Fat liberation is good for everyone

activism, fat activism, fat liberation, resources -

Fat liberation is good for everyone

 A couple of weeks ago I did two workshops at the Council of Trade Unions' Women's Conference, called Fat liberation is good for everyone. 

Since the 90 minute workshop took me at least a dozen hours to write, I thought I should make the best possible use of that effort, so I've filmed it as a presentation here, as well as rounding up further resources for y'all to continue on your fat liberation journey. 

The talk

Download the slides as a PDF here, and get the transcript at the bottom of this page. 

Further resources

This is by no means an exhaustive list, just some good starting places for you. 

Twitter 

Facebook 

Instagram 

 Fat liberation

 

Fat joy

Clothing companies

Fat art

 

Newsletters

Podcasts

Full disclaimer: I don't listen to podcasts. They're not how my brain works. But these ones come very recommended by people I trust. 

The transcript

Ahi ahi pai everyone and thank you so much for being here today.
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I’m a fat queer disabled babe, my pronouns are she/her and I’m the founder of an ethical clothing company called House of Boom. I do does good clothes in sizes 16 – 34 (actually), made right here in Wellington by people on the living wage or more. Except for me. This is a photo from Season Three which was called The Crown Jewels, featuring me and some of my Boomettes (my friends who model for me) – wearing an a-line skirt called the TIARE, which is my middle name

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Unfortunately you can’t really tell the story of why something like fatphobia is so bad without using some actual examples of it, so if you’re not in the right headspace to deal with these things today, I completely understand if you want to move to another talk, or go for a walk. And please feel free to leave at any time.

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So I know the theme of this conference is Fire in the belly, and I was invited here cos I defeeeeeeeeeeeefiniately have a lot of fire in my capacious belly about fat liberation. I was given the suggestion of calling my talk “Rocking my belly” but that didn’t sit right with me, because that’s a “body positivity” kind of slogan, and I’m not here for “body positivity”. I’ll put this in union terms so I can fit in here. Me – or you – feeling comfortable in our body is not the systemic change that we need. It’s like one person hitting the jackpot by having a really good individually negotiated contract. I mean, good for them, but we need the collective. Everyone should be on a good contract. And further more, we need better labour laws and societal change to protect everyone in the first place so that ideally unions won’t even be a necessity in the future.
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Look, is it obtainable in one 90 minute session? Absolutely not. Are we gonna aim high anyway? Absolutely.
So when I say fat liberation, does anyone here wanna define that for us?
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What do I mean when I say fat liberation?

You can compare it – and intersect it – with queer liberation, trans liberation, disability liberation. It’s about breaking barriers and changing attitudes across society, not just one person going “hey I’m okay wearing a bikini”.

I must add here, as a pakeha woman that the fat liberation movement owes everything to the women of colour who started the work and still carry it today.

And it’s important that when I talk about fat people throughout the whole talk, anecdotes and data says that the more intersections you have, the shitter time you’re going to have of it – that is disabled fat people receive worse treatment than non disabled fat people, coloured fat people receive worse treatment than white fat people and so forth. We’re not here to compete in the Shitty Time Comparison Olympics, but we do have to acknowledge universal truths.
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We’ll start with the obvious meme right here, because as I just said, I’m a business owner by night and a public servant by day (I’m on annual leave today!), so yes, I do participate in society and yet I do talk about the idea of dismantling capitalism. Or at least being slightly more humane with it.
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So how exactly will we spend those 90 or so minutes? Well here’s the table of contents for the session. We’re going to start with a little 101 around the word ‘fat’ and how it is perceived in society. Then I’m gonna talk about myself for a bit – my favourite subject! my business House of Boom– and then what puts fire in my belly – fat activism, and actually doing more than just talking about it.
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I don’t just want to talk at you the whole time so I’ll try to make sure that you do some of your own thinking and talking too, though I appreciate this isn’t the greatest set up for that. If you’re not comfortable working with others, or you’d rather keep your physical distance because yes we are absolutely still in a pandemic, that is absolutely fine too! There’s no judgement here, please do what you need to do.
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This is a word that... carries a lot of weight. And it’s also possibly the most freeing word that you can use. I spent decades absorbing the message that to be fat was the worst thing in the world, missing out on activities like swimming (which I LOVE) in front of my friends because omg what if I took off my clothes and people realised I wasn’t skinny underneath that baggy flannel? And whenever people want to insult you – especially if you’re a woman, it’s often the first word they go to. But when you can go “yeah and?” – well that’s powerful. Where do they go from there?

I see some of you giggling nervously about this term, and yes, your entire existence has probably involved you being bombarded with messages that being fat is a bad thing. But fat doesn’t mean unhealthy. You can tell literally nothing about my health by looking at me. And additionally, even IF all fat people were unhealthy – and they’re not – that doesn’t make them any less human, or any less deserving.

Let’s all say the word out loud right now. See if you can say it without scrunching up your face. Say it again. Cool!
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It is absolutely confronting the first times you say out loud “I’m fat” because so much of society is built around telling us that fat is wrong, bad, disgusting, whatever. People who believe their social capital lies in the size of their body are desperate to hold onto that perceived idea. I’m here to tell you though that you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by adopting fat as an absolutely neutral term – just like being tall, or being brunette. Someone wants to call you fat and you are? Okay cool, so what else do they have?
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So when I was launching House of Boom five years ago, I got this unsolicited comment from someone on Twitter who I didn’t follow, who decided to tell me how I should be labelling my business. I replied back to them that no, I sell clothes for fat people, and I very carefully avoid using gender specific words, except in the search engine optimisation section on my website, where I do refer to plus size clothing and women’s clothing, so that people can find me if they google those terms. But it felt gross typing them in! What I do is sell skirts and dresses in sizes 16-34 for whomever would like to wear them.
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And that paid off! Turns out there are other people who understand the importance of embracing a word that you’ve feared for so long. Here’s feedback from some of my customers
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And here we come to our first bit of crowd interaction.
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I am absolutely a nerd for language – by day I work in communications so really, semantics pays the mortgage. I used to have business cards that said “I like words. I really like words” on them. But obviously I don’t like all words. Here’s some that I dislike.

