Inside Fat Liberation Month With Tigress Osborn

Welcome And Guest Setup

SPEAKER_02 0:00

On this episode of Big Sexy Chat, we have a whole legend in the building today. Tigris Osborne is the executive director of the National Association to Advanced Fed Acceptance, NASA, the longest-running documented Fed Rights Organization in the world. But if you know Tigris, you know she's so much more than a title. She's a historian, an advocate, a storyteller, a community builder, and one of those people who can connect the dots between where we've been, where we are, and where we still need to go. And today we're getting into all of it the history of NASA, the origins of Fet Liberation Work, building Fat Community, Side Drimination, Accessibility, Airline Travel, the realities of funding Fat Liberation Work, and what it really means to create a movement where everybody has a place. And because this is Tigris, we already know we're gonna laugh, we're gonna learn, we might get a little fired up, and we're probably gonna go down a few fabulous rabbit holes along the way. So get comfortable, grab your snack or your drink, and settle on in because this conversation is big. Welcome to Big Sexy Chat.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Hi all, welcome back to Big Sexy Chat. My name is Crystal. I'm the host. And also, if you're new here, welcome to Big Sexy Chat. You can always find us on the our website. We have a website called BigSexyChat.com and our socials are Big Sexy Chat. And tonight we have a very exciting guest. I'm really thrilled to have my friend join us tonight, Tigris Osborne. Hi, Tigris. Hi. Tigris, I have an introduction. I'm going to give and I'm going to read it right now. So everybody knows who you are because I know, I feel like everybody in Fat Liberation knows who you are. But I'm going to do your official introductions. Tigris Osborne, she uses she and her um pronouns, is the executive director of NAFA. She was previously, she previously volunteered as NAFA's board chair and director of community outreach. In addition to overseeing NAFA's day-to-day operations, Tigris hosts and produces the NAFA webinar series, which features a wide variety of activists, scholars, and artists from all over the FAT community. Tigris has been featured on CNN, ABC News. Welcome. Thanks, Tigris.

Fat Liberation Month Origin Story

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Thank you for having me on the show, Crystal.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

You are, in my mind, you are NAFA right now, right? You are real, you're the face of it. You're everywhere. I love seeing you traveling all around and doing all kinds of fun and fat liberation. This is actually Fat Liberation Month when we're recording this. Today is August 14th. So we're in the middle of the uh Fat Liberation Month. And Tigris Fat Liberation Month was created by NAFA. Is that right?

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Yes. This is our sixth year, and we created Fat Liberation Month as a gift to the community. We felt like there needed to be something like a, you know, like an annual moment when we like really focus in, right? Like fat liberation should be every day, but we wanted to have that focus in moment. And the origin story is that, you know, there had been many people who had talked before about the idea of like there should be a fat pride month, there should be a fat activism month, you know, things like that. Um, there has there was a um a creator named Anari Grace who was doing uh did a couple of years on Instagram of something called um Fat Acceptance Month that that they were doing in January. Um, a couple of years of like, you know, posts and programming a little bit about that. Um and uh Wane Tango, who um has been in Fat Community forever, was had, you know, often commented on things on Facebook about us needing a fat pride flag, us needing a fat month, or something like that. But what crystallized it at NAFA was that Clark Beltran wrote something for at the time our our community voices blog was pretty new. And Clark wrote an essay for the community voices blog about his his identities as fat and gay and Hispanic. And um, and he said, you know, we have Hispanic Heritage Month, which at NAFA we call Latin A Heritage Month. Um he said it we have Hispanic Heritage Month, we have Pride Month, but I don't have anything for my other identity. And when he submitted his piece to us, um we started talking as a board about like, well, why don't we just do something about that? Like, why do we why would we just publish this and then not do anything about it? And so that year, uh we started Fat Liberation Month. And the first year we did it in May, we had some ideas about like sort of helping people get fortified for the whole sort of like swim body season and things like that. And so we we did it in May the first year. Um, but that year in particular, API Heritage Month was incredibly important because there had been like a lot of spiking in um harassment of Asian and Pacific Islander folks, and particularly East Asian folks, because of things related to the coronavirus pandemic. And so we got some feedback from community like, why don't you do this at another time so we can concentrate on API Heritage Month during May? And May is actually a lot of things. It's API Heritage Month, it's Jewish Heritage Month, I think it's Haitian American Heritage Month, it's Mental Health Awareness Month, it's National Masturbation Month. Like May is all of these things. Yeah, I know your listeners know. Yeah, I know your listeners know it's National Masturbation Month to me. And so um, so we decided to move the month to August, and we've been there since the second year, and this is year six.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

Love it, yes. And lots of exciting things going on. And I know some of them are virtual and some of them are in-person events, and I know you've been all over trying to do all kinds of fun stuff, but um, I think there's still a few things left to do this month, and it's Fat Liberation Month. So, do you can you remind everybody what is going on this month still that they might be able to participate in? So every you're in person?

