Should I Delete That? - Growing up in a world that hates your body… with Stephanie Yeboah

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

After growing up in a world that teaches us to hate our bodies - how can we come to feel at peace with, or even begin to feel positive about our bodies? And what happens when the movement that made you feel better about your body shifts to a position you no longer align with? Stephanie Yeboah is a content creator, author and journalist - and we spoke to her as part of our exploration of the body positivity movement. It was a movement that she was closely associated with, but one that she has moved away from in recent years. In this extended edition of our conversation we find out why - and how we can move forward in dismantling fatphobia as a society.Follow @stephanieyeboah on InstagramPre-order Stephanie’s book Chaotic Energy: The hilarious, heartfelt, must-read romantic comedy now! If you would like to get in touch - you can email us on [e-mail] us on Instagram:@shouldideletethat@em_clarkson@alexlight_ldnShould I Delete That is produced by Faye LawrenceMusic: Dex RoyStudio Manager: Dex RoyTrailers: Sophie RichardsonVideo Editor: Celia GomezSocial Media Manager: Emma-Kirsty Fraser Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome back to Should I Delete That? This week, as part of our body image series, we are asking what happened to body positivity? In Monday's episode, you heard part of our conversation with content creator, author and journalist Stephanie Yaboa. M spoke to Stephanie about living in a society that teaches you to hate your body, how she managed to overcome that, and also how she has now moved away from body positivity to more of a neutral space. This challenge, That is so brilliant that you needed to hear it in its entirety. So let's get straight into it. Here's Stephanie.

Can you talk us through the use of the word fat as a neutral descriptor? Absolutely. So with the word fat, obviously, we know that it is a term that has historically been used as an insult. It's been used as a way to taunt others about weight. And so because of that, it just has this really negative impact on. body image. And so I think I would say over the last 10 to 12 years since the rise of the body positivity movement, we have seen an increase in people wanting to reclaim that word fat because like other body types, such as slim, thin, tall, muscular, you know, fat is also

a descriptive word. It just describes a body shape, a body type. There shouldn't be anything negative attached to it in the same ways that the other body descriptors are. But unfortunately, because we live in a very fatphobic society that kind of shames bigger bodies. This specific word is incredibly loaded with negativity and it's seen as an insult. And so for me and other people within the community, we've kind of decided to reclaim that as a neutral descriptor because for me it doesn't indicate or have any bearing on my worth or my impact as a human being. And for me, I've always just thought, well, if I can call myself fat, what else can somebody, like, what is the worst thing that somebody else can call me outside of fat? Because if I'm referring to

myself as fat, then they can't really come back at me with anything else because I've already acknowledged that and I don't see it as a bad thing. And so for me and a lot of other people, it's just about reclaiming that word and taking the negativity out of it and hopefully getting to a point where we can normalise fatness in a way where people just see it as yet another body type and not automatically demonise it. What does it mean to you personally to reclaim the word fat? So for me, reclaiming the word fat is hugely significant to me because it was a word that really ruled me for a lot of my teen and early adult life.

I tied all of my self-worth to that word. And because in my mind, I've always seen it as a negative. It made me feel as if I was undesirable. It made me feel like I was almost dehumanized. It made me feel as if my body was the reason why people didn't like me. And so it was very important for me to reclaim that word because once I did that, I could take the power out of it. Once I stopped associating my self-worth with my weight, that's when I realized that things began to get a lot. better for me. I started being able to do things that I wouldn't normally do because of the

self-shame that I would normally feel that was attributed to these things. And also, it didn't give anyone power over me the way it used to. And that is a really freeing feeling when you can walk out into the world unapologetically in the body that you're in and know that nobody's words can hurt you because you've already, you know, decanted the power out of, out of that word. So then it's like, well, that's not the worst thing somebody can call me anymore. And if the worst thing somebody can say to me is attributed to my body, then for me, it feels like I'm doing quite a good job, because that must mean that my personality is great, my spirit is great, my aura is great, everything about me is great. And if the worst thing you can say is, oh, she's got some fat on

her body, then I'll take it happily. It doesn't bear any worth on me at all. do you think people who aren't fat should be able to use the term as a neutral descriptor for body types and if so do you think this is a particularly important step that we take within society oh that's such a good question i think in a perfect world it would be great if everybody could use the word fat as a neutral descriptor but unfortunately in the world that we're in people are always going to have negative associations with it so i think if you are somebody that is not fat and you have done the work to unlearn fat phobia and to unlearn all of these toxic body narratives that we've grown up with and you know people personally who are fat,

