Peace Talks Radio
Body Image
Paul Ingles: Today on Peace Talks Radio, we’ll explore peace and equality in the body positivity movement.
Alishia McCullough: The way that we view comparison now in our culture comes from this very deficit-based comparison. When we look at comparison from an abundant perspective, we’re able to see the differences, the nuances and in some ways, seeing ourselves as a reflection of that other person through that shared sense of beauty.
Paul Ingles: We’ll hear how our beauty standards can be exclusionary and unrealistic.
Kelvin Davis: I was getting some newer clothes because I wanted to be stylish. There was this bright red blazer that I really wanted but they only had a size 42. I asked for a size 48 and she was like, “No, we don’t have that size.” I asked her to look online or at other stores and she said, “Maybe you’re just too fat to shop here.”
Paul Ingles: The idea is about honoring all bodies today on Peace Talks Radio, the radio series and podcast on peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution. I’m series producer Paul Ingles today with correspondent Julia Joubert.
For centuries, humans have placed significant importance on beauty, being fit and being healthy. Society and more so in recent decades media and pop culture have often shaped these views and set the standards by which we compare ourselves to those standards and to each other.
In today’s program, we will hear two firsthand experiences, one from Cate Navarrete, a 19-year-old second generation Cuban American. Cate is the founder and executive director of Body Positive Alliance, a student-led nonprofit organization advocating for the acceptance and representation of all bodies. We’ll also hear from author and men’s style and body positive influencer Kelvin Davis.
We’ll also be turning to Alishia McCullough, a licensed clinical mental health therapist and founder of Black and Embodied Consulting, PLLC. In part two of our program, we will dig into the body positivity movement, explore where it came from, how it can be more inclusive and intersectional in its approach and address the health concerns around celebrating larger bodies.
We’ll begin today’s conversation with licensed clinical mental health therapist Alishia McCullough. Julia Joubert asked, “How would one define body image and what does it encompass?”
Alishia McCullough: When I think about body image, it really brings me to how do we experience ourselves in totality. I think that body image looks like our internal experience of ourselves. For example, how are we feeling safe in our bodies? How do we view our bodies in general? When we are moving around the world, how safe do we feel within our bodies? There is the internal and external, the way that the world views our bodies. There are different perceptions that have been placed on our bodies due to those world ideas. I think all of that goes into how we see our bodies and how we show up and experience autonomy, safety, belonging and dignity within ourselves.
Julia Joubert: Both Cate and Kelvin work extensively to advocate not only for their own bodies but for the acceptance and representation of all bodies. I want to go back to the beginning and ask what the history of their relationship with body image was like.
Cate Navarrete: I can remember struggling with body image as young as five years old. Growing up I was a competitive athlete, a swimmer all my life which I always think is important to highlight when I talk about where my body image issues came from.
Growing up, I was a very traditionally healthy kid. I lived an active lifestyle. I didn’t think too much about food or exercise, it was always just something that I am very grateful to say that I’ve had access to.
As I got older and went into middle school, I went through puberty and noticed that my body was changing a lot. It changed a lot faster than I could mentally keep up with. I think that this compiled with the fact that during my last year of middle school, I was forced to wear a back brace for my scoliosis which caused a lot of muscle atrophy. It definitely instilled this idea that my body was not good enough and that it had failed in some way and failed me by not living up to the standards that I set for myself.
At this time, I also noticed that as a girl who was going through puberty, your athletic performance sometimes diminishes and this is an unfortunate thing that happens to a lot of young girls, a sad reason why a lot of young girls stop playing sports. I was definitely a victim of that mentality and that mindset.
When I started high school, I developed two eating disorders, binge eating disorder and orthorexia. You could also describe what I was experiencing as anorexic tendencies or bulimia without purging, just compensatory behaviors.
It was this struggle that caused me to quit my sport eventually. It was also this struggle that inspired me to be so passionate about alleviating body image concerns for myself and my peers and ultimately led me to start a club at my high school which later turned into my nonprofit organization.
Kelvin Davis: I was fortunate enough to grow up in a body positive family. I have a heavier set mother. Within the black community, especially with women, it’s very normal for women in the African American culture to have curves and be bigger and have stretch marks on their hips and stomachs. For me, seeing that wasn’t foreign.
From a societal standpoint, especially since I was born in 1987 and raised in the ‘90s, the way that I grew up was not only was a certain body type more beautiful, but a certain skin tone was more beautiful as well. If you were lighter skin and black, you were beautiful. Being darker skinned and being chubby and short, all those factors were like you’re not beautiful from a societal standpoint.
