Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Virgie here. I hope you're all hanging in there.
Speaker 1: I've been deep in quarantine Landia and dealing with it
Speaker 1: the only way a type A Taurus knows how, by
Speaker 1: filling my time with ritual and work. Here is a
Speaker 1: shortlist creating elaborate teatime rituals, making chocolate chip banana bread,
Speaker 1: painting my toenails, gold stretching, meditating, dancing really hard on
Speaker 1: my bikini to Kate Bush, and listening to self help audiobooks.
Speaker 1: Drumming on stuff like literally just me drumming on the
Speaker 1: wall with my hands has been weirdly helpful as an
Speaker 1: energy release, and then sometimes I have deep, heaving waves
Speaker 1: of tears when things begin to feel overwhelming. I hope
Speaker 1: Rubel Eaters Club has been able to offer some solace.
Speaker 1: And in that spirit, I wanted to play a live
Speaker 1: conversation I had in late February with someone I really respect,
Speaker 1: Caleb Luna, better known on Twitter as Chairbreaker. Caleb is
Speaker 1: an intellectual powerhouse finishing up their PhD at UC Berkeley,
Speaker 1: and I have a very big friend crush on them.
Speaker 1: We first met years ago when fat activism was still
Speaker 1: a small movement. Since then, I've read all of their
Speaker 1: writing on the intersection of race, gender, sex, and fatness,
Speaker 1: and it's amazing to witness how they hold it down
Speaker 1: for complexity and nuance, but with a lot of heart.
Speaker 1: Caleb and I started off by talking about their favorite snack,
Speaker 1: Mother's Circus Animal Cookies. They were one of my favorite
Speaker 1: treats as a kid too, because not only were they
Speaker 1: animal shaped, they were frosted, and they were pink, and
Speaker 1: they had rainbow sprinkles, and even to this day they
Speaker 1: are delicious. So I feel like I was talking to
Speaker 1: some people here beforehand about how these are such like
Speaker 1: a childhood memory, and I chose them specifically because I
Speaker 1: still love them and I still eat them, um, because
Speaker 1: they're delicious. Um. And also I'm really stubborn. I'm a
Speaker 1: tourist moon um, so I'm really into the principle of
Speaker 1: the thing. Oh my god. I was wondering, yes, food
Speaker 1: and stances all about it. Um, But I find that, like,
Speaker 1: I mean, I grew up working class, right, and now
Speaker 1: I'm like doing this PhD thing at this like institution
Speaker 1: that has all this prestige and blah blah blah, and
Speaker 1: like everyone around me is so thin and so like
Speaker 1: concerned with it and so obsessed with it in these
Speaker 1: like ways that they don't even recognize or think is
Speaker 1: normal and been good. Um, right, And so like eating
Speaker 1: continuing to eat the foods that I ate as a
Speaker 1: child is actually really important to me as a way
Speaker 1: of like maintaining like my working class background and like
Speaker 1: honoring it and recognizing that that's like what brought me
Speaker 1: into my fat body in some ways. And especially as
Speaker 1: like these kinds of foods get really demonized in some
Speaker 1: ways as like unhealthy or sugary or processed and blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, and like everybody is like I don't know
Speaker 1: whereas like the fucking local vegan alternative to this, right
Speaker 1: or whatever. It just feels important to me to continue
Speaker 1: to eat them because yeah, like I said, I'm stubborn,
Speaker 1: and it's the principle of the thing that these are delicious.
Speaker 1: I just remember one of the first things I was
Speaker 1: examining when I started looking at the public health stuff
Speaker 1: around like you know, the campaigns and whatnot around the
Speaker 1: quote unquote obesity epidemic and then specific focus on children,
Speaker 1: and there really was this very to me overt line
Speaker 1: of reasoning around the idea that essentially working class people
Speaker 1: make poor decisions across the board, and eating is one
Speaker 1: of those things. And obviously I grew up working class
Speaker 1: as well, and I kind of think about how that
Speaker 1: relationship to these very class foods right like they they
Speaker 1: stay with us. I kind of want to get into
Speaker 1: who you are. Sure, I'm a Leo Son, a Pisces
Speaker 1: rising in a tourist moon. Like I said, I'm a
Speaker 1: PhD candidate, I'm a scholar, I'm an activist, I'm a performer,
Speaker 1: a writer, artist. I obviously am a fat person and
Speaker 1: that has been like in many ways that defining experience
Speaker 1: for me, especially as like a super fat person, gender nonconforming,
Speaker 1: non binary. Yeah, I mean or in a program for
Speaker 1: performance study? Is correct? Correct? Yeah? Can you tell for
Speaker 1: the people of people who have never heard of this?
