Weight-loss injections built to treat diabetes and obesity are increasingly appearing in a different setting: the competitive recruitment process at some elite college sororities. A recent feature in The Cut, titled «The Secret 'Ozempidemic' on Sorority Row,» describes how compounded semaglutide and tirzepatide have quietly become part of campus culture, particularly during rush, when prospective members are judged in part on appearance.
Three female students interviewed under pseudonyms said they used the medications to improve their chances during recruitment and to meet what they described as an increasingly thin beauty ideal. They pointed to social media and informal weight-loss competitions among friends as forces driving the trend. One student said thinness feels like «the ticket into the best possible college experience» for many young women who have just arrived on campus. Another said she had not realized someone who was 19 and not significantly overweight could obtain the drug, adding, «I gotta hop on.» A former sorority recruiter described a harsher logic at work, saying the attitude had become that «there's no excuse for people to be fat because they could just get a GLP-1.»
The anecdotal accounts arrive alongside data showing that GLP-1 use is climbing fastest among younger adults. A 2024 analysis published in JAMA found that 162,439 young adults ages 18 to 25 received at least one dispensed GLP-1 prescription in 2023, and women accounted for 76.4% of those patients. That analysis included medications prescribed for both diabetes and weight management. Separately, the 2025 Monitoring the Future survey found that 2% of students in grades 8, 10 and 12 reported using a prescription GLP-1 medication, while another 2% said they had used one without a prescription.
Jay Campbell, a longevity and peptide expert and bestselling author, said the drugs were designed to address a metabolic crisis but have been «hijacked as a cosmetic shortcut.» For patients whose metabolism is genuinely dysregulated, he said, they are a real medical intervention. For a 20-year-old sorority member with a normal body mass index, however, they can look like «an aesthetic hack in a syringe.» Campbell attributed the spread partly to the social dynamics of sorority life, where visibility and comparison are constant. When one member loses 15 pounds in six weeks, he said, word travels through the house faster than any diet fad because the results are fast, dramatic and require none of the discipline of nutrition or training.
He noted that college-aged women already tend to have high sensitivity about body image, a trait heightened by what he called a full-scale social contagion. Many of these young women, he said, grew up already struggling with disordered relationships to food and their bodies, and the medication can play on those insecurities.
The concern is not that GLP-1s lack benefit. In clinical studies of people taking the medications for obesity, fat mass generally accounts for more of the lost weight than lean mass, Campbell said. The risk is different for a healthy 20-year-old who is not obese and has far less metabolic and muscular reserve to lose. Rapid weight loss without adequate protein or resistance training can mean a greater proportion of lean mass is lost, he warned, and can contribute to the facial and body changes sometimes called «Ozempic face» and «Ozempic body.»
Campbell advised students considering a weight-loss medication to ask themselves honestly why they want a drug designed for a disease they do not have. Muscle loss is preventable, he said, but only with real protein intake and resistance training. «Skip both, and you will absolutely lose muscle tissue that you cannot easily get back at 20 years old,» he said.
Other considerations extend beyond appearance. Experts agree GLP-1 medications should not be used for weight loss during pregnancy, and semaglutide labeling advises stopping Wegovy at least two months before a planned pregnancy. Tirzepatide has been shown to reduce the effectiveness of oral hormonal contraceptives during treatment initiation and dose increases, so the FDA advises using an alternate method for four weeks during those periods. Mental health also deserves attention, particularly for young adults with depression, anxiety, eating disorders or a history of using food to cope emotionally. The FDA has found no increased risk of suicidal thoughts or behavior from GLP-1 medications, but patients are advised to tell their prescriber about any new or worsening mood symptoms.
What remains unknown, Campbell said, is the long-term picture for a woman who starts GLP-1 use at 20 with a normal body weight.