Hey, Rebel Eaters, We're launching season three so soon. This season we're focusing on tools, tools for dating, tools to help you reconnect to nature and exactly the body. You have, tools to help raise a kid with a positive relationship to food, and we ask you to send in your questions. You had so many good ones, and one of the episodes this season, I feel that that with my good friend, an anti diet crusader, Isabel Fox and Duke and I wanted to share a taste, a snack, an appetizer if
you will, of that episode with you. So here's a question that one of you sent in that really made me smile. This person says, I want more fat friends. Sometimes I'll see a fat babe and I think that I want to be friends with them, but I don't know how to approach it without saying, Hi, I notice that you're fat and I want to hang out with you. Do you have any advice about how I can start building relationships with more fat folks? I will say I
have a little bit of extra information. I do know this person is also a fat person, so I'm going to ask them. They're looking for community, so I have some thoughts, which is like, first, I want to say, like, I love this energy. I think fat community is so important. It's so valuable when you're a fat person to be able to sort of have I mean, anybody you share an identity with or some part of your background with. There's almost like an intimacy that's sort of baked into
the exchange, which can be so nice. And especially when you're constantly doing labor, if you're a marginalized person, it can be nice to not have to explain or you have a shorthand that you can kind of share with somebody. But anyway, I think important. So I'm going to put that as like the overall sort of you know, the vibe.
But I want to say, in terms of strategy, I personally always gauge where that person is at about being fat first, Like, so I have to figure out, like, is this a conversion situation where I'm gonna try Yeah, maybe I don't even know, Yeah right, they could not be fat positive actually a hundred statistical likelihood that they are not. Yeah right, So I got I want to like gauge, right, and then I'm like, are they am
I converting? Do I want to Is that okay? Do they consent to this right, and or they already on board, And I think what's cool is you get to make the call on how much work you want to put into it. Like I'm the kind of person who like, if I'm looking for fat community, I'm looking for fat fat positive community. Yeah. Like that's what I mean when I say that, Right, you get to make the call on how much work you want to do and put into it. And I've had situations backfire when I've been
like I can convert. I think there's home and then they're actually there's none, and I've just spent like ho hours weeks arguing with another fat person. Yeah. I mean, I will say though, I have a fat friend who's fat positive. She is an expert at converting. She's also like she's like an organizer, so she like converts people on everything from like anti capitalism. She converts people to feminism.
She's like literally converted this entire group of like regular as stratement into like some kind of women supporting like support network that they meet monthly or whatever. So she's like, really good. I'm like, if you're like that magician, that's your superpower, go for it. Otherwise I would say go for someone who seems like and I would say, signs that they're on the same page, signs like they look.
Start to look for the clues, like, because I think fat positive people flag in certain ways through gestures that they're fat positives. That might be clothing, Yeah, it might be how they talk about stuff. If they're already political about other things, it's likelier that they'll be political about this. I know of many fat folks who don't necessarily identify as political, but who just are living their best lives in their own body and they're just not participating a
diet culture and it's not necessarily political. It's just kind of who they are. I think, like a good portion of my friends at this point in my life are just they're not they're not necessarily political, but they're also just not dieters, right, Like I just don't hang with dieters really anymore. Yeah, I mean, one hundred once you kind of aren't doing it. It's a very specific vibe that you don't want to super be around. Um, you know.
I mean, it's just in my experience, but I think also my last two tips are like, it's okay to sort of learn how to start a friendship reach out to but he asked them to coffee. I do that all the time enough, I feel a little sparkle. Ye'll just be like, do you want to get coffee? I don't even think about it anymore. I'm just like do it? Just ask yeah, Dad. I think the last thing that my last tip is, you know, always be recruiting a
br Always be recruiting, which like create situations. I mean my producer was like, you know, maybe they could start their own rebel eaters club, or maybe you could have like some kind of an anti diet. Like I mean this, like if you're on a college campus or you're somewhere where, like you have a coworking space, you can create a little group and those people will self select and that could be your posse potentially, like letting a large a group of people know they can opt into a situation
where y'all could be friends. And I think that's a very smart move, right, It's really I mean, ultimately, it's like really just a question of like how do I make friends with somebody I want to be friends with? Right? And that is all about just putting yourself out there and just you know, you get to decide if it's not weird, Yeah, one hundred percent und I love my friend Isabel and real talk. Rebel Eaters Club is a bit like having a whole buffet of excellent new friends.
Season three comes out on May third. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.