Speaker 1: Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show. A reduction of shondaland
Speaker 1: Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. I ate only
Speaker 1: like lettuce and toast for three months, and then I
Speaker 1: remember going to my doctor after that summer and I
Speaker 1: had changed sizes pretty radically. Clearly that's what happens when
Speaker 1: you don't eat anything. And he just said, congratulations, and
Speaker 1: if you just keep losing weight, maybe you can date
Speaker 1: one of my sons. And there was no question of
Speaker 1: this child on the verge of pubescence, like what's going on,
Speaker 1: why are you what are you doing differently? This is alarming.
Speaker 1: There was none of that from anybody. Hello everyone, I'm
Speaker 1: the Verne Cox and welcome to the Laverne Cox Show.
Speaker 1: On this episode, we're discussing fat phobia and diet culture. Now.
Speaker 1: As an actress, I've been very lucky that I've worked
Speaker 1: on productions where no one's ever asked me to lose weight,
Speaker 1: and I haven't ever been body shamed in the context
Speaker 1: of my acting work. But when it comes to fashion
Speaker 1: and red carpets and magazine shoots, it's nothing very different.
Speaker 1: When I've had photo shoots, particularly for higher fashion magazines,
Speaker 1: I've gone in and there have not been closed that
Speaker 1: fit me. And I'm generally a size ten or twelve.
Speaker 1: Occasionally I've been a size eight, but um my weight
Speaker 1: has probably fluctuated within thirty pounds since I've been in
Speaker 1: the public eye. It is very difficult not to internalize
Speaker 1: feelings of being less than because I'm not sample sized.
Speaker 1: But what changed my perspective on all of this was
Speaker 1: the work of my guest today, Virgie Tobar. Virgie is
Speaker 1: the author of the books You Have the Right to
Speaker 1: Remain Fat and The Self Love Revolution, Radical Body Positivity
Speaker 1: for Girls of Color. She is also a contributor for
Speaker 1: Forbes dot Com, where she covers the plus size market
Speaker 1: and how to end weight based discrimination at work. Her podcast,
Speaker 1: Rebel Eaters Club investigates the North American relationship to food
Speaker 1: and body. I couldn't be more thrilled she's here to
Speaker 1: discuss this important subject matter. Please enjoy my conversation with
Speaker 1: Virgie Toba Virgie. How are you doing today, daring, I'm
Speaker 1: so good. I was just reading your piece in paper
Speaker 1: and it's filled me with inspiration. And I really want
Speaker 1: to talk about horror movies. But whenever you want to
Speaker 1: talk about let's do it. The funny thing is so
Speaker 1: the funny thing is that in Bad Hair, the film
Speaker 1: that I talked about in that Paper magazine cover story,
Speaker 1: I play a character named Virgie. Yes, I know. It
Speaker 1: was so exciting, So I okay, so I do want
Speaker 1: to say this. I became aware of your book and
Speaker 1: then my friend Matt mcgory shared an excerpt of your
Speaker 1: book on Stagram and it stopped me in my tracks.
Speaker 1: And the moment I saw it, I was like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, this is me. So I went and write
Speaker 1: your book immediately, and I cried a lot, and I
Speaker 1: made me think and I knew that we needed to
Speaker 1: have a moment like this some day, and I'm so
Speaker 1: excited that we're having it now. Can we start with language,
Speaker 1: Because you use the word fat in the title of
Speaker 1: your book, you have the right to remain fat. You
Speaker 1: call yourself a fat activist, but there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people out there who do not embrace the word fat.
Speaker 1: We have where it's like curvy, we have where it's
Speaker 1: like overweight plus size. I was on Twitter one time
Speaker 1: and I used the word overweight and someone was like,
Speaker 1: that's problematic. Can you tell us in the fat Activist movement,
Speaker 1: What language do we want to let go of, what
Speaker 1: we reclaimed, what language we using to talk about this? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that fat really is the word that we
Speaker 1: use to talk about bigger bodies. And there's definitely a
Speaker 1: lot of interrogation and criticis them, and you know, just
Speaker 1: kind of like critical awareness of medicalizing and pathologizing terms
Speaker 1: like overweight or obese, which are just essentially ways of
Speaker 1: medicalizing a type of body. But I think another important
Speaker 1: thing is when you are somebody who is living in
Speaker 1: a bigger body, you get to decide what language you
Speaker 1: want to use about your body. So I think that
Speaker 1: there's a political vernacular that is useful to understand, but
Speaker 1: when it comes to the individual experience, whatever language feels
Speaker 1: right is really the language that people should stick with.
Speaker 1: And I think also there's a code switching element, right,
Speaker 1: Like I might not use the word fat to talk
Speaker 1: about myself the first time I meet somebody if I
Speaker 1: don't know where they stand on this, or if I
Speaker 1: just don't want to have a thirty five minute conversation
Speaker 1: about whatever their attitudes about it are, right. So I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of fluidity, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: change that's happening both on the individual and the political level,
Speaker 1: and I think that there are people who would say
Speaker 1: plus size is offensive, there are people who say fat
Speaker 1: is offensive, or even within the movement, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of disagreement, and I think that's really powerful because we're
Speaker 1: trying to create an identity in a culture where our
Speaker 1: humanity has just been fully denied. Oh and I think
Speaker 1: that is what I hope to get across to people
Speaker 1: that reading your book, it is so clear your humanity
Speaker 1: and what this struggle is, and I hope people will
Speaker 1: go out and read You have the Right Roomain Fat.
Speaker 1: It totally changed me. But can you talk to us
Speaker 1: about that journey how you came to be a fat activist.
Speaker 1: What were some of the first times in your life
Speaker 1: where you even realized that fat was a thing and
Speaker 1: that it was an issue. Yeah, I come from a
Speaker 1: fat family in some ways, like my journey to being
Speaker 1: a fat activist started with being born into a culture
Speaker 1: that hates brown people, hates fat people, hates women and girls,
Speaker 1: and I'm at the intersection of those things. And I
Speaker 1: think growing up I did not learn fat phobia from
Speaker 1: my family. I learned a lot of love and self acceptance. Actually,
Speaker 1: but it was when I was about five, when I
Speaker 1: was introduced to kindergarten, when the word fat became part
Speaker 1: of my life and I had no I had no
Speaker 1: context for that word as a negative thing. It wasn't
Speaker 1: in my world before then, and then it was all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, it was everything in my world. And
Speaker 1: I mean, looking back on it, it was really lavern.
