Food Psych #113: How to Cultivate Radical Body Love with Sonya Renee Taylor
Writer and activist Sonya Renee Taylor joins us to discuss why we need more radical body love in the world, how to deal with weight gain and weight stigma while learning intuitive eating, what mainstream body positivity gets wrong, why understanding oppression and intersecting identities is the key to creating a world that's *truly* body-positive, how to navigate diet culture as a body-acceptance activist, how to begin to untangle internalized oppression, and lots more. PLUS, Christy answers a listener question about how to tell the difference between self-care and orthorexic thinking.
Sonya Renee Taylor is the Founder and Radical Executive Officer of The Body is Not An Apology, a digital media and education company committed to radical self-love and body empowerment as the foundational tool for social justice and global transformation. TBINAA.com reaches over 1 million people each month in 140 countries with their articles and content focused on the intersection of bodies, personal transformation and social justice. Sonya is also an International award winning Performance Poet, Activist, speaker, and transformational leader whose work continues to have global reach. She has appeared across the US, New Zealand, Australia, England, Scotland, Sweden, Germany, Canada and the Netherlands. Sonya and her work has been seen, heard and read on HBO, BET, MTV, TV One, NPR, PBS, CNN, Oxygen Network, The New York Times, New York Magazine, MSNBC.com, Today.com, Huffington Post, Vogue Australia, Shape.com, Ms. Magazine and many more. She has shared stages with such luminaries as Carrie Mae Weems, Theaster Gates, Harry Belafonte, Dr. Cornell West, Hilary Rodham Clinton, the late Amiri Baraka and numerous others. Sonya continues to perform, speak and facilitate workshops globally. Visit her at www.sonya-renee.com or www.thebodyisnotanapology.com.
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We Discuss:
Sonya’s relationship with food growing up, including growing up in the Midwest in an African American family
Diet culture and body expectations
The communal nature of dieting and disordered eating
Body as currency and feminine value
Body image in relation to life circumstances
All-or-nothing behavior
Performance poetry
Body politics
Health at Every Size
The process of paradigm shifts
Shame, body judgment, and finding body peace
The role of community in body autonomy and body acceptance
Intersectional feminism
Being black in America, internalized racism, white supremacy, and the white beauty ideal
Social justice
Mainstream body positivity and the capitalist co-optation of the movement
Radical body love
Unpacking personal bias
Dealing with weight gain and grappling with weight stigma during the intuitive eating process
Awakening to oppression
Living in diet culture and navigating this body-negative world as anti-diet, body acceptance activists
Resources Mentioned
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FAT!SO? by Marilyn Wann
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Listener Question of the Week
How do we eat intuitively while also keeping our nutritional wellness in mind, but without falling back into orthorexic-type eating? How does privilege impact our perceptions of, and ability to, obtain “health?” How do we approach health in a true holistic way, including our emotional, social, and mental health? How do we differentiate between self-care and self-control?