Episode 1: On Fatness

Welcome to the very first episode of Unboxing It with Lara and Rowan!

We’re thrilled you’re here. We started out with a topic that has impacted both of us most of our lives - fatness.

We think is a conversation that more people need to have. Please comment below and let us know what you thought of the episode and if you have anything to add to the conversation!

Scroll down to the bottom if you’d like to read the transcript of the show, and if you enjoy this episode, please feel free to tell all your friends :)

Things we referenced in the episode:

Tales of the City - we talk about Wren and Brian in this episode but apparently nobody other than Lara find this story of note (which is a great thing!)

Oprah’s wagon of fat.

Episode transcript:

Unboxing it - On Fatness

Lara: [00:00:00] Hey everyone. Today we're gonna talk about fatness and how it's not always a bad thing and just how it impacts the lives of like everyone.

Rowan: Yeah. Whether you're fat or not, honestly.

Lara: Absolutely. I think that how society views fatness, how society teaches us to feel about what people should look like, impacts.

Everybody, and we're gonna talk about it a bit today.

Rowan: I'm really looking forward to this one. I mean, I think it's gonna be a challenging conversation in part because, as progressive as I might feel on the subject, sometimes I also, this is something I struggle with. I really do struggle with it.

Lara: Yeah. So it's personal for both of us, and it has been personal for both of us.

For most of our lives,

Rowan: yeah, I would say as soon as I ramped up into puberty, I started to be bigger than most of the other people around me. And [00:01:00] how that affected me was very negative for most of my life. I don't know about you, but definitely the messages that I received and the things that I was told about how my body looked really impacted.

Everything about me.

Lara: So maybe, we'll, I think it'd be interesting to start with a little context that, so Rowan and you and I are the same age, right? So we are born in the seventies and grew up in the eighties and had a lot of the same experiences. And what I was just thinking was like we grew up in, when we were little with like the Jane Fonda aerobics.

Period. I don't know if you felt that that was part of what you experienced, but it's like everybody needs to work out. We're getting into this aerobic, we gotta be fit, we gotta be healthy, we have to have a certain look of body. The TV commercials included that what was it? Special K had the commercial where they're like, you can't pinch an inch on me.

Like not being able to pinch an inch was the goal, and I [00:02:00] want. You to think about that if you have a body, which you should, if you're listening to this, how many people could say, there is not a single place on my body that I couldn't pinch an inch of fat.

Rowan: Yeah, it's, just, it's not possible for pretty much anybody.

And, , I want to just give a little bit of context too, that I am a transgender man, so I started transitioning in my forties, but up until then. I was raised as a girl and I grew up and lived as a woman and so I took on all of the stuff that women were taught about their bodies.

I owned a Thigh Master. Do you remember the Thigh Master?

Who did the, was that Suzanne Summers? Who did the Kai Master again? Yeah. Yeah. I found one used in the nineties. It. It did nothing. It did nothing. It made my thighs hurt.

Lara: And so as we are in the early stages of this podcast, I think we can already state [00:03:00] for our listeners, you will probably hear a lot of Gen X references as we think back to all the things that have impacted us in our lives, which don't get me wrong, I think this is a fun and great thing.

Gen X has lots of fun and great things to share.

Rowan: Yeah, we're kind of badass. You know, we , we're the generation that just, we, we really did just get sent off into the woods every day. I mean, it was just, it was just like that. You, you learn a few things, but yeah, GenX, GenX fun. But I, I also think that this is one of those topics that is going to impact everybody no matter what generation they are.

And. I know like with, you know, the way that my children, I have five kids and I know the way that they see their bodies. It's very different than how I saw my body. But I think in part that is because of what we were taught versus what they have been taught. We were the Oprah audience, for example.

Lara: Yep. [00:04:00] Yeah. Oprah talked about her weight a lot and about the goal of not being fat, right? it's really fascinating because there were multiple of these very public figures who struggled with their weight, and therefore what they did with that was to publicly. Feel like they always had to fix it. And when you publicly see people constantly trying to fix what they look like, and you look like that, it's like the opposite of representation in a good way.

Rowan: Yeah. I was thinking a lot about this because we, were talking about doing this topic as one of the first topics we cover. And so I was giving a lot of thought and, and where a lot of my. My dislike for my own body came from. And also about the people who perpetuated a lot of this, like Oprah herself.

Yes. She, she definitely did have a lot to do in, when it came to diet [00:05:00] culture at that time. At the same time, she was a victim of it herself. And this is a thing that I try to keep in mind. I don't wanna shame anybody. I don't want, you know, I, I, I also cannot speak from the experience in her case of being a black woman.

And, and you know, the, probably the most famous black woman on the planet. You know, at a time that was still very racist. You know, and, the amount of pressure that she must have been under in every way. So, you know, hats off to Oprah because she also brought a lot of good to the world, a lot of positivity, but she struggled with her weight very openly.

