Tigress Roars: From Time Magazine's Health 100 to Fat Liberation

Ever wondered what it takes to challenge societal norms and gain recognition for advocating fat acceptance? Meet Tigress Osborn, the Executive Director of NAAFA, who has recently made it to Time Magazine's prestigious Health 100 list. Join us for an invigorating conversation as Tigress shares her personal journey in combating size discrimination, the thrill of being spotlighted in Time, and the vital role of fat-positive language in mainstream media.

Our deep dive into the pervasive impact of size discrimination uncovers heartfelt anecdotes from Tigress and other fat activists. From microaggressions in everyday settings to the importance of representation and allyship, we discuss the social barriers that fat individuals face and the collective efforts needed to dismantle these biases. Hear about the photo shoot that brought the community together and the significance of allies in amplifying the voices of those affected by size discrimination.

In our final segments, we celebrate the strides made in body size representation and systemic change. Learn about Pinterest's innovative initiatives for inclusivity, the success of NAAFA's fundraising campaigns, and advocacy efforts in legislation and healthcare. Merf joins us for closing remarks filled with personal stories and empowering messages, emphasizing the importance of uplifting language. Discover how to connect with NAAFA and our community, and support the ongoing fight for fat liberation. Don't miss this compelling episode of Big Sexy Chat!

https://time.com/6967232/tigress-osborn/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

On this episode of Big Sexy Chat, we're joined by Tigress Osborne, the Executive Director of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. Tigress joins us to discuss being one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in health. And Tigress, all we can say is it's about damn time, Without further ado.

Speaker 2: 0:24

It's about damn time Without further ado. Hi, welcome to Big Sexy Chat. I'm Crystal, I'm Murph. We're just two rad fatties sitting around Chewing the fat Twice a month. We'll be chatting about current events. Hot topics.

Speaker 2: 0:42

Sex, sex toys, fat politics, fat community, cannabis, CBD, you name it. We're going to talk about it. We are very excited to have you a part of our community. Welcome and enjoy. Hey there, welcome back to Big Sexy Chat. My name is Crystal and I'm here with my lovely co-host. Hi, I'm Murph. Hey, Murph, and we have the extra special guest today. Executive Director of NAFA, the National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance. Yes, and welcome Tigress.

Speaker 3: 1:10

Close Okay. National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance.

Speaker 2: 1:14

To Advance Got it Very cool. Well, welcome, tigress. It's so lovely to see you and lovely to hear from you, and I'm lovely to talk with you today.

Speaker 3: 1:21

It's always good to be with you guys.

Speaker 4: 1:26

Big sexy friends. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 3: 1:26

So much fun stuff has happened since we last chatted yes, lots of fun stuff has happened since we last chatted um, I think. Uh, when was I here last?

Speaker 4: 1:37

maybe around this time last year maybe I think it was fat con when we have a quick little.

Speaker 3: 1:44

Yeah, of course we saw each other at FatCon. I'm super excited to see that our friends at FatCon have announced their dates for next year yeah, excited so we'll hopefully all be reunioning in person then, but in the meantime I'm happy to be with you, big sexies, and all the big sexies who listen to you.

Speaker 2: 2:01

Yeah, for sure, thank you. Okay. So, tigress, you had a spread in Time Magazine. How did the hell did that happen? And congratulations. So amazing, it's great for all of us so excited.

Speaker 3: 2:15

I think spread is maybe overstating a little bit, but what I had was a little feature in Time Magazine's actual magazine and then a slightly larger feature on the website. But I was selected as one of the Time Health 100. So many people know Time Magazine. Every year does their like 100 most influential people in the world, but they are also developing new lists that are sort of content or area specific. So last year they did a Climate 100. This year they did their first ever health 100. And so I was selected to be part of the health 100 for my work around size discrimination, the work that I do through NAFA and have worked on in various ways for many, many years. And so it was really, you know, it was really an honor to be included. It's a great piece of exposure for the work that we are doing.

Speaker 3: 3:10

I mean time is, you know, undeniably recognizable. I didn't realize how hard it was going to be to get my hands on an actual physical time magazine. I was in New York and I had this like dream of like oh, I will go to the classic like the newsstand, like you always saw in the movies when I was growing up. People of my vintage for sure will remember, like in movies, people always like stopping by the newsstand to grab a newspaper or whatever. And all of those newsstands now do not sell newspapers. They are still called newsstands. In fact they're literally called the newsstand, a whole set of them. Um, they don't sell news anymore. They sell like gum and candy and bottled water and phone chargers and whatever, but they don't sell magazines or newspapers anymore. So I I had to actually go to the time honoree dinner to be able to. I went to several bookstores, I went to a bunch of drugstores like it. Just everybody either had no magazines at all or every magazine but time.

Speaker 2: 4:06

And so I had to act. There was an honoree dinner. How did I miss that? How?

Speaker 3: 4:11

did they find you, tigris? There was an honoree dinner that was for honorees. It was. It was not like the time like the main 100 list, where they have this huge gala and all these celebrities and it's on TV and it was not that. It was a more humble dinner than that. But and you know, I don't even I don't remember what the journalist said about how they found me. I we got, you know, we got a message from a journalist at Time who was like can we? You know we want to consider Tigress for this Can we interview her? And I did a really great interview with this journalist. I really, I really appreciate the piece that she wrote up about me.

Speaker 3: 4:47

It's really hard to get journalists, especially at major publications like that, to use the language that we want to use to talk about fat bodies. You know there's a sort of expectation that you use the medicalized language, which is actually like part of our work is opposing the medicalization of the language and the people that are involved in the usage of that language. And so there's a lot of you know what we in community often refer to as like oh word, use those words being obesity or overweight, and it's really hard to get publications not to use that language or to not put like some kind of weird parenthetical like don't worry guys, she wants us to call. Like some kind of weird parenthetical, like don't worry guys, she wants us to call her fat, kind of thing. And so I really love this journalist and the piece that she wrote up, which you know folks can find on the time 100 health website. But you know, I had this interview with her like several months ago and forgot about it, um, and and then I get this message and my inbox is always in a state of overflow and I get this message that I almost missed saying like hey, we've selected you, like what? So I really didn't anticipate being selected.

