feminism |

Paula is part of a bad-ass improv troupe who plays up and down the East Coast. You can find them here! We just looooove Del Close and for Paula & the Quitters to be able to perform in the Del Close Marathon was *literally* a dream come true. They saw the chicks from Broad City and Ben Schwartz as (aka John Ralphio Saperstein).

At the block-party-bluegrass-stand-outside-drink-beers-activity with Marisa, we heard an awesome band called Greensky Bluegrass. They played a Dire Straights cover and it was awesome.

This American Life “Tell Me I’m Fat” rocked both our worlds. Lindy West encouraged me to come out as a fat person and go about my life, and I decide to give back the “problem of being fat” to the people who actually have a problem with it. They can go to therapy and figure it out, because we Fat People are living happy lives!

Check out HEADLESS FATTIES!!! (We only call out The Today Show and Hoda & Kathy Lee & Matt because that’s what we watch every morning and are familiar with. All the media do it.)

INTERLUDE! Paula runs over to get Lindy West’s book called Shrill.

Women matter. Women are half of us. When you raise women to believe that we are insignificant, that we are broken, that we are sick, that the only cure is starvation and restraint and smallness; when you pit women against one another, keep us shackled by shame and hunger, obsessing over our flaws, rather than our power and potential; when you leverage all of that to sap our money and our time – that moves the rudder of the world. It steers humanity toward conservatism and walls and the narrow interests of men, and it keeps us adrift in waters where women’s safety and humanity are secondary to men’s pleasure and convenience.

Our struggles with body positivity and what it’s like to be a fat woman is SHACKLED to what it’s like to be a woman in America. WE’RE JUST GETTING WARMED UP.

Naomi Wolf explains it best in The Beauty Myth, “an obsession with female thinness is not about beauty, it’s about female obedience.” An entire population of people who are obsessed with how small they are can be easily manipulated. Read that sentence again and let it sink in.

As I think you all know by now, there’s nothing that we think up that hasn’t already been said better than what we laugh our way through. So: Jess Baker’s article about why people hate Tess Holliday.

THEY CUT IN LINE!

The second act of This American Life was focused on Elna Baker. Please listen.

I spend a lot of time talking about the Agile Scrum method of project management and it’s all hilarious and nothing is worth linking to.

salad