For me, it was the fact of trying to understand how I felt so comfortable with my family, but when I leave that bubble and go outside, go to work, go to school, I feel so insecure.
Julia Joubert: In spite of the mostly supportive home environments that both Cate and Kelvin grew up in, both of them experienced levels of body dissatisfaction. I wanted to find out from Alishia how our larger societal system is potentially influencing the way that we see our bodies.
Alishia McCullough: When we look at systems, these are the things that tell us how we exist in the world, the things that give us access to different advantages or disadvantages in the world.
For example, I think about the system of Colonialism or Patriarchy or Supremacy, those are different systems that have been established that determine how safe we feel in our bodies. For example, due to the system of Patriarchy, often times as a woman, I might not experience the world in the same way as my male counterparts.
I have personally been impacted by a few of the systems, but the one that I think about is I am a black woman. Specifically, being black, the experience of White Supremacy and this idea that white is the standard in our culture has impacted the way that I exist in my body because if whiteness is the standard and our society has been structured around that whiteness, then my existence as blackness is considered deviant. Because of this default, there is a constant questioning of myself. Is this space affirming for me? Is this space safe for me? Will I be accepted? That’s something that I’ve had to contend with within my identity, just being someone who holds that black identity.
Julia Joubert: For Cate, external factors like the community she grew up in had a huge influence on her individual body image and also the way in which she viewed and treated other bodies.
Cate Navarrete: I definitely grew up not surrounded by diversity externally and I think that that made me very uncomfortable, not necessarily with people of other races, but people of other body sizes. From a young age, I was taught to respect people regardless of their race, their background or their identity, but something that was never included as a factor was body size. A larger body was deemed as not only unattractive and unhealthy but also of a lower status.
Being from a Hispanic family and having family members of a multitude of races, ethnicities, backgrounds and identities was something that I was exposed to in my home, but not necessarily taught to understand in a school or peer setting. Because of that, when you go to school and spend the majority of your time there as a kid, one becomes the dominating mindset as opposed to the other. For me, I fell much more susceptible to my peer environment.
Becoming an athlete, the sport of swimming especially is a very homogenous sport. Because of that it perpetuated and fueled a lot of narratives consistently about body size and athleticism and health that were confirmed by my peer environment. I definitely would pass judgement, not vocally, but internally at least.
Julia Joubert: I find it interesting in that similarly I was also a swimmer, and I can viscerally remember standing on the poolside comparing myself to my peers without really wanting to, (this is a moment of vulnerability) not with judgement, but kind of with judgement. I think a lot of the time I was making comparisons mentally in that society says that I’m better than this person but worse that that person purely because of how they look. I don’t know who this person is, I just know that I am better than them because I am not as big as them. I am worse than someone thinner because I am bigger than them. Growing up I really struggled with the link between body image and value or worth. I just want to clarify that there was that for you. Your value and how you looked were very much interlinked.
Cate Navarrete: One hundred percent. When I talked previously about my family validating my appearance and never instilling any negative body image in me was a double-edged sword. I think it’s important for parents to instill positive self esteem in their children, but at the same time, especially for young girls, doing so on the basis of her appearance is problematic for a number of reasons. One of the largest reasons is that the frequency of appearance validation can be, in a lot of ways, internally fulfilling but it also perpetuates the idea that your worth is linked to your appearance.
For me, having this happen at such a young age and then my body changing, I suddenly felt like my worth was then diminished because I didn’t look the way that I previously had when I was receiving validation. You could argue that part of that was the amount of validation that society was giving me because society tends to validate people who are smaller more than people who are larger, but at the same time, I think to some extent I really, really wanted other people’s approval on the way that I looked.
We all want validation. We all want to feel like we are worthy. Women are given more privileges when they are found to be conventionally attractive, so it makes sense that so many women tie their worth as a person to their physical appearance because that’s what we are taught to do.
Experiencing this at a young age, being considered conventionally attractive then growing up and somehow feeling like I was getting farther away from that, I felt like I was losing some amount of power in society.
Julia Joubert: Earlier Kelvin shared that having darker skin and, in his words, being chubby and short meant that he believed that he was not beautiful from a societal standpoint and similarly to Cate began to first experience this while in high school.
Kelvin Davis: In high school I had to wear glasses and I wanted contacts. I remember when I went to go get them, I asked my mother if I could have colored contacts because people thought that colored eyes were so beautiful. I remember my being like okay, yeah sure. She was kind of confused, but for me, it was me trying to equate or be something that I’m not. Obviously, my eyes are brown naturally, but I wanted to get colored contacts to make me look and feel more beautiful to the people that I was around.
