Ending Body Shame: Raising Kids Who Respect Their Bodies

Unlearning my internalised fatphobia, ditching diets, and healing my body image is one of the best things I did for myself AND my kid. I don’t claim to be an expert, I’m doing my best and figuring it out as I go, but as I share in this episode a number of friends have asked me how I’m building this body positive relationship with my kid and it’s been a topic of conversation on my socials too.

So I thought we should take a deep dive and talk about ways we can encourage body respect in young people, and end the inheritance of body shame.

Topics discussed in episode 27:

The negative impact of restrictive food behaviors in children
Why I don’t believe it’s my responsibility to prevent fatness in my child
How I supported my child after he was body shamed
Language and tools that encourage him to respect his and other people bodies
The negative impact of diet talk and diet culture in the household
Questions I ask myself when navigating body image related questions or experiences with my kid

Chapters:

00:00 Exploring Parental Responsibility in Body Image
02:44 The Impact of Fat Shaming on Children
03:38 Creating a Trusting Parent-Child Relationship
06:01 Breaking the Cycle of Diet Culture
09:53 Reflecting on Childhood Body Image
14:44 Navigating Parenting with Body Image Issues
20:42 Raising A Body Confident Kid & Teaching Body Respect
25:52 Parental Responsibility in a Fatphobic World
30:42 Questions for Weight Neutral Parenting

Next week:

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Transcript

Melanie Knights [she/they] (00:00)
Hello friends, welcome to The Culture of It All. Hello, hello, welcome my plus-sized pals. Hello everybody. If you are new here, thank you so, much for joining us. I really appreciate it. In this episode, we are going to be exploring parental responsibility, or I guess perceived responsibility when it comes to our children's health and why folks seem to think it's their responsibility to control their child's body size.

I have many, many thoughts. As a parent in a fat body, this is something I've thought a lot about over the past 11 years. And in more recent months, I've had some really wonderful conversations and a lot of my fears have been presented to me. I'm not a parenting expert. Most of this discussion is anecdotal and formed from both my personal experience of parenting, my personal experience of being a child and having parents who felt the need.

to control my body weight and body size. And also from conversations that I've had with other people about their own experiences growing up and at hands of their parents, their parents trying to control their body, their size and how that really impacted them quite negatively as they got older.

So you might be wondering who this episode is for. It's definitely for parents who are struggling with their own body image. Anyone, parents with a child who is perceived to be in a larger body. And I really use that word perceived very, very strongly. And I will explain what I mean by that later in the episode. And any adult, if you are around young people, any adult who is around young people, this episode is for you.

So before we get into today's episode, a quick reminder that you can subscribe to the Culture of It All over on Substack by heading to cultureofitallpod.substack.com forward slash subscribe and choosing the free or paid plan. Subscribers get early access to episodes, regular bonuses, including creative resources, blogs, videos, and more. You can follow the show on Instagram at Culture of It All Pod, where I share episode updates in the stories.

my fat thoughts and the odd many Aquarius memes You can also

join me over on TikTok @MelanieKnights where we discuss plus size fashion without the diet talk, body image, parenting and fat acceptance. Yes, all of those will be linked over in the show notes if you need access to any of those along with any resources or references that I mention in today's episode. But as I said, today is mostly going to be anecdotal based on my own experiences as a child, as a parent, and also from conversations I've had with other people.

So to give you some context of where this conversation about parental responsibility started, I had shared publicly on TikTok that my kid and I were fat shamed by one of his peers. I've talked about that here on the show already. And I shared the video because I thought it was important to have the conversation because A, it's important to highlight the fact that fat shaming, especially among children, is still very much alive and well. It's not something we just made up.

and it's not disappeared, it's still happening. And not only that, I wanted to talk a little bit about my kid's reaction, because in comparison to how I would have reacted at his age, it was very, very different. And I felt that for me, that was a very proud parenting moment. There are times when I feel like I am flailing as a parent, but when it comes to body image and food and health and all these other things and being a decent human being, those things are really important to me.

And I want it to be different for him than it was for me as a child. I want him to grow up with a very different experience and feelings around his body and food. And this situation, this kind of anecdote, very much represented how I feel as a parent. He came to me immediately that evening and told me what happened. He was more concerned about my feelings because he really wasn't that bothered about being called fat. He understood that didn't mean anything about him. He recognized that

other than the fact that he had decided I'm not going to be friends with this kid anymore, it didn't mean anything. And that was so, so powerful. As an adult who has spent a lifetime not liking their body, having negative feelings about myself and my size, and this coming from childhood, like I was younger than him when I started to understand that my body was apparently different to that of my peers and it was a problem to be fixed.

