Food Psych #223: Fat-Positive Comedy, Diet-Culture Recovery, and Native American Representation with Jana Schmieding

Photographer: Khali MacIntyre

Comedian, fat-positive activist, and fellow podcaster Jana Schmieding joins us to discuss using comedy to call out diet culture, why there needs to be more Native representation in the media, how Western values contribute to oppression and ill health, how diet culture’s demonization of emotional eating causes additional distress, and so much more. Plus, Christy answers a listener question about whether cultural changes over the centuries have influenced average body sizes. 

Jana Schmieding is a Lakota Sioux comedian, writer, performer and educator currently living and working in Los Angeles. Jana puts a lot of focus into her creative work and advocacy as the host and producer of the podcast and accompanying live show, Woman of Size where brilliant people discuss weight stigma, fat acceptance and marginalized cultures. She's currently working on screenwriting and publishing essays that revolve around moving the needle on Native representation in media and entertainment. Find her online at WomanOfSize.com.

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We Discuss:

  • How Jana’s family helped her nurture a positive relationship with food growing up

  • Pop culture, and its role in Jana’s disordered eating

  • Her relationship to movement, and how she is working to heal it

  • The roots of diets and athletics

  • How Western values, like competitiveness and individualism, contrast with indigenous values

  • How indigenous values make room for marginalized people

  • Hierarchies, and how they inhibit decolonization

  • Jana’s experience growing up in both white and Native communities

  • The erasure of Native history in the US, and why increasing Native representation is important

  • How being in a larger body influenced Jana’s approach to comedy

  • Using comedy to call out diet culture

  • Her experience with eating-disorder recovery

  • Why it can be easy to turn to previous coping mechanisms even when we know they are harmful

  • The demonization of emotional eating by diet culture, and how it causes additional distress

  • Limiting access to food and healthcare as a form of genocide

  • The compounding factors that contribute to poor health in Native youth

Resources Mentioned

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Listener Question of the Week

Have cultural changes influenced changes in average body size over time? Does talking about these changes increase or decrease the shame that people feel about their bodies? What is at the root of some of these cultural changes? What drove fears around industrialization at the time of the Industrial Revolution? Why might concern around sedentary lifestyles be triggering?

Resources Mentioned: 

 
Christy HarrisonNative American, indigenous, oppression, pop culture, disordered eating, eating disorder, eating-disorder recovery, recovery, movement, history, dieting, athletics, values, marginalization, hierarchies, decolonization, representation, comedy, activism, coping mechanisms, emotional eating, health, weight stigma, anti-diet, trauma, food politics, food activism, S720