a conversation with Fat Activist Allison Graham

It’s a very compassionate thing to do to see yourself as you are and not hate yourself.” — Allison Graham on building fat community in her hometown

Advocate and community-builder Allison Graham joins guest host Emily Christensen for a conversation about why she likes the word fat, body positivity vs. fat liberation, and how anti-fat bias shows up in the work she does as a therapist and advocate for survivors of sexual violence.

More recently, Allison has been working to build fat community in Wichita, Kansas, and she discusses her motivation and goals around that work.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of the Periodical Podcast, in which Allison interviews photographer and “How to Carry Water” documentary subject Shoog McDaniel.

**Allison and Emily do mention weight, weight loss and body size over the course of our conversation. We also talked about sexual violence in the context of Allison's work as a therapist, and advocate. If these are sensitive subjects for you, please take care.

Transcript

Lela Meadow-Conner:
I’m Lela Meadow-Conner, a co-founder of rePROFilm. Welcome to (Part 1/2 of ) the rePROFilm Periodical podcast. Our regular host Asha Dahya is away this month, so I’m filling in to introduce this conversation between Emily Christensen, the rePROFilm newsletter writer, and Allison Graham, a Wichita-based advocate and community-builder. The two discuss how anti-fat bias impedes reproductive justice, and specifically Allison’s work to combat anti-fat bias in the treatment of survivors of sexual violence.Allison Graham (she/they), LMSW, is a dedicated and compassionate professional who has been a sexual violence advocate since 2018 and a therapist specializing in the care of sexual trauma survivors since 2020. As a member of The Association for Size Diversity and Health (ASDAH), she is deeply committed to the practice of Health at Every Size® principles, advocating for a holistic and inclusive approach to health and well-being.

In 2023, Allison embarked on a mission to build a fat community in Wichita, creating safe and celebratory spaces for individuals of all sizes. She successfully planned and co-hosted a Fat Babe Pool Party that year, followed by a winter Fat Clothing Swap in 2024, with another exciting event planned for July 20, 2024.Allison's dedication to promoting inclusivity extends beyond events. She created and facilitated a transformative staff training at her workplace, focusing on combating anti-fat bias. Additionally, she provides valuable education within the community at the intersection of anti-fat bias and sexual violence, fostering awareness and understanding to create a more inclusive and supportive environment for all.erstanding to create a more inclusive and supportive environment for all.

Emily Christensen (01:45):
Hey, this is Emily with a quick note before we begin this interview, Allison and I do mention weight, weight loss and body size over the course of our conversation. We also talked about sexual violence in the context of Allison's work as a therapist, and advocate. If these are sensitive subjects for you, please take care

Well, good morning, Allison. Thanks for joining us on the Repro Periodical Podcast.

Allison Graham (02:11):
Good morning,

Emily Christensen (02:12):
Alison. You are here to talk to us about our current volume theme, which is fatness and fat Acceptance and fat liberation. We invited you to do this interview in part because you identify as fat as I do, and so I thought that would be a good place to start to talk a little bit about why we use the word fat.

Allison Graham (02:41):
I think it's really interesting when I work with people or I'm out and about and I use the word fat to describe myself, there's a lot of pushback. Oh no, you're beautiful, you're not fat. So that all or nothing thinking, but I use fat because it's an accurate description. I kind of imagine it like back in the day we used to use queer as a slur and now a lot of folks are reclaiming queer as their own gender and sexual orientation. I see it as a descriptor and I think it's really important that when I'm working with somebody, if they do not use the word fat, I'm going to use the word that they want to use. But for myself, I'm very comfortable or when I work and do my clothing swaps or the pool party, those things, we're going to have fat and plus size in the descriptor.

Emily Christensen (03:34):
And I know there's other words that people prefer to use too in a bigger body of your weight. I too feel pretty comfortable with the word fat and this way that it's simple. People understand what it means. It's not in comparison to something else, it just is and it's morely neutral. But yes, I've had that same experience where you use the word for yourself and other people. It makes other people uncomfortable, but they don't have to feel uncomfortable.

