A Stand For Self-Love: Amy's Advocacy

On this episode of Big Sexy Chat, Crystal and Murph are joined by body image activist, writer, artist, public speaker, educator and radical, Ida Hoenn, Amy Pence-Brown. Amy is a fat feminist mother in conservative rural America who believes in opening her mouth and her heart. Join us as we open ours right along with her.

Hey there, welcome back to Big Sexy Chat. My name is Crystal, hi, I'm Murph and we have the amazing, fabulous Amy Pence-Brown with us tonight. Hey, amy, hi, thanks for having me. We're so happy that you're available tonight. We could chat with you. We have so many things to chat with you about. First of all, you know you're so interesting. You have so many different facets to your life that we all find so fascinating. But I want to start off by talking about your stand for body acceptance. That was when, eight years ago, you went into, like the town square. Which city were you? In Boise, idaho, in Boise? She was in Boise and she went into the middle of this area like a marketplace and stood there in her black bikini with a blindfold on and like a chalkboard or whiteboard right and some pens Right. Amazing. And when you were doing that, what was your goal? What were you thinking was going to happen?

I had been doing work locally and sort of regionally in body acceptance for a few years at that point in 2015. And most of those, most of my sort of performance, art and activism projects had not been well accepted here in Boise at all, and so I was really prepared for it to be horrible, honestly, and it did not. It actually turned out to be quite lovely and one of the most amazing sort of moments of humanity that I've ever experienced.

It was pretty beautiful. I forgot to say that you are a poet, a blogger, a fat liberationist body acceptance warrior, you write zines, you're a TED talker, your mom, you're feminist. You are well spoken around, the things like death and grief that people are so afraid to talk about, and, yeah, we want to know a little bit about all of that stuff. And, anyway, it's going to be exciting. I'm very excited we're here. So tell everybody how old are your kids, just randomly. I know that sounds strange, but I wonder how old were they when you did this?

Well, they are now 1915 and nine, so eight years ago they would have been like one, seven and 11. They were quite little.

What do they think about it? How did they react to it then and how do they react to it now?

I actually did not bring them to. I call it the stand for self-love in the forest market because I was so worried about how the public might respond. I stepped out, stripped off all my clothes to a small black bikini, blindfolded myself with these markers in my hand and a sign at my feet that said I'm standing for anyone who's struggling with self-esteem issues, like me, who has struggled with self-esteem issues. If you believe all bodies are valuable, draw heart on my body. And I didn't know how it would go. I didn't know if the police would come and ask me to leave. I didn't know if people would say mean things or write mean things or yell at me. I was a little worried for those reasons, for my own safety, to be honest. But also to kind of expose my kids to that level of vulnerability was too much for me. So I didn't bring them to the market. They were not there that day, so my husband was home with them. But afterwards, of course, I told them about it and it went to be super, super viral and I got an extraordinary amount of national and international fame from that particular piece. So there was lots of press and lots of interviews and they were asked lots of questions. They were like little celebrities in their school as a result. So we they were very proud, they were super excited about it and I. They didn't receive much pushback, negative you know negative comments or anything. I certainly did, but luckily my kids did not.

Thank goodness yeah.

Yeah, and what about Dr Brown?

That's her husband.

Yes, that is my husband. He was so afraid for me too. He was really nervous, thought that I was. It was a little bananas that I was, you know, wanting to do this performance art. Yes, it was, and, you know, was worried for my safety also, but he was also super proud and totally overwhelmed with emotion. Just, you know, I came home covered with all of this marker, all of these words, because people went rogue and wrote words, not only drew hearts on my body, as they were instructed, but wrote these amazing words and everyone there was moved to tears. I was moved to tears. I walked in the house and started crying and he looked at me and started crying also because it was just, it was really beautiful, choked up just thinking about it, yeah, yeah.

And you got lots of calls from the view and the doctors and all kinds of shows and I know you did a ton of press and people. I think most people were positive, right about your experience out there and what you were doing. I'm sure there were some haters, because you know they always are and we definitely need to talk today about how to deal with trolls but I think you got mostly positive response. And then some people who wanted to try to prove that you were unhealthy, of course, because you know they could tell by looking at you. It's magic, exactly.

Exactly. Is you notice when you were doing it live? Were there any negative responses from people or was it just overwhelmingly positive?

Well, I was blindfolded so it was hard to tell. That added a full other level of sort of vulnerability for me, but it was important, it was an important part of the project to do that. I think it made me sort of anonymous and also represent sort of everybody you know. Then I think it was easier for people to participate in the project, also easier for people to see themselves and me. It was also could be easier for people to do mean things right or say mean things when I can't see them. I did not. But other people who were there that day who were not blindfolded, told me afterwards that there were a couple, you know, of moms who used to me as an example of what to never be to their children, right Like, stood their children in front of me or near me and said, you know, like never, you should never do this, you should never show your body like that, you should never be the kind of person, I guess, who strips down for self acceptance. I don't know. I think there was some religious sort of moral messages that those parents were trying to send about, you know, new semi-nudity and bodies. They're that's the only things that I heard. Of course, after that, once it reached sort of viral internet fame. People had all sorts of negative things to say because, as I found, and I'm sure you all know, people are meaner behind a keyboard than they are to your face.