Obese, Ob*sity – some people think it’s more polite to say that rather than fat because they see it as a medical term. But that’s exactly the issue with it. Obesity is health industrial complex bullshit term literally created to pathologize higher-weight bodies, and, like “BMI”, has a deeply racist history
This whole “real women” have curves thing – ugh, it’s so gross, and especially these days when transphobes seem desperate to reduce women to walking baby incubators. Implying that skinnier people are somehow less real does not raise you up. They enjoy more privileges sure, but they’re still women.
Curvy – when people talk about someone being curvy, they generally mean that there is heft in the “right” places – ie: boobs and butt. But bodies store weight in all kinds of places. Would someone in an A-cup but with lipedema in their legs be called curvy? Probably not.
“Plus size” – this may seem fairly innocuous, but more than half the population wears over a 14 – in fact in Australia, new research suggests the average size is a 16/18. So why are we the othered ones? Maybe we could call non fat people “minus sized” instead. How would that sit with you?
Luscious – so if a lover called me this, I’d be fine with it. But if a clothing label wanted to say I was “luscious-sized”? It sounds like they’re sizing me up to eat, and geez, buy a girl a drink first.
Fluffy – is an incredibly infantilising dehumanising word. Fat people are already so often stripped of their sexual presence as it is, as if all we do is sit at home crying into a box of bonbons instead of having sometimes really great sex & love lives (and sometimes really awful ones – like anyone else, let’s not kid ourselves), we don’t need a word to make us sound like friendly muppets.
Much like plus size - Overweight – there is no one weight to be, so how can you be over it? there are people of all sizes at every point along the health spectrum, there are people of the exact same weight with different health statuses, and people of very different weights with the exact same health statuses.
Or when someone tells you “you’re not fat, you’re beautiful”. Lady, I can be both. I contain multitudes. Beautiful is NOT the opposite of fat.

Ultimately you get to choose what you call yourself, and others should respect that. But right now I’m the one with the microphone and the powerpoint presentation and these are my hot takes 
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Right, before I dive into the next section, I wanna use this quote from Regan Chastain to set the mood. I’m going to quote Regan A LOT, partly because she says things really well in very understandable terms, but also because her writing is absolutely littered with reference points if you want to dive into the statistics and studies that she quotes from. She has the receipts and is not afraid to use them.

But still, I’ve set this part of the talk up to explore health and fatness in more depth, so let’s press on.
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So now we are … chewing the fat on the word itself, let’s have a chat about the number one thing you hear in combination with being told that you’re fat – that it’s unhealthy. Because that’s very much not necessarily true.

And I’m going to add here that while a 90 minute workshop seems like a long time – and it’s definitely taken me a veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery long time to write, I’m only touching the very tip of many many icebergs here, so if you feel like you’re not getting compelling enough evidence on anything here, do please follow up with your own research – I’ll have resources to list at the end.
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So I wanna start out this section with a quote from Viriginia Sole-Smith who has a new book out right now called “Fat Talk: coming of age in diet culture”

What she – and a lot of other researchers, and what you may have experienced yourself – is that fat people too often experience substandard medical care because of their weight that results in worse outcomes, rather than the weight itself causing the problem. Does that nuance make sense?
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Ragen Chastain writes an amazing newsletter called Weight and Healthcare that you should subscribe to if you want to delve deeper into this topic. For now though, I’ll give you some anecdotal evidence based purely on mine – and my friends’ experiences. These range from microaggressions – which we know pile up to maxi-aggressions - to serious errors.

I’ve made a really conscious decision in this talk not to show you screenshots of random abuse I’ve received online, or some other negative stuff because I have no doubt we’ve all seen fat hate, and probably all experienced it – I suspect probably every single one of you has at some stage been called a fat bitch even if you’re nothing of the kind, because that’s the first word that people go to when they want to insult someone, and exactly why it’s so important to reclaim it. But for the next two slides I am going to talk about particular examples of medical mistreatment, and if you’re not up for that, cos I know it can be traumatic, please by all means, catch up on Instagram or daydream about a tropical holiday or whatever you need.

I went to a doctor once and said “I have an ear infection from doing a lot of swimming and I need antibiotics”. He was like “well actually, I’ll be the judge of that” all uppity before looking in my ear and conceding that yes, I did have an infected ear, and needed antibiotics, but maybe I should eat less sugar because it was feeding the infection. He had not asked me a single thing about my diet, and then told me to go for more walks.

That same doctor this year – who is not my doctor, I should point out, but is at the practice I go to – prescribed me the anti viral Paxlovid when it was reported to the practice that I had COVID. Because I’m fat, right? So I’m more at risk. But if he’d actually read my file, and knew anything, he’d know that actually, I can’t take Paxlovid because it is counter-indicated against both my antidepressant and the inhaler I use after Long COVID left my lungs kind of shredded. So his assumptions could have done me some serious damage if my actual GP hadn’t caught it in time.

