Ozempic is warping the definition of 'skinny' at Cannes

In the hazy early days of cinema, cinephiles everywhere yearned for the curves of Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren, international stars who enchanted our screens with their larger-than-life personalities and full, natural figures.

These stars are still crowned Hollywood icons, but in the increasingly internet-addled collective psyche of the modern film festival, which has determined that “thick” is out and “skinny” is back in, stars are left with no choice but to comply. With the rising popularity of GLP-1’s like Ozempic and Mounjaro, it’s easier than ever to achieve the previously unattainable levels of skinny brought into the mainstream by Kate Moss in the 1990’s.

And as the film festival kicks off on the French Riviera, women everywhere brace themselves for the slew of images they prepare to hit their social media feeds, readily accepting that in 2026, a new leader reigns true: skinny.

This is what I call the Ozempic Overton Window, and it’s changing all of our perceptions of “healthy”.

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The Overton Window is a political term coined in the 1990’s by Joseph Overton, and it refers to the way that politics usually sits across a spectrum, from left to right, and what’s considered “centrist” is always moving depending on what is politically “in vogue” (if you will).

For example, in many countries across Western Europe and the US, right-wing politics are rising in popularity, meaning that the Overton window is shifting to the right, and what was considered moderately left-wing just a few years ago is now perceived as radical.

The Ozempic Overton Window takes this concept and applies it to body types. What was considered healthy just a decade ago is now widely considered unacceptably fat in 2026. And what was previously acknowledged to be unhealthily thin is not only being accepted in the modern day but also lauded as the new standard for which to strive.

There is no place where this is better exemplified than at the Cannes Film Festival. It is, after all, where the crème de la crème come to mingle and schmooze, at champagne-fuelled parties on the Côte d'Azur.

So naturally, those parties are filled with models and actresses, for whom it is written into their contracts, explicitly or otherwise, to maintain a certain body composition, should they wish to remain employed for the foreseeable future.

And for us proles, that’s a concept that is so wildly alien to us, we will never truly understand or appreciate how difficult it must be. When the Ozempic Overton Window shifts even further towards skinny, no one is more frustrated than these women, who will have a blindingly painful moment of clarity: Their diets are about to get more restrictive, their workouts tougher, and the spotlights on them even hotter.

I am not interested in morally policing any of these women. It is an exceptionally difficult industry to break into, and even harder still for women who are told that not only do they have a higher ceiling to smash through, but they also have an age deadline on which casting directors will put them up for opportunities.

In a patriarchal society which constantly moves the goal posts for women, body standards just got tougher.

And why did the Ozempic Overton Window move so far? Because beauty trends rise in popularity in accordance with perceived exclusivity. The reason that the curvy, sexy aesthetic shaped beauty standards in the 2010’s is that it was deemed unattainable.

Only the elite had access to procedures like the Brazilian Butt Lift or lip fillers. But when these procedures were brought into the mainstream by figures like the Kardashians, their potency as indicators of cultural capital depreciated. The body standard inverted bell curve hit a saturation point, and curvy was on its way out.

Flash forward to 2020, and all the celebrities who inspired thousands to hop on flights to Turkey suddenly started having their procedures reversed. It was a line in the sand from the rich and a firm reinforcement of class divides, delivered through the praxis of dress sizes.

The message from the 1% to the rest of the world was clear: Stop trying to be us. You're cheapening what we're trying to do here. We are not the same.

So, as the cultural pendulum began to swing in the other direction (as violently as it often does), there was only one alternative: Don’t just lose your curves. Lose everything. We’re talking prominent collarbones, gaunt cheekbones, visible spinal cords.

The aesthetics of the elite in 2026 are so alarmingly coherent with chronic emaciation that pro-anorexia communities even have terminology associated with certain body parts that they see on the red carpet.

One particularly charming colloquialism is attached to a body part so ubiquitous on the red carpets for Wicked that it raised alarm for activists everywhere, and it’s known as a "xylobone”.

A “Xylobone” refers to the jutting sternums that develop when the individual is so emaciated that the end result is a chest reminiscent of an xylophone, and it’s such a marker of physical deprivation that an entire community of eating disorder sufferers lust after it.

When you start seeing this everywhere, you know that this is no longer a conversation about “judging celebrities’ bodies” or being arbitrarily critical of women who are clearly unwell. It’s a sign that we’re slipping into public health crisis territory.

One small glimmer of sunshine for those hoping to batten down the hatches and ride out this latest body standard craze (without developing an eating disorder in the process) is that if beauty standards rise in accordance with unattainability, then everyone getting skinny will flood the market, thus making skinny less desirable.

So, women everywhere, allow me to reassure you! When you see the stars heading down the red carpet this weekend, and you catch yourself comparing your figure to theirs, remind yourself: The more skinny we see, the less time it’ll stick around.

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Georgia Bell is a Digital Journalist at LBC.

LBC Opinion provides a platform for diverse opinions on current affairs and matters of public interest.

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