i love my curvy wife, pt. 2

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the show where we talk
to the Internet's characters of the day from time gone
by to see what their moment says about the Internet
and about us. My name's Jamie Loftis, and everyone is
always shocked to learn that I am actually six feet tall,
which is unfortunate to admit here, but I think it
is because my personality scans a hard five to six.
But I use it to my advantage. It's how I

(00:26):
get people to tell me so many secrets. And today
we are continuing our discussion of the Curvy Wife saga
of twenty seventeen. Now, if you haven't listened to part
one of this episode and aren't familiar with the story,
I would say go back.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
You gotta go back.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
This episode isn't going to make a hell of a
lot of sense without at least the context from the
first part of the series. Last week, I recapped the
story of I Love My Curvy Wife in detail and
spoke to Curvywife Guy himself, Robbie Tripp. So again, if
you haven't heard any part of the first episode, it
would make more sense to just go back. But for
those returning, you already know that In the summer of

(01:06):
twenty seventeen, a Utah man named Robbie Tripp posted a
photo of himself and his wife, his.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
Wife Sarah Trip, at the beach.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Sarah, at the time was an influencer of in betweeners,
or as she clarified, people who wore sizes that were
between extremely thin models presented in the media and the
plus size section, and this post was heard around the world.

Speaker 4 (01:31):
I love this woman and her curvy body. As a teenager,
I was often teased by my friends for my attraction
to girls on the thicker side.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
It keeps going from there again. You can listen to
part one and the curvy wife post went through what
listeners of this show will now recognize as a pretty
typical main character experience. Step one, the post goes viral.
Step two, it gets a lot of positive attention. Step
three a significant wave of backlash and negative attention. Step

(02:04):
four optional but common, the surfacing of old offensive posts
from the main character. Step five, the public apology and
disavowal of said posts, and ultimately what they do to
maintain and build on this notoriety. And this all depends
on who the main character is and whether they have
aspirations to stick around. Some people just want to return

(02:26):
to their lives. Think thirty to fifty Faral Hogs Guy,
Think Coffee Wife. But others like Robbie and Sarah already
had big ambitions in the influencing space after the Curvy
Wife post. Sarah Tripp continued to build her fashion and
lifestyle commentary brand under the Sassy Red Lipstick banner and
launched a series of bathing suit line collaborations. Meanwhile, Kurveywife

(02:50):
husband Robbie Tripp became a rapper who just released the
song hot Wife. And by the way, after part one,
a bunch of you commented, does he know what hot
wife means? And then I had to look it up
and now I know what it means and I resent
you all for sharing that with me. Airhorn, Please, It's
undeniable that there were elements of this story that really
had staying power. People were talking about the curvy Wife

(03:13):
post for months and years after the original post, and
the phrase I love my curvy wife has more or
less entered the permanent lexicon of people who were online
and engaged with the story at the time. And the
reason it's still around is because during its original circulation.
This story, intentionally or not, touched a lot of nerves, including,

(03:35):
but not limited to, how men can talk about and
objectify women, the idea perpetuated by the media that one
should be praised for being attracted to fat people, how
fat or curvy women are portrayed by the media, the
terms curvy or fat and what that meant to the
person that was saying or receiving them, and the wide
range of feelings on how those terms are used personally

(03:57):
and politically, and quite frankly, a very specific strain of
millennial cringe. And I'll be honest, I did not love
the Curvy Wife post when it came out or now,
but I was glad to have the opportunity to talk
with Robbie Tripp about his thinking behind posting it in
the first place, because it's my job to give main

(04:17):
characters their chance to speak on their fifteen minutes of
fame and reflect. It's just that our conversation didn't really
change my mind. In our interview, Robbie took repeated jabs
at white, female, millennial snarky bloggers in New York, which
I personally feels a lot of qualifiers added to dress
up the fact that he seemed upset at any woman
or really any person who was frustrated by his post

(04:41):
and said something about it. And again, plenty of people
took no issue at the post. Many felt empowered by it.
I've heard from a few people to this effect, and
I don't mean to negate that viewpoint, but disliking the
Curvywife post had nothing to do with being anti man
or being a specific type of person. I looked back on,
the backlash was coming from a pretty diverse group of

(05:02):
very online people. So yeah, make of that what you will,
and let's move on, because I think there's a more
interesting angle to discuss the Curvy wife moment from this week.
And regardless of my feelings, Robbie and Sarah love each other.
They recently celebrated ten years of marriage, and their marriage
is honestly not something I'm interested in dissecting, no matter

(05:22):
how many Instagram comments I get about it. Lest I
be characterized as a white millennial snark blogger from New York,
which is only forty percent true. I want to talk
in this episode about why the Curvy wife post really
struck a chord during this backlash, and how that connects
to how we talk about other people's bodies, and fat

(05:43):
and curvy bodies specifically, because even if I understand that
Sarah Tripp does not mind that her husband made this
post about her, I still cannot find a read of
this post that doesn't feel centered around Robbie's feelings and
comes off as condescending to the quote unquote her women
he is addressing in the post. And a lot of

(06:03):
people felt the same way. Body positivity and fat liberation
movements had been going on for decades at the time
of this post, but had in many activist opinion been
co opted and deep politicized by mainstream culture in a
way to either sell you things or tacitly make people
feel either bad or confident enough about their bodies to

(06:26):
buy something and nothing more. To feel good about your
body when you weren't. Finn was a brave act all
of a sudden, the same way that Robbie saying he
loved his wife was treated as commendable and not the
bare minimum from a loving spouse. And this was a
narrative that was really pushed by media outlets in the
early days of this story, and not much is outside

(06:47):
of Robbie's control. Even the term body positivity put pressure
on people to feel good about their bodies, to demonstrate
their worth and morality when very few people have a
day to day simple relationship with their body. A lot
of people talking about body positivity ten years ago are
now talking about body neutrality. And so today I want

(07:09):
to dig a little deeper, understand this story outside of
the realm of Robbie Tripp and talk to body positivity
and fat activists to see why after seven years, this
story still prompts such a response. Buckle in Curvy Wife
guy Robbie Tripp and curvy wife Sarah Trip. Your sixteenth
minute continues now, welcome back to sixteenth minute. I thought

(08:26):
I was doing a little better emotionally and then I
just reread Charlotte's Web and it made me cry for
truly three hours. If you haven't read Charlotte's Web recently,
it is the most beautiful piece of American writing I've
ever encountered. Hadn't read it since I was seven, and
it just has so much to say about life and
death and purpose. And here I am Jamie's book Club.

(08:49):
Please read this book for second graders again. You won't
regret it.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
But let's get back to the episode.

Speaker 2 (08:54):
And so today we are continuing our discussion of the
infamous Curvy Wife post of twenty seventeen, and once more
at the top of this episode, I do just want
to say that if this post works for you, that's
totally fine, But this week I want to examine the
backlash to this.

