Ep. 41 | Joy, Style, Softness: A Year at Full Volume

A reflective wrap-up for 2025.

This is our final episode of 2025, and what a year it has been. In this episode, I’m reflecting on what it truly meant for me to live at full volume this year: in my work, in my body, in my creativity, and in community with all of you.

I wrap up the year with honesty, gratitude, and a look ahead to 2026’s anti–New Year energy.

If you’ve been a longtime listener, thank you. 

If you’re new here, welcome.

In “Joy, Style, Softness: A Year at Full Volume” we’re exploring:

• What living “at full volume” looked like this year
• How an unexpected viral TikTok video helped shape my work
• What it looked like to parent my child (and myself) through body shaming
• How my style has evolved without shrinking, performing, or reinventing myself
• What I’m bringing with me into 2026

Takeaway to Hold Onto:

"Softness isn’t the opposite of strength — it’s the space where I meet myself with honesty and enoughness."

Thank you for listening to The Culture Of It All! this podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive early posts, bonus material and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber on Substack.

Come say 'hello' on social media!

You'll find episode content on Instagram stories.

Looking for more conversations around the politics of fashion? Join me on TikTok

Until next time, pals — keep showing up, speaking up, and taking up space.

Transcript

Melanie Knights [she/they] (00:00)
Hello friends, hello my plus size pals, hello everybody. Welcome back to a brand new episode of The Culture Of It All. If you are new here, thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode. I know there's a lot of new listeners over on Substack. This is episode 41 and as you could probably tell from the title of this episode, we are going to be talking about joy and style and softness.

a year at full volume. This is essentially a reflective wrap up for 2025 because it is our final full episode of this year. If you are a Substack listener, you will be receiving a couple of bonus episodes before the end of the year. And if you are not already listening on Substack, why not come and join us? You can subscribe for free. If you head over to cultureofitallpod.substack.com

forward slash subscribe. You can follow the show for free. You will receive all episodes in your inbox a week early. You also receive access to other articles or posts I may create. And if you choose that you want to use the Substack app, which I do highly recommend, if you are already following Fat Liberation activists,

body positivity activists and writers. If you are interested in this work, there are so many incredible writers, podcasters, content creators who are on the Substack app working within the anti-diet fat liberation space. And I highly, highly recommend coming over there and joining us.

So as I said, this episode is going to be the final full episode for 2025. And as we wrap up this year together, I wanted to reflect on what it has meant for me to live at full volume. What it means to live full volume in my fat body and in this space, to live softly, taking up space, being visible. Also,

confronting some fears and learning to trust our bodies again.

Like so often, I started out this year with some ideas, some dreams, some things I wanted to work on. I wasn't exactly certain which direction the podcast would be heading in. I felt like I needed to hone in on what I wanted to talk about and the direction for the culture of it all. What I can tell you is that I had

not expected to take TikTok so seriously. I did not expect to go viral, even if it was only for 72 hours and meant really nothing. And the reason I didn't expect to do those things is because some of those things were terrifying to me. I didn't expect to become so visible this year, even in a very small space of the internet.

I didn't plan to do that and it was only back in March that I decided to, I don't know, just commit to TikTok. I was, I've been doing Instagram for so long and I was so done and I needed something creative and I found myself sharing outfits whilst also talking about the politics of plus-size fashion and I found

a lot of people in community there. And it just grew steadily from there. I've found some incredible people who want to have these conversations, an incredible community of people who want to have these conversations and want to speak up and do this work. And it's, it's amazing.

I've also had an incredible year on Substack. as a creative, Substack felt like this place that I could not figure out. I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to be doing or how I was supposed to be creating. And what I discovered is that it feels to me, Substack always feels to me like it's where the adults go when they're fed up of social media. So.

I love it for that reason. It is so different to TikTok. It feels like such a different platform. It is a different platform. But I also know that it has evolved a lot this year with the threats of social media platforms disappearing, which is funny, a year later and that hasn't happened. ⁓

There's been a lot of growth this year, personally and creatively, in ways that I hadn't expected.

My word for this year was create and it wasn't about being creative or using my creativity. It was more so about creating the opportunities. If I wanted to, if I wanted something that wasn't available, could I create it? Could I create the community that I wanted? Could I create the space? Could I create the opportunities?

And yeah, that's what happened this year in unexpected ways, but that is what happened. I have found an incredible community in number of different places and that has been wonderful and so needed. And it's also allowed me to shift the work I'm doing here on the culture bit, or from a place of urgency to a place of kind of steadiness and comfortability.

I have a tendency to try and push for ⁓ answers or to push for clarity for myself and instead I'm allowing it to develop over time and that is a wonderful thing for me personally because I drive myself crazy sometimes.

