Embodiment for the Rest of Us – Season 4, Episode 10: Dr. Rachel Fox, PhD
Thursday, December 19, 2024
Jenn (she/they) and Chavonne (she/her) interviewed Dr. Rachel Fox, PhD (she/her) about her embodiment journey! Specifically we talk about having a clinically fat ass and passion projects (aka the dissertation Doctor Fox just defended last Tuesday!!!)
Dr. Rachel Fox is an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Grand Valley State University. She is also a Kroner Family Fellow, Judith and Neil Morgan Fellow, and UC President’s Dissertation Year Fellow in the Communication Department, Science Studies Program, and Critical Gender Studies Graduate Specialization at UC San Diego. Her dissertation will be available as an open access document in 1 or 2 months from this episode’s publication. She holds a BA in Biology from Wesleyan University, an MS in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University, and an MA in Communication from UC San Diego. Her research has been published in the Fat Studies Journal, Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and the Journal of Applied Social Psychology. In 2021, she joined the Centre for Fat Liberation and Scholarship as an Inaugural Junior Fellow. Her research critically examines how anti-obesity efforts drive anti-fatness in the US and how the field of weight stigma research perpetuates anti-fatness through its refusal to divest from an anti-obesity agenda.
Content Warning: Discussion of ableism, discussion of medical fatphobia, discussion of the multiple genocides occurring globally, discussion of intentional weight loss (including GLP-1 drugs), discussion of ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis)
Trigger Warnings:
This episode uses the word “obesity” throughout without being bleeped.
The captions for this episode can be found at https://embodimentfortherestofus.com/season-4/season-4-episode-10-doctor-rachel-fox/#captions
A few highlights:
10:03: Rachel shares her understanding of “the rest of us” and how she is a part of that, as well as her privileges
18:35: Rachel discusses how the word “Rest” right in the middle of the podcast name feels, occurs, and shows up for her
27:07: Rachel shares her passion project and how it has affected her own embodiment
1:31:21: Rachel discusses how listeners can make a difference based on this conversation
1:35:17: Rachel shares where to be found and what’s next for her
Links from this episode:
The Body is Not An Apology (Book)
The Body is Not An Apology (IG)
Persistent Drive for Autonomy (PDA)
Public Health’s Power-Neutral, Fatphobic Obsession with “Food Deserts”
Music: “Bees and Bumblebees (Abeilles et Bourdons), Op. 562” by Eugène Dédé through the Creative Commons License
Please follow us on social media:
BlueSky: @embodimentrestofus
Instagram: @embodimentfortherestofus
CAPTIONS
Season 4 Episode 10 is 1 hour, 42 minutes, and 25 seconds (1:42:15) long.
Jenn: Welcome to our 4th season of the Embodiment for the Rest of Us podcast, a series exploring topics and intersections that exist in fat, queer, and disability liberation (and beyond!!)! You can consider this an anti-oppressive and generative space full of repair and intention.
Chavonne: In this podcast, we interview those with lived experience and professionals alike to learn how they are affecting radical change and how we can all make this world a safer and more welcoming place for all humans who are historically and currently marginalized and should be centered, listened to, and supported.
Jenn: Captions and content warnings are provided in the show notes for each episode, including specific time stamps, so that you can skip triggering content any time that feels supportive to you! This podcast is a representation of our co-host and guest experiences and may not be reflective of yours. These conversations are not medical advice, and are not a substitute for mental health or nutrition support.
Chavonne: In addition, the conversations held here are not exhaustive in their scope or levels of inquiry. These topics, these perspectives are not complete and are always in process. These are just highlights! Just like posts on social media, individual articles, or any other podcast – this is just a snapshot of the full picture.
Jenn: We are always interested in any feedback on this process, especially if you feel something needs to be addressed. We invite you to email us at Listener@EmbodimentForTheRestOfUs.com with any comments, requests, or concerns.
[1:44]
(J): Hello from Season 4 Episode 10 of the Embodiment for the Rest of Us podcast. In today’s episode, we have the second of two parts of our embodiment journey conversation with Dr. Rachel Fox, PhD (she/her). Specifically we talk about having a clinically fat ass and passion projects (aka the dissertation Doctor Fox just defended last Tuesday!!!). Disclaimer: due to the topic of Rachel’s work the O word is intentionally and topically used in full within this intro, transcript, and audio recording without being hidden or bleeped.
(C): Dr. Rachel Fox is an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Grand Valley State University. She is also a Kroner Family Fellow, Judith and Neil Morgan Fellow, and UC President’s Dissertation Year Fellow in the Communication Department, Science Studies Program, and Critical Gender Studies Graduate Specialization at UC San Diego. Her dissertation will be available as an open access document in 1 or 2 months from this episode’s publication. She holds a BA in Biology from Wesleyan University, an MS in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University, and an MA in Communication from UC San Diego.
(J): Her research has been published in the Fat Studies Journal, Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and the Journal of Applied Social Psychology. In 2021, she joined the Centre for Fat Liberation and Scholarship as an Inaugural Junior Fellow. Her research critically examines how anti-obesity efforts drive anti-fatness in the US and how the field of weight stigma research perpetuates anti-fatness through its refusal to divest from an anti-obesity agenda.
(C): Wherever and however you are listening to this today, you are in for one of our favorite conversations to date. We are so glad you’re here! Happy holidays and we’ll see you in the new year xx
[3:35]
Chavonne (she/her):
We are so excited to spend more time talking with Rachel Fox, she/her, who is joining us from Michigan as a professor. Congratulations. Welcome, welcome.
Rachel (she/her):
Thank you so much for having me back.
Chavonne (she/her):
Yeah. We’re here to continue our conversation and especially center on your passion project. So how [inaudible] been, how are you doing and thinking and feeling and being, Rachel?
Rachel (she/her):
Well, being has been a lot. Being has been a lot. So yeah, since the last time we spoke, moved across the country, started a new job, and I currently have about two weeks left to finish my dissertation. So I started this job without my dissertation being finished, due to a number of reasons, and so writing a dissertation, it’s truly like a full-time job. And then being a new tenure track professor is also literally a full-time job. And so I feel like I’ve been working two full-time jobs that started the day after moving, and so it’s been really overwhelming and I am really looking forward to defending my dissertation and then next semester when I get to just be a professor and not be working on my dissertation. I think that’s going to be really great, but I guess don’t hold me to it, because who knows?
Jenn (she/they):
Are you going to defend it virtually over Zoom or something back to San Diego or are you going to go there?
Rachel (she/her):
I am still in negotiations with my chairs about that. I would like to defend remotely and they would like me to defend in person and they make the rules. So if they say come back to San Diego, I will be back in San Diego.
Chavonne (she/her):
I hope that you are able to do what feels most comfortable and safest for you.
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah. Thank you.
Jenn (she/they):
And less exhausting. I mean that sounds nice after this final push here especially.
Chavonne (she/her):
Yeah, sounds very necessary.
Jenn (she/they):
So you’re being a lot. Taking up space, pondering, using that logic brain.
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah. And it’s been really interesting, for the past few years my job was totally remote and so I was working from home, and so this year I am now back in the classroom teaching in person and trying to remember how I used to dress, and how to comport myself in a professorially-ish kind of manner. And fortunately my department is awesome and the students so far have also been really great. So no one is pressuring me to do this. I don’t think anyone would really blink if I wore jeans or whatever. It’s just a personal thing of trying to perform the part again. And so that has been really interesting.
And also, Michigan has so many more fat people than California. Also very different in so many ways, far less racially diverse, which has also been kind of a thing to get used to, but yeah, so many more fat people and it is so great. I love it. I feel much more at home here. And so that’s been cool. Michigan is the only state in the US that has, at the state level, legal-based protections based on size. And so even though I’m not super invested actually in legislative protections for fat people, because the way that they play out can be very pathologizing, it’s still kind of cool to be in the one state that did it. Just very different vibes than San Diego.
Jenn (she/they):
Wow.
Chavonne (she/her):
Absolutely.
Jenn (she/they):
Oh, you’re right. It is pathologizing what happens in those campaigns. I’ve been paying attention to New York City and now Boston is going through the same thing. It is. It’s like when we have to use the O words to get medical coverage and insurance, we have to keep staying pathologized. At least on paper, and in talk. And I don’t particularly like the way legislators talk about bodies in all sorts of ways, so I really get what you’re saying. Absolutely.
Rachel (she/her):
I had a fun moment where the chair that they provided in my office was too small for mem and I was like, “Hey, can I have a bigger chair?” Just kind of assuming that they had a stock of differently sized chairs because it’s a big university, and they were like, oh, you have to go through the essentially disability accommodations office. So I filled out their form and they were like, we need to do consultation. And I was thinking about one of my friends who had to go to her doctor and get a doctor’s note that basically said, yes, my patient has a clinically fat ass and therefore needs a larger chair. And I was like, am I going to have to do this too, in this new place where I have seen one primary care provider one time, to make sure that I had someone? And fortunately, I didn’t end up needing to do that, and they were kind of like, yeah, it’s weird that we don’t actually have this ready to go because we it’s our number one most requested accommodation among faculty. And I was like, okay.
Jenn (she/they):
That’s says something.
Chavonne (she/her):
Maybe we should.
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah, let’s think about that. Yeah.
Jenn (she/they):
And I just want to name that clinically fat ass, quote unquote, might end up in the title of this episode.
Rachel (she/her):
I hope it is. I love that.
Chavonne (she/her):
That’s an incredible phrase. Absolutely.