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Yeah, every I mean NAFA does one of the things that we try to do for community is create a lot of virtual programming because we really, in this era of NAFA, wanted to have a lot of virtual programming available for folks because not everybody lives near a fat community that's doing things together in person, or you know, some people are not leaving their homes for a variety of reasons or, you know, whatever people's reasons are for needing virtual events, we saw at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, you know, a bunch of organizations offering virtual events all the time. And then as the world started opening back up, a lot of those organizations stopped doing that. And we thought that especially for our community, we wanted to make sure that we continue to do a lot of virtual offerings. And so most of our Fat Liberation Month programming, and right now, most of our programming at NAFA is virtual programming.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

I just want to say, real quick, just to give NAFA a little bit of a shout-out. NAFA also cares about the disability community. And I love that this sometimes can really provide an outlet for people that really can't get certain certain places or certain events. So the this is a really lovely option, I think, to have the virtual option.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Well, everybody should have at least some virtual options, right? It's not possible for organ, it's it's you know, we need to dream bigger about what's possible for our organizations to do in terms of accessibility and also, you know, limited budgets, limited capacity, whatever. It can make it really hard to do everything hybrid all the time in all the ways, or you know, um, but but this is like the we feel like this is kind of the low bar of what we can do. It's just like keep having some stuff. So even as we are doing a little bit of in-person meetups and things like that, especially when I am, you know, traveling for for NAFA, or when I'm traveling for personal, I will sometimes just arrange some things for for NAFA. And and so we're seeing some people in person, but we want to continue to have virtual options. It's not just um, you know, it's it's for accessibility for all different kinds of bodies, right? Like people who have physical disabilities, people who um, you know, find it hard to travel to an event because of their budget or because of what public transportation looks like for people of size, even if you're not dis disabled, but like all there's all kinds of variety of reasons why it feels really important to us to offer a lot of virtual programming in during Fat Liberation Month and all year round. And also because you know, fat NAFTA is is um is a US organization, right? But because of our long, long history, we've been around since 1969. We we have a lot of reputation in the rest of the world as like a place that people can look for something about fat acceptance or fat rights or fat justice. And um, you know, we do most of our programming with a focus on our US audience because because that's our primary audience and our primary area of expertise, but we also want people to be able to join us globally, right? And so if you do it in person, the then you know, then when you send your fantastic um Latvian intern back to Latvia, she can't come anymore, right? But if you do virtual things, then when you send your fantastic international intern back to Latvia, then she can still tune in for some of those things. And you know, I had the pleasure and honor of being able to try to travel to Argentina a couple of years ago for an international fat activist conference there. And NAFA's been a longtime supporter of the International Weight Stigma Conference. And so you meet people in other parts of the world, you you meet people in other parts of the world who would love to be able to participate in some of our things. Right now, we do all of our programming in English, but people have lots of tools available to them to help them translate the programming. Uh, we have ASL interpreters um at many of our events, and they're always available upon request if we don't already have them scheduled. But um, but in terms of other spoken language, we don't do a lot of that yet, but people have tools they can use to do it. And so when we have virtual events, then people from all over the world can can join us, no matter what their circumstances are, about being able to get to in-person events or be comfortable at in-person events or whatever. And so this year we did um, this year we planned for uh 15 total events. It's 13 virtual events, and then we started the year in I live in the greater Phoenix area. So we started the year with an in-person meetup here in my hometown. And we're excuse me, we started the Fat Liberation Month that way, and we're finishing Fat Liberation Month this year in the Oakland, San Francisco Bay Area at the Making Waves Fat Swim, which is the oldest continuously running fat swim anywhere in the world. Um I think they're on like their 42nd year or something like that. Um, so they've they've been doing this, you know, since since the 80s. Um, you know, and and and a few of the like original swimmers from the 80s fat swim are still attending. But lots of so it's this multi-generational, you know, local meetup in Albany, California. And that will happen on August 30th. And but on August 29th, we're having a virtual fat swim. And like we know that like it's not the same as being in a pool with community. Sure. But as we've seen fat swims become more and more and more popular and and really become, in some ways, the centerpiece of how a lot of local fat communities are gathering, especially in the summertime. Um, we didn't want to just leave behind everybody who can't make it to an in-person fat swim. And so

