Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S8 Ep12: Bookshelfie: Megan Jayne Crabbe

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

Body positivity influencer and feminist writer Megan Jayne Crabbe discusses female hunger, moving beyond the ‘male saviour’ narrative and learning to accept her race, sexuality and place in the body positivity movement.  Megan is best known for changing the narrative of how women feel about their bodies. She’s amassed over 1.3 million followers on social media, and has built her platform by creating empowering content on the topics of body positivity, mental health, feminism and beyond. She is also a seasoned presenter and podcast host, working with major broadcasters like the BBC, Universal Studios, Channel 4, The Brits and MTV, where she hosts the new digital series Faces, interviewing famous women about their own journeys with their bodies. In 2017 Megan released her bestselling debut book, Body Positive Power, and earlier this year released her second title, We Don’t Make Ourselves Smaller Here, a collection of personal essays which explore the areas of life where women often lose themselves.   Megan’s book choices are: ** Small Island by Andrea Levy ** The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf ** Dietland by Sarai Walker ** I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou ** Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin Vick Hope, multi-award winning TV and BBC Radio 1 presenter, author and journalist, is the host of season eight of the Women’s Prize’s BookshelfiePodcast. Every week, Vick will be joined by another inspirational woman to discuss the work of incredible female authors. The Women’s Prize for Fiction is the biggest celebration of women's creativity in the world and has been running for over 30 years.  Don’t want to miss the rest of season eight? Listen and subscribe now! You can buy all books mentioned from our dedicated shelf on Bookshop.org - every purchase supports the work of the Women's Prize Trust and independent bookshops.  Recorded April 2025. This podcast is sponsored by Baileys and produced by Bird Lime Media.

The roots of body positivity are in radical fat liberation. You know, there were groups way back, like in the 1960s, there was a group called the Fat Underground who used to like storm Weight Watchers meetings and say like, we're fat, we're not going anywhere, we're happy, you don't have to diet. This is the Women's Prize for Fiction bookshelthy podcast supported by Bayleys. Join us in celebrating women's writing from around the world in the 30th anniversary year of the Women's Prize for Fiction. sharing our creativity, our voices and our perspectives. I'm Vic Hope and I am your host for Season 8 of Bookshelfy,

the podcast that asks inspiring and brilliant women to share the five books by women that have shaped them and their lives. Join me and my incredible guests as we talk about the books you should be adding to your reading list. Today I am joined by Megan Jane Crabb. Megan is best known for changing the narrative of how women feel about their bodies. She's amassed over 1.3 million followers on social media and has built her platform by creating empowering content on the topics of body positivity, mental health, feminism and beyond. In 2017, Megan released her best-selling debut book, Body Positive Power, a manifesto on all the ways we've been taught to hate our bodies and how we can accept them instead. The book has empowered thousands to ditch diet culture and find peace with how they look.

This summer, she published her second book, We Don't Make Ourselves Smaller Here, a collection of personal essays which explore the areas of life where women often lose themselves. Megan is a seasoned presenter and podcast host, working with major broadcasters like the BBC, Universal Studios, Channel 4 and The Brits. She's interviewed some of Hollywood's biggest names for MTV movies, as well as hosting red carpets and events. And she also hosts MTV's new digital series, Faces, where she connects with guests, including Jamila Jamil, Emineke, Nikki Lilly, Mahalia and Emily Campbell to discuss their own journeys with their bodies. Welcome to the podcast.

I realised your face was going, oh. How do you feel when someone kind of... Does anyone like that part? It reels off their act. You know what? No. No. No.

And I wonder, actually, because I obviously only have women on the podcast, I wonder if it's quite a female thing to find it difficult to hear all your achievements sort of toll back to. you. Yes. I think there's always like a grip of panic whenever someone says to you. Like write me a bio. Send me a list of things you've done. I'm like, oh, wow, this is going to be a challenge to my self-esteem, but I will do it. I'll push through.

Maybe that's something to work on, being able to hear your accomplishments. If you need, I will, I will say them to you whenever you just, I'll call you. Thanks, babe. And you can just take it. Just learn to take it. I'll keep that in mind. It's a funny thing, isn't it? Because you're sort of torn between, say, someone asks you to write a bio.

I'm like, have I done enough? Am I good enough? Am I enough? And then on the other hand, I'm thinking, do I sound big-headed? Is this too much? And it's the eternal toss-up, isn't it? As a woman, of being not enough and too much. Absolutely.

