Woman's Hour - Cyntoia Long-Brown, Being Fat, Children and Climate Change

Episode Date: October 26, 2019

In 2006, 16 year old Cyntoia Brown-Long was sentenced as an adult to life in prison for killing a man while she was a teenage sex trafficking victim. Granted clemency in January this year and released in August, she tells us about her childhood and the impact of 16 years in prison.As same sex marriage becomes available in the new year in Northern Ireland, we hear from Grainne Close and Shannon Sickles, the first couple in the UK to get a civil partnership fifteen years ago.The Danish comic and podcaster Sofie Hagen says she's 'a fat liberationist who wants to abolish the systemic discrimination and abuse fat people endure on a daily basis'. So what's your experience of being fat? We hear from the plus-size model Bischamber Das and from listeners Farah, Les, Jo and Karen.The Oscar-winning American actress Regina King has been named as one of the most influential people of 2019. She tells us about her leading role in the drama Watchmen.What's the best way to talk to children about climate change, and are schools doing enough to educate this new generation? Caroline Hickman, a climate change researcher at the University of Bath, the eco-activist Ella Man and Fiona Cowen, the pre-school climate change headteacher at Bolsover Infants discuss.Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed Editor: Siobhann Tighe

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Good afternoon. On Monday, abortion in Northern Ireland was decriminalised and equal marriage will be available in the new year. What does it mean to the lesbian couple who've been civil partners for 15 years? The abuse and criticism faced by people who are stigmatised because they're fat. Weight

loss for me was important because I was starting to feel the side effects in terms of my health. The reason why I couldn't lose weight much earlier on is because I constantly felt trapped in this cycle where I was being bullied by people around me thinking that they're encouraging me when they weren't. And we hear some of what you had to say in a phone-in programme. As climate change is discussed on an almost daily basis and protests have appeared all over the country, how important is it for children to understand what's going on? The amount of children who play in natural places has decreased massively over the

last decade from half to like less than one in 10 I think and this is extremely dangerous because obviously if you don't have experience of being in the natural world you're not going to want to protect it. If the most nature you've experienced is a little bit of grass outside your house you're not going to fight to protect that. And Regina King, Oscar winner and one of time's most influential people of 2019 on her role in the new TV drama Watchmen. In 2006, a young woman was sentenced to life imprisonment in America, a term of 51 years for killing a man. Cyntoia Brown-Long was 16 when she shot Johnny Allen and even though she was still a child she was sentenced as an adult. Her case attracted a lot of attention when it was discovered she'd been a victim of sex trafficking and after serving 15 years of her sentence she

was granted clemency in January and released on probation in August. She married the man she'd met through correspondence whilst she was in jail and was reconciled with the parents who'd adopted her as a baby. She's published a book called Free Sintoya, My Search for Redemption in the American Prison System. She spoke to me from her home city of Nashville and we first discussed her childhood. When she was 12, she was charged with stealing and sent to an approved school. How did she get involved with a man known as Cutthroat, who effectively became her pimp? So in being with the wrong crowd, I had started living on the streets of Nashville as a runaway and started meeting older women who ingrained in my mind that, you know, never been told that that is how relationships work. But here I was on the streets, and that's what is being put into my brain.

And so by the time that I met Cutthroat, I actually thought he was my boyfriend. I thought that this was a normal relationship. I thought that my going out with random men and bringing money back was simply my way of bringing something to the table. And I didn't come to view myself as a victim of trafficking until my late 20s. What do you recall of what happened the day you shot Johnny Allen? I can recall that day I was in the hotel with Cut and he had just told me that since it had been so long since I had brought money back, that it was time for me to go out because the room was almost up. It was almost time for us to buy another hotel room.

And, you know, he had choked me that night until I passed out. And, you know, whenever I came to, I got up and I went out and the man that I shot, he had picked me up. And whenever we went back to his house, he was acting really strange. He kept mentioning how he was a sharpshooter. He had showed off guns to me and it really just made me feel like he was trying to intimidate me. And I mean, it worked. And I just wanted to leave. And so I started to feel like really trapped. I started to feel like I couldn't leave. And I really didn't know what to expect from him. I had come to a place in my life after being constantly assaulted by cut where I just expected violence from men.

I just expected that that was what was going to happen because that had always been my experience. And at the man's house, there was a moment where I thought that he was reaching for a gun. I didn't know what was going to happen. And I just remember feeling this fear and this sense of immediacy, and I reacted and I shot him. Now you've never denied killing Johnny Allen. The prosecution when it came to court said you were actually trying to rob him. Why did you take money and guns from the scene? So whenever I met him, I had to go out to get money for cut and I couldn't come back to the hotel empty handed. If I went back empty handed, like, I mean, it just wouldn't be good

news. That wasn't even an option. It wasn't on the table. And to be honest with you, after experiencing everything there that night with that man, I didn't want to go out with another man. I didn't want to take another risk. I just wanted to go back to the room. And when I left, that's when I took the guns and, you know, I took his truck so I could get back to the hotel room just so that I would have something to take back to cut. Now you have described yourself, that 16-year year old girl who did what you've just described,

