| In this week’s New Yorker, the staff writer Jia Tolentino reports on Ozempic, a controversial new drug that can be used to lose weight. Ozempic was developed to combat diabetes, but it is rumored to have gained popularity among celebrities as a way to get thin. Demand is now soaring among the non-famous, too. While Ozempic may be new, the pursuit of weight loss isn’t—nor is the willingness, at least by some, to resort to methods that are questionable, if not outright unsafe. In 2007, the staff writer Judith Thurman documented her stay at We Care, an “ultra-lavish” “fasting spa” about a hundred miles east of Los Angeles. “With Oscar night approaching, a number of guests had checked into We Care for a red-carpet tuneup,” Thurman recounts. The experience that followed mixed spa treatments, lectures, and the intake of very, very little food. As Thurman documents her own fast, she explores how “abstinence” from eating has accrued prestige across a wide swath of cultures, though not always for reasons connected to appearance or weight. The Bible refers to fasting no fewer than seventy-one times, and it has been employed, sometimes in a manner more accurately described as “self-starvation,” by figures including the Buddha and Gandhi. The spiritual and political effects of fasting change over time, but the pursuit of weight loss—and the ability to profit from it—appears eternal. “One can expect to lose about a pound a day,” Thurman writes of We Care, “and to emerge about four thousand dollars lighter.” | 
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