Adulting - #52 When Will The World Accept Fat Bodies? With Stephanie Yeboah

Episode Date: February 23, 2020

This week I speak to multi-award winning Plus Size Style, Beauty and Lifestyle Blogger and Author of upcoming non-fiction book "Fattily Ever After", Stephanie Yeboah. We discuss fatphobia, the policing of women's bodies and the way diet culture impacts our lives from such a young age. I hope you enjoy and as always, please do rate, review and subscribe! Oenone x 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, poddlters. I hope you're doing well. In today's episode, I speak to Stephanie Yeboah. We talk about fat bodies, race, and the way that those two things intersect. it might be slightly triggering for those of you who have had disordered eating, or perhaps who exist in a fatter body and have struggled with the way that people are treated you. So I just wanted to say that in case anyone feels like this might be a slightly difficult conversation to listen to. Stephanie was so generous in telling me her story and about her growing up and how she's kind of overcome fat phobia.

And she now is a body image advocate and activist, I suppose you could say. She's also an author and her book, Happy Fatally, Fatally Ever After, sorry, is coming out in September, I believe. I really hope you enjoy this episode. I absolutely loved meeting Stephanie and it was such a great chat. Please do rate, review and subscribe and I will see you next week. Bye. Hi guys and welcome to Adulting. Today I am joined by Stephanie Yeboah. Hi, thank you for having me. Thank you so much for coming on. So for people who don't know who you are, please could you tell us a little bit about you?

Okay, so I am a plus-size style blogger, freelance journalist, activist, and an author. Oh, this is my first time saying that now. Author of a book coming out 3rd of September called Fattily Ever After. Yeah. And I'm just online just ranting at people, arguing with racists, arguing with fatphobics. Yeah. The usual. That title is so good. Oh, thank you. I'm so proud of it. It comes from my brain.

I'm so proud of it. When it clocked, I was like. That is the best thing. Thank you. So this episode is going to be called like, when do we start to accept fat but what I've just realized is obviously as a woman of color the intersection of race is hugely important because when we accept black women could be a question in of itself let alone fat black women so I think that's a really pertinent point to bring up because I wanted to ask you if you could kind of explain where body I know you say you're more body acceptance

but the body positivity movement could you explain where that came from because I think a lot of people recently in the media as well it's been co-opted by a lot of like slim white women and yoga teachers and stuff could you explain where that really stemmed from and what that really means yeah sure so I actually did used to be a part of the body positivity community back when it sort of had its resurgence in like 2008 2009 so it originally um started in america in the 1950s 1960s but it wasn't called the body positivity movement it was called i can't remember what the full name of it was was but i know that the acronym was fafsa so fat acceptance society was it like fatiance of I feel like I remember yeah

something like that yeah and that was um predominantly sort of spurned by um plus size Jewish women plus size black women and then it kind of just died down a bit I guess as the trend sort of moved on in the 70s and 80s we saw you know different body shapes uh being in vogue and then didn't really hear anything for a while until about 2007 2008 when tumblr was like the platform that everybody was using um and it's actually a platform that a lot of influencers sort of came from so from tumblr they went on to instagram and then owned blogs and things like that so around 2008 um a lot of plus-size black women and a lot of plus-size black queer women specifically started using the hashtags body positivity fat acceptance and body acceptance

movement and with these hag these hags with these hashtags oh dear with these hashtags they would write essays they would upload photos of themselves in lingerie or bikinis um and they would just write um poetry or whatever means of expression that they wanted to convey to their audiences about how much they loved their bodies how much they loved their cellulite and their roles all of these things and it came it became somewhat of a safe space for a lot of plus-sized black women to sort of celebrate themselves in an industry and in a community that didn't really celebrate us um so that's where I um first saw the movement because I created a tumblr actually to track weight loss so I wanted to yes it was like a weight loss blog for

me and I wanted at the time I wasn't body positive at all and I still really hated my body and so I thought let me start a tumblr blog where I can document how much weight I can lose in like six months and my target was like 150 pounds oh my god or something like that obviously it didn't happen I was just like because it didn't happen because as I was scrolling through my timeline on tumblr I would see all of these posts from plus-sized black women women that looked like me and that was one of the first times that I was like actually I can love myself like it's okay for me to love myself and so from tumblr a lot of the women moved or migrated over to instagram so it predominantly happened in america first so we have um um influences such as gabby greg from gabby

fresh um chastity valentine so all of these um plus size black women who started on tumblr migrated towards instagram and started to use the hashtags again a lot of them created plus size fashion blogs as well and then it slowly sort of took over in the UK as well so a lot of us who were on who were in this community in the UK on Tumblr migrated over to Instagram and then it just became this really underground kind of safe space where fat women could just love ourselves loudly and unapologetically. And we would have these message boards on Facebook about where can I get this, these clothes or just like the most random of things, like what bikinis are good for plus size bodies and so once the whole influencer thing started to take off we noticed that brands started utilizing influencers so you have brands like simply be in evans and other plus size brands who are like oh wow you know there's this huge

market of plus size bloggers let's start using them in campaigns so for a while it was actually quite cool in that you would get plus size brands using plus size bloggers as time goes by people start to pick up on the body positivity hashtag um a lot of people still didn't really understand it a lot of people thought as some still do today promoting obesity and then we get the uh resurgence of models such as ashley graham um so i think when ashley graham came onto the scene that was the first turn point in body positivity because they saw this she's at most a size 14 yeah um white woman high cheekbones big bum big boobs small waist and they made her the face of body positivity because she was a model that was bigger than a size eight yeah and so for a long while you know

we were all like oh wow we've got representation we've got a size 14 on the catwalk amazing um but then we also had other models coming up so like iskra lawrence as well who's probably like a size 12 size 10 um and other very beautiful white women with you know hourglass shaped bodies and it got to a point where we were just like hold on none of these bodies look like the bodies that helped create the movement they're not representing bodies that look like ours and the media because we still live in a world where sex sells the media started to use influencers spokes models and models for the movement who still had a degree of being very very very attractive and can we swear on it yeah yeah fuckable basically so it was almost a sense of you know we'll do this whole body positivity thing and

we'll support bigger bodies but as long as you're still fuckable as long as you've got all the curves in the right places we'll support it and that's essentially what it's turned into now so it's sort of it's it's been shifted towards women that already have privileged bodies yeah and by that i mean not privilege in the sense of how they see themselves but how society sees them so basically what I mean is that they can walk along the street and not be not have people take pictures of them and make them into memes not have people call them you fat this in public not have people watch them eat not have people um video them as they're walking which is something that

happened to my friend actually yesterday when we were in oxford street and my friend is like a size 28 and she's she's actually a model like she's stunning and we were just walking down regent street and there were these um tourists who had his he had his ig live on and he was taking he was like zooming in on her and we didn't want to like accuse him too early because we were like oh no maybe he's just a tourist and vlogging but then he started calling her cow cow cow with the video and then my friend my other friend went up to him and just started shouting at him so savagely in the middle of the street he was so embarrassed and then I obviously joined in because I'm like and just started savedly shouting at him and you know these are the kinds of things that as larger plus-size women we have

to put up with all the time having ads directed at us telling us to lose weight so in terms of privileges it just means somebody that can blend in almost with society without being made to feel like they're the biggest person in the room and so I decided not to align myself with the body positivity movement anymore because I feel like it doesn't align with my interests and I feel like it doesn't represent myself and a lot of other women who were sort of there at the beginning it no longer feels like a safe space for us to celebrate our bodies um and in turn it's become a huge you know even this even though this is a movement that is that was created to celebrate our differences and our curves and everything that makes us unique there is still a standard of beauty within body positivity so if

you do not for the most part if you're not white with high cheekbones and an hourglass shaped body you won't really get that much representation because you have to be beautiful in the eyes of western society that's such a long answer i'm so sorry that was perfect there's so much i want to take from that i mean three years ago when i was still very much being like fitness blogger i used the term body positivity on a post where i was literally shredded and very eating very disordered and And I hadn't, because of media representation of fatter bodies and women of colour, I had not seen how that hashtag had got into my vision from where it had come from. And it wasn't until, luckily, someone commented being like,

