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Ulrika Jonsson has criticised Serena Williams for ‘forcing feminism back by several steps’ after the tennis player revealed that her recent weight-loss was down to a skinny jab.
The TV presenter, 58, shared her concerns for ‘impressionable young women’ and said the endorsement was a ‘betrayal of everything Serena has stood for.’
Serena, 43, admitted she lost 31lbs with the aid of a weight-loss medication Zepbound, a GLP-1, and went on to work with a prescriber on a promotional campaign.
GLP-1 is a natural hormone that helps regulate blood sugar and appetite that is found in popular weight loss medication brands such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro as well as Zepbound.
Writing in the column for The Sun, Ulrika questioned the message that Serena’s admission sent to women and shared her disappointment.
She wrote: ‘Those of us who have spent years admiring her for the absolute powerhouse and machine that she is, now feel cheated because the underlying message appears to be that she supposedly hated her body all this time.’
Ulrika continued: ‘I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that this whole PR message is forcing feminism back by several steps.
‘Serena admitting she uses weight-loss jabs suggests to women that, even if you train hard, eat the right things and measure every bit of food that goes in and out, it is unlikely you’ll have a body you like unless you stick a needle in your abdomen and to hell with the side-effects.’
During a recent appearance on Today, Serena opened up about the health issue that runs in her family, which made her want to lose any extra weight.
The tennis star told viewers that several of her family members have had diabetes.
Diabetes is a chronic condition where blood sugar (glucose) levels are too high, often because the body doesn’t produce enough insulin or doesn’t use it effectively.
She also hoped that losing weight would relieve pressure on her knees.
‘I had a lot of issues with my knees, especially after I had my kid,’ she said. ‘That, quite frankly, definitely had an effect on maybe some wins that I could have had in my career.’
‘As an athlete and as someone that has done everything, I just couldn’t get my weight to where I needed to be at a healthy place, and believe me I don’t take shortcuts. I do everything but shortcuts,’ she continued.
After Olympia was born in 2017, the seven-time Wimbledon champ worked out for hours to shed the weight but her weight refused to go down.
Serena explained: ‘I literally was playing a professional sport, and I could never go back to where I needed to be for my health, for my healthy weight, no matter what I did.
‘I would always lose a lot of weight, and then I would stay. No matter what I did, I couldn’t go lower than that one number.’
She also kicked off a campaign with Ro, a company that prescribes GLP-1 medications through telehealth and said her aim was to show that taking the medication is not just an ‘easy way out.’
Her husband, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, is an investor in Ro and serves on its board.
