Adulting - #29 Breaking The Rules with Sofie Hagen

Episode Date: March 17, 2019

This week I speak to the fabulous Sofie Hagen. Sofie is a comedian, body activist and podcast host. We discuss being fat, non-conformist, cheating in exams and much more! I hope you enjoy the episode - it's a long one and I really enjoyed recording it. Oenone xx Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. Hi guys and welcome back to Adulting. This week I'm joined by Sophie Hagen. Oh hello. I felt like I was listening to it in my head. I was like oh it's a great podcast. I'm so excited to have Sophie on as a guest. She's actually one of the people that I've always wanted to have on. So just to have you in the flesh is really exciting. Do you want to introduce yourself as who you are and what you do? Yeah, I'm a 30-year-old Danish stand-up comedian, podcaster, I guess fat activist, now weirdly author. Amazing.

When are you allowed to call yourself an author? I think I'm a, I've held the book in my hand. I'm an author. I claim that. Yeah, cool that. Yeah. Cool guy. Yeah. Actually, that was something I was going to ask you because I listened on your episode with Jessica Foster Key the other day.

And you're like, I don't know if I identify as a woman anymore. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm, I don't know what, all I know for certain is that I'm not a woman. I think I'm still, I'm still, like she feels fine. Right. They feel fine. He feels fine. It's just the word woman, I think. Woman, lady, girl.

That feels wrong. It feels as right to me as man would feel. Right. To call myself a man, to call myself a woman, that would equally feel like that wasn't true. So I think it's, I guess it is non-binary possibly like genderqueer not really sure what the word is you know what it is about the word that makes you feel uncomfortable like what is there any particular like attribute that you think oh that's just not me i think it's just always felt wrong i my mom never referred to us as women or girls it was never a thing you. It was never any like, you're a girl, sit like this or do like that. It was always just, we're always just people. So the second I started stand up when I was 21, suddenly woman was such a huge part of everything. Oh, you're the first woman, you're a woman comedian. And it always just felt wrong. But I think I think I just kind of pushed it away and I was like I guess this is just how most people feel

yeah you know it wasn't until I started talking to people and I realized that not everyone felt nauseous when they were called a woman no and so I've just kind of for 10 years I've just been kind of struggling with like it it like felt wrong every time it was used about me but I just always just pushed it away as it was like the first time my friend a friend of mine when I was 15 came out as bisexual to me and I was like well who isn't you're just describing the human condition and it took me so long to realize that oh no some people actually just like boys and some people just like girls and I just couldn't comprehend it because I just thought my world was normal but that's an amazing way to be because I feel like most people are walking around thinking they're the weird one whereas like you're probably in a position where you're not fitting into really heteronormative boxes and you're going, no, this is right, which is a really great way of thinking.

Yeah, well, none of it was learned. You know, none of it was, I'm just not very aware of a lot of things. And I think I just always, and I just never questioned. I didn't have a lot of, all the rules of how to be a woman didn't really come to me until I was probably a teenager alongside girls in my class at my school because my mom just never like my mom was quite androgynous and she's quite I mean I've never heard her describe herself as a woman you know she's never wears makeup she wears men's clothing like what's traditionally known as men's clothing.

She's, you know, just doesn't really shave her legs, doesn't do any of those things. You know, we've always just watched action films. She doesn't really, you know, it's just never been a thing. Like the whole woman thing has never been a thing. So I think I was kind of shocked when I learned that oh there's different things to being a woman I think that it's interesting though you say that it's because you're really not aware I don't think you're not aware I just think your mom very cleverly didn't condition you oh no she's not aware either I think she just didn't my mom doesn't know any of like she doesn't know any of this like she doesn't she also has lived in like

a weird bubble what was her how did is it well now i was about to say is that a danish thing that's actually so generalizing is it i think i think a part of it is a danish thing there is a fun i mean denmark is a i could talk for hours about the weirdness of denmark but there is a i remember seeing a few years ago a danish movie and there's a scene where a man and a woman are fighting and they're both crying they're both like it was like the most realistic fight i've ever seen because both people were you know there wasn't that like dramatic like oh no you bastard oh you know that whole thing it was just like both two people just like crying just like snot crying yeah and it was just so equal it just felt so

equal and like in Denmark there's no you know men don't hold the doors for women you know there's no like oh hi love like you know that that felt so strange when I came here to suddenly it was just my gender my presumed gender my presumed gender was just constantly being like putting your face yeah like it points it out it was you know there's a lot of things where I'm like oh you definitely would not say that to me if if I was a man if you thought I was a man so there is a bit of it that's a bit Danish what's the in when you translate into Danish like do you do you have the he she pronouns as prominently? Does the language work in the same way or is it different?

That might be quite difficult. Do you know what I mean there? Because I wonder if it's just that as well, maybe we've emphasised. Oh, in that way? No, if anything, we have, oh, well, maybe a tiny, well, with the word boyfriend, girlfriend, which is weird. You don't have a word for we are boyfriend, girlfriend. No, yeah. You would say dating, but dating isn't really.

Or a couple. We are a couple. Yeah. Yeah, that must be the closest one. But we have kärsta, which kind of means care is like dear. We are. One kind of thing. Dears.

Like we are like, we are. But then you say, so instead of saying my girlfriend or my boyfriend, you just say my dear. Oh, so it's genderless. So you don't have that thing that you always have, especially in American films where you're like my partner. You can't just say thing that you always have, especially in American films, where you're like, my partner. You can't just say, like, my dear is. That is really helpful, actually, because now I hate it when I get caught up and I go to someone like, oh, have you got a boyfriend? I mean, or a girlfriend or just anything. A significant other.

Yeah. Do you love someone? Do you share a bed with someone? Yeah. But I think, I just think my mom is just quite, she just hasn't really, to be fair, I think she might have, I mean, she's from a very different generation. She's almost 60, I think now. So I don't think, I think if she was young now, I imagine she would embrace queerness. I imagine she would embrace, you know gender the gender fluidity but she's just

from another time so i think instead of uh embracing woman is because that's probably felt wrong yeah she's not really thought of it i think it's so interesting because my mom's completely opposite like she was brought up really catholic and she very much was brought up in such a conditioned way of like completely being like oh no this is what a man and a woman are and this is what everything is and it's only now that I'm kind of trying to teach her about feminism and becoming a bit more liberal she's softened up but when I was younger there was very strict parameters around what things were yeah I had to like like definitely idea of being ladylike burping god no she'd be like that's not really

all the time so isn't that funny that like yeah it's like you you hear about like you know it's like it's normal i know that's the norm that is what most people do but that just hasn't been i mean it's definitely been there subtly i mean this you know the the what do you call it like the subconscious bias and all of that it's definitely been there but it's not been said out loud unless well i mean maybe when we were teenagers this suddenly there was suddenly a lot of um i probably haven't just i just probably didn't pick up on it but and i blame myself always i was always if there's anything that I now see was a woman thing

I would just say like oh that's probably just me but do you not think that's nice because I guess what it is it's showing that I definitely thought for a while when I was younger that the most capital you could have was through how you looked so I was my ears would I was very consciously aware of when those times were to be like, act attractively or do whatever. Clearly you, your mum didn't instill or the position you were in was never instilling that idea. So you're probably just quite impervious to it.

They've just washed over you. Well, then there's the fat thing. The fat thing. Which is another kind of interesting aspect of it because, like I never had, i never experienced the world as someone who's perceived as pretty i've always been fat so that was always like my thing uh so but do you think that being do you think society views someone as fat as automatic like do you think they're always together do you think we can be fat and pretty or do you think that

oh it's not that's never like that I believe that that is that that can I think that people are beautiful yeah you don't think so I'm sorry I wasn't saying me either I just oh no no what do you mean yeah no but definitely that's not a that's definitely considered unattractive in the eyes of society that's always been and I think what I mean is I remember being 19 20 and, and my best friend, she's gorgeous. Like, in every kind of way, she's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful woman. And she's very feminine. You know, she's kind of, you know, she has, like, the big, big blue eyes, blonde hair.

She's a professional dancer. She's thin. You know, the hourglass figure. She looks the way you're meant to look. And I do that in, like, you know, hourglass figure she looks the way you're meant to look and i do that in like you know in terms of society and i remember you know it's like every time i well my two best friends my other friend is like model model looking she has i once put up a photo on instagram of her one eye just her eye because she has quite amazing green eyes it's like this is my friend's

eye and i got more messages from men that I have ever received personally just from that one people saying is she single who is this woman like it's amazing she's so beautiful and so I spent a lot of years without knowing anything about fat phobia how fat people are treated just not being conscious of it looking at my two best friends being I mean inundated with offers and attention and praise. And, you know, we couldn't walk down the street without someone stopping on their bicycle to go, oh, my God. Oh, my God, are you single? I must have your number.

And, you know, I remember I lived right across from one of my best friends. So every time I went to the pizza place, they'd be like, where's your friend? Is she there? Can you give her a note from me? And they all had free pizza.'d be like, where's your friend? Is she there? Can you give her a note from me? And they all had free pizza. I was like, fuck you. I'm right here. What are you doing?

Oh, that hurt. But I remember saying to my friend, like, this kind of feels a bit shitty, you know, because I never get the attention. And she was like, oh, it's an attitude thing. It's because you don't feel confident, you know. Like, if you felt confident, if you had, like, the energy of someone who's was like, oh, it's an attitude thing. It's because you don't feel confident. You know, like if you felt confident, if you had like the energy of someone who's just like, I love myself and I deserve love. And so for years I tried to do that. For years I was just like every time I didn't get attention or there was someone I liked that didn't like me back, I'd just be like, right, change the attitude.

Like, come on, go into this, walk into this room with confidence and self-esteem and that is so tiring because that doesn't change the fact that every single person in the world have been raised to believe that fat people are lazy and stupid and unattractive and worthless and not either hyper-sexualized people or desexualized people and realizing that was such a relief in a way like oh this I couldn't have changed this with my attitude like if I was just happy enough I would get that's not how it works because that would never and I think I think that's I think that's why it's not really a blessing I think in a way it's a blessing to not have been raised with be a woman be like this but in a lot of ways it was also really

a real relief to realize that that was the reason for a lot of the things that didn't go the way I wanted them to. Like that was the reason for a lot of injustices was because people saw me as a woman and therefore assumed or that people, you know, have predetermined biases about fat people. And that was why I never this, this and this. There's something relaxing about it. Also sad because you realize that, this is this isn't fair but essentially some that's why I kind of like the labels I kind of like you know because when I said and told my friend I was like the next time she said oh it's an attitude thing I said actually it's not I gave her the statistics like this is how the world works and she was so sad because then that was also me telling her that

she had a privilege like this isn't about your attitude you're just pretty you could be like the most gloomy sad depressed person and you'd still get like maybe just only half of the attention you'd still get attention yeah and i don't know did you do you think that first of all do you think you've always been fat like someone like your your whole life? Like someone that you would see yourself? Well, yeah, I haven't. I think I've always thought I was fat. And I've always been the fattest, you know, in my class and in my school and amongst my friends and in my family.