you shouldn't use this hashtag. And which was actually amazing of them, because that was before I think people, it was very widely known that it had been co-opted and that was the kind of the turning point to me to learning about because I've been one of those people that thought oh um well it's just bad for you like I had such bad I mean I think we all are brought up fat phobic so you can be fat phobic about yourself and I've had to like unlearn so much so I completely understand why that wouldn't feel like a safe space or a

space that you can even affiliate yourself with because the some of the people that even today still hashtag body positivity and they are bordering on you know potentially having an eating disorder or something it's really really difficult and it's really sad but what's fascinating and amazing now is that these voices are coming up and I love that social media is being a vehicle for that on the other hand we have this one side where hopefully women like myself and other people who have privilege are starting to understand that privilege recognize it and also diversify our fees and that like I now try to follow women and men and whoever of all different types of bodies and backgrounds and ethnicities and all those things but then on the other hand you have the world which is kind of full of um as you say this very eurocentric beauty this new kind of instagram face lots of plastic surgery really rife in diet culture and i think it's a

really interesting polarized time yeah to be living in i imagine that you have as we've talked about previously before the echo chamber of certain spaces where it's very safe and everyone seems to understand and then I imagine like if something gets posted on Facebook which seems to be the worst place for comments you suddenly see that there are swathes of people out there who still can't even fathom the idea that you can exist in a fatty body and should be allowed to access happiness genuinely people don't believe that do they no not at all so I'm lucky in that and I think everybody should do this they should um just what's the word I'm looking for curate that's it they should create their feeds full of um images and photos that

make them feel good about themselves so whether it's following people within the fat acceptance body acceptance body positivity whatever whichever images make you feel good about your body it's so important to have those images on repeat if you do use social media facebook is one of the worst places for comments because i feel like the majority of people in facebook are of an older generation still and i feel like you can't for the most part you can't change their minds on a lot of things they're so stuck in their ways and i find that anytime a brand who have facebook pages they post images of either myself or other influencers who's wearing who's wearing one of their clothes you get some of the most horrible fat shaming comments on there and the

funny thing is that i've noticed is that some of the worst fat sh shaming comments on there and the funny thing is that i've noticed is that some of the worst fat shaming comes from other fat women and that's because they are projecting their self-hate onto um a lot of the times younger influencers who are wearing crop tops and short skirts and mesh and all of these things and they're so used to being told that they have to cover up and they're so used to being told to wear butterfly print and cold shoulders and smocks and empire lines and they're just so used to just you know assimilating to what society has said is good for them that when they see somebody younger or just somebody being bold and showing flesh it's like no you shouldn't do that and they can't

fathom that a fat person can reach this level of confidence um so I try not to go on Facebook that often um I don't really go on it at all really no it's just there just in case a family member like from another country wants to get it yeah all random videos all random videos to you exactly but for the most part, I think, yeah, curating your feed is so important. Can I ask you

about growing up? I mean, you said that you came to find this, so you started off having a weight loss account, which is exactly what my Instagram

started off with. For some weird reason, I feel like Instagram and Tumblr, I remember going on those awful pro-anorexia websites when I was younger

that was really rife on Tumblr. So you, obviously, growing up must have, and don't talk about this if it's too stressful, but evidently, anorexia websites when I was younger that was really rife on tumblr so you obviously growing up must have and don't talk about this if it's too stressful but evidently you've had a huge mindset shift and come to your own fast acceptance place what was it like for you when you found those body positivity accounts and how long did it take you to really believe because it's it's really fat phobia is so pervasive and so entrenched in everything that it takes a long time to undo it. And I'm not even in a fat body.

So I can imagine that existing in a fat body and then having everyone else's opinions on you as well as your own would be a very long process of undoing. Yeah, I mean, it's taken maybe 15 years or so, I would say. For me, so my main catalyst, I guess for it was fashion I have been such a huge fan of fashion since the age of like eight um I remember like coming home from school and watching fashion tv with my cousin I used to buy vogue with like the pocket money like it's like four pounds back then yeah and um I would just buy Vogue and I would rip the pages out and I would make collages on my room I was just it wasn't the models it was just like the outfits I was very like rah-rah when I was younger I loved it and growing up I realized that there were no plus size fashion um spots for me to wear like I had to go to and you know no shade to

Evans or Simply B but the clothes were a bit aging and I was like 14 15 at the time and I was just like oh you know this is if this is all I have so once I started seeing plus size women in the community on tumblr cutting up tops to make crop tops or um finding some niche website where they have really cute bits of under plus size underwear I was like okay this is this is the inner me like this is how I want to channel my personality because I was very quiet as a child and because of getting bullied and things like that and I knew that there was like a creative in me that really wanted to come out and I knew that I wanted to use fashion as a way to express myself and so it was just a case of um not so much pinning because

Pinterest wasn't around back then but I guess saving and archiving pictures of even women that were like a size 12 to 14 saving those pictures and just like praying that one day like a brand will you know um launch so when asos curve launched in 2014 13 13 that was the day that i was like okay now i can get my mesh i can get my jumpsuits my mini skirt like all of these things and wearing clothes that made me feel confident was honestly like the best thing that could ever happen to me I it was really a case of me faking it till I made it because I was still trying to sort of come out of that sort of fat phobic way of thinking but even back then it was still a bit difficult for me because I was so exposed to all of these different fat phobic bits of media and unfortunately um around the time so no just before was it just before I can't remember now

it must have been during or before I started my page on tumblr I um wanted to go to Barcelona for my birthday and I think this was this was the pinnacle that that's on my dishwasher um this was the pinnacle of where I was like okay I need to actually learn how to love my body because this is ridiculous so from the age of about 10 my parents or my mom put me on weight watchers um and in, that taught me such destructive, terrible eating habits to the point where I was eating like 800 calories a day. Nobody saw it as an eating disorder because I was fat. Fat people don't have eating disorders. They're doing what's best for them. And that's the narrative that we've had to kind of live with for the longest time because people assume that

when you're fat, you can't have a disorder. i wanted to go to barcelona for my birthday and i thought you know i'd never worn a bikini before in order to wear a bikini i have to have a fat stomach so i did like a countdown and i said i'm gonna lose four four stone in four months or whatever the case may be and i did really really destructive things to my body so i won't go into all of the I don't want to give anyone ideas but like it just included a lot of fasting included a lot of like laxatives like these really random diet pills that my aunt actually suggested to me and then I bought loads and then the website just mysteriously disappeared like I bought them on the dark web like it was really really I don't know if I mean I don't know what they contained but they made me

they suppressed my appetite um I was exercising you funnily enough I used to exercise to the Jillian Michaels DVD she's anyway she's another but, um, she had this DVD that came out called 30 Second Shred, and so I would work out to it, like, three times a day, I ended up losing all the weight, went to Barcelona, had my little pink free bikini, I remember, but I, my mental health was just shit, I was the worst I'd ever been mental health-wise, and I already suffered from depression, so this was just another trigger for me, um, throwing up all the time not because of the bulimia but because I guess my body was just feeling really ill because of all the starvation mode all of these things um I kept looking in the mirror and thought I had to lose more weight I've lost this but I could do with

losing more because it suddenly became quite addictive and then I was just feeling I just felt really shit because I was like I was on the beach and nobody was looking at me and I was like I lost weight for you like why is nobody paying me any attention and that was the moment that I was like I'm literally destroying my body for the benefit of others like my all my body does is work hard to keep me alive and I'm treating it like this and I'm harming it like this and I almost had to take my body as a separate entity and look at it and just be like I'm so sorry because I would never treat another human being like this but I've done horrible physical things to you and yet you're still

trying to keep me alive and when I clocked that that was when I was like okay I need to start apologizing to you instead of apologizing on behalf of you because we're in this together me and my body like this is all I have and I have to treat it with the utmost care and respect and if it wants to be fat then I will let it be fat and just do things that make me feel good and feel healthy regardless of how much weight I carry um but yeah that Barcelona trip was when I was like nah I can't keep doing this to my body it's it's unbelievable how much uh I relate to everything you said I've done all of the things you just said and I've always been straight-sized and as a young person thought I was fat and at the same kind of tipping point

as you did where I got so lean and no one I look back on the pictures and it's actually like I look ill everyone's like you look absolutely great and that was when same as you my mental health was shit I literally I remember had a boyfriend at the time completely lost my libido was so tired every like things that bring you joy I couldn't get joy and I remember stopping and thinking I'm literally looking the best. And better commas, I actually looked awful looking back. I've ever looked. I've never been so small in my life.

