I think there's a lot of just-world fallacy going around re: how I keep running across the following pattern online now that GLP-1RA drugs exist.
Commenter A (esp. often a woman, though of any age): I lost a lot of weight and people treat me radically better. I did not change my behavior in a way that explains this; it seems like stigma / prejudice.
Commenter B: I have never met you but it is probably the case that stigma is not relevant and in fact you did somehow become more confident or otherwise start behaving differently in ways that mean your prior and current experiences of the world were somehow deserved.
There is a persistent bias, in general and online, against any claim that one's job prospects, social status, overall life satisfaction is dependent on the way people treat you specifically due to your physical appearance. I think this bias has worsened in the recent decade due to how emphatically the affirmative claim is espoused by the incel/looksmaxxer movement, so conceding any ground means "proving them right".
There are certain realities people feel more comfortable denying/de-emphasizing. Another such bias is the impact of innate talent and its connection to success in any field tied to cognitive ability. People don't seem to want to accept that there are differences in ability/faculties that are:
1. Extremely impactful on one's life outcome
2. Extremely hard or impossible to change, especially past adolescence
3. Largely predetermined by genetic differences, many of which are random
One of my favorite examples of this is a transgender woman who worked at Subway (sandwich shop) and wrote about her experience on reddit. Someone posed a question on reddit that was something like "people who have transitioned, how did others treat you differently after the fact." I interpreted the question as how did friends and family react after knowing you previously as one gender and then another, but this trans woman's response on how the general public treated her was much more interesting IMO.
Before she transitioned, as a man she said she'd get lots of compliments and kudos from customers for basically just doing her job at Subway. As a woman, though, people were much more likely to complain and she was rarely complimented, and only if she went "above and beyond" her normal work duties.
The thing I loved about this is that, like the women who lose a lot of weight, she basically "acted as her own control". When it's different men and women you can argue over whether or not people behaved differently, but it's harder to do that (or at least it should be) if it's the same person.
Indeed. It is not quite the same situation, but I experienced differences when I transitioned from slovenly geek to well dressed consultant. Cut my long hair, lost some weight and started dressing much nicer. People treated me with more respect, taking me more seriously. More random people wanted to talk to me, and not just flirty people. People were more curious about me as a person.
Biases exist. You see it when your personality stays the same but visible aspects of you change.
>Before she transitioned, as a man she said she'd get lots of compliments and kudos from customers for basically just doing her job at Subway. As a woman, though, people were much more likely to complain and she was rarely complimented, and only if she went "above and beyond" her normal work duties.
Mild counterpoint: a friend of mine, a professional woman, started on GLP-1 drugs some time ago. She has lost weight, but she also says she's had significant cognitive improvements, more focus, better sleep, etc. It would be great to have research which explicitly teases out these various effects.
This research already exists though. Obesity and being overweight increases the risk of sleep apnea, strokes, heart disease, diabetes, mental health problems, etc. etc
Causality is an issue there, I would suggest that genetic auto immune issues that are rather wide spread can cause all of the above. I think people are finding that GLP-1s help with auto immune issues.
I can speak only for myself. But when I was overweight, the heels of my feet would crack into such deep fissures that I could remove skin like thick pieces of jerky.
I lost 90 pounds and now the heels of my feet are as soft and supple as a baby's bottom.
Being overweight causes all sorts of weird side effects.
Anectata: I sleep much better after losing about 25 kg, and don't snore anymore. I didn't really think before about how your airways can get fat, but now that they're thinner, I had to relearn how to swallow, because food/drinks tried to go up my nose. I guess my point is that resting better has all sorts of secondary improvements.
The incidence rate of genetic issues generally doesn't change much over time due to how slow genes changes, so an increase in obesity rates from 5% to over 40% in just a few generations suggest the cause is very unlikely to be due to genetics.
In the US, I'm convinced that it was the food pyramid.
As a kid in the 80s, I wondered how it made sense that my diabetic father was told to follow the same model as non-diabetics, which emphasized carbohydrates.
Interesting. Part of the reason I was eager to use retatrutide was the reversibility. Fantastic drug and entirely reversible. I self-tested and the effects I had on it were reversed entirely in its absence. Similar to caffeine or amphetamine at the doses I have tried (which are not high), removing the intervention resulted in a return to a prior state over a fairly short period. I'd say that, in general, some of the good properties essential to an intervention for a non-debilitating condition are:
* uniform dose-response: easy to increase effect by changing dose
* reversibility: automatic reversion to pre-intervention in a short-term is gold standard - allows for regret escape
* low-cost
GLP-1 drugs have these properties which I like. I'm surprised to hear that someone would prefer the alternative, but I must imagine that cost and the dosing structure (sub-q injection is annoying) must dominate decision making here.
The side effect of drastic muscle loss isn't quickly reversible though.
Because muscle is about 3x as expensive to maintain as fat, unless you are on some major strength training to maintain, muscle is the very first thing that your body gets rid of when losing weight.
So now you are off the GLP-1. But you also have to eat fewer calories to maintain a calorie deficit because you no longer have all that calorie burning muscle.
* And depending on when you start your GLP-1 journey, men when they hit 40 naturally lose between 5% and 8% of their total muscle mass ++a year++ a decade (women, probably earlier). In addition to the muscle loss due to weight loss.
* And it takes approximately 3 times longer in your 50s to create a pound of muscle that it does in your 20s.
* And you can't train like you did in your 20s or you will hurt yourself.
* And as you age, your body can't absorb the protein it needs to build muscle as efficiently as it did when you are young. So you need to eat even more food to compensate.
Ok. This is now more of a rant about getting older than it is about GLP-1s.
-- Edited to reflect that muscle loss % is decade, per the corrections in replies.
It doesn’t have to be a foregone conclusion that GLP-1 causes muscle loss though. The primary reason for the muscle loss is the reduction in calories and protein intake. If you want to keep most of your muscle mass you can just make sure you keep up with your daily caloric and protein needs.
GLP-1s aren’t “forever drugs.” They’re eliminated so fast from your system you need to keep taking them to keep the effect. That’s the opposite of a forever drug. If you go off them, you just return to the way you were.
It certainly can be a good thing! But it can also be considered a bad thing that you have to keep taking them, and have to keep paying for them forever. A one-time fix (a cure) can be more desirable than a lifelong treatment regimen.
how do you permanently cure obesity? you can try rewiring metabolism with crispr or some epigenetic changes but thats insanely risky, it would be very likely to mess up the immune system and give people cancer or nerve disorders.
maybe i could see something based on modified gut bacteria that produce GLP-1 drugs inside your body. that would run into problems with dose regulation but at least you can flush them out with antibiotics if you get a bad response.
Which means if you want to maintain their effect, you need to keep taking them forever. So maybe GP used the wrong term but I suspect they meant exactly this.
In any case, we just don't know what kind of long-term effects these drugs have. No one knows what happens if you come out of them 30 years after you started.
The health problems that GLPs produce help people avoid are way more costly than the drugs will ever be. Especially now that the market is so competitive and will only get moreso.
For me, historically drugs like this for ADHD or depression or gastric bypass or whatever tend to lose effectiveness over time as the body adjusts. Not for everyone but for enough where you've got a short term gain that ultimately compounds the original problem.
Medication can be a slippery slope into side effects and rotating dosages/medicines. Especially for behavioral medicines.
Yeah, money, and just signing up to regularly inject a thing forever.
Anything that’s “starting tomorrow and until the day you die” just seems like a thing I shouldn’t take lightly.
Also I’m not badly, badly overweight. So it’s not like “it’s this or cardiac arrest in a year or two”, for me. I should probably be dealing with my issues the old timey way.
The stakes look very different for other people, obviously.
Water and food have a milder risk profile. The FDA (https://glp-1.health/blog/glp1-obesity-eligibility-bmi-chart...) recommends "GLP-1 weight loss medications (Wegovy, Zepbound) if your BMI is 30 or higher, or if your BMI is 27 or higher with at least one weight-related health condition such as high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, or sleep apnea". This is because there are side effects such that GLP-1 meds have not been shown to produce a net positive benefit-to-risk ratio for people who are only mildly overweight.
> This is because there are side effects such that GLP-1 meds have not been shown to produce a net positive benefit-to-risk ratio for people who are only mildly overweight.
Importantly, this is different from "GLP-1 meds have been shown not to produce a net positive benefit-to-risk ratio"
Anyway nearly all of the side effects for these drugs are just discomfort. Not even really obvious they should be called "risks." Meanwhile, the vast majority of Americans who are not already diabetic or have HTN will soon, and it would be quite a surprise to learn these drugs don't have protective effect.
Bariatric surgery has most of the same upsides as GLP-1s and is a one-time cost. But I agree with the other commenters that "forever drug" is mostly fretting without an actual reason. The Hunger that engineered foods are deliberately designed to induce is a forever thing too, now there's a counterweapon.
If it sounded like I don’t think other people should take them, that was a mistake on my part.