But when you look back at when I was eight and the first nurse school nurse told my mom that I was dangerously obese I wasn't I was a child you know when you look at the pictures of like just a chubby child I got told I got kicked out of ballet because they said I was too fat and I was nowhere near fat yeah that's the thing that's very weird we're all too fat like in the eyes of society every single person in the world is too fat oh yeah it'd be a size zero and you as long as you but you then you need the the bones sticking out that's like the new trend you could always be thinner in someone's eyes for sure yeah you're not thin enough until you you're not there until you disappeared do you think that you were because i only learned about fat phobia

because i listened to this american life and there was an episode talking about I think so yeah and she talks about like that pretty privilege about how no one had ever opened a door for her no one had ever offered her discount and I had that whole realization of I see the world through this road and there's still an inequality but I have like one more layer of rose-tintedness than the person next to me because of this like perceived pretty privilege or thin privilege when you then have that realization yourself do you think you've been fat phobic to yourself prior to that or do you you had oh internalized fat phobia is yeah so prominent because you you and it's not just because of not knowing that society is the way it is. It's also just how we are taught.

You know, like all diets basically say, if you succeed, which you will, they always say, you will succeed because you have chosen to do this and it's a great diet. But if you fail, it's your fault. It's because you are lazy, you are useless. And all diets fail. 99% of diets don't work.

A diet in of itself doesn't work because it's unsustainable. So unless you're changing how you eat in general. No, but even that, your body will want to get fatter. So there's lifestyle change is another way for diet. It's just another word for diet. And it just doesn't work. Your body will want to be the size it is now. Oh, yeah. Your body has a set point that it wants to be at.

I really believe that's true. Yeah, you will. And then if you start to diet, you will eventually crash. You'll get fatter than you are now. But that is just how diets work. I really believe that's true. Yeah, you will. And then if you start to diet, you will eventually crash. You'll get fatter than you are now. But that is just how diets work. That's why it's an industry. That's why it's a $6.2 billion industry because it's meant to fail.

And then not only is it meant to fail, but you then blame yourself. It just wouldn't happen with any other product. Like this car will only work if, then the car just crashes. You wouldn't go, oh, I just, I bet I drove the car wrong. Do you know what it reminded me of though it's like the iphone you know they set them up so that you have to always get a new one because the technology stops working

and then you have to as you're saying it was actually that is they have to make something fail at some point otherwise you won't buy another one otherwise we'd all be minimalist and be so happy exactly that's what that's capitalism that's why capitalism is so damaging and so horrible. It's like it puts money above ethics and morality. How do you, because I completely agree, but how do you walk that line every day of being like, capitalism is so fucked, but also I need to make a living and also I quite like buying stuff, but this is really bad for me.

Do you have any way that you try and rephrase things in your mind or deal with things differently like at what point did you come across that junction where you're like fuck it's really difficult it's also especially within like fact fat activism and you know because when i wrote my book i wanted to write about clothes because it's a huge thing of you know fat people not only thinking that we don't deserve to look good but also there isn't any clothes we can really buy yeah and but you know also this is all these clothes rules about like don't wear vertical stripes and always wear black and blah blah blah don't wear crop tops and leggings or whatever so i kind of wanted to say hey you can find this clothes and you should wear it and you should buy clothes for yourself. At the same time, I'm like, right, okay, but that's not ethical

and that's me buying into the capitalists. So it's a, I mean, it's hard. You can't really live in a non-capitalist way because that's like what the entire society is. So it's definitely, it's like a struggle. I think I try personally to aim to do things in my life that makes me happy. I never, ever want to be controlled by money or fear. That's my main two things. I like that.

If there's a thing, I mean, like now I'm fairly broke so I have to you know of course it's not a choice everyone can have but I never want to I never want to undermine something that I want to do if it's because of money and the two times I've had to do it to make yeah and it's felt awful and I know people who are choosing entire careers based off on what will make them the most money i i i completely agree with you and this is why it's like weird being freelance because i'm the same you're like no i'm going to stick with my integrity and stick with my morals but then it will be a month being like fuck i need to pay my rent now i have said no to i mean so many things yeah i would have paid i could have owned a house by now if I had said yes to more of the things that I said no to because it would have killed my soul.

Yeah. And that's a privileged position to be able to say no to these things. But I just, I'm so, I've also seen people who are incredibly talented and in love with an art form choose to study business relations even though they hated it because well what are the odds that i'm gonna make it and now they're just miserable in these nine to five jobs and they could have been on a stage and i do think that's i think that because i think as i was growing up i don't know i think we had the idea that money was success and then you suddenly start to realize like what actually brings about happiness and I'm like I could earn so much money in the job I'm in it's so lucrative everyone was asking me I was like what assumptions you have about me and they're

like you make loads of money I'm like I actually don't I could but I know it wouldn't make me happy yeah it's so redundant I want to earn enough money to have like a very privileged life still but the actual idea of the money making the money in of itself to me turns me off. I'm not like, it's funny that that's a... But there's also the study, and I don't remember any of the numbers. I'm so bad at anything to do with remembering numbers. But there's a thing about there is a certain amount. There's an amount of money above which you will be happy.

Right. But that ends at one point and then above that amount it doesn't matter you can't get happier right it's like a threshold yeah there is like a an amount of money because being poor is stressful and horrible and yeah sorry and it's it can really destroy your soul like getting a bill you can't afford like ruins you from the inside it is so so stressful like i grew up you're very poor you know like often starving because we couldn't afford food and it is it destroys people you know and it's and so many different hypotheses and the biggest killer and the biggest horrendous thing so of course you wouldn't say to those people well money wouldn't make it because it really would make them happy it really would make them happy

to be able to pay the bills and be able to sleep at night because they can feed you feed their kids yeah but then there is a point where and i don't remember what the number was but there's a thing where you can be happy and live your life and everything's great but more money wouldn't no wouldn't add to it Because you just have more stuff then. Yeah, it'd just be more money. Yeah. Just without any... And then you always just reach for more, I think.

Yeah. Well, you can see that that's the case. I mean, also, have you ever... When you hang out with all your poor friends, oh, they're the first people to buy you around. Yeah. Your rich friends are the ones who are like... Stingy. Yeah, where did they go?

Oh, it was your turn to buy the I cannot get over how I mean rich people are the worst people in the world that's why they're rich because they don't give any of their money away yeah and also because they're soulless because they just that's how you make money is by not caring about people you know not caring about ethics and I mean I sometimes I had a I did a gig where I got like a sorry a membership card to airport lounges yeah so I got to go into all these fancy first class lounges in the airport and I've never been pushed so much out of the way been scoffed at been like physically removed like these people were just the biggest assholes and i have to swear yeah good definitely it was just also like the few very few times i've flown like business class and planes and stuff when you're amongst people who are rich rich

oh it's disgusting these people are disgusting i think that i flew business class once i got flown for a job and i was looking around and i was like none of us have paid for this surely who no one can actually surely surely we're all being given this that was the best part of the trip the flight it's amazing oh my god that's like a vacation yeah and then after that you're like maybe i'll just do that next time then you look up and you're like, fuck. And I think that planes are such a good example of, what's it called? Disparity? Yeah, disparity. Yeah, yeah.

Because you can choose between either sitting in coach, which is awful. Like you are crammed together. Your knees hurt. Your neck hurts. The fatter you are, the worse, right? You're so close together. You can barely breathe. It's horrible the

seats are hard and disgusting or business class which is basically you get a bed and free champagne and you know actual knives to use for the cutlery and it's like why isn't that just why can't we all just be comfortable true there's no middle but there's no just why is it either five grand tickets or 50 pound sick why can't we just have like a you know there's just no in between and it's a weird bit of the walking through it as well that's always really uncomfortable when you're walking through to get to economy through the business class yeah there's always that weird like actual feeling of tension where you can feel the like it is odd actually now you said that like segregating people yeah and there's the second class is it like seeing class yes i and i remember being and this was this is one of the like i had to empty my account completely to get a business

class flight home it was surprisingly cheap compared to you know some of them are like 10 grand yeah i had to buy them five days before i had to fly because I was too fat for the coach flight. I was just like, my back was broken for a week after I'd flown in to Australia. And I just couldn't walk. And I was like, if I take this coach flight back, like I won't be able to walk. So then that's literally not wide enough. Yeah, I was just crammed together. Like I had um elbows pressed together

my like after an hour i lost all um what's it called like blood blood flow to my legs it was horrible so i was like i can't go back i can't and i tried to call the app the thing and i was like can i just buy another ticket next to me and they were just like no you should have done that when you called like can i get a refund no get a refund? No. I was like, well, I was like, okay, so either I get a business class flight home or I now just live in Australia. I don't have my stuff here. So I guess I found like the cheapest business class flight home, which was still, I think, I think three grand.

That's actually really good from Australia though. Yeah, definitely. It was very cheap compared to what it could have been. I very lucky but that was also all the money I had it was like right I don't know how to pay rent but I have to get home yeah but but that was like I mean this amazing trip like the those hours on that plane I mean I wish they could have lasted three days I know the food so good you got to watch endless tv also people are so nice but the niceness feels so you kind of want to be like, really? Why are you suddenly so nice to me?

If I'd sat three rows back, you would have been annoyed with me. And I remember when you had to leave the plane, they wouldn't let the coach people out until all the first class people had come out. So I was immediately ready to get off because I'm a proper pole person. I was like, get ready to leave. No, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Well, everyone else was like, oh, just, like, stretching. Like, oh, maybe I should get an –

we could see the coach people waiting to get out, and they were just, like, staring into first class, or the business class being like, we need to get off the plane. We have works to do. And I remember just looking at them and being like, this is so horrible. Like, they're leading us out. And I remember, like, I was obsessed with Titanic when I was a child, and I just had this image of, you know, when they locked in all the, what's it like, third class people.

Oh, my God, yeah. And, like, all the rich people got to go and they were, like, holding them in. That was how it looked to me. Like, all the coach people were, like, being held back until the business class people could get off. Like, we've had the most comfortable journey. We could just let all the coach people off first have you not experienced this like as you get more famous with your comedy because on a very small scale of experience as well as in I used to go to clubs in London when I was really young wasn't anyone it's like now I might get invited to an event

because I'm invited at the event the way people treat you because of a perceived importance where you don't actually fuck all apart from just you might have a few more followers on Instagram or a couple more people know who you are, is massive. Like someone that was rude to you a minute ago will be so polite and doesn't it make you feel a bit sick? Oh absolutely. The worst thing was I remember when I first moved to London, I lived

in Streatham Commons and I couldn't really afford to take the tube or the train so I always took the bus, it was like an hour and a half two hours sometimes when there was traffic yeah yeah so sometimes it would actually be cheaper for me to eat in like a cheap restaurant than to go home and cook so sometimes also like restaurants are so cheap in London compared to Denmark you know yeah like I could pass a dish and a coke nine pounds where in Denmark that would be like 30 pounds so i was eating in this

restaurant being really poor like so it was like my only meal of the day and then the after i'd eaten the waiter came over and said um do you want to pay cash or card or do you want to do the dishes and i was like oh my god i can i do the dishes that would be amazing oh my god thank you i didn't know i didn't know you could do that thank you you so much. And he just went bright red. And he was like, I'm sorry. No, we don't do that. And I was like, oh, you thought we could laugh at the poor people. That's what you thought. You thought I was one of the rich people.