And I feel like shit. And my brain went, oh, so it's not my body. I always thought if I, I remember waking up every day at school and thinking, if only I could be skinny then, then I could do this. And it was the first thought I had when I woke up in the morning. First thing I thought when I went to bed. And my God, my life's so much better now that I'm not stuck in this prison of like, because diet culture, the reason it's so scary is because you can always be smaller.

It doesn't matter whether you're a size two or a size 20. This idea, especially as women, the smaller you are, the better you are. It can get, and it's just so fucked up. Yeah. It's horrible. And it's so weird because it's such a westernized thing as well. Yeah. Because in Africa, sure, fat phobia is a weird because it's such a westernized thing as well yeah because in

africa sure fat phobia is a is a thing it's definitely a thing but it's always been more socially acceptable to be curvy not too curvy but curvy as in like a 14 to 18 is like generally seen as like oh wow like she's really pretty kind of thing and it's often slimmer women that are um treated really horribly and so I just find it so bizarre like I find it I don't know I just find like I don't know I I don't understand where this obsession with thinness comes from um because on one hand you can't like even if we get into the health debate like you can never tell somebody's health by how they look um and it just makes me so sad that we have this diet industry that profits off of people's insecurities and i've never been you know when I was younger I did all

the diets I was on the Cambridge diet lighter life um the Atkins diet the waterfall diet which was one that you literally just drank water and ate apples and that was so damaging and I remember with the lighter life diet after seven days and my actually my mum was really cruel in this because I remember I was doing it and obviously you can't eat any solid food for like three months and I would go to her house and she would be making like a fry up so while I'm there just drinking my water she would just come with like her full plate of her fry up and just waft it under my nose for ban she thought she was being funny now at the time I thought she was being funny as well but then like 30 to 40 minutes later I actually passed out because I don't know if the scent triggered something in my stomach I don't know but um I had to go to the hospital not the hospital

the GP and everything and apparently like my heart rate was like just beating a thousand times a minute and it was because I hadn't eaten this was seven days into the diet you're not even allowed to chew gum like it was just literally water and then these like really weird shakes horrible shake things and I can't believe that that's still legal that that's still a legal thing because your body I just don't think bodies are made to go on such extreme diets and one thing that I've always said is that even if you do want to go on a diet it's so important to if you do want to change your body to do it from a place of self-love because if you try and diet from a place of I hate my body

you're going to wake up every day look at yourself and wish it was gone and want for it to go faster and in that process of you wanting your body to shrink as quickly as possible you're gonna do destructive things to your body so that the weight can go so the things that we mentioned much as you know starvation and pills and all of these things and yeah you'll lose the weight as quickly as possible but then after a while you're it's not going to be sustainable and the weight will come back and you will feel even shitter so if you love yourself from if you want to lose weight from a place of loving yourself then you will understand that it will take time for your body

to adjust to your new body um to the new weight and you will do things to make your body feel good as opposed to do things to making your body feel shit and I just don't think yeah the diet the diet industry I don't think it's a sustainable it's not sustainable it's it's it's such a scam like it literally makes money from from people's insecurities about their bodies like I just I could never support it never no and you said that that you aren't sure like where this desire for smallness has come from and the more I kind of read feminist rhetoric and look into it and things it seems like it's twofold and quite sinister in that the smaller women are the weaker they are the more that men can dominate them I really think it comes from like a heteronormative idea of femininity daintiness it's very Victorian ideal of like women blushing, being quiet, chaste.

Curvy women are overly sexualized. And whereas younger, not younger, slimmer women are viewed as younger. And that's creepier as well. So I do think there's this kind of creepy sexualization and idea of dominance that we can dominate. That women who are physically stronger and bigger might be seen as a threat to men. think and emasculating I think that's one of the things and the other thing you brought up was uh obviously the diet industry which basically it makes money because diets don't work so you can bring out 50 diets a year and you'll always sell it because you're always going to have to get a new one if diets works they'd have no money because you'd go on one diet and that would be sold and then they

wouldn't be able to sell again and I wanted wanted to ask you about your relationship with your mum because my mum also triggered dieting and me. I used to do things like the cabbage soup diet at home, which is where you basically just eat boiled cabbage and then have like a banana. And she would just let me do that. And I was like 16. But she was doing it from a place of, she really believed,

I think growing up as well, she thought that women should be thin. She still now says things which I'm like, she's and it's unbelievable and she's like my tummy and I'm thinking you've had three babies and you're sick who gives a shit like why do you care and I think she was brought up and I wonder if maybe your mom was the same where the value on women was put so heavily on how they look so we've got much more autonomy and more much more access to careers and being independent and like don't no one really cares if we get married. But I think my mum's ideals growing up, probably she would have brought up an idea where a woman's values were very specific to being this very specific kind of beauty. And so she would almost encourage me to lose weight, even though I was not fat by any stretch of the imagination.

Do you think that your mum kind of allowing you to diet as well might have come from that slightly old fashioned idea towards women's bodies? I think so. I think that your mum kind of allowing you to diet as well might have come from that slightly old fashioned idea towards women's bodies? I think so. I think with my mum. So my mum's kind of almost like the opposite. It was more my dad who was, oh my gosh, my dad was, he was the one that was really on it about my weight. But with my mum, so she was overweight when she was younger. As she got older, though though she lost all the weight but I don't think it was due to anything intentional I think she was just going through a lot of trauma at the time growing up and just a lot of really horrible things happened and so

she just lost it by I guess stress and things like that and like now she's actually on a mission to put on weight because she's like a size eight and she's very petite so she's like 4 11 so she's got beautiful like pear shape she's actually got like stunning figure but she's always like I'm too slim I'm too slim I don't like this I'm too slim I want to put on more weight she wants to put more weight on her bum on her boobs like all of these things and to hear her say stuff like that actually makes me feel quite happy. I think when I was younger and she put me on Weight Watchers, I think, I mean, I still don't really know where that came from. I think because that's when all the puppy fat started to come on. And I think she was so used to seeing me, I don't know, like quite slender as a child that she probably panicked when she realized that I was putting on um a lot of the

weight and I think for her it was more of a health thing yeah whereas with my dad it was uh an aesthetic thing so my mum I don't have like yeah she did the weight wash this thing and then I came off it and then I told her you know I'm not doing this it's not good because she didn't see the calorie counting when I was doing it as well she just kind of made the food and then just left me to it and she didn't see when I would like not eat all of it that kind of thing but after a while like she stopped kind of going on about my weight um I want to say when I was like 15 16 so I don't really attribute a lot of the um fat phobic related trauma to her with my dad, however, because I take after my dad's build and stature.

And so my dad's side of the family are all quite big, vivacious, you know, loud, matriarchal women. And so when I started putting on weight, because I'm the firstborn, and so me and my dad were very, very close, you know, firstborn, and, you know, we had this bond. And then as soon as I started putting on weight, he started to distance himself from me a lot, and I started to get in trouble a lot more,

and he would be a lot stricter on me. He would always say that I eat too much. He would stop me from eating. If we were eating at the dinner table, he would say, you know, leave that bit, leave that bit. He would punish me if he saw me eating a chocolate bar or anything like that and I think the moment that really stood out for me was when I used to get bullied in school a lot about my weight like physically beaten up by boys and just some really horrible uh violence that happened at school and I never used to tell anyone because I was just very meek and

at one point I thought I deserved it because of how I looked but there was this particular issue that happened at school where we were in science and some of the boys I think the teacher left to go to the toilet or something and one of the boys got some of the corrosive acid and he threw it over my neck. And so my neck to this day is still like three or four shades darker than my face. Threw it over me in science, kind of like burned the back of my neck. Everybody in the class was laughing. And I was such a good student.