I’m just really not what you’d think of as a model candidate for them, so I’m not quite ready to commit to my first and only, not exactly free, rest of my life pharmaceutical dependence.
That may not seem perfectly rational to some… but ya’know… I’m the one who has to live with my brain.
I'm sure being treated nicer by everyone might also increase my confidence tbh. I think the opposite order is more interesting for that though - people who become overweight and notice their coworkers and friends changing how they look at them and so on.
I find it amazing people don’t believe this. I lost about 50kg and people treated me better. They didn’t randomly shout ‘fat fuck’ in the street for a start.
I can't believe there is even a discussion. The better you look, the better people treat you and being better looking also means being of a normal weight.
I literally have a weight number where if I am north of the number, I can tell people treat me differently and not as nice and if I am south of that number, people treat me a lot nicer (gasp, Women even hit on me). People are fooling themselves if they think their weight does not matter to the world around them.
I'm close to B. In the 80's they tested how appearance affects people. Some women were given a facial scar and went to interviews while others were left as is. The scar group reported higher levels of discrimination than those without the scar. Tricky thing was none of them had scars in the interviews. The women that thought they had the fake scars had a "touch up" and the testers removed it.
I would point out that there's a middle way between those stances: GLP-1 receptor agonism has anti-auto-immune effects.
(I don't know yet if anyone has determined whether this is a direct effect of GLP-1R agonism; or whether e.g. metabolic disorder has auto-immune aspects, and GLP-1R agonism effectively treats metabolic disorder; or whether it's just that e.g. sugar and other simple carbs are directly pro-auto-immune, and GLP-1R agonism breaks the addictive salience of sugars/simple carbs in such a way that even if you're eating the same amount, you're putting less of those in your body. Regardless of the mechanism, there does seem to be a consensus on the overall anti-auto-immune effect itself.)
The anti-auto-immune effects of GLP-1RAs show up visibly, e.g. on the face, entirely separately from the effects of weight loss (because this effect still occurs even when the dose of GLP-1RAs is too low to provoke weight loss), in the form of decreased puffiness, oiliness, acne, chapped lips, etc. It causes a bunch of small changes that make someone look like they're "taking better care of themselves" (even though they may have been taking assiduous care of themselves before, but didn't look it, for autoimmune reasons.) People definitely judge others on how "healthy" they look, so this could definitely help someone to get a job.
But the anti-auto-immune effects of GLP-1RAs also show up in entirely unconscious behavioral changes — not in anything cognitive, like "confidence", but rather due to GLP-1RAs being at least partly effective in treating chronic, sometimes-subclinical, usually-not-well-managed autoimmune pain disorders (think fibromyalgia) and autoimmune energy disorders (think ME-CFS.) Being less achey and having more energy makes people behave differently — whether that be on the macro level in subconscious decision-making (think of how people make different choices when overtired without being aware of it — people with chronic energy disorders are "overtired" 100% of the time!), or on the micro level, in terms of how e.g. speech is performed (people have reported becoming less "croaky", and their usable vocal range expanding), how nonverbal communication is performed (it's easier and "cheaper" to move your face and head and body, so you do), etc.
And note how, for these behavioral changes, some of these might be obvious to the person going through the changes (like your voice changing); but others are things you may not be aware has changed.
For facial expressions in particular, people learn to use their face in certain expressive ways when they're young, and then often don't notice when their face stops "responding" fully/correctly/in the way they'd anticipate to their brain's commands to execute these expressions. As far as you're concerned, you're doing what you always did; it's just that, at some point, you developed an autoimmune condition that attacked (or plugged up with waste) some nerves or muscles or tissues or whatever, that made those higher-level signals from your motor cortex stop translating perfectly to actually initiating the actions you expected. Most people don't periodically test their facial expressions in a mirror, so you only get info about the breakdown of these capabilities reflected in other people's reactions toward you changing. And, likewise, if these capabilities were to be suddenly restored, you'd only find out through others' reactions to you as well!
Thank you. That is insightful and well written. And corresponds with academic literature as far as I have read.
I find it extremely interesting that GLP-1 agonists and GLP-1 receptors are highly pulmonary.
(There seems to be a persistent correlation between detailed pulmonary mechanisms, biology, responses… and neuroinflammation. Which does make sense when we consider the metabolic demands of the brain,
which can be highly localized and sensitive to fine variances in supporting system capacity.)
My from-the hip take – from the hip!, no judging pls; It's a hunch, working to falsify it – is that… everything that makes humans aggressive to someone. Every feature someone can present that increases the odds of aggression… is a heuristic for neuroinflammation.
It's a lot of things, but neuroinflammation is a pretty consistent good match as core heuristic.
As in: GLP-1 agonists do reduce neuroinflammation. And then the hunch: This generally and ubiquitously reduces the aggression-induced features thereof.
(This take is somewhere between riffing on concepts and a surprisingly earnest and mechanistic theoretical perspective. Started as jokey banter but it's kinda hard to unsee it. not sure where else to place it, haha.)
Why is lookism supposed to be bad/stigma, but favoring intelligent people is good/meritocracy? Both are "unjust" in the sense that they are a result of genetic lottery. If anything, it's the intelligence you are born with that you can't do anything about.
Society is better off with more intelligence, but also with more beauty! As we automate intelligence, the selection pressure on good looks will only increase.
> Why is lookism supposed to be bad/stigma, but favoring intelligent people is good/meritocracy?
Your question elides what “favoring” is in this context.
Outside of a few particular jobs, intelligence better predicts work performance, especially for knowledge work. The point of calling out the stigma of obesity is that it unfairly maligns people who are otherwise capable of contributing to a company.
> Nor do I find evidence of upward job mobility among incumbent workers. Already-employed women do not increase hours, income per household member, or job-to-job moves. If anything, employer changes decline, possibly due to a desire to retain access to health insurance that covers these drugs. These null effects help distinguish a new-match channel from a general productivity or well-being channel
This complicates the idea that it’s just people treating lighter people better. It could well be that a lot of people who take GLP-1s are obese enough where it affects their ability to go out in the world and do stuff, and losing the weight enables people to work.
I also snag on her not attributing it to any personality changes because people reported no change in life satisfaction, loneliness, or depression from taking GLP-1s. Which seems to run counter to the reasons why [overweight] people would take GLP-1s
I'm not about to dive into the literature, but I kinda just assumed that losing weight naturally would help all those things.
> The study also paints this as "kind of unfair against women", but didn't include men at all.
Unfairness found against one segment is not negated by studying only one segment, and “but” is a load-bearing word representing your entire one-word claim. Please explain in more words what argument you’re supporting with your two observations?
If I read a medical paper that concluded and headlined that “cancer kills left-handed patients” but studied only left-handed patients, I might think the study was technically correct but still reasonably wonder if the left-handedness is relevant to the study’s results.
> wonder if the left-handedness is relevant to the study's results
Considering this in generic, such distinctions are relevant to all scientific research studies for two reasons:
First, the hypothesis was only tested for a population of left-handed patients. So, while it serves as a foundational basis for future research both exclusively on left-handed patients, and for research on populations exclusive of left-handed patients, it cannot serve as a basis for any claims about any population exclusive of left-handed patients. This is generally applicable to all scientific research: you must not draw conclusions that exceed the scope of your study.
Second, there is no 'best' level of population diversity for studies to target in their research. One study may target left-handedness; another may target blonde six-fingered men; and a third may target an even distribution of people from all ages and races, but restricting to one region's current population alone in that selection.
Moving on to trying to understand your specific concerns regarding this specific study, I still don't see any opinions expressed by you about this study. You're describing the basic circumstances about scientific research but have not yet made any claims, nor have expressed any personal opinions, about this study in particular and why you're interested in talking about it. There are no sentences that yet contain "I think that [opinion]" or any synonym thereof, and so no takeaway is possible from your comments thus far.
Perhaps one of these examples will help you find a way to communicate your views to us. These are just creative napkin sketches, to help encourage you begin sharing your viewpoint with us. You could tackle them as direct questions and answer at length — a simple yes/no will fully devalue your views, so I discourage that! — or you could construct your own opinions as statements rather than questions and then say "I feel / believe / think that ___"; whatever works best for you.
1. Is your argument that this study was inappropriately selective, and that should invalidate its results?
2. Are you appreciative of the study's design and outcome, and wish to see it repeated for another population?
3. Do you have any conflicts of interest to declare regarding the population restrictions of this study?
This has been the case for a long time, even with attributes that you have far less control over, such as your height [1]. Given typical social prejudices, I would not be surprised if the height effect was greater for men and the weight effect was greater for women.
GLP-1 drugs seem to provide a (relatively) painless way to control the weight effect; the corresponding treatment for control of height [2] is much more painful, risky, and expensive.
I know of a guy who, before attending in-person meetings for the first time with new people, sends the message "FYI, I am 7 feet tall." He's gotten enough weird looks or outright stunned people that he takes precautionary measures.