I think always asking them first, like, am I okay to use, you know, the word fat around you, always ask them to see, you know, if it's okay for you to use the word around them. But generally, I would prefer it if everybody could use it in a way that was just neutral. I think it's a good thing because, again, it normalizes these body types the same way that we use thin, you know, tall, short, etc. But it's just we need to get to the point where we do the work to completely take the negativity out of that word. And I fear that if we then have everybody using it, there are still people who are going to be out there using it with insidious intentions. So that's the problem there. I think we just need to get to a point where we can all just.

be neutral about our bodies. Yeah, hopefully that will come. I have good hopes about some millennials, Gen Z, Gen A. I feel like they're doing a lot of the work. The older ones, I feel like there are still some archaic narratives that kind of need to be weeded out. But as the generations go on, I'm hoping that we can get to a better place with that. Living in a diet culture where thinness is idealized, what is it like to navigate the world as a plus size woman? Oh, it's really shit. It's just awful because you are made to feel like your whole self-worth is worth nothing. And the thing is is that growing up, I didn't hate my body because I looked in the mirror and I saw my body and hated it. I hated my body because everybody told me to

hate my body, whether it was directly, whether it was through TV, through media, through my parents, things like that. And you will find that with a lot of fat women, a lot of fat people, that's how we develop this relationship with our bodies is through others. And so growing up, sort of being excluded out of everything, not being able to shop at certain places, not even being able to sit next to people on public transport because people either didn't want to sit next to you or they couldn't fit next to you. People taking pictures of me at the gym, at restaurants, not being able to fit into graduation gowns because they only tend to make one size. It's that exclusion and that thing where you're made to feel is if your

body is grotesque and that the only way that you can sort of be a normal human being is to look the same as everyone else. So yeah, living in a society that kind of teaches you how to hate your body was just the most toxic, the most toxic place to be. So I'm really glad that I've finally been able to grow out of that, but it was not a fun time. So interesting. about the films and the, like saying about the films and the, like the TV and we watched growing up. Do you have memories of specific things? Obviously, you know, you do, one does put themselves into situate, you know, if you're watching a sitcom or if you're watching or whatever, you know, you try and relate it to your own life. Do you remember having points at which

you felt targeted or hurt or specifically hurt, is the word I'll stick with, by, by moments in TV or a film. Yeah, TV especially. Like the whole super size versus super skinny was a thing. There was this TV show. It recently went viral on TikTok because people are bringing it up again. And it was this guy who was a presenter and he just goes around calling people fat. I, I thought it was the way between.

I honestly, I thought it was a Mandela effect. Like, I thought it couldn't be real and it was real. It was an actual thing. And I was like, we used to watch it when we were kids. And like, it was fine. It wasn't fine. But it was so normalized. movies like Shallow Howe, movies that had actors playing in fat suits and, you know, the way that

fatness is portrayed in the media, it's always either we're lazy, we're stupid, we're unlucky in love, we're the sassy best friend, we were never the stars of our own shows, especially as it pertained to rom-coms and desirability, you know, we could never just be fat and desirable. We always had to go through some kind of change or, you know, things like that. Or we were the villains. So you see in a lot of Disney movies, the villains are fat. You have like, you know, the Queen of Hearts is fat. You've got like in Pocahontas that the colonizer guy is fat.

Ursula the Sea Witch, who was very fabulous, mind you. Like she's amazing. But again, a fat, a fat creature, a fat octopus. And then you have things like Tom and Jerry where you have the housekeeper as a fat black woman and you tend to see a lot of fat black women specifically in subservient slash made maternal roles like very desexualized roles. So it's even when you bring race into it, there is a whole other underbelly of the way in which fatness is categorized with black women specifically were either seen as the maternal strict house mother. A lot of the times played by