And it's the trap of humility. And it's the being a quote-unquote good woman or a nice woman, not a polite woman. You cannot brag too much. You have to be just the right amount of humble, but don't be self-deprecating because that's annoying. And don't be, don't stage relatability. You know, there's so many caveats that you have to fit just right in the middle of all of them in order to be likable as a woman. It's exhausting. It's really. You said when we first came in the studio, you know, this is one of the first interviews that you're doing ahead of your next release and you don't necessarily love the publicity side of things. And I can imagine it's hard.

Do you find it difficult to big up your work when you've worked so hard on it? That was the work. You know, I'm sure you've had guests who've said this before, but the writing process is so insular. It's quite lonely. You're just there with yourself and your words and you're convincing yourself as you go like, yeah, this is worth writing about. This is all right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. then the concept of that then being put into the minds and the hands of people you have no control over, you have to choose whether you're going to look at the reviews or not, it's quite an overwhelming prospect. And again, it's a test. It is the ultimate test, I think, of self-esteem, of believing, yeah, I've written something of value. And you have to let go as well. There's that instinct, I think a lot of us have that we really, really want to control people's perceptions of us.

and we think if we just tweak everything exactly right then we can be, well, likable, I suppose. And with something like this, you really have to have that acceptance of, I've done my best and now I let it go and what will be will be. You can't control what others think of you at all. Exactly. A good friend always says you can't be everyone's cup of tea, otherwise you'd be a mug.

And it's actually quite good not to please everyone. Yeah. Do you read the reviews? I read the reviews of my first book, obsessively for the first week. And for the first week, they were all good. And then I said to myself, I'm going to quit while I'm ahead. I'm going to stop now and never read another one again.

Because as far as I know, they've just all been fantastic. I think that's a good way of doing it. And as you say, it doesn't matter because there's so many hands that that book has been pressed into and it's taken on its own life because it means something different for every reader. Exactly. Who needs it for different reasons. Yes. And you have shifted the dial.

And you have changed people's lives and their perceptions. And that's its own. That takes on its own life. Thank you. Did you always know you wanted to be a writer? How did it happen? I have always loved writing. I was a very goody two shoes, perfectionist at school, kind of very type A,

do more than it's expected of me. And I wrote about this in the book, actually, the kind of concept of the path that you will take that's expected of you, you know, the traditional life path, school, uni, career, baby, husband, you know, all of that. And I fell off at the uni level. So I worked my ass off throughout school, got the grades, got into a really good uni, and I dropped out twice. So I kind of thought that anything academic was then out of my path and not something that was meant for me. And I had this thought in my head of, well, maybe I could write. I don't know what I would write about. And when the opportunity came around for my first book, it was truly just, I want as

many people as possible to know this stuff. This is all the stuff that I have learned that has helped me to heal. I want to put this together and get this out there because everyone should know about this. Everyone should know about diet culture and about fat phobia and about why women are taught to hate their bodies. So I'm going to write it. So it was a, I don't know if you'd call that a labour of love or I don't know, just I have to do this. And now I've had the opportunity to write another one. So it's all a bit like, wow, I thought maybe this path wasn't going to be for me. And it just goes to show you can get to places through many different paths and not just the one.

It sounds like a real vocation, like a calling. And it's interesting that we think of writing as academics, it isn't necessarily. And yet, you know, you have that in your mind, but you can still have that vocation. And what about reading? Did you think of that as academic, or did you understand it to be something that was pleasurable when you were growing up? Did you love to read? I love to read.

Every Christmas or birthday, I would only ask for one thing from, well, two things actually. One, I would ask for mango body butter. I don't remember the mango body butter on the body shop. Oh, something's just come rushing back. So good. Quite pricey. So that was a birthday treat. I will say, as well, don't eat it.

A mistake I made because it smells so good. it feels like it should taste nice. Absolutely not. You learn fast, don't you? So I'd have a like a mango body butter parcel. And then a second parcel that was all books that my dad had gone out and he'd kind of researched like the best sellers or, you know, the best like Y, YA at the time. So yeah, and that was, oh, yeah.

Good times. Well, we're going to talk about the books that you have loved, that have shaped you. And your first book, Shelfy book is Small Island by Andrea Levy. described as possibly the definitive fictional account of the experiences of the Windrush Generation. Small Island won the 2004 Women's Prize for Fiction. Set in 1948, it explores a point in England's past when the country began to change. Levy handles the weighty themes of empire, prejudice, war and love with a superb lightness of touch and generosity of spirit. how did this book connect for you?