Speaker 1: What is it? So? Performance studies is an academic discipline
Speaker 1: that considers all sort of behavior as performance, that we're
Speaker 1: all performing roles at any given time. And I'm actually
Speaker 1: setting my dissertation this semester and I'm writing about performances
Speaker 1: of eating and not eating. Okay, wait, I need that
Speaker 1: we need to keep going. Can you talk about the
Speaker 1: performance of can you talk more about that the performance
Speaker 1: of eating not eating. Yeah, Like this performance of like
Speaker 1: oh I can't eat that because I'm bad or that
Speaker 1: makes me bad, right, is a performance. It's performing this
Speaker 1: like sort of good citizen, which is like an individual
Speaker 1: who will produce a productive body towards the ends of
Speaker 1: the nation state. And so I'm really I'm really interested
Speaker 1: in the ways that fat phobia impacts in people too, right,
Speaker 1: because I feel like with with these conversations sometimes like
Speaker 1: obviously fat people are impacted um most directly, but UM,
Speaker 1: I worry that sometimes the way the impacts on thin
Speaker 1: people gets lost as well. And so I want to
Speaker 1: put pressure on the ways that thin people are self
Speaker 1: disciplining UM in ways to maintain a certain kind of
Speaker 1: body size UM that comes with the rewards, but also
Speaker 1: like comes with hardships. Also, thin people take up in
Speaker 1: some ways like fat aesthetics of eating UM in ways
Speaker 1: that are culturally evalorized UM and obscured. And it's like, actually,
Speaker 1: you really want to be fat or you want to
Speaker 1: like perform the things that you think that fat people
Speaker 1: are doing all the time, but you're really scared too.
Speaker 1: I Mean, I'm thinking what comes to mind is this image.
Speaker 1: I remember once there was this I found a T
Speaker 1: shirt and it called it said I Love Fatties on it,
Speaker 1: and I was so excited and then I was like, great,
Speaker 1: can I buy one? And then they sort of looked
Speaker 1: me up and now they're like, well, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: we've sort of and I was like, well, what's this
Speaker 1: you have? And like the largest side they had was
Speaker 1: extra large and it was like a tiny extra large, right,
Speaker 1: it was like a baby tea. And I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you guys, you need to get your branding, you need
Speaker 1: to get this together. But you know, it just reminds
Speaker 1: me so much of what you're talking about. Um, okay,
Speaker 1: so your Instagram handle is chairbreaker. I'm wondering if you
Speaker 1: can give us the origin story of this handle. I think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So before I came to grad school, I had an
Speaker 1: office job and there was one other fat person in
Speaker 1: my office. Um, and she and we like kind of
Speaker 1: bonded a lot over being the only fat people in
Speaker 1: the office. Yeah, as you do, right, And she kept,
Speaker 1: I mean she kept there were two chairs that were
Speaker 1: broken that were in her office. Who knows how that happened,
Speaker 1: but she was like really stressed about it like understandably,
Speaker 1: but I was also like, girl, fucking good for you. Um,
Speaker 1: I've broken so many chairs before, and it was just
Speaker 1: like this real like yeah, that's the thing that happens
Speaker 1: because it's framed as like, um, something's wrong with our
Speaker 1: bodies because they break chairs, rather than like these chairs
Speaker 1: are insufficient because they can't hold our bodies right yes, um.
Speaker 1: And so I was like, there's my new Instagram handled. Um.