Speaker 1: It was like an onslaught, you know. It just felt
Speaker 1: like this united front of people who wanted to put
Speaker 1: me in my place, and it just felt like they
Speaker 1: didn't stop until I mean, they didn't stop even after
Speaker 1: I had internalized the message and something was wrong with
Speaker 1: me and I was working actively to try and not
Speaker 1: be that thing. And the way that I was introduced
Speaker 1: to it was no one will ever love you. You
Speaker 1: are ugly, you are monstrous, and like when you think
Speaker 1: about a five year old here about the idea that
Speaker 1: they're never going to get love is just it's like unthinkable, right,
Speaker 1: And so the steaks felt so high, and the thought
Speaker 1: was right, if I just became thin, the torture, the
Speaker 1: abuse would stop. And so it was my fault. It
Speaker 1: was my job then to become the kind of person
Speaker 1: who didn't get tortured by these people. And I really
Speaker 1: took that on, that kind of ideology of like victim blaming.
Speaker 1: I completely accepted it. I had no alternative, and so
Speaker 1: I did what a lot of that people do, which
Speaker 1: is diet work really hard. I mean, the thing that's
Speaker 1: really interesting now looking back as sort of somebody who
Speaker 1: does this work all the time, Like dieting pretty much
Speaker 1: always is progressive because the body is fighting against the
Speaker 1: impulse of food restriction. So as you diet, it might
Speaker 1: start out my old quote unquote, but it will get
Speaker 1: more intense over time because your body is actively pushing
Speaker 1: against it, assimilating reassimilating. For somebody like me, it was
Speaker 1: inevitable that I was going to end up essentially having
Speaker 1: an eating disorder, like an undiagnosed eating disorder, where I
Speaker 1: was starving myself for very long periods of time. I
Speaker 1: just want to slow you down a little bit because
Speaker 1: I told everyone to be with you and to feel
Speaker 1: what I feel. First of all, what you just said.
Speaker 1: You said you developed a neating disorder where you were
Speaker 1: starving yourself for a long period of time. At what
Speaker 1: point did that develop? Yeah, Honestly, the first time I
Speaker 1: ever experimented with starvation was I think I was ten
Speaker 1: years old, maybe eleven. I remember it was the summer
Speaker 1: before sixth grade, and I really wanted to go back
Speaker 1: to school and have that beautiful American transformation story where
Speaker 1: I would go from this ugly duckling to this swan
Speaker 1: like in a matter of three months. And I had
Speaker 1: seen it on so many movies it felt possible. In
Speaker 1: the book, you talk about a movie at the time,
Speaker 1: I forget the name of the movie that was your
Speaker 1: life where this transformation happened. Do you remember this? It
Speaker 1: was Greece. There are two movies like the two movies
Speaker 1: that informed my dream. We're like She's out of Control
Speaker 1: starring Tony Danza, and then Greece, like the moment where
Speaker 1: she transforms into this total like rockabilly babe. That was
Speaker 1: gonna be my swan song or whatever, Like when I
Speaker 1: finally became a thin sixth grader, that was going to
Speaker 1: be my dance. Right. So I knew even at that
Speaker 1: time that if I wanted those extreme results, I had
Speaker 1: to take extreme measures. And I was like, the fastest
Speaker 1: way to do it is to reduce food to pretty
Speaker 1: much nothing. And I ate only like lettuce and toast
Speaker 1: for three months. And then I remember going to my
Speaker 1: doctor after that summer and I was I had changed
Speaker 1: sizes pretty radically, clearly that's what happens when you don't
Speaker 1: eat anything. And he just said, congratulations, and if you
Speaker 1: just keep losing weight, maybe you can date one of
Speaker 1: my sons. And there was no question of this child
Speaker 1: on the verge of pubescence, like what's going on, why
Speaker 1: are you what are you doing differently? This is alarming.
Speaker 1: There was just none of that from anybody. It really
Speaker 1: hit me when I just rewad your book over the
Speaker 1: weekend and they hit me again that story that because
Speaker 1: it was tied to love, it was tied to you
Speaker 1: get to date one of my sons if you become acceptable.
Speaker 1: And then it reminded me of another story in your
Speaker 1: book when you I think you were meant alluded to
Speaker 1: earlier when you were five years old and you noticed
Speaker 1: that this boy was looking up all the girl's skirts,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't looking up your skirts. And I believe
Speaker 1: in the book he was one of the first people
Speaker 1: who called you fat if I recall correctly, yes, totally,
Speaker 1: And I write about this in the book that even
Speaker 1: then I felt a connection between understanding that it was
Speaker 1: no coincidence that the boy who looked up girls skirts
Speaker 1: was the first boy who called me fat, Like I
Speaker 1: completely understood the connection between gender desirability, misogyny, rape culture,
Speaker 1: and fat phobia, like intuitively as a child, and it
Speaker 1: kept coming up from me over and over again, this
Speaker 1: desire for love and how it and we all want
Speaker 1: to be loved, right and the relationship between that diet
Speaker 1: culture and fat You can you just define for us, though,
Speaker 1: what is fat phobia and what is diet culture so
Speaker 1: people have a real understanding, because that is the piece
Speaker 1: that really hit me hard when I read that excerpt. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: fat phobia is a form of bigotry and discrimination that
Speaker 1: essentially says that fat people are morally, intellectually and physically
Speaker 1: inferior in our culture. Right now, we don't see it
Speaker 1: as a form of discrimination. We see it as an
Speaker 1: attitude that emerges out of health concerns, and there's this
Speaker 1: false belief that if we stigmatize and abuse fat people
Speaker 1: enough that they will fall into line and become like
Speaker 1: the right kind of person um. In terms of diet culture,
Speaker 1: what makes something a culture is once and when it's
Speaker 1: ubiquitous and you can't escape it. So it's like the
Speaker 1: general messaging that's all around us every single day that
Speaker 1: weight loss at any cost is positive, that no matter what,
Speaker 1: things will be better if you are a thinner person,
Speaker 1: and that essentially the worst thing that you could be
Speaker 1: is a fat person, and anything that you can do
Speaker 1: to not be that you should undertake it. And the
Speaker 1: diet industry has a very robust, multimillion dollar industry that
Speaker 1: is proportionately predates upon women. So that's how I would
Speaker 1: define those things. Wow. The section in your book that
Speaker 1: got me was that basically when you say that we
Speaker 1: either let me just read it and let girl let
Speaker 1: me just read it to you, you write, you write
Speaker 1: fat phobia targets and scapegoes fat people, but it ends
Speaker 1: up harming all people. Everyone ends up in one of
Speaker 1: two camps. Is the piece they got me. They are
Speaker 1: either living the pointed reality of fat phobic bigotry or
Speaker 1: they are living in fear of becoming subject to it.
