Food Psych #148: Disability and Diet Culture with Rebekah Taussig
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#148: Disability and Diet Culture with Rebekah Taussig
Disability-rights advocate and writer Rebekah Taussig joins us to talk about why body positivity needs to be a radical and intersectional movement, the connection between body acceptance and disability rights, the many ways in which diet culture has infiltrated disability culture and affects people in disabled bodies, embracing all the emotions that surface when doing anti-oppression work, and so much more! Plus, Christy answers a listener question about quick ways to respond when a friend says something diet-y or body-shaming.
Rebekah Taussig is a Kansas City writer and teacher with her PhD in Creative Nonfiction and Disability Studies. She is interested in the powerful connection between the stories we tell and the world we live in, from physical spaces and economic opportunities to social roles and interpersonal relationships. Her writing contributes to the collective narratives being told about disability in our culture -- empowering, mundane, wild, heart-breaking, exhilarating, ordinary stories of her life lived through a paralyzed body. Find her online at RebekahTaussig.com.
Grab Christy's free guide, 7 simple strategies for finding peace and freedom with food, to start your intuitive eating journey. You can also text "7STRATEGIES" to the phone number 44222 to get it on the go :)
We Discuss:
Rebekah’s relationship with food growing up, including internalizing body and size preferences
How Rebekah’s disability influenced her relationship with her body
The various ways we cope with body shame
Rebekah’s experience with marrying young, and the ways in which our culture perpetuates the false narrative that romantic love will complete us
The physical repercussions of emotional pain
Rejecting self-objectification and embracing the fact that we are more than our bodies
The role of therapy and disability studies in Rebekah’s journey through embodied healing
The connection between body acceptance, body positivity, body liberation, and disability rights
The power in being a part of bigger movements like #MeToo, eating disorder recovery, and disability advocacy
Rebekah’s PhD work in disability studies and creative non-fiction
How our ideas about what does and doesn’t qualify as a “normal body” and the “ideal body” are constructed
Rebekah’s journey to embracing her voice as a writer in the disability community, including the positive impact of internet communities
Rebekah’s exploration of self-photography, and how it changed the way she experienced her body image
How Rebekah made the bridge between body positivity and disability rights, specifically around how both movements work to dismantle the narratives we’ve been told about our bodies
Why body positivity needs to be a radical and intersectional movement
How transformative joyful eating can be in our relationship with our bodies
Why diet culture is The Life Thief
Diet culture’s infiltration of the disabled experience, including how some people push diets on disabled folks in order to “cure” their bodies
The assumptions placed on disabled bodies, and Health at Every Size implications for disabled folks
How thin privilege can validate certain voices over others in the fat-liberation space
Embracing all the emotions that surface when doing anti-oppression work
Rebekah’s experience teaching young adults disability rights
Resources Mentioned
Some of the links below are affiliate links. Affiliates or not, we only recommend products and services that align with our values.
Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body by Lennard J. Davis
Emily Contois’ Food Psych Podcast episode
Megan Jayne Crabbe and her Food Psych Podcast episode
Rebekah’s
Submit your questions for a chance to have them answered on the podcast!
My online course, Intuitive Eating Fundamentals, which includes monthly listener Q&A podcasts and access to my private Facebook support group
Listener Question of the Week
How do we spread the Health at Every Size, anti-diet message to people we don’t know so well? Are there some quick phrases we can use to retort the diet mentality that comes up in everyday life?