Can You Be Body Positive And Still Want To Lose Weight?

The Sporkful

The episode explores the growing rift between the fat acceptance movement's focus on systemic social reform and the body positivity movement's emphasis on

Key takeaways

• Gabriella Lascano transitioned from makeup tutorials to fashion hauls, eventually becoming a prominent body positivity influencer.
• The movement has split into two distinct wings: social reform (fat acceptance) and personal self-acceptance (body positivity).

Main topics

• Body positivity vs. Fat activism
• Social media influencer culture

Notable quotes

I started to wonder if loving myself at any size had become an excuse to ignore how big I was getting.

Conclusion

The episode highlights the complex and often painful intersection of p

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:00) For many of us, going further isn't a choice. It's a feeling we can't ignore. Because ambition has a way of outgrowing where it began. Turning dreams into direction. Every journey brings us closer to the life we imagine. So, where will your journey take you? Etihad. Beyond Borders. Speaker 2 (0:41) This episode includes explicit language as well as discussion of suicide, body image, and weight loss. Speaker 6 (0:48) So you like glamour? Speaker 8 (0:49) Oh, for sure. I'm a glam girl. You can't tell. Speaker 6 (0:52) For people who are only on audio here, Gabrielle has a leopard print top. Tell me about your nails. The nail situation is very nice. Speaker 8 (1:00) Oh, yeah. We have like some gold accents, some airbrushed little flowers. Solid Speaker 6 (1:06) red lipstick matches the Sporkful logo on your mic flag. Speaker 8 (1:10) I mean, hello. Big Speaker 6 (1:12) gold earrings. You're rocking it. Speaker 8 (1:13) I'm from the Bronx. I have a mob wife aesthetic. I don't know what to say. I can't help it. Speaker 2 (1:21) This is the Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. Quick bit of exciting news to share here at the top. My best-selling cookbook, Anything's Possible, is on super special sale as part of Amazon Prime Days. Amazon Prime Days is now two weeks, so it's happening now through October 7th. Get the recipe for Cacio e Pepe with Chili Crisp, Scallion Oil Bucatini with Runny Eggs, Spaghetti alla Sassina, Speaker 6 (1:49) Pasta Pizza. and so much more. You must know one or 20 people who would love this book as a holiday gift. So place your orders now, go to Amazon, Speaker 2 (1:57) and search for Anything's Possible. All right, let's get into it. One subject we've covered here on The Sporkful a number of times is how anti-fat bias impacts people in all kinds of ways. When I talked with fat activist Aubrey Gordon, she described the backlash she's received just by writing about being fat in the world. I spoke with another writer, Lindy West, at a diner in New York City in 2017. She had this to say about the feeling of always being watched when she eats. Speaker 3 (2:23) You have to be sort of demonstrating and performing your penance. Like, you have to be ostentatiously eating salad. in public at all times and going to the gym and posting on Instagram about going to the gym, except also when you go to the gym, people are mean to you because it's not real. Like you can try as hard as you can to be a good, the good kind of fat person and they still hate you. Speaker 2 (2:47) The fight for fat acceptance really formalized in the 1970s when groups began holding rallies, demonstrating in public and getting media attention, like this 60-minute story from that time. Speaker 7 (2:57) A while back we heard that a group of fat Americans were planning to hold a convention in Washington, the National Association to Aid Fat Americans, they call themselves. A hundred fifty fat people, most of them female, from all across the country, come together in a kind of consciousness-raising session. Speaker 5 (3:14) Most people in society do not like me because I am fat. Within the past two months I have been the unwilling participant of a verbal attack. I was in the supermarket one day. And a woman was in line behind me. She said to me, you know, she says, you have such a pretty face. Do you enjoy being fat? I said, I work very hard at it. It took me a long time to get this right. Through Speaker 2 (3:38) the 80s and 90s, fat activist groups continued to organize. They called for equal rights for fat people in all areas of life. They spoke out against very real fat bias nearly everywhere in society. In medicine, studies have shown that physicians often give short shrift to fat patients, assuming their weight is the cause of the issue in question, and too quickly telling a patient to lose weight before trying to understand why the patient is fat in the first place. There's lots of evidence of discrimination in employment, too. Fat people are less likely to be hired and, on average, are paid less for the same work. In the media and culture, there are countless examples of fat people being made the butt of jokes or