Oh yeah, They'll never say to your face.

Yeah, that's what I figured probably happened was not in person so much, but probably online, did people?

talk to you at all. Did they say anything to you or hug you or anything like that they did.

And I was shocked at that. I was floored at the interaction I got Immediately. The first woman walked up to me, grabbed my hand, was shaking, and started. She was crying I could tell in her voice and said thank you. And then I started crying and I heard lots of stories of struggles with people's bodies. Not only would they tell me stories about that, they were older women, for example, telling me about how they wished, you know, they'd wasted so much of their life wishing their body was different. Women talking about how they hated their small breasts. Or men talking about struggles with their body image. I would hear people interacting with each other. They would meet at my body while they were writing with markers in this really intimate moment and were sharing these stories of struggle and shame with each other and me. People did give me hugs. After I took my blindfold off, I saw that people had left me flowers at my feet. They had left an ice cold lemonade. It was very hot, it was the end of summer, it was like 91 degrees outside that day and I was sweating. So some really lovely gestures like that.

I don't know why I'm so emotional.

It always gets me like that too. It's still after eight years. It's an extraordinary experience and I was so pleased that it actually translated really well. I had the forethought to invite a photographer to come that day and she hid in the crowd and took some photos from a far distance away and took some snippets of video. You know she would like switch from the camera to video just briefly, and we ended up getting together and putting together this little iMovie that we had never used iMovie before then. And we put it together and I wrote this blog post about the experience and I was so shocked at how well it translated to film and to words with my voice, because it was an extraordinary experience. I still meet people today who were there that day and we all still cry when we talk about it.

I know that Boise is not the most. It's pretty conservative, I believe. Right, it's pretty so maybe, like you, being a bikini seem like you're some kind of whore. I don't know what these religious people thought, right.

Right, they definitely did, and I was going to wear a bra and underwear which essentially looks the same as a bikini, like you. Couldn't tell the difference, so you know. Perhaps they thought that's what I was wearing. I mean, it covers about the same amount of skin.

Hmm, yeah, very, very moving, very important, and I'm sure that you really touched a lot of people that day. And then, well, we know, for the last eight years, you have too, when you did your TED Talk. Your TED Talk was a little bit about this whole movement, right?

Right, yeah, it was.

Very cool. How did that happen? How did you get to do a TED Talk? Did you reply? Did they reach out to you? How does that work?

No, they reached out to me, I didn't reply. I didn't actually know that was ever something I wanted to do in life, but it was very stressful, it was very scary. For me, that TED Talk was almost as much as actually stripping down in public and doing the stand for self-love. That TED Talk was, you know, I don't. It's a little bit different now. This was probably seven years ago, six and a half years ago, when I gave the TED Talk. Then it had to be entirely memorized and no notes, right, no visual aids, although they had just allowed some photos, some like I could project photos on the screen. So that was really nice. I could add some photos of the stand for self-love, which I think was helpful for people who maybe hadn't seen it, and the maximum was 17 minutes. So you know, it was a very timed talk and it was pretty extraordinary and that was actually a lovely thing too. I'm really proud of that TED Talk and I was able to talk a little bit about sort of briefly, you know my ideas on body acceptance and body liberation and what led up to that moment when I stripped off my clothes to the bikini in public, what happened during the moment and then sort of the immediate aftermath of that.

It's kind of metaphorical right. You're stripping away all the bullshit, all the Western beauty standards, all the crap that the media puts on us and the crap we put on each other. It's very I could see where it would really impact a lot of people. And I know you know that's how I know you is because of your stand for body love. That's the only way I would have ever known you is because you did that, so I'm grateful.

Yes, I know it brought so many people into my life and it brought my work into so many people's lives too. So many other fat activists that I hadn't heard of before, because the internet, you know, wasn't easily accessible or as widespread as it is now. Not a lot of people were using the internet, you know, either as well as they are now, and then so many that I had read their work already or had been familiar with their work and had been completely, you know, inspired by and I can now call, you know, colleagues and friends.

Who's the first fat activist you could ever be like, being so inspired or just going, oh my God, when you saw their work.