There were moments when I felt inferior to the people around me because they were people who were the definition of societal beauty at that time. Obviously, being a young teenage boy, not only do you want to fit in, but you want to be attractive to the people that you are attracted to. With me, it was the struggle to get girls that I was attracted to to be attracted to me.
That’s when my eating changed a little bit. I would eat a little bit less. I would replace lunch with water. I would exercise a lot. I put colored contacts in. I was basically just trying to be something that I wasn’t. This is sad to say, but I’m glad that I didn’t know about skin bleaching because when you get older, you can’t erase that. It’s scary that so many people out there are still so insecure with not only their bodies but with –
When I talk about body positivity, I feel like a lot of people forget that the biggest part of my body is my skin. Before somebody sees the fact that I’m bigger, the first thing that they notice is that I’m black and I’m a male. Those are the first two things from a societal standpoint that people first notice when they see me.
Julia Joubert: What was the conversation like around your body in these early teenage years? What were the conversations and language like about your body and other bodies at that time?
Kelvin Davis: I feel like the male perspective and female perspective are two different things. With my friends that were girls, when they would say certain things, it hurt a lot more. With girls that I was attracted to and wanted to date, when they would say certain things or when I would ask for advice or confide in them, their opinions meant a little bit more to me.
There was a girl who I had a huge crush on. Her name was Amanda in the sixth grade. I wrote her a letter confessing my undying teenage love for her. She wrote me back and said, “I don’t date guys that shop in the husky section.” Back in the day there was a husky section for teenage boys who were too big for kids’ clothes but too small for men’s clothes. My mother had a way of making it feel like an exclusive club like I was special. You only get to shop here because you’re special, but at school it was like nah, you fat! “You shop in the huskie section!” That’s crazy! When she told me that, I remember my feelings being hurt.
Julia Joubert: Clearly the language that we use when speaking about ourselves and other people has a huge impact. I wanted to know from Alishia and from Cate how they believed we are knowingly or unknowingly contributing to suffering by the way that we talk about other people’s bodies.
Alishia McCullough: This is a wonderful question. I get this a lot when working with different clients. For example, let’s say you’re a parent on a diet and constantly critiquing your body; “I have to lose weight. I don’t look good. This outfit doesn’t fit right on my body. Do I look think in these pants?” Those types of comments, your kids are hearing that and picking up on it so that when they look at themselves, they are internalizing those messages asking the same questions. That is one way that fat phobia and body dissatisfaction is directly passed down to our children.
I would also say that even when you’re with friends, if you’re saying things like, “I’ve gained so much weight.” If you’re at an outing going over the menu saying, “I can’t eat this. This is bad food. These are not healthy options.” While those comments might seem innocent because you’re just talking about yourself, you have to think about how those comments are coming across to people around you. For example, when you say, “I’m gaining weight,” what about your friend who is actually a higher weight than you? How are they experiencing that comment as someone who is in a larger body? If you’re eating dinner and talking about what you’re eating, what about your friend who is eating what they want and feeling pleasureful in their food, but seeing you critique and judge yourself, they’re feeling like maybe you’re critiquing and judging them too.
There are ways that become normalized when talking about ourselves. We normalize saying things like, “I just need to lose a little bit of weight. I’m going to go for a walk after I eat to take off the pounds.” Our bodies are a lot more complex than just food in and food out. We have to be more mindful of the ways that we talk about our bodies to be more affirming.
Cate Navarrete: I always think of the one scene in Mean Girls where all the girls are point out something that they don’t like about their appearance and then Katie, who is not from the U.S. and hasn’t grown up in a body conscious environment is then turned to. She doesn’t have anything to say, so she makes up a weird response. That is a hyperbolized representation of the way that young women and women as a whole, my mom’s friends talk about their bodies.
I definitely notice it in a peer group setting. It was something that I struggled a lot with it in high school. When I went through recovery, I was very open about the fact that I was going through recovery. Because of that, a lot of people in my life, thankfully so, respected my boundaries and stopped talking about and didn’t make comments about themselves or others.
I have noticed whether it’s people in my family making comments about their bodies or people in my peer group at university, having those thoughts is contagious. You bring it up and then someone else starts to wonder if they should be worried about that. Especially if you have a friend who looks similar or dissimilar to you, if they comment on something about their appearance saying, “I don’t like my nose” or “I don’t like my hips,” what if you have the same nose? What if you have the same hips? How will that make you feel about your body?
Avoiding negative talk about the body is really important. I believe that there are productive ways to have conversations about body image without it being triggering towards others. Having conversations about appearance is 99% of the time more unhelpful than helpful.