Speaker 3 (09:11):
Story more clearly. Not every story I cover.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
Has backlash that, at least in my opinion, warrants a
closer look, but in the case of this story, I
think it also offers an opportunity to take a look
at what body positivity and fat activism meant at this
moment and what it means now. I'll be speaking with
Tigris Osborne of NAFA, the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance,

(09:35):
and Kate Navarete of the Body Positivity Alliance. But before
we jump into my talk with Kate, I wanted to
give a quick snapshot of we're attitudes toward body positivity
and fat liberation stood around the time that the Curvy
Wife story went viral, and this is going to be
a pretty rapid fire history. So for more nuanced and
detailed work on this movement, and a link of fumore

(09:56):
works in the description as well. Fat liberation movements, which
have gone by a number of names, including fat acceptance,
fat empowerment, and fat pride, have been in the mainstream
discourse since the nineteen sixties and is often characterized in
movements alongside the major feminist movements of the last one
hundred or so years. In nineteen sixty seven, Fat Power

(10:20):
activists staged a demonstration in Central Park where over fifty
people eight held signs with pictures of Twiggy and said
diet books on fire, Pretty punk rock then. NAFFO was
founded in nineteen sixty nine by engineer Bill Fabri, who
started the volunteer driven group in response to the discrimination
his wife faced in her day to day life. A

(10:40):
spinoff of this group, called the Fat Underground, began in
nineteen seventy two. Texts like Fat Power, Whatever You Weigh
Is Right by Llewell and Lauderback in nineteen seventy and
Fat as a Feminist Issue by Susie Orbach in seventy
eight continued to push the movement forward, along with Naffa's
own Fat Manifesto in nineteen seventy three, which demanded quote

(11:02):
equal rights for fat.

Speaker 3 (11:03):
People in all areas of life.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
Unquote. These groups were certainly considered radical at the time,
but they were also often criticized as being flawed in
the same ways that the feminist movements they worked alongside
with were. While fat activism was and is considered a
civil rights issue, NAPA had neglected to meaningfully include non
white people and black people, specifically under the guise that

(11:28):
fat activism was not needed as much in those communities,
something the organization has strived to rectify since here. I'm
going to quote Tigris Osborne, the current executive director of NAFA,
writing in a blog post on the NAFA website about
how discouraging it was to see a dearth of people
who looked like her when she first got involved in

(11:48):
fat activism. And since I'm interviewing Tigris later in this episode,
I asked if she'd read her own words.

Speaker 5 (11:55):
So I'm going to share with you something that I
wrote for the newsletter for the Nationalist Theiation to Advance
Fat Acceptance or NAFA, a couple of years ago, and
as I'm reading it now in twenty twenty four.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
It still really holds true.

Speaker 6 (12:09):
Here's what I wrote.

Speaker 5 (12:10):
Some key moments we identify as the roots of fat
lib are really really white moments. And throughout the history
of the documented organized fat activist movement, what's often not documented,
especially before the modern era, are the black people who
were there. I've been going through old NAFA newsletters from
the seventies and so far I've only seen one visibly

(12:34):
black person who was unidentified in the photos.

Speaker 6 (12:38):
A couple years later.

Speaker 5 (12:39):
Side note, I've seen only a handful more as I
continue that project of reviewing our old newsletters back to
what I wrote. I haven't tracked them down yet, and
I don't know if I will ever be able to
track down that person. Maybe this person was having the
time of their life at NAFA events, behave Sometimes I've
had a great time despite being the only black person

(13:01):
in a place. But at other times I've been incredibly
uncomfortable but made the best of it, and other times
I've just been uncomfortable. I've felt all of those things
as a black person in NAFA in the twenty tens
and twenty twenties, so I can imagine what I would
have felt in NAFA in other decades. We see black
leadership in other social justice movements. At the time of

(13:23):
NAFA's founding, what does whiteness have to do with why
we don't see black leadership or even much black participation
in early NAFA. What does anti blackness have to do
with it? Is there simply more urgency of other issues
for black folks then now? Or is there discomfort in
these spaces for black people then now? Or are black

(13:48):
people simply not interested in NAFA then now? These questions
feel rhetorical, but they're not.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
By the nineties, BAT activists were picketing in front of
the White House and becoming increasingly critical of the rampant
fat phobia present in mainstream media. The nineties and two
thousands are notable for rampant fat phobia that, whether you
like millennials or not, did a hell of a lot
of damage on how everyone, but particularly women and fems,

(14:19):
were conditioned to perceive themselves. Anecdotally, I started dieting when
I was eight years old. This was the era of
Kate Moss's grand ode to internalize fat phobia. Nothing tastes
as good as skinny feels, and gave way to online
communities that were centered around encouraging each other's eating disorders.

(14:41):
And while NAFA had a persistent issue with a lack
of black leadership and members. Fat activism was increasingly spearheaded
by black and queer communities when it moved online. I
remember hearing this poem from poet Sonya Rene Taylor when
it first went viral in twenty eleven.

Speaker 6 (14:59):
The body is not an apology.

Speaker 7 (15:02):
Let it not be forgive me, not fixed to mattress
when night threatens to leave the room empty as the
belly of a crow.

Speaker 5 (15:10):

Speaker 7 (15:12):
Do not present it as a disassembled rifle when he
is yet to prove himself more than common intruder.

Speaker 6 (15:18):

Speaker 7 (15:21):
Let it not be common as oil, ash or toilet.
Let it not be small, as gravel stained or teeth.
Let it not be mountain when it is sand. Let
it not be ocean when it is grass. Let it
not be shaken, flattened, or raised in contrition.

Speaker 6 (15:35):

Speaker 2 (15:38):
A link the full poem in the description It's really beautiful.
But even after fat activism moves online, there are similarities
between fat activism and feminist activism during this period of time.
In previous decades, fat activism had been either mocked or
dismissed by mainstream outlets, but by the two thousands, the

(15:58):
distinct online communities built led mainstream advertisers to view it
as an opportunity. What if we took this notion that
all bodies are worthy of love, removed the politics from
that notion, and sold it back to consumers. It's not
quite that simple, but after the success of the original
run of Dove soap real beauty ads starting in two

(16:21):
thousand and four, body positivity stripped of politics became an
increasingly common marketing tactic. The original Dove soap ads were
rooted in the language of body positivity, but didn't really
offer any solution or action toward it outside of visual
representation and buying Dove soap.

Speaker 1 (16:41):
How long have we been chasing someone else's idea of beauty?
Maybe one size fits all hair, it doesn't fit you.
Rediscover the beauty of your own hair. Discovered Dove shampoos
and conditioners.

Speaker 2 (16:58):
But these ads were really effective. After the first series
of ads featuring a group of women that were comparatively
more diverse in race and age and less thin than
women you were used to seeing in soap ads, Dove
sales went up seven hundred percent. That's an ad from
two thousand and four, but this campaign has lasted over

(17:19):
twenty years now. Different eras of Dove ads single out
the ways that other brands photoshop and marginalize their representatives
to make the consumer feel bad about themselves, and more
recently have made short documentaries about how girls become critical
of their appearance, beginning at a very young age. And
I don't mean to dismiss this campaign outright, because this

(17:41):
is all true and makes a demonstrable difference to have
out in the mainstream, But the common refrain is that
cannot be the endgame.