Virtual Events And Accessibility

SPEAKER_01 11:00

we have Mermaid Shea Monique, who's gonna come and be our special host. Um, we have Ms. Terracotta Sugar Baker, who is uh one of our long-term friends from Drag Story Hour and who's gonna read us some children's books that are about, you know, swimming and mermaid vibes and things like that. And um, and you know, like we're just we're just gonna have a good time together with some beachy vibes. DJ Sauce is gonna be there to play some summertime music for us and just hang out with that same kind of vibe and intention and just remembering like summertime fun is for everybody, even if they can't physically go to a pool or beach, right? And um, and so like we're really excited about doing that. So we still have those things uh that will happen after this show debuts. But by the time, you know, by the time this show comes out, we will have done um some affinity group meetups so for super fat folks, for elders, for Gen Z. Um, we're doing a networking session for people who are running local fat clubs so they can meet each other. And then later in the fall, we'll do a follow-up to that for people who want to start new local fat clubs. Um, you know, we we will have had by the time we get there, we did dance some dancing with Ivo Sheena. We had a nutrition panel of like fat, fat positive, and size inclusive nutritionists, um, three really fantastic folks. That one will be on our YouTube channel, so people can check that out. Like this, all kinds of great stuff throughout the month. And those are the things we offer. And then all over the world, there are people who have Fat Liberation Month events now or do Fat Liberation Month campaigns on social media, or you know, make I make, you know, um uh Fat Lib resolutions at the new year and for Fat Liberation Month. There are people who do things like that. So there are like lots of different ways to celebrate it.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

I got to meet Monique at FatCon a couple years ago. She had a tail. You got to meet her then too.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

I got to, well, I got to see her um leaving the pool. I had a little um I had a little emergency with a friend who lived local to Fatcon that year. And I was I missed most of the full pool party. So I came in at the very end of the pool party when she was actually leaving the pool in her fabulous mermaid tale. So I didn't get to meet her directly, but I did get to see her, and um, we're very excited to have her.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

She's so beautiful too. And I just she had like those little rhinestones on her face and just like everything that you could think mermaid. It was just walking around the conference and stuff. She's so so so sweet and kind and beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

And yeah, well, and she and for for those of you who have like mermaid, you know, mer friends fantasy or vibes or you know, aspirations or whatever, um, you should check out Mermaid Shamonique and the Society of Fat Mermaids. Yeah. Um, you know, you can get Society of Fat Mermaids t-shirts and you can learn about mermaiding, you know, all the things about mermaiding.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

When I had them at my boutique, um, we had a lot of mermaids that shop there.

SPEAKER_03 13:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

We had a lot of furries and people who were the tails, all kinds of it was wild. It was a wild five years, but I met so many people from so many different things. I've never heard of people being a mermaid. People have their own tail and everything. It's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

Yeah, this year, Bigger Bodies Boston, which is you know the local fat group, as it sounds like in Boston. Right. Um they had their, this is I don't know, their fourth or fifth annual pool party, I think. And this year they had someone who brought mermaid tails so that other people who'd never tried one could have a chance to try one. So you can see some um video of that on their Instagram, Bigger Bodies Boston.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

Hey, Tigers, is this fat liberation flag? Is that a thing? Is this somebody's unofficial? I don't know what is official.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

There is a there is a fat flag. Um, and it was created. Um it was made by a Canadian creator, and um, I didn't know you were gonna ask me about this, and I'm blanking on her name, but um, we actually are probably gonna do a social media post about this before the end of the month because we do want people to know more about this. Um, her flag design was actually inspired by NAFA's campaign for size freedom, which is our work to uplift the conversation around public policy related to anti-fatness and like to change public policy through legislation, through whatever kind of public policy changes, so that it becomes illegal to discriminate based on body size. Um, we have, you know, in the US, some of your listeners have probably heard me say this before, but like in the US, there are only nine places where it is, where there are any kind of legal protections against anti-fatness and um or against size discrimination of any kind. Size discrimination is not only anti-fatness, it's just that fat people being discriminated against is perceived differently by the culture than when a tall person or a short person or a thin person is discriminated against based on their size. Um, and you know, of course, and we are a fat rights organization, so we're thinking about the fat people aspect of it, but we work with little people of America and historically there was a short stature Americans organization. There used to be like a tall people's organization. Like, you know, there's been some partnership over the years with those things, but you know, but right now we know that most of the time what size discrimination looks like is anti-fatness. And there are only nine places in the US where it's against the law, and but there are a bunch of uh, well, I should say there are a handful of other places where people are actively working on trying to change the law. And then there are a few more other places where people are sort of buzzing, like gonna start doing some of that work. Um, it's hard work to do under this administration, under this federal administration, and in this political climate, you know, fat liberation is considered sort of like woke politics, like whatever. And so it's it can be difficult to do. But at any rate, we started the campaign for size freedom in 2023 to work on, you know, changing media narratives around this stuff, getting more people to talk about size discrimination as a social justice issue instead of just like an interpersonal issue, like, oh, you don't like fat people or you don't think fat people are cute or whatever. But no, like to really talk about like what does employment discrimination look like? What does housing discrimination look like? What is medical treatment, you know, discrimination in the medical system look like and family courts and all like all these places where that are sites of discrimination for people based on their body size, to really think more about that. And so anyway, um, the campaign for size low size freedom logo is the color scheme that inspired the fat flag. And I think the fat flag, I want to say that their Instagram handle is just fat.flag. Um, and you can definitely um, you know, learn more about them directly. If you just search, you know, fat flag and you'll get the whole origin story. Uh, but again, like hopefully by the end of this month, we will have something on our social media that's just reminding folks of like, this is not, we didn't create this. It's fine. No, it's real. It's and you know, there's been a lot of discussion around it for a long time. And like I mentioned, Wane Tango is one of the people who's a Bay Area activist, is one of the people who, you know, would bring it up a lot online and would point out that like there's a fat fetish flag, but there's not a fat liberation flag. There's not a flat rights flag, you know, we should have something, we should have something. At NAFA, it wasn't one of the things we wanted to take on. We felt like we could take on fat, you know, creating a month because we were saying, like, this is our gift to the world. Yeah, we we don't own the idea of fat liberation month. We are the originators of fat liberation month, but fat liberation belongs to fat liberationists, not to NAFA. Right, right.