portrayed as undesirable. And we should note that all of these issues persist today. In the 90s and 2000s, fat activists moved online, and a new generation coined the term body positivity. It was based on the idea that just by being a fat person online, posting photos of yourself in everyday ways, you'd normalize fatness and promote a safe space for fat people to be themselves. Over time, the body positivity movement would coin the phrase, love yourself at any size. And yet, as fat activism and body positivity have broadened and changed, rifts have emerged. There's one group that views the goal more as social reform, fighting broad systemic issues that affect fat people. There's another group that's more focused on self-help and personal acceptance, encouraging people to feel good about their own bodies. Today, we'll hear the story of one person who found herself at the center of these tangled perspectives. Speaker 2 (5:09) Gabriella Lascano is a fashion and beauty influencer and public speaker. Earlier this year, she published a video op-ed for the New York Times called Confessions of a Former Body Positivity Influencer. I wanted to have her on to talk about her experience in the body positivity movement and what made her leave. Gabriella was born and raised in the Bronx. Her interest in fashion and beauty started at a young age. Speaker 8 (5:31) My mom, my grandma, my great-grandma, they were all very glamorous women. So I was in that kind of environment where it's like, you don't leave without your lipstick, without your earrings, just very, you know, put together. Speaker 2 (5:40) Growing up, Gabriella always had a bigger body. But when she was young, she never felt stigmatized by her family. Speaker 8 (5:46) My mom was very adamant about telling me that I was beautiful no matter what, not to let that stuff bother me. You know, even when kids would... bully a little bit or tease. I was always very confident and bold and just naturally loud and outspoken. So I never felt too ostracized or different. I just thought some people are a little bigger. Like, that's life. But Speaker 2 (6:08) Gabriela says her health was also always a priority. I Speaker 8 (6:11) always cared about my health. And I was a dancer. I was in drama club. Like, I'm a singer. So I was always active growing up. Health was an important thing in my household. I grew up. you know, not eating fast food, no soda, no, you know, even at night if I wanted cereal, my mom was like, okay, just a little bit only, you know what I mean? Like there was always some form of, I don't want to say restriction, but there was an element of health involved in everything, you know, no over the top junk food and stuff like that. My mom was very Puerto Rican, rice and beans, chicken and broccoli. Speaker 6 (6:45) There was a point where your mom. took you to Weight Watchers. Oh, Speaker 8 (6:48) yeah. As I got older, that definitely started. I think maybe when puberty started, you know, that's when beauty and dressing flattering and things like that come into play. So there was definitely moments of being told, you know, I needed to eat less or go, you know, I got put on Weight Watchers, got taken to Lucia Roberts, the whole kind of POV, growing up fat in the 2000s. Right, right. Yeah. Speaker 2 (7:14) Gabriela had dreams of becoming an actress or a singer. But she says at a certain point, she realized her body didn't fit the mold. Speaker 8 (7:20) I wanted to be, you know, like the next Beyonce. I came to this conclusion that I don't know if that's really going to happen, but I want to get as close to it as I can. And becoming a makeup artist was kind of my foot in the door into that industry. In Speaker 2 (7:37) 2010, Gabriela was 19 in college. She started working for Sephora and Mac. She also did freelance makeup for celebrities. She began posting makeup tutorials online, and she got a good response. Speaker 1 (7:48) Okay, so to start off this makeup tutorial, we're going to do skincare. So I'm going to use the Pixi Skin Treats Glow Tonic to go white. After a Speaker 2 (7:56) few years, people started asking her about fashion, too. Speaker 8 (7:58) Because I'm in the videos wearing clothes, and then it starts to become, like, where are you shopping? So then I started posting haul videos, which is, like, I think what I became known for later. Speaker 6 (8:08) Sorry, I'm an old. You'll have to translate for me. Like Speaker 8 (8:10) clothing haul. So like this is what I bought. Oh, H-A-U Speaker 6 (8:12) -L. H-A-U Speaker 8 (8:13) -L, Speaker 6 (8:13) yes. Okay, I thought H-A-L-L. I'm like, what are you, in a haul? In a hallway, in a dark Speaker 8 (8:17) room. That sounds like fun, actually. So you would post Speaker 6 (8:19) your clothing haul from a shopping trip. Got it. Yes. Thank you for humoring me. Speaker 8 (8:24) I got you. Especially because back then there wasn't as many plus size options. And so I was. Kind of teaching, like, here's how I shop at this store, even though they don't have