Speaker 3: 5:52

Even after I did the interview, like I thought the journalist was lovely, I thought I might maintain relationship with her for other kinds of like you know, to reach out to her for other media things. I never thought that I would be selected other media things. I never thought that I would be selected and partly because, you know, mainstream news coverage is so, just so inundated with stuff from a medical framework and especially in this moment, with stuff that is about, you know, the GLP-1 drugs, which most people just call Ozempic, even though there are lots of different names for those drugs and even though Ozempic technically is not a weight loss drug. It's a diabetes drug and it's got a different name as a weight loss drug. But you know, everybody just calls it Ozempic and everyone's talking about the Ozempic era and so in the Ozempic era, to have someone named to this list that is about health, but who is not talking about weight loss is pretty major.

Speaker 2: 6:46

Really major Congratulations. Health but who is not talking about weight loss is pretty major, um, really major congratulations, although I just want to say thank you, oh, oh, oh ozempic.

Speaker 3: 6:51

that's why we all know it, because of the fucking song well, we all know it because the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry has made sure that we all know it they have money for ad campaigns, like for the last five years, all I could hear is ozempic songs well, they have money for ad campaigns and research and marketing.

Speaker 3: 7:09

You know marketing, research and marketing methodology that goes back significantly longer than the last five years, so this is it's not accidental that we all know it as Ozempic. The manufacturers of Ozempic, novo Nordisk are sort of the the usual suspects when it comes to how pharmaceutical companies talk about weight, and they really have been sort of the masterclass in manipulating medical and media presentations of stuff around weight and weight loss, and so I was pretty sure. So we didn't get to know who else was on the list until the list came out and I was pretty sure that someone from Novo Nordisk would be on the list and they were. The CEO was on the list and some of the researchers that actually did the original, you know, like research around the GLP-1 drugs, which again was not specifically for the purpose of weight loss stuff, but that research team was on the list and so you know.

Speaker 3: 8:02

But what usually happens is those are the only folks on the list. There's no. You know the both sides-ism of covering body size, fat, weight usually involves anytime we say something, there has to be the other side presented to say like but it might be unhealthy though, but it doesn't go in the other direction. It's not like every time they say something there has to be a presence from fat liberationists or fat advocates or fat activists, and so what often happens is they get recognized or they get attention or they get a media platform and we just are not invited.

Speaker 3: 8:45

Even be on the list felt like really important. Uh, to be in the in the room for the honoree dinner, um, you know which was, um I also didn't know at the time was going to be sponsored by eli lily, which is another manufacturer of a major weight loss drug, and so to even be in that room, um, to, you know, to be a counter narrative in the room as the ceo, eli Lilly, talks about these, you know, obesity treatment, drugs or whatever it's, just like you know it felt conflicting and, you know, complicated, but also like really important.

Speaker 2: 9:15

Very important. Thank you first of all. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for all of your advocacy and for all the work that NAFA does, and thank you for being, you know, vulnerable, cause I know that probably felt somewhat vulnerable knowing that those people are going to be around and you might've been one of the only people there that understood this part of things. So thank you, and thank you to Time Magazine. I'm so glad they found you. You're the perfect person and beautiful photo shoot too.

Speaker 3: 9:43

Oh, my God, so cute. I'm really lucky. They asked us to provide our own photos. They did not send someone to take photos of us and I, uh, I live in the Phoenix area and I work a lot with um Earl Tubbs from contract contrast photography, who also took the photos of me when I was on my alumni magazine cover, um and uh, I took these like really, really beautiful photos of me for that, and so I was able to just call him and be like, oh my God, time Magazine wants a photo. What are we going to do? And he's like we're going to drop everything and get a Time Magazine photo.

Speaker 3: 10:17

So really lucky and also part of the best part of this experience was that feeling of taking along everybody else with me and even the photo shoot, like being able to work with this photographer, who is not a fat person himself but who is, you know, a great like ally to fat community and and and who has a plus size daughter that I spend a lot of time mentoring and is really going to be, I think, one of the like next generation fat activists, you know, whatever language she lands on for herself, but she's um, and and not because of my mentor, because she is a fantastic young leader who is growing into an amazing woman. But, um, so I feel like you know the the tubbs family is with me in the room. But also, you know that shirt that I'm wearing in that photo, I got at the plus bus and um, and the earrings that I'm wearing in that photo, I got at plus brooklyn. Um, and the earrings that I'm wearing in that photo, I got at plus Brooklyn and um, you know so. So, just like, like, even down to that visual representation felt like I get to bring other people along.

Speaker 3: 11:15

Um, crystal knows this, but in the article I didn't even remember that when I talked to the journalist, we talked on zoom and I was wearing my glorifying obesity t-shirt, which actually comes from Crystal's t-shirt shop and was designed by Tony Tales, who's a super fat artist, who I've admired her work for years, and so I didn't know they were going to actually link to the shirt in the article and so there were just all these different ways that it felt like.

Speaker 4: 11:55

And so there were just all these different ways that it felt like you know, our community including our allies, you know get to get to come along for this and I appreciate that. But I also really love that you shared that, because there's so many allies that listen to this pod that they've had that kind of moment of someone explaining to everyone. I'm the only person in the room that looks like this, and the way that you're talking about me is like I shouldn't exist and for a lot of people they don't understand that that happens for us. They just blindly go through life and this is what I do, but wow, it's powerful. So I just appreciate your vulnerability there no-transcript.

Speaker 3: 13:15

First, being seated in a space where, like, the chair itself was fine but the space wasn't big enough for me, like the spacing between the tables. I actually had to switch seats with my plus one I don't think anybody else at the dinner had to switch seats with somebody, you know and it just was something like they're recognizing me for my work around size discrimination and they have not thought about the physical access needs that I have as a person coming to this dinner. And then, at the end of the dinner and of course this is not, you know, time magazine magazine, this is an individual serving person but, um, the dinner had, you know past desserts at the end of it, like you know, people going around with trays of desserts and the waiter came up to me standing with a group of other folks and offered the desserts to all the thin women and then turned around and walked away and you know, and it's like that's fine, I'm gonna get my dessert. So I just went in the other room and got desserts from other waiters and had all the desserts that I wanted to have, um, but, but just like the the you know the fact that that happened.

