Speaker 1: Do you remember the first time you felt the fizzy
Speaker 1: crackle of pop rocks on your molars, The triumph of
Speaker 1: getting a full sized Snickers bar in your trick retreat bag.
Speaker 1: The mind blowing moment when your friend levels you up
Speaker 1: by teaching you how to mix peanut butter Eminem's into
Speaker 1: buttery popcorn at the movies. Oh then, just when you
Speaker 1: think things couldn't get any better, you meet a fancy,
Speaker 1: dark chocolate bar sprinkled with salt crystals at a tiny
Speaker 1: bougie grocery store. And there it is again, pure unadulterated joy.
Speaker 1: We begin this season with something epic, tantalizing and almost
Speaker 1: mythological candy. Unfortunately, candy isn't all sweet, and later in
Speaker 1: the episode we're going to get into the history of candy,
Speaker 1: and I have to warn you it's a little dark.
Speaker 1: But for now, let's keep the candy positivity going. Let
Speaker 1: me introduce you to Dayshawn Harrison. So yes, I am
Speaker 1: Dashawn Harrison. I am black, fat, queer, trans, poor, disabled,
Speaker 1: I'm based out of Atlanta, Georgia, and I wear a
Speaker 1: lot of hats. They are a brilliant writer, activist, and
Speaker 1: public intellectual par excellence and their candy crush is Reese's
Speaker 1: velvety feel of the chocolate along with like the gritty
Speaker 1: but very smooth peanut butter feel. It just feels like me.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm very like a very velvety, smooth,
Speaker 1: rich chocolate type of person, but I also have like
Speaker 1: this grainy type of like inside. I've had to kind
Speaker 1: of develop as like a defense mechanism but also as
Speaker 1: a who I am and a part of the environments
Speaker 1: I've I've lived in and I've been in. So is
Speaker 1: there a ceremony to eating the real I mean, I
Speaker 1: just want to know how you do it? There is
Speaker 1: no ceremony for me. I just I mean, I've never
Speaker 1: actually seen a bear, but what I imagine a bear,
Speaker 1: what I imagine a bear looks like what I imagine
Speaker 1: a bear looks like when it's like super hungry, um,
Speaker 1: and it like goes into the water to like collect
Speaker 1: the fish. Okay, I love it. So what I'm gonna
Speaker 1: like try and emulate this bear thing that you've fun
Speaker 1: and I'm just like ripping it open and I'm just
Speaker 1: imagining that I'm in the wild, in the wild. Should
Speaker 1: we do the bit together or I don't know what
Speaker 1: we are put it in my let's just do it.
Speaker 1: I want to eat it. M that's night. Whoa, that's
Speaker 1: my favorite. If I can just get my hands on
Speaker 1: a Reese's cup or ten, I'm good to go. Like
Speaker 1: I was set, and it just feels like fat glory.
Speaker 1: And do you remember when it became a comfort thing?
Speaker 1: It became a you're gonna like make me open up already,
Speaker 1: you're ready for it. Um. I had a kind of
Speaker 1: rough childhood, so dealt with like a lot of like
Speaker 1: abandonment things with my dad and bullying. Of course, I've
Speaker 1: always been fat, so I was like a fat kid,
Speaker 1: and so I got bullied for being a fat kid.
