00:03:14.140And it quickly became one of the most famous and beloved Broadway shows of all time.
00:03:18.320So the thing that I find really interesting about this show is that the plot is ostensibly
00:03:22.540about a city, the city of Oz, falling under fascism and the diverging roads that these
00:03:27.960two women, Elphaba and Glinda, take to deal with these circumstances, right?
00:03:32.640But really, I think the reason why this show became so beloved is that it is a story that
00:03:37.580really centers womanhood. There is this heterosexual love story in it, but it's really
00:03:41.900secondary. It's secondary to the story of these two friends who are coming into their power as
00:03:46.660women. And some have also argued that it's kind of a queer love story between Glinda and Elphaba.
00:03:51.800There's like a gayler world for Wicked. Oh, love.1.00
00:03:54.800So when it was announced that Wicked was going to become a film, there was obviously very,
00:04:00.620very high expectations. It's very hard to convert a musical into a film and to retain support from
00:04:06.920the fandom and to retain any sort of critical adoration. And it's notable that in this film,
00:04:12.560the person who played Elphaba was Cynthia Erivo, who was kind of like a niche, very respected
00:04:19.040singer, but who I would describe as Indy. She was not a household name, and she was notably0.71
00:04:23.020going to become the first Black woman to ever fill the part of Elphaba. It's pretty interesting.
00:04:27.040When you consider the symbolism of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, as a woman who is judged
00:04:31.000by her skin color, she is born green, and that is a very central part of her character. When you
00:04:36.900think that she is kind of presumed to be all these terrible things by people who don't ever
00:04:40.820take the moment to understand her. It was an incredibly meaningful decision for them to make
00:04:45.000Elphaba a woman of color. Then they announced that Ariana Grande was going to become Glinda
00:04:49.440the Good Witch. So this immediately becomes this like massive, massive anticipation for a cinematic
00:04:56.380experience, right? The fandom is decades deep. It's multi-generational. There was so much
00:05:02.160anticipation. And so when part one came out last year, so December 2024, I went to see it and I
00:05:08.180became very interested in it because I was kind of struck by the level of talent of these two
00:05:12.540main stars. I was bowled over by what a career pivot Ariana Grande had made. I think I had kind0.73
00:05:18.300of understood her as like the seven rings, kind of raunchy, incredible singer. And all of a sudden
00:05:24.560she had taken this turn as like an Oscar nominated actress. Pete Davidson's coolest girlfriend.
00:05:29.540yeah exactly which wait by the way have you seen the memes of it's like
00:05:35.940someone has like photoshopped erica kirk with pete davidson
00:05:40.080wait what i don't even understand what that means i feel like my brain is just a joke that
00:05:46.680like anytime like a famous marriage breaks up it's like the next thing you see is like that
00:05:50.680woman with pete davidson i thought i thought you meant that someone had never mind i was
00:05:56.140imagine Erika Kirk's face on Pete Davidson's body. And I was like, what's happening to me?
00:06:02.560J.D. Vance in the background, just stewing. So anyways, I liked the movie and I started to pay
00:06:07.900attention to the reception. And it seemed that the franchise had done what no one thought it
00:06:11.920could do, which is basically win over the fandom. It was hugely celebrated. It was nominated and
00:06:17.780ended up winning, I think, two Oscars. It was a commercial success. It was a relative critical
00:06:23.400success. And I was really, really interested in particular in how Ariana Grande and Cynthia
00:06:28.260Erivo, who play the two main characters, presented offscreen. And you sort of started to have this
00:06:32.740mirroring of the story where you have a story about two very different women who step into
00:06:37.840the center of their powers and who retain a friendship in spite of like the odds. And then
00:06:43.060you see that happening in real life, right? You're watching this offscreen friendship kind of mirror
00:06:47.600the on-screen one. Is this the meme where Ariana's holding her nail? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It became
00:06:55.020very meme-worthy. It was all over the place. They were in so many interviews. Everyone thought they
00:06:59.140were very cheesy, but it was relatively saccharine and, I think, low stakes. And so I want to pause
00:07:05.080here before we get into the backlash to Wicked, which is why we're here today. We're going to
00:07:10.820pause and we're going to watch the Defying Gravity scene. So just so you understand, this is at the
00:07:15.760end of part one of the musical so this is like before the intermission this is the end of the
00:07:21.100first movie and this is largely believed to be like the emotional peak of the whole story right
00:07:26.460like a lot of people have been critical saying the second half is nowhere near as good because
00:07:30.640Defying Gravity just has such emotional thrust and I really want you to see like the performance
00:07:35.880that these two women did it's notable they performed live so for every scene they were
00:07:40.820singing live and I think you can really feel that and so I want us to stop here and like have a
00:07:45.480sense for who we're talking about as like a foundational understanding for the rest of this
00:07:49.480conversation. For the audience, I'm not going to make you listen to the whole 15 minute scene. So
00:07:53.540I'm going to play the two minute Oscars version, but I want Katie to watch the whole one. So.0.98
00:07:57.820Okay. You know, I have to say that I do think I will consider Diabolical Lies as a project
00:08:03.720of failure if at some point there is not a Gaylor sub-niche universe for us.0.59
00:08:09.240Oh my God. Our relationship is so homoerotic. I was thinking about that the other day.0.98
00:08:15.480Okay, so all you need to really know for this scene is this is basically the moment where Elphaba and Glinda realize that their paths are diverging for how they're going to deal with this fascist regime.
00:08:26.040Elphaba's going to lean into being the Wicked Witch of the West.
00:08:28.400Glinda wants to work within the institutions.1.00
00:12:17.000And it's kind of shocking we haven't had a Black Elphaba. Do you know what I mean? When you think about how on the nose it is. Yeah, I really wanted you to see it because I think, I don't think you do this, but I think generally speaking, girly things or musical things or stories about women are often seen as flippant. And I think in particular, you have to see Ariana Grande act to know that she's capable of that.0.77
00:12:38.220And I know she was a Disney star, but I was bowled over by her acting and, of course, by Cynthia Erivos.
00:12:43.160And so it was important to me to ground that.
00:12:45.340And, like, this was the level of performance that was taking place in Wicked.0.98
00:12:48.920These women are some of the best living singers we have.0.98
00:12:51.820And they delivered an incredible acting performance.
00:12:54.140And there was so much effort put into this film.
00:12:56.460What you're dealing with is people at the height of their profession.
00:12:59.200Yeah, people at the height of their profession telling a very poignant and relevant story that is kind of trying to answer, like, the question.
00:13:07.480right of our times like how do we move forward right now and there isn't a simple notion of
00:13:13.300good versus evil which i thought was really nice like glinda and elphaba kind of represent that
00:13:17.260right like elphaba chases truth and is punished for it and glinda kind of is becomes symbolic
00:13:22.320for goodness but actually is a little bit of a coward but they're very complex characters and
00:13:26.020i think a lot of that is just communicated in their facial expressions and in their love for
00:13:29.960each other and so i i was really impressed by it as a movie and i was really moved by it and so i
00:13:35.880was paying attention to the response to this film, and I was really interested to see the response to
00:13:41.180the part two of this film. So when the first film came out, in addition to the critical success and
00:13:45.440the massive commercial box office sales, there were two cultural conversations that immediately
00:13:50.420began to creep around the edges. Number one was how thin Ariana Grande was. And then one had to1.00
00:13:56.180do with her friendship to Cynthia Erivo. Pretty much immediately people were like, it's too much,
00:14:00.640it's over the top, they're weirdly sentimental, they're holding little each other's fingernails,
00:14:04.400They're so gushy. They cry in every interview, which like, tell me you've never been to theater
00:14:09.100camp without telling me you've never been to theater camp. Katie, you can. I'm like, yeah,
00:14:12.560guys, that's just par for the course. Okay. I have never been to theater camp, but I do dabble
00:14:17.640in theater camp TikTok. So I like to think I'm an ally. Yeah. I mean, dramaturgically it works.
00:14:23.140That's all I'll say. So then part two comes out this fall and these side conversations
00:14:28.940essentially threaten to overtake the film altogether. I think it doesn't help that part
00:14:33.940two is just generally not considered to be as good as part one, even in the Broadway consideration.