Why did you pick it? Why do you love it? So this book was given to me by an English teacher. And I grew up in Essex on the coast, like very white working class town. And obviously throughout the curriculum back then and still now, not very diverse. You know, most of what you read is written by white men,

most of those, you know, quote-unquote classics. and an English teacher gave me this book when I was teenage and suggested that I writes my project on this book. And it kind of, it felt like a recognition. It felt like a recognition of a part of my identity that was not, you know, necessarily embraced, that was sometimes quite difficult to navigate in that area in that time. And it also gave me an insight into what would have been my ancestors,

experience, which I'd always been so curious about. So my grandmother, her, as a child, she came over from Jamaica. And my family then, they were actually one of the first people, oh, sorry, one of the first families to emigrate from Jamaica before Windrush. Right. So I have always been so curious about that experience. And unfortunately, she passed when I was quite young, so I never got to ask her as a teenager or as an adult what that was like.

So this was like a little insight and I just, I loved the characters. I loved the complicated relationships that the characters had. It was, I just blasted through it. It was brilliant. What side of your family were your grandparents on? Dads. Your dad's. And did your dad have any memories or anything that he could impart to you

or you were really learning through this book? You know, there's certain little stories that had been passed down. And actually I'm really fortunate. because someone wrote a book about my family. Oh, wow. About them being one of the first families to have emigrated from Jamaica. So then later on, I managed to get hold of that as well. And so I had a proper deep dive.

It's so true. When we're really young, I think we sometimes don't realize the kind of the richness of this source that we have, whether it's in grandparents or parents, to kind of find out about our past. And it's as we get older and we become more curious. And then they're not there anymore. I know. And turning to books, for me as well, it's been my education and my connection to my heritage and background.

Do you think that attending a mostly white school impacted you growing up and who you became and how you felt about yourself? Absolutely. I think as a mixed race person of black and white heritage, I have always struggled to know where I fit, to know how I should be, wondering how people perceive me. You know, it's this idea that two things can exist at the same time, but for me I was so desperate to just figure out the one thing,

to just be one solid, not a bit of this, not a bit of that. And one of my earliest memories of questioning my identity was in primary school, and it would have been the first year that I went, and I came home one day, and my mum asked me, how was your day? What did you do? How are you doing? I said, I don't know anything. I don't even know if I'm black or white, which now bless me, bless precocious little me.

And that was a theme that kind of, you know, ran throughout. And it's only maybe in the last like five years that I've gotten properly more comfortable with accepting that two things can be true at the same time and you don't have to split yourself in two because you're whole. Searching for that box to put yourself in is mad when you think about it.

We all do it because when you're young, you just want to fit in. And realizing that those boxes were made by someone else that we don't have to fit in them is so liberating. But I relate so profoundly with what you just said because it's hard to get that I remember coming home and asking my mum to scrub the brown off my body. But saying, but you're fully brown, you're properly brown. Why can't I be that?

And not understanding that it was glorious to be born. because you're your mum and your dad, you're all of these things. When did you, I guess, get more comfortable with your identity? You know what? Similarly, in the last decade or so, and I think it goes hand in hand with being more comfortable in myself as a woman, just as a human being. And I always say this, learning that it's not just that you can be anything,

but you can be everything. And there was such power in that growing up. And again, books have been a huge part of that. How do you address race in your work? Do you address it in We Don't Make Ourselves Smaller Here? Tell us a little bit about that. So I have written an essay in We Don't Make Ourself Smaller here that is about identity because also I find myself, especially online,

I'm in a very identity politics-centric space. I believe very much in identity politics and learning about it would make the world a much better place but it has also led to a lot of questioning from me I found myself in the middle of a few things in terms of my own identity so in terms of my race being both black and white

in terms of my sexuality I spent a lot of years questioning well I'm not straight but am I queer enough to be queer and I identify as pansexual so just it's the person for me it's not the gender it's not the body it's the person and then also being in the body positive community,

I've had to do some navigating in terms of where I sit there being not quite fat and not quite thin, coming from an eating disorder background. There's a lot of opinions about who should speak on what and what topics should be covered by which people. So there's been a lot of figuring out identity through the lens of being in the middle of things, and I've written about that in the book.

We're going to talk a little bit more about that, actually, as we move on to your second book-shelphi book, which is the beauty myth by Naomi Wolf. Every day, women around the world are confronted with a dilemma. How to look. In a society embroiled in a cult of female beauty and youthfulness, pressure on women to conform physically. It's constant and it's all pervading.

This book is a radical, gripping and frank expose of the tyranny of the beauty myth. It's oppressive function and the destructive obsession it engenders. I know for so many women, this book was a sort of introduction to this topic, to feminism as well. Tell us about when you first read it and how impacted you? I read this book in 2015, which was wild because it came out in 1991. And when I read it all that time later, it still blew my mind. It still felt so radical.

