Episode description

We live in a culture that is obsessed by weight. About a third of adult women in the US are on a diet at any given time, and a fifth of men. Those who aren’t dieting are thinking about dieting, with well over half of all adults actively wanting to lose weight, with men only slightly trailing women. 

To feed the obsession on weight, or to help people manage their weight, depending on the way one looks at things, there is a global weight loss and management industry that is expected to surpass US$405 billion by 2030.

So what is going on here? Why is there a near pervasive belief that it’s good to be thin and bad to be fat. 

In this episode we explore some of the reasons why fat has come to signify so much, looking at issues like health, shame, self-discipline, beauty and more. 

Guests

Tigress Osborn (she/her) is a fat rights advocate and Executive Director of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), the world’s oldest documented organization working towards Equality at Every Size. She is a co-founding leader of the Campaign for Size Freedom, which supports passing legislation to outlaw size discrimination. Tigress is a two-time women's college graduate with degrees in Africana Studies (Smith) and English (Mills). She is an intersectional feminist teacher and writer whose professional background as a youth empowerment leader and DEI educator has informed her fat liberation activism since 2008. She has been featured in USA Today, Newsweek, and the cover of the Smith College Alumnae Quarterly; heard on BBC AntiSocial, Burnt Toast, and NPR; and seen on ABC News, NewsNation and Free Speech TV’s Feminism Today.

Helen Pluckrose is a liberal humanist and political and cultural writer and commentator. Her writing has focused on the evolution of postmodern thought into contemporary Critical Social Justice activism which she regards as counterproductive to the goal of genuine social justice. Helen is best known for participation in the Grievance Studies Affair, co-authoring Cynical Theories and the foundation of the organisation Counterweight to support workers at risk of cancellation for not supporting Critical Social Justice theories. She mostly just wants people to value evidence-based knowledge and consistently liberal ethics. 

Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman.

This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics Centre.

Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in

Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and Twitter.

This Podcast is Produced by Jonah Primo, Bronwen Reid and Danielle Harvey

Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram

Find Danielle at danielleharvey.com.au

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