00:14:38.460But almost immediately, there was a fixation on the three most prominent main stars of Wicked,
00:14:45.060which is Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, Ariana Grande as Glinda, and then Michelle Yeoh as Madame
00:14:49.680Morrible. And so all three of these women were noticeably very thin. They had all visibly lost
00:14:55.680weight in recent years in slightly varying timelines, but it was pretty stark when you
00:14:59.800looked at them all together, for example, at the movie premiere. And so that's why we're here
00:15:03.700today. I wanted to look at a conversation that was taking place online at a decibel level that
00:15:08.340was kind of overwhelming to me. And I wanted to understand why it felt so familiar to me.
00:15:13.160And I want to understand why it feels so uncanny to me. To understand how this conversation takes
00:15:19.580place, I think we have to first address the elephant in the room with these conversations
00:15:22.980about women's bodies that you and I have all the time, which is like, yeah, of course you can talk
00:15:26.040about women. You and I talk about women all the time on Diabolical Eyes. But something that is
00:15:29.880used almost as like a defense mechanism for what these people are saying about these famous women's
00:15:35.000bodies is, don't tell me we can't talk about women. That's like pseudo-feminist crap. We have to talk1.00
00:15:40.440about women to protect other women. And saying we can't talk about women's bodies, it feels like
00:15:45.940the spiritual equivalent to like, does Israel have the right to exist? It's like, babe, it does exist.
00:15:50.580Like, you are having the conversation. So it's like, I don't want to make the impression that I
00:15:55.760don't know if we should be talking about women's bodies. What I'm interested is not whether we
00:16:00.480should or not, it's how we talk about them and what this current conversation tells us about
00:16:04.460ourselves. So Katie, I'm going to show you some of the most viral TikToks that have spread around
00:16:10.180this online conversation. Ooh, okay. And we're just going to go through them one by one. So
00:16:15.620this first one has 7 million views and 600,000 likes. Holy smokes. Okay. I saw it as the search
00:16:22.980on someone's video but the moment that i knew that that movie was pro anorexia regardless of1.00
00:16:30.000your fuck ass opinions because you're obsessed with ariana grande or you're a wicked gal i don't0.99
00:16:33.880care was when i saw those little glitter things on ariana's shoulder collarbone what even what1.00
00:16:38.880even is that bone dbh i don't fucking know because no one is skinny enough to have it pointing out0.57
00:16:44.040that much what the hell was that but you're gonna tell me of all the accents you could do of any of0.99
00:16:51.140the huge necklaces you could adorn her with,
00:24:26.740Yeah, you know what? I'm not going to pretend to be obtuse here.
00:24:29.680I understand the argument that is being made.
00:24:32.260And I think that there's certainly, like, an element of truth to situating this body trend within the broader context of our sociopolitical moment and similarly to how I think Trad Wives kind of felt like a precursor or an omen for what was coming and a shift that had already happened.
00:24:51.900I understand that we're looking to the physical world to tell us things about that moment that we are in. However, I think when I sit back and reflect on the work of people like Jessica DeFino and what she has said about the other sorts of body modification that all this time have been considered fine and empowering and wonderful, like Botox and filler and what have you,
00:25:19.940You can't really embrace that philosophy in one arena, the face, and then below the neck, say that that's all off limits. I feel there's a lot of cognitive dissonance between the emphasis on health and nourishment and what is quote unquote normal for the body below the neck, but then a completely different approach and perspective for the face.
00:25:46.400Yeah, that's an interesting point. Pay attention to how these people are creating a sort of temporal language that establishes a foundation of urgency. Things are changing. These women are shrinking. There is a sense of urgency that is established by claiming that we are in a changing moment and that if we don't do something, more women will shrink.
00:26:09.660I also came across a post by this food influencer with a million followers. Again, a very thin white blonde woman who is delivering this message. And her caption said, quote, me with a loss for words, seeing all the celebrities and influencers becoming dangerously thin. She said, I'm shocked that we're back here. So again, that temporal language. She said, I'm shocked to see media companies support and promote them on TV. It's heartbreaking and dangerous, end quote.1.00
00:26:36.940So, like, you have this back and forth with all these videos and posts between fixating on a handful of people, primarily the Wicked co-stars, as well as three or four other A-list women whose names are constantly referenced in the comments, and fixating on what appears to be this sudden epidemic.
00:26:50.860You see some people calling it the skinny apocalypse, some people calling it a skinny epidemic, and all of it is happening right now, suddenly.
00:26:58.980There is a clear positioning of we are at the end of one movement and the beginning of another.
00:27:04.300And this new generation might see these bodies and think that's normal.
00:27:13.280But what I did pick up on was something that felt like the reverse of what Aubrey Gordon will talk about sometimes, which is concern trolling.
00:27:19.940Like the focus on like osteoporosis and like, well, you need to be lifting weights and getting enough.
00:28:24.000That is like a number one no-no in talking about eating disorders online.
00:28:28.960You don't show body pictures, and you certainly never show before and after pictures.
00:28:32.240So again, 80 million views, 8 million likes.
00:28:35.100So to summarize the arguments that are being made online, in articles, at like prestige publications, in podcasts, in newsletters, there was once a time when we celebrated health and strength and diversity of bodies, and that was the body positivity movement.
00:28:49.520Yeah, and that was recent, and that has apparently ended.
00:28:52.480Number two, the rise of conservatism is what is fueling the return of skinny culture.
00:28:57.840Number three, these famous people are starving themselves intentionally and they are bad role models to young women and we should not see them on the screen.
00:29:07.400So I view this as like a spiritual part due to your Liv Schmidt skinny talk episode. And I think that that conversation was a more aerial understanding of like the history and the future of our relationship to thinness, like where it comes from and how we kind of move towards achieving body liberation. And I think this conversation is framed more squarely in the now. Like how do you live in a world that is not going to be liberated anytime soon?
00:29:30.760So here are some of the questions that I want us to be thinking about moving forward.
00:29:34.340How do we talk about celebrity weight loss?
00:29:46.520How do eating disorders factor into this?
00:29:48.840What causes eating disorders to begin with?
00:29:51.180And why did all of this culminate with the premiere of Wicked Part 2?
00:29:56.560I just want a really light topic for people to listen to while they're holiday shopping.
00:29:59.740So Katie, what's your understanding of the body positivity movement? You and I were both like in our teens and 20s for this time period. So what do you remember of it?
00:30:07.460The symbolic representation of the body positivity movement was those Dove Real Beauty campaigns where it was like suddenly we were seeing the presence of people who were not able-bodied, thin, white, blonde women in advertising.
00:30:26.360I know that there are people who are like fat activists who would be like, no, it was so much more than that. Similarly to how I think feminist activists will be like, no, the pop feminism of like lean in in 2010, that was not the feminist movement. Like the real feminist movement has been working all along and it exists outside of these corporate boardrooms.
00:30:45.400So granting that, I think the way that I experienced the body positivity movement was primarily through advertising and like the commercial messaging from brands.
00:30:57.340I think the limitations that I always saw or felt in the way that I experienced that time was that the capital B, capital S, that's ironic, beauty standard never really changed.
00:31:12.400There was never a time that I have experienced in life culturally where, like, it was not considered preferable to be thin, where there was not a serious taboo or stigma against fat people.
00:31:25.640So you weren't briefly liberated from your shackles in, like, 2017?
00:31:29.700No, certainly not. There are just certain, like, cultural beauty trends that I don't think ever really went out of vogue.
00:31:37.140And I think at every step that you saw any push against those things, they were always met with severe backlash. Like, when Victoria's Secret started having models in their shows that weren't size triple zero, you would not want to read the comments on an article about that show. Like, I don't feel like the culture ever really shifted, I guess.
00:32:01.980No, it didn't. And I will note that fat activists don't either. So you mentioned that fat activists think the body positivity movement was more than it was. I'll give a little spoiler, which was it was fat activists who tipped me off to how little the body positivity movement actually was.
00:32:19.300So what's really interesting is that this conversation, again, about the wicked stars and about how important it is to talk about thinness and this backsliding into skeletivity, everyone is grounding it in the body positivity movement, right?
00:32:32.060And what I found really interesting as I was starting to take note of how everyone was referencing this is, number one, there were never any specifics.
00:32:39.080There was never any conversation about what it was, what it did, who was front and center.
00:32:43.480There would be like three or four stars mentioned, but that was it.
00:32:46.720And there wasn't clarity on the timeline. So I had, like, some Gen Zers who were referencing it as the early 2000s, which I thought was hysterical. I was like, babe, absolutely not.0.71
00:32:57.740General rule, if you don't remember 9-11, this is maybe not.