Julia Joubert: I’d like to move now to social media if I may and talk about how we are engaging with our bodies and other bodies in that space. As we are learning about the impact that language from our parents, peers and community influence us, I wanted to know what role social media plays.
Cate Navarrete: Social media is a big one. I’ve been in situations where the nicest people in my life are scrolling through social media, and I’ve heard them say some nasty things about people on social media. People that I know look at girls on social media and say, “Why did they post that? They don’t look good in that.” Comments like that come from a place of personal insecurity. It’s that commentary that is fueled by a system like social media, which is completely intended to be superficial.
When people are trapped in a superficial cyclone, they are going to start to make judgements about people to calm down their own insecurities and also just because there is not much else to do. You either say, “I wish I looked like that” or criticize the looks. There are not many situations where you’re looking at social media and thinking to yourself, wow, I’m so happy for them. That looks awesome. I’m completely content with my life. It’s usually one or the other. It’s usually a comparison or a putdown. That’s definitely something that I’ve noticed.
Julia Joubert: Alishia shared that while social media is a powerful tool, she reminds us that we do have some agency to determine what we see.
Alishia McCullough: If someone is posting a before and after picture, if we like that picture, the social media algorithm assumes you want to see weight loss pictures, so then there will be another picture like that. If we are liking pictures of people consistently saying they’re trying a new diet, a new cleanse, a new weight loss supplement, the algorithm will pick that up and think you want to see more images like that.
One of the things I think about as consumers is how are we structuring the algorithm to offer us more affirming content? I do want to be mindful that we do have a dominant narrative of the Eurocentric beauty standards that are overlaying the landscape of social media.
It does take that intention usage to say actually, I want to see more influencers who are black, who exist in larger bodies, who have disabilities, who are talking about food in affirming ways. It can take more intentional effort, however a lot of times we’re just consuming, consuming media and not being as mindful about how we are altering the algorithm to best serve the needs that we have in the moment.
We have a culture that does push the thin ideal, the slim ideal, but we also have another side that is more inclusive to diversity and inclusion on social medial.
Julia Joubert: What I see for example online as you mentioned are a lot of the skinny images. I see a lot of the classic “This is my 9:00 am body,” “This is also my 9:00 am body.” I look at it and I can kind of appreciate it for what it is and what it is trying to be, but it still seems to create an atmosphere of comparison. I spoke to Cate quite a bit about this as well. By consuming all of this, I am still inherently comparing myself saying, “I’m not as big as this person,” or “I’m not as thin as this person.” What does it mean? I know that images are hyper-edited or photoshopped. I know that there are so many different bodies and therefore my body should be valid, yet I am still affected by it so much. Why am I still impacted by it as much as I am? To follow on from that if you can help me here, how do I better filter this messaging so that it doesn’t affect me as much as it does?
Alishia McCullough: That’s a wonderful question. I want to really normalize that comparison is a superhuman experience firstly and also say that I think that the way that we view comparison now in our culture comes from this very deficit-based comparison versus this abundant space comparison. When we look at comparison from an abundant perspective, we are able to see the differences, the nuances, the beauty in other people and celebrate that while also seeing it in ourselves and in some ways seeing ourselves as a reflection of that other person through that shared sense of beauty and individuality and how that all comes together to create this human experience.
When we’re looking at it from a deficit base, we are solely looking at “I don’t measure up. I’m missing something. I need to change. I need to alter.” It reminds me for example when engaging with social media the filters. While we might cognitively know my friend is using a filter, my family, celebrities, because the goal of media is to keep us on for as long as possible in the hopes that we will buy something, we’re often quickly consuming pictures and stories so quickly and rapidly that our minds are not actually taking the time to consciously process what we are taking in. For us, as we are seeing the filters, we’re just seeing them as real. “They look so good.” Then we’re feeling like, “I must go and alter my appearance to get that.” That’s why we do now have a culture where kids, teenagers are asking their parents, “Can I get fillers? Can I get Botox?” at such young ages. The brain development is not there to say, actually, this is a curated AI image type of product that is being on this real person.
One of the ways that we can combat that is firstly, setting time limits around the time we’re on social media. Even if it’s just for 30 minutes, take a break, give your eyes a reset and then go back.
If you are able to intentionally engage with your content, ask yourself, “How am I feeling by consuming this picture? What are my thoughts as I look at this image? What do I feel in my body? What sensations and impulses do I have as I’m taking in this content?” That means that you are journaling about it, talking to a friend, taking a mental note. Even just that little pause can offer space for us to really reshape the way that we think about this experience of being online.
Paul Ingles: That was Licensed Therapist Alishia McCullough.