He hadn't got that, that's not there. And as far as I'm concerned as a parent, that to me is something I should be incredibly proud of.

I watched him carefully. I was like, I don't, I want to be very aware of the fact if he makes any changes to how he feels about himself or how he eats. It never happened. It never came. None of that happened. He was more bothered that this kid had been his friend than what this kid thought of him. It was more, it was almost like he took on this feeling of like, can't believe I was friends with him. And I did have that conversation. I was like, it's not your fault.

Like, we don't know how people behave until they behave like this. And, you know, you are children. I'm sure he might change and you might become friends again. He might realise that he's done something wrong, but that's fine. You don't have to be friends with somebody. You don't owe them your friendship.

In the days following on from this I did reach out to some of my friends to discuss it because it was still heavy to process, it was still a lot, there was still some emotion there even though being fat shamed is not, is nothing new for me, but it's still a lot to process just the feelings behind it and I reached out to a friend and we were chatting and she asked me how I had created this relationship with my child. She was curious to know, you know, what do I think I've done differently and

I really thought a lot and long and hard about this because I thought if I can share this with other people, if I can share what I think I've done differently to make this a little bit easier for someone else, I will. And I don't necessarily have all the answers. And as I said, I'm certainly not an expert. I'm just doing my best. But what I've recognized through our relationship and looking at our relationship for the last few months is that he knows he can trust me. It's not even that I think he can trust me.

He knows he can trust me. He knows he can come to me and have- and I'm not thinking that my child tells me everything, but he can trust me. He knows that I'm not going to laugh or make fun of him. He knows that I'm not going to think his questions are silly. I listen to him. I'm always very honest with him in what I think- I'd like to say age-appropriate, but I do treat him probably older than he is. I think he's very much used to that.

even when he was a toddler and a baby, I think I still spoke to him like he was an adult. I think he's very used to having adult conversations within reason and being spoken to like he's an adult, which can be difficult for him, I'm sure, because he's still a kid. He doesn't have the emotional intelligence of an adult yet. But I also know that he can ask really thoughtful conversations, really thoughtful questions, and we can have really thoughtful conversations about quite-

complex subjects, some of which I'm not even sure I know how to answer. I also think one of the contributing factors is that he doesn't hear negative body language or diet talk from anyone within our family.

Now, I will say we have a very small family. He is an only child. He is the only kid in the family. He has no cousins or anything like that. He spends most of his time within a small, like small-knit community of family. And of course, he's at school and other places that I have no control over who he's listening to or hearing from. But within the people that he trusts most in the world,

He doesn't hear negative body talk, he doesn't hear negative language, he doesn't hear conversations about diets, calories, or any of the other things that I would have heard as a child. He doesn't hear any conversations about, wish I was this dress size, or I wish I could lose weight. Like, these are things that I grew up hearing, whether it was from my mum, or friends, or, you know, friends, siblings, or whatever it might have been. He's not hearing that. As I said, just do my best. I'm not an expert.

When I stopped dieting and I started eating intuitively, and that meant that I was also divesting from diet culture, this meant I also put an end to the generational diet trauma. So in his very early years, he probably still would have been subject to some

He would have still seen, probably, if he knew what was going on, some disorderly behaviors on my part. I wouldn't have talked shit about anybody's body. I don't think I would have talked shit about my own, but I can't guarantee that. So, you know, very early on he may have seen those things, but probably from like four five years ago, he hasn't seen any of that or grown up with that.

And so all of this led me to thinking a lot about my own childhood, my own upbringing, and one of the things I often say is that, you know, I spent my whole life being fat, I've grown up fat. And I started to question this a little bit because I had pictures of myself as a child, and I look at them and I'm like, did I grow up fat? Did I really grow up fat? I grew up feeling like I was bigger than everybody else. I grew up...

feeling like my body needed to look different, be different and be smaller, but did I really grow up fat? And I know that from a very young age, as I said, I felt very different to my peers about my own body. My peers didn't seem to care about their body size and I seemed to be the focus of that attention. My size seemed to be fodder for kids bullying. You know, I wasn't athletic, I wasn't naturally good at sports, I wasn't outdoorsy, I liked food.

