PODCAST: Season 3, Episode 12: Beyond Body Positivity: dismantling the ladder of body hierarchies with Nicola Haggett

Join us for a thought-provoking episode of The Youth Mentor Podcast, where Amanda sits down with body liberationist and Body Trust coach, Nicola Haggett. In this snippet of a conversation recorded at the 2022 Youth Mentor Conference, they delve into the complex topic of going beyond body positivity and dismantling body hierarchies. Listen in as they discuss the challenges of working with young people on body image and learn how to start going deeper than suggesting people just ‘love themselves.’

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YMP S3 Ep12 – FULL TRANSCRIPT

Sound bite

Nikki: what does healthy look like? You know, like from a very young age, we learn like, From, from very young.
Like you, you, you see research on kids, you know, younger than five and, and they can point to the healthy body, the unhealthy body, you know, and, and they learn that, um, to be healthy is good and to be unhealthy is bad. Um, we learn that healthy has a look. We learn that sporty bodies have a look. We learn which bodies are more worthy than others.

Others, uh, which bodies have more power than others. Um, what do lazy bodies look like? You know, um, the popular, you know, all of this, if we close our eyes has a picture, you know, which we’re socialized into these beliefs through the communities we’re in, through the, the cartoon. What I think of my own kids and, and like even the Disney movies, you know, and like the, the fat villain or the kind of like, um, reading rule Dal books and Mrs.

Trench, the Matilda Ideas of. Somehow otherness of, of certain bodies and then the kind of, um, ped of like the other bodies, you know, the, the heroes or the, the good girls or, you know, um, the, the pretty girl. You know. So I think that’s always been my fascination is like this ladder that’s kind of created and where we learn our place on the ladder in relation to other bodies.

generic intro

Hello and welcome to the youth mentor podcast. This is your short burst of inspiration tips and research about teens for parents, educators, and mentors. I’m your host, Amanda Rootsey, founder of teen personal development school Shine From Within and coach to incredible youth mentors all over the world. Now I certainly don’t know it all.

So I interview the experts about what’s going on for youth today. From psychological insights to really practical advice, this is your moment of inspiration, motivation, and a few laughs amidst the ever changing world of teens and tweens.

Episode Intro

Hi, everyone. Welcome to this episode of the youth mentor podcast. Uh, in this episode, it’s actually a snippet of a conversation I had with Nicola Haggett, who is a body trust coach during the 2022 youth mentor conference. And. The full recording of this session is actually included as a bonus in the 2023 conference, which starts on the 27th of February. So, um, you’ll get some really great insights here. And then if you feel like you want more, come in, come and check out.
The youth mentor conference. Um, but this, yeah, there’s, there’s so much goodness, in this snippet alone. Um, we’re talking about going beyond body positivity and dismantling the latter of body hierarchies. Um, it’s, it’s a complex topic. Um, But I love, I just, I can just listen to Nicki, talk about this all day. And, um, it, it gives a lot of food for thought. And particularly if we’re working with young people.

And, um, you know, we know that this is such a big issue. If we’re approaching this work, because we also had, um, some, some challenges around body image. Um, And honestly, regardless of whether you did or not, There’s there’s a lot here to consider and to, and to unpack. And, um, yeah, it’s just a really important conversation. So let’s get straight into it.

