Introduction to Body Image and Beauty Standards

Summary

Podcast Summary: Feminist Survival Project – Introduction to Body Image and Beauty Standards

Release Date: April 30, 2025
Hosts: Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski
Episode Title: Introduction to Body Image and Beauty Standards

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1. Introduction to Body Image and Beauty Standards

In this inaugural episode of the “Feminist Survival Project,” Emily and Amelia Nagoski delve into the intricate topics of body image and societal beauty standards. Drawing from their expertise and extensive research, they aim to empower feminists feeling overwhelmed by the relentless pressures to conform to idealized body norms.

2. Defining Beauty: Intrinsic vs. Cultural Constructs

Emily begins by distinguishing between inherent beauty and culturally constructed prettiness:

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It exists outside of an external standard.”
—Emily Nagoski [02:33]

She emphasizes that all bodies are inherently beautiful, akin to how every tree remains beautiful across seasons despite changes. This contrasts with “pretty,” which she defines as a “culturally constructed, aspirational aesthetic ideal”:

“Pretty is... conforming to a narrow, socially constructed, arbitrary ideal.”
—Amelia Nagoski [04:28]

3. The Problem with Societal Beauty Standards

a. Intersectionality: Racism, Classism, and Ableism

Emily and Amelia highlight that beauty standards are not merely about aesthetics but are deeply rooted in oppressive systems:

“All pretty ideals are inherently racist, ableist, and classist. The function of them is to enforce social structures.”
—Emily Nagoski [04:45]

They discuss how Western beauty ideals have global influence, often overshadowing diverse cultural standards, thereby perpetuating white supremacy and patriarchy.

b. Historical Context of the Thin Ideal

Emily provides a historical perspective on the thin ideal, tracing its origins to the Industrial Revolution:

“Before the Industrial Revolution, it was valuable to have a wife who is strong enough to work in the field... which is how the thin ideal began.”
—Emily Nagoski [17:54]

Amelia adds that the thin ideal has evolved but remains classist and racist, maintaining an unattainable standard:

“No matter how fit or healthy you are, you will never achieve the ideal...”
—Amelia Nagoski [14:17]

4. Media and Capitalism’s Role in Reinforcing Beauty Norms

The hosts critique the capitalist underpinning of the beauty industry, which thrives on creating unattainable goals to drive consumerism:

“Prettiness is designed as a capitalist trap... set up an unmeetable goal so you will spend money trying to achieve it.”
—Amelia Nagoski [21:15]

They discuss examples like TikTok’s algorithm favoring attractive individuals and the perpetuation of beauty standards through makeup and fashion industries:

“People are more likely to click on your thumbnail when your face is prettier.”
—Emily Nagoski [38:45]

5. Medicalization of Fat and Its Societal Implications

Emily and Amelia expose the medicalization of fat, questioning the correlation between body size and health:

“The size and shape of your body has a very low correlation with your health.”
—Amelia Nagoski [52:49]

They critique how fatness is stigmatized as a moral failing rather than a natural body variation, highlighting the ableist and classist roots of this perspective.

Emily references Daeshawn Harrison's book “Belly of the Beast” to elaborate on how anti-fatness intersects with anti-Blackness, further entrenching systemic oppression.

6. Practical Strategies to Overcome Negative Body Image

a. Mere Exposure Effect

The Nagoski sisters advocate for leveraging the mere exposure effect to reshape perceptions of beauty:

“Look at fat bodies until they don't gross you out anymore.”
—Amelia Nagoski [50:05]

They emphasize continuous exposure to diverse body types to retrain the brain and foster a more inclusive sense of beauty.

b. New Hotness Game

Introducing the “New Hotness Game,” they encourage listeners to:

• Deserve Love: Embrace the belief that everyone is deserving of love despite societal pressures.
• Positive Affirmations: Regularly acknowledge and appreciate personal and others' unique features.

“New hotness means deserving of love in the face of pressure to conform.”
—Amelia Nagoski [58:39]

c. Mirror Exercises and Self-Compassion

They recommend mirror exercises where individuals list things they appreciate about their bodies, fostering self-compassion and countering negative self-talk.

“You are allowed to have and love the body you have exactly as it is.”
—Emily Nagoski [49:56]

7. Personal Anecdotes and Cultural References

Throughout the episode, Emily and Amelia share personal stories and cultural critiques to illustrate the pervasive impact of beauty standards. Emily recalls experiences from her professional life, advocating for health at every size, while Amelia discusses societal expectations and her own struggles with body image post-COVID.

They also critique contemporary media, referencing the inauthentic portrayal of characters in movies like “The Northman” and “Joker”, arguing that these works often reinforce harmful stereotypes despite their aesthetic appeal.

8. Conclusion and Forward Look

Emily and Amelia conclude by reinforcing that overcoming negative body image requires continuous effort and community support. They tease the next episode, which will focus on making healthy food choices devoid of the weight loss narrative, building on the foundations laid in this discussion about why the pursuit of thinness is fundamentally flawed.

*“You're allowed to be something good and better than the culture has.

You deserve to be loved.”*
—Emily Nagoski [57:25]

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Notable Quotes

• Emily Nagoski [02:33]: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It exists outside of an external standard.”
• Amelia Nagoski [04:28]: “Pretty is... conforming to a narrow, socially constructed, arbitrary ideal.”
• Amelia Nagoski [14:17]: “No matter how fit or healthy you are, you will never achieve the ideal...”
• Amelia Nagoski [21:15]: “Prettiness is designed as a capitalist trap... set up an unmeetable goal so you will spend money trying to achieve it.”
• Amelia Nagoski [50:05]: “Look at fat bodies until they don't gross you out anymore.”
• Amelia Nagoski [58:39]: “New hotness means deserving of love in the face of pressure to conform.”
• Emily Nagoski [49:56]: “You are allowed to have and love the body you have exactly as it is.”

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Key Takeaways

• Intrinsic Beauty vs. Cultural Prettiness: All bodies possess inherent beauty, which contrasts with the externally imposed notion of prettiness that is narrow and oppressive.
• Intersectionality: Beauty standards are deeply entwined with systems of racism, classism, and ableism, perpetuating societal hierarchies.
• Media Influence: The beauty and fashion industries, bolstered by algorithms on platforms like TikTok, perpetuate unattainable beauty ideals to drive consumer behavior.
• Medicalization of Fat: Society's view of fatness as inherently unhealthy is a flawed, biased perspective that serves oppressive agendas.
• Empowerment through Practice: Practical exercises like the mere exposure effect, the New Hotness Game, and mirror affirmations can help dismantle internalized negative body image.
• Continuous Effort: Overcoming ingrained societal standards requires ongoing effort, self-compassion, and support from community networks.

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Resources Mentioned

• BURNOUT: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski
• Drink Water Mind Your Business by Donna Oriolo
• Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness by Daeshawn Harrison
• Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes
• Reclaiming Ugly by Vanessa Rachelle Lewis

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This episode serves as a foundational exploration of how societal beauty standards are constructed and perpetuated, and offers actionable strategies for listeners to redefine their relationship with their own bodies. By challenging ingrained norms and advocating for a more inclusive understanding of beauty, Emily and Amelia provide a roadmap for fostering resilience and self-love in the face of overwhelming cultural pressures.

Transcript

[Amelia]

Hi, this is Amelia. I'm going to be doing lives again Fridays at 4 in May and June at our YouTube channel, YouTube.coministsurvivalproject I'll be answering questions, singing songs and talking about Murderbot. I hope you can join us. How do you feel about that?

[Emily]

You suggested recording video after we had already sat down and I was prepared for a non video thing.

[Amelia]

So. No.

[Emily]

So like my hair is in a high ponytail with all my in the back and I'm like super sweaty because of all the moving and. No.

[Amelia]

Do I look video ready to you?

[Emily]

No, I feel like it's. I feel like this is. This is what it's. This is. This is what we look like when we're not trying.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

I think that that's.

