00:01:24.520Kimberly Springer is a adjunct professor at Barnard College and the editor of a volume called The Oprahfication of American Culture.
00:01:31.900She got in touch with us a couple of months ago and was like, I have weird feelings about Oprah and I feel like you have weird feelings about Oprah too.
00:01:45.720So that's what we're going to do in this episode.
00:01:48.020We're going to talk about Oprah as a cultural force.
00:01:50.820We're going to talk about her biography.
00:01:52.920And then, because Oprah, like all of us, contains multitudes, we couldn't cover her entire career in one show.
00:01:59.840So this episode, we're going to talk about her infamous Wagon of Fat episode.
00:02:04.920And then we're going to do some sequels on other sort of iconic Oprah episodes over the years.
00:02:10.200I would just add to that introduction that like, Oprah, like all of us has a great deal of goodwill amongst the public and rightfully so. And also she is someone who does things with a great deal of good intention. And sometimes that good intention leads to harm. And I think we're going to try and talk about all of those things all at once the like incredible intentions, the incredible work that she's able to do, and the harm and try and hold all of those things all at the same time.
00:02:38.420Yes. I think that Oprah has done very good things for America, and I think that she has done very bad things for America, and, like, both are true at the same time.
00:02:46.400I think it's interesting that we have to issue a disclaimer.
00:02:48.760Yes, right? What are your weird feelings on Oprah, Kimberly?
00:02:52.380My weird feelings are that I think everyone assumes that everyone loves Oprah, but I have not experienced that as necessarily being true in Black communities.
00:03:04.580And I use Black communities plural because, of course, there are people who love her and they love her capitalism and her entrepreneurship.
00:03:11.860But I know that there are also people who are very critical of Oprah as a person and what she has or hasn't done for the Black community.
00:03:21.660And I think that's where it gets very interesting.
00:03:25.180Well, let's dive in. Do you want to start by telling us like the story of Oprah?
00:03:29.680Sure. Even this gets complicated because I think there's Oprah's own myth making about herself that has just become fact. Like it's almost as if she sprung fully forth from her own forehead. So she's born in 1954 in Cusico, Atala County, Mississippi.
00:03:49.060She talks about being a bookish child and how she was literate very early.
00:03:55.000She said she was able to read by age two and a half, and she's reading scripture by the
00:03:59.580age of three, and she's giving oratory in church.
00:04:04.300She is raised by her grandparents in Mississippi until she's eight.
00:04:10.220For that era of her life, it's interesting that all of the biographies of her will talk
00:04:17.200about her being raised on a pig farm. And I think that's really interesting because I think it to a
00:04:22.480particular kind of maybe Yankee imagination implies a kind of squalor. But actually, for the 1950s,
00:04:30.620for Black people to still own their own land and to own their own farm means that there was a kind
00:04:36.800of self-sufficiency that gets erased by just calling it and dismissing it as a pig farm.
00:04:41.280One of her aunts, there was an interview, it was actually in the National Enquirer.
00:04:45.760Sorry, it was a cousin, a second cousin.
00:04:53.980They could work in the fields, but it was a point of honor that they didn't do maid work.
00:04:57.860And I think that's really interesting to think about Black women in a community, but
00:05:04.480also her family making this unspoken rule, which speaks to a kind of determination, a
00:05:12.480kind of self-determination that might get overshadowed when we think about how Oprah
00:05:19.480tells her own story of individual achievement.
00:05:22.760Yeah. I mean, it's also interesting to think about this sort of question about sort of like,
00:05:26.380what were the supports that existed in Oprah's life that are maybe made invisible in her
00:05:32.700self-narrative, right? And how that links to what we see sort of later on when she starts
00:05:40.200talking about like the secret and getting into this kind of almost like prosperity gospel yes
00:05:46.000one of the things that i came across in my research was a quote from her from the late
00:05:49.38080s where she starts talking about the deep spiritual meaning of money we're in some gnarly
00:05:55.540yeah because how she's able to make like living your best life becomes the mantra but before that
00:06:03.980it requires her to transcend any kind of racial or gender barriers right and the way she talks
00:06:12.380about mississippi is always about leaving the place and she often will like refer to mississippi
00:06:19.520as like a place where there's nothing there so um in about 60 to 67 she goes to live with her
00:06:29.720mother in milwaukee this period pretty much is characterized by her as the time when she was
00:06:38.020sexually abused she is sexually abused from about the age of 10 to 14 jesus christ um actually it's
00:06:44.660age nine she says by cousin age nine um by an uncle and also by a family friend it's interesting
00:06:51.000because the narrative that she then creates on her show like with things like the child predator
00:06:56.340watch list is all about stranger danger, as opposed to families as the site of abuse,
00:07:02.580which is where a lot of her abuse happened.
