Fat in a Thin World: Weight Inclusivity

Transcript

Eleanor Pike:
Quiz time. What connects the prescription drug Ozempic, the viral song Richmond, North of Richmond, and the American Academy of Pediatrics? Stumped? Well, the answer is all of them made major headlines in the last year through controversial stances on fat bodies and whether or not they are acceptable in our society. This debate sparks hot takes no matter where you turn, from politicians to artists to doctors, and even to your family get-together. It can feel impossible to discuss weight in a neutral and understanding way. Yet what is often missing from these conversations is the actual lived experience of fat people. That's why we chose to record today's episode with two incredible authors, Aubrey Gordon and Kara Richardson Whitley.

Aubrey Gordon:
So my name is Aubrey Gordon. I am a podcaster who co-hosts Maintenance Phase, and I have written a couple of books about being a fat lady. The most recent one is called You Just Need To Lose Weight and 19 Other Myths About Fat People. And the one before it is called What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat, because I don't do short titles.

Kara Richardson Whitley:
My name is Kara Richardson Whiteley. I am a mental health advocate for Eating Recovery Center. I share openly about my experience with binge-eating disorder, helping to build compassion and understanding about the most common eating disorder out there. I've also written a number of books about being a fat lady, more specifically a fat lady in the wild. I wrote A Gorge: My Journey Up Kilimanjaro at 300 Pounds, which is being made into a movie with This is US actress, Chrissy Metz, producing and starring as me. And there are two other ones called The Weight of Being and Fat Woman On the Mountain. Oh, and sorry, I forgot, I'm also CEO of the Gorgeous Agency, which helps brands connect with the plus-sized audience through best practices and body inclusivity.

Eleanor Pike:
Today's conversation is the perfect launching point for someone uncomfortable with fat stigma, but unsure how to understand its roots, our personal roles in it, and how we can be part of the solution. You are listening to Mental Note Podcast. I'm Ellie Pike.

Well, I feel privileged to be here with such amazing authors and speakers. I have not written any books, but I have read some of you all's books and I'm really excited to talk more with you. And so I'm just going to start off by commenting on the fact that you both referenced yourself as fat ladies. So how do you like to reference yourself when it comes to referring to your weight and your shape?

Aubrey Gordon:
I mean, I'll say I just use fat. It feels very direct to me. It feels very descriptive to me. I get that it's not a comfortable word for everybody, so people can use whatever words they want to use to describe their own bodies. For me, the word that I use is fat because everything else, like the 'O' words, overweight and obese, and fluffy and curvy and all of that stuff feels like it's much more for the comfort of the person doing the talking than it is for the person that they're describing. And for me, the most comfortable word is just fat. Done and done.

Kara Richardson Whitley:
Yeah, I also use fat as well. I also use 'in a larger body', that one only because I am often finding myself in a teaching space where I'm trying to help folks use better language when it comes to folks in diverse bodies. And so that one also comes to mind, but fat, larger, or just has a body.

Eleanor Pike:
This person who has a body. So that's how you refer to yourselves. How do you like others to refer to you, or even more broadly, to folks who do live in larger bodies or for folks who are fat?

Aubrey Gordon:
I would say again, for me, I just use fat. I just use fat and fat people. I also will use plus-sized sometimes, not because of its euphemistic characteristics, but because it attaches to a pretty clear delineation. We live in a culture that encourages most of us to think of ourselves as being 'too fat', and that makes it really hard to have conversations about people who are experiencing institutional exclusion as a result of their size, or people who are experiencing family rejection because of their size or what have you. So sometimes plus-sized can be helpful as being a way of being like, "Hey, are you over a size 16?" Then yes, but otherwise, probably not. So those are the ones that I use the most. But also, again, I get that people's comfort levels vary pretty widely. My main thing on that front is that folks should just be listening to the people that they're describing, rather than to their own discomfort.