It was the first time I had ever seen laid out before me the connection between beauty and capitalism. a beauty and patriarchy with facts and figures of, you know, this is how much money is made from us hating ourselves and this is why we're so fatphobic and look at these double standards here. It blew my mind. I read it on a holiday and it was every year when I went on a holiday, I would always crash diet leading up to it because I had this fixation with the bikini body and having the perfect body before I went away. And I'd crash dieted all summer, got down to what I thought in my head was the goal weight that was going to make me happy and make everything wonderful and perfect. And I still hated my body. And I took this book away with me, having just kind of just seen the body positive kind of movement online. And it was playing in the back of my mind, but I wasn't ready yet. But I took this book away. And it changed everything. It changed the trajectory of my whole life because there's something for me about cold, hard evidence, facts, you know, the numbers, the money, like seeing it laid out like that, that was just a

massive wake-up call and, yeah, set me on the path of learning as much as I possibly could about the diet industry and about, you know, why we feel the way we do about our bodies and that informed the rest of my work. For any of our listeners who don't know you or your story or your journey, could you talk to us about body positivity, about your particular journey into that? Because it started with anorexia. Yes, yes. So I have had body image issues for as far back as I can remember.

You know, I remember being four or five and starting primary school and thinking, my body's different to everyone else is here. I'm too big. I'm brown. No one else is. And I got into dieting really young about eight or nine. And that kind of spiraled and intensified until I was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa when I was 14. And I spent a good few years kind of clawing.

my way out of that, but not really healing the underlying issues. And after that, I kind of just went right back into diet culture and still believed, you know, ultimate happiness lies in my bathroom scales once I get to the perfect body. And it wasn't until I was 21 and I found the body positive movement online and I read the beauty myth that another way of thinking opened up to me, another way of seeing myself and seeing my body. And that's when the real healing actually happened. I've watched the body positivity movement develop, I'd say, evolve over the years. And I know that there are so many terms and it changes and people change the way they talk about this movement.

Do you still think that the term body positive is the best way of describe, or the most useful way to term this? it's hard, like you said, it's been so debated. Yeah, and I think anyone you ask will maybe have a different definition of body positivity. A lot of people prefer body neutrality these days. For me, body positivity has two strands to it. There is the personal, there is the subjective, your body image, how you feel about your body and the way you move through the world in it. And then there is the political, the objective, the fact that in society certain body is,

are treated with more respect than others. There is this hierarchy that is placed upon us that values the thin, young, white, able-bodied, cisgender ideal. So I think when you bring the personal and the political, for me, together, that is body positivity. And I think a lot of the issues and a lot of the tensions have come from only ever hearing about

or only ever amplifying personal stories of people whose bodies maybe don't fall too far out of the cultural, ideal of beauty and forgetting the political element because the roots of body positivity are in radical fat liberation. You know, there were groups way back in the 1960s. There was a group called the fat underground who used to like storm Weight Watchers meetings and say like we're fat, we're not going anywhere, we're happy, you don't have to diet. And if you look at the body positive movement today, so much of it can be traced back

and the first kind of bloggers and like activists on this topic are plus size feminists who then weren't amplified, you know, didn't kind of get their shining glory moment because so many other voices were there. And I include mine in that because I, you know, I have a great deal of privilege as to why I was amplified and my voice was amplified over maybe people who fall further outside of the beauty standard than me. You said at the beginning that you had this urge that you needed to help. You needed to tell your story and help others who might be going through something similar. There was a message there. When you, when you got that platform, when you wrote your book, taking everything that you'd been through, how have you seen it paid forwards? How have you

seen it impact others? I mean, even just the topic of body positivity now, I feel like is quite a well-known thing. Like when I... Yeah, the world's changed. Absolutely. It's changing. Absolutely. Like when I started, like, people didn't know what that word meant. And I was just weird because I was on my phone all the time. And I was like dancing around in my pants on the end.

Which I get, I get it. But as you said, times have changed. And we've seen the movement massively evolve. I feel like there was a peak, maybe 2017, 2018. And it really felt like things were changing. And we were moving forwards. There was a lot more diversity. We saw a lot more plus-sized characters, especially, you know, diet.

culture was shape-shifting because people were on to it. So, you know, all the big weight loss groups started to like change their message of it or like change their name even. And we had this real push forward. And unfortunately, at the moment, kind of feels like the pendulum has swung back. And we're back into another phase of quote-unquote thin-is-in. A lot of, you know, GLP1 widespread usage, which means that people are quick fixing their weight and becoming very slim again.