Speaker 3 (17:49):
It's not enough.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
So after Dove's success, other brands jumped on board the
SS body positivity, including brands that had been notoriously fat
phobic in the past. Looking at You, Victoria's secret put
Amamas Prado.

Speaker 6 (18:04):
Myself proud to be who I am, proud to be,
proud to be, proud to be.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
Brands like Airy, Oley and famously Barbie in twenty fifteen
suddenly featured a wider range of body types than ever before,
and every time it prompted controversy in the mainstream media
because in one sense, this was a wider range of
body representation than mainstream audiences were used to seeing, but
there was never a political goal attached to this representation.

(18:36):
The goal was to sell products more effectively. And it's
during this era of body positivity in the early to
mid twenty tens, that Sarah Tripp launches her blog Sassy
Red Lipstick, and it was a fashion blog. It wasn't
launched with the intention of being a source for body positivity,
but over the years, Sarah would often be candid about

(18:58):
her relationship with her body and being this quote unquote
in between her making a name for herself in an
industry and an influencing space that was obsessively thin. She
wasn't trying to or explicitly doing activist work. She was
speaking honestly about her own experiences and certainly as the
blog continued, she opened the floor to women of all sizes,

(19:21):
so body positivity was discussed. But it wasn't like she
was doing on the ground organization work and wasn't aspiring to.
She was and is an influencer who loves her body,
and that's great, but it does provide some context or
when the Trips were suddenly made the faces of American
body positivity, while some fat liberation activists were kind of

(19:43):
annoyed about it because not only were the Trips not activists,
there was also this glaring issue of inclusivity and this
persistent issue of CIS white bodies within fat activism being centered.
Sarah Tripp is a CIS white woman from a lot
of money, and while that doesn't negain any body discrimination
she's experienced in her life, it does make a difference

(20:04):
in the ways that she and her husband were subsequently
able to turn this into a career, because, as has
become obvious over time, the way that black and brown
women are treated online and in the real world is
with continued degrees of mistrust, neegging, and even violence. Thankfully,
there are and always have been, many people working in
that space that aren't SIS white people. I don't mean

(20:26):
to erase them. I am curious to ask whether this
story would have gotten the attention and media prioritization it
did if the couple and the bodies at its center
weren't SIS, straight and white.

Speaker 3 (20:39):
And I can't stress this enough.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
This is not Sarah's fault, right, She was just trying
to exist and have a career online and this became
a launching point that she told Rebecca Jennings was very
uncomfortable and anxiety inducing for her because Sarah wasn't inviting
this conversation about her body and didn't personally prompt it.
It was her husband and the media who started this conversation.

(21:04):
So on one end, her body is being centered without
her consent by the media, and on the other end,
there were fat activists who seemed frustrated with Sarah's body
were not being fat enough to warrant such an outsized discussion.
And so my next interview was with a person who
had an especially fresh perspective on the curvy wife saga

(21:24):
because she was a child when the story happened. My
interview with Kate Navarette. When we come back, welcome back

(21:45):
to sixteenth minute. I found a white eyebrow hair this morning,
and here is my interview with Kate Navarette of the
Body Positivity Alliance. This interview has been edited for time
and clarity.

Speaker 5 (21:57):
Enjoy.

Speaker 6 (21:58):
My name is Kate Nevadet. I am the founder and
executive director of Body Positive Alliance, which is a nonprofit
organization dedicated to promoting the representation, fair treatment, and equity
of all bodies, regardless of appearance or identity. We started
back in twenty nineteen as a local high school club

(22:19):
and have since expanded to a nonprofit and have been
operating for about four years now as of five oh
one and c three. And in my personal life, I
am a current undergraduate student at Emory University. I'm a
business major, and I'm super passionate about all things pop
culture and I think that what we're about to talk

(22:40):
about today dives really deep into that, and I'm excited
to chat.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
I know that you are.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
So you're a college student and we're talking about a
story that happened seven years ago.

Speaker 3 (22:50):
Now, the Curvy Wife Saga. You were a full child
for this.

Speaker 6 (22:55):
I think I was about twelve when this happened. Yeah,
I think. I think twelve is painful to hear. But
the truth is the truth.

Speaker 3 (23:04):
So were you familiar with the story at all? I
was not.

Speaker 6 (23:08):
No, this is all news me.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
I'm really interested to get your take as a first
time I love my Curvy Wife Saga experiencer. What do
you make of this story?

Speaker 6 (23:20):
What's really interesting is that, at first glance, I think,
in the line of work that I do, I was
really quick to judge. I think that at first glance
it seemed kind of odd whereas I think for people
who maybe don't have as much exposure to body positivity
would jump toward more reaction of admiration our praise, which

(23:44):
I think is what a lot of people did at
the time. It seems like when this came out there
were certainly some good components to what was posted. I
mean this bringing attention to how women are marginalized based
on narrow appearance ideal or fighting conventional norms of attractiveness,

(24:04):
and supporting the idea that you can experience love regardless
of what you look like, you know, even like finding
things that traditionally aren't considered attractive, like fatness in the
Western world attractive. I thought there were good nuggets overall.
I just thought it was really odd from just a

(24:24):
personal lens of it felt weird for this to be
coming from the perspective of this woman's husband. I think
that was what stood out to me immediately is something
that was a bit off putting, because if this was
a woman speaking to her experience dealing with body image

(24:45):
and talking about her journey marrying someone who more narrowly
falls in line with those ideals on the like male
end of the spectrum, and then also you know over again,
like overcoming this personal struggle, that would be something that
I think would be really endearing and really positive for
people to see. But just this whole idea that it

(25:06):
was coming from him, and it was using such I
wouldn't say vulgar is the right word, but using just
language that was so body focused and also at the
same time giving himself kind of a pat on the
back for liking curveer women when that's just something that

(25:30):
some people do. I think was it was a bit odd.
I think I'm teetering on icky. But for the time being,
just with what I've seen, it has felt kind of odd.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
If this was a post by a woman talking about
her own body, I feel like it's not it's not
even a news story because it's.

Speaker 3 (25:49):
A man talking about his wife.

