Too Fat, Too Furious (Featuring Tigress Osborn)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Black Fat Fem Podcast is a production of iHeartRadio
and Doctor Sean Paul LLC. Hello everyone, Welcome to another
episode of the Blackfatfem Podcast while all the intersections of
a dynity are celebrated. I am one of your hosts,
John also known as the God Paul, and I just
wanted to know, bitch, what was this past week? Like

(00:28):
so much this past week and I was just like,
I gotta go to bed.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Like it just so much happened.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
I'm gonna get into it a little bit later, but
I do want to shout out anyone and everyone who
marched this weekend. Shout out to y'all for getting out
there and doing what y'all had to do and what
had to be done. But I also want to say
l O L, not L as an l O L.
I'm saying e l O L sadass parade, because that

(01:02):
nigga thought he was gonna have himself a whole little
like China Stop March, and he that's in his head,
that's what he thought he was gonna have.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Baby, that's sad ass pump pump ass March that he had.
The fuck was that? What was that?

Speaker 3 (01:23):
I have so many.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
When we are going to get into them I place,
But Joe, it was it was given. Boo boo, it
was given. You know the porta potties that aren't nice,
it's you know, just nice. That was tipped over.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
It plastic, the plastic one.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
He thought he was gonna have him one of those
television show porta potties. No, girl, it's giving side of
the road with a chain wrapped around in porta potties.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
This is tragic, honey. Anyway, Joe, how are you good?

Speaker 4 (02:01):
Oh my god, about the yar bitch? Oh my god, y'all.
Damn girl, it's Jordan aka fat girl. Jo ho bitch.
I am tired.

Speaker 5 (02:11):
It's been a week awesome. It's hot. It's hot, y'all.
Y'all don't understand. But like literally before we started recording,
my eyeball was out here having a whole assid break
down because you know, like when you get sweat in
your eye but you get like mixed with the sunscreen,
because she just like perpetually like I cannot even like

(02:32):
my eyeball is up my eye like I might have
red eyes after this.

Speaker 4 (02:35):
It's so nasty. It has been.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
Earth winning fire, honey, But It's.

Speaker 4 (02:48):
Okay, y'all.

Speaker 5 (02:49):
I will be even even if even my eye pops out,
It's gonna be okay because I'm trually being excited for
this that we have no glass eyeballs on this show.

Speaker 4 (03:01):
Just bye, I'll just this way.

Speaker 5 (03:04):
But I'm being savage condition day, y'all because we are
joined by somebody that I respect so very much, whose
work is so necessary for our fat liberation movement. This
human is an activist, a curator of movement culture, event producer,
and also also a Bay Area born patty. Today she
serves as the executive director of NAFA, or the National

(03:25):
Association of to Advance Fat Acceptance. Thank you, please join
us and welcoming our dear friend, Tigris Osborne.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
How are you Worlday? I am.

Speaker 3 (03:37):
I'm so happy to be with y'all. I am not
a Bay born batty, but I am a Bay loyal batty.

Speaker 4 (03:43):
Hey, loyal baddy.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
I spent twenty two years of my life in the
Bay and I used to.

Speaker 4 (03:47):
You basically native basically nadim. Yeah, okay, I.

Speaker 3 (03:50):
Well, and I love it like I'm a native. But
I am back in my hometown, which is outside of
the Phoenix.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
It's in the greater Phoenix area in Arizona. Yeah, that's where.
That's where I'm coming to y'all from today, and I
just want to go back to I thought I heard
a reference to working up a black sweat, and I'm
obsessed with that song all week. And I don't know
where it came into my head from, but I was
just like, why don't more people talk about how brilliant

(04:18):
this song is? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah, yes, yes, and we weren't.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
I was working up a you know, a black sweat
out at the march in my little hometown yesterday. I
was really excited because, you know, growing up in what
was then sort of rural Arizona and is now kind
of suburban sprawl Arizona, I never could have imagined this
many people turning out for solidarity with immigrants to talk,

(04:44):
you know, solidary against white supremacy, solidarity against fascism. Like
I was going to drive into Phoenix and I was like,
let me just see what's happening down here. And I
went downtown expecting it to be like thirty to fifty people.
I'm you know, I'm hanging out with these old hippies
and young radicals and it's going to be a handful
of us, and the streets were packed. We have more
people than some of them. Scenes from the military parade.

(05:06):
You know, we didn't have any squeaky tanks making strange noises.
So but yeah, so so that was my my black
sweat of the weekend was getting out there for that.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
I love it. I love it. I had a chance yesterday.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
So people know I live in the Inland Empire, and
I've been very vocal about the idea of how the
Inland Empire. Oftentimes we like we miss a lot of
the bigger stuff because everything's happening in La or everything's
happening in like major cities like San Francisco, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Et cetera.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
And I was so surprised one of the cities I
was driving through yesterday when I was coming back, so
I didn't get a chance to march into everything. I
had a book talk yesterday and I was at the
book talk, and as I was driving home from the
book talk, I was just surprised. I was I was
literally getting ready to get back on the freeway to
go home, and as I was getting ready to leave
and come home, there was just mound and mound and

(06:00):
mounds and mounds of people that were out there, and
I just was like, this is what we need. And
so now, you know, I'm seeing a lot of conversations around,
you know, because even my my husband is saying, like,
you know, he was driving home yesterday from work and
he was like, oh my god, there was so many
people out there and I was like, yeah, like and
he was like, if all these people are protesting, then
why did this man win? And I go, you know,

(06:20):
I'm not I try not to be a you know,
what do you call those people who speculate.

Speaker 5 (06:27):
Like a political scientist or whatever, Like, no, what do
you call them the commentators?

Speaker 1 (06:32):
No, there's another word for people who think who always
put their tenfoil heat zone, sciracy theorists. I try not
to be a conspiracy theorist, but I genuinely believe that
something about this election ain't right and it's not sitting
with me well. And I genuinely like, I know that
there's a lot of terrible people out there, but I'm
looking around and I'm going, if this many people are

(06:54):
are are marching the streets. And again, I also think
a lot of it is people didn't think that this
stuff was gonna come to their front door, and so
they've had to change your heart. But I also believe,
like I'm thinking to myself, like I would love I'm
just gonna say it this way. I would love for
someone to investigate what happened, because again, oh well, there are.

Speaker 3 (07:15):
There are investigations happening, and there are lawsuits happening, and
there's you know, there's there's all this stuff looking at
the election, and the problem is we have to deal
with the you know, we have to deal with the
situation in office now. Even if they got even if
it came by by that office in a faulty way,
this is you know, this is what we're what we've got.
And I'm real but I'm very I feel, you know,

(07:38):
cautiously optimistic about seeing so because some of the folks
who were out there with signs and cheering and whatever,
then they just went on back to their lives right
after that, and they're not thinking about it today. They're
not going you know, they're they're going to show up
for the performative part, but they're not going to do
the other parts.

Speaker 6 (07:55):
Right.

Speaker 3 (07:55):
But some of them are not, Like some of them are,
this is gonna Galvin Night. Some people. This is going
to radicalize some people, and it's going to you know,
and even if they are baby steps, there are steps
that weren't they weren't taking when I think about, like,
you know, yet, nobody's downtown in my hometown today, right,
and nobody was downtown in my hometown on Friday. But
where did people carry that into their Where did they

(08:18):
carry that into their churches this morning? Where did they
carry that into their Father's Day celebrations today? Where did
they carry that into their week and their work week?
And what did you do this weekend? Oh? I went
to the hey, the whatever, and you know, and so
like really thinking about because you know, I have some
skepulists sometimes, and especially you know, especially when when the

(08:40):
white folks show up for the protest. Sometimes they show
up like the who's and who will like we're just
gonna make us things and yeah, and you know and.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
That yeah bothering people.

Speaker 3 (08:51):
Yes, yeah, we're just gonna make a circle and sing then,
you know, and and and I like the singing circle.
I like the energy of that.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
It's necessary.

Speaker 3 (09:01):
But what are we gonna you know? But that right?
But then then then what are we gonna do, you know,
after we make our who circle.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
When the Grinch goes inside the house and y'all are
done being mad at the Grinch, what are we gonna
do afterwards?

Speaker 4 (09:13):
Right?

Speaker 2 (09:13):
Yeah? And that's literally you talk about who vill I want? Yeah,
And also what are we gonna do?

Speaker 3 (09:18):
What are we gonna do with the system that isolated
the Grinch in the first place and traumatized him into
being who he was? How goring? How we're gonna bring
back the Grinch and and and create actual healing, actual change.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
I'll always be wanting to cuss out the mayor every
time I see him and be like, you are the
reason why everybody hates the Grinch because you out here
instigating ship. You and your wife out here instigating ship.
That's why.

Speaker 4 (09:43):
Uh huh.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
But you're right, You're right.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
There is a system that's present, and I think a
lot of folks it's very performative. But I also agree
with you, and I think that that that's something I
need to think about yesterday. I think about the people
you know who are watching it, you know, play out
in front of their you know, like a for instance.
I mean, I'll say this, and I know we have
to move on. But I was watching something earlier today
when I, you know, everyone knows I start my day
off watching reels, and so I was watching a reel

(10:06):
this morning and ABC was reporting about how I guess
there was a swap meet that happened yesterday, and they
did a raid at the swap meet, and people were saying,
you know, I have never I never thought that it
would get here, you know, like we saw it happening
in downtown LA. We saw it happening, and Whittier, we
saw it happening, and Belflower, but we never thought it
was actually gonna happen here. And I think that that's

(10:27):
the thing that people are starting to recognize. It's like, yeah,
you thought, you know, you used to think of it as, oh,
it's just something I'm seeing on social media. But now, girl,
this stuff is actually happening in your neighborhood and you
have to respond to it. And now it's a different
game for people. So yeah, yeah, yeah, and I right.