So we're going, we're swinging. The pendulum is swinging. And I hate to see it, but I do have faith that we can swing back. Yeah. It does feel a bit frightening at the moment. We were just talking the other night with my family about a Zampic and just the accessibility and, you know, it comes back to danger on a very basic level. What is dangerous at this point as well as, like you say, the

capitalist connection to the diet industry. It's expensive. The health risks. Yeah, but I agree with you. I do believe we will go back the other way as we do with so many things. And it does feel like a lot of progress that we've made in a lot of areas. Or feminism have been rescinded to an extent in recent years. The world is a... And it's connected. You know, the way we feel about our bodies or what we are taught our bodies should be. It's massively connected to our wide. political context and wherever our stage of feminism is at, you know, we, we had this, this push and I think social media allowed us to push forward into another wave of feminism. And now we're seeing this swing back to fineness, to conservatism. We've got trad wives blowing up

on the internet, you know, women who want to go back to quote unquote traditional gender roles. And this is, it's not a coincidence. It's not a coincidence. And especially in terms of thinness. Naomi Wolf pointed out in the beauty myth that female hunger is the most potent political sedative in history. When we are hungry, we do not have the energy to fight for our rights, we are distracted, all we are thinking about day in, day out is how our bodies look, how we look to other people, whether we're placating the male gaze and being aesthetically pleasing. We're distracted. We're distracted. And I think remembering that is very, very powerful. Because I personally refuse to be tricked into believing that turning my body into some perfect image is my purpose in

life when there are so much bigger going on. Yeah. Are we swearing? Do we swear? Swear if you want. Okay, cool. Shit. Which brings us very, very nicely onto your third book, which is Dietland by, sorry, Walker.

Plum Kettle does her best not to be noticed because when you're fat to be noticed is to be judged. But when a mysterious woman starts following her, Plum finds herself involved with an underground community of women who live life on their own terms. As Plum grapples with her personal struggles, she becomes entangled in a sinister plot, the consequences of which are explosive. Why did you choose Dietland? I always recommend Dietland. And I recommend it to people who aren't necessarily in the body positive world because it's a fictionalized, you know, it's a fiction, it's a story

that kind of brings you in in a very relatable way because Plum, this main character, is so lovable. She goes on her own journey, so she starts the book wanting to have weight loss surgery and, you know, dreams of this thin version of herself. She buys clothes for the thin version of herself. It's all she wants. And she goes on this, this arm,

of questioning and getting angry and learning to see herself differently, letting go of male validation, and at the same time gets involved with this feminist, this badass feminist organisation of women. And it changes their whole life. And also at the same time, there's like murders happening. There's like bad guys, like predators and bad men getting just killed off and thrown out planes, which, I mean, I'm not saying I endorse it, but...

Oh, it's exciting. the book though, isn't it? It's so good. It's, yeah, it is a really brilliant story and I think has all the messages that we need to hear more of. Well, there are aspects of Plum's character that resonated with you, particularly, you know, when you were younger, you were struggling with body image. How did her personal struggle differ to yours even? I think we definitely had a different struggle in that she comes into her journey as a plus-sized woman and I've come into it from an eating disorder background. But I think there is so much crossover in that personal, that how you see yourself, that whether you think your body is worth existing and respecting and being seen.

And I love Plum's journey with fashion. And I related to her very much because she starts out, always trying to shrink herself, trying to hide, cloak, you know, flatter, and then develops this like bold, colourful, vibrant style. I was like, yes, girl, get that colour, get that dopamine dressing. When you say tries to shrink herself, obviously, you know, your new book, we don't make ourselves smaller here. What are the areas that you believe most women lose themselves, shrink themselves? What's been your experience of feeling lost?

It's such a spider web. I think, I wanted to write this book because having done book one, all about the body, I realised that the body was just the start for me. And there were so many areas, so many parts of my life, where I'd lost a part of myself, or a part I'd been taken, or I'd given away unknowingly a part of my self-esteem or my confidence. So the book travels through, it starts with body, it goes into relationships, goes into sexuality, into our lives, and finally into our whole self, how we see ourselves. so it travels through all these different places where we are taught to make ourselves small.

I could have written, I could write tomes. Like this could be a never-ending book because within patriarchy there are so many places where we are taught to make ourselves small that these for me were the big moments. And I share a lot of my personal stories very open, too openly, some may say. Never too open. Well, tell that to the legal team of my book. But yes, it's very, it's very open. personal as well.

Bayleys is proudly supporting the women's prize for fiction by helping showcase incredible writing by remarkable women, celebrating their accomplishments and getting more of their books into the hands of more people. Bayleys is the perfect adult treat, whether shaken in a cocktail, over ice cream or paired with your favourite book. Check out baillies.com for our favourite Bailey's recipes. You've, aside from your writing, also built this amazing following online. And we do have to talk about that platform because it, I have such a love-hate relationship with social media.