We’ll have part two of Julia Joubert’s Peace Talks Radio program on peace, equality and body image after this upcoming short break.
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This is Peace Talks Radio, the radio series and podcast on peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution. I’m series producer Paul Ingles today with correspondent Julia Joubert. This is part two of our program on peace, equality and body image.
Previously we heard from Cate Navarrete, a 19-year-old advocating for the acceptance and representation of all bodies.
Also, we heard from Kelvin Davis, a black man and father of two working to inspire men to be confident in their bodies.
Our guests in part one shared their personal stories of body image, the role that their communities played in how they saw themselves and the role that language and social media played in maintaining sometimes harmful views.
We also heard from Alishia McCullough, a licensed clinical mental health therapist about the way that beyond what society says, critiquing our own bodies inadvertently affects how others see themselves. She also shared her views about how the structural system influencing body images disproportionately affect black people and minority groups more than others.
In part two of this program, we’ll be taking a look at the body positivity movement. We’ll explore where it came from and whether people are equally represented in the movement and if there is any validity to the health concerns around celebrating larger bodies. We also hear from our guests about how they came to have their own positive body image.
We’ll begin with more from Alishia McCullough. Julia Joubert looks to understand where and how the body positivity movement actually came to be.
Alishia McCullough: The body positivity movement is a movement that was influenced by Fat Liberation. The Fat Liberation Movement actually started in the ‘70s and ‘80s by fat women to discuss their experiences of discrimination, prejudice and biases that they were experiencing in their body through the medical field, their jobs, within the home.
Now I do want to be clear and say that body positivity in general is a movement that was started by fat, black, queer, trans and disabled women. However, over time, what has happened is that the movement has become coopted and now we see representation of mostly thin, white, able-bodied women at the forefront of body positivity. I want to be clear, that’s actually not where it originally started. Those folks who experience marginalization have been pushed to the margins and have been ostracized within this movement of body positivity.
Julia Joubert: We’re coming now to the intersectionality of it. Before I ask you whether you consider the movement intersectional, I’d first love to hear – could you please explain intersectionality?
Alishia McCullough: Yes, intersectionality is a term coined by Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw and the term really refers to the ways in which we experience disadvantage or advantage and how those can be compounded based on our identities. Intersectionality really talks about that place where you’re holding multiple identities within yourself and saying, “I belong in each world,” but at the same time, the Women’s Rights Movement excluded black women. Often times, even within the Black Power Movement, there was a lot of patriarchy and black men at the front and so sometimes black women feel excluded from that area as well because of their womanhood. This intersectionality piece really holds the places in which we have intersecting identities of privilege or marginalization and how that shows up in our society. Often times, folks with intersectional identities are often invisible in a lot of these movement spaces.
Julia Joubert: You mentioned there black women, white women, black men. From my understanding, intersectionality has broadened. What other factors should we be considering when we speak about being intersectional?
Alishia McCullough: When we think about intersectionality, some things to consider are gender, race, class, socioeconomic status, religion, citizenship, abilities, sexual orientation, gender identity. Those are just a few ways that we can view intersectionality.
For example, when we talk about intersectionality, I think about the experiences of someone who might be white, gay and male is going to be different from the experiences of someone who identifies as white, straight and male. Someone who identifies as a trans black woman is going to be different than someone who identifies as a cisgender black woman because of the way that those intersections show up.
I do want to say that not only is important to acknowledge the places where we do hold that oppression, but it’s also important to notice the places where we hold privilege because those are spaces where we can create more possibilities for folks that don’t have access in the ways that we do.
Julia Joubert: To come to intersectionality within the body positivity community and movement, you alluded to how its able-bodied, white, relatively thin women who are leading this now, which is very different to how it started. I think I already know your answer in terms of would you consider today’s version of body positivity intersectional. I’d love to hear in your own words do you and if not, why not?
Alishia McCullough: When we talk about body positivity or see representations of body positivity now, it is mostly thin, white, able-bodied women who are on social media or some other larger platform saying things like, “It’s okay to have a body roll. It’s okay to have cellulite. It’s okay to have stretch marks.” While those things do have a place and can be inspirational for a lot of folks who have never been told that before, I think that for folks who don’t see themselves in that message, it continues to leave them isolated.
For example, is it okay for me to be in a wheelchair? Is it okay for me to need assistance? Is it okay for me to have the skin tone that I have? Is it okay for me to have some other type of physical presentation that doesn’t align with this specific image? It really leaves out those folks.
What I would love body positivity to do is really expand on the way that it shows representation. I would also like to see this reorientation understanding that body positivity did start with folks who experienced marginalization.