[10:03]
Jenn (she/they):
Well, thank you for sharing that with us and sharing yourself with us. And that kind of goes along with these last couple questions about the podcast title itself. We’re really rooted in that language specifically, and so the second half, we already talked about the first half, I’m curious about what does the rest of us, quote unquote, mean to you? How do you identify within the rest of us, and this is also a really great place to share your pronouns, your privileged identities, your positionality, in other words, in context here too. Does that feel okay to talk about?
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah. Now I’m curious about how much it’ll align with what I did last time.
Chavonne (she/her):
Ooh, yeah, yeah. A lot has changed since we last met.
Jenn (she/they):
Well, it’s a very dynamic thing. Sometimes positionality can even be for a single day. That’s a good interesting.
Chavonne (she/her):
True, true.
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah. Yeah. The rest of us. Okay, well I’ll do some of the basics. I use she/her pronouns, identify as a cis woman, and I am white and Jewish, which is a very hard thing to be right now, to watch so many people use the religion that I was brought up in as rationale to commit genocide, not a fan. But also happy to be one of the voices saying that, actually, Judaism and anti-Zionism are extremely compatible, perhaps. I find anti-Zionism to be the logical place that you would get if you follow Jewish teachings. And now I’m talking about Judaism a lot, despite not really practicing.
Jenn (she/they):
But that part of you is like, whoa, why are you doing that in my name? I didn’t ask for that.
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah. And definitely being in Michigan and realizing, ooh, there are way fewer Jewish people here than there were in California. That has also been interesting. Okay. What else? One thing that has changed for sure is my economic status, going from being a graduate student to being a tenure track professor. Talk about the rest of us did not think I was going to get a job, was fully ready to join, oh, what did they call it? I think the adjunct churn is what an article about the University of California lecturer system titled it.
Jenn (she/they):
That’s where I was. That’s where I was. Yeah. It is a churn. I never heard that term before.
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah. And truly feeling like I won the lottery every day, to have a full-time position with stability, with a salary, with benefits. Moved here with my partner and am pretty much able to support both of us, here and there, but mostly, which is wild, to go from being a grad student where, and for transparency, I was on fellowship last year and my fellowship paid $25,000 for 12 months.
Chavonne (she/her):
In California.
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah. Which was less than I was paid my first year of grad school when I was also on fellowship in 2016.
Jenn (she/they):
I got paid similar amount at NIH in 2005. Which I think it’s still the same. It doesn’t really inflate like everything else inflates.
Rachel (she/her):
So to go from that to this has been incredible. Everyone warned me that moving was going to be really expensive. It was so much more expensive than I even anticipated, even with all our careful budgeting. But now I’m living in an apartment that is twice the square footage as our graduate housing apartment.
Jenn (she/they):
Oh, yay, space.
Chavonne (she/her):
That’s great.
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah, so that has really changed. It’s been, actually, I would say, a lot of different steps out of the rest of us, in a way, to reach a degree of stability that I know most academics never get. And I’m talking about it like I’m for sure going to get tenure, and who knows what the next few years are going to look like, but it’s just really different.
I will say one way that I still feel very firmly part of the rest of us, the people who are neglected, under-resourced, persecuted, marginalized, is that I identify as disabled, and I deal with numerous mental health challenges. And so I’ve been really pushed to my limits cognitively, and that has been, full credit to my medication regime and all of the work that I have done in therapy for so long to remain stable. The fact that I haven’t had a breakdown, a huge breakdown, is very cool, but also is much too close. And also, I think largely due to my privilege, have not been harassed for masking, but I am one of the only people who’s masking. My students are like, we don’t even know what your face looks like. I’m like, if we go outside, I’ll take off my mask, but while we’re in the classroom, I won’t.
And honestly, so one thing that I have done for all my classes this semester is I have a no penalty absence policy. Or I just told my students, I would much rather err on the side of you not coming to class if you think you’re getting sick and not getting us sick. And it took a few weeks, I think, for my students to really believe me, but I have a little form that they fill out if they’re going to miss class, they don’t even have to email me. And I’ll tell you a number of those form responses have been like, I tested positive for Covid. And so I’m really glad that I can take two weeks off and you’re not going to penalize me. And I’m like, yeah, don’t come to class.
Chavonne (she/her):
Please don’t come to us. Right, yeah. Yeah. Wow.
Rachel (she/her):
So I feel sad that they’re getting covid, but happy that that policy seems to be working.
Chavonne (she/her):
Absolutely.
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah.
Jenn (she/they):
Wow. Well, how does it feel to talk about those that have changed? The differences in your positionality and in the things that are marginalizing and challenging, I just wanted to name, it’s disabling to be in a fat body, even in a state that largely has access points. The number of hoops you have, it’s expensive. It’s exhausting. We have to be the agents of change about stuff, even if a system is in place.
Chavonne (she/her):
For sure.
Jenn (she/they):
I know that’s exhausting. I can hear the levels of exhaustion and it’s like, yeah, there’s some privilege exchanges and also a lot of stress.
Rachel (she/her):
Part of why moving was expensive is because we have bought really sturdy furniture, and so I can’t just ditch it in one place, buy new furniture in another place. I needed to hold on to my big, big mattress and my body built office chair, which is the single most expensive piece of furniture I own, is my office chair. Bought it with my Covid pandemic money in, I think 2021. And I had to bring stuff with us, couldn’t just get new stuff. And that meant more objects to move, which was more expensive.
Jenn (she/they):
Yeah, it’s a fat tax, a disability tax that’s not written anywhere. It’s like we just know we’re going to have to pay the extra. I really relate to that. I had some things that I know would fit my body in storage for a decade, just continuously paying for it, because I couldn’t fit it in a New York apartment, but I could fit it in this house. But that got really expensive. I’m like, oh my gosh, but it helps my back, and it’s got the right thing, and I don’t know if I want to change that, and I’m really grateful to have it.
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah.
Chavonne (she/her):
Wow.
Jenn (she/they):
Well, thank you for sharing those.
Chavonne (she/her):
Yeah, thank you. Thank you so, so much.
Rachel (she/her):
Thank you for asking.
[18:35]
Chavonne (she/her):
Yeah. You’ve already answered a little bit of this, and wondering how things are going to, I don’t know if we talked about this off mic before, but we’ll say it now. Part of a realization for us as co-hosts in the last season is that rest pops up right in the middle of our podcast name, Embodiment For The Rest Of Us. How does that being in the middle feel, occur, and show up for you? Especially with all of this change and transition since we last met about five months ago.
Rachel (she/her):
I would say, I know right.
Jenn (she/they):
Time.
Rachel (she/her):
Bananas.
Jenn (she/they):
Time keeps happening.
Rachel (she/her):
Part of actually why I was able to do this today and not have to reschedule is because we’re on fall break right now, so I’m not teaching today.
Jenn (she/they):
That’s right. We were like, we’ll put it as a holding place and we’ll see if it works out.
Rachel (she/her):
So it feels very appropriate because, honestly, this has been kind of the first breath that I’ve taken all semester. And part of that was because my body kind of forced me to, and part of it was because I didn’t really feel like I could cancel class, and I also kind of wanted to not cancel unless I really, really, really needed to. And so last week I was really hitting the limits of what I am physically and mentally capable of. And again, like I said, it’s cool that it wasn’t a breakdown, that’s a first, but it was not cool to get there. I am trying to remember this quote that I saw recently, that it was like your best is what you can do without hurting yourself. That’s a bad paraphrase.
Chavonne (she/her):
I love it though.
Rachel (she/her):
But it was like, have you rested enough to do things, rather than have you done enough things to deserve rest? And I saw that and I was like, wow, that’s very far away from where I am right now. But I do appreciate it and I wish that more people thought that way. And I also am hoping that I can align my life to get closer to that. And I will also say, coming with professordom, is like my partner is currently doing their scholarship and is also supporting me in my scholarship. And because they’re not working another job, beyond being a grad student, they have taken over basically all the domestic labor.
And I do feel like the professors of old coming home to a wife who has cooked and cleaned, to have my partner get all that stuff done, because I am too busy to do it, it feels like the most enormous privilege and I really don’t actually know what I would be doing if we weren’t in that situation. So the little bit of rest that I am able to get is because of having someone else to take over those duties.
Jenn (she/they):
Oh, I’m grateful for your partner and that you get that space.
Chavonne (she/her):
Me too. Me too.
Rachel (she/her):
Me too. Yes. Shout out to Rowan, my fiance.
Chavonne (she/her):
Yay Rowan. Thanks Rowan. Yeah, that’s right. I remember, you were engaged, and I can’t remember if you were doing a wedding soon or not. I couldn’t remember.
Jenn (she/they):
That was kind of new last time.
Chavonne (she/her):
Yeah. Yeah. I think it was. Yay. I’m sorry. Now I’m just getting, is the wedding happening soon? I’m sorry, I can’t help who I am.
Rachel (she/her):
No, the wedding is not happening soon. The wedding will happen when we both have our PhDs.
Chavonne (she/her):
Sure, sure.
Rachel (she/her):
That will be, we’re hoping, 2027. Maybe.
Chavonne (she/her):
Okay, gotcha. Congratulations though, and yay, Rowan.
Rachel (she/her):
Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, getting engaged, knowing that we might have a long engagement, was actually because we knew that we might have to move across the country together, and it was like, are we going to be able to get insurance without being married, etc, etc. So the engagement was a symbolic representation of if we have to do that for logistical reasons, we were already intending to do it. But Michigan has been very chill. My employer has been very chill about just us being engaged and not married.
Chavonne (she/her):
Yeah, that’s great.
Rachel (she/her):
I love that because New Mexico’s very not chill about this, so I appreciate that very much.