Speaker 1: People will frequently like DM me showing me like pictures
Speaker 1: of chairs they broke, and I'm always like, congratulations, another
Speaker 1: one down. You know, we're gonna break every chair until
Speaker 1: there's none left that can't hold us. Um. And that's
Speaker 1: really how we do this work. Like yeah, so like
Speaker 1: you know, a smaller bodied person SIT's in a chair
Speaker 1: and breaks and it's a broke it's a broken chair,
Speaker 1: and a fat persons it's in a chair and a
Speaker 1: break and they broke the chair right like. And I
Speaker 1: always tell people right people are like, well, how like,
Speaker 1: how how do you know fat phobia is is bigotry
Speaker 1: and discrimination? I'm like, because two people can do the
Speaker 1: exact same thing, and you can have very different experiences
Speaker 1: of how they do them. Um, depending on their size,
Speaker 1: right and like, and what you think about them and
Speaker 1: what happens um when I was thinking about you and
Speaker 1: human rights and fat justice. Right, one of the things
Speaker 1: that has increasingly gone away from the conversation around body
Speaker 1: positivity body justice, um is the fact that we are
Speaker 1: fighting for human rights. This is not just a movement
Speaker 1: about the individual feeling good about themselves. Um. Though those
Speaker 1: things though that's important, right um. But really, you know,
Speaker 1: when I think about the inception of fat activism and
Speaker 1: fat justice, I think about the ways that you know,
Speaker 1: rights were always a big part of it. And at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, right like positivity is very important,
Speaker 1: but it's not actually a political tool. And in the
Speaker 1: sense that right like, positivity is not a useful tool
Speaker 1: for people who are in survival mode. You cannot wield
Speaker 1: positivity and get anything from it. Really if you're like
Speaker 1: if you're being denied human rights. So I'm kind of
Speaker 1: curious about I mean, like, just like, right like, I'm
Speaker 1: curious about your thoughts on maybe the ways in which
Speaker 1: human rights have gotten away from this conversation, your interest
Speaker 1: in them, things like that. Yeah, I think it actually
Speaker 1: is for me about identifying as an anarchist and rejecting
Speaker 1: social hierarchies right, and understanding that social hierarchies are hierarchies
Speaker 1: of race, they're hierarchies of gender and class, but they're
Speaker 1: also hierarchies of body size, and that I can make
Speaker 1: the choice to not perpetuate them in my actions. But
Speaker 1: I think you're right that like it gets the conversation
Speaker 1: gets so distilled and so like how we feel about
Speaker 1: ourselves and like body image and self love and all
Speaker 1: this shit, and like, actually the stakes aren't much higher. Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get so freshed by that conversation, partially because thin
Speaker 1: people don't love themselves. But when thin people don't love themselves,
Speaker 1: and I still granted opportunities like admission to college, like
Speaker 1: they get the job offer, right, Like those things it
Speaker 1: isn't part of the conversation, And those are actually the
Speaker 1: stakes that we're talking about, right, That, like fat phobia
Speaker 1: impacts our access to resources and our access to livelihood
Speaker 1: and survival and happiness through having resources and having the
Speaker 1: resources to be happy. Yeah, I mean I use like
Speaker 1: body positivity is like business lingo for me at this point,
Speaker 1: because I want to tie my work and when when
Speaker 1: I'm talking about it in reality for my own life
Speaker 1: with my friends or you know, privately or academically or
Speaker 1: any other thing. It's always fat active bism. It's always
Speaker 1: fat liberation to me, because liberation is an actual political demand.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's complicated, bec there's different paths to it,
Speaker 1: but um, but there have been many movements throughout history
Speaker 1: that have fought for liberation. And there are like mechanisms
Speaker 1: that you can do to like that are pride and
Speaker 1: true to get rights, to get those kinds of things
Speaker 1: like access to medical care, and also like highlights that
Speaker 1: fat people are not the only people impacted, right that,
Speaker 1: like then people need like don't feel good about themselves either,
Speaker 1: and that like sometimes people are just naturally thin and
Speaker 1: like that's fine, um, and like you can also feel
Speaker 1: okay about yourself. But yeah, it's very much like use
Speaker 1: that as a link as like the sort of Trojan
Speaker 1: horrors to then be like and actually this is what
Speaker 1: body positive is. Body positivity is to me, which is
Speaker 1: like the liberation of all people. Yeah absolutely, um, Okay,
Speaker 1: So I have tons more questions where I've got all
Speaker 1: my little all my little notes here. Yeah, Okay. One
Speaker 1: of the first pieces of yours I ever read was
Speaker 1: an article titled on being fat, round them ugly and unlovable,
Speaker 1: and I really loved how you went there in discussing ugliness.
Speaker 1: I remember thinking, there's there's power here, right, there's power
Speaker 1: in this idea, right that like, and for me as
Speaker 1: someone who grew up feeling super ugly, right and being
Speaker 1: taught that I was ugly because I was fat, and
Speaker 1: those things were the same thing. And so for me,
Speaker 1: one of the most powerful things that ever happened was
Speaker 1: when I started to actually have sex. And I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: this is actually not hard. I don't understand. And I
Speaker 1: was like, you know, I was being told I was
Speaker 1: never gonna get that, I was never gonna have sex,
Speaker 1: I was never gonna have love, I was not gonna
Speaker 1: have a relationship. And then I found that, you know,
Speaker 1: at least casual sex was actually quite easy to acquire.