Speaker 3 (10:44):
Sometimes we you know, sometimes we asked this question like, well,
why didn't you know before? We some of us knew before,
I think before, right, why weren't you listening to the
people who knew before? Why weren't you listening to the
people who told you it could go like this and
it would go like this, And those are are fair questions.
And also and also you know, how do we kind

(11:05):
of like check folks with that, you know, kind of
told you so and then get past that told you
so into the like okay, but you're here, now, do
you actually want to roll up your thieves and do
some work? You actually want to try to do something
because you know, like Eja ma Alo wrote this piece around,
it's actually about Palestine and folks who are you know,

(11:27):
supporting a free Palestine and who've been supporting a free
Palestine for many, many years, and that frustration that they
sometimes have often have of like the folks who were
more late comers to this And I'm like, full disclosure,
I was a bit of a late comer to this, right,
I understood some of the politics, not all of the politics,
and but like, but Jo wrote this really beautiful piece

(11:48):
about like what we do need. I think she called
it a welcome committee, Like you know, the it's not
the work of everybody who's already been in the movement
to orient new people, but it is the work of
somebody to orient the new people, because we want new people.
And it's the same parallel. I think about this all
the time in the work that we do in fat
liberation at NAPA specifically, and the other kind of you know,

(12:10):
fat liberation work that I do or that my colleagues
at NAFA do out you know, within our organization and
outside of our organization. That's sort of like, you can't
expect folks to show up already as fully baked fat
activists or even as fully baked social justice understanders.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
You got to all have to start somewhere.

Speaker 3 (12:29):
Yeah, all have to start somewhere. You have to have
some one on one for people, and you have to
not let that one o one be anywhere in the
range of annoying to abusive for people who already get
it right right, you have to have you have to
have spaces where people who already get it don't have
to be dragged through one on one over and over
and over again. But you still also have to have
the one on one spaces. And you know, for me

(12:51):
this rally downtown, it's like the pre one oh one
Right now, who's gonna come to the one oh one?
And then who's going to go to the two oh one,
and then who's going to work on the actual projects.

Speaker 2 (13:01):
In the streets, right, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:03):
You know, And I just I think there's parallels for
across movements for this, for this stuff, and we have
to work in solidarity across movements on all of this stuff.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
That's so real, that's so right, and I think we
all need to hear that right now. You know, I
wasn't going to take too much time today in this episode.
I mean, but obviously right when you're talking about liberation work,
I always like to say, all oppression is connected, and
you know we're going to be talking a lot about
fat liberation in this conversation. Obviously we wouldn't have brought
you on, if you know, to just like just to

(13:31):
have you on, Like we want to make sure that
we're centralizing a lot of what you're talking about.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
But I think this is.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
Really good to talk about folks who are listening to
this show and are thinking to themselves, I want to
do more. I don't know how to do more. I'm
scared to do more. Where do I start? And I
think that this is a great kind of segue into that.
And I think as we get into our next category
in a couple of minutes. It'll be really good for
folks to kind of hear that, because I do. I
think I get this a lot. You know, even yesterday

(13:58):
when I was talking to you know, some babies. You know,
there was a group of kids who came to hear
me speak yesterday at the Anaheim Library, and their number
one concern was, you know, they said, I'm queer, and
you know, I'm this, and I'm that, and I'm doing
all of these things. How do I get not only
do how do I get confident? But how do I
find ways to start doing more to make sure that
I change the way things are working around me as

(14:20):
a kid. And so we were having conversations about that
and so that that introductory thing is real for people.
People are scared that they're gonna say or do the
wrong thing when they start, and that's basically what I
told them.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
You just have to start.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
You have to put the content out, you have to
show up to the march, you have to start doing
something like even this, like this podcast.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
Right.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
Who would have known we would have the success of
this podcast if I never pitched it, right, So, I
think that's the thing we have to remind ourselves is
that we have to start somewhere.

Speaker 3 (14:46):
So and you are gonna say or do the wrong thing.
You are, like, if you're trying to do social justice work,
you you are a human and at some point you're
gonna step on somebody's toes or roll over somebody's toes
or you know what, whatever, and you have to if
you're if you're well, you know, because I'm a part
time roll later user, So sometimes I'll be out there

(15:07):
rolling and you know, and I'm gonna roll over somebody's else.
Sometimes I'm gonna bump into somebody from the back me
and my role later trying to go through fan Fusion,
which is our Phoenix version of Comic Con. I took
three costumes last week for fan Fusion because this is
this is part of my creative expression. And I dress
up my roll Later as well so that I can,
you know, use my mobility device. But I just bring

(15:28):
it on into the costume, right, But I'm gonna I'm
gonna bump people with it. Sometimes it's crowded or whatever,
and it's like a it's like a you know, it's
like a parallel to what's gonna actually happen to you.
Anytime you go out in the world and engage with folks,
you're gonna bump people sometimes. And then the question is, like,
do you take responsibility for how you bump people? Do
you make people think about how maybe it was their

(15:48):
fault they got bumped, because that's certainly true when you're
a mobility device user, but it's also sometimes true in
other settings, right, and like, you know, but do you
take a responsibility when it was you when it really
was your fault? And like, what do you do for
repair if you actually hurt somebody? You know, if I
roll over somebody's foot with my roll later and they
are injured, it doesn't matter to them in their injury

(16:11):
whether I had I didn't mean to do it, right,
And it's not the time to talk about like, well,
maybe if you were being more if this space was
more accessible rolls, or if you'd been more temperate. Right now,
it's just the time to make sure is your toe broken,
Let's take care of that, right. And it's the same
thing with activism, like you're going to make mistakes and
you have to take care of yourself, and you have
to take care of the people that you've harmed, and

(16:32):
you have to give yourself a little bit of grace
for when your intention was not to harm anybody. And
you also have to understand the difference between impact and intention.
You may have still had impact even if you didn't
intend to hurt somebody. And it's just like you're gonna
fumble around, and it's better to be fumbling around in
the interest of Like, if you're committed to community, and

(16:53):
you're committed to you know, empowering other folks and supporting
other polks and solidarity and all those you know, all
those values that I know I share with y'all at
the podcast and y'all in your other work. If you're
committed to those things, then when you make mistakes, you
will address the mistakes and you will still be part
of community. You know, we will still be part of
I mean, I think we have a lot to learn

(17:14):
also from what was really helpful to me on this
is Adrian Marie Brown's We Do Not Cancel Us, you know,
about like stepping back to be reflective about like when
there is growth for when people make mistakes, when there
is room for accountability but also repair and restoration and
all that stuff, and like you don't have to be
kicked out the family because you made a mistake, you know,

(17:36):
and if you had and if you made that kind
of mistake, then you still have to figure out what
do I do instead? So I can be a part
of us. What do I do instead? And where else
can I be part of the family to contribute in
a different direction, because you don't get to just stop
doing the work of trying to make the world better
because you're licking your wounds forever, right, But you will
make mistakes. And I think that's really important for people

(17:58):
who are young chronologically, but also people who are young
to particular kinds of movements. If you don't accept that
you're gonna you're gonna fuck up some time, yep. And
and you and you live, you live, and well, you know,
we'll we'll get you through it, or we'll get you know,
we'll get you through it, or you'll find another place
to get through it and do the work.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
And then so real, So I'm happy that you're here
because I think this is going to be a very
robust and I say that with with all the things
around of fat, joyful happiness, flowers you want to name it,
this is gonna be a very very good convo. And
so as we start our show, I mean, we've already
kind of gotten into what the crux of the show
is going to be. But I want to say this

(18:39):
week one of the things that I would love to do,
as we always do, is we like to give our
flowers to Miss Tisha Campbell and are still here segment.
One of the things about having another fat liberalists, uh
liberal what are.

Speaker 4 (18:52):
The liberationists liberation relationists?

Speaker 1 (18:56):
It's Sunday and I'm tired of fat liberationalist with us
is it's thinking about our humble beginnings. And like you said,
you talk a lot about that, right, like where did
we start? What?

Speaker 2 (19:06):
You know? What are we doing?

Speaker 4 (19:07):
Right?

Speaker 1 (19:08):
And so I wanted to ask y'all, you know, what
is one of the things that you know, thinking about
policy and thinking about where we're at in this fat
liberation kind of movement, thinking about policy and law, what
is something that you'd like to change that may impact
our fatness? And I was going to go back to
your point about airplanes. I know you had made a
point about that. I don't know if it was on

(19:29):
the air, if it was in the pre show, but
I know you had noticed you had noted about yeah,
you were talking about your fat books and your fat
shirt and all of that. I would make it a
law that airlines have to require, regardless of your size,
that if a person needs a second seat, that they
don't have to pay for it.

Speaker 3 (19:44):
Well, that is a law in part of Canada, but
in the you that is not the law.

Speaker 1 (19:48):
I would make it a law here, God damn it.
And then also too roller coasters, because I'm a roller
coaster girl. I love thrills, but I know a lot
of roller coasters don't love and a lot of times
you can't get on the roller coaster. You can't get
on a ride quote unquote here in America because there's
no side. Some rides have them, like I know that
some rids will say, oh, if you go to the back,
there's a seatback there that actually has space for you

(20:09):
to close or for for you to be able to sit.
But I would also make that a law too, that say,
if you have, if you have anything anywhere, whether it
be a chair, whether it be a roller coaster, whether
it be a plane, whatever, if a fat person has
to sit, it has to be size inclusive to some degree.
And that would be something that I would that would
be my thing. I would I would what do you
call that when when when politician and your kid? I

(20:33):
would campaign on that plat platform. Yeah, that would be
my platform. What about you, Tigris?

Speaker 3 (20:38):
Well? So can I share with your listeners a little
bit about the laws that do exist, because I think
the listeners that might not know, it's really rare anywhere
in the world actually for there to be laws that
explicitly address body size. And part of our work at
NAPA the organizations I run is the Campaign for Size Freedom,

(21:00):
which works on trying to change laws around the United States.
There are only a handful of places in the US
where there's anything related to size discrimination in the law.
Sometimes it's in the civil rights law. Sometimes it's in
laws based on based discrimination. So sometimes it's made very
explicit this is about heightened weight. Other times it'll just say,
you know, you can't discriminate based on appearance, and then

(21:21):
in the sort of legal definitions behind the scenes, it'll
mention heighten weight. But there are nine cities and we
are on nine cities now I think at two states
that have any kind of law. There's no federal law
protecting against size discrimination. So when it comes to the
specifics of airplanes and roller coasters. Airplanes are governed by
the Federal Aviation Administration, so state and local laws do

(21:42):
not affect what airlines are required to provide for you. Airlines,
it's up to them and the policies. Right now, it's
up to them and the policies that they have. There's
nothing in FAI guidelines specifically about size. There are some
other things about accessibility that you can kind of, you know,
get them to do stuff. But sometimes, you know, some
airlines have policies that are specifically for customers of size.

(22:04):
Right now, Southwest Airlines has the best policy in the industry,
but they are making changes to their policies every day,
and they've already made some changes to their policy to
make it a little bit more limited than it was
a couple of months ago. You can find all this
information on the NAFFA website, because I don't want to
go in too much into the nuts and boats of
it right now, but on our Southwest page on our

(22:27):
website you can see if you want to, if you
want the details. But the short version is Southwest is
the best airline to purchase a second seat and get
a reimbursement with a procedure that makes it easier than
it is on most airlines.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
Hard they make it hard.