SPEAKER_03 18:18

Of course.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

Um but but we didn't want to do a flag without some kind of like wider coalition of folks doing input. And we just hadn't, we hadn't made it there yet. It's something we had talked a little bit about, but we hadn't made it there yet. And so when we saw this one debut, um, you know, and she really beautifully responded to like she got some feedback about like, is there something you can do with the design that sort of more um that visually acknowledges the the history of anti-racism being a huge part of what anti-fatness is and the leadership for black and brown folks, sometimes in fat spaces and sometimes just in other civil rights spaces that were

Fat Swims And Virtual Fat Splash

SPEAKER_01 18:55

inspiring fat liberation or um, you know, or creating liberation for fat people, even if it wasn't specifically called fat liberation. And so she actually did a second design. Like when you look at the design now, what you see is um an updated design that takes that into account. And in the same way that the updated pride flag has more than just the rainbows, and it also has some like black and brown to represent those communities. Um, and so I think this is the actual like second design, the one that we you know we see now if you look at her on social media. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:27

So let's just take it back a little bit, just in case we have listeners that have never heard of NAFA. Yes. Well, why would they want to know about NAFA? What why would they want to join? Why would they donate money to NAFA?

SPEAKER_01 19:38

We did kind of, yeah, we did kind of just jump in. So we jumped into Fat Liberation Month because we're halfway through it, right? So, so NAFA is um the world's longest-running documented fat rights group. And we always emphasize the word documented because we want to sort of pay tribute to the people who were doing things that we would now call fat liberation, but they maybe weren't calling it that then. Or, you know, we want to pay tribute to, again, the black and brown folks whose leadership in other civil rights movements was essential, and who also were talking about fatness in that work, people like um Fannie Lou Hamer and Johnny Coleman in the US civil rights movement that were, you know, talking about blackness and their identity as women and their identity as poor folks and their identity as fat women as all part of their oppression. And often when we hear about them, if we get to learn about them as civil rights heroes, and we should, um, that piece about them talking about the body politics is often left out of that story. So we want to pay always tribute to those folks, and we want to pay tribute to like, you know, the early 1900s celebrities who, as body uh sort of tastes in US society around what kind of bodies were, you know, to be prized, were changing these like, you know, fat celebrities who'd been praised for their big, voluptuous, curvy bodies, and then all of a sudden it was like flapper time and everybody wanted to be have no curves, like those folks, but also just like everyday fat folks who like before there was an official organization with a 501c3 charity approval that that were just like sitting around their kitchen tables together or sitting around their living rooms together, just trying to figure out how to make it in the world as fat people, right? We want to pay tribute to those folks. But it is true that NAFA is the start of something, which is this this sort of like documented, organized, you know, movement for creating fat community and working on fat people's rights. And the founder of NAFA is a man named Bill Fabry, who um who was a thin, cisgender, straight, um, young, able-bodied white man who had like all this privilege in in a lot of ways, and was a young engineer who, you know, had a young wife that he adored, and she was a fat lady because he'd always liked fat girls all his life. And he, but now that he had one as a wife that he was living with and seeing. Her day-to-day experiences all the time. He was seeing the psychological toll that anti-fatness was taking on her and also the practical toll it was taking on their family, of things like, you know, her not being able to find clothes or her not being able to find a job. And, you know, how like what that did materially to her and to them as a family, but then also like what that did to her psychologically. And so, you know, Bill started thinking about like, is there something bigger than just supporting my wife that I could do and partnered with a few other folks? There were, I think, eight people at the first NAFA meeting in New York in June of 1969. And since then, you know, NAFA grew to have like chapters all over the country. We don't have chapters anymore. That's not how we operate. But for many, many years there were local chapters and people had the opportunity to do leadership through local chapters. And it was sometimes about fat community and fun. Like, is there someplace I can go where I can just escape the anti-fatness of the world and be in a situation where people want to be around me, where people think I'm beautiful, where there are people who want to date me and have sex with me.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