Allison Graham (04:03):
I also wanted to talk about why we don't, well, I don't use overweight or obese, so overweight kind of says that there's a standard weight when we know scientifically that there are all sorts of body sizes, that's kind of a medicalized term. So I'm not going to use a medical term to describe who I am and how I show up in the world. And the word obese is also a medical term and it comes from the word, I believe the Latin word ob. I might be wrong on that pronunciation, which literally means to have eaten oneself fat. And what we do know from research is that fatness doesn't just come from eating yourself to fatness. It can look like a lot of different things.

Emily Christensen (04:49):
Next, I wanted to kind of navigate some of these terms that you hear around fatness, body positivity, body neutrality, body liberation. I know we want to talk about fat acceptance, but I think for people who are not very familiar with these different kinds of terms and these different movements, it all feels kind of confusing and maybe all the same, but these terms do mean different things. Can you tell me what your favorite one is or where you most align?

Allison Graham (05:23):
I would say that I prefer to use the words anti-fat bias or fat liberation. Sometimes I throw in a body neutrality, but I'm seeing that as something completely different. I'll just define a little bit of this. Body positivity was originally I believe taken from fat positivity and fat liberation in almost a whitewashing way. So white feminists, and I want to acknowledge I'm also a white feminist, but the white feminist movement really started using body positivity in a way to make smaller bodies feel better about themselves. So when I say smaller bodies, I just mean people who might be fat but not what we call super fat. So in very larger bodies or for people who are straight sized, so body positivity might be used like the Dove campaign, use body positivity and that might look like feeling good in your body, feeling accepting of all that it has to offer. So if somebody has curly hair, being okay with having curly hair instead of straight hair, but it's really been co-opted and people feel good about themselves rather than talking about a lack of accessibility and the political issue at hand, which is fat liberation

Emily Christensen (06:53):
It is ignoring the fact that we live within a system that upholds anti-fat bias as a little bit of a standard. And I mean all of these terms I think are fine if people want to adopt them for themselves, but it's helpful to understand the nuances between them. I think body neutrality is kind of an interesting one too. I know people that feel much more comfortable with that. I think the other challenge about body positivity is that not everybody always feels positive about their bodies. I mean, there could be really legitimate reasons not to feel positive about your body. Many, many different kinds of reasons. Some of them external, some of them internal, and it almost feels like being forced to put on an outfit that doesn't fit you or suit your style. And this idea of body neutrality is like, I have a body. It's not morally good or morally bad. I'm not sure how excited I am about it, but I'm going to take care of it.

Allison Graham (07:57):
Body neutrality is something that I will slide into conversation with clients and people I'm working with to talk about self-compassion instead of placing judgment on the body. It's not, oh, my body's amazing or beautiful or wonderful, or on the flip side, it's not, I hate my body, it's awful. It doesn't do the things I need it to. It's more I have a body and I'm going to take care of it. So when we take out that judgment, we can meet ourselves with compassion. So body neutrality can be really great for people with disordered eating. It can be great for people who maybe have a lack of self-compassion and want to work on that. Again, it is not necessarily in line with fat liberation and working to create access, but it is a very helpful tool for people who need that compassion for themselves. I think that kind of leads us to the macro versus micro because some of these terms are very micro and when we say micro, we think smaller. So individual or small groups of people versus macro on a bigger scale. So systemic issues, community issues, that kind of thing.

Emily Christensen (09:20):
Yeah, absolutely. When we talk about body neutrality or body positivity, these are things that we might adopt for ourselves and the way that we view our own bodies. But when we talk about fat acceptance or fat liberation, we're talking about confronting whole systems. So can you talk a little bit about fat liberation and why you identify with that?

Allison Graham (09:43):
Fat liberation is something that's important to me because from, without getting into details from a very young age, I was told that fatness was bad. As I've learned that fatness isn't bad, that it is a valid existence, it doesn't necessarily mean unhealthy. I'm learning and have learned that this is a marginalized group. I don't want to compare it directly because I think it's more intersectional than that. We don't just have one identity, we're not just one thing, but it is a marginalization that as a social worker, as a therapist, as an activist, it's important to me to shine a light on the ways that people don't have rights and accessible options. I probably have always been an activist and it just looks different as I get older.