On that Long COVID note, the exhaustion it’s created in me has led me to the revelation that I have ADHD, because I am just too exhausted to mask all those symptoms. But the very expensive psychiatrist I waited six months for an appointment with decided to tell me that really, the solution is that I should do 30 minutes of exercise a day. Do you know what makes Long COVID worse? Over-exertion. I’m not saying that movement and physical activity can’t improve some people’s mental health, because I know it can. But in this case, it was an inappropriate and ill-informed response.

The media is full of stories of people with endometriosis and how they’ve struggled to get diagnosed, with doctors suggesting they “just lose some weight” instead of actually doing the necessary scans to find out what’s really going on. I’ve had friends who’ve had tumours missed initially because doctors have again gone “oh just try losing weight”. And if that’s the response you get, it’s no wonder that that people may just opt out of going to the doctor and miss out on cervical smears, mammograms, routine health checkups, and everything else, leading to big problems down the line. I’m lucky that I’m an educated white woman with English as my first language and financial security who is not afraid to go full Karen and go “well what would you suggest if I wasn’t fat?” because the thing is that there is not a single disease or health condition that –only- exists in fat people. People without my privileges – and I also include here the fact that I have perfect blood pressure and perfect blood sugars that I am able to point to as measures of health and therefore value – have even shittier experiences, unless they’ve managed to find a doctor who believes in Health At Every Size.

Sometimes fat people are denied surgery they need because they’re deemed to be too at risk for anaesthetic. Do you know what they’re offered instead sometimes? Weight Loss Surgery. Which uses the exact same anaesthetic. Oh but it’s okay to risk your life if it will make you look better, right? I have a friend who’s had weight surgery who’s ended up in hospital with a broken toe after fainting because it’s too hard to get enough iron into her body now. But she’s thinner now so that’s seen as a success. Actually the best thing about this is because she’s seen as a success story, she was invited along to a lecture about weight loss surgery that her doctor gave at the med school, and we spent a loooong time before that talk discussing all the things we wanted doctors to know about fat patients, so we managed to sneak in some fat liberation into the medical system.

I understand that not everyone who has weight loss surgery has these negative outcomes like fainting from lack of iron, but that’s the point. What may have worked for you will not work for everyone. It’s true diet culture to have weight loss surgery suggested to you as as the cure to weight stigma, instead of actually working to dismantle that stigma. It’s like blaming rape victims for existing, instead of working on better education for men.
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Here’s a thing I hope you know but I don’t blame you if you don’t. If you have a larger arm, chances are you will need a longer needle for a vaccination, to make sure it gets into the muscle. Seems pretty straight-forward right?

But I only found out about it from fat activists in Australia. In fact, I had to put in an official information act request to the government for them to publicly say that yes, 38mm needles was their recommendation. The amazing Cat Pause – who a lot of you might know from her union work – was also doing research into this before her death.

So when the time came for me to go and get my first vaccination, and the vaccinator didn’t know she had to use a larger needle, and then they had to go and get them from the pharmacy because they hadn’t packed them, you bet I went back to the government to demand to know why the vaccination clinic didn’t have the knowledge or the needles. Oh, and at the same time I asked about why they hadn’t thought about fat bodies when they provided tiny little chairs for the 20 minute wait after shots.

The Official information Act is one tool you can use to ask for any information a government agency holds about a certain thing and generally they are required to answer you within a certain period of days. You can submit them really easily through a website called fyi.org.nz. It’s one way of bringing things to their attention so that they can do better. It’s also a way to catch them out. In this case Capital and Coast District Health Board said they had two types of chairs available (there were two of the more sturdy chairs their response mentioned and both were being sat in by the vaccinating team) and that larger needles were always available. Which obviously hadn’t been true in my case. But it did mean that from then on, larger needles and larger chairs WERE always available wherever I went so hopefully my OIA did some good.

And while I’m talking about needles, all flu shots in New Zealand last year were purchased from the supplier in pre-filled 25mm needles, which means they may have been less effective in fat people. Ragen Chastain has written about the needle length of epi pens too, and how those may not be long enough for some fat people to properly deliver lifesaving medicine in case of an allergic reaction, so if that applies to you, it’s worth looking into. This is one of the consequences of fatphobia in the medical industry – much like how so many drugs are only tested on cis men because women are too “difficult” with their menstrual cycles messing things up, and you know, how we’re such a small percentage of the population anyway, fat people are often left out of testing. Med schools won’t even accept fat bodies as cadavers for research most of the time so they won’t even learn from us when they’re dead. And then they wonder why we’re such a mystery…
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But back to COVID shots. So later when I went to get my boosters for the COVID vaccination, twice they knew they needed a larger needle, but one time I had to tell the woman, she had to check it and when she asked me how I knew, I said that fat people always have to advocate for themselves, do you know what she said? She said OH BUT YOU’RE NOT FAT, YOU’RE LOVELY LOOKING.

A less effective vaccine means a greater risk of COVID-19. Her lack of knowlege, and lack of training, is a risk to my health. And instead of apologising for that, she was trying to police my language. Lady, I am lovely-looking, I am fat, and I deserve to have medical staff who are responsive to my needs.

Someone on the House of Boom facebook page had somewhat of the opposite experience – her vaccinator swapped to the large needle she needed, but felt embarrassed to tell her that it was because she was fat, which is kind of sad. He wouldn’t have even needed to say “fat” – he could have just said “these needles are the right size for your size” and it would have been a useful learning experience for someone who hadn’t learned from a fashion label’s facebook page about how to get what they needed from a vaccinator. And let me just emphasize that sentence again, because misinformation is such a threat right now. People absolutely should not have to be learning about needles from someone who is trying to sell them clothing! But someone has to fill that vacuum when the health system is failing in its role.