you've described yourself as Satan's seed. Why? At the time, that's how I was made to feel. I was involved in a court proceeding where the whole nature of it was like extremely adversarial. And every single thing that was presented was always presented in the worst possible light. It was told to me that, you know, I was this incorrigible young girl that I was a horrible human being. I was just made to feel that I was all these things. And you know, that weighs on you. If you're sitting in a courtroom and you're constantly told this day in and day out, and you can say nothing and you just see all these people just looking at you and you're thinking, are they believing this? Like, I can't tell them that

it's not true. I want to scream that it's not true, but I can't do that. I mean, what is wrong with me? I've never been able to figure out why I just couldn't get it right, why I couldn't make the right choices, why I couldn't just go to school and not get in trouble like the other kids. What was your response when you were told you would have to serve a life sentence? You know, it was devastating. But at the same time, I had spent so much time worried about the worst possible thing that could happen.

And when the worst did happen, strangely, I felt like relieved because I didn't have to worry what was going to happen. There wasn't the not knowing. There wasn't that uncertainty. All that was left was, okay, well, where do we go from here? And so I just vowed from that moment, like, I'm going to fight this. I don't believe that I'm going to serve life in prison. I don't accept that I'm going to serve life in prison. So let's just let's just

figure out how we're going to go about this. So how did you go about it? I mean, what effect did spending 15 years in prison have on your efforts to obviously want to turn your life around? I mean, it was hard. You know, prisons here, they are not at all encouraging of anyone who wants to rehabilitate themselves. You literally have to fight for it. And I had to realize that there was a need for me to change. I had to realize that, you know, things weren't just happening around me and me reacting to it. Like, I could actually make conscious decisions to choose how I react to situations, to choose to control myself and not just be controlled by everything that was happening.

And I started enrolling in classes. I started doing everything that I could. I enrolled in a college course through Lipscomb University. And, you know, slowly but surely, I started to build back up my self-esteem. I started to tear down all those lies that I had taken on that I was this horrible person and that I would never amount to anything. And, you know, I started to have hope again. And in that meantime, we were also going through the appellate process, asking the courts to overturn my conviction. At what point did you realize that you might have a chance because you'd effectively been a victim of child trafficking? So I had always felt that I had a chance, you know, not only for that, but by the sheer fact that I was

a juvenile whenever I was charged. And the sentence that I was given was an adult sentence. It was a lifetime in prison and it just didn't seem right. And so I'd always felt that there was a chance that, you know, I would get some relief, that I would be granted some manner of leniency. And whenever all my appeals were denied and clemency was pretty much a slim chance. You know, that's when, you know, I met my husband now. And we really started buckling down on believing that God could completely overhaul everything, that he had power over every sentence, over the judge, over the jury, over everything. And slowly but surely, we started to see change. We started to see things turning around. We started to see how victims groups in Tennessee were supporting me, which is unheard of.

It was unprecedented for the two organizations that came out in support of me. They showed up at my hearing. They wrote letters for me. We started seeing people who were judges, people who were district attorneys showing support for me. And it was like, wow, like only God can do this. He's literally changed these people's hearts. I could remember a time when, you know, I felt that the entire world was against me and they thought I was this horrible human being. But here are people all across the globe who are just rising up and speaking out in support of me.

And it was just amazing. You had support from people like Rihanna and Kim Kardashian. What impact did they have? You know, I think that no person's impact was greater than another, to be honest with you, in terms of expressing support. I think that the school teacher there in the UK was just as important as any of them. Everyone who sent a tweet, everyone who sent a letter, everyone who spoke out, everyone who just showed their support by having conversations, that was just as important as anyone else. And when it comes to the governor's decision, he's made it very clear that, you know, as a public servant, as a leader, he made it his

mission to actually look at the facts, to actually look at the petition and make a decision based off that. It's not fair to someone else who doesn't receive that type of attention that he would base his decision on that. my record on the things that I had done to improve myself on my rehabilitation, and on his belief that I could be a positive and contributing member of society. Now, you were released in early August, you were given clemency, you were not exonerated from what had happened. And you're on parole, what conditions do you have to obey now? So as part of my clemency I have to do community service regularly which is not a problem you know that's just something that it's in my heart to do anyway. I have to maintain employment which is also necessary. And I have to report to a parole officer. Whenever I travel, I have to get permission for that random drug test, just the normal things that come along with parole.

But I make it a point to not complain. Because I know that there are so many people who are still trapped in prison who would love that opportunity. How much do you think about the family of Johnny Allen? You know, I think of them often. Every decision that I make, I always think about the impact that it can have on other people. Whether I can see that impact immediately or not, you know, what happened with them has forced me to think of that. They had absolutely nothing to do with what went on with me and Mr. Allen. However, they're the ones that are here paying the price. They're the ones that are here still suffering 15 years later. And,

you know, that's, that's horrible. I couldn't imagine, you know, you wake up one day and your life is completely turned upside down. And it makes me want to educate people. It makes me want to share what happened with me so that it can prevent other families from going through what they're going through. Now, there will be vulnerable teenage girls out on the streets now, just as you were. How would you advise them and their families? Yeah, so my adoptive mother, you know, she definitely made every effort that she could, every effort that would be expected of a parent. But, you know, it's really hard when you're up against all of these other influences that really speak to a child's development. You're up against peer groups.