I'm sure so many of our listeners will feel similarly. You've got 1.3 million followers on Instagram. It's a lot of people looking at you. That's a lot of eyes. As someone who has struggled with body image from a young age, before the rise of social media as well. I don't know how they're doing it now because I'm so glad we didn't have that back then. What are your thoughts on how platforms like Instagram impact young girls and boys today? It's a real double-edged sword.

Yeah. Because I wouldn't be where I am now without social media because I wouldn't have found the body positive community and all these different diverse voices to learn from. But they are still very much the minority. and I think the majority of social media unfortunately is becoming more and more toxic, filters are becoming more unrealistic and unspotable, like more convincing. I don't know what's real anymore. No. Scary AI.

Terrifying, you know, the accessibility of things that we're sold online. You know, I feel like every time I scroll on TikTok, I'm being sold like a lip fillers or some miracle wrinkle, something that is, you know, another version of Snake or that we've been. been sold before that probably doesn't work and it's going to make someone a lot of money. It's going to make a man a lot of money. Let's be real. So yeah, I do feel like it's a bit of a Wild Wild West out there. It really is. And we have seen some progress, you know, a handful of years ago, Jamila, Jamil did a

really successful intervention with Instagram and she got certain diet products to be almost shadow banned. So if you're under a certain age, you can't see the post. It's like sensitive content. That was a great step forward. But it kind of feels like the ball is rolling too far. and in terms of legislation, like we're just so far behind. We can't keep up with it all.

We cannot keep up. I was talking to a friend the other day whose daughter is 12 and is obsessed with anti-aging creams. Right. But it's because she's being served them online constantly. And like you say, it's not just the physical. It's not just about her skin, which, by the way, isn't aging. Of course. But it's about what that is telling her deep down about the concept of aging, the idea of it.

it's frightening and it's moving so, so fast. Absolutely. And I can't remember the exact stat, but a huge percentage of young people now, obviously, want to be influencers. They want to be content creators. And that in itself, the amount that you have to self-objectify

or that we are learning to self-objectify because we're turning almost every single moment of our lives into content. We're filming ourselves. We never saw our face. that much before. We were never meant to see our faces as much as we're Yeah. And that is something's got to give for this to be a healthier place. But on the other side, I do also see a lot of social media, especially Gen Z accounts, who are embracing a new

wave of feminism and body neutrality and using social media to say, look, this isn't real life. let me show you real life. Let me be real with you. Let me come on here, like in my pajamas, no makeup, just talk to you about normal things. So it's whether we can prioritize going that way. And we do kind of all have a bit of a personal responsibility because what we engage with is what we will see more of.

You know, the algorithm needs to know what we want to see. So if we all go out there and focus our attention on the stuff that is going to be good for us and healthy for us And for the younger generations, that's what's going to win. The connection is brilliant. It's the comparison for me, which is toxic, and it's being able to do one without the other. And you're right, I need to work on that. We all need to work on that.

Let's move on to your fourth book now, which is I know why the Cagebird sings by Maya Angelou, a favorite for so many. In this iconic and deeply moving, first volume of Angelou's sort of biography, the author beautifully evokes her childhood with her grandmother in the American South in the 1930s. Loving the world, she also knows its cruelty. As a black woman, she has known discrimination, violence and extreme poverty, but also hope and joy and achievement and celebration. Do you remember how you discovered this book? It was my dad.

I think it would have been in one of those boxes of birthday gift. and I remember reading it and I think I thought it was fiction the first time I read it Oh, because it reads like she's a poet Every word is so imbued Beauty and intentional and genuinely made me laugh out loud

because you know the world that she paints you're so immersed in it and I've gone back and read it maybe three, four times it's just it's perfect I think it is a perfect work Why did you pick it today though. Why does it have a place in this collection that you brought to me today?

It makes me think of just sitting outside somewhere on a bench, taking that time for yourself to reread, to believe that it's worthwhile, to reread something just because you enjoy it and you want to be transported back to that place and be inspired. And I think, again, another one that was written so long. ago and still has so much to say to speak to people who read it today. Maya Angelou is one of those authors where you want to sort of carry her words around with you. You want to wear them like pearls everywhere you go, whether it's pearls of wisdom or experiences that have resonated with you that you can learn from or just beauty.

Like her poetry makes me look at the world a nice way. Absolutely. They appreciate the world more. She's also published a number of collections of essays during her time. in the same format as your latest book. What is it about that format that appeals to you, those sort of short, sharp, let me get my ideas down on the page. I think I love that format because you can write it when you're inspired.