[Amelia]

If we're going to talk about beauty standards.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Then looking like us is.

[Emily]

A thing to do.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Okay, let's do it.

[Amelia]

Okay. I think we should start with definitions.

[Emily]

Okay. Definitions related to. So today's topic again, the function of the feminist arrival project Zombie Apocalypse Edition is Stronger than the Fire. How can we help people get their hands on and effectively use tools that will help them get through what is undoubtedly a particularly dark and dangerous time in her story? So that's why we're talking about body image. Because if you spend a lot of time beating the crap out of yourself because of how your body looks, which you're doing because you got raised in what we call the Bikini industrial complex, that is not making you stronger. It is in fact like tearing up your central nervous system. It's making you stressed out. It is reducing the functionality of all your organ systems. And we're not saying don't criticize yourself. Like you're not going to be able to not criticize yourself. But like let's help you reduce the amount that that happens.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And maybe even turn towards your own body with kindness and motherfucking compassion. Terms.

[Amelia]

Yeah, terms. We're going to use the word beauty and beautiful and I think we should define that as the thing that all of us already have. Everybody is beautiful. Everyone is beauty. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It's a thing that exists outside of an external standard. It's.

[Emily]

Beauty.

[Amelia]

It's a thing we all have to. Does that feel?

[Emily]

Yes. So the way I talk about beauty, the way I've talked about beauty in all three of the books that I have written and or co written is that all of us are beautiful because all of us live in bodies of some kind or other. And those bodies change over time. And they do not become less beautiful as a result of any of those changes. In the same way that a tree does not become more beautiful. We might prefer it in the spring when the flowers are blooming. We might prefer it in the fall when the leaves are changing. But it is inherently no less beautiful.

[Amelia]

With all things bright and beautiful oh, creatures great and small. I think I sang a little bit of All Things Bright and Beautiful.

[Emily]

That was. Yeah, I can hear. I heard it on my headphones. That was not the tune that I know to All Things Bright and Beautiful. You might know a different tune.

[Amelia]

It was the. Yeah. No, it wasn't the classic hymn. It was the choral setting by what's His Name? Whose name is Escaping Me?

[Emily]

Doesn't matter. So all of us are beautiful because we all live in bodies. We are all beautiful in the same way. Every tree is beautiful in the same way. A tree is beautiful at all seasons of a year and all phases of its life. That is what I mean when I use the word beauty and beautiful.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Okay.

[Emily]

As opposed to pretty.

[Amelia]

Pretty is pretty nice.

[Emily]

A nice short way to say culturally constructed, aspirational, aesthetic ideal.

[Amelia]

Yeah, yeah. Conforming to a narrow, socially constructed, arbitrary ideal.

[Emily]

I'm gonna go ahead and say it's not arbitrary. All pretty ideals are inherently racist, ableist and classist. The function of them is to enforce social structures.

[Amelia]

No, no, no. I'm not saying that it's arbitrary as in it's not purposeful in terms of its use in oppression and disenfranchisement. I mean, arbitrary as in it's not a mathematical truth that this one thing is beautiful, inherently better. It's not inherently better. There's no reason that that's the ideal. It's. It's. It's made out of white supremacy and patriarchy and capitalism and, you know, CIS heteronormative ideals.

[Emily]

And ableism.

[Amelia]

And ableism, yeah. It's arbitrary in that, like, in Asia, it's slightly different. Although in Asia, the white supremacist ideal is filtering in. In nations that are largely not white, there are slightly different ideals that are constructed out of those individual cultures. Does that's what I mean by arbitrary?

[Emily]

Sure. The west, the air quotes, Western standard has infected a lot of the world.

[Amelia]

Yeah. So we're mostly talking to American and European women. That's our audience. So we're talking about the one that. The ideal that we see on the COVID of Vogue. Specifically kind of beauty standard models. Movie stars.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Hollywood movie stars.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Okay, so when we say pretty, that's what we're gonna. That's what we're gonna mean.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

I think that prettiness as an ideal, the first thing about how we internalize that is that we learn it unconsciously through the mere exposure effect. And the mere exposure effect is very powerful in influencing what we understand is normal, lovable, pretty, which can infect what we believe about what is beautiful.

[Emily]

Yes. If there were anyone who were going to talk about a biological foundation to opinions about aesthetics, it would be me. I spent a lot of time. Time during my doctoral work reading the evolutionary psychology research and finding a lot to critique in that. And also there are a couple of interesting things that I learned from really more the evolutionary biology than the evolutionary psychology, because the field of evolutionary psychology is sort of inherently toxic. But.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So, for example, symmetry.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Emily]

It is the case that a person who grows up comparatively healthy will have greater facial and body symmetry than a person who grows up relatively unhealthy. The extent of asymmetry that needs to be visible is pretty extreme. So. So people who are.

[Amelia]

Have.

[Emily]

Who've, like, learned the thing about how symmetry is what's pretty and are, like, staring at their faces in the mirror profoundly worried about the ways their eyebrows are not the same.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

That is not. That is not right.

[Amelia]

How did you know? I have stared at my eyebrows to notice the ways that they aren't the same. Everybody.

[Emily]

No one's eyebrows are symmetrical.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And everybody's worried about it because of the culturally constructed, aspirational.

[Amelia]

Like, why do I have a gap over here on this one and then this one's fine.

[Emily]

Because bodies. Because bodies. That's why. So. So there is a thing.

[Amelia]

I'm not worried. I'm not actually worried about my eyebrows, but.

[Emily]

But people stare.

[Amelia]

I. I have stared.

[Emily]

Sure.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Bob the drag queen recently said that, like, we are just not meant to look at our own faces as much as we do. Like, it is not part of good mental health to spend a lot of time staring at your own face.

[Amelia]

Bob the drag queen is very wise.

[Emily]

Yes. And Bob the drag queen spends hours a day applying makeup.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Staring at her own face. Like.

[Emily]

Yeah. To, like, change the structure of her face visually with makeup. Yeah.

[Amelia]

I also want to. So as we're talking about eyebrows, I want to talk about all the things that we're talking about when we talk about prettiness and the aesthetic ideal. We are, of course, because this is leading up to making food choices. This is. But this is also.

[Emily]

Right. We are preparing the ground.

[Amelia]

Yeah. We are talking about body shape. And size, but also color. There is a color ideal.

[Emily]

Oh, yeah.

[Amelia]

And it's not just about what color it is. It's about the consistency of that color. Any, like, splotchiness or uneven sunspots or freckles are controversial. Vitiligo is a whole other planet of having to get comfortable with skin that is not a regular, single consistent tone, which is definitely.

[Emily]

I will preferentially buy skincare and beauty products that use models with Vitiligo.

[Amelia]

Yeah. When I had. I have rosacea. Like, of course I have rosacea. Look at my skin. But when I. Before I started treating it, I was, like, called out by people about the redness on my cheeks, and I was just like, whatever. I have rosy cheeks. It never bothered me, ever. But so many people pointed it out that I was like, why? I was offered pills by a. By a health professional to.

[Emily]

Without your having expressed any concern.

[Amelia]

Without having expressed any concern, a pill you take every day to lessen the redness. And I was like, no, I'm not going to take a pill because I have rosy cheeks. And later I learned that rosacea is a result of, like, Demodex mites and a reaction to that. And then I was like. I was just freaked out. And then I started.

[Emily]

Yeah. And I already knew about it. And I was like, tea tree oil.

[Amelia]

Yeah, tea tree oil. Now I use a lot of tea tree oil in my skincare. But anyway. Yeah. So it's not just about.

[Emily]

So we're talking about complexion, which is not just color. It's about, like, evenness of skin tone.

[Amelia]

And it's also about scars, texture of your skin, crepiness and wrinkles. And, like, all signs of aging. Signs of signs of aging.

[Emily]

Did we use the word aegis yet? Cause it is that also because you.

