Lindy West, author of the book Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman, shares how she became a fat-acceptance activist, the roles that feminism and body-positive imagery played in helping her reject diet culture, her experience of finding love in a larger body, how thin allies to the fat-acceptance movement can help, how she's improved her relationship with food and what she's still working on, and lots more!

Lindy West is a Seattle-based writer, editor, and performer whose work focuses on pop culture, social justice, humor, and body image. She’s currently a culture writer for GQ magazine and a weekly columnist at The Guardian, as well as the founder and editor of I Believe You | It’s Not your Fault, an advice blog for teens. In 2015 she wrote and recorded a story for “This American Life” about confronting an Internet troll who impersonated her dead father and was half of the duo who initiated #shoutyourabortion, which landed her on the cover of The New York Times. She was named one of “Internet’s Most Fascinating 2015” by Cosmopolitan.com. Find her online at LindyWest.net, and pick up her book Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman wherever books are sold.

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We Discuss:

Lindy’s relationship with food growing up, including being active as a kid, and the impact of being in larger body
Pursuing weight loss at a young age
The normalization of diet culture
How disordered eating behavior is encouraged and applauded in larger-bodied people
The Health at Every Size movement's impact on eating disorder diagnosis and recovery
Eating in public as a fat person
Food and pleasure
Living in a food-obsessed world that paradoxically subscribes to the thin ideal
Lindy’s experiences with fat-shaming and discrimination
Natural weight fluctuation, set-point theory, and size diversity
Weight bias in the medical community
Thin privilege and the importance of thin allies in the fat acceptance movement
Lindy’s experience embracing fat as an identity
How the wedding-industrial complex is rooted in diet culture and the diet mentality
Body positivity, fat acceptance, feminism, and social justice
Bodily autonomy and making the body political
The systemic oppression of fat bodies
The impact of fat stigma and fatphobia on health
Lindy’s experiences with sex, dating, and love while fat
Fighting for body positivity for bodies of all sizes