Speaker 1: And when I read that, I was like, I just
Speaker 1: I stopped breathing. I was like, because it was the fear.
Speaker 1: I was like, this fear is so real, especially for
Speaker 1: me as I've gotten older. Um in my mental is
Speaker 1: a mis slowed down and like, I ate whatever I
Speaker 1: wanted to when I was younger, and being in the
Speaker 1: public eye and having people comment on your body just
Speaker 1: hit me. And I feel like that is the piece
Speaker 1: that I would love people to understand and take away
Speaker 1: from this conversation. That we are all implicated. And I
Speaker 1: am a little critical of the idea of a binary,
Speaker 1: but I think in the context of fat phobia and
Speaker 1: fat phobic culture, maybe that binary stands right. We're either
Speaker 1: experiencing the bigotry of fat phobia or we're in constant
Speaker 1: fear of it, and it like polices our bodies. That
Speaker 1: fear that mentality constantly has us policing our bodies. Other
Speaker 1: people are policing our bodies. Medical professionals are policing our bodies.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the health stuff, but I
Speaker 1: think the pain of it for me is what hits
Speaker 1: me when I read your work and when I think
Speaker 1: about my own journey around weight, body image, all that stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think to your point, we live in a culture
Speaker 1: that forces everything into a binary, and that is a
Speaker 1: method of control. And we see the inescapability of how
Speaker 1: these binaries really impact us when it comes to fat
Speaker 1: phobia or really anything, every single person, not just the
Speaker 1: group that is the target of the stigma or the
Speaker 1: abuse of the oppression. We are all impacted and touched
Speaker 1: as human beings by the experience. If we're on the
Speaker 1: receiving end, obviously we're experiencing a very extreme version of
Speaker 1: that impact. But the people who are witnessing and colluding,
Speaker 1: who are forced to collude by virtue of the way
Speaker 1: the system is constructed, how can their experience also not
Speaker 1: be eroded? How can they also not be impacted? And
Speaker 1: I think, and first of all, right, it hurts our
Speaker 1: spirits and our hearts and are collective whatever, like our
Speaker 1: collective unconscious if you will to be enlisted in that process.
Speaker 1: And then I think the fear peace really is like
Speaker 1: even if you are not somebody who's on the receiving
Speaker 1: end of that today, you could be on the receiving
Speaker 1: end of that tomorrow. And the body in particular is
Speaker 1: something that does change, right, Like it changes every day.
Speaker 1: This idea that you could become a victim of it,
Speaker 1: it's like the whip, you know what I mean? Because
Speaker 1: I think there's like the carrot side of that phobian
Speaker 1: diet culture, which is like, these are the social benefits
Speaker 1: you get if you comply, and this is what your
Speaker 1: life could look like if you don't. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think what's really crucial about your work is how clear
Speaker 1: it is that this is something that is systemic, right,
Speaker 1: This is something that is structural, that is enforced by
Speaker 1: so many different systems. On this podcast and in my life,
Speaker 1: I always like to think about things in terms of
Speaker 1: structural issues and and and systemic issues. But then also
Speaker 1: where's my part in it? Where is my sort of
Speaker 1: personal responsibility in relationship to it? I eat the potential
Speaker 1: for resistance, So where is the resistance piece? And where
Speaker 1: is my personal responsibility? But I think like just making
Speaker 1: something personal responsibility doesn't acknowledge how something is systemic. And
Speaker 1: I think thinking about it in relationship to systemic racism,
Speaker 1: which people have been having a lot more conversations about lately,
Speaker 1: it's it's a great way to begin to think about
Speaker 1: fat phobia and diet culture as something that we're all
Speaker 1: implicated in, whether we want to be or not. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I think one of the things that I think
Speaker 1: about even in my own work as someone who really
Speaker 1: does try to teach people tools on how to navigate
Speaker 1: these systems. One of the things that's really complicated is
Speaker 1: like these tools rely on resiliency, which I mean, resiliency
Speaker 1: is beautiful, but resiliency is not going to end systemic oppression, right,
Speaker 1: Like there's over reliance upon the people who are experiencing
Speaker 1: the oppression to work their way through it and somehow
Speaker 1: make it work and make it cute. Fundamentally, Like, I
Speaker 1: don't know what else we could do, Like, surviving is
Speaker 1: the only option we have, but it's not fair to
Speaker 1: put that burden on the people who are experiencing the
Speaker 1: oppression to also end the oppression. Hopefully we can begin
Speaker 1: to raise awareness and raise consciousness so that once we
Speaker 1: have the information and we know better and hopefully we'll
Speaker 1: do better. Time for a quick break. When we come back,
Speaker 1: Virgine and I talk about how people's concern for the
Speaker 1: health of fat people is just an excuse to stigmatize. Alrighty,
Speaker 1: then let's just dive right back in. Most people say,
Speaker 1: is what about health concerns? Right that, Like, what does
Speaker 1: it mean to be healthy? That fat is unhealthy? That
Speaker 1: is the immediate thing that people go to when they
Speaker 1: address your work and people who are in a space
Speaker 1: of body positivity that this is unhealthy. What do you
Speaker 1: say to those people, Darling, Yes, I mean, on the
Speaker 1: one hand, right, I do find that the health argument
Speaker 1: is mostly a decoy, and I think for me, I
Speaker 1: talking about human rights. I've always been talking about human rights.
Speaker 1: Like if you're somebody who can look at the reality
Speaker 1: of the fact that like plus size women make nine
Speaker 1: thousand dollars less annually than their in their straight sized counterparts,
Speaker 1: when you look at the reality that that people experience
Speaker 1: romantic discrimination, are refused proper medical care, if you can
Speaker 1: kind of look at that scenario, and your primary concern
Speaker 1: coming out of that is are these people cardio metabolically healthy?