00:33:56.660We have the end of diet culture and the rise of self-care culture, which were, spoiler alert, the same exact culture cloaked in different colors and different language.
00:34:04.760It's generally believed that body positivity took place during the latter half of the 2010s.
00:34:08.760So I'm going to have you read a section from this piece from Rose Stokes, who was a fat writer and columnist, who talked about the end of body positivity for The Guardian earlier this summer.
00:34:20.660girl, something is changing. Gone are the days when there was a deluge of messaging that told
00:34:26.240us to love our bodies no matter their size. When brands were falling over themselves in the who
00:34:31.240can shout self-love the loudest Olympics. When Vogue, once a shrine to the skinny, declared
00:34:37.340three plus-size women were the new supers and plastered them on the cover. Instead, in a change0.73
00:34:43.900I'd never have believed possible just two years ago, we have somehow been thrust back into a
00:34:48.980Nazis-level skinny worship culture that is bringing up the same feelings I've been running
00:34:54.580from since I was a girl. For Alex Light, a British body-positive influencer, things started to change
00:35:01.040even before the arrival on the mass market in the UK and US of GLP-1 agonist drugs used exclusively
00:35:06.780via prescription for weight loss. Before this, they were used mainly to treat symptoms of type
00:35:11.4802 diabetes, including obesity. Quote, for a while there were subtle signs, Light says. Fewer size
00:35:17.200inclusive launches, less campaign imagery, more brands quietly reducing size ranges,
00:35:22.100and a shift in which kinds of bodies were getting visibility and praise. But weight loss drugs have
00:35:26.760made this shift impossible to ignore. The signs are everywhere. Dozens of A-list women who were
00:35:32.440once intentionally or not symbols of what it means to rebel against diet culture are now changing1.00
00:35:37.720shape dramatically. First Adele, then Rebel Wilson, Lizzo, Meghan Trainor, Kelly Clarkson,
00:35:44.720serena williams mindy kaling and oh my god this reminds me of there's some comedian amy schumer
00:35:51.520amy schumer yes yeah she's often referenced in these conversations yeah where she posed in a0.60
00:35:57.500bathing suit on a magazine they're like that is so brave and she's like wait what like that's how
00:36:02.940i was eight that's how i would feel if someone was like constantly referencing me in this context i'm1.00
00:36:08.580like stop talking about me stop talking about my body can't imagine why these women would lose weight1.00
00:36:13.880Right? Okay. And although some of these attribute their weight loss to strict diet and exercise, others are openly using the jabs. Okay, see, and there's a lot of, like, judgment kind of inherent in this construction. Like, well, some are doing it the correct way. Others are using the jabs.1.00
00:36:30.600Plenty of once-overweight A-listers have been explicit about how much they've benefited from using the jabs,
00:36:36.420with Robbie Williams calling them a Christmas miracle in a 2023 interview.
00:36:41.100Others, such as Queer Eye's Jonathan Van Ness and Oprah Winfrey, have spoken openly about their use.
00:36:46.340Not, they say, in the pursuit of skittiness, but to get to what they feel is a healthier, more comfortable weight.
00:36:53.380She references a Vogue cover shoot with three-plus-size women.1.00
00:36:58.460I'm going to send you that Vogue cover shoot, and I want you to describe how plus-sized these women are.1.00
00:37:16.820This is actually worse than I thought it was going to be, to be completely honest with you.
00:37:20.460I am trying to abide by, like, certain trauma-informed guidelines by not talking too much about people's bodies and talking more about the conversation.
00:37:27.160but like it's very important to me that Katie gives a general overview of like what bodies we
00:37:31.440are seeing on this cover as representative of a movement when we cared about people feeling
00:37:36.120healthy and safe and free. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Here, I'll just, I'll describe it this way.
00:37:42.160If I had just seen this picture in the wild, I'd be like, there are three models. There are three
00:37:48.680models. There are three thin women. Katie, I went through every single Vogue cover of the last1.00
00:37:54.44020 years, and I found two fat women who have ever graced the cover. One of them, Ashley Graham,1.00
00:37:59.820was in her final trimester of pregnancy in 2019, which feels kind of notable. And then the other
00:38:04.380woman was Lizzo in 2020. And that is it. Yeah. I mean, I have read a lot from people who feel
00:38:12.260all sorts of ways about this. And I think what I was thinking of really when I was reading that
00:38:16.840excerpt was the people that I have spoken with who take GLP-1s because they want to do exactly
00:38:24.340what Van Ness and Winfrey describe, which is, I want to get to a weight that feels more comfortable
00:38:29.860to me. And the construction of that paragraph is like, well, some people are getting thinner
00:38:35.260through diet and exercise. It just reminds me of what Aubrey and Michael talk about on Maintenance
00:38:39.520Phase, which is basically that there is a correct way to be thin, and it is suffering. And if you
00:38:44.820are not suffering, you are doing something wrong and you are taking a shortcut and you are cheating.
00:38:49.020And I just think that it is such an unfortunate catch-22 to live in a culture where those three
00:38:56.000women are plus size and to be told you're doing it the wrong way. Yeah. So again, as I was looking1.00
00:39:03.240through this history of the body positivity movement and this criticism of the apparent
00:39:07.020loss of the body positivity movement, I was trying to find concrete examples of how this visibility
00:39:12.520has changed. And one thing I found that was referenced frequently was a Vogue business
00:39:16.880report about inclusivity on runways. So Vogue and a few other outlets have basically been tracking
00:39:22.260different metrics over runway seasons. So like gender, race, body inclusivity, all these kinds
00:39:28.220of things. So in the 2025 report, Vogue essentially said that the body positivity movement, quote,
00:39:34.080has lost stream in mainstream culture as the pendulum has swung back to the glamorization
00:39:38.720of thinness amid the rising use of Ozempic and the subsequent shrinking of celebrities and
00:39:43.460influencers. And so I was like, okay, they have evidence that this has shrunk. Katie, do you want
00:39:48.360to guess what the peak of body inclusivity was in the form of any representation of plus size
00:39:55.140models, meaning anyone a size 14 or over on runways at the peak of representation? Do you
00:40:00.060want to guess what percentage there was? Five. Two percent. Oh my gosh. In the spring fashion
00:40:08.620months in 2020 and 2022. These were the most body-inclusive on record, okay? And so across
00:40:13.920the New York runways, the Milan runways, the Paris runways, and the London runways. For women who0.99
00:40:19.880were a size 14 or larger, less than 2% total. That was 86 women across four countries. Half of those
00:40:26.900women were in New York, and the majority of those 48 women in New York were in three brands. Tommy
00:40:32.940Hilfiger, Christian Siriano, and Cromat. I'm struck too by like even just the premise
00:40:38.820of where we are looking for representation. Sure. High fashion runway shows. I would think that if
00:40:45.540you're going to really try to quantitatively study how the beauty standard has changed,
00:40:49.680you would look at pop stars. You would look at streaming services and like who is being
00:40:54.580represented in popular television shows and more mainstream elements of culture.
00:41:00.480I do think fashion trends as translated from high runway fashion is relevant to the conversation, but I do agree with your point. And I looked into those elements of culture as well.
00:41:09.700The biggest body positivity example I would say in terms of 2010's zeitgeist visibility for music would probably be Lizzo and just her presence in the industry. And then for television, I think there were a number of television shows like Girls and Shrill and Somebody Somewhere, all great shows, that featured both like fat and straight-sized bodies in a way that weren't considered the norm for television.