Speaker 3 (22:44):
They make it very hard, and if you're flying on
other airlines, you almost always have to book your ticket,
you know, with a customer service agent if you need
a second seat, whereas on Southwest it's easy to do
on their website. There's a bunch of stuff, but we
just don't know how it's going to continue to change
at Southwest. So your listeners who are interested in this,
we have a to Southwest on our website. We've been
trying to get them to meet with us and talk

(23:04):
more about their policies. But so anyway, that's so for airlines,
the FAA does that. For roller coasters. There is usually
stuff in the place. There's stuff in federal and state
safety laws about the safety of amusement parks and in
places that have rules that you can't laws that you
can't discriminate based on size. Those laws almost always have

(23:26):
a clause that says unless it's based on federal safety standards.
So it's really hard to get amusement parks to say
we have to make things that are size accessible, because
they can just say it's not safe and then the
law doesn't really bind them. The question is when do
we start to get creative about wanting to include everyone
in our communities. Because these amusement parks, especially a new

(23:49):
amusement park that's being built or a new ride that's
going in at an amusement park, y'all know, fat people exist, right,
and it's not impossible for every fat person to be
able to be in an amusement park ride. There are
other rides that we can, you know, there are some
rides that even very large fat people can do. It
just depends on the amusement park and the ride. And

(24:10):
there's great travel influencers and other folks who do accessibility
stuff around amusement on the clock app Yeah, but the
big but the underlying question is the same. Underlying question
is for everything, y'all know we exist, So why don't
you make stuff for us? Why do we have to
come in after the fact and be like, you didn't
have these clothes, you didn't have these chairs, you didn't

(24:31):
have this blood pressure tough you didn't have this roller
coaster seat, you didn't have this airline seat, you didn't
have this seat on the public bus. You don't have
these seat belts, you don't have the like all of
that stuff is being made right now with the full
knowledge that fat people exist, but without consideration for fat people.
So how do we change more people's hearts and minds
so that instead of them saying, well, you shouldn't be

(24:53):
so fucking fat, and then you wouldn't have this problem
that what they are saying is there are fat people
in my community, and I I want them to be
able to participate. So what do I need to do
to make the space accessible? And it shouldn't require this
is just like everything else about accessibility and inclusion. It
should not require an act of the government to tell
you that you want to have a chair in your

(25:15):
restaurant that a larger person in your community can sit,
that that you want to have a qew in your
church where that's wide enough for somebody to be able
to get into it. That you want to sell caskets
that are big enough for big people without charging them
thousands more dollars. You should not take a federal law
to make you do that. It should take you being
interested in your fellow humans who are big, whether you

(25:38):
think we should be or not, and wanting us to
be with you. More than you want to judge us
based on our size, wanting up to be included, more
than you want to lecture us about our health or
your perceptions of our health. You know, like, where do
we get? So I love the question about how I
would change the law. I would change the law with
a federal change to title you know, to the Title
nine Civil Rights Act laws that just add body size

(26:01):
to those. That's how I would change the law. But
we all know, like the Civil Rights Act already bans
discrimination in all kinds of other ways, and we still
see people face in all those ways. Yeah, so the
law is only one tool. We always say, you know,
legislation is not liberation. Legislation can be harm reduction, it

(26:23):
can be systems change. But we do have to be
dreaming about something bigger than just can we get some
more of these laws on the books.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
So that is the title of this episode, dream of
Stop that big a bitch.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
You got to dream big a bitch.

Speaker 3 (26:39):
Yes, no matter what you think about, you know what's
what's gonna you know, you're you're not gonna be fat,
You're you know you're these people shouldn't be fat. Like
whatever your thoughts are on that there have always been
fat people. There are always going to be fat people.
Unless y'all try to eugenics us off the planet. There
are going to be fat people. And some of you
who think you're never going to be fat are going

(27:00):
to turn out fat because of something that changes in
your life. Your life, Yep, you know that you anticipate.

Speaker 1 (27:06):
Was it Crutches and Spice who said that, like you're
one uh, You're literally one thing away in your life
from your body changing or your body turning its back
on you, And I'm I will say that now for me,
I'm I'm learning that more and more in my own
lived experience, especially now I'm dealing with a lot of
hip and joint pain as I'm getting older, and I'm
still able to do a lot of the stuff that

(27:27):
I'm doing. I can climb stairs, i can do things.
But I think about that a lot that as I'm
starting to age, you know, I'm i turn forty next
next month. My body is definitely reminding me daily that
I'm no longer in my twenties and I'm no longer
in my early thirties, and so yeah, but I wanted
to Joho, to jump in Joe, anything that you wanted

(27:48):
to change or that you would like.

Speaker 3 (27:50):
To well, I went on the I went in the
Civics lesson, and then we didn't get to hear your
answer of like what's what's it's.

Speaker 5 (27:56):
All good when girl, you want and do a whole
civil rights lesson here something I actually didn't even know.
I mean, I really love what you're saying so much
because I think one thing, like one thing I think,
and actually in so many movement conversations, we actually are
just like talking about like Rashi, we're having Rashi having
the wrong conversation because we're like like we are talking

(28:17):
like we're like we're like we're like discussing solving for theoreticals,
like you know, like you could write this like if
people weren't fat, blah blah, but like but we're not
actually discussing reality of like that is actually what exists today,
Like tragically, we like we already exist too, So like
whether you want to debate whether we should exist or not,

(28:37):
we already do and so like we're having the wrong
conversation now like this. That's also why this movement work
will actually be kind of futile or or like or
the anti work we will be futile, because like you're
having conversations about things that are already happening right now
or in our existing and so I really really really
like appreciating that, And I think I think it is
much about I want, you know, like I just want

(28:58):
things to be made in hare in my like in
mind with that folks, Like I think a lot about
like when I went to Universal Studios, you know, and
like you know, and like like it's supply of every
pop person of like which theme park is the is
the is the one for us?

Speaker 4 (29:12):
Right? Is it Disneyland, Disney World, Universal Studios or x
y Z right?

Speaker 2 (29:15):
And I you know.

Speaker 5 (29:16):
And I particularly remember when they made they had the
new that was the word of was the World of
Harry Potter or even like or even Intent World.

Speaker 4 (29:25):
I'm like, y'all built this in.

Speaker 5 (29:27):
In the like in the Lord of My in the
the Year My Looking Saviors Beyonce's twenty like twenty nineteen,
twenty fifteen, twenty twenty, Like you have built this knowing
that fat people exist, and you still decided to build
something like that that.

Speaker 4 (29:41):
Was that exclusive. And I think a lot.

Speaker 5 (29:43):
I think a lot about virgietov A and her Ted
talk years ago about like the way the way the
world works is that it's it is trying to limit
a fat person's you know, participation in public in public
life is limiting our access to public muchpaying in life.

Speaker 4 (30:00):
And I think I think.

Speaker 5 (30:02):
About that so much until I think, one thing I
want to shift is just how things to made, like
I you know, even like even when I went to
like when I when I went like for example, I
love going to the theater.

Speaker 4 (30:09):
I love seeing a musical, I love seeing a play.

Speaker 5 (30:13):
These theaters are inherently built to be for thin people,
and like and like, let's be honest, you think you
you think the minors sizes because my my my friend
says minus size is the people mines size.

Speaker 4 (30:25):
You think the minor.

Speaker 5 (30:25):
Size people also enjoy these type seats and these like
in the small rangements, like I get, like I get
that you're built for like maximum capacity and maximum money
and like that's rough, right. The systemic issue here is
that you feel like you don't have enough money to
to do X y Z, but like you all but
you also but you also need to sell them. Like
the cistisation that then you're in perpetuating is that like

(30:47):
is that people actually can't enjoy something and be comfortable.
Like we all deserve comfort, we all deserve access to
fun experiences enjoy and so like like when one thing
I know, one thing, one thing like I might try
and to do the legislation is that is that like
actually that you actually have to build things with all
bodies of mind. And I also think our government should
then should also be assigned to offset costs.

Speaker 4 (31:08):
And don't tell me they'll be able to being on
a budget, because y'all.

Speaker 5 (31:10):
Bes had that selling every dam day for for for
for ships and giggles. Then y'all we definitely many constantly
on our military forces. So we can absolutely actually subset
the cost that would take for businesses, restaurants, theaters, planes
to build things that actually feel more spacious to every
single person.

Speaker 3 (31:28):
But also well, but also we absolutely can, right, there
is enough money in this country to take care of
the needs of fat people, disabled people, queer people, black
and brown people, all the people who are all the
people who are excluded, and the excuses it's too expensive
to stop excluding them. That's a bullshit excuse. There's enough money,

(31:50):
it's just how we prioritize the money. Right, But part
of how we prioritize the money is by who we
deem as worthy in the culture. And while you know,
we have stigmatized fat into a place of you know,
you you if you don't, if you want to be
treated fairly, then you should lose weight. And there are
a variety of sociocultural, political, and economic reasons why we

(32:15):
maintain those attitudes. And you know, again for people who
are new to this, there's some really great, you know,
scholarship by a variety of especially black scholars, writing about
the ways that are ideas about fat bodies, the ways
that our construction of anti fatness is rooted in white
supremacy and colonialists, and you know, and is rooted in

(32:37):
these ideas of what an ideal body is and who
and what ideal behavior around food and enjoyment of food
and all that stuff is and who who that means
is ideal? Right, and that affects everything from military policy
to hospital policy to education policy, like it affects every
system that governs our lives. This idea the ideal body

(33:01):
is a thin white body, and you know, like and
shout out to doctor Sabrina Strings and Dashawn Harrison and
Jessica Wilson and Joy Cox and all these folks who
are writing about the intersections of anti fatness and anti blackness.
And I always hate to like name names because there
will always be people that I forget, but like, those

(33:22):
are a few of the folks that folks, you know,
you can look at if you want to learn more
about this. But I all of that stuff is this
is the thing about like, you know, like we're all
in this together. One of the things I would most
like to see that is not a legal change, but
is a change to how we do social justice activism

(33:43):
is I would like to see more people across other
movements talking about the needs of fat people and the
inclusion of fat people. And we have not done that perfectly.
Fat liberation as an organized movement has historically been a
very white, hetero normative movement in the ways that it's
been formally organized. And there are there are individual activists,

(34:06):
there are group leaders, there are people like the Fat
Underground that you know had more queer sensibility or more
intersectional politics, even if we weren't calling it that then
than NAFA, the group that I run, was historically a
white heteronormative organization. We started talking about intersectionality. When I
started talking about intersectionality, and I don't mean that as
a like patting myself on the back, but I do

(34:27):
mean that like that's the era in which it came
into the dialogue as an organization. But today, when I
think about people who are truly fat liberationists, not people
who are plus size influencers, that is not the same
thing as fat liberationists, not the same thing. Some people

(34:48):
who are plus sized influencers are doing that from a
basis in fat liberation and people are not, and they're
not the same thing. And when I think about like
people who are truly trying to live an actual will
fat lib politic, that politic is based in ideas of
intersectionality and solidarity. And even if we even even from

(35:09):
folks who weren't using that particular terminology at the time.
And so if that's what you're really trying to do,
then you are doing the work of talking about other
social justice issues, maybe not every single social justice issue,
but you're thinking about how our movements, the Venn diagram
of our movements, and the things that we need to

(35:30):
do to support each other. Right, if you're truly a
fat liberationist, a lot of people use that word. Who
I don't that terminology, who I don't consider to be
true A fat liberationists but the but but also a
lot of people use the word liberation to talk about
other movements. And they will have a meeting in a
place where fat people literally cannot be physically cannot be there,

(35:52):
right or you know, or they will you know, they
will talk about they will talk about improved means the
access of health care, and they won't talk about they
will talk about the obesity epidemic instead of talking about
anti fatness in healthcare. Right, And so like there's all
of these pas.