Jenn (she/they):
Wow. And thanks for sharing that. I would consider that a really vulnerable share of, I don’t know how accessible rest is in a way that feels like it truly supports capacity building and things like that. And so that means it challenges what you’re capable of, it challenges those sorts of things. And I just relate to that too. I was in academia and I had to run away, because I could never, same thing for working in a hospital, I could just never find some sort of balance. That word can be so problematic, but I’ll use that intentionally here. That I could never, I’m like work-life balance? No one here is encouraging me to do that. There are no supports in the way that make that available without jumping through a bunch of gates that someone else has the lock to and I have to go to multiple floors and get those things and all of that stuff.
It’s a pretty unforgiving, unrelenting environment in that way. And so I just hope that eases. I hope that every year, I haven’t been in academia, or the hospital environment, for almost a decade, but I just keep hoping it’s not going to be like that. Right? Why do we have 72 hour shifts for doctors? Well, it’s because those doctors who first did that were on cocaine, just so everyone knows. Also, Freud. Psychoanalysis definitely comes from what happens to your brain when you’ve done cocaine. Highly written about by the man itself.
So academia is structured around those same things. Oh, you have to do drugs in order to do this, you have to leave your body. You have to go beyond your limits. And so it makes sense that we can’t find them, but I just keep hoping something, and it seems to slightly be changing, but gosh. So I just really feel for you in that, because that’s a real thing, right? You always have to feel it, think about it. It’s hard to truly rest, short for restore. How do we restore if there’s always an edge? If there’s something always marginalizing that’s happening? That’s kind of on theme for a lot of things we’ve already been talking about.
Chavonne (she/her):
I also want to say, we appreciate you meeting with us, but also you could have called off. It’s okay.
Rachel (she/her):
Well, no, I truly have been looking forward to it.
Chavonne (she/her):
Okay. Okay, sure. You get so few breaks, you get such little time to take a break, so this is very appreciated. I just wanted to say that.
[27:07]
Jenn (she/they):
And I hope it feels like you can be seen, heard, and understood here. It’s one of the intentions that we have is we just get to be people in here. The people going through this thing called life, whatever that is for us at this moment. We’ve been playing around with that too. We took a long break. This summer was really wild and we had to just pause for a while. But it feels good to be able to do that, and to return to these conversations. This is just really reminding me how human we get to be in here. Yay, Chavonne, I’m so glad we get, why do we keep doing this? Chavonne and I get to be people. We get to talk to people who are being people about people things. And that’s never going to be boring. That’s never going to be hard to do. That’s just going to be a really special experience. I consider that a privilege we have, is just getting to talk about what we want to talk about. So I just love that you’re joining us in that.
And so here’s where we switch to logical brain. So let’s see how this feels for you. There’s no pressure. This is your passion project, which is what I referred to it last time, because I can just tell right, in the weight stigma conference presentation you did, I think it was last June or July now, I can’t even remember the date. And they also sent the recording much, much, much later. So I also am like, well, when did I actually rewatch it? I don’t know, I don’t remember. Just relate to that. By the way, conference putter-onners. I totally get that. What a neurodivergent thing. I’m like, oh, I totally get that.
So I just want to put a trigger warning in here. We talked before the recording last time, I can’t remember if we talked on the recording as well, but we really wanted to talk about a specific O word here, and so we’ll put it in the show notes, but we’re going to talk about this name that you created that just feels a lot like when Sonia Renee Taylor talks about body terrorism and the body is not an apology, right? It’s super directional and intentional, and it’s a big old system and it’s out to get us. It’s true. It’s real. It’s there. People are agents of this. And so we’re keeping it in intentionally. We’re not going to bleep it because we want to really dive into that, but that’s not usually what we have done. So I just wanted to share that here, and then we’ll put it in there and away we go. Does it feel okay to talk about that? Your logical brain feel okay?
Rachel (she/her):
Yes, absolutely.
Chavonne (she/her):
Because mine’s ready. Mine’s ready.
Jenn (she/they):
Okay, so the name of this is Anti-O.
Jenn (she/they):
Okay. The name of this is anti-obesity assemblage. How has your work around that and other structural anti-fatness, which you talked about a lot last time, changed and challenged your own relationship with your embodiment. It’s also okay to tell us what that assemblage is and all that too, of course.
I’m also curious about what learning and unlearning feels like it’s only possible because of this intentional space. I think you’ve alluded to some of these already, but I’m [inaudible]
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah. So many really great questions. Yes, one conceptual model that is coming out of my dissertation work is the anti-obesity assemblage, which is a way of talking about how efforts to eliminate obesity structure anti-fatness and the oppression of fat people.
The definition of the anti-obesity assemblage, excuse me, is that it is a network that is comprised of anything; and that can be person, idea, standard, discourse, technology, institution; anything that works to enable or enact the elimination of obesity.
As you can tell by that definition, it is very, very big, very, very vast. The term assemblage comes from postmodern French theorists Deleuze and Guattari. That is maybe all I’ll say about it on the academic side. But I will say I liked the term assemblage, beyond its academic meaning, because for me, it brings up this image of a churning mass of gears and equipment. That’s how I see it, is that it is huge and in motion. It is something that is happening.
There’s been a lot of parts that I’ve focused on, but one of the things about it that I think is so useful for people working towards fat liberation is understanding that the project to produce a world without obesity, which of course is a world without fat people, that we have, I think, done a better job looking at how that is enacted, and we have paid less attention to how it is enabled. So putting it all together I think is really useful.
What I mean by that is enacting obesity elimination is pretty visible. It’s doctors doing bariatric surgeries. It’s fat people taking weight loss supplements from the drug store. It’s Weight Watchers. It’s parents putting their children on diets, et cetera, et cetera. It’s pretty explicit, pretty visible. It is this thing that fat activists have contested and condemned for so long, because it’s harmful, it hurts people, and it’s often very dangerous. There’s been trillions of dollars devoted to that, and in comparison, not trillions of dollars devoted to just helping fat people exist without changing our bodies. So when I talk about the anti-obesity assemblage, that’s the part that people are like, “Yep. I know what that looks like.”
Enabling obesity elimination is much more diffuse and it takes on a lot more forms. Part of why I encouraged, I asked if we could have the word obesity in this episode, and part of why I call it the anti-obesity assemblage, is because it is an assemblage that really specifically targets this thing that has been constructed as obesity.
Part of enabling obesity elimination is the production of the concept of obesity itself. That includes things like the BMI categories, and weight classifications, and scales in schools, and Fitbits, and now those smart mirrors that’ll tell you what your BMI is by looking at you or whatever.
Chavonne (she/her):
Oh my God. I did not know that.
Jenn (she/they):
I hadn’t even have heard of that.
Chavonne (she/her):
That’s horrifying.
Rachel (she/her):
This is what I get for having lived in San Diego. Go to the mall and see those startup stores where they offer that.
I want to be really specific here. It also includes all of the efforts to rebrand and re-quantify fatness that don’t rely on the BMI. Those are still, for sure, part of the anti-obesity assemblage. So looking at the AMA ruling from last summer where they were like, “BMI is racist. Maybe we shouldn’t use it. We’re going to use waist circumference instead. More accurate classification of pathological fatness.” No, that’s all part of it.
Jenn (she/they):
Yeah, “Visceral fat is the ultimate enemy,” is the same propaganda as, “Toxins in the environment are going to put cancer in your body.” It’s already in there. Our body’s taking care of it. It’s the extremes of toxicity that we should be talking about, not the everyday stuff.
What I mean by that is not “Over a certain BMI, I’m going to care about that.” I mean when the person whose body it is says, “This is not okay for me. Something’s not okay in this body,” that lived experience part, where it’s really about … It’s often them coming up against systems. “I don’t have access,” right? It’s a challenging thing that comes up.
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah. All of that is one huge part of the anti-obesity assemblage, the production of obesity as a thing that can be targeted for elimination. When people go to understand anti-fatness structurally, I think they go to the BMI because it is so ubiquitous and because it is so clearly built into medical systems and infrastructure and epidemiology.
I love to say all of that work is good and is part of this model, but obesity elimination is enabled in a lot of other ways too. So part of coming up with the anti-obesity assemblage has been synthesizing all of those, and putting them all together, and saying, “These are all part of one thing.”
In the chapter in my dissertation where I write about it, I talk about the production of obesity is one way that obesity elimination is enabled. Another way is the construction of obesity as an eliminable threat. That has two parts. One, the construction of it as something that can be eliminated, which is like …
When we talk about eliminating forms of human difference, usually that’s bad.
Chavonne (she/her):
Yeah. [inaudible]
Rachel (she/her):
Truly, some people have come for me and been like, “This is very extreme. Why would you say this? Why are you talking about eliminating obesity?” I’m like, “I’m not saying it. They’re saying it.”
Chavonne (she/her):
Exactly.
Rachel (she/her):
Go at the academic literature. They’re very straightforward that this is their goal.
Jenn (she/they):
The war.
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah, right? There’s a war. And then threat. Those things are often things that come together in things like the war on obesity, and all of that news media that is constantly like, “Obesity is killing X, Y, Z number of people.” “Obesity causes A, B, C comorbidities.” “Obesity is why the US has worse COVID death rates than other countries.” All of that. All of that is part of the anti-obesity assemblage, and is not separate from any of these other things that we’re talking about.
Jenn (she/they):
It’s like a contextual bias that gets created, that everything is seen through this lens. That pisses me off, Rachel. Not what you were saying [inaudible] Right?
Again, that’s reminding me of body terrorism. This term, reorienting around the intention and maleficence and direction of this, it’s just sounding really powerful as you’re describing it. I remember you talking about you felt so lucky that you could do this as your dissertation, that your committee’s with you on this. I’m feeling really grateful for that now because it’s just making me curious about a lot of ways …
Even in what I was saying before, I’m like, “I wonder if I said something in that language that’s along these lines,” because if it’s so subliminal and propaganda … It’s making me really curious about what other nuance and subtleties are there, how it’s normalized, which makes me think that what you’re doing is really powerful.