00:41:31.620and I don't want to say that was nothing it was definitionally something but number one this was
00:41:37.080also during the golden age of the streaming era so there were a lot of niche projects that were
00:41:41.340greenlit because there was so much money in Hollywood at the time and that money has since
00:41:44.640dried up and number two the question even with shows like Girls is what percentage of television
00:41:51.620representation was that even to begin with and what does that visibility lead to and unfortunately
00:41:57.420the answer to both of these questions is really not that positive. I spoke to a few different
00:42:02.480fat activists about the body positive movement. And generally speaking, fat activists are very
00:42:06.640negative about the body positivity movement. Interesting. Because it was a movement defined
00:42:10.540by visibility. I talked to Virginia Sol Smith and something she said that kind of struck with me is
00:42:14.360like, the message of body positivity was that fat woman deserved to be able to buy string bikinis0.96
00:42:19.180too. It was about commerce, right? It was about like, oh great, Khloe Kardashian started a jeans1.00
00:42:26.540line that fits women of bigger bodies. And like, great. I mean, I think everyone should be able to
00:42:31.200buy jeans, but visibility only works as a strategy if the visibility in question is leading you down
00:42:38.060a road that is defined by like legislative change, right? Huh. Okay. So another way that I wanted to
00:42:44.640determine visibility with body positivity. So even defined by its own standards, was it successful
00:42:49.100is the Met Gala. That is where you see pop stars. That is where you see famous actresses. That is
00:42:53.840basically each year you get a collection of the people who are perceived to be the greatest
00:42:57.780tastemakers of each year across the board, right? And so I thought this will be a good representation
00:43:02.000of like the zeitgeist of each year. First of all, I saw some incredible outfits that are really
00:43:06.700dated now. Taylor Swift used to really rock the Met Gala. I went through every single photo on
00:43:11.700Vogue's Met Gala's archives since 2010. Oh my God. Everyone, I just need you to know that
00:43:17.820Caroline has been working on this episode for a month.
00:43:20.800150 hours of work went into this Google Doc.
00:43:24.780Katie, this is my rise and fall of capitalism.
00:43:27.560But again, I wanted to get an idea of like,
00:43:30.000we referenced the same five people, right?
00:43:32.440We referenced Mindy Kaling and Amy Schumer.
00:43:34.280And I don't want to deny that they might make someone feel seen.
00:43:42.000At the most, Katie, for each archived year,1.00
00:43:44.420there are probably between 100 and 150 pictures.
00:43:46.680So we're looking through a few thousand pictures. From 2010, I would say that I counted two dozen bodies, non-pregnant bodies that were over a size eight. I would say the rest of them were probably a size zero. They looked identical to me to the co-stars of Wicked. So, and I don't say that facetiously. I think that they looked like it was hard for me to tell the difference in terms of what Jamila Jamil would call skeletal. Like, this is just kind of the visuals.
00:44:12.920When we talk about the fat activist movement, that also is a movement. The fat liberation movement is a very distinct movement from body positivity, and it has nothing to do with bodies. So I talked to Virginia about this, and I was like, would you say that body neutrality is a term that is kind of synonymous with fat activism? And she was like, no, we don't care about how you feel about your body at all.
00:44:36.320Fat liberation is a movement with roots in the 90s with Black activists, queer activists, disabled activists, and it has specific demands, right?
00:44:44.440And the primary goal is to outlaw discrimination based on weight.
00:44:48.180So from employment to housing to public accommodation, it's completely distinct from body positivity because it has very specific demands, and those demands were not even remotely encapsulated in the body positive movement.
00:45:01.060Interesting. Well, and I'm just thinking about how fat discrimination in the workplace is so real today. I think it's, I mean, it's crazy. There is like a larger wage premium from being thin than from having a master's degree for women.
00:45:18.020Yeah. Clearly, this is something that is like very necessary. But yeah, it's interesting to think about the the specific policy demands that. I'm just thinking of what our friend Helen Andrews would say, the specific policy demands that were completely absent from like the I want to see somebody who has the same body type as I do in like the old Navy advertisements.1.00
00:45:44.600Right. I was also interested to learn that a lot of fat activists display a lot of ambivalence around these conversations around Ozempics. You see like a lot of these like thin, beautiful blonde women being like, Ozempic is taking away representation. But when you talk to a lot of fat activists, something that they will say is like, if you are fixating on visibility, if your anger about GLP-1s has to do with how they are changing visibility as it pertains to bodies, then you are kind of again missing the point.0.96
00:46:12.780Like, again, I think the goal would be access and then the goal would be equity under the law, regardless of your weight, regardless of what medications that you're on, regardless of how much weight you lose from Ozempic.
00:46:22.520And I would also say, I'm sure you know this, Katie, there is this fixation on GLP-1s in this conversations as them kind of fueling this return to skinny culture.
00:46:32.300But I think that that kind of presents a vision of GLP-1s that is not really true to scale.
00:46:37.960Like clinical trials suggest you can lose 25% of your body weight, but real world settings suggest the number is way lower, like 10% or less.
00:46:46.680I was going to say, I thought from what I remember, it was like the clinical trials, they were getting like 15%.
00:46:56.460The idea that somebody taking a GLP-1 will become skeletal is, I think, a misunderstanding of how those drugs work, as well as why somebody would take one, frankly.
00:47:12.400Yeah, it might be worth saying the quiet part out loud here.0.99
00:47:14.860The vast majority of deeply viral content on this topic is delivered by women who represent the beauty standard.
00:47:21.280And when they lament how drugs like Ozempic are ending body positivity, you really get a window into who they perceive as fat in this world. And it is not people who are actually fat.
00:47:32.620Any person who experiences profound body transformation by losing, say, 10 or 15 percent of their body weight, aka the standard with GLP-1s, was not fat to begin with. They were at most straight-sized, maybe on the small side of plus size.
00:47:46.220And that really gives you an idea of who this conversation is driven by and whose bodies are being centered in this, quote, body positivity movement, and also how truly thin Hollywood is and has always been when you have a straight-sized famous person or a small plus-sized famous person who becomes emblematic of said body positivity.
00:48:04.920And that kind of brings me to this idea of weight loss of celebrities and that visible weight loss. I think, again, when we're talking about these wicked stars, there is a fixation with these arguments to claim that this is a change that needs to be documented, that needs to be discussed.
00:48:18.560And something that I became very aware of as I was pouring through these archives is that weight cycling is constant in Hollywood. And weight cycling is basically when you are cycling through the loss and then the regain of a small percentage of your weight.
00:48:35.380A lot of people who are susceptible to diet culture weight cycle their whole lives.
00:49:05.380That it's, like, very bad for your health to be in that loop.
00:49:09.900And so something I came to realize is that, like, it seems to me that the baseline for fame, for hyper-visible fame for these actors, for these performers, for these models, the people who are famous enough to go to a Met Gala or to star in a franchise, the basis of your life is weight cycling.
00:49:25.080And I think that it makes a lot of sense when you think about what their jobs are.
00:49:28.520Like, these are people for whom their bodies no longer belong to themselves.
00:49:31.620you have to get very thin for the Met Gala or for your next movie premiere or a role or a concert
00:49:37.460tour and then you might gain those 10 or 20 pounds back you know six months later and so you again I
00:49:42.480don't encourage anyone to do this who has suffered from any sort of eating disorder but like you can
00:49:46.800see this as you move through the years that this weight loss and gain is constant for virtually
00:49:52.200everyone that you can see on these red carpets it is it seems to be a feature and not a bug and as
00:49:58.560such, if a person wanted to mount an argument that any given celebrity is losing weight rapidly and
00:50:04.180this rapid weight loss is indicative of a cultural shift, then a person would be able to find people
00:50:09.120for this argument every single year without fail. I know this because I went year by year through
00:50:14.020the 2010s and 2000s, and every single year I found a new crop of articles about the latest group of
00:50:19.580quote-unquote unhealthily thin celebrities who were quote-unquote representing a dangerous new
00:50:24.140trend in beauty culture, like clockwork. And so again, as I'm looking through the visibility of
00:50:28.920these pop stars, of these actresses, of all these people who represent the beauty standard to us
00:50:33.940over this time period of body positivity, it was very clear to me that the visibility hadn't
00:50:38.880changed. And so I wanted to look into any sort of legacy. And so for an example, when you look at
00:50:43.140something like Me Too, that's pretty roundly criticized right now as something that has kind
00:50:46.720of lost steam and led to a pretty big backlash. But over 80 pieces of legislation have since been
00:50:53.040passed in 24 states related to Me Too. Oh, really? There are workplace harassment laws. There are
00:50:58.760office protections. There are certain legislative changes that have been made that you can attribute
00:51:03.580to, you know, the outcome of the Me Too movement. Bullshit, man. You can't even fuck your secretary1.00
00:51:08.340anymore without... Love that. What is that, W? Is that a George W. Bush? I don't know. I just,1.00
00:51:15.900it was, it came over me and I had to let him out. So this is all to say that didn't happen
00:51:22.300with body positivity. The legacy of body positivity, the legacy of this legal framework
00:51:27.080is non-existent. The BMI has not changed. Our understanding of the BMI has not changed.