Because if I – or someone without that fat advocacy community - had died of COVID-19, they would chalk it up to obesity, and not factor in their failure to provide a long enough needle. If I’d taken the Paxlovid the male doctor had incorrectly prescribed to me and it had given me complications, again, I have no doubt they’d put my death down to fatness, not medical error.

If you want another approximation to that, I have a friend who’s a small fat, but they’re also a wheelchair user. They have never had a pap smear, because their GP doesn’t have a way to get them onto the practice bed to take it – and also I believe because a lot of medical professionals don’t see disabled people as sexual beings so don’t view it as a priority. If they were to develop ovarian cancer and die young, their mortality rate would be partially chalked up to their Disability – when in fact it was the health system’s inaccessiblity that caused it.

I am just going to offer a bit of light here though to say that I’ve been working with a researcher called Dr Lesley Graham at Otago Uni who is doing research into needle sizes. I’ve also offered up my arms for another study by the medical research institute of New Zealand for other testing, so it IS possible to contribute to positive change.
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Okay, but maybe you’re not convinced though, some of you might be like “well just lose weight and then maybe health system will treat you like a human being and not a pile of insentient adipose tissue”. Let’s break that down.

To quote Virginia Sole-Smith again: “So even if fatness was always unhealthy, and even if weight loss could unequivocally improve health, the point is moot: We don’t have a safe, sustainable, and accessible way for the vast majority of people to do it. ”

I’m not going to ask for a show of hands, but given how pervasive diet culture is, I bet a number of you in this room has lost weight – and then regained it and possibly more, within a not too short period of time. That’s not your failure – that’s what your body is designed to do. The body has a strong biological drive to regain lost weight, as noted with increased appetite and a slowed metabolic rate.

The Fat Nutritionist writes “There isn’t a single study where more than a tiny percentage of participants are successful at significant, long-term weight loss. Among so-called “successes” the amount of weight lost is typically negligible, and the research does not suggest that subjects are healthier because of the weight loss, but rather that the same behavior changes that improve health can lead to the small (and likely temporary) weight loss.”
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Chances are if you’re fat, you’re going to bounce and jiggle more than a non fat person, so you’re going to need better support from your exercise clothes. A lot of gym equipment isn’t actually made for bigger bodies, which carries a risk of hurting yourself – or even just being humiliated. In the screenshot of a video here is fat yoga instructor Jessamyn Stanley and I think you can guess what kind of comments this Gatorade commercial got. People always tell fat people to exercise, but when fat people are shown to be active, it’s said to be a bad example? It’s almost as if the world doesn’t want us to exist! So think about how safe you might feel going for a run or a walk in public when your body is hyper visible.

And moving your body in a way that brings you joy is great! Maybe you join a gym because you want to be strong to punch Nazis. But the trainer there insists on taking all your measurements and talks to you about your diet, assuming they know better than you. I have always had perfect blood pressure, but one time at the gym the trainer took my blood pressure with a cuff that was too small, so it gave a false reading of very high blood pressure, which was a big panic moment. Turns out they just couldn’t cater to my body and didn’t care to do better.

Maybe you have an untreated eating disorder and you’re not eating enough to sustain yourself, let alone take on a vigorous exercise programme, because you’ve always been taught that fat people should be starving themselves., Or maybe your yoga teacher has very small boobs, and doesn’t understand that if you bend a certain way, you’ll be smothered by your own tits. So much of the exercise world is not built to hold fat people safely. And yes, some of these problems are solvable for individuals for the right amount of money, and if you are able to access the right environments.

But it’s simple, just calories in, calories out, right?
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The thing about developing a little bit of a platform – even with fewer than 2000 people following me, is that it makes it easier for the media to come to you to ask for your hot takes, so if you were my mother, you would have been very upset to read me being so PUBLICLY HATEFUL in Stuff about six weeks ago. And rest assured that any time a fat woman speaks out, people will try to put her back in her place. One dude came to my social media to tell me that women in Russia take much better care of themselves, how dare I tell a corporation to rot in hell, and to have I have fun with my diabetes. Jess, not being white, got even more hate targeted at her.

Jenny Craig and similar companies work on an extremely predatory business model, KNOWING that their product will fail in order to attract repeat customers. You may lose weight, but you’ll regain it again, blame yourself, and buy from the company again. And don’t think that just because one company has gone bankrupt that we are any safer. Jenny Craig is just one cog in the Diet Culture and fat phobia machine. It's now finding more insidious ways to prey on people under the guise of "wellness" rather than "diet". Check out how Weight Watchers has rebranded to WW - like Kentucky Fried Chicken rebranded to KFC - like if they're not saying the word "weight" they can pretend it it's healthier than dieting. Or how Noom claims it's not a diet - intermittent fasting is absolutely a diet! And businesses are still profiting from making people unhappy with their bodies. Various market research studies put the global weight loss and weight management diet market around $250 billion dollars A YEAR, so there is still much much more work to be done. 
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So, if your weight is going up and down constantly as you get on and off the diet treadmill, your body doesn’t know what the heck is going on, and it freaks out.
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I’ve mentioned before the online hatred that fat women – and women in general – cop any time you stick your head over the parapet. Thank Lorde for them, because somehow I would have got to 43 without realising I’m fat! Imagine if an anonymous person on the internet had never told me to eat a salad.

At this stage in writing my talk it’s late at night and I’m very tired and want to go to bed instead of digging up stats on eating disorders, or the absolute toll that poor mental health can take on your physical health. So I’m actually not going to elaborate more on this slide. I think it speaks for itself.
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So I just discussed some reasons why some fat people will always remain fat, that diet and exercise are not cure-alls. But most importantly, IT DOESN’T MATTER WHY PEOPLE ARE FAT. They’re still PEOPLE. One of the issues I have with “body positivity” as a movement is that some people use it as a chance to be like “oh but I’m not like those –other fat people, because I’m healthy”. It’s trampling others to get ahead, and it’s gross. You won’t be protected from fatphobia by perpetuating it.