Because I love when I’m going to question what I just said earlier. I’ll leave that as is, because I don’t know. I have to think about it and then listen to what I said. But just noting that.
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah. Well, I think that that brings up another mechanism of it for me. The third way that I talk about enabling obesity elimination, and these three things are not exhaustive, they’re just big ones that I picked out, is the production of new knowledge about obesity. This is the one that I think is really dangerous.
Well, let me back up and say, although when we’re talking about this, a lot of it sounds really intentional, someone does not actually have to have the intention of eliminating obesity in order to be participating in the anti-obesity assemblage. The AOA is what I’ll call it for ease of speaking. I don’t think every journalist who runs a headline about the obesity epidemic or whatever new finding is actually like, “I wish that all the fat people in my life weren’t there anymore.” Actually, intentionality doesn’t matter as much as the consequences of what they’re doing.
Chavonne (she/her):
The impact, yeah.
Rachel (she/her):
This thing about producing new obesity knowledge, it sounds obvious when you call it producing new obesity knowledge. However, that part of the AOA includes really, really well-intentioned, smart, social-justice-oriented people who make claims about things like the obesogenic environment, things like racism causing weight gain, things like food additives causing weight gain, things like the injustice of, for example, Black women being targeted for weight loss through public health interventions when a lot of Black women don’t have time or energy or resources to do that. It’s all these things. These are things that we are supporting.
Jenn (she/they):
Or support, or, “Hello. These people are the backbone of things and they’re not getting what they need.” I could go on. I immediately want to stand up for Chavonne and say, “That’s right. I know you’re exhausted, Chavonne.” I know you’re exhausted, the exhaustion that that creates.
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah. The thing that I want to be so clear about is I see all these people, I see these arguments, I see the intentions of easing the burden on people who are already marginalized, moving the blame from individuals to structures. I want to be so clear. All of that is part of the anti-obesity assemblage. Despite the really good intentions of people saying that, it does end up enabling the elimination of obesity, because every one of those things is like a causal claim about how obesity comes to be, which means it is also a thing that can be targeted to produce a world without obesity.
This is the thing that I see again and again and again, is what feels like a really progressive take, actually strengthening and growing the anti-obesity assemblage. It becomes a rationale to put more resources towards anti-obesity efforts. It becomes a reason to pay more attention to obesity as a problem, et cetera, et cetera.
Chavonne (she/her):
How do you combat that? We’re not going to stop … Maybe this is another chapter in your dissertation. You don’t [inaudible] have to have the answer, because Lord knows I don’t. But we’re not going to stop talking about food apartheids. We’re not going to start talking about all of the kinds of things that can play into this.
I don’t have an answer. I’m just talking out loud. I don’t know. I don’t actually expect you to have one. I just wanted to say it out loud, I think.
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah. But we do. I’ll plug my bestie and collaborator, Mikey Mercedes.
Jenn (she/they):
Yay, Mikey, [inaudible] the podcast.
Rachel (she/her):
Love Mikey. [inaudible] podcast.
Jenn (she/they):
We love Mikey.
Chavonne (she/her):
Love Mikey.
Rachel (she/her):
Who wrote such a good piece about food apartheid. Truly, the answer is food apartheids are bad because they’re food apartheids and not because they produce fat people. If we talk about them as bad because people deserve food sovereignty, that’s an argument that doesn’t rely on anti-obesity rhetoric, so we can do that.
Chavonne (she/her):
[inaudible]
Rachel (she/her):
This is not a solution, but it is a political move that I myself do and I recommend to other people, which is shifting the focus from fatness as the problem to anti-fatness as the problem.
I wrote an article that I cannot get published for the life of me.
Jenn (she/they):
Oh no.
Rachel (she/her):
I know. It was called Fat Oppression is a Feminist Issue, which is a play on, of course, Susie Orbach’s book, which in case anyone listening does not know, Fat is a Feminist Issue is just a straight-up diet book. It’s a weight loss book. It is not the fat feminist manifesto that I think a lot of us want it to be.
Chavonne (she/her):
It makes me mad she took … I don’t [inaudible] pronouns. That person used that ridiculously good title for that. I think it’s such a good title.
Rachel (she/her):
Yes. Even though that sounds like a really simple thing, it is actually a really, really huge reframing to stop focusing on, “Well, it’s wrong that we target poor people for weight loss, because they live in food deserts that make them fat.” The problem is not why they’re fat. The problem is that they’re being targeted. So just focus on that, right?
Anti-fatness is a form of injustice and it causes a lot of harm. We have truly not even scratched the surface of those harms, because it’s really hard to connect these really broad things like headlines about the obesity epidemic to what they actually do to individual people, or what they do to the allocation of public health resources, and on and on.
It’s very broad. It can be very abstract. It’s much easier to talk about, “Well, we know that this makes people fat,” because we can see fat people. We can see their bodies as evidence of this injustice. So it’s really tricky. It’s really difficult. But it is, I think, a viable strategy.
Chavonne (she/her):
I think so. Absolutely. [inaudible]
Jenn (she/they):
Yeah. You’re highlighting, you’ve mentioned, public health intervention. I’ve always found that positional language very interesting, that we were … I have a public health degree. That’s supposed to be my job is to intervene. But you’re right that it’s intervening in what the problem is.
I’ve always been sitting at the level of, “I don’t like that we’re supposed to intervene. Who made us the people who are doing that? Why would we choose that?” It just feels very oppressive and very power struggle. It’s not just intersectionality, but the matrix of domination oriented, where it’s like, “I’m in charge. Look at me.” It’s so white-supremacist-oriented too.
But what if it’s intervening about anti-fatness? You just put a whole different context on that that I’m finding extremely interesting. It’s hard not to dismiss my own entire education at the graduate level sometimes. Preventive nutrition is what they call it inside of public health, if you want to, in the future, become a dietician. It’s like prevent what? According to who? Who’s going to be harmed in that? What’s the direction?
I’m still hearing that direction’s really important, and you’re really … Which direction are we looking in? It’s connected to everything else. You’re reminding me that if we make it an anti position, which can be very fraught inside of supposedly inclusive environments … We’re like, “Well, we are not anti though,” right? It is a form of purity or superiority, where they’re being very exclusive, just so they know. It’s really like if we are further marginalizing the harmed group with our good intentions, it seems like we should ask them what they want to do.
As three fat people sitting together talking right now, I’m like, “I wouldn’t say get rid of my fatness.” I don’t know how you both feel, but I would say … I just prefer the pressure and the intensity and the pathologization of my body just leaves my care in the medical system, and leaves the judgment of people who won’t …
I’m a person who masks everywhere. I have yet to have been told I’m not going to be served in this city or anything like that. But I can feel I’ve gotten a little close to that. It feels the same about my body when there’s no chair in the waiting room that can support … or there’s just one, and seven people are going for it, right?
It’s powerful. I don’t know. It’s expansive or something, instead of really contained. Everything about this reorientation of the direction is coming across to me as very powerful.
Thinking like Chavonne … I don’t remember when we talked about this, Chavonne, because I don’t know what time … But we talked about this study that talked about how autoimmune diseases happen more often to people perceived as women of color or socialized as women, even if they don’t identify as women, because there’s just no direction where it’s unrelenting. It’s always exhausting.
It doesn’t even matter … I wonder your perspective on this, Chavonne. I could even see it doesn’t really matter the level of privilege in other ways. That doesn’t matter when you walk into certain places. They don’t know those other levels of privilege.
Chavonne (she/her):
Correct.
Jenn (she/they):
So the anti is starting to strike me as really important in the way that you framed this. I love that. Because this endless debate of who can be the purest intuitive eating counselor is really boring to me. It’s not even interesting. It feels like it’s part of the AOA, now that we’re talking about it. Put it on the back burner. I’m like, “What if they can’t access care? Don’t tell them to put it on the back burner.”
Speaking as an intuitive eating counselor … Don’t worry. [inaudible] at least know I speak this way all the time. I just don’t understand that particular … I don’t know. I guess I didn’t have an understanding, and you’re helping me place why that anti can be really important, because it’s a position.
Sometimes as clinicians, we are told to not be human and to not have a position. Like, “Don’t be positional. Be neutral.” I’m like, “What is that, as a person? What is neutral? What is objective? What even are those things?”
So it’s just really cool what you’re … I don’t know. I feel a little fiery in here as we’re talking. I just named some things that it was pinging in my brain. I didn’t want to speak for both of you, but that anti is just feeling really valuable.
Chavonne (she/her):
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. I agree with that. I have been honest about the fact that I come from a different socioeconomic background than some people. But Kanye West … I hate that I bring this person up all the time, because I have lots of thoughts about Kanye West that I could get into. But there’s that song where he says, “Even if you’re in a Benz, you’re still an N-word in a coop.” I think about that at least once a week. It doesn’t matter what I look like. It doesn’t matter what I’m driving. It doesn’t matter what spaces I am in. I am a Black woman always.
Speaking of the positionality, I went to a decolonizing therapy training, which was life altering, life altering. I believed in it so much I paid for my entire staff to go. We are all going. We are going to sit in this. She was talking … It wasn’t the main presenter, but someone was talking about something, and we did a debriefing after. All I could think of the whole time is like, “This is why we’re fucking dying.” This is why Black and brown people socialized as female are dying at record rates. Because it is unrelenting, as you said. Absolutely. Yeah.