Speaker 1: I think you've really missed a crucial point, which is
Speaker 1: that when people are being denied basic human rights and dignity,
Speaker 1: that's a very urgent issue. And so I find that,
Speaker 1: like some people actually do have legitimate concerns about you know,
Speaker 1: what are the implications of this politic But I do
Speaker 1: find that a lot of people weaponize the health conversation
Speaker 1: as a way to derail a conversation that's really about
Speaker 1: a systemic problem. And again, with the health issue, going
Speaker 1: back to the individual versus the system. I'm somebody who
Speaker 1: has had to deep dive understanding health a lot more.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's not my area of expertise at all,
Speaker 1: but I've had to equip myself to be able to
Speaker 1: talk about it. And one of the things I often
Speaker 1: point out to people is I'm like, Okay, if you
Speaker 1: look at the CDC guidelines for health, you can easily
Speaker 1: and quickly begin to understand that health doesn't happen in
Speaker 1: a vacuum. Health is a collective thing that happens, right.
Speaker 1: Health is something that you have when you have access
Speaker 1: to a doctor, when you have access to transportation, when
Speaker 1: you don't have trauma, when you're not abused, when you
Speaker 1: don't have to live in fear of whether someone's gonna
Speaker 1: hurt you when you leave your house, And that very
Speaker 1: individual argument of the individual is responsible for having good
Speaker 1: heart health, living a long, good life, right. And we
Speaker 1: have a system where there's no universal healthcare, there's not
Speaker 1: even universal access to clean water, and we're looking at
Speaker 1: a rollback on resources for women's health, you know. So
Speaker 1: for me, I'm like, what does the word health mean
Speaker 1: to you? Even the c d C understands that health
Speaker 1: is a community based entity. Individuals don't create that on
Speaker 1: their own. And I think the last thing I'm gonna
Speaker 1: say is actually have two more things I want to say, Like,
Speaker 1: one really compelling piece of research that I found was
Speaker 1: that the chances of a woman who is classified as
Speaker 1: overweight becoming a normal weight is less than one percent.
Speaker 1: And that's like looking at all of the studies. And
Speaker 1: then what happens with dieting with food restriction is that
Speaker 1: people don't actually lose weight. They actually cycle through gaining
Speaker 1: and losing, regaining and losing the same amount of weight
Speaker 1: over and over again, with a longitudinal trend upward. Can
Speaker 1: I sell you down there? Because I want you to
Speaker 1: say that one more time because I think that everybody
Speaker 1: knows that's the truth. That is the truth. We know that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of THEO will call it weight loss,
Speaker 1: but it's actually weight cycling. And what's really hard is
Speaker 1: this is something that people don't realize. And again, if
Speaker 1: you've been in this cycle, you know it is like
Speaker 1: the emotional ups and downs are very damaging. Right, Dieting
Speaker 1: is correlated with anxiety. Depression is not correlated with long
Speaker 1: term weight loss. I think that's what people don't realize.
Speaker 1: And so what happens is like the emotional process of
Speaker 1: you lose the weight, you're so happy, everyone's telling you
Speaker 1: how incredible you look. Maybe that person you've been flirting
Speaker 1: with all of a sudden wants to like hang out right,
Speaker 1: And then you gain the weight and you feel like
Speaker 1: a failure and you feel like your world is ending,
Speaker 1: and you feel like something's wrong with you, and you
Speaker 1: begin to evaluate and those compliments go away. And if
Speaker 1: you can imagine that over a lifetime, how many times
Speaker 1: that happens. It's very, very debilitating. But I think what's
Speaker 1: interesting is from a social perspective. I mean, it really
Speaker 1: is like bootstrapping and assimilation. It's like that American dream
Speaker 1: of I can make myself anything if I work hard enough.
Speaker 1: And so you're in that cycle over and over again,
Speaker 1: and each time you think this is gonna be the time,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be the time that it works. I
Speaker 1: think what's interesting is this process of disappointment success disappointment
Speaker 1: success that keeps us believing that all these other process
Speaker 1: is in our culture that don't fundamentally work because their
Speaker 1: social injustice built into the system, like it normalizes those
Speaker 1: processes too. So we do capitalism with our bodies through
Speaker 1: diet culture. We do white supremacy through diet culture. Right.
Speaker 1: I love that. What I want to emphasize about what
Speaker 1: you just said, the aha that I just had, is
Speaker 1: that whether or not someone is healthy is actually none
Speaker 1: of our business. If we're lucky enough to have a doctor,
Speaker 1: that's between us and our doctor. Dealing with someone else's
Speaker 1: health should not be my concern. All the people out
Speaker 1: there who want to sort of police people's bodies and
Speaker 1: say they're unhealthy, and then because they're unhealthy, we should
Speaker 1: shame them, we should stigmatize them. That is what we
Speaker 1: need to let go of. Yeah, And I think another
Speaker 1: thing when you were talking, I was thinking about this
Speaker 1: finding from a U c l A professor named Janet
Speaker 1: Toma Yama. She did this meta study, which is essentially
Speaker 1: like looking at all the studies that are in that
Speaker 1: area of findings, and she found that there were over
Speaker 1: seventy million Americans who were either fat and were misdiagnosis unhealthy,
Speaker 1: or sin and misdiagnosed as healthy. And this has like
Speaker 1: these incredible implications, right because right now, both socially and medically,
Speaker 1: the biggest way that doctors understand health is by visually
Speaker 1: checking are you thin or are you fat? That's literally
Speaker 1: like the most important factor in whether or not a
Speaker 1: doctor is going to ask how are you eating? How
Speaker 1: are you feeling? Do any tests around your blood sugar?
Speaker 1: Do any tests around whether you have high blood pressure?
Speaker 1: They just look at a thin person and think, oh,
Speaker 1: that person doesn't have high blood pressure, and they look
Speaker 1: at fat person and say, oh, that person probably does.
Speaker 1: I think, really what has become clear to me is
Speaker 1: that this approach is both bigoted and it's anti scientific. Right,
Speaker 1: It's not like there's it's not winning on any front.
Speaker 1: You know. Wow, It just makes me think about so
Speaker 1: many issues with our healthcare system and how that's another conversation. Wow, virgin,
Speaker 1: So you alluded to white supremacy, and I love the
Speaker 1: ways in which you talk about the relationships between sexism, patriarchy,
Speaker 1: fat phobia, white supremacy, classism. Can you break down some
Speaker 1: of those intersections. Yeah. I think for a long time
Speaker 1: I thought diet culture and fat phobia were really about
Speaker 1: beauty ideals, because that's still the dominant idea that somebody
Speaker 1: who is fat or thin. It's about whether they're beautiful
Speaker 1: or they're not beautiful, But like when you really unpack it,
Speaker 1: you begin to see that it is totally attached to
Speaker 1: all of these very very ingrained systems and ideologies that
Speaker 1: make up like the West and the United States in particular.