You're up against messaging in society. You're up against what you learn in school. And I would just say that not just parents, but teachers, but everyone, you know, it really takes a village to raise a child. I think everyone needs to educate themselves on that and on teaching healthy relationship patterns, teaching healthy behaviors when it comes to sexual relations. I think that we sexualize young girls way too early in this country in particular. I think that's a problem that all of us as a society, we can address. Kids are exposed to things like that way too early. And I think that too often people are just okay with it and they kind of just turn their eye to it. I can't tell you how many people who witnessed me and going through what I was going through and simply labeled me as fast or promiscuous when really I was being taken advantage of by adult men.

I was being exploited. And we need to be very careful about the language that we use because labels can be very, very powerful. They can be very damaging. I think we should all be conscious of that. And to young girls out there, you know, I just want you to know that no matter what you're going through, no matter what you've been through, you can make it out of it. You can survive. You can come out on top. It doesn't have to define you for the rest of your life. There is hope. There's light at the end of the tunnel. I was talking to Cyntoia Brown-Long. At midnight on Monday, abortion was decriminalised in Northern Ireland and same-sex or equal marriage will be available in the new year. In 2005, Northern Ireland made history when it was the

first part of the United Kingdom to allow civil partnerships. Shannon Sickles and Grania Close became the first couple to exchange vows at Belfast City Hall. Grania took Jane back to that morning in 2005. I remember feeling very overwhelmed but very excited that Northern Ireland was going to be the first place where we could have same-sex civil partnership. Feeling slightly similar in terms of this morning where feeling emotional, thinking back to those like 14 years ago, 2005, when basically very emotional and excited about the change in Northern Ireland. And we knew back then and felt back then that civil partnership was the first step in this journey towards marriage. Little did we know that it was going to be as long as it has taken.

But we are delighted. I'm feeling really relieved this morning. And I have to say, walking a little bit taller this morning as we walked into the BBC studio here. Yeah, it must be a very, very, well, it is actually an important day. It's funny, when history is made, when real change happens, it's never in quite the way you expect. And this is absolutely true of this, isn't it, Shannon? It is, yeah. And as Gordian mentioned, and you mentioned,

it's been a very, very long time. I mean, this morning I'm kind of in disbelief still, and it's taking a while for the realization to settle in that friends are saying, so we're going to look into booking our wedding. We're already getting requests for wedding presents. And there are all these, this opportunity to celebrate in a way that as gay women, we haven't necessarily always been able to think of. I mean, I remember during our civil partnership, one of our gay friends said to us, I am so excited to buy your wedding gift because I have never been able to. And so this little things like that are huge, huge deals right now to the

LGBT community. And I'm still, I can't believe it. I've got lots of outfits and shoes that I got to go and buy because everybody is going to have to go have a big party. Well, tell us a bit about your relationship, Shannon. How did you meet? We met in New York, Jane, a long, long, long, long time ago. And I think Gráinne did that kind of, that thing that certainly people from Ireland do, which is they leave the motherland, they go and find a mate, and then they kind of throw them over their shoulder and drag them back to this island.

And Belfast is a really funny place, as I'm sure recent have been working so, so long in the LGBT community that the last place to decriminalize homosexuality in 83 would be the first to have a public civil partnership in 2005. Northern Ireland went on quite a journey in quite a short period of time, didn't it, actually? I know that you two weren't allowed to go wild at midnight last night because you have you have a three year old, Grainne. So I guess that's not possible. Yeah, no, we do indeed. And I was thinking if it had been 10 years ago, we would have been out there partying and celebrating. But last night we enjoyed midnight hit and we had our peppermint tea and we were exchanging messages with all our friends and family who are delighted for this day and so many people who were waiting for marriage

and who were saying, no, we're going to wait until it's marriage, who have now promised a little girl, a little three-year-old to be their flower girl. So there's going to be a lot of activity come February in our little three-year-old becoming a flower girl. There's a lot of emphasis here on what's going to happen in terms of dresses, shoes and your three-year-old becoming a flower girl. There's a lot of emphasis here on what's going to happen in terms of dresses, shoes, and your three-year-old being almost fully employed as a flower girl for all eternity.

So she's well up to speed with all this as well, is she, and happy for you? Yes, she's very happy. I mean, it's a very significant day. She doesn't realise the significance of today for us, and she will someday. Looking back, social media now, a very significant day. She doesn't realise the significance of today for us. And she will someday, looking back, social media now, social media wasn't around when we had civil partnership back in 2005. It doesn't play the part that it plays now. So she'll look

back and she'll be able to see that today was a very significant day, momentous day for us here in Northern Ireland. Can I just ask you, growing up in Northern Ireland, when did you first realise you were gay? I first realised when I was 13 and it didn't come out until I was 19. And that's because you didn't feel able to or tell me. I grew up in a Catholic minority living in auckle, and I'm very proud of my roots, I'm very proud of where I came from, but it wouldn't have been the thing to come out in a huckle. My family are Catholic, they're practicing Catholics,

so there would have been huge, I suppose, misunderstandings, limited acceptance around gay people. So, yeah, I've come on my own personal journey through that, and I thought 2005 for me was when we had civil partnership was a big step. I feel that even from becoming a parent that there's been even more acceptance within

my own family and they've embraced our daughter and embraced our family in a way that I could never imagine back when I was 13 year old living in a huckle. Yeah and being fearful presumably of what might lie ahead for you. Yeah. Well, that is over. And that's fantastic.

