It used to be that the deepest rift in British society ran along the red lines of the European Union. A decade after the referendum, families remain wary of bringing up the subject at Christmas dinner; Remain voters still seethe at promises made by Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson that turned out to be “hot air”. But a new divide is emerging – one that cuts just as sharply, and often along gendered lines. The stigma surrounding weight-loss drugs is now splitting opinion in a way that feels eerily familiar to anyone who lived through the Brexit years.
The new division
The numbers alone tell a story of rapid social change. According to industry estimates, around 1.6 million UK adults used weight-loss medications such as Mounjaro or Wegovy between early 2024 and early 2025. By July 2025, more than two million were paying privately for them – seven times the number receiving them on the NHS. A further 3.3 million Britons said they were interested in starting within the next year. Broader polling suggests that 8.25 million people across the country have either taken, are taking, or are considering taking GLP-1 drugs. That is nearly 7 per cent of the population who have already used them, with another 8 per cent weighing up the option.
The majority of users are women. Mounjaro (tirzepatide) now accounts for roughly 79 per cent of those taking the drugs, and women make up 77.6 per cent of that group. Overall, women are twice as likely as men to use these medications, with the peak age bracket between 45 and 55. Yet alongside this rapid uptake comes a powerful counter-current of secrecy and accusation. Two-thirds of patients reported hiding their treatment from friends and family. Nearly 40 per cent said they had been judged for using GLP-1s – accused of “taking the easy way out”, told to “just eat less and move more”, labelled as cheats or lazy. For women the rate of judgment is higher, at close to 40 per cent, compared with 28 per cent for men. Generation Z are especially secretive: three in four young people using weight-loss drugs do so without telling anyone.
The comparison with Brexit is not simply about division but about the nature of the fault line. Just as the Leave vote became a proxy for deeper anxieties about sovereignty, immigration and national identity, the debate over weight-loss drugs is exposing raw nerves about bodily autonomy, morality and fairness. Many of the criticisms rest on an outdated notion that weight loss is solely a matter of willpower, ignoring the complex biological and hormonal factors that drive obesity. Social media and celebrity culture have compounded the problem by presenting these medicines as cosmetic shortcuts rather than medical interventions. And just as Brexit supporters and opponents talked past each other, so the camps on either side of the “jab or no jab” argument often refuse to see the other’s position as legitimate.
The long shadow of body shaming
Underpinning this new division is a much older one: the relentless critique of women’s bodies. The societal pressure on women to look a certain way – and the harsh judgment when they do not – is far from new, but the arrival of weight-loss drugs has sharpened its edge. Women report being told they are “too thin” or “not thin enough”. If they are heavy, they are called lazy. If they become thin by any method other than strenuous exercise, they are still called lazy. The catch-22 is exhausting.
Comments that seem innocuous often carry a sting. One woman recalled her mother telling her she looked “healthy” – a euphemism she understood all too well. Another was told during pregnancy that she “must” be having a girl because she had “put weight on all over”, whereas “with boys, you just stick out in front”. Older women in their sixties and seventies still refuse cake or chocolate because they are “on a diet”, a lifetime of internalised discipline that shows no sign of loosening.
This scrutiny is not evenly distributed. Women are disproportionately targeted by comments about their appearance, and that burden is reflected in the data on weight-loss drug stigma. Nearly 40 per cent of women using these medications report being judged, compared with just over a quarter of men. The same pattern holds for concealment: women are far more likely to hide their treatment. The result is a peculiar double bind: the drugs offer relief from the physical and psychological toll of obesity, but they also carry the shame of being seen to have taken a shortcut – a shortcut that society regards as cheating even as it demands that women conform to an impossible standard.
Expert and personal perspectives
Roxane Gay, in her memoir Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, describes building her body into a “fortress” since her early teens in response to trauma. She writes: “People see bodies like mine and make assumptions. They think they know the why of my body. They do not.” Her account speaks to the way external judgments flatten individual experience. The body becomes a site of public commentary, its story ignored or derided.
Sally Boyd, 51, experienced the flip side of that dynamic. Mounjaro, she says, transformed her life: her health improved, her fitness became the best it has ever been, and her energy levels soared. But the gain came with an unexpected cost. “I didn’t expect my 30-year battle with weight to be replaced by a new struggle: the secrecy and shame surrounding these drugs,” she said. Her experience is emblematic of the broader pattern: women who finally find an effective treatment are then forced to hide it for fear of being judged.
Yimei Qin, a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner, offers a different lens altogether. She approaches appetite dysregulation not as a problem to be silenced but as a signal. “I’ve learned to be curious about the question behind the symptom,” she said. “The more useful question is: what is the body trying to communicate?” Her perspective – that appetite is not an enemy – stands in direct contrast to the moralising that surrounds weight-loss drugs. It asks why the body’s self-regulation has been disrupted in the first place, rather than simply seeking to override it.
The tension between these views – medical intervention, holistic inquiry, personal liberation, social shame – creates a landscape as contested as any political referendum. Women, the data shows, bear the heaviest weight of this new divide. They are the ones most likely to use the drugs, most likely to be judged for them, and most likely to conceal their use. And they are the ones who have been told for generations that their bodies are never quite right. The least we could do for each other is hold space – and make sure it is one we can all fit in.