{The Body Liberation Guide} Gender euphoria and fatness

Hi friend,

How do you like the new look for the newsletter? I attended an email design webinar right before I traveled earlier this month, and it got me all excited about design again.

Also, you have till Wednesday to enter the drawing for the Pan Eros Film Festival tickets!

As someone deeply committed to size inclusivity and active in Health at Every Size for a long time now, I’m thrilled to endorse Jen McLellan’s new Size-Friendly Birth Course. If you’re looking to deepen your understanding and implementation of size-friendly practices, this course is for you.

Why this course matters:

  • It offers over six hours of evidence-based content aimed at making maternity care more size-inclusive.
  • You’ll learn how to tackle weight bias effectively, creating a more supportive environment for all families.
  • The course guides you through adapting your practice to be welcoming and accessible for clients of all sizes.

This isn’t just about learning; it’s about becoming part of a community committed to size inclusivity. I believe in this course’s power to make us better professionals.

(The link above is an affiliate link, so if you sign up I’ll get a tiny part of the proceeds, but I reached out to Jen to promote the course because Jen’s work is so important and deserves to be supported.) 

And now, to this week’s letter:

I’ll be honest — the response to last week’s letter startled me. 

People responded to the email and commented on social media about how miserable my trip sounded. And yeah, it wasn’t a fun time. But it was so much less unpleasant than flying before I had the ability to get two airplane seats that it hadn’t occurred to me that it was actively terrible, just less so.

It’s fascinating because generally, when very fat people talk about our experiences, we’re not carefully making the point every sentence or two that those experiences are due to oppression, not faults in our bodies. 

And when very fat people talk about our experiences, we don’t generally get the same reaction I just did. It makes me wonder whether it activates our sympathy more when it’s made clear to us that a bad experience isn’t the fault of someone’s body — whether we intend that reaction or not.

I’ve also been thinking this week about gender euphoria and how it’s similar (or not) to these experiences. 

This is a half-formed thought I’ve been mulling over, and gender studies are way outside my lane, so feel free to tell me I’m off the mark here.

Keep reading….

Hi there! I'm Lindley. I create artwork that celebrates the unique beauty of bodies that fall outside conventional "beauty" standards at Body Liberation Photography. I'm also the creator of Body Liberation Stock and the Body Love Shop, a curated central resource for body-friendly artwork and products. Find all my work here at bodyliberationphotos.com.