Episode Begins

[00:03:34] Nikki: Welcome
[00:03:37] Amanda: everyone to this final session of day two in the youth conference. I’m really, really thrilled and honored and excited and, um, that’s enough adjectives. , excited to be to be introducing you to, to Nicola Haggett today.
[00:03:55] This chat’s all about dismantling the ladder of body hierarchies go going beyond body positivity, body confidence, something that I know is really important to a lot of you and a lot of, um, the youth mentors that I’ve spoken to over the years, a lot of people come into this. With that topic really in mind.
[00:04:13] I’m wanting to focus a lot on, on, um, body confidence and body positivity. So I’m excited to go a bit deeper with that and unpack some of the other stuff around that. And, um, I met Nicola through, through the Feminist Coach Academy, which is, um, a wonderful, wonderful training program I recommend to, to anyone, to all of you.
[00:04:35] Um, and got so much out of, it feels like a weird phrase to say, I got so much out of you. Like, I took so much from you . Um, but I did, I did learn a lot, um, and, uh, felt, yeah, and it challenged quite a few things for me and it was really, um, really an important session for me. Um, just getting to be on a live call with you, uh, with a small group of people.
[00:05:00] So that’s what kind of what we’ve recreated
[00:05:02] Nikki: here, which is exciting. , um, Before we go any further, I’d
[00:05:07] Amanda: love to, to take a moment to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land that we’re meeting on for this meeting today. Tonight. Um, uh, I’m on Gaby or Cubby Cubby country, so I’d like to pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging.
[00:05:23] Thanks for joining us.
[00:05:25] Nikki: Would you mind
[00:05:26] Amanda: starting off by telling us a little bit about yourself?
[00:05:30] Nikki: Yeah, sure.
[00:05:35] So I am, I think a visual, I wanna give a visual description just also for folks that’d like listening or who have visual impairment. So I, um, you can’t see me. I am a white, um, Woman in her early forties with kind of pinkish hair. Um, and I’m a shoulder length hair and I’m wearing a, a beige top with a little rainbow necklace.
[00:06:01] Rainbow colored necklace. I am, I’m based in the UK originally from Ireland, so I have a bit of a funny accent. Um, you might have noticed. Um, yeah, I’m, I’m a parent of two kids. Uh, I have an eight year old and a 10 year old. Um, and I describe myself as being fat. Um, and that’s a word that is a neutral descriptor for me.
[00:06:29] It can be quite a loaded word. It can feel complicated for a lot of folks. Um, that it’s been important for me to reclaim it. Um, what else? Um, what you can’t see, I’m neuro divergent. Um, I also live with chronic illness and yeah. And I guess, A little bit about what I do. Um, I’m a body liberationist. I’m a facilitator and coach.
[00:06:55] I work with folks in lots of different ways around reclaiming a sense of what it means to feel at home in their body, really looking at what’s come between there and feeling at home. Um, often that starts with exploring our body stories and exploring the roots of body shame and how that connects to this idea of the ways in which we internalize beliefs and biases around bodies.
[00:07:24] Um, hyper socialize into that. I also mentor and offer supervision to healthcare professionals, dieticians, therapists, coaches around unpacking anti-fat bias, and often just holding space for their own complicated feelings about their body, cuz our body shows up in the room with the folks that we hold space for.
[00:07:47] Um, and so really inviting in that this is a practice, a practice of coming home. Yeah. I think that’s all I wanna say for now. That’s beautiful.
[00:08:00] Amanda: A practice of coming
[00:08:01] Nikki: home.
[00:08:04] So I love that our body shows up in the room, including the zoom room, . Yeah. Yeah. Even this room . Yeah. Yeah.
[00:08:18] Amanda: It must be really interesting doing that work with dieticians and, um, in that healthcare kind of world as well.
[00:08:27] Nikki: Yeah. I think that, um, what comes up when I think of what, what’s complicated, I think that there’s often, in the training that we get in healthcare settings, um, there is a lot of that expertism fixing that can kind of come up as, you know, as folks name it to me, a sense that, that we’re the experts that we have, that they have the answers, but also a sense that their body is kind of their brand, if you like. Their body’s a representation of how good a dietician or a nutritionist they are, or as a therapist, you know, there’s these ideas of of, of fatness and body size that kind of are somehow linked to trauma or a sense that we are not well.
[00:09:14] Um, and so, It’s really interesting and, and really, really beautiful to hold space for their own process with body acceptance, but also to invite them to look at the edges of where their lived experience might be different from the folks that they’re working with. And, and just holding an awareness for their own process, but also where they might be missing stuff or where their biases are showing up.
[00:09:41] So it’s really lovely to get to hold space for their own healing cuz we all get to do that work. We’re all living in this culture. None of us , none of us sort of escapes unfortunately. And also like sort of locate ourselves in, in sort of in a wider context socially as well and invite us into kind of the bigger work of unlearning some of those biases that are sort of getting in between us and the folks who work with, but also harming them.
