TLDR
Ashley Graham says the Hollywood rush to weight-loss drugs like Ozempic feels like a “smack in the face” to body positivity, and she is drawing a line to protect the space curvy women fought to claim.
At a time when GLP-1 weight-loss drugs are whispered about at fittings and flaunted in before-and-after posts, Ashley Graham is using a glossy magazine cover to push back.
The 38-year-old model fronts Marie Claire’s new Motherhood issue and, in the interview, questions what the Ozempic boom is doing to a movement she helped bring into the mainstream. She calls the popularity of GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Mounjaro “really disheartening” and says it feels like the culture is rewinding.
“There was a pendulum that swung that was so body acceptance, positivity, everybody be who they want to be,” she told the magazine. “And now it is going back this whole opposite way that feels like a smack in the face to the women who have felt like they have had a voice.”
For Graham, that voice is not abstract. She built a career on lingerie campaigns, runway shows, and a historic Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover that challenged fashion’s sample-size default. To her, the GLP-1 craze is not just about shrinking waistlines. It is about shrinking representation.
Yet she is not predicting extinction for plus-size women. Graham frames GLP-1s as a moment in time, not a permanent eraser. “It goes with the times, and GLP-1s are a time,” she said. “I know that there are, and there are going to still be women who are considered plus size forever. This drug is not going to wipe out a whole statistic of women.”
What gives her hope is what has grown up around her: an entire ecosystem of creators who look more like her audience than a runway sample. “There are so many plus-size influencers and creators. They are all over the place with their sizes and their proportions and how they look and how they are relatable,” she pointed out. “And to me, that is the coolest part about all of this.”
She is especially focused on the young women stepping into that spotlight. Graham lights up talking about a generation raised on social media now using it to tell teenagers, “Be yourself, be who you want to be. If you have cellulite, who cares?”
Outside her photo shoots, the visual story on red carpets is changing again. Super slim silhouettes dominated the 2026 awards season, and conversation quickly turned to whether GLP-1s were quietly driving the look. Multiple sources told Page Six that already-thin stars are taking so-called microdoses, or “baby” doses, of Ozempic and similar weight-loss jabs that are below the FDA-approved therapeutic amount.
One A-list stylist said those in charge of dressing celebrities are caught in the middle. “You cannot tell these actresses they are too skinny,” the stylist told Page Six. “They will just say, but another actress is smaller than I am.”
Graham is not alone in questioning where all of this leads. Podcaster Brianna Chickenfry recently told followers on TikTok that people who do not medically need Ozempic are using it anyway and warned them in stark terms, “You are gonna die. You are all gonna die.”
For Graham, the stakes are reputational as much as personal. She has become shorthand for body confidence in an industry that still rewards shrinking yourself to fit a sample. Speaking out now ties her legacy to whatever comes after the Ozempic era, whether that is a new standard of acceptance or a return to the old thin ideal with better PR.
The question her comments leave hanging is not whether GLP-1s work. It is whose bodies will still be visible when the trend quiets down, and whose voices will be strong enough to be heard.
Do you see weight-loss drugs as a helpful option, a setback for body positivity, or something in between? Share where you think the culture should go next.