[Amelia]

Need to have more youthful skin is.

[Emily]

The ideal when models walk in the Runway are 13 and 14 years old.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

That's how you know. Yeah.

[Amelia]

So skin, hair, how much you have of it, where it is located, the.

[Emily]

Color, the texture, the style.

[Amelia]

The style, everything. Hair on your body, on your. Why did my screen go blank?

[Emily]

Yeah, you're frozen.

[Amelia]

That was crazy. My door blew open because it's so windy. Anyway, so skin, ham, fat, fat. We're talking about the location of the fat, the amount of the fat, the texture of the fat.

[Emily]

Yep.

[Amelia]

Because there's hard fat in there, soft fat.

[Emily]

There's fat that sort of goes in the same direction as the skin and fat that goes in a different direction from the skin. It's really about the musculature versus the skin and the relationship of the fat to that. And that's how you get cellulite, which was invented in the 20s, 1920s, about 100 years ago. Used to be. Used to be. People found cellulite attractive. That's why Rubens painted it. He wasn't trying to make those women not look hot. Yeah. He was making them look hot, which is why they had dimpled bottoms and thighs.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

If you read, and I don't recommend that you read Victorian and earlier pornography, but if you do, they will talk about dimpled bums and thighs and a.

[Amelia]

Thing I was thinking of that I forgot because your dimpled diatribe distracted me from it. So anyway. Oh. Even if you have muscle, muscle tone, muscle shape, muscle, muscle quantity.

[Emily]

Yep.

[Amelia]

Yeah. So like, this creates an un. An unmeatable goal, an unreachable standard. Because no matter how fit or healthy. And we all know that this is a way that. We're going to talk about that in a second. No matter fit or healthy or. Or thin you are, you will never achieve the ideal because you won't have the right kind of muscle tone. You won't have the right skin. You'll have too many scars.

[Emily]

The closer you get, the more they move the goalposts.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, good. It's inherently white supremacist because this is. We live in a world that is.

[Emily]

White supremacist rather than us white splaining the ways in which cultural beauty standards are white supremacist.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Let me point people to a book that's going to come out this summer called Drink Water Mind you'd Business by Donna Oriolo, who's a therapist in Washington D.C. a therapist and sex educator. It's written for black women by a black woman. And I, like, I sobbed reading it because it was like, I got to read it early. Cause like, we work in the same field and I think Don is really wonderful and amazing. So I have a printed out PDF version. We were going to be at a conference together, so I brought my printed out PDF copy and I was like, will you sign my book? Because I had so many feelings about this book. So that is one book that is like way more authoritative and wonderfully helpful as a resource to understand the relationship between beauty standards and white supremacy. And if you follow the work of Yaba Blay, B L A Y, if you can. If you can see the documentary the Whites of Our Eyes. Sobbing, sobbing, sobbing, and a lot of Yaba Blaze work. I'm a supporter on Patreon So I, like. I, yes, super invested in spreading the word, but a lot of Yabba Blay's scholarship and advocacy is around beauty standards and the ways that white supremacy and Christianity are weaponized against women in particular and black women in particular. But everybody and the whites of our eyes is just. It is stunning.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Besides being white supremacist, it's also inherently patriarchal, slash misogynistic, Slash. Defined by the male gaze.

[Emily]

So I'm just gonna, like, keep inserting, like, anecdotes of people who know more than I do.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

A million years ago, back when I had a day job, I went to a conference about body image. I had just started working at Smith, and I was like, I don't know enough about disordered eating and body image, like, from a science point of view. And so I went to a conference at Harvard and heard a talk by a professor at Harvard who was like, let's talk about the inherently classist, white supremacist foundations of the thin ideal in particular. And so here is a shortened, simplified version of that story. Before the Industrial Revolution, it was really valuable to have a wife who is strong enough to work in the field and bear and raise multiple babies because you want more children, to have more people to work in the fields, et cetera. Standards are different for different classes, but, like, most of the people were peasants laboring in the field in Europe, and Europe is what influences American beauty standards in particular, which is why we're talking about that. And then the Industrial Revolution happened, and we developed what was called the middling class, and it became a status marker for a man to be able to afford a wife who was too physically frail to work.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Which is how the thin ideal began. Now, the sort of narrative underpinnings of the thin ideal changed over the next 150, 200 years. So that by the start of, like, the 1920s, it became very much about, like, fitness and being young and healthy and playing tennis and riding horses. And it's still classist and racist, but it was a different sort of function of, like, what the ideal woman is. But it was still thin.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So if you ever wondered why thin ideal. So, like, biologically. Biologically, the heavy air quotes. Ideal woman, meaning female, reproductive woman, large monkey. The ideal is big and strong.

[Amelia]

Yeah. And also as a side note, the misogynistic patriarchal ideal is not just anti woman, it's also anti man. Oh, yeah. It's anti human because it requires people to conform to narrow ideals that. I mean, the ideal for men is less narrow but it's still narrow.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

And still an unmeatable goal.

[Emily]

Dan Levy. Back when James Corden was the host of the Late Late Show.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

When Dan Levy was on, they did a little game called dad Bod or Radbod.

[Amelia]

Right.

[Emily]

And Eugene Levy was just. I mean, not Eugene Levy. Dan Levy. Dan Levy was like, I just think all bods are rad bods.

[Amelia]

Yeah, exactly.

[Emily]

And James Corden, having been called out, was like, it's about the rhyme.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And I was like, yeah, yeah. Dan Levy. Yeah. Make sure you name it.

[Amelia]

James Kurt Gordon is a comedian who has internalized fatphobia.

[Emily]

So much stupid.

[Amelia]

It's really a shame. Yeah. Oh, I also want to point out a cultural reference to. About having the thin ideal as the owafishness in Star Wars. In andor the new Star wars series, when Cyril's mom says he was a delicate boy with nothing but his mother's love and determination. And Dedra's like, I have no family. I was raised in an imperial kinder block. And the mother says, nothing delicate about that, is there? And, like, the. The idea of delicacy being like, he doesn't like being called delicate. And like, oh, you should be delicate. Like, Yep. Yeah. That was a great scene.

[Emily]

Delicacy.

[Amelia]

Anyway, pretty. Is also a capitalist trap. Intentionally designed to be a capitalist trap.

[Emily]

I wanted Ballerina Barbie.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And you know what I got for Christmas? Malibu Barbie. That's not who I was. I was a ballerina. Graceful, delicate. They had to go. That's Adam's family values.

[Amelia]

Yeah. That's from Adam's family. Yeah. Joan Cusack.

[Emily]

Cusack. Joan Cusack's monologue. Just Joan Cusack.

[Amelia]

Oh, yeah. I knew exactly what it was when you quoted it.

[Emily]

Graceful, delicate.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Prettiness is designed as a capitalist trap in order intentionally to set up an unmeatable goal. So you will spend money trying to.

[Emily]

Achieve it because people feel like, shit. Buy more shit.

[Amelia]

We say the phrase beauty products with no question. We all have a budget for beauty products.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Skincare, hair care.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Is a industry. Because we're not just, like, keeping ourselves clean, hygienic. We are trying to achieve an ideal with our stuff.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Fashion, clothing is also.