One thing that was pinging in my head as you were speaking, Rachel, is there an anti-Black assemblage? Yes. Is there an anti-disabled assemblage? Yes. All of these … Are these the next books you’re going to …
Jenn (she/they):
That’s true.
Chavonne (she/her):
Not that you don’t have … You don’t have anything to do. You can write 17 more books. It’s fine.
Rachel (she/her):
No, you nailed it, 100%. This is also credit to Rowan who is always pushing me to think bigger.
Jenn (she/they):
Yay, Rowan.
Rachel (she/her):
Actually, one of the next articles that we’re going to write is basically that the anti-obesity assemblage is only one of a broader phenomenon that we’re calling eliminationist assemblages.
Jenn (she/they):
That gave me creepy chills.
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah, any time you’re targeting a way of being for elimination, you set up an eliminationist assemblage. The thing is … This has been really tricky for me to wrap my head around. But even for things that I think many people would like to eliminate, things like Alzheimer’s, when you specifically are focused on elimination, that means that you’re going to be devoting resources, you’re going to be funding certain projects and not others, that you’re going to be … Basically that when you set up an eliminationist assemblage, it means that you’re not doing other things.
Rowan and I have talked about this a lot. There’s now some evidence that this focus on curing or-
Rachel (she/her):
There’s now some evidence that this focus on curing or eliminating Alzheimer’s has led to, yeah, a huge investment in research, and not a comparable investment in caring for people with Alzheimer’s. The people who are alive with it are not really benefiting from this focus, and it’s like, yeah, because when you’re focused on eliminating something, you’re not focused on caring for the people who have it. And so eliminationist assemblages truly can go from incredibly evil to just something that we should pay attention to, even if we’re not necessarily contesting the outcome. So yes, you got it.
Chavonne (she/her):
Yeah. I was like, “Oh, spot on.” I know people don’t use the word crazy, and I understand why. But I’m like, “I have very well-documented clinical depression.” I’m like, “That sometimes that’s how I feel-”
Jenn (she/they):
You can take that term back.
Rachel (she/her):
… show people it doesn’t bother me. In my head was I like, crazy, which I would never say, but anti-mental health. Yeah. But I’m like, who would I be if I had had this experience? What is this baseline of not having to not, I don’t even know what my life would look like if I didn’t have to take medication. Like wow, it’s such a huge part of who I am.
And I’ll say one eliminationist assemblage that I think a lot of people can recognize really fast is the anti-autism assemblage. Yes, 100%. 100%. All of that. We got to find the genetic basis of autism so we can snip it out or do selective abortion or whatever. And one of the things that I really admire about autistic self-advocacy is they see it and they call it out. And I would love if we were better able to do that as fat activists to be like, let’s look at how autistic self-advocacy is going. Doing a really good job actually.
Jenn (she/they):
Absolutely anti, I’ll put in trigger warnings here. So anti-ABA would be part of that as a self-diagnosed autistic person, you just let me up. So I’m going to just say a couple, but I’m like, oh, wow. This really relates a name kind of autism where you’re supposedly high functioning, which is a very eugenicist term anyway, functioning for who? It’s not for yourself, but the ABA applied behavior analysis, a thing that is offered to dieticians to be trained in to manipulate their clients and patients. I was trained in it. I had to undo it. I am like, oh, this is so easy. Oh, you just reinforce, oh, you just do this. Right? But I was actively harming myself and other people at the same time. And the person who that particular, not that term, is not really considered as part of the autism spectrum. The spectrum’s even questioned.
Now, there’s a lot of stuff, but the person who came up with that is a literal Nazi. That is who this person was, and there’s a quote where they talk about how people with autism are not human beings, so what he’s doing is creating their humanity for them. What a statement. That’s my paraphrase. There’s a paragraph that you can easily Google that’s from his book and his research actually. But that the idea of the MMR vaccine created this in people, even though that doctor was disbarred, all of his research was removed from the annals of research because it wasn’t actually real on and on and on. And that could still continue. It reminds me of a lot of things related to the O words, because we’re like, that’s not a thing. Oh, they just changed the categories overnight. What do you mean the research became more modern?
No, we just decided that we were going to be anti-fat, so anti autism, anti neurodivergence in general. We could actually go a lot of places there, including things like OCD and schizophrenia that are so highly understood and are co-occurrences of other neurodivergences, hello OCD over here that like my PDA and my persistent drive for autonomy, and my OCD love to fight it out. They love to give me multiple layered stories of intrusive thoughts and obsessions where they love, love, love it. But really that kind of space, ABA, anti autism, will never help me understand curing it, eliminating it, controlling it, management. I’m even kind of considering some terms around diabetes, anti diabetes is the direction I’m taking myself in because if you sit in a place of, I think I’m interested in protecting from anti-fatness and dismantling that you have to start doing it about diabetes too, if you’re a dietitian anyway, because otherwise an eating disorders, you’re not really going to get very far. And dietitians don’t know a lot about that topic.
Sorry, dietitians. You really do have to specialize. It takes a lot of training and it’s very hard, but I have to undo my training as I do it because it’s part of the AOA. There’s so many sections in that where I’m like, no, no, that’s not what happened. We just changed the categories overnight. No, that’s not what happened. We don’t want to be weight neutral by changing the phrasing of how we refer to the O words. That’s not it either. So just sort of on this, I’m a very tendential person in general, but really, really this week, I was telling Shama earlier what I’m really noting and saying is it’s absolute, I’m really hearing what you’re saying. The intentionality is not the important part. It’s the direction.
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah, yeah. The consequences.
Jenn (she/they):
And how many things overlap in that new direction if we just let ourselves go in that direction, actually sounds like it might simplify the processes in that direction, which I’m just finding, I don’t know, kind of hopeful among a big old pile of stinky.
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah. I would say one of the things that has been most relieving to me is when you name the AOA, when you recognize it and you start to see it’s not hidden. It’s very concrete. And there are many people who straight up admit to participating in it and making it visible means that we can dismantle it. And because it has been so invisible, I feel like we’ve targeted little pieces of it, like the BMI, and when you destabilize a little piece of it, if you’re not also working to destabilize the whole thing, it can, I mean, not work for one, but some of my research is showing it can actually have a paradoxical effect of actually strengthening the assemblage, which I don’t have to talk about here. Very, very, very complicated. But I understand though.
Jenn (she/they):
Yeah, that actually makes logical sense to me. If the intention isn’t it, then even the absolute most, this is the way we’ve always done it, look at what it’s doing in this micro kind of way, could really be doing something nasty on a macro level or vice versa. Oh, it looks great macro, but look at all the damage on the micro level. Correct.
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah. Yeah. I talked about this in my weight stigma conference presentation actually. But the simple thing about the challenging of the BMI and then the AMA, like saying, oh, we agree with the challenges, but we’re going to just do it more sophisticated, is networks of expertise can actually benefit from being challenged because if they respond to the challenge and say, incorporate it and show that they’re responding, it can actually increase their legitimacy because it seems like they’re responsive to critique.
So I think this is a whole other article that I’m working on, but I think a lot of fat activism, again, really so well-intentioned and stuff that I needed to get where I am has operated by attempting to undermine critique, destabilize weight science or obesity science and show it’s biased here. It’s wrong here, they’ve exaggerated here. And I think all of that is correct, but I don’t think that it has necessarily weakened the AOA. I think that in some cases it has enabled the AOA to say, Ooh, this is a critique coming towards us. Let’s respond to it. And then we look, we’re being more scientific and we look like we’re being more culturally competent, and it’s really upsetting and it’s really scary.
Jenn (she/they):
It’s like missing a humility element where it becomes mutual, where it becomes, that makes so much sense. And just working with individuals, if you break down a word research, it does not ultimately work in addressing anything about their eating disorder because logic isn’t really where that is anyway. And so if you can’t change the lived experience, the felt experience, the, oh, it’s actually, I have a felt sense of safety, that’s different when I go into the world now, is it actually towards protecting from anti-fatness or not? Wow.
Holy. Siobhan and I talk a lot about journal topics, but I want to write a book in response to this. That’s how many thoughts I have. I want to fill a journal with this. This is very interesting because yeah, it’s just very interesting. I was about to say because, but it’s a lot of things, so I’ll just say it’s very interesting. It’s not going to be a small list. So I guess I’m just curious about, I so appreciate you talking about this and sharing this.
I’m really curious how investing in this and investigating this and putting yourself into this plays with your embodiment plays with the space you hold as a professor, as a researcher, anything like that. And I’m sure it’s constantly evolving and your positionality probably changes. I really loved the nod to Rowan and think bigger. It’s one of the scariest things about stuff like this is because we can really feel like we’re going to fail because we’re going bigger and bigger and bigger. We’re like, I’m just one person. All those sorts of stuff pops up. So it just makes me really curious if it feels okay to talk about that. I know it’s in progress. So maybe at this point, two weeks-ish out from being done from your dissertation, how does here in mid-ish October, how does that feel?
Rachel (she/her):
Okay. Well, I will say, and I think that I mentioned them last time too, but I have Rowan and then I have my closest collaborators who are Mikey, Mercedes, Monica, Creti, and Blakely H. Payne, I should say. She likes her middle initial. I’m a middle initial person.
Chavonne (she/her):
I get that.
Rachel (she/her):
If I did not have them, I would be lost no longer in grad school. Actually having fat interlocutors who share the same political goals is everything. And honestly, one of the best parts of the AOA is that it helps elucidate those political goals really well, because our goals are to dismantle the AOA in the interest of calibration.
