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White women think we have a monopoly on body size oppression. We’ve all heard (and probably repeated at some point) the racist stereotype that fatness is more accepted in black and brown communities. This is simply not true, and we white people should get out of the way and let fat POC tell their own stories about
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It’s kind of our culture’s greatest tradition to tell each other how to act and what’s good for us. “Just be confident!” is one of those vague directives that we’ve all heard a hundred times–it’s the apparent solution to all of our problems. Episode 24: “Just Be Confident!” and Other Useless Advice for Fat People
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“Or I could just say whatever and open a plus size thrift shop…” What do you do when you’re a fashion-forward, business-minded woman who is fed up by how difficult plus size shopping can be? You create something different. That’s what Cat Polivoda did when she created Cat’s Closet. It started with just selling her
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Between TFL episodes there are often stories about fatness and activism that I want to comment on, but most of the time they’re just quick little things that are either too small or too new to talk about in a full episode. Some of these are things that I feel are actually incredibly significant for our movement,
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Elizabeth Terry was a big kid who started attending Weight Watchers meetings with her mom before she even hit puberty. She learned body shame before she learned algebra, and she carried that shame with her throughout middle and high school. In her first email to me, her opening line was “I have had the wonderful
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So This American Life is rerunning their “Tell Me I’m Fat” episode from last summer this week, and I keep seeing people discover this episode on NPR’s facebook page and talk about how life-changing it was for them. But if you’ve heard Episode 4 of The Fat Lip, you know that I didn’t think it
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The fat positive community was shaken up last week when Ashley Nell Tipton, one of our few fat representatives in mainstream entertainment, announced that she had weight loss surgery last month. But the community’s shock and hurt wasn’t for the reason you think. Sure it smarts to hear that we’re losing one of our tiny
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If you’re a fat person (particularly a fat woman,) you are no stranger to the “I like big women” comment. It’s awkward, and it often feels like the speaker feels entitled to special privileges or access based on this admission. For fat people this can be a wholly unwelcome message. We want to date people who want
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Cheryl Fuller is a Jungian psychotherapist and a fat woman, and throughout her career she has confronted the common approaches to working with fat people in therapy. Her new book, The Fat Lady Sings: A Psychological Exploration of the Cultural Fat Complex and Its Effects, explores the trauma of fat stigma and the troubling practice of recommending
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I recently got an email from a listener asking for my thoughts on My 600Lb Life, a TLC show about very fat people, most of whom are pursuing weight loss surgery. I have been thinking about this show for a while, but my problem with shows like these have nothing to do with the fat people
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Alison covered superfat air travel extensively in her blog post (Read it here!) but we wanted to take an episode to go over some of the most important things to keep in mind when you’re traveling by air. In this episode we talk about how to prepare for your flight, how to get through security,
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In the last couple of weeks especially, we’ve seen millions upon millions of people around the world protesting the actions of the new US president. Immediately following the election, Ann Coulter tweeted in response to protests that “without fat girls, there would be no protests.” And for once I think she’s absolutely right! But some
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This year is already pretty intense, so it’s been hard to figure out how to talk about fat positivity lately—it just feels like there are so many other things of critical importance right now. But making fat peoples’ lives better matters and it’s a worthy cause, so we have to keep going. In today’s episode
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The holidays can be a real shitshow when you’re fat. Travel is terrible, family dinners are a minefield, and sometimes you just have to find a place to hide and cry. Or read a book on your cat, apparently? In today’s episode Alison and I are talking about strategies to get through the holidays, no
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Believe me, no one was more hopeful than I was when I learned that NBC’s new show, This Is Us, featured a very fat woman in a lead role. But we’ve learned time and time again that mainstream media doesn’t treat us well, and this time is no exception. This is Us treats its fat
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Fat dating (and sex and love) is just a subject that mainstream culture doesn’t talk about. If popular media were to be believed, fat people barely date at all because we’re too busy dieting and hating ourselves. But fat people of all sizes, cultures, abilities, and orientations do date and have sex and fall in
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In the last year or two, the Body Positive movement has had some incredible momentum, and it’s even getting some mainstream media coverage. But is the actual message of body positivity actually getting through? It’s not hard to find a tweet that says “I’m all for #bodypositivity as long as you’re healthy” or “#bodypositive does
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What do you do when you wake up one morning to find that the whole country is mocking a body like yours? If you’re Shane Brodie, you tell people how hurt you are. And then you do something about it. Shane Brodie is a fat trans man who lives a quiet life as an artist
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The fat positive movement is bigger than ever, and it’s starting to get noticed by mainstream media. Fatshion bloggers and fat activists are building real bridges to mainstream culture, and the benefits to fat people are incredible. Unfortunately, though, in some spaces fat-positivity doesn’t reach those who are outside of regular plus sizing. We call these
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On August 18, 2016 an activist art collective erected five nude statues of Donald Trump in five major American cities. The project was meant as a criticism of the candidate, presumably for his racist, regressive, and violent opinions, but the message that the American public received is that Donald Trump is fat and gross. There
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When The Fat Lip started, telling real fat people’s stories was a big part of the mission. As fat people, we don’t really hear ourselves in media. We don’t see relatable stories about people like us that often, and that lack of representation can be very alienating. When Maura Penn wrote to me about her
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Last week This American Life, possibly the most popular podcast there is, ran an episode called “Tell Me I’m Fat.” Leading up to the episode’s release I had read and listened to some teasers and learned that Lindy West and her book, Shrill, were featured, so I was really excited. I love Lindy and loved
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When I started this podcast I didn’t tell my mom that I was doing it, but one of my brothers did. Then after the first episode was up, she texted to tell me that she had listened to it and that she wanted to talk about it. For a split second I was completely terrified that I
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In our culture, fat people are expected to be making every effort to become un-fat. Every day we must be proving that we’re trying our hardest to lose weight in order to make sense to the rest of society, and as long as we continue to prove our efforts and talk about our healthy decisions
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“Fat” is a loaded word in our culture, and it can take years to unpack the feelings and shame this tiny little word can create in a person. But “fat” is also bold and powerful. That’s why it’s so integral to the name of this show, and that’s why embracing it can change your life for
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Welcome to The Fat Lip! We’re calling this Episode 0.1 because it’s not a full length episode but just a quick introduction to the show and to what you can expect going forward. Take a listen and let us know what you think! A transcript of this or any episode of The Fat Lip is