Speaker 1: So Reese's like became, I guess, just at an early age,
Speaker 1: just became like something that I gravitated towards because I
Speaker 1: think that like Reese's has just in a way has
Speaker 1: inadvertently been like a representative of who I am. The
Speaker 1: first time I heard Dashaun in the panel, I was like,
Speaker 1: who is that? I could feel their urgency and enthusiasm
Speaker 1: for connecting all the dots between race, fat phobia, gender eating,
Speaker 1: and health. We are socialized in an anti fat culture,
Speaker 1: one where we are taught that that sugar is always
Speaker 1: already bad, And I think I think we have to
Speaker 1: really sit with what it means to choose pleasure over
Speaker 1: falsified myths around around around health, right, Like, like what
Speaker 1: does it mean to actively make the decision? Like so
Speaker 1: I'm gonna choose to eat three of these reasons instead
Speaker 1: of one, and I'm going to enjoy it, right like,
Speaker 1: like what does it mean to engage in that? And
Speaker 1: also what does it mean to divest from the health
Speaker 1: and dust your complex? The diety dust your complex that's
Speaker 1: built off of the teachings of an anti fat science
Speaker 1: and an anti fat government that has always only existed
Speaker 1: to harass the rate and criminalized fat people. Whoa the
Speaker 1: mic has been dropped. I promise we are going to
Speaker 1: get into everything Dashawn just said. But let's start at
Speaker 1: the beginning of Deshawn's food story. I am a non binary,
Speaker 1: but I of course grew up socialized as and perceived
Speaker 1: as a little black boy, And for as long as
Speaker 1: I can remember, from kindergarten to twelfth grade, I avoid
Speaker 1: it eating in cafeterias. I only felt comfortable eating around
Speaker 1: my best my childhood best friend. People would ask me,
Speaker 1: why are you hungry? And my antio was always no,
Speaker 1: I'm not hungry. That was actively denying myself food, and
Speaker 1: I was actively denying myself my desires, the things that
Speaker 1: did pleasure me, the things that did make me feel good,
Speaker 1: and the things that I needed to survive right. And
Speaker 1: so I was not the stereotypical person who would who
Speaker 1: would be diagnosed with an eating disorder. I was never
Speaker 1: engaged as someone who could have an eating disorder. And
Speaker 1: in fact, I was told by one of my doctors
Speaker 1: that because I am an African American boy and because
Speaker 1: I'm OBEs is what he called me, it was very
Speaker 1: unlikely that I had an eaven disorder and that they
Speaker 1: weren't going to engage me in that way at all.
Speaker 1: I was clearly like struggling with some disordered eating and
Speaker 1: that I wasn't eating right. And I remember very vividly
Speaker 1: talking to my pediatrician, maybe somewhere between eight and ten
Speaker 1: years old, and I remember going into her and just
Speaker 1: talking about how much I hated my body. I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm so fat and I don't want to eat.
Speaker 1: When I'm around people, people they talk about my weight
Speaker 1: and they and they say these things, and so she
Speaker 1: said to me, well, you know, I hear you saying
Speaker 1: that you don't like your weight, but if you don't eat,
Speaker 1: your body's gonna think that you're starving yourself and you're
Speaker 1: gonna store more fat, and then you will become more fat.
Speaker 1: And there was no there was no comfort offered to
Speaker 1: me as an eight to ten year old. The things
Speaker 1: she had to offer me to reckon with and to
Speaker 1: sit with around my weight was not that, well, you
Speaker 1: should eat because you have to nourish yourself. And it's
Speaker 1: okay to nourish yourself, and it's okay to survive, it's
Speaker 1: okay to live. Deshawn's story is really relatable. Hidden meals,
Speaker 1: fat shaming, pediatricians, feeling invisible, and not having our needs met.
Speaker 1: This is stuff that people go through every day. I
Speaker 1: remember going to the doctor as a kid and hearing
Speaker 1: the kind of weight loss advice and fear tactics that
Speaker 1: Deshaun is talking about. I took everything my doctor said
Speaker 1: as a gool because I didn't know anything different. I
Speaker 1: neither did my family. I mean, you're supposed to listen
Speaker 1: to someone in a lab coat, right, And in my twenties,
Speaker 1: even after I learned the doctors actually weren't all knowing
Speaker 1: God humans, and I could set boundaries with them. Deep down,
Speaker 1: I still believe that I was never going to have
Speaker 1: a positive relationship with a doctor. At thirty eight, I
Speaker 1: finally decided I wanted to be an empowered and engaged patient.
Speaker 1: That meant listening to my gut that my doctor was
Speaker 1: not treating me with respect. I started to research and
Speaker 1: interview new potential doctors. I was really clear about what
Speaker 1: I do and don't want. Rule number one, no more
Speaker 1: way ends unless they are necessary for surgery or correct dosing.
Speaker 1: Rule number two, no weight loss advice. Rule number three,
Speaker 1: don't treat my weight as an illness. I'm a proud
Speaker 1: fat person. And rule number four, I live in a racist,
Speaker 1: fat phobic, and sexist culture as a fat woman of color,
Speaker 1: which means I have chronically high levels of stress that
Speaker 1: negatively impact my heart, help and immune system. I told him,
Speaker 1: please make sure that whatever advice you give me takes
Speaker 1: into account the fact that I can only do so
Speaker 1: much to counteract the stress of injustice. But I'm an adult,
Speaker 1: not a ten year old kid like day Shaun was
Speaker 1: when they were getting blamed instead of care, their doctor
Speaker 1: failed them when they were at their most vulnerable. That's
Speaker 1: a common scenario for many fat people and many black people.