Speaker 2 (36:10):
Like you said, get specific, bitch, get specific.

Speaker 3 (36:13):
I mean, yeah, there's all these So there are these
places where you or they'll make the list of like
all the people who need you know, need support, and
they'll leave fat people off the list. Or they're scared
to even use the word fat. I mean it's controversial
to use the word fat. We use it because we
believe that you cannot destigmatize something that you won't even.

Speaker 7 (36:30):
Say, right, because then you're still you're you're still having
the stigma that all the time, like like like I
just comfort with the word is gonna it's gonna continue
with Marra downfall, like if we have just come ort
the word, but we're never gonna actually have progress for anything.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
You can't fat like say it.

Speaker 3 (36:47):
I feel like that it is true.

Speaker 5 (36:50):
Also also speakes your point about like people are afraid
to fuck up, and you may a point earlier like
you have to fumble, you have to fumble. I think
I thought all the time, like like in the words
that I didn't my community and you know, especially by
last Yah, there's such that you can. I work with
folks who are mainly white, there's so much refusal to engage,
like because they're like, well, if we fuck up, and
I was like, bitch, fuck up, Like if you fuck

(37:12):
up and you say, hey girl, I might fuck up
and I say this, you will more likely be forgiven
and they will be they'll say, no, what I can
work with that, I can work with it. If you
if you just fuck up and don't and then don't
say shit girl.

Speaker 1 (37:25):
Right like you know it all and then fuck up? Yeah,
you know it all and then up.

Speaker 3 (37:31):
Sometimes you will fuck up and you won't be forgiven,
but you don't mean you get to abandon your post
of doing the work right and and and when it
comes to the word fat, you know, sometimes you will,
especially if you are not fat yourself, and you'll say
the word fat and somebody will correct you, Oh no,
don't say that. You know that's mean, don't say that. Right,
There's a lot of complication around the word fat, and

(37:53):
it's a lot of It's a trauma word for many people,
fat people, formally fat people, people who are terrified of
becoming fat, all of us to trauma work. So I
want to always acknowledge that it is difficult for some
people to hear, but it feels really like. One thing
I know is that people who use fat in a
politicized way are people who actually want to make a

(38:14):
better world for fat people, not people who want to
make the world easier for fat people to lose weight.
So I trust people who use the word fat in
that politicized way to have my best interest in heart,
and I believe that there are activists in other movements
who want to have more of that dialogue. We need
to be doing more cross and I'm including myself in

(38:35):
this right and I including my organization. We need to be
doing more cross movement work, more cross movement training like
we did some really great partnership work last year with
Little People of America because we're working on these bills
and they're about size discrimination, that's height and weight, right,
And I learned so much. And now I'm following all
these you know, all these activists and influencers who are

(38:57):
little people. I'm learning more about the history of little
people in the world. I'm learning more about the things
that little people face in you know, in today's culture.
And they got to learn more about like, you know,
fat people and the things that we have in common
around like the medical establishment trying to change our bodies
to tell us that the only way we can have
free lives is if we change our bodies, you know,

(39:19):
and and the pressures on them to you know, the
weight loss pressures on them, the way that the the
obesity industrial complex, which has been you know, created to
sell us stuff about losing weight, goes after them, medicalizes
fatness in them.

Speaker 5 (39:35):
Right, Okay, wait to tell you sorry, I just you're
saying so much good stuff and I love it, and
name we do have to get we do have to
get to our first break, you know, or else will
be off the air. And what you're saying, I want
your hold, I want you want you hold your hold.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
You're getting into Okay, we're getting into our next segment.

Speaker 4 (39:56):
So yeah, we're doing the damn things.

Speaker 5 (39:58):
So y'all, familist, is now that you so now that
we the thoughts are out here five for freedom in
these streets and got your thing. You're gonna give them
a thing with a quick fat break more in society Okay, yeah, okay,

(40:20):
we are black fam. We black fat and fam. And
so that into the day's conversation. I mean, Tyger is
so like I had a question that I was gonta kick
us off with, but really I feel like you, like
like you you died very so much into it already.
I think I'm maybe curious to hear about like maybe
maybe like your own your own journey to this work,
your own journey into the org, into the the orger

(40:42):
of NAFA.

Speaker 3 (40:43):
Mm hmm. Well, I first learned about NAPA when I
was eighteen years old. I went away to college in
nineteen ninety two, and on my eighteenth birthday, my school
was having a diversity like a day conference. It was
called o'lia Cromwell Day, and there was a woman at
my school care him and Waye who had been very,
very active in the Boston chapter of NAFA, and she

(41:04):
worked in the career development office at my school, and
she hosted a workshop as part of this diversity Day
about fat people, and she talked about NAFA, and I
went to the I had an identity as a fat girl.
If you see pictures of me as a teenager, especially
if you don't if you just see me by myself,
if you see me in you know, in contact with
my peers, you can see I'm a little wider, I'm
a little curvier, I'm a little more developed. But you

(41:26):
probably wouldn't be like, look at that fat lady, right,
because it was just in context. I felt super fat
all the time, compared to my classmates, compared to what
the teenage girl magazines were showing me, compared to Oprah
and her ups and downs that I was watching when
I came home from school every day. You know, like
there were all these things that made me and in
looking at my family and what I was my body

(41:47):
was going to look like when I got older and whatever,
there were all these things that like I was being
told all the time that I was too fat. My
actual weight was higher than it was quote unquote supposed
to be. So I had a really strong identity as
a fat girl, and I felt a little bit rebellious
about that, and so I went to this workshop and
learned about NAFA. Now I did not join NAFA until many,

(42:08):
many years later, but just knowing that NAFA was out there,
because I'd like seen fat activists on folks of my
vintage and older will remember Donahue. It was like the
talk you know age yes King King of the talk
shows in the you know, in the mid eighties, and
and you know, I remember seeing, you know a few

(42:29):
times fat people on there, and then later on shows
like Ricky Lake like oh are you too fat to
wear that outfit? Or just because they make it in
your size doesn't mean you to wear it, or whatever
like those like trash air talk show kind of topics.
But you know, so I saw fat people sometimes in
you know, in media and stuff. And I saw fat
people in my family and on one side of my family.

(42:49):
Like for me, I had a very racialized understanding of
who could be confident as fat people and who could
not be because my fat black ants, even if they
were still talking about dieting, even if they were still
talking about how they should lose weight. They were also
fly as hell, right, they were put on this dress
and I'm going to be sexy and somebody's you know,
and it was you know, black men talking about these

(43:12):
black women. In my family where I heard expressions like
don't nobody want a bone but a dog and like
things that affirmed that there were people who were attracted
to bigger women. I heard that on the I heard
that in the black community that I grew up in
the black neighborhood I grew up in, and I heard
that in that side of my family. I'm a mixed
race Black woman, and on the other side of my family,
on the white side of my family, I mostly just

(43:33):
heard people talk bad about being fat. So I developed
a really racialized understanding. And I think that that kind
of lived experience sometimes gets misinterpreted when other people hear
you talk about it. Oh well, black people don't have
fat phobia. That's not what I said.

Speaker 4 (43:53):
That is not what.

Speaker 3 (43:55):
But there are some cultural differences, and especially in my generation,
there was still some culture protection. I think like music
videos and things like that shifted some of that body stuff.
But but that so that was like me as a
young person looking at the world and seeing like it's
even my fat, confident and beautiful, glamorous aunts, we're still
always talking about weight loss. So there was a constantly

(44:17):
loss message, you know. And an Oprah was one of
my biggest role models, and she was the you know,
the the icon of weight and weight loss in so many,
so many complicated ways, and a bigger conversation than we
have for today probably But but like all of that
is who I was as a teenager. And then I
encountered the idea that this entire organization existed and the

(44:40):
whole point of the organization was just to say, let
fat people be and let us, let us, let us live, right, Yeah,
And I carried that with me, you know for years.
When I first my first sort of foray into publicly
talking about fatness was like I had a little Geo
Cities Geositi's website, little free Yaho website. Yeah, I was

(45:02):
called Big Girl Pride and I used to make my
own little art even though I'm terrible artists, and write
little blogs basically it and it had you know, I
don't know, twenty followers or something, but it was my
first sort of for ranto public life. And then in
two thousand and eight, I founded a nightclub event in
Oakland called Full Figure Entertainment, and we used to host
these full figure Friday parties and it was a hip

(45:23):
hop I mean it was you know, it was a
hip hop party. I started with parties in San Francisco,
but I lived in Oakland. We moved the party in
Oakland and I ran this party for like nine years
in the Bay Area. That was you know, we used
to say for full bodied ladies and their friends and
fans of all sizes, and that's right. Yeah, And it
was you know, it wasn't political, except for the fact

(45:45):
that it is political anytime fat people do something in
defiance of people telling us we were supposed to stay
home and wait until we lose weight to do stuff.
So it was political in that way. But I had
a mission and value statement because I'm a nerd and
I think I was the only, probably only nightclub promoter
in the country that had a mission and value statement,
certainly in the plus sized nightclub world. And you know,

(46:08):
and it said things like, you know, we want to
support fat activism during the like what are we gonna do.
We're gonna try to throw the hottest party in the
Bay on Friday night for fat people. That's what we're
gonna try to do. And on the what do we
do with the rest of our week? It's today. People
would talk about it as like, how do I use
my platform in other ways?