Jenn (she/they):
Not just thoughts or talk, but how you live according to your morals, values, ethics. You all feel like a match in that way and a mutual way. I could almost picture you all holding each other up at different moments. Yeah,
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah. We’re doing that actually with Mikey right now as she’s going on the job market like I did last fall, and it is a full night there. Know Mikey is so brilliant. I hope that every single thing she applies to offers her the job. 100% they should.
Chavonne (she/her):
I do too.
Rachel (she/her):
But I will say actually the best part of moving was that I got to spend a week in an Airbnb with Blakely and Monica. They came to Michigan to help me settle in. And so even though I had to was at orientations all day, every day during that week, being with two other fat people where we could just be fat together and not make any qualifications, not make any excuses, just be comfortable, was transformative.
And we have all talked about it. And also, one of my favorite parts was that we went to tour together and we all bought the same dress, and we did a photo shoot wearing the same dress. Amazing. Sorry, I can tell you this because it’ll be delayed. We ordered it for Mikey also and Perfect. It just arrived at her house and she wasn’t yet. But eventually we will all get together the four of us, so we will all wear the dress. I love it. And it’s a dress that none of us like that much because it’s orange. It’s a terrible color for everyone. But it was like they had fantastic as it should be.
Jenn (she/they):
That feels like a secret story that all fat people know of. Like, well, this is what’s available.
Chavonne (she/her):
I had to put something on the tour.
Rachel (she/her):
Employees were pretty tickled though. They’re really enjoying that. We all bought the same dress. I love that so much. I love that so much. I mean, we do look like a group of traffic cones in some of the pictures that we took, but in the best way.
Chavonne (she/her):
So good. So good. Yeah.
Jenn (she/they):
Oh my God, I’m going to totally look and figure out what dress it was. That’s awesome. Well, thank So right in community, in mutuality, in shared practice, and going in the same direction together, not having to do it on your own. Wow. Who Siobhan is to me. So I relate to that. That’s my journey. We’re never alone Siobhan even. I mean, Siobhan and I talk practically every day, but even if we don’t, I could still feel you. It’s still there. It’s always there.
Chavonne (she/her):
Well, because we text each other in our brains a lot, and then it’s been a week, and we’re like, what? In know what’s been going on for the last six days? I don’t understand what happened. Who, but it sounds like you have that, and that’s such a beautiful gift. It’s the biggest gift. It really is.
Rachel (she/her):
Again, would not have made it to this point without them. MI have been so nurtured and so encouraged to keep going when I really did not want to keep going because getting a PhD is awful. Yeah, it sounds like it. Sorry. It really is. Right. So I think, but in terms of how this has another big way that seeing the AOA has influenced me, has really been in the way that I navigate all the stuff that’s coming out about GLP-I’s. And part of why I started looking at this at all in the way that I have, and part of why I did my dissertation the way that I did, was because of people claiming that GLP-I’s will solve weight stigma.
Chavonne (she/her):
Sorry.
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah, right.
Jenn (she/they):
There was even a 60 minutes presentation on that.
Rachel (she/her):
And there’s the Oprah thing about the shame, the Oprah thing that I was thinking of. And so on the one hand, it has been really helpful to be able to say, is this trying to eliminate obesity? If yes, it is oppressive to fat people, it is not destigmatizing. Pretty clear, pretty straightforward, helpful. Dang, that was a good snippet, Rachel.
Jenn (she/they):
Great little elevator pitch there. I really liked that.
Rachel (she/her):
Thank you. Thank you. Exactly. And it seems like, it seems so straightforward once, so common sense pointed out to you.
Jenn (she/they):
It takes away medication from people with diabetes. The shortages are usually not happening from that direction of trying to cure the O word. It’s really happening with people who are just going month by month versus buying a stockpile. Right? That’s why the shortages are existing. So it’s actively harming fat people as well. You don’t have to be fat to have diabetes, but the people who are fat and have diabetes like myself, it harms them when they can’t get their medication because someone else is the final goal can finally be reached. If I’m just on this medication for the rest of my life and my body won’t let me eat, and I’m not going to go too much into that because it’s going to be very triggering, but it’s a distinct feeling, isn’t it? When that started coming around of like, oh, they think they finally figured it out.
Just like with FenFen, we can kind of hit every moment on the timeline. Oh my God. So boring. Right. I guess I have one final question on this. Does it ever just bore you what you figure out where you’re just like, it’s like, oh, this is so textbook AOA. This is so, why is this here? I’m just curious because something I’ve noticed in positionally being pro-fat people that I get really bored, not when my clients bring stuff to me, but in the world where I’m like, oh my gosh, the eye roll almost hurts of how toxic I know it’s going to be, and we can watch the pattern. We know what it’s going to be. And that kind of bores me how repetitive it is. So I was just curious about that. That’s a very neurodivergent question. This is just bore you because boredom irritates me in theory. It kind of builds a lot of emotion. I’m curious.
Rachel (she/her):
No, not yet.
Jenn (she/they):
Good. Not yet. This is your, that sounds like that. You’re a better person than me to do this. I think I’d be like, oh, this is so irritating.
Rachel (she/her):
I will say, I worry that other people will get bored of me. People will come to me and be like, what about this? What about this? And I’ll be like, yeah, that’s the AOA. Yep, that’s the AOA. And I’m like, at some point people are just going to get tired of me being like, is it working towards obesity? Elimination? You have your answer.
Chavonne (she/her):
Just tattoo it on, and you just point to your arm every time you’re like, AOA.
Jenn (she/they):
Well, we’re not bored of you. Never. I’m so grateful you’re in the world doing this work. Have such a supportive partner. Have a place that’s supportive of what you’re doing, having a committee that’s supportive of what you’re doing. I’m feeling really grateful for that, because with resistance, I wonder if the boredom would kick in. So I’m feeling really grateful for that. And also, I was just like, that was a big old tell on myself that I’m like, boring. You’re not saying anything boring, but it’s just, if I was discovering that it’s all the same thing. It’s just the first kind of exposure to the term diet culture, and just note, I’m like, oh my gosh. Everything, everything, everything I thought was a truth for my nutrition education is just dietitians learning diet culture. That’s boring.
Rachel (she/her):
I think part of what keeps it from being boring for me is that it’s one thing to say, yep, that’s part of the AOA. It’s another thing to do the work of showing how it harms fat people of making that link between, yes, it’s part of the AOA and here’s what it does. Here’s why it’s
Chavonne (she/her):
Oppressive.
Rachel (she/her):
Like I said earlier, that link is really hard to do. There hasn’t really been a lot of research to try to make that clear. And so I think the part that stops me from getting bored is every time I’m like, yep, that’s part of the AOA. That’s part the AOA is like, okay, and now how can I show it? How can I show what this does to fat people? How can I even, it’s creative, even speculate or hypothesize about what it does. And that work, I think, could be a thousand people’s lifetimes. It’s immense. Oh, yeah. And we have done so little of it. And so that’s still exciting and motivating to me.
Jenn (she/they):
Thank you for that really cool reframe passion project. That’s great. Yes, exactly. Passion project. You get to be creative. You get to create a possible direction forward and try it. Wow.
Chavonne (she/her):
Yeah.
Jenn (she/they):
That was such a cool reframe. Love that.
Chavonne (she/her):
And you’re just getting started, and maybe a thousand people do it. Life work is the most beautiful thing to have your life story is the most beautiful thing. Yeah, I absolutely understand that, for sure. Yeah. And something I was thinking as you’re talking about the, sorry, because every time I say it in bl, I think of the Avengers, which is pretty appropriate because you said it’s like it’s, we’re gearing up and it’s going, and it’s like this train, you can’t slow down. So I’m thinking of this anti-obesity, Avengers, but something that’s really sitting with me as I was talking. Is there, what did you say? I’m really enjoying it really ticking me. Every time you say it, I’ve been like, just things are flying and just, so also, I have two children who love everything with the Avengers right now, but I, was thinking of all of these elimination assemblages that you mentioned.
And the reason this one is, I mean, they’re all important to talk about, but one of the reasons this is so important to talk about is it’s one of those, it’s not a protected class. And it is funny because Jen, you said, I wouldn’t want you to change my body. And in my head, I was like, today, I’m okay, but ask me next week. Ask me last week. Because we live in this society that is always, it’s telling you your body is wrong every single day. Every single day. I wake up in new ways. And so sometimes I’m like, if I’m being honest, yeah, I don’t know if I point want to be this size because I want to fit in a airplane seat without it being a big deal.
I want to get an office chair without, I’m not speaking for you, but get an office chair without having to have a full conversation about why. Because knowing me, I’d be like, well, I’m just going to let it cut off my circulation. I’m afraid of talking to people. That’s probably where I would’ve ended up, or I would’ve bought the thing and brought it in myself. But that’s also my privilege. But it’s so important. And if someone were saying, but if you ask me, would you never want to not be, I’m like, absolutely. not. That’s me. I love, this is me. And not just because it’s a protected class, but I think there’s much more encouragement for accepting yourself
A part of yourself if it’s not your body, if it’s not the size of your body. So I think that’s why this is so important. It is so pervasive from macro to the micro. I was thinking about this a few days ago where I was in my staff kitchen and somebody had made these gorgeous muffins, and I was like, oh, I really want to eat those, but I shouldn’t. And I walk away, and then five minutes later I come back and I was like, oh, no, it’s because it has butter and I’m lactose intolerant, and I have this whole thing, and people are looking at me just go away. Nobody even thought about it more than that.
So I was like it about, it’s, I’m not food shaming, just I’m going to die if I eat something with milk in it. But just how pervasive it can be on the super tiny level and just go, go. And like Jen said, it affects the macro and vice versa. And it’s so important. It shows up constantly. And I, maybe being a pessimist, I hope I’m wrong, but I feel like that’s going to be existing way past my existence too. Maybe it won’t because you’re doing such important work, but yeah, it’s just everywhere. So it’s really so important. It’s so necessary. Yeah.
