In Oprah Winfrey’s recent primetime TV program, “An Oprah Special: Shame, Blame and the Weight Loss Revolution,” the talk show host sat down with Maggie Ervie and her mother to discuss adolescents using blockbuster drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy to lose weight. At just 13 years of age, Ervie underwent bariatric surgery and was prescribed Victoza, a GLP-1 agonist that was an early predecessor of today’s most common anti-obesity medications.
Ervie’s story and its recent spotlight on Winfrey’s special — which portrays obesity as a chronic disease instead of a character flaw — reinforces why the way we talk about childhood obesity matters, especially in the Ozempic era.