00:07:05.780Does she talk about the effect of all of this abuse on her as a person? Like,
00:07:10.220it must have been a really hard thing to hold on to.
00:07:12.500So the research in the book shows that she didn't talk about the abuse until she
00:07:17.480spontaneously confessed it on her show, which was about survivors of incest.
00:07:24.160Oh, wow. So she wasn't, she didn't like plan it out. Like I'm breaking my silence. It was just
00:07:28.740like, it came up. Right. Wow. Maybe it's just a changing way that she thinks about it because
00:07:33.560there was a book that just came out where she's talking about abuse at the hands of her grandmother
00:07:39.620being in an abusive household. It's a narrative around her abuse that keeps changing. And I think
00:07:46.800it would be worth looking at how it tracks with how we talk about abuse in each different time
00:07:53.820Yeah, that's true, because these things are framed so differently. And also she's been a public figure for so long that she can sort of ride the waves of like different societal understandings of abuse and also like processing what happened to her. You would just do that differently at different times.
00:08:06.800Yeah, I mean, I will say that also came up in the research that I did where I was like, oh, the way that Oprah talks about her body and particularly her size is just a direct reflection of like, this is how we're talking about this thing at this time.
00:08:22.900I didn't really think of her as being kind of like a little bit of like a sort of pop culture cypher.
00:08:27.820It's also a fascinating like palimpsest because she's also creating these societal understandings at the same time. Right. That like she's been so influential that if she does a bunch of episodes on Stranger Danger, like she's helping to spread and reinforce that at the same time that she's also reflecting it in her own experience.
00:08:44.540Right. And so in 68, she gives birth to a premature baby and that baby dies a few weeks later. And I think that's the point at which she goes to live with her father in Nashville. So this is where we start to have her, her sort of trajectory into speech and communications and drama.
00:11:04.860Everybody was angry for four years.1.00
00:11:06.900It was an all-black college, and it was in to be angry.1.00
00:11:10.440I mean, one of the things that this says to me is sort of the way that the sort of the0.90
00:11:14.920tractor beam into the white mainstream is plucking out people like Oprah.
00:11:20.500Like they're people that are more palatable to white America.0.94
00:11:24.640Right. And I think it's really dependent on that context, because I think it's pretty easy to just be in our present day context and think, well, everybody was radical back then. But no, those are not the people who capitalism has embraced.
00:11:40.500There's also a quote that came up in a 1989 profile of Oprah in the New York Times.
00:11:47.920When Winfrey was hired for AM Chicago, the station manager was, according to her executive producer, Deborah DeMeo, delighted that he had managed to find someone who wasn't an, quote, Angela Davis type, who'd pick at the station with a gun in her hair.
00:12:02.880there is like an active reward for not aligning herself with almost kind of any kind of racialized
00:12:10.820politics right right but i just was sort of a staggering moment to be like oh right it is like
00:12:17.360the early 80s and like a station manager would totally go to the press and be like we got a
00:12:22.940black woman who's not angela davis hooray right oh jesus yeah but yet she has an afro you know1.00
00:12:29.300she's she anchors the news in um nashville and then she moves to baltimore and she's anchoring0.92
00:12:34.780the news there and you can see clips on on youtube she has she has a beautiful afro it frames her
00:12:41.120face like a halo and then she co-hosts uh her first talk show people are talking so she does
00:12:47.020that before she moves to chicago so i think there's an element of like she knows she's black
00:12:53.100she accepts that and she's just black enough to be palatable for white people who are running
00:13:01.260these institutions and what what year is this when she moves to chicago she moves to chicago
00:13:06.280in i think it's 1984 okay she takes over as host of am chicago and after just a month her rating
00:13:15.000surpassed donahue's because his show was also on at the same time oh wow so it only takes a month
00:13:21.060and after in less than a year it goes to an hour and they rename it the oprah oprah winfrey show
00:13:27.460is it a local show or is it national at this point the oprah winfrey show is local until 1986
00:13:32.440when it goes into national syndication okay her estimated earnings for 91 92 were 88 million
00:13:38.700dollars in 1990s money yes whoa and and and by like isn't it 87 or 88 when she
00:13:46.900buys her own show and creates her own studio that's when she starts harpo in 1988 she fully
00:13:54.340like now is like owns the means of production like she's like all the way in on it that was
00:14:00.040very very smart for her to do that it's incredibly savvy yeah and then yeah how i mean i guess she's
00:14:05.500now on the track of like becoming the oprah that we know so is it just like a sort of steady rise
00:14:11.560from then on just some some markers she's in um the color purple in 1985 and she gets academy award
00:14:18.600golden globe nominations um she also had started dating stedman in 1986 okay i'm sorry you have
00:14:25.360to explain the stedman thing to me i don't like know anything about stedman and he's like one of
00:14:29.840those words that comes up in like refrigerator magnet ways like he's just associated with oprah
00:14:34.020but like i don't know what his deal is or who he is i love that too he's just stedman now you know
00:14:38.580Is that his first name or his last name?