Speaker 6 (25:50):
Like you're saying, right, it feels like a very conventional
trend cycle, slash media headline, whatever you want to call it.
It seems like he's kind of made a career off
of this, almost not you know, I look at his
profile here, He's about half a million followers. He has
continued to produce content around liking curvy women and celebrating

(26:13):
curvy women. But again, it just feels really objectifying. It's weird.
It's weird that this is coming from a male perspective
because it's not exactly like either he's celebrating men or
you know, people who like identify within the confines of
his gender identity. He is exclusively celebrating women in a

(26:36):
way that I think a lot of people would interpret
as fetishizing people with this particular body type. And I think, again,
it's great to challenge norms of romantic attraction and challenge
beauty standards and challenge the way that we're perceiving bodies,
but again, it's really hard to do that without objectifying people,

(27:00):
and especially when he's looking at it through clearly such
a sexual gaze. And again there's also this added component
of he considers himself brave for this, which to me
is so ridiculous, Like you are not brave for finding
your wife attractive, you know, if anything like credits should

(27:23):
go to her for her however, she has navigated the world.
And also I just want to say too, she is,
you know, not the largest woman in the world, right,
like she pretty much has Like I'm you know, I've
seen her, and you know, I'm not gonna like label
her body one way or the other. I believe in

(27:45):
individual like autonomy there. But from what we can see
on the census data of the average size of an
American woman, pretty standard, right, And I completely understand that
the ways in which women are portrayed in the media
versus what the actual average American woman looks like, there's
a huge discrepancy there. I will never discount that, and

(28:05):
in fact, I will do everything I can to challenge that. Again,
this attribution of bravery courage for liking this woman, that's
where I kind of feel the fetishizing coming in, because
it feels like, despite you being considered ugly to everyone else,
I still love you. And men, if you like ugly

(28:27):
women out there like I do, it's okay. It's still
perpetuating a narrow confine of beauty rather than trying to
expand it. And you know, that is one approach. I
don't think liberation comes from expanding the definition of beauty.
I think it comes from deconstructing beauty in its totality.
But and then it also kind of begs the question,

(28:48):
if I'm sitting here criticizing it, then how can we
really tackle all these systems or all these nuances with
one individual's response, we can't, we can't, he can't accomplish everything,
and I can't expecting too. But again, I think my
overall thought here is just that it's uncomfortable that this
came from her husband's perspective instead of her own, because

(29:11):
I think that just again perpetuates objectification and misogyny. Honestly,
that beauty standards create and uphold.

Speaker 2 (29:22):
Something that always rubs me the wrong way about this
story is just her like Sarah Tripp's removal from the story,
because completely at the time this was posted, she was
you know, I think she had a couple hundred thousand
followers and she was an influencer for I think she
could called it at a time like in between sizes

(29:43):
where she was between plus size and has like normal
store sizes in the way that it was presented, and
that was sort of her whole beat was exploring that
and like, how do I find clothes that fit me?
If you have the same sort of frustration while shopping,
here is what I do. So she was directly interacting
with this.

Speaker 6 (30:03):
Yeah, it's also what you said too about her having
her own Internet personality and you know, propagating something that's
coming from really personal and probably pretty painful experience of
trying to navigate shopping as a non standard sized woman.
That's something that should deserve way more attention than you know,

(30:27):
a man calling his wife hot, Right, Like, why are
we even test? Holiday said in an article with people,
Why are we giving men trophies? Why are we giving
men trophies for being attracted to women who don't fit
conventional beauty standards. I think also if people are only
attracted to what is considered conventionally beautiful or the beauty standard,

(30:49):
that should signal to us that there is so much
more we need to address and that there are so
many problems out there in our society that need to
be tackled. And I think that's part of what he's saying, right,
like the fact that he was quote unquote bullied for
liking women who didn't fit this conventional norm. But again,

(31:11):
he there's been some other stuff that's come up. He
has made transphobic tweets in the past, and I'm not
sure what he didn't necessarily to rectify that, but he's
made transphobic tweets towards trans women specifically, and that's something
where I think to myself, if you're not going to
support all women, then you're just sort of narrowly opening

(31:32):
the door for a woman who's maybe like myself, closer
to like a size twelve or whatever, you know, come through,
come through the door, and then quickly shutting it for
everyone else. Right, it's not incremental progress. That just kind
of creates a debate around incremental progress. But I yeah,
I just found it. I just found it really hypocritical,

(31:55):
Like you are questioning and criticizing these beauty standards, but
then also simultaneously putting messaging out there that would indicate
that you don't support all women, and that again you're
maintaining that narrow beauty ideal or just narrow idea of womanhood.
To some extent, women just aren't appreciated in the media

(32:18):
or listened to in the media in the same way
that men are. And so when a man decides it's
okay for a woman to love her body, then we're
allowed to love our body, right, Like, yeah, we need
permission to feel attractive or to feel worthy of love.

(32:38):
And that's exactly what this post exemplifies. And it's so
transparent as to what the media cares about, which is
the perspectives of men, white men at that white straight men.
That's incredibly frustrating. And he's making a career out of this,
which is, I mean, just kind of disgusting.

Speaker 3 (32:57):
If I'm being honest, this is clearly the wrong approach.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
Can you tell me a little bit about the work
that you've been doing and how it sort of evolved
in the four years that you've been doing it.

Speaker 6 (33:09):
Definitely, I got my start doing body positive adocacy work
really inspired by my personal struggle with body image and
ultimately the struggle of the people around me. I noticed
that this was an issue that was really pervasive in
my community, and I started a body positive club as

(33:29):
a sophomore in high school and drew like a pretty
right just like a decent community. It was friends, I
like got my favorite English teacher to sign on as
our sponsor. It was very casual, and we just had
an opportunity to talk about body image in a way
that I hadn't really done before, and in a way
that I had increasingly started engaging with online because I

(33:52):
was really trying at this point to recover from my
eating disorders. And so what ended up happening was the
pandemic hit around March of sophomore year of high school,
and I started doing public addicacy work online, not dissimilar
from what Sarah Tripp was doing. I was advocating for
body positivity on TikTok. I amassed a small but mighty

(34:13):
following from that, and I got some really cool opportunities
because of it. But I just was led to this
place of feeling very objectified, and especially being that young,
being fifteen and sixteen and doing this work, it felt
a bit uncomfortable for me to be doing, especially so
new into my recovery, and ultimately I wanted to do

(34:35):
something more substantive, and so the path I took then
was to expand my organization from just a club to
a nonprofit, and we've been operating as a nonprofit ever since,
you know, and I started a podcast surrounding it, speaking
with activists in the space, and really over time developed
a broader understanding of body positivity that went beyond feel

(34:57):
good about yourself and you know, we can we can
help you with your relationship with food, to what are
the systems in place that are making people feel bad
about their bodies and also contributing to the oppression of
people based on their physical appearance, and how can we address,
educate about those and deconstruct them. And so our work

(35:18):
now focuses much more on the socio political context of
body positivity, as is true with the original intention of
the movement, which emerged as a byproduct of fat liberation
during the Civil rights era in the United States. And
I really found that this approach just opened my eyes

(35:40):
in a way that I had previously not been exposed to,
in a way that surface level and mainstream body positivity
is failing to encompass. And it's because this part of
the movement, and this radical part of the movement, it's
not as palatable and it's not as digestive as some

(36:01):
of the mainstream messaging that we're seeing. And so while
it's great to say that everyone is beautiful, we should
also be challenging the idea of beauty in and of itself, right,
the idea that we need to be beautiful or need
to expand this definition of beauty. And it's tough because
in the society we live in, expanding the definition of
beauty is really the most realistic path forward to liberation, right,