[00:10:14] Um, yeah. How do you locate yourself in all of that? In everything that’s, Hmm. It’s a practice. Yeah. We, in Body Trust, which is one of the modalities that I am trained in and that I use, we have a practice called Locate Yourself and Widen the lense. And so for me, it’s kind of a layered process of locating myself and my body, like what’s here.
[00:10:44] You know, sometimes if I’m feeling like where it might show up in the room with folks might be, we suddenly find ourselves feeling defensive or maybe the shame being triggered. So just really like taking a moment to locate myself and my body and in my experience. And then I also want the context of what’s going on, who my relationship to, in my positionality, in my identity, in my privilege, in my bias, in my oppression.
[00:11:11] Not on a way to like, Hold my full humanity and also to hold the full humanity of, of the person that I’m in relationship with. And then I guess there’s also a practice for me of locating myself in my body story. So like where is, what’s showing up here? Like how do I connect that to the ways I was socialized to have beliefs?
[00:11:38] How can I have compassion for like, oh yeah, it makes sense right now that I’m feeling some shame around this discussion we’re having about health. Cuz you know, I was socialized to believe that health is something we can control, or health is our responsibility. So there’s a practice of, of, um, locating and widening this landside into wider contexts.
[00:12:03] Yeah. So it’s not simple, but in some ways it is. But it’s kind of this like compass that we keep coming back to. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. I,
[00:12:14] Amanda: I feel like you asked us this question in, in the session that I had with you around, um, looking at, looking at our social identities and now how we’ve been socialized to, to look at health, what health means, and some of those things you just mentioned around health is our, is our own responsibility and health is almost like something we owe to the world and all of that stuff.
[00:12:41] Yeah. And it was, it was really powerful to, to do a bit of a reflection on that. Mm-hmm. Of how, how we might have been brought up or socialized to think about
[00:12:51] Nikki: something as big as health . Well, yeah. And, and it’s not even the idea of health. It’s like, what does healthy look like? You know, like from a very young age, we learn like, From, from very young.
[00:13:05] Like you, you, you see research on kids, you know, younger than five and, and they can point to the healthy body, the unhealthy body, you know, and, and they learn that, um, to be healthy is good and to be unhealthy is bad. Um, we learn that healthy has a look. We learn that sporty bodies have a look. We learn which bodies are more worthy than others.
[00:13:24] Others, uh, which bodies have more power than others. Um, what do lazy bodies look like? You know, um, the popular, you know, all of this, if we close our eyes has a picture, you know, which we’re socialized into these beliefs through the communities we’re in, through the, the cartoon. What I think of my own kids and, and like even the Disney movies, you know, and like the, the fat villain or the kind of like, um, reading rule Dal books and Mrs.
[00:13:55] Trench, the Matilda Ideas of. Somehow otherness of, of certain bodies and then the kind of, um, ped of like the other bodies, you know, the, the heroes or the, the good girls or, you know, um, the, the pretty girl. You know. So I think that’s always been my fascination is like this ladder that’s kind of created and where we learn our place on the ladder in relation to other bodies.
[00:14:30] And then when we’re talking about health, when we’re talking about wellness, when we’re talking about nutrition, when we’re talking about, um, yeah. , all these other ideas, how are those tied to other beliefs around bodies? Um, and how do we really go beneath the surface to kind of, not to say health’s not a conversation that’s important to have, and how do we go deeper beyond personal responsibility?
[00:15:01] How do we question like how much of this is in our control? And also if we are gonna look at a conversation about health, are we talking about the same thing? Are we unintentionally reinforcing other biases in that, um, Yeah. So it’s just like a, it’s something that I feel is really important cuz a lot of the conversations that I see don’t go deep enough.
[00:15:24] And then in the work that I do with folks, I guess I’m seeing the aftermath of the unintended consequences in sort of adults around, you know, the conversations they heard around bodies, you know, insco, um, and community, you know, and their families. Um, yeah. And the ways in which they internalized certain ideas.
[00:15:47] Hmm. Yeah. So what, yeah. So what, what do you then, what do
[00:15:54] Amanda: you see is, is the problem with, with body confidence, body positivity? Is it, is it that kind of thing? Is it that it’s at, that it’s not going deep enough and it’s not, and it, and it is kind of reinforcing all of these, all this health, you know, healthism and ableism and things like that, or, yeah.
[00:16:13] Could you talk a little more about that? Yeah. .
[00:16:16] Nikki: I think it’s a few things. I mean, in many ways it can be a really, um, it’s a place that many folks find very supportive, the idea of body confidence and body positivity. So I’m not like, let’s throw it all on the bin . Um, I think the idea that we can feel positive towards, in about our body is, is, is, is really lovely.