00:51:32.640The size of the famous people that we look up to has not changed. We have made no national
00:51:38.300headway whatsoever in terms of fat activism. There have been some small wins on the state
00:51:42.220level, but also in terms of how we perceive health, that has not changed.
00:51:47.280Well, and I think with the current administration, the big health wins, according to the RFK school of thought, is like making it so people who receive SNAP benefits can't buy soda.
00:51:57.960Right. And, you know, it's interesting, too, when I was talking to Virginia about this and about the kind of fraudulence of the body positivity movement as really nothing more than a little bit of corporate capture,
00:52:07.960Something she mentioned when I brought up this theory that conservatism is fueling skinny culture is the Obama era and how dangerous, like, Michelle Obama's crusade against fat kids was and how, like, that was really terrible.
00:52:21.380And, like, everyone was fixated on how fit her arms were.
00:52:25.100And, like, there was this whole thing that if you just, like, give these kids an apple at school, then we'll solve obesity.
00:55:45.220Like, just put as simply as possible, it's just not true.0.99
00:55:47.740Skinny culture has always been incredibly, incredibly potent.0.82
00:55:51.380Celebrities have been weight cycling all through the 2010s.0.99
00:55:53.920If you look at the highest paid actresses, the highest paid pop stars, if you want to nitpick over details, maybe there's been a slight shift.
00:56:00.720But we really don't see the change that I think that we want to believe that there has been.
00:56:06.420So now we're basically looking at like a one-legged stool, right?
00:56:08.840Like, the reason that we're making all these videos and essays and news stories about how thin these Wicked Stars are and what a bad message that is for little girls and what terrible role models they are has to do with the claim related to eating disorders, right?
00:56:45.820And given how dangerous anorexia is, it's essential that we point it out.
00:56:49.780It's essential that we make this the most important conversation taking place around the film.0.95
00:56:54.100You do not want to look like these women.1.00
00:56:56.500You should want to look a little bit heavier, but not that much heavier.1.00
00:57:00.640You should be like two sizes bigger than these women.1.00
00:57:03.340That is what is so funny about it. We are talking about such marginal changes to people who are already extremely thin that where is the threshold? Is it when you can see a collarbone? Is it when you can see a sternum? When is the eating disorder bell going off in your head that you feel confident that you can assert that this woman is either unhealthy or struggling in some capacity?0.98
00:57:28.560Right. So Katie, what do you know about eating disorders, specifically anorexia nervosa, which we will refer to just as anorexia?
00:57:35.660What do I know about anorexia? Really, my experience with anorexia stems from somebody that I was very close with in high school who was diagnosed anorexic.
00:57:49.740And all I really knew from being friends with somebody who was experiencing that and struggling with it was that her relationship with food became very all-consuming and very restrictive.
00:58:04.300And she kind of became increasingly withdrawn.
00:58:08.480And when confronted about it, kind of would always, oh, I had a big breakfast.
00:58:14.300Or, you know, oh, I'm going to eat a big dinner.
00:58:16.680But it was really about calorie restriction.
00:58:19.740And I remember that for her, the impetus was that she had recently been an athlete who
00:58:28.720was going to essentially pursue like a D1 level of athleticism in college and because
00:58:37.740of an injury was no longer able to do that.
00:58:42.060And that was sort of the event in her life or the change that then, I don't want to say
00:58:48.140kicked it off but like that seemed to be and I think she would probably say the same after that0.96
00:58:53.380happened she became anorexic so I had my shit thoroughly rocked when I began to look into this0.97
00:59:01.360I spoke to over 10 clinicians and psychologists and eating disorder specialists related to this0.97
00:59:05.760I even got to get coffee with someone who lives where I live which was really fun she works at
00:59:10.100the local university clinic I had my understandings and my assumptions changed to the degree that I
00:59:15.400compared to like a Lily Phillips episode of how I thought I understood what was taking place
00:59:19.780entering the conversations and how much my mind was changed. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited to learn.
00:59:24.120Yeah. So there are many forms of eating disorders. A lot of them are very recently coined,
00:59:27.920but today we're focusing almost exclusively on anorexia. People believe it's the most deadly
00:59:32.260mental health disorder or the second most deadly if you're counting opioid overdoses
00:59:36.520as an indication of deaths related to disorders. So quick history, a little speed run of anorexia
00:59:42.640through the years, throughout the historical record, you can see countless examples of what
00:59:47.100now appear to be textbook anorexia. But in those early time periods, like 1400s, 1500s, 1600s,
00:59:53.820these incidents of starvation were often attributed to religious fasting. So like nine times out of
00:59:59.04010, people just thought that they were fasting as a means of religion. And this was like the
01:00:02.860cultural context that those people would cling to as well. So they would just say, yeah, I'm fasting
01:00:06.980because of religion. In 1689, the Dr. Richard Morton wrote the first medical account that
01:00:12.860attempted to understand this condition, which he coined as nervous consumption. In this description,
01:00:18.760he thought that both men and women could be afflicted by this condition, and so I would
01:00:22.500like you to read a little section from his writing. And this is a description of a man
01:00:26.220that he believes to be suffering from what he called nervous consumption.
01:00:30.040The son of the Reverend Minister Mr. Steele, my very good friend, about the 16th year of his age,
01:00:36.260fell gradually into a total want of appetite occasioned by his studying too hard and the
01:00:42.380passions of his mind and upon that into an universal atrophy pining away more and more
01:00:48.960for the space of two years without any cough fever or any other symptom of any distemper of
01:00:53.980his lungs or any other entrail as also without a looseness or diabetes or any other sign of a
01:01:00.600colloquation. This is tough to make you read. It's so not natural. Or any other sign of a
01:01:07.080colloquation or preternatural evacuation. And therefore, I judged this consumption to be
01:01:13.760nervous and to have it seat in the whole habit of the body and to arise from the system of the
01:01:19.140nerves being distempered. I began and first attempted his cure with the use of anti-sorb-butic
01:01:26.660bitter and chalbiate medicines as well natural as artificial but without any benefit and therefore
01:01:34.500when i found that the former method did not answer our expectations i advised him to abandon his
01:01:39.780studies to go into the country air and to use riding and a milk diet i'm gonna start i think0.99
01:01:47.680i just need some riding and a milk diet uh and especially to drink ass's milk no no fucking lay1.00
01:01:56.300Hey, give me that ass milk. Hey, baby, can I get some of that ass milk? For a long time.1.00
01:02:03.040By the use of which he recovered his health in a great measure, though he is not yet perfectly
01:02:08.360freed from a consumptive state. And what will be the event of this method does not yet plainly
01:02:13.440appear. What did I just read? What was that? So long story short, we were starting to identify
01:02:20.520even at that point that what is happening to you physically is actually a disorder of the mind,
01:02:26.040right and i think that that was kind of a little bit of a light bulb the idea that this has to do
01:02:29.580with the nerves right but it wasn't until 1873 so you know over 150 years later that the term
01:02:35.520anorexia was coined by two doctors like kind of simultaneously interestingly enough there was a
01:02:40.100french doctor and a british doctor sir william gull and gull said it happened to women and men
01:02:45.140and that it was a medical disorder that was often caused by quote ego perversion so i think that
01:02:49.840that was one of the earliest examples of body dysmorphia right like you're unable to see
01:02:53.460yourself clearly. I also think it's interesting that Gull first called it anorexia hysterica
01:02:59.180because this was the time period where we medicalized hysterical women.0.76
01:03:02.600Ladies. Yeah, don't be too hysterical. But because he thought it happened to men and women,1.00
01:03:07.520he didn't want to use that term. So very shortly after that, physicians start to believe that this
01:03:12.720actually only happens to women. And for several decades, the prevailing cultural belief was that
01:03:18.240this was a mental disorder that impacts women. It is caused by vanity, by a desire to be beautiful,0.98
01:03:23.860to be thin. And to cut to the chase, physicians no longer think that that is the case. So I just
01:03:30.240want to give like a summary of the most up-to-date theorizing on how eating disorders like anorexia
01:03:34.660operate because a lot of these discoveries are very recent and have not yet been coded
01:03:38.720into like the medical diagnostics and into our healthcare system. So number one, research
01:03:44.500increasingly indicates that anorexia has a genetic component. Not that there's like an
01:03:48.920anorexia gene, but there are a series of genes that can come together to impact how a person
01:03:53.140responds to social and psychological issues. So I think this gives like a slightly different
01:03:57.080perspective on the stories we hear so often about an anorexic young woman growing up with a mother
01:04:01.740who is obsessed with counting calories too. Like I think part of that could be cultural,
01:04:44.780Another expert I spoke with told me that there's a neurochemical component.