Kara Richardson Whitley:
Yeah, absolutely. And it's almost like I try not to get so hung up on the words, though I know that there are definitely words that cause harm, like the 'O' words as they're now called. But I try to focus so much on the intent of the word and the way it's delivered. It's like there's a difference between, "I'm a fat person," to, "You're fat." That's the same word, different delivery. And I think when you're wrestling with language in any space, whether it's body size or gender or race, there's some fumbling that's going to happen, but the intention is really what's more important to me overall.

Eleanor Pike:
Well, I really appreciate how you're both talking about folks in larger bodies or folks who are fat as a really neutral descriptor. And you're right, it takes adaptation, and especially for a lot of our culture, we've been taught being fat is bad. So why would I reference you as being fat? I am doing something wrong if I use that word. And yet I know we could make a whole episode about the 'O' words and how they're offensive, but I do think we should touch on it for just a minute here. Why are the 'O' words offensive? Why are we not referencing you with those words?

Aubrey Gordon:
I mean, I'll kick us off.

Kara Richardson Whitley:
Yeah, go for it. You can start the soapbox. No problem.

Aubrey Gordon:
Yeah, totally. So a couple of things. One, I think folks think that because the word 'obese' is medical, that it can't be hurtful, but that to me reflects a lack of understanding of what fat people experience in doctor's offices, which is often very hurtful. For me, for example, I've had doctors who've refused to touch me, who've refused to treat me at all because of my size. That's perfectly legal. They're allowed to do that. It's not a great look, but they're allowed to. And that is the main context in which I hear people refer to me as 'obese', or worse, 'morbidly obese' or 'extremely obese'. The times that I hear that word are when I'm being denied care that I know that I need and I'm being often denied tests and screenings for more serious health issues and so on and so forth. So I think it's worth knowing that the context that many folks think of as being neutral for fat people just isn't really.

It's also worth knowing that baked into the word itself, 'obese' derives from a Latin word that literally means 'to have eaten oneself fat'. So the idea is you've been sitting around eating so much, you made yourself so fat. There is a blame and shame angle built in to the term itself.

And then the third thing I would say is listen, the way that we use the word 'obese' is specifically not based on our specific knowledge of someone else's BMI. It's our way of saying, "That person is unacceptably fat. I'm okay with plus-sized people, but not if they're 'obese'." That is how that gets mobilized, is as a way of indicating that someone is too fat and shouldn't be out in the world, shouldn't be seen, and the rest of us shouldn't have to entertain what that person might need. It also just hurls us back into that BMI system, which is famously racist, famously misogynist, famously everything. Just touching on it. 'Just touching on it.'.

Eleanor Pike:
I was going to say, you did an incredible job for just touching on it. I'm like, "Wow." You really summed it up so well and now we all know all the rabbit holes we can dive down and learn a lot more about. And it's ...

Oh, go ahead, Kara.

Aubrey Gordon:
Yeah, go.

Kara Richardson Whitley:
It's like the idea that weight and health are not linear conversations. They don't equal each other. And so it's tough when I walk in a room and people think that I'm on death's door when you look at the numbers and you know that that's not true. So numbers like blood pressure, blood sugar, all of those, cholesterol. People have a story that they make up when they see my body because of those terminologies when that may not be the truth. So your body is not always your story, and so those terms tend to box people into those narratives.

Eleanor Pike:
Well, I so appreciate that you talk about how loaded those words are and that they automatically assign an understanding, that it's like you're not deserving or you're doing something wrong, and that is extremely hurtful. And so I imagine for both of you, you have really interesting journeys to where you are now where you can talk about this so openly. So would you mind sharing a little bit about what it was like to grow up a fat kid in a world that really praises thinness and clearly diet culture, and just what that experience was like for each of you?

Aubrey Gordon:
Do you want to kick us off, buddy? I feel like I've been starting us.