black men, which is another conversation completely, or we are hypersexualized, which is something that is more to do with the ways in which black women are hypersexualized, unfortunately, in the media. And so it's only recently that we're starting to see TV shows and movies depict fat women in a normal light, not even like a good like, just normal. And it's taken what, nearly like 150 years of TV or whatever for us to get to a point where we can actually have our stories told in a way that represents us truthfully and in a respectful way. So, yeah, I think early TV was just trash. It was awful, wasn't it? So bad. You've been open about your experiences with fat phobia in your writing. Are you able to

talk us through a few if you're comfortable? Yeah, sure. So my issues with body image began at a very young age when I was 11. And that was actually the first day of secondary school. And I was the only fat girl in my class. And so I was automatic target by a group of about six or seven boys. And that kind of lasted the whole of the five years because I didn't tell my parents and I didn't, you know, I didn't really tell anyone that I was getting bullied. But the bullying was the thing that really affected me because going into school every day, it was like going into my own sort of source of hell, so to speak. So the bullying was not only verbal, but it was physical. So I would get beaten up all the time and all of these things. And then it got to a point when I was 14. I started to sort of

trigger warning. I started to self-harm a lot. I started to develop slight sort of eating disorders by way of just not eating or binge eating, things like that. And I remember, sorry to put you on blast dad, but I remember telling my dad once, just kind of giving a slight indication that, look, I'm being bullied because of my weight. And his response was, well, maybe if he weren't so fat, it wouldn't happen. And that, I remember like it happened yet. I remember that conversation like it was yesterday. It stayed with me my whole life. And in that moment, he made me feel as if my weight was the reason that all of these bad things were happening to me. And so that shame was something that I carried. And it was the reason why I started to

punish my body. So when I was a late teenager, early adult, I also bought the insanity DVDs, 30-day shred, you know, all of these awful DVDs that were just brutal when it came to their treatment of fat people or talking about fatness. And it further encouraged these really terrible eating habits. Alongside mental health issues like depression, I also kind of went through dating was a whole other thing where a lot of the times I was dumped or people didn't show up or whatever the case may be was a lot of the time was because of my weight where you know when we get onto the dating apps I was very transparent I was like look I'm fat in real life like I would always put like a funny quip in there something like that and then when

I would meet up with these guys they would see me and be like oh I don't think it's going to work out so little things like that that kind of contributed to this negative body talk My mom taking me to Weight Watchers when I was like 16 as well. All of these kinds of subtle things that we grow up with once you get to an age where it's like, hold on, that wasn't cool. Like my parents would always watch me when I'm eating and they'll be like, you're going to finish all of that. Or little things like not being able to fit in with the people at school because I wasn't able to like wear the things that they were able to wear. yeah the fat phobia was at the time and still is very very rife it's very exclusionary you know when we got into the age of pop and we saw christina aguilera and brittany spears and

there were all of these trends where you could wear like handkerchief tops and low cut jeans and so you know not making these things available for all bodies obviously you're automatically excluded from a whole sort of pop culture moment and so you kind of see those kinds of things things. And then yeah, medical fat phobia again is a whole other other thing where I never thought that my illnesses were taking seriously because they would always see my weight first and tell me to deal with my weight. And oftentimes the issue that I had had nothing to do with my weight. So for example, I remember a time when I got a bruise on my thigh because I think I'd fallen over really badly and the bruise wasn't going away after weeks. And I remember going to

the GP and he was just like, well, it's probably. your weight and I was just like I don't know I fell over that had nothing to do with my weight my weight is not causing this bruise to like not go away and so it's like little things like that that kind of affect your day to day life and it makes you really realize how dehumanizing it is to exist in a world that doesn't make room for you this is I mean this is a hard question and if we don't have to talk about if you don't want to but how have these experiences affected your mental health and self-esteem. And have they also, do you think in any way, affected your physical health as a result? Yeah. So dealing with the fat phobia and growing up and being

made to constantly feel shame over my body, it ended up with me developing depression when I was 14, which I've had ever since and I've been on medication for ever since. My self-esteem and confidence were in the gutter and for a long time that was all I know I thought that that was just my normal state of being was to not experience joy or happiness it was just this well at least I'm alive kind of feeling so for a lot of the time I didn't actually feel like I was living life I was just existing and watching everybody else live their lives while I was just like almost in this like weird sunken place type thing like I would go through the motions waking up showering, eating, going to school, going to work, but I wasn't mentally there.