Speaker 1: So Dashaun created a support system they could trust. They
Speaker 1: built a community that could give them the tailor made
Speaker 1: love they wanted. It was college for me that introduced
Speaker 1: me to people, to ideas, to thoughts that I've never
Speaker 1: had before around gender, around sexuality, around fatness, around blackness,
Speaker 1: around all of my identities. That allowed for me to
Speaker 1: stand a lot more firm and who I am and
Speaker 1: became more confident in myself because I became more confident
Speaker 1: in the people around me who loved me truly, unconditionally,
Speaker 1: who loved me for exactly who I am, and who
Speaker 1: were committed to learning about what it meant to loving
Speaker 1: me as a fat person. So many people don't know
Speaker 1: what it really necessarily means to love a fat person,
Speaker 1: right because we grow up learning to hate them, and
Speaker 1: so finding community with people who all were committed to
Speaker 1: learning how to love me in my fatness and learning
Speaker 1: how to offer me a fat love right with the
Speaker 1: fat politike, Yes, I mean, so what does it mean
Speaker 1: to give you, Shaun fat love? Yes? I love that,
Speaker 1: m I love that and I honestly just came up
Speaker 1: with fat love on the spot, so I'm just embracing
Speaker 1: it TM exactly. But fat love it literally means being
Speaker 1: committed to seeing me in my fullness and my full
Speaker 1: self and not asking me to strink myself. Right, So
Speaker 1: I know my body takes more room and you should
Speaker 1: allow it to. I love that one of my closest friends,
Speaker 1: who was also fat hunter Shackleford, before we ever even
Speaker 1: go out to a place to eat, we're looking online
Speaker 1: to see what the seating looks like. And that to
Speaker 1: me is a fat love because it says that you
Speaker 1: want me to enjoy eating so much that you're making
Speaker 1: sure that I can sit in the seats enough to
Speaker 1: be comfortable with the food that I'm eating. That's a
Speaker 1: commitment to pleasure. That's a commitment to desires and into
Speaker 1: seeing me being pleasured and being desired in a way
Speaker 1: that matters most to me. Right, And so like those
Speaker 1: type of small things, it is what it means to
Speaker 1: provide someone with fat love. It means, you know, like
Speaker 1: and not just on a level of like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you're fuckable, but like on a level of
Speaker 1: I think you and your fatness are so beautiful and
Speaker 1: are so deserving of desire that I want to love you,
Speaker 1: be a platonic, romantic or otherwise, right. I want to
Speaker 1: commit myself to showing you the type of love that
Speaker 1: you need and the care that you need, to make
Speaker 1: sure that how I'm throwing up for you in the
Speaker 1: world is exactly how you need to feel affirmed in
Speaker 1: your body and your being. Yes, I want to get
Speaker 1: into You talked about desire, You talked about pleasure. What
Speaker 1: is your relationship to pleasure? What's your history with pleasure
Speaker 1: and desire? And that's a big question, But thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: how much time do I have? No, I think it
Speaker 1: definitely is a big question. I have had such a
Speaker 1: horrible relationship to desire and desirability and desirability politics and
Speaker 1: all the things my friends will always talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: how many ex partners they have and sex partners they have,
Speaker 1: and all the things. I'm like, well, I don't have
Speaker 1: this experience. I've had a lot of sex with a
Speaker 1: lot of people, and most of those instances have been
Speaker 1: one night stands, and they've always been private, and I've
Speaker 1: never had conversations with a lot of these people beyond
Speaker 1: that moment I oftentimes talk about how these days, I'm
Speaker 1: very explicit with people about what it is that I want,
Speaker 1: because otherwise people thin or fat will literally coerce you
Speaker 1: into a friendship that you never asked for. I don't
Speaker 1: want more friends, I don't desire more friends, and I've
Speaker 1: always been made a friend, right, And they'll do that
Speaker 1: because they feel like, well, it's not called ursa to
Speaker 1: to make this fat person nurturing to you, and it's
Speaker 1: not called erso to make this fat person the mammy
Speaker 1: for you, and it's not col ersio to make this
Speaker 1: person the fat Albert in your life, because that's what
Speaker 1: your role is in life. Right. That is to say
Speaker 1: that my relationship to desire has not been a great
Speaker 1: one since I've been a kid. It's a thing where
Speaker 1: people have oftentimes, again you know, made me feel silly
Speaker 1: or or foolish for desiring love and sex and romance
Speaker 1: in the same ways that they've made me feel foolish
Speaker 1: and silly for desiring food. Right. Yes, I mean there's
Speaker 1: so many things you said that were i mean, illuminating, resonating,
Speaker 1: But like the other thing that I really wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you was this actually goes back to the beginning
Speaker 1: with your snack choice of recent's peed of archistic delicious.