Like sometimes I really also I wanted to say um, rest in peace, Bill. Such a sweet, sweet man. He's lovely, always so lovely to me. And I never got to meet him in person. It's like a big bummer for me, but I do appreciate all that he did for all of us. And I know you you have deep respect for him as well.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

And also Bill and I were really Bill and I were actually really close, especially at the end of his life. I mean, we didn't meet until he was in his late 70s. We we first met at the 50th anniversary NAFA conference in Vegas. Yeah. And but we we became we became friends, and especially um, you know, in the last few years of his life, that whenever I was traveling, if I was anywhere near him, I would try to go spend time with him and collect his stories and um and and you know, and also just like check on him, right? Like we need to check on our fad community elders. And so I can be super protective of Bill. Like, there's a lot of critique of Bill as the founder of NAFA, as a straight white guy. You know, people have these debates about, you know, NAFA was started by a fetishist, or like Bill, Bill was quite proud of having coined the term fat admirer to talk about people who are fat attracted. And some people really consider that fetishism and really, you know, don't want to hear about Bill's like 50 years of service of service to fat people. They just want to write, they just sort of write him off as the like, oh, well, he was a fat admirer, so he was a fetishist. And I think there's a much more nuanced conversation that we should have about like fat attraction and the role of, you know, like people who whether they label themselves fat admirers or not, but who exclusively want to, you know, date or are attracted to fat people. And like there's a more nuanced conversation than just writing everybody off as fetishists. And um, and I can be really protective of Bill around that. But I also know that, you know, sometimes in NAFA spaces, the people who showed up that were identifying with that language, like fat admirer, um, were problematic and toxic. Were they the only problematic and toxic people

Fat Liberation Flag And Anti-Racism

SPEAKER_01 24:55

that were showing up in those spaces? Absolutely not.

SPEAKER_00 24:58

Um they were problematic, are problematic.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

And they can be, and that's right, to this day, they can be in different kinds of spaces. And um, and then there also can be folks who are not, and like it's a mixed bag, and people have different, different experiences with how much they've encountered it or how much they've just heard about it from other people. So, like, it's a big conversation. But in terms of like what that means to what NAFA was and what NAFA is, you know, we are still a place where we're trying to create social space for fat people and community space for fat people. There's not as much emphasis as there was in historic NAFA on us helping facilitate things like people dating. Like at one point, NAFA actually had a dating service that was by demand of the people who were coming. Um, you know, and it was a very uh mostly heterosexual, you know, crowd at NAFA for, you know, decades. And so it was like the women who were coming, um, and the men who wanted to be with them, not just thin fat admirers, but also the fat men who wanted to be be with them. And, you know, there was a lot of like what they what we see in other fat spaces now at conventions and bashes and whatever kinds of gatherings fat people have of like some people are here for genuinely community, and like some people are here for the hookups, right? Like, this is what you get humans together, especially in places like hotels for conferences, and they're gonna be people hooking up. And so, but anyway, that's part of what NAFA was, but it was also things like you know, like one of my favorite NAFA um uh pieces of like historical paraphernalia is this lovely picture of Sally Smith, who was the executive director at the time, and Barbara Altman Bruno, who was on the NAFA board then and is one of the sort of founders of Health at Every Size, uh, like in front of the White House. Like they were protesting at the White House because of something related to Clinton's policy around the obesity epidemic, and I think of what would eventually become the Affordable Health Care Act under Barack Obama. Like that at the in the Clinton era, it had some like messed up stuff around fatness, and they were protesting at the White House about it. And like, you know, there were, you know, there were NAFA conventions. There was a joint convention between NAFA and ASDA, the Association for Size Diversity and Health, where they like loaded up buses of people and went to Capitol Hill to walk around and talk to, you know, elected officials about these, you know, issues related to size discrimination. And so there's a, you know, it's a 57-year history, right? There's a lot of different kinds of stuff. And if you encounter NAFA today, the campaign for size freedom is a primary part of our work. And our virtual programming for community building is a primary part of our work. And um, we don't have local chapters anymore. So the way people get involved is through participation in our virtual events. Um, we, you know, people can volunteer to do work with us. Um, we are a small organization, we have a huge legacy. Like, and I I like to think that we make a huge impact, but we're a small organization. I'm the only full-time staff person. We have a couple of contractors and we have a bunch of volunteers. Our board members are all volunteers. I was a full-time volunteer for years before I um you know became a paid staff person. And um, and and so like we love to have people uh who want to volunteer. And also it's onboarding volunteers is not as easy as people think sometimes. So please, if you are interested in volunteering with NAFA, just be patient with us. If you reach out to us, we'll you know, we'll get you into something uh if we can. And sometimes people want to volunteer for a very particular thing and we don't have that or we're not doing that or whatever, and then we'll help you find somebody else. I love