Kara Richardson Whitley:
That's all right. That's all right. I've written whole books about each portion of my childhood now. Yeah, growing up as a fat kid, it was problematic for me just simply because the amount of bullying that I received, and also just that my whole childhood, I remember different ways that I was supposed to change my body and to fit into the world around me, but I never ever felt like I fit in because there weren't clothes in my size when I took my first job. When I was on the soccer team, there weren't shorts in my size. It was really challenging, not only to experience bullying and teasing, but also anything that I wanted to do, I was told, "You don't fit." Soccer team, jobs, anything. And also when you look to role models, there were so few. Actually the one that I can think of the most is Oprah at the time. And I love how Aubrey calls the complicated relationship we all have with Oprah. It's so complicated that as a fat kid growing up, there weren't a lot of fat role models, people doing things and highlighted and showcased in their bodies, living fully with joy, with purpose, because those weren't in marketing and media.

So it was a really complicated time to just feel like you fit in and also know what you're reaching and aspiring to because the only thing that you're told to reach and aspire to is thinness.

Aubrey Gordon:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, similarly for me, I would say a lot of people carry trauma and hard feelings about their bodies and how their bodies were treated and regarded growing up. And I think what that means is often for people who don't wear plus sizes, I think they imagine that to be the sum total of issues with body image. It's sort of like, "Oh, people have said hard things to me and that felt really hurtful," and that's as far as I go in the conversation about body image. Growing up as a fat kid, it wasn't just about saying mean things to me because I was a fat kid. It was about getting sent to fat camp, which is, for folks who are unfamiliar, I think pretty clearly just a way of giving kids eating disorders, and in some cases pretty clearcut abuse of kids happening in those spaces. It was about being put not only on diets, but also being put on Fen-Phen, which was a diet drug that was pulled from the market because it stopped people's hearts. It was about, as Kara mentioned, this whole idea of not fitting. Not being able to get a choir dress that fit unless you had one special made, and not being able to get a uniform size for a sports team.

At every turn you're not only not expected, but you're not welcome. And the only way to get welcomed is to transform your body into something it has not ever been. And that is a real hard way to grow up in the world, being told that the only way that you can be accepted is if you change almost completely. I am also a queer person who worked on campaigns around conversion therapy, and I will tell you, the similarities there are often really striking. There's no evidence that that kind of transformation is really possible for most people, but there is a deep investment in making sure that people who are outside of the norm face some punitive circumstances for being outside of the norm. And that feels really bad and gross. It feels really bad and gross.

Eleanor Pike:
I have so many directions I could take this because there's so many pieces, but just to insert my little anecdote as we converse, I was listening to ... I want to say it was either NPR or New York Times, and it was one of their responses to AAP guidelines that had come out. And the individual who was being interviewed was the medical correspondent, and towards the end they finally started to talk about weight stigma in children. And they were like, "But isn't weight stigma a problem?" And she was like, "Absolutely." And she kind of clarified. She said, "And that's why supporting these kids with weight loss measures will be beneficial, so then they won't have to endure weight stigma." And that's exactly what you're talking about, of being queer and being told, "You shouldn't be queer, so let's go through conversion therapy," because that's not stigmatizing. And so when you describe that, I'm like, "Man, the whole fat camp mentality is not gone." It is still there and there is still such a medical perspective that, "Well, stigma will decrease if you just fit into this size." And it's just heartbreaking to hear that you all have been through this, millions of people have been through this experience, and it continues to be really challenging.

Aubrey Gordon:
Yeah, it sure does. And it just feels like there's this idea that we've moved past anti-fatness, or we're moving past anti-fatness or something like that, and I feel like I see that from such a dramatically different perspective than so many folks, which is essentially like I don't think we've moved past it. I think we're entrenching it more. That those APP guidelines are about giving very new drugs with very little research behind them to children. To actual children. It's about giving weight loss surgery to preteens. It is rough out there. Those are big dramatic decisions to make with children's health. And again, it feels like rather than we're moving past it, it feels like we're regressing real hard right now.