Speaker 1: And you know, when I was thinking about this snack,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about how candy sweet things, right like,
Speaker 1: they are a symbol of how extraordinary the body's capacity
Speaker 1: for pleasure and fun really is. And and I'm curious,
Speaker 1: very large question, why is this embodied form of pleasure,
Speaker 1: like you know, enjoying candy of so terrifying to our culture.
Speaker 1: I think it's just I think it's terrifying because we
Speaker 1: are we like we are socialized in in a diet culture.
Speaker 1: We're socialized in an anti fat culture, one where we
Speaker 1: are taught that that sugar is always already bad. We're
Speaker 1: talking about it as something that we shouldn't have, that
Speaker 1: we shouldn't engage because it's quote unquote bad for you.
Speaker 1: And I think I think we have to really sit
Speaker 1: with what it means to choose pleasure over falsified myths
Speaker 1: around around around health, right like, like what does it
Speaker 1: mean to actively make the decision like, Okay, I actually
Speaker 1: don't give a fuck about whether or not this does
Speaker 1: or does not like do a bad thing to my
Speaker 1: quote unquote health, because I already don't believe in the
Speaker 1: idea of health itself. So I'm going to choose to
Speaker 1: eat three of these reasons instead of one, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to enjoy it, right, Like, like, what does it
Speaker 1: mean to engage in that? And also what does it
Speaker 1: mean to divest from the health industrial complex, the diet
Speaker 1: industrial complex as a whole, the medical industrial complex that's
Speaker 1: built off of the teachings of an anti fat science
Speaker 1: and an anti fat government that has always only existed
Speaker 1: to harass, berate, and criminalize fat people. And I think
Speaker 1: that people internalize that sugar is bad and therefore candy
Speaker 1: is bad, and it's so hard to hear, but the
Speaker 1: reality is that it's that if we reach fatness, if
Speaker 1: we reach obesity, then we are dead. Right, there is
Speaker 1: no life in a fat person. There is no life
Speaker 1: in an obest person. I hate that term, but I'm
Speaker 1: using it intentionally. And so what does it mean for
Speaker 1: me to actively avoid, actively work against, actively war against
Speaker 1: fatness so that I never had to see that. Let's
Speaker 1: take a second to let what DeShawn saying sink in
Speaker 1: and maybe take a breath. Deshawn's words are reminding me
Speaker 1: of something troubling I've noticed in movies and even on
Speaker 1: the news that when a thin person dies, their cause
Speaker 1: of death is always explained. There's surprise, condolences, and grief,
Speaker 1: but when a fat person dies, it's not always explained,
Speaker 1: as if it's obvious that it was their size that
Speaker 1: doomed them. And usually it comes along with a joke
Speaker 1: and I told you so, or an expression of resentment
Speaker 1: that the person didn't take better care of themselves. Can
Speaker 1: you hear the side eye? And this doesn't just happen
Speaker 1: in the movies. Our culture is eager to see a
Speaker 1: fat person become a cautionary tale, someone who proves that
Speaker 1: if you don't follow the rules, like if you aren't thin,
Speaker 1: bad things will happen to you. Those bad things are
Speaker 1: as Deshaun points out, different kinds of death. First, you're
Speaker 1: seen as a failure. You become an outcast, a social death.
Speaker 1: Once you're an outcast, you become dehumanized. You have less
Speaker 1: access to friendship, income, and romantic relationships. It's a kind
Speaker 1: of spiritual death. And then if you're fat and you
Speaker 1: die before you're one hundred friggin eight years old, your
Speaker 1: physical death becomes the moral to a bullshit story, another
Speaker 1: way for other people to feel relief and comfort that
Speaker 1: the world works exactly the way they've been told it does.