And that's why so many people are in a celebratory mood today. Are you going to get married then? And what will it mean if you do? What will we mean? Well, that's one of the interesting things, because we can't upgrade our civil partnership the way that you could have in the UK. You were able to upgrade. We actually and that's a difference in a difference in the legislation here we're going to have to go through the whole marriage again so that's something that we're going to have to plan and a wedding and all of that in the future unfortunately we would have probably because our situation has changed we would like to have a low-key upgrade but that's not we can't do that

so yeah we're going to have to get married and that might mean you have to have a low-key upgrade, but that's not, we can't do that. So, yeah, we're going to have to get married. And that might mean you have to have a wedding list. Yes, again. Shannon Sickles and Grania Close. Earlier in the year, we spoke to a young Danish comedian who'd written a book called Happy Fat, where she's now touring the UK to talk about the book. And she's been tweeting about the kind of abuse and discrimination to which fat people are exposed. She wrote, I am not a body positivity campaigner. I am a fat

liberationist. I care about abolishing the systemic discrimination and abuse that fat people endure on a daily basis. In conversation with Jane, she expanded on her theory. I have the knowledge that fat people get hired less than thin people. We get paid less than thin people. I can't really turn on the television and watch anything without fat people being the ridicule and the punchline to any kind of joke. You know, you turn on the news and you see these headless fatties walking down the street with like obesity epidemic written everywhere. So you kind of know you're a very, very hated group in society. Well, it was just 24 hours ago at the start of Monday's edition of Woman's Hour that I was talking about recent research from Liverpool University, which talked

about the link between emotional problems and obesity in young children. So without, I don't want to dismiss your passion for being positive about being fat, but there is no doubt that some people pay a price for that, don't they? Oh, all fat people pay a price. Well, in general, all marginalised groups pay a price for being, you know, oppressed and treated very badly. So I'm in no way surprised that children get depression and anxiety because of the way we treat them. What surprised me about how people usually react to statistics like that is, you know, you go, oh, these fat children are sad. How can we make them thin instead of going, maybe they're sad because they're treated very badly and they're told by every single person they meet that they're worthless because of their bodies. Why not teach them to be, why not teach society to treat all of us better?

Bishamber Das works in child protection and she's a plus size model. What has fat felt like for her? Fat for me is something that I have battled with all my life i was an overweight child um even in going into my teens and pretty much um throughout my 20s as well it's only recently that i've um over the past three years that i've lost weight down to my own choices now i belong to the south asian community ind India in particular, and it can't be denied our community is notoriously known for body shaming. So growing up, I would have elderly women who I don't even know coming up to me to say, oh, you have a very beautiful face, but you're fat, who's going to marry you and imagine hearing that as a child growing up constantly it was basically you know instilled in me that I'm not worthy of anybody's love just

because of the way my body was. I think Bishanbi you've gone from a size 24 to a 16 or 18 recently why did you feel weight loss was important now in your early 30s? I think the most important thing is we all should do what we feel is right for ourselves. And weight loss for me was important because I was starting to feel the side effects in terms of my health. Now, I'm a young woman who would want to start a family, and that was always something that was, know the forefront in my mind now the reason why I couldn't lose weight much earlier on is because I constantly felt trapped in this cycle where I was being bullied by people around me who would say that they love me and that's why they were saying the things that they were to me thinking that they're encouraging me when they weren't

it was only when I was able to break free from all of that and realise that what mattered is what I felt about myself and what I needed to do for myself is when I started to take the right steps for my health. How have you coped with what you've been asked to do as a plus size model? I've really struggled with it. I've been doing modelling now for about five years. And when I first initially started, I was actually Britain's only Asian plus size model. So representation is very, very important to me. And on one hand, we have the body positive movement that says all bodies are good bodies, and we encourage each other to be the way we are. But then behind the scenes, I felt the pressure when I was looking at the body positive sort of community as such that I needed to be just like them.

And that would include putting a lot of images of myself in swimwear or in lingerie when personally that wasn't who Bishamber Das is. That didn't fit right for me. And because I wouldn't do that, I felt I wasn't accepted. So how would you describe yourself? I mean, Sophie calls herself a fat liberationist. She's a little bit critical of the body positive movement. Where do you sit in that, you know, what she describes as a political thing? I mean, I understand where she's coming from. At the end of the day, when there's a lot that I do owe to the body positive movement it's because of that movement that I was able to finally see myself

in a positive way and actually show other people as well through the work that I've done that it's okay to be the way you are but also at the same time I have felt pressure it started to become a bit of a movement where you need to be a certain way. And that is the only way where in terms of how Sophie describes it, nobody should ever feel any sort of discrimination towards them. Where I think maybe the body positive movement kind of dismisses that. And what is your experience of being fat? You joined us in a phone-in. Karen first. Up until being about 13, I was just a normal size.