Speaker 1: And I think for me, one really big breakthrough was
Speaker 1: around understanding that dieting was away that people of color
Speaker 1: could express a desire to be in line with an
Speaker 1: ideology that white people really promoted, and that Americans in
Speaker 1: particular promoted, And just seeing that even in my own family,
Speaker 1: Like you know, I grew up in an immigrant family
Speaker 1: from Mexico, and I saw that dieting was a way
Speaker 1: that they could perform American nous, and I saw that
Speaker 1: they undertook it as a way to be socially legible.
Speaker 1: They had internalized the idea that weight loss was a
Speaker 1: positive thing, but more than that, it was a way
Speaker 1: of fitting in. And I think this actually leads really
Speaker 1: well into gender right, Like dieting is a way that
Speaker 1: women have been socialized to create intimacy, like our body dissatisfaction,
Speaker 1: that moment in front of the mirror, that moment when
Speaker 1: we're going to the bakery and we're like having that
Speaker 1: experience of, Oh, my god, should I shouldn't I? That's
Speaker 1: so evil? Right? Am I going to be good? Am
Speaker 1: I going to be bad? That is a way that
Speaker 1: women have been taught to create friendship. And I think
Speaker 1: what a distorted, disgusting like shaming and being anxious about
Speaker 1: food should not be a thing that people are expected
Speaker 1: to bond over. But that's kind of the reality that
Speaker 1: we have going on. Like I mean, like my academic
Speaker 1: background is actually in sexuality studies, and as I was
Speaker 1: doing the work, I was being introduced to all these
Speaker 1: historical figures, right, and like two of these really incredible
Speaker 1: historical figures, interesting I should say historical figures were these
Speaker 1: really intense anti masturbation advocates who, like in the eighteen
Speaker 1: hundreds were just obsessed with everybody not masturbating and and
Speaker 1: they were like legit like haten pleasure. The stuff that
Speaker 1: they were proposing was like really intense. But the whole
Speaker 1: idea was, you know, you shouldn't masturbate. Respectable white men
Speaker 1: had to have control over their sexuality. Okay. Then I
Speaker 1: become like interested in studying fatness and food and all
Speaker 1: these kinds of cultures around dieting and stuff, and these
Speaker 1: same dudes resurface. They're also clean eating advocates. These anti
Speaker 1: masturbation dudes who hate sex are the same people who
Speaker 1: are promoting clean eating. And all of a sudden, I
Speaker 1: was like, hau, what's that about. That's weird, that's an
Speaker 1: interesting connection. But it all came together in my head.
Speaker 1: I'm like, right, you gotta control how you eat, you
Speaker 1: gotta control pleasure. All forms of pleasure have to be controlled.
Speaker 1: Why because you had to be distinguishable from the savages
Speaker 1: who you were enslaving and murdering. Right, So it's like, okay, yes.
Speaker 1: So this idea was like, these Europeans come and they
Speaker 1: meet indigenous populations, and these Europeans have these extremely Christian
Speaker 1: puritanical views, and these native folks have a much more spiritual,
Speaker 1: much more integrated, holistic They don't believe in private ownership
Speaker 1: like in general, and there's not taboos around sex. And
Speaker 1: the way that Europeans begin to rationalize they're essentially what
Speaker 1: will become a genocide is to say these people are
Speaker 1: subhuman and how do we know? Because we have this
Speaker 1: discipline relationship to our animal selves and these people do
Speaker 1: not the same as true slavery, colonialism, slavery genocide. Right,
Speaker 1: This kind of like trifecta behaviors really relied upon a
Speaker 1: rationalizing ideology that said, some people are subhuman and we
Speaker 1: can take everything from them, and we can kill them
Speaker 1: with impunity. And some people are superior and they get
Speaker 1: to not only rule the world, but they get to
Speaker 1: rule the future. And I kind of think like this
Speaker 1: is like what manifest destiny is really about. I think
Speaker 1: what's interesting about that connection between like white people owning
Speaker 1: the future is sold. You can kind of see it.
Speaker 1: It's ripples in diet culture all over the place, but
Speaker 1: like one of them is the preoccupation with the future self, right,
Speaker 1: the idea that someday, I'll be able to wear that skirt, Someday,
Speaker 1: I'll be able to wear that elliptic Sunday, I'll be
Speaker 1: able to smile in photographs or do that thing I
Speaker 1: really want to do in the future. And I think
Speaker 1: that preoccupation with the future has a real connection with
Speaker 1: that manifest destiny kind of ideation of maintaining a future
Speaker 1: that is white, that is slender, that is athletic, that
Speaker 1: has all these sort of characteristics. Girl, you have just
Speaker 1: said a mouthful, and like my mind is sort of
Speaker 1: racing this whole of in the future. When I'm thin enough, right,
Speaker 1: then I can begin my life. In the last half,
Speaker 1: you have a book you talk about freedom, and you
Speaker 1: talk about what freedom is, and that you thought at
Speaker 1: that dieting and thinness were freedom, and you learned that
Speaker 1: they're quite the opposite. And I kept thinking about those
Speaker 1: what Renee Brown calls the prerequisites to worthiness, and Renee Brown,
Speaker 1: it's a shame research or who I have referenced all
Speaker 1: the time, and she defines shame is the intensely painful
Speaker 1: belief that we have about ourselves that we're unworthy of
Speaker 1: connection and belonging. She says that guilty is I'm sorry
Speaker 1: I made a mistake, and shame is I'm sorry I
Speaker 1: am a mistake. So as I was reading your book,
Speaker 1: I was just like, oh my god, this is shame.
Speaker 1: This is just like one two threes of shame. And
Speaker 1: she said, the way with that we bill shame resilience
Speaker 1: is to understand when we're in shame. And so knowing
Speaker 1: the prerequisites to worthiness is our way of knowing our
Speaker 1: shame triggers right. The prerequisites to worthiness, I e. I
Speaker 1: will be worthy when I lose twenty pounds. I'll be
Speaker 1: worthy when I change my hair or get this degree
Speaker 1: or whatever. And the beautiful thing she says in her
Speaker 1: work is that worthiness has no prerequisites, that worthiness is
Speaker 1: a birthright, that we are worthy because we were born.