That credit needs to be given back to those folks who sacrificed sometimes their careers, their livelihoods in order to create this movement for us to all show up in now and feel comfortable existing in a variety of shapes, sizes and ways that we do. There is so much human variation. That’s such a beautiful experience; to be able to witness and be a part of the myriad of ways that we exist. I do see that on my page.
Talking more systemically, overall, we are seeing mostly white, thin, able-bodied people at the forefront of the magazines, of the modeling agencies. When entertainment media tries to expand representation, often times they are looking at who is safer to put at the forefront. For example, that might be putting a fat white woman who has more of a pair size or pair shaped body that is more sexualized or desirable at the forefront of this magazine or if they do decide to use a person of color, they will go with the person who is the lightest skinned with looser hair texture, thinner features because that is what is more in proximity to whiteness or Eurocentric beauty standards. Even when they’re trying to expand, they’re asking, “What’s safe enough for white culture?”
We are not seeing a lot of the darker skinned body sizes that are not super proportional in shape, people who have acne, older people who have wrinkles, we are not seeing that type of representation in the media.
Often in talking to folks who get lifted up in that way they say, “I was underpaid for that opportunity” or “I was made to feel like I should just be grateful that I was even being invited to the table.” There is still a different energy for folks who even get those opportunities than for other folks who get paid what they desire, they’re in the right conversations and meeting people who are advancing them to the next level or to the next opportunity. That is something that I often do hear unfortunately for folks who do finally get that seat at the table. They said, “I honestly just feel exploited.”
Julia Joubert: Kelvin believes that the men’s movement is scattered.
Kelvin Davis: I feel like the body positivity movement for men right now, especially on the internet is very scattered. There is not a definitive marker. With the women’s movement, there are certain accounts and it’s very definitive. With the men’s movement, it’s all over the place, maybe that’s why the men’s movement is so hard to progressively move forward. There is such hypermasculinity and such non-hypermasculinity. There is no middle ground. It’s either or.
The body positivity movement for men, there are not enough of us. When you did research and found me, how many other people did you find in the men’s space? Did you find any more?
Julia Joubert: I think if we’re being honest, the list I found you on, you were one of eight.
Kelvin Davis: In the prominent space of social media and places where people can get the knowledge that they need, we are talking about less than ten people who are spreading the message of body positivity for men.
Julia Joubert: Cate has similar concerns to Alishia when it comes to the body positivity movement and highlights body neutrality as a possible response to the failings of the movement.
Cate Navarrete: I want to start by validating the people who take the time to combat harmful body standards in general as a whole whether it’s through body positivity or body neutrality. I think that body neutrality was created as a response to where body positivity may have failed people. I personally do not see body positivity as individually ideological but rather as a sociopolitical movement.
What I think body positivity in the mainstream gets wrong is that it’s about loving your body all the time. That’s where body neutrality comes in as a response to say no, don’t think about your body. Your body is good enough regardless of what it looks like. Prioritize what your body can do for you. On one end, there may be some ableism in body neutrality. I don’t necessarily think that it’s intentional, but it just comes up.
Where I would love to see body positivity go is to prioritize the concerns of women of color, to prioritize the concerns of disabled people, trans, nonbinary people and everyone else who has been affected by some form of body oppression. Right now, that is how I define body positivity. I would love to see that pushed more into the mainstream because I do think that ultimately it is a sociopolitical movement, not an individual ideology. If we can relieve the concerns of the most marginalized people, it will have a ripple effect on body image, and everyone will be more positive as a result.
Julia Joubert: One of the most prevalent conversations that comes up alongside body image is the conversation around weight, especially around the weight/value connection in society today. If you’re larger, you’re potentially seen as lesser than. Society says that weight is a marker for health. If you’re fat, then you’re unhealthy. If you’re fat, you’re lazy and you don’t have discipline. I wanted to hear from Alishia could she explain that weight/value connection that we see in society today.
Alishia McCullough: First, I want to affirm that the weight/value marker is a real thing. It shows up in the body mass index also known as the BMI. When thinking about the BMI, it was actually influenced by a mathematician named Adolphe Quetelet who in the 1830s wanted to measure the average height to weight ratio of the average man. It was some random experiment that he wanted to discover and research. He particularly looked at white men in the 1830s.
Our healthcare system picked up on this instrument and decided to incorporate it into the healthcare system as a way to measure health. There is also this idea through the public health system and insurance system that by adopting the BMI scale, they can charge people insurance premiums based on their weight using that as a predeterminant of health.
I want to be clear with folks and say that weight is not an accurate measure of health. It was never intended to be. Adolphe Quetelet was not a healthcare provider, researcher or scientist. He was a mathematician and an astronomer.
