The privilege of being "skinny"
It's Been a Minute
NPR
4.6 • 8.8K Ratings
🗓️ 29 December 2025
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Last year, online influencer Slim Kim went viral for a TikTok where she said she loves "being skinny." It sparked a debate that continued throughout 2025: how do we talk about bodies without falling into "body fascism." And with drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy flooding the market, how are the ways we talk about bodies shifting and changing?
Brittany is joined by authors Emma Specter and Kate Manne to find out: what's so wrong with loving being skinny?
This episode originally aired on December 6, 2024.
Support Public Media. Join NPR Plus.
Follow Brittany Luse on Instagram: @bmluse
For handpicked podcast recommendations every week, subscribe to NPR’s Pod Club newsletter at npr.org/podclub.
Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices
NPR Privacy Policy
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The Novelizers podcast, where we turn classic films like The Matrix and Dirty |
| 0:04.3 | into hilarious audiobooks narrated by guests like Rachel Dratch, Ira Glass, Samantha B, |
| 0:10.2 | Will Forte, Wayne Brady, J.K. Simmons, and more. Listen to The Novelizers podcast, hosted by me, |
| 0:16.0 | Dave Hill, from Cincinnati Public Radio and the NPR Network. |
| 0:21.9 | Just out of curiosity, what is your favorite thing to be? |
| 0:27.8 | I would say rational, kind, hopefully, and political. |
| 0:33.9 | Oh, I like those. Those are good descriptors. |
| 0:36.2 | I would say on time because it so rarely happens, honestly. |
| 0:40.0 | That is amazing. I could never say that about myself. So I really admired that and others. |
| 0:48.3 | Well, let me set the scene for what we're going to unpack here. |
| 0:54.1 | A micro influencer who goes by the username Slim Kim. The for what we're going to unpack here. |
| 1:00.8 | A micro influencer who goes by the username Slim Kim found her 15 seconds of fame when she uploaded a video to TikTok about her favorite thing to be. |
| 1:04.1 | My favorite thing to be is skinny. |
| 1:06.0 | It is my favorite thing to be and it is my favorite fear to not be. |
| 1:10.6 | And this is just for me personally. |
| 1:12.0 | This is all personal to me. But I just wanted to say it out loud, because honestly, it's all I |
| 1:17.3 | think about. Shakespeare couldn't have written a better line himself. This set off a wave of |
| 1:22.9 | classic internet discourse around whether these comments were an expression of body positivity or just another |
| 1:29.5 | face to fat shaming. Critics of Slim Kim have called the comment gauche and claimed that it uplifts |
| 1:35.2 | body fascism, but defenders are calling it a matter of personal taste and asking, what's so wrong |
| 1:41.2 | with loving being skinny? Slim Cam is only one of a growing number of influencers |
| 1:46.0 | to make these kinds of comments. And with semi-glutides like Ozempic and Magovi now being |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in 18 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.