Speaker 1: And so building shame resilience is about letting go of
Speaker 1: all those prerequisites and diet culture and thinness. For me,
Speaker 1: it's it's certainly been one of my big prerequisites to worthiness.
Speaker 1: I will be ready when and having to consciously let
Speaker 1: go of that on a daily basis. Some days I
Speaker 1: do better than others. Yeah, absolutely, I think that that
Speaker 1: preoccupation with a future self. I remember reading a study
Speaker 1: that actually Dove did around the percentage of women who
Speaker 1: opted out of important life events because they didn't feel
Speaker 1: like they were satisfied with their bodies, right, Like, what
Speaker 1: do you call that? Just even saying that just brings chills.
Speaker 1: That is dehumanization completely, And I think going back to
Speaker 1: a colonial concept of ghosting, right, the idea that like
Speaker 1: these people are still here, which you're pretending they're dead. Um, Like,
Speaker 1: can we talk about indigenous people as if they don't
Speaker 1: exist anymore? And I think a lot about how diet
Speaker 1: culture is ghosting us. We're not here. The bodies that
Speaker 1: we have right now are imperfect and therefore they shouldn't exist.
Speaker 1: And how do I know, because this body doesn't even
Speaker 1: be deserved to be documented, like this idea that you
Speaker 1: don want to even be photographed, like you don't want
Speaker 1: to have you don't want to get married, you don't
Speaker 1: want to go to the prom, you don't like, you
Speaker 1: don't want to do these things that are important markers
Speaker 1: not only of societal participation, but that have really important
Speaker 1: meaning for people. You don't want to participate in them
Speaker 1: as a fat person, as the person that you are
Speaker 1: right now, means that you don't want to be like
Speaker 1: documented in history. And I just think there's something so
Speaker 1: intense about that realization and that kind of like that
Speaker 1: process of just waiting around for you to be the
Speaker 1: kind of person who is worthy enough to be documented,
Speaker 1: to have joy and all of those things. You know,
Speaker 1: it's so sad, it's so sad. Is their way out?
Speaker 1: What is our resistance? What is the thing that we
Speaker 1: can do as individuals to begin to free ourselves, to
Speaker 1: do colonize ourselves, if you will, from a culture of
Speaker 1: fat phobia Yeah, I think that there's so many things
Speaker 1: I want to start with sort of like the highest
Speaker 1: order thing, which is that we can imagine something different.
Speaker 1: Like one of the most powerful things that people can
Speaker 1: do is actually envision what would And there's this thought
Speaker 1: exercise in the book where I'm like, imagine a world
Speaker 1: where you don't feel like there are any conditions to
Speaker 1: enjoying food, to wearing the clothes that you want, to
Speaker 1: going after the relationship that you desire, to expecting more
Speaker 1: from the people around you. What if there were no conditions? Right?
Speaker 1: And I think what's powerful we when we imagine we
Speaker 1: create space, and the collective unconscious we create space in
Speaker 1: the universe. I do believe that there's that sort of
Speaker 1: metaphysical power, and so I think that's like a labor
Speaker 1: that we can all easily do that's so joyful and
Speaker 1: beautiful and fun. And I think what's hard that when
Speaker 1: we live in a culture that is so steeped and oppression,
Speaker 1: one of the most heartbreaking parts of that is that,
Speaker 1: like diet culture, it kills our spirits, It kills our
Speaker 1: ability to imagine a world that could look different. And
Speaker 1: when we resist that and we say, like I'm an imaginative,
Speaker 1: creative human being who can literally imagine like different structures,
Speaker 1: a totally different way that society functions, a totally different
Speaker 1: way to engage with the world, a totally different way.
Speaker 1: To date, we have that power. I just want to
Speaker 1: pause you there because I love the idea of that,
Speaker 1: and I love the idea of doing it collectively, right,
Speaker 1: and then we can maybe begin to change this distance
Speaker 1: because we have to visualize at first, we have to
Speaker 1: be able to see it, and then we can create it.
Speaker 1: So I just wanted to pause on that, because I
Speaker 1: think that's really powerful. Go on, Virgie, I think that
Speaker 1: actually dovetails perfectly. You know what I was just going
Speaker 1: to say, which is like, when we imagine, we create
Speaker 1: the tools to build it, right. I mean, I can
Speaker 1: give you tactical tools right now, and I want to
Speaker 1: give tactical tools, like some basic ones that help us
Speaker 1: navigate the culture as it exists right now. But what's
Speaker 1: so incredible is that the tools that we need to
Speaker 1: build that gorgeous future, they maybe haven't been built yet,
Speaker 1: Like maybe that somebody listening is going to build those tools.
Speaker 1: I don't know, And I think that's what's so rad
Speaker 1: is that there's innovation on that other side, But like tactically,
Speaker 1: I think it starts with really beginning to ask yourself,
Speaker 1: what are the things in my life that I feel
Speaker 1: I have to do and do they bring me joy?
Speaker 1: What do they give me? Almost like that Marie Condo
Speaker 1: sort of ideology, where it's like, if you want to
Speaker 1: have room for new stuff, you've got to make the room.
Speaker 1: So it's like, what are you going to let go
Speaker 1: of in order to create that other thing? And I
Speaker 1: think in terms of like diet culture and actually engaging
Speaker 1: with like food, for instance, I think it's important to
Speaker 1: begin to really stop engaging in moralizing like this food
Speaker 1: is good, this food is bad, this food is evil,
Speaker 1: like all these kinds of things, like these things actually
Speaker 1: have age or impacts not only on our psychology but
Speaker 1: the people around us. Right. One of the most astonishing
Speaker 1: things that I found when I started working with women
Speaker 1: was when I asked them, I was like, where do
Speaker 1: you experience the most triggers? I was shocked that they
Speaker 1: set the workplace. It was just this constant sense that
Speaker 1: they couldn't eat their lunch without somebody watching or saying
Speaker 1: something or commenting. They couldn't have a birthday cake for
Speaker 1: their coworkers that everybody like losing their minds. What I
Speaker 1: want what they brought up for me is a moment
Speaker 1: in your book when you I think you were at
Speaker 1: a conference and how how culturally sanctioned it is to shame,
Speaker 1: culturally acceptable to shame fat people. So our fear of
Speaker 1: being on the other side of that derision. I think
Speaker 1: often for those of us who may have found ourselves,
Speaker 1: you know, shaming or dehumanizing someone who's fat, that comes
Speaker 1: up our own fear and trauma around being on the
Speaker 1: other side of that. Yes, yeah, it's it's a really
Speaker 1: shitty way that we create a sense of belonging, right,
Speaker 1: like we're in this group and you're not, and like
Speaker 1: survival is tied up in that mechanism. Like if we're
Speaker 1: not on the other side of that, we actually are
Speaker 1: feeling the sense of relief. And it's it's just really
Speaker 1: intense right to think about it that way. And I
Speaker 1: think really, like when you're thinking about fat shaving or
Speaker 1: transphobia or homophobia, the ubiquitous kind of punchline groups, you
Speaker 1: really can tell. I can tell people don't even hear
Speaker 1: what they're saying. They have been taught this is completely
Speaker 1: acceptable and it's completely harmless. And I think that taking
Speaker 1: that moment to sort of interrogate, to sort of have
Speaker 1: that reflective moment and being aware that you do have
Speaker 1: power and what are you going to do with that power?