[Emily]

So many of the men I dated back when I dated, like, for sure, told me that they prefer women who don't use all those products, women who don't wear makeup. And I was like, no, they don't. You cannot tell when I am wearing makeup. You don't look long enough to, like, examine whether or not someone is wearing makeup. And When I challenged a boyfriend on this, he started, like, when he was going to the gym, he would notice who was attracting his attention. And he would notice, oh, she put on makeup to go to the gym.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And I don't like that. But his first response attraction was like, oh, pretty. And like, yeah, exactly. And another one. And I was like, you, you really do prefer it when I use just a fuck ton of moisturizer on my skin. You love it when I make sure my skin is really soft. And he was. He had not considered the possibility that skincare, including body care, is part of the beauty industry.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Malin, when we're watching tv, he will often comment, wow, she's got extraordinary eyes. Or look at his eyes. Like, he notices eyes. And I'm like, you don't notice eyes. You notice people wearing eye makeup. And like, the more often I pointed it out, he doesn't talk about it anymore. Like, now he notices she's wearing a lot of eye makeup. Like, he didn't. He didn't know what was making, what was causing his attention. I also want to talk about the ways that appearance and identity are linked. This is sure an inextricable part of being human. We choose to modify our bodies or to adorn our bodies in ways that express our individuality or express our belonging to a group. That has always been true and it's just been weaponized by capitalism. And that's terrible because they're. They're just. They're just locking into something that is like really primal about humanity and, and using it to make money instead of using it to, you know, help people. I also want to tell a story about the. I mean, there's. The power of pretty is undeniable. Pretty. Pretty people get hired for jobs more often.

[Emily]

Yeah, pretty. Pretty privilege is a phenomenon.

[Amelia]

Yeah, pretty. Tiktokers are promoted by the algorithm.

[Emily]

Yes.

[Amelia]

There's literally an algorithm on the TikTok that if you're more attractive, you get more views, like on purpose. They promote your videos more. I also want to tell a story about a pretty movie that I saw that has great reviews, but it's bad. It's. It's called the Northman. It was released in 2022, I think. So it was like a post Covid movie. But it's pretty new is what I'm saying. And it's a beautiful movie. It's beautifully filmed. The cinematography is beautiful. The. It's about Norse history. So it takes place in like Scandinavia. And all the historic details are really well researched. Every review is full of praise for the costumes and the props and the sets. Everything is so authentic and looks so natural and realistic and historically informed. It is a beautiful movie, but it is bad. Like, the ways that. Okay, so it's about. It's Hamlet. If Hamlet didn't have a prefrontal cortex, like he.

[Emily]

I was gonna say, because Hamlet good.

[Amelia]

Broadly speaking, yeah, Hamlet good. Hamlet. If he didn't have a prefrontal cortex, if he had no power, like. So the movie starts, first of all, it starts from the point of view of Hamlet's father and then shifts to Hamlet's point of view after his father dies. So that sets up a question as to who is the narrator of this movie? From whose perspective does this movie happen?

[Emily]

Presumably it takes place from the perspective.

[Amelia]

Of the father's ghost, maybe. But, like, they do nothing to establish that, like, intentionally. It just shifts perspective. And you're like, well, now I'm watching another person. And that person apparently is an unreliable narrator. Because he. We like later in the movie, his mother corrects him when he says, I saw you screaming. And she's like, no, I was laughing. And like, we saw her scream an hour ago. We saw her screaming. But was that an unreliable scene? Like, we don't know.

[Emily]

Or is that a woman trying to gaslight her child?

[Amelia]

Or is that a woman trying to gaslight her child?

[Emily]

Or has she herself been gaslit into believing that her experience of screaming was actually laughter?

[Amelia]

We don't know. We don't know. And then, like, she tries to seduce. Kiss him, I guess.

[Emily]

Oh, God.

[Amelia]

Cause she's gross or. Cause that's the only way she knows how to manipulate a man. Like, yeah, it's icky. And there's lots of scenes that are like dream sequences or visions. Bjork is in it.

[Emily]

She plays a witch.

[Amelia]

But there are only three, like, women characters in it. One is his mother, who is, as I have just described, her job is to have and protect children's. To be the mother who needs rescuing. Who then is gross and weird when human. He actually talks to her as an adult and he ends up murdering her. The second is his is his girlfriend whose job it is to have his babies. And the third is a witch played by Bjork, who may or may not.

[Emily]

Actually exist and historically accurate for the function of women in upper class society to be like creation of progeny fully.

[Amelia]

But as a movie where the director says in publicity that he wanted to reclaim Norse mythology from the far right, like, bet you didn't do that.

[Emily]

You just told a story about the Values of the far right.

[Amelia]

So it. Yes, he told a story about the values of the far right and he made it even worse because his uncle, who killed his father and married his mother, gets his throne, gets taken away and he has to go into exile. So now Hamlet still wants to get revenge, but it's not even to get the throne or to be interpreted as like, to save his people from this bad person. Like, there's no way to interpret his revenge.

[Emily]

It's just. He wants revenge now.

[Amelia]

He just wants revenge. And like, they didn't have to change that as part of the story. That is not part of the Danish history. No, it's not part of. It's. It's not part of Hamlet.

[Emily]

It's not part of the play.

[Amelia]

It's. No, it's. They added this on purpose to make it clear that his only goal is just revenge. He's angry revenge, man. And that's it. So he kills his mother, kills his.

[Emily]

So this is absolutely just stating the principles of the far right. Revenge, no matter the cost. Violence, revenge, without reference to whether or not you got access to the resources you wanted and deserve.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Framed in this beautiful movie where Alexander Skarsgard plays Amlash, who is the. Or Amleth, who is the Hamlet, who is. He conforms to some masculine, you know, pretty ideals. He conforms. He is super tall and super muscular, and he is the most tall and the most muscular and the most blonde.

[Emily]

Oh, boy.

[Amelia]

All the people.

[Emily]

Oh, boy.

[Amelia]

In the. He conforms to the Nazi ideal. What can I say? And in the end, the final fight is between Amleth and his uncle, and they're literally inside a volcano. I guess it looks like the fight at the end of.

[Emily]

Because we're reclaiming Norse mythology and there's so many volcanoes in Denmark.

[Amelia]

I mean, they are. They're in Iceland is where they are.

[Emily]

Because he's go to Iceland. Okay.

[Amelia]

They go to Iceland. They're inside a volcano.

[Emily]

That's where the bad guys live.

[Amelia]

Yeah. You know, they literally fight in a pit and they both die. And there are literal seconds of just a close up of face going like, I'm angry. Yelling.

[Emily]

Just show the anger. Just show the anger on the screen. No wonder reviewers who are mostly white men, let's face it, liked it because they got to see someone express the emotion that they've been told they're not allowed to express in this primal, I'm gonna murder my uncle way.

[Amelia]

Yeah. And there's no they both die. They both die in a pit. It's a beautiful movie. Where everyone dies violently and gorely. And even the hero doesn't have an arc. He has a chance. He has. There is a pivotal scene where he's about to escape on a boat with his girlfriend and he learns she's pregnant. And he's like, I. We can't. I can't. You're gonna go and I'm gonna go back and kill my uncle. We're not gonna escape and leave him unscathed because my babies will be in danger if he lives.

[Emily]

Okay.

[Amelia]

He swims back to shore to kill his uncle in a pit. Yeah.

[Emily]

To protect.

[Amelia]

To protect his unborn babies.

[Emily]

To protect. Well, to protect his hereditary line, his bloodline.

[Amelia]

Yeah, yeah. He says, you carry my family's blood to his girlfriend. And I was like, what is she a vampire? Is there like. And then I was like, oh, he means she's pregnant with his pregnant. Yeah.

[Emily]

So everybody dies in Hamlet, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there's Laertes, talks to the audience and is like, this was some fucked up shit. Right? What did we learn here?

[Amelia]

This is what happens when you're angry. Revenge, man. You die in a pit. There's none of that. There's no. So his character has the chance to have an arc, and he chooses instead to go back to who he was at the very beginning of the movie. Like, he chooses. I'm not gonna have an arc.

[Emily]

And he's trapped. The story is. He's trapped in masculinity.

[Amelia]

Yeah. This toxic cycle of revenge. If when I die, you have. His father tells him, when I die, you have to avenge my death. I'm gonna die heroically in battle and go to Valhalla. And your job is to avenge my death.

[Emily]

Okay. Yeah.

[Amelia]

And he does.

[Emily]

So the reason we're talking about this is because it is beautifully shot and.