I also think they gave us a space to struggle with our own things more openly. So again, hats off to her for that. But. I will never forget when she wheel, , what did she wheelbarrow out? She had, do you remember what that was? She, like, on stage she had lost a bunch of weight.

Lara: It was like a wagon of fat maybe to [00:06:00] represent how much she'd lost something.

Rowan: Oh yeah. Something like that. Something like that. It was, it was quite a moment. I remember it was all over the media and. When I saw, I don't remember what she had , in the wagon, but I remember seeing her and what that said to me in that moment was, well, if she can do it, why can't I do it?

And I had tried to do it many times and I had not been successful long term. And that has been the story for a lot of people. Most people we know by the stats, if you take weight off. You tend to put it back on

Lara: and more

Rowan: and more and more depending on how you do it, especially. Right. The Biggest Loser was was, was a big thing for us and also for probably older millennials, right?

A lot of us watch The Biggest Loser. Even if you didn't watch it, you would see it all over anyway. And they have followed up scientists followed up with some of the Biggest Loser contestants. [00:07:00] And found that most of them did put the weight back on and that some of them are quite large today. They have much larger bodies even than they had before.

But now their metabolisms are so messed up from that time period in their lives that they can't eat, say over 1200 calories a day without putting weight on. Like that is astounding to me. But I don't blame anyone and I don't judge anyone because. We were all fed the same ideas about our bodies,

Lara: and I think this is gonna be a recurring topic for us.

It's constantly the things that we were taught that made us feel. Shameful about our bodies or fearful of feeling shameful about our bodies. And that's why I say it like impacts so many people, right? There's not just those who were struggling to lose weight, but those who were like terrified of being fat, right?

Like you certainly have heard people act like the very worst [00:08:00] thing that can happen to you is if suddenly you were made to be fat.

Rowan: Yeah. I remember something about that with Bridgette Jones' diary and how, why am I blanking on her name? This is, this is gonna be a recurring theme too, by the way.

I can't remember people's names to save my life.

Lara: Renee Zellweger,

Rowan: Renee Zellweger, and she was apparently really grossed out by having to put on weight for that role. And as somebody who was so much bigger than she was. That made me really sad about my own body. It really did. Yeah. And, and I don't think I was alone in that.

So I think we certainly needed a fresh perspective. And that leads us to the idea of body positivity. And I know something you wanted to talk about body positivity you know, versus body neutrality. What is the difference? What does it mean? Is one [00:09:00] better than the other?

Lara: Yeah. I, and I think I feel very similarly to this body positivity as, as just in general toxic positivity, right?

Like nothing is wonderful all of the time. So let us not pretend that everything is wonderful all the time. And I feel like the, the goal with body positivity is to say like, everybody's great. Just how they are all the time. Love your body. Love your body. Love your body. So there's a couple of parts to that.

One is sometimes there are things that you aren't gonna love. Like, like sometimes there are things that might need to change. Like it's not about the fact that everything is great no matter what. We just need to be positive about it. Love your body. The other thing with love your body is. If you've grown up in a culture that really makes you feel bad about your body, you cannot flip a switch and suddenly love your body.

Rowan: [00:10:00] Ooh, it's true.

Lara: And so asking people to do that, that is certainly something I've struggled with, right? Like, I should be okay with my body now. I should love my body now. I've been told I should love my body. Love your body, Lara. And I'm like, I don't, I don't.

I am trying, but now I'm not only failing at not being fat, I'm failing at not loving my body.

Rowan: Yeah. It's like a double fail. Yeah. I've seen that too.

Lara: And so it's hard. Body neutrality just means like, we all have bodies. They're neither good nor bad, but we have them stop judging them based on.

No information other than your eyeballs

because you have no idea what else is going on. And for our lifetime, fat bodies are the ones that have been, I. Called out. I mean, once upon a time, fat bodies were like, wow, you must have a lot of money and be doing well and not have to work super hard if you have that body right. Like maybe they were revered in different [00:11:00] time periods But also there are a lot of really, really thin people who are thin for like not good reasons. They are not healthy. But people don't look at a thin person and think, oh. I mean, maybe that's changing a little bit, but you know, being thin and like, we have like really, really thin, but just like thin, like we have, how do we have clothing that is called size zero

Rowan: or double Zero?

Double zero

Lara: zero wasn't small enough. Like do you people know what zero is?

Rowan: Well it's kinda like we had, Xl and then we just stopped. We were just like, and now it's two XL and three XL and four xl, and five xl. And it's like, it doesn't, it doesn't really make a lot of sense. It's just like, well, if you're outside the norm, either you know, below a size one, I guess or above an extra large we're just gonna make up a whole new.

