Body Positivity to Fat Feminism (feat. Dr. Amelia Hruby)

Overthink

Ellie Anderson, Ph.D. and David Peña-Guzmán, Ph.D.

Philosophy, Society & Culture, Education

4.7 • 550 Ratings

🗓️ 8 June 2021

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In episode 27 of Overthink, Ellie and David speak with feminist philosopher and author Dr. Amelia Hruby about fat feminism, intersectionality, alternatives to the male gaze, and her project #selfiesforselflove. Before the interview, Ellie and David discuss their issues with the "body positivity" movement using phenomenology, and suggest why Sonya Renee Taylor's account of radical self-love is a better alternative. The episode closes with a deep dive into the racist history of the thin ideal using the work of Sabrina Strings.

Works discussed:
Sabrina Strings, Fearing the Black Body
Virgie Tovar, You Have the Right to Remain Fat
Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body is Not an Apology
Alexandra Sastre, "Towards a radical body positive: Reading the online 'body positive movement'"
Amelia Hruby, Fifty Feminist Mantras
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception
Kimberlé Crenshaw, "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color"
Patricia Hill Collins, "Controlling Images"
John Berger, Ways of Seeing

Support the show

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi, I'm David Pena Hussman.
0:08.9	And I'm Ellie Anderson.
0:10.5	Welcome to Overthink.
0:12.3	The podcast were two friends, who are also professors, put philosophy in dialogue with the everyday.
0:18.9	Because big ideas are within everyone's reach.
0:29.4	After being the first large black woman to appear on the cover of Vogue, singer Lizzo,
0:35.8	whose fans are known as Lizzie's, which I just love, noted that the
0:42.2	body positivity movement, which began as a way of combating the stigma attached to fatness,
0:48.5	has been co-opted. And it's been reduced to a hashtag that no longer supports the fat community.
0:54.1	What are your thoughts about this, Ellie?
0:56.0	I mean, I have lots of thoughts on the concept of body positivity and its limits, both as a concept and as a movement.
1:05.3	And I think I see on social media all the time these photos of like totally conventionally attractive,
1:13.5	mostly white women, oftentimes with surgical modifications being like, love your body.
1:21.3	You're perfect the way you are.
1:23.4	You have to love yourself first.
1:25.5	And it just strikes me as extraordinarily superficial and a way of
1:28.9	getting income by associating oneself in particular with brands that have association with the body
1:35.3	positivity movement. It's like, oh, give me a sponsorship because I'm wearing your bras and I'm
1:41.2	part of this body positivity movement. Well, and this is precisely Lizzo's point, namely that the term no longer reflects the
1:48.2	interest of what she calls the 18 plus club, i.e. women who wear a size 18 or higher. So it's
1:56.1	suddenly these thin women who are jumping on the bandwagon and appropriating this concept typically to profit from
2:03.7	it. And it means that the concept of body positivity is no longer doing the critical work
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Ellie Anderson, Ph.D. and David Peña-Guzmán, Ph.D., and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Ellie Anderson, Ph.D. and David Peña-Guzmán, Ph.D. and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.