I always credit. The very first two that really stand out in my mind are is one is Kath Reed, who has a blog called the fat half a lump, or she did, and she's Australian. And then Marie Dene, the curvy fashionista. Yeah. Sort of a plus size fashion blogger, and they were the first two actually, when oh gosh, it has to have been 15 years ago, almost now I had come to this idea of body liberation and fat acceptance on my own through my work and feminism and sort of my own struggles and life and educating myself and being done with diet culture and I talk about this in my TED talk also and I often bring this up that it was about 15 years ago when I, you know, was so fed up with all of this stuff and I knew no one else in real life or otherwise that felt this way, and so I Googled the words why am I fat and happy? Because I thought I was losing my mind, right? Or if I wasn't losing my mind, there had to be someone else out there. You know, maybe there was no one in Boise, idaho, that felt like that, but there had to be someone in the world. And the internet 15 years ago was even less utilized than it was eight years ago when I was in the Stanford School. But I said, or I think it was 13, maybe it was 13 years ago. Time is like flying by and it's hard for me to keep track of. So, I Googled why am I fat and happy? And the internet, as it does still and did then, like Google, took fat and the happy and changed happy to unhappy and so I got pages and pages of ads for diets right, because no one was saying on the internet or otherwise that they were fat and happy. It was mostly they were unhappy about being fat. But I kept scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and finally those two blogs showed up. They were the first sort of fat positive blogs that showed up in my newsfeed Are in that in that search, the fat half lump and Marie Dene's, the curvy, fashionista and plus size fashion, was sort of an entry point for me and for a lot of people. Kath Reid was writing a little bit more radical about fat acceptance and both of them led me to other, you know blog, other people who were writing blogs and Tumblr feeds and other writers and books. So I always credit those two as sort of helping me find my way and realize, helping me realize that I wasn't alone and not only were there other people who felt that way, the same ways I did, but there was like a whole, you know, a revolution and a movement that had been, you know, started in, like the 1960s civil rights movement with the fat acceptance. And then, of course, you know all of. I did a deep dive for three years of all that academia, of reading all the books I could find by Kate Harding and Marilyn one and and others that really helped me the fat underground.

It's interesting that we mentioned that one of the reasons that we wanted to be a part of fat con and when pucks invited us they were saying you know, a lot of things that happened in the 60s have haven't been preserved, and so one of the things we want to do all right, fat con and they want us to do for them and for fat con is to document, audio document and video document A lot of the con and the people, because a lot of stuff have gotten lost in the past and a lot of people that should be getting credit or not getting credit for the fat liberation movement. And I'm we're from the community for this question as well. But I remember for me, the first time I really got really like a slap across the face, kicked in the face, oh my God, like wow, this is so exciting was when I found the militant Baker and I was like, look at her, she's fat and sexy. I'm like, yes, I know there's more than me, I know it can't be the only one that like is fat and happy and having a great sex life, and I want to talk about it and I can't be the only one, and there was just Baker, oh, thank you. And then she invited me to be a part of the Body Love Co-Prints and that was amazing and not too, son. And that's where I met, like Jen McClellan and Marie Denis and Sonia and a Taylor I mean so many people that are huge in this world and I was so blown away. But, thank you, militant Baker. What about you, murph? What was the one that you really remember that came to you first?

Actually it's two, and you both have already mentioned them and Marilyn and Jess. Both of them I had got. Someone gave me the book Fatso and I was just like, oh, I just like absorbed it. You know, it was just like this is great. And so then it was like starting to go out and look online and who's you know who's a representation of what I want to see and how I want to, you know, take in information. And actually I remember being on Tumblr and seeing Amy stuff not knowing it was Amy at the time and seeing that incredible movement and just like people approaching you and writing on you and just like the I was probably in my late 20s then, you know, I was just like holy shit, like this is this is it? Like this is what I've been waiting for. Just have somebody have the confidence and the ability to just like be that vulnerable and transparent. And it was truly inspirational.

I love Marilyn's book Fatso. That's how I saved my head. Yeah, fat. And what do you also have to say about that, sir Troll? Yeah, good stuff. I know there's so much. And when I met Sonia Renee, I was like I could barely talk. I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. You know she was my body's, not an apology Is that what they used to be called? Or the body's not an apology? Yes, she's very radical and you know she's amazing. So let's talk a little bit about what you're up to these days. I know you're a mom and I know that's super important to you, and you're crafty and you're involved in this crafty little, that little, actually pretty large event today or this weekend. Is that right?

Yeah, this coming weekend Okay cool, that sounds like fun.

And you, you were creating zines and you were doing things for kids, or you had your rad camp and your babe camp, and I know, of course the pandemic put all that on hold. But what are you up to these days?

Yeah, yeah, the pandemic really did change a lot of things for a lot of us. Right, I had to cancel all of my camps and several you know. Several of them were already well planned out and people had paid for them, and so I put those on hold temporarily. I guess we'll see if we can ever figure that out to bring those back. One was rad camp, a body positive boot camp for feminists, women like adult women in the mountains in Idaho, and we had people playing from all over the US and Canada for that for several years. I think the first one was in 2017 and it was super fun and so beloved. And then I created a teen version of that to body positive boot camp for teens, specifically for girls ages 13 to 15. And then, more recently, I started because I had so many requests a workshop called the rad BU, a body image workshop for girls, typically ages 10 to 12., and that I continue to do so. I was able to do that. Often, libraries will hire me to put that on, or schools or organizations like that, and because it's a workshop, it's like two hours. It's a little less, you know, difficult to pull off in our new COVID times. I don't know if we're ever post COVID or not. I never know what's going on With these days. It's so hard to navigate things, but the workshop for young girls has been really fun. I do a lot of public speaking still Also, that changed during the pandemic. I prior to the pandemic, I was flying all around and giving keynote addresses and talks, been doing sort of combination workshops or art lessons. I often use art, like I did in the Stanford Self-Love. That was more performance art, but I often use two-dimensional art as part of my activism as well and I like to teach that and use that in my workshops. So I was flying around or driving around and doing lots of speaking at universities and businesses and other places and then COVID threw that all off right. So then I was doing it via Zoom, which was okay. It's not my favorite way to speak to people. I do prefer face-to-face interaction, much like I do with my camps and classes. I think that there's something really special about being in a room with people talking about hard things like this. So that's kind of coming back. I have done I still do some public speaking on occasion to kids and often in the classrooms, from like young elementary school classrooms all the way up to college more college age these days on occasion, oh gosh, I'm always making art and doing lots of art and then I do lots of other stuff. Like you mentioned, I run WinTree Market, which is this indie holiday art and craft fair. I'm a small business owner and I have been for 12 years with my business partner and we do a summary market, a summary version of that as well, but our WinTree Market is big. We have 187 artists and crafters from five Western states coming in to Boise this weekend for our big show.