Speaker 3: 14:13

Those kind of microaggressions happen all the time and I think you know it's, and what happens often is people, in a very well-meaning way, try to say like oh, he probably just didn't see you standing there. Like you didn't see the 300 pound woman standing there, you know.

Speaker 3: 14:28

Or like oh, it probably was just a misunderstanding or something else caught his attention, or like, whatever and like and all of those things could possibly be true. And also, I've been fat my whole adult life and I have pretty good instincts and I have the same desire as everybody else to want to dismiss things, because I'd rather not be feeling like I am, you know, the victim of discrimination. I'd rather be feeling like it's just a misunderstanding. But because of that, I have honed a pretty good spidey sense for knowing the difference between the two, you know. So when I tell you that this waiter did not offer the fat lady desserts, it is because I'm the fat lady that this waiter did not offer me these desserts right, like in my case.

Speaker 2: 15:06

The person offered the extra vegetables to me, but not the other nine people at the table, because I'm pretty sure and everybody's like no, no, no, that's not what he did, matt, I go. Okay, I've been fat since the third grade. Tell me again how my life works. I know what he's doing. It's fine. Fine, I loved him. They were delicious, but fuck him too.

Speaker 3: 15:26

Yeah, exactly, and I and you know, and that's the thing it's like, I do have more of an arsenal, a reserve for how, like for bouncing back or for not being injured by a moment like that, because I exist in this supportive fat community, because I've spent years owning the word fat and developing, you know, some armor for those kinds of microaggression dings. But not everybody has that Right, and so when that kind of thing happens to someone else this is the same thing with the travel stuff I deal, you know, travel. I was in New York not just for this dinner. I had this fantastic month of working in New York and getting to do a lot of really wonderful and beautiful fat community things in New York and also sometimes just, you know, holing up in my room on Zoom or doing, you know, doing paperwork or whatever. But like being in New York and being able to be in person with a lot of folks in fat community for a lot of different things, in person with a lot of folks, in fact, community for a lot of different things.

Speaker 3: 16:28

And you know I'm doing a lot of travel related to my work with NAFA and that means all the things that people experience when they're traveling I'm experiencing on a very regular basis and a lot of those things, just, you know, just look like, oh, it could be a misunderstanding, or could, even if it was just a misunderstanding, when it happens to you. All the time there's a cumulative effect of the stress of all of that, and I do have a lot of ability to self-advocate, bandwidth to self-advocate and, of course, like a platform to lean on when I don't, when I'm having those sort of insecurities where, like you know, is it worth it for me to advocate for myself? That, the reminder that I'm not only advocating for myself, I'm advocating for a whole community of people. I have that in ways that you know.

Speaker 3: 17:10

Other people don't necessarily have it and so, um, I'm gonna be fine most of the time yeah, I know you will, but that sucks but I'm also going to always be reminded of the person who's not going to be fine, because they don't have all those years of practice and deep community behind them and places like this to go and process and and be supported, and so, when it happens to them, what they're going to do is just not travel the next time yeah or not?

Speaker 3: 17:39

go to the restaurant anymore, or any restaurant anymore, not try to find the clothes, not try to go for the job, not try to restaurant anymore, not try to find the clothes, not try to go for the job, not try to advocate for themselves. And I just think it's really important for folks to remember that this happens all the time and the solution to it is not all of those individual people changing their bodies. The solution to it is all of the rest of you. Stop being jerks and also be more aware of the things that you're doing, that you might not even be intending to be a jerk, but you're still landing on people in really, you know, oppressive and disenfranchising ways.

Speaker 2: 18:21

Just rude, tigress. I know I shared this before when you were on where I said, you know, I got to witness you and Saucy eating your cupcakes or those nothing but cakes, and I started to take a picture of you and I was like, oh never, I won't take all your eating. You know, take a picture of me eating the other thing that I learned from you, which a million things. But when I fly now I make a big to do, a big, big production about. I will please, can I please have a seatbelt extender that way? Try to normalize it right. That's what you suggested, and the more we talk about it and the more we make it seem like it's totally normal. People don't have to go. Can I pass you the seatbelt extender and try to do it on the down low? I'm like, no, give me my fucking seatbelt extender. I'm trying to be loud about it.

Speaker 3: 19:05

And that fucking seatbelt extender. I'm trying to be loud about it, well, and and that's the thing is like those of us who have that security around that or confidence around that. You know, confidence is such a loaded word because so often it's weaponized against us in a way that's like I could never be confident if I looked like you, you know, but I think I feel so different about people complimenting my confidence if it's aspirational than if it's in surprise, so if it's just that sort of like um, you know, I'm also a big girl and I'm trying to get to where you are in terms of confidence, that's very different to me than the person of any size who treats it like it's an impossibility that I could be confident, right, but so I I get. So I get the sort of like, the pushback people have around the word confidence, and I also think that sometimes it's it's it's not like fit spiration, it's actual inspiration or whatever can really be inspiring for other people who need that, who would have just flown with their jacket over their lap and not flown without a seatbelt, or who sneak their own on a plane. I know people who have entire collections because every plane has a different one, and I know people who have whole collections of them and you shouldn't have to do that. And it's also not as safe for you if you're kind of bootlegging a seatbelt extender instead of just using the one that that airline provides, that they are federally required to provide to you.

Speaker 3: 20:32

And also, having said that, because it is still an area of tremendous shame for people, I do think there needs to be sensitivity around how the staff handles it, and you know, I've seen different ways on different airlines of like sometimes they'll just you know, if there's kind of like a little counter in the entryway, they'll just kind of put them out so people could grab them themselves. Or like, how hard would it be? For every airline. Seatbelts are not that expensive. Every fleet in the country could have a seatbelt extender in the seat pocket, the same way that they have their emergency card in the seat pocket, and it would be available to everyone without anybody having to go through anything to get one. Like that's just a thing that could be not just us having not us normalizing asking for it, but also us not having to ask for it. The same thing is true for taxis and ride shares, or the same thing is true for your friends in their personal cars. Like, you can't have a seatbelt extender for every car of every person, you know, but your friends could all spend $10 on a seatbelt extender and then always have a place for you to ride in their car.

