Jes Baker is a positive, progressive, and magnificently irreverent force to be reckoned with in the realm of self-love advocacy and mental health. Known internationally for sharing the importance of body liberation, “she loves having hard conversations, strong coffee, and even stronger language.” On her website The Militant Baker, she illuminates the importance of body autonomy, self-love, and mental health. She has written two books: Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls: A Handbook for Unapologetic Living and Landwhale: On Turning Insults into Nicknames, Why Body Image is Hard, and How Diets Can Kiss My Ass.
“Through fighting against racism, able-ism in the mental and physical world, all -isms, we’re fighting liberation for fat bodies as well.”
Jes Baker
In this episode of In This Body, a podcast series on body diversity and social justice hosted by Ashley Bullock of Reasons EDC, Jess Baker shares her own journey that led her to body positive activism. She speaks candidly about the ways fatness intersects with other forms of oppression, how to advocate for yourself with medical professionals, and inspires us all to examine ways we can make this society a more just place for all bodies.
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What You’ll Learn
- The purpose diet culture actually serves
- The intersectionality of fatness and other forms of oppression
- What a medical advocacy letter is and the purpose of using one
- Some feelings often behind shame and anger and how to use self compassion to work through them
- They ways somatic experiencing and embodiment can be healing
Quotables from Jes Baker
When I talk about this kind of stuff, I’m not coming to it from a ‘you have to be perfect’ kind of way. And I feel like that’s important. Because if we wait to be perfect, we won’t get anything done. And this is how we grow and move. And if we’re looking for action items doing is where it’s at. Instead of just kind of thinking about this.
When I learned about racism and the intersection with fat phobia, instead of going into a shame place, which serves no one, it’s an opportunity to be like here’s another piece of the puzzle. We’re putting it together and getting it. So I don’t want to discourage anyone by being like, let’s talk about intersections and all of these things that maybe you haven’t thought about. Because how could we be in this society? But there’s room now for people. There’s always been room. There’s room for us to learn and grow. And for it to not be a shame based thing so that we can actually get something done.
Sometimes when we can’t control situations, the only thing we can control is how we speak to ourselves about it.
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