[00:16:39] Um, and that we can have confident confidence, um, in our body and it’s in ourselves, in our voice and the function of our body, you know, in, in our ability to, to do things. I think where, where I bump up against, um, some limitations in it is in a few areas. I think often when these conversations are, had, they, they really say like a personal responsibility level, like that we can change our perception that really if we, um, If we do enough work, , that we can really like this, this body that, that, that we’re in, and that, that can be really lovely.
[00:17:23] And I guess it doesn’t speak to what becomes between us and that, and that the further we get away from health, from, you know, being able bodied, from being nurtured, neurotypical, from being white, from being, um, you know, different class level, um, that we have to work a lot harder in order to feel positive toward our body.
[00:17:52] And if we can’t manage that, then somehow. Problems with us. Um, I think, you know, another piece that I see is that, you know, if we talk about this ladder of body hierarchies, like another way of thinking about that is often body positivity and body confidence stops at the level of just being okay with our place on that ladder.
[00:18:14] Like just learning how to expand our capacity and resilience for it rather than sort of seeing the ladder and seeing and questioning like, um, do I buy into these beliefs? Like what are the roots of them and actually what, what would it take to dismantle the whole ladder, um, and step off of it, you know?
[00:18:36] Um, and I think also like healthism gets tap trapped in there, you know, as well. Um, like, yes, feeling good about our bodies is so important, but I think that it can get really confusing when. Kids learn that they’ve got to be, but what about health? And then that health comes with the body size. And then when we look at the research, you know, into interviews with, with kids, you know, as young as five and going up to sort of, you know, their, their mid-teens, um, they really sort of learn that one of the other reasons for health and for exercise and movement and all of these, you know, practices, which on the face of it, um, you know, aren’t necessarily a problem in and of themselves.
[00:19:26] I love movement. Um, but if we learn that one of the reasons is to control our bodies or to control the size of our bodies because that’s what’s gonna make us healthy, or that’s what’s gonna make us worthy, then it becomes a kind of a double bind. And then who gets left out of that conversation. And then also, like, you know, it doesn’t speak to.
[00:19:48] all of the aspects of health that aren’t related to individual behaviors as well. So it, it can feel like kind of gaslighting for folks who, you know, their socioeconomic situation is actually the biggest factor in health. Or it doesn’t speak to the negative health consequences of like weight stigma and how much the billion in discrimination of kids in higher weight bodies has an impact.
[00:20:10] Really big impact on suicidality and eating disorder risk and mental health. Um, and I, and you know, and sort of the last piece, or one of the last pieces for me is it really locates problems in our bodies. A lot of these conversations, like in this roundabout way, without going to leave, we still end up with this kind of place if as our body changes, if we experience ill health or disability or.
[00:20:41] Changes that we have to start all over again to like our body that we’ve not really, um, gotten to the root of what’s come between the fact that we are our body, our body is our home. Like we’re born into this world, , um, you know, most of us, if we’re lucky with a sense of not this separation, not the dualistic idea of, you know, me and my body.
[00:21:03] We just, it’s just, it’s just us. And we’re, you know, and what the research, especially Niva Pean’s research, which I love on the developmental theory of embodiment, shows that as kids, especially, you know, kids socialized as, as, as girls, you know, from the age of eight onwards, they move from a position of this is my body, my body’s good, you know, I can use my voice, I can feed and move my body in a way that that cares for my body.
[00:21:32] That I’m not an object, you know, for the, the gaze of other people, um, to this. This place that, uh, Dr. Peran calls docile bodies. So this idea that we are, um, that we’re bodies, you know, for, for, to be looked at, our body needs to perform a certain way, that we need to take up this body project of fixing our body.
[00:21:59] And that can be really sneaky in many ways because it can keep us at a distance of actually being and living and connecting with ourselves right here, right now. If we’re always trying to get to some point where we’re better, where we’re fixed, where we’re gonna be getting validation cuz we’re performing health or because we’re, it’s a very slippery slope.
[00:22:20] Um, and I, and I see it in just such high rates of eating disorders, like nearly 50% of 16 year olds in some research, you know, have got disordered eating behaviors and. And it’s a real epidemic at the moment, especially, you know, we’ve seen figures rise from lockdown. Um, yeah. And also, I guess another piece of this, and again, I keep naming different pieces cuz it is so complex.
[00:22:49] We, you know, we’ve seen, um, Harvard University in their project, um, project bias, I think it’s called, where they look at implicit and explicit bias. Mm-hmm. , um, you know, they recently published, um, a report that implicit bias in many areas is decreasing, but there’s a concern that implicit bias around weight is actually increasing.