And then through puberty, I put a lot of weight on. I think the thing was that I felt that people had the right to talk about my physical appearance, where they felt that they had, because I was fat. So there were always sort of comments about the way that I looked. An example being I went to see my uncle after not seeing him for a few months and I walked through the door and he said, oh, you're as broad as you are tall, girl. And it just made me feel so not being liked, being stigmatised really. Do you have any idea, Karen, of what caused that change in your adolescence

where you'd been a normal weight and then it changed? It's just my body just seemed to explode really. When I was at school, I can remember making a dress at the beginning of the term and then by the end of the term, I can remember making a dress at the beginning of the term. And then by the end of the term, I put so much weight on that I had to put some extra seams in the side and take it out. And the home economics teacher said, oh, it must be middle age spread. So I'm not really sure. Perhaps it was just to do with the emotional need to eat more. I just don't know I know you're 65 now what's happened recently as you get older you have to go to the doctor

to have an NHS check and then the nurse said to me and she said you're overweight she said have do you have a sweet tooth and I've spent my whole life trying to monitor um that I don't put weight on I weigh myself every day just because I'm frightened of going back to being the bigger person that I was I now weigh nine stone 12 pounds and I try to keep below 10 stone and um she said you you know, you're overweight. Have you got a sweet tooth? And I just went home and I just felt all those feelings of insecurity and failure just seemed to come back to me. And I just felt that she had no understanding of the daily struggles that I've had, really, just to feel acceptable now in the skin that I'm in. Karen thank you very much

for calling us and starting us off let's go to Telford now in Shropshire and Jo is on the line hello Jo. My point is that I think being overweight is one of the last stigmatisms and last isms for sizeism if you like for which we are vilified quite rightly there is an awful lot of support out there for those with eating disorders such as anorexia and an awful lot of sympathy for those and i totally sympathize with people like that but the first reaction when people see someone is overweight isn't one of sympathy it's one of vilification and how could she let herself get like that and what a drain on the NHS and even colleagues and close friends will be oh doesn't she look well and we all know that's

a use for this and thought oh she hasn't lost any weight or she still looks fat. But what do you say to people who say these fat people they are a drain on the NHS. You know, they do get type 2 diabetes and are a problem. How do you respond to those kind of comments? My response to that is, well, let's try and look at the cause of why people are fat. Nobody wants to be fat. Nobody wants, well, there may be one or two, I don't know, but I have hated being fat all of my life. And my view is that this is very much linked to mental health,

but that fat people are just told go on a diet but if we if it was that easy we would do that in the end I reverted to bariatric surgery and paid for it to have done myself it took me 10 years to decide to have it done but having had it done has made me realize that actually being overweight was totally linked to my own mental health and that having some CBT therapy has made me understand that and I still have an unhealthy relationship with food but I can't put the weight on anymore and that's the reason I can't so yes there is a drain on the NHS but if we actually looked at the cause of people who are overweight then actually I think

a lot of that drain would disappear. All we're doing is trying to treat the fact that people are overweight, but actually not treating the symptoms. Jo, thank you very much indeed. Our next caller is in York, and it's Les, who is male. I think TV, magazines and media have a massive role to play in this. If you look at TV adverts nowadays, most couples that are on our telly

come from different ethnic backgrounds, which is absolutely fine, and that shows that we should be proud of Britain's multicultural society. But advertisers still seem to refuse to use larger people in adverts, which to me, I don't know about other people, is blatant discrimination, and they should be challenged.

And my example is, after the recent World Athletics Championships, we had a gold medal in the heptathlon and in the sprints. But we also had a very successful shot putter who got to the final, which is quite rare for a British woman thrower, who you would say, because of the job she does

and her sport, she needs to be larger. But I bet you she will not be advertising on the telly quicker than the other two ladies, you know, Dean Rasher Smith and KGT. What about you, Les? What sort of size

are you? Have you suffered from being fat? Well, I don't know if you call suffered from being lucky or whatever i'm quite slim and i've never really had a weight problem i've done a lot of sports because i loved it and i've i think i'm just lucky in my metabolism and another thing that if you have a drug problem or alcohol problems you have groups you can go to but if people want to lose weight they have to pay 10 pound a week to go to a weight watchers club which again i think is wrong it's discriminating against people les thank you very much indeed for calling us and i must just tell you about a tweet that we've had this came from rita and she said one of my worst stories about being plus size is whilst on an evening out with

my husband a drunk came up to him and said christ mate you could do better than that one of her best stories about being plus size was another while sitting in my beautiful red sports car in a traffic jam a young man who was a passenger in the parallel car said how did you get in a car like that i responded by earning a darn sight more money than you ever will right let, let's go to another caller. Let's go to Farrah, who's in Lancashire. Hello, Farrah. Basically, I just wanted to reinforce slightly what the woman yesterday who was on your programme

was saying about Asian women in particular, the stereotype that we have of having to be slim or having to sort of fit certain moulds and things. And I think that's a pressure through our lives. I remember when I was really young, when I wasn't thin and I wasn't fat, but I was called chubby. And then after I had my first daughter, I remember my dad saying to someone, oh, she used to be so slim and now look at her.

And, you know, now with my own daughter, I'm so conscious that I think she's too thin. And it's very hard in our culture to sort of... I think it's one of the last taboos, actually, in Asian culture, is stopping the body shaming. It's really kind of ingrained and kind of... It's a very strange and kind of culturally embedded situation. It's not good and it needs to be confronted.