Kara Richardson Whitley:
Right. 100%. Because when I think about the kinds of campaigns that are going on right now, and I also think about my own childhood, when I was 12 years old, I was sexually assaulted and that's when my binge-eating disorder kicked into high gear. I wasn't really just snacking here and there. I was in a legitimate eating disorder. Meanwhile, I have lipedema and I didn't know it. I didn't even know it until two years ago. And so I've had [inaudible 00:18:18] surgery and it didn't do much, and I've had weight loss drugs over the years. I had Meridia, I had all these different interventions, the powders, the pills, the programs, and none of them really made a dent in my body. Or if they did, it was temporary and it just came back with a vengeance. So when I think about how this is some campaign that promises to change the trajectory, well, what are we not considering? What's going on in each individual child's life? Maybe they're just a fat kid.

Aubrey Gordon:
Yeah, totally.

Kara Richardson Whitley:
Maybe this is just their body and it's not going to react in a way ... but the promises of those campaigns are just so problematic.

Aubrey Gordon:
Well, and also when do we ever respond to stigma or bullying or in any way punching down with, "Hm, the people who are getting punched are probably the ones who need to do the changing, rather than the people doing the punching." It's very strange to me, particularly with the AAP guidelines, that there is this acknowledgement of weight stigma, there is this acknowledgement of anti-fatness, and there is zero plan to do anything about it. There are no action steps about how weight stigma is going to be combated aside from, as you noted, just make fat kids thin and then the stigma ceases to exist, which no, it does not. And also, how would that happen, team? Scientifically, where are we going with that? How's that going to be delivered?

Eleanor Pike:
That's right. We need a project manager for that.

Kara Richardson Whitley:
Action steps.

Eleanor Pike:
And I should probably clarify for our listeners what the APP is. And so it's the Academy of American Pediatrics, meaning the governing body of who decides what the best practice is for pediatric care. So in the last ... what was it? I don't know, seven months ago? They came out with a more anti-fat, very restrictive diet and medication approach to weight loss. There we go. So Kara and Aubrey, when did you in your childhood or teen or early adult journey start to question the messages you were getting, that you must be thin, you must change your body to fit into a different mold and to be accepted?

Aubrey Gordon:
I would say for me, my first girlfriend was a fat activist adjacent lady, and she would take me to see things like there was a radical fat cheerleading troupe in Portland, and she'd be like, "We're going to see the fat cheerleaders. We're going to go do this and we're going to read these books and we're going to dah, dah, dah," and all of that sort of stuff. And it was too soon for me and it made me really uncomfortable.

And then a couple of years later, I think my own disordered eating and relationship to diets just reached a breaking point, and I just decided to give myself a 'break' from dieting, to just be like, "I'm just going to not worry about that for a little bit," and a little bit turned into a long bit. And I think the nail in the coffin in as much as that exists for folks, because diet culture and anti-fatness are still all around us all the time, so it's not like we get to just step out of it, but the closest I get to a nail in the coffin was actually starting to research diets and anti-fatness and treatment of fat people and all of that kind of stuff. Because as soon as you start looking into it, it all just falls apart really quickly. As soon as you start looking for, say, primary source studies in peer reviewed journals about what delivers weight loss for most people in the longterm most of the time, it doesn't exist, buddy. They got nothing. They're coming up blank.

As soon as you start looking into what are the effects of discrimination on fat people and what are some solutions to that, again, a lot of things start to snap into focus. You start to see that actually when people experience discrimination, their blood pressure goes up. Oh, interesting. Interesting and a thing that maybe we should consider when we're talking about hypertension in fat people. There is just all of that information that I thought would cut against me as a fat person because that's how we talk about this stuff as we mobilize science as a way of silencing fat people, as I dug into it, I found that it was quite the opposite and that quite a bit of the data actually cut in fat folks' favor and was in defense of fat people in some pretty big ways. And that felt really, really helpful to me.

Kara Richardson Whitley:
Yeah. And I think for me, maybe this generation is going to learn sooner, but for me it was definitely wildly into adulthood, even solidly into my 30s, because that's when I was about to turn 30 ... I was about to turn 30, that's what it was, when I started to get these adventure travel catalogs in the mail, and I realized that I kept saying to myself that, "I'm going to do that when I lose weight." I'd see these pictures of Machu Picchu, Kilimanjaro and the Alps, and I realized that everything was followed by that clause. "I'll get some new clothes when I lose weight." "I'll see the doctors when I lose weight." "I'll go on this adventure when I lose weight." And that moment of getting an adventure travel catalog and realizing like, "Whoa, wait a minute. What if I just went on a hike here in New Jersey, and it's a tiny one? That's okay. What if I started to take up some space in the places I really want to be in and I want to explore?" And so that was really the first step.