That's amazing. What's the weather like there right now?

It's actually beautiful. It's fairly warm today. We haven't even had our first snow yet, which is kind of unusual.

Yeah, we usually have definitely have snow by now I mean, it doesn't always stick but we haven't had any snow yet, oh well, while we're kind of on the topic of the babe camps and the camps for kids and stuff, I wanna talk about something that's really difficult to talk about and it sucks. Is this idea that kids would be prescribed diet drugs like Ozympic or will gov'y or whatever the hell it is. And I'm just like it breaks my heart because I already know kids have enough issues and they already feel like they have to go on a diet by the time they're five. And I know you're a mom and I know this is kind of the topic that you are near and dear to you and I'm just wondering, like, do you have any feedback for the American Pediatric Association and all the other people that think it should be? It's a good idea to give kids weight loss surgery or weight loss drugs?

Wait, they are just all over the place. You know, there were a couple of years there where they had the American Pediatric Association in particular, had sort of walked back on their guidelines about talking about weight loss and, you know, with children at all. They had sort of rethought this idea about that being a positive thing and in fact we're realizing that maybe weight neutral healthcare was better for kids and we're sort of recommending that for their pediatricians and their parents, right. And then they just blow us all away and do this, right. They start, you know, sort of stepping up their game again on promoting weight loss and promoting these drugs and or surgeries, right, like weight loss surgeries, bariatric surgeries for kids, as something that should be done, which I think is incredibly dangerous and incredibly unfortunate. I mean, that's it's like they've. It's even worse than it was before, right, when they would just try to push their inane diet culture and healthism on parents and children, and now it's like drugs and surgeries for little kids, and I think I hope parents are feeling more empowered by a whole bunch of us. I've been talking about it certainly for a long time sort of body positive parenting and promoting ways to language to use in the doctor's office, but other people have been doing it, you know, before me and certainly since there's lots of people now and I think it's really helpful to have all of these tools, reagan-chastain is a great resource for promoting, you know, like advocating for yourself, and I think some of that can be used by parents for their children as well. Virginia Sol Smith is writing a lot these days about positive parenting and giving a lot of tips. I mean Health at Every Size. The book had for, you know, for a long time in the back, you know sort of verbiage to use, like sample letters to write things like that in there. Reagan-chastain has like a postcard also, you know, with exact words to use, and a lot more people are coming up with more things now. So that's really helpful and really encouraging and I hope people are using it. As a parent who has to advocate for her, one of my children is in a larger body and I constantly feel like I have to advocate for him for weight neutral healthcare. It's hard.

It's hard, and even imagine it's just gotta be a nightmare. I know Jen McClellan from Plus One Me also does a lot of this, and we've had her on the show too. We think we had her right when the APA came out with her new hey, let's get kids weight loss surgery. And she is blown away. You know it's just so disgusting. And also imagine if you wanted to have a surgery because you feel like you're trans. That's not allowed, but we can, definitely. You know we can amputate part of your stomach so you stay thin. So don't be your true, authentic self. No, you can't have weight loss. You can't have trans-surgical surgery. But you can have weight loss surgery because that's more important, makes me so sick and I don't have any kids. Damn, it pisses me off.

Yeah, yeah, it's rough. There's so much trauma and grief behind that you know, there's yeah, it's just a mess, an absolute mess. I have a question, though, that has nothing to do with any of that. So I have always had an issue with death and dying and I really delve into that when I was about seven or eight years ago and I found out that you were a mortician's assistant and then became a death historian, and so I need to know more about that. I need to know, like, what led you into that, what, how do you use that in your work now, like there's just that's gotta be so fascinating, so I'm all ears.