I would have rather sat in my room with some crayons and some music and my imagination. That is where I would have rather been. And I grew up with, in particular my dad, because my dad was a stay at home dad. And he, you he was a post-war baby. He certainly had this like, you should be outside in the summer kind of mentality, which I had to unlearn for myself because I don't like being outside.

And so I just, I just would have rather been doing my own thing and kind of left to my own devices. I liked my own company. I still do. But when I look at photos of myself as a child, I just don't understand what other people saw. I don't understand what people saw. I can't see it. And I don't think it was there. I don't think it actually was a problem or something that needed to be fixed. It made me ask myself, was I really a fat kid or was I just not thin? Right?

Was I really a fat kid or was I just not thin? And I think it's the latter. I think I just wasn't particularly thin. And I don't think I had these attitudes or behaviors that perhaps we now would associate with thinness, right? These things that I think people still associate with health, but actually what we mean is thinness. And I didn't fall into those categories.

I liked food. I still like food. I'm not denying that. Food is fun for me. You know, my parents loved me and I know they did what they thought was right. And that is a conversation I've had with my mum. She has now got to the point where she's understood that she did what she thought she had to do. She did what she thought was correct. They were passing on their set of beliefs, right? Diet culture. But their intention didn't have

the impact they thought it was going to. They tried to prevent something that happened anyway, and I think personally from my own experience and everything I've known, learnt from research, is that the reason it happened, the reason my body was always going to be larger than other people's, I was always going to be in a larger body of some kind because of genetics, but it was

harder because I was forced to diet and restrict myself from a much younger age, constantly in this cycle of trying to make myself smaller.

And we know, and we've known for decades, that there are plenty of studies that show how damaging weight loss, dieting, restriction is, and the impact it has when people stop. So I understand that I wasn't a thin child. And I've talked about this before as well, you know, sometimes I wonder, would I be in this size body if I had just been left alone?

Who knows? Who knows? And I won't ever know, but it is something I often think about.

My mum has always diet cycled and there were always diet products in our home. And doing a lot of reflection, I don't really know what I ate as a child, which apparently is very common. It's a very common thing to kind of, especially if you were restricted or diet dieted a lot, you don't quite remember what you ate. Which I think is interesting because

Part of the intuitive eating framework is figuring out which foods you enjoy and which ones bring you satisfaction. And that was so much fun, scary, but it was also fun because I realized that I had no idea. I really genuinely had no idea. But by the time I hit my teens, I had already established rules around my food. My dieting behaviors had become more restrictive and that especially was present the more independence I had. So by the time I was kind of in high school and then...

you know, getting in my mid-teens, I had much more independence around the food that I could eat and obviously cooking my own meals and it just meant that everything became a little bit more restrictive. And I also would look for ways in which I could, you know, make my body smaller. Unfortunately, at the same time, I started getting attention from the opposite sex as my body got smaller. And that just really, unfortunately, validated

a lot of what I was seeing, a lot of the things I'd heard, a lot of things you saw in across the media, right, from TVs and movies and books, the idea that you could only be loved and successful and worthy if you were in a thinner body, and I was seeing that right before my eyes. And this just led to 20 years, 20 years of diet cycling, 20 years of control.

And in my late twenties, I was deep in disordered eating. was trying to work as a personal trainer. I was trying to get qualified and we decided to have a child. We decided that we wanted to grow our family. And I did back off the restriction, but I was still definitely dieting until I got pregnant. And once

was born I was so eager to get back to exercise and I continued with the diet mentality and my body image and the struggles I had definitely impacted how I parented even as a baby and toddler. Like I can recall really struggling with being a parent who had body image issues and struggled with food and control and

diet and disordered eating for most of my life, and now I had this other little human, and it was very difficult to kind of detach my feelings from how I would perhaps feed him. I was somewhat delusional. I was super resistant to certain foods, processed foods or fast food, when he was very young.

I very much tried to control at that very young age. More so, we just didn't have it. Like, I was repeating the same things that my mum did for me.