Emily Christensen (10:40):
Okay, thank you. And I think one really key example of how anti-fat bias shows up in the world is in the medical profession. We have study upon study that demonstrate that providers are biased against fat people. That fat people receive worse treatment outcomes or have worse treatment outcomes than, and their straight sized peers, although this is very important too. Clothes are important, but it's not just about being able to go into a store and find a pretty dress. It's things that affect people's livelihoods, their employment, and certainly their health, their medical care, and so serious issue and certainly one that is worth addressing on a systemic level. We also wanted to talk really briefly about how Antifa bias shows up. Where did it even come from? And often people will point to the history of western art and not so very many. A hundred years ago, there was an ideal body that was much larger than today's standards of an ideal body. So how did that change Allison?

Allison Graham (12:01):
It is what all roads lead to. Well, not all roads but many roads lead to racism. So when this transatlantic slave trade was happening, Africans were coming unwilling obviously to Europe and white Europeans were noticing the differences or the similarities sometimes between them. So they saw black folks as other, and one of the ways that they saw them as other was their body size differences, also hair the way they spoke other things. But where anti-fat bias really starts is within that transatlantic slave trade. And there's some really great information from Sabrina Strings. She wrote a dissertation and then transformed it into a book called Fearing the Black Body, and there's a lot of great information about that if you're interested.

Emily Christensen (13:01):
It's a fabulous book, definitely a little bit dense, but if you're interested in this topic, highly recommend. I checked it out at our local public library. Well, let's talk a little bit about you and your career. You're a social worker and you counsel survivors of sexual assault and sexual abuse. Was there a moment when you realized that anti-fat bias shows up in the field that you work in or was that something that you were expecting when you went into it?

Allison Graham (13:38):
What's interesting, I don't think either option. So when my journey of fat acceptance, fat liberation, maybe even some body positivity thrown in there has been going for a long time. Even before I started in school, I did go to school a little bit later, so I was, as I was developing my own views and learning and starting my activism work, I was coming into my practicum at the agency that I work now, and it was my graduate level practicum for social work. And it wasn't something that just one day it poked up and I was like, oh, this is something that's happening. I would notice survivors that I work with or survivors that were working with other people who were in larger bodies and noticing that there weren't seating options. I also learned a little bit about emergency contraception and through the training at this agency learned about emergency contraception.

And I was thinking, well, I know as a fat person that Plan B and Ella and all of these other emergency contraceptions are less effective once you get up to a certain weight. And I know that that's a pretty lower weight because a lot, they have a lot of fat people in the world, so it's almost like it creeped in and developed over time, if that makes sense. But it was pretty apparent that those intersections apply just like as with racism, housing status, gender, sexuality, all of those different intersections. So it's just one piece of the puzzle.

Emily Christensen (15:30):
And you responded to those observations by developing a training for your coworkers, is that right?

Allison Graham (15:36):
Yes. I started at this agency as a practicing student in 2018, was still in school for that academic year, and then the pandemic hit. Things were hard for everybody. We were working from home. But once we got back to the office, I started thinking about how can I help the other staff members in the office under understand how important this is, utilizing resources, pulling those in and making a resource packet, so to speak for my colleagues, and developed a training and actually provided it in summer of 2022. And a really interesting response because we're coming into this work as humans, not robots. So we're not just taking the information and going and doing it. We have to figuring out where our tender spots are and working on them in hopes to be better humans, to work with survivors. So that looks like making sure that we're not using diet talk to connect with a survivor because frankly, a lot of people do that in their daily lives.

So just this last weekend I was with some family and we went out to lunch and I saw there's bonding over food beliefs and diet culture and those people can have those beliefs, but that's a legit bonding thing. Or it can be when we're working with survivors that we're not pushing that on them. A really big part of the work that we do at this agency is autonomy survivor led. So if a survivor comes in and says, I want to lose weight because I think it'll make me feel more healed, we're going to support them and what that looks like. But if a survivor comes in and talks about, I feel really bad about my body and dieting isn't something I want to do, but I want to work on my body image, we're going to meet them where they're at. We're not going to suggest dieting.

I really worked on developing that training and it was very rough draft so to speak, but I was talking with people that I work with regularly and it went well. But through that I actually started working with a colleague who has similar beliefs and education around this, and we developed that initial training into a 90 minute interactive presentation for Kansas holds a crime victims rights conference, and that conference is for folks who assist crime victims in the state of Kansas. Basically the title was Anti-fat bias and Survivors of Sexual Violence. What do you need to know when you're working with somebody in terms of that?