Yeah, I know it sounds probably really disparate to people that I do all of these things, but they're very much connected to me and I tell this story often too, that it was actually my work and death. That was probably my first sort of foray into body positivity. So death positivity is a movement now, much like body positivity is a movement now, but they're both fairly new. As far as like the exact title of it, right, like being death positive or body positive. In the case of body positivity, you know it was born out of sort of the fat acceptance or fat liberation movement and also the feminist movement, right. So and it and it appears slightly different, I would say body positivity as a movement has kind of shown up differently than flat acceptance or fat liberation as a movement was, but it worked out of that. Death positivity is sort of a newer movement too, to sort of get people talking about death, because we as a culture, in particular in America, have not done that for a long time. We did not grow up, certainly, in a culture that was openly discussing death. It hasn't always been that way, but it certainly is, has been that way more recently, and I was probably 20, maybe 20, 21, 22, when I first started thinking about this idea, about how messed up I thought it was, that we didn't talk about death when people would die, and this came to me like most people, I would think as a teenager when my grandparents died. That's often like grandparents and pets are probably people's earliest not always, but often their earliest experiences with death. And for me, I saw my grandparents die and I saw these traditions that we did that were sort of required but felt really impersonal and cold and maybe weren't exactly conducive to the grieving process or the celebration of life or whenever the loved ones wanted. But more how, like our culture decided we were supposed to do things. And I started to question that like, why do we do this? Why do we have and I know funerals like this? Why do we have an open casket here? Why are kids, at least in my family, not really allowed to go to funerals? We don't really talk about death. And I started researching, like I always do, and almost went to mortuary science school and on the way to do that it was recommended to me to work for a mortician and I became a mortician's assistant, picked up dead bodies at night from all sorts of various locations. I was able to assist the medical examiner with autopsies and all sorts of things, and I really learned a lot about living and about life through studying death, and I continue to do that. It really made me think a lot about what I wanted to do with this one life that I have, and every day is another day that we'll never get back. Every day is precious, every day is not a given, and that certainly was something taught to me in working in the death field and that really helped in me as a young woman. Think about my body right, like how much time I was wasting on trying to make it smaller and it never would be smaller, it never wanted to be smaller. How much time I would waste on dieting and I never really wanted to do that and it didn't work anyhow or hating myself in the way I looked and how much time I was wasting doing that. So I didn't end up becoming a mortician. I ended up studying the history, becoming a historian of death Instead, went to graduate school and got a master's degree in art and architectural history. I wrote my master's thesis on the architecture of the American funeral home. I continue to work for cemeteries throughout my life and now I run the Boise Death Cafe, which there are death cafes actually all over the world. There's likely one where you live if you're interested in it, and it's a really nice way to get together in real life with strangers actually and talk in a casual sort of informal way about death. We have tea and we're coffee and cake and cookies Lovely. Every couple months or so sit in a circle and ask big, hard questions.

It's kind of like I'm sure you know about this now but there's all these death doulas and I have a couple of friends that are certified, I guess, to be a death doula and help families who have a hard time discussing these difficult questions, difficult topics, and they go and just ask you, have you left? Don't leave anything unsaid, have you said all that you need to say, or is all your paperwork and everything in order? And just to bring out those discussions because some people won't talk about it at all, at zero, and that's what they do. I'm like I wanna do that when I retire. I love it.

Yeah, death doulas are kind of like birth doulas, right, but they have something like. They're like an advocate for a person who's actively dying, usually, or preparing to die, and like a birth doula does for someone who's preparing to, you know, give birth right and helps them answer all those very questions. We have lots of death doulas that come to the Death Cafe as well. Yes, that's awesome.

It's kind of a new thing though, the death doula. I don't think it's been well, it hasn't been formally. It hasn't been around formally. I'm sure it's been around. I happen to be one of those people that I talk about death with everybody and some people run for me because like oh shit, there's that lady again, because I either want to talk about fat liberation or about grief. I'm a grief pusher, a grief counseling pusher. I feel strongly about grief counseling and I know that Tarot is not guaranteed and it's better to deal with that shit when it happens as opposed to pushing it down and then dealing with it. You know when it bubbles up, because it's always going to bubble up, as we all know. But yeah, I'm, I'm. I wish we could talk more about. People are really in America where grief and income poops. I have no idea what to say or how to say it. And I tell people there's nothing you could say, just be there, you don't have to, there's nothing, you're not, you're not, you're not, you're not going to be able to think of anything to say to me. That's going to make me really feel better. But if you're just there, just with me, that's, that's the biggest gift I feel.

Exactly, and there are, you know, like body positivity I was, I mentioned death positivity and now there are actually lots of activists in that field, lots of younger morticians, in particular Female ones. I was the one I was the only female when I was working went for the mortuary in Oregon where I was at that time and I was the youngest person by far. Now there are lots of them, but they have like great, like you know, instagram pages and blogs and there's lots of websites that help planning in particular, like planning for death or grief counseling, grief services. But the death cafe is always free and there's usually one in every city and at least my experiences with it have been really lovely. Lots of people show up like you, who are terrified of death, don't want to talk about it. You know, oftentimes we have people that come because their counselor has recommended as sort of like an exposure you know, treatment like try this to see if this. You don't have to say anything at the death cafe either, like you can just sit there and listen. You can leave if it gets to be too hard or uncomfortable for people who have like a real phobia of death, which some people do, and they've come to the cafe and they've always left telling me about it and thanking me for, you know, providing such a warm, welcoming environment. I'm not the only facilitator there, with our several of us, and we split up into small groups so we have like a small circle of people so it feels less intimidating and it's really, really lovely. So I can't recommend it enough.

