Bethany Berkshire (00:06):
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Feminism NOW, the podcast from the National Organization for Women. I'm senior producer, Bethany Berkshire. Feminism is about equality, equality of opportunity for all genders. But the world doesn't look equal to people who are in larger bodies. People in larger bodies, which medical experts describe as people with overweight or people with obesity, face persistent stigma. They make less money and get fewer promotions. And that's before they have to face all the people constantly telling them to lose weight.
(00:39):
And according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, by body mass index, 42% of the people in the United States have obesity. And a further 30% are overweight. That's most of the people in this country. Is it really uplifting women if we can't uplift women of every size? Today, NOW's national president, Christian F. Nunes, speaks with Tigress Osborne, the executive director of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance about bodies and how body acceptance and feminism go together. And while we're here, we would love to hear your thoughts. How do you feel about your body as a feminist? Contact us at feminismnow@now.org. And now, let's get to the interview.
Christian F. Nunes (01:27):
Hello. Hello, everyone. I'm Christian F. Nunes, the national president of the National Organization for Women. We are here this season, season three, to uplift women. And women come in all shapes and sizes. And I think it's so important that we are having this conversation. And that is why I'm so thrilled today to be here with the executive director of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, Tigress Osborne.
Tigress Osborne (01:57):
Hi. Thanks for having me.
Christian F. Nunes (01:59):
Yes, Tigress, thank you so much for joining the show. I'm so excited to have this opportunity to talk more and explore more of the work that you're doing, because I think it's so important to really talk about size acceptance and also just really to talk about and just address the importance of stigma that comes with body and fat acceptance. And so, let's just get into this conversation. I wanted to start off by just the words that your organization uses and that people use when we talk about acceptance. You're the director of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. But many times when people hear that word, in fact, it brings so many uncomfortable feelings for people, and we often hear what terms overweight and obesity. And so, what kinds of words would you and people at NAAFA like to see us use and why?
Tigress Osborne (02:53):
Well, we certainly understand people's relationship with the word fat, especially if they've not yet encountered a fat acceptance or fat liberation space. But we also don't talk often enough about people's same reactions to words like overweight and obesity. We use the word fat and always have. NAAFA has always had the word fat in our name. We use it because we believe it should be used as a neutral descriptor of people. It should be something we can say the same way that you say that you are a brunette, or that you are tall, or that you have blue eyes or brown eyes. But because it has not, we always want to acknowledge that even though we are trying to change the world by using it in this positive way, it can be challenging for folks to hear it and to use it because they've only heard it in traumatizing ways.
(03:44):
And so, what we hope we're doing is being part of that change where people can reclaim the word and feel very affirmed by it. We actually have deep concerns about the pathologization of fat. And so, the medicalized words, overweight and obesity, are words that we avoid using in fat advocacy work. Folks will often be using that terminology because they think, "Well, I don't want to use an insult word like fat, and I don't want to use a euphemism like fluffy or big bones because those feel inaccurate or they feel silly to some people or whatever." And so, people often think they're doing the most respectful thing by using one of the medical terms. But in fact, there are many, many people who find those terms to be slurs and who understand that even though it's the medical terminology, there's a lot of historic medical terminology that we don't use anymore because people think it's disrespectful. So, I just want to put that out there for folks to really be thinking about how they use all the words, not just to be thinking about how they use fat, how they use all of them.
(04:43):
Right now it feels like pretty widely accepted to use the term higher weight instead of fat or obesity if you're looking for an alternative to both of those. Plus size is very, very popular. Although I do caution folks that because plus size comes from women's fashion, it can feel really gendered to some folks. So, depending on the setting, maybe not. And I like to always use the superlative of the adjectives that mean larger or bigger. So, instead of large or big, I like to use larger, or higher, or bigger because it implies a spectrum. The word overweight implies a fixed point. There's one weight that everybody should be and you're either over it or under it. And so, I like to use the words that are a little less fixed and that it implied that spectrum.
Christian F. Nunes (05:29):
Okay, Tigress, I want to unpack this a lot because you just gave us a lot, right?
Tigress Osborne (05:33):
Yes, it was.
Christian F. Nunes (05:36):
I want to unpack-
Tigress Osborne (05:36):
And thank you for letting me just run with it.