00:22:46.420It is, you know, less than 25% of your recommended daily allowance according to sort of the food pyramid and all that kind of stuff.
00:22:54.640There is a piece in the Buffalo News at the time that says, quote, Optifast is made of egg white and milk supplemented with vitamins and minerals to prevent cardiac irregularity.
00:23:06.760Its formulation differs from controversial liquid protein diets of the past.
00:23:11.74040 dieters died on that mix, made of collagen, protein, hooves, hives, horns, connective tissue
00:23:19.020of cattle. It was not life-supporting. Optifast is. I love it when fad diets are like, we're not
00:23:25.740like those other fad diets. Like those ones that are bad for you. We aren't made of ground-up
00:23:32.440cattle hooves. Yeah. Like, what? Little fun fact about this diet. Like many diets of that era,
00:23:40.040It has the sort of like initial like phase to quote unquote kickstart weight loss, right?
00:25:20.280And the way that she decides to reveal it is at the opening of her show, she pulls out this red classic like radio flyer wagon with a clear plastic bag full of 67 pounds of animal fat.
00:29:15.100I am stealing this point from a lady I know named Aubrey Gordon, but also Oprah didn't do it. Like she gained the weight back. Like 99% of people who lose this much weight this fast do. What this really is a story of is like even Oprah with her $88 million a year isn't able to keep the weight off because like nobody can continue living like this.1.00
00:29:35.480Like, nobody can eat a thousand calories a day for the rest of their life.
00:29:39.120Like, it's extremely bad for your health.
00:29:41.420It's extremely bad for your mental health.
00:29:43.140Like, this was never going to work for her in the long term.
00:29:45.860I will say the other thing that feels really fascinating to me about this clip that is not often mentioned is that this show airs during sweeps.
00:29:57.380This single episode has her largest ratings to date, and some of the media that I found claimed that even in the 25-year run of the show, this was still the highest-rated episode ever.
00:30:25.840So it's this really tricky thing, right, where you're like, oh, my God, Oprah's getting all of this horrific negative media coverage about her size and these public debates about her body and about her life and about everything.
00:30:39.060Right. She's working all that out. Like many of us, she thinks maybe weight loss is the thing that will take care of it.
00:30:44.840she does that but everything she does is on tv including this so it also sort of sets off this
00:30:50.800kind of you know it's like a butterfly flapping its wings right leading to sort of a tsunami right
00:30:56.400where you're like oh this is like a deeply human thing to do but you're doing it during sweeps on
00:31:01.840an immensely popular tv show also it's just awful to think about going through the sort of extremely
00:31:08.480normal cycle of like a crash diet feeling good there's a sense of euphoria and then this general
00:31:14.780disappointment in yourself and like self-loathing as you inevitably gain the weight back like that's
00:31:19.800hard enough but doing it in front of the entire country and having people commenting on it and
00:31:25.000speculating on it and like what's wrong with her she's gaining the weight back why can't she do it
00:31:29.240like that's just like this extra level of basically abuse yeah it does make me sad i did not expect
00:31:35.780that it's like i'm so sorry there are two more clips and both of them will also make you sad i
00:31:40.880apologize um okay so i dropped a link to you guys oh no it's maintenance phase nemesis johnny
00:31:47.620carson it sure is the trash men of maintenance phase oh buddy you will be surprised by where
00:31:54.560the trash comes from this particular interview oh no let's go back when what age were you when0.98
00:32:01.060you first started to find out you were a little larger than actually you wanted to be this is0.76
00:32:06.180what i learned i've always been one of those people thank you johnny being delicate
00:32:09.940trying to freak out speaking of that i happened to look at some tapes the other day of the first
00:32:15.240time i was on this show why didn't you tell me well i mean i look like shamu no you didn't no
00:32:21.720you no well we actually it's very interesting i'll bet you some people i'm taking a guess
00:32:26.120i'll bet you some people said i'd like you better the other way is that did that happen yeah they
00:32:32.260have said that but they lying do they lie they are lying the interesting thing about it is though i