Speaker 1: I love it. It's that time again. Coming up after
Speaker 1: the break, Virgie and I get into the social effects
Speaker 1: of fat representation on runways and social media. Okay, we're back,
Speaker 1: Let's keep the conversation going. Do you think there's been
Speaker 1: progress in terms of representation and when we see models
Speaker 1: like Ashley Graham and test Holiday? I mean, do you
Speaker 1: think visibility is helping? Visibility is you know, an interesting trap.
Speaker 1: I think for trans people we've been very critical of that.
Speaker 1: Do you think things are getting better? Yeah? I really do.
Speaker 1: I'm a very hopeful person. I'm somebody who thinks that
Speaker 1: fat shaming could be a thing of the past in
Speaker 1: my lifetime. I really do so. Yeah. Absolutely, I think that,
Speaker 1: like the representation piece is really important, and I think
Speaker 1: that it's, like you were mentioning, it's got like a
Speaker 1: shadow side for sure, because what it does is it
Speaker 1: creates another beauty ideal sometimes which could be its own trap.
Speaker 1: But when you think about Test Holiday, you think about
Speaker 1: Ashley Graham. These are people who emerge through a groundswell
Speaker 1: demand that we really began to see that had a
Speaker 1: platform finally on social media because for the first time,
Speaker 1: fat people were like, actually I have a PhD. Actually,
Speaker 1: this is me looking super cute. Actually I've got fourteen
Speaker 1: booze actually right, Like you know, it's like if you
Speaker 1: can see it, you can be it. And I love
Speaker 1: that saying because I think, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: right before all this happened, the only possible image of
Speaker 1: a fat person was somebody who you did not want
Speaker 1: to be at all. And I think that like when
Speaker 1: we create these Ashtagram or test Holiday or any number
Speaker 1: of the people who are really popular, like it really
Speaker 1: matters because they're creating a space in which dignity, beauty, autonomy,
Speaker 1: and style are possible for fat people. And that, I
Speaker 1: mean literally, that is revolutionary in a culture that has
Speaker 1: only ever really seen and represented fat people as abject
Speaker 1: and pathetic and ugly and evil dignity and being beautifully human.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. So okay, one other thing I wanted
Speaker 1: to bring up because I was thinking about the intersections
Speaker 1: again of colorism and racism and sexism and then men
Speaker 1: because my friend Matt McGorry I mentioned earlier is the
Speaker 1: reason I write your book, and he's done such beautiful
Speaker 1: work around talking about masculinity and fat phobia and expectations
Speaker 1: around what men's body should be as well. That this
Speaker 1: isn't something that just affects women, it's something that affects
Speaker 1: all of us, which we've said here. But can you
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about I guess that men and
Speaker 1: then um, colorism. Yeah. I think it's interesting because my
Speaker 1: work is definitely focused on like women and feminine people.
Speaker 1: But what I have found when I've done research, like
Speaker 1: the first people who were pathologized around weight weren't women.
Speaker 1: They were men, and they were specifically Jewish men. It
Speaker 1: was considered like a Jewish disease among men. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so the anxiety really rested in the sort of masculinity
Speaker 1: to begin with, and then I really think that as
Speaker 1: the twentieth century in particular unfolded, it became an issue
Speaker 1: that was more a feminine issue. Um. But yeah, one
Speaker 1: of the things that I noticed when I was researching
Speaker 1: how fat phobia intersected with masculinity and with men for
Speaker 1: the book was. I was really compelled by the fact
Speaker 1: that fat men were also experiencing misogyny and sexism, because
Speaker 1: one of the biggest concerns that people seem to have
Speaker 1: with that men is not about necessarily health or beauty.
Speaker 1: It's about feminization. It's about the fact that, like a
Speaker 1: fat man's body is a soft body. And I think
Speaker 1: it goes back to the gender binary, right, like this
Speaker 1: idea that I have to be able to tell exactly
Speaker 1: if you are masculine if you're feminine instantaneously. And I
Speaker 1: do think that fat men and fat women to be
Speaker 1: fairly blur that line a little bit, right, because like
Speaker 1: fat women are in the domain quote unquote in the
Speaker 1: dome to masculinity through our largeness, and fat men are
Speaker 1: in the domain of femininity due to softness. But like
Speaker 1: the memes that I kept seeing as I was doing
Speaker 1: the research were three that that really like really astonishing
Speaker 1: in some ways. Like one was like the meme of
Speaker 1: fat men having breasts, which again it's about gender anxiety.
Speaker 1: The second most common one was around the invisible penis,
Speaker 1: the way that the stomach covers the penis, and again
Speaker 1: it's about feminization. And then the third one, which was
Speaker 1: really bizarrow finding was that there was this study that
Speaker 1: I would argue it is very poorly done, but it
Speaker 1: was about like this idea that fat men lasted longer
Speaker 1: during intercourse because they had more estrogen than thin men.
Speaker 1: And so again estrogen, which is like this totally misunderstood
Speaker 1: hormone right, Like it's connected to women in femininity and
Speaker 1: our culture, and this idea that like fat men have
Speaker 1: more of it and all of it just pointed to really,
Speaker 1: fat men are experiencing both fat phobia and also misogyny. Um.