And over the course of this season, from autumn into winter, the message that we were never too much has really stood out to me. It was a message that I wanted to...

really elevate in full volume and bring to the work that I'm doing. And I think it's something that I've noticed with my work over this year is we always feel like we're too much. We've been told that we're too much. And we never were. We were never too much. Our bodies were not too much.

And this message and deep belief that we were never too much has also evolved into a place where we get to be seen.

as we are without shrinking or changing ourselves for others.

As we come to the end of another year, I've been thinking a lot about fat joy and the fact that a year ago I so deeply wanted to experience more fat joy and I feel like I was looking for that in a way that was perhaps unattainable because I was looking for outside of myself. I was looking for something that

wasn't just ordinary. When so much of the Fat Experience is just ordinary, but it has been demonized. And so over this year Fat Joy has been about noticing. Noticing my own body, noticing how I create and how I speak up and how visible I am.

It's been about slowing down, getting comfortable, showing up, taking space, kind of slowly and steadily reclaiming so many parts of myself.

and realizing that it's not something that we have to earn.

Right? Joy, and fat joy specifically, can really show up quietly in spaces that you... in spaces you're not looking for in.

For me, Fat Joy really showed up in my parenting this year. It was the little things. It was the private and quiet moments between me and my child and me and my close family when they were struggling so much this year.

when they were going through things I have experienced repeatedly as a child, a teen, as an adult, and knowing that I needed to handle it differently. I needed to break the cycle that had been passed down generation by generation and...

what I've had the joy of seeing is how my child has been able to advocate for themselves.

has been able to thrive in the face of this. The relationship they have with their body, the relationship they have with other people, the passion they have.

the way that we've gone, it feels like night and day in one school year and going from primary school to high school and making a new friendship group and even though it's scary as a parent and brings me no end of anxiety, it also has been wonderful because

hindsight being 20-20, I now can see all of the things that they were experiencing. Earlier this year we were both fat shamed by one of their peers and that for me was a defining moment, not just as a parent but in the work that I'm doing because I spoke about this...

incident publicly. And there was so much support and it was was wonderful. But of course there were people that blamed me. There were people that made assumptions and that really kind of stoked a fire under my arse about how I was going to talk about this work and how I was going to do this work and why I'm doing this work because it's not just for me. Yes I get to benefit from this as I continue to learn and show up but

I know that I'm doing it for the wider community, but I'm also doing it as an example for this person in my life who is experiencing things that I've also experienced. And that's been really wonderful. And...

Over the course of this year I've been able to reflect and look back on the work that I've been doing, both here on the podcast, on Substack, and on social media. And I have certainly approached each of these things in slightly different ways, but one of the areas that has really stood out to me is the kind of

returning to myself and the development or the evolution of my style over the past year. My style this year, it finally felt like it wasn't me reinventing myself,

And I think this is the first time that I can say that I truly feel like myself in every hour. I mean, this is the year that I cut my hair short, a hairstyle that I wanted when I was a teenager, but it went very, very wrong. And I was terrified to cut my hair short because there was so much safety and identity in that. I cut my hair this year.

I continue to try and figure out what my style preferences were, what I liked, have fun with it, play with it, heal my body image. And all of these pieces have kind of worked together to do that. And part of that is, you know, dressing for the body that I have, breaking down some of these rules and the ways in which perhaps I was dressing for other people, dressing to...

be attractive or more feminine and letting a lot of that go. And really discovering what my style is after shrinking, right? No longer shrinking my body to fit into certain things. And earlier this year, when I first started taking TikTok seriously, one of the conversations I was having is I wanted to

figure out what my casual style was. I consistently felt like I was either fully dressed up, like, as if I was going out out, or I was in sweatpants. And there's nothing wrong with that, but that wasn't what I wanted. I wanted to find this kind of middle ground, this place where I could be me and comfortable, but it wasn't sweatpants. I worked from home.

I'm not going out to an office and I'm still, I'm right now, I'm in sweatpants. And also sometimes I might not want that. And I really struggled with some of the societal rules around how fat people dress. Some of the unfortunately fatphobic and anti-fat narratives around how fat people should appear, how we should look.

And realizing that so much of that, A, doesn't belong to us as individuals, it's what society is telling us. But also if I don't believe it to be true, then it isn't.

And so trying to find that balance this year, that middle ground, that's where I started back in February, March time. Now I can say I've figured that out. Even if I haven't been intentionally looking for it, I've definitely figured that out this year. And it's allowed me to find comfort and let clothes be something that

help me express myself, they support me.

I've been able to find a place where I feel stylish and feel like I'm expressing myself without feeling like I have to perform trends or without feeling like I have to constantly reinvent something or without performing feminism or being attractive.