01:04:48.220So like clients with anorexia often have abnormalities with serotonin and an overproduction of dopamine, while actually patients with bulimia often have lower levels of dopamine.
01:04:57.240So you see these chemical differences with people who suffer from these disorders.
01:05:01.700So realization number two, research increasingly indicates that eating disorders have little to no relationship with vanity.
01:09:51.160Anyway, yeah, and there is something about that way of exercising control that, yeah, makes me feel like I can bear the existence of being alive.
01:10:03.940And I think that when I hear someone describe the way in which restricting food gives them that sense of control, it's not a hard jump for me to make.
01:10:16.100Because I think the, to complete this analogy, we look at somebody who has anorexia and we say
01:10:24.400that's about vanity. That's about, they want to look a certain way. They want to look that way.
01:10:29.680I think the equivalent for me would be, you could look at somebody that approaches work or life the
01:10:34.660way I do and say, well, she wants to have money. She wants to have success, but it's really not
01:10:39.560about those things. That's like collateral. But what I really want is the feeling of being in
01:10:44.400control of my life. And being safe. And being safe. Right. And so I think that we are all
01:10:50.980looking for that same outcome and our brains just try to achieve it in different ways or we find
01:10:58.340that different approaches to that, which can become self-destructive, tend to give us that
01:11:05.480feeling more poignantly than other things. Yeah. There was an eating disorder specialist that I
01:11:10.960spoke with who kind of characterized it this way, where she said, look, these are significant
01:11:16.260mental disorders, but that doesn't mean that these people are not responding to something
01:11:20.900very true about our society. And the rewards that we give to thinness and the confirmation
01:11:26.960that we societally give to the idea of thinness being a higher version of control is very
01:11:34.020real. Like, you write about this in Rich Girl Nation in your book. Like, thin people are
01:11:38.460more likely to be seen as organized. They're more likely to be promoted. They're more likely to be
01:11:42.120perceived as type A. Fat people are more likely to be seen as lazy, no willpower. You have no
01:11:48.100control over your life, right? And so every single clinician I spoke with emphasized that their
01:11:54.200anorexic clients had a very high predisposition for perfectionism. A lot of them have a likelihood
01:11:59.240of also having obsessive compulsive disorder. They often recognize that their eating habits
01:12:04.260aren't healthy for them, but they can't stop. And so there is a recognition of what they're doing,
01:12:09.240but the idea that people are choosing to starve themselves is, I think, a gross mischaracterization
01:12:13.960of how eating disorders work. And moreover, the barriers to access for recovery, which is what
01:12:19.480we're about to talk about, like the money, the effort, the signing over your life, they are so
01:12:23.280high that it is very easy for anyone over 18 with this disorder to be like, nah, I'm good. I'm not
01:12:29.060doing that. So it's very hard to get help. This is where the social media component came into it.
01:12:33.820one of the assumptions that I went into this conversation was like, I don't think that
01:12:37.100celebrities are the problem, but I think social media is the problem. I think algorithms are the
01:12:41.500problem and I no longer feel that way. So I brought up the question of social media and
01:12:47.280these algorithms. Is it capitalism? So I brought this up and I like tested my hypothesis with a
01:12:54.500bunch of people and all of them were like, Ooh, that was a really awesome shot, but no.
01:12:58.400they were like no that's great this is so spot on though because every single episode that either
01:13:06.900one of us do where i go it's capitalism you go it's the internet so it's really fun that you
01:13:12.280were told no yeah it was not really yeah so one person said to me and i thought this was really
01:13:17.600interesting she was like not only is social media not like the top 10 of issues that i deal with
01:13:22.940with my clients but if social media were to disappear if social media networks were to
01:13:27.120totally disappear and tabloid magazines were to go away and actresses were no longer to exist,0.52
01:13:32.560she was like, I think that we would probably still have 95% of our eating disorder clients.
01:13:38.320I don't think that the population would change whatsoever. She was like, in a world where
01:13:41.660everything was completely abundant, I think that there is a certain genetic component that certain
01:13:46.000people respond to stress a certain way. And the question is, what triggers that into becoming an
01:13:51.800eating disorder? And so the most common factors that led to these tipping points for these
01:13:56.540people's patients are kind of similar to what you talked about with your friend, Katie. So
01:13:59.800someone's parents get divorced. An athlete can no longer pursue sports or go to practice.
01:14:06.420Your friend group is being mean to you. You're a straight-A student who starts getting Bs and Cs.
01:14:11.500The idea that anorexic people are obsessed with famous skinny women is just like wildly overstated.
01:14:18.480And no one told me that the initial trigger or primary trigger was another thin person.
01:14:24.100And I want to be clear that like anorexia is one of three disorders in the DSM, which
01:14:29.880is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is like the reference
01:15:11.720If you're in a room with three people who have disorders
01:15:13.980or who have predilections for disordered eating,
01:15:15.960you might start competing with one another to see who can be the best,
01:15:18.920in the same way that three competitive people can try to get the best grading class.
01:15:23.000But even in that circumstance, a lot of people reminded me like when you get treatment for
01:15:27.540anorexia, you're surrounded by other extremely thin people. Part of your recovery, which is
01:15:32.120lifelong, it never goes away, is learning to live with other really thin bodies, learning to see
01:15:36.700other thin bodies and find ways to cope with how that triggers you and how that impacts your desire
01:15:42.640to restrict eating. I do think something that you said, and I don't know exactly how you phrased
01:15:46.680it but I appreciated it because you bridged the gap for me between obviously there is a societal
01:15:51.760component to this sure but the societal component is not what people think it is which is like
01:15:56.540you see a thin person and then start restricting your calories to the extent that you are becoming
01:16:02.380emaciated that it's thinness is equated with control in our society thinness is seen as a
01:16:11.600virtue that represents the control that you have over your life and therefore in seeking control
01:16:17.380you are seeking that physical state. I think that is really, really fascinating because it doesn't
01:16:23.200understate the social role of thinness, but it also I think contextualizes it to say that if you
01:16:31.020were to strip away all of that social context, the thinness itself is not the goal. I want to
01:16:37.540complicate the idea of the social and cultural influence even further by acknowledging that it
01:16:42.140is true what we are talking about when we talk about thinness and our understanding of how
01:16:46.100thinness confers power. It's true that that plays a role into eating disorder culture in modern day.
01:16:51.340There are plenty of studies that show that our fixation and deification of thin bodies impacts
01:16:56.260how young people see themselves so they understand their own bodies. It's also true, though, that
01:17:01.640eating disorders like anorexia have prevailed in societies all throughout human history when
01:17:06.760our understanding of thinness was vastly different. Why? Because at the end of the day,
01:17:11.840caloric consumption is one of the only tools at a person's disposal that is completely in your
01:17:17.240control. And obviously, this isn't true for someone who is suffering famine or in a similar
01:17:22.120situation. But I even had a clinician who told me that they had multiple anorexic patients who
01:17:27.240were on the poverty line who developed an eating disorder to help cut down on grocery costs for
01:17:32.100their parents. So when you think about how our long history of fasting and hunger strikes plays
01:17:37.720into this conversation, food is and has always been a tool of control, and it's often one of
01:17:43.680the only things in a person's life that they can have autonomous decision-making over. I think the
01:17:49.160same goes for extremely wealthy people. You can be a billionaire, and it can still be true that
01:17:52.840caloric restriction is like the only thing in your life that feels fully under your control.
01:17:57.620And I think that that's just one of the many ways in which eating disorders are so beguiling, honestly, and the ways in which they often defy our attempts to simplify them into a boxed cultural understanding.
01:18:09.320So I think the most interesting element of this is when you consider what appears to be the gendered element.
01:18:14.380So one of the biggest arguments people give for why the beauty standard plays into this is the gendered element, right?
01:18:20.100Like most patients, the vast majority of patients are adolescent women, specifically adolescent white women.
01:18:26.020So if eating disorders have so much less to do with beauty than we think, why do they impact women so much more than men?
01:18:33.320I think my best guess would be that it has something to do with something that we've talked about before, which is that the closer you are to a standard already, the more that it appeals to you.