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah. I think ever since I started engaging in fat activism, people would be like-
Rachel (she/her):
Ever since I started engaging in fat activism, people would be like, but what about me when I specifically want to lose weight for my health or because I want to fit in a plane seat or whatever. And my response has always been like, yeah, that is a really reasonable response to being oppressed. It’s trying to escape the oppression. I get it. And in some ways, theorizing the AOA has been a relief to be like, oh, it’s so big. Of course, of course, we want to escape it. It’s so big and it’s so powerful. And in some ways it’s been really scary to be like, oh, this is never going away. It’s so big. It’s so powerful.
One thing that has been very motivating for me personally, and I will not say that anyone else needs to feel this, but the AOA is self-reinforcing in that fat people are targeted for elimination. We engage in these elimination practices. We experience the weight of this bearing down on us all the time. We get sicker, we become miserable, we suffer. And all of that is used as evidence that we need to keep doing the AOA. We need to keep eliminating obesity. And so that recognizing that self-reinforcing cycle has been very motivating for me where I’m like, how dare they? How dare they?
Chavonne (she/her):
How fucking dare they? Yeah.
Rachel (she/her):
How fucking dare they? That’s what I was just thinking. Mikey and Monica call this the stigma harm justification cycle. That person is stigmatized, they experience harm.
Chavonne (she/her):
That’s so good.
Rachel (she/her):
And then the harm is re-attributed to fatness, which becomes justification for increased stigma.
Chavonne (she/her):
Absolutely. Absolutely. Wow.
Rachel (she/her):
That’s kind of one thing that I can tap into. It doesn’t always work though. For sure it doesn’t always work. And I already had a huge well of compassion for fat people who are like, I can’t do this.
Chavonne (she/her):
Yeah, absolutely.
Rachel (she/her):
And I would say it has made that even deeper. And it’s like, I want to raise consciousness. I want people to see this monstrosity for what it is. Maybe monstrosity isn’t even the right term because I like a lot of monsters.
Jenn (she/they):
Yeah. And it’s spooky season, so we’re very pro monster right now.
Chavonne (she/her):
I love monsters.
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah. It’s a fucking oppressive system for what it is, but we’re living in it. Right? And I think really, it’s hard for me to imagine that there’s anyone in the US who is not made part of the AOA, non-consensually because it’s the first time you have your height and weight recorded. It’s like you’re in it now you’re legible. And that’s really also scary and shitty so rough.
Jenn (she/they):
It’s rough, yeah.
Rachel (she/her):
I will say…
Jenn (she/they):
Yeah, go ahead.
Rachel (she/her):
Really quick. The one thing that I will say is that just because I have that empathy, just because I recognize that this is what’s going on does not mean that pursuing weight loss is somehow magically not fat phobic anymore.
Chavonne (she/her):
Correct.
Rachel (she/her):
It still is.
Chavonne (she/her):
Right, absolutely.
Rachel (she/her):
Pursuing obesity elimination still fat phobic.
Chavonne (she/her):
Absolutely.
Rachel (she/her):
And that’s fine if that is a choice that you get to make. But I will not. People really want absolution from me very often, and I’m not willing to give it.
Chavonne (she/her):
I cannot do that, yeah.
Rachel (she/her):
Endless empathy, but not absolution. Okay, sorry.
Jenn (she/they):
Wow. No, I wanted you to finish that because actually I was going to ask a question. You already answered it. But there’s like compassion fuels you forward. The justice angle fuels you forward. This is your life’s work. This is your passion project fuels you forward. Anything in this direction benefits your existence in the world and makes it so it’s less likely to be eliminated no matter how small of a dent that is. I just appreciate that really expanded perspective because I noticed for myself, this is scary. And I’m like, when I ask a question, do you get bored? I’m very rarely bored. So I was like, why am I asking that kind of question? Because it scares the shit out of me. So I’m just noting that for myself and anyone listening, I ask questions like that when I’m like, fuck. Right?
But you’re in it all the time. So that sort of practicality about it, that reality of it can really be fostered and constructed into something you find more meaningful to your existence, to avoiding anti-fatness, in fact, going in the other direction. So I just really appreciate what you’re sharing because this is why I was calling it your passion project last time too, I think because I don’t know if you know this about yourself. Your posture has changed. You’re lit up.
Chavonne (she/her):
Absolutely have.
Jenn (she/they):
Things that tickle up. We’re laughing about some of the hardest shit I think we’ve ever talked about on this entire podcast maybe. We’re releasing and we’re in it with you. And so I just wanted to reflect back to you that there’s a really expansive, inviting, welcoming, interesting the fact that people are looking to absolve themselves through you tells me what an invitation you are. That’s just not the invitation you meant. Right?
That’s what happens when we’re in an invitation, right? We’re like, dang, I didn’t mean that. So I can also hear something that I really value in you, which is your boundaries that protect you. I’m also hearing that Rowan’s a protector in that kind of way.
Chavonne (she/her):
Oh, my gosh, the biggest.
Jenn (she/they):
And these other beautiful people in your life. Ooh, it’s giving good chills now, little goosies, that feels good. There’s just, we can’t do it alone is also part of this. Yes, if I was doing it alone, of course I’d be bored. I’d be terrified. I’m doing it alone, and it feels too big and I’d move on with my life. But it’s really that connectedness. So I just appreciate that because I don’t think there’s a lot of people expressing that very clearly, at least in a way that I’ve tracked. If I’ve missed someone, send me something.
But I haven’t seen that very often. Absolutely, in our conversation with Mike, we were also laughing about really, really, really hard shit. We also were like, come back. Right? Same experience of you’re such an invitation. Mikey is such an invitation. I only know Monica from social media or from the podcast. I just apparently noticing other people. But there’s such an invitation that you all are that I’m just getting present to again. And I just wanted to name that because it’s so palpable in my body right now. And it’s such a cool thing.
I actually wrote down read dissertation? I was like, can we read the unpublished article? Can we read the dissertation? I’m just noticing that even in an academic sense, I wonder what an invitation you are, and I have a guess that you’re quite an invitation. And academia hates invitations. It feels threatened by these. But if we’re already the threat, why not be a bit of a threat just in the direction we’re actually trying for is really why I’m saying all of this. So I just am in awe of you, Rachel, and I’m just really grateful for this conversation and for you sharing your passion with us. Can you feel it Chavonne? Don’t you feel it? I can feel it.
Chavonne (she/her):
Oh, yeah. Yeah, it’s incredible.
Jenn (she/they):
I’m super compartmentalized today. I’ve wanted to cry five times. It’s just not going to happen. But I keep having these waves of emotion, of this kind of hope that you generate from being this kind of invitation. It keeps me curious. It keeps me invested and interested, and I think I just needed that today. So you really showed up for me in that way. So I wanted to share that with you because we don’t know when we’re invitations unless someone tells us. So I wanted to tell you.
Chavonne (she/her):
Absolutely. And I feel like it’s easy to get into that pit of despair, and then you get to talk to someone who’s really jazzed by, and I’m like, oh, okay. I’m in it. I’m in it. I’m in it. I’m not going to go put my head under my pillow for the rest of the day because I’ve been thinking about it, and I want to cry. So it’s just you bring such energy to it.
Jenn (she/they):
Yes. Yourself. I think you’re bringing yourself.
Chavonne (she/her):
Yourself, yeah. And it’s just such a gift to be present to it. Yeah, absolutely.
Rachel (she/her):
Thank you. I will say I’ve never described myself as an invitation before, but I will say I do know that it brings people in because it’s theory, the anti obesity sandwich is a theoretical concept and that means that it can be applied in a lot of different ways. It is explicitly meant to be generative.
Chavonne (she/her):
Oh, I love that.
Rachel (she/her):
That was actually my goal. That’s part of how I got to it, is I was looking at the fat studies literature and again, with all the love in my heart, because this is what got me to where I am, I looked at it and so much of it was people coming from a specific discipline and being like, here are the tools of my discipline. I’m going to bring them to the case study of fatness or anti fatness. And so here is a sociological approach to fat phobia in media, or here is a historical account of the intertwining of anti fatness and anti blackness. Very important work.
But I was like, what is fat studies theory? What are we missing by not considering this as something that is its own thing? And instead always trying to bring other tools to it or to say, oh, this theory over here can help explain this part of anti fatness or whatnot. So part of it was actually me being like, I love fat people. I want theory that is going to support fatness and value fatness. And that means taking anti fatness really seriously as its own thing. And so refusing to use other tools, but actually try to work from anti fatness as its own thing is how I got to the AOA. And for me…
Jenn (she/they):
You see Broccoli just wake up to the invitation that you are? Did you see that? For those who can’t see, my dog is stretching in the background and like yes, just living in this invitation.
Rachel (she/her):
And so I think part of why it is so inviting is because it is theory that starts with valuing fat people’s lives and valuing fatness. And because it’s theory, because it’s not just like I took this other theory and here’s how it applies to this case, it actually does open up a lot of possibilities. It opens up all these routes for analysis.
Jenn (she/they):
Because you made it so it can enable the direction you want. I get it.
Rachel (she/her):
And so I don’t think fat studies has had a lot of that. And I think the terms that we have have not been as precise. They’ve been a little wigglier. And it’s still been very helpful for a lot of people, things like diet culture or the diet industrial complex. It’s like that’s really useful, this being even more specific and more precise.
Chavonne (she/her):
Absolutely.
Rachel (she/her):
It’s really useful. And so my first foray into publishing in fat studies was about theory, and I hated it the whole time. And I don’t consider myself a natural theoretician. I don’t love doing theory. I’m not a very abstract thinker. This is one of the things that Rowan is really great for is they’re super abstract, and I’m very concrete.