[00:23:10] So our internalized idea around size and the idea that it’s a choice and a moral obligation, um, is increasing, um, alongside other things. And, and I, you know, this link there between Healthism and that, this idea of. Health means something we have to perform and, and pick up and take and have responsibility for.
[00:23:35] And it’s somehow what we look like are our appearance, you know, in that implicit bias is somehow a reflection of whether or not we’re doing that project well enough. I probably went off on a tangent there, but fantastic tangent, . Yeah. It’s um,
[00:23:55] Amanda: even just the way you, you’re talking about health as this project we have to perform and we have to perform it well and it’s, it’s a never ending project is you can’t e ever get to the point where you feel like it’s fixed or it’s, you’ve done it well anyway.
[00:24:09] Can you why? I dunno, of anyone that feels like
[00:24:12] Nikki: they’ve got to that point and can now rest , , I mean, we are all losing health all the time. I mean, we’re all going to. we’re all going to die. Um, and often what healthism and wellness culture and nutritionism, and again, I’m not someone that’s against health and care.
[00:24:37] Um, I guess I’m just putting a question on whether all the behaviors that are linked with, with achieving that or performing it are in fact health promoting. Um, when we look at the unintended consequences. Um, yeah.
[00:24:56] Amanda: I just noticed, uh, penny just asked what research you mentioned earlier. It wasn’t the Harvard one,
[00:25:01] Nikki: it was just before that. Do you remember? Oh, so Dr. Nva Koran, um, was that the one, the developmental theory of embodiment? Mm-hmm. So it’s this really, um, fascinating piece of research, which is a grinded theory.
[00:25:19] So basically looks at. Hundreds of interviews with girls and women across the lifespan and really exploring this, what their experience of being in their body has been. What’s come between that, what, you know, what’s disrupted that experience and what’s enhanced it. Um, and then from those interviews constructed this idea of the experience of embodiment.
[00:25:43] And what I love about that research is that, um, it also looks at the sun cultural context, which is often missing from body image research. So it looks at, um, safety like sense of feeling safe in our bodies and where that gets disrupted, um, for folks. So she lives as girls, but also as we look also at. You know, socioeconomic, um, where we’re living our environment.
[00:26:10] When we look at, um, our race, when we look at other factors, um, it looks at safety, it looks at attuned self-care, it looks at agency voice, it looks at this idea of objectification that I touched on, and all of these themes emerged from the research. Um, rather than somebody sort of saying, I’m gonna look at this particular idea, um, which is what I really love about it.
[00:26:35] And you can really see this journey from early childhood, um, through to this disrupted embodiment that happens. Um, after the age of sort of eight words. I’m gonna type the name in the chat. Dr. Neva Perran, and it’s the develop
[00:27:01] mental theory of, um, embodiment. And it’s something I use in, in my work and in Body Trust work to explore our body stories and to explore, um, practices that might help us to reclaim a sense of being at home.
[00:27:23] We’ve talked about, um,
[00:27:25] Amanda: you’ve mentioned anti-fat bias a few times. Would you mind sharing a little bit more about the, where that comes from? The Yeah. The, the language around obesity, the roots of bmi, that kind of stuff. Like where does all this Yeah. Where does it all come from? .
[00:27:43] Nikki: Yeah, so I guess there’s a large body of research on, um, wit bias and weight stigma.
[00:27:50] Um, I use the term anti-fat bias cause I feel like it really gets to the heart of it. Um, and yeah, so there’s a body of research, um, that is well established now. Um, the, you know, we even had the World Health Organization did a report on the impact of weight bias and, and weight stigma.
[00:28:08] Um, and really it’s, it’s at the different levels of which, um, folks in higher weight bodies experience discrimination. And we all experience the impact of weight bias at some level. You know, so like there’s a sort of intrapersonal level. So that’s these internalized ideas we have about, about bodies, about our body, about, you know, um, Like I said, starting from those early cartoons and movies we watch ideas that we pick up of like that fat bodies are kind of wrong or bad or, or scary or it’s not, you know, shows up in kind of the ways in which we police our own body or talk about our own body internally, or rate ourselves or criticize.
[00:28:54] Um, you know, it’s also kind of shows up on an interpersonal level then. So we might experience comments from mothers in relation to our body and that can happen again at any size. We can have a parent or, or we can be subject to somebody in our life that, that really, you know, we get the sense that our body’s a problem or there’s something about our body that’s, it’s not okay.
[00:29:20] And often that can be around size and it can be tied in with other ideas of like, you know, our experiences into certain. Sports, perhaps, for example, or with, you know, um, I guess the clothes we want to wear or the, you know, what, what’s presented to us as, um, important in terms of like our appearance. Um, and obviously as, as, as folks move further away from the kind of what’s identified as the norm, um, you know, that can become much more, um, explicit and people feel really empowered to comment on people’s bodies in, in public and, and on, on what they’re reading.