Perhaps not in the early part of the hiring pipeline but unless the entire hiring process is remote (I've done this once so it's not impossible), sooner or later the full physical appearance is going to get judged.
I did have a weird experience right before the pandemic where the CTO of our company, who had never met me in person before but we'd been on tons of Zoom calls, got visibly upset and even said he'd been tricked, because I was older than he thought. That wasn't a good sign for my future in the slice of the company. The irony here is that he was near retirement age and has since retired. Still, my professional headshot, which was at least a decade old, appears to have set expectations. Guess even on a video call people sometimes see what they expect to see and only during an in-person meeting do they have to confront reality.
The best analogy I have heard about height and men: Height is a proxy for strength, and that is why it is so advantageous in economics, politics, and dating. I fully expect serious medical research in the near future for a childhood genetic treatment to increase adult height, as the advantages are just so enormous.
Lookism is pretty serious, folks. Or whatever you want to call it since that one sounds silly.
Maybe a makeover should be suggested more often in job search advice? Work on your hair and diet for a few months before you jump ship and you could have better luck.
I thought this has always been pretty obvious. It’s just human nature that makes people “judge” by appearances. As long as there is a face to face interview I don’t think someone could claim is not discriminating on appearance. It happens “naturally” and could go both ways but more often the “good looking” and “charming” is rewarded. It’s part of the “life’s not fair”.
Nah, gobs of people will insist to your face, despite direct evidence, that "I can look past it" when interviewing, or "I don't see color"
The world is made of HR departments and executive suites chock full of people who insist they are somehow special and immune to all the things we know about how fallible humans are at making decisions.
It's like how nearly everyone believes themselves to be an "Above average" driver, including the morons who get into an accident every single year because they text and drive constantly.
In my experience, improving appearance is already one of the top suggestions for job applicants. We're attuned the other way too, showing up to work in a nice outfit tends to be met with "got an interview today?"
The problem with pretty privilege is it's quite female centric. (It's not that normative to call a man pretty and intend it as a compliment) It ignores that it also applies to men who are attractive, tall, have strong (as in pronounced) masculine physical features
My mid-50's mother was on quite a long unemployment streak, and I suggested she use realtime ML models to replace her webcam face with a de-aged and improved one.
Ageism and being attractive are both real things, like it or not... =/
If everybody improves their looks, the net effect will be zero. It's also not clear what parts of "looks" actually have an effect. It's also not clear what effect GLP-1 has on other elements that might make someone more employable.
The study itself is certainly not conclusive. The control group were women who wanted to take GLP-1, but didn't. That can indicate all kinds of status/class differences. The study also seems to have been a fishing expedition, and is based on self-reports, so it's tentative at best. I wouldn't recommend taking GLP-1 for a job interview based on this article.
Same reason you shouldn't try to build skills or acquire unique relevant experience as part of your job search: if everybody does it, the net effect will be zero.
>If everybody improves their looks, the net effect will be zero.
I'm not sure that's true. I think there's a baseline issue here. Regardless, even if it netted out to zero, you'd end up with a different order of who gets hired when, so for any individual it'd still make sense to try to improve your looks.
Might be different for programmers… my experience is that—broadly speaking—programming ability is inversely proportional to how well dressed you are. I wonder if that is still true, or if I’m just old.
Companies, certainly large ones, prefer people who can communicate and behave professionally, so that would favor well-dressed applicants. If we're thinking nerdy stereotypes: most programmers (by far) don't have to (and can't) solve tricky graph-theoretical algorithms or optimize intricate low-level stuff.
I get a haircut and wear a suit when I interview but am wearing an oversized Star Wars t-shirt while working right now. It’s just putting in the right level of effort at the right time?
There might be a set of people for whom that might be true. There are a lot of people for whom that is not true and, fair or not, they will have an easier time to make things happen in the world
The study compares people who actually started GLP-1 treatment to people who say they want to but didn't. It sure seems to me like people who say they want something but don't take action to get it would also be less likely to get jobs, independent of what the thing they want is.
first sentence is one step from outright discrimination even if not everyone recognizes it. if you’re visibly transgender/queer, have noticeable accent, visible disability, and on and on and on
It is weird that you picked this example. HN is dominated by folks working in technology. Depending upon where you work, a large minority of your co-workers probably have a "noticeable accent". Do you really think it still matters in 2026? I am forever trying to tell non-native English speakers who are concerned that their accent makes them sound dumb: For educated native English speakers, we don't care about your accent; we care about what you are saying.
I can get on board with this. However, discrimination based on political affiliation has been rampant in Silicon Valley ever since Trump has been president.
In addition to this, I regularly am looking for contract work, and have jobs outright ask me if I am part of the LGBT community in the interview process. This is almost all coming from California. Before DOGE cut most of the budgets, NGOs would tell me that they would only hire me if I was part of a minority group.
Since there's no test, I just say that I am to get more work (and this has gotten me more work).
I've worked with LOTS of people from the LGBT community. At this point, discrimination just isn't happening for those groups at any mainstream level. Women also make up > 50% of management in almost all companies I deal with, so the 'glass ceiling' is also a myth.
Usually, chronically-overweight ppl have tried regulating weight with all kinds of diets, lifecycle interventions, regular exercise, etc, and a lot of the time the thing that actually worked was the GLP-1. I think this speaks a lot to the variance in metabolism, hunger, cravings etc across the population.
The rub is that if they did a good job with those things, they would have worked. Most people cannot accurately account for calories and poorly estimate how hard they are actually working out.
I think this is a commonly-held misconception. Even when individuals accurately account for calories and workout intensity (using hard data, not feels), theres a large variance across individuals, broadly attributable to 'metabolics'.
While that is true there is variance it doesn't vary to the point of overcoming the basic thermodynamics at play. Facts are, you eat fewer calories, you lose weight. You burn more calories than previously without eating to make up the difference, you lose weight. There is no obese person that can starve themselves and not lose weight. It just doesn't work like that. The energy has to come from somewhere.
What often happens when people say "it doesn't work for me" is that they think they are working hard in the gym but aren't actually, or they think they are eating healthy without realizing all the little snacks or drinks they consume are putting some thumbs on the scale.
I've been overweight many times in my life, and I've been able to use diet and exercise to get my weight back to a healthy level.
Each occasion took a large amount of willpower and the healthy habits didn't stick around forever.
I started taking tirzepatide weekly and the most striking effect was a marked decrease in cravings. Where previously it took all my willpower to ignore cravings, it has now become difficult to overeat. I would have to force myself.
Now I wonder if its like this for those who have never had issues with their weight. Are there people who insist it's easy but have never experienced cravings?
Among baseline partnered men (which is where partnership dissolution is
well-defined), I find a 6.8pp increase in men leaving their baseline partners
(s.e. 2.9), which rises to 12.1pp after 1.5+ years (s.e. 6.1). Unlike women,
partnered men leave existing relationships with weight loss.
I wonder how GLP-1 treatment would affect men's employment. I think in the case of women, if there's an effect for appearance increasing employment opportunities, it's not surprising that losing weight would help too.
I am trying to re-find it but there was a study I'd read that was saying that in general if you don't break it down, there's a massive amount of weight stigma impact on women's employment but not men's. However, if you do break it down, you see that that impact doesn't exist for blue collar men, and does exist (if in a mediated form) for college-educated white collar men. If anyone can help turn this up (or something contradicting it) it seems useful.
My experience is for men that it's not just white collar/blue collar, more it's appearance gives a halo that helps people progress in domains where there's a human, interpretive aspect to advancement. General contractors are rewarded for being attractive and fit, the plumber they contract to is rewarded for getting the work done on time/budget. Attractive men get promoted to prominent public facing and leadership roles more for this reason, while dumpy unattractive men tend to be stuck in (typically lower level) roles where competence is enough.
Unlike 100 years ago, the bald thing is only a negative if you're fat/weak looking. The bald tough guy has been so established in modern lore that even older men can ride the wave if they look/dress the part (through the 50s anyhow, once you're saggy and loose it looks try hard).
It just changes the baseline. Maybe weight stops being an easy discriminator, but we go back to clothes, styling and make up quality. The lookism still exists even among the prettiest, as we can see in the eating disorders and other issues among people in Hollywood. Many of the prettiest women on the big screen see themselves as on the edge of not getting any more work.
It puts a finger on the scale. Which unfortunately lasts as long as the person takes the drug. What happens when they stop taking it, unless they were on some serious strength trailing, is that they will have lost all the muscle they need to burn the extra calories they will start to eat when they transition off the drug. Which means the weight comes back even faster.
The body has no mechanism to break down fat cells like it can muscle cells. So every fat cell they had before taking the GLP-1 will still be there after years of taking GLP-1. Like deflated balloons, just primed to absorb any extra calories.
Those fat cells will be screaming for fat when empty. GLP-1s are a drug for life currently, we aren't treating them as such but we should because there is no avoiding the need to continue to quiet those fat cells down from their errant signalling to the brain.