Speaker 3: 21:36

So, like, some of the normalization is not just about us and our individual behaviors. It's about systemic changes that could very easily be made, um, but I don't remember how I tangented myself into this thing about the seatbelts because, oh, because you know, it is the thing where, like those of us who have the confidence, uh, you know, when, whatever you call it, you know, confidence, courage, um, self-advocacy, like whatever you have it there are folks who haven't learned that yet and they still deserve, like, care and compassion from their communities and from the people around them, um, and and discretion, because we do live in a culture where it is considered humiliating, even if it will not humiliate me, and so we need to make sure that, um, you know, folks in service positions learn to follow the lead of the customers that they are serving in terms of things like privacy and discretion, so that everybody can be comfortable and safe and accommodated.

Speaker 4: 22:32

Yeah, and I appreciate that. That kind of cued me into a discussion we were having earlier. The work that you all have been doing with Pinterest yeah, that kind of aligns with this need to like it all comes together on the team, especially um, megan d'alesio, who was on the pinterest team at the time.

Speaker 3: 23:08

Um, who was a plus size woman on the team and really very plus forward in all of her, you know, plus size forward, you know fat liberation forward in all of her, her work as an employee at pinterest and um, but really a really like truly. They came to us like this amazing, diverse team of like folks from all over the world, folks of different ages, different gender identities, different sexual orientations and different bodies on this team together to work on every aspect of this the technical aspects, the implementation, the, you know, communicating with pinners, which is what they call the community of folks who use Pinterest like just at every level. They were considering all of these different things in terms of how to like, like truly grapple with representation, not just sort of like a performative grappling with it, but a sort of like how can we use the tools we have? Pinterest takes a lot of pride in their they, they like to call themselves the friendliest corner of the internet or something like that, the friendliest place on the internet, and they take a lot of pride in that and I'm sure that, like every other corporation, there are people in the Pinterest pipeline, for whom that is just like their marketing slogan. But we were very lucky to have a team of folks that it felt like they were genuinely interested in this and through some of their old lived experiences of being marginalized in other ways, even if they weren't in fat bodies themselves. So we just had a really fantastic experience working with them and they debuted this tool in the fall last year and what it is is it's an enhancement to their search engines so that if you are on Pinterest, if you don't know Pinterest, it's a little different than other social media because it's people use it more for like hobbies and crafts and showcasing.

Speaker 3: 24:53

You sort of make digital. It's called Pinterest because the idea initially, I think, was like pinning things to a bulletin board. So you sort of make digital bulletin boards with ideas and inspiration, or they would say pinspiration. They're really big on that sort of like using the word pin in their vocabulary, so they would say pinspiration. But people look for inspiration on Pinterest. I think you know like our board chair looks at manicures on Pinterest, like to see, like fun things to take when she goes to get a manicure, whatever.

Speaker 3: 25:21

And a lot of people use it for fashion and we always get these discussions in fat activism around whether we're paying too much attention to fashion. Is that too frivolous of a thing? Like we have medical discrimination. We have workplace discrimination, like why are we worried about whether you have a cute dress or not? And I always say, like, first of all, we deserve the same access to self-expression as everyone else, but also all of the serious systemic injustice things that we talk about, there's a way in which access to clothing and also access to you know, an industry that employs millions of people is part of all of those other sort of systemic issues.

Speaker 3: 26:00

So the fashion piece to me is really important and you know people were finding and Pinterest was finding that it was harder for folks to find, for plus size folks to find inspiration on Pinterest, because even though there are plus size pinners and they're, you know, whatever they're, just like things weren't coming up right in the searches.

Speaker 3: 26:19

So they worked on AI to ensure that if you search for particular kinds of fashion, you see people across the body size spectrum.

Speaker 3: 26:28

They had already done some of this work around skin tone and they had already done some of this work around hair texture, so that you don't only always see like you go to see like spring dresses and you would just see like 50 thin white women with straight blonde hair Right, and so they'd already done some of that work around color and hair texture and then they started doing it around body size. Then they sought us out and it was so cute because, when, um, elise marshall, who's the pinterest exec, who first reached out to us, was like I'm running from pinterest, pinterest is you know, and I always tell people I'm reading this message I'm like, girl, we know what pinterest is. Just tell us what you want from us, you know. But, um, but that kind of like sort of humility is part of how their team shows up at least the team we were working with. So they were really fantastic. Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm kind of modelizing about it, but we love it.

Speaker 2: 27:18

What do?

Speaker 3: 27:18

you want. When do you want to know more about, about that experience?

Speaker 2: 27:21

well, for one thing, I would like them to become consultants to other media outlets and let them know how to do this shit and stop being so small minded.

Speaker 3: 27:33

We have had a lot of conversation with them about how to be examples in their industry. I think the other social media I'm not sure how much the other social media platforms see Pinterest as the same thing as themselves, but still they're in the tech industry as the same thing as themselves, but still they're in the tech industry and you know they did reach out to tech industry oriented media around this launch. We had a huge launch. I should say they had a huge launch, but they really centered NAFA and our work with them in this launch last fall around the same time as New York Fashion Week, because they wanted to be part of the fashion events to be talking about body size representation and they invited a lot of other companies. Come and learn from what we learned by doing this. So I should say the first stage of this.

Speaker 3: 28:20

So the search engine right now, the body inclusion search AI works on what we call women's fashion, so like femme fashion and wedding, and they're in the process of like rolling it out for also, you know, men and masculine fashion.

Speaker 3: 28:39

The other thing that they worked on and that we were really excited to help them work on was creating some body type tools so that when you go on Pinterest you can see sets of different bodies.

Speaker 3: 28:50

So you don't pick like one person is exactly me, but you can kind of see sets of different bodies that represent different categories of sizes along the scale from, you know, from extra small to 5XL kind of scale, and you can say, like this is the range that most matches me and show me results that are in this range, because sometimes we're looking for inspiration that could come from anybody.

Speaker 3: 29:12

I don't have to wear the same dress as this then white woman, but maybe I want to see that dress right. So, like, maybe I don't only always want to see people who are the same shape and size as me and I definitely don't want other people to never see people who are the same shape and size as me. So in the general search I want those mixed results. But then sometimes when you are shopping you really do need to see things that look on bodies like yours. So with Pinterest you now have both options. You have the general search where if you just put in you know summer shorts you're going to get summer shorts on lots of different bodies. But if you want to see summer shorts on your body, you can choose your body type and then see results only that show those kinds of body types.