01:18:44.800Could that have something to do with it?
01:19:07.600So from 1952 to 2013, which is when the majority of studies were done on anorexic patients that have since informed the guidelines as seen in the DSM,
01:19:18.060there were two requirements which defined who would enter a study, who would enter treatment.
01:19:22.180One of them was amenorrhea, which essentially means that you no longer had your period.
01:19:26.780And the other was the BMI, which means that almost every single study that informed the DSM did not include fat people and did not include men.
01:19:37.320Any fat person who came in with the symptoms that were identical to anorexia was rerouted to another condition, probably told to try to lose weight, ironically enough.
01:19:45.700And any man who came in was rerouted to another condition.
01:19:49.400oh my god so it's like a statistical error i would say i didn't talk about this specifically
01:19:57.120with every single person but every person i did talk about this said the same thing we don't think
01:20:01.600anymore that women have more eating disorders than men women are just getting treated for it
01:20:06.080and the way that men present their symptoms shows up kind of differently like like anorexic male
01:20:11.860patients will often fixate on muscular growth they'll take steroids they'll be less likely to
01:20:16.500take diet pills. And again, for people who are fat, who come in with the other attributes they're
01:20:22.540not eating, they have a low heart rate, they're told that that is because they haven't lost enough
01:20:26.380weight. And so would you consider trying to lose weight a little bit harder? And if they die of a
01:20:30.740heart attack, which is often how anorexic patients die, they will be told that they died because
01:20:34.920they were fat. Holy shit. Oh my gosh, dude. So as of like 2013, the number of male anorexic1.00
01:20:43.400patients was at around 10%. The physician I spoke with about this said it's now at 25% and she
01:20:48.600expects it to just keep growing until we get to, you know, 50% parity essentially. To kind of double
01:20:54.180down on the BMI, one clinician said that you have to weigh less than 75% of the ideal weight to your
01:20:59.740height, essentially 75% of your BMI in order to be admitted, which means that you essentially have
01:21:04.440to already come in profoundly, profoundly thin. If you come in as straight sized, which is like a
01:21:09.840term we use just for like a quote unquote average body, you're not going to be admitted for care.
01:21:14.300You don't fit the diagnostic. And if you come in as fat, you don't meet the diagnostics for care.
01:21:18.900You will not be admitted. Your insurer will probably not cover you and you will not be
01:21:23.060able to get recovery help. It kind of reminds me honestly of like the abortion laws in Texas where
01:21:28.480it's like you have to be actively dying before they will. And you still have to look a certain
01:21:32.400way. Even if you're actively dying, they will say that you're dying because of something else.
01:21:36.680they will say it's not possible. And a lot of physicians and specialists that I spoke with
01:21:40.520are very frustrated by this because they have information that they now know kind of disproves
01:21:46.080this. Like we have these new studies, we have these new theories, but you're still operating
01:21:49.760under very dated hospital guidelines, DSM guidelines, health insurance guidelines for
01:21:55.680coverage. And so for these clinics, the people who get care are by and large adolescent white
01:22:01.620girls because those are the ones whose parents are going to pay often out of pocket tens of1.00
01:22:05.620thousands of dollars for treatment. And so everyone else is basically ignored, and that
01:22:10.460leads to this reinforcing of this idea of visibility, this idea that you know who has
01:22:15.740an eating disorder, you know why they have an eating disorder. Yeah, because the qualifications
01:22:19.960are selecting for people who look that way. Exactly. That's crazy. It's a self-reinforcing
01:22:25.740mechanism. Oh my gosh. So we see the same people get treatment because they're the only ones who
01:22:29.800can afford it, and they're the only people who fit into the diagnostics that we have set up for
01:22:33.540them. And as such, we are then rewarding people for reaffirming just like misinformation about
01:22:39.680eating disorders. Oh my gosh. I think what this highlights for me too, or where I would bring
01:22:47.440back in like the perversity of incentives and the healthcare system and just how, you know,
01:22:52.040if you want to understand what kind of outcomes you're going to get, look at the incentives of
01:22:55.360the system. It reminds me a lot of the flip side of this conversation, which is that if you are fat0.68
01:23:00.900and go to a doctor they're going to chalk up anything that is wrong to your weight right and
01:23:07.380again it for me this is really just underscoring that that that works both ways the extent to
01:23:14.820which not just we the lay people of the public look at a body to deduce what is wrong with it
01:23:22.980or whether or not it is healthy and that we know what a healthy body looks like or what a quote
01:23:28.080unquote normal body looks like but that in many ways that might actually be downstream of the way
01:23:34.580that the medical institutions have defined some of these things and their understanding of them
01:23:43.300and it sounds like not everybody's understanding of it but changing this sort of stuff takes time
01:23:48.540particularly in a system where you have like a private health insurance schema where like they
01:23:53.900are going to determine how bad something has to get or how narrow those conditions have to be in
01:24:00.240order for them to pay for something. And when you think about the fact that this disorder has been
01:24:05.160feminized and that it impacts men and fat people, which are both very politicized groups, like the
01:24:12.020incentives for anyone to open up our understanding of this disorder are really non-existent in
01:24:17.920Congress or these massive health insurance companies. Like these places do not want to
01:24:22.160help open up coverage for fat people in any sense of the word. Like denial of coverage to fat people
01:24:27.040is very foundational in this country. And I would also say the idea of allowing men to be feminized
01:24:32.920by associating them with an eating disorder that is coded lady is very unattractive.0.83
01:24:40.180Did women ruin the workforce part two?1.00
01:24:42.860Exactly. It's very important to me that we highlight this because I think that one of the1.00
01:24:47.940grounding arguments for this thing about Wicked and this thing that happens every fucking 18
01:24:51.900months about a famous person is that you can know someone's health. You know what it looks like.0.77
01:24:56.740And that pointing out that it is unhealthy is essential to prevent other people from getting
01:25:01.640eating disorders. That is not how eating disorders happen. They are genetic. They are
01:25:06.140biopsychosocial. I love saying that and sounding smart. They are going to happen. And again,
01:25:11.860every person I spoke with was like, yeah, social media isn't great. It makes everyone feel depressed.
01:25:16.080It makes everyone feel alienated, but those feelings are the ones that contribute.
01:25:21.560Not seeing your friends at a bowling alley is every bit as impactful as scrolling through and seeing a picture of a skinny celebrity.
01:25:27.960It's just whether or not you have all of these combining factors that will take that anxiety, that feeling of helplessness, that feeling of depression, that feeling of desire for perfectionism, and whether you are going to be the person who channels that into calorie restriction.
01:25:41.820And a lot of that is out of your control.
01:25:44.120Katie, we've kind of unpacked the two stools,0.99
01:25:46.080which I also realize is a stupid way to describe a stool.0.97
01:26:12.920And like the real myth, and I think profound damage that comes with assuming that someone who looks really thin has an eating disorder, that we know what eating disorders look like, that it is associated with vanity, all these things.
01:26:24.280I want to open a third door here for this conversation about what is happening with Wicked and why Wicked was so overtaken at the release of part two with this conversation about these women and why they were not good role models.
01:26:37.580So, Katie, have you heard of the feminist theory coined by Rain Fisher-Kwan about what it means to be womaned?
01:26:45.420Oh, okay, sort of, but refresh my memory.
01:29:48.480It's on the outline. It's on the outline. It's on the outline. Don't bring it up yet.
01:29:51.460Okay, okay. Banging our heads together. Banging our foreheads together. I'm going to give your
01:29:56.080forehead a little kiss. Three minutes from now. Okay, go ahead. Your turn. Okay, so you said
01:30:00.420earlier in this conversation that you were talking about how in the body positivity movement, the
01:30:04.240thing that changed was our language, right? Like instead of saying you need to be skinny, you needed
01:30:08.480to be healthy. Instead of saying you need to lose weight, we say you need to lift weights. This kind
01:30:13.380of therapy speak is present all over the place. Or you had like Pilates body. That was, that's
01:30:18.220another one. Pilates body, exactly. And so as we've discussed, the central goal never changed.