Christian F. Nunes (05:37):
Yeah, no problem. But I want to unpack when we talk about using fat as a neutral term or descriptor. Because like we're talking about for so long throughout history, it's been seen so negatively it's been seen to demean people. So, how do we shift to use that as a neutral descriptor? And what is it if we're using it as a neutral descriptor? I think we need to let the audience and our listeners know what that means.
Tigress Osborne (06:05):
Sure. Well, I would point out that we have historically used fat as an insult, but we've also actually historically used fat as a positive descriptor of many other things besides human bodies and sometimes of human bodies. You got a big fat paycheck. Somebody gave you a big fat hug. And so, it is more of a nuanced word than we sometimes pause to think about, especially if it has been used in hurtful ways against us.
(06:31):
I also like to ask folks to think about other terminology, especially with other identity groups, that has been historically used negatively that people have reclaimed and used in positive ways. And I'm thinking of words like Black or words like queer. And of course our identities are all different, and fat is also a physical status, not just a sociocultural or sociopolitical identity. We need to take a little bit of nuance into account when we're making comparisons with other groups. But it is something to think about in terms of how some people can take a tremendous amount of pride in a word that has been used in the past to hurt them. And for many of us, that is really powerful. I know that it is hard to stay neutral about the word fat in a world where the word fat is so projected upon folks as a negative thing, but the more of us who use it in those other ways, the more we can own it in those other ways.
Christian F. Nunes (07:31):
Well, I love what you say about reclaiming the word. It's like taking ownership back of it and not letting people make it sound like it doesn't have worth. And I think it's a big part because I know for myself, I'm almost 6'1 and I'm a full-figure woman. I'm size 18, and I'm very prideful in my appearance and what I look like, and I have no problem saying that. But it's really interesting to see how people sometimes are surprised that I am okay acknowledging that part of myself. It's not shameful for me.
Tigress Osborne (08:08):
Right. Well, because we are so used to using fat actually as a proxy word for something else. Sometimes we literally mean like that person's body is a certain way. But what we often mean is that person's body is a certain way, therefore, that person must be fill in the blank with some other negative stereotype. Lazy, stupid doesn't care about themselves, unhealthy. We don't just mean that person is visibly fat. We mean that there's something we're seeing or something we're attributing to their fat that is actually about their morality. And some of that, and especially about health, is actually shaped by capitalism and by white supremacy.
Christian F. Nunes (08:52):
Absolutely.
Tigress Osborne (08:53):
I hope that your listeners, if they're not already familiar with the work of Dr. Sabrina Strings, will get familiar with her work around the history of the connection between racism, between white supremacy and our ideas about fat. How our ideas about fat bodies are constructed in part as a way to juxtapose the savage other who is curvier or who has more fat on their body with white perfection, and with white abstinence, and with an idealized white womanhood. And how much of that is about upholding racial differences in order to justify slavery. A lot of people have not ever thought about that. But even if you don't know that specific history, you can certainly look at mainstream beauty and health standards and see how they are shaped by idealized whiteness opposed to everything else.
(09:45):
Body mass index, the tool that is used by the medical establishment to designate people as medically fat, starts with looking for what is the ideal man centuries ago in a European setting. So, who is that leaving out? Our American ideas about who is too fat medically and in terms of health date back to early 1900s, life insurance mortality charts that are based on BMI or that are shaped based on a population of people, again, who has life insurance at that time. And also colonialism, the idea of who is the conqueror, what the ideal American looks like historically and contemporarily. And our ideas about body, shape, and size and performance are all connected to those things.
Christian F. Nunes (10:35):
I'm so glad that you're bringing this up because in our society, and our country and our world, so many decisions, so many policies and standards, majority of them are based on these very colonial standards, these white patriarchal standards.
Tigress Osborne (10:54):
All of this stuff is intersecting. So, the way the systemic anti-fatness works exponentially impacts Black and Brown folks, folks with queer identities, sexual orientation or gender, sometimes older folks, folks who are also disabled. If you've got these other identities or other socio-political groupings that you're part of that experience challenge in this culture, then those are layering on top of each other. And anti-fatness is really pervasive in our culture for all people, but especially multiply marginalized people and especially the fattest people. Anti-fatness affects everybody. If you live in a culture where you are always told that fat is bad, fat is unhealthy, fat is deadly, fat is immoral, then you are constantly under the pressure to not be fat, to not get fat, to not stay fat, to not associate with fat. And that affects everybody. If things are assumed you medically because you are a larger-bodied person, then you may be missing the clues to what is actually going on with you medically.