When I personally think about health, I think about it being connected to having access to clean water, to clean air, to living in a safe neighborhood, to having quality food to eat, having environments where you don’t experience as much stress in your body because stress is a precursor to inflammation which is the root of most disease. Those are the ways in which we can expand out what health is outside of just looking at a number on the scale which does not account for muscle mass or hormonal changes and things like that. I just want to let folks know that your worth is not tied to a number on the scale.
Julia Joubert: You’re listening to Peace Talks Radio, the radio series and podcast on peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution. I’m Julia Joubert and on today’s program we are discussing peace and equality in the body positivity movement.
Our guests are Cate Navarrete, a 19-year-old second generation Cuban American and founder and executive director of Body Positive Alliance, a student-led nonprofit organization advocating for the acceptance and representation of all bodies. She also hosts The Generation of Body Positive podcast.
We also speak with Kelvin Davis, author and men’s style and body positivity influencer with a blog Notoriously Dapper: How to be a Modern Gentleman with Manners Style and Body Confidence.
And Alishia McCullough. Alishia is a licensed clinical mental health therapist and founder of Black and Embodied Counseling and Consulting, PLLC. Alishia specializes in eating disorder treatment with the focus on amplifying the values of body justice and fat liberation within queer, trans, black, indigenous and people of color communities.
They join us today to talk about their own body image, how larger systems contribute to body dissatisfaction and the role that language plays. If the body positivity movement does need improving, how do we truly honor all bodies? Now back to our conversation.
How can we overcome the societal influences? How can parents, for example, better support their children to live these healthy lives while loving their bodies?
Alishia McCullough: That is a really great question. First, I just want to validate the concerns of parents because it is a hard time that we’re living in where kids’ bodies are constantly under scrutiny. There are research studies showing that even as young as five, six years old, children are worried about their weight and they’re attempting to lose weight at such young ages that it’s a really hard time for parents at this moment. I really want to hold space for that.
We can talk to our children and the youth around developing an awareness of their bodies in a more holistic way. By that I mean asking them about how they feel in their bodies. Even at a young age asking, “Do you feel good in your body?” When they eat a certain food, “How does that food feel in your tummy?” It really starts to develop an internal awareness for the child and the youth. “Is this something that is affirming and brings me joy and pleasure?” Those are the types of conversations that I would love to hear.
It can be more work on the parents, but even when you go to the medical provider, pushing back about being weighed and the BMI. You can advocate for yourself and say, “I choose not to be weighed.” You can ask, “Is it medically necessary for me to be weighed at this time or for my child to be weighed at this time?”
I will say too in the household setting a precedent of not shaming or stigmatizing weight but talking about it as if its neutral because it is and having those conversations, “Yes, some people have small bodies. Some people have larger bodies. That’s part of the diversity of human existence.” Normalizing those conversations from a young age can serve as a protector for kids as they move out into the world where we know that they will be inundated with those constant diet, fat phobic messages from society.
The work that I would invite folks to do is to go inward and really examine your own biases. We have all been infected by this culture of fat phobia. It’s not if we have fat phobic beliefs, but when did those beliefs show up. I say that even for myself as someone who has studied this work, who is a mental health therapist, who works with eating disorders, who works alongside colleagues in the fat liberation spaces that even for me, being part of this culture, I’ve been indoctrinated with fat phobia. I have to constantly go within myself when I critique my belly, when I critique something that I’m eating and ask where is that critique coming from. Come at it and approach it with compassion and care around these beliefs that I’ve internalized about myself. Does this belief serve me? Who is this belief serving? Then replace that belief with something that feels more affirming.
Julia Joubert: For Kelvin, it was also a journey to be more affirming with his body.
Kelvin Davis: One of my best friends from college used to always tell me, “People are too busy thinking about themselves to be thinking about you.” It didn’t really make sense to me until I got into my mid-20s when I realized that so many people are literally consumed with how they look and how they feel about their bodies that they are not worried about how you look or feel about your body. That was a big change for me because it lowers the pressure of having to worry about how you feel based off of what society and other people think.
Julia Joubert: I do think it is very difficult for people, even when they hear the words, “No one is looking at you, everybody is unique, love your own body,” to actually believe them.
Kelvin Davis: Yes.
Julia Joubert: What did you do to get to that point? That’s where we really need some help.