You want the exercise during it anyway to maintain muscle mass. Usually your prescribing doctor will be trying to measure how much of that you're losing and might change dose or require diet changes for protein etc
40 years ago educated women were rare, even in the western world.
Now not being obese is becoming increasingly rare.
I for one am glad for all the people now finding better employment opportunities, better health, and (anecdotally) better outlooks on life thanks to their weight loss. Awesome throughout.
Diminishing returns though. Once everyone is on glp-1, noone gets an employment advantage from it anymore.
I still recommend riding the wave as long as it works.
> 40 years ago educated women were rare, even in the western world.
Uh, what? Of my nine aunts (both sides), all of them have university degrees. None of them are particularly special (very high intelligence, nor from wealth families). Women have been going enmass to university since the mid-1960s. If you want to argue about it, first define what you mean by "rare".
Are you for promoting obesity and unhealthy behavior? It's not because you want to promote people being healthy (aka having a normal body weight) that you are "fat-shaming".
If looks are important for employment how then men find a job? Men are mostly unattractive even compared to not a perfect woman. In terms of looks and style, average man loses to an average woman. Or employers require only women to be attractive?
I'd be surprised if there wasn't a similar dynamic for men. While men probably have a wider range of "acceptable" physical flaws as compared to women, that doesn't mean there isn't a range. A morbidly obese man is probably going to have a tougher time finding a job than a similarly skilled fit and trim man.
Part of this is probably unconscious, but another part is probably explicit assumptions about the person's self-discipline, e.g. the fit guy must get up at 6am every morning and go for a run, and the obese guy probably sleeps in, eats trash, etc.
> Part of this is probably unconscious, but another part is probably explicit assumptions about the person's self-discipline, e.g. the fit guy must get up at 6am every morning and go for a run, and the obese guy probably sleeps in, eats trash, etc.
More like stereotypes.
For some reason I took both GLP-1 and Ritalin everyday, having moderate exercises despite throwups, only see myself gaining weight rather than losing. I have no idea why both drugs that claims to lose weight only to do the exact opposite, and perhaps I'm the kind of people who can only get fat and not losing it despite some joint efforts.
Perhaps it is not enough and I have to go full aerobatic and ketone mode. Money money money.
Was GLP-1 oral? Those off-brand lozenges don't do anything.
A real GLP-1 slows down digestion so much that if you try to overeat you'll regret it. You'll still be uncomfortably full and ready to throw up on day 2 after that big meal.
Hmm, I've got Rybelsus, it did something. I can reduce my daily meal from 3 to 1 lately, and even on 2 meals I can eat half of it compared to what I typically eats ordinarily, to get full appetite.
Still, with all the things I've tried I still gained weight. And I have been noticably getting harder to sleep at night because the hungry feelings comes back. Maybe it is the oral Rybelsus waning off idk
yeah definitely try to get on injections if you can, you should be struggling to stomach food after two meals a day if it's in full effect.
then be sure to get extra fiber and protein from somewhere. and my biggest suggestion is always to just not keep and snacks or extra food in your home - keep what you need for planned meals and maybe some apples or similar on the side. very dark chocolate is also decent for some flavor that's low impact imo
Rybelsus is remarkably less effective than the injections (both in my personal experience, and according to the science), and it's also very hard to take properly. I would not extrapolate from that. It also takes about 30 days to hit a useful dosage. If you're interested in GLP1s, either get the injections, or see if you can source some Foundayo / orforglipron.
Men get the same effect through things that are traditionally masculine. Off the top of my head, things like height, ruggedness, and for clothes you want straight lines (such as with suits, which a well-fitting one has a lot of and a badly fitting one curves around the body and breaks the straight lines).
"Based on the meta-analysis, we found evidence that the height premium varied by context: the height premium was smaller in the U.S. and Australia, and larger in Latin America and Asia. Within geographies, there appeared to be a larger height premium for men than for women."
Men tend to work in less public facing/social career fields. Your appearance doesn’t matter much if you’re a linesman or a welder; it matters more if you’re doing sales or supporting clients. Probably not the entire story, I think people do have different expectations for men and women, but certainly part of it.
you know a pretty fair majority of men are working in white collar office work, which is directly comparable in terms of public facing and social careers?
real loosely, something like 1/3, 40% are in these blue collar fields, and even in those fields there are enough sales and similar roles that prefer better appearances.
I would say different white collar jobs have different expectations for personal appearance.
For example, even looking solely at the men at my company, our sales reps, marketing lead, and CEO are all more conventionally attractive than our hardware engineers, finance manager, and CTO. And I would say women tend to be at least slightly more likely to wind up in the former positions than the latter (of course we’re speaking in generalities here)
Women and men are not judged according to the same standards. We're not super sexually dimorphic as a species, but certainly enough to matter in terms of evolved social responses.
Well you kinda said it yourself? If men are generally unattractive then a man should be less likely to lose out to a better-looking man, simply because there's fewer of these to go around.
Yes but an average man would lose to most of women in term of looks, style, clothes choice, skin care, makeup, hair, etc. If employers cared only about looks then they would prefer to hire women. Of course, it is possible that only women get judged by looks and men are not.
Maybe to you, I personally find both the average man and woman attractive. Women spend more time taking care of their bodies though, given societal pressures
Nah men by and large do not experience the same levels of societal pressure than women do to be attractive, modulo getting into looksmaxxing and other stuff, and even that is mostly to show off masculinity traits to other men and not actually in being attractive to women.
Not exactly sure why this is downvoted - seems like a genuine question.
Here's a random Internet troll's theory (mine): there's a kernel of truth to the whole "patriarchy" thing. It's just that most men aren't part of it.
Hold that pitchfork for just a moment! What I meant was: the entire economy is controlled by a very small number of people. Most of them are men, and they have very particular preferences. Assuming the majority of them are straight, it would make sense that they prefer women they see as pretty, and don't care much about men. If anything, a good looking man might be a competitor.
I don't think this idea is completely nuts. Think of the few times in history when a woman had real power. For example, Catherine the Great. Who was suddenly promoted to positions of influence? Sexy men, her "favorites" (yes, that's an actual term).
I think there's a lot of just-world fallacy going around re: how I keep running across the following pattern online now that GLP-1RA drugs exist.
Commenter A (esp. often a woman, though of any age): I lost a lot of weight and people treat me radically better. I did not change my behavior in a way that explains this; it seems like stigma / prejudice.
Commenter B: I have never met you but it is probably the case that stigma is not relevant and in fact you did somehow become more confident or otherwise start behaving differently in ways that mean your prior and current experiences of the world were somehow deserved.
Which is kind of wild!
There is a persistent bias, in general and online, against any claim that one's job prospects, social status, overall life satisfaction is dependent on the way people treat you specifically due to your physical appearance. I think this bias has worsened in the recent decade due to how emphatically the affirmative claim is espoused by the incel/looksmaxxer movement, so conceding any ground means "proving them right".
There are certain realities people feel more comfortable denying/de-emphasizing. Another such bias is the impact of innate talent and its connection to success in any field tied to cognitive ability. People don't seem to want to accept that there are differences in ability/faculties that are:
1. Extremely impactful on one's life outcome
2. Extremely hard or impossible to change, especially past adolescence
3. Largely predetermined by genetic differences, many of which are random
One of my favorite examples of this is a transgender woman who worked at Subway (sandwich shop) and wrote about her experience on reddit. Someone posed a question on reddit that was something like "people who have transitioned, how did others treat you differently after the fact." I interpreted the question as how did friends and family react after knowing you previously as one gender and then another, but this trans woman's response on how the general public treated her was much more interesting IMO.
Before she transitioned, as a man she said she'd get lots of compliments and kudos from customers for basically just doing her job at Subway. As a woman, though, people were much more likely to complain and she was rarely complimented, and only if she went "above and beyond" her normal work duties.
The thing I loved about this is that, like the women who lose a lot of weight, she basically "acted as her own control". When it's different men and women you can argue over whether or not people behaved differently, but it's harder to do that (or at least it should be) if it's the same person.
Indeed. It is not quite the same situation, but I experienced differences when I transitioned from slovenly geek to well dressed consultant. Cut my long hair, lost some weight and started dressing much nicer. People treated me with more respect, taking me more seriously. More random people wanted to talk to me, and not just flirty people. People were more curious about me as a person.
Biases exist. You see it when your personality stays the same but visible aspects of you change.
>Before she transitioned, as a man she said she'd get lots of compliments and kudos from customers for basically just doing her job at Subway. As a woman, though, people were much more likely to complain and she was rarely complimented, and only if she went "above and beyond" her normal work duties.
Highly relevant: Norah Vincent's <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Made_Man_(book)>
Vincent later committed suicide. She found from writing the above book that being a man was so difficult that it caused a breakdown. <https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/18/obituaries/norah-vincent-...>
Mild counterpoint: a friend of mine, a professional woman, started on GLP-1 drugs some time ago. She has lost weight, but she also says she's had significant cognitive improvements, more focus, better sleep, etc. It would be great to have research which explicitly teases out these various effects.