Emily Christensen (18:36):
That's so cool. And before I move on and ask you another question I have to say as you were talking about how we use diet culture tropes is ways up bonding with one another. I was thinking that is so true. I mean, it's almost like weather number one. I mean we live in Kansas, so maybe it's not the same everywhere, but like, oh, it's so windy today. There's a storm coming in. I mean, I'm just as likely to hear, have you lost weight? Or, wow, you're being so good, you're having a salad for lunch or you are being good and not having a dessert, so I'm not going to do it. I mean it really is so prevalent and I think it comes out of our mouths without really thinking about how it affects other people. And I think it's also important to note that not everybody, I mean some people are able to process those beliefs and it not wound them on the inside and they're just kind of unthinkingly parroting it and not realizing that it really can be harmful. Let's talk about how anti-fat bias does show up. What you were addressing in your training, how does it show up in the field that you work in and working with survivors of sexual assault?

Allison Graham (19:50):
We see it in a lot of different ways. I'm going to go over each of these, but inadequate medical care, victim blaming, not being believed, accessibility, which kind of goes around the same inadequate medical care starting with inadequate medical care. I think a major thing that people don't understand is that when somebody is sexually assaulted and they're concerned about risk of pregnancy due to that assault, there are things that they can do emergency contraceptive, but like I said earlier, that only goes up to a certain amount of weight with its max effectiveness. I think Ella goes up to 1 95 and pounds, and there are some doctors who have discussed doubling up the dose, please talk to your doctor before trying that. There's really a gap of research in higher weight individuals in terms of that, the only other option we have for folks who are trying to prevent pregnancy who might not qualify for emergency contraceptive is a copper IUD within five days after the assault.

And for anybody who's listening that's ever had an IUD inserted, they know that that's pretty invasive, can be very painful. And to ask a survivor of sexual violence to experience that just because the world was not set up for them is an injustice. That is a key point that I wanted to bring up. But there are other things like let's say there was physical violence as well as the sexual violence and they need to get an MRI, so head trauma, other trauma maybe to the skeletal system. MRIs don't fit everybody. Scales can be used for dosing of medication, but if somebody's at a higher weight, they might not have an adequate scale to use. Accessibility can look like hospital gowns. Somebody in a higher weight body, they shouldn't have to wear two gowns or maybe even if there aren't enough gowns or if you have an inept or maybe less compassionate person working with you, even just being exposed, trying to hold one gown together, think about somebody who's just experienced sexual violence.

There's another added trauma. I would also say furniture in hospitals, they're getting a little bit better about that, but the sturdiness of equipment, even just kind of the mental thought of, I really hope this chair doesn't break underneath me or I hope this table can hold me. As far as victim blaming, this gets really into the intersection of rape culture and anti-fat bias, but thinking about women and men and non-binary folks who are in larger bodies, if they're sexually assaulted, sometimes it might be because of what they were wearing and in a different way than maybe a thin person might be victim blamed. So a thin person might be able to get away with that's in quotes, wearing maybe a dress that comes up mid die, maybe modest in standards, not showing a lot of cleavage, but then you have somebody in a larger body, a fat person wearing a similar style and they might see it as sexualization.

Same thing with these hot temperatures right now. People wearing the clothes that keep them cool versus what society expects them to wear, not being believed and victim blaming can come into this as well. When survivors do go forward and they are in larger bodies when they're fat, they can say, I didn't want this and police or loved ones or anybody really can say, well, this is all you're going to get. You should be grateful because no one's going to love you. No one's going to desire you. And that is extremely harmful in so many ways, but it is unfortunately really common. Those are just some of the ways that these things show up in our work, specifically in our agency, not looking at food as a reward or morally. So we have a variety of snacks. We have snacks that are considered healthy and snacks that are considered unhealthy and we don't police who gets what. And if somebody wants more than one thing that they can have that.

Emily Christensen (24:45):
I love that. And what was the response from your coworkers to the training?