Speaker 2: 29:52

That's amazing, Tychus.

Speaker 3: 29:53

I love it.

Speaker 2: 29:54

Thank you for all the work you did with that. Thank you to Pinterest. If they're listening. Share this with that fun lady. Tell her that we're grateful for her and we're grateful to Pinterest for that.

Speaker 3: 30:03

Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 30:04

I wanted to also just to Murph, do you have anything more on the Pinterest stuff, or okay? No, no, Um, so can I? I'll just say one more thing about it.

Speaker 3: 30:12

Um, I am presenting about this at this summer's international weight stigma conference. This year it's in Colchester, uk, but the conference has a virtual track so people who are interested in some of some of the sort of more nerdy details about NAFA's work with Pinterest can certainly join me for that presentation. But also I just recommend that folks in your audience, especially if they have a little bit of a lean towards fat studies or research or any of those kind of things check out the Weight Stigma Conference. They're having their 10th year. Last year it was in the US and Denver, so there was a lot of presence from US activists, advocates, eating disorder specialists there's a wide variety of folks who do work around weight and weight stigma and this year the keynotes are Dr Lily O'Hare and Dr Caleb Luna and then there's a bunch of different panels.

Speaker 3: 31:04

But it's a really great conference and folks who did the first virtual version of it last year gave really positive feedback about that. So you know it's a little time difference for your us listeners because it's in the uk this year. Um, but I just highly encourage for folks who are interested which at least check out their website, see what kinds of things they're offering, especially if you are a scholarly type or a researchy type or you know the type who like nerds out on on um, on that more academic side of of fat advocacy stuff. Definitely check them out and their their website is just weightstigmaconferencecom I think it's dot com.

Speaker 2: 31:40

I don't think it's dot org. We'll figure it out, we'll put in our notes. I like the word wonk. Are you like a scholarly wonk about fat activism? Mm-hmm. So thank you for that and thank you for letting us know about that. September is that the month that they have the Weight Stigma Month?

Speaker 3: 31:55

No, so well. The Weight Stigma Conference is coming up in just this month, in June. Okay, okay, cool. And then that is organized by Angela Meadows in England Okay month in June, and then that is organized by Angela Meadows in England. Chavis Underhill-Turner and a few other activists in the eating disorders world do a weight stigma awareness week in September. And then of course we do, and we invite all of the world to join us in doing, fat Liberation Month in August.

Speaker 2: 32:24

That was one of our best um best podcasts and best most downloaded podcast was about the one we did about that. But I want to know more about how did y'all do with the pod fundraising. The pod thing was so cool. You had a benefactor. Is that the right word? That?

Speaker 3: 32:39

yeah, that's a great word for whether I actually should have been using that word more often as we advertise this. So, um, for May, which we were kind of internally calling Matching May, lindsay Fowler, who's just an individual benefactor, who came to us and said you know, I want to give a donation to NAFA, but I wanted to inspire other people to give, and so what we did was we had been thinking about building out our monthly donors. So we are happy for any kind of donors. We are predominantly a donor-funded organization. I, as the executive director, do some consulting work or some workshops or things like that, but most of our programming is free to the community, so it's not how we bring our money in. We bring our money in mostly through donations. We're working on grants and things like that so that there's not as much of a burden on individual donors or there's not as much of a there's a break. You know we're working on expanding the income sources that you know from things that match our values, but we are donor funded and having ongoing donors gives us a little bit more stability. So we love our one-time donors.

Speaker 3: 33:48

Somebody told me once that I was like the Bernie Sanders of a fat community, because I was always talking about our $5 donors. I don't think I'm I'm sure there are ways I'm like Bernie Sanders. I don't think most people are like Tigress is like Bernie Sanders, but in that way like I feel really excited about our $5 donors and even if you're $5 one time ever, but having ongoing donors, of course having major donors is super helpful to us as an organization. Fat liberation is one of the most underfunded social justice areas and you know, the medicalized anti-fat movement is funded with a whole bunch of zeros behind those numbers. We have a couple of zeros behind the numbers. They have all the zeros. They practically have limitless resources. We don't, because you don't make as much money off of telling people you deserve to be respected in your body as you make off of telling people that they need to lose weight, and so it's just a reality that we are always. You always have to be thinking about funding and resources, and even with our very limited resources, we are still one of the most resourced of the organizations in fat world.

Speaker 3: 35:01

And so, anyway, we were thinking about, like, the stability of monthly givers, because then we know we have something coming in every month, even you know whether it's $5, $50, $500. And so we focused on that for May and we use Lindsay's you know, matching funds to do a $100 incentive. So every new person we signed up we got $100 for that and we did make the. Our goal was 100 new givers or folks who were already giving to upgrade their donation, and we did make it to that goal of 100 about halfway through the day on the last day and I haven't gotten the final numbers from my administrative director yet about whether we went over the 100. But I suspect that we did because we just had, you know, a lot of support and a lot of folks who were waiting for the end of the month to sign up, which is, uh, remember those? You know I've had those days and so, um, uh, I just also want to just say, like I know, aubrey Gordon is a friend of your show and Aubrey was like, tremendously supportive too and getting the word out.

Speaker 3: 36:02

We were so lucky to have so many people, in fact community liking and sharing and you know, sending it out and tapping their friends on the shoulder hey, have you thought about doing this?

Speaker 3: 36:14

Um, but most of those other folks don't have the kind of audience and reach that aubrey has. Um, and I tell aubrey she's like the john oliver of fat community, like when she tells her audience to do stuff, they do it and so um. So I just want to give a special shout out and thank you to Aubrey, you know, on top of the obviously tremendous amount of things we have, to Lindsay and to the volunteers who help us on our fundraising team. Like, I am the only paid staff person at NAFA. It is huge that we have a full time, paid staff person. Some of you who've been following us for a while will know that has only been true for about a year, like before that I was a full time volunteer, just doing side hustles and side gigs and living with my mama and whatever to like make it work. Now I'm a paid, full-time staff person. That is because of donors, like all of you including like literally y'all.

Speaker 3: 36:57

Oh, thank you.