Size Discrimination And Policy Change

SPEAKER_01 28:35

fat community, right? I love fat liberation spaces, I love fat community, and I love NAFA. I, you know, I better, it's 70 hours a week of my life sometimes. I better love it. I love NAFA. And also, if NAFA is not the right fit for you because you don't like some of the history, or because you want more in-person things, or because demographically we are a lot more diverse than we were historically, and also we're still not as diverse as some other spaces, or we're still, you know, maybe you need a space that is matches your identity better or whatever. Like, I'm here to help you find something else. If you want to be involved, if you want to give money, if you want to participate in things like whatever you want to do in fat community, if NASA is not the right place for you, I'm happy to help you find the right place for you, right? I just want you to find a place because that's what was powerful to me, right? Finding like finding spaces, creating spaces, being in, I live in the Phoenix area now, but I lived in the Bay Area when I first started exploring fat activism and the Bay Area is just a you know, like rich multi-generational fat activist community with like radical feminists from the 70s and and um and you know, people from NAFA in the 80s, and then people from the dance and arts movements of the Bay in the 90s and early 2000s, the body positivity people from like 2010. It's this mix of all of that. And that's where I came of age as a fat activist when I was living in Oakland and when I was running a plus size nightclub and in uh nightclub event in Oakland. And like I got to benefit from that in a way that everybody doesn't have that kind of community. And I want to help you find that kind of community if I can. So when folks are folks who are listening, like if if you're hearing about NAFA and you're like, well, I don't know if that's for me, like, well, let's figure out what is for you, right? Is it is it Fat Rose, which is like a little bit more radical of an organization, is it Asda, which does more like health and wellness stuff, you know, is it your local fat club that doesn't do anything but one big swim swim party and one big clothing swap a year? Uh or is it your local fat club that has every month they have something? Like whatever it is, um, you know, you want to be a fat dancer, you want to be a fat artist, you like you want you want to be a fat porn star. I don't care what you want to do. Like, if you want to find a place in fat community, um you know, then uh let's help you find it, right? Like let's help you find it.

SPEAKER_00 31:00

Absolutely. Just to go back to for a second, Saucy found out the name of the person that made the flag. I think the first name is Sterling Tippon tip on Sterling Tippon.

SPEAKER_01 31:11

I think is that right? Is it tipton?

SPEAKER_00 31:13

Tipton? Does that sound right to you, Tigers?

SPEAKER_01 31:16

It sounds right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:17

Okay, okay. Tell us what'd you find, Saucy? I just saw something in in the chat.

SPEAKER_02 31:25

Oh no, it was it's Sterling Tip tip on, I think.

SPEAKER_00 31:28

Tip on okay.

SPEAKER_02 31:30

Um just one one quick thing, and then you guys can get back to it. At the end, you can read your intro with first for Tigris. Okay. So now you know exactly what the title is, and we can just you can do the intro at the um Answalker. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

Yeah, so I so the, you know, so Crystal, like when you ask like how do people get in in, you know, how do people come become members? So we don't have formal membership at NAFA. We have a participation model of membership, which means like if you are participating and you feel like you're a member, then go ahead and say you're a member. Like our participants are who we are community, our community, right? Um, and we have um, you know, we have a we have a donor community where we know exactly who gave and what they gave and all of those kinds of things. But for participation, like, you know, for membership, like you show up and participate. And we did that a few years ago because we were debating like, should we have a sliding scale? If we want to make sure it's accessible to people to be members of NAFA, what do you get from being a member? And it's like everything you get from a being a member, we give away to the community anyway. Like you get it be on our newsletter list or you get to come to our conferences if we have them or whatever. Everybody gets that. So, what's the benefit of membership? Um,