Speaker 1: And I kept sort of going through the math. I
Speaker 1: was like, okay, wait, so like we've got this person,
Speaker 1: I've had sex with them. That happened, I'm sure, and
Speaker 1: then that person definitely real also, but like what it
Speaker 1: meant to occupy the space of being sexually desirable and
Speaker 1: also ugly and I'm kind of talking, and I'm curious,
Speaker 1: you know, do you still identify with that piece? Do
Speaker 1: you still identify with all of those words that I
Speaker 1: say when it's so I have such a complicated relationship
Speaker 1: to it because I wrote it when I was really
Speaker 1: sad at like three in the morning and like unrequitedly
Speaker 1: in love with somebody and never expected anyone to read it.
Speaker 1: And then like I remember waking up like two in
Speaker 1: the afternoon the day it was published, and like it
Speaker 1: had like all my friends were sharing it and like
Speaker 1: it went and I was like fuck. And as part
Speaker 1: of its like virality, like I got a lot of
Speaker 1: like messages affirming that I wasn't ugly, which also I
Speaker 1: don't actually remember if I like talk about in that
Speaker 1: essay that like I don't actually think I'm ugly. I
Speaker 1: think I'm very attractive, but the world responds to me
Speaker 1: as if I'm ugly just because I'm fat. So I
Speaker 1: got all these affirmations that I wasn't ugly and that
Speaker 1: I just needed to love myself, and I was like,
Speaker 1: once again, I see it. Then people who ate themselves
Speaker 1: all the time and they still get asked out on dates. Um,
Speaker 1: So like this is not the issue. However, I think
Speaker 1: one thing that I would have that I've learned since
Speaker 1: that essay is that yes, sex is easy, and that
Speaker 1: just because somebody's gonna have sex with me, it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean they're going to respect me. Yeah, And that is
Speaker 1: like the thing that I feel like more fat people
Speaker 1: need to, like I don't know here like understand or
Speaker 1: like a process that we all go through is that like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is easy. It doesn't necessarily feel good. They're not
Speaker 1: necessarily like treating me well. And like I had this
Speaker 1: one experience with this boy who was like very attracted
Speaker 1: to me and then like told me when we were
Speaker 1: cuddling that he could never be with me because he
Speaker 1: didn't know what his family would say, right, And I
Speaker 1: was like, I'm literally just here for the sex. You
Speaker 1: don't need to like overshare with me. But you know,
Speaker 1: people are so many more people are attracted to us
Speaker 1: than they want to admit. But it doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: they're gonna like be nice to us. It doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that they're gonna like love us necessarily, not the way
Speaker 1: that we need to be loved. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean
Speaker 1: I relate to what you're talking about where it's like
Speaker 1: you were in the midst of this really intimate thing
Speaker 1: and there's clearly this desire and it's reciprocal. But then
Speaker 1: there's this public facing component. The public component is a
Speaker 1: significant part of how we understand relationships, how we understand
Speaker 1: love and intimacy and all that. That's a big part
Speaker 1: of relating. That's a big part of dating. That's a
Speaker 1: big part of relationships, right Romance, one of the pieces
Speaker 1: that you wrote was about Grinder, and you said that
Speaker 1: it took you until the age of twenty nine to
Speaker 1: realize that you could be genuinely desirable and not just
Speaker 1: someone that someone settled for, and I kind of want
Speaker 1: to hear that story of that realization. I would love
Speaker 1: to tell that story. So it was actually right after
Speaker 1: I moved to the Bay. I moved here on a Tuesday,
Speaker 1: and like within an hour, this dude was like hitting
Speaker 1: me up and was like when can we meet? And
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, my god, my friends here, So
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to wait a couple of days. So
Speaker 1: my friend who drove across the country with me, I
Speaker 1: feel like they left Thursday morning and Thursday afternoon we
Speaker 1: hooked up and I was very attracted to him and
Speaker 1: I was, and he was like very attracted to me.
Speaker 1: And that was the moment when I was like, I was.