Speaker 5 (46:24):
Right?

Speaker 3 (46:24):
And for me, it was just sort of like, I
want to throw this really hot party. I want this
party to be competitive with the you know, with the
what did you say, minus minus size people?

Speaker 4 (46:41):
Listen, Daniels, my play cousin, can she said?

Speaker 3 (46:44):
Kelsey said that, of course Kelsey is brilliant. Everybody should
everybody should throw Kelsey's brilliant spoken word art. And Kelsey
is brilliant and and just always fly and minus sized people.
I love that because you know the idea of just
considering people who are not plus the norm and then
plus is the additional thing, right right is you know

(47:08):
it's yeah, I love minus sized people. So anyway, I
want to be competitive with the minus sized people, and
the minus size people are welcome at this party. Come yeah,
come on down and spend your money supporting this black owned,
fat owned business, and also come into this space knowing
that what is centered here is fat women of color.

(47:29):
Everybody else is welcome what's centered here is fat women
of color and women of color in particular, because I
started going to some of the other plus sized parties
or they were called BBW parties, Big Beautiful Women parties,
and I was off, Yeah, and I was off. She
go to Butterfly Lives ll.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
Ena. I do, I do remember a time with my mom.
But I'm going out with the fat girls and the
word and if I get in trouble for this.

Speaker 1 (48:04):
Mom, but no, my mom, My mom used to have
the big girls and they would get dressed and dolled
up and they would go on and push they titties
together and go down into the big girl events down
and still the California. I don't know where they were,
but I do know my mom went to them.

Speaker 3 (48:19):
Yeah, I mean, if I had to guess, I find
to guess, I would say that probably was the Butterfly Lounge,
because the Butterfly Lounge in the LA area was one
of the longest running plus size parties, you know, in
anywhere in the world for a long time. And there's
a lot of you know, there's plus size parties all
over the world, especially in the United States. Sometimes they
are also very racially segregated. There's you know, sort of

(48:41):
black centric plus size parties and you know, which people
usually refer to as big girl parties, and then white
centric plus size parties, which people usually referred to as
BBW events. Sometimes that language crosses over. But for me
in the Bay, I was trying to do, you know,
I was trying to do a party that was focused
on women, fat women of color being the primary event.

(49:03):
Because I was going to the other parties. I was
like a late bloomer to nightlife, and I started going
out to mainstream clubs and to plus sized clubs, and
I would go to the other parties and I would
sometimes get a warm ish welcome. I was a but
but I never I but there was always something that
was like, these parties are more welcoming to black cis

(49:24):
gender men than they are too black women and to
black that I end up and there's a you know again,
a lot of nuance to that and more we could
talk about there. But it was part of why I
started my club is because I wanted a place for
my girls who I was going out with to feel
like they were the star of the show, not the side,
you know, not you know, not the side. Quest This

(49:45):
is the actual adventure is coming to see these sisters
right here. And so, uh, you know, I put together
a team of models because I wanted to put people
on the flyers who actually came to the events, not
just like stock photography or you know, plus size models
don't think about these clubs at all. I'm actually like,
this is who actually comes. And out of those women

(50:07):
that modeled for me, some of y'all might know Saucy West.
She started modeling her modeling career modeling for my club,
and we really grew up together as activists in a
lot of ways do because part of the goal was
through the hot party on Friday night, but also what
else are we doing in the community on the rest
of the time. So sometimes that looked like modeling in
the local fashion shows. Sometimes that looked like putting together

(50:30):
a team for the AIDS Walk. Sometimes that looked like,
just you know, what are we posting about online? Or
how are we trying to make sure our party is
inclusive for queer folks, even though we know most of
the people who come are straight, but they should be
able to bring their queer friends with them and have
a good time, like and how do and for a
while we did our parties at Asia SF and San Francisco,
which is a transgender cabaret.

Speaker 6 (50:50):
So they was like, yeah, and I worked there for
a couple of years as the reservation is too and
but but I knew them because we you know, we
had a we had a party scheduled at a venue
that closed at the last minute without telling us that
that that they had any you know, anything like that
that was about to happen.

Speaker 3 (51:09):
And my DJ at the time, sake One, was like, well,
I know these folks at Asia SF. We can move
the party over there.

Speaker 4 (51:15):
And so we did.

Speaker 3 (51:16):
And and so we had our party, you know, in
the basement club at Asia SF, off and on for years.
We really were based in Oakland, but we did this
San Francisco party. And whenever we did the San Francisco party,
we had to grapple with will these cisgender men who
want to come dance with our fat girls come to
this party or will their transphobia prevent them from coming

(51:36):
to this party because we are in a place where
these transgender women are performing at the cabaret upstairs, you know,
and and so like we had to think about intersectionality,
even though like it's a nightclub event. Right, it's not
you know, it's not the gay Pride march or whatever.
But like, but I care about this is my community.
I'm you know, it's a conversation on safety. And I

(52:00):
also like, I'm straight and I'm super queer adjacent. And
what that means is if I love the queer folks
in my life, then I have to go to places
and create places that are safe and comfortable and welcoming
for that, right and so, and they don't have a
queer fat club in the Bay at this time in
the Bay's timeline either, So if they want to be
in a fat positive place, they're coming to us, right. So,

(52:22):
even if we started the event with the idea that like,
this is a place where sis, straight men and women meet,
you know, shake their ass on each other and meet
meet each other for dating and whatever else they are doing,
even if we started with that idea, if we want
to be in solidarity with everybody, and if we want
the people we love ourselves to be safe and comfortable here,
then we have to be thinking about those kinds of things, right,

(52:45):
And so it became so my party was a little
bit different than the other plus sized parties in the
country because of where we were and because of who
I was. I was a DEI director by day, you know,
talking to my students.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
You doing yes, you know as you Yeah, I can
I ask you a question to that.

Speaker 1 (53:06):
So I think this feeds into the question we're going
to ask before before we wrap up this segment. I
think you you you've talked a lot about this idea
of just so the the kind of this what I'm
hearing or the undertone, the undertone that I'm getting is
disrupting you. You you you're taking and you're moving even
with this party. You know that you're you're you're mentioning right,

(53:28):
You're going into spaces and you're disrupting norms. And I
think a lot of folks, especially folks in fat liberation
movements or in any movement for that matter, we get
nervous or we get scared around disrupting different spaces or
even disrupting kind of the status quo. And so I
did want to ask you, you know, for someone who's
listened to all of this right where you know, we've
been together for a minute, you know, and we've heard

(53:50):
how you've you've you've you've come into organizations and you've
kind of disrupted the status quo. You've gone into clubs,
You've you've disrupted the status quo. I would love to understand,
or would love for you to just kind of give
us a nugget on As you're helping to build out
this world for fat folks and you're you're pushing back
and you're resisting, how do you experience people's ideologies and

(54:14):
and and really communicate in a way that allows them
to not misunderstand you? If that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (54:21):
Yeah, well, I mean some people are committed to understanding
anything about fat politics and fat liberation because.

Speaker 2 (54:27):
They just don't want to see fat people, don't They just.

Speaker 3 (54:29):
You just don't like fat people. Just say you don't
like people, and you think that people are ugly and
move on out of the way. Right for the people
in the you know, we used to say the movable middle,
right like the folks who actually can grow and learn
or change their perspective. You know, some of it is

(54:50):
just like you. You have to tell you know, you
have to tell the personal stories, You have to share
the vulnerable parts you again, you have to give people
space space to grow. You know, if every time something
one of the things we work really hard at in
fat liberation spaces. Is not to not it's to be
very conscious of how if ever we use what we

(55:11):
call the O words, right that's overweight and obese, because
those are medicalized words, and a lot of people are
well intentioned when they use those words because they just think, well, like,
that's what the doctors say, so that's the that's the thing,
that's the way I that's the official thing. That's the
thing that's not us. But for many fat people, and
especially fat people in activist spaces, those words are considered slurred.

(55:33):
They're considered slurs and they are and they are considered,
you know, to be the terminology and of an oppressive
system because of the way obesity has been constructed as
a disease, you know. And it again, way more complicated
than we can get into right now. But I just
encourage people to sort of question the paradigm of whether

(55:54):
there really is an obesity epidemic, even if there are
more fat people than there used to be, which is arguable,
But even if you believe that, is that a medical
epidemic or not? Or is that just a shift in
bodies as human as humans change and like we're just
question that stuff, question that stuff, and so like. But
that's the thing is like, so if somebody who is

(56:15):
well meaning and wants to support us as fat people
says obesityent, you just cancel them because they said obesity right.
They can't learn right. So but when you think back
to like what I was saying earlier about like a
jeoma's peace around having like a welcoming committee, I have
the tolerance most of the time to be in the
welcoming committee role so that people who don't want to

(56:37):
do that do not have to. I have a higher tolerance.
And maybe it comes from having been a teacher for years.
I mean, you know, you got to be patient with
fourteen year olds in a different way than you should
have to be patient with forty year olds.

Speaker 1 (56:48):
Also were fourteen year olds yep, and their fourteen year
old that's right.

Speaker 3 (56:54):
Or they can be brilliant and beautifully liberatory in all
these other ways and they've just never been owes to
some of these dialogues yea. And so that there's there's
space to you know, like I have patients, or I
have ways of remaining diplomatic in helping them and then
taking my impatient feelings to my friends instead of taking

(57:15):
them out on them. Right, So that is one of
the skill sets that I bring to this work, and
a practice with being able to talk to people from
lots of different kinds of backgrounds, and lots of different
kinds of identities and lots of different belief systems.

Speaker 1 (57:28):
Right.

Speaker 3 (57:28):
I grew up, you know, a first generation to college,
broke ass black kid in a white school system that
was dominated by Mormon ideology and conservative evangelical Christian ideology.
And like, I had to survive that without a lot
of social and socio cultural support that taught me how

(57:51):
to move and how to code switch in ways that
can make it easier for me to to help nurture
people along this journey. Some people would say that I'm
a little too tolerant of people sometimes, and and I
understand that critique. I think the other thing is, you
know your listeners are not seeing me. You know, I'm
a light skinned black woman. I'm a mixed race black woman.