Then we could all laugh at how the poor people would need to do the dishes. Oh, was that funny? That some people would need to. Ha, ha, ha. I felt so. I was like, you. The second when people start seeing you as a certain type and they go oh yeah you're like no no you vastly misunderstood the situation

the classism is so gross it is so gross i i hate it i remember like when someone told me about ethan i couldn't believe it was a thing it felt like a horror story to be like oh is this college uh where they they say that this is where they make the prime ministers i was like oh is that a thing like yeah they say that the next prime minister's at the school and then i was like but it says like it's a school for boys they're like yeah i was like but where what if what about women where's the women prime ministers going is there a equivalent they're like oh no this is complete transparency so i went to private school i've learned this i spoke about this when my boss was scotty but i didn't realize poor little rich girl when i was at my parent's school i had no idea really about class because my parents sent me to school what fair enough my dad worked really hard sentence I thought it gives

the best education bloody well did it's how I probably ended up here because of all the privilege but I didn't realize that the levels of class that exists in the world because you're in such a bubble and it's so bad because you get taught this is what the biggest thing you get given when you get sent to a school mine's not like eating it it's not like old money like it's very scholarship based but it's still like you have to pay to go but what happens is you get sent to the school and people go to you oh you're amazing you can do whatever you want you're gonna have this and you're gonna get this but and the difference between being working class and middle class is when you're working class people tell you like you're gonna have to work really fucking hard and no one's gonna listen to you and that's the

difference I think the real difference is that sense of like you belong and you don't yeah you can actively like I was I was when I wanted to choose it was a bit different in Denmark class is a bit different in Denmark as well but I I wanted to go to the I don't know what the right way to say like the most academic thing and they actively tried to send me to the school where i just learned to do like a craft and there's nothing wrong with that yeah but i like i was very clearly like a brain person and very much not a skilled like physical skilled person and they were still just like no i don't know i think you should do this other thing i was like but i'm like at top grades and yeah and everything to do with like language and and not maths, but I could choose this language section of the school.

And they were still like, no, maybe just learn how to work with wood. And I was like, well, never. It was such a weird – and I didn't understand it for years why they would actively try to send me to another school. Like, no, don't go to that one. That's not really you. And it's true like my mom always said the only thing she ever said about my future was one day when you become a single mother that was the only thing that's how I was raised to think that that was

what it was do you think they were basically pushing you into that because they were like well let's be honest you're not gonna make it yeah I don't I don't I genuinely don't know because i was good i was really good at school do you know what they said was it on the guilty feminist the other day someone said like they never got into oxford because they weren't allowed to apply because the school didn't want their students applying to oxford because basically it was like a state school and they knew the likelihood of them getting in wasn't very high so they'd rather the students didn't apply because it would look better on the school to have less rejections that is like that's not privileged perfectly explained and i don't know what it is that's so tiring so nothing there's nothing on merit it's literally on like

nepotism and yeah and what money yeah it's why it's kind of it's why i'm i have a few friends who went to cambridge and they hate it when i make fun of Cambridge. Or they hate it when I, I mean, I kind of take the piss of, like, I don't put any value, any status to you having gone to Cambridge. And they're like, of course you shouldn't, but you can say, like, they get tense about it. It's a very difficult education. I'm like, yeah, still. I don't, I'm not impressed.

I don't think it's great. I don't think it's great. I don't think it's, you know, well done on you doing something you wanted to do, but I'm not going to in any way think that that's impressive because I just refuse to because everyone else in the world is telling you that that's a big deal. I'm not going to. And one of them said, you shouldn't look down on intellectualism because you're quite clever yourself and I was like that's so funny that you think that that's what I'm looking down

on in your head you've already conflated Cambridge and intellectualism where what I'm saying is that fuck all to do with how clever you are yeah it's elitism and it's um privilege yeah and then I go but I worked very hard yeah but but you work very hard a different like you already started really hard on the ladder yeah like yeah i did a gig at cambridge once where i i was it was many years ago and i just it was like 200 people in the room and as part of my set at one point i just said this is very white isn't it and it's just like you can just see like 200 assholes just clenched together and then afterwards they were all like well it's not it's not our fault it's very white it's not our it's it's cost the same as any other university

it costs the same so anyone could anyone if they can afford another year and i was just like well it's more than just that isn't it like it's not like if you can afford any university you might as well like it's a whole lifetime of how your life has been pointed out. The only reason I don't have a university degree is because I didn't. Academia was just never part of my life. It was about my mother worked from six to six. She was never a single mother, two kids. She never had time to sit.

She didn't know anything. I first saw a world map when I was 18. I genuinely had no idea how the world looked. And i first saw a world map when i was 18 i genuinely had no idea how the world looked yeah and until i dated a guy who was into academia and he was like wait you what i was like is that china he's like that's australia what's happening and this it was just not part of my life so what i'm saying is yeah i am intelligent but i don't value well that type of intelligence. You're right, because you have intelligence, then you have academia.

Academia is like taught, state, educated, cleverness. But intellect is real intellect, whether that's emotional intellect or the ability to understand things. Survival is so, you have to be so intelligent to navigate the world as someone who isn't a very privileged person i think that the way because of technology though i think those skills are going to be so much more important because when i always think about this i've never did very well in exams because i can't just remember information unless i completely understand it i'm really good at creative stuff and writing things but like just remembering information if i know it perfectly was i had friends who could remember a whole biology textbook i had friends who could remember a whole biology textbook i had no fucking clue what they were talking about and that's where

the education system is so flawed and because of like google and um things that mean that we can just look up like written down history really easily that that kind of academia is going to be really redundant in the future no one will need it so the thing that's going to have a lot of capital is actually that emotional intelligence and that the real innate intelligence that can't really be taught which is such a good thing because that'll definitely flip the scales on who's gets a bit more power hopefully yeah well i cheated in so many exams but do you know how hard is cheating an exam it's really hard yeah i've got it is so difficult both to have the acting skills the fucking sorry the guts the courage to do it the stupidity to do it but also just

thinking of a way to do it because they obviously make it very difficult how did you cheat that is actually really interesting well there was one where um there was one where i made my boyfriend at the time just give me a script say exactly what i had to say and it was uh physics science physics something about space it was i had to calculate the age of the universe and it's apparently like a really long i don't even know what it's called a long thing uh subtraction what do you call them this is like an equation equation yeah it's a really long equation i had no idea so he just taught me to say that whole thing. And I learned it word for word.

And I was doing it. And it doesn't take that. And they were very impressed, these two teachers. And then at one point I said something like, and then there's like a 3, 18 divided by 3. And then they went, what's that? And I was like, shit. So I said um excuse me what's what's 18 divided by three I'm calculating the age of the universe and you're asking me what 18 divided by three is

and they're like I'm so sorry that's condescending I was like yeah it is anyways I got like the second highest grade you could get and I knew nothing about it I was um oh German I did the same in German I had my German friend uh just write down I wrote it to her in English she wrote it all back in German I put it on cue cards and I learned how to say in German, I'm sorry, I'm just really, really nervous, so I need cue cards. I'm so sorry. I really get really nervous at exams. And then I just read it out loud. So funny.

And then the second question was, so you had to prepare this speech, which you then just read out loud, having no idea what I was saying. And then they had to ask you a question. Then you just had to free, what do you call it, freeform it. And so they asked the other question. And I was obviously like, Ich habe keine, ich weiß nicht. And I still got the second highest grade.

And they were really like, yeah, we couldn't give you a higher grade because you were too nervous. But obviously you speak fluent german but your nerves has got the best of you so i'm so so sorry oh my gosh i was again my teacher was it was my teacher and then like this outside teacher who didn't know me but my teacher knew that i couldn't speak a word of german and he was just fuming and what was the other one oh yeah that was nature nature and science where I showed up and I was just like crying and I was just like I lost my I lost my project I lost my computer I put my computer down at the station and I called them and they have it but it's too far away and I can't can I please just get can

I do this another day and they're like no I'm sorry this has to be now so just like cried all the way through and every time they asked me a question I was like I had the answer I had the answer I'm so sorry so they just about didn't flank me but they were like we can't obviously give you a good grade but because this is such an unfortunate situation we'll like we'll pass you but you know because obviously you knew what you were doing and I was like I'm also I'd never touched I never touched a project there was no computer in a station you're literally the master manipulator really good at really good acting really good at acting but also you just hate by some things you just don't like rules but in a like but it's worked really well well I said I said to my mom a few a few months ago I said like I just pointed it out. I was like, oh, yeah, I've cheated many exams.

And she said something like, oh, that's very disappointing. I was like, is it, though? Do you know how hard it is? Do you know how unfair the entire system is already? Like, in history, I knew everything about World War II and the Cold War. Everything. I knew nothing about any other time period. And it's random what you get.

Like if I had chosen, you know, the Vikings, I would have failed completely. I chose the Germans and I got the second highest grade. It's so random. I was super into Freud. I loved Freud. I was so into everything to do with Freud. And I happened to pick the one essay that dealt with Freud. If I'd chosen the poetry, I would have failed.

It's so random. And the kids in my class who had ADHD or who had any kind of difficulty with the – where Danish was their second language, got lower grades, not because they weren't clever, not because they couldn't have done the eventual education they wanted to do because that was based on something else just out of pure yeah they now can't study they can't get into psychology because they failed history what the fuck does that have to do with each other the irony this happened with us like the people in our year at school who everyone will kind of know were like not the smartest people are all some of the most successful people in our year now because they're all just doing they've created their own business it's incredible they're doing something where they're not pigeonholed into these really small ideals of what intellect is yeah and possibly because i think there's such a strength in being able to not put value onto authority yeah because

if you follow authority and you're just waiting for people to tell you what to do and you trust that everyone wants what's best for you you will get i mean not always but you will often find yourself stuck and just awaiting instructions what if you have taught to follow your own instinct there's value in that like when i whenever i hang out with my friends kids i'm always just like i i try to i really try to be that person in their lives who's like no fuck that i can remember my first mentor i'm always very much into having mentors i love it was a danish journalist who's now unfortunately a huge cunt wow huge prick but he wasn't at the time he was this really cool journalist who uh once went to jail because he threw a brick at the police because he wanted to write a piece about what it was like to be like an anarchist it was really cool he wrote a whole

book that was supposedly fiction but it was very clearly about real people in the danish media industry and like revealed a bunch of secrets about them he was ice cold and i remember when i was 13 i asked him if i could be an intern which is silly like no one gets to be an intern on this newspaper it was like the metro the danish version of the metro and he allowed me to write like a two-page spread an article like a proper article and he was like this is great and i said to him yes i want to go to the journalism school and he said no don't do that, because what they will teach you is things you already know.

They'll teach you how to put a comma. What you need to do is travel. Travel for five years, live your life. You'll come back a much better journalist than any of the pricks who went to the school. They'll just teach you to obey rules. That's not what makes a good journalist. I was like, oh, mind blown. But where, because it sounds like from a really young age you were quite kind of

anti-authority where where did you get the confidence because am i right in thinking do you suffer from anxiety as well yeah so that well i don't know i can't talk with any authority on that because i have no i don't suffer from anxiety but are those two things sometimes quite opposing or how did they what where did that come from in you do you think where you decided like i don't want to do what you tell me to do well I remember when I started my first protest I must have been seven and they wanted us to go outside in the lunch and the break time at school and I was very opposed to that I thought it was bullshit because why why is it better to go outside what's that why are you deciding it was better for you but that's it's not. I thought it was bullshit. Because why? Why is it better to go outside? What's that? Why are you deciding?

Oh, it's better for you. But it's not up to me. It's bullshit. I want to be inside. Inside, there are books. Do you not want me to read a book? So I was very furious. I tried to create like a huge thing at my school.