Speaker 2: 36:59

We're both happy to make a donation. I think there was something going on where you guys maybe changed your database or something. And I think there was something going on where you guys maybe changed your database or something. And so that's when I, for somehow, I, somehow I saw a lot of like donating every month.

Speaker 3: 37:13

But now I'm donating every month again. Yeah, what happens is well, we had a successful year end fundraiser at the end of 2022, I think it was where the fundraiser was specifically so that we could invest in a better database for managing donors, but that did mean that people had to manually change to the other database and the beauty of being an ongoing fundraiser, an ongoing donor we. The reason we chose pod is because it stands for passionate ongoing donors.

Speaker 3: 37:41

I love it and so we liked pod because what we like, we thought about like pods of whales and like things, are sort of like all the ways we reclaim bigger animals and that kind of thing. But also, you know, we thought about pods as like the community of safety that people you know formed during the height of the pandemic lockdowns, and also, just like you know, that sort of closeness, the two peas in a pod. There were all these positive association with pod and then we decided it could stand for passionate ongoing donors and so we're happy to have y'all in the pod. We're happy to have any of your listeners.

Speaker 3: 38:17

You can join the pod at any time. You don't have to do it only when there's the matching. And the beauty of doing that is that you don't have to think about it anymore. Right, you sign up. I care about this thing, I've signed up. They just get the money every month and I don't have to think about it. So on those rare occasions when something major happens, like a database change, you have to think about it. You know it is easy to lose a couple folks there, but we've gotten almost all those folks to convert over to the new database and and now they've got, you know, 100 new friends joining them as members of the pod.

Speaker 2: 38:46

So wonderful, really excited about that. So what are y'all focusing next? Like, as far as are you raising money for anything specific? Are there going to be other like fundraising cool ideas like this one.

Speaker 3: 38:59

Well, we're not sure what our next are. Probably our next major sort of fundraising campaign will be the end of year fundraising. But of course lots of folks like to give during Fat Liberation Month. It's a time of high contact with our community. We typically have, you know, 10 to 15 virtual events. Those are all free to the community. That brings a lot of new folks to us. So lots of folks like to give during Fat Liberation Month month.

Speaker 3: 39:30

Of course I will be leveraging my 50th birthday this year to get folks to give to NAFA in honor of my 50th birthday. So those things will be coming up. But you can give to NAFA at any time that you are so moved and have the money to do it right, and if you are so moved and you have the money and you're into fat community. But NAFA is not quite your cup of tea in terms of the work that we are doing. There are lots of organizations you can give to. Some of them are, you know, formally recognized 501c3 charities, like we are, that can give you a tax receipt. Some of them are your you know fat influencer who's helping run mutual aid campaigns for other people or organized local groups in your you know, in your own area that are having FAT events and don't have the capacity to do fundraising or don't have that 501c3. So it won't get the same donors or grants or things. You can always look around and see like, where can I put some money into FAT community? I just really encourage people to do that. And then, in terms of other things coming up, I mean we are gearing up for the relaunch of our blog, our Community Voices blog, which started about four years ago, and we have a new blog editor who actually will be putting out some stuff about them on our social media this week and on our website this weekend. So you know you can meet Samantha, our new blog editor, who's fantastic, and we're going to relaunch the blog later this summer. And then, you know, fat Liberation Month is the next big big thing.

Speaker 3: 40:54

We're always behind the scenes doing work related to our campaign for size freedom, which is the work that we do to support local organizers who introduce legislation related to preventing or providing recourse for size discrimination, and in some cases we help initiate or lift that legislation off the ground. In other cases, other people do that organically and then we come in to support however we can. I'm not sure what the political landscape is going to look like for the fall, given how much people's attention will be on the national elections, especially the presidential election. But I just want to remind folks that like it's really easy to get caught up in focusing all the attention on Trump and Biden and obviously that election is really important, but every election on your ballot is important and the local elections actually impact your lives in tremendous ways. And the reason that we have eight cities in the United States that have some protections against science discrimination is because some small cities have done that right.

Speaker 3: 42:02

It's not we get all this attention when it's New York City. Of course New York is the global city. That's the most recent one. You know that happened last year. You don't get the same attention. You know when it's you know one of the smaller cities on the list. But they're just as important. They're filling in the map, they're providing protection for people in their local communities. They're helping people build community through the grassroots work that goes into passing that legislation. So we will support you. If you're a small town of 500, you want to take that to your city council right, and in your medium-ish town of 200,000 versus, you know, 20 million or whatever, like New York.

Speaker 3: 42:43

So we're always doing that work behind the scenes, even when it's not a legislative session. And then, of course, when it is legislative session we do even more of that work. This year, some of the work that was less glamorous and less media attention getting really unfolded in Colorado because local activists there introduced a bill to add weight and height to the protected classes in Colorado school bullying laws. So there's not a statewide law that covers everything in civil rights but at least in the world of education in Colorado now schools that are doing programming around anti-bullying have to include weight and height in that anti-bullying programming, and that's huge. That's not true in very many places. And also in Colorado we did a lot of work around testimony and organizing related to a bill there that was seeking to ensure that weight management treatments in quotation marks.

Speaker 3: 43:40

Treatments in quotation marks because I don't think weight management is a treatment for a disease. That's not part of how we believe fatness works, but that is how the medical establishment has set up that fatness works. And so you know the pharmaceutical companies are doing a tremendous amount of strategizing and funding to try to pass laws to ensure that weight loss treatments and most notably, drugs like Wigovi which is what most people just say is Zimbic can be covered by insurance. And the problem with that is, you know, as fat liberationists, we really deeply believe in body autonomy and we deeply believe that insurance companies should not be what's controlling what you and your doctor think you need in terms of medical care. And also we have deep concerns about the development of these drugs, the way that the drugs are marketed, who the drugs are marketed to, whether they're controlled well, what the long-term effects are going to be, without being able to make a real informed consent decision that is based on good research, that starts from a weight-neutral perspective, not from a how-can-we-find-the-miracle-cure-and-make-all-this-billions-of-dollars perspective. So it's very complicated.

Speaker 3: 44:56

It's super complicated, thinking about this piece that has to do with insurance versus pharmaceuticals in terms of this coverage and our strategy.