(12:00):
And if people are assumed about you medically because you are a smaller-bodied person, you also may be missing the clues to what is going on with you medically. People with lower BMIs are underdiagnosed with metabolic health problems that they have that we associate with fatness, even though people across the size spectrum have them. So, doctors will not be looking for some of those things in smaller-bodied patients. They will be assuming that larger-bodied patients have those conditions or chat health challenges regardless of whether we actually do. And so, all across the spectrum, we're getting it wrong with a lot of people by using tools that make assumptions that are just by measuring our body's size, we can automatically know something about an individual person's health. And that's one of the greatest challenges that we face around dismantling systemic anti-fatness. And it's one of the greatest benefits to people of all sizes.
Christian F. Nunes (12:57):
Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm curious, one of the stereotypes I often hear is about the fact that fat people can't be healthy. Our people in larger bodies can't be healthy. Can you talk about this stereotype, this misbelief a little bit more, and a little bit more about where this comes from and then how do we dismantle it?
Tigress Osborne (13:19):
Sure. Cultural assumptions, and ideas, and understandings impact our medical establishment and vice-versa. So, we have a starting place for our medical understandings that comes from some cultural bias. And if we're always looking for how can we get rid of fat and how is fat unhealthy? Versus starting with more neutral questions like what does fat do and how does fat do things in the body? Then we're likely to have a lot of medical research that keeps leaning into the idea that all fat people are unhealthy. And one of the things we don't think about often enough is how medical discrimination leads a lot of larger bodied people to medical avoidance. You've got higher percentages of larger bodies in Black and Brown communities who already face a lot of medical barriers and medical discrimination, and then you have fat people avoiding healthcare because of the way that they're treated in the healthcare system.
(14:17):
So then you measure fat people's health and you blame it all on their fat, and you don't consider any of those other factors, and you don't consider the sociopolitical factors around access to exercise, access to healthful foods, those kinds of things. So, we're talking about those things a little bit more these days and the medical establishment is even talking about them a little bit more. But again, the idea that all fat people inherently have a medical condition is something that more people could test within the medical system than the media leads us to believe most of the time. One example of this is the fact that when the American Medical Association designated obesity a disease in the United States, they did that against the advice of their own internal committee who was looking at obesity and whether or not it's really a disease and said, "We don't think that it's actually an appropriate designation." And then the association did it anyway.
(15:14):
And I think that's really interesting. It raises a lot of questions for me about why would that happen? What influenced that decision? Even the American Medical Association has come out and said... they came out with a report and said, "We admit, BMI is historically racist and highly problematic. But a lot of doctors really find it useful, so we're going to keep on using that. But we're going to tell them that they could maybe add some other things to measure fat people in other ways. Measure their waste or think about other things that are going on with them." So, don't just use BMI, but they continue to use BMI even though we're acknowledging that things that fat liberationists have been saying for decades have actually been right this whole time. It's hard to pry it out of people's hands.
(15:56):
And so, that just shows to me how culturally entrenched it's and how systemically entrenched it is. And so, I just want to be clear too, because I want to make sure, we're always thinking about how anti-fatness is connected with ableism, and our fears of becoming disabled and how we think we can prevent disability and death by keeping the "perfect body." I do want to say there should not be stigma involved in having a medical designation, a medical condition. So, the fact that my fat body is considered to be unhealthy is not inherently the problem. If there are actual connections between fat and health, I want to know about those things because I am a fat person and I want to know how it is affecting my health. What I don't want is for things to be assumed about my health if that's not what the science actually says.
(16:54):
And a lot of the science that we believe that especially lay people, just like average Americans, a lot of the science that we believe shows that fat is deadly actually is correlations between fat and conditions. It's not a causal relationship. It's not fat causes you to have heart disease. It's that fat and heart disease exist in a lot of the same people. Well, so does Blackness and heart disease. So, does maleness and heart disease. There are correlations with everything. That is part of why we are concerned about larger body people's health with other kinds of identities and other kinds of life conditions as well.