But diet culture has this way of ... the only thing I can envision right now is the waves of a sea. You're riding on a boat in the sea and sometimes you're in control of the tide and sometimes the tide can pull you back in. And so it's been a journey back and forth, but I do remember a doctor that I had who was very just nonjudgmental of me. I think I was asking for something, I don't know if it was a pill, a program, a prescription of some kind, and she just said to me like, "Listen, Kara. I've seen you for eight years and your weight has always been around this number and you're okay. All the numbers that I care about are great. So I don't know much about this," whatever it was I was asking about, "But I do know this about your body and I think you're okay." And so that was one of those moments that was like, "My gosh, maybe I am." And so there are lots of stops on that journey of just trying to figure out, "Maybe I don't need diet culture or thinness in my life to exist and do the things that I really want to do."

Eleanor Pike:
Well, I appreciate both of your perspectives, and the analogy you brought of the tide where you get pulled out and back in, the journey is not linear at all, and yet you all are here and you're such advocates for inclusion and really speaking up and providing education. So I'm wondering, in your own personal journeys, what are you aiming for? What impact do you hope that you could have on this space?

Aubrey Gordon:
That's a big question. Kara, I don't know if you have an answer ready to go?

Kara Richardson Whitley:
All right. All right. Well, we'll have to divide the task in half and you take half of it and I'll-

Aubrey Gordon:
Totally. Great. Love it. Excellent.

Kara Richardson Whitley:
Because it's a huge question and it's a huge ask, because there is so much work to be done in this space, from weight not being a protected class, there's so much work to be done from the discrimination point of view. But where my skillset is and where my expertise is is helping to change the narrative and the imagery and the perception for folks that all bodies are welcome in spaces. And whether that's the fitness space, the travel space, the apparel space, helping companies articulate that better and understand not only the moral case for it, but the business case for it. Because in the work that I do through the Gorgeous Agency, 67% of US women are a size 14 and above. So why are only 12% of garments made in plus sizes? The math right now does not add up. And so that's where I'm focusing my effort because that's where my skillset really is.

And of course, to continue telling my story about climbing Kilimanjaro and having that platform and just being a role model so that other people's adventures can feel like a reality ... And believe me, not everybody wants to climb Kilimanjaro eight days without a shower. It's just really not for everybody. But-

Aubrey Gordon:
It's not for me. I'll tell you that.

Kara Richardson Whitley:
Right. Who knows what someone else's Kilimanjaro will be, right? Who knows? Is it walking around the block and not being terrified that a middle schooler's going to yell something out of a car? Or it doesn't even have to be a middle schooler. It could be just a regular adult human being that feels permission to yell out something ridiculous when someone's taking a walk. So if my platform, my story, the things that I do in the adventure space helps someone else to make a decision to do something that brings them joyful movement or joyful feelings, then my work is not done, but it's working.

Eleanor Pike:
It's impactful.

Aubrey Gordon:
That was a good answer. You had a good answer ready.

Kara Richardson Whitley:
Now you do the rest.

Aubrey Gordon:
Yeah. I think Kara noted it is perfectly legal in 48 states to fire someone or deny them housing or deny them a table in a restaurant or a room in a hotel just because you think they're too fat. We have a long way to go. It is perfectly legal for doctors in many states to deny care to fat people because they think they're too fat. There's a lot of work to do there. There are issues in doctor's offices about the equipment that they have. Do they have exam tables that will hold fat people? Do they have scales that will measure us if they're going to insist on weighing us? Do they even have equipment that will weigh us? There is an issue with blood pressure cuffs. A lot of folks don't necessarily know this, that most blood pressure cuffs are built around the idea of a thin person's arm, so they are cylindrical. If a cylindrical cuff is put on a fat person, it will give them an artificially high reading on their blood pressure. There is another kind, which is a conical cuff, which makes space for fat people's arms. They can be used on thin people with perfect accuracy, so great, and they're accurate on fat people, but those are not as common as the cylindrical ones.