Once he started nursery and school, it started to become very clear to me that I wasn't going to be able to control these things. And that may have been difficult at times, but I also knew I had to let go. I had to let go of being so resistant for the change and allowing him to experience these things around other people. I started to realize that I was repeating the same things that my mom and my dad had done for myself. And I started to realize I didn't want to

be doing that. I wanted to break that diet culture trauma. know, body change is inevitable. Kids grow up, they change, they get older, their bodies will change a lot and all of us will experience body change. The pandemic certainly impacted our bodies

And I remember him returning to school after the pandemic and him telling me that somebody had called him fat. I was very confused. I didn't know whether this was something, he didn't seem bothered by it, so I didn't know whether this was something that had been interpreted as unkindness to him. So instead of assuming that he was hurt or upset by this, I asked him how it made him feel. And, you know, does it bother you that your body is different to your friend's bodies?

And then a couple of years ago he was telling me that he wasn't as fast a runner as his friends. He... when they were playing games he felt like they were picking on him, they bullying him basically. And he was really upset about this, and so when he came to me and told me, and it broke my fucking heart, but I acknowledged his feelings, I acknowledged how he was feeling because he was incredibly sad, and I asked him, do you want to be a fast runner?

Or is it that you'd prefer people not to be unkind? Because I think that's a really important thing to highlight for them, but also to understand where these feelings are coming from. You know, I was pretty certain he didn't actually care about being able to run quickly. What he cared about was the fact that people who he perceived as his friends were being unkind.

And he is very, he is very sensitive. And I mean that in the sense of like, hyper sensitive to other people's feelings. He is very aware of other people's feelings. And he has big feelings. And I love that. But I also want to be able to help him to process those feelings. So it's not, I need to run faster. It's, I need to help you navigate when people run faster.

kind to you.

And we talked about this and I said, you know, some people will be faster at running than other people. I was like, people are built differently. Some people are sprinters. Some people are marathon runners.

not so much about being good at something. A lot of the time it's about our bodies being naturally built for certain activities. You know, when you look at Olympic athletes, their bodies, you don't...

you don't build a swimmer's body, you naturally have a swimmer's body and you go in the water and go, shit, I'm good at swimming. I'm going to work on this. I'm going to nurture this. That's not something you can necessarily create. It's something that is already there and you work on that and you build on

So that was something that we talked about at length and I acknowledged with him that I know this feels important right now, I know this feels like it's the most important thing and I get that but I promise you that as you get older it won't have as much importance, like it won't be as important to you as to whether or not you're fast at running. There are other things that you can be really great at, there are other things that you can...

work on and nurture and develop and not everybody is going to have those qualities and that's okay.

So back to the recent fat shaming incident. When we had the conversation I acknowledged that this child was being unkind. He already understood that. I asked him how did this make you feel? I reminded him that this word, fat is neutral in our house. We do not use it with malicious intent. We do not use it to be unkind to people. It is not... that word doesn't mean what people think it means.

I said it's how people use the word and the intention behind it. And I tried to lead with honesty. I told him I knew this was going to happen at some point, about me in particular. I knew that somebody was going to say something about my body to him. And I explained to him that my fear had always been that it would change how you see me, that it would change our relationship. I said, there's going to be times where you may be feel that way, but I want to remind you that it's not my job.

to change who I am in order to make some 11 year old feel like, what, better about themselves? Like, people hurt people. There was no need for them to say this about you. It was completely unprovoked. And even if it was provoked, they shouldn't have said it. It was designed to hurt your feelings and it didn't, so they don't win. It doesn't hurt my feelings, so they don't win. And I explained to him that

In life, unfortunately, people perceive different bodies as being like low-hanging fruit. I explained to him that this is something that people feel they can easily judge me on. They don't know me, but they can make this perceived judgment about the size of my body based on what they see and their own set of bias.

We also talked about the fact that if this is the only thing that someone can say about me, then that's fine. Like, me being in a larger body doesn't make me a bad person, doesn't make me less worthy of respect, doesn't mean that I should be treated differently or unkindly. That's not about me. That is about the way someone else perceives themselves within society. It's not actually...

my belief. I don't think that I deserve to be treated less and I don't think somebody in a smaller body deserves to be treated better. So I don't treat thin people better and you know, unfortunately in many cases that upsets people. And I reminded him that I will not be changing myself for an 11 year old and I was very honest and said I spent far too much of my life not liking who I am. I really like who I am, I really like my body, I like

the way I parent, I like the relationship we have. I don't want to change any of that. Why would I want to change something that I've worked so hard for? And we had a cuddle and he agreed and he was like, I like it too. I don't want you to change. Broke my heart. I cried at that point.

