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

Resources Mentioned:

• “My wedding was perfect – and I was fat as hell the whole time” by Lindy West

• “Why Don’t We Think Fat People Are Worth Fighting For?” by Ijeoma Oluo