Again, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t take whatever steps you need and are able to take for yourself to feel what your definition of health is, because you’re in charge of your body, and you know it best.

What I’m saying is that people shouldn’t be treated better when they are able to eat healthy food and exercise, because we shouldn’t be treating people like shit for being fat in the first place.
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Another quote from Regan Chastain here - health (and weight, which are two separate things) are not an obligation or barometer of worthiness, are far from being entirely within our control, and are not other people’s business unless we ask them to make it their business
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Did you know that immigration criteria for New Zealand includes BMI, which has proved itself to be outmoded and racist yonks ago? It was created by a white Belgium man who wanted to measure European populations – not European individuals.

So when I saw this article on Stuff, I was pretty certain there was going to be some shonky lack of evidence going on behind this decision. How does having had a gallbladder out mean you’ll cost more money? Gallbladders don’t grow back! That’s the whole point of removing them!
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Crash dieting is SUPER SUPER bad for you. It’s very likely to cause more health problems in the future. So forcing someone to lose weight is actually likely to inflict more cost on the NZ tax payer in the future.

And here I must interupt myself to say that it’s an incredibly ableist position that we should only let “healthy” people into NZ anyway, and people’s worth should absolutely not be measured in dollar values like that. BUT in this particular case, I was trying to work within Immigration’s existing criteria.
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Surprise surprise, Immigration NZ weren’t able to provide me with the research they had, because IT DIDN’T EXIST. Which I knew. I just wanted to remind them of that fact, because I’m petty like that.

Told y’all there’d be more OIAs!
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Just so we’re clear, I’m not saying that fat is a disabilty. I’m saying that some health issues may be disabilities because of the barriers that are created by our society, including by our attitudes.
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Because diet culture hurts all of us, it’s not just fat people who suffer in a world obsessed with appearance.

Imagine how much more time you’d have in your life if you were able to stop worrying about what others think of how you look. And now go back across your life and consider that.
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a LinkedIn study found a gap of nearly $9000 between fat and non fat women, because the women are perceived to be more lazy and less productive. 

AI is only as good as what it learns from – and in this case, it learned from, you know, all of the problematic and inaccurate stereotypes put into the world.

Ozempic has trended so much it’s in the jokes at the Oscars, but it’s not had all the research it needs into its long term effects, and as soon as you stop taking it, you’ll put the weight back on – and we already talked about weight cycling. So in order for people to be thinner – not healthier – the health of others for whom the drug was actually designed – is being compromised.

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So yes, diet culture is bad. If I had a dollar for every skinny person who, when they heard about Boom’s Kaupapa, decided that I was the person for them to talk about their experiences with being bullied because they were skinny, I’d have a much more financially sustainable business. But to be honest, I’m not here to listen to random strangers who decide to take other people’s systemic trauma and make it about themselves. Bullying is awful. Talking about other people’s bodies is completely unnecessary. I hope they have good people they can work out their feelings with. But their experiences don’t compare to the continued discrimination that fat people face – in employment, in health, in immigration policy, in parenting – so I am not the person to talk to about it. And this is where I refer to ring theory, which is one way of making sure you’re focusing attention the right way when there’s a crisis or trauma happening.

In other words, it’s about allowing those closest to the crisis to vent out and say what they need to say freely, while those further from the crisis offer support and solace.

We should never put people in smaller circles in a position of feeling like they need to comfort us. Comfort should move inward through the rings, not outward.

So as with eveeeeeeeeeeeeeerything in life, I’m a large fat. I wear a size 28, which means I can buy –a limited range- things in store at Farmers or the Warehouse, or from a selection of online retailers. When I fly Air NZ, I need an extension belt, but I fit in one seat – though it’s tight. People larger than me don’t have the privilege. Small fats may be able to find things at Glassons. Our experiences are not the same.

Ring Theory works for soooooooo many things, by the way, so even if you dislike every single thing I say about fatness today, at least take this home with you!
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So, speaking of putting myself at the centre of everything, who the heck am I?
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Look, this is going to blow your minds when I click through to the next slide, so I hope you’re prepared for the revelation.
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Some of us like to wear clothes. Some of us like to shop ethical. Some of us like to exercise. Some of us like to fuck. Some of us like to support local. Some of us speak at conferences. As people, fat people like whatever not fat people like. You’d think this would be pretty obvious, but apparently not to clothing retailers.

I like to solve problems.
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So back to the problem. Buying clothes as a fat person is not a good time. According to the majority of retailers – if they deign to stock larger sizes at all, because most don’t, despite the fact that in the USA over 60% of women wear a size 14 or over – what fat people want to wear is asymmetrical polyester, with ruffles all over the place, and why have one clean length when a number of layers and maybe a random aplicae butterfly would just make everything just so much more… shit. And you can have any colour you like ,as long as it’s black. And of course, let’s make sure those clothes are hidden at the back of the shop, because fat people ought to be ashamed and hidden away.
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I wanted to wear bright coloured clothes. I didn’t want to be patronised by a clothing company calling me “fluffy” or “luscious”. I don’t want to dress like a mother of a bride when I’m still under 50. I want to wear cotton clothes. And I want to know that the people involved in making my clothes aren’t doing it in sweatshops. But no one would take my money!
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So I decided to do it myself, even though my ship had not come in – and it still hasn’t. So, first piece of advice – if you’re going to start a company, you need to be really really sure of the reason you’re doing it. For me, I set up Boom to provide better options to my community, and to advocate for fat people. Your reason is going to steer you through every single decision you make, so it had better be a good one.