Speaker 3: 45:06

In conjunction with our colleagues and good friends at FLARE, the fat legal organization, our strategy is to do as much harm reduction as possible so that we're not going on record saying don't make insurance companies do things, but we are going on record saying don't allow insurance companies to then force fat people to do things they don't want to do because they're mad that they now have to cover these expensive drugs.

Speaker 3: 45:30

Yeah, so what we don't want is, you know, we don't want insurance companies saying sort of like uh, you forced us to cover this thousand dollar a month shot. Well, we're going to save money somewhere else by making these fat people take this thousand dollar a month shot so that they can't have this other medical treatment unless they lose weight. Right, we don't want any of that sort of like gatekeeping of other medical procedures based on the flawed uh classifications of the bmi. Hey, yeah, and so our whole strategy is like harm reduction, to like get into these hearings, say the things that need to be said about like. We should be questioning the motives here, we should be questioning who's behind things and we should be um ensuring that, if this legislation passes, that it includes things that require informed consent and you know, and um and screening for eating disorders before you prescribe these drugs to people and like other things that can. When we try as much as we can just like get some amendments in that just say stuff about size discrimination in general or whatever.

Speaker 3: 46:29

So, anyway, all that to say, we are always doing work with the Campaign for Size Freedom, even when you're not seeing us do a call to action to contact your people or whatever, we're always doing that kind of work behind the scenes.

Speaker 2: 46:42

Thank you for all that work and all that explanation, and I'm going to take us a little bit on a left kind of a left turn here, so it's a little bit more back to the Ozepics and Wagobe's of the world. But the way I understand it, they were created for people who have diabetes type two and I've understood that it does work really well for diabetics and it can bring people's A1C down pretty quickly and anyway, and that people are using it for weight loss as well because they notice this correlation. But the question I wanted to ask and I wonder if you know the answer to this but is it true that once the insurance companies got forced to giving away or selling insulin for only $35, that's when they said, okay, now we need to find something else to make tons of profit from?

Speaker 3: 47:31

That's how these Wigobies of the world came about. I think it's a it's, I think that's maybe a little bit of an oversimplification. I mean the where pharmaceutical companies set prices versus where insurance companies or advocacy organizations like the aarp or things like that. Like how all of that affects drug pricing is a little bit more complicated than just sort of like, they told us, we had to make this cheaper, so we made this other thing more expensive. I mean you, there's a high demand for weight loss product, so even if insulin still cost an arm and a leg to get it, they could still price these weight loss drugs, especially once they've been approved as weight loss drugs, which you know. Some of Glutide, which is Ozepic, yeah, is um, uh, is Wagovi as approved as a weight loss drug, right? So as Ozempic it is not approved as a weight loss drug. That is just a side effect of some people taking it for diabetes, but at a higher dose, as Wagovi it is. You know it's gone through the FDA approval process and so, um, you could price those drugs at whatever you want to and people are going to try to get them and people who can afford them at those prices are going to get them at those prices and, as we are seeing with these drugs, people who can't afford to get them at those prices. Some of them are going to advocate for legislative changes or policy changes that help bring those prices down or make insurance companies cover them. Other people are just going to get knockoff versions that may or may not be dangerous, that may or not be quote unquote effective, like you know. So there's like the market is there. You don't have to be strong armed into selling weight loss drugs at a higher price to make up for something else, because if you could still sell insulin for, you know, for 40 pounds of gold, then you you would also still be able to for 40 pounds of gold, then you would also still be able to get 40 pounds of gold for the quote unquote weight loss drug right? So, yes and no, there's always.

Speaker 3: 49:29

Anytime their profits are cut somewhere, they're going to look for someplace else to make up the profits. Weight loss products is an easy place to make up the profits because our society has demonstrated again and again that whatever the dangers are, whatever the side effects are, whatever the research actually says versus what the headlines say, despite all those things, people will still spend the money. They'll find ways to get the money, it'll still happen and you'll still make your money. So I think that they're pricing it at what they can get away with pricing it at, and there's a demand for that. If they were saying this is $1,000 a shot and people were like I don't care, because it's easy and accommodating and accessible to be fat in the world, so I don't need that, then they wouldn't be able to sell it for $1, a shot. Right and um, you know, because some of it is health.

Speaker 3: 50:25

When it comes to weight loss products, whether they are pharmaceutical products that are, you know, approved by our government and christened as the next big thing by the media and whatever, or they are the sort of like wellness supplements and things like that, that like whatever. That all from SlimFast shakes all the way to Ozempic people will do it and people will do it whether there's actual evidence of it working or not, and people will ask very few questions about the evidence that is presented to them. If you cause even a little bit to look at the results from the actual research on drugs like Ozempic or their competitors, you know versions Zetbald and Majaro and you know when you pause to look at the research, the headline of like miracle drug eliminates obesity is actually much different than that eliminates obesity is actually much different than that. So I tell people all the time that you know, as the research continues to unfold, we get more and more. I think folks, you know I always look to to what fat study scholars and advocates are saying and people like reagan chastain, who I think is also a friend of your podcast and who does a lot of research, does a lot of like breaking down research articles. If y'all don't know, if your listeners don't know reagan's work, she does a sub stack called the health and um, the weight and health care sub stack, and a lot of her articles focus on here's this, you know. Here's this headline about this research, but here's what the research actually says. We're. Here are the questions we should be asking about the research, because the headlines will say stuff that will make you think that if everybody started taking Ozempic today, there would be no fat people tomorrow. That's not even what their own best research says, like the manufacturer's own research does not even say anything remotely close to that. It says a certain percentage of people will lose a certain amount of weight and we hear that as, oh my God, the miracle is here, the cure for fatness is here.

Speaker 3: 52:26

If you're a person who doesn't believe fatness inherently needs a cure, then you're already going to be a little bit more skeptical of that. But if you're a person with a lot of internalized anti-fatness, or even a person who's working on dismantling their internalized anti-fatness, or even a person who's working on dismantling their internalized anti-fatness but still lives in a really anti-fat world, you're looking for strategies to help you survive. And so if they tell you this is a strategy to help you survive, and especially if they can convince you that everything else about your health is dependent on this, you're going to spend the money. You're going to find a way to spend the money. They don't have to give you a coupon to get you to buy it. This is not our, this is not arby's five for five. Well, you're only eating that if it's five dollars.