Allison Graham (24:51):
I think overall they were glad that it was talked about. I think it can take a while to kind of digest this and really start to lean into it, especially people who are really attached to diet culture and their previous beliefs. It can be hard to unlearn, so we're still working on it, but just like everything, we can always learn more.

Emily Christensen (25:17):
Yeah, absolutely. And would co-sign the fact that it takes a long time to unpack and unlearn and examine these beliefs that we have because at least if you grow up in the United States, I can't speak for everywhere in the world. They are pervasive, and it took me a really, really long time. In some ways I'm still working on it. Things come up and I think, oh, that's some old diet culture belief that's popping up and I've been working on this for more than 20 years. So if you're listening to this and you feel uncomfortable or you feel defensive, I would just say give yourself some time, take a few deep breaths, and we provided resources in our recent periodical. There's just so much out there, so much content out there from a dissertation length book to a TikTok video, and there's ways that you can gradually start to unravel these beliefs that you have that are really truly damaging on a system-wide level as we've talked about. Let's talk a little bit about community building and the work that you've been doing in our community around bringing fat people together. What has motivated you to do that?

Allison Graham (26:41):
I initially decided to start building some fat community here because I went to a fat camp retreat in summer of 2022. Carissa Anakin, also known as Fat Girl Flow on Instagram, created this camp retreat getaway for fat folks to see themselves and have fun and kind of take back the narrative of fat camps. I got a lot of joy from it. I remember going for a walk for the first time in shorts on the sports bra and I was like, wow, this is so cool. I can be just like other people. And so after that I started thinking, how can I bring this to Wichita? This really energized me with the idea, with the help of Emily, we planned a pool party last year and called a Fat Babe Pool party. I felt that similar community as I did the year previous. Then I decided, what if we do a clothing swap?

And we did that in January and it was hard. It was one of those Saturdays where it was like negative degrees, but we still had 30 people show up. There were a couple of people that had just moved to town because, and this didn't have anything to do with my work, but they had shared that they had moved because there was a violent situation from where they were living. They were set up with a lot of stuff. I have a friend who came to the swap and she said, it's like a thrift store and everything's in my size. So I just love the joy that clothing swaps can bring. We also have a clothing swap coming up on the 20th. It might be past this podcast, but really excited about it. We have over a hundred people interested on Facebook on it, and people coming as far as McPherson to attend, which is lovely.

Emily Christensen (28:44):
It's about an hour, hour's drive away,

Allison Graham (28:46):
But it is one of the first that I've heard of in Kansas, maybe not in the Kansas City area. My goals for, I call it Fat Babes ICT, but I'm possibly changing it to fat friends ICT because I want to be more inclusive of people who don't identify as a babe. I think that's a little bit more compassionate. Some of my hopes are to build a community and where people feel seen and heard just as they are in the bodies that they have and don't feel pressure to lose weight or to dislike themselves or put themselves down. It's a very compassionate thing to do to see yourself as you are and not hate yourself.

Emily Christensen (29:29):
What do you hope to accomplish with Fat Friends or Fat Babes ICT?

Allison Graham (29:35):
So I have a not so secret hope that we can create a community where we can do things together that society has told us that we shouldn't or can't do until we're in smaller bodies. I really like being outside walking. I think that's something that is societally acceptable, but if you put a fat body in a kayak or go hiking or I was even thinking about joining a kickball league, and it doesn't necessarily have to be sports or movement. Those are just some of the things that I am interested in doing with other fat people I haven't experienced. I went to sailing camp on Cheney Lake and I was the only fat person there, and I felt really, really uncomfortable and I didn't know how to ask for modifications, and I'm wondering if we could find people who are skilled in these things who are showing up in fat bodies who can help us. For example, I take a yoga class now and the modifications are we can move some of our fat around, so moving in the belly to increase the stretch, that kind of thing. So just being able to do some of these things that society says, Nope, you have to be in a smaller body to do this because I want to do it now.

Emily Christensen (31:04):
Yeah, absolutely. For me, I am at an age and at a time in my life where I understand that that smaller body is never going to arrive and I want to, like you said, I want to live my life. If other people have a problem with that, well that's not something I'm going to take on board anymore. And I think we don't usually think about body size. It's a community, but being fat is a huge part of who I am and to tie things into the film, there's a line, one of the participants in the film that we're screening How to Carry Water says We are our bodies and we're so much more. That really resonated with me and I keep thinking about it. Our bodies are so much about how we show up in the world, how we move through the world, how other people see us, how other people treat us.