Yeah. So I have been writing, we don't make ourselves smaller here, probably for three years. And it is when the inspiration strikes, when a certain thing is happening in your life, and you need to process it. For me, that writing, it has a very, diary-like element because I am so personal, because I share so much of myself in it,

it really is part of my healing. It helps me to get it down, to make sense of it, to put it out there. And it just so happens that then that resonates with other people because they've experienced similar things or been thinking about similar things. People say to me all the time, oh, wow, I had that exact feeling, but I didn't know the words. And that's, I think, what is so powerful about that format, especially. Like he said at the beginning about feeling the need to get your experiences onto paper.

It's sort of almost articulating it for others. And finding the words for something really helps. Because so often our feelings are insurmountable until we put them into words. In her poem, Phenomenal Woman, I do want to quote Maya Angelou, she talks about embracing your identity. She talks about not fitting into the traditional idea of beauty. She wrote, pretty women wonder where my secret lies. I'm not cute or built to suit of fashion model size, which really echoes a lot of what you speak about when it comes to body positivity.

This was written in 1978, so almost 50 years ago. What does it mean to you when you hear words like that and just take into account how long ago they were written? I think it really highlights to me that there have always been women who refuse to make themselves smaller. And especially when you look at someone like Maya Angelou and her journey, what her life became like the incredible things that she has done through various stages of her life,

she is a real embodiment of we don't make ourselves smaller. She embraced everything about herself. And there have been so many, you know, these iconic feminist figures throughout history who have walked a different path, even though it is not easy. It is not easy to wake up every day and choose to go against everything your culture is telling you

that you should be and think and do and say. But these women are there and they have paved the way and we'll continue to. It's heartening, you know? It's, oh, it gives me, like, gives me the energy. That's why the cage bird sinks. There we go. There we go.

Megan, it's time for your fifth and final bookshelfy book now, which is Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. When Sam catches sight of Sadie at a crowded train station one morning, he has cataported straight back to childhood and the hours they spent immersed in playing games. Their spark is instantly reignited and sets off a creative collaboration that will make them superstars. What comes next is a decades-long time

of friendship and rivalry, fame and art, betrayal and tragedy, perfect worlds and imperfect ones. And above all, I need to connect, to love and be loved. This is a book that you selected actually is a recent favourite. Tell us a bit about it. Surely someone's spoken about this book before? I think we've had it once, actually. Okay, okay. Because I remember it coming up maybe last season or even the season before.

Okay, fair, fair. So I avoided reading this because I tend to avoid things that are very overhyped. Oh, yeah. Because I'm just like, nah, whatever. Harry Potter who? Like I just completely skirt them. And then I couldn't resist any longer. And it was so much more than I thought it was going to be.

I mean, the relationship building, even just the, I guess, the overall setting and the gaming element that they build video games. I have never, I know nothing about that world. I do love to play video games. I just found it fascinating how accessible that world was and how cleverly done it was and I was so absorbed and the twist, the like the gut-wrenching twist that comes towards the end. It's the first book I have cried into for a long time and have recommended it to absolutely everyone and said, yeah, it's worth the hype.

I am remembering now actually when we last spoke about it. It was very much a case of, I thought this wasn't. for me. Yeah. And yet. Yeah. And yet. And I mean, I love that. I love when a book surprises you. It's in many ways a love story as well. I've heard you speak about your journey with positivity and your queer identity who's spoken about it today as a pansexual woman falling in love with the first woman that you dated and realizing that actually growing up, you thought that you just wanted to be the women that you now recognize you were attracted to. Can you tell us a bit more about that?

So I thought I was straight for the majority of my life. Grew up, you know, extremely heteronormative setting. Section 28 was still in law when I was at school. So there, by law, could be no enforcement of the acceptability of homosexuality. Teachers were not allowed to talk about queerness at all. So there were no rainbows, there were no pride flags. And I just went through life thinking, yep, I'm straight, I'm going to get a husband, I'm a princess, I'm going to be saved by a prince, everything's going to be perfect. And it wasn't until I did a lot of healing and a lot of questioning of this, you know, compulsory, heteronormative culture and society that we're in.

But I was even open to the idea that I could be with a woman. And I had experiences with women when I was a teenager, but I wrote them off as like, oh, that was just for a guy. You know, I just, I just kissed her because he was watching, and it was for him. And we often see that framing, especially of like women and women together. We see that framing of it's for the male gays. It's not actually, women aren't actually queer. You know, women can't actually be with women and be in love.