Here are some of the ways that I try to espouse the Boom Kaupapa of fat liberation.
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When I started Boom back in 2018, I knew nothing about fashion – because fashion had never cared about ME - and I didn’t know about making clothes. I did know a lot about my target market, and I have a background in comms, web, marketing and social media. I figured if I could get the clothes made, I could sell them. But making things cost money. It was really really easy for me to get a ten thousand dollar loan from the bank. They didn’t even really need to see a business plan. But that’s because I am on a good ish salary at my day job, and my mother went halves on my mortage with me right before Wellington’s property prices went out of control. I’m single and I don’t have kids. Frankly with all the privilege I have, it would be ridiculous not to be working on a side project for good.

So I decided if I was going to have a business, I would mould it as close to my moral compass as I could
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I really wanted to open a physical shop with House of Boom because so often fat people don’t actually get to try on clothes in store, they have to order them online, but my accountant put the kaibosh to that. I pivoted to hosting pop-up shops in my home a couple of times a year, but for the most part, unfortunately people have to order online. So I want my customers to see what the clothes look like on people who look like them.

Amongst my Boomettes – who aren’t all each available for every shoot, I should point out, I try to show a range of sizes and ethnicities and also bodies. For example pictured here, there’s Alana who has a prominent ass. Anna and I are quiiiiiiiiiite different in height. If you’ve got a big bust, you might be looking at Carma to get a sense of how your clothes will work. Shelley’s got grown up kids. I even have a token straight model or two too. There is more work to do - I don’t have models with visible disabilities, and all my Boomettes are cis for example, but all movements and revolutions should continue to be works in progress.
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I like to spotlight the work that my Boomettes do outside of modelling for me and tell their stories about their work to improve whanau health initiatives, in the hospitality industry or how they work to be better people, because it’s important to me that they’re not just clothes horses. When I asked Alex to model for me, she reached out on twitter to her followers to ask how any of them with history of self harm would feel seeing a model who had obvious scars, and if that would be triggering for them. Overwhelmingly they said it would be great to see someone living their best life. So that’s what we do – we demonstrate living our best lives, acknowledging the costs that have got us here. And that’s what I think makes Boom a success.
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Speaking of good people, this is my best friend’s girlfriend Emma and she’s very good. What she’s wearing is the DEMELZA dress, which is named after another friend of mine. All my clothes are named after fat babes who inspire me. They’re simple clothes, but they’re incredibly comfortable and they’re excellent quality so they’ll last forever. No fast fashion flimsy here.

Back to establishing Boom. I approached a number of new designers but it wasn't until I got put onto Iona at Umsiko out in Berhampore that things really started to happen. Iona acts as both my pattern maker and my production manager. It's fun to go in and see her and see the other designers she's working on, like stuff for 27 Names, and then think about how much those designers are charging compared to me. Plus, the absolute best thing about working locally is that if I’ve had some crisis or whatever – one day I was just in absolute tears in her office and she was like “come with me” and took me into a room that was filled with the kittens she was fostering.

Even the incredibly fake factory that the Shein influencers visited recently didn’t have kittens in it!
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Influencers are such a huge part of capitalism now. I know I could sell more Boom if I was to follow the rules – not criticise fashion media for their exclusion of fat people, for instance, so they’d throw me a crumb and give me some publicity, or change my language to avoid offending people who still believe the word fat is an insult. But I’m not going to sell out my core beliefs in pursuit of money. I have that luxury because of my day job.

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Making clothes locally is EXPENSIVE.  Take this t-shirt - the base rate for its manufacture is $30. That's not including fabric, which is generally at least $12 p/m for cotton - and my dresses can involve up to three and a half metres. If I order less than 20, there's a surcharge for small orders on top of that. Then there's all the other costs involved in running a business like the website, GST, occasional facebook advertising – and in today’s case, taking a day of annual leave from my day job to speak to y’all here – not to mention the many many hours that it took to prepare this talk. I sell my shirts for $80 because they're t-shirts, they shouldn't cost the earth. As I’ve already mentioned, that according to stats out of the UK which I am certain will be true here as well, fat women make less money than non-fat women. Gosh beauty standards are fun!  So while I'm trying to provide a more ethical alternative to shopping fast fashion, it would be unethical of me to make that alternative inaccessible to the very people I am trying to serve.

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And I'm always happy to explain the costs. To me, that's part of being an ethical business - that level of transparency is important because people don't talk about money enough. House of Boom will remain a sideline for the foreseeable future because in my day job I am a senior advisor, and I am used to making a decent wage. But my day job is absolutely subsidizing the heck out of the House of Boom, especially with the cost of living rising and ethical clothing becoming less and less of a priority for many (and understandably so)

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So apart from having a wardrobe of clothes that are perfect for me, the big payoff for me for the tremendous amount of work that is Boom is that I’m making people happy.

Because we all deserve happiness.

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Everyone likes compliments. But compliments that show you’re playing a (tiny) part in how someone is seeing themselves in the world? That’s POWERFUL STUFF
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Changing people’s mindsets through your actions is a HELL OF A DRUG, I gotta tell you.
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So one of the things about outspokenly running a fat positive business who can string two words together is that media outlets learn to come to you for quotes. After doing an interview about some garbage a Real Housewife of Auckland was quoted on, and then seeing the article absolutely centre her hāte in the piece, instead of the considered responses from the fat community, I’ve started to swear off doing phone interviews and will only reply by email. This is a really useful way of managing my Long Covid/ADHD brain fog as well.