Speaker 4 (58:10):
I had educational It'll be on YouTube as well.

Speaker 3 (58:15):
I always just listen to y'all on the listening app.
So I already know what you look like. But like
for people who don't know what I look like and
that's and when I came into this work, I was
a smaller fat person and an able bodied fat person.
I'm neither of those things now. But I'm still light skinned,
and I still have a certain kind of education, Like
I have cultural capital that and privilege that other people

(58:38):
don't have, and I need to be using it and
need to be using it for the benefit of people
who don't have. Like, so on a spectrum of oppression,
I you know, I can take all these boxes of
like you know, I experienced racism, I experience anti fatness,
I experience fat you know, ableism. I you know, I've
experienced economic hardship, whatever. And also even where I am
on that spectrum, I'm tremendously more privileged than a lot

(59:00):
of other people. And so that I have to acknowledge that,
and I have to use that wherever I can and
and model for other people to use that. And so
for me, you know, the question being like, how do
you how do you grapple with people who have all
these other ideologies? You know, I've I've had a lot
of I'm fifty years old, I've had a lot of

(59:21):
practice moving through lots of different kinds of groups of
people and trying to help them learn about things that
they didn't already know about or that were sensitive to
learn about or whatever, and holding a little space for
them to make mistakes, and you know, and and knowing
when to check people a little harder and when not to, Like,
I have that skill set. And also I just have

(59:42):
a really great support network and a twisted sense of humor.
So sometimes when these fools come at me with just
like pure nonsense, when it's just like me, it's just
that's your best shot, you know, that's your yeah, best shot. Yeah,
be really centered in like, because I don't want any

(01:00:04):
of your listeners to think that I have it all
worked out, that I am, you know, perfectly body positive
every moment of my life. My body is changing as
I age, as I've moved in and out of different
you know, phases of disability. Like there's all this stuff
that I've had to learn to adjust to. I've had
to deal with my internalized anti fatness, my internalized ableism,

(01:00:25):
my internalized agism. And it's not perfect. You know. I
don't always look at myself in the mirror and think
the things that I want to think about myself in
the mirror. But what I always know is no matter
how much I think I'm ugly today, or I think
I'm fat today, or whatever, I still deserve to be
treated fairly centered. And I don't I'm unwavering in that,

(01:00:47):
and I'm wavering in it for the rest of you
as well. I don't care how ugly people think you are.
I don't care how much people think you're unhealthy. I
don't care what people have to say to you, so
to say about your appearance or your health or any
of the things that they attack us on all the time.
I don't. Yeah, they can think whatever they want to
about all the things they attack us on every at
any moment, And we still deserve equity, justice, you know, liberation, freedom, like,

(01:01:14):
we still deserve all of those the access, you know,
a sense of welcome. You know, we still deserve all
those things, and we're gonna get it wherever we can.
And you know, we were talking earlier about the you know, Jordan,
when you were talking Joho about the theater seats, right,
there are a lot there are a lot of theaters

(01:01:35):
that are completely inaccessible, and there are also many many
theaters that have accessibility procedures, like they can pull out
a couple of these chairs and put a bench in
or arms. The arms come off the side of this chair,
and we won't ask for it because we're too ashamed
to ask me. I don't want anybody to see that
I'm so fat I have to take the arm off

(01:01:55):
the chair today. Then girl, you don't want to go
to the theaters.

Speaker 5 (01:01:59):
This is.

Speaker 1 (01:02:01):
Right?

Speaker 4 (01:02:03):
Any players, do you have a you have a arm
without give a chair with the arms.

Speaker 2 (01:02:07):
Yes, I'm not about to.

Speaker 3 (01:02:09):
Chair And like, no shade to people who get on
the plane and bring their own seat belt extender so
they don't have to ask one. And you good do
what works for you. But I have no shame about
asking for a seatbelt.

Speaker 5 (01:02:27):
Okay, do you talk about how when you asked for it,
they like discreetly giving.

Speaker 2 (01:02:34):
It the underground you can hand me.

Speaker 3 (01:02:42):
That's the thing is like everybody is on a different
place in the journey. So again, no shade for you
if you feel a sense of relief because this because
the flight attendant gave it to you discreetly. I just
want you to have your seat belt. But that's the thing.
I want you to have your seat and your seat belt,
and it's not you know, the plane, for example, but
it's all if the plane is one example, but it's

(01:03:02):
in all the places. I want you to feel comfortable
advocating for yourself when other people advocate for you, because
the theaters should be trying to change. Using that example,
the theater should be trying to change. But until they do,
you don't have to stay in your house and never
see a play again.

Speaker 5 (01:03:18):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:03:19):
You put your outfit on, you put your mask on,
and you go down to the theater and you tell
them that you need a bigger seat. You call ahead
and find out what they have and all of that.
You know, Like sometimes I do that even if I'm
not feeling myself. If I'm looking in the mirror and
I'm feeling like this is today, it is not it today? Yeah,

(01:03:40):
you know, then I'm still What helps me is knowing
that whenever I do it out in the real world,
whether that's asking for a different seat, asking for the
seat belt extender, you know, you know, telling somebody we
can't go to this restaurant because it's too tight. We can't,
I don't there's nothing for me at this store when
you come with me to this other store, Like whatever
the thing is when I'm advocating for it for myself,

(01:04:02):
I'm also advocating for it for other people. And so
sometimes on those like lower self esteem days where I'm
not feeling my own worth in the way that I
should because I'm glorious, you know, where I'm a little
more sensitive to if somebody says something crazy to me
out here in this world, you know, or whatever. On
those days, putting on that sort of like it's like

(01:04:24):
putting on the you know, I'm not trying to be
like I am Captain Save a Fat but like put
but putting on the cape to know that when you
advocate for yourself, it actually is helping other people to
Sometimes that's the thing that gets me over on a
day when I wouldn't have advocated for myself only Yeah,
you know, and I have that official.

Speaker 2 (01:04:43):
Yeah, and that's sorry, say that again.

Speaker 3 (01:04:48):
I have that official hat to put on because I
am literally the president of fat people in a way,
right you have. But but but I'm out in the
world at home. People don't know. It's not like I
have a sign on that says this is the president
of the fat organization. I'm just the family.

Speaker 2 (01:05:07):
I'm just a very well educated I'm just the fat that.

Speaker 3 (01:05:12):
When I go to my own doctor's office, or you know,
like I had to fight with these women. I went
to have a mammoground and I got in a pretty
heated debate with the women in the front office because
they only had they didn't have larger sized gowns in
a full length gavern. They only they only had them
in the little half gowns that you just take off

(01:05:34):
the top. But but I had you know, if I
come in here, oh sorry, I said that backwards. They
had them in the little half gowns, but they didn't
have them in full length gowns. So if I have
a half gown, thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:05:46):
I don't.

Speaker 3 (01:05:48):
I need a full length gown that fits me. And
there are people bigger than me who come as why
don't you have this for us? And I got emotional.
I wasn't in my NAFA mindset. I was in my
mindset of lady, this is my first Mamma ground since
my best friend died of breast cancer. I don't want
to be in here arguing with you, and nobody should
be in arguing with you about something sensitive like this.

(01:06:09):
I don't care if your distributor doesn't have a five
x gown. Amazon has one, and you know, I'm not
going to advocate for you to get anything off Amazon.
Order it today, but I wasn't. But that's what I'm saying.
Like I do like because I think it's easier for
people to hear me talking about it and be like, well,

(01:06:31):
that's easy for you because you're the chair of NAFA.
You fall back on you give them your business card
and tell them a thing. Sometimes it's that Sometimes I'm
just like, y'all, I'm just the fat I'm just the
fat lady in the thing having to do the thing.

Speaker 1 (01:06:43):
You're human, and you can, I say, stoping real quick
to that point. I think, so you you're mentioning something
that I think is very important. I think sometimes I
had mentioned this to somebody. I think it was actually
shout out to our listener Kyle and Jared, who listened
to our show weekly, and I was with them just
recent and we were talking about activism as a whole,
and I was explaining to them that I think sometimes

(01:07:06):
people forget that folks like us, right, folks who are
on a podcast on the network, or folks who are
presidents of an organization, or folks who are who are
wearing this activisty hat are human and I think for me,
I think this is the thing that I really want
us to not lose in this conversation of like, you've
dropped so many amazing gems and you've really got folks

(01:07:29):
to really thinking about how do we do the work.
But I also want to encourage people in this time
and in this moment, especially folks who are out here,
who literally are on the ground, literally have their boots
and their fans on the ground, right to not get
lost in the humanity of this, all the emotion that
you're feeling. I know it's easy for us to say, well,

(01:07:50):
I can't be emotional. I got to get out there
and I gotta fight. Yes, we are all fighting different battles,
whether it's a fat battle, whether it's an immigration battle,
whether it's a black queer battle, whether it's you know,
I work for an organization and an email just came
out that one of the service providers that we have
for queer youth in my organization has closed its door,
and so now we're we're trying to figure out what

(01:08:10):
the excuse my language, what the fuck we're gonna do
to help these queer babies as they they maintain their
mental health and get access to transparent all these things, right,
all all of us, Like even in those moments when
I'm trying to think strategically about all of the stuff
that I have to do, they're still in there's this
innate feeling that I'm having in my stomach, and I'm going, baby,

(01:08:31):
don't forget that you're human too. And I want us
to hear that, like I want us to say I
wanted to say it on the mic, but I want
us to hear it because I think so many of
us look at folks like yourself is superhuman, and we
look at people who are who are who are doing
these movements and who are leading these movements as superhumans,
and we are not. We are all having a very emotional,

(01:08:55):
very humanistic experience. And I want to make sure that
we don't lose this. So I'm gonna say this. We're
gonna go to break real quick, and then we're gonna
go to our next We're gonna do a little bit
of a little bit of a.

Speaker 2 (01:09:04):
Something what is it missing remix?

Speaker 1 (01:09:08):
We're gonna do a little bit of a remix, but
it's gonna tie into a lot of what we've already
been talking about, and then we're gonna go out and close,
Go ahead and close the show.

Speaker 2 (01:09:15):
So we've affirmed our big girls, we love us, we love.

Speaker 1 (01:09:18):
Us for real, but also take a moment, drink something,
do something you got to do to take care of yourself.
And then when we get back, we're gonna get back
with our yes ma'am and our no man's segment. Okay,

(01:09:38):
all right, y'all. So this week we're gonna remix our
yes ma'am and our no Man segment. So we initially
in our notes have put something in here for Tigris
to talk to us about fatness and pop culture and
all of the things that we actually enjoy are things
that we hate.