I didn't even want to leave the class to go to the bathroom because I was like, I'm going to wait for the teachers to come back. So I just went to one of the taps you know like those yeah yeah those taps in like the science class and another girl who was actually really lovely she like my only ally she helped me sort of soothe the area eventually went to the nurse all of that stuff so that was the first time that I told my dad that I was getting bullied and his response was maybe if you weren't so fat you wouldn't be bullied and our relationship kind of just broke down from there like he's always had an issue with my weight and so yeah I think the majority of my insecurities with growing up being

plus size was because of that rejection from him and obviously when you start getting older and start getting into relationships or dating it transfers and then you start getting complexes when you get rejected by men as well because then it triggers that rejection that you get from your dad this is something I only recently learned in therapy as well like but I would, I would always notice that I would get, even though I'm confident when it comes to guys, I'm like that same 10 year old, very, very insecure girl. And I realised it's because I have that link with men rejecting me

because of my size, because of my dad. So he was the one that was like really sort of draconian when it came to my weight. My mum, she's easy easy like she's all right she's always been okay well daddy issues is a saying for a reason I mean those things that happen in your formative years with your father he informed so many of us and I do think that especially like I think we're a similar age the the parental structure and obviously it's different in every family but I think back then I think now

couples probably have a very equal balance but I do think men in the household years ago and certainly in different cultures and things have a very different attitude towards their daughters so I think we've all grown up a little bit fucked up uh because we didn't have kind of consistent normal love loving dads I mean obviously some people do but actually a lot of my friends and I are like we didn't have like a normal relationship with our fathers yeah I'm so sorry that that happened it's just so traumatizing and sad to go through that as a child yeah and to think it's kind of to have the blame then put on you and told that you know well it's your own fault is awful did the school take any action on that or did you not really tell them they took action eventually

because something really something worse happened in school so the bullies were smart it was a it was a group of five boys in my year and I think two in the year above and my school um it was just really weird and it was so it wasn't cohesive in terms of the kids playing together i guess because everybody it was different um different classes of people so i went to oh i don't want to bait up the school actually i went to school in westminster and so the the classes were very different so lots of middle class all the middle class people played together all the working class people played together so all the working class people were from like Stockwell, Brixton, Camberwell and then all the middle class were like from Belgravia and Chelsea and all of that stuff

and so because I didn't really talk to anyone but I was black plus size but didn't necessarily have the idiolect of somebody that was working class or from South London I was such a target because you know people would call me oh you're a bounty you're an oreo like why do you sound white but you're black like all of these kinds of things and it was normally like black kids that would call me that so then I was like a target and I guess they zeroed in on my the way that I spoke, but then also my weight as well. And so I was, I just felt really embarrassed to talk to anybody about it. I, we had a school counsellor, but I, I just couldn't, I'm, I was so used to suppressing things and decompartmentalising things, because I was, I just wanted to learn. And, you know know I was one of those like boffins I just

really liked learning and and all of that stuff and um the bullies were smart they would always attack me when nobody was looking our school was huge it was like a submarine like it was just a big it was a huge huge school with loads of nooks and crannies and so my favorite thing to do would be at lunchtime I'd go to the music department uh because nobody nobody went there at lunchtime everyone was out and um I would go there and we would have like the um what do you call it the practice rooms full of pianos and I would lock myself in a practice room eat my lunch there tinker on the piano read whatever and then go back to lessons and so they would always follow me there and beat me up and then leave and so on one occasion I think it was like year 10 you know when you you're allowed to go out to buy lunch

yeah so you don't have to stay in the cafeteria so we would go out and um get lunch from like everyone just used to go to the chip shop it was so unhealthy um or greg's and so i remember there was a time when i went to go and um eat lunch on this council estate that was close by the school because they had like these really cool not like a reading area but it's like these chairs it was like a really nice area basically to like read or chill out and so i went up to this it must have been the second or the third floor and I went to go and um read have my packed lunch and I didn't know that they'd followed me and so um it got to a point where they kind of like it was kind of like a being taken by surprise so they pulled out my um earphones from my walkman that's how long ago this was and um and they started you know saying all the usual stuff you're fat this this this

nobody will love you all of these things and I think at that point I'd had enough like I kind of wanted to snap and just be like you can't do this to me anymore and I really wanted to stand up for myself which I kind of did unfortunately because we're on the second floor I guess they were very shocked and um angered by the fact that I was trying to stand up for myself and I was shouting at them they'd never seen normally I'll just take it and so it was about five of them they started sort of pushing me to one another so they started pushing me between them um and just like slapping me across the face and things like that and then one of them pushed me and i fell um i fell over the the balcony basically um and broke my lower spine um

i can't the thing is with that i can't remember too much about it trauma quite traumatic yeah um talk about it no it's it's fine i haven't really spoken about it that much because a lot of it it was like a lot of legal stuff that had to be rectified so for the longest time we couldn't speak about it but a couple of them were in juvie um which and i actually have heard from one of them via facebook who i've since blocked because i just don't need did they try to apologize or they try to apologize and i was like no no i did i blocked them and i didn't respond i just read it and i was like okay yeah you don't know the response 100 not yeah i didn't and so that was when the school had to get

involved because they were like why is our student lying like unconscious on the floor kind of thing and that was when like because my mum was traveling a lot at the time and so that was when she got back that was when we kind of had to go through all the legal stuff and and that's when I developed depression so I was 14 and then I developed depression and yeah I can't remember too much from that because it was such a blur but it was yeah horrible to be treated like that at that age is well it's inhumane it's basically treating you like you aren't a human and that is like the one of the most horrible stories I think I've ever heard and so I'm so sorry that you had to go through that but I think that I assume that

there'll be other people in fat bodies and other women of color who who've experienced this kind of bullying and cruelty because and the reason I wanted to use the word accept in the title is because so many of the things you'd said if we could just accept that people can be fat and that's the end of the sentence not you can be fat if you do this or you can be fat just people can be fat then you would have had access to buy clothes not just from simply be and evans because shops would have popped up earlier to cater to it i feel like the reason that fashion wasn't available before was because people thought well no one's destination is being fat so we don't need to cater clothes for them exactly and with the bullying and

things children i mean they're children but how pervasive must that be for a child to feel like they have the vitriol to be able to physically harm another student because they don't fit into their understanding of like what people should look like fanduel casinos 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 or visit connectsontario.ca please play responsibly i mean it's do you know what's funny though it's the funny thing one of the funny things that happened actually recent as recently as a year ago was that one of the boys not the one of the ones that pushed me because i think it was only two that were charged for that the others i don't know what they got i didn't i couldn't give a shit because i was going through like healing and things but

one of the ones that used to bully me all the time actually on tinder they swiped for me and i was like oh my gosh is that and so i went onto his profile and i scrolled down and it said oh yeah i like um plus size women and i was like you fucking dickhead you were bullying me for being plus size and now it turns out that you like plus size women and i literally i just laughed for like five minutes and then like swipe like i didn't swipe for him i was just like is this where it comes from because you hear a lot about people when you're a kid you tease other people because you like them or like you I don't know you project something onto somebody because you either want it or you're not happy with yourself or whatever so it was a weird case of this guy like swiping for me

but yet was bullying me as a child like it's just so childish I don't know I just thought that was quite humorous like okay and also look how well you're doing that's like kind of the best thing ever is that you're doing amazingly and that you like you basically survived being treated like that okay I will quickly want to ask you about dating actually what what do you feel when people kind of like fetishize because would you call that fetishization of bigger bodies when people say I like plus-sized women or do you think it's just them kind of opening up and being like this is what i'm attracted to how do you feel about that kind of thing it's such a thin line you know because i know that there are some men some women but mostly men who are scared of saying that

they like big women because people will automatically say it's a fetish right um equally it's it's so nuanced because i think when you are in a position where men are swiping for you or messaging you it's all about the language so when it comes to being fetishized you can instantly know when someone's fetishizing you if they they they always talk about your body they don't talk about the things that you like or dislike your aura your intelligence it's always about I like you know your fat body I like your roles I like your this and they're always being hypersexual in their messages so for me it's always a case of it being a fetish plus my race so they'll always say oh I've never been with a fat black girl before I think you guys are I mean