[00:12:00] Way of representing clothing at that point. It's, it's a strange thing and you know, I, I think about this a lot because now that I have transitioned the way that people view my body has changed dramatically. This is, I say this all the time, this is one of the gifts of transgender people, is that. We have lived the other side of things.

And so you get to see how society treats you either this way or that way. Right? And I know there are also non-binary people. I'm not taking away the non-binary experience here. I'm just saying that having lived as a woman, quote unquote, I'm using air quotes here and now living as a man, the way that everybody talks to me about my body has changed suddenly.

I am allowed to look however I want, however I want present myself. Any which way? It's fine. I'm no [00:13:00] longer fat. I'm stocky. Mm-hmm. The, the language has changed and I'm like, no, no, I'm fat. They're like, no, no, no, no, no. You're a guy, you're stocky, you're portly. It's different, right? It's like it has a different, it's, it's less negative somehow now.

Right? I am not expected to care for myself in the same way that I was expected to. And I'm, I'm, again, I'm using air quotes here because care for yourself takes on very, very negative meanings. Sometimes lots of people, no matter what size, take care of themselves. I certainly, I, I mean, I've been exercising.

For well over a decade, almost every day. So I definitely am somebody who does. Prioritize, something like that. I'm also still a big person because guess what? Genetics, right? And exercise does not lead to weight loss for most people. There's lots of good reasons to exercise. I think that is one of the biggest lies we were fed though, especially in our generation.

But I digress the way that I [00:14:00] am viewed now, like nobody brings up my BMI anymore. Nobody, makes, you know, comments on my stomach. So now that the algorithm has realized that I am a man, it doesn't feed me a bunch of diet articles anymore. You know, pun unintended.

That was pretty good though, right? Feed me a bunch of diet articles. Mm-hmm. Anyway. Mm-hmm. You know, but it, it's, it's wild. What I'm trying to say here is that. In the age of Oprah, in the age of Rosie O'Donnell, who was also a bigger woman and, and you know, was expected, I think at the time, to not love her weight either.

I cannot think of a man who was under so much scrutiny. For the size of his body, even though there were much larger men in Hollywood, and this has continued now we're many, many years beyond the Rosie O'Donnell and, and you know, the Oprah Show or many years past that now, and [00:15:00] still I'm seeing men are allowed to be bigger with less judgment than women are.

Lara: And the judgment comes from everybody, right? It comes from other women. It comes from and I think this is part of the hardest part, is that it comes from the doctors. A lot of doctors blame everything on weight.

Rowan: Everything on weight. Yeah. Everything. You, you are depressed. It's because you are, you are fat.

, the most amazing thing that happened to me recently, so I, I started taking testosterone just over a year ago and my blood pressure went up. Now we don't know if it went up because of testosterone or if it was just gonna go up anyway. It's really hard to know because I'm in my late forties, right?

And lots of people have high blood pressure. The first thing I thought of when I saw high blood pressure. Was, it's my fault. I'm overweight. That's the problem. [00:16:00] And I went on this extreme. As I tend to do, I tend to do everything very extreme on this extreme like cleanse of, of the things that I ate and the way that, you know, and, and, and everything I did to try and modify it.

I mean, I went, I went so hard. It did absolutely nothing. I felt so defeated at my next doctor's appointment and my doctor, he's a little younger than me, he's probably, I'm gonna say in his late, like mid, mid to late thirties, he was like, Rowan, it's a lot of reasons why people have high blood pressure and a lot of it is completely beyond your control.

He's like, it's great that you're taking care of yourself, but don't kill yourself over it. Let's just get you some medication. And I love that he did not. Point out, you know, well Rowan, you know, maybe if you lost 30 pounds, right? That's not, that's not what he did. But my goodness, have I been through that and I know you've been through it too.

Lara: Yeah. And for my whole [00:17:00] adult life, losing weight and being sent to specialists to help you lose weight, like this is constantly the messaging. I think it's starting to change. And so this is something I, I've told you about that. We can get into a little bit more here is that I think the younger your doctor, the more likely they are to not really completely focus on your weight and understand that this is something the medical community has done for a long time and start to change it.

I think a lot of harm has been done by doctors saying, you just need to go lose weight without taking anything else into consideration, without taking into consideration. Just your family history. what happens when you try to lose weight, whether or not you're healthy, right? Like there are some things that you may go see your doctor about something.

It's not really like your overall health, but it's always, always, you need to go lose weight. And losing weight is not. Easy. And I know some people think it must be in [00:18:00] fact, I saw this post on Facebook yesterday where somebody had shared a post from another coach and it was like basically saying that.

if you were overweight and trying to tell people how to live a good life, you were out of integrity because you weren't doing the work to make sure that your body was kept up well.

Rowan: Wow. Right? The audacity

Lara: and like, they honestly believe that. Right. People think. That everybody's experience is The same. And, I talk about this constantly in my work, in my work as a coach, in my book, all the things my, thing that I want everybody to understand is, and it might sound really obvious when I say it here, but it isn't obvious in the way people talk about things, which is we are all different.

