hurt feelings. “It’s beyond ridiculous for her to act like this,” he said. “But as Samantha Jones said [on HBO’s Sex and the City]: ‘I love you, but I love me more.’”

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prompt: taylor swift eating a burger

“She Eats, She Pays, She Gets the F*** Out” (New York magazine)

Each restaurant I go to separates me further from financial security and an understanding of my purpose on Earth. This one is no exception. I’ve never been to the Barrière Fouquet’s and in fact, had never even heard of it before it recently hosted Taylor Swift and Sophie Turner for what “Page Six” describes as a “low-key dinner.” (The chicken is $54.) It’s in Tribeca, near Taylor’s home, and even if I were blindfolded and dropped off in its lobby, I would know that. When I arrive at 5:30 p.m. for my own low-key dinner with two friends, we are the only people in the dining room who are not rich tourists from out of state in $600 leggings and platform Dior sneakers.

Our server informs us, not unrelatedly, that “old money is quiet and new money is loud,” which explains why, as she puts it, “Taylor doesn’t have a bad reputation. She was nice and she was chill, and she wasn’t, like, being fancy and ordering caviar.”

So you can’t interview Taylor Swift? Why not go to the New York restaurants she goes to, and ask why someone as galactically famous as her would risk eating a burger in front of people surreptitiously taking photos.

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Quick Links

1. “I’m personally at a point where I’m interested in returning to fiction, partly because I’m fed up – to put it mildly – of only telling my own story.” Here’s a nice preview of a new book about female directors by one of my favourite writers on theatre, Rosemary Waugh (The Crush Bar, Substack).

2. ICYMI: here’s my interview with Professor David Runciman about how to control AIs, states and corporations.

3. “But the author remains mostly insulated from the praise, and indeed from much of the outside world. He has a 10-year-old Nokia phone that he uses for calling, texting and checking the time. (“It’s also a torch,” he noted, using the British word for flashlight.) During the pandemic, he moved in with his partner, Jo Howard, an executive-search consultant for the publishing industry, but he has no Wi-Fi in his old house, where he spends his days writing. He gets the news from the radio and, on weekends, the newspapers. “I never really got my head around it,” he said of the internet.” How does Mick Herron write a new book every year? Oh. (New York Times)

4. “A “bight” is a curve in a coastline: German Bight is thus the area of the North Sea bounded by the German and Danish coasts. (The entire North Sea was, once upon a time, referred to as the “German Ocean”.)” Jonn Elledge on how shipping forecast areas got their names (Substack).

5. They said it would never happen, but the Tories found a good attack line on Keir Starmer! So why aren’t they using it, asks Tom Hamilton (Dividing Lines, Substack).

6. “The far bigger problem on his plate at that time was the fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran, calling for the death of Rushdie after the publication of The Satanic Verses in 1988, although disregard for his own personal safety was a matter of both principle and pride for Wylie.” A glorious Decca Aitkenhead interview with literary agent Andrew Wylie (disclosure: I’m represented by the Wylie Agency) where he hams up his snobbish brahmin persona to great effect (Sunday Times, £)

See you next time!