Speaker 1: People who are bad or fat get punished, people who
Speaker 1: are good or thin get rewarded. Let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: We're back. When we talk about what fatness symbolizes in
Speaker 1: our society, I think of a book called Fearing the
Speaker 1: Black Body by the sociologist Sabrina Strings. Professor Strings is
Speaker 1: a major influence for Dayshon. Yeah, the opening chapter is
Speaker 1: her talking about exactly how anti fatness becomes a coherent ideology,
Speaker 1: and it becomes a coherent audiology through the subjugation of
Speaker 1: black people, Europeans saw Africans, and we're like, I thought
Speaker 1: I was okay with fatness, but then it looks like this,
Speaker 1: and I don't think I actually really enjoyed what these
Speaker 1: beasts look like, right, what these animals look like. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, through colonialism and Christianity and the construction of
Speaker 1: anti blackness came the very construction of anti fatness. And
Speaker 1: so when when I say anti fatness as anti blackness,
Speaker 1: I mean exactly that, because one does not exist without
Speaker 1: the other. We've gotten so comfortable with using language like well, yes,
Speaker 1: anti fatness intersects with anti blackness, and it's like, well, no,
Speaker 1: it doesn't. If you abolish anti fatness today and don't
Speaker 1: abolish anti blackness today, you don't abolish anti fatness. They
Speaker 1: exist and they come online into a coherent ideology through
Speaker 1: the through the exact same mechanisms. Yes, totally. I mean
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people, you know this, A
Speaker 1: lot of people understand fat phobia, diet culture, body image,
Speaker 1: body dysmorphia. They understand it as fundamentally not only a
Speaker 1: gendered issue, but they kind of consider it, really, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I mean, a body image issue or something
Speaker 1: like that, which I'm just like, that's not it, it right,
Speaker 1: I'm like that that's I mean, you have to have
Speaker 1: a structure beneath that. That's you can't just point to
Speaker 1: the secondary symptom of a secondary symptom and say that's
Speaker 1: the thing. Um and so, and I just kind of
Speaker 1: and I kept thinking about the you know, the old
Speaker 1: white dudes who really brought us clean eating and diet culture,
Speaker 1: and they were anti sex advocates, as you know, um,
Speaker 1: and they were anti masturbation advocates, and they were also
Speaker 1: you know, they were also people who were highly influenced
Speaker 1: by the by colonialism and colonial ways of thinking um
Speaker 1: and this idea that you that you construct another and
Speaker 1: you dump every part of your shadow self into that other,
Speaker 1: and then you hate that other. I think that that
Speaker 1: is what you're what you're talking about. Yes, yes, no,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what I'm talking about. Okay, you know that
Speaker 1: in my opinion everything ties back to colonialism, because well
Speaker 1: it actually does. With that in mind, I wanted to
Speaker 1: share some things I found while I was doing research
Speaker 1: for this episode. The first is a poem written sometime
Speaker 1: in the eighteen twenties by an abolitionist named Elizabeth Margaret Chandler.
Speaker 1: She starts out writing about sugar plum candies. No, no,
Speaker 1: pretty sugar plums, stay where you are. Though my grandmother
Speaker 1: sent you to me. From so far, you look very nice,
Speaker 1: you would taste very sweet. Though I love you so dearly,
Speaker 1: I choose not to eat even what you have sent me.
Speaker 1: By slavery made sweet. The poem got me thinking about
Speaker 1: the connection between candy, where my conversation with Dashawn began,
Speaker 1: and slavery, the place where our conversation has landed. It
Speaker 1: turns out you can't tell the story of candy without
Speaker 1: telling the story of sugar and sugar is the story
Speaker 1: of slavery. Sugar planters were some of the wealthiest people
Speaker 1: in the Americas, but before all that, in the Western world,
Speaker 1: sugar was just a rare delicacy, reserved only for the
Speaker 1: fanciest people. In Europe, Queen Elizabeth the First had legendary
Speaker 1: sweet tooth, a fact I can really relate to. She
Speaker 1: loved sugar so much that her teeth turned black. It
Speaker 1: even became fashionable for poor folks to black in their
Speaker 1: teeth as a status symbol. I'd try it. There were
Speaker 1: two major reasons sugar was expensive. First, it only grew
Speaker 1: in tropical climate, so it had to be imported from
Speaker 1: the Caribbean or Asia. By the eighteen hundreds, everyone was
Speaker 1: putting sugar in their tea, and some shady yes people
Speaker 1: figured there was a lot of money to be made
Speaker 1: if you could make sugar more cheaply. And this brings
Speaker 1: us to the second reason sugar costs so much. Labor
Speaker 1: planters cut the cost of this labor intensive crop with slavery.