It was almost like I was just waiting for myself to expire because I didn't feel like I belonged there. It was a really horrible effect on my self-esteem. Once I started involving myself in the body positivity community and things, things did look up for a time. And then 2017 happened and that was my first ever breakup. And that was my first ever boyfriend, my first ever, it was my first he was my first everything and I thought oh my gosh this is my happily ever after somebody has accepted me for me and you know we were together for two and a half years and um only for them to break up with me uh because my weight was the issue so even though they had met me when I was a size 24 26 somehow they had now been like well I'm breaking up with you because you're not the right body type

that was the words that they literally used you're not the right body shape you're too big and I think from 2017 onwards, everything that I had worked hard to attain in terms of my self-esteem plummeted in that moment because it felt like, well, you can't, I couldn't even love myself out of a systemic, fat-phobic environment. As much as I had learned to love myself in that moment, it meant nothing because this person that I had fallen in love with still saw me as this grotesque person to the point where he didn't want to be with me anymore. And my confidence just went down the gutter and it did develop again I started to develop those really terrible habits in terms of eating where I stopped eating for a while some of it was the

heartbreak but then after the heartbreak I mean the heartbreak was three years but after the heartbreak it got in I got into that mode where I was like well I have to be slim because if I'm not slim I'm not desirable so it kind of went into that for a while I was able to catch it before it got really bad because I was in the body posse community and so I kind of had some resources to help but I did start developing those really toxic attitudes again and so yeah it kind of happened in like two or three waves for me where I would I would be good one minute and then it would dip but yeah now it's it's steady. Of course, it's something we touched on earlier, but being black means that your body has been further marginalised.

Do you think it's been exacerbated in your experience, how you've moved through? Do you think the two are separate, or do you think it's been exacerbated by the coexistence? I think it's been exacerbated when you kind of put sort of being black alongside being fat. There is a certain kind of misogenoir against fat black women where not only are we sort of made to be hypervigensual. on a, unfortunately, a hypersexualized version of ourselves, but also we're raised. And what I mean by that is when we talk about body image, there is a general, there seems to be this general understanding that black women don't get it as bad as other races because in our culture, everybody loves curves and hourglass shapes are amazing and, you know, fat women are

seen as that's the body type that we aspire to have. And while there is some truth that in a lot of Afro-Caribbean communities being curvier is the standard of beauty, it's the Nicki Minaj curve. It's the video vixen curves. That is what the standard of beauty is. It's hourglass or exaggerated hourglass shapes. It's not larger fat body. So there's a there's a really big kind of misunderstanding there where people assume that we don't need the same resources or support because, oh, well, people love our body, so it's fine. And that's not the case. And so for a lot of the time, I found that we were getting erased. So our perspectives were getting erased. It didn't really feel like people were kind of listening to our perspectives on how we've grown up being fat because just, yeah,

because of those assumptions that are made about black women's bodies, just this notion that we were either put into these camps of being masculinized. I think that's another thing, especially when we put colorism into it. So when you are darker-skinned as well, there are these stereotypes of darker-skinned women being more masculine, which is why when we look at movies such as the Medea movies, big mama's house, you know, all of these movies,

you have men masquerading as women, they always seem to be darker skinned and fat because there is this association that the darker you are, the bigger you are, the more far removed you are from femininity. And it's a really difficult one to have to deal with. I've been in a couple of situations where I've gone to like an event and I can be quite introverted. So sometimes when I'm at events, I'll kind of like stand in the corner just eating because that's like my thing. I'll just be there eating and just looking at everyone having a great time. And I actually remember being an event a couple of years ago. And I was doing just that. I was like looking at the whatever it was, the decor and stuff and I was eating, not really talking

to anyone. And I remember this guy came up to me and he was like, oh, you look amazing, all of that kind of stuff, which sounded great until he said, oh, I didn't come up to you earlier because you just look really intimidating. And I was a bit scared to talk to you. And I was just like, why is that? And he kind of looked me up and down and he was just like, oh, because you just have such a big presence and you look really sassy. And if it's one word that I hate, especially when it comes to associating with black women, it's sassy, angry, you know, spunky, all of these kinds of things. And I kind of just looked at him and smiled and I was like, okay, cool. But inside, I just felt like this guy nearly didn't even like give me a chance because he had