I've heard you guys are aggressive I've heard you guys are really dominant in bed those things are very anything that's very hyper sexualized automatically I think is quite a fetish whereas for because there are men that do genuinely prefer bigger women um where they are I don't know if you like big women please slide into my dm because some of us are starving out here like honestly like don't know where they are but i know that they exist and i know that some of them are in really happy relationships with plus size women um and there are some men that just don't give a shit they'll be like yeah i like bigger women and then they date plus size women but then there are some men i think they're so scared of being put into that fetish box or they're so scared of being seen as a freak that they don't

say anything and they continue to maybe sleep with plus size women but won't be seen with them yeah do it quietly kind of do it quietly so in the case of like with my ex like even him like he after a while did say that he was kind of scared of saying that he did prefer plus-sized women because he felt like he had an image to uphold and he's like this tall white slim athletic guy and so he I guess there was an expectation that he would go out with like a you know a really small petite white girl but in fact his preference was plus-sized women of color color plus size black women and so he felt like he had to keep that to himself until he moved to London and then realized that we're

all over the place yeah um but yeah I do think that um I've always said when it comes to plus size dating and obviously it doesn't this is just a generalization it's not with every plus size woman but I feel like you're either humiliated, fetishised or ignored. And it just seems to be those three pillars of fuckery when it comes to it. And it's really unfair because women, like, I don't think women ever kind of feel a way, not that anyone should be shamed

for dating whoever they date, but a woman can kind of date someone who looks like whatever. And if they're funny or if they're, it could be like the ugliest man you've ever seen in the world but if they're a little bit funny everyone's like oh my god we love him yeah but as a man you're so right and I think it comes back to this kind of uh again the heteronormative idea of ownership where men's or girlfriends I think it must be like subconsciously it's kind of like your um candy on your arm and even if they don't

consciously feel that if society is marginalizing a certain group or a certain look then I think that that's part of like the patriarchal structure is that and I think in a weird way I think that is also quite um hard for men in that like I do think that women have some freedoms within the patriarchy that like men don't have yeah but then men can be fat and i feel like they don't receive anywhere as near the same amount of hate as women oh my god if any no i mean it's so police women's bodies in general not even just fat bodies are policed so much and you know even it's even if you look at things like cartoons, The Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad, all fat guys with slim wives, totally normal. Nobody gives a damn about that.

You see all of these celebrities, James Corden, DJ Khaled, Rick Ross, all of these plus-size women with men with slim women. Again, nobody makes a comment. So DJ Khaled and rick ross have appeared shirtless on the front of magazines nobody says anything test holiday does it on front of cosmo and it's a huge scandal with pierce morgan just thing in his head i fucking hate him he's just like you know saying all of this stuff on good morning britain and so i think it's just a case of women's bodies just being so unfairly policed. And it speaks to what you said earlier about

the femininity and being small and dainty because, and I said this on another podcast recently, actually, we were having a discussion about our types of men that we like. And I said that I've always gone for men that are really tall. I don't know if it's because my ex was really tall he was like six five but i've always and this might even be ingrained fat phobia who knows something that i have to unlearn but i've always been attracted to taller men or men that are of a slim to athletic build because it makes me look smaller or it makes you feel smaller in their arms i feel smaller in their arms i feel safe i feel protected um and we were having a discussion about oh steph would you ever date somebody that's like five seven five eight and i was a bit like well i i don't know if i would only because i feel like walking down the street it might look a bit odd but why do i care do you know what i mean and even and then other things like oh

from the bedroom would you be able to handle like it just goes to all these other technical strength things but like yeah for me I really had to stop and think and be like why do I like tall men is it do I am I genuinely attracted to them or am I attracted to how they make me feel and I think it's a bit of a bit of both I think that also I'm not a therapist but I kind of thought this stuff before I didn't have the best relationship with my dad and I think that some of it can also be that if you don't have a strong male figure in your life the idea of someone that's really tall and big I used to go out with like really alpha male guys that would tell me to be assholes but they're very tall and really

musky and that make me feel small I think it's a protect it's kind of like a protection feeling yeah so if you don't have a strong male figure in your life I think sometimes you can gravitate towards someone that you kind of mix up like what you're looking for in order to replace I mean again I'm not a therapist but I do often think there's so many things going on with with that and and that's also I mean this is the one thing guys have you know when someone tweets like if you're a guy under six but don't't at me, and they all go mad. And it's like, with women, it's like, if your waist isn't at 26 and your boobs aren't, like,

looking up to the sky and the endless list of things that a woman's body has to be. But we're talking about, we've spoken, I guess, about being in a fast body, but talking about the intersection of race, you talk, you've got natural hair, and have you always had your hair natural? So I've always had natural hair and then so we well a lot of black women tend to sometimes um relax their hair or perm

their hair so straight uh chemically straighten their hair my mum decided to have you seen the movie coming to America no okay so it's this Eddie Murphy film and it's got like a um like really famous scene where there's a i don't know if you've heard of a hairstyle called the jerry curl no um so in lizzo's video juice right in the beginning she's got like her hair in tight curls yeah that's the jerry cut and it's it's it's basically like um a curly perm but it uses really intense chemicals my mom decided she saw the movie and she was like Steph let's experiment on your hair and my hair used to be like down to my like elbow it was like really long and thick and she she did this jerry curl which was supposed to do

in a salon we did it at home and it turned out okay but my hair just all just dropped out it all just dropped out so I was I was looking a bit like Lionel Richie I had like this really short weird kind of curly bob thing and so my hair never grew back the same afterwards um and so when I was at university um because I after the curly perm grew out I started chemically straightening my straightening my hair um university I was like I I'm going to go natural because I miss my natural curly hair and it's healthier and all of that stuff.

Maintained it for about a year. Went back to perming it again. Not because of any kind of standard of beauty. It's for me, it's more a case of I'm very low maintenance when it comes to my hair and Afro hair is for me it's more a case of I'm very low maintenance when it comes to my hair and afro hair is for me not for everyone but for me it's so difficult to maintain because it's dry and just the knots and it takes it literally takes about nine hours to dry and so I was just like I've got things to do like I can't I can't let me just straighten my hair for convenience

and then sort of last couple of years I've just been like no I actually miss my afro nice so yeah I've decided to kind of like stop

perming straightening my hair it's funny you bring this up because I actually about the like the chemicals because I recently re-read White Teeth by Zadie Smith

and the daughter and that she goes and gets her hair done and they she's never had it done before and she'd washed her hair and apparently meant to not wash her hair when they did those chemicals in it basically just like burns all her hair done and they she's never had it done before and she'd washed her hair and apparently you might have not washed your hair when they did those chemicals in it basically

just like burns yeah you have to wait about half an hour before you wash it yeah and it's funny this isn't funny actually this is really embarrassing i grew i went to private school and i grew up in a very um white area and the only people of color the only girls in my year all had weaves so i had never seen an afro. So I genuinely just thought, like one of my friends had a weave that braided weaves.