But of course, everyone else just went outside because they were told. And I made this huge thing. And I tried to fight it. So there was a bench. And if you sat on the bench, that meant that you'd done something bad it's like outside the principal's office and then I realized you can just sit there and people just think you've done something bad but no one will check that because why would you sit there it's embarrassing so I just spend those half hours sitting on the bench so I just got to be inside hang out and chill really trick the the system. And I remember them calling my mother, complaining about me,

and how my mom just lost her shit. I was like, how is she wrong? Tell me how she's wrong. You can't tell me. You just want her to obey. So I said it to her recently. I said, actually, thank you for always having my back whenever I got into trouble, which was quite a lot. She just said my mom was very stone-faced, and she was like, actually, thank you for always having my back whenever I got into trouble, which was quite a lot.

And she just said, my mom was very stone-faced, and she was like, well, I couldn't have you respecting authority, could I? I was like, perfect, that's where it comes from. My mom has always questioned it. But that line of thought is so clever. I was actually listening to a guy the other day, I can't remember his name,

but basically he ended up rowing the world record in prison. Have you heard of him? No. And he did the thing where basically he realized the same thing he was like if i if i take away the power of the situation so they like put him in isolation and then when they took him out he's like no i want to stay here and he was like every time they tried to punish him in some way he would decide that he wanted to do it and that means that you have the power over the authority and they don't know what to do yeah it's like quite an advanced school of psychology that you're doing kind of age sevens yeah and i know exactly what you're talking about because we had the same thing it was like orange cushions outside the headmaster's office and if you were there

like you knew your child and it was so shameful yeah that's really mean thing to do to children when you think about it isn't it like to shame them for probably making a really like silly mistake yeah that's i think it was also very obviously fucked up in a way. There were so many things where it was just so... You know when an adult in general said, oh, because I say so, I cannot have it, and I cannot have the... I mean, also because most of the times I was right.

Yeah. I was right. I remember when I went to gymnasium, which is like, I think it's a mix. It's like the school you go to for three years when you're between 16 and 19. It's like the step before uni in Denmark. Right, yeah. And trigger warning, this is a bad story. But there was a girl from from what year were we in

this is the second or the third year second year so we were like 17 18 and from another class they went on a school trip to london and six men six boys from the other class there were two classes going together and uh six boys had like pulled her out of bed and undressed her and was about to violate her well they'd already violated her physically violate her sorry and um the teacher had already said to the principal like these six boys are bad news i don't want to go on this trip with them i don't like them they're going to do something bad and i can't control them We're not enough teachers to handle them. So they did this thing to this girl, and they went back to the school.

He called the teacher. This was something that the teacher told me in secret. And he said, he was like, I don't know what to do. We're just having a chat. I'm always a very good friend of the teachers. I'm a horrible person. That's why I didn't have friends. All the teachers would hang out with them. But he was like, he'd called the school and said they just did this what do i do what do i do with the situation and they said i just have a

chat with them just have a little chat with them tell them not to do that again i was like this is and they got um detention for three weeks but that was it they got no there was no police thing there was no nothing so she had to go to school with these rapists for the rest of her school trip school time and uh so that happened at the same time i was severely depressed like really really depressed so i was only attending school my absence percentage was 33% so out of three years I was only there for two years technically so I was already on their radar

because I just kept making trouble so what I did was I tried to call them out and be like also because the arts and crafts teacher threw scissors at me and I was like she threw scissors at me and they were like you've not gone to school a lot and I was like yeah but she still allows to throw scissors at me and there was like a teacher who was drunk who graded us by throwing some dice a lot of because we have

numbers in our grades not um letters there's a lot of things happening so i because i'd already complained about the teachers throwing scissors at me and they already hated me because i um had protested about doing PE it's a long story anyways I got out of PE as the first person in Denmark um legal legally got out really yeah it made a huge thing of it that's always been my main process has been that's me I just used to run away and smoke behind bin shirts oh if we could have done that I would have had a different life so they already hated me at this school because I kept making trouble and then this happened

so what I did was the school was called Eller Rød Gymnasium if anyone's listening who goes there like fuck them this is shit school keep protesting

so Eller Rød in the city that's the name of the town Rød is R-U-D U is the the O with the line through and when you put that

in a website address usually you would either put O or O- in denmark because you can't use the actual letter okay in a website address so they had chosen rod so i bought a recommendation.dk with oe so there was a 50 50 chance of what people would guess when they went to the website yeah so i bought that website and i took pictures of all the broken furniture around the school, and I put that up there as a front page. Then I had a message forum where people could anonymously write

what they wanted to say about the school. So it was like, you know, a student was sexually assaulted and they weren't thrown out, teachers throwing scissors at the student. It was mostly me using it. It was a drunk teacher. You know, so people could just write anonymously. You're so smart.

Because I'd been threatened to be thrown out if I complained about the scissor teacher, which sounds like a good thing. It's not. So I had made this website, and they called me into the office, and they're like, have you made this website? And I was like, no, I haven't, and you can't prove it.

And they're like, we know it's you. And I was like, you, I haven't, and you can't prove it. And they're like, we know it's you. And I was like, you don't know it's me. It's not me. And they were like, literally no one else would do this. Like, no one else would do this. And they were like, we're going to throw you out if you don't take it down. I was like, but it's not me. They're like, we're going to throw you out if this website doesn't go down.

I don't care if it's you or not. And I was like, so I had to take it down. And the teacher was threatened to be fired if he made a sound about this assault thing horrible school i don't remember what it was oh i think so this wasn't answering your question it's about anxiety sorry i think stuff like this makes me this is going to be such a wanky answer but i think it's the truth it's a wanky like it makes me look like a shitty shitty person maybe I am but I remember being five or six years old watching Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

my favorite show when I was a child it was how I learned English and I spoke like Will Smith for a lot of years oh that's so good I was a six-year-old white fat girl saying yo a lot it's horrible horrifically problematic really great but i remember in freshman to bel-air when you watch it now you realize it's a lot about uh like black power movements yeah i don't think it would be allowed to have a show like that on popular prime time tv now but back then i mean it's amazing and they talked a lot about malcolm x and rosa parks and black power And I was like, ask my mom. My mom knew nothing about it.

But I looked into it. Like I had my mom borrow books in the library and tell me what it was. And it just made me feel, I was so into it. Like I was so amazed that this existed, that there were people. Disrupting power. Yeah, who fought against the system. And also just yeah who fought like against the system and also just learning that that is what the system was and my mom has always been like that she's always been very because we live in this tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny white awful village so she knew that i was going to be surrounded by racism and inequality and i think racism was the only

kind of ism she knew existed really maybe homophobia she knew about but nothing else really so she moved us from this white little racist village to the biggest ghetto in denmark because she was like fuck that like you're not that we're not you don't i will not have you be one of these people yeah so i'm going to place you like in the place that they all say is dangerous because fuck that, it's not dangerous. So I think she's always been, she's disrupted herself in many ways. And I think it makes me feel physically sick when people don't fight.

So do you think maybe some of your anxiety actually comes from those oppressive conditioning parts? So the fight is like you feel safer when you think you're doing the right thing. Yeah, I think I'd feel more anxious just accepting that I should just do something because someone said so. Anxiety doesn't really come in. So it's almost like it's being replaced by this other feeling of i don't know it's like like every time i did a protest i had i always had this pink pink cloud of idea that once you told someone this thing has happened and it's unfair and if you sign here or speak up or protest or write a letter it'll get better yeah that people would then do it and i remember every single time someone was like

yeah i'm not doing i was just filled with disappointment and rage and how how would you not like how how do you not want to fight this did you ever have that thing when you were little where like you thought that if someone murdered someone the murderer would get caught and then just put in prison and as you get older you start to find out that like if someone could be corrupt and then suddenly you're older and then you just have no faith that like it's that weird unraveling of realizing that everything you get taught about the power structures that are supposedly protecting us. Yeah.

You start to think, why have I been taught that everything's so black and white when literally nothing functions in the way that you're taught it does? And it's very much our white privilege as well. Being raised to think the police are goodies. Yeah. I've learned that they weren't when I was 20 or something. And that realisation was, like, I remember thinking it actively actively and I said it out loud to the police that I met I said something like I said I don't think you're allowed to do this because I was so in my head I was still so convinced that but maybe if I tell him that he's doing something wrong he's gonna do a good that

he's gonna be like oh I'm sorry like it was such a oh shit this is the world isn't it like you're not necessarily i think i learned it from um isn't it in 99 problems you know the rap song and i'm sure he says something like something about because of the color of your skin that's why i'm going to pull you over and i remember being like and then i think i think i learned a lot from rap music actually I think I just wasn't really exposed to it day to day

it's very rare isn't it and the best thing was I would know all the words to all of those songs and it wasn't until I was older and I was still rapping it

and then I was like kind of listening to the things coming out my mouth and I was like oh fuck that's bad yeah but that's

kind of how I feel about Fresh Prince of Bel-Air when I watch it now yeah like wow I was so lucky that that was what I saw in cartoons in a way. Because it's, I don't know if I would have had the same. I mean, I think a lot about, I don't know if fate is the right word, but the whole butterfly effect and how many little things happened by coincidence that has made me this person and what could have been different and also like if you go back to like my mom's life

and like how she sorry how she was raised and what happens it's like all the right things and all the right moments to yeah kind of create this world worldview that I'm quite happy that I have. I completely, it's so funny you said that. I think it was like two nights ago, I was talking to my boyfriend about the butterfly effect because I love, I'm so fascinated by it. Like, you know, when you spill your coffee, I'm like, no, it's fine.

Because it's probably like, it's probably mean that I'm not getting run over today or something like that. I always think, it's really silly because I know it's illogical, but it's also a really positive way of thinking because I automatically attribute something bad to being part of a larger system that's probably protecting me somewhere right yeah but I have it about like

when I was what happened what started this it was I had a job which I only had because I once when I was 18 I walked down the street and I was stopped by this salesman who worked for UNICEF which meant that I applied to get his job when I left school if I hadn't applied for that I would never have applied to do Danish refugee council where I ended up working for a few years, where I met this guy who was in musicals. And I one day saw him on a poster for Rens. He was in Rens in Copenhagen.

And I went to see him be in Rens. And I fell in love with him. Bad idea. Really bad idea. He broke my heart. And because he broke my heart, I was like, I'm going to go to London and I'm going to watch all his favorite musicals. So I went to London for my rent money and saw musicals

and then thought, well, let's do some open mics because why not? And I did an open mic where there was a comedian who kept in touch with me, brought me to another gig where I met Bobby Mare. Bobby Mare said, why don't you just move here? That had never even crossed my mind. And that was probably why I moved here, which is the reason that everything in my life is happening. And it just all comes down to either running into this guy in the street

or maybe even going out that night with my co-workers where I spoke to this guy at work so I got to know him so I would find him in this musical later. Maybe it all came down to my mom always teaching me about how big voices are brilliant. So I would love musicals. You know, it's just so many tiny things. That's like, if that boy had been in love with me. Where would you be?

I wouldn't be. There was no way I would be here right now. I always think stuff like that. FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning. Which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do. Enjoy the number one feeling, winning, in an exciting live dealer studio.

Exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. So my friend Mark, Mark Watson, a few, I re-watched, what's it called? Nevermind the Buscocks. cocks recently there's like one season

that we in stand-up comedy in denmark nine years ago now every time we'd done a gig we'd sit afterwards and watch never mind the bus cocks this particular season i think 18 or whatever and we left it was so funny and then i re-watched it recently like mark was in it and i was like this this there was a parallel universe where I kept doing stand-up in Denmark, but I would have watched this guy so often, not knowing that there was this other universe where he's like one of my best friends.