[Amelia]

It'S so well reviewed. It's got like, an. Like an 87 on Rotten Tomatoes.

[Emily]

But like, anybody who knows anything about story structure knows that that's a bad.

[Amelia]

Like, it's not just bad. It defies its director's intention.

[Emily]

Like, nobody changes. Nobody learns anything. So one of the most powerful examples of understanding what a story actually is about is Lindsay Ellis's conversation about the Little Mermaid. Little Mermaid, Ariel, the Disney cartoon. She knows what she wants from the beginning. She doesn't change. She finally gets what she wants because her commitment to what she wants is so steady that her father changes. Yeah. In a way, he is the main character.

[Amelia]

Yeah. He's the one with an arc. And in the live action version, they made the Prince's mother also change.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

She has the same arc as the father.

[Emily]

One of the reasons why I like the sort of headcanon of the Little Mermaid as the autistic heroine is like, wouldn't the world be a better place if instead of forcing an autistic person to conform and change and be like, no, I'm fixed. What if the adult caregivers of that autistic person, what if the family around that person came to accept and grow as a result of having this person in their life? They become better instead of forcing someone else to change. Wouldn't that be great? But. So the nature of a story is, like, who changes, who learns what? And there's a thing in, like, medieval morality tales. So, like, traveling actors will put on shows usually based on stories from the Bible. Nobody learns anything in the story, but the audience learns something.

[Amelia]

Right.

[Emily]

Stories are about who learns what and audience. And this sounds like a morality tale, but it exactly also sounds like the white male reviewers didn't learn the thing.

[Amelia]

Didn't learn the thing.

[Emily]

They just, like, had a feel because they got to see their feel on the screen. And that made them, like, all it was was catharsis.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Without insight.

[Amelia]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the power of the beauty of this movie distracted them from the fact that it didn't accomplish what it was, what it set out to accomplish, which.

[Emily]

The director said was to reclaim Nordic stories from the alt right.

[Amelia]

From the far right. Yeah. All I did was reinforce beautifully, frame everything that the alt right. And, like, I guess he trusted his audience to interpret it as, oh, this was bad, I guess, because they all died. Nobody did that.

[Emily]

Oops.

[Amelia]

Yeah. The same thing exists, I think, in Foliardeur, the new. The newer Joker movie with Joker. And also have not seen Harley Quinn. I haven't seen it either. But FD signifier does a review of it where he's talking about, like, people don't like this movie because it's an edgelord who fails. And it's like, the people love the first Joker movie because it's an edgelord who, you know, starts this riot and this uprising. And that's so cool. And like, he FD signifier suggests, like, maybe the filmmakers were like, we didn't want people to make the Joker a hero. Like, the Joker's the bad guy. The Joker should fail and be defeated. And they made the folie a deux thinking, like, we're gonna make this. This ridiculous character fail and not be cool and not be a hero because.

[Emily]

Because he's not.

[Amelia]

Yeah. And People hated that movie, but it trusted the audience to understand that, like, this character they thought was cool is not actually. And I. And I. Yeah. So that comes from FD signifier.

[Emily]

There is a great deal of power in an aesthetic. Yes. I think the rise of Neo Nazism is partly because the aesthetic of the Third Reich, like, morally, just like one of the most repugnant moments in human history. Probably aesthetically. Baller.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Like, there's a reason why the Empire in Star wars. They look like Nazis. Yeah, they dress like Nazis. Because that aesthetic is baller.

[Amelia]

Yes. Yeah. Fully on purpose.

[Emily]

Yeah. They're cults. Storm Troopers, for fuck's sake.

[Amelia]

If anyone doesn't know there were people called stormtroopers in the Nazi regime. I only have one more thing on my. On my list of notes.

[Emily]

So I just want to like, reinforce that we did not just go on this long tangent about this movie you saw that people liked because it was beautiful. Because that's not the only example. Like, aesthetics make people and the aesthetic of the Joker, like, super cool.

[Amelia]

When people.

[Emily]

When things look really interesting and neat, you get people's attention and they're more likely to believe you when your style is great.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

That's the reason why TikTok has in their algorithm promote the pretty people.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

There's a reason why so many women youtubers always wear makeup. Sometimes they wear makeup because they are people who wear makeup and they feel great about it. And also, like, it just is the case that people are more likely to click on your thumbnail of your face when your face is prettier. Yep. Pretty.

[Amelia]

I'm pretty. Anyway, so there's only one more thing on my. On my list of notes.

[Emily]

Okay.

[Amelia]

And this episode isn't even an hour long yet. We're amazing. The last note is that fat in particular has been made medical. Now there is a long history of sickness. What people. It was Jessica Kellgren Fozard does a video on the ugly laws where, you know, people who are.

[Emily]

Put a link in the doobly doo.

[Amelia]

Yeah. That. That anyone who has what is seen as a disfigurement is not allowed out in public because they make other people uncomfortable. So they need to hide. And.

[Emily]

Yeah, like, so I mean, it could not be more explicitly ableist.

[Amelia]

Yeah. And fat in particular, into the 21st century has been medicalized in that way where like, you're not just not pretty, you're ill. That literally. The United States government has called obesity an epidemic. It calls it an illness so that insurance companies can profit from weight loss treatments.

[Emily]

Yeah. And that's not a conspiracy theory. That is, that's the facts.

[Amelia]

That's how it happens.

[Emily]

Very explicitly documented. Gonna recommend a book called Belly of the Beast, the Politics of Anti Fatness as an Anti Blackness. Daeshawn Harrison is the author and they go in a quick short book just sort of with devastating detail into the history of the medicalization of fat as a form of oppression. That's the short version. Just. Just read Belly of the Beast.

[Amelia]

Yeah. So the, the information that we need people to have to be stronger than the fire is that the size and shape of your body has a very low correlation with your health.

[Emily]

Truly.

[Amelia]

And you're, you're not going to hear that from your doctor, probably.

[Emily]

Nope.

[Amelia]

And you're not going to hear that from any medical professionals or a dietitian or a nutritionist. Nutritionist.

[Emily]

Or a, A lot of mental health therapists.

[Amelia]

I was gonna say, you know, the person who helps you do a workout. Personal trainer. Not gonna. Because they, I mean they all profit when you try to be thinner.

[Emily]

Unless you look specifically for a provider who practices health at every size.

[Amelia]

Yeah. And when I say they all profit when you try to become thinner, I don't mean that they are consciously choosing that. Most people believe absolutely. This lie that's been told, even though there's just no science on it. And there is a thing called scientific weightism where the science is just biased against fat on bodies and it skews research results and it's a problem.

[Emily]

Yeah. And let me say so as a person with a PhD in health behavior, master's degree in counseling psychology, when I got to my job at Smith as a health educator, I was in rooms where I had to talk about like health behaviors. People were asking questions about like choices they were making around their health. And in the room were people who had been told by their medical providers that they needed to lose weight, people who were fat, women of size and people of. Who were in active eating disorders or in recovery from eating disorders. And there was also overlap in those groups over a lot of overlap in those groups. I tell the story and come as you are about a compet, like a professional level competitive athlete whose body fat was so low she was skipping periods, but because she had so much muscle, because she's a professional fucking athlete, her doctor told her she needed to lose weight. Like I'm not.

[Amelia]

So I.

[Emily]

Early in my time there, I went to all these conferences. I went directly to meta analyses and peer reviewed research and like I'm already like a full ass professional in my field. And until I went and asked, how am I going to talk about health behaviors in a way that includes and doesn't stigmatize anybody in that group, no matter their shape and size, no matter their relationship with food? How am I going to talk about nutrition and physical activity and health behaviors in. And that is when I was. When I found that I had spent all of my life being lied to about what the science said. And like, because we talk about it in burnout, I talk about it in both of my sex books. Like, here is not the place to go deep into why that happened or how that happened. I want everybody listening to this to know that as a person who loves the science, I had to look at the data itself and compare it against what the authors said about that data.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

In order to understand that they were biased and not understanding the results they themselves had found.