Do you know what I mean? So it's like long braids but it wasn't her hair. I just thought she'd plaited her afro down to like her waist. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So she's got like

an extension of braids. Yeah. And I didn't realise it wasn't until my friend then came to school who was mixed race and she had her full afro art and I would constantly

ask her to touch it and play with it. Now, which is awful and we'll come on to that because you've spoken about this a lot. But when she was growing up, I've also had her on the podcast and she spoke about how because she grew up in such a white area as well, she didn't even know the microaggressions that she was going through because she was so assimilated. Of course, yes. And I found it really interesting now I feel like I've learned so much from speaking to different people and feel so grateful to know because it's fucking embarrassing when I see those videos on Instagram of like white women going up to women and being like can I touch your hair but for people that maybe aren't enlightened um could could you talk more about hair because I think it's

it's one of the really good pinnacles of explaining microaggressions and also I think cultural appropriation I guess like with the Kardashians and cornrows and things I know it might be a bit of a big topic but I think it's a good it's a good kind of signal point to explain how like when we take something from our culture that isn't ours that's previously been really um I don't know what the word is but do you know what I'm going on yeah no definitely so I think with afro hair it's such a political statement for black people because even I mean even existing in our bodies doing nothing is political in itself when you add an afro to that it's even more political because it's kind of like a a sign of like going against what society says is beautiful and an afro obviously being so different to straight hair

because it's you know it's um it's a bit kinkier it's drier it's a lot more tightly curled I think there's always been like this fascination behind it because and mostly it's to do with what does it feel like what's the texture and I don't think there's anything wrong in people asking, you know, what it feels like or, you know, anything like that. Where the problem lies is when people don't ask permission and then they sort of put their hands in your hair. So not only is that a gross, you know, invasion of privacy, it's almost a case of not treating this person like a human being because you wouldn't go up to like say if it was a white woman doing this you wouldn't go up to another white woman just put put your hand in their hair because you know that texture and I feel like you wouldn't have a degree of um respect not to you know go into their personal space but when this happens to us quite

often it's it's incredibly dehumanizing um it's incredibly othering as well um it's totally fine to ask questions and I think especially if you've sort of grown up in a predominantly white neighborhood it's natural to to be curious I suppose if you haven't seen this hairstyle and know anything about it and that kind of thing so I've always been happy to answer questions about it um because people get curious like it's you know what I mean but I think for me it's when the physical when it's a physical thing when they start touching it or pulling it or anything like that it makes me feel like I'm a pet at the zoo as if I'm kind of um I'm I'm an attraction and that's where I have the problem

it's potentially it can come across as a bit triggering just because I know that you know back in the day we had you know human zoos and they were filled with pygmies in Africa and people would pay to touch their hair and touch their teeth. And then we have Zara Bartman, who was a South African woman with a really big bum. And she was brought to the UK and put in a zoo for white people to touch her bum, touch her vulva, look at her, seen as specimens. And I feel like to this day, sometimes,

because we have things that are a bit different, we're almost sometimes seen as a specimen to be touched and inspected and not seen as human beings. That's exactly what it makes me think of. Now that I kind of understand it, I just think that's, again, that ownership thing of like, why the fuck should you be able

to touch someone else's hair? And I do think like somewhere deep down, it must be like trauma runs, trauma and history, I think, carries on. Oh yeah, definitely. Subliminally. So I think that on oh yeah definitely subliminally so I think that that it's like it must be just echoing in people's bodies they think they are able to do that and it's so rank when you do break it down and you really think about like where we've been

yeah it's really awful because once upon a time white people were allowed to do that they were allowed to go to up to any black person and touch their hair and we weren't expected to react otherwise we would get in trouble so there's those bits of ownership and kind of like oh i have the right to do this to somebody that i consider less than me because you wouldn't do it to somebody who looked like you therefore you must see me as a dickhead or you must see me as like you know somebody that is less than you and I think where cultural appropriation comes into it it's an it's again it's another difficult one I just feel like because our hair is so diverse we can braid it in a multitude of different ways cornrows is always going to be a point of contention it's always going to be very sensitive to us because it's not just a hairstyle it's a language for us it was a way for us to

communicate it you can braid specific um sigils and signs into hairs that would differentiate differentiate the tribes in africa in america um people would plant um grains of rice into the hair um so that you know women and other people wouldn't go hungry when they were on the underground railroad that's incredible yeah and also they were used as maps to escape the plantation so different cane row cornrow patterns would show you the way out of the plantation so it's so political and so significant for us so when we do see people that aren't of the culture wearing it because it's just really cool, it's just a bit like, you know, the cultural significance behind that. Same with locks as well. And, you know, locks, dreadlocks are a black religious statement.

So it's a religious thing. So I completely understand when, you know, people that are Rastafarian get very upset when they see people who aren't Rastafarian wearing dreadlocks and things of that nature as well. And I've always just said, you know, I feel like black culture is so dominant. It's so powerful. We're just really cool. And, you know, music and culture and clothes and all of these things like I feel like it's contributed to a lot of the culture that we have in terms of the media and entertainment and and style and fashion and you can appreciate stuff but I think when it comes to kind of taking something or you know doing the wholeian thing that's when we have a problem with it and a really really good analogy i read about cultural appreciation versus appropriation

was oh what was it what was it it was basically somebody said it's like when somebody goes to a restaurant and they eat they go to like a yeah they go to a restaurant they eat the food they really like the food and they ask to speak to the waiter, congratulate the waiter. And then they tell all of their friends, oh, I've gone to this restaurant. That's appreciation. Appropriation apparently is like when you go to the restaurant, you eat the food, you don't say anything to anybody that works there. And then you leave the restaurant. You then tell people that you created this meal yourself and you replicate it um at home and then you tell people oh yeah this is the thing that i created yeah i feel like that's such a good analogy because you're not paying homage to that specific race and especially in fashion when they

take specific prints and then they just sell it for thousands and thousands of pounds it's just like i we see this a lot in the blogging world like people especially from like black or queer or fat artists or activists who create really amazing prints and pieces of work and because of privilege and structures meaning that like me as a white white cis het posh woman finds it probably easier to go on instagram than maybe someone who doesn't have the same privileges people like me who look like me and sound like me might co-opt art from people who don't have the privilege and it's really fucked up and it's still happening like every single day yeah and I just did a video about

plastic surgery because I think this is really fucking interesting as well about how when I was growing up Eurocentric beauty was the thing so like blue eyes being white and like looking quite uh Caucasian and now it's like people want big bottoms which for years have always like black women have been kind of like naturally not always had a bigger bottom and then suddenly like the kardashians make that fashionable and suddenly that's a cool thing and everyone wants that or like having and these features that we're kind of borrowing from different cultures i find that quite dystopian and very odd like so if you're white you can get

filler and have like take a black woman's lips maybe and then maybe look someone from Asian copy their eyes but those features on that person where they've kind of originated are not viewed as beautiful I find this really weird it's it's weird isn't it because I feel like the standard of beauty now it isn't even really european anymore no it's it's like kylie jenner i see filters on instagram now that have the big lips and the almond shaped eyes and freckles freckles and i'm not gonna lie i've used them before in the past because i thought they were cute but now i the more i use them i'm a bit like actually why am i why it's quite creepy because when you see your normal face you're like i'm a bit like oh yeah so I'm really trying not to use them anymore um but it's yeah it's not it's not really

a European standard of beauty it's like almost a black standard of beauty but put on white yeah white bodies and that's exactly what the Kardashians are known for buying their body parts and you know because and I feel like the reason that they all went down that route is because they have this attraction to black men and they know what black men like and all of them with the exception of courtney i think yeah have dated black men um or have had babies by black men and i think they know that black men like you know like i said in our culture in the beginning having a big butt is like you know standard of beauty um hourglass shaped big

hips small waist but because they're not in our culture they haven't done it properly so you can tell that they've bought it because they haven't matched the thighs to the bum so they've got big arses but their thighs are very athletic and so you look a bit like a chicken drumstick i'm not gonna lie like yeah and like you can't physically build that muscle without building your legs exactly it's so fascinating to say that as well because Courtney's the only one that hasn't had her body done I think she's had a boob job years ago but she hasn't had um like her bum done like Chloe and Kim have yeah and Kylie yeah and when I was growing up as well the thing the thing is for me it was funny I've definitely not got big legs but I've always had I always had a shape as a little girl this is what I thought was fat I wasn't fat I just wasn't you know little girls

that look really skinny and look almost like little boys yeah I kind of missed that and just was had a little body just like a little woman that's been shrunk yeah that's what I look like so I always had legs but when I was growing up the cool thing was looking like Effie from Skins or like Kate Moss and that like heroin chic really wide hips really skinny legs so that was all I ever wanted and then one day suddenly the good thing that happened was the thigh thing because then suddenly I was like you got amazing legs and I was like oh oh oh really what I've literally my whole life I would stand in a picture and like twist my legs apart and it was and that's that transient idea of trends I find really weird as well because as you say like when I was going in movies people would be like

does my bum look big in this and now all anyone wants to do is wear their bum. Everyone wants a big bum. It's so weird how trends just like come in and out of fashion. Like I remember even with like faces, everybody wanted to look like Courtney Cox. And like back in the 90s, everybody wanted that kind of scream mask face where it was like cheekbones are just behind your ears and all that kind of stuff. And now it's like Kylie Jenner. Like everybody wants to look like Kylie and Kim everybody wants the big lips and the small nose and the almond shaped big eyes and the high cheekbones and um yeah people are actively going out of their way to

have surgery to look like that and I think even with the lips like even me like I wouldn't even consider my lips to be big but when I was was younger, I always wanted like really, really big lips. Um, and I remember even though my lips aren't that big in school. I think you've got nice lips. They're shapely. Yeah. They're not small. Oh good.