You're now 50. how do you deal with your weight now uh i'm just on a constant diet i mean it's just you know that sort of menopause or the 10 pounds you couldn't get rid of as 10 into 15 or 18 or whatever and just sort of constantly aware of what i'm eating but also as you get older you just get more comfortable with sort of how you look and you know who you are and i think it matters less but no i'm on a constant i can't eat that because you know what i mean just a sort of awareness so it's something you think about every day is what you're eating and whether it's going to make you fat yeah pretty much and i think this is embedded in my childhood and i you know i've never been fat fat but i've never been thin And the other thing I just wanted to say was this, you know, using all these antidepressants like catepin and ritazapine and stuff,

they really make women put on a lot of weight. And no one's kind of looking at that as an issue. Have you done that? Have you taken antidepressant? I have. And it made me, well, it just made me very kind of more unwell mentally and also put on you know really pile on a lot of pounds farrah les joe and karen still to come in today's program as climate change rises up the political agenda and protest increases in cities across the country what can parents do to explain what's happening to their children without frightening them? And a reminder that you can enjoy Woman's Hour any hour of the day. If you can't join us live at two minutes past ten during the week, all you have to do is find us on BBC

Sound. Earlier this year, Regina King won an Oscar for her role in the film of the James Baldwin novel, If Beale Street Could Talk. She also starred in the films Boys in the Hood and Jerry Maguire, and she's been named as one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2019. She also stars in the new HBO drama series Watchmen. It's based on the graphic novel of the same name. It's set in an alternative America where sinister white supremacists roam, the police wear masks and can't tell anyone what they do, and Robert Redford is the president. Here's Regina's character Angela telling a group of schoolchildren about herself. I was born just outside of Saigon and when I grew up I was a police officer there until I moved here to Tulsa. Did you stay a police officer? For a while then I retired. Why?

Um I was one of the cops who got attacked on the white night. And that was before police officers were allowed to wear masks. So the bad guys, they knew who I was and they knew where I lived. And they came to my house and they shot me right here. And the doctors, they had to pull apart my insides to find the bullet and get it out anyway i figured making cakes and cookies was better than getting shot yes your character angela well the bakery hasn't opened no it has not does it ever open oh well people have to tune in to find out but uh i hope it's not a spoiler, I guess, because the first episode is aired already. It's a front.

Yeah, because you are really still in the police. Yes, I am. Very much so. And you wear one of the best uniforms I think I've ever seen. Just describe that. There is a picture in the Times today, but just describe it. Well, first of all, I think, you know, you have that old superhero vision, the cape crusader, someone wearing a cape. Well, that's what you are. Yeah. And instead of having a cape that's around your neck, kind of put a twist on it where she has this cape skirt and it billows out just like a cape when I walk. And it's all black and leather and a hood. And she spray paints her face to disguise herself and wears balaclava.

She pulls it up to cover up her nose and mouth. It is terrifying, the first episode. I'm assuming the rest of the series follows suit, but it's also fantastically entertaining. Were you into this comic book world? Was this your thing? No, I was not familiar with the graphic novel. But Damon Lindelof, the creator, he made sure I knew the history because this show is not a sequel.

Dave Gibbons, who's been very supportive of the show calls it an extrapolation and so the graphic novel is canon so we use that that's almost like the bible of this alternate history it really is regarded as yeah people who love this stuff they really love it oh they do they i mean watchmen there, there are people who list their top five favorite books and Watchmen will be on there. Yeah. In Jerry Maguire, I think some people called you best supporting wife, didn't they? Did they? But that was a more traditional role.

You are not, there's nothing supporting about your role in this. You are right in the heart of the action. Yes. You're driving it yeah and i think in in a big way that character angela we're seeing this world through her eyes she's she's the audience's pov you're our way into yeah and that must be something that really satisfies you oh absolutely absolutely i mean you know to be on a poster or billboard and I'm a woman and the title is Watch Men is, you know, it's pretty awesome. I was watching your Netflix series Seven Seconds last night.

Now, this is about an incident on a snowy highway where an off-duty officer is on his way to his wife's in hospital and he kills a young black boy and there's a cover up. But you have done other roles in which the fact that you're a woman of color isn't relevant. Are you bored to tears with being asked the question I'm about to ask you, which is why do I always seem to end up asking women of color about racism? Not bored to tears with it. I think it opens up another question that why are people who are not of color asking themselves the question of racism and their space, how they feel, their relationship to racism. And I'm speaking of in America. I know that we're here in the UK, but I'm sure race is an issue here as well.

Why is that question asked of the person of colour and why isn't it something that's not asked of yourself? And yet, of course, racism is at the heart of some of your most powerful work. Yes. I mean, you know, even with American crime, there were that was part in that. And that's part of that storytelling as well. I think just as a woman, I'll be 49 in a couple of months. And, you know, and I'm sure you can relate to this as you mature, as you become wiser, your, the way you move in the world changes, the way you think changes your,

your connection to something either gets tighter, or you realize what's not so important. And I think as these roles came, they spoke to me probably more than if they would have come to me in my 20s, just because I've lived more life. And do you feel a stronger sense of injustice? Is that something you think has come with maturity? I don't know that it's a stronger sense of injustice it's the reality that it nothing has changed from uh from as long as i can remember you know the only things that have changed is that, you know, we have more documented evidence of injustices.