NAFA History From 1969

SPEAKER_01 32:40

and so we decided to experiment with having a participation model, and most people didn't even notice. So we're like, so that must work, right? Like nobody, nobody has had to be a card-carrying member of NAFA to care about NAFA. Um, we do have a group called our pod, which is our passionate ongoing donors, and those are the folks who commit to making a monthly donation starting at $5. It could be whatever amount is right for you. But our pod members are just like, you know, when you're a nonprofit, when you're a small budget nonprofit, knowing that money is coming in. You know that we have 300 people who give us money every month. And a few years ago, we only had like 30 people doing that. So it's growth for us, right? It's stability for us. And um, and so we appreciate our passionate ongoing donors. If you want to become one, you just go to nafha.org slash pod pod, passionate ongoing donor. Um, or you can also do it through our general giving page. You get stickers, you get stickers, you get stickers. We said we started the sticker program. Stickers are so popular. I think they're especially like um certain certain like age groups that are really activated around stickers. Um, I know like for for me as a uh as a Gen X person, I keep thinking like we need a snap a scratch and sniff NAFA sticker because those were like all the range when I was a little kid. But as a you know, as a grown-up, I want some scratch and sniff. I'm like, what would it be like a a frosted donut, a cupcake? Like, what would a scratch and sniff naffa sticker look like? But we have not we have not engineered the step scratch and sniff sticker, but we started a sticker program because we wanted to give thank yous to all of our donors. And we also have some stickers that we give out at community events when we're meeting new people. And we work with um these fantastic, one of the things we do every year for Fat Liberation Month is we commission an artist to make, you know, we had Bats Langley do it for us for a couple of years in a row. He was just sort of friend of NAFA and he was making these fantastic characters for us. And so for three years, Bats did it, and then we decided, you know, um, it's time to pass the torch and give some other um some other visual artists this opportunity to create the logo and artwork for Fat Liberation Month. This year's artist is Danye Coles, who is um out of Minneapolis and is also like a horror novel author. If you're a horror person, Dahne has two uh two signed books in our auction, which will be open by the time you are hearing this podcast episode. And um, all of this stuff is at NAFA.org, right? Um, but we it feels especially important right now, our sticker program, not just because people like stickers, but also because we are commissioning artists to do it. And we're now doing it at every fundraiser. And so it's not just Fat Liberation Month, it's also our year-end fundraiser, our monthly donor may campaign, where, you know, if you just give a straight up, just give a small donation to NAFA, $5 or more, you get the thank you sticker. If you become a pod member, you get an additional sticker and you get all of the stickers every time we release new stickers. And so the pod is kind of a sticker club for some people, but you know, there are some people who just like they don't care about the stickers, they're just here to like support our work. And we appreciate all of our donors so, so much. And fat liberation work is some of the most underfunded social justice work in the world. You know, we have we have more resources than a lot of organizations, and we are still considered a very small budget organization. Like our budget is so small, there are grants we can't apply for because they will not be given to organizations that don't have enough infrastructure to have like a million-dollar budget. So, like people tell me all the time, like, what? You guys should try to get some of that McKinsey Scott money. You can't get McKinsey Scott money unless you have a million-dollar budget. You're not a million-dollar budget organization. If you know how to help us get there, or if you just have a million dollars to drop on us so we can bump up to that category and then start applying for those kind of grants, holler at your girl because we'll take it. But in the meantime, I love our five-dollar donors. I was a five-dollar donor, you know, and I am I'm able now to give a little bit more than that. To I give part of my salary back to NAFA, I give to mutual aid and fat community, I give to other fat organizations. I'm able to do that because I'm paid a fair wage by my employer, which is NAFA, which is possible because of you guys making donations to NAFA. And so um, I was a $5 donor and I'm a $5 donor to other stuff. Hello, Sesame Street, you know. But like I um, and I think like there with there are so many people who benefit from our work, whether they see the direct benefit or not, like the things that we do around trying to change media narratives and around trying to pass laws and things like that. You know, we should be able to get a mighty wind of $5 donors to sort of, you know, fill our sales. But in the meantime, um, you know, we work really hard at trying to fundraise in other ways. And the thank you stickers from these artists feel like an important, like commissioning these artists is part of what your donations fund, right? It's a cycle. Like you give us some money and we put it back in fat community. I love that. And especially right now, when so many people are turning to AI for everything. And you know, there are positive benefits of some kinds of AI, but generative AI is all built out of stolen artwork, it's built out of stolen writing. My writing, if you Google certain things about fat liberation and you get that AI answer, that is my writing that was stolen.

SPEAKER_00 37:53

Let me tell you, AI created a whole book that I didn't write and put it on my Wikipedia page. And I was like, I didn't write this book. What where did this come from? Somebody just totally made it up, but I wanted to say two things. It's really fun to get something in the mail, in the US mail, in a cute little envelope. It always makes me so happy when I see it. Stickers, big deal, whatever. But I it makes me really happy. I love them.