This research already exists though. Obesity and being overweight increases the risk of sleep apnea, strokes, heart disease, diabetes, mental health problems, etc. etc
Causality is an issue there, I would suggest that genetic auto immune issues that are rather wide spread can cause all of the above. I think people are finding that GLP-1s help with auto immune issues.
I can speak only for myself. But when I was overweight, the heels of my feet would crack into such deep fissures that I could remove skin like thick pieces of jerky.
I lost 90 pounds and now the heels of my feet are as soft and supple as a baby's bottom.
Being overweight causes all sorts of weird side effects.
Anectata: I sleep much better after losing about 25 kg, and don't snore anymore. I didn't really think before about how your airways can get fat, but now that they're thinner, I had to relearn how to swallow, because food/drinks tried to go up my nose. I guess my point is that resting better has all sorts of secondary improvements.
The incidence rate of genetic issues generally doesn't change much over time due to how slow genes changes, so an increase in obesity rates from 5% to over 40% in just a few generations suggest the cause is very unlikely to be due to genetics.
Not exclusively genetic but inclusively genetic. There are of course other factors involved and I think genes are a big one.
In the US, I'm convinced that it was the food pyramid.
As a kid in the 80s, I wondered how it made sense that my diabetic father was told to follow the same model as non-diabetics, which emphasized carbohydrates.
Nah you don't get to 40% obesity in some countries due to genetic issues.
It's all hyperpalatable foods and the effects of extra adipose tissue are know to be bad for pretty much every health metric under the sun.
OTOH, these other effects could have been directly caused by weight loss. Being overweight isn't exactly healthy!
I really wish these weren’t forever drugs. I would be next in line.
Interesting. Part of the reason I was eager to use retatrutide was the reversibility. Fantastic drug and entirely reversible. I self-tested and the effects I had on it were reversed entirely in its absence. Similar to caffeine or amphetamine at the doses I have tried (which are not high), removing the intervention resulted in a return to a prior state over a fairly short period. I'd say that, in general, some of the good properties essential to an intervention for a non-debilitating condition are:
* uniform dose-response: easy to increase effect by changing dose
* reversibility: automatic reversion to pre-intervention in a short-term is gold standard - allows for regret escape
* low-cost
GLP-1 drugs have these properties which I like. I'm surprised to hear that someone would prefer the alternative, but I must imagine that cost and the dosing structure (sub-q injection is annoying) must dominate decision making here.
The side effect of drastic muscle loss isn't quickly reversible though.
Because muscle is about 3x as expensive to maintain as fat, unless you are on some major strength training to maintain, muscle is the very first thing that your body gets rid of when losing weight.
So now you are off the GLP-1. But you also have to eat fewer calories to maintain a calorie deficit because you no longer have all that calorie burning muscle.
* And depending on when you start your GLP-1 journey, men when they hit 40 naturally lose between 5% and 8% of their total muscle mass ++a year++ a decade (women, probably earlier). In addition to the muscle loss due to weight loss.
* And it takes approximately 3 times longer in your 50s to create a pound of muscle that it does in your 20s.
* And you can't train like you did in your 20s or you will hurt yourself.
* And as you age, your body can't absorb the protein it needs to build muscle as efficiently as it did when you are young. So you need to eat even more food to compensate.
Ok. This is now more of a rant about getting older than it is about GLP-1s.
-- Edited to reflect that muscle loss % is decade, per the corrections in replies.
> men when they hit 40 naturally lose between 5% and 8% of their total muscle mass a year
I think your numbers might be per decade, not per year?
Oh thank God! You are correct. It's per decade.
If I lost 5% of my muscle mass every year since I was forty I would only have 32% of my muscle mass left. At 8% I’d be down to 16% left.
You are correct. It's per decade. Although some days it feels like I only have 16% left.
It doesn’t have to be a foregone conclusion that GLP-1 causes muscle loss though. The primary reason for the muscle loss is the reduction in calories and protein intake. If you want to keep most of your muscle mass you can just make sure you keep up with your daily caloric and protein needs.
GLP-1s aren’t “forever drugs.” They’re eliminated so fast from your system you need to keep taking them to keep the effect. That’s the opposite of a forever drug. If you go off them, you just return to the way you were.
I think they mean they're drugs you have to keep taking forever (for the rest of your life) to keep the effects.
Interesting. That usage is the opposite of “forever chemicals” though. Isn’t it a good thing GLP-1s don’t permanently change your body?
It certainly can be a good thing! But it can also be considered a bad thing that you have to keep taking them, and have to keep paying for them forever. A one-time fix (a cure) can be more desirable than a lifelong treatment regimen.
how do you permanently cure obesity? you can try rewiring metabolism with crispr or some epigenetic changes but thats insanely risky, it would be very likely to mess up the immune system and give people cancer or nerve disorders.
maybe i could see something based on modified gut bacteria that produce GLP-1 drugs inside your body. that would run into problems with dose regulation but at least you can flush them out with antibiotics if you get a bad response.
Which means if you want to maintain their effect, you need to keep taking them forever. So maybe GP used the wrong term but I suspect they meant exactly this.
In any case, we just don't know what kind of long-term effects these drugs have. No one knows what happens if you come out of them 30 years after you started.
You’re right, I did say that wrong, I suppose.
Do you have the same concerns about water or food? Why does it matter that it stops benefitting you if you stop taking it?
It's possible to secure those independently in a wide variety of scenarios. It's harder to DIY your own GLPs.
Oh god… if only I could quit food, too.
No but like... why is it a concern? Money?
The health problems that GLPs produce help people avoid are way more costly than the drugs will ever be. Especially now that the market is so competitive and will only get moreso.
For me, historically drugs like this for ADHD or depression or gastric bypass or whatever tend to lose effectiveness over time as the body adjusts. Not for everyone but for enough where you've got a short term gain that ultimately compounds the original problem.
Medication can be a slippery slope into side effects and rotating dosages/medicines. Especially for behavioral medicines.
ADHD medications do not lose effectiveness over time. That's magnesium deficiency.
Yeah, money, and just signing up to regularly inject a thing forever.
Anything that’s “starting tomorrow and until the day you die” just seems like a thing I shouldn’t take lightly.
Also I’m not badly, badly overweight. So it’s not like “it’s this or cardiac arrest in a year or two”, for me. I should probably be dealing with my issues the old timey way.
The stakes look very different for other people, obviously.
Water and food have a milder risk profile. The FDA (https://glp-1.health/blog/glp1-obesity-eligibility-bmi-chart...) recommends "GLP-1 weight loss medications (Wegovy, Zepbound) if your BMI is 30 or higher, or if your BMI is 27 or higher with at least one weight-related health condition such as high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, or sleep apnea". This is because there are side effects such that GLP-1 meds have not been shown to produce a net positive benefit-to-risk ratio for people who are only mildly overweight.
> This is because there are side effects such that GLP-1 meds have not been shown to produce a net positive benefit-to-risk ratio for people who are only mildly overweight.
Importantly, this is different from "GLP-1 meds have been shown not to produce a net positive benefit-to-risk ratio"
Anyway nearly all of the side effects for these drugs are just discomfort. Not even really obvious they should be called "risks." Meanwhile, the vast majority of Americans who are not already diabetic or have HTN will soon, and it would be quite a surprise to learn these drugs don't have protective effect.
uniquely among maintenance drugs some people report saving money on GLP-1s, they spend less on food than the drugs cost... But think of the farmers!
Bariatric surgery has most of the same upsides as GLP-1s and is a one-time cost. But I agree with the other commenters that "forever drug" is mostly fretting without an actual reason. The Hunger that engineered foods are deliberately designed to induce is a forever thing too, now there's a counterweapon.
If it sounded like I don’t think other people should take them, that was a mistake on my part.
I’m just really not what you’d think of as a model candidate for them, so I’m not quite ready to commit to my first and only, not exactly free, rest of my life pharmaceutical dependence.
That may not seem perfectly rational to some… but ya’know… I’m the one who has to live with my brain.
I'm sure being treated nicer by everyone might also increase my confidence tbh. I think the opposite order is more interesting for that though - people who become overweight and notice their coworkers and friends changing how they look at them and so on.
I find it amazing people don’t believe this. I lost about 50kg and people treated me better. They didn’t randomly shout ‘fat fuck’ in the street for a start.
I can't believe there is even a discussion. The better you look, the better people treat you and being better looking also means being of a normal weight.
I literally have a weight number where if I am north of the number, I can tell people treat me differently and not as nice and if I am south of that number, people treat me a lot nicer (gasp, Women even hit on me). People are fooling themselves if they think their weight does not matter to the world around them.
Skinny fuck!
(This is me say good job, and congrats on your new found health :) )
Nah I see this as a bald dude. When I wear a cap people smile at me, make conversation, etc
Not when I’m clearly bald though
People treat you better when you look better it’s sad but true
I'm close to B. In the 80's they tested how appearance affects people. Some women were given a facial scar and went to interviews while others were left as is. The scar group reported higher levels of discrimination than those without the scar. Tricky thing was none of them had scars in the interviews. The women that thought they had the fake scars had a "touch up" and the testers removed it.
