Finance & economics | Hunger games

The economics of thinness (Ozempic edition)

Will skinny still be desirable when it is more easily achieved by the masses? 

A quarter dollar coin being squeezed by a tape measure
Illustration: Getty Images/Alamy/The Economist
|New York

Arriving in Stepford, Connecticut, Joanna—protagonist of “The Stepford Wives”, a horror novel—is dragged to a “workout class” at the Simply Stepford Day Spa by a neighbour. The duo are met by 15 identikit women. Their hair, heights and skin colours differ a little. Their waist sizes do not. Each can be no bigger than a British size 8, their waists nipped in by belts and accentuated by 1950s skirts.

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Hunger games”

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