But we're also so much more than that and I don't want to talk too much about the film because I know you're going to be interviewing the main character at the documentary about a photographer who photographs people who are in fat bodies. It's a beautiful film. It's really about to me, fat representation and the beauty inherent in all bodies and especially fat bodies. And we are of course a periodical, a podcast organized around reproductive justice. And so I imagine some of our subscribers and listeners might be wondering what this all has to do with reproductive justice. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Allison Graham (32:51):
So when I think of Pat Liberation and this film, I think of accessibility. I think of autonomy. So accessibility inherently making sure that this world is accessible for fat folks, but when it comes to reproductive justice, making sure that research is being done on contraceptive measures and reproductive measures for people at higher weights. So thinking back to emergency contraceptive, making sure that there's an option because we know that bodies don't stop at 200 pounds. We know that there are people in these larger bodies that need access to these kinds of care. And then the second part is autonomy. Where I work, we highly focus on what does the survivor want to do with their experience? Do they want to report? Do they not want to report? Do they want to go to the hospital? Do they not want to go to the hospital? Obviously this is only with adults letting them choose what's right for them because ultimately they know what they can do best with their bodies, and I am very confident in saying that the majority of fat people know that they're fat. I love this film because it shows a lot of fat joy and we don't see a lot of that.

Emily Christensen (34:22):
Like the before photo is how we see fat people a lot. This is a way to show up in the world as somebody that's trying to be as small as possible. We were talking before this interview started about showing up in exercise and fitness spaces, and I'm always really conscious of the fact that the people around me might be imposing some kind of narrative on me and what I'm doing when they really have no idea why I'm there and why I am engaged in the movement that I choose to be engaged with.

Allison Graham (34:58):
I remember I picked up walking as stress relief one day on my lunch break. I was walking and this person with a dog was walking by and they were like, good for you. Keep up the good work. And it was very condescending because they didn't know that I was walking for my mental health. They had these beliefs that I was trying to lose weight or what have you, trying to be smaller, and I was just blindsided. Just another example of that, I can't even go on...

Emily Christensen (35:37):
If you take nothing else from this podcast, never tell a fat person to keep up the good work people. Never do it. I've also been on the receiving end of encouragement like that, don't do it. It's terrible. Terrible. And as you said, so condescending and tone to f. Well, Allison, thank you so much for joining me this morning. Is there anything else you'd like to add before we finish our conversation?

Allison Graham (36:06):
I think my last piece or my key takeaway of this is getting comfortable with being uncomfortable in terms of saying the word fat, seeing fat bodies, it's okay to be uncomfortable about what you see. It's not okay to tell people, the people that you're seeing that you're uncomfortable with it. That's a microaggression at best. Just learning to be comfortable with being uncomfortable about fatness, if that's your experience.

Emily Christensen (36:40):
Yeah, I totally agree, and I think that this short film, how to Carry Water is such a great place to start. I think some people will find it challenging, but I do think it's a gentle challenge to see bodies in a different way. And I'm excited to hear your conversation with Suge and excited for our in-person experience where Allison is going to be facilitating the discussion afterwards at our screening in August. And for more information about that, you can head to repro film.org. Thanks again, Allison. 
Allison Graham (37:20):
Thank You.

Lela Meadow-Conner (37:22):
Thank you to Emily and Allison for this wonderful conversation. You'll be able to watch How To Carry Water via rePROFilm very soon, along with part two of Volume 27 podcast. Allison's interview with the film subject photographer and artist, Shoog McDaniel. Be sure to share this podcast episode with a friend and help us spread the rePROFilm mission, which is all about centering bodily autonomy through storytelling, film, and conversation. TThe Repro Film podcast is executive produced by mama.filmHosted and produced by me, Asha Dahya, Edited by Kylie Brown, With original music by ParisJane and Marrice Anthony.The periodical is programmed by Neha Aziz and written by Emily Christensen You can find us on social media @reprofilm on Instagram and watch our additional video content on our Youtube channel @reprofilmorg.