Oh, that's so interesting. I'm so obsessed with these tiny things that has made all of this happen. It's so fascinating. I completely agree. I think I always go back to, I had a horrible boyfriend that hit me and that's what started my hope.

Basically, I can trace pretty much all of everything I've ever done because of that, which to some people, they're like, no, you're basically saying he gave it to you. I'm like, no, I literally, like something really bad made me, I love that. I completely have the exact same train of thought

as you on so many things yeah um whilst you're talking I'm just thinking about this and because I think a lot of what you're talking about is like your active disruption of trying to subvert whether it's like the way that we think about gender or the way that we think about relationships or um the way that we talk about race but you're that's like active disruption but you're inactively just a fat person do you think that's the thing that most people find the most like oh i can't believe you're fat more than you trying to talk up about something that's actually really fucking important yeah weirdly it's a weird it's a it can in many ways it kind of feels like a superpower because i love the disruption yeah there's something like i don't have to do anything i have to exist and people are angry

that's so ridiculous you're literally standing up and talking about something really important like i've seen it happen in comments and stuff when you've been doing something and you're literally talking about something and someone will just talk about you being fat yeah yeah it's not the issue at hand but it's funny like because people project so much onto fatness. I'll do a whole stand-up show where I'm like, I love being fat. I'm so hot. I'm fat and hot. I love myself. I'm so fat and so hot.

And people will afterwards say, you don't have to be so down on yourself. Wow, you have a problem. You have such a problem. And I didn't even know that was, but I think it might be part of it, you know, because I've never fitted in. I've never been okay. And it doesn't matter how much I have. I haven't, I've never really tried to fit in.

Of course, you have, you know, you do it a bit. You know, when you're a teenager, you try to fit in a bit. But I never really cared that much and I just maybe maybe I sensed from a young age that I was never going to be part of I was never going to be okay like I was never going to be accepted what do you mean by okay like okay in yourself or okay no like that I was never be I think when I was 12 or whatever it starts being important how you how you how you're dressed I think I remember clothes being important clothes were suddenly important to my friends and well not my friends the people I went to school with and there was such a difference I could see

them being like you know their families could afford their families could afford, their families could afford, I'm trying to remember what was the fashion at the time. Like really wide-legged trousers. Like neon trainers and stuff. And I think I just, I think I must have had a feeling that even if I had those trousers and those shoes, and even if I learned to wear makeup and I learned how to do my hair and I started liking going to the parties and kissing the boys, I think I must have had a sense that I was still going to be an outsider because I was always going to be fat.

So I could try as much as I could, which most people do. I was never going to be an outsider because I was always going to be fat so I could try as much as I could which most people do I was never going to be one of them but in a funny way you're freed then from all those extrinsic things that people spend their life trying to accrue and be and get and you just kind of went oh that's not going to fix me I remember me and my I had a best friend she I remember that was the whole that was always our big thing was she would try to fit in and I would always get feel so scared when I remember her her mother taught her to shave her legs and I remember having a huge fit because I was like no no no no no no we're it's you and me together like against them but she would always try and be one of them and I had already I quite liked that she wasn't but I remember so we just hang out and we just wouldn't wear the clothes that they wore

we wouldn't go to the parties we wouldn't be drinking we wouldn't you know play with the boys the way they did and then one day me and my this we were 13 we were called into a meeting because all the other girls, like 10 girls, had the accusers of bullying. And we're like, what? We never speak to, like, we never. And they were like, but that's because they felt bullied by us not trying to be like them. Interesting. By your confidence, they felt like. They felt like we didn't like them.

That's so weird. It was so strange. I remember just being like, this is the most surreal thing. Like, we've never said anything bad about them. We've never actually kept them out. Like, they've never asked to play with us. But they just felt really bullied by us not caring about fitting in.

But in a young teenage mind, I can actually completely, in a weird way, understand that. You know when your brain's like, my biggest, the only thing i used to be jealous of other people was when they really knew who they were when i was younger i used to get really jealous of people that were really confident because i was like

how do you know you're allowed to say that how do you know they're gonna laugh like how do i would be so it would kill now luckily i'm really confident but when i was younger i literally would be like but how do they know that they can i don't it used to really unsettle me. So that's probably what was going through those guys' minds. They're spending the whole time trying to fit in and do exactly what they've been told is the right thing and then someone's walking past going, I'm absolutely fine like this. Yeah, I don't need you. And to them that's so unsettling for their understanding of themselves.

And I think that's why people are furious with the fatness. I think it's the same feeling. Yeah, I think you're right. Jess Baker coined the term body currency and I'm going to probably completely butcher it. I feel like I've said it now so many times that it's probably more like my theory now because it's probably not what it was originally.

But what I believe it to be is the idea that most of us, like 99.99% of us, spend our whole lives becoming the ideal. We're trying to be the ideal. We're trying to be the thin person. And it so expensive that's why it's an industry so we will have spent in our life so many hours and we know subconsciously how much an hour is worth we know that's also money so much money on fitness memberships and uh uh the training equipment and uh slim fast the slimming world and powder drinks and blah blah blah so we know we have a subconscious idea of how much we've actually

spent and it's kind of like we're all saving up for this thing which is happiness it's not thinness we think thinness is happiness and worth so we think we in our heads we kind of know that we've spent 10 20 50 grand on trying to be happy and we can see it in the distance if i just do more work and put more effort and more money into it i will eventually achieve happiness and it all seems fair because we're all in the same boat together we're all it's trying to achieve and we all have if you just put enough money into it we can become happy and then the eye walls in having gotten happiness for free you know i don't need you know i'm still eating all the cake i'm not putting any hours into it i'm not putting any money into it but i've achieved that happiness so they feel it's like

someone's saying you know the money you've saved up they're worthless now yeah it's monopoly money do you think it's exclusive to when do yeah it's monopoly money do you think it's exclusive to when do you think that that because do you think thinness for men because i think the argument about thinness as well is also to do with that idea that like women need to be more diminutive and take up less space there's definitely the idea that men need to be have definitely are just under the same pressure to look um some kind of ideal body type but do you think that same thing translates for men if you know what i mean is it necessarily thinness with men or is it just a general desire to want to look

i think it's it's a tricky one with men because it's a i think men have men are allowed to be a bigger but not fat yeah you know men are allowed to be what's the word you know it's like even when men the second met you started acknowledging that men were a bit fat people were like oh but dad but oh it's actually quite like even fat men on tv are always married to a supermodel yeah you know yeah i remember seeing what was the one with revel is it revel wilson is it how to be single yeah i think in the beginning she's so awesome and in the beginning she's like dancing around with all these hot guys like conventionally hot guys and she's like this party girl whoo and then you see her the next morning having slept

with someone and he walks out and he's fat and i was just like oh it's ruined it yeah i was just like if it was a perfect world and you know i've personally i find the fact i'm more attracted than the other guys she was dancing with but why is she not allowed to fuck them yeah why not why not just have a fuck them not that she shouldn't you know because then you could have the opposite it's just like you're not allowed to see if that woman what's her name it's jess baker as well i think who did the uh photo shoot the the Calvin Klein spoof photo shoot, where she, I've never seen it.

It went viral, but it's like many years ago. So she's like, you know, these black and white lingerie adverts, where they're like really sensual. She took one where it was her, and then these like muscular,

you know, traditionally handsome blokes. It was just like, yeah, I like watching this. Yeah. Seeing like a, what people think is an attractive man with a fat woman.

We're just never allowed to see that. No. And with Rebel Wilson, it was like, it's too unrealistic though. It happens in, I noticed this so much, it's really sad,

but like in Hollywood, so a man gets famous and he's prior been married to a, what people call like a normal woman. And then the minute this same, looks exactly the same man, but he gets famous and does's prior been married to a what people call like a normal woman and then the minute this same looks exactly the same man but he gets famous does a film he'll divorce his previous normal inverted commas wife because he's become like hollywood man and then he'll marry the next level up of woman like as if it's like you see that don't you oh yeah and it's amazing how that currency changes but the man doesn't have to change how he looks. He can get capital in loads of other ways,

whereas when women get famous, often they will have that glow up where they get thinner and better hair or whatever thing it is. Yeah. And it's blindingly obvious. It's obvious, and it's going back to the whole idea

of being 19 being told, oh, maybe we just smile more. You know? You're like, this is a systematic problem it's a huge we live in a world where every single person from like there are three year olds I think was it three the age of three is the first time children start to think negatively about bodies three I think mine started quite young I think I was about seven eight when I started to think

that I had you know how little girls have skinny legs? I always had just actual legs that were like really small woman's legs. Do you know what I mean? And I knew that. And I knew that that wasn't right. But it isn't not right. So somewhere along the line, I'd read too many messages or magazines or seen too many billboards or something.

And that started a long process of going through the whole hating my legs and learning to love my legs, which is, as you say, a massive waste of time. Because I don't know. I grapple with, I completely agree with you that I think we are occupation with thinness. I say this all the time with regards to money. I'm so bad with understanding my finances,

yet my boyfriend knows everything about finance. And I generally think it's because all the hours I probably spent in reading magazines, buying clothes, looking looking up shit he's probably looking at the stock exchange yeah like I genuinely think that's how it works yeah I was so preoccupied with it yeah well I look I look at my teenage years and how many parties I said no to how many people I said no to uh because I thought well wait till I'm thin because i don't deserve this right now or this oh i can't have this one beer with these friends because i need to lose weight and you have this idea of how my life is going to be when i'm thin and that's your whole life is based on you know

it's like every time you started a diet we would think like right so according to this diet you'll lose a pound a week so that means that by summer next year you'll be thin and then like right so the summer next year that's when i'm gonna start living yeah when you look back at my in also just looking at pictures of myself when i was a teenager like oh it's beautiful it's so hot so wonderful you know and i i can see now retrospectively that you know there were people who just really loved me really were really into me like really wanted me at that party and i was i was so um like i remember this this girl i didn't even think i knew i was bisexual she went to my school and she was like she declared her love for me i remember just laughing in her face like just like shut up and for years i just it's a few years after that one of her friends said to

me you know that she was so in love with you she was so in love with you and i wouldn't even acknowledge it as a thing because because you didn't have self-worth or because you didn't know your sexuality was beautiful she was beautiful and like no it wasn't even the sexuality thing it was just no you don't it was that feeling of like no of course you don't of course you don't

like me of course you don't like this wouldn't even be a it wouldn't even be an option like no you're not you're making

you're deluded why would you do that like so much life I got an email from two girls I get a lot of emails from girls from

who have school projects and i love them i'm always like i will answer them before i answer any other email and there were two 13 year old girls and they said uh uh when you were 13 you hate your body how do you feel about your body and i was like fuck you say that as a fact when you were 13 you hate your body fuck fuck this world like you can't any justification for fat phobia which is it's always like what it's unhealthy or it's all bullshit because we have two 13 year old girls who hate their bodies i also think the health argument is even if you could prove that an individual on the basis of their health or on the basis of their weight wasn't healthy because of their weight, there's no other instance when you go up to someone and are concerned about their health.