Link: https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/what-a-1980s-facial-scar...
There's 2 sides to this:
1. Halo effect - people treat you better cause you're hot.
2. Confidence effect - you do things you wouldnt have because you now have energy, confidence, and freed up mental capacity from lower food noise.
I would point out that there's a middle way between those stances: GLP-1 receptor agonism has anti-auto-immune effects.
(I don't know yet if anyone has determined whether this is a direct effect of GLP-1R agonism; or whether e.g. metabolic disorder has auto-immune aspects, and GLP-1R agonism effectively treats metabolic disorder; or whether it's just that e.g. sugar and other simple carbs are directly pro-auto-immune, and GLP-1R agonism breaks the addictive salience of sugars/simple carbs in such a way that even if you're eating the same amount, you're putting less of those in your body. Regardless of the mechanism, there does seem to be a consensus on the overall anti-auto-immune effect itself.)
The anti-auto-immune effects of GLP-1RAs show up visibly, e.g. on the face, entirely separately from the effects of weight loss (because this effect still occurs even when the dose of GLP-1RAs is too low to provoke weight loss), in the form of decreased puffiness, oiliness, acne, chapped lips, etc. It causes a bunch of small changes that make someone look like they're "taking better care of themselves" (even though they may have been taking assiduous care of themselves before, but didn't look it, for autoimmune reasons.) People definitely judge others on how "healthy" they look, so this could definitely help someone to get a job.
But the anti-auto-immune effects of GLP-1RAs also show up in entirely unconscious behavioral changes — not in anything cognitive, like "confidence", but rather due to GLP-1RAs being at least partly effective in treating chronic, sometimes-subclinical, usually-not-well-managed autoimmune pain disorders (think fibromyalgia) and autoimmune energy disorders (think ME-CFS.) Being less achey and having more energy makes people behave differently — whether that be on the macro level in subconscious decision-making (think of how people make different choices when overtired without being aware of it — people with chronic energy disorders are "overtired" 100% of the time!), or on the micro level, in terms of how e.g. speech is performed (people have reported becoming less "croaky", and their usable vocal range expanding), how nonverbal communication is performed (it's easier and "cheaper" to move your face and head and body, so you do), etc.
And note how, for these behavioral changes, some of these might be obvious to the person going through the changes (like your voice changing); but others are things you may not be aware has changed.
For facial expressions in particular, people learn to use their face in certain expressive ways when they're young, and then often don't notice when their face stops "responding" fully/correctly/in the way they'd anticipate to their brain's commands to execute these expressions. As far as you're concerned, you're doing what you always did; it's just that, at some point, you developed an autoimmune condition that attacked (or plugged up with waste) some nerves or muscles or tissues or whatever, that made those higher-level signals from your motor cortex stop translating perfectly to actually initiating the actions you expected. Most people don't periodically test their facial expressions in a mirror, so you only get info about the breakdown of these capabilities reflected in other people's reactions toward you changing. And, likewise, if these capabilities were to be suddenly restored, you'd only find out through others' reactions to you as well!
Thank you. That is insightful and well written. And corresponds with academic literature as far as I have read.
I find it extremely interesting that GLP-1 agonists and GLP-1 receptors are highly pulmonary.
(There seems to be a persistent correlation between detailed pulmonary mechanisms, biology, responses… and neuroinflammation. Which does make sense when we consider the metabolic demands of the brain, which can be highly localized and sensitive to fine variances in supporting system capacity.)
My from-the hip take – from the hip!, no judging pls; It's a hunch, working to falsify it – is that… everything that makes humans aggressive to someone. Every feature someone can present that increases the odds of aggression… is a heuristic for neuroinflammation.
It's a lot of things, but neuroinflammation is a pretty consistent good match as core heuristic.
As in: GLP-1 agonists do reduce neuroinflammation. And then the hunch: This generally and ubiquitously reduces the aggression-induced features thereof.
(This take is somewhere between riffing on concepts and a surprisingly earnest and mechanistic theoretical perspective. Started as jokey banter but it's kinda hard to unsee it. not sure where else to place it, haha.)
Why is lookism supposed to be bad/stigma, but favoring intelligent people is good/meritocracy? Both are "unjust" in the sense that they are a result of genetic lottery. If anything, it's the intelligence you are born with that you can't do anything about.
Society is better off with more intelligence, but also with more beauty! As we automate intelligence, the selection pressure on good looks will only increase.
> Why is lookism supposed to be bad/stigma, but favoring intelligent people is good/meritocracy?
Your question elides what “favoring” is in this context.
Outside of a few particular jobs, intelligence better predicts work performance, especially for knowledge work. The point of calling out the stigma of obesity is that it unfairly maligns people who are otherwise capable of contributing to a company.
why not both?
Attractive people regardless of sex are universally treated better, unattractive - worse.
You could call it a stigma or prejudice, but until calliagnosia[0] becomes a reality, it is what it is.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liking_What_You_See:_A_Documen...
The article has a bunch of speculation that’s not in the paper: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w35387/w353...
One key point:
> Nor do I find evidence of upward job mobility among incumbent workers. Already-employed women do not increase hours, income per household member, or job-to-job moves. If anything, employer changes decline, possibly due to a desire to retain access to health insurance that covers these drugs. These null effects help distinguish a new-match channel from a general productivity or well-being channel
This complicates the idea that it’s just people treating lighter people better. It could well be that a lot of people who take GLP-1s are obese enough where it affects their ability to go out in the world and do stuff, and losing the weight enables people to work.
I also snag on her not attributing it to any personality changes because people reported no change in life satisfaction, loneliness, or depression from taking GLP-1s. Which seems to run counter to the reasons why [overweight] people would take GLP-1s
I'm not about to dive into the literature, but I kinda just assumed that losing weight naturally would help all those things.
The study also paints this as "kind of unfair against women", but didn't include men at all.
> The study also paints this as "kind of unfair against women", but didn't include men at all.
Unfairness found against one segment is not negated by studying only one segment, and “but” is a load-bearing word representing your entire one-word claim. Please explain in more words what argument you’re supporting with your two observations?
If I read a medical paper that concluded and headlined that “cancer kills left-handed patients” but studied only left-handed patients, I might think the study was technically correct but still reasonably wonder if the left-handedness is relevant to the study’s results.
> wonder if the left-handedness is relevant to the study's results
Considering this in generic, such distinctions are relevant to all scientific research studies for two reasons:
First, the hypothesis was only tested for a population of left-handed patients. So, while it serves as a foundational basis for future research both exclusively on left-handed patients, and for research on populations exclusive of left-handed patients, it cannot serve as a basis for any claims about any population exclusive of left-handed patients. This is generally applicable to all scientific research: you must not draw conclusions that exceed the scope of your study.
Second, there is no 'best' level of population diversity for studies to target in their research. One study may target left-handedness; another may target blonde six-fingered men; and a third may target an even distribution of people from all ages and races, but restricting to one region's current population alone in that selection.
Moving on to trying to understand your specific concerns regarding this specific study, I still don't see any opinions expressed by you about this study. You're describing the basic circumstances about scientific research but have not yet made any claims, nor have expressed any personal opinions, about this study in particular and why you're interested in talking about it. There are no sentences that yet contain "I think that [opinion]" or any synonym thereof, and so no takeaway is possible from your comments thus far.
Perhaps one of these examples will help you find a way to communicate your views to us. These are just creative napkin sketches, to help encourage you begin sharing your viewpoint with us. You could tackle them as direct questions and answer at length — a simple yes/no will fully devalue your views, so I discourage that! — or you could construct your own opinions as statements rather than questions and then say "I feel / believe / think that ___"; whatever works best for you.
1. Is your argument that this study was inappropriately selective, and that should invalidate its results?
2. Are you appreciative of the study's design and outcome, and wish to see it repeated for another population?
3. Do you have any conflicts of interest to declare regarding the population restrictions of this study?
This has been the case for a long time, even with attributes that you have far less control over, such as your height [1]. Given typical social prejudices, I would not be surprised if the height effect was greater for men and the weight effect was greater for women.
GLP-1 drugs seem to provide a (relatively) painless way to control the weight effect; the corresponding treatment for control of height [2] is much more painful, risky, and expensive.
-------------------
[1] https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/standing
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/us/height-surgery-limb-le...
in an era when interviews are done by zoom, is there a height effect for men?
Surround yourself with tiny replica objects and look like a giant. You can skip straight to CEO.
Definitely one of the most unexpected bits of WFH is to show up to an onsite and find out your coworker is 6'5".
I know of a guy who, before attending in-person meetings for the first time with new people, sends the message "FYI, I am 7 feet tall." He's gotten enough weird looks or outright stunned people that he takes precautionary measures.