[Amelia]

Exactly.

[Emily]

So, like, I'm a person who loves the science, but science is made by people, and people are inherently flawed. And therefore science is just sometimes going to be inherently flawed, especially studies. I mean, nutrition is so complex, human physiology is so complex, and people vary so much from each other and they change across their lifespans that there just isn't a way to have, like, a thing you can say the science says.

[Amelia]

Right. And you have a PhD in public health. You took classes in statistics.

[Emily]

Heck, yes.

[Amelia]

You. You know how to read data. Whereas when science gets reported to the lay folk or policy gets made, it is made by governing officials. And as we all know, journalists and government officials don't have the training to interpret hard data. Ironically, meanwhile, academic training doesn't make scientists fluent in social justice.

[Emily]

That's a song Amelia's been working on.

[Amelia]

That's a song that I, that I, that I. I'm not working on it anymore. I wrote it.

[Emily]

It's done, been done, wrote.

[Amelia]

I finished it on a life. Abindone wrote it because it's true. Because there's people who do the science don't. Aren't trying to do social justice work. And so it takes somebody like you who has a PhD and understands how to read science and also is connected to the broader picture of public health to understand, like, the role of stigma in disease. Yeah. It's journalists and government officials don't. Don't have the training.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Takes you and John Green and, you know, people with some intense smarts to make the connection between science and how people. How the world actually works.

[Emily]

So Gary Taubes is the author of Good Calories, Bad Calories.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Which here's Why I love that book. It's because he did exactly the thing that I am talking about. Where. Okay, sure, you read the paper and you read what the authors conclude, but then you actually look at the data itself and you see whether or not that conclusion is warranted based on what they found. And if they cite papers, you go and read the papers they cited and you see if those papers actually say the thing that these authors are saying it said.

[Amelia]

Right.

[Emily]

And then if it doesn't, you find out what that paper actually does say and you look at the papers that paper cited and see if those papers say the things that they said. And when you pick back through the history of the science, Gary Taos was able to like find the place where the break happened.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Where people started saying the data said one thing when in fact it said something else.

[Amelia]

Cool.

[Emily]

Yeah. So good calories, bad calories. If you're interested in like, we're going to talk about nutrition next. But yeah, it's complicated. And if you don't want to have to think about the sciency part, all you need to know is you have been lied to. You will continue to be lied to by government infrastructure, your medical providers, insurance companies, and also you'll be discriminated against because you're not conforming to the aspirational. Pretty standard. Those things are all real. And it makes it really difficult to love your body when you're constantly being told that you both don't belong and are sick. And also you are a moral failing.

[Amelia]

Right.

[Emily]

Because fatness in particular gets attributed to laziness and greed. Gluttony, like gluttony. Two of the deadly of the mortal sins. The deadly sins, two out of seven associated with one characteristic about the shape of your body. When all of the science is abundantly clear that that is not the thing. Fat is not associated with either gluttony or laziness. And yet. So I'm not gonna.

[Amelia]

I just.

[Emily]

If you wanna, like, I talk about it in all three books and we've given you other books to read and other phrases to Google you, you can find out whatever you want to. We want you to be stronger than the fire. And part of how you're going to get that is by recognizing that you are allowed to have and love the body you have exactly as it is. We're not saying you have to, we're not saying you should. You have permission though. You're allowed to. And if you don't ever want to tell anybody that when you look in the mirror, even though your Body doesn't conform to the culturally constructed aspirational ideal. You look in the mirror and you're, like, pretty cute actually, though. Like, this round, poofy. Like the, like, roll of fat that I see above my hip bones. What if that's cute?

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Like, I think that might be cute. I think I might be adorable.

[Amelia]

One of the most powerful ways you can create this change in perspective, in your mind is to use the mere exposure effect.

[Emily]

Yes. Mere exposure towards it.

[Amelia]

Like, you've been trained through the mirror exposure effect, which is just like you've seen so many movie stars and magazine covers, and you've been told by your doctor so many times that this is the idea that the mere exposure effect has told your brain that this is true. Turns out it's not. And Lindy west in Shrill suggests, just look at pictures of fat people until they don't gross you out anymore.

[Emily]

Yep.

[Amelia]

Mere exposure.

[Emily]

Just exposure.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

We know for sure that it changes people's brains and that it changes what people perceive as beautiful. You perceive as beautiful the thing that you are exposed to?

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Over and over and over again.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And make sure you spend time looking at, like, the bodies of the people in real, actual life and not just pictures of people on the Internet or in magazines or whatever. Look at the bodies of the human beings around you. Notice that something happens, something emotional happens when you see someone's body. If they do or do not come close to the aspirational ideal. If they do or do not have traits that you like about yourself. Or, let's face it, more often, traits that you resent about your own body. Body. Like, the ways you judge someone else's body because of the ways it reminds you of the things you've been taught you are not allowed to like about your body. Notice that and begin asking yourself, like, what if. What if actually that person's cute? What if that person's beautiful? Because, in fact, that person is beautiful. That is the definition we started with. Every body is beautiful in the same way. Every tree, every river, and every rock is beautiful. Every bird, every plant.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Not every house.

[Amelia]

There's ugly houses.

[Emily]

That shit's man made.

[Amelia]

Yeah. This is Amelia recording an insert. Emily keeps talking about the ways that rocks and trees in a river are inherently beautiful. I also want to say that one of the ways that humans prioritize prettiness in a destructive way is in our. The way we manage landscapes, golf carts and green grass yards. It's all about creating something that, like, conforms to an aesthetic ideal and not about like, hey, maybe if we just let nature grow and, or create a wildlife habitat in our yard, maybe that would be like also beautiful rather than pretty. It's a, it's. The lawn is a socially constructed ideal that is damaging to the planet. And I just, I. This is me recording an insert. Okay. As you were. Thank you. So that thing number one was the size and shape of your body has very low correlation with your health.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

It's a lie to unlearn. Also, your body has a defended weight that generally goes up with age. I think you mentioned this at the beginning. Like your body has a weight that it wants to be and it's going to be. It's going to make you work so hard so to overcome that. Like. And in fact, there is no research that confirms that significant weight loss is possible long term. It's just, there's no science that says that it's even possible to sustain long term at a population level. It's just so unlikely. And there's also no research that shows that losing weight makes you live longer, which is kind of like why you want health is so that you can keep on having life. And. Yeah, no, that just. There's just no correlation between life expectancy and body size.

[Emily]

There's a book called why Diets Make Us the Unintended Consequences of Our Obsession with Weight Loss by Sandra Amott aamodt, which again goes into the science of this stuff. It is healthier to stay at a weight that your doctor considers too high than it is to lose weight in a bad for your body way or to lose weight and gain weight and lose weight and gain weight and lose weight and gain weight. Which is what happens for virtually everyone. Yeah, virtually everyone. I've said previously you can lose and maintain realistically like 5%.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Of your body weight loss. Extraordinary outliers. 10 or 15%. You are not an extraordinary outlier. If you're listening to this.

[Amelia]

Yeah. I mean statistics. I mean you might be, you might be, probably not, but there's a literal.

[Emily]

Like 98% chance that you're not.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Like by definition.

[Amelia]

And that leads us directly to the final point about fat being medicalized is that you need to know that weight loss behaviors lead to more negative health consequences.

[Emily]

Disease than being actual Disease is caused by weight loss behaviors, not by fat.

[Amelia]

Right. Yeah. Weight loss behaviors are more dangerous than fat.

[Emily]

That is not a disease.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

You do not need to make your nutrition choices based on weight loss. I. Back in 2024, at the beginning, when I was promoting the new book, I Got asked my opinion about the new weight loss injectables, the semiglutides. Do you know how they work?

[Amelia]

No.

[Emily]

They make you feel full.

[Amelia]

Okay.

[Emily]

They literally treat hunger as a disease.