It was a lot of emotion. I had to go decompress, aka send my friend lots of voice notes. And I was just like, you know what? This, this is the stuff I will hold onto. There have been many times I have felt like I am failing as a parent, but this stuff is the stuff that I will hold onto.

And so a few days later, I made that TikTok video. I talked about the experience. talked about in, you know, minute detail because I can't record a 30 minute podcast episode on TikTok. I talked about this a little bit. And unsurprisingly, people blamed me. People blamed me. People were more concerned about my ability to parent rather than the parent whose kid is bullying people.

I don't know why I was surprised. Don't get me wrong, a number of people came in straight away and were like, I am so sorry this happened to you. I hope he's okay. That, beautiful, lovely. But there was a lot of people blaming me And this conversation kind of started to emerge.

And people's favourite phrase is, this should be a wake up call. And I'm like, what? A wake up call to what? That people are shit? Yeah, I already know. Like, what is this thing that you think I'm supposed to be learning? Like, I'm- no, I'm not actually the person to blame here. And I got told that it's my responsibility because I'm in control and I was like, you clearly don't have children if you think that you have full control over how they eat or where they go or what they see, like-

No. And if a child, or even an adult right, tells you that they have been fat shamed and your response is, well you could do with losing weight though couldn't you? This is victim blaming, it's fat shaming, it's siding with the bully. Please don't be your child's first bully. Please don't be your child's first bully. So

Many adults told me that their first memory of fat shaming was at the hands of their parents, the hands of teachers, dinner ladies at school, a friend's parent, a grandparent, people who were supposed to protect them from this shit. And someone asked me whether I thought it was possible to control a child's body weight. Could I ensure they were thin when I'm responsible for their food?

I didn't know if they were actually asking from a place of genuine curiosity. It seemed they were, in the end. And I responded by telling them, it's not my job to prevent fatness. Even as a parent, I don't see it as my responsibility to prevent fatness within this context because

Of course, people misinterpret every fucking thing I say. So when I said it's not my job to prevent fatness as a parent, I didn't mean it's not my job to teach my kid about nutrition. I didn't mean it's not my job to encourage my child to eat, try different foods, or to understand the nutrition content of different foods.

I didn't say any of those things. But of course, the internet likes to run wild. And not only did many people take that as what I meant, I discovered today, just today, I already had this podcast episode planned, but this morning I found out that some mediocre white dude on YouTube took a lot of my content, including all of this content about parenting, to Twitter on for 20 minutes about absolutely nothing.

whilst making fun of my accent in order to profit off of me. So yeah, it's fascinating the way people will just hear what they want to hear. So no, I don't think it's my job to prevent fatness. I don't think it's my job to teach my child how to restrict themselves or restrict foods or to develop disordered eating habits. I do think it's my job to help my child navigate a fatphobic world.

I think it's my responsibility to help them understand their hunger and their fullness cues without shame. It's my responsibility to teach them empathy and compassion and open-mindedness. It's my responsibility to help them navigate this incredibly scary world. And one of the things we talked about at length was like there are far more fucking important things in this world right now that we need to be confronting and

realities of especially raising young boys, then whether or not I'm worrying about restricting his food or trying to control his body size, like, that just feels like the most inappropriate and wild thing to believe. And I understand where it stems, but it's really hard to explain to somebody

you don't have a crystal ball. Like people who have already experienced it, and I get it because I was once there, but like

Repeating the same behaviors, the behaviors that didn't work for you, isn't going to have the effects we think it will. Or at least it may not. There's a good chance it won't. In fact, the intention may be to help, but the impact is usually far worse. The impact is far more negative and disordered and can last a lifetime.

And so as I explained to this person who had asked this question, I was like, you can do all of the things that you think are going to work, but ultimately you will not achieve what you want through control and restriction. And I asked them, I posed the question, what if you do all of that and they end up fat anyway? Then what? Like what then? What happens then? Because in my experience, most adults and parents perceive this as

failed parenting and it ends up resulting in them trying to go harder. Right? It leads to more shame, it leads to more control and even resentment.

This shit is hard to hear. It's hard to recognize that there might be behaviors that we're passing on to our children that we think are... that we think are about health, but they're actually about thinness. And they're actually rooted in anti-fatness and fatphobia.

But unlearning our own fatphobia will do more for our own health and the health of others, including our children, than any amount of restriction or diets ever could.