Rowan: Yeah.

Lara: Not only in how we look, like our faces, but like our bodies are all different. Our [00:19:00] metabolisms are different. The way we think is different, the way we process information is different. Like we are all vastly different from one another, but people tend to think. It's not hard for me or, and this is one of my favorites.

They think it's hard for me, but I do it anyway. And I'm like, I don't think what you think is hard is what I experience. But you think it is, and therefore you think if I did it, why can't you? you know, I don't always love to get up and go for a run every morning. But I do it anyway because I wanna take care of my body.

And you're like, okay, great. But like the level of fatigue and the way my body feels is not just like, I don't really feel like getting up, like it's a different baseline, but people think it must be the same for everybody. So if I had the willpower to do it, I'm like. I feel like if you were where I'm at, you wouldn't have the willpower either, but you're not [00:20:00] acknowledging, we're starting at different places,

Rowan: not acknowledging you're starting at different places and also not acknowledging privilege.

I. Mm, this gets me every time. Like it would be really easy for me, for example, being, being a trans guy aside for a minute, it would be very easy for me to say to everybody, well, I exercise every day, so if I exercise every day, I mean, I don't see why you can't, but I also have the space in my life to exercise.

And yeah, there have been times when the space has been harder to find, but I was still able to do it. I have financial security. A lot of people don't have that. Some people are working two or three shift jobs. How are you going to find time to work out? And if you are finding time to out, then what else are you giving up in your life to do that does, you know, I mean, some people are.

They might have a gym [00:21:00] membership, but they can't really afford to eat, right? or they have kids who are young and if they're going to the gym all the time, or they're working out at home all the time, whatever, they're not spending that very limited time that they have with their children.

I mean, people have chronic illnesses, people have invisible disabilities, people have mental health struggles. People have all kinds of things that weigh them down every day. And I mean, I'm not gonna say that I don't have some. But exercise in my life is important enough to me that I do it whenever I can.

That does not mean that it is the same priority or just as easy for someone else. Why can't we understand that? you know, we, we, tend to think that everyone's just coming up with excuses. Excuse is not to eat salad every single day. You know, vegetables are expensive, my friend.

Fresh vegetables are very pricey and not everybody can afford it. There are people who live in food deserts. They, don't have a grocery store nearby [00:22:00] and they cannot, they don't have a car. So good luck going to the grocery store. They have corner stores and small little bodegas and wherever they are and that's where they get their limited amount of food.

People use food banks. I mean, I can go on and on and on, but I am so tired of that judgmental. If you are not doing what I am doing, then you're not trying hard enough. That's, that's bs.

Lara: Yeah. And then they're like, they're just being lazy. And you know how I feel about the word lazy? Nobody is lazy.

Rowan: No.

Lara: There's always something else going on, whether it's they don't have the resources, they don't have the energy.

I think that's a big one. Chronic fatigue is something I struggle with. I know other, you know, chronic illness, like if it's hard for you to get up and eat. Something that got delivered. Imagine how hard it is to get up and like make food from scratch, from real wholesome ingredients. Like it's true. I get that.

That is a good idea, but if I can barely eat the [00:23:00] processed food because I'm having a rough day, it is not just a matter of power through to be able to regularly cook every meal from scratch.

Rowan: That and you know. I was talking about this with the people I live with today, and I'm the biggest person out of my family.

I would also be probably what we would consider by the amount of work that I do to take care of myself, the healthiest person, because genetics play a big role here and here's what happens. You'll have a smaller person and a larger person, let's say living just about the same lifestyle, and let's say that lifestyle involves a lot of processed food and not a lot of movement.

The only person who is really going to hear about it and be judged for it usually is the larger person, even though. Same lifestyle, same lifestyle, same circumstances. But if you're bigger, you will bear the [00:24:00] brunt of that judgment, not just from your family or your friends or your partner or whoever it might be, but also from your doctors.

Anytime there's anything wrong with you, as we've said, it'll be blamed on your weight, right? Whereas a smaller person. It'll be like, well, I mean, they'll get looked at and go, oh, you're probably pretty healthy. And then maybe when they dive into it, they'll say like, oh, maybe there's some things here that you could change, but the assumption when you or I go into a doctor's office, or you, or you or I enter a room, or whatever the assumption some people make, whether we like it or not, and I, I know we don't like it, but it is that person doesn't take care of themself.

That person is lazy. That person eats poorly, that person doesn't move. And then you'll have somebody else, like some people that I love very dearly who are much smaller than me, who do not do the things that I do, but they walk into a room and the assumption is they are taking really good care of themselves and eating all the right [00:25:00] food and exercising, and we have to change this narrative.

We have to change it.

