It’s time for riots, not diets. This week we talk about bodies, health, food, and fatness with Kimberly Dark, author of the new book, Fat, Pretty, and Soon to be Old.

Kimberly is a writer, a storyteller, a performance artist, a professor, a yoga teacher, a queer mother, and so much more—and she delves into all of it in this interview. From being shamed as a fat child to starving her way through her teens to finally leaving diets behind forever, we loved hearing how Kimberly learned to love and nurture her body—and how we can all change the way we think and talk about fatness, beauty, and aging.

You can’t hate a person’s body and claim to want to help them.—Kimberly Dark, author, Fat, Pretty, and Soon to be Old

We talk about:

• How our healthcare system fails fat people. “I don’t use the word ‘obesity’ because it’s a medicalized term to describe a fat body, which, fat bodies are not inherently diseased.”
• Why eating well and exercising shouldn’t be prerequisites to respect. “There should be no requirement for anyone to have to uphold health practices in order to be considered a worthy human being.”
• Coming out as fat: “If you want to know me, if you want to know me in my full humanity as a human being, then I should be able to talk about my experiences in the world.”
• How to sit next to a fat person on a plane: “We’re going to occupy this space together; let’s acknowledge it, and let’s treat each other nicely.”
• The double-bind of beauty expectations. “Women are supposed to be on a quest for prettiness and we’re not ever supposed to acknowledge it.”

Plus:

• Unpacking our own relationship to weight, food, and health
• How anti-fatness affects people at work
• Getting dressed up for the abortion ball

Links:

• pretty-and-soon-to-be-old.html">Fat, Pretty, and Soon to be Old: A Makeover for Self and Society
• Kimberly on Twitter and Instagram
• Kimberly’s website