So that's what fucks me off. Because also I do believe that the health of every size thing, but I also just believe that every individual, there could be an instance where something impacts you negatively. But no one, I used to smoke. No one. Not not even I don't think my dad this is fucking sexist but quite funny on the 18th birthday I was having a cigarette and my dad came outside and I thought he was gonna tell me off and he walked straight past and went up to one of my guy friends and went you shouldn't be smoking because you play sport think of a shit

about me obviously in the back because it doesn't matter what you do but like in those instances like really no one comes up to you when you smoke and goes oh that's gonna be really bad for you yeah but also it's fun when you give the example of like no one comes up to you and says that's actually really bad for you because that's not even what they say to people they go you fucking fat it's gonna die you're gonna you know it's not even like oh hey i'm sorry i just wanted you to know that actually that could be quite bad that's never what they do they're like frothing around the mouth like you will die because of this like they're so angry and i remember like having put a photo up of me being fat on instagram and i was like getting all these abusive comments whilst i was watching football and like these men just like banging into each other like knocking out their teeth and like twisting their ankles and

physically violent physically just destroying their bodies and i was like i've never heard anyone be like well actually football's really bad for you you shouldn't do football it's really bad for you it's clearly bad for you like they're being very injured and very hurt no one's talking about this. I love football. I think it's great to work. So I'm not going to be, you know, they can do whatever they want with their bodies. But then I should also be allowed to do. And that's the whole thing.

It's never about health. That's why it's someone like Kat Porce, who's an amazing fat activist who lives in New Zealand. She's incredible. She's like, I'm not answering the question anymore. I'm just not answering. The first book about why it's not unhealthy to be fat came out in the 80s we've answered this question the reason they keep asking us is because it's not about health it's about derailing it so we're like give us freedom you know stop abusing us in the street and then people go but what about health you're like that has absolutely fuck all to do

with what we want yeah even if it was it's not even if it wasn't healthy still don't shout at me in the street please yeah it's not the point but it is this is what this is what got me around to because i definitely was really fat phobic both to myself and i was never someone that shouted abuse but definitely had those thoughts and it and then when people are saying it's about health there's people that i know in my life that are really skinny that smoke fuck tons of cigarettes purely only drink fizzy drinks and like if you probably cut them open in half their insides would literally black but i've never probably ever looked at them and thought but they really do have to think about the health and so when someone said that to me i

was like oh that is fat phobia and it does take a bit to get over it because as you say like i grew up with it about myself there's different levels of it like we're fat phobic in the weirdest ways to us like it it's runs so deep yeah so then the like the fat phobia to fat people is the obvious bit to look at but you don't even realize that i see it in my friends and like the way we do you probably see this but i said pinch my tummy at school i'd just be sat in lessons just pinching the fat yeah just thinking why is that there because no one had taught me that like obviously i'm a girl you like you need to have fat on your stomach that isn't that so sad it's so sad and that's so young and I had the same thing where I'd wake up in the morning and I'd go oh I'd have like my GCSEs and I'd be like

if I was thin then it'd be fine and like I'd be happy and then I actually got really fucking thin once when I did like a bodybuilder competition and I wasn't happy and that's what got me over my disordered eating because I got there and I was like oh oh this wasn't everything's actually I'm just really hungry now and I'm really tired and I've got no sex drive and it's really sad a lot of it was like when I realized that it's the what you call it like the the weird association between body and emotion yeah so it's like I want to be pretty well pretty is subjective it's what you think is pretty that's in your head so you can change your way of thinking without changing your body yeah you can just as well do that it's also hard it's just as hard to if not harder

but it's way more possible than losing weight yeah it's more possible for you to change the way you think of beauty and worth and happiness but it's also because that idea of beauty like the thin idea of beauty is the um patriarchal idea of like it's quite sexual it's quite weird when you think about it because it's basically like it's control it's not eating it's um you're weaker it's like it's in in terms of looking at women the actual like thinness beauty ideal that real is really gross when you break it down to what it is because it's it's fundamentally you're controlling your pleasure because eating is pleasure much like we never talk about female pleasure with sex eating is another form of pleasure it all ties in i don't know if i've

explained that very well but i know what you mean i think and i'm now going to butcher another thing but i met this i forgot her name i think her name was jessica who's like an expert on like a scientist within the history of clean eating okay and there was something about and i'm going to completely butcher this as a fact but something about a woman in history, like in the 1800s, 1600s or something, who, what's it called, went on a hunger strike. And that also created an outrage. So it's not about being thinner. It's about the control.

Yeah, it's about us not being allowed to take control yeah yeah yeah it's the same now when it's become a trend especially on black twitter uh the whole all men are trash thing and you know we don't need men and you know chidera ekeru has the whole uh you don't need a man to be happy you can do fuck men don't never date a man be alone yeah it is terrifying to them yeah we might not need them yeah oh my god they are few there's a my favorite thing is do you know aloni yeah it's the sex um she has tweets yes like a sex social media bloggers something yes like that and what she does it's incredible so she'll have she's had a set of few fat phobic things i've tried to speak

to her about it but i hope she'll she'll probably i she's had a set of few fatphobic things. I've tried to speak to her about it, but I hope she'll, she'll probably, I think she means well. I don't think she really knows what she's doing, but that. Yeah. It's just a shame, but she does that sometimes. But mostly what she does is she goes, she has like a name for it. She goes like, something like, write hoes. Let's talk about how we were a hoe this weekend.

Oh, yes. And the threads. Yes. She's like, talk about when you had a threesome. Talk about when you were the other woman in a relationship. Like the things you're not really allowed to talk about or be. And then she has these women anonymously DMing her and telling them about, you know, oh, yeah, so I fucked this guy. But his dick was a bit too small, so I went to fuck his best friend.

And then I was still horny at 4 a.m., so I went out and fucked a cab driver. And it's amazing because we're not allowed to say those things we're not allowed to do those things and and the men they cannot because they have always every time that these men have fucked these women they've had this idea that they were in charge and the woman really was really emotional about this and really wanted this and and they cannot have that these women are sitting in a group of and just going oh yeah fuck this guy oh yeah i fuck this guy i was like this other guy and just not caring like they're expecting them to leave the flat and this woman would just be like oh when is he gonna come back with his magical penis when actually they were like i'm gonna fuck another one the reactions from men are the best because they just can't they're not in control they don't – and I can – this is a very weird kind of segue,

but it's like the way that fat people are often seen as quite desperate and desexual and just like unlovable in many ways. So I can – like if I've made out with some guy at a party or slept with a man or something i can like have had the most i can have been a huge bitch about it i can be like oh yeah okay i guess we're gonna have sex i'm kind of in the mood but i don't really like you okay we'll do it anyway it's not gonna be like right it's over now please go home like you need to go home now i'm not you know we've had sex go i'm not interested and six months after i'll meet that guy and he'll be like hi how are you feeling oh no just to let you know like there was one who asked me out for pizza like a year after we'd slept together we hadn't spoken for that whole year and he asked

me out for pizza to tell me i think i'm gonna propose to my girlfriend i just i didn't want you to find out through facebook and i was like wait what did you think was going to happen that i was going to like break down and be like oh no please don't we've not spoken for a year it was a bad lay like it's you can just sense that these people are like oh god i'm probably gonna break sophie's heart now because we slept together once so she's probably like get over yourself yeah 100% get over yourself but it is

it's that really funny idea that it's I do this all the time where I'll write something like men should be better and they literally will DM me and tell me why they are so good no actually it worked today

I was really polite to a woman of colour and I'm like oh amazing well done Steve but they honestly were like they come in like by swarms of like

it is true it's that whole like equality to the privilege feels like oppression yeah and then I get called like I'm a sandrist all the time

and Piers it's basically Piers Morgan like just multiple versions of him have you ever been retweeted by Piers Morgan no have you

yeah twice it's is the worst do you get abused or people nice to you after that oh no loads of abuse oh look i mean i mean the right people are nice but like you just i remember like right i was the plane was just about i was gonna be like one hour plane from ireland it's just right you know the last time you check your phone before you turn it off and it was just retweeted by Piers Morgan calling me a rapid feminist or something like that. I was like, oh no.

I had this hour on the plane going, oh I'm going to land to an absolute shitstorm. I don't know if he's... I can't work out. I don't know if he's real or if he's a caricature. I don't know if anyone actually... I just don't know. He's making a lot of money, maybe that's why. I don't get it. I think he just don't know. I mean, he's making a lot of money.

Maybe that's why. I don't get it. I think he's real. I think he hasn't had to. I might be a bit wrong, but when men do something like that, I honestly believe that he's just like a man who feels his way, speaks his mind, and it's still going pretty well for him. Yeah.

Where I think when a lot of women do it, it is a bit more calculated. I mean, I don't know. Oh, interesting. And I don't know. I think maybe just have a higher opinion of women. Even the bad ones. Even the ones with the shitty opinions. I guess it's just that he's maybe been so privileged in life that he's never had to question stuff so he's just like i like it how

it is and i want to stay the same and stop trying to change my that is what it is isn't it there's a lot of i see it now in comedy there's a lot of people who used to be big like a big deal and now suddenly women and people of color and trans people and non-binary people are demanding space. And they turn into right-wing activists because, well, I've never had to struggle and now I struggle. I had a friend say to me that they were applying for a job and now they're concerned that they probably wouldn't get it because they were too posh or weren't a person of color. And I went, well, that's really good then. That's really positive change. And they were like, yeah yeah you like sit back down then yeah it's your turn to sit down it's our turn to like like maybe have to work a bit harder yeah it's absolutely

okay with that yeah absolutely okay with you know maybe it's not that things are really hard for you now maybe it's just that they've always been super easy i think that's what it is yeah yeah i feel that's completely fair and I kind of like it. Yeah. Because they get very angry and I'm often the source of their anger. Not the source,

but where they put the output into because they're so upset. And I remember being in the middle of a shitstorm so I was getting hundreds of tweets a minute calling me horrible things, telling me to kill myself, like all these really bad things. And then my friend was like, Sophie, Sophie, Sophie, I got this abusive tweet.

Look at it. And the tweet was like, dear blah, blah, that joke you did, I wasn't quite sure how I felt about it. Would you mind considering maybe not using this word? But otherwise, I enjoy your comedy. And he was like, I don't know what to do. How do I reply? This has hurt my feelings. Oh, is that you?

Oh, maybe it was my laptop. I don't know where that came from. And I was just like, I sent him just like a screenshot of the last, like, just my news, my feed. It was just like, kill yourself, fuck you, all of it. And he was like, oh, yeah, but anyways, I don't know what to do about this tweet. And I was like, who are you talking to oh my god what are we doing right now like it's so get out of your shell like my favorite thing was when i was doing like a pilot for a sitcom that never happened and i was it was in the middle of a shitstorm maybe one of the pierce morgan retweets

this is james woods anyways. Anyways, one of them. And I was just getting, so I kept being on my phone to like block, delete, block, delete, block,

delete. And then this guy I had to the sitcom was this like white privileged guy. He was like, he was like, oh,

just don't worry about it. Just don't, don't care about it. Just, don't, don't, just stop thinking about it. Don't take it personally.

Like, don't take it. So I was like, oh really? And I just started reading. Every time I got a tweet, I said it to him Like, don't take it. So I was like, oh, really? And I just started reading. Every time I got a tweet, I said it to him. Like, what they said to me. I was like, go kill yourself.

Fuck you. You're a horrible piece of shit. You're a bad person. You're going to die. You're going to die. And after five minutes, he was like, please stop. And I was like, oh, don't let it bother you, though. Just don't let it bother you.

You're a piece of shit. You should die now. Don't let it bother you. And he was like, no, stop, stop, stop. I was like, yeah, exactly. So leave me be. Don't worry is the worst piece. My boyfriend said it to me the other day

and I was like what is wrong I literally came I went babe I'm really really worrying about them I'm really quite stressed it's not in this bed

and I don't really get this worried that much I was like basic and he went oh just don't worry and I was like I've come round to tell you

that I'm so worried if I could not worry obviously I just wouldn't have worried would I like but also it doesn't work it's that weird thing of these men screaming.