Lara: and I think that's why we wanted to talk about this is because I know, you know, how many people are walking around with this like heavy weight of shame on themselves, that they're not doing enough, that if only they could do more, why can't they just be thinner? So there's that whole part, especially the health part, right?

It has been so screamed at us. That you should be thinner to be healthy, which is not true. Sometimes it's true, but it is not automatically true. It is not automatically true that anybody in a bigger body is really unhealthy. So there's that piece of it that we've like the shame of, of not being healthy, not taking care of yourselves.

And then the part about how anybody who is fat is not attractive.

Rowan: Ugh. I can't stand that one. I can't stand that one. Especially [00:26:00] somebody who, as a general rule, finds a lot of larger people, very attractive. Right. But also then there's, you know, you have people who especially men. Yes men. Cis men especially.

I'm calling you out here. You have men who are on the dating scene who might, this girl might check off all of the boxes. She is smart and funny and beautiful and successful and anything else that you might be looking for, but the idea of introducing her to your friends or family because she's a bigger woman is too much for you.

So you don't pursue that. And it, it just does a disservice to everyone. You have people you have men in their profiles and they'll say things like, no fat chicks, right? I mean, it's, it's terrible. I mean, first of all, nobody wants to date a guy like that. Like newsflash to you buddy.

Nobody worth anything is gonna want to date a guy who very proudly says, no, [00:27:00] fat chicks on his profile. But like, that is, the way that, we, view bigger people. The stereotype is alive and well.

Lara: Which is why, you know, at the beginning we were saying this conversation impacts everybody because people have been socialized to, to think a bigger body should not be thought of as attractive.

I think there are a whole bunch of people who wouldn't want to be seen dating a fat person because they've been taught. Other people will think. You shouldn't be attracted to that and like so it goes on both sides, right? For me, I often struggled with people thinking I was attractive because I taught it's not possible.

So therefore, if you think I'm attractive in a bigger body. Oh, oh, is it a fetish? Is it like, right. It's like problematic. It's not just, yeah. You know, we all have different preferences and that's fine. Like now I know I talk to people, they're like, I like bigger bodies. And I'm like, I don't immediately go to, well, I guess something's wrong with you then, [00:28:00] right?

Like but that's how it felt a lot of my life, right? Like, I don't see how people could think I'm attractive. Like it's almost like. People could think I'm attractive despite my body, not including my body. Yes. Because society said that wasn't possible.

Rowan: That's right. That's right. Exactly. And that it's a message that I still fight against today.

You know, I've been posting very openly posting pictures of myself through my transition and very kindly, there'll be, a lot of people will be like, Rowan, you look great. You're, you're, you're a very handsome man. And my whole thing is, you know, I'll think, well, they're either just being nice because they just wanna be supportive.

Or I'm like, oh, that's 'cause you haven't seen me at this angle or at this angle, or you haven't seen one of the full body pictures I posted and I have to stop myself and be like, you know. this is not how I would want anyone else to think about themselves. So I shouldn't think this way about myself either.

But that [00:29:00] deprogramming, as we know, it takes a lot of

Lara: time. A lot of time. It does. And it's deep. Right? I was looking at a couple of photos of myself today as we we're leading up to this conversation. So full body photos. Ugh. That's a tough one, right? Yeah. Like you are like, oh, like my head is fine full body, but I've had some photos taken by professional photographers and I was like, I look good in full body.

And the first thought is, did you edit this to make it look like that?

Rowan: Yeah. Yeah. But also, I mean yeah. It's like, did you edit it? And then the next thought is uhoh, is this a body dysmorphia moment?

Lara: Mm-hmm.

Rowan: Right. And for people who don't know what body dysmorphia is, you might have heard of body dysphoria, if you know trans people, if you've ever talked about that.

And by dysphoria and by dysmorphia, there are some similarities, but body dysmorphia specifically is. not seeing your body the way it really [00:30:00] is. Seeing it as maybe bigger or smaller or taller or shorter, whatever it might be. Or seeing something that is, maybe exaggerated.

Mm-hmm. And that is something that I definitely, I have a diagnosis of that and I know a lot of people struggle with that, including you. Yeah.

Lara: Yeah. and I remember saying to a friend once, maybe I think I'm struggling with body dysmorphia, and she's like, just because you feel fat doesn't make it body dysmorphia.

And I was like, okay. Yes. But also what I am seeing is from day to day, what I see in the mirror. Is vastly different and that is not possible. I did not change like yeah, 50 pounds in one day, but why? When I look in the mirror one day, I am like, I am disgustingly fat, and the next one I'm like, I look pretty good like That is too big of a difference.

Rowan: Yeah. Yeah.

Lara: For any real change that is absolutely a perception moment based on how I feel about myself, the [00:31:00] shame. Or, I mean, I don't know what it is on the good days, but it's fantastic. But it's also hard to believe.

Rowan: It's tough. It's tough. , I go through the same thing.

I'll wake up in the morning and kind of like shuffle my way over to the bathroom, and there are days where I'm like, Hey, yeah, I look pretty good, you know, and I can see it and I feel really good about it. And then there are days where I'm like, did I put on 50 pounds overnight?

And, and again, first of all, how sad is it that I think that I might not look as good because I might have more weight on me. So again, that's, you know, something that, that, that really needs to change. But also when you have been fed this anti-fat messaging for decades. You again, you can't just flip a switch.

You don't just flip a switch and go, and suddenly I love everything about myself. Self-acceptance can take time. And, and I think, you know, as we're talking about unboxing these ideas and, and [00:32:00] living outside of you know, the norm living outside of these, this messaging that we get, that we're all supposed to feel a certain way or behave a certain way or live a certain way.

I really want to challenge this idea that there is a, you know, oh, here's a, a one size fits all approach to this. Yeah, yeah. Because I mean, there are, Some people really do get to a place of true, pure self-acceptance and love. That's, that's definitely where I want to get. I really want to get there.

I'm closer, a lot closer than I used to be, but I'm not there. Some people. You know, go all the way to, you know, they might, or they might just be like, I am, I'm fine no matter what. I don't love it. I don't hate it. So that whole, like body neutrality, I like that approach in, in its own way. That a body is frankly just a body.

But there's so much nuance wrapped up in this as well. Right. I mean, I think as a trans person , I think it would be disingenuous as somebody who's going through [00:33:00] medical transition. To say that you don't need to change anything about yourself to love yourself.

Mm-hmm. I mean, I love myself and that's why I'm transitioning. No question. But, you know, I, take hormones because I feel a lot better on those hormones. I'm not gonna lie and say that when I work out, I don't enjoy the fact that it, you know, that I have bigger muscles and wider shoulders and that sort of thing.

That makes me feel really good. And if you ever see a video of this, if you happen to be watching this, rather than listening to this, my eyebrows are really dark today because my eyebrows are very sparse. So I, I decided to have them microbladed. Right. So now I'm in that weird dark phase, and then they're gonna go away completely and then they come back.

It's, it's a very strange process, but that is something that I decided to do for myself. Could I have lived without it? Yeah, I could have lived without it. Do I feel better that I had it done? Hell yeah. Absolutely. I feel better that I had it done. So I do think there's so much nuance in these conversations.

So [00:34:00] anybody who comes up with this, you know, this idea of like, everybody needs to. Think and feel this way that is radically different from this way. I, I, I think we're just arriving at the same place, just with different, a different message. And it's not, it's not a healthy one.

Lara: I am a big believer in not speaking in absolutes and in not thinking there is any one thing that is true.

Right? Like, like we have. Many things that can be true in many different ways. And so the idea of body positivity being not great is because the message is just love yourself for who you are. Just love yourself for who you are. Just love yourself for who you are. But like sometimes you don't love a thing, but like I mean, changing what I'm wearing is also changing something to feel better in my skin.

Like there's so many ways to do things, not hating yourself. Society has taught you to is different than saying, I want to really bring [00:35:00] out what feels best in me. Like those are two separate things. And so the more we can talk about that and unpack it and figure out, right, and this is the thing. This is the thing.

Rowan: This is it, huh? Okay.

Lara: Yeah, it's, really. About whether or not you are letting society dictate how you should feel about yourself or whether you've had an opportunity to just within yourself, figure out how you feel about yourself.

Rowan: Oh, okay. The crowd is screaming right now, like, ah. Because that, that is it.

You just, to me, you just put it in you just put it in a nice little package and wrapped it up in a bow and handed it over to me because that has really guided any major decisions that I have made in the last little while about myself. Like I said, I worked out for, you know, I've been working out for over a decade.

The reason I've been working out for over a decade. I didn't just start and say, I'm just gonna start working out now. I should also say at the [00:36:00] beginning of that, I was throwing my back out all the time. So this is what got it all started. I was throwing my back out all the time, and I was larger than I am now.

I had a larger body than I have now. I was finding it hard to move around. My knees hurt, my back hurt, a lot of things hurt, so but first I approached it from this idea of, you know. Like disgust or self-hatred and I was like, oh, look at me. I'm so gross and I'm so unhealthy.

And I, you know, and I tried to shame myself into it and I stopped. 'cause you know what? I had done that a few times before and I had never been successful. In making any significant change for the betterment of me, because we don't do things long term for people we don't like. No. So my first step, my first step, which took several months, maybe even a year before I did anything.

I worked on loving myself. I worked on trying to take [00:37:00] care of that little person inside of me who really needed some love and support. I. Some people call that the inner child. It doesn't matter what you call it, but we all have that little, that little wounded human being inside of us who's been through it in the first few years.

And so I really worked on loving him. When I got to the place where I was like, I can do this outta self-love. I love myself so much. I care about myself and I respect myself so much that I'm gonna go on this journey. And I don't have an end goal. There's no end goal. I'm not here to lose a hundred pounds.

I'm not here to be able to bench press this much. I'm not here. That's not the goal. The goal is just to do something good for myself every day. That's when everything went really well, that's when I was able to put healthy behaviors in place. And I'm not talking extreme measures, I'm not an extreme anything.

I do exercise. I enjoy an only exercise I enjoy and that changes from day to day. And from moment to moment I, I used to [00:38:00] run. I don't like running anymore. So, you know what? I stopped. I stopped. You know what I like doing? I like doing dance. Okay. Not, not in a class, I'm, I have no, I have no groove.

No groove. I, yeah, it's terrible. But I, I'll do it, you know, I'll put on like a dance routine and I'll do that right. Or I'll do kickboxing So I did all that and like, I, I did take off some weight and I was able to keep it off. In large part because I did it, I think outta self-love and I just continue to make choices that work for me.

Those choices, by the way, include chocolate almost every day. I love chocolate so much, but all of this to say that doing it because it felt right to me, not caring what anyone else thought. That is what made me successful. and people would look at me today, some people look at me and say like, but Rowan, you're not successful.

Like you're still a big person. But that was never the goal. The goal was I wouldn't hurt my back all the time. The goal was so my [00:39:00] knees wouldn't hurt all the time. The goal was so I could play with my kids in the park and run around with them when they were younger. That's why I did it, and I was successful with that self-love.

It makes a difference.

Lara: Yeah, and I think just for me, some of the wording that I use of myself is, I wanna feel good in my body, whether it's feeling good in my body, physically, like does it hurt? Does it move? Can I do the things that I want to do? I. And also how I feel about how it looks. So like that is the big goal.

I do think, you know, one of the things that again, will come up on in so many different areas is representation. And, and there was a story I wanted to tell about the first time that I felt like I saw a representation in this particular case that felt like, wow, right. It felt. I can't, like, it just felt like I didn't think this was possible.

So let me set the scene. So there's a show. Called Tales of the City, the mini series. It's [00:40:00] happened, like, I think they've redone it or rebooted it several times, but it came out again in 2019. And like there's a side story, right? So it's like, like a really small thing. And in fact, I Googled it to be able to tell this story and I was like, there's like nobody has written about this amazing thing that this show.

Like I talk about it constantly. Nobody's ever talked about how amazing this thing was. So I guess, you know, I don't know if it's spoken to as many people, but it, like, it spoke right to my heart. So what it was, was there were these characters and there was a man called Brian, played by Paul Gross, who I still think of as dressed up as a mounty,

Rowan: but absolutely.

Lara: And a woman who was called Wren, who was played by Michelle Buteau, who is. Also like the host on the Circle, the Netflix show. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I like the circle. But she is a person in a bigger body and she and Paul Gross's character were romantically [00:41:00] involved and. Her weight never came up. So this is what we've seen a lot, right?

There's a lot of movies and shows, and then it turns out that even though they're fat, they are pretty wonderful and worth being in a relationship with. Like, that's the, that's the end moral of most of the time that you see romances with somebody in a bigger body. Like it turns out they are still great.

Like, yeah, even, even though they're fat.

Rowan: Yeah, no, no, exactly. In spite of their body. It turns out they're wonderful.

Lara: Right? And in this show, her weight was never talked about. It never, ever, she didn't talk about it. He didn't talk about, it was simply, we are attracted to one another.

Rowan: Oh, I love that. I love that.

Lara: And it was like, oh. Like, just like I've talked about it, it came out in 2019, so I've been talking about it for like six years. I was like, in this show there was this couple and [00:42:00] one of them was fat and it never came up.

Rowan: This is the ultimate representation. 'cause as, as somebody who works in, in a lot of L-G-B-T-Q plus advocacy, I always say, you know, media will do a good job.

Representing somebody who say is trans, when them being trans is just never an issue. you know, they, maybe they just happen to be trans. The first time I saw that happen was on a Netflix show called You. Okay. And it was, it was just a little side story. But , the main character, the antagonist, he, he has a bookstore and he has an employee who works at the bookstore and the employee gets in a relationship with a woman.

She's a trans woman. It just never comes up. It's not even as far as I know, written into the story that she is [00:43:00] trans. I. She's just a woman that he falls for and they have this like really cute story and I love to see that sort of thing. It should not be abnormal. It should not be abnormal to see stories where someone is accepted for who they are.

The same as anyone else would be accepted for who they are. So yeah, I love that kind of thing. I think that we need more. Stories where larger people are, especially women. 'cause you, we've seen it for a while now, where you might have a man who's larger on TV and a wife who is smaller.