It must be for a man. And it took a lot of unlearning and realizing that my path could be different. And I don't think I was ever. meant to fit the stereotypical patriarchal roadmap. And I don't need to be saved by a man. I think even after I did so much healing of my body image and I was on the feminist path, I still had this idea that it was going to be a man who was going to come in and make everything perfect. And, you know, take away my bad feelings about myself or about life and be the one who saves me in some way.

And I wrote about this in the book as well, this idea of the savior. And I think we're all taught it. We're taught it in fairy tales as we grow up or in rom-coms, where the woman is like career-obsessed. And then finally a man makes her realize that her life is worth living. We all get this narrative about being saved by a man. And I think it truly undermines our ability to be the one who saves us. Yeah, that agency.

Yeah, truly. And we're just waiting around. And also putting our. faith and putting our safety sometimes in the hands of people, men who come in and act or look like a saviour and they're really not. And actually we would be far better off learning that we have the tools within us to save ourselves. And I think the same can be said for the beauty industry as well as romance. It's not looking outward for someone to save us, for someone to make us better because we can do that ourselves and it's right inside.

100%. You're now hosting MTV's new digital series, faces. How have you found having those conversations with guests about their own journeys with their bodies? Why is it that we are so preoccupied with our bodies? Is it our bodies or is that just a way of putting a plaster over what's deeper? Well, I think it's what we've been taught since we, from the moment. that we are old enough to take in cultural messaging and images, we are taught to be obsessed with

our bodies and to never-endingly chase this one extremely narrow idea of what a good body is. And that will make us happy. That will lead to us being loved. Then we will be good enough and respected. And I think having these conversations with all these incredible, iconic people who all have very individual journeys with their own body image shows. how wide it goes, how deeply we're affected, and how we've still got a long way to go. You know, we are not done with the body image conversation. And yes, body positivity is now a well-known thing. And it kind of had its big moment.

But as we've said, it's still very much needed, maybe now more so than ever. And these conversations, they've been so heartening, inspiring, like brutal at times, like hearing the things that people go through simply because they do not look like this one narrow ideal that we've been told we all have to look like. But there's so much power. There's so much power in these people's stories. And every time I leave being like, yeah, let's do this. Let's tear it down. So I love it.

Taking back that power is what it keeps going back to. And when it comes to that journey, that evolution that we're seeing in the movement, I feel like your own goes alongside it. You know, your career has come so far since the origins blogging as body posy panda. Try saying that after a few drinks. And I get the impression that as well as your career developing, so have you. What are your goals, ambitions for the future, whether that be work or on a very personal level or both? That's a great question.

I never quite know how to answer this question because I'm not a five-year plan girly. I am kind of a choose what feels right in the moment and continue to heal girly. Because, you know, 10 years ago, I never could have imagined that this was going to be a career because I started when it wasn't a career. So I think my goals are to continue to practice self-love because it is a practice. It is a daily effort, keep on healing, go into therapy, moving my body for joy, you know, taking good care of myself. And I think getting more into the real world. You know, I have had this amazing experience with social media and been able to do so much because of that platform.

And I'm at this point now where I'm realizing we really, really need to see each other in the real world, be with each other, be with each other, be in. community together. It's a different level of connection. And social media can be great and can plant good seeds and be the start of something. But we've got to get together, man, you know? We've got to get out here and really be connected. Amen. Now, community and connection is at the heart of self-love.

I have one final question for you. And it is the one that everyone hates the most. So I do apologize. But if you had to choose, Megan, one book from your list, that's a favorite. Your face. Which would it be in why? What, like, can I only ever read this book forever?

It's not quite a desert island situation. And I always, I crumble at this whenever I get asked, oh, could I have some allowances? And I go, yeah, yeah, no, you, it's not forever. It's not forever. Just what, and you know what? It's the type of thing where your answer could change, depending on how you feel.

Well, yeah. So right now, in this moment, since we're about being present, what do you feel is your favourite? What means the most to you now? I'm being drawn to Maya Angelou. Because if I had to choose one to sit down and read again now, it would be, I know where the Cajibird sings. Could just read it over and over.

But for anyone listening, it depends where you're at in your life. If you need some body healing, choose one of the body ones. If you want a good story, choose Gabrielle's Evan. You know, it's pick and mix, babes. It's a great answer. Thank you so, so much for sitting down with me for joining us, for bringing your wisdom because I think a lot of people need to hear it. So I appreciate that.

Thank you so much. I'm Vic Hope and you've been listening to the Women's Prize for Fiction Bootschelphie podcast, brought to you by Bayleys and produced by Birdline Media. Thank you for joining me for this episode. You'll find all the books discussed in our show notes. If you've enjoyed it, please leave us a rating or review to help other readers discover even more brilliant books by women. See you next time.