You know, they're like, women are so sensitive. You're like, really? Are women so sensitive? Because you seem like really angry right now over what's basically nothing, like a tweet or a picture or something. Oh, I'm going to have to read it out to you because someone sent me. It's called a bro flake. Have you heard of this?

A bro flake? No, but I'm loving it. Okay, because you know how everyone calls everyone snowflake oh yeah i'm super into it okay this is um this is so good oh come on there's also an instagram thing called the awards awards for good boys which is oh i think i might have seen that okay so a bro flake um a commonly seen stereotype of the quintessentially conservative heterosexual white male who despite all his privileges and advantages in life is easily sensitive to any criticism or mockery

unable to see outside of his own perspective and takes everything personally even when it's not about him specifically fragile like a snowflake with the mentality of a bro usually denies or ignores reality and very real struggles of other genders races sexual identities etc so it'll be like um mike was deemed a bro-flake by the public when he went to a Black Lives Matter protest and shouted, All Lives Matter. Classically.

Or, yeah. Anyway, so I just now send that to people. Bro-flake's amazing. Whenever men send me stuff like, Not all men, and here's why, I just send them bro-flake. Yeah, or when they, I often get these comments that are like,

I don't care about this. I don't care. I don't care. You seem to care so much, though. You really seem to care a lot. I get the weird ones are the ones that are like, if you really loved your body, you wouldn't block people who called you a fat pig. It doesn't even make sense it it's not even it doesn't even make sense it's not even logic like it doesn't if you really loved your body you would be open to read abuse

about it like it just doesn't no they're just so furious not be heard like there's a few like they're so scared of you know being erased and it's just like you don't worry you'll you'll probably still be fine i know you won't be part of the oppressed you will never be part of the oppressed group at most you'll be equal to others at most it's scary and kind of fun or do you know what else is funny it's like you write something about i wrote something about rape culture in like within the uk about like the short skirt thing and this man went you think you're a feminist but you're not even talking about these problems people in different countries and i was like this is all a problem like who are you suddenly the head of

feminism now i didn't know are you giving like marks also what have you said have you have you thought about these women in other countries exactly why is that my why is that my thing it's so funny they're suddenly like no don't try that. Like, you've got it bad. You've got it really good. We're really good over here. My main, what I love, what I love about sexism is that because they hate women, they will always underestimate women's intelligence. And that is how we'll win.

Yeah, that is so true because they they they really think that like rachel fairburn amazing comedian posted something recently about the comments she gets on twitter from men because they will always explain her joke back to her or like point out what her joke like i remember i like i didn't remember what was that i tweeted about it was after brexit was it after trump no it was after brexit i think where i tweeted something like um can someone go back in time and make sure that nigel farage gets into art school and this man commented and said actually uh hitler hitler was uh was turned away from art school like yeah that's that's the joke, isn't it?

That's why I tweeted that. What? Like, it's the assumption that you didn't know. And, you know, I bet you get, I bet all women or people who are perceived to be women get the same thing of, like, I've been mansplained comedy so many times by people who've never been near a comedy club.

And they just assume. Like I was in a cab the other day where he started talking about, I said I was talking about body activism. And he said, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not a problem anymore. I was like, what? It is still a problem. It's still the expectation of people to be thin. And he's like, no, no no it's just not a

thing anymore and there's like assumption that whatever you say just has no weight just has no like it's it's incredible the when you can actively feel yourself being almost like raised yeah diminished of yeah it baffles me that it's like wow it doesn't matter what i say that will be like i had a lot with denmark at the moment was trying to explain to them like that sexism is a thing and feminism isn't a bad thing like they will look for their their kind of base their baseline will be she's definitely wrong we just have to find out you know where the misunderstanding

happened it's not even a it's not even an option to consider you're saying that in denmark this is the attitude yeah yeah yeah in the whole really yeah feminism is a bad word i didn't know i thought that was quite progressive yeah that's sweden okay yeah i'm very much riding that wave in the in the international waters i see very lucky it's very lucky. It's so backwards. It is the most tiring place. Really? It is so tiring being a feminist in Denmark. The second I became a feminist in Denmark,

I lost half my friends and was ostracized from the Danish stand-up circuit. When I came out as a feminist, I got a phone call from a Danish comedian saying, do you need to be fucked? Is that it? Do you want me to help? Like, I can have sex with you if that's what's...

I just don't understand why you would say these things. Because, like, if it's because you need to get laid, like, I can figure something out. But are they... Is it that whole thing of what we've managed to get over here now, where people actually are feminists, but they just don't like the word? Or they also aren't feminists

and they hate the word I think there's a lot of, like I said about them not holding the door or calling you love the movies being quite there's a lot of very strong female characters who aren't necessarily femme and there's a lot in the

legislation is that a word yeah that is quite uh progressive i do think culturally you're more gender neutral actually now i've thought about it even like the clothes and and like the way people dress it isn't as um like effeminate and masculine yeah yeah yeah there's a lot of yeah there's a lot of um you know less makeup is more classy and like baggy clothes is a thing and in that way there is in that way i can see why i can see why a lot of danish people think that it's progressive but it's absolutely not i think that's why i do actually funny enough those really

small signals probably make me perceive danmarks being actually someone that's very yeah on the it's just a different yeah it's a it's a really strange one and I wish I kind of wish I had more I wish I was a sociologist or something who could like actually look into what has actually happened and why it's so I think there's also this part of us being told all the time that we're this progressive country and we're the happiest country in the world we're the best country in the world the most equal country in the world and yeah i think that might like people just don't acknowledge like whenever i do any interview with any journalist it's always but why why feminism why are you a feminist like what is it like why do you claim

that men run the world it's like it's not even acknowledged as a thing. Oh. So they don't believe there's a patriarchy. No, no, not at all. No. And then if I'm like, all over the world we've acknowledged this.

You're the only country left. That's not true, but like, and they're like, oh, that must be because we're fixed and the rest of the world have this feminism thing

you talk about. So the Danish, this says everything. There's a danish feminist comedian a professional comedian she's amazing she's uh been a professional comedian for 15 years she does makes a living off of comedy and uh she also you know engages in a lot of debates about feminism so she's widely hated by a lot of you know the media and people in denmark in general because no one's a feminist and uh she also does talks about bullying she's like a non-expert she wrote a book about bullying she

does talks like young people about bullying she's very great she recently announced that she was never going to do comedy in denmark again because she was tired tired of the bullying tired of being ostracized tired of being bullied by the media and other danish comedians because she was just like i'm tired of sexism i'm so fucking tired of it. I can't do this anymore. She went on the biggest Danish news talk show to talk about this. She was sitting there. She was explaining this like tears in her eyes, saying like I've been through this for 15 years now,

and I'm tired and I don't want to do it anymore. And the reporter, the journalist, the presenter said, but couldn't they just have been joking? And then maybe you just didn't get the joke a professional comedian for 15 years who does talks about and wrote a book about bullying the question she was asked by an like a respected reporter was maybe you just didn't understand the joke i was like what was the response that they did did it was everyone kind of like no one cared no one noticed it no one talked about that's just how it is that's just how much that everyone thinks then

i did the um a danish talk show a few weeks later and they were like well obviously we can't have you on unless you comment on you know her and feminism and like the like the question was like so this is a question this says a lot about it about it, the question that will get asked a lot is, have you ever experienced anything sexist? That says everything about how they view sexism. As if it's like always a... Like have you ever? As if it's not institutional,

as if it's not systemic, as if it's like... As if we haven't all experienced it all the time. is sexist yeah so that's a question but have you ever experienced anything like i guess it's like the question of like have you ever experienced racism to a person of color and they'd be like well by the proxy the fact that we're white we profit off of a racist society it's in everything it's in everything and it's a nice question it's yeah and i never know how to because i can't answer it because yes we'll almost acknowledge that the question is an okay question to ask i'm like so i was on this uh this danish talk show and um that's

like an evening interviewee show that like watched by a lot of people and uh so they pre-prepped me for all the questions and they were were like, the first question is, what's it like being a female comedian? Second question was, what do you think of this case with this Danish comedian who's left because of the bullying? And the last question was going to be, have you ever experienced anything sexist? And then I would get to talk about my show,

which was the reason I was there. I had to go through all this click-baity stuff first. So so my first question when they said what's it like being a female comedian is it is in the uk they said i said well it's really great because over there you would never get asked questions such as have you ever experienced anything sexist because you acknowledge there's a systemic institutionalized problem and this interviewer was just like blinking like um uh oh that's really cool and i was like one is live as well i was like so his last question was just like dumb that's really good you have to otherwise like how are you gonna yeah it's so backwards it's so tiring it's like one of the questions i got from a

journalist was um but he said um so something about you know like white people shouldn't use the n-word and uh men shouldn't mansplain like the most basic things and she went like you talk about these things as if you're right i was like yeah i am she was like but other people might feel another way and i was like it's not up for debate this is not it's not my opinion i'm not like but in denmark i'm like this freak who comes from the outside with these wacky wacky ideas of like what i think is a thing where here it's just like yeah we've we know it's a thing well then also we say this but then like it's such a small portion of society that we occupy that does think this as well but then it's like yeah but still it's like because the media you

know i mean of course we have like horrific stuff like daily mail and stuff but even it's getting there you're right it's like changing isn't it because like the the journalists i'm talking about it's like the main like the danish version of bbc and like the danish version of itv and the guardian and you know i wouldn't no one in the guardian here would ever ask no so why why do you claim that sex sorry why do you claim that sexism is a thing like i would never it's just oh that's so enlightening i never would have known i actually say quite often i'm like god the danes have really got it got it sorted over there we have sorted many things food it's just much better i feel like drugs you're really good with the whole way you deal with drugs and you've got a really good

system over there maybe i don't actually know i mean i think i watched something i'm sure you've got a really good thing oh maybe they like decriminalize in some parts i don't know no i think well there is like a christania which is like its own little free space where it's you you can buy it and i think i know nothing about drugs i'm so uncool i know i generally don't actually know i know that like i know our i know that even within feminism the small group of feminists there are who are all incredible because i couldn't do it literally could not do it is so difficult to be a feminist and then like oh my god but so the ones who are great but even within like some of the most prominent ones transphobia is still big like anti-sex work is still big you know it's not got that like intersectional and not yet i mean

fortunately we now have prominent uh women of color speaking up but even that has that's recent like i don't remember anyone from five years ago when i lived there seeing anyone now it's beginning to happen but it has taken the powers of like we have emma holton who we're very proud of who um i'm trying to think of the right word it's what we used to call uh revenge porn what was it like um non-consensual oh she did did she do your podcast she did my podcast oh my god i remember i just i shared it we used to call revenge porn. Oh. What was it? Like, non-consensual. Oh, she did, did she do your podcast? She did my podcast.

Oh my God, I remember, I just remember, I shared it. I remember listening to it and thinking it was fucking amazing. She's incredible.