I don't know if everybody knows this, but if you have in your town or your city, if you have like people that are in hospice or some kind of help with other things around death, they often have free grief therapy for like the first year. As long as you usually as long as you start within one year of your person dying you can get like free grief counseling. Sometimes it might be via Zoom, but that's okay, and sometimes it might be in person, but there are all kinds of options out there and gosh, I swear that going to grief counseling the best gift I ever gave myself. I was like thank goodness I did it, because I didn't know how badly I needed it, but I needed it and no, it was the best thing I've ever done for myself. I just, yeah, hands down on the grief counseling pusher. I know that everybody's ready to hear it right away, you know. So I try to give people a little space but then eventually kind of weave my way back over and just like, hey, I know it's been a few months, you know, I just wanted to make sure you know about this because it's so important and a lot of people just don't want to do it. They're afraid, and they're afraid of the cost. I think too.

Yes, yeah, I had found Caitlin Dowdy and she has that YouTube series, ask Mortician, and yeah, I just kind of like deep dived into her books and into all of that and came to a much more comfortable space just by challenging those thoughts. Like you said, it's it really is taking whatever the topic is and saying, okay, why, and let's dismantle that and let's look at that from different angles. And I think it does really play in, like you said, to how you learn to appreciate your life and your body and all those types of things. They all interplay.

Yeah, they really do.

I feel terrible when I meet people that are in their 60s and 70s and 80s and they're still dieting. They're still chasing that thin body, they're still looking for that little. They feel like they have a little bit of control when they're on a diet, and it makes me, it makes me my heart just bust right up and I want to be like stop it, just gonna enjoy your life. Stop worrying about if you're a size 12 or a size 10, just whatever. Just stop, and just all you have is right now, right this second. It's all you have. You could be gone like that. Stop worrying about that bullshit. It's all just pushed on us by the media and not. It's not a good, not a good place to be. Just stop it. People can't, though. It's just they're so addicted to it. So, on a lighter topic, I want to talk about Hilda. Hilda, she's one of my favorite pinup girls and I love your series of Hilda pinups. I love them. How did you get started with Hilda?

Yeah, I love Hilda also. So it started right about the time that I did the stand for self love and it went so incredibly internationally viral. I had so much positive press and media attention and just like thousands and thousands of fans, new fans, new people to my work coming my way. And about that time Hilda, who was started in the 1950s a brain from the brain of a Minnesota artist named Dwayne Briers, who had this amalgam of women in his head, particularly plump, silly, sexy ones he morphed all together to make this redheaded illustrated gal that adorned lots of mostly calendars from the 50s through the 80s and her name was Hilda and since the 80s was kind of forgotten for a while. And then somebody found a whole stash of her calendars. Some big fans of hers put together some websites with a whole bunch of images that they had found and people started sharing them and she started getting all this attention again and getting a whole bunch of press about the time that I went viral and people noticed in my work and my imagery that I looked a lot like Hilda. So they started sending me these calendar images saying, oh my God, have you heard of this plus size pinup girl named Hilda? You remind me of her you look like her. My other photos, my other artworks, I often, in addition to the stand for self love, I had already been using my body as a canvas in my art and my activism. That continues to be something I do to this day. So for, oh my gosh, at least a year or two years, I was getting so many people sending me Hilda images, telling me how much I looked like her, and I started to realize, oh, you're right, I do kind of look like her. And then I got this wild idea to recreate Hilda's quirky, goofy pinup drawings. She's often barely clothed or naked, or wearing a bikini that she's made out of flowers she's picked in the field or flower sacks that she's baked with. She's like doing household chores. She's playing sports in the wild, in the water, she's cavorting with animals and frolicking with them in the forest, and she's doing all of it kind of like not well, you know, like she's also, you know, barely covered. Most of the time she's falling out of her clothes and she's a doll. So there's a lot of material to work with, right? There was a lot of fun imagery to try to recreate and I decided that Hilda needed sort of a fresh feminist perspective and wanted to see if I could actually recreate these images in a real life, sort of subversive, sexy, silly selfie series. So I used a whole bunch of stuff I have around my house. I happen to love mid-century art and furniture and design, so I own a lot of actually a lot of things that Hilda or in Hilda's images I already own. I did pick up a few more things at Thrift Stores or at the Dollar Store to hand make these vikinis or whenever things I didn't have. I use my kids toys, often in place of her animals as put my own spin on it, but also as sort of a take on motherhood, which often comes up in my work as well. And they also the Hildas that I have recreated I call the series Reviving Hilda have gone super viral also. People love them and love her. I've gotten lots of international press and press around the country and the world. I've recreated 65 of them today and there are at least I mean I don't know if anyone knows we keep finding more Hildas 200 be more than 200 images, so I could keep going forever.

How did you get to know Les' toil.