immediately saw my body and written me off as this sassy, domineering character because of my appearance. And these are things that we see being exacerbated in the movie, in the movies and television shows. Like even, is it Norbit with Eddie Murphy? Again, he's created Raspusia, which is this awful, awful stereotype of a black woman, a black fat woman. And, you know, nutty professor, again, all of those characters, they're all over. hyped stereotypes of black women that give people this impression that, you know, fat black women are jolly and, you know, we're sassy and we're domineering and we are intimidating. And these are all things that, you know, it doesn't feel like we're allowed to

be soft. It doesn't feel like we're allowed to have the same desires as everyone else because we have to be on all the time. And so it's very, it can be very detrimental. do you think there's been much progress in recent years with dismantling fat phobia um i do think there has been quite a lot of progress in terms of dismantling fat phobia from where we were i want to say pre 2007 pre 2008 there's been a lot of progress when we look at things like fashion and clothing I don't want to say huge amounts of progress because there are still a lot of ways to go but in terms of the way in which brands

have responded to things like inclusive clothing it's a lot better than when we were kids when we were teenagers. I never thought in this lifetime I would be able to shop from Tammy girl but recently seeing them show up on ASOS and they got up to a size 26. I was like, oh, I can now, you know, live

my dreams of being a tammy girl, even though that was like 25 years ago, but, you know, we're here now. So I think the rise in a plus size influences, plus size activists, you know, us pressuring brands and going in on brands and raising the discourse about inclusivity has definitely helped. In terms of representation in the media, there has been a little bit of progress, although I do think more could be done. It's great that we're seeing a more diverse range of artists coming out. So, you know, people like Lizzo, who, even though that wasn't her main aim, because she's just an artist, but she has done a lot for, in terms of people seeing

themselves represented, actresses like Monique, and all of these other actresses that have come out and they are kind of defying all of the stereotypes that have been put on us has been great. There is a lot more that could be done, I think. But in terms of where we were 12 to 12. years ago there's been quite a lot of progress made when you talk about the steps that we need to take in your opinion what are they what are like the most important vital necessary steps that we need to take in order to continue to dismantle fat phobia in terms of dismantling fat phobia

we need to have conversations with people about how they use language uh when describing bodies i think that's a really important one i think for people that want to be allies to those who live in different bodies and just generally the way in which we talk about fatness needs to change. There needs to be a huge overhaul in the NHS and in the medical sector with how they approach fatness as well. They need to learn how to humanise fat patients and to not write us off when we have really bad medical issues because there is a negligence there that is so harming. And when you blame somebody's body for their body malfunction in some way, you're putting more shame on that person than they might already feel. I do think that we need to have

resources to help people from a mental health point of view as opposed to just a physical point of view. Because what you'll often find is if somebody is gaining a lot of weight or if somebody has an issue with their health that is related to their weight, they don't concentrate on the mental health aspect. They don't concentrate or think about, well, why has this person put on a lot of weight? How is what I'm doing affecting their mental health? Am I coming at them from a place of love and concern or am I coming at it from a place of shaming and telling them that they have to change themselves? So I think the way in which we confront others about weight has to change. Secondly, we need to just stop commenting on people's bodies. I don't know if that will ever,

ever change, but the way, you know, whether somebody puts on weight or loses weight, we have to get to a point where people's bodies are not the most important thing about us, because it's not. And when you constantly make somebody's body the most important thing, it's like you're prioritizing that, they're, what they've contributed to society, their thoughts, their feelings, suddenly no longer matters. And it's dangerous as well because you don't know what that person has put on or lost weight. And then you get into an issue where, you're now, you know, looking and feeling very awkward because the reason that they may have put on weight was because of something that was health related. I do think having more allies is a really powerful thing as well.