Chavonne (she/her):
Interesting.
Rachel (she/her):
But our intellectual collaboration, it has been a lot of generating theory. People aren’t able to do this kind of analysis, and I really want them to be able to do it. And it’s not something I can do all alone. Like I said, it’s many lifetimes worth of work. So I think that’s part of why it feels so inviting, and that is absolutely a goal of mine.
Chavonne (she/her):
I love that.
Jenn (she/they):
Thank you for sharing that. Wow.
Chavonne (she/her):
That’s so cool. That’s so cool. I love that. It’s just such a gift to be present for it. Absolutely. Absolutely. So thank you.
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah.
[1:31:21]
Jenn (she/they):
Thank you so much for being here with us today. What do you think we can all do to make a difference with what we have learned here?
Rachel (she/her):
Big question.
Jenn (she/they):
We talk about the small stuff here. Just the small stuff.
Chavonne (she/her):
Only small.
Rachel (she/her):
Just the small stuff. Just this huge structural system of oppression. That’s all.
Jenn (she/they):
Exactly.
Rachel (she/her):
Okay. Well, for listeners who are in academia, I would say goodness gracious, do we need more research on this. And even for folks who aren’t in academia that work, like I said, of connecting anti-obesity efforts to their consequences, I actually think that’s something we can all do. And it desperately, desperately needs to be done. And that relates to the focus on anti-fatness rather than fatness itself because it honestly kind of shifts a lot of stuff from the debunking area to the how is this hurting fat people area.
And so that’s a very specific call to action, I suppose, in terms of what we can do with it. But more generally, knowing that the anti-obesity assemblage is there and starting to see all of its component parts, the thing that has been a relief about it as a theory for me is knowing that if we see it, we can undo it. So I am coming from a communication department and I get questions often, what can we do? And I’m like, yeah, if we saw half as many headlines about the obesity epidemic as we currently do, the world would be a better place.
If we had journals who said, actually, we don’t want to publish articles about obesity or with weight loss as an outcome, that would make the world a better place. Every person who fights to not be weighed at a doctor’s appointment and gets the message across that actually weighing people and constantly quantifying their bodies so that they can be targeted is part of the oppression, that is working to dismantle the AOA. Knowing that it’s so big and so everywhere also means that pretty much anyone can fight against it in their own little corner.
And so that’s not to say that it’s easy because it’s not. It’s really, really hard. But that it is accessible in a way that I think systems of oppression often don’t feel accessible. They feel overwhelming and huge and far away and yet somehow shaping our lives. It’s like, no, this one is also close by. It’s right there. And so I describe it very often as divestment. Divest from the AOA. And what that looks like is going to be different for everyone. And it really depends on recognizing the places in your life where you have power and agency and then using it towards that end. But I think it’s a really good place to start.
Jenn (she/they):
Yeah, it’s very reminiscent of activism, accomplice level work of what can you do where you are with what you have that’s in this direction.
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah.
Jenn (she/they):
I like the specificity actually.
Chavonne (she/her):
I do too.
Jenn (she/they):
It’s so big. It’s like my brain could be like hmm and just sit there forever in a buffered state.
Chavonne (she/her):
Yeah.
Jenn (she/they):
So I just really appreciate that.
Chavonne (she/her):
100%, absolutely.
[1:35:17]
Jenn (she/they):
And what are you up to and where can we find you? Online? I don’t know what other options. I was going to say in person. No, I was online and my brain just again, the rotating wheel stopped half way.
Rachel (she/her):
Come see me at Grand Valley State University, come see me in person. That sounds great.
Jenn (she/they):
We’re in the back. We’re like, yeah. Yeah, Rachel said it.
Rachel (she/her):
Truly, anyone who wants me to come and talk about the AOA to a class or an organization or whatever, I would be so happy to do that. So if you want to find me that way, you totally can. I will say I am taking a break specifically from clinician education that has a focus on changed practice partially because the flood of GLP ones into healthcare really makes these messages harder to get across. And partially because I am not a medical expert. I am in fact a social scientist and I am an expert at anti-fatness, but that’s not really often what clinicians want to learn about per se, when I can talk to them. So I would say if you want a clinical lecture Mikey and Monica, especially Monica are going to be your go-to people for that. And I truly bless Monica for how much more patience she has about this than I do. So that’ll be my one caveat is I have done that in the past and I am currently taking a break from it, but would love to talk about my dissertation work and my research.
And then other than that, I’m on the hell site that remains Twitter-ish on there. And I have a personal website that is pretty out of date at this moment, which is RachelEFox.com. And the best part about my website actually, is that it has my recorded talks.
Chavonne (she/her):
Oh, perfect.
Rachel (she/her):
And so if you want to watch videos of me talking, you can go see them there.
Jenn (she/they):
Yes.
Rachel (she/her):
But yeah, and then I’m on the website of Grand Valley State University School of Interdisciplinary studies, so you can also find me and my Grand Valley email there.
Chavonne (she/her):
Perfect. Perfect. Well, thank you. This has been such a gift. Such a gift. I’m so excited. This morning I was like, it’s happening. We took a very extended break from doing this, and it just is fantastic.
Jenn (she/they):
What a way to be back.
Chavonne (she/her):
You’re the one that we got, such a dream. Such a dream. So thank you sincerely.
Jenn (she/they):
Seriously, since June or something. I mean, we have been off of it for a while. So yeah.
Chavonne (she/her):
The summer was summering as it was for you.
Jenn (she/they):
Yeah. And then the fall was falling. That’s when I…
Chavonne (she/her):
And the fall was falling. All of it has.
Jenn (she/they):
There’s just been a lot, lot of stuff. And moving has been moving for you and all that stuff. Right? It has been a time. And so just really grateful that you were…
Chavonne (she/her):
Thanks for your time.
Jenn (she/they):
Yeah. Grateful you were here with us and shared of yourself with us and of your passion project with us. Just deeply, deeply, deeply grateful. Thank you.
Chavonne (she/her):
So honored.
Rachel (she/her):
Thank you.
Chavonne (she/her):
Absolutely.
Rachel (she/her):
And my dissertation, I believe, will be open access once it is up and available.
Chavonne (she/her):
When are you defending? I know you’re still figuring out where and how.
Rachel (she/her):
I am defending in the second week of December.
Chavonne (she/her):
Oh, you might not wanted me to say that yet.
Rachel (she/her):
Oh, no, no.
Jenn (she/they):
It’s real now.
Rachel (she/her):
Literally heard back from my final committee member yesterday. So it’ll be December 9th, 10th, or 11th. One of those.
Chavonne (she/her):
Oh, my. Okay.
Rachel (she/her):
The end is in sight. I did not think it would ever come, but it’s going to come.
Chavonne (she/her):
It’s here. It’s here. I love it.
Jenn (she/they):
So we will publish around that because your first episode’s going to be December 5th, and the last one’s going to be December 19th as to our current estimate, so that’s very cool.
Chavonne (she/her):
Perfect. Can we say Rachel Fox for the first one and Dr. Rachel Fox for the second?
Jenn (she/they):
Well, can we?
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah, you should be able to.
Jenn (she/they):
We’ll check with you. I highly doubt that. Okay. I know it’s the fee there, right? It’s like, oh my gosh. Sorry. That’s real, that’s so real.
Rachel (she/her):
Yeah. Through the University of California, I think there’s a pretty small fee to publish open access. And so part of actually why it’s taken me so long to defend is I’ve been spending this semester doing revisions such that my dissertation is not something that I’m embarrassed for other people to read once I make it open access. Yeah. I can send it to you, and then hopefully the link can go in the podcast show notes or something.
Chavonne (she/her):
I’m going to watch it with popcorn. I’m excited.
Jenn (she/they):
I am. Oh, my gosh.
Chavonne (she/her):
I can write the words I don’t understand. I’d be like, oh, that’s the whole thing.
Jenn (she/they):
Thrilling, oh, Rachel always makes it accessible. Something I appreciate, even on an academic level, your language is still accessible.
Rachel (she/her):
Thank you.
Jenn (she/they):
I really appreciate that. You’re illustrative, your narrative, it’s such a cool quality. Love that.
Chavonne (she/her):
Wow.
Jenn (she/they):
Oh, my gosh. So on the second we could say, and now presenting… And now.
Chavonne (she/her):
And maybe I can find an air horn sound. I’m finding that.
Rachel (she/her):
I honestly would love that. I would love an air horn sound.
Chavonne (she/her):
It’s happening. It’s happening. I’m doing it.
Jenn (she/they):
And you both had way better sound effects than me. I am very in awe of that. That was awesome. So thank you.
Chavonne (she/her):
I just do DJ Khaled for everything.
Jenn (she/they):
I love that. Rachel’s is good too.
Rachel (she/her):
Okay, noted.
Chavonne (she/her):
This has been wonderful though.
Jenn (she/they):
Well, we love you and we’re so glad to have you here with us. Thank you you for connecting with us, and we’ll be cheering you on.
Chavonne (she/her):
Absolutely.
Rachel (she/her):
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Jenn (she/they):
Bye. Bye.
Chavonne: Thank you for listening to Season 4 of the Embodiment for the Rest of Us podcast. Episodes will be published the first Thursday of every month-ish (in case we need some wiggle room) wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also find all podcast content (including the transcript and show notes) at our website, EmbodimentForTheRestOfUs.com.
Jenn: And follow us on social media, on both BlueSky @EmbodimentUs and on Instagram @EmbodimentForTheRestOfUs. We look forward to continuing this evolving and expanding conversation in our next episode.