So I want to wrap up today's episode by sharing some of the questions that I ask myself when I'm navigating this parenting stuff. And to be honest, this stuff could help us as well. As we are navigating our own anti-diet work, when we're practicing eating intuitively, we're trying to shift our thoughts and our own experiences, these questions can help us as well. They can be used as journal prompts, they can...

be things that we stop and ask ourselves in the moment. The first one I ask myself most commonly is what would I have wanted to hear from my parents? Right, what would I have wanted to hear from my parents? What would have made me feel less alone with my body, with this stuff? What would have made me feel less alone? Does this belief actually belong to me or is this the voice of diet culture? Does this belief...

actually belong to me or is this the voice of diet culture?

You know, sometimes I will hear myself saying no to a snack near bedtime and I'll stop and be like, why? Why is this? Why? Why am I saying no? We're not having a three course meal. He's asking for a snack. Am I allowed to say yes? You know, I eat near bedtime. So why am I saying no? I'm not saying there's a right or wrong answer. I'm just sharing with you the ways in which

explore this. And my friend recently, and she gave me permission to share this story with you, my friend recently told me that she was struggling with her kid and some of the ways in which he will constantly say that he's hungry and she didn't know if he's hungry, she felt like he was trying to get attention and so I said to her like, look, with love and compassion I'm asking you do you know that to be true? Like do you know that he's not hungry?

And she said, no. And I said, no, you don't. And I said, mean, he's young, so perhaps he is hungry. And she said, yes, but if he has a bigger snack, then he won't win his dinner because he doesn't eat his lunch at school. And I was like, okay. So said, so you give him a snack and he's then full. I was like, but what happens if he doesn't eat his dinner? What's the worst thing that could happen if he doesn't eat his dinner? And she was like, nothing. I said, okay, but what if he happens to eat the snack and his dinner?

What happens then? Nothing. And I was like, no, what happens is he's full and he's satisfied. I was like, that's the difference. I said, it's not perfect science. I'm not saying it's going to work every time. But like, a lot of this stuff is... can be rooted in not only the way we were parented, but also rooted in attitudes and behaviors that were formed from diet culture.

and from fatphobia and anti-fatness and from the diet industry, right? Things that we've, the rules that we've created around food and food policing. And I, I catch myself doing it as well, as I said, I hear myself saying no, and I'm like, do I really mean that? You know, if my kid wants to have a snack and that snack is something sweet, that's fine. If he...

wants to have something after dinner, that's fine. I don't make him clear his plate in order to have dessert. I let him pick out his own foods when we go to the grocery store. He can make his own choices. I think building autonomy for him is far more important than me controlling everything. That doesn't mean all of the negative things that people like to think it means. It just means that I'm trying to approach this differently. It doesn't mean that I'm a shit parent. In fact, I think...

I'm doing pretty well with this stuff. I'm not getting it right 100 % of the time and as I said, there is no way of knowing until he's older. I'm not a professional, I'm not a qualified practitioner, I'm not a therapist or nutritionist. These are my own opinions based on my own experiences growing up. It's hindsight and it's the choices I'm making as a parent and I don't think there is a right or wrong way but I do know from experience that often

the way in which we will make decisions around food, not only for ourselves, but for other people, is based on negativity rather than satisfaction. It's based on things like the diet industry and the diet rules and food policing and the rules that we've created over our lifetime. So like, as I always say, I'm simply choosing a different path. I have no idea if I'm doing it right.

Take what you want from this episode, leave the rest, take what resonates. If any of today really did resonate or you have, you know, your own stories or experiences that you would like to share, please feel free to send them over to me. You can message me on Instagram or send me an email, message me on sub stack, however you wish to get in touch. ⁓ As I said, I've heard the stories from, I think probably hundreds at this point of women in particular.

on social media who've shared with me their own experiences of being fat shamed and the way in which it was at the hands of people that they were supposed to trust, people who were supposed to protect them, and the impact that that has had on their entire life. And that's why I won't stop talking about this, I won't stop highlighting the impact this can have, because it's not a flyaway comment

And I think a lot of this stuff gets said without any consequences because it's so ingrained in society and it's so, you know, normalized that these are probably the same people who are then saying shit to people on the internet who are making these frickin' videos, right? Taking other people's content, profiting off of it, in order to fuel these like fatphobic narratives. So, thank you for being here. Thank you so much for...

listening to today's episode and I will see you next week friends.