(36:25):
like representation and the importance of representation, but also behind
the scenes, there need to be people who are deconstructing
this idea altogether. And so my messaging now more so
revolves around the idea that you should be allowed to
feel good about yourself and feel good about the way
you look, but you should also know that you are

(36:48):
worthy and you are good beyond the way that you look.
And so I think in this respect, I understand I
don't know. I wouldn't say I necessarily understand his intention,
but I understand why his wife was okay with it
happening and what maybe felt like positive validation for her,

(37:12):
And I want to say this without being patronizing or
like infantilizing her. I also think, though, that there is
arguably a need for transparency and the real motivations behind
maintaining this. And is that something that's monetary or is
that something that's the basis of ideology, because if it's
based on ideology, that could use some correcting, right, multiple

(37:36):
things can be true at the same time.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
The last thing I wanted to ask you about I'm
ten years older than you, but also so much of
the way that I perceived my body for better and
for worse, Like the Internet, both empowered and encouraged an
eating disorder that was, you know, raged for me throughout
high school into college, and the Internet was instru mental

(38:00):
in me finding people that were extremely like critical in
my recovering and healing from it. I would love to
hear a little bit about, you know, whether it's your
experience or people you've spoken with through your advocacy, how
you know we conceive our bodies with the internet, how
and if you have any feelings on how to form

(38:21):
a healthier relationship with perceiving your body on the internet.

Speaker 6 (38:24):
Totally, and I really resonate with what you said. The
Internet was arguably a large contributor to my body image
struggles and why it developed my eating disorders, but it also,
again like you said, was instrumental in recovery. Some of
the early recovery influencers that I found, especially because I

(38:45):
was recovering during the pandemic, Exposing myself to this changed
the trajectory of my life and I'm so eternally grateful
for that. And I think that a lot of my
life has been spent trying to navigate what social media
can look like in my life, and that's a journey
that I'm still on. I've been on social media for
more than half of my life now. I got my

(39:07):
Instagram account when I was nine years old, and I'm
now again. Like I said, funny, I've been around the
Internet for a while now, and I've also I've taken
breaks from it. I think there's no shame in taking
a break from social media. There's this constant fear of
missing out, but I promise that there is. There's so

(39:29):
much more to life than what is on a screen.
And I also think that something that I've done because
often I think this guilt of sometimes, you know, as
someone who struggled with binge eating disorder, find myself kind
of replicating the same behaviors when I'm using social media,
which is to say that I am scrolling for a

(39:49):
really long time. Then I feel really guilty about it,
so I delete social media the next day, and then
I re downloaded, and then the same cycle repeats over
and over. And something that I really tried to incorporate
recently is setting aside like five ten minutes maybe fifteen
each day to go on social media and making that
time intentional and it doesn't have to be the same

(40:10):
time every day, but making the time that you're spending
on social media intentional rather than a passive scroll. You know,
while you're waiting in line for you know, a public bathroom,
or just like you know, you're sitting at lunch and
your friend hasn't showed up yet. In these waiting moments,
I think can be something that plagues our mental health,
but being intentional about it is something that's really important.

(40:33):
And I also think to the same degree, be intentional
about what you're consuming. If you are looking at people,
even friends, who make you feel bad about yourself. I
think the mute feature is great for friends because you
don't have to unfollow them, but you also don't have
to see their content. I do this with people. I'm
not going to be not going to name names, but

(40:53):
there's people that you follow, even that you're friends with,
that you're close to and you love, and a door
that you look at their Instagram and think, oh my gosh,
I need to look like that, then mute them. It's okay.
Set boundaries. Put yourself first, you know. I think that's
what's really important here. And sometimes it's really difficult to
control what we see. And I also, I'm going to

(41:15):
be realistic, right we live in an age, and especially
when you're my age, like a college student, you need
to be on social media for clubs and for communication
and whatever it may be, especially in my case, like
maintaining long distance friendships, which I'm sure a lot of
us who totally you know, our adults can relate to.

(41:36):
And so I see the value in it, and I
think that suggesting we all delete it entirely is not
productive or feasible. But again, being intentional with your usage,
moderating your usage is really the biggest thing that I
can offer as a piece of advice. And also just
know that we're all figuring it out. Being kind to
yourself and knowing that even if you doom scroll, you

(41:59):
don't have to completely cut yourself off. It's okay, And
we're all figuring this out together, and we're all guinea
pigs in this new age of communication and life, and
it'll take some getting used to for sure.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
Thanks so much to Kate, And you can learn more
about the Body Positivity Alliance in the description when we
come back. Tigris Osborne of NAPA, Welcome back to sixteenth minute.

(42:39):
I have been watching YouTube videos theorizing about why Mormon
influencers specifically, are so successful.

Speaker 3 (42:47):
And it's blowing my mind.

Speaker 2 (42:49):
And this is part two of our Curvy Life series.
My final talk is with Tigris Osbourne, the executive director
of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. She's been
entrenched in fat activism for a long time. She's a
gen xer and has a different free and post internet
take on this story. And as always, this interview has

(43:11):
been edited for time and clarity. Here's our chat.

Speaker 5 (43:16):
I am ty Chris Osborne. I am the executive director
of NAFA, the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
So yeah, we've already sort of started diving into the
curvy wife saga.

Speaker 3 (43:26):
Were you aware of this story when it first happened.

Speaker 6 (43:31):
I was.

Speaker 5 (43:32):
I wasn't following it super closely because to me, it
was just like just another fat admirer guy talking on
the internet. And I've seen a lot of that over
my years. Before I became involved with NAFA and became
more of an activist and advocate in the fat space,
I was a plus sized nightclub promoter and so I
started a club in Oakland in two thousand and eight

(43:54):
called Full Figure Entertainment that was, you know, a nightclub
party for plus sized women. We used to say bodied
ladies and their friends and fans of all sizes, And
so I was exposed to a lot of guys who
are sort of like waving the flag of like, I
love big women, and so to me, he was just
like another guy waving the flag of I love big women.
And the main thing I remember thinking at the time was,

(44:16):
your wife is not even that big, dude, This is
not like you're really gonna die on this hill of
I love big women, and she's only big compared to
like the most mainstream of beauty standards. So that's what
I remember my reaction being at the time.

Speaker 2 (44:30):
That's something that I've heard come up a lot, and
it totally makes sense, and I feel like, does even
more to pull curvy wife into.

Speaker 3 (44:39):
This story kind of against her.