01:30:23.800And I think a lot of people frankly fell for it, thought that that language was more empowering
01:30:27.560when in fact it wasn't. People are still trying to be thin. The representation has never really
01:30:32.120changed. We haven't made any visible steps towards equity under the law in terms of your body size,
01:30:36.920but it feels better the way that we talk about it, right? And so something that has happened
01:30:40.380is we have essentially replaced tabloids with social media. And so when we talk about entertaining
01:30:46.140the masses, we are now the generators of tabloid culture. But it doesn't feel like tabloid culture,
01:30:52.400right? Because we use new language to talk about it. And so something that I find really interesting
01:30:57.180is that this process of womaning often feels very lefty. And it is often people who,
01:31:03.360in all other senses of the word, identify as progressive and want to call out perceived
01:31:09.780progressive failures call in call in thank you thank you it is something that is very often
01:31:17.060fueled by the right but just as often fueled by the left and is often a moment of radicalization
01:31:21.340of political radicalization where someone moves from the left to the right you have this rabbit
01:31:26.160hole of misogyny where you go in saying amber heard is a bad representative of domestic abuse1.00
01:31:31.280and you come out on the other end going and that bitch is so annoying and can't she just leave us0.99
01:31:37.100alone and you end up surrounding yourself with people who are conservatives. Just the Candace1.00
01:31:42.080Owens content. Yeah, the Candace Owens content. So an example of this would be that you start
01:31:47.480with a very legitimate form of criticism, right? This famous woman steals from Black culture.1.00
01:31:52.640This famous woman is rude in interviews. This famous woman is too rich. She is too skinny.1.00
01:31:58.400She's going to make it harder for other, insert survivor type here, to be believed or to be1.00
01:32:03.140respected and as such and this is the critical component this woman is a bad role model when a
01:32:09.420woman is a bad role model we have a dog whistle and all of a sudden people start saying and also1.00
01:32:14.000and also her fashion sucks and also she hooked up with a married man and also her friendships feel1.00
01:32:20.140fake and also she's cringe and also she's too emotional and also she's vain and manipulative0.99
01:32:26.200and cares about her beauty and reputation more than she cares about others i mean this was blake0.52
01:32:30.580lively 101. When the Baldoni lawsuit happened, this descended so quickly.
01:32:38.260Yes. Nine and a half times out of 10, something I noticed is that the famous person in question
01:32:42.600who is being womaned is of a childbearing age, okay? So I issued a call out for resources related0.98
01:32:50.520to this topic, and I was recommended a book called Damned Whores and God's Police. Have you heard0.67
01:32:56.080about this, Katie? No. This is a book by the Australian feminist Anne Summers, and it takes
01:33:02.780a really comprehensive look into the idea of the Madonna-whore complex, but about the implications
01:33:07.500of that, of how we see women and what we expect of their roles in society. You are not just a
01:33:12.620virgin or a Madonna. You are either a bad role model or a good role model, okay? And the term0.64
01:33:19.340God's police first came from a letter written by a woman named Caroline Chisholm in 1847,
01:33:24.500And she was an Australian humanitarian who was arguing for the value of white women in the colonies in Australia as a way of, like, taming the indigenous population and keeping the men there in check.
01:33:35.360So I'm going to have you read what she wrote in the name of these women serving as role models in these early Australian colonies.
01:50:01.340Wow. Just wow. I think the thing that is coming through most powerfully for me right now, and I'm so happy that we started the episode where we did, watching that clip and, like, understanding the power of that message and just, like, what it means to this moment.
01:50:20.400And then to journey all the way here where you're telling me that the only thing people are talking about online with respect to these films is like whether Ariana Grande is too thin.
01:50:31.920And I also just want to say like a lot of people have talked about the movie.
01:50:34.440I think that it's just there is, again, this massive conversation taking place in the center.
01:50:39.640But I think what's coming through most powerfully to me is this pretty clear discrepancy in how a woman like Ariana Grande, who is by all measures pretty exceptional in her talent, is allowed to be celebrated for that talent only in so far as she is also a morally upstanding person.
01:51:09.640And how we don't demand or expect that of exceptional men.
01:51:15.960There's some wide receiver for the Dolphins who has been arrested for domestic violence, like, several times.
01:51:25.460And it's kind of trippy to, like, watch a football game where, like, you hear the announcers celebrating somebody for being so talented.0.86
01:51:35.080while you at the same time know that, like, they just posted bail for, like, beating the shit out0.99
01:51:40.460of their pregnant girlfriend. And you're like, how is that not part of what we're talking about0.98
01:51:44.840right now? Like, how are we able to, like, separate these things? Men are people. Men have
01:51:49.400nuance. Oftentimes, the mistakes that these men are making are, like, actual crimes. They're not
01:51:55.820just, like, had an affair or was bitchy in an interview or was a little difficult on set.1.00
01:55:30.760She has openly discussed her battles with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
01:55:35.920She has acknowledged having to often medicate to cope often with drugs and alcohol.
01:55:40.360She has asked the public to stop speculating on her private life across the spectrum.
01:55:45.460She has told people in interviews that the time in her life that they represent as having the healthiest body, quote unquote, was the most unhappy in her life.
01:55:53.660Do we know what is and is not true of these statements?
01:56:00.000Do we hold men to these standards? No. Men are not role models. They are people. We have to stop viewing women as role models. And so when I think about living in the world that we live in that is so far from body liberation, if you want to have a conversation about eating disorders, the number one element to this that stood out to me is access. Access to recovery. Fat people should have access to eating disorder recovery. Men should have access to eating disorder recovery.
01:56:26.780And the number one way to approach that conversation is to end the stigma around assuming that you know what anorexia looks like. And that is like the biggest change that I think that you could make by posting a video or by having these conversations is by saying, hey, maybe this person has an eating disorder. She could.
01:56:45.700But like, just to be clear, a lot of people can have eating disorders and they don't necessarily present at it. So maybe we should stop talking about how it's obvious when someone has an eating disorder. And the way that you talk about famous people will not reach them, but it will impact everyone around you.
01:57:02.800and I have been thinking about that a lot in the last year I have tried to start talking to my
01:57:08.400friends without using like physical signifiers and it has changed my life and how I think about
01:57:13.980myself it's very corny but I think without using physical signifiers yeah like instead of being
01:57:19.800like oh my god she's gorgeous or like well please still continue to call me gorgeous I would actually
01:57:25.200prefer if you continue to talk to me well yeah that's because you're so intellectual that I
01:57:29.500actually exclusively use physical words with you because I have to balance it out. But I think that
01:57:34.760when a child or a friend or a parent makes comments like the ones we've talked about today,
01:57:39.240I think it's really useful to remind people that other people's health is not theirs to speculate
01:57:43.500on, that health is not a zero-sum game. That's a very capitalistic thing that we have, that some
01:57:48.240woman's poor health is our problem, and we have to pay for the bottom line, and the health care0.75
01:57:53.160industry is buckling from all these premiums. That is not real. Someone can be unhealthy and
01:57:58.660not prioritize that. And that's okay. That's not something that we have to accept, that everyone
01:58:03.540has to be striving for perfect health and that if they don't, you pay for it. And I think that we
01:58:08.940have to remind people that people with eating disorders, as well as people who are extremely
01:58:13.160thin, as well as people who are extremely fat, are still worthy of love and respect and can still
01:58:18.460achieve things, even if they don't ever overcome what you think that they need to overcome.
01:58:24.240I'm so happy you said that because it has become a little bit of a trope now where it's like,
01:58:28.440oh, Ariana Grande won't see the video where you are saying that she's a terrible person for being
01:58:34.060so skinny, but like your friend who has an eating disorder will. And like, it's going to affect her1.00
01:58:38.940or him. Yeah. And I think what you've also done for me today is highlighted just how absurd it is
01:58:46.980to be angry at a public figure for having an eating disorder or to hold them responsible
01:58:54.280for a mental disorder the condescension yeah the anger that we have at women like jennifer lawrence
01:59:01.980said is really something to behold and i will also just say i'll kind of end this conversation
01:59:06.840by saying that like this was a journey that i needed to take i think that at points i have
01:59:10.960participated in this kind of womaning without realizing it and without always being totally
01:59:15.360aware of what's taking place and i think that i still sometimes will have a knee-jerk impulse to
01:59:20.440be angrier at a woman than a man. And I think that for a podcast that spends so much time,
01:59:24.840I think, righteously talking about women and women's issues, it is really important to hold
01:59:29.800ourselves to those standards and to always be trying to get better at that, at being like,
01:59:33.460how do we learn about this? What does this tell us about the world? And how do we
01:59:36.700stop short of, and also, and also, and also.