This week, Abbie is joined by Paula Atkinson, who shares her experience growing up in a fat body, developing an eating disorder, and eventually coming to understand thinness as a kind of cult.
One that teaches us to distrust our bodies, override our needs, and spend our lives chasing an ever-moving promise of belonging, desirability, purity, and superiority.
They talk about patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, and the history of beauty standards—including how women’s attractiveness became tied to their survival, and why the bodies we’re taught to desire are never separate from the culture and politics around us.
They also get into GLP-1s, starvation, and why body hatred makes a lot more sense when we stop locating the problem inside individual bodies.
And, because these conversations can get big and abstract, they bring it all back down to earth. Because what do you actually do tomorrow morning when you know the body hierarchy is bullshit…and then you look in the mirror and hate what you see?
Paula has an answer for that, too. It involves seething feminist rage.
Listen for more on:
Paula’s experience growing up in a fat body, developing an eating disorder, and discovering how differently people treated her when her body became smaller
Why Paula thinks of thinness as a cult, and what makes its promises so difficult to walk away from
The relationship between beauty, patriarchy, white supremacy, and the policing of bodies
How attractiveness became tied to women’s survival, and why beauty standards shift alongside social and political power
Thinness as a moral hierarchy, and the promises of purity, superiority, and belonging
GLP-1s, starvation, and the normalization of suppressing our bodies’ most basic needs
Why understanding body hatred as a systemic issue can change the way we approach recovery
The grief of letting go of the promises attached to thinness, even when we know they aren’t real
What to do when you know the body hierarchy is bullshit but still struggle with your own body (hint: seething feminist rage)
We’d love to hear from you on this one.
- What's one belief about beauty or thinness that you once accepted as truth, but now see very differently?
- Has learning more about the history and politics of beauty changed how you think about your own body?
Join the Patreon and share your thoughts!
About Paula
Paula Atkinson is a psychotherapist and Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker who has spent decades working with people around trauma, disordered eating, body image, internalized weight stigma, anxiety, grief, and relationships. For ten years, she was also a professor of Weight & Society at George Washington University, where she taught about our culture’s obsession with thinness, the history and politics of body ideals, and the oppression of larger bodies.
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Podcast Cover Photography by Anya McInroy
Podcast Administrative Support by Alexis Glaubach
Podcast Editing by Brian Walters
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