Speaker 5 (44:40):
Well, yeah, and there's always that sort of question of
where the male gaze fits into body positivity, right, like
how much are feelings and especially at that point in
the trajectory of body positivity, so like how much our
feelings are influenced by what men think of our bosodies
and or how much we do not care or only

(45:04):
care when it's our own man, but don't need anybody
else kind of going around making pronouncements, and you know,
I think people have a lot of really mixed reactions
to a moment like that based on where they are
in the trajectory of learning to you know, love and
embrace their body for whatever it is. And you know,

(45:24):
body positivity is interesting because we've been using the phrase
body positivity for decades, like fat activists and and you know,
and other advocates for sort of body freedom have been
talking about body positivity for decades. The organization the Body
Positive is I think twenty five years old. But when

(45:44):
we think of body positivity or we're really talking about
what happened on Tumblr and Instagram around body positivity in
the twenty ten ish era. And so in that time,
body positivity went from being sort of like the most
rebellious you know, the bipock people and the queer people
and the disabled people and the people with you know,

(46:07):
visible differences in their bodies and faces, and then you
know sort of like inched its way over to people
who kind of look like models already but are just
a tiny bit bigger or a tiny bit different in
some way. And I think those folks need positivity too,
they're living in the same culture as the rest of us,

(46:27):
but the way that they are disenfranchised from the culture
is a little bit different, or sometimes drastically different. And
so I think a lot of reaction from people in
fat activist community if they knew anything about curvy wife guy,
was that sort of like, here we go again, centering
someone who is barely outside of the norm and making

(46:48):
a whole big deal about that. And then, you know,
especially folks who have a more feminist or womanist orientation,
we're just sort of like, and we got to be
validated by some dudes, right, Right.

Speaker 2 (47:00):
This is something I've wanted to get a little more
into because you've been working in this space for so
long now, that moment in the twenty tens where body
positivity is kind of corporatized, I feel like, in the
way that we see a lot of movements corporatized, and
you know how you see pride flags outside of banks
and all of this stuff, Right.

Speaker 3 (47:21):
How did you have to move with that moment?

Speaker 2 (47:25):
Because this story feels sort of like a very kind
of sanitized presentation of anything, and so I'm curious, you know.

Speaker 3 (47:32):
How you sort of navigated that shift.

Speaker 5 (47:35):
Sanitize is an interesting word I think. I think I
think the word I would use is depoliticized, like or
a political It's just like I'm going to say a
nice thing about bodies. I'm not going to talk about
any of the politics of why we don't usually say
nice things about bodies, or how these bodies are actually
treated out in the world, like or the access Like
I'm not out there, you know, fighting for more access

(47:58):
for my wife so that she can have better clothes
or you know, more job opportunities as a plus sized person.
I just love her and I want to sing about that,
and like I want to sing about how I love
myself too. I'm not hating on this man for loving
his wife. I mean, there is a little bit of
a sort of like you actually want a lot of
congratulations for something that you are just supposed to do.

(48:20):
But there's a little bit of that. But in terms
of like how it sort of represents what happened with
body positivity. Part of the challenge is we want the
concepts of body positivity or in our case, you know,
fat liberation, fat activism, fat rights movement, we want the
concepts to get more mainstream. That's the point of the work.

(48:42):
But when they get more mainstream without any of the
politics still attached, what you get is like a really
hollow version of what it is.

Speaker 6 (48:51):
Right.

Speaker 5 (48:51):
I want anthems. I want to shake my butt to
songs that sound like they are written by people who
want to see me shake my butt, although I still
question with him whether he actually wants to see me
shake my butt at you know, my size twenty six
butt is not the same as his wife's butt, But
that's neither here nor there. Like you know, I want
the fun times and the good times too, but then

(49:13):
I want the people behind that to show up when
there is real work, So like I want the Robbies
of the world to sing the anthem and then to
also give money to fat activist causes and show up
when there's a rally and sign the petitions and do
the testimon like you you know you could do. I
love my curvy wife as a senate testimony when we're

(49:36):
fighting for a civil rights law, right, And that's kind
of what it is, the same thing with the sort
of mainstreaming of body positivity. It takes all of the
fun parts, It takes all the feel good parts and
blows them up, but it leaves all of the work behind,
all of the struggle and commitment. But that is where
body positivity started, right. It started with again, fat activists,

(49:58):
queer people, especially like Lee readership, from black women and
fems in internet spaces, and from feminists and queer women
and non binary fems, and like, you know, all of
these folks who are living on the margins, folks who
are disenfranchised from our systems of power. If you leave
all those folks behind, then what you have is just

(50:18):
a bunch of slogans and a feel good campaign.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
So it's the liberation aspect in the political work that
is sort of absent from these kinds of stories.

Speaker 3 (50:29):
And I'm curious also how this.

Speaker 2 (50:31):
Applies to a media perspective, because something that always kind
of struck me about this story is that, yes, Robbie
made this post, but no one forced the media to
cover it in the way that it did.

Speaker 5 (50:46):
Yeah, I mean, it really became a sort of like
a juggernaut of you know, like this little body positivity
moment or whatever. And I think some of that was
just the media fumbling around looking for anything to capitalize
on the popularlay of body positivity. And you know, and
it's a little bit of a as they say, a
dog bites man story, right, like, we're you know, we're

(51:07):
supposed to be like what he actually loves something that
everybody else doesn't love, and we're supposed to be like,
oh my god, he's such a hero for standing up
for his wife this way. And a lot of people
genuinely felt like that. You know, a lot of people
genuinely like revisiting the story and seeing comments from people

(51:29):
about how it made them feel to finally have somebody
not be closeted about liking a person who was like them,
because a lot of plus sized women in particular, and
I'm sure that this happens across like genders and sexual
orientations in some way, but but I think especially like
heterosexual women dealing with this gender men, there are a

(51:50):
lot of plus size women who have experienced the dude
who likes them in the dark, but who does not
like them in public, you know, who will not tell
his family and friends who will not certainly won't make
a big pronouncement about it. And there are a lot
of guys who have genuinely been like harassed by their

(52:10):
friends or you know, or left out of social situations
because that was their preference. You know, I've known guys
like that. I had a partner who spent years with
his friends like teasing him all the time because he
liked bigger girls, and even at NAFA, you know, our
origin story as a civil rights organization is a story

(52:32):
of a man who was passionately in love with his
wife and wanted to make a better world for her
because he was seeing all the ways that anti fatness
was affecting her like emotional landscape, but also was affecting
her in the practical world. And he was thinking about
things like the jobs she was confined to when she

(52:52):
wanted to get a job in their town, and he
was thinking about things like wanting to buy her a
blouse for their anniversary and not being able to find
anything at all in the town where they live that
would fit her. But he will also talk about being
a very young man and his friends talking, you know,
teasing him for wanting to take a chubby girl to
the prom. He's eighty two years old. And when he

(53:12):
tells that story about the prom date he wanted to
go on, you can you can feel the way that
he felt, you know, othered and shamed by the other
boys in his life, and and that that's the story
that a lot of men who date fat women have
And so I think it was really affirming for a
lot of women, the you know, the curvey wife letter.

(53:35):
But I also think it was affirming for a lot
of guys. And there is something important and powerful about that.

Speaker 3 (53:41):
We just have to do more.

Speaker 5 (53:43):
With it than like a two minute segment on the
Today Show patting him on the back for loving his
wife right right.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
And because it's the Internet, some people, you know have
talked about curvy wife guy as if he should be
you know, drawn, and quartered others have been overly.

Speaker 3 (54:02):
Defensive of him. And then there's people at the heart
of this story. So it's just inherently a mess.

