She's All Fat hosts, Sophia and April, are leading the conversation on body positivity with humor, grace, and a wealth of knowledge. These gals are two peas in a pod(cast) who hold safe space for anyone to join in and #createconversation on dense topics like body politics, radical self love, and popular culture intricacies from a femme perspective. For their fatmily and new listeners alike, She's All Fat authentically shows up for everyone and educates how anyone can do the work. Read on to learn how these women take conscious actions to self empower and in turn, empower their diverse listeners. 

What I love about about She’s All Fat Podcast is that you two are able to create conversation around body positivity, diversity, intersectional feminism, and current social issues in a positive, upbeat manner. You two do an AMAZING job at being the most approachable hosts that these topics suddenly become easy to talk about. When did you start speaking up and speaking out on these topics? How did the She’s All Fat Pod come to be?

Thank you! Both of us began our journeys with body positivity by following tons of body positive accounts on Instagram a few years back (shoutout to @gabifresh, @nicolettemason, @iamdaniadriana, and so many more!) and found that diversifying our feeds had a major impact on how we saw ourselves.

About a year after we became friends, we realized that not only did we share our passion about body positivity, but we also were both huge fans of podcasts. We were so excited at the possibility of creating a space of our own to join the body positivity conversation in podcast form while adding our own spin to it. Our friend Lindsey came up with the title and She’s All Fat was born!

It’s great that you mention how your feed majorly impacted your self image. What was your feed like before diversifying your feed? What is your relationship with social media like since then?

Before we diversified our feeds, neither of us saw many bodies that looked like ours in every day, smiling pictures or in glamorous, influencer shots. Now that we've diversified our feeds, it feels affirming and our bodies feel, well, normal, when we go online and scroll through. It was a first step for both of us to be able to tell ourselves, hey, there's these other bodies that look like mine and they're beautiful, and maybe one day I'll be able to say that to myself. Now that our feeds are more representative, we also try to add more accounts that aren't like us at all, that further expand the images we see and further normalize bodies that are often marginalized.

Talk to us about the new season. What’s new, who’s on, what are you excited about? 

This season, we have an episode dedicated to superfat people, an episode about non-binary fat people, and an episode about raising body positive children. These are all identities and intersections that we do not personally experience, but we are super excited to learn more about and explore on the show. We’ll also be doing more media critique and answering lots of listener questions.

How do you define body positivity?

April: Body positivity is a political movement about the liberation of all marginalized bodies. To me, it is primarily about the need for societal change so that no one faces marginalization due to the bodies that they live in and secondarily about one’s personal journey to self-love and acceptance.

Sophie: Ditto April. Body positivity is political. It’s the movement to respect every body, and treat the amazingly diverse bodies we have with care, respect, and attention to the differences while making spaces and places accessible and welcoming to all. In order to achieve that goal, we have to uplift and highlight the most marginalized bodies, and focus on tearing down the ways those bodies are shamed, pathologized, and demonized. Body positivity is often confused in the public sphere with self-love - not the same thing at all!

You two are kicking ass as podcasters, content creators, social activists, and all around entrepreneurs. Being paving your own path and your boss can be so freeing, but also so overwhelming. What has been your biggest lesson in entrepreneurship?

April: I have learned that while it can be extremely difficult to assemble a team,  having a great one can truly make or break your small business. Our rockstar of a producer Maria Wurttele and our intern Lynn Barbera are truly what dreams are made of and we would not be able to put out the pod without them.

Sophie: I’ve learned to trust myself and my biz partner more. Every time we’ve done something that our guts warned us about, that thought in the back of our heads ended up being something we should have listened to. In the end, we know ourselves and our business better than anyone else, and it’s okay to say no to the wrong opportunities to make space for the right ones.

She's All Fat creates conversation on topics that desperately need to be put at the forefront. What’s a social issue you wish were openly discussed more?

April: I think intersectionality is so important and an issue we emphasize in every single episode of the show. There are many times when I see people discussing issues that women face without acknowledging that not all women are white and women of color may experience those same issues more acutely. I’m pretty militant and truly believe that no one is free until we are all free, and we will never get there if we cannot challenge ourselves to acknowledge other people’s experiences.

Sophie: Again, what April said. I wish white people spent more time talking about racism amongst ourselves - a lot of white people will learn about racism and then turn to the black people and people of color in their lives to express shock and horror, and that’s not helpful. I think we need to be working on our internalized racism and the pain of trying to grow and work on ourselves with the support of other white people, not putting that burden on those who are already marginalized.

I also wish people talked about the connection between food and the way you feel more. I think sometimes, so much of the way people fall into diet culture has to do with a sense of needing to lose weight to “be healthy” and an ignorance of the way health, diet, and food actually interact and how it’s so individual for every body. Finding intuitive eating - or being on the path towards intuitive eating - and learning to center my eating experience around what my body needs and wants to feel good instead of what I want it to look like has been life-changing for me, and I wish more people had that experience.

Yes, I love that you are bringing light to these issues. Intersectionality has been a big topic in the Dazey community recently. What tip would you give to people who are trying to be more conscious in understanding and practicing intersectionality?

We think it's important to uplift the most marginalized voices as well as find the times when it's important to listen instead of talk. The best way to learn is to read, to listen, and to engage in conversation with others who are also learning. For example, there's lots of resources for white women who are trying to learn how to be more intersectional about their feminism in terms of race. There's instagram accounts that can introduce you to topics of intersectionality, there's lots of easily google-able essays about how white women can be allies to black women, and there's plenty of books where you can read about people's experiences different from your own. Overall, it's important to stay curious and to be comfortable messing up and admitting when you maybe hurt someone even by accident - it's okay to be learning.

What has your journey of self love been like and how do you practice self love today?

April: My journey with self-love has been just that; a journey that is ongoing with plenty of ups and downs. I grew up incredibly steeped in diet culture and did not even begin to break free from it until college, where I gave up dieting for good and started to feel more comfortable in my body as-is. Today, I practice self-love by making a conscious effort to be less hard on myself and give myself lots of grace. I’m definitely a recovering perfectionist!

Sophie: I also try to not beat myself up when I feel like I “fail” at loving myself. I practice self-love by setting boundaries, which can be really hard to do! And baths, lots of baths and bath bombs.

What would you tell someone who is struggling with self love and confidence? 

Sophie: For me, it's been helpful to have days where I focus on feeling just neutral about myself or trying to experience not thinking about my body 24/7. I don't always have to feel like the hottest thing in the room; it can be very freeing to just breathe and let myself exist in the form I inhabit.

April: Ditto. It's important to allow yourself non-body-love days, and it's important to remember that you're deserving of respect and accessibility every single day, regardless of how you feel about yourself that day.

April, how do you Prioritize Happy?

I'm honestly working on getting better at this! Something that helps me is remembering that I have a limited amount of time to be alive and I want to enjoy it. As Beyoncé says in the "Pretty Hurts" music video, "My main goal in life is to be happy."

Sophia, how does the phrase That’s A Hard No resonate with you?

I can sometimes have trouble setting clear boundaries, mostly with family and friends who I care about and often want to over-extend myself for. When I'm successful in setting those clear boundaries, I find that it's often easier and less scary than I had feared, and everyone is happier when I'm comfortable, well-rested, and able to be generous without feeling resentful of my time or space. It's a lot easier to say "no" or "leave me alone!" to strangers or people I don't know!