00:32:36.960was one of those people who always said oh i carried my weight well i carry it well i know
00:32:40.440i'm overweight but i carry it well then i look back at pictures i carried exactly where it was
00:32:44.720yeah my best friend said to me the other day you know i see those pictures of you and
00:32:49.160gee i don't think of you that way moby yeah what uh yeah tell me tell me what you guys are um
00:32:57.720thinking and feeling oh it's just nauseating yeah this is a 10 minute clip that i watched in like
00:33:05.64090 second intervals because i was like i need a break like and i think part of what landed so hard
00:33:12.000is watching someone who sometime between you know four months or a year or whatever however long
00:33:19.120before was fatter so aggressively divorce their current self from their past self yeah so she's
00:33:28.000like divorcing herself from her previous fat self but she's also kind of divorcing herself from fat
00:33:32.780people yeah she's buying into all of this logic that's like oh if people tell you they carry it
00:33:38.920well they're lying if they tell you that they like the way you look they're lying she's also0.99
00:33:42.740like she's congratulating her friends for saying mean shit to her too like your friends should not1.00
00:33:47.220be calling you a fucking whale dude like you shouldn't be like lol my friends did this awful0.99
00:33:51.560thing to me like that's just normalizing the idea that we're kind of like supposed to confront our1.00
00:33:55.940fat friends like fuck that also just like why didn't you tell me her question to johnny carson0.99
00:34:01.940Why didn't you tell, like, Jesus Christ.1.00
00:34:06.100Never in my life have I heard a fat person be like, you know what?
00:34:09.380I actually don't hear from thin people enough what they think of how I look.
00:34:14.400That's just, like, not a thing that I have experienced ever.
00:34:18.480Make sure to tell me about this thing that I'm acutely aware of at all times.
00:34:21.900Yeah, make me feel bad in my closest relationships, too.
00:34:25.460To me, it's like this sad thing of, like, it's this woman who looks fine and seems, like, happy
00:34:30.360and like unbelievably successful yeah and then it's like she still feels like a failure because
00:34:34.540of this one extremely superficial trivial thing and like and also the whole culture of course is
00:34:40.100telling her that she's a failure because of this one thing or that nothing counts because of this
00:34:43.600one thing i mean first of all this is not a standard that we apply to men at all yeah there0.99
00:34:47.760are many men in public life who have just been like fat dudes and like no one gives a shit and0.94
00:34:52.500it really feels like a firm move into a kind of white assimilationist individualistic stance for0.99
00:35:01.200her the idea that if somebody says they're comfortable they're lying it just feels like
00:35:06.440a direct attack on black women who are larger yeah totally aubrey kimberly do you think oprah
00:35:12.600was able eventually to just sort of come to peace with the way that she looks or like is she still0.99
00:35:18.400in this cycle? I mean, I think this is where we get into a little bit of like the things that we
00:35:23.220know about Oprah's mindset are the things that she decides to tell us. So I think there's a
00:35:27.760question about like her individual mindset as a human, which we can't know. It feels to me like
00:35:33.280as I was looking through media for this, like, you know, she's done media work since I think
00:35:38.620it's like 2009, maybe where she starts talking about how like healthy is the new skinny and she
00:35:44.120doesn't want to just be thin she wants to be strong and healthy by which she means thin right
00:35:51.060like right it just feels very conflicted in a way that feels like a reflection to me of like
00:35:56.760the way that like many many many people and particularly women feel about their bodies
00:36:01.280right right kimberly i'm curious about if you have thoughts or experience uh to share on this
00:36:07.160i was gonna take us into it i kept getting distracted by her hair and i don't know right
00:36:11.900want to get into that that tangent because you know i'm like what is this tina turner wig that's
00:36:17.940happening i know like how does like her wig speak to me of a particular kind of class achievement
00:36:26.380so that she's able like everybody knows oprah has money we assume she has more money than god1.00
00:36:32.640and so she's able to make herself look a particular way and indulge in particular products0.99