So in this case, when Stuff came to me for a quote about the movie The Whale, they then decided to get me to write the whole piece instead.

Other rent-a-fat activities include giving this here talk, modeling for the Ministry of Women when they realised they needed a more diverse stock image Library of New Zealand women and basically whatever I get asked to do because a) I really desperately want other fat people to find their community and their rights and b) I’d quite like to sell some more clothes too.

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If you’ve ever seen the TV show Shrill, which you really should, you’d undoubtably remember the pure joy that the protagonist felt when she went to her first fat swim. Water is really really great. But if you’re constantly told your body is no good, and that it should be hidden away, you may need some encouragement to put on a pair of togs. You might not even own togs, because they’re hard to find in larger sizes, and you don’t know if you’ll wear them often enough to justify the purchase – and a lot of pools have rules that you’re not allowed to wear street clothes in the pool. Swimming is just about my favourite thing in the world, so I’ve put on two fat swims in Wellington and one in Auckland where we hired out the whole pool for fat people only. Tickets were $15 but there were also community tickets that were free, paid for by other people’s donations, so that finance wouldn’t be another barrier. I’d love to keep doing these but Wellington City Council have made it really really hard because they’ve decided not to hire out Karori Pool to private bookers anymore, and Thorndon Pool does not have wheelchair access – and it’s outside so the weather is more of a risk. Fat swims have also been put on in Auckland as part of the Fat Feb festival, and in Christchurch by the Curve Collective, and I hope there will be another one in November in Wellington but that’s still a work in progress.

In the corner, that’s a still from the video of me coming down the waterslide at Karori, absolutely shrieking and laughing my head off. I use it to reply to fatphobic bullshit because me in full joy mode is a glorious thing that should be shared often. A couple of people have told me after the swims that they’ve started swimming regularly, which is excellent for both their mental and physical health, and that made me so so happy.
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Fat community has given me everything online, but there’s nothing like the feeling of being surrounded in real life by people who share many of the same experiences that you have had. I imagine that’s why a lot of you are here today!

So my version of that is a fat camp with a difference that happens once a year called Camp Boom. It’s a mix of focusing on fat issues, like systemic discrimination and media representation, but also hearing from people doing super cool things, like running small businesses, mediaeval fighting or doing drag, who also happen to be fat. There’s arts, crafts and wine & soda tasting, plus a great big clothing swap.

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My not at all secret agenda with Camp is that as well as making new friends, attendees will be leave with a belly full of fire about and passion for activism, and they’ll go out and push for the changes that we need. Last year I did a 30 minute talk on how to be a fat activist in five minutes, which is where this talk started before I expanded it to provide more of a 101 on the problems that fat people face. But now you’ve got through that, and the introduction to the House of Boom, we can start getting to how to make things better!
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So I’ve talked a bit about what I’ve done for the fat community, and now it’s time to about what YOU can do for them too. First let’s talk about being an ally, and then we’ll get into activism.
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We have to get better at identifying unpleasant emotions that are coming up for us. For most, saying “I feel fat” means “I feel unlovable, unworthy, lazy, undisciplined, ugly, alone, etc.” NONE of these things are synonymous with fat. Maybe you’re feeling bloated cos your digestion is playing up. What you’re feeling is uncomfortableness, not fat.
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Sometimes it feels like there is absolutely nothing worse than morning teas at work, because someone’s always gotta be like “oh I shouldn’t eat that” or “well I’ll have to go to the gym now” or “this cake is going to give me diabetes” which is a) not true and b) hella ableist. Let’s just let food be food. This picture is of my friend Iona at Camp Boom, where we did cupcake decorating because it was fun.
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I remember very clearly doing a fashion show as part of Women’s Week at Victoria University in 2004, and it was a shit show because I told the organiser what size I was, and she still took me to all these shops with clothes that wouldn’t fit me and told me to try to squeeze into them, which was the opposite of empowering. But anyway, photos of it went into the Dom Post and my picture had the caption “Joanna McLeod holds her head up on the runway” and I was like WHAT THE FUCK, why wouldn’t I hold my head up?”

Another time I was at a magazine launch party filled with fashion models, and I knew there was going to be a pool there, so I brought along my togs and went for a swim and some of them were “Oh you’re so brave” and I was like…. “I’ve known how to swim since I was 8 years old, don’t worry”

Let me clarify – it is absolutely cool to tell someone they look amazing, that their dress is great or their bikini is fire. In fact, you definitely should compliment fat people’s clothes because they probably cost twice as much and took five times as long to find as a non fat person’s, with one tenth of the options. But don’t project how you feel about your own body – or how you feel like they should feel about theirs.

It is totally okay to – in your own head – be like, well look, Joanna posted pictures of fat babes in their undies and they looked great so maybe I could post pictures of myself in my undies too. Take what you see as other people’s braveness and use it for good.

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Chances are anyone your size or bigger will be like “oh they must think that I am gross in that case”. It’s ingrained in us to compare ourselves, even though comparison in the thief of joy

A 2016 study by the Professional Association for Childcare and Early Years found that children as young as 3 can have body issues

It is HARD to be positive about your body, when you have been raised to hate it, I know. But if you can’t be positive, you can absolutely at least strive to be neutral. Or use the Ring Theory that we discussed before to work outwards for compassion.
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Again, it’s late at night when I wrote this so hopefully these are pretty straight forward
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These can be super triggering.
If you have to do this, consider setting up a special group for those who opt in to following your weight loss, or use a hashtag so that people can mute it.