[Amelia]

Jesus.

[Emily]

And they're like, technically, they didn't start out as weight loss drugs. They started out as diabetes medications.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Okay.

[Emily]

But then it turned out they could help people. They. Some people.

[Amelia]

Oh.

[Emily]

Lose a lot.

[Amelia]

Is this ozempic that you're talking about?

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Oh, okay. I didn't know it was Wegovy.

[Emily]

Ozempiclutides. Yeah. They treat hunger as a disease.

[Amelia]

Okay.

[Emily]

And I just want everyone to know, like, if you want to try these drugs out, if you are diabetic and you want to try these drugs out for sure, see if they're a good fit for you. Like, it is your body. You get to choose. You can even ask your medical provider. And I want you to know that hunger is not a disease. I want you to know that your body, exactly the way it is right now, deserves to be fed.

[Amelia]

Yeah. And all this episode was to prepare people for the next episode, which is making healthy food choices. And we needed first to separate the idea of making healthy food choices from making weight loss food choices. Which is why we did this episode, was to talk about why weight loss is bullshit.

[Emily]

Yeah. And it's a complicated message. It's difficult to communicate that, like, yes, pretty privilege 100% exists. Yes. People are drawn to things that have aesthetic appeal. And there is a cultural standard for pretty. And that has nothing to do with whether or not you are beautiful. And it has nothing to do with whether or not your body deserves care and pleasure and food. It has nothing to do with those things. So we're going to talk about nutrition next week. But we're also going to have a big caveat. You're not allowed to listen to the nutrition episode until you listen to the pretty one.

[Amelia]

Yeah. I also think that we should end with some actual practical exercises people can do to, you know, help relearn.

[Emily]

Well, we have mere exposure. Just like, look at fat bodies. Right. Look at non conforming bodies until you have a neutral emotional reaction or even a positive emotional reaction.

[Amelia]

Yeah. You also talked about, like, noticing how you feel about other people's bodies when you observe them.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

We turn that in the book. We turned it into the new hotness game, which is more catchy and memorable than just notice other people's bodies. Like the what you could do in our definitions, new hotness is deserving of love. In the face of pressure to conform yes. Deserving of love. Even when the outside world's like, well, you need to change this thing about yourself, you know, you better take this pill to get rid of your rosacea because those rosy cheeks are. Why would you want that? Yeah. You know what I'm saying?

[Emily]

Yeah. How dare you accept your body the way it is.

[Amelia]

Yeah. That's the new hotness game, is you look it, you see someone. She doesn't look like you. You feel the judgment build in your brain, but just noticing thoughts and singing this song is how we all create change. She's the new hotness. You're the new hotness. I'm the new hotness. We're all the new hotness. Hotness means deserving of love in the face of pressure to conform. It's another song. Yeah. The new hotness game.

[Emily]

New hotness. Obviously taken from men in black 2.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Yeah. New hotness. Like old and busted, Old and busted is the white supremacist, cis, heteropatriarchal, arbitrary, narrow, unmeatable standard that we've all been presented with. This. That's old and busted.

[Emily]

Old and busted.

[Amelia]

New hotness is deserving of love.

[Emily]

In.

[Amelia]

The face of pressure to conform. Yeah.

[Emily]

So the new hotness, if you're listening to this, you. You already are the new hotness. You're the new hotness. So this is about looking in the mirror as well as looking at other people. Yeah, looking at your butt. So Eric Stice is person who does research on effective interventions for preventing and treating eating disorders. And in the Body Project, which is the program he developed with his colleagues, this exercise comes from that you look at your body and you write down everything you see that you like and like. What's going to happen when you look in the mirror, of course, is your brain's going to fill with all the things you have been taught you're supposed.

[Amelia]

To as a protective response to be like, you should conform in order to belong, to fit into that herd so that you are protected by the herd.

[Emily]

Right.

[Amelia]

Yeah. That's where your brain is.

[Emily]

Like, you can have those thoughts any other time. Right now you're just going to set a massage and you're going to look for things that you like.

[Amelia]

If it is your eyelashes, you're going.

[Emily]

To write that down. If it is your kneecaps, you're going to write that down. If it's your ankle bones, if it is your spirit, because you can see it in your smile, you write that down and then you do it again the next day, and then you do it Again. And you do it again. It's another version of mere exposure, but it is training you to see your body with your actual eyes instead. Instead of through the cultural lens that has been imposed on you through every day of your life. Being taught about what you're supposed to be. All the ways that your body is a failure, as opposed all the lies about how your body is a failure as opposed to the ways that your body actually legit is a freaking fracking miracle.

[Amelia]

Yeah. And if you've got a circle of friends where it feels comfortable, like maybe noticing what you like about other people who you're close to who are okay with you making comments about their appearance, you can say, I just love your eyes or the color of your skin is blah, blah, like complimenting and just making it a practice among a group, a bubble of love to do the same exercises and do it for each other. So it's not just you being like, I'm fighting against the whole multi trillion dollar business there.

[Emily]

Absolutely. Maybe groups of people who would do that. I would. I would never do that even.

[Amelia]

No, me neither. I would never do that.

[Emily]

I'm just saying I would never want you to do that to me.

[Amelia]

No, I would never do. Because I. I wouldn't know. I'm not saying this is for us.

[Emily]

Look, most people, we are not our target audience.

[Amelia]

You're not a target. Most people find connection to be the most valuable and supportive and useful thing.

[Emily]

And it's so much easier to be kind and supportive and see hotness in other people than it is in ourselves.

[Amelia]

Right? Yeah. I'm not saying that we should do this. I'm saying that I would not tell.

[Emily]

A stranger on the bus.

[Amelia]

No, no, no.

[Emily]

Stuff I say to myself about my body and I do it like, I know this stuff for a living. I teach it for a living. And I'm so much better than I was and still, like, I got the voice in my head.

[Amelia]

Yeah, I was just talking to my therapist about this, this week where like, I know all this information and I, I feel all of the. Like, yeah, it's an arbitrary cultural and deal. And mostly I live and I feel just fine about how I look. But like, when I need to go in public sometimes I'm like, oh God, people are going to look at me and they're going to think all those things and all those things come bubbling up like, like an overflowing septic tank in my front yard. In my mental front yard, I have a septic tank full of the bikini industrial complex bullshit. And sometimes and sometimes the cracks and seeps up and, like, I didn't put that there.

[Emily]

Nope.

[Amelia]

We can name three generations of experiences in our family of women trying to lose weight.

[Emily]

Yep.

[Amelia]

Back to our grandmother in the Depression. The Great Depression. Like, but that was put there. It's why it's a septic tank and not a swamp. It was constructed by the history of our people. And it. And I buried it. I don't think about it. And then sometimes it just goes. And it farts up a little.

[Emily]

I thought you were going to go, like, blue.

[Amelia]

That might have been better.

[Emily]

But that's what mine does. And I. Like, I was. So one of the things that I regularly say about this is that, like, you can do the mirror exercise and, like, start looking at your body and being like, actually, like, what if maybe it's cute?

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

What if maybe, like, I can see my body is a freaking fracking miracle? And then five years later, it's going to be really different because bodies change over time.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And then five years after that, and then five years after that. So you have to keep doing it over and over. Like, basically like a. It's like getting your oil changed. You got to do it every five years, though, as sort of, like, maintenance to, like, so that your self image keeps up with your body.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Yeah. That's hard. Aging is hard.

[Emily]

Aging is hard.

[Amelia]

But that leads me to the final thing of, like, how to fight this thing.

[Emily]

Final practical tip.

[Amelia]

Final practical tip, which is to remember its connection to something larger. The ways that your body shows your experiences. Shows. You know, a very easy one to talk about is, like, scars and stretch marks from giving birth. That's like, oh, yeah, I have this belly. I have this saggy skin. I have these stretch marks because I had a baby that changed my body in this way. And that doesn't make my body worse. That makes my body a statue, a trophy to this amazing thing that I did. Right.