Speaker 1: And so it was fascinating to realize that intersection was
Speaker 1: so clear. And in terms of colorism, there's an incredible
Speaker 1: scholar named Sabrina Strings, and she wrote a book called
Speaker 1: Fearing the Black Body, and it's all about how fat
Speaker 1: phobia and anti blackness are essentially the same thing, I
Speaker 1: mean the same thing. Yeah. So she talks about how
Speaker 1: when Europeans landed on the shores of Africa to essentially
Speaker 1: enslave people, that they saw these big bodies and they
Speaker 1: made the connection between the big bodies, their blackness, and
Speaker 1: this untamable animalistic nature that couldn't be disciplined out of
Speaker 1: a person. Um and I have to name check another
Speaker 1: really incredible scholar, day Shawn Harrison, who is writing a
Speaker 1: new book called Belly of the Beast. They write about
Speaker 1: the fact that there's a really explicit connection between fat
Speaker 1: phobia and police violence and murder of black men because
Speaker 1: a lot of the black men who have been murdered
Speaker 1: by police, and some of them been boys, were fat,
Speaker 1: or they were bigger people. And I think there's this
Speaker 1: really intense moment, for instance, give me a second, give
Speaker 1: me a second, give me a second. Yeah, I have
Speaker 1: to read that one in I just go on. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I wanted to hear everything you're saying, but I just
Speaker 1: thought about Eric Garner, and yeah, I mean I think
Speaker 1: like I've been in the weeds with um doing research
Speaker 1: around this, and I've been going through that cycle to
Speaker 1: uh to speak about Eric Garner. So one of the
Speaker 1: reasons that the police officer who murdered Eric Garner was
Speaker 1: exonerated was because the NYPD union lawyer argued that he
Speaker 1: died of obesity related cardiac arrest and that if he
Speaker 1: had been a healthy man, that he would have survived
Speaker 1: a choking maneuver, which is just like so vile, and
Speaker 1: so I mean just so disgusting. Um. But like you know,
Speaker 1: when you're talking about anti blackness, any kind of largeness
Speaker 1: exacerbates anti blackness because blackness is considered a threat in
Speaker 1: our culture. Anything that adds any component of largeness, whether
Speaker 1: it be body fat or height or any number or
Speaker 1: even like even volume, right, like even like sound, like
Speaker 1: the sound of my voice, the sound of my laughter,
Speaker 1: or largest is not just about physicality, it's metaphorical. And
Speaker 1: so any kind of largeness is going to be experienced
Speaker 1: in our white supremacist culture as a further threat. I mean,
Speaker 1: excessive force is not exclusively for larger, fat black men,
Speaker 1: but like that element creates a sense that like you
Speaker 1: get to be extra extra aggressive and violent and murderous.
Speaker 1: And I think that maps onto the reality that fat
Speaker 1: people are already always seen as capable of handling more
Speaker 1: emotionally physically, right, and and the same is true black people.
Speaker 1: It's essentially a form of dehumanization. Um. And I think
Speaker 1: the last thing I want to say on that is
Speaker 1: when you think about the literal ways in which dark
Speaker 1: skinned boys, um have been targeted by police, there's also
Speaker 1: this component of that is shared between anti blackness, and
Speaker 1: that phobia, which is the phenomenon of adultification, right like,
Speaker 1: essentially the projection of an adult like level of understanding,
Speaker 1: level of you know, responsibility, control, and potentially malice. And
Speaker 1: you see how that combination becomes deadly in certain cases.
Speaker 1: That was so deep and so necessary to hear. I'm
Speaker 1: so glad to ask you about that. Thank you for
Speaker 1: that research, Thank you for sharing that. I like to
Speaker 1: end the podcast with the quest, and then the question
Speaker 1: is what else is true? And this question comes from
Speaker 1: the idea of both and that yes, there are things
Speaker 1: that are challenging in the world, but what else is true?
Speaker 1: And this comes out of my somatic therapy of resetting
Speaker 1: my nervous system, and specifically it's a kam out of
Speaker 1: what else is true in my body? Right that if
Speaker 1: I might have anxiety, and I might feel that anxiety
Speaker 1: in the pit of my stomach, where in my body
Speaker 1: is a neutral or positive And if I can focus
Speaker 1: on what's neutral and positive, I can reset my nervous system.
Speaker 1: I can reregulate. Right, So I like to ask people
Speaker 1: what else is true? So virgery right now for you?
Speaker 1: What else is true? I think? Right now I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about the relationship that I have with my cactus is
Speaker 1: I feel um, I started with one cactus named Lumpy,
Speaker 1: and I feel like we have this like I feel
Speaker 1: like they teach me the grounded nous and like the
Speaker 1: joy of being round and prickly. So that's gonna be
Speaker 1: my what else. That's what else is gonna be. That's
Speaker 1: that's what my what else is true. I love that
Speaker 1: your relationship with your cactuses that help you embrace being
Speaker 1: round and prickly. That is absolutely brilliant. That is absolutely brilliant.
Speaker 1: I love it, and I love you, Virgie, and I'm
Speaker 1: so utterly excited we got to have this conversation that
Speaker 1: was so brilliant. I love you. Um. Can you tell
Speaker 1: the folks where they can find you? What else you
Speaker 1: got going on? Yes? Um, so I'm pretty active on
Speaker 1: Instagram at Virgie tovar v I R g I E
Speaker 1: t O V as in Victor A R. And I
Speaker 1: also have a podcast called Rebel Eaters Club and you
Speaker 1: can check out my books. You have The Right Term
Speaker 1: in Fat, which is an audio book and a digital
Speaker 1: book and a physical book, and also The Self Love Revolution,
Speaker 1: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color. YEA, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for thank you have a beautiful rest of day. Bye.
Speaker 1: I love Virgie Tovar, and I love this idea that
Speaker 1: Virgie spoke about around imagining something different, that perhaps one
Speaker 1: of you listening out there will have the idea the
Speaker 1: innovation to move us closer to a world without fat phobia,
Speaker 1: without discrimination and stigma. If we can imagine it, we
Speaker 1: can create it, we can manifest it. Here's to a
Speaker 1: world where worthiness has no prerequisites. Thank you for listening
Speaker 1: to The Laverne Cox Show. Be sure to subscribe and
Speaker 1: rate us. You can also follow me on social media
Speaker 1: at Laverne Cox on Instagram and Twitter and Laverne Cox
Speaker 1: for Real on Facebook. Join me next week as we
Speaker 1: talk about moving beyond the gender bineering with internationally known poet, writer,
Speaker 1: and performance artist a local Baide Minute. Until next time,
Speaker 1: stay in the love. The Laverne Cox Show is the
Speaker 1: production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the I Heart
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Speaker 1: favorite shows.