(17:39):
So, the socio-political factors that lead to what somebody's health looks like, we scapegoat fat for all of them whenever it is convenient to do so, and whenever it's profitable to do so. If there were no money in trying to get people to lose weight through commercial diet programs, or through pharmaceutical assistance, or through other medical assistance like weight loss surgery, are there still as many entities trying to get us to lose weight? Because so much of that is interwoven with the medical establishment. And so, much of our medical establishment is interwoven with profit-driven motives, not health-driven motives.
Christian F. Nunes (18:17):
So, this has been such a fascinating conversation. We have to take a quick break, Tigress, and then we'll be right back for a minute. We're going to go to our action now.
(18:33):
It's November, and that means it's Native American Heritage month. Indigenous people in North America have endured and continue to endure centuries of injustice. In our history, native peoples cultures, identities and governments were not welcomed as a part of our nation. Instead, they were seen as a threat. Indigenous people were murdered, displace and forced into assimilation through boarding schools. Even now, indigenous women face murder rates at 10 times the national average. At the National Organization for Women, we know that one month of commemoration cannot make up for the historical and ongoing oppression. But we do know that commemoration can make us learn about indigenous history and culture. We can uplift the voices of indigenous women and demand improvement for their economic conditions and safety. For your action now, find out which indigenous people lived where you live now. Then head to firstnations.org/knowledge-center, where you can learn more about Native American issues and culture. And now, back to our show.
(19:50):
I want to talk a little bit more about how racism intersects with larger bodies. And I want to bring up something for the listeners to help guide this journey. We're going to take a little bit. I don't know if you remember the story of Sarah Bartman from back like 1700s. Did you ever hear about this?
Tigress Osborne (20:11):
Yeah, I know exactly where you're going with this.
Christian F. Nunes (20:13):
Okay, so for the listeners, there was a slave, a woman, Sarah Bartman. She had very large breasts, very large. And when white colonizers came around to Africa, it was something that was unbelievable to them. They decided that they would make her act and take her around the world as a circus act. And they enslaved her, put her in cages and put her around for people to stare at her, and watch her, and made her into the circus act because your behind was so large, which now people buy, I want to say. But back then they made it a mockery, and they would have people come buy tickets, and she was just ridiculed for her body.
Tigress Osborne (20:57):
She was ridiculed for her body, but she was also observed with fascination. And I think that a lot of Europeans, that's how they justified witnessing Sarche. Sarah was sort of the English name that they called her. I think the correct pronunciation of her name was Sarche. I think it's really important for us to remember that the dehumanization of fat bodies and particularly fat Black bodies, and her as a fat Black woman, people justify it as not being dehumanization. They justify it as learning more. And that is also important for us to note that this is learning about bodies without the consent of the subject or with coercion of the subject even.
Christian F. Nunes (21:46):
There was no consent in this.
Tigress Osborne (21:48):
Right.
Christian F. Nunes (21:48):
This was servitude, this was enslavement. And I always question the fascination part to me because to me, it's more people use that because to me it's like how is that fascination when you're objectifying another human being for your learning?
Tigress Osborne (22:04):
Yes. Yes.
Christian F. Nunes (22:08):
That's not fascination, but we know this is where we've started. We know this is what's happened, but how do we now push forward?
Tigress Osborne (22:19):
Well, I mean, and after we still use our historical name, which includes the word acceptance, but we operate in our work from a fat liberation framework. And the difference there being is acceptance is the low bar. Just let us be, just accept the fact that fat people exist and just let us exist. Where of course, liberation is the bar where we are existing freely and within our rights, and having equitable and respectful treatment in the society, and getting to live the lives that we dream for ourselves regardless of what our body size is. And so, there are all these different movements or labels for movements. Body positivity is the one that folks are most familiar with often. And body positivity is rooted in the work of fat liberationists, Black liberationists, Black women and femmes, and the civil rights movement and the feminist movement, queer folks, disabled folks.
(23:14):
There's all this stuff that is at the roots of what body positivity is. But we know body positivity as what happened on Instagram and Tumblr in the early 2010s. And that movement started as more radical and a more about liberation in a communal way, like everyone's liberation. And then whittled this way back down to looking like something a lot closer to mainstream health and beauty standards and a lot more based in people's individual feelings about their body. Do you feel positive about your own body? And any pursuit that you make that makes you feel positive about your own body is good because it's positive for you, even if it's part of these collectively oppressive frameworks.