So when my Hilda images when I started I knew of Les, so Les Les' website is a great archive of Hilda and I had used it when I was researching Hilda and researching Dwayne Brier's when I was when I first started the project. And then when my project went sort of viral and became internationally famous, lots of people sent it to Les and Les became a huge fan of mine and contacted me and I said I was already a fan of his because his research was so helpful in my research of Hilda. So that's how we became connected and friends and Les has drawn me as a gift one time as one of his little you know, sort of caricature of me.

He did our first logo for big sexy chat. He also did my logo for when I have my Curvy Girl star. He's here in the Bay Area, he's in Oakland and we're in I'm down here in San Jose. So yeah, I love all of his art and all of his pinups. It's amazing.

Yeah, it's fantastic.

Totally, and I know that Merv and her husband are fans as well.

I've become a totally old girl. Yeah, that's right, old girl. Huh, that's right. Yeah, very cold.

So, before we end on your favorite sex story, amy, which we know is a very important business, I want to talk a little bit about fat community and why it's so important, and I love that you have your private group, boise Rad Fat Collective, right yeah, and we are struggling as a brand ourselves to figure out how to stay engaged and in touch with our listeners and all of our other people, and we're just exploring different ideas and I was wondering how many. I know you have about 3,500 members now of your Boise Rad Fat Collective.

Yeah, I think there's 3700.

Yeah, you don't have to be in Idaho to be a part of the BRFC, is that right? You can be anywhere, but you have a line or there's a queue because there's a lot of people waiting to become a member of this group, right?

Yeah, I've cut it, I've limited it, which not a lot of people do with Facebook groups. But, I did that from the beginning and I've let it grow several times. I've limited it to try to keep it safe and manageable I'm the only admin and to keep it sort of more intimate.

Yeah, it's really great. I think people feel very safe to share things there and to ask questions that are. You know we have to be very vulnerable and we all know if we ask those questions there, we're going to get a respectful answer. It seems like you're able to keep the trolls out, which is awesome. Very rare in the fat world. So you, what's your plan for that group? What do you think? Do you have any advice for us? We're talking about discords and you know other things we don't. We're just not sure what to do with our group. We know we need to do something though Patreon maybe we have a newsletter, for sure, but anything else that you're thinking about for BRFC?

Gosh, it's hard because there are so many platforms now and so many options and it changes all the time. I've even seen Facebook. I've had the Boise Radfatt Collective now for 10 years we just celebrated our 10th and a birthday and I've seen Facebook sort of fluctuate in the way it's used and how it's used and how much people use it, how many people don't use it now. So that's also a tricky thing and I knew right away when I started that group that I wanted in in real life community. So we at least pre-COVID did a lot of in-person events that were around body liberation. We would go to film films like film premieres together. We had a book club. We have an annual plus size clothing swap. We have rad camps, which we talked about, things like that. We have chunky dunks. We had them forever and then COVID shut all of that down and we're kind of just now coming back and reviving that. But that means that's only available to people who live here, right? So that does limit some people like your audience, which is probably, you know, all spread out and certainly members of the Boise Rad Fat Collective, like you said, don't have to live in Idaho. A lot of them do. So that makes our in-person stuff a lot easier to do, and I love in-person community. I mentioned that already, that I love seeing people face to face. It really is a lot of fun. I don't know where it's going to go as far as like online, the online world, I'm always threatened with being kicked out of Facebook forever. I'm in jail all the time for you know posting pushing their community standards.

I just got out of a three-day stint in jail Facebook jail because of a photo I put up 10 years ago. Oh my gosh. And what really pisses me off is that I've already been deemed for that photo, like three years ago, and put in jail for 30 days and I had to appeal from my other ID because you know, nowadays you have to have more than one ID because you get kicked out so often. So a lot of people are raving about Facebook groups and why it's a great place for engagement and stuff, and I'm like I just don't know if it's the right thing for the future. It's a hard decision to make, so we're still. I feel like I want to have something before we go to Fat Con, and the main reason I'm so excited about Fat Con is being in community with other fatties. It's been a long time. I wish it could be there.

I know when is it located. Where is that happening?

Seattle, oh my gosh, so fun. No, we're really excited. We're all three going to be there, and our correspondents too. We're going to do all kinds of interviews and they're having every night they're having fat a lesk, they're calling it like fat burlesque All kinds of fun events in the evenings and oh, it's going to be just. I'm sure we're going to be wiped out after those three or four days. So much in person fun and hugs and talking and gossiping and planning to take over the world.

And if I was organizing it?

it's called puck production. Pucks is the person who's the main organizer and they have a pretty cool team of people putting it all together. Tigris is going to be one of the keynote speakers. Saucy West is going to be one of the keynote speakers. There's a sex. What is Marifold's her title? She's a sex therapist. She's a sex therapist. She looks really amazing. I can't wait to see you. Also, panels panels about healthism, panels about, you know, fat yoga and things like that All kinds of cool topics and we're going to have we're going to also do we're going to be on a panel talking about fat community and a little bit about podcasting and why it's so great for more fat community. So I'm just really excited. It's going to be a blast, marif. Any more questions for Amy before we ask her about her very best favorite sex toy.