Perhaps not in the early part of the hiring pipeline but unless the entire hiring process is remote (I've done this once so it's not impossible), sooner or later the full physical appearance is going to get judged.
I did have a weird experience right before the pandemic where the CTO of our company, who had never met me in person before but we'd been on tons of Zoom calls, got visibly upset and even said he'd been tricked, because I was older than he thought. That wasn't a good sign for my future in the slice of the company. The irony here is that he was near retirement age and has since retired. Still, my professional headshot, which was at least a decade old, appears to have set expectations. Guess even on a video call people sometimes see what they expect to see and only during an in-person meeting do they have to confront reality.
> but unless the entire hiring process is remote (I've done this once so it's not impossible)
FYI this is the norm for fully remote positions, at least in my experience
The best analogy I have heard about height and men: Height is a proxy for strength, and that is why it is so advantageous in economics, politics, and dating. I fully expect serious medical research in the near future for a childhood genetic treatment to increase adult height, as the advantages are just so enormous.
We (tall people) die sooner.
Lookism is pretty serious, folks. Or whatever you want to call it since that one sounds silly.
Maybe a makeover should be suggested more often in job search advice? Work on your hair and diet for a few months before you jump ship and you could have better luck.
I thought this has always been pretty obvious. It’s just human nature that makes people “judge” by appearances. As long as there is a face to face interview I don’t think someone could claim is not discriminating on appearance. It happens “naturally” and could go both ways but more often the “good looking” and “charming” is rewarded. It’s part of the “life’s not fair”.
Nah, gobs of people will insist to your face, despite direct evidence, that "I can look past it" when interviewing, or "I don't see color"
The world is made of HR departments and executive suites chock full of people who insist they are somehow special and immune to all the things we know about how fallible humans are at making decisions.
It's like how nearly everyone believes themselves to be an "Above average" driver, including the morons who get into an accident every single year because they text and drive constantly.
The halo effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect
I was gonna say "this is decades old", it's over a century old.
Relevant sequence from 30 Rock - Jon Hamm lives in "The Bubble"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAQoXOLlvT0
I like "pretty privilege."
In my experience, improving appearance is already one of the top suggestions for job applicants. We're attuned the other way too, showing up to work in a nice outfit tends to be met with "got an interview today?"
The problem with pretty privilege is it's quite female centric. (It's not that normative to call a man pretty and intend it as a compliment) It ignores that it also applies to men who are attractive, tall, have strong (as in pronounced) masculine physical features
My mid-50's mother was on quite a long unemployment streak, and I suggested she use realtime ML models to replace her webcam face with a de-aged and improved one.
Ageism and being attractive are both real things, like it or not... =/
This sounds like a great idea. Can you share more details about the story? Did she finally get a job?
She eventually did get a job, though not a great one. At that point she was willing to take pretty much anything.
If everybody improves their looks, the net effect will be zero. It's also not clear what parts of "looks" actually have an effect. It's also not clear what effect GLP-1 has on other elements that might make someone more employable.
The study itself is certainly not conclusive. The control group were women who wanted to take GLP-1, but didn't. That can indicate all kinds of status/class differences. The study also seems to have been a fishing expedition, and is based on self-reports, so it's tentative at best. I wouldn't recommend taking GLP-1 for a job interview based on this article.
Same reason you shouldn't try to build skills or acquire unique relevant experience as part of your job search: if everybody does it, the net effect will be zero.
>If everybody improves their looks, the net effect will be zero.
I'm not sure that's true. I think there's a baseline issue here. Regardless, even if it netted out to zero, you'd end up with a different order of who gets hired when, so for any individual it'd still make sense to try to improve your looks.
Might be different for programmers… my experience is that—broadly speaking—programming ability is inversely proportional to how well dressed you are. I wonder if that is still true, or if I’m just old.
Companies, certainly large ones, prefer people who can communicate and behave professionally, so that would favor well-dressed applicants. If we're thinking nerdy stereotypes: most programmers (by far) don't have to (and can't) solve tricky graph-theoretical algorithms or optimize intricate low-level stuff.
I get a haircut and wear a suit when I interview but am wearing an oversized Star Wars t-shirt while working right now. It’s just putting in the right level of effort at the right time?
In my experience the worst dressed definitely have more self confidence about their ability, rightly or wrongly
There might be a set of people for whom that might be true. There are a lot of people for whom that is not true and, fair or not, they will have an easier time to make things happen in the world
honest question - did that cliche ever apply to women? or non-white people?
i'm well aware of the stereotype but 100% of the time, seen it as a scrubby white guy in a hoodie.
> Lookism
Pretty privilege
Halo effect - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect
The study compares people who actually started GLP-1 treatment to people who say they want to but didn't. It sure seems to me like people who say they want something but don't take action to get it would also be less likely to get jobs, independent of what the thing they want is.
I think people often tend to treat drastic deviations from standard appearance as an indicator for undesirable character traits.
If you are badly groomed as a man, you tend to be perceived as careless.
In my experience if you are obese, people think you lack will power and discipline.
Changing how people view you for the better always has an influence on your personal success.
first sentence is one step from outright discrimination even if not everyone recognizes it. if you’re visibly transgender/queer, have noticeable accent, visible disability, and on and on and on
It probably is zero steps from outright discrimination, but it matches my estimation of how humans actually behave.
I read it as a “is” statement not an “ought to be” statement.
I can get on board with this. However, discrimination based on political affiliation has been rampant in Silicon Valley ever since Trump has been president.
In addition to this, I regularly am looking for contract work, and have jobs outright ask me if I am part of the LGBT community in the interview process. This is almost all coming from California. Before DOGE cut most of the budgets, NGOs would tell me that they would only hire me if I was part of a minority group.
Since there's no test, I just say that I am to get more work (and this has gotten me more work).
I've worked with LOTS of people from the LGBT community. At this point, discrimination just isn't happening for those groups at any mainstream level. Women also make up > 50% of management in almost all companies I deal with, so the 'glass ceiling' is also a myth.
>However, discrimination based on political affiliation has been rampant in Silicon Valley ever since Trump has been president.
Same thing in Hollywood (and long before Trump): <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends_of_Abe>
Why take drugs when you can take home-delivery diet?
This is genuine question, I've started using them and they're one of the best things I've ever paid for.
You get good food, at calculated sizes/calories/etc etc, you don't have to do shopping, cooking, cleaning, etc.
It is insanely convenient and you can manage your weight easily without even any exercises (but they're still recommended tho)
Usually, chronically-overweight ppl have tried regulating weight with all kinds of diets, lifecycle interventions, regular exercise, etc, and a lot of the time the thing that actually worked was the GLP-1. I think this speaks a lot to the variance in metabolism, hunger, cravings etc across the population.
The rub is that if they did a good job with those things, they would have worked. Most people cannot accurately account for calories and poorly estimate how hard they are actually working out.
I think this is a commonly-held misconception. Even when individuals accurately account for calories and workout intensity (using hard data, not feels), theres a large variance across individuals, broadly attributable to 'metabolics'.
While that is true there is variance it doesn't vary to the point of overcoming the basic thermodynamics at play. Facts are, you eat fewer calories, you lose weight. You burn more calories than previously without eating to make up the difference, you lose weight. There is no obese person that can starve themselves and not lose weight. It just doesn't work like that. The energy has to come from somewhere.
What often happens when people say "it doesn't work for me" is that they think they are working hard in the gym but aren't actually, or they think they are eating healthy without realizing all the little snacks or drinks they consume are putting some thumbs on the scale.
I've been overweight many times in my life, and I've been able to use diet and exercise to get my weight back to a healthy level.
Each occasion took a large amount of willpower and the healthy habits didn't stick around forever.
I started taking tirzepatide weekly and the most striking effect was a marked decrease in cravings. Where previously it took all my willpower to ignore cravings, it has now become difficult to overeat. I would have to force myself.
Now I wonder if its like this for those who have never had issues with their weight. Are there people who insist it's easy but have never experienced cravings?
Why suffer hunger for the rest of your life when you can inject a drug weekly and it takes only 2 minutes?
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/21/well/eat/ozempic-food-noi...
Because many drugs have side-effects, and they are different for different people. So if a drug helps one person, it might harm another.
The original paper is quite readable and interesting in how the researcher works through a number of alternative hypotheses.
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w35387/w353...
An tangential part of the paper is partnered men:
Do you find this finding surprising? I do not.
I wonder how GLP-1 treatment would affect men's employment. I think in the case of women, if there's an effect for appearance increasing employment opportunities, it's not surprising that losing weight would help too.
I am trying to re-find it but there was a study I'd read that was saying that in general if you don't break it down, there's a massive amount of weight stigma impact on women's employment but not men's. However, if you do break it down, you see that that impact doesn't exist for blue collar men, and does exist (if in a mediated form) for college-educated white collar men. If anyone can help turn this up (or something contradicting it) it seems useful.
