Oprah Is in Her Villain Era

And she's been there for years

"I don't know if there is another public person whose weight struggle has been exploited as much as mine over the years." - Oprah Winfrey

In 1985 Oprah Winfrey made her first appearance on national television, as a guest on The Tonight Show. Joan Rivers was filling in for Johnny Carson and took the opportunity to weight shame the 29-year-old Winfrey. It’s pretty awful to watch.

This launched Winfrey’s very public battle with her weight. No matter how many professional milestones she reached, she couldn’t shake it. But Oprah being publicly fat-shamed for decades doesn’t undo the massive damage she inflicted upon every Gen X person who ever struggled with weight. Oprah hated her body, and in so publicly hating it, she taught all of us, very clearly and methodically, what bodies were okay and what bodies were not.

Oprah has done more damage to the collective body-conscious psyche than probably anyone else in existence.

Oprah has done more damage to the collective body-conscious psyche than probably anyone else in existence. She came for us as children — even if it was unwittingly and rooted in a deep shame and trauma. And now she’s coming for this generation. She won’t stop coming. She won’t give it a rest.

Oprah can be both things: an icon deserving of respect, and a villain.

“Inside every overweight woman, is a woman she knows she can be,” Oprah declared in a 2015 ad debuting her involvement in Weight Watchers. “Are you ready? Let’s do this together,” she said. In August of that year, four months before her first televised ad for the Weight Watchers ran, Winfrey paid $43 million for a 10% stake in the company and the stock prices skyrocketed. She made a whopping $70 million in one day, and became the company’s spokeswoman. She bought her 10% stake in Weight Watchers for $43.5 million in October 2015. By 2018 it was worth 400 million.

But she still couldn’t keep the weight off. Because, spoiler alert: diets don’t work.

“It’s the perfect business model. People give Weight Watchers the credit when they lose weight. Then they regain the weight and blame themselves. This sets them up to join Weight Watchers all over again, and they do,” wrote Traci Mann, a PhD who’s spent years studying the psychology of weight loss. “The company brags about this to its shareholders. According to Weight Watchers’ business plan from 2001 its members have ‘demonstrated a consistent pattern of repeat enrollment over a number of years,’ signing up for an average of four separate program cycles.” The former CFO of the company said the company is so successful because the majority of the users regain the weight they lost: “That’s where your business comes from.”

So what does a billionaire icon obsessed with body size do when she owns a giant stake in the weight loss company she’s brought back to life, and still can’t keep the weight off? What does a weight loss mogul do in the time of Ozempic? The answer is simple: take the Ozempic, lose the weight, and ditch the weight loss company whose stocks are now plummeting thanks to drugs that can actually deliver on all of those unfulfilled weight loss promises. Then host a prime time special on the efficacy of those drugs.

You really can’t make this shit up.

Last night, millions of people primed to tune in to The Bachelor (which reaches an estimated 4.5 million viewers a week) were ambushed by Oprah. Are we to assume that was a coincidence? That the 4.5 million, largely female key demographic audience between the ages of 18 and 49 wasn’t chosen specifically to be the target for what turned out to be an hour long Ozempic infomercial?

Oprah’s in her villain era.

I watched that hour-long Ozempic informercial, because I couldn’t look away. Because I’ve always been fasciated by the fact that even Oprah, someone who has everything, still feels the need to publicly batter herself over and over and over again because she just can’t make weight. And every time she does this, she brings us with her.

We were there when she pulled that red wagon containing 67 pounds of animal fat onto the Oprah Winfrey Show stage — and revealed that she’d shed the pounds thanks to a liquid diet. Remember the liquid diet craze of the late 80s? Thanks, Oprah.

We were there when she became obsessed with running, and eating healthy, and yoga, and all the things and lost the weight again. Then she gained it back. Who can forget this cover?

In 2009, she wrote for O magazine, “here I stand, 40 pounds heavier than I was in 2006. (Yes, you're adding correctly; that means the dreaded 2-0-0.) I'm mad at myself. I'm embarrassed.” Jesus Christ. She was 55 years old when she wrote those words. She also goes on to admit that at 53 she started having “health issues.” She was lethargic, irritable and gaining weight. Um, hello. It’s called menopause. “I began having rushing heart palpitations every time I worked out… I actually developed a fear of working out. I was scared that I would pass out. Or worse. I felt as if I didn't know my own body anymore.” Does this sound familiar to anyone? Anxiety, weight gain — these are all symptoms of perimenopause and menopause. Imagine if Oprah, in 2009, had devoted the energy and money she’s put behind weight loss for so many years into bringing some light and attention to menopause and all that women our age struggle with when we get there? Just imagine that.

Nope. It’s always been about the weight. And it always will be.

This brings us, finally, to last night and this absolute dystopian hour that millions of viewers spent watching Oprah shill Ozempic. The ABC special was called, “Shame, Blame and the Weight Loss Revolution.” Oprah framed Ozempic as a wonder drug that helped her brain finally fix her fat body. Hooray for the end of fatness! She brought on mothers crying about their fat teenagers, women who “could never be happy” until they lost weight, and doctors whose words were eerily reminiscent of early opioid testimonials. There was finally one woman she brought on to talk about the adverse side effects that made her stop. She was vomiting for months, which culminated in her vomiting blood and visiting an ER. After she finished her horrifying story, Oprah essentially asked, “Will you try something else?”

I have to believe Oprah is more than this person, obsessed with weight loss. She has access to therapy and information and specialists. She has to know that weight loss is not always medically indicated. She has to know that weighing 200 pounds as a 5’7” adult woman in menopause is not catastrophic. She has to know this. She’s 70 years old and still obsessed with body image. When they say money can’t buy happiness, this is what they mean.

It can buy shares in weight loss companies though. It can access primetime viewership and send messages that no one needs to hear. It can do so much fucking damage. And I’m sick of Oprah’s damage.

I’d like to say Oprah is in her villain era, but she’s been there for decades. At what point do we accept what she’s been telling us for years? As Oprah’s famously close friend Maya Angelou once said,

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”