Yeah, so she like, reclaimed her body, got naked photos taken of herself to put them out there. She was, and she,

I think she then got a job at the UN or something. That was an amazing episode because that, that's something that's happened to my friends. Yeah. Like,

put it up on porn sites and. It's terrifyingly normal it's terrifyingly like it's so scary but she was like it's like when the world discovered her

like Buzzfeed and Huffington Post were like oh my god she's incredible the Guardian were like oh my god

Denmark it was like why is she whining she should have just not taken the photos and she like she moved out you know I moved out

this Danish feminist community in San Francisco has stopped there's a we have another Danish not taking the photos and she like she moved out you know i moved out this danish feminist means that a sonar girl has stopped um there's a we have another danish activist who's i know considering moving here as well there are danish uh women messaging me saying where can i gig in london because i will never start doing comedy in denmark because it's such a toxic there's a girl recently who messaged me and said when i was 17 17, I started doing stand-up in Denmark, and two Danish comedians sat on each side of me and grabbed my thighs, so I stopped. And then you say to the Danish comics,

this is happening, and they're like, who? Who said that? That's not the point. They're like, well, but who claimed this? Because I've never heard of it. I'm like, no, that's because they're afraid to tell you, because you have this reaction. And they go, well, because they're afraid to tell you because you have this reaction. And they go, well, if they're afraid to tell us,

then that can't be a thing. That's how it starts with everything, though, as well. I mean, it's like, that's with me, too. It's the same thing, isn't it? People don't come forward to the power. But hopefully it will shift. I hope so. But Denmark feels like such an uphill struggle.

I wanted to have something happier because this're both sat here like our faces. So let's talk about Happy Fat, which is your book. Yay! Give me the premise. Happy Fat is basically everything I know and have learned about fatness, which I think is justifiable. There's a lot. I know a lot. I've gone from being someone who

absolutely like devastatingly hated my body and everything to do with my body and fatness in general to being fatter than I've ever been but happier than I've ever been I love my body I I'm a fat person and I think I'm sexy I think I'm hot I think I'm worthy something that I never ever imagined I could reach without being thin so it's about it's about me and the journey I don't like the word journey but it's about like how I got there. And it has a bunch of history. It has a bunch of, I say a bunch, it has some history from the like the fat acceptance movement. And it has a chapter called How to Love Your Body where I give like all the practical. I think within body, the chat about fatness and bodies, there's a lot of love yourself. There's a lot of love yourself there's a lot of love your body you are beautiful and i've sat

with body activists and said but how how do you do it and they go well just love yourself like no no we we get that a lot and then now we just all feel bad about not being able to love ourselves i think sometimes it's just like looking at body being like oh fine and just kind of not just being body neutral sometimes but it usually is is the ideal just not caring about how you look at all but it's very difficult to get neutral about something that you hate how do you get neutral about anything but it's basically like there's no i missed practical stuff because one thing is seeing memes and quotes and statuses that said, you are worthy and beautiful. You're like, mm-hmm, but I still hate it.

Yeah. So I have practical advice. These are the practical things you can do actively to try and learn how to love your body. And it's just like a – I try to give a view of what it's like for people who, either for people who are fat, who have never heard anyone else talk about it, or for people who aren't fat, who don't know what it's like.

I think actually that's one of the more poignant or important bits is like, if you've never operated the world as a fat person, like I said when I first listened to that, this is American life, whatever the fuck else that really shook me and changed and made it so much easier for me to understand and i think actually that's if all the non-fat people read about what it's like to live life as a fat person fat people probably wouldn't need your book yeah because they wouldn't be operating in a world that was so derogatory towards them yeah so much of the subconscious so much of it is so subtle and we don't know we're yeah we're doing it we don't we don't even i did a

body positive podcast with someone who wasn't really that fat who hosted it and she said at one point she said something like we're talking about body positivity and like loving your body and fat being okay and at one point she said oh someone the other day called me huge and I was like yeah what she was like oh can you believe it that really hurt and I was like have we not just have we not just established that that's okay like you're still in that mindset even though you've like acclaimed a body positive I am okay with being fat I'm okay with you've like acclaimed a body positive i am okay with being fat i'm okay with you've still made the association between huge and bad yeah in your head when actually huge is you know it's not like it's just it's just a descriptive this is like when now it's taking me so long to get here but like just saying to you you're fat and i have no attachment to it yeah whereas before i used to be

like but you're fat can i say like i don't mean it in a bad way and plump yeah yeah what's funny is other people will hear me say to someone like you're fat or that and they're like you can't say that i'm like you can because they're fat it's not like oh yeah we need to de-stigmatize the word of fatness like that's that's one of the first steps probably isn't it well one of my one of things I've, the invisibility of being fat, the ironic invisibility of it is, one thing is being told, you're a fat pig, kill yourself, which is, we get that a lot.

But I think it's even worse when, you know, oh, you're not fat. You're not fat. Or, you know, you're a teenager and they say, oh, you can just borrow my shirt. And you're like, but I can't wear your shirt. I can't fit you know you're a teenager and they say oh you can just borrow my shirt and you're like but i can't wear your shirt i can't fit into it and they're like no you can you can you totally can no you're not fat you're not fat you can and like this anxiety with people like you know like i've gone into a restaurant they're like oh sit in this booth and i'm like oh i can't i'm too fat and they're like you know like you ask for an extension in

the in an airplane and they're like okay okay madam and an airplane. And they're like, okay, okay, madam. And they come back and they're like hiding it like under the seat. Like they're giving you drugs in an alley. Like this is like, oh, my God, we cannot talk about it. I had the realization when I was in a comedy club. Another comedian doing another fat joke. And I suddenly realized why it was so bothering. And it wasn't the fact that it was a fat joke.

It was the fact that the way he did it, he said, they, oh, fat people, they're like this. And I was like, if he had said, fat people, you are like this, I would have maybe even found it funny. Because it's the fact that, oh, I'm not even here. I'm in this room, and no one's acknowledging that I'm here. Because people are still laughing, but it's they those fat people i'm right here mate except say to my face but they never do it's that like so i saw someone post about i can't find the quote i'm desperate

to find the quote but someone said something like when you're fat you're always invisible when you don't want to be and too visible when you want to be invisible. Like you can never just be allowed to just exist in a normal way. I think with everyone who's marginalized in society, we do the same thing. We do it with people who are disabled. Just look, if I don't look at it, because you've been told that to be anything but this very small paradigm of beauty or normality or in better commas health is like, oh, that's not, just fine, just ignore it kind of thing. Yeah. I left the hairdressers because I couldn't sit in the seat and sit on the chair. health is like oh that's not they're just fine just ignore it kind of thing yeah i said i left the hairdressers because i couldn't sit in the seat and sit on the chair and when i was like complaining about it uh the hairdresser woman the owner of the hairdresser said uh oh it's because

i've taught my i thought my hairdressers not to see not to see things like that so they probably didn't even see you as fat i'm like you can't do that because you can't be like come on walk up these stairs person in the wheelchair I'm sorry I don't see wheelchairs it's like colour blindness

like I can't see race I don't see colour fuck off you have to see this it's a thing you can't that doesn't make you a good person

to ignore it you have to acknowledge how the world affects me looking the way I do is my friend saying oh smile more no no

we have to acknowledge that these people here they will talk to you but they won't talk to me because they don't like fat yeah we have to acknowledge that yeah and it's it's that it's like um like when I someone suggested that I wrote I wanted to write like a general book it's like I don't want to write about things and they said maybe make it just about fat and I was like I can't write a whole book about fat stuff like what would I say like and then I just started writing and it was so difficult to cut it down because there's so much and I'm still like I want to pitch a second book because there's so much more it's like it's such a so much to say about it and I'm so I'm

really excited I'm really proud of it I'm really happy that I did it and I have so much to say about it. And I'm really excited. I'm really proud of it. I'm really happy that I did it. And I have so much more. Did you enjoy writing? Yeah, I did. Very, very much. Very much. It was interesting.

You know, you start writing and you're like, oh, this is great. I don't understand why people are like, why would I need a second draft? This is perfect. And then the process of realizing oh oh no did you plan it or did you just write and then saw what came out I think I planned like I had like chapters like six chapter like topics which then sort of changed along the way but yeah I had like my so it was like i wanted like something about my childhood the other othering uh popular culture like media and representation health and how to love your body

is that it oh yeah and then like a how to be a friend to fat people like an ally oh that's good when you write do you automatically write in english now because danish english well like you said i wrote in english yes uh but yeah i usually think in english and write in english but i have to switch so when i go to denmark there'll be like a day where i'm really rusty in danish and it's really embarrassing but then once i start thinking in danish again i'll have that day in England when I'm like oh let's change it back again to English it's a bit it's getting really more and more difficult as time goes so have you had it published in English and Danish and or is that going or it's coming out in English and then I think they're

I think they're trying to sell the rights to other countries. Amazing. It's weird. It should have probably been like a collaboration with Denmark because I know a lot of people in Denmark want it, but I don't know how it works. Sorry, I probably asked you a question way too far ahead. No, I don't know. It's just like this publishing world is so big and I'm still not really sure I understand how everything works.

I don't really know. It seems like a very complicated world but well done for writing a book, that's absolutely unbelievable I'm really excited to read it I've been such a big fan for so long and I feel like you taught me loads so I'm sure that loads of people will learn as well and thank you so much for doing this

I literally have chatted to you all day have you enjoyed it? I really have, I really i really have i really have i feel like i had so many more things to talk about but i was so scared you're gonna ask me how to be an adult and i was like oh god i can't oh my god no no one knows exactly it's actually a bit like a new horse when you're like and just no one knows what they're doing do you also start this because you genuinely wanted to know yeah so i was like oh i don't really know everyone basically my parents got being like what are you going to do now that you've left uni and that

you're doing this? And everyone around me, every family thing I went to, like at Christmas and stuff, they'd be like, so what is it that you're going to be doing? And I would just be like, I don't fucking know. And then I'd ask my friends who were in really secure jobs, this is exactly what, and no one knew. And then it's kind of just come on to a conversation

more actually about privilege. And instead of like, what are we going to do? It's who are we? How have we got here? And what's the world doing? And that will help you figure it out rather no one asks you like how are you or who are you yeah everyone just asks you what are you going to be and it's like i don't even know who i am yet so i don't know yeah and you can't just say happy i think no i know exactly well you want no, no. I just literally make sure that... My dad still says to me,

have you got a job? I'm like, yeah. I remember telling my grandmother that I moved to the UK and she said, for whom? I was like, what? To work?

She was like, but who lives there? I was like, a lot of people. No one in particular. What do you mean? She was like, but who are you moving for?

Is it a boyfriend? Yeah. I was like, no, me, work. She was like, all right all right you don't want to tell me his name i was like imagine imagine having that imagine having lived that life when you exist through oh my god thank god that we escaped that also talking about chadera literally i was saying i saw her last night in a van and i was like i fucking love my boyfriend but i'll be sat next to him in love with him reading her stories and being like, maybe I should break up with him. What do you give to me?

Would you offer me? Then I look at him and I'm like, oh, you are really, really nice. But what else do you get? Oh, amazing. Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening, guys. If people want to find you online or in real life,

where do they live? I prefer online. And I live on, well, SophieHagen.com, where you can get this. Sophie Hagen everywhere, like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. My newsletter is my main kind of, sign up for my newsletter, because it's both really gossipy and I say a lot of secrets that my manager doesn't want me to say because I don't think anyone reads it and then so that's also where I announce like I'm going on tour this May April June on a book and stand-up tour of the UK I'm going to be in Edinburgh for the Edinburgh French with a new show which I will then take on

tour and I have a secret dinosaur cult as my one of my podcasts and Made of Human as my other podcast and all of that I could have so many stuff so much stuff to do so that all comes out via the newsletter amazing

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