[00:30:04] You know, I’ve had people come up to me when I’m eating an ice cream with my kids and make comments. Even it seems like a joke, you know, oh, you know, look like you’ve had one too many of those love. Or, you know, when you’re, when, when you’re out, you know, I, I climbed Kilimanjaro before lockdown with some other, um, a group of fat hikers that I’m part of and just.
[00:30:25] The comments from people around, you know, when I went to get a R sack even, and I couldn’t get one to fit that, it was the idea that I should diet to fit into this, you know, r sack. Just ideas that come up and it can be really aggressive and really mean. You know, when I was pregnant, I had a lot of really harmful things said to me about my body.
[00:30:43] Um, so that’s the interpersonal level, and I guess there’s a level which is institutional. And so that’s like often these messages we hear about, um, you know, these pictures we get of like what we call the headless fatty, you know, if people are talking about the obesity epidemic, you’ll often have a head chopped off and just this really degrading photo of, um, of somebody’s body usually positioned, and clothes that are too tight or fat, you know, rat rolls or they’re sitting down on a bench eating like a hamburger or there’s just all these ideas that, that we have that if somebody’s fat, then they must be lazy or lacking morals or greedy or.
[00:31:22] you know, and then unattractive. And you know, and we also know from the research that fat folks, um, you know, experience discrimination and employment and it’s legal to discriminate against people based on their size. You know, even getting access to clothing. You know, I, it’s just the way you move through the world, you know?
[00:31:41] Um, getting on a plane, going to the Airbnb and trying to get in the shower or use the towel. It’s, it’s all these little ways in which you meet a world that tells you that your body’s not okay. It can feel small and big, but it all kind of adds up. Getting access to like gender affirming care with b m I cutoffs, getting access to surgery, to fertility, you know, learning that, um, You know, even these conversations about, um, the contraceptive pill and AOR access, you know, many of these drugs even aren’t tested for folks, um, above a certain weight.
[00:32:17] You know, we had that with covid and the vaccines that the, the needle sizes, um, weren’t tested. And we actually, if you’re just above a certain weight, should be offered a larger needle. So ways in which it’s assumed that you’re not, that your body shouldn’t exist. Um, and you need to be doing something to, to fix it so that you better fit within the, the environment.
[00:32:41] That’s the institutional level. And I guess it’s the ideological level, which is this ladder that I talk about. So like what’s underneath, what’s, what are the ideas that are not being named in there, you know? And there’s a lot of. You know, we could, you could go into with, with doctors Sabrina Strings research on fearing the black body and the kind of links between, um, anti-fat and anti-blackness and how, you know, um, anti-fat was a way to kind of differentiate the, the, the thin, white puritanical body from, you know, the, the bodies of, you know, um, enslaved folks.
[00:33:25] And I think it’s really gone beneath and as many other sort of roots and ideas behind worthiness of certain bodies over others. Um, so that’s the ideological level really looking at like, what is the ideology that underpins this, this idea, um, that a fat body is. Is an unworthy body or that we don’t deserve access to healthcare unless we can demonstrate we’re performing health.
[00:33:54] You know, unless, you know, we can, we can show that we’ve tried hard enough. It’s kind of, for me, there’s a question of everybody being, um, should it be entitled to the same safety, dignity, compassion, respect, belonging, um, you know, regardless of their body. There’s a lot that like of complexity in the conversation.
[00:34:21] But yeah, that’s kind of, yeah. And in terms of negative health outcomes, I mean there’s, there’s a lot of research showing the. the adverse psychological health outcomes, but there’s also adverse physiological health outcomes. So, you know, we’ve got a lot of research showing that people who experience anti-fat stigma, so folks who experiencing that stigma, you know, have higher levels of cortisol, of, um, allostatic load experience, a lot of stress.
[00:34:46] And all of these things are linked independently to the diseases that are blamed on, um, you know, obesity, which is not a word that I, that I like. Um, you know, it’s linked to insulin resistance, it’s linked to high blood pressure. It’s, it’s, you know, linked to many other things. So there’s a way in which. We often don’t name that the experience of stigma itself.
[00:35:13] It’s, you know, there’s an idea that, oh, shaming people, you know, it’s sort of for their own good without naming, actually, there’s a real negative health outcome to experiencing stigma. And stigma is not always, I guess the other piece I’ll say is not always the really mean stuff. Um, it’s also the ways in which people are kind of blamed with kindness for their situation or their experiences are undermined.
[00:35:41] Um, they’re not believed or they’re labeled as non-compliant or, yeah. All of that stuff. Hmm. Yeah. Thank you. There’s a lot, there’s a
[00:35:54] Amanda: lot to it, isn’t there? It’s, it’s a, it’s such a, such a big, big conversation. It’s like
[00:35:58] Nikki: an octopus with all these different generals. Um, I feel, and it’s linked to, you know, all these other systems of oppression, which again, is why it’s important to kind of dig a little bit deeper than this circle level discussion about liking our body.