Thank you. Hell no. Cause I feel like by my standard, it's not that big. Right. Or that plump, plump. I think it's probably the better word.

Uh, but I used to get bullied about them as well um and so it's so interesting to see that now that we're here everybody's sort of wanting to have that kind of fuller look and i remember there was a thread where people were accusing beyonce of having lip surgery and i was just like that the fucking cheek like she's a black woman she's got naturally big lips like they did the same to Samira on Love Island because they were talking about everyone's stuff and then they were like and she was like I'm just black yeah we've we've had this for ages you guys have just been teasing us for like the last 15 20 years and now it's in fashion the

juxtaposition of people getting their body done to the extent that the Kardashians are and then fat acceptance and body neutrality and all the stuff is I think really interesting and there's kind of two camps and I see both of them in the people that I follow do you think that the future of the way that we look at bodies is going to get better like are you hopeful that we will accept fat bodies because sometimes I am I'm like oh my god we're going to complete the right way and then something will happen where someone will go oh but the thing is that they are impacting their health which that was the hardest unlearning for me was that because also I used to smoke 20 day I fucking loved smoking even now I'm like it is I don't do it but I kind of wish I did and I would go out and drink loads and I and I was really skinny at one point barely eating so my health

at that point in time could have been way worse than someone in a faster body and that's quite a lot of unlearning because of the bullshit that we get fed in the media and I think it's starting to happen but I'm wondering like when will like basically something's got to give I think that diet industries are really actually being taken down by amazing accounts like yours and other people who are really speaking out and actually we've seen that skinny t's and things are being blocked and there is definitely a movement do you think it'll ever go far enough so that you'll be able to really genuinely walk down the street and feel like no one's going to fucking look at me and think or if the thing that sophie hagen talks about a lot she says how like she can't go and eat a burger which can but if i ate a burger that's so cute you eat so much

but if you ate a burger someone would be like oh you's so cute. You eat so much. Ha ha ha. But if you ate a burger, someone would be like, oh, you sure you want to eat that? Yeah. I think the only way that we can thrive in our fat bodies, not even fat bodies, whatever kind of, whatever section of your life you're in. So even if it's, you know,

you're queer or you're disabled or person of colour, like whatever the case however you choose to present and exist the only way we can do that and feel completely comfortable it's going to sound extreme but i honestly think it's true there's a certain demographic of people that need to just die yeah and brexit wouldn't have happened as well yeah it's that demographic i think it's the demographic it's the what are we general uh millennial generation x yeah or baby boomers boomers my parents see ya i'm so sorry boomers just need to go because i feel like a lot of the trolling and stuff does come from them a lot of the health concern comes from them and they've

taught their kids that and then their kids were taught that so i think it's great that millennials like our generation's like the first generation to actually be i hate this term woke um but it's such a good thing it's such a great start to what could potentially be amazing in the next 10 20 years and for us to really thrive like the pierce morgans of the world have to just they need to just hurry up and die. Because they're still, they still have such a toxic mentality towards body positivity, fatness, always assuming it with health. And the reason why they are so persistent with their trolling is because obviously fatness is a physical thing that you can see. Smoking and drinking and taking drugs, sometimes it does show on the body but if a if a fit person is doing it you can't tell unless that you know you can't tell at all and so that's why i don't think it gets as um monitors and policed as much as fatness does

because you can see the fat whereas you can't see the coke or the whatever like working within their systems and also when you say about, like you were saying earlier about Facebook and how it's all older people, it's so true. I did an ad with Ancestry, and my mum was in it with me because it was part of the campaign about finding out about your family. And they were like, can we link this onto your Facebook page, which I don't post on, but I have it. And they wanted to, like, boost it through there.

And I was like, yeah, whatever. There's my link, whatever. The comments underneath that were from middle-aged men going, I'd fuck them both. Like, all of it was about getting with me and my mum or shagging my mum first and shagging and I've actually to email them like you need to take this down like no one on Instagram or no I think we're the empathetic generation that generation especially those men of that age yeah were so bitter and so fucked up because I think they genuinely think like everything's being taken away from them I think

they can't they can't compute they can't especially white men who can't believe that they've got through life like literally having a joyous time and suddenly there are young vivacious women and men and non-binary people coming up who aren't living by these rules which like profit them because fundamentally and ultimately they are they are starting that nothing will be happening to them, but they'll be starting to feel what it might feel like to not have every door open for you. And I think Piers Morgan, first of all, I think he's just a shit, like says shit that he doesn't mean, to the point of being contrarian, which I think is even more sociopathic. Because you're literally putting people's lives on the line. Like some of the things he says about trans people endanger trans people. Like I don't know why he, on everyone, things he says about trans people endanger trans people like i don't know why he's

horrible on everyone everyone he speaks about but i think his life has to be so fucked up because i'm so and you are i can totally tell and all of our generation are so empathetic everyone's got so much time it's so kind obviously someone's being cunt yeah such a good word i love it then you won't but i i think i hate i hate and love the word snowflake because it's so stupid. It's like, we're just fucking kind. We have time for people and we listen and we allow people to be how they want to be. Imagine judging people for that. This is how it always should have been. It really fucks me off when people call, those who are talking about mental health specifically,

people that suffer from anxiety and depression, which is one of the two most popular sort of mental health issues people that suffer from anxiety and depression which is what like one of the two most popular sort of mental health issues popular ones not in a good way but like they're my favorites like it's the two most um yeah like the ones that people yeah oh god that's not so bad no that's funny i like it they're the two ones that are like, you know, it's easy to kind of get in a sense. And people call us snowflakes when we say we have anxiety. Like I see that a lot online and I'm just like, this is ridiculous.

Anxiety has been around since the beginning of time. It's just, it's either a case of people didn't have the word for it or people were told to suppress it or people were told you know back in pierce morgan's day weren't allowed to talk about depression weren't allowed to talk about this otherwise i'll take you away to an asylum or here's this you know woo-woo product that you should take slime and mix it with dandelions and drink it and you'll be you'll be cured you know and so i feel like we're the first generation where we're actually openly talking about things

such as mental health, fat phobia, racism, feminism, queer rights, you know, all of these things. And this is how it should be. This is how it should have always been. And they just hate to see it. They hate to see it. And if we'd done it all this time, we wouldn't have, if we were accepting of everything, like if we accepted there are people it all this time we wouldn't have if we were accepting

of everything like if we accepted there were people who were disabled we wouldn't have ableism because we would have built systems to fit people

if we weren't fat phobic then we wouldn't have seats that were too small for people in fast bodies or it wouldn't be like the reason we're undoing all the shit

that they've done the only reason that we're doing this work now is because they the structures were built by men like Piers Morgan yes blame him for everything who had a very specific vision and very specific set of things when they were like cis probably loads of them

were gay but they couldn't say so yeah I I feel hopeful for the future I feel like that's you feel that way too I do yeah I feel I feel hopeful I think this generation you know like even with my mum like my mum is just my mum we always have the worst arguments when it comes to these kinds of subjects because she is a black woman that was raised in the UK at a young age she was the only black person in her school lots lots of racial abuse, lots of traumatic things that happen. So she's grown up learning how to survive. And so her thing of surviving was assimilate, you know, blend in, don't be too much trouble.