Don’t assume that everyone (or anyone!) wants to lose weight either. I once was in a team that got an email saying “inspired by Michael’s stress-related weight loss of X in three weeks, we’re setting a weight loss challenge for the team” and I was like OH MY LORDE how do I even start to count the ways that it was wrong? The team MANAGER was providing a prize of a Lululemon voucher that immediately cut out half of our team sizewise anyway, and stress-related weight loss is NEVER something to be inspired by. I wrote back saying “can you please let me know what you’ll be using in the subject lines of these emails so I can filter this incredibly harmful unsafe messaging straight to the garbage?”

Like way to not even consider how triggering that could be for eating disorders. And to focus on weight loss instead of, you know, actual health. COMPETITIVE WEIGHT LOSS EVEN. So terrible.
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I like to say “Hey so what are your favourite facts about monkeys?” and make it abundantly clear I am changing the subject.
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If you can’t bring yourself to actually tell someone else to shut up about food, maybe you can buy one of these pencils from the House of Boom. Pop out a plate of these at the next office afternoon tea or that family gathering you’ve been dreading.
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So let’s step up from being an ally – that is, not making things worse for fat people, to actually working to improve things for them.
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You can ask these questions gently, if it’s someone you care about, or who you think is genuinely open to learning. Or you can be abrasive. It’s up to you.

I’ve seen a lot of discourse on the internet – usually aimed at feminists or people of colour – that if you want people to come around to your side you have to be nice to them. But you know what? Fuck that. You don’t owe anyone nice if they’re not nice to you.
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So what are some ways to get started in fat activism? We’ll start with how you spend money.
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Like for example, there’s one plus size clothing company in New Zealand owned by someone who also sold A “WEIGHT LOSS” TEA THAT COULD BLISTER YOUR PERINEUM. I know there’s limited options for clothing for fat people, but seeing decent people in her stuff is just so disheartening. No one should support companies that are actively trying to harm fat people.
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If you don’t have money to support businesses that are doing good, you can still help them in other ways.
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Please note, when I say “ask” as bullet point 3, I may not always mean that very politely.
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Fat people should not be so hard to see. We’re big! Even though society does its best to shrink us, we’re still physically here. And yet, where are we in the media?
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I’ll let you in on a little secret, and this is not targeted at these particular people in this screenshot. Whenever I post on Facebook a copy of a letter I’ve sent to someone about a fat cause, like to a magazine editor asking them why they’ll do a fashion spread for dogs - twice - but not for fat people, it kind of makes me a little bit cross when someone comments “thank you for doing this”. I appreciate that they spent 20 seconds to thank me for my work, but what I’d really like them to say is “thank you for this AND I have taken an additional 20 seconds to also send the same email to the same target”.

I understand it is not always possible, New Zealand is a small place and there are reasons why you may not be able to contact particular businesses or be seen to speak badly of them. And I know it can feel like you are talking to a brick wall most of the time.
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But every so often, you get a victory! For years now I’ve been emailing various directors and producers at South Pacific Pictures who produce shortland street, and talking about it on social media, begging them to introduce a fat character. And they finally have!

Was that thanks to me? I’m going to take the victory even if it’s not.

In that vein, if you see fat joy in the media, it’s also worth contacting them to say thank you – if only to say that one Lizzo cover is not enough to make up for 1000 thin white women so they needn’t rest on their laurels yet!
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So, let’s start with an easy one. What’s the problem with this ad?

If you can’t see the second image very clearly, it’s the 17 Sundays size chart. This company that ADVERTISES ITSELF as “Size inclusive” goes to a size 26.

Size 26 is NOT inclusive. I don’t call House of Boom because I only go to a size 34, and that doesn’t cover everyone. Now when I see this on instagram, I link them to a little song I wrote which goes like this:

(sing the song)
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At other times, what I like to do sometimes when I get served ads like this is play dumb. This is also a really really great tip if someone tells you a sexist or racist joke – tell them you don’t get it and ask them to explain it to you. When they try to, say “but I don’t understand what’s funny about that” all sweet and innocent.

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I think this response tweet from Papango spells out what the issue is. If you’re “inclusive” but you’re leaving people out, what does that say about their place in society? It’s yet another way to other a fat person.

And going back to the media, it really pisses me off when journalists do this, they’ll reprint a company’s press release that claims they’re “inclusive” without taking thirty seconds to check the company’s size chart to see that “inclusive” means they’ve added a size 18. And if they’re dropping the ball on something like that, chances are the journos are also buying into greenwashing or dubious ethical standards as well.
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Sometimes when you complain about things – like how Ensemble Mag wrote a headline saying there’s no size limit on Hine Collection – when they go to a size 26 - they pay attention and actually fix it!
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Here’s another example. Jaime (like lots of others) noticed that Trademe’s clothing section offered search options for size 6 to size 20 – and then “sizes 22+” I remember in the years before Boom I’d scroll through sometimes hundreds of listings trying to find something in my size. For some reason the people who were between sizes 8-16 didn’t have to do the same thing – they were catered to. So Jamie started contacting trademe about it. Then she posted about it on Instagram, so that other people would know about it, and could tag in trademe to demand better. I took it to twitter cos that’s my prefered platform. And look! Within one month, they changed it!
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Remember earlier when we were talking about how BMI is part of New Zealand’s immigration criteria? My next move was to write to the Minister of Immigration, who at the time was Kris Faafoi. He didn’t reply. The Green Party’s immigration Policy is looking to remove this bullshit – their official line is “All immigration applicants, migrants, asylum seekers and refugees, should be treated with dignity, compassion and respect in accordance of their needs” so in terms of next moves to make on this particular issue, I’m voting Green.
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So there’s just a few directions you can take your fat activism in. It is by no means an exhaustive list, but let’s just get these done and then we can think of some more things to do next week!
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