Speaker 3: 53:07

Right, this is like people will prioritize their spending on this and it's because they feel like their lives depend on it, and because that they're right. Your life depends on you being able to survive this culture, and if you believe that the only way you can survive this culture physically, socially, emotionally is to lose weight, you're going to invest in that. So part of our work is about getting people to like. Let's put a pin in that for a minute and ask some questions about, first of all, whether you even need to do that to be healthier mentally, spiritually, emotionally, physically, whether you even need to lose weight for that, but also, if you still believe you do, is this even doing anything remotely close to what they're telling you it's doing? Because y'all got to stop reading headlines and not asking questions.

Speaker 3: 54:13

I could go on Wegovy tomorrow and if I experience the absolute top of what their research says, people experience what I would be a. That's if we're only looking at whether it's, you know, effective as a weight loss drug or what a lot of advocates and, like Deb Burgard always reminds me, like it's really. We're talking about weight suppression. We're talking about forcing your weight down and trying to hold it down against whatever your body is doing. It down against whatever your body is doing. Um, but even if you're willing to play that game, their stats don't the the stats and the headlines are very different true, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 54:47

So we probably need to get started. Start thinking about wrapping this up, murph um, we probably do. It's been so fun, though I know I can listen to you all day but, murph, is there anything that you want to make sure we we bring up or talk about, or any of our questions on our list that you want to cover.

Speaker 3: 55:03

Is there any other soapbox? We want to get tires to get up on and rant for our listeners.

Speaker 4: 55:08

We don't see it as ranting. Yeah, no, we have this new little sexclusive interview, kind of questions, they're not super. We don't expect like a really long answer, they're just kind of questions, they're not super. We don't expect like a really long answer, they're just kind of fun little you know um. So let me ask one for you um one body part that you like to have kissed okay.

Speaker 3: 55:30

so erica badu has this song. I want somebody to walk up behind me and kiss me on my neck and breathe Ooh, that was not the note. That's not how I'm going to get somebody to do it through my singing. It's not going to happen that way, but someone should put that song on and be inspired. Is what I'm saying, absolutely.

Speaker 3: 55:52

Inspired by Erykah Badu singing it, not by me singing it. My apologies to your audience for attempting that moment, but yeah, that would be really good If I could have a little of that in my life these days. I would appreciate that.

Speaker 4: 56:03

Mm-hmm, absolutely Well. Thank you so much for your time and just sharing your perspective and your knowledge, and it's just always a delight and I always feel more inspired every time we get to chat.

Speaker 3: 56:19

Absolutely delight and I always feel more inspired every time we we get to chat. Absolutely, I'm really grateful that y'all bring things to your audience that are not as directly about sex, because, like it's all, it's all still about sex, right? Like, the better you are able to live in the world and and be safe and accommodated and feel good in the world, the more you're going to have the energy and the mental space to have the kind of sex and the kind of sex life you want, right. If all your energy is going to being discriminated against and dealing with microaggressions, you're not look like. We want less O words and more O words.

Speaker 2: 56:56

right, it's different O words, they're just different O words.

Speaker 3: 56:58

More focus on the other O words. We Different O words, they're just different O words.

Speaker 4: 57:00

More focused on the other O words. We need to turn that into a bumper sticker.

Speaker 2: 57:04

for sure, that is fantastic, I'm going to need some merch man. And also I want to say again thank you, for I know you didn't mean to, you didn't make it happen yourself in particular, but thank you for wearing that shirt Glorifying Obesity that you bought from my merch store and, yeah, glorifying obesity that you bought from my merch store and um, yeah, for the link back from time magazine to my store.

Speaker 3: 57:27

Pretty awesome. Thank you, tigers, and I hope that y'all saw some traffic. I think like I love wearing that shirt and I I always tell people when I talk about the o words and why we do and do not use them and in which context we use them, under protest and whatever. One of the things I always tell people is that one of the places I will use it to. I will use it in critical analysis of that language. I will use it. I will use overweight to talk about rapper heavy D, because he's one of my favorite rappers of all time and he always used to refer to himself as the overweight lover. And and I will use it to reclaim the term glorifying obesity, because I am glorious. Yes, you are.

Speaker 2: 58:01

Tigress. You know, one thing we didn't talk about is tell people where they can find all the NAFA stuff, all the socials, all the NAFA N-A-A-F-A dot org, Correct, and where else can they find? You Find NAFA.

Speaker 3: 58:14

We are NAFA official on almost everything. We are not active on almost everything. We're going to bring something to tiktok for y'all one day, but this is not the day. But we are most active on instagram. We um have a pretty active presence on facebook. We are on uh on twitter mostly for just resharing stuff, and we're developing a presence on linkedin. And, of course, um, we'll be debuting our. We did all this work behind the scenes with pinterest, but we don't really have a um uh, an outward facing presence on pinterest uh, but we are in the process of of planning all of that. So soon you will see us pinning.

Speaker 3: 58:49

You will see us tweeting. You will see us, I you know, you already see us ig and um and facebooking and then, but it's almost always NAFA official, n-a-a-f-a official, and on Facebook it is facebookcom slash. Equality at every size.

Speaker 2: 59:06

Perfect, thank you. We definitely want everybody to know how to connect with your community and have our communities connect with one another. I'm sure there's lots of overlap, but so so important. I really appreciate everybody that works with and for and volunteers for, nafa. I know it takes a large team of people and I really, I really appreciate all of them and all of you and, of course, tigress. I appreciate your, your work all the time. So I just want to mention, or Murph, you want to mention, where people can find us.

Speaker 4: 59:32

Oh, we are big sexy chatcom. You can find us at big sexy chat on all the socials.

Speaker 2: 59:42

Um, and what is our new email address? Crystal big sexy chat pod at gmail. Fantastic, yeah, so easy peasy. And yeah, we, we're so grateful to all of you. We really appreciate when our community shares our podcast with other rad fatties. We really need the shares and the subscriptions are really helpful too. So, whatever you can do, but we always love it when you share our stuff because you just never know who you're going to reach and who you might help, and we just appreciate that. So I think that's it, unless anybody else has anything else I want to say. See you later, alligator, after a while crocodile, keep it real, happy seal.