(24:02):
And so, we don't really use the term body positivity in our work other than talking about that historical context. We hope you can feel positive about your body, but we understand that in a world where systemic discrimination is enacted upon your body because of your size, your color, your gender, whatever, that being like, "Yay, bodies," is aspirational, but not always possible. And so, we identify as fat liberationists at NAAFA. And personally, I identify as a fat liberationist because I think the framework there is about undoing systemic injustice.
Christian F. Nunes (24:39):
Yeah, that's just so great. And I know also one of the things you also do is part of in doing the systemic injustice is working on passing legislation to make sure that cities and places are not having size discrimination. And you recently just made sure that New York City banned size discrimination.
Tigress Osborne (24:59):
We worked in coalition with a lot of folks, and we actually didn't initiate the law in New York City. And I want to make sure credit where credit is due to the New York City Councilors, first, Brad Lander, and then ultimately Sean Abreu and all of their colleagues who supported the bill. And Lydia Green, who's a New York district leader who helped shape the bill, our friends at RWDSU and retail action. Folks in the labor movement, really working on what size discrimination looks like in their industries. And our colleagues at FLARE, the Fat, Legal, Rights, Advocacy, Education project who help us make sure the language of bills is the most effective.
(25:37):
But yes, New York City passed this law, and it went into effect last November, right around this time of the year last year, to ban size discrimination in housing, public accommodation and employment. So, it's not the most comprehensive law in the world. There are still other areas we could protect people under the law. And we very much understand that everything that happens in the political system is not the only route to liberation. But we do believe on doing some within the system work around changing laws. So, we work through our campaign for Size Freedom, which works with local organizers to try to support them if they initiate laws, and then to try to initiate laws in some places to get more of those laws on the books.
Christian F. Nunes (26:23):
That is awesome. And how can people get involved if they want to get involved with this campaign?
Tigress Osborne (26:28):
The first step is to sign our petition at our website, naafa.org. And if you go to /sizefreedom, you'll find our size freedom. Petition and some more information about this if you want to do a little deeper dive into what some of the existing laws are and things like that. And if you sign the petition, not only does that add to the collective show of support, it also helps us contact you if people in your geographic area start to work on a law. And so, that is the best starting place. And then of course, if there are local fat liberation groups near you, you can just Google that or use that liberation hashtag to start seeing places. We're working on collecting some resources to make it easier for people to find each other. But right now, you can go on Instagram, you could go on Google, you could go on TikTok and use some of those hashtags and start finding people who are local to you.
Christian F. Nunes (27:19):
Wonderful. So, Tigress for coming to the end. So, I have one last question for you. So, once again, our show season three is about women uplifting women. So, can you tell us how you feel your work uplifts women?
Tigress Osborne (27:34):
Our work uplifts women by helping folks see that there's an alternative to the diet culture messaging that they have lived under their entire lives. That you don't have to wait for a different body in order to live the life that you want to be living now. That of course, there are systemic barriers, but there are ways to get involved in help changing those. And there's an entire community of people who will support you in facing those systemic barriers.
(28:06):
And we know that women and femmes have done a lot of the leadership work of fat liberation. We're seeing more folks with other trans identities, and gender identities, and cisgender men, we're seeing more of those folks get involved. But it's women and femmes who've done a lot of the leadership work in this particular area. And it's really exciting to be able to look around and see women doing that kind of leadership work and partnering with folks in other social justice movements to uplift each other, and to support each other, and to try to make a better world. So, we know one of the things that especially fat women need, is representation of themselves. This is a place where you can get it in this world of folks who believe that your fat doesn't have to stop you. You can be exposed to more people who are living their lives according.
Christian F. Nunes (29:02):
Wonderful. Thank you so much, Tigress. I appreciate all the work you're doing, your community, your coalition, the work you're doing for fat liberation, fat acceptance. This has been a great conversation.
Tigress Osborne (29:15):
I'm so, so excited that you invited me, and I'm also very appreciative of the work that NOW is doing. So, thank you.
Christian F. Nunes (29:23):
Absolutely. Thank you so much. Okay, listeners, you have heard it from Tigress Osborne. Thank you.
Bethany Berkshire (29:33):
Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast this week as we talk about the intersection of feminism and body size. If you liked it, we'd love it if you liked and subscribed to the show. You can also send us your thoughts and questions at Feminismnow@now.org. Head to now.org to read up on NOW's core issues and our approach to advancing women's equality. Together, we can make a difference. I'm Bethany Berkshire. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you soon.