Speaker 2 (01:09:52):
So we're gonna do a spin on that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:54):
We're gonna do a yes ma'am to the things that
we think are really cool ass fat people, and we're
gonna to do with no ma'am to all the things
that we hate.

Speaker 2 (01:10:03):
So I'm gonna start with you, Joe, Yes, you see
see you see what I did that.

Speaker 1 (01:10:09):
Yes, but we don't do a little bit of a
remix because we got we we got us a very
very talented, educated brilliant person with us, and I was like,
I would love to know in their mind what's actually
happening here. So we'll start with yo hoho, We'll go
to you tigers, and then I'll close out what is
something that you're that you as a fat person you're

(01:10:31):
loving right now? What is something that you see that
you're like, Oh, this is this is this is what's up?

Speaker 4 (01:10:36):
Okay? So yes, ma'am. Five jokes told by five people.

Speaker 2 (01:10:40):
Hey man, okay, no man, No, ma'am, told by.

Speaker 4 (01:10:44):
By min size people.

Speaker 5 (01:10:46):
No man, thought suits but yes, ma'am, it's if it's
yes man, it's do Mamosell's and yes if it's flid
circa two thousand. I hate you, No, no, okay and
absolute no. I am tired of weight storylines. I can't

(01:11:09):
stand them. I don't need girl to get pep talk
about how to lose weight, and I don't And I
don't need a girl to petal of how she needs
to be confident either.

Speaker 4 (01:11:18):
Iy A yes, ma'am.

Speaker 5 (01:11:19):
To a character who inherently just just loves her body regardless,
no comments on it, Like, no one's like, oh she's
so brave.

Speaker 4 (01:11:27):
This bitch is just not her being a regular person.

Speaker 5 (01:11:30):
Yes, yes, do not do not give me a whole
sir alarm where she has a pep talk and be like,
oh I can be confident, girl, you are confident.

Speaker 2 (01:11:37):
Yeah, live your life.

Speaker 4 (01:11:40):
Live your life, bitch, or no one's living for you girl.

Speaker 2 (01:11:44):
Amen?

Speaker 1 (01:11:44):
Amen, uh so tigris. Yes, ma'am's to to fatness. No,
MAM's to fatness.

Speaker 3 (01:11:52):
Okay. The yes ma'am that came to mind for me
first is that I've been totally binging Tiny Desk concerts
because it's Black Music months and they're doing some incredible
new ones. But I actually, when I first started watching
Tiny Desk, I actually thought it was specifically a black
music show because whatever I, whatever I started with, it
only was recommending of a black art It was so

(01:12:16):
long before I realized there were other people on Tiny Desk.
But and I've seen lots of other great Tiny Desks,
But but really, that vein of black artists and the
way that bigger bodied folks of all genders are, you know,
in those clips looking fly as hell when they are
the backup singers, when they are the band, Like, it's
not a bunch of fat artists as the main artist.

(01:12:37):
Because it's Maxwell, it's usher, it's whoever. But like, but
like looking at although I love tanking the Bangers Tiny Desk,
you've never seen it. If you've never seen it, incredible yet. Also, yeah,
but bigger bodied people, right, getting to see bigger body
people through that particular show is really turning me on lately.
So that's what came to mind as like a big

(01:12:58):
fat yes, ma'am, because it's like a bunch of little
yes ma'am, because it's a bunch of different episodes rights no, ma'am.
I mean, I just I really want people to stop
asking the question has ozimpic killed body positivity? There's there's
a whole wave of media and it keeps like recycling,

(01:13:18):
Like every time I think it's gone away, then there's
a new one that's like did ozmpic kill body positivity?
Or like is is is you know? Fat activism over
because of ozimpic and ozempic at all? Right, all of
those drugs and listen, one of the key principles of
fat liberation to me is body autonomy. People's choice whether
or not to access these medications, even if they're accessing

(01:13:41):
them specifically for weight loss, that is their choice. But
the way we talk about it collectively, and the way
the media talks about it, and the UH and the
way that it is pumping up narratives about the fact
that fat can be solved and should be solved. This
is a big just a big fat no, ma'am to

(01:14:01):
all of that, right, I like want to have subtle,
nuanced dialogues around weight loss and the weight loss industrial
complex and all of that stuff, but just as a
sort of like super short cut of just been like,
no one has to be fat anymore because ozimpic like, Yeah,
that sucks and it's untrue, right and it's and I

(01:14:21):
big fat no, ma'am.

Speaker 1 (01:14:22):
And if I can't you know what, So I haven't.
I have not said this on the air, but I've
been talking about it. I also would love so kind
of to your point, you know, I I'm going to
get into my guests, man, my O mam in a second,
because they're kind of one of the same. But I
was gonna say, you know, I haven't vocally said on
the mic that I am now on ozimpic, and and
it came at a time when I was very like hesitant,

(01:14:43):
like I didn't want to get on it. And then
my doctor was like, the met forman that you're taking
is not doing what it needs to do. We can't
figure out. You know, there's no other alternative other than
you getting on it. So I was like, okay, fine,
I will be very upfront. I have lost some weight,
but I will be very transparent and saying that the
weight loss. Like, I wish people were actually talking more

(01:15:04):
about this notion of it's not just the idea of
like oh the side effects, how like how fucked up
it is to be on it. Like I if my
doctor was to tell me tomorrow, you don't have to
jab yourself anymore. You can get off the ozimbic, I
would get off of it because it has changed everything
in my life. It has changed the relationship I have
with food. It has changed I go through these weird

(01:15:26):
waves of being starving and then wanting to go eat,
and then when I go to eat, I am grossed out.
And so now I'm frustrated because I really wish I
could enjoy a meal the way I the way I
enjoy a meal. I'm a big bit who likes to eat.
And I don't say that, no, I'm just being real,
Like ozimpic has really fucked up my life in a
lot of ways, and I wish more people instead of

(01:15:48):
glorifying it for just this weight loss thing, I really
wish people were talking about you know what, the true what,
the trueiness of it all is is ozimpic or with
goov or whatever. And me and my friends in a
group together. You know, I'm on anti nausea medication. Now
I'm on one more medication I didn't want to be on.
You know, they're they're all of these things, and I
think we can, we can come back to this in

(01:16:10):
another another life. But I'm just saying, like I agree
with you, Like, yes, I'm sick of hearing this conversation,
but I also believe like we really need to start
having real conversations about what what this medicine is really
doing to people, and how there are so many of us.
I have friends that are texting me and we're having
conversations back and forth about what we're doing to just

(01:16:31):
enjoy eating because we're we're hungry, and we we're sick
every time we eat, you.

Speaker 3 (01:16:36):
Know, and it's you know, and it's and it has
that effect for some people and not for others. Like that,
this is the whole reason why we need to be
it's not a yet, it's not a no man to
any conversation about these drugs, right, it's a no man
to oversimplify and conversation one side of the story, you know,
and the only side of the story they're presenting is,

(01:16:56):
you know, we're gonna say the world from fath house
because individuals are gonna get thinner and the whole. Like
at the beginning, there were these ridiculous ass articles that
were like, we're gonna save the airline industry because so
many people are gonna lose weight that you know, that
jet fuel is gonna be cheaper, or like you know,
we're gonna like fast food is gonna go out of
business because like they're just ridiculous conversations and some of

(01:17:17):
that stuff is I'm gonna sound like a conspiracy theorist again,
but like some of that stuff is actually planted by
the drug companies in.

Speaker 2 (01:17:24):
The oh yes, oh yes, there's that something.

Speaker 3 (01:17:27):
But like and you know, always you know, like and
it's always a complicated, yes, ma'am, No, ma'am to pharmaceuticals
because they save so many people's lines in so many ways.
And also we are dependent on these companies that are
absolutely shady, if you know, like I want, some of
these companies are the same people that are making you know,
breakthroughs in Alzheimer's breakthroughs and cancer break I don't want
the companies to just collapse, but I definitely want to

(01:17:50):
dream a new world that works a different way around
that time.

Speaker 2 (01:17:53):
Yeah, can we.

Speaker 1 (01:17:55):
Oh, can we dream bigger bitch? And we have real
conversations on it. Is there a way for us to
not you know? And I think that's the thing. And
for me, it's like, can we talk about it really
about like I would love for people to be talking
about how has those zimpic made my life easier as
someone living with type two diabetes. Let's let's let's dive
into that more than this idea of weight loss. And

(01:18:17):
I hate that the idea.

Speaker 3 (01:18:20):
You can't sell the drug as effectively with that conversation.

Speaker 1 (01:18:22):
As I know you can't, and I know you can't.
What I'm saying is what it comes down to, Yeah,
it's it's it's all capitalism. It's all capitalism, and I
think that's that's actually going to be part of my
So I'm like, yes, ma'am. Is to the people who
are pushing back like you and a lot of other
people are pushing back to these these conversations on on on,
just in the medical conver you know, the medical field.

Speaker 2 (01:18:42):
We're pushing back on how we have these discussions.

Speaker 1 (01:18:44):
So I love that, and I love that we're becoming
more real about this and people giving people grace to
talk about these things.

Speaker 2 (01:18:50):
My no, ma'am. So you know, I wanted to.

Speaker 1 (01:18:53):
I want to make sure that I say this so
it doesn't come across as as insensitive. I first want to, uh, Lou,
I'm actually going to be talking about death, and so
trigger warning for anybody who may be triggered by this,
you can. I will make sure to put a marker
in this segment so that way, if you want to
skip it, you can. But I wanted to talk a
little bit about Ananda Lewis specifically and thinking about you know,

(01:19:16):
I want to say, my heart goes out to her
family and friends. I just recently became I'm gonna say
I met Dave Holmes and we follow each other now
on social and we talk back and forth a lot.
And seeing how Ananda's death impacted Dave Holmes. For those
of you who don't know Dave Holmes, he was a
really big VJ for MTV back in the early heydays.

Speaker 2 (01:19:39):
It's it's sad.