So there are just all of these things that we can do; in schools, having seats that are attached to desks at a fixed width. There are things that all of us can do from wherever we are with whatever power we have to functionally make the world more welcoming to fat people. And that doesn't stop at not using slurs or not being the person who yells at somebody when they're on a walk, to Kara's point.

I think there are two other effects that I hope to have for folks. One is exposing the scaffolding that has been the source code for a lot of our deepest anti-fat beliefs. We have been told that those are hard and fast science, and often they are the furthest thing from hard and fast science. That feels really important to me, that folks start to think of the diet industry like they think of big tobacco, like they think of vaping companies, like they think of the worst players in our economy, because I think the diet industry is one of the worst players in our economy, one of the most disingenuous and one of the most profit-hungry and all kinds of stuff.

And then I think the last thing for me that feels really important is anytime we're talking about structural issues of inequality, anytime we're talking about systems of oppression and marginalization, we have this conversation that's like, "Man, some people out there somewhere are really mean to fat people, and I don't know who they are, but they should knock it off," in this way that is completely absolving ourselves of any role of upholding those same systems.

So the other impact that I hope to have through this work, and question mark on effectiveness, we'll see, is getting folks to understand that in big ways and small ways, all of us are capable of being the villain in that story, just as much as we're all capable of being the target of villainy in that story. That we are much more likely to hang on to our stories of how we were hurt by anti-fatness than by acknowledging when we have been part of upholding anti-fatness and working on that. And that's true for fat people about people who are fatter than us. It's true of thin people. Regardless of size, all of us are capable of anti-fatness, and that feels like a really, really important message for folks to get, to stop looking outward for find the fat phobe and start looking inward to, "Wait a minute. Where do my practices not totally match up to my values? Where might I have done this?" Without blame and shame, because that's not really helping, but just doing an honest inventory of, "Where can I show up differently and in a stronger way for fat people?" It feels like a really important set of questions that I would love for people to spend a little time doing a little soul-searching on.

Kara Richardson Whitley:
Aubrey, we were talking about effectiveness, and I would have to say that your exposing the scaffolding on the diet industry has been, I'd say, unlocking the next level of my understanding of my body and history with food and body.

Aubrey Gordon:
Wow.

Kara Richardson Whitley:
No, seriously.

Aubrey Gordon:
Thanks, buddy.

Kara Richardson Whitley:
You're welcome.

Aubrey Gordon:
That's great.

Kara Richardson Whitley:
When I listen to the Maintenance Phase and I hear, Oh yeah, French women don't get fat. That's like a recipe for an eating disorder." I'm like, "Right. I thought I should have just liked the leek soup. Why did I not like it? Oh, because I was hangry." And so when you start to unpack that for people, myself included, and all the many grateful listeners of the podcast, it's just such a gift, because it truly does, it allows you to revisit something and reexamine in a way that's something that you always thought was true. And it's so important to do that in the world of diet culture because we're talking about things that everybody has always assumed was true. Your work is just so powerful and meaningful to me personally, and I know to so many other people.

Aubrey Gordon:
Oh buddy, that is so kind. I will say, it's a very fun thing about making the show that I also get to get my mind blown through the process of making the show. I will absolutely never forget sitting down to record an episode with Mike where he had researched the President's physical fitness test, and I absolutely thought that that was standardized from state to state, that the data was going somewhere and doing something, and that the public policy was there with benchmarks that we were all aiming toward or whatever. None of those things were true. Dwight Eisenhower just thought we needed military-ready children.

Kara Richardson Whitley:
Which I am not.

Aubrey Gordon:
No. Not one time in my life have I been military-ready. Never.

Kara Richardson Whitley:
Right.