Speaker 1: I didn't understand that, like I was sexy and that
Speaker 1: people could think I was sexy because up until that moment,
Speaker 1: I was only having sex with people that weren't really
Speaker 1: engaging with my body. And so when I met this person,
Speaker 1: then I was really attracted to you that was really
Speaker 1: into my body that we had to get sex. I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, like, I'm not a consolation prize, which
Speaker 1: I think until that moment I had always felt like
Speaker 1: partially because that's kind of how people treated me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I can relate to that also. I mean
Speaker 1: just thinking there's only two kinds of people right for me,
Speaker 1: it was people who don't like me and some kind
Speaker 1: of man saint who will just out of the magnanimity
Speaker 1: and wonderfulness of his spirit, would tolerate my body. And
Speaker 1: I just remember thinking, right like, I have to be
Speaker 1: on point. I have to be smart, to be funny,
Speaker 1: I would be fashionable, I have to great glasses and
Speaker 1: right like, and then maybe he'll be able to overlook
Speaker 1: this like layering problem with my body. And then kind
Speaker 1: of finding that I could actually experience and then demand
Speaker 1: something much better, right, and just kind of like the
Speaker 1: first time somebody was like, can I watch you shower? Please?
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh my god, right, what a
Speaker 1: special day to day is? You know? And I don't know,
Speaker 1: like they're just something so powerful about that. Before we
Speaker 1: wrapped up our conversation, we took a question from a
Speaker 1: super cute fat babe in the audience. She runs an
Speaker 1: Instagram account called Curvy Streets documenting fat fashion in the
Speaker 1: Bay Area. She brought up how it's on trend for
Speaker 1: brands to make plus size clothes and you can order
Speaker 1: them online, but when you go into the stores, the
Speaker 1: plus sizes aren't on the rack. I was really struck
Speaker 1: by one thing. She said that she feels like these
Speaker 1: companies are treating her and other fat people like their
Speaker 1: secret girlfriend. They want our money, but they're not sure
Speaker 1: about committing. Yeah. Well, and I think like the duality
Speaker 1: of fashion, how it's both for me, it's both self
Speaker 1: care and it's also armor, which I see is not
Speaker 1: as antithetical to self care in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: And so it's difficult, you know, And I think for me,
Speaker 1: I have a different persona. When I don't look cute
Speaker 1: and I'm not like shower, I like, I turn into
Speaker 1: this like very inwardly facing, very sort of like defensive,
Speaker 1: very person and I really I watch, I literally see
Speaker 1: the shower as like part of the arming to go
Speaker 1: out into a world that hates my body. I had
Speaker 1: this experience like a couple of weeks ago where I
Speaker 1: went to fucking tourid the Fat Girl Store and they
Speaker 1: did not have my size in store, and I was like,
Speaker 1: what does it mean to be too fat for the
Speaker 1: Fat Store? And so I'm just especially like bitter about
Speaker 1: that right now. But yeah, it's absolutely this thing where
Speaker 1: they want us to wear their clothes, but they don't
Speaker 1: want us in the store because we are somehow chanting
Speaker 1: their brand and chanting their image. They don't want us
Speaker 1: to be associated. And then you know, I feel fucking
Speaker 1: chopped because I like looking cute and like we have
Speaker 1: thank you again. Who knows that this is because I'm
Speaker 1: a Leo Son, But like my self esteem is so
Speaker 1: tied to like how cute I feel and how cute
Speaker 1: I look, and like I can't do that without access
Speaker 1: to the clothes, and so it's just and so then
Speaker 1: we're like forced to. Um. I mean I still have
Speaker 1: to fucking BUYE Toward pants because that was like the
Speaker 1: only place I know that can like harries my size. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's garbage. UM and I hate them. YEA.
Speaker 1: Check out Caleb Luna on Instagram at chairbreaker. That's one word.
Speaker 1: C h A I R B R E A K
Speaker 1: E rum. Caleb, thank you so much for being here
Speaker 1: and being amazing and wonderful. Thank you. Next week I'll
Speaker 1: be back to answer a few of your questions. How
Speaker 1: do you get to the point of loving yourself at
Speaker 1: any size? That sounds wonderful, but how do you get there?
Speaker 1: If you'd like to send one along, leave a voicemail
Speaker 1: at eight six two two three one five three eight six.
Speaker 1: That number is eight six two two three one five
Speaker 1: three eight six. You can also email us at Rebel
Speaker 1: Eaters Club at gmail dot com. Rebel Eaters Club is
Speaker 1: in a original podcasts from Transmitter Media, the podcast company
Speaker 1: that's like adding fresh herbs from your window garden to
Speaker 1: your pasta prima vera. I'm Virgie Tovar. The show is
Speaker 1: produced by Lacy Roberts and Jordan Bailey. Our editor is
Speaker 1: Sarah Knicks Greta Khane as our executive producer. Like what
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Speaker 1: Send us a note at Rebel Eaters Club at gmail
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