Don't say this, don't say that. And now she sees me as an activist. She follows me on Twitter, which I was just like, mum, please don't. Oh no. She'll see me saying all of these things. Like, Steph, don't say that. You're going to anger this.

Don't say that. The problem with you, Snowflake. And she's like, she's like, and she's a Tory as well. And I'm just like. Oh, don't. They all are. It's their age group. I've tried.

I'm like, mum. You're, you're, mum, no. You're like a black, like, you're, like, she doesn't like, like, not Piers Morgan. I mean, Boris might as well be Piers Morgan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're all in the same circles. But she doesn't like like not Piers Morgan I mean Boris might as well be Piers Morgan yeah yeah yeah all in the same circles but she doesn't like him at all but I guess

the thing she grew up in that age where it's like you know and I've tried I've tried no my parents are completely the same

my mum came in from Ireland so both her parents were Irish and they moved here when it was like no blacks no dogs

no Irish yes that's where my mum was here so that was her growing up and then my dad's parents are Hungarian so he came in

from the war and then they'll start talking about immigration and I'm like babes you're both second generation immigrants that's it my mom was growing up and then my dad's parents are hungarian so he came in from the war and then they'll start talking about immigration i'm like babes you're both second generation immigrants that's it fucking idiots like exactly but they're the same they don't like bryce johnson but they also go you weren't alive you don't know oh my god that's my mom and you weren't here in our days when we had to do this and i'm sure they do know stuff that we don't know i'm sure there is political stuff that they don't understand but it's some things are too far removed but my mom started to listen to podcasts where I talked to her about things and she has

actually come so far like she now has that like relationship she's got really good on gender and sexuality and she suddenly comes out with things and I'm like I did a podcast about polyamory and I was kind of telling about it didn't know what she'd say she was like oh well that's what everyone's like nowadays aren't they they just don't have any rules about anything I was like yeah exactly and I was like oh good so she is listening but it's taken a fucking long time yeah my mom's the same like she's now starting to like like now she started watching repulse drag waves which i thought she never would and now she's like oh steph i love this person and this person and have you seen paris is burning on netflix and i'm like wait a minute where is this coming from she's like i love it and i love pose and like i'm learning so

much about like the trans culture and i was just like I like a single tear just rolled down my cheek I was like I'm so happy about this new progression that you're making so and even with things like fat phobia and all of this stuff she's learning because of the stuff that I'm saying but she just still has these little points of activism where she's like no you know you just need to teach white people this you need to do this you need to do the emotional labor I'm like I'm not doing that I guess she had to survive for you to thrive that's it and I yeah and I always say you grew up learning how to survive and to survive you had to do these things but now we need to live yeah I can't just get by on surviving anymore because there's so much inequality that we need to fix and so you have to be aware that our generation now we want to fight to live not to just survive

yeah and um still what she's a work in progress but we'll get there but you are you are really brave because i think one of the biggest things that i would well there's so many things but if i was one of the one of the fucking most the other thing that i can't get over is the the trope of the aggressive or angry black woman because i'm a really passionate woman who has a lot of opinions so if someone even if I had that against me if someone could use that against me I would literally be crying every day because I hate the idea of being silenced I'm very lucky my voice people will just listen to me because I sound and look how I do and I that weaponization of like the angry black woman or the aggressive black women I can't imagine how difficult that

must be to come up against that and feel like you have to monitor your language sometimes or like check yourself so I think it's really really brave to be in a position anyway and you're doing an amazing job oh thank you so much yeah that I mean the whole angry black women is oh it's horrible it's but now I've just gotten into this thing where I just don't give a shit. I think we should be able to talk about the same things that annoy us as everybody else does. And again, this whole narrative of angry, aggressive, feral all goes back to slavery and colonisation and seeing us as animals and less than and hypersexual.

And the thing that I think annoys me the most is when there's something racially motivated or something racial happens in the news and then people send me the link and then they say what are your thoughts on this what your thoughts on this I'm like I'm not a rent an angry black woman I can't I do not exist to be traumatized yeah and have be expected to constantly put up emotional labour so that you can feel better about yourself. Like, why don't you have an opinion? Like, I'm not here to just be ranting all the time because it's so emotional, emotionally exhausting. And so that whole sort of rent an angry black woman, I think, I don't know if you follow Kelechi Okorafor.

Yes. She speaks about that brilliantly, like so beautifully. And I completely agree with her. Like we're not here to just be mammies and teachers and the help to teach you how to not be racist or to teach you how to not be oppressive or whatever the case may be. And so, and also I feel like black women

do have a right to be angry. Oh, totally. But that's what I mean. You should be like the fact that even when you're not being angry, you're told you're being angry is the most awful gaslighting ever because it's like you're you're you're fucked either way basically exactly and i think you know we do have a right to be angry about just i mean where do i start so many things but but then

equally there's this um ideology that black women have to be strong we have to not show emotions we have to be um we're like these magical fairy people that you know we don't show any emotion and we don't cry and we don't do this and we don't do that and that can be so exhausting because then again that's you know even though it's a positive thing that you're saying it's still really dehumanizing because you're not seeing us as women with empathy and emotions who who are deserving of love and support and being able to cry and show emotion we're always taught to be strong and that's such a huge reason why a lot of us a lot of people within the afro-caribbean society we don't seek help when it comes to mental health because our parents have taught us

stiff upper lip don't let them know that you're scared don't let men see that you're crying don't met you know all of these things and it we decompartmentalize and then when we get older it just all falls apart and that's the reason why middle-aged black women are like some of the highest um in terms of being sectioned they're some of the highest because when they just break down because of all of the struggles that we're going through in early life and so I think it's so important to allow women to allow black women to be women as well not just black women but actually yeah yeah women and let us cry and you know be upset and be sad and be angry as well without but without putting that whole angry black woman thing because we're not aggressive like we're just the same as everyone else yeah and it's that like like that um and

it's really cringe was it's like people fuck so instead of being like angry it's not like black woman i try so much to always or like if someone has a disability not say disabled but i also now try and call every so now that if i ever speak out someone who's white i'll always say that they're white to try and like balance out the fact that I say a person of colour. Yeah. So with some of my friends, I'm like, so my white friend, and then there's just two

of my white friends and they're like, what? And then I'm like, this is just how we do it now. Yeah. I did actually ask you about Meghan Markle earlier and I'm sorry,

because I agree, I'm really guilty of doing that sometimes as well when you're trying to like check something, but you're right. I think the final step towards like being an ally is recognising that you're right i think the final step towards like

being an ally is recognizing that you can be an ally and not feel like first of all you don't need some i find it funny when people are often people do it a lot on rachel cargill's page and she always shuts them down where they'll be like um oh i've done this today and she's like great because it's like you don't need um congratulations for not being racist that should be like exactly that should be your default position exactly not you don't need to then go and like announce that you didn't treat a black person like shit like that should have been your like automatic it's so and it's like it's as similar as like when men like or like dad say oh i looked after my child i know you don't need a star for being a dad that's that's what you're supposed to do yeah and so yeah you're right like do you don't need a star for being a dad that's what you're supposed to do yeah and so yeah

you're right like you don't need a star for not being racist like I'm not like I good yeah yeah yeah

good that's a great thing but I'm not going to congratulate you and pat you on the back for being a decent human being yeah totally

oh this has been amazing I feel like we've touched a page I hope it hasn't been too stressful I feel like it's been quite an emotional conversation. Not emotional, but a lot of...

Heavy stuff. Yeah, heavy stuff. Heavy shit. If people want to learn more about you or what you're doing, if you've got anything exciting coming up, they can come to you. Or where can they find you online? So you can find me at stephanieyaboa.com

and on Twitter, at stephanieyaboa, Y-E-B-O-A-H. And then on Instagram, I'm at nerd about town um my book fastly ever after oh it's so weird like promoting it now yeah um fastly ever after is coming out the third of oh september which you can pre-order and what am i doing i'm doing women of the world festival in march which will be really cool I need to get the details for that but I will be doing a few panels here and there in London but I will update it all on my website and stuff perfect well thank you so much I've literally loved this conversation oh thank you so much and thank you so much for listening guys I will see you next week bye Fanduel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning.

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