Eleanor Pike:
I just need to know how long you ...

No, no, go ahead.

Aubrey Gordon:
Oh, I was just going to say, that's so incredibly kind of you, and I'm so, so glad that that is having that impact for you, bud. I appreciate it.

Kara Richardson Whitley:
Oh, my pleasure. I appreciate you.

Eleanor Pike:
Well, I just have to know how long you research for each episode, because to truly expose the scaffolding and to simplify it the way that you do, it takes a lot of background knowledge, and then you're creating the Cliff Notes for all of us. So I'm just curious.

Aubrey Gordon:
Yeah, totally. So I think depending on the topic ... on really, really gnarly ones, we'll spend a month. On most of our episodes, I would say it's about two weeks of research for each of us and then a week-ish of editing and writing and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, it's a labor-intensive little process to get it right.

Eleanor Pike:
It is. Well, we appreciate you, because someone needs to be digging in and providing us all the right information. So thank you so much for that.

Aubrey Gordon:
Sure. Appreciate it.

Eleanor Pike:
So as we wrap up, I'm curious your take on how can folks become allies?

Aubrey Gordon:
Yeah. For me it feels really, really simple, which is get curious about what people in your life who are fatter than you need. Ask them what they need, ask them how they need you to show up, and then do those things. If you have a classmate who is a fat person who is like, "Actually, yeah, the desks in this classroom are really, really hard for me," or, "This professor in our class keeps using 'the obesity epidemic' as their go-to example of a public health crisis or whatever. Could you talk to them about it? That would be really helpful." Just ask people what they need and then do those things. I think it's easy to get overwhelmed by the complexity of getting to know a community that's new to you or a community that you haven't explored a lot. And I think it can be really helpful in those times when it feels really overwhelming to remind ourselves that it really is just how do you be a decent person to each other? Do you know what I mean? It really does not have to be complicated. It really can be as simple as, "What do you need? How can I help?" That's it. And that's a thing that many, many, many people just don't do with fat people, just check in and see if we have what we need.

Kara Richardson Whitley:
Yeah, it's so true. I'd say that one of the most beautiful moments I've had this summer was when we were in Europe, we visited our previous au pairs. Most of them are in France, and two of them were together with us in Lyons, and we went to a restaurant. And for those of you who visit France, you probably know it's not very fat-friendly. So we went into a restaurant and the two of them just went ahead of me, got a chair without arms and put it in the place that I was sitting without me asking for it. And I never said anything to them about it, but if you're listening now, that was really powerful, that they know me. They lived in my house for a year. They know what my needs are. And so I didn't need to ask. They just immediately took care of me in that scenario, because they knew I would be uncomfortable for the whole beautiful lunch that we were about to have in Lyons. And so it was such a simple gesture, and those simple gestures, just like Aubrey said, are just so powerful.

Aubrey Gordon:
That's huge. I love that story. That's so great. Tuning into seating, it's a cut above. It's not just, "I'm going to defend you if I hear someone say something." It's like, "I'm going to anticipate. I know that this is going to be a challenge for you, and I want you to feel comfortable here like I feel comfortable here. How do I make that happen?" That's awesome.

Kara Richardson Whitley:
Like, "I just want you to have a beautiful experience." It's almost like, "I want you to, A, have a seat at the table, and B, just really enjoy it." And so it was such a beautiful, beautiful experience.

Aubrey Gordon:
I have one larger and quicker thing that people can do, which is the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, NAAFA, is working on a campaign to end anti-fat discrimination. They just passed an ordinance in New York City to ban anti-fat discrimination in New York. That's a huge deal, and they are cooking with gas. They are ready to move on to their next state or municipality. So folks should go to their website and sign up to volunteer to donate and just to stay in the loop, because if and as it comes to your town, you want to be able to write to your city council member, you want to be able to write to your state legislature and make sure that fat folks in your community are protected from really baseline, really overt discrimination.