Speaker 1: Almost all of the slaves brought to the Caribbean colonies
Speaker 1: were sent to sugar plantations. These plantations were deadly. People
Speaker 1: working on them were fifty percent more likely to die
Speaker 1: than people working on other types of plantations. The work
Speaker 1: was more labor intensive, the machinery more dangerous, and the
Speaker 1: plantation owners tended to be more cruel. There was even
Speaker 1: a saying among Cuban sugar planters gonsangre Sasasuka, sugar is
Speaker 1: made with blood. Fast forward to today, sugar has fallen
Speaker 1: a long way from being a symbol of wealth and power.
Speaker 1: Now sugar is looked down upon. It is associated with
Speaker 1: the quote unquote bad decision making. Our culture connects to poverty,
Speaker 1: fat people, and communities of color. The message is clear,
Speaker 1: sugar leads to disease and death. In the so called
Speaker 1: food deserts of big cities, people get food from independently
Speaker 1: owned convenience stores, and these are the sites of where
Speaker 1: Alton Sterling, George Floyd, and Eric Garner were killed. Whether
Speaker 1: it's the history of sugar and slavery or the reality
Speaker 1: that going to a convenience store could lead to a
Speaker 1: police officer ending a person's life, it is no accident
Speaker 1: that food and death are blatantly linked. When we're talking
Speaker 1: about black people in America. DeShawn is paying close attention
Speaker 1: to those connections. I asked them what they'd learned doing
Speaker 1: research for their forthcoming book, Belly of the Beast, The
Speaker 1: Politics of anti fatness as anti Blackness. Yes, this is
Speaker 1: gonna be my favorite part of the book. I can
Speaker 1: just already tell. What made me think about this in
Speaker 1: the first place. Was I just one day was thinking
Speaker 1: about how everyone that I've seen on my on my
Speaker 1: TV screen who had been murdered by police, we're fat.
Speaker 1: We're fat men are fat mask folks. You think back
Speaker 1: to Mike Brown, who in a lot of ways is
Speaker 1: what ignited this movement, this wave of current activism, and
Speaker 1: then you start naming more people, and it's Watches Guy
Speaker 1: and Alton Sterling and Samuel de Boles and George Floyd
Speaker 1: who is not fat but is large, and Tony McDade,
Speaker 1: who is not assist man but who is a trans man,
Speaker 1: and who is fat right. And so you start thinking
Speaker 1: about all these names, all these black folks, and you
Speaker 1: start reading headlines where you see Washington posts called Mike
Speaker 1: Brown beast, and you see Fox News called Eric Garner
Speaker 1: um obese right, and you see um other news outlets
Speaker 1: called Walter Scott animalistic um and you see them called
Speaker 1: Samuel de Bose aggressive even though he was in his
Speaker 1: in his car, right, and Walter Scott was running away,
Speaker 1: um and and Mike Brown was eighteen and Eric Garner
Speaker 1: was on the ground being choked, right. But this is
Speaker 1: the language that they use for these men who are
Speaker 1: being murdered by police, right, who were being slain by police.
Speaker 1: So you start looking at well, surely there's like, you know,
Speaker 1: at least the autopsy reports are giving us the sound
Speaker 1: judgment we need to hear that these men are being
Speaker 1: murdered and it's not their fault. But then you read
Speaker 1: autopsic reports and then that's not an all what they're saying. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's well, they already had high pertension, and they already
Speaker 1: were OBEs, and they already had high cholesterol, and they
Speaker 1: already were at risk of a heart attack. This is
Speaker 1: exactly what day Shaun was talking about earlier when they
Speaker 1: said fat bodies are already dead. Police officers who are
Speaker 1: murdering people are literally getting exonerated because an untimely death
Speaker 1: is what society expects for a fat person. Fat black
Speaker 1: mask folks, especially those who are dark skinned and or poor,
Speaker 1: are engaged as always already animalistic as beasts, as as
Speaker 1: things that must be put down right, as animals that
Speaker 1: have to be euthanized, because our bodies are inherently aggressive,
Speaker 1: our bodies are inherently murderous, our bodies are inherently weapons.
