Melissa Rivers Says Joan Would Have Loved Ozempic

“I hate thin people,” Joan Rivers once joked about the kind of aggressively fit person who says things like, “Oh, does the tampon make me look fat?” But she would have loved an easy way to stay thin herself, Joan’s daughter Melissa told PEOPLE. “Oh, she would have thought Ozempic was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Her two least favorite things were diet and exercise, so if she could find a way to avoid both? Awesome.”

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Melissa’s probably right, judging by Joan’s punchlines. “I don’t exercise. If God had wanted me to bend over, he would have put diamonds on the floor,” she cracked. Could anything change her mind? “The first time I see a jogger smiling, I’ll consider it,” she retorted to such questions.

Rivers made weight — her own and celebrities’ — a frequent subject of her comedy. In fact, here’s a Joan sampler platter:

• “Elizabeth Taylor is so fat, she puts mayonnaise on aspirin.”
• “If Kate Winslet had dropped a few pounds, the Titanic would never have sunk.”
• “On the Vanna White diet, you only eat what you can spell.”

Occasionally, the jokes got her in trouble as audience attitudes toward fat jokes began to change. Back in 2013, Rivers puffed out her cheeks and held out her arms to mimic Oscar winner Adele on David Letterman’s show. You can hear the audience groan at jokes like, “What is her song, ‘Rolling in the Deep’? She should add, ‘Fried Chicken.’”

But Melissa thinks Joan would have been down with changing standards of beauty, along with the move away from body shaming. “She would have been very excited by body acceptance,” Melissa says. “That would have actually made her really happy.”

Less amenable to the comic would have been the trend toward a casual appearance in all aspects of life. “She would not have bought into athleisure and people wearing sweatpants everywhere,” Melissa says. “She’d be like, ‘No, you still get dressed, you pull yourself together, you put on a little lip gloss and then you go out.’”

And with the help of Ozempic, Joan would have looked thin doing it.