SPEAKER_01 38:13

And I yeah, shout out to our. I mean, we have an administrative director who does so much work behind the scenes, Darlene Howell. I would

Bill Fabry And Community Tensions

SPEAKER_01 38:20

wonder how you get those done. And who was um, well, Julianne, Julianne Guatesick, our our admin assistant, you know, manages all those sticker mailings. If you're getting a sticker mailing, that came from Julianne. Um, our board members are sending postcards out to our donors for some stuff this month. But the sticker mailings, like, that's all Julianne. And um, but and Darlene does all this other behind-the-scenes admin work. And the two of them, like when you started, you said something like, You are NAFA, you're the face of NAFA. I am the face of NAFA, but I'm not NAFA, right? We there's a team at NAFA. It's a small team, but it's a mighty team. And those two, you know, just like in many organizations, right? Like, get to know the admins. They're they're who keep the trains running on time.

SPEAKER_00 39:04

Always know the receptionists, always know the admins, they're the ones who are gonna get you whatever you need.

SPEAKER_01 39:08

Yeah. And and, you know, and without Darlene Howell, NAFA would not still exist, right? Because she was the, you know, the board chair who helped bridge the gap between, you know, this time where NAFA had become fairly dormant and this sort of rejuvenation that we had that started with our 50th anniversary conference. If Darlene had not picked up the torch there, you know, when Phyllis War, who was the first um, first black board chair of NAFA before me, um, and uh, but but as an interim chair. So I was kind of like the first person of color to chair the organization with a long-term vision, with like a like in a per permanently in the chair position. But Phyllis was serving as interim director. And when she resigned from the board, there wasn't really a plan for who was gonna succeed her, right? She succeeded uh Jason when he, the board chair who died in office, and then Phyllis succeeded him and in this temporary position. And when she was like, I can't do this temporary position anymore, um, there wasn't a real plan. And Darlene had been a volunteer for NAFA for like 25 years, and she was the board secretary, and which at that time was not a board position, and so she wasn't even technically, she wasn't even on the board, and she stepped up to step into that role. And if she hadn't, there wouldn't be a NAFA today.

SPEAKER_00 40:19

Thank you, Darlene.

SPEAKER_01 40:20

Thank you, thank you all. Thank you, Julianne, and our whole board. And this fall we will be doing a board search. We have a few up with seats, and we'll be doing a board search this fall. So if you're you're hearing this stuff and you're like, what about that? What about me on the board? Like, what about you on the board? Come on and interview. And we've had, I love our board search because we only get, you know, a couple of new board members every time we do a board search, but we also get some other really great volunteers. I mean, our our blog editor came from our board search. Um, you know, we've worked with some other people around like specific projects around arts and uh documentaries and grant writing and things like that that are all folks who came from our board search. So it's a great way to get to know us and for us to get to know you. And I it's a lot of work because we interview everybody who applies. We really believe that um people should be given a chance to show themselves off in a way other than a written application. And so, you know, unless they just like egregiously don't fill out the application or something, but like, but we interview, you know, almost everybody who applies, uh, and everybody who completes the application process and you know, references and stuff we interview. And so, you know, that's that's talking to a lot of people. Um, and I love it. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 41:35

I know this is a challenging uh topic to discuss right now, but uh do we what what can we do about the airline stuff? I mean, I know I know NAF has done a lot already, and just what it's I feel like I just don't even want to go anywhere anymore. I just what can we do? Tigers or anything?

SPEAKER_01 41:53

Well, it's so uh uh transportation accessibility is a huge issue for fat people, for disabled people, for lots of people, um, not just airlines, all the transportation, right? Like you get everything right with the airlines, and if you get to the city of your destination, and then you can't there's no seatbelt extender in your Uber, or you can't, you know, the public transit, you can't go through the turnstile because you're, you know, because you're not gonna fit through the turnstile. Like there's there's all kinds of um things related to, you know, you get to your hotel and the bathtub is not big enough for you, or whatever. Like there's all kinds of things about travel that are opportunities for advocacy. Um, the airline piece is, you know, it's really challenging because it probably is gonna take an FAA regulation to make airline travel more equitable for people in all bodies. And that is a long and slow process. And so what we've depended on as a community is the commitment of businesses that said they cared about inclusion. Uh, and in particular, I mean, everybody who you know flies fat knows that there's been a lot of attention in the last couple of years about Southwest and their changing policies. And but for, you know, for a long time, Southwest went from being like we literally called them Southwest as a community. And then they were like, Well, we have this reputation for great customer service. We don't want people to feel like this about us. What can we do? And they created better policies than their competitors. Their policies were still not fully inclusive, they were better than their competitors, and then you know, private equity stepped in and changed Southwest, and they changed all kinds of policies, including their customer science policy. Um, I don't know that we're gonna win Southwest back. I mean, what this is so this is the thing, Crystal. Like, I don't know how many listeners you have who are not fat people. But what I know is what I know is that no matter you know, like internalized anