Breaking the Fear of Fat: From Stigma to the Awakening of Body Autonomy

Selected 100 classic TED Talks, ranging from 8 to 15 minutes, covering innovation, growth, and future trends. Provides MP3 online streaming, downloads, and English transcripts to help you improve listening and speaking. Use the power of ideas to ignite your passion for learning! Here is this issue of the 【TED】100 classic speech oral listening material collection. Keep accumulating, and make your English closer to life!

I'm here today to talk to you about a very powerful little word. One that people will do almost anything to avoid becoming. Billion dollar industries thrive because of the fear of it and those of us who undeniably are it are left to navigate a relentless storm surrounding it. I'm not sure if any of you have noticed but I'm fat. Not the lower case might have behind my back kind or the seemingly harmless chubby or cuddly. I'm not even the more sophisticated voluptuous or curvaceous kind. Let's not sugarcoat it. I am the capital FAT kind of fat. I am the elephant in the room. When I walked out on stage some of you may have been thinking, oh this is going to be hilarious because everybody knows that fat people are funny. Or you may have been thinking where does she get her confidence from because a confident fat woman is almost unthinkable. The fashion conscious members of the audience may have been thinking how fabulous I look in this best-did-oh dress. Thank you very much. Where some of you might have thought, oh black would have been so much more slimy. You may have wondered consciously or not if I have diabetes or a partner or if I eat carbs after 7pm. You may have worried that you ate carbs after 7pm last night and that you really should renew your gym membership. These judgments are insidious. They can be directed at individuals and groups and they can also be directed at ourselves. And this way of thinking is known as fat phobia. Like any form of systematic oppression, fat phobia is deeply rooted in complex structures like capitalism, patriarchy and racism. And that can make it really difficult to see, let alone challenge. We live in a culture where being fat is seen as being a bad person. Lazy, greedy, unhealthy, irresponsible and morally suspect. And we tend to see thinness as being universally good, responsible, successful and in control of our appetite's bodies and lives. We see these ideas again and again in the media, in public health policy, doctors offices, in everyday conversations and in our own attitudes. We may even blame fat people themselves for the discrimination they face because after all, if we don't like it, we should just lose weight. Easy. This anti-fat bias has become so integral, so ingrained to how we value ourselves in each other. That we rarely question why we have such contempt for people of size and where that disdain comes from. But we must question it because the enormous value we place on how we look affects every one of us. And do we really want to live in a society where people are denied their basic humanity if they don't subscribe to some arbitrary form of acceptable? So when I was six years old, my sister used to teach ballet to bunch of little girls in our garage. I was about a foot taller and a foot wider than most of the group. When it came to doing our first performance, I was so excited about wearing a pretty pink tutu. I was going to spark. As the other girls slipped easily into their Lycra and show creations, not one of the tutus was big enough to fit me. I was determined not to be excluded from the performance. So I turned to my mother and loud enough for everyone to hear. Said, Mum, I don't need a tutu. I need a four four. Thanks Mum. And although I didn't recognise it at the time, claiming space for myself in that glorious four four was the first step towards becoming a radical fat activist. Now I'm not saying that this whole body love thing has been an easy skip along a glittering path of self-acceptance since that day in class, far from it. I soon learnt that living outside what the mainstream considers normal can be a frustrating and isolating place. I've spent the last 20 years unpacking and deprogramming these messages and it's been quite the rollercoaster. I've been openly laughed at, abused from passing cars and we've been told that I'm delusional. I also received smiles from strangers who recognise what it takes to walk down the street with a spring in your step and your head held high. And through it all, that fierce little six-year-old has stayed with me and she has helped me stand before you today as an unapologetic fat person. A person that simply refuses to subscribe to the dominant narrative about how I should move through the world in this body of mine. And I'm not alone. I am part of an international community of people who choose to rather than passively accept that our bodies are and probably always will be big. We actively choose to flourish in these bodies as they are today. People who honor our strength and work with, not against our perceived limitations. People who value health as something much more holistic than a number on an outdated BMI chart. Instead, we value mental health, self-worth and how we feel in our bodies as vital aspects to our overall well-being. People who refuse to believe that living in these fat bodies is a barrier to anything, really. There are doctors, academics and bloggers who have written countless volumes on the many facets of this complex subject. There are factinistas who reclaim their bodies and their beauty by wearing fat keenies and crop tops exposing the flesh that we're all taught to hide. There are fat athletes who run marathons, teach yoga or do-kid boxing, all done with the middle finger firmly held up to the status quo. And these people have taught me that radical body politics is the antidote to our bodies' shaming culture. But to be clear, I'm not saying that people shouldn't change their bodies if that's what they want to do. Reclaiming yourself can be one of the most gorgeous acts of self-love and can look like a million different things. From hairstyle, tattoos, to body contouring, to hormones, to surgery, and yes, even weight loss, it's simple. It's your body and you decide what's best to do with it. My way of engaging in activism is by doing all the things that we fatisants are both to do and there's a lot of them, inviting other people to join me and then making art about it. The comments read through most of this work has been reclaiming spaces that are often prohibitive to bigger bodies. From the catwalk to club shows, from public swimming pools to prominent dance stages. And reclaiming spaces on mass is not only a powerful artistic statement but a radical community building approach. This was so true of aqua porco. The fat fem synchronized swim team, I started with a group of friends in Sydney. The impact of seeing a bunch of defiant fat women in flowery swimming caps and babies throwing their legs in the air without a care should not be underestimated. Throughout my career, I have learnt that fat bodies are inherently political and unapologetic fat bodies can blow people's minds. When director Kate Champion of a claimed dance theatre company, Force Major, asked me to be the artistic associate on a work featuring all fat dances, I literally jumped at the opportunity. And I mean literally. Nothing to lose is a work made in collaboration with the performers of size who drew from their lived experiences to create a work as varied and authentic as we all are. And it was as far from ballet as you could imagine. The very idea of a fat dance work by such a prestigious company was to put it mildly controversial because nothing like it had ever been done on mainstream dance stages before, anywhere in the world. People skeptical. What do you mean fat dancers like size 10, size 12, kind of fat? Where did they do their dance training? Are they going to have the stamina for a full-length production? But despite the skepticism, nothing to lose became a sell-out hit of SIGI Festival. We received rare reviews, toward one awards and were written about in over 27 languages. These incredible images of our cast were seen worldwide. I've lost count of how many times people of all sizes have told me that the show has changed their lives, how it helped them shift their relationship to their own and other people's bodies, and how it made them confront their own bias. But of course, work that pushes people's buttons is not without its tractors. I have been told that I'm glorifying obesity. I have received violent death threats and abuse for daring to make work that centers fat people's bodies and lives, and treats us as worthwhile human beings with valuable stories to tell. I've even been called the ISIS of the obesity epidemic. A comment so absurd that it is funny, but it also speaks to the panic, the literal terror that the fear of fat can evoke. It is this fear that's feeding the diet industry, which is keeping so many of us from making peace with our own bodies, for waiting to be the after-photo before we truly start to live our lives. Because the real elephant in the room here is fat phobia. Fat activism refuses to indulge this fear. By advocating for self-determination and respect for all of us, we can shift society's reluctance to embrace diversity and start to celebrate the myriad of ways there are to have a body. Thank you.