Speaker 5 (54:07):
Yeah, And I'm just like, I don't want to like,
I don't want to be the champion of curvy wife guy,
but I also don't want to be the crucifier of
curvy wife guy. Like I think, especially for folks who've
never been introduced to a more radical politic, or even
a politic at all, around body acceptance, body liberation, body sovereignty,

(54:28):
Like people who would be like, what are you talking
about when you say those things? It just feels like
a really nice thing sometimes if you are the person
who's always been told you weren't good enough by the media,
by your family, by other people you tried to date, whatever,
to see somebody kind of champion the like, I think
you're good enough and and I think it's still true.

(54:49):
Like looking at his stuff now, like was looking I
was looking at his YouTube channel, and I just wandered
into the comments, and you know, on the folks who
are following him. Now you know, there's no like, let's
have a meaningful conversation about whether this is objectification of
women or whatever. There's mostly just people being like, I

(55:10):
feel so relieved to know someone feels like this, or
it's about time to hear some of the guys who
feel like this actually admit that they feel like this
instead of slinking off into a corner somewhere, or you know,
being real obvious when they're trying to holler at me.
But then when I want to go out to brunch,
they don't want to go right, So become you become

(55:31):
the guy who is the champion for curvy girls. But
all you do is make booty anthems. Okay, I mean,
we need some booty anthems, that's great. You know, what
do you do when you do want to take your
curvy wife out to brunch and the restaurant doesn't have
a chair that fits her? What are you doing about?
What are you doing about that? Are you that dude?

Speaker 3 (55:52):
R hey?

Speaker 6 (55:52):
Are you?

Speaker 3 (55:53):
Are you that partner?

Speaker 5 (55:55):
You know, there are a lot of couples like Robbie
and Sarah, and there are a lot of guys who
they're response to having been told that their attraction or
adoration of larger women at whatever range of that larger means, like,
there are a lot of those guys who have been
like their reaction to having been told that they were
wrong is to double down on it. And they've got

(56:17):
the I love my you know, I Love Curvy Women
t shirt and they've got and there is an audience
for that. There's an audience for people who see the
guy in the I Love Curvy Women t shirt and
are like, hooray, finally someone. And then there's like a
whole segment of people who are like, oh my god,
here this guy, like, you know, how is he trying
to manipulate women with this? Or how is he trying

(56:38):
to make himself popular? With this or how is he
like it's never you know, there are a lot of
reactions of like, it's not actually about the women, it's
all about him, and I think that was part of
the real time reaction from a lot of people.

Speaker 2 (56:50):
I would love to take some time to talk about
what NAFA is doing and has done that does address
that political angle, because for whatever reason, if this story
like appeal to someone at the time but did like
lack that political angle, let's get them into it.

Speaker 3 (57:07):
Let's talk about it.

Speaker 5 (57:08):
Yeah, And to be fair, I want to also just
like be transparent that there are lots of moments in
napa's history where NAFA was doing the feel good thing,
where NAFA was just you know, doing the the community
building thing of connecting people, including connecting people for dating.
I mean historically there was actually a program called NAFA
Date that was about helping match people to you know,

(57:32):
to someone that they wanted to be with. Or there
were people who would come to NAFA conventions, you know,
hoping to find the love of their life. They weren't
coming to you know, to see how we can protest
at the airport for better airline seating. NAFA was doing that,
but there were people who were coming that were not that,
and sometimes there were quite toxic people who were coming
who were not that. We perfect that at NAFA either,

(57:54):
just because our origin story starts in a you know,
starts in a place with a romantic couple that was
actually where the and are actually did show up as
a real ally, That's not what all the dudes did, right,
That's not what all people did. But what we hope
we are doing better today is approaching things in a
much more intersectional way so that everything at NAFA is
not built around heterosexual dating relationships. And I would like

(58:16):
to see more cis gender men come around to help
do the work. And what some of the work looks
like is just fun community building stuff because we need
places to celebrate fat bodies, and at NAFA we always
use the word fat. We really believe in destigmatizing that
word by using it in neutral and celebratory ways. And
wherever you are in this sort of spectrum of fatness, like,

(58:38):
you're welcome in our spaces.

Speaker 6 (58:39):
But we want to always.

Speaker 5 (58:41):
Remember that the people who are on the larger end
of that spectrum are facing different kind of societal barriers
and different kind of systemic challenges than people who are
more like Sarah the Curvey wife, Right, We want to
always remember that in our work. One of the things
that we are doing is working on legislative change. So

(59:02):
we co founded the Campaign for Size Freedom with our
friends at FLAIR, which is the fat legal advocacy organization,
and it works towards supporting the passage of laws that
add height and weight to protected classes under anti discrimination law.
The political work that we're doing within the system is
all about that. It's all about, you know, advancing civil

(59:24):
rights law so that big bodies are protected by those laws.
And we also know that legislation and liberation are not
the same thing, right, and that working within the system
can only do so much, so we try to support
other kinds of grass proofs, organizing a small and definitely

(59:44):
under resource movement. I mean, another thing we're doing is
talking a lot about getting more funding for this very
important issue. So many people think of they just think
of body positivity, and they think body positivity has solved.

Speaker 3 (59:58):
Everything for larger people.

Speaker 5 (01:00:00):
They either think body positivity or ozembic is going to
be the solution to every problem that fat people face,
and neither of those things are true. So we work
a lot on narrative change just to get people to
change their minds, But we also work on narrative change
to get people to understand that this is a movement
that needs funding, just like other social justice movements need funding.

Speaker 2 (01:00:21):
The last question I had was because this is a
story that is now seven years old, which is but yeah,
the story is from twenty seventeen.

Speaker 3 (01:00:30):
Now we're in twenty twenty four.

Speaker 2 (01:00:32):
In that span of time, ish, have you noticed any
meaningful changes in the way media handles these stories?

Speaker 3 (01:00:39):
Has it improved, has it worsened you? How do you feel?

Speaker 6 (01:00:42):
Well?

Speaker 5 (01:00:43):
I mean, one thing the media did since twenty seventeen,
between twenty seventeen and now is just decide that Lizo
was the solution to everything, right, Like Lizzo is fat
representation or Lizzo is you know, curvy representation. That's all
we need. So if we've done our Lizos, we don't
have to talk about anything else. And you know that's complicated, right.