She has to look perfect. And, and I say that by, today's beauty standards, he doesn't. He doesn't. And so I, I want, I wanna see more of it the other way. something that really hit me a few years ago was Lizzo just did a, a video where she was showing people her workout routine and.

I loved it. She was just saying, oh yeah. So then I, you know, I, go on [00:44:00] this and I can remember what she was doing. Like I was treadmill for a few minutes and I do this, and I, she was like, ah, just like, oh, like working out. Gotta look after my body, you know? And Lizzo is a larger person. And I was like, there we go.

That was, , I mean, people were not kind about it because of course the internet, they were not kind. But I really appreciated that as somebody who is larger and works out. And my goal is not to be thin. My goal is just the benefits, the many benefits that exercise provides me. So that, that was nice.

That was nice. Yeah.

Lara: So that's what I think, right? Part of it is society needs to show us people and show us people like us that are just being people, right? It's not like a story. They're just being people. That's part of the change that I hope keeps happening, and as we keep thinking about ourselves, it's partially allowing ourselves to be okay with who we are without having to change. It's partially asking ourselves, do I feel this [00:45:00] way or have I been taught to feel this way? It's partially. Accepting that some people will find you attractive and some people won't. Just like, some people are gonna like you and some people won't.

Like all of these things are true. And so for me, you know, I still have internalized fat phobia. I still struggle with how I look. I also have. Accepted things and changed my view on a lot of things. It's like a work in progress, and what I hope this conversation does for people is helps them see, maybe it's about themselves, maybe it's about somebody else, but it helps them see how there's so much more at play than maybe what they thought, and that there is room for allowing yourself to let go of some of the shame and some of the.

Societal expectations that really don't belong to you.

Rowan: You're gonna be , the wise old man on the hill of this podcast because I'll be like, let me tell you this story. [00:46:00] Here's a story and go off on a rant. Then you just bring it home and you're like, and here my children is what we should. It's great.

I love it. I love it. I'm just coming to you for advice, always from now on. That's it.

Lara: That's good. And then everybody can listen in 'cause we're probably gonna do it on the podcast.

Rowan: You know? We are. You know, we are. Oh my goodness. This has been a really good conversation, but I do want to wrap it up with one thing.

That is , I, I like to end everything with a bit of joy, a little nugget of joy. What about your body and you as a person brings you joy?

Lara: He's putting me on the spot. What do I enjoy? And it's, it's hard for me not to be like, I've always really liked the color of my eyes,

Rowan: but that's okay.

You can say

Lara: that. Yeah. And I, I mean, my hair is pretty good.

Rowan: You [00:47:00] have great hair.

Lara: Thank you.

Rowan: Yeah. Yeah.

Lara: And even just realizing that my hair is pretty good and enjoying it has been something I've, started accepting right lately. 'cause it to me, no matter what, nothing could really be great about my body for a really long time.

Like it was always forced and now I'm just like, yeah. I like it other than my eyes. My eyes have always been good. And I think it's because when I was like five or six years old and right from the start when I used to have like your school photos taken, the photographers always would mention my eyes. So I've always hold onto that.

But like saying you have a nice color of eyes is a really like, don't look at me. I have a tiny, tiny little thing. That's okay. And so, you know, I think. It's still a work in progress. So I'm gonna ask you to answer the same question.

Rowan: Oh, yeah. I I, it was fine to throw you on the spot now. Yeah. Way to turn it around.

No, I, you know, my body has been through a lot. [00:48:00] It's, you know, it has been through the ringer, including giving birth three times. I've had three major surgeries. I was hit by a car when I was a, teenager. That's a whole story in itself. I mean, there are so many things have happened and I live in Toronto now and almost every day I walk somewhere.

It's a very walkable city and I am so grateful to my body. I. That it carries me to all these beautiful new places. That is what I love the most. I love getting out in the sunshine. I love interacting with people. I love just the ability to get out into the world , and see and experience things, and my body takes me there.

We have been through so much together, my body and I and It brings me joy that I can now, finally. Start to appreciate it in the way that it deserves. I

Lara: love it. I love it. I think this has been a good conversation. I [00:49:00] hope other people take away nuggets and pieces that help them understand themselves or understand other people a little bit better, or them notice things a little bit differently and that, to me is what I hope most people take away from this.

I'm sure that fatness and bodies is gonna come up again on this podcast because it could be every episode. There's so much to dig into. But I think it was a really good topic just to sort of start talking and unboxing how people feel about their bodies.

Rowan: Just be gentle with yourselves. Take a breath.

Remember that you don't owe anybody anything. When it comes to your body, it's your body. It's your body, and I hope you find your joy in it. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you.

Lara: Thank you for listening to unboxing it with Lara and Rowan. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe. Come and find us@unboxingit.substack.com and [00:50:00] tell a friend.