Body Size and Romance

revisiting your 2021 stories...and wondering how Ozempic's changed things?

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This week, we are sharing an episode with listener stories about body size and romance called The Weight of Love. We first released this episode back in 2021, and as we were preparing to share it again, we started wondering as a team how semaglutide weight loss drugs like Ozempic have added other layers of complication to what you do and don’t talk about in your romantic lives when it comes to body size.

So - we are renewing our call for your stories, or advice questions, about body size and romance for another episode. How are you talking about it, and not? Have you noticed how you think and talk about your weight and body with your partner has changed over time? If you’ve had a significant weight loss, how’s that affected your sex life? If you’re on weight loss drugs, when do you disclose that to a partner—or do you keep it private? You can record a voice memo and send it to us at deathsexmoney@slate.com or comment here, and I’ll share your thoughts with the team.

In the last few weeks, as we got this week’s episode ready to share with you, I got back in touch with some of the people you hear in it. You can hear some of those updates at the end of the episode, including from Maddi, who shared this email update:

I feel like I can hear how much younger I was in that recording and how much of a different place I was in at that time.

….Not long after that recording I ended up taking a leave of absence from work because my mental health was so poor. I dove headfirst into therapy and getting on medication. It’s changed my life in ways I couldn’t have imagined possible back then….

People love to say that hard experiences make you stronger and while I wouldn’t go as far as to imply that what my ex did to me made me better, I will say that how I met that experience, and eventually faced it head on, did.

I called Maddi up to hear more about what’s happened in the last three years, and you can hear that conversation in your Slate Plus feed this week.

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I ended up hanging around our Death, Sex & Money inbox more than usual this week, and I thought I’d share a few other notes that stuck with me.

One listener, responding to our callout for menopause stories from over the summer, shared this video of the British Columbia Green Party, making a floor speech about menopause.

Another Canadian listener, a 33 year-old from Alberta, sent this email about our episode with San Francisco Mayor London Breed;

I was listening to the episode with [Breed] and there are just so many things that resonated with me along with all the complicated feelings (I’m a minority and work in law enforcement but also have family who has trouble with addiction and current times are trying at best sometime).

One that struck a particular chord was along the lines of oldest daughter syndrome, or the work of taking care of aging and conversations that work from that. Long story short my in laws live with us….We have family who live elsewhere but don’t seem to come and help as much as we think they should/was part of the arrangement of having them come live with us. We have a baby and love that grandma can be close to her but we are frustrated and feel like helping them is coming at a cost. I know we aren’t the only ones going through this.

And we got some constructive criticism about my conversation with my cousin Carolyn, an ob/gyn, in our Plus episode about the physical and emotional changes that menopause can usher in:

The only thing that I wish had been different is that you had included lesbians when you were mentioning vaginal discomfort. When the conversation is only about pain during intercourse, it leaves a lot of us out. It is already hard for lesbians to talk to many gynecologists because many of them assume that every patient is heterosexual and ask us what kind of birth control we’re using, even when we have previously indicated that we are lesbians. 

Your show is usually so inclusive, so I just wanted to ask you to include gay folks when talking about post-menopausal sex.

We read and listen through every message in our show inbox at deathsexmoney@slate.com. Including any tips/reading/experiences you’ve had about menopause as a queer person — we’ll pass on what you’ve learned!

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Other recommendations

I really liked Ann Friedman’s newsletter last week about Chappell Roan being “a joyfully displaced Midwesterner.”

She projects a true and deep love for the region without living there. Finally! Someone who capably represents me and the majority of Midwesterners I know who have made our lives elsewhere. The "love it and leave it" crowd.

It spoke to my place-obsessed self, as I’m always looking for new ways to understand how I can identify so much with rural places (West Virginia and Wyoming) where I don’t live full-time. In this essay, Friedman offers that a split-screen perspective can lead to its own sort of mature, clear-eyed love.

Throw away the JD Vance model of poverty-pity plays for coastal attention and egocentric pledges to move back home and “fix things.” No, the “love it and leave it” identity is actually quite joyful and generative.…
This is a special combo of distance without divestment, and it's what allows Chappell Roan, who is living in Los Angeles when she’s not on the road these days, to be her full Midwest princess self. There's a confidence in not hating or pitying the region that birthed you, a joy in maintaining the strong ties you choose, and a peace in not hierarchically ranking the cultures that compose your identity. It’s possible to love a place from afar and never really leave it.

I sooo appreciate this, particularly the phrase “distance without divestment.” Read the whole thing here.

And speaking of pop music, I liked getting to know more about songwriter Amy Allen in this New York Times profile. You know her work if you’ve enjoyed Sabrina Carpenter’s megahits “Please Please Please” or “Espresso,” and hearing her compare the winks and jokes in those songs to Dolly or John Prine makes me dig them in a whole new way.

Until next week,

Anna

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Listen to our latest Death, Sex & Money episodes

9/3 The Weight of Love

8/27 Two Friends, at 35 and 95, Confront Loss and Find Hope

8/20 Life and Death Inside the Playboy Mansion

8/13 Miranda July’s Perimenopausal Thriller

8/6 A Former Debt Collector’s Unpaid Bills

7/30 Olympic Legend Greg Louganis on Outliving and Outperforming Expectations

7/23 What’s Missing from the Opioid Overdose Conversation

7/16 The Mayor of the Most Controversial City in the U.S.