And of course, part of that, this past few months has been the development of full volume. The creative spark that gave me back in the summer and playing with fashion again, that has been so much fun. And that really served as a, almost like a flip book of my style this year. There's this audio on social media that says something around how the best way to document your style is by taking photos.

And I truly believe that that helps. Even if you're not creating content, the idea of just taking a short video each day of your outfit, if this is something that you are interested in and something you want to develop, it really does help. It really helps to see over the course of a year and throughout the different seasons as well,

Another big theme for this year has been softness for me. ⁓ Really embodying softness, giving myself permission to rest, moving slower.

not feeling guilt and shame about that, listening to my body and getting really honest with myself. Just recently I've noticed I've been feeling a little bit crunchy around the- I started out this school year in September walking every day and then the weather turned and it got cold and rainy and we've been doing that a little less.

And I noticed this week that I was really battling this kind of push and pull of...

walking or not walking in the mornings and having to remind myself that it doesn't mean anything, it's not determining my self-worth.

it's is absolutely okay and just kind of giving myself permission for that. So if this is something you're also experiencing I just want to hold space for you because honestly this is something I've battled for years. Something that has come up for me time and time again and sometimes I just need to be reminded.

there is no need to feel ashamed, is no need to feel guilty

And I guess I want to use this as an opportunity to remind us all that softness isn't the opposite of strength. To me, it's about creating space and allowing ourselves the opportunity to be comfortable and curious with ourselves.

So this year, joy has really shown up for me in unexpected ways. It has shown me how to be present, especially with my family.

I discovered community in really unexpected ways and was able to not just work creatively but also face some of those fears of being more visible.

And it's funny because I didn't intend to face those fears, but in the brief moment where I went viral, or at least viral for me, on TikTok earlier this year...

it kind of pushed me into a place where I realised unfortunately that when I say something about the fat experience it inevitably pisses people off.

it also lands in front of the people who need it most. And so...

Sometimes the hard things feel hard and the hard things will... I will need to take a break because you know there's only so much...

ignorance I can tolerate. But at the same time, it has really helped me to grow this year. It's helped me. And you know what? I have to assume that the people that hate to see me coming would hate that. I'm sure they'd hate to know that their negativity and their hatred towards fat people has actually helped me to grow in so many ways. And ⁓

just know that they're so so wrong.

And it's also reminded me that I need to stay soft because it makes me so angry and I cannot be angry all the time.

It's not helpful for me.

And so softness has helped me to kind of regulate those feelings and reflect back on what I believe to be true and reconnect with myself and my community.

essentially allowed me to create and develop full volume, you know, and start that, start that, that project. Because full volume isn't a theme, it's not performative, it's not a slogan. I believe wholeheartedly in this project and that we need to have our stories shared and told out loud.

And so I want to continue working on full volume. My intention is to deliver a winter, you know, a smaller winter version and keep creating this and hopefully developing it to a place where I get to share some of your stories as well. But I mean, I guess this year it wasn't about shrinking. I know for such a long time, I told myself that I've held back from

really speaking up, really using my voice. I've been creating content for over a decade and I feel like this is the first time I've really grown, really been visible, really been able to show up in a way

that challenged me in multitude of ways. And the thing is, it's not about numbers, it's not about likes or any of those things. It's been about knowing that what I'm creating and what I'm saying is making a difference. Again, in the little ways, in the quiet ways.

So as we come to the end of 2025, and I'm looking forward to next year, I firstly just want to say thank you for, if you've been here since the beginning, thank you so much for sticking with us. Thank you for staying for this kind of evolution of me and the culture of it all pod. I really appreciate it. If you are a new listener, thank you for showing up and I hope you'll stick around into next year.

I'm excited to move into this next season of the show. Kind of a anti-New Year new me, if you will. You know, this winter season is all about slowness and grounding and cosiness and I think that the marketing and the fatphobic rhetoric that will no doubt be very loud this coming year is really the opposite of that.

It's not slow, it's not grounding, it's not about coziness. It is harsh and it is expecting us to hustle and do more and...

It uses our bodies against us. So I'm really hoping that I can bring more of that kind of winter season to the show in January. I am going to be bringing guests onto the show. I've been saying that for a while. I really am. I will be bringing more guests on the show in 2026. That is my intention. You heard it here first. And...

I'm looking forward to continuing this work and seeing where it goes with softness, right, with compassion. I know that the new year often delivers a message of reinvention and asking us to rush into making decisions and telling us once again that we are not enough and that we always need to be improving. And

I'm all for personal growth, but not at the expense of my physical, mental, or emotional health. And Instead of rushing into reinvention, let's ease into reflection.