Speaker 1 (01:19:39):
It really hurt me to see someone that I'm becoming
friends with really lose someone that they were super close
to in this way. And so my no, ma'am in
this conversation is I really want to say, I'm really
sick and tired of the health influencers and this whole
entire this quote unquote health move movement per se it,

(01:20:03):
in my opinion, is what killed Ananda Luis. She has
been very She was very I should say, she was
very vocal about taking all of this information right and
running with it and saying like, oh, I can healthy
my way out of breast cancer. And by the time
that she got to a place where it was too late,

(01:20:23):
she realized, maybe I should have listened to my doctor,
maybe I should have listened to people around me about
what I should be doing. And so for me, my no,
ma'am has been that, like, there are so many health
influencers and so many of these health people who are saying, oh,
do this and do that, and don't do this and
don't do that. If it is not coming from a
doctor you trust, not even just a doctor. I want
to make that very clear, a doctor you trust, because

(01:20:46):
I just changed. We just had a conversation and we
just had an episode about that. I changed my whole
doctor because I felt like my doctor wasn't wasn't trusting me,
and was not working in my best my best right judgment.
SAW switched it up on our ass. I want you
to have a good relationship with your doctor. But I'm
also saying trust your doctors. If your doctors are saying

(01:21:09):
I think this is good for you, and you have
that relationship where you feel like you can trust them,
listen to them.

Speaker 3 (01:21:16):
It's so hard because it's so so hard because we
live in a system where a lot of folks don't
have choice about who their doctor can be.

Speaker 4 (01:21:25):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:21:25):
This is who my who takes my insurance, this is
what this is who has office hours at a time
when I won't lose my job for going to the doctor.

Speaker 2 (01:21:32):
This is like, there's all of.

Speaker 3 (01:21:33):
These other you know, it's so so hard for folks
to find good health care. But I want to mention
too fat specific health care resources. I mean, I want
folks to know if the well will be we have
some health care self advocacy tool kits that we've been
working on updating and they'll be back on our website

(01:21:53):
in time for Fat Liberation Month in August, and so
that is a great you can check out the resources.

Speaker 4 (01:21:59):
That we have.

Speaker 3 (01:22:00):
In the meantime, I want to say that for for
folks who are in larger bodies who may need imaging
or like like an MRI or cat scan or something
like that, the FLAIR, the fat Legal Advocacy Organization, has
just put a database up on their website. If you
know a place that has a larger accommodating MRI or

(01:22:20):
if you'd like to volunteer to help them call places
to check that. You can see all that on their website,
which is flairproject dot org slash imaging. And I also
want to give a shout out to the new organization.
Hopefully some of your listeners already know about ASDA, which
is the Association for Sized Diversity and Health. And there's
a lot of folks, a lot of nutritionist dieticians. So

(01:22:41):
some of the things doctor John, that you're talking about
about the intersections of fatness and eating disorder, there are
a lot of There are a lot of folks in
that organization, who are you know, really thinking about those
kinds of things from a weight inclusive perspective. But also
there's another new organization called AWESOME, the Association for Size
and Weight Inclusive Medicine, and it is an association of
doctor so that as the folks are healthcare practitioners, but

(01:23:03):
they're mostly not doctors. Now there's an organization for doctors
to join and learn more about being inclusive in their
health care practice. So refer your own doctor to that.
Look at the materials they have for doctors to get
some training, and you know, it takes more time. It's
you know, one of the things that's always unfair in
our marginalized identities is that we have more time and

(01:23:26):
do more work to advocate for ourselves. But at least
I want y'all to know some of those tools are
out there to help you with advocating for yourself.

Speaker 1 (01:23:34):
Thank you, And we're gonna we're gonna definitely put that
in our in our show notes for folks, I will
do my best during our listen back to try to
capture all of that and put it in ours. But
I was also gonna say, just you know, kind of
my last point just be cautious about who you're taking
health advice from, especially if they are quote unquote influencers.

(01:23:54):
That is literally what my point is, because so much
of us are taking advice from people who don't know
what they hell they're talking about, and then turning around
juicing up to to you know, I'm yoked, I'm yoked,
I'm really healthy. Noaw girl, you're taking steroids. And not
to shame people who do, I'm just saying that we
got to be cautious about where we get our information
in terms of our health. With that being said, this

(01:24:16):
I know this episode, My god, this episode was so
massive in a way that you know, we had clock
to that. We have never had anyone on this show
talk about cultural capital and the way that you have,
So thank you for that, Like tigers like I am
honored to just know that you exist and to know
that the work that you're doing is important.

Speaker 2 (01:24:36):
Folks.

Speaker 1 (01:24:37):
If you if there's any questions or anything that you
feel like, was you know, a really big concept or
you felt like there was a concept that you you
would love for us to dive more into around this
conversation of whether it be marching liberation, whether it be activism, whatever,
the case may be, Please send your thoughts your feedback
in your email to Blackfatfempod at gmail dot com. I
promise you either me or Joho will respond. We want

(01:24:58):
to make sure that folks are not necess We're not
just talking at you, but we're talking with you, and
we want to make sure that you're included in the conversation.
You can also send your thoughts over to us over
on Instagram and Blue Sky by using and also threads.
We're also on threads, so if you want to send
us a thread message as well, you can. Blackfatfempod is
where you can find us. With that being said, Tigris,

(01:25:18):
can you let us know where the dolls can find you?

Speaker 3 (01:25:22):
They can find me on I'm most active on Instagram
and it's I of the Tigris like the letter I
of the Tigris, and NAPA is also most active on Instagram.
We have hope to branch out to more platforms, but
we're on LinkedIn, Instagram, on Facebook, and Blue Sky and

(01:25:43):
I think coming soon to threads and our website is
NAFA dot org naa f A dot o RG. I
am always behind on email, but you are welcome to
reach out through our contact form on our website if
you have something specific for me, and our fabulous assistant
Julie and will help make sure that you actually get
an answer from me. And and I just want to, like,

(01:26:05):
I just want to thank y'all for having me on
the show. I want your listeners to know that we
do a bunch of virtual programming during August for Fat
Liberation Months, So it's a great time to like start
following us, start learning more about this movement. There are
so many other folks that you can learn from in
this movement, and we'll be featuring some of them during
Fat Liberation Months, So it's a great time to get

(01:26:29):
to know us and learn more about you know, NAP
as an organization, but the but just you know fat
rights work in general.

Speaker 4 (01:26:36):
Amen.

Speaker 1 (01:26:36):
Amen, I love that. And again, thank you so much
for taking this time out. For those of you who
do or don't know, we're actually recording on a weekend
because everyone's schedule has been up in flux, and so
just for you to take time out of the weekend
to be able to share your your mind and your
thoughts and to uplift the work that you're doing, it
really means a lot to both me and Joho, And

(01:26:57):
I just really wanted to say that, Queen Joho, where
can the dolls find you before you go out there
in March?

Speaker 4 (01:27:03):
Thank you girl. Of course you can.

Speaker 5 (01:27:05):
Y'all can find me at Jojo Dann's across All Socials
website durindanns dot com.

Speaker 4 (01:27:10):
You can find me fits in the streets where I
go on my My, My My protests. This week. You
also have not you can that you can find me
on the corner and do my one man stand up show. Uh,
the funny fat Bitch.

Speaker 2 (01:27:23):
I know that's right, girl. You better put a tam
behind that before somebody.

Speaker 1 (01:27:27):
Try to steal it's the funny sat bitch.

Speaker 2 (01:27:30):
I know that's right.

Speaker 1 (01:27:32):
And and I too very much can can can attest
that Jojo is one of the most funniest and comedic
people that I know, and I'm so grateful to have
them as my co host on this show. With that
being said, as for me and mind, you can find
me down to the WZ dot doctor John Paul dot com.
I only have four more bookstops for those of you.
I will be in Dallas, I will be in New Orleans,

(01:27:55):
I will be in I can see the name of
the place, but I can't think of it.

Speaker 2 (01:27:59):
But anyway, and then I'm in Minneapolis.

Speaker 1 (01:28:01):
There's another one on there, so if you want to
go to my website you want to find out where
I am, though you will see the stops. Keep buying
the book, keep running it up, listen to the podcast.
There's a few other spots. When they come out in
their drops, I will let you know. I will also
say that I am promoting the book on a very
very very funny podcast, so keep your eye out for that.
I will mention it once it drops on the show.

(01:28:23):
And then other than that, you can find me somewhere
crying because I can't eat a donut. I've been craving
a donut the way I really. I've been wanting one
so so deeply. And it's not that I can't have it.
It's just I know that if I do eat it,
that there's going to be a lot of things I
cannot have because I got to keep my sugar together.

(01:28:43):
So I don't even want to chance it. And it
just it bugs me to know that that's where I
am in my life, where I'm like, do I want
the soda? Do I want the donut? And I want
the soda more.

Speaker 3 (01:28:57):
I'm sending you vibes for a donut comeback.

Speaker 2 (01:28:59):
Or for you to find like the bal Yeah lonor
balance gird what was so bad?

Speaker 1 (01:29:05):
But I've been thinking that, girls, do you really want
to have to deal with, you know, having a to
get rid of other stuff so you can have that
one donut? Because the sugar pushes my numbers up so high.
So I just want to just send me a prayer,
send me something girl all else, you could send me
a la boo boo. If you really feel bad for me,
you can send me a latle boo boo. That'll make

(01:29:25):
me feel so much better. If you don't know what
a la booboo is, looking up, you're missing out. But
with that being said, we thank everybody who keeps listening
to the show. We want to thank our producer Bay
Wang for handling all the logistics and making this happen,
and we want to also thank iHeartMedia for keeping the
show up and running and supporting us. We'd also like
to shout out a wonderful editor, Chris Rogers, because without him,
we'd have no audio or visuals down at the tubes

(01:29:48):
of you. And yes, I want to shout out everybody
who watches the YouTube videos in these comments, we see them.

Speaker 2 (01:29:55):
We love you for it. Definitely, thank you. This has
been another show. Stay pleas. That's fin and fabulous. And
remember what, Jojo.

Speaker 4 (01:30:03):
We may not be a cup of tea, but girl,
it's hot in these streets. Or drinking some water.

Speaker 1 (01:30:07):
Please stay hydrated. I stay hydrated because you're probably needed anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:30:13):
I love us for it.

Speaker 1 (01:30:14):
And I also want to say this real quick before
we go off, and I'm gonna hold this too for
anybody who's dealing with folks saying you suck the air
out of rooms.

Speaker 2 (01:30:23):
Keep doing it. You need it. It's your ass.

Speaker 1 (01:30:26):
Take all the air out the room. And if they want, yes, suffer.
And if they want and if they feel a way, uh,
you tell them to get what is it? The new
what's the airman's thing? What you call them things?

Speaker 2 (01:30:36):
The things?

Speaker 1 (01:30:37):
The air tanks, the oxygen tank. Tell me to get
an oxygen tank so you can take that air too.
I love us for real.

Speaker 4 (01:30:46):
Bye yah

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