(01:01:04):
There are a lot of complications around Lizo for a
variety of reasons. And from a like purely representation standard
love it. We we've also seen a lot more representation
in body positivity. We've seen some of those you know,
businesses that sort of co opted body positivity and helped
corporatize it, I think was the word you use. We've
seen some of them be a little bit, a little

(01:01:26):
little little bit responsive to the feedback that they were
not doing enough. Don't you think it's so much better now?
And like yes, and no, if you can you name
anyone Curvey other than Lizo, because if you can't, then
we're not on equal status with other, you know, celebrities,
And I don't I don't want all of our definition
of success to be built around celebrity culture either. But

(01:01:48):
you know, but like, but this is the world we
live in, right, and representation matters, and we're still dramatically underrepresented,
especially compared to our percentage of the population. We hear
all the time about, you know, how many Americans are fat,
and then we don't see any fat Americans, so that's
not representation. So it's sort of like we've had some

(01:02:12):
advances in talking about this stuff. I mean, I think
there's been a lot of sort of two steps you know, forward,
two steps back. And of course I am loath to
talk about this as the Ozembic era, but the reality
is we are living in the world of ozembic and
all of its ripple effects and the way that that

(01:02:32):
dominates the media has tremendous impact on how we see
fat people, whether we think it's okay to be fat,
whether we think it's fat people's own fault that they're fat.
And also it dominates the politics because a lot of
the money and energy is going into like the insurance
companies and the pharmaceutical companies fighting over who's going to
make the close billions of dollars matter the most in

(01:02:53):
terms of covering these drugs, and then gets left behind
in politics is no, there's not a miracle solution that
gets rid of all the fat people. We still need
to actually do political work to make sure that fat
people are treated as equal members of our community. So,
you know, I wonder what would have happened if Curvey
Wife Guy had debuted in the ozembic era. It is

(01:03:14):
good to see people like like Pretty Big Girl Movement,
the Dance Troupe, or like we do have some anthems
that are coming actually from female performers, not from men
objectifying women or even you know, celebrating women, but like
people like El Bias, who's just gotta you know, I
gotta love my body anthem. That is all about her
loving her body. It's not actually about men looking at

(01:03:36):
her body and deciding whether they love it or not. Right,
there's a little bit more celebration of that space, for
that acceptance of that TikTok viralness of that, you know.
And you know, you can ask questions about all of
those two things too, but at least there's more of
a diversity of voice. Especially younger millennials and Gen zs
are are better at sort of you know, looking at

(01:03:59):
the stories and being like, okay, but what else though,
or okay, but what's behind this? And I do think
that there is some generational difference in reaction. It's not
only a generational difference, but you know, in reaction to
things like the actual curvy wife Guy post or just
the sort of like the career of Curvy wife Guy

(01:04:22):
after the fact. Like, I do think that there is
some like we never got to see anything even remotely
like this reaction from folks, you know, like my gen
X cohort and folks who are older they can't even
imagine a moment like that. That then there is from
people who've seen those moments throughout their life, and they

(01:04:43):
might still want to deconstruct the moment or critique the moment,
or you know whatever. But at least it's not the
first time they've ever heard of it, right. If you've
lived your entire life on social media, it's probably not
the only time you've ever seen a guy be like,
I love big girls, right.

Speaker 3 (01:05:01):
Right, right.

Speaker 5 (01:05:03):
And so there is a little bit of a difference
there that again I wouldn't attribute only to generation, but
I do think that that is part of the impact
on how differently some folks see it. We do have
more dialogue around like the male gaze and you know,
and how media feeds it or upholds it or whatever,
and where we just don't care. There's like a lot more,

(01:05:26):
especially in social media, a lot more self created media
by women and fems that is about how that's very
nice for you that you love curvy girls. Go over
there somewhere and do your thing right, because over here
we don't care what you think. We're just here to
do that with just live in our best last with
or without you and what you think.

Speaker 4 (01:05:47):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:05:48):
I think there's a little bit more space for the anthems.
I think there's a little bit more space for the
people who don't care.

Speaker 3 (01:05:52):
About the anthems.

Speaker 5 (01:05:54):
I mean, I do think there is something to think
about too, in the viralness of this and the fact
that it was a white couple, you know, like there's
always an aspect of race in how we think about
which bodies are appropriate or whose bodies are desirable, you know,
And there is this stereotype that also we saw in

(01:06:18):
a viral moment around Test Holliday years ago that had
to do with like people's assumptions about black men loving
bigger women. And and I do wonder like if a
black husband had written that, if people would have just
been like, yeah, well that's what black guys think and
moved on, Like if if you know that racial element
where it's like.

Speaker 6 (01:06:36):
What a white guy who.

Speaker 5 (01:06:38):
Likes big butts and he cannot lie, Like if there's
like a you know, I think it's I think it's
important to consider the question, both in terms of his
race and hers, about like what where that contributed it
to the moment blowing up in the way it did,
And if you know, if that could have happened with
different races involved. Definitely, if it could have happen and

(01:07:00):
with you know, different sexual orientations involved. You know, if
this had been you know, a gay man writing about
how he loved his curvy husband, like, would we have
seen that on morning talk shows?

Speaker 1 (01:07:11):
No?

Speaker 5 (01:07:12):
Right, So you know there's not It goes way beyond
this dude and his wife and their viral moment. You know,
at the same time that he was going viral for that,
there were you know, hundreds and and I would say
thousands of men all over the country going to places
like my nightclub looking for the curvy girl of their dreams, right,

(01:07:35):
or looking for the super fat women of their dreams.
Not just the sort of like you know, barely bigger
than socially acceptable curvy girl, but like actually looking for
and preferencing you know, much larger folks. And he's just like,
you know, he became the poster child for something that's
not just about him. And there's way more nuance in

(01:07:56):
the thousands of relationships that develop out of you know,
that develop with those guys, at least in some of them, right,
some of them are just gonna be caricatures, And he's
kind of a character. He's kind of caricature at this point.
To me, if we got to hear more stories and
see more stories about fat people in love, then it

(01:08:17):
wouldn't seem like such and other people in love with
fat people, people of all sizes in love with fat people.
Then it wouldn't seem like such a breath of fresh
air to people when we got to hear like the
one guy who wrote a long caption on Instagram say
that he likes his wife.

Speaker 2 (01:08:35):
Thank you so much to Tigris and you can read
more about her work and follow her and Nafa at
the links in the description. And this concludes our two
part series on the curvy wife saga. And again I
realized that it is impossible to summarize the history of
the fat liberation movement in the space of one podcast episode,

(01:08:56):
so I encourage you to check out the links in
the description and learn more. And to close out, I
have a confession to make. I've had Big Girl Banger
by Robbie Tripp stuck in my.

Speaker 3 (01:09:06):
Head for three weeks. See you next time. Here's your
moment of fun. Uh got hot wife?

Speaker 6 (01:09:18):
Real nice? Oh, got a hot wife? What a good life?

Speaker 2 (01:09:24):
What a hot wife?

Speaker 6 (01:09:27):
Real nice? Hot wife?

Speaker 3 (01:09:32):
Good life?

Speaker 6 (01:09:35):
Okay, I've lost I've lost the thread. I can't Talk.
This first.

Speaker 2 (01:09:46):
Sixteenth minute is a production of Pool Zone Media and iHeartRadio.
It is written, posted, and produced by me Jamie Loftus.
Our executive producers are Sophie Lichtman and Robert Evans reganizing.
Ian Johnson is our supervising produce U and our editor.
Our theme song is by Sat thirteen and Pet. Shout
outs to our dog producer Anderson, my cat's fleeing Casper,

(01:10:08):
and my pet rock Bird, who will outlive us all
by bye

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}i love my curvy wife, pt. 2