Maxine Ali is a writer, journalist, and linguistic, who focuses on women’s health and wellness culture. Because she has experienced first-hand the barriers and hurdles so many women come up against when navigating a health system that was designed by men, she is dedicated to dismantling the deep-seated sexism that underscores our understanding of what it means to be ‘healthy.’
The biggest thing you can do is just exist openly and not shrink yourself. Not reduce yourself to a palatable version of what other people want you to be. Not hide yourself or conform yourself to ideals that we’ve been socialized into pursuing.
Maxine Ali
In this episode of In This Body, Maxine shares how being raised by immigrants affected her desire to fit in and the messaging around food and her body. She also opens up about her experiences growing up with a chronic illness.
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What You’ll Learn
- What are socio linguistics & psycho linguistics
- What an invisible disability is and how it impacts people’s experiences in our culture and the health care system
- How Maxine fights against systematic oppression by openly being herself
- How there is a lot of covert ableism in the messaging going out today on social media
- How anger against systems of oppression can be used as fuel for important work
- The concept of self-care and how it has been commodified
- The stigma around doing nothing and how this impacts us
Quotables from Maxine Ali
It’s not always easy, but I try my best to remain neutral about my body, because bodies are ever changing.
I find it most respectful, I think to myself, to approach my body with a sense of neutrality. And not tie my sense of self worth to that.
It’s almost a little bit revolutionary, when you can say, actually, you are allowed to just exist. You don’t have to be striving towards some goal. You don’t have to be pursuing some kind of project all the time. You know, you can just be. And that’s okay.
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Connect with Maxine Ali