Eleanor Pike:
I appreciate an actionable item, and I just wrote that down, so I will be first to do that today. Thank you so much for that idea. So for the rest of our listeners too, who are like, "Okay, so I need to dig in. I need to learn more about anti-fat bias. I need to assess my own biases." Just keep learning, keep this as a conversation. Clearly we're going to be reading you all's books and listening to Maintenance Phase. What are some other resources that you recommend to folks that you believe are credible? That's an important word there.

Aubrey Gordon:
I'll say I have a couple of particular favorites to recommend in this realm. One is a book that just came out a few months ago called Fat Talk by Victoria Sole-Smith. That is looking at the 'childhood obesity epidemic' and parenting around anti-fatness. So if folks are parents, that is an extremely information dense, but also instructive book on not just how to parent fat kids, but how to parent all kids in a way that respects different kinds of bodies and that sort of thing.

So that's thing one. And thing two I would say is Da'Shaun Harrison has a book called Belly of the Beast that is about the relationship between anti-fatness and anti-blackness. That is absolutely stellar, and I can't recommend it strongly enough. Those are both really, really, really strong pieces of analysis and really foundational and should be foundational to folks' understanding of how anti-fatness operates.

Kara Richardson Whitley:
I also echo the Fat Talk. That's my summer reading.

Aubrey Gordon:
It's a good one, right?

Kara Richardson Whitley:
And it's fun to see you quoted so often in that. I'm like, "Yeah." I know that it's supposed to be other than Maintenance Phase, but that is one of the things that deconstructs things for me. And then to vibe on the entertainment space, I think that it's important, just as you go through the world, and especially because we're in the midst of making a movie, it's important to just continue examining in your own mind as you watch things, like the portrayal of people, from The Whale to anything on TV. Who are the characters? Who are the people? How are they being portrayed? And then start to support projects that make a difference and show body diversity in an empowering way versus just to push people down.

Eleanor Pike:
I am so grateful to Kara and Aubrey for sharing honestly about their experiences today. I hope their candor helped open your mind to critically thinking about weight bias and its profound consequences. The good news is that you and I can do something about it. A great place to start is by going to the website of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance and sign their Size Freedom petition. You can find it at naafa.org/sizefreedom. We will also list the books Aubrey mentioned in our show notes, and don't forget to check out Aubrey and Kara's websites on our show notes as well.

And finally, I am so proud to highlight our friends at the nonprofit Project Heal. They are doing incredible work bridging healthcare gaps created by lack of finances, insurance, systemic oppression and bias. From free assessments to expert insurance support to free treatment, Project Heal's services are designed for those our current healthcare system is failing. For more information about Project Heal's services or to sign up for support, go to theprojectheal.org. Thank you for listening to Mental Note Podcast. Our show is brought to you by Eating Recovery Center and Pathlight Mood and Anxiety Center. If you'd like to talk to a trained therapist to see if in-person or virtual treatment is right for you, please call them at (877) 850-7199. If you need a free support group, check out eatingrecovery.com/support-groups. Also, keep a lookout for an unlearning fat stigma workshop Eating Recovery Center will be putting out in early 2024. Signups should come out later this fall.

If you like our show, sign up for our e-newsletter and learn more about the people we interview at mentalnotepodcast.com. We'd also love it if you left us a review on iTunes. It helps others find our podcast. Mental Note is produced and hosted by me, Ellie Pike, and directed and edited by Sam Pike. Till next time.

Presented by

Ellie Pike, MA, LPC

Ellie Pike is the Sr. Manager of Alumni/Family/Community Outreach at ERC & Pathlight Behavioral Health Centers. Over the years, she creatively combined her passions for clinical work with…

Presented by

Aubrey Gordon

Aubrey Gordon is an author, columnist, and cohost of Maintenance Phase. Her work has been published in The New York Times, Vox, Literary Hub, SELF, Health, Glamour and more. Her first book, What We…

Presented by

Kara Richardson Whitely

Kara Richardson Whitely, an Eating Recovery Center Binge Eating Disorder Recovery Advocate, is the author of Fat Woman on the Mountain and Gorge: My 300-Pound Journey Up Kilimanjaro, an honest and…