And still we're in this conversation of where you hear white male politicians say things like, well, you know, I worked hard to get to where I am. And, you know, that's what you should be doing. And it's kind of like, oh, so we're just going to erase history and you're just going to not acknowledge that you have always lived a privileged life. And the problem is that some people, a lot of people, end up voting for those people yeah because we don't do our research i mean i think that that's another thing you know um disenfranchised people uh don't have as many resources as far as um to gain the information to understand the difference between politicians, what they stand for in different. Here's the thing. I think we get so caught up in voting for the president and forget about all of those assembly men and women, all of those local politicians that are probably more important

to making decisions of what's happening in your community directly. And briefly, you have said you want to set up, I think, your own production company. Yeah, I have. You have already. Okay. And employ more women. Yes. Have you got to a stage where you're employing, is it 50% women you wanted to?

That's the idea. Yeah. To create parity. create parody um yeah right now um i am working on um it's uh it'll be my theatrical directorial debut and we're in soft prep right now and yeah that's what we are doing it is not as i said it's not going to be easy it i'm in the middle of it right now and it's not easy but we are making progress which is a good thing. Good luck with that. Thank you.

We should say Watchmen is on Sky Atlantic and now TV on Mondays in the UK at nine o'clock. And I didn't mention that Jeremy Irons is. I mean, he's just everything. Well, he's naked in the first episode. Yeah, but I mean, to look like that at his age. I have to say it makes me feel old because I remember him in the British TV series Brideshead Revisited when I was a very persuasive, persuadable 17-year-old girl. And we all loved a bit of Jeremy in those days.

And for reasons I didn't fully understand, he's having his thigh massaged by a woman dressed up as a housemaid in a castle. Well, this is what I will say. If you continue to tune in, all of those questions will be answered. Thank you, Regina. Regina King and Watchmen is on Sky Atlantic and now television on Mondays at nine o'clock. Climate change in the past few months has constantly hit the headlines, whether it's Greta Thunberg or Extinction Rebellion. Everybody's been talking about it.

Children and young people want to be involved. After all, it's their future they're concerned about. But how can parents discuss what's going on without frightening them? Fiona Cowan is headteacher at Bolsover Infant School in Derbyshire. She's completed the training at the Educate Global Climate Change Teacher Academy, accredited by the United Nations. She's qualified to teach climate change. Ella Mann is an eco-activist from Oxford and Caroline Hickman is a climate change researcher from the University of Bath. She conducted interviews with children from the UK and the Maldive. What did they tell her? I've been talking with children for the last five years,

which I think is important because this was before Greta Thunberg and the school climate strikers started to sort of become well known. So this is what children have been saying to me for some time. And what I'm really noticing is that they're clear-sighted about the destructive impact of global warming on both themselves and on other populations, but also other species, on nature. So they've got a strong empathy with nature and the natural world.

So they're saying things to me like... And they're also very insightful. The age for taking the environment for granted is long past. We now need to be thinking about the future. People need to be listening to children. If we listen to children, then maybe our children will inherit a world in which they can bear to bring their own children. So children are thinking not just about the impact on themselves, but the impact on future children and the environment. So our listener who emails to say that she has a nine-year-old who is worried that he will die at 20. That's not uncommon. It's not that uncommon, no. But what I think is unusual is that many children haven't been talking about this up until now, but they're now beginning to talk about it more and more. So it's becoming more visible, but it has been going on for some time and i think it's i just want to bring it sorry excuse me i just want to bring in fiona um fiona you're there with small children because

yours is a an infant school did you do that course accredited by the un because you felt there was a real need because kids were asking you about this stuff? Yeah I think we as a school have been looking at climate change for a good few years now. This course came online in May time and I thought it was really important that we made sure that we were teaching children correctly and giving them the proper view about what's happening. And not making them unnecessarily fearful? Absolutely because what the course teaches you is to empower people, to empower children, to empower women, to be able to support and help themselves. And what about parents? Because Bolsover is a place that I have to say I wouldn't immediately associate it with widespread concern about climate change. I mean, that's a generalisation and I apologise for it, but you know what I mean.

Yeah, I think it's quite interesting. Bolsover's right in the centre of England. It's right by the M1. It's an ex-mining community, isn think it's quite interesting. Bolsover's right in the centre of England. It's right by the M1. It's an ex-mining community, isn't it? Absolutely, yeah. And you'd think that it would be a topic that wasn't really on people's radar. But actually what we've found over the last three or four months is we've seen a huge interest from the community. We've got parents setting up recycling sites on Facebook. We've got people asking to have meetings where we can discuss

these issues. Parents have been extremely positive in the work that we've been doing because I think we've taken an approach that's very child-friendly, it's very age-appropriate and we're walking children through the knowledge that they need in order to discuss this appropriately. And Ella, tell us, how have you come to be a climate activist? Well, it's been a long journey. I think it started with a love for the natural world. And I think that's a really important starting point for many young people. Because obviously, if you have a connection to the natural world, you have an urge to protect it. And the removal of children from the natural world, which we're experiencing at the moment is... What do you mean by the removal