Kelvin Davis: Of course. I did have one of those experiences and that’s what led me to start this blog. When I graduated from college, I went shopping and wanted to get a red blazer. The sales associate told me that I was too fat to shop there. Now that was an experience where my biggest fear had been met with the insecurity that I felt. I had that moment. I had just graduated from college. I was getting some new clothes because I wanted to be stylish. There was this bright red blazer that I really wanted, but they only had a size 42. I asked for a size 48 and she was like, “No, we don’t have that size.” I asked her if she could look online or call another store. She said, “Maybe you’re just too fat to shop here.” Those were her exact words.
Now mind you, I was in my 20s. I had just had my first child. Everything to me was very vulnerable. I was a brand-new father. I was trying to use the college education that my parents paid for to do something with my life. I felt an overwhelming sense of insecurity for a long time.
This was the first time in my life for a long time that I felt very insecure. It was the first time my biggest fear was realized. I felt insecure even before anyone had said anything to me. I didn’t think anybody was really worried about me, but then when I had that one time when the clerk said that it hurt so different.
When that happened, I could have gone two separate ways. I could have gone down a rabbit hole of sadness, which I did for a little bit, but then I tried to understand that I can’t control people and how they feel about me should have nothing to do with the way that I feel about myself. I knew that I had to pull myself out of the mud and keep pushing.
That’s how I started this blog. It started off as a body positive menswear blog because I wanted other men who felt insecure to know that they were not alone. It was a way of me discreetly talking about insecurities and body image through the lens of fashion and making men feel better about themselves by giving them advice about how to dress better and how to dress for their body types.
Julia Joubert: In an episode of her podcast Generation Body Positive, Cate expressed that she often found herself able to preach self-love, anti-diet culture and self-acceptance but struggled to actually absorb the messages herself.
To close out this program, I wanted to know from her how she would advise somebody to push through that barrier and get to a point where they actually hold a positive body image and begin to heal.
Cate Navarrete: That’s a great question. I have said that that was something that I struggled with really early on in the creation of my organization or the club specifically before that. I was still dealing with issues with food and body image at that point. I think something that really pushed me to recover was one sentence, one question that I asked myself, “Do I want to feel like this for the rest of my life?” That question motivated me throughout my entire recovery and motivates me to this day to stay with it.
I will not say that I have not struggled since I entered recovery. There were a few really great years where I felt mostly on top of the world and that was because, at least for a couple of hours a day, I put an insane amount of effort into making sure that I felt okay with my body and food. Sometimes life happens. I’ve been incredibly busy this school year. My anxiety has picked up. I know that my relationship with food is very much connected to my anxiety as someone who struggles with that. I have struggled with body image a lot more this semester than I have in the past four years honestly. That is something that I recognize as constantly fluctuating.
I always remind myself that I deserve to live a life where I am happy with my body, where I am comfortable with my relationship with food, where I get to enjoy a meal with my friends, go on spontaneous ice cream runs, travel to different places and try new foods from different cultures and engage in joyful movement. I deserve to live a life without disordered eating because I don’t have the brain space for disordered eating right now.
That’s something that my nutritionist would tell me in recovery; “You’re a busy person. You have a lot of stuff going on in your life. This is a distraction. This is anxiety telling you that you need to do this to feel good when in reality, it’s preventing you from being whole.” I think to myself how much of a friend I am, how much better of a partner I am, how much better of a family member I am when I am nourished and able to engage in joyful movement.
Think about it as something that you deserve individually, but if you can’t do that yet, think about how it may affect other people. People in our lives can be great motivators for recovery. I don’t want to be on my deathbed worrying about my relationship with food and my body. That just sounds like such a horrible thing to have to go through. I want to say that I lived a full life and for me, a huge part of that is being liberated from that.
Paul Ingles: That was Cate Navarrete with her closing sentiments. Cate is the founder and executive director of Body Positive Alliance, the student-led nonprofit organization advocating for the acceptance and representation of all bodies. She believes we all deserve to live a life where we are happy with our bodies, where we have a comfortable relationship with food, where we get to engage in joyful movement and where we get to feel liberated from external ideas of what a beautiful body is.
You can find Cate’s full interview with Julia and all the complete interviews with Kelvin and Alishia at www.peacetalksradio.com where you can go to hear all the programs in our series dating back to 2002. You can see photos of our guests there. You can read and share transcripts, sign up for our podcast and importantly, make a donation to keep this program going into the future. You can help our nonprofit work at www.peacetalksradio.com.
Support comes from listeners like you as well as the Albuquerque Community Foundation Ties Fund, Nola Daves Moses is the executive director of our nonprofit organization. Jessica Ticktin is our supervising producer. Ali Adelman composed and performs our theme music. For our cofounder Suzanne Kryder, correspondent Julia Joubert and the rest of our team, I’m Paul Ingles. Thanks so much for listening to and for supporting Peace Talks Radio.