[Emily]

Yes.

[Amelia]

Same with any kind of scar. I got that scar doing this thing that I didn't think I could do, and I failed along the way, but. And then I bleed or I tried so hard, and I'm so proud of what I. Blah, blah, blah. Like, wrinkles. How many. How many hours have you spent laughing and smiling in a way that when you laugh and smile now, you get little crinkles? Like, that's amazing. That means that you. You have had all those laughs and all those smiles. This goes really far into, like, disfigurement that I did a podcast interview with.

[Emily]

Hold on.

[Amelia]

I'm Gonna look her up, woman. She's Australian and she ran like an ultra marathon through the Australian bush. And there was a fire, a wildfire, and it. Turia Pit is her name. There was a wildfire and she was burned severely. And she has burn scars over most of her body that make her no longer look like what she looked like, but she got those scars doing something very few people can do. And she's now a very well known Australian, like, motivational speaker and has a podcast, a great podcast where I got to talk to her. And she's terrific. And she talks about the ways that women in particular are expected to make their own needs secondary to other people's convenience. And yeah, I wanted to talk. I wish we. We'd gotten a chance more to talk about disability because, you know, she is. She had fingers amputated as a result of these burns. Like, it's very severe. So, I mean, it changed everything about how she lives and when and how she needs help. And I wish we'd gotten a chance to talk about, like, the need to ask for help and why everyone deserves help and why it sucks so much that, like, it takes becoming disabled to learn that you deserve help. Like, it'd be nice if women could learn that before they get as damaged as she or I have been by life experiences.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Turia Pitt again. T U R I A Pitt is the name of the ultra marathon runner she still runs.

[Emily]

So a million years ago, I wrote a blog post about a song by an artist named Alex with an I Olsen called Real Things have Scratches where I talked about scars. I have a couple of small scars and, you know, have obvious criticism of my body about them. Like, one of them is like a scar on my forehead that's very obvious to me and almost no one ever can notice it. Even if they look really closely, it.

[Amelia]

Is currently not visible, just FYI to you.

[Emily]

And it's from a time when we were jumping on a bed and I fell off and cracked my head open and had to get stitches. Emergency care and stitches and stuff when I was a little kid.

[Amelia]

Like little, little, little, like.

[Emily]

Yeah, like full, tiny, like, or if not yet. I remember it, but barely.

[Amelia]

Yeah, same.

[Emily]

So just some of the lyrics. I never noticed I had stains until he asked for a discount. So I almost missed out on loving you who said perfection's imitation. That's why it's called ideal. See, real things have scratches and I'm looking for real. You paid full price never asked for a change till I gave it you said baby, save it you'll need it for something harder than me. You said I'm easy. I think scars are sexy. And most times you make sense of things I think are crazy. And that's not why I love you. But it helps.

[Amelia]

That's great. That reminds me of, like, the Japanese ideal of, like, wabi sabi.

[Emily]

Wabi sabi.

[Amelia]

Finding beauty and imperfection, and you fill the cracks with gold. When a thing breaks, you make a statement. Highlight the fact that it. Like, I haven't. I haven't seen that applied to physical beauty in or of people in.

[Emily]

I do it and come together.

[Amelia]

But in Japanese actual living culture.

[Emily]

Yeah. No, it's not applied to real life humans. And so I talk about both wabi sabi and ubuntu, which is South African. I am. Because we are as. Neither of these things gets applied to human beauty. But there is literally nothing in my own culture that I can refer to at all about the beauty of things that have been used, things that are about our connection to each other instead of about, like this isolated conforms with the culturally constructed aspirational beauty ideal. And so I have to turn to language from other cultures to even offer a framework for having a conversation about it.

[Amelia]

I was going to say maybe shabby chic is the Western version, but it's not. Shabby chic comes from generational wealth having a thing of such high quality that it lasts for generations, but you can see the wear and tear, and yet it's still beauty. But that's a. That's a. That's a capitalism thing.

[Emily]

And classism.

[Amelia]

And classism. Yeah. So. But still the ability to feel.

[Emily]

The.

[Amelia]

Beauty that exists because of the scars and the wrinkles and the things you've been through. Yeah, that made me feel better just now about, like. Because my body got a lot fatter when I got long. Covid.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Like, all that fat is because I survived. Covid. I didn't have to be hospitalized even I was not a ventilator, even though I gained a lot of weight. Changed the.

[Emily]

I changed the Changed dress sizes changed.

[Amelia]

Yeah, Changed. I had to buy a whole new wardrobe twice. But, like, that happened because I survived.

[Emily]

Yeah, because your body did a miraculous thing of surviving. A thing that millions, millions of people did not survive.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Congratulations.

[Amelia]

Oh, my God, my body. Thanks, body. See. Yeah. So next time we're gonna talk about what healthy food choices are when you can take weight loss out of the equation.

[Emily]

Right. I hope that helped some people, like, both the acknowledging, like, pretty privileged real. And also, you're beautiful. You are. And that's just not a thing. And we keep saying, but the last thing. But the last thing. But the last thing. This was always going to be a long episode. I know, but like, I have tried in multiple books to use language about, like, Reclaiming Ugly, which, you know, which disability activists started that language.

[Amelia]

No, I don't. I don't know.

[Emily]

There's a book called Reclaiming Ugly by Vanessa Rachelle Lewis. It's Reclaiming Ugly and choosing Self Love. There's a whole website, Reclaiming Ugly. I have tried using language like this. I like the idea of it and my beta readers hate it. Hate it.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Cause that word is. It feels. It has been weaponized so intensely.

[Amelia]

Yeah. It feels like reclaiming something inherently bad. Ugly feels like the definition of ugly is bad. And it feels like Wreck it Ralph in his, like, villain support group, where it's okay to be bad and bad is good or like, whatever their mantra is. It sort of feels like that.

[Emily]

And yeah, accept that you are a villain.

[Amelia]

That's a. That's a big. That's a big leap for people.

[Emily]

Yeah. For me it's like, no, I'm going to claim the role in which I'm cast. Like, I'm going to choose oppression. I'm going to be like, yeah, I am. Yeah, I am this thing that is a reason for. You were just me, right? Yeah. And like, again, I see the power of it. I understand the rhetoric and just like people, my readers, Big no. Big. Just. Yeah.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Nope. Nope. And one of the reasons why I say so insistently, like, everything, everybody, every tree, every rock, every bird, every dog, we all know every dog is beautiful.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Every dog.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

The uglier the dog is, the more beautiful it is.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Right? Yeah.

[Amelia]

But I feel like the word ugly.

[Emily]

Three legged dogs give me a tripod.

[Amelia]

There is. The reclaiming of words is a thing that marginalized groups have done, especially lately. And y'all can think of the mar of the marginalized groups and the words they reclaiming. We're not gonna say them, but ugly is an ancient word. All those words are new. Right. Within the couple of hundred years of language.

[Emily]

Ugly is not fat, for example. No.

[Amelia]

Yeah. No, but. But fat as a slur is.

[Emily]

As a slurry is new.

[Amelia]

Right.

[Emily]

But ugly has always had the same definition and the same meaning and the same valence, the same affect, the same emotion.

[Amelia]

Right?

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

So I think that's a. I think that one's a hard sell.

[Emily]

So, like, I offer Reclaiming Ugly, if you, like, cannot metabolize me saying I don't need to know what you look like to know that you're beautiful. I know that you are. You have permission to know that you are. And if your body is, like, under no circumstances. Big no from me. Try reclaiming ugly.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Yeah. As a. Google it. Okay, so that is it for this week.

[Emily]

That is it. We're going to stop, and then we're going to talk about nutrition.

[Amelia]

Okay?

[Emily]

Cue the ukulele. And you know what I got for Christmas? Malibu Barbie. That's not who I was. I was a ballerina. Graceful, delicate. They had to go.