My experience is for men that it's not just white collar/blue collar, more it's appearance gives a halo that helps people progress in domains where there's a human, interpretive aspect to advancement. General contractors are rewarded for being attractive and fit, the plumber they contract to is rewarded for getting the work done on time/budget. Attractive men get promoted to prominent public facing and leadership roles more for this reason, while dumpy unattractive men tend to be stuck in (typically lower level) roles where competence is enough.
I think there are studies that analyze height vs. career achievement.
Also baldness.
Fuck. Good thing I'm self employed.
Unlike 100 years ago, the bald thing is only a negative if you're fat/weak looking. The bald tough guy has been so established in modern lore that even older men can ride the wave if they look/dress the part (through the 50s anyhow, once you're saggy and loose it looks try hard).
Bane would have looked absurd with a head full of hair
Indeed, men on average look worse than women.
Pretty privilege exists.
But if everyone takes GLP-1 ... its a level playing field again
It just changes the baseline. Maybe weight stops being an easy discriminator, but we go back to clothes, styling and make up quality. The lookism still exists even among the prettiest, as we can see in the eating disorders and other issues among people in Hollywood. Many of the prettiest women on the big screen see themselves as on the edge of not getting any more work.
It puts a finger on the scale. Which unfortunately lasts as long as the person takes the drug. What happens when they stop taking it, unless they were on some serious strength trailing, is that they will have lost all the muscle they need to burn the extra calories they will start to eat when they transition off the drug. Which means the weight comes back even faster.
The body has no mechanism to break down fat cells like it can muscle cells. So every fat cell they had before taking the GLP-1 will still be there after years of taking GLP-1. Like deflated balloons, just primed to absorb any extra calories.
Those fat cells will be screaming for fat when empty. GLP-1s are a drug for life currently, we aren't treating them as such but we should because there is no avoiding the need to continue to quiet those fat cells down from their errant signalling to the brain.
you described the need to switch to healthy diet and exercise routine to maintain weight after finishing treatment..
You want the exercise during it anyway to maintain muscle mass. Usually your prescribing doctor will be trying to measure how much of that you're losing and might change dose or require diet changes for protein etc
Another point for "Pretty Privilege / Halo Effect"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_privilege
Shocking news. Humans like attractive people.
very unfortunate ! shows physical discrimination !!
Causation or correlation?
Market scarcity holds true.
40 years ago educated women were rare, even in the western world. Now not being obese is becoming increasingly rare.
I for one am glad for all the people now finding better employment opportunities, better health, and (anecdotally) better outlooks on life thanks to their weight loss. Awesome throughout.
Diminishing returns though. Once everyone is on glp-1, noone gets an employment advantage from it anymore. I still recommend riding the wave as long as it works.
> Now not being obese is becoming increasingly rare.
For men, I assume?
So uh, this is just trying to promote fat shaming and lookism using science as a judgement tool. How cool is that? /s
Your reading comprehension is off.
Are you for promoting obesity and unhealthy behavior? It's not because you want to promote people being healthy (aka having a normal body weight) that you are "fat-shaming".
Oh! I thought this would be about migraine.
If looks are important for employment how then men find a job? Men are mostly unattractive even compared to not a perfect woman. In terms of looks and style, average man loses to an average woman. Or employers require only women to be attractive?
I'd be surprised if there wasn't a similar dynamic for men. While men probably have a wider range of "acceptable" physical flaws as compared to women, that doesn't mean there isn't a range. A morbidly obese man is probably going to have a tougher time finding a job than a similarly skilled fit and trim man.
Part of this is probably unconscious, but another part is probably explicit assumptions about the person's self-discipline, e.g. the fit guy must get up at 6am every morning and go for a run, and the obese guy probably sleeps in, eats trash, etc.
> Part of this is probably unconscious, but another part is probably explicit assumptions about the person's self-discipline, e.g. the fit guy must get up at 6am every morning and go for a run, and the obese guy probably sleeps in, eats trash, etc.
More like stereotypes.
For some reason I took both GLP-1 and Ritalin everyday, having moderate exercises despite throwups, only see myself gaining weight rather than losing. I have no idea why both drugs that claims to lose weight only to do the exact opposite, and perhaps I'm the kind of people who can only get fat and not losing it despite some joint efforts.
Perhaps it is not enough and I have to go full aerobatic and ketone mode. Money money money.
Was GLP-1 oral? Those off-brand lozenges don't do anything.
A real GLP-1 slows down digestion so much that if you try to overeat you'll regret it. You'll still be uncomfortably full and ready to throw up on day 2 after that big meal.
Hmm, I've got Rybelsus, it did something. I can reduce my daily meal from 3 to 1 lately, and even on 2 meals I can eat half of it compared to what I typically eats ordinarily, to get full appetite.
Still, with all the things I've tried I still gained weight. And I have been noticably getting harder to sleep at night because the hungry feelings comes back. Maybe it is the oral Rybelsus waning off idk
yeah definitely try to get on injections if you can, you should be struggling to stomach food after two meals a day if it's in full effect.
then be sure to get extra fiber and protein from somewhere. and my biggest suggestion is always to just not keep and snacks or extra food in your home - keep what you need for planned meals and maybe some apples or similar on the side. very dark chocolate is also decent for some flavor that's low impact imo
Rybelsus is remarkably less effective than the injections (both in my personal experience, and according to the science), and it's also very hard to take properly. I would not extrapolate from that. It also takes about 30 days to hit a useful dosage. If you're interested in GLP1s, either get the injections, or see if you can source some Foundayo / orforglipron.
Exercise basically doesn't do anything for your weight.
Have you reduced your calorie consumption?
Men get the same effect through things that are traditionally masculine. Off the top of my head, things like height, ruggedness, and for clothes you want straight lines (such as with suits, which a well-fitting one has a lot of and a badly fitting one curves around the body and breaks the straight lines).
People look for different things for "beauty" in men and women.
Taller people--an area where men have a very distinct advantage--make more money and have an easier go of things.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1570677X2...
"Based on the meta-analysis, we found evidence that the height premium varied by context: the height premium was smaller in the U.S. and Australia, and larger in Latin America and Asia. Within geographies, there appeared to be a larger height premium for men than for women."
Men tend to work in less public facing/social career fields. Your appearance doesn’t matter much if you’re a linesman or a welder; it matters more if you’re doing sales or supporting clients. Probably not the entire story, I think people do have different expectations for men and women, but certainly part of it.
Just go to a fast food place. There's a strong tendency to have guys in the back cooking, girls in the front at the register.
you know a pretty fair majority of men are working in white collar office work, which is directly comparable in terms of public facing and social careers?
real loosely, something like 1/3, 40% are in these blue collar fields, and even in those fields there are enough sales and similar roles that prefer better appearances.
I would say different white collar jobs have different expectations for personal appearance.
For example, even looking solely at the men at my company, our sales reps, marketing lead, and CEO are all more conventionally attractive than our hardware engineers, finance manager, and CTO. And I would say women tend to be at least slightly more likely to wind up in the former positions than the latter (of course we’re speaking in generalities here)
I don't think anyone can objectively judge the attractiveness of both genders on one scale.
Women and men are not judged according to the same standards. We're not super sexually dimorphic as a species, but certainly enough to matter in terms of evolved social responses.
Well you kinda said it yourself? If men are generally unattractive then a man should be less likely to lose out to a better-looking man, simply because there's fewer of these to go around.
Yes but an average man would lose to most of women in term of looks, style, clothes choice, skin care, makeup, hair, etc. If employers cared only about looks then they would prefer to hire women. Of course, it is possible that only women get judged by looks and men are not.
Maybe to you, I personally find both the average man and woman attractive. Women spend more time taking care of their bodies though, given societal pressures
> If looks are important for employment how then men find a job?
This feels very fallacious. Attractiveness can be important but not the only factor that matters.
Height is a way that men are judged as attractive. Likewise, tall men tend to do better than short men on income and promotions.
> Men are mostly unattractive
Could it be that _you_ are simply be not as attracted to men as you are to women?
Nah men by and large do not experience the same levels of societal pressure than women do to be attractive, modulo getting into looksmaxxing and other stuff, and even that is mostly to show off masculinity traits to other men and not actually in being attractive to women.
Studies show that hetero women tend to agree that most men are not attractive.
Go to the barber, to to the tailor, go the gym...
All these things help.
Not exactly sure why this is downvoted - seems like a genuine question.
Here's a random Internet troll's theory (mine): there's a kernel of truth to the whole "patriarchy" thing. It's just that most men aren't part of it.
Hold that pitchfork for just a moment! What I meant was: the entire economy is controlled by a very small number of people. Most of them are men, and they have very particular preferences. Assuming the majority of them are straight, it would make sense that they prefer women they see as pretty, and don't care much about men. If anything, a good looking man might be a competitor.
I don't think this idea is completely nuts. Think of the few times in history when a woman had real power. For example, Catherine the Great. Who was suddenly promoted to positions of influence? Sexy men, her "favorites" (yes, that's an actual term).
It's attractiveness all the way down
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest
yes! i still wondering why feminism had to be created /s