from the natural world? Well, I mean, the amount of children who play in natural places has decreased massively over the last decade, from a kind of half to less than one in ten, I think. And this is extremely dangerous, because obviously, if you don't have experience of being in the natural world, you're not going to want to protect it. If the most nature you've experienced is a little bit of grass outside your house, you're not going to fight to protect it. You know, if the most nature you've experienced is a little bit of grass outside your house, you're not going to fight to protect that. I wonder exactly, Fiona, what you teach the pupils

at your school. Which lessons actually are about climate change? Where do you shoehorn it into the curriculum? So, shoehorn is an interesting way of phrasing it because obviously the curriculum's jam-packed and there's lots to teach. What we've tried to do is embed it within what we're already teaching so that it's not become a bolt-on part of the curriculum. So a lot of what we do is about what we were always doing. I think it's just interesting what our friends just said about children having an understanding and a love of the natural world. That's a lot of where we start with, with our children, going out into the woods, doing lots of adventurous activities. We spent a lot of time we start with our children, going out into the woods, doing lots of adventurous activities. We spent a lot of time working on our outdoor area.

Those are things we've always done. But the idea now is that as part of that, we include knowledge and discussions around climate change and the concepts. For example, last week our children went out on a walk around the village. That was talking about preparing to write stories actually but it was also a mapping exercise for geography. But as part of that they were also looking at how many washing lines had washing on, how many solar panels they could see.

Because when they returned back into class the teachers had quite lengthy conversations about why would we be looking for washing lines and what would people be using if they're not using their washing lines? What would the impact of that be? Caroline, what about dietary changes? My kids went vegetarian, still are vegetarian, but I have to say, you know, they still leave lights on,

still have lots of showers and still never turn down a lift. What do you say about young people's attitudes to all this, actually? Well, it's complicated. I think you've got to deal with both practical and emotional solutions. You can't just focus on external practical solutions. We've also got to be talking to children about how they feel. So you can deal with it on a practical level by talking to them about the milks that you buy,

get a different range of milks. Yeah, I mean, the thing about cow's milk is, and I appreciate there are arguments against it, although not from Britain's milk is, and I appreciate there are arguments against it, although not from Britain's dairy farmers, of course. There are arguments against corn-fed cows. Right, OK, but it's cheaper than many of the alternatives. And, of course, jobs depend. In the farming community,

jobs depend on the continuation of dairy farming. But other alternatives are expensive, more expensive. They are, but in the long term, are we talking about short-term or long-term solutions? In the long term, are we talking about short term or long term solutions? In the long term, we are going to need to make these adjustments. So we have to actually have economic and political solutions that will enable the communities to make these changes. So we can't get stuck on it costs more. We actually have to address what is the bigger issue, which is the long termterm survival of our communities and the planet.

So we do have to find ways to address these complicated things. Sure. And is there proof that doing something about the environment, whether it's recycling or cutting down on the amount of red meat you eat, for example, makes children feel less fearful about the future, makes them think they're doing something? I don't think that on its own makes children less fearful. I think you have to do that in relationship with others, and think they're doing something. I don't think that on its own makes children less fearful. I think you have to do that in relationship with others, with other children, with adults, with schools.

It's a relational issue. It's not just a practical issue. We're not going to save the planet, so to speak, by just planting trees or switching off cow's milk. We also have to be working together in community and we have to take care of the emotional feelings which are underpinning the anxieties which is grief and sadness and anger and despair and frustration from the point of view of the young people that adults haven't stepped up and done enough to deal with this up until now so actually that's what's causing more anxiety for young people than anything else is they need to see adults taking action on this.

Ella? Yeah, I totally agree. I think we really have to take care of the emotional well-being of us young people because we are very angry and very frustrated that we're just kind of coming into this world that's falling apart. Would you recommend school strikes then, Ella? Is it something you've supported? Yeah, yeah.

So I organised the first couple of strikes in Oxford and I found it a massively empowering thing to do not only because it sort of gave me a way to sort of channel that anger and sadness that I felt but also that it was so well supported by the adults you know the adults weren't saying you have to do it this way you know have all the answers. They were saying, we really support what you're doing. How can we help you? And that was such an incredibly empowering thing. Yeah, I get that. But of course, Fiona, as a headteacher,

I can't believe for one minute that you would endorse school strikes, not least because your school's doing its best to teach the subject properly. It was an interesting journey, actually, this, because as a school, we didn't really want to endorse children missing in school however with conversations with the parents in school actually what they were saying is that we need to show that our children have got a voice and we need to talk to them about what peaceful protest looks like and to give them an opportunity to say what they want. Fiona Cowan, Ella Mann and Caroline Hickman. On Monday, Lisa Simone, a singer, composer and actor

and the daughter of Nina Simone will join us. She's just released her third studio album. It's called In Need of Love. And she'll talk about her music and, of course, being the daughter of such an iconic singer. Join Jane, two minutes past ten, Monday morning, from me for today. Enjoy the rest of the weekend. Bye-bye. I'm Sarah Treleaven and for over a year I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered.

There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this?

From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.