I will take another one at 4:00.Īt one point, they play a recorded conversation between Elna and her new husband, in which he admits that he would not have dated, loved, or ultimately married her, had she been her previous size (5’9’’, 265 pounds). I need to stay thin so I can get what I want I'm taking it right now, by the way. I am on speed, because I need to stay thin. The central story is that of Elna Baker, a woman who lost 110 pounds by using the Schedule IV controlled substance phentermine, which she’s still taking: I really didn’t want to listen to the episode, but thankfully they offer the transcript online. My friend Laura Luna was the first to reply, saying that she had planned to post about the episode and offer a much-needed trigger warning to any fat people who planned to listen to it.Īfter a string of, like, 50 comments I was pretty enraged by what I gathered from the hearsay, but was still decidedly ignorant of what the episode actually contained.
Honestly, the whole thing brought back a lot of really unpleasant memories of being single and going on dates with tech dudes.įeeling like a spurned lover who clearly felt that the one-night stand meant more than it did (two-night stand, though!), I posted a warning on Facebook: D on’t link me, don’t tag me, I know it’s there. I was pissed at myself for having given this Official Home Of Self-Congratulatory White Liberals not one, but two precious pre-interviews. I can admit that I had already gotten up on the wrong side of the bed, and the idea of listening to that episode made me feel extra salty. Yesterday, though, right as I was about to enter the vortex that is my morning Facebook-checking-time-suck-ritual, I got a text from my friend Mica.
It felt like the producers were still fishing for an angle, and I thought I’d steered them in a good direction: Fat politics are about the fight for a life free from bigotry and discrimination, regardless of size. She asked me whether I thought fat people were ‘better’ in some ways than thin people. Susan asked me questions about my childhood, my research in grad school, and then whether my life would be easier if I weren’t fat. We set up a time to chat over the phone and she called me from some landline in New York. They were preparing for a show about fatness, and I was excited to share my hard-earned analysis on the matter.
We were so tight on time that we weren't able to produce a segment full of personal stories in the way we'd originally envisioned.Ībout two months ago, I talked with Susan, one of the interviewers for TAL. I'm sorry we weren't able to interview you for the episode, which airs this weekend. Thanks so much for talking with me on the phone a few weeks back. On Saturday, I woke up to an email from someone at NPR’s “This American Life”: Content notice: drug use for weight loss. Yet again, fatphobia and its proponents (many of them admittedly left-leaning NPR listeners) somehow fade into the ether.