I could spend all night, so I'll cut it short. I'm sure we can have Amy back on and have a round two. We really appreciate your time.

Amy, before we talk about your favorite sex toy, tell everybody where they can find you. Like how do, and you have the Amy Pence Brown website. What are other ways that are better for you, that you prefer for people to reach you?

I am on Facebook until they kick me out forever at Amy Pence Brown, writer, artist, body image activist. The Boise Rad Fat Collective is also on Facebook and you know, like you said, you don't have to be in Idaho to join and it is a really, really lovely community and a really safe one. I am really proud of that, that group. I'm also on Instagram, amy Pence Brown. My handle is Idaho Amy. I am, reluctantly, still on Twitter because I joined it like a million years ago, I feel like, and I hate it there, but I still haven't deleted my account, so I rarely use it. But you can find me there. You just won't find me saying much at all.

Yeah, old Elon, oh, he's a tough one. It's really tough to do business with him, that's for sure. So I know Amy to be very sex positive and her group is very sex positive. And I know Amy to enjoy sex toys, maybe as much as Murph and I enjoy sex toys. So which one is your favorite?

Amy, I would have to say still and this has been the case, I think, for five years now since I got it from you actually is the womanizer plus. Yes, I think I know it's a beloved toy by a lot of people but that I recommend it all the time. I know there are cheaper versions now, like sort of knockoff versions, which I hear are equally as amazing. If you're not familiar with the womanizer plus technology, I definitely check it out because it's a favorite. I like the plus because it has a longer handle. Yeah, so it has a little rubber sort of head on it with a hole in it and it has this sort of technology where it sucks the clitoris and also kind of vibrates a little bit and like pulses like an error pulsing technology, and it has like 12 different speeds and you can come real fast.

Real fast you have to be ready.

Yes, you got to be ready for that and prepared.

So if it's like 30 seconds or less for me, I tell you, the very first time I ever used it, I was like I had everything already. I was set up, I had my wine, I had my show on, I had my lube, I had my, I was all covered in my blankets, I was all cozy. I'm like, okay, let's try this sucker out. They're like, okay, okay, oh, I didn't want to go that quickly. So I'm like, okay, crystal, breathe, take a moment, take a walk, you know? Okay, let's try to have a little more time with our womanizer. And I had to just like give it more thought, be more intentional about not having an orgasm too quickly, because I wanted to really enjoy this, like the little. The little opening is like a little tiny mouth that just sections on your clitoris.

Yeah, it's pretty great, but it is really fast. Yes, it is really fast so you have to be prepared for that. I like the plus in particular because it has a longer handle. So I don't know shorter arms, bigger belly, it's easier to reach and the controls are on the outside of the handle, so that's helpful too. And it has comes with two different sizes of heads. If you, you know, have a larger or prefer whatever you prefer or hand, or if you have a larger or clitoris or smaller, it's great. It is spendy.

Yeah, but it's not available anymore the long handled one, unfortunately. But I'm trying to get them to bring it back.

Wow, really, yeah, unfortunately, I'm a little worried because I feel like mine is in a hold. I think it might be dying Close. I'm a little worried about it, I too, the whole charge.

Yep, murph, what's the one that you you talked about recently, Satisfyur Surge or the Satisfyur Secret Secret? Some Things and it was in our interview are not the one we did about sex toys, but the one before that. Right, right, yeah, okay, yeah, I it's, it's in our show notes, but, yeah, I forget what it's called. I keep thinking Surge for some reason. I might have written it down somewhere so I could look it up and put it on my website. But yeah, the Satisfyur products are just as just as good as the womanizers, I think. I just I love that womanizer toy too because it is so nice and long, much easier to reach things.

I somehow miss the the jump on that one, and so I didn't end up getting that one. I have a womanizer, it's just not the one with the longer handle, and I can guarantee you it makes a difference, because I don't use the other one as much, because I have little T-Rex arms.

You always say that Satisfyur, top Secret, top Secret. I did have it in my notes. Well, wonderful, so wonderful to have you, amy, wonderful to talk with you, and we really talked, as we did your interview for my Fat Product Review YouTube channel, which I'm I need to start working on that again. I have so many things on my I know you are everybody's like this with so many things on my X-Nit playlist, I hope, and I have this post-menopausal ADHD. I love to procrastinate right now, so that's fun. Thank you, amy, I really appreciate you. I really appreciate all the work that you do and I appreciate your, your, your movement. It is so important and so just like, just really hit, hit where it needs to hit, I think, and I wish everybody could be exposed to it because it really it really brings it all home. I think, if you, if you watch her, her Stand for Self-Acceptance or what do you call it, stand for a body acceptance, I call it Stand for Self-Love. Stand for Self-Love. Yeah, but also you can just Google Amy Pence Brown, she's everywhere.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

My pleasure, we were so happy to have you. I appreciate you. Yeah, me too. And then, murph, do you want to tell everybody?

how to find us real quick. Yeah, so we are on all the socials, at Big Sexy Chat, and if you would like to send us an email, you can. At sexy at bigsexychatcom.

Awesome, see you later alligator, after a while crocodile Take care polar bear.