Outro

[00:36:14] Amazing. Right. I’m just going to end that snippet of that conversation here, but we go on to talk about. Um, Uh, health and physical education in schools, we talk about, uh, a lot more about, um, oppression and the role that that has in, in the way that we’re socialized to, to view and feel into our bodies.
[00:36:35] Um, and lots of other great stuff. So if you’d like to, if you’d like to access that, that full recording. Um, it’s a free bonus as part of the youth mentor conference that we’ve got starting on the 27th of February. So just head to youth-mentor-conference.com. To check out the incredible speakers that we’ve brought together for this conference. You won’t find another, um, another conference like this in the world with this incredible caliber of experts, I’m just.
[00:37:05] Ah, you should, you should see me. My legs are like bouncing around. I can’t sit still just thinking about what what’s, what’s coming up. And this conference. Um, it’s just $125 Australian, um, there to get your tickets. But if that’s prohibitive for you in any way, please reach out just email info@shinefromwithin.com.au
[00:37:25] And, um, we’ll sort you out. Yeah. We just want to, the main thing as always is, is for us to, to. Hold a space for us to learn more about how we can be even better with the young people in our lives. And, um, and to get to connect with each other too, because this can be. Um, challenging lonely work a lot of the time. And, um, I know a lot of youth mentors are just solo.

[00:37:51] Uh, solopreneurs working in their business and to get to connect with others and hear the way that others do things. And, um, be in that, in that space together is, is so, so special and amazing. Um, thanks for being here and Phil listening into this episode of the youth mentor podcast, and I look forward to. Connecting with you again really soon

Mentioned in this episode:

• Connect with Nikki: nicolahaggett.com
• Youth Mentor Training
• Youth Mentor Conference!

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