Speaker 1: And it's especially true for the men and the mask
Speaker 1: folks who we often see on our screens for being
Speaker 1: murdered because of the continued idea that if you are
Speaker 1: fat and black and mask, you are inherently violent, and
Speaker 1: you are inherently aggressive, and you are inherently murderous, and
Speaker 1: therefore you must be euthanized because you are a rabbit
Speaker 1: dog who cannot be contained, who cannot be trained, who
Speaker 1: cannot be put in his place. In the end, it
Speaker 1: was the abolition of slavery that also ended sugar plantations.
Speaker 1: By then Napoleon, yes that Napoleon was mass producing these
Speaker 1: things called sugar beets just beats with more supros. In
Speaker 1: the US, abolitionists and blacklead organizations started growing them and
Speaker 1: using collective buying power to purchase sugar made with paid labor. Listen,
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to make you feel even worse about sugar.
Speaker 1: As always. Rebel Eaters Club is one hundred percent committed
Speaker 1: to being one hundred percent anti food chaining. I'm telling
Speaker 1: you this story because I want to show you that
Speaker 1: this history shapes our beliefs. This history is bitter, for sure,
Speaker 1: It's fraught, it's violent, and it's trapped a lot of
Speaker 1: people and hurtful ideas. But we work through this history
Speaker 1: every single day, not by choice, but because we've had to.
Speaker 1: We find joy, we find redemption, and like Dyshawn, we
Speaker 1: find that the tiny moment of delight when a Reese's
Speaker 1: melts on our tongues can unlock the road back to
Speaker 1: our pleasure, back to our humanity, and forward to the
Speaker 1: history we want to leave for others. This is the
Speaker 1: world Dayshaun wants to see. It would look like another
Speaker 1: place where I'm able to exist as a being who
Speaker 1: is engaged um as something that that someone wants, or
Speaker 1: that people want, or that um that the world wants
Speaker 1: to live. I would live. I think off in a
Speaker 1: cabin somewhere with a partner who loves me well and
Speaker 1: who I love well UM And I write for fun,
Speaker 1: and I read for fun. I don't read a lot
Speaker 1: of nonfiction. I read fiction, and not fiction that makes
Speaker 1: me think, but fiction that just makes me enjoy where
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to escape the world by building different realities,
Speaker 1: because the new reality is already here where I am,
Speaker 1: you know, like excited about all the food that I'm
Speaker 1: going to eat and all that I'm going to take
Speaker 1: part in. That's going to pleasure me, and that's going
Speaker 1: to be enjoyable for me without any any guilt or
Speaker 1: shame because I don't know guilt or shame. And what
Speaker 1: does it mean for us to not know shame and
Speaker 1: not know guilt but only to no pleasure, harmless pleasure? Right?
Speaker 1: I think that is what my ultimate desire is if
Speaker 1: I had to use that language for it. This was
Speaker 1: amazing and I can't wait for your book to come out.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad that you get to be on the planet.
Speaker 1: At the same time. Oh wow, all that means so
Speaker 1: much for me. Thank you. I'm a cancer so I
Speaker 1: am so so thank you so much. That means a lot.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Just like we did in season one, we're
Speaker 1: giving you journal prompts, but this time you can find
Speaker 1: them online. You'll find one journal prompt per episode at
Speaker 1: Rubbel Eatersclub dot com. Rubbel Eaters Club is produced by
Speaker 1: Transmitter Media. Our lead producer is Jordan Bailey and her
Speaker 1: favorite candy is Pete Rings. Lacy Roberts is our managing
Speaker 1: producer and she loves a good TwixT. Sarah nix edits
Speaker 1: the show and can't live without Peanut m and M's.
Speaker 1: And our executive producer Gretta Cohen loves black licorice, but
Speaker 1: not the salty kind. And I'm your host Virgie Tobar
Speaker 1: and I love Carmel patties from CS Candy. Ben Shano
Speaker 1: is our mix engineer. Special kudos to James T. Green
Speaker 1: and Jessica Glazer for the production assist and do Haakka
Speaker 1: yes Uzawa, who wrote some of the music we use
Speaker 1: in the show. If you love Rebel Eaters Club, tell
Speaker 1: your friends and share the love by writing a review
Speaker 1: on your favorite podcast app. See you next week.