I think people who are keen on dismantling fatphobia, if they are not fat, to try as much as possible to use their privileges to uplift people who may, whose voices may not be heard as much because unfortunately, you know, if you're a fat person and you're trying to combat the NHS or you're trying to speak to the general public about fatness, they don't really want to hear us because they see our bodies as the first thing and then they don't really want to listen to anything else we have to say. So sometimes when you are smaller, unfortunately, people will want to hear from you more because we just live in that society that is fatphobic and pretty privilege is a thing. So it's one of those things where, you know, if you are in a place where you want to help us is to kind of like,

like what you're doing, like using your platform to kind of have us speak and like share our perspectives and things like that, which I think is really a really powerful thing to do. What else? Making things accessible as well. I often hear this argument from the general media, oh, you know, fat people aren't working out. We're not doing this. We're not doing that. But then if I go into Jim Shark, it goes up to an Excel. What do you want? If I don't have the tools to work out, you can't shame somebody for allegedly being lazy if you're not giving them tools. We still have a huge issue with accessibility when it comes to gym wear. Because again, even when it comes to active wear, thinness is the goal. You don't see fat people in gym clothes.

Nike had all of that bother a few years ago because they had a plus size mannequin. And so it's like if you keep targeting fat people or making fat people your target for working out, then you need to have fat models if that's the case. You need to make it inclusive so that everybody can, if they want to work out, we have the tools to be able to work out. And yeah, media again, just having more inclusivity when it comes to fatness. Stop pairing fat men with slim women because I'm actually tired of it. I'm actually sick and tired of the body shaming when it comes to fat women. You don't really see fat women with slim hot men in the movies or TV shows. It's always Homer and Marge Simpson or you've got Lewis and whatever his name Peter Griffin or you've got you've

even in cartoons we see it where you've got a fat man and a slim hot wife and it's just like okay so fatness is okay as long as the wife is slim so kind of reverse the roles a bit like I want to see fat women being desirable and being seen as desirable without it being hypersexualized so just little things like that I think could could definitely change I'd never even thought about the cartoons. That's nuts. That's weird, isn't it? Also, Marjorice just had a baby. So did Lewis. They, sorry, they had babies. Right? Yeah. I'm like, I'm going back in their jeans. It's just ridiculous. What does body positivity mean to you? And do you align with the movement where it is currently? The body positivity movement for me meant being in a safe space

filled with predominantly women who could share their stories and their anecdotes of growing up in a world that hated their bodies. At the time where we kind of had the third wave of it, which was predominantly online through platforms such as Tumblr and Facebook and then eventually moved on to Instagram, it was a community of people who were predominantly larger fat. And we just came together to kind of just share our stories, to talk about what we went through growing up. It was a place where people would share their fashion as well. So it was like, you know, if you're plus size and, you know, we had such limited fashion places to shop back then. So if you found something that was awesome, you wanted to share it. And a lot of the time,

it was ASOS. That was like the main place. When ASOS started doing plus size clothing, we were all in these communities sharing like the latest links and things. And so it was a place for us to share our fashion. It was a place for us to kind of share our stories and to feel seen, I think, was the big thing. Back when I was heavily involved in it, it was predominantly sort of larger fat, plus size women. And it was just a place to feel recognized and to feel humanized and to not feel as if your existence was a hindrance in any way. It was a place to make friends. It was a place to just share resources as well. And I would say, do I, do I, feel like it resonates with me in the here and now. I would say no, only because over the last

five years there has been a bit of a schism, I think, especially once the pandemic hit. I always say the pandemic was such a huge change when it came to body positivity because what that meant was even before that, we started to see body positivity hit the mainstream and brands started to latch onto this sense of inclusivity. However, what they would do is when it came to influencers, advocates, models, they would only use the smaller fat because that was what they saw as desirable. So once you kind of hit over a size 16, it was like, no, we don't want to use you. And so I think a lot of us started to see that and started to feel a bit marginalized in a community that was meant to celebrate larger fatness. We started to see ourselves not be that

standard of beauty in our own community. And I think once the pandemic hit, and we started to see people at home a lot more, which meant a lot of people that had always been slim or smaller their whole life started to gain weight because we were all at home. We couldn't go out. And so we saw a lot of mid-sized content because suddenly people that were size tens were now size 14s and they didn't know how to, not exist, but they didn't know how to shape or to dress their new bodies. They weren't used to having this bit of weight on. And so we started to get a lot of content, rightfully so. We started to get a lot of content from people that were between a size 12 to size 16s, coaching women, talking to women about existing in these new bodies, which was

absolutely fine. But because it ran so synonymously to the body positivity community, it started to kind of take it over to the point where a lot of larger fat women felt marginalized in their own community. And I think once brands and publications latched onto it, they saw mid-size as the new plus size. And so what you'll find is when it comes to things like models and things and clothing, you kind of don't really see a lot of plus-size people in those positions anymore. Society now sees like a size 16 as plus size, which is inherently quite dangerous because then you have all of these people that are a size 22, 24, 26, 28, who now are not existent in the conversation because we're not made to feel as if our bodies matter.

So for me, I wouldn't necessarily say that I see the current body positive trend as representative of me. I think I've kind of moved on to like more of the neutral space, I think, because now I just don't give a shit about my body at all. I'm actually just tired of it, if I'm being honest. I'm tired of having to be positive all the time. It's just exhausting. I just leave me alone.

It was hijacked and I don't think a lot of people, I don't think it was something that was purposefully done by the creators that you're talking about there who were gaining weight. But like you say, they did take advantage of the situation when brands came to them with deals and that sort of thing. And the movement was hijacked because it's not, it doesn't look anything like what it's supposed to

and it's certainly a long way from its origins. But I wonder when we are speaking about those people, do you think there is a space for what they're doing? And if you do, what kind of is that? Do you think the two things need to be completely separate? Can they work together? Like, how do you see that kind of content existing? I definitely think there's a space for it.

I think where it went wrong was just the, it's more like the usage, the word. So to do this thing and then call it body positivity, it's like this phrase already is attributed to a specific movement. And that's kind of what body positivity was. It wasn't just like a general hashtag. It was attributed to a specific movement for a specific type of body. I think the error in that is that body positivity is so vague that it could technically apply to anything.

But I think that was the word or the phrase that we chose or they chose to attribute to fat bodies. There are other movements such as like the radical fat liberation movement, things like that, which are all there as well. But I do think that there is definitely a place for body image movements, body image communities, because at the end of the day, everybody needs to have those resources. Everybody, there's nobody that wakes up in the morning and is 100% okay with their bodies. That's just not how life works, unfortunately. Like, life is not linear to the point where everyone. one's going to be happy with themselves all the time and everybody deserves to feel seen.

That's one thing that I've always kind of stayed strong by is that everybody, regardless of the body that you're in, they deserve to be able to go online or to go into the mainstream and see somebody that is representative of them. So I definitely think that there is a place for people that are midsize or smaller to have those movements. It's just, it's a weird point in time where it's, we can't go back to what it was. I don't really know how we're going to move forward with regards to the representation of fat bodies because a Zempic is here and it doesn't look like it's going anywhere soon and unfortunately and I'll be very honest. I spoke about it on my blog recently. We are in a time now where because

these methods are so accessible, how can I say this? The, we are always, we are always, witnessing the decline or the shrinking of advocates, activists, models and influences. Everybody's getting smaller. And I don't discount myself in that because I'm very aware that I am smaller. For me, it was due to gym and other things. It wasn't intentional, but it's just annoying that it's happened around the same time as everybody else. And so I do mourn it, if I'm being honest, I do mourn.

the community that we used to have because now it just feels like who is flying the flag for like the Gen Z fats and the Gen A fats. There are some influences that I know who are still like, you know, flying the flag. But I think now that we're in a community where these weight loss injections are so accessible and fat phobia has reared its ugly head yet again to the point where it's just, it's just awful. I don't know. I really don't know how we can get back there. I think the most that we can do as individuals is to just keep pushing for that inclusivity, to keep having those conversations, to keep challenging the government and the NHS and any kind of media outlet that tries to change society with their fatphobic views, like the

whole thing with Labour government and them wanting to give OZMPIC to the facts so that we can go to work, which totally gives eugenics, by the way. It's giving workplace eugenic. I have, yeah, I have thoughts on that. I just think it's a ugly thing that I've ranted about on my Twitter, but yeah, I genuinely don't know where it will go from here. Yeah, you're right. It is, and I hadn't even thought about that, but as the community shrink, literally, shrink in size, it also shrinks in numbers, so it does feel like a shame for representation. But I guess that, I mean, this is tragic, but this is the point. It's like, it goes in cycles and it feels like we're just at the start again somehow.

Yeah. Seth, this has been amazing. Thank you so much. Oh, thank you for having me. Thank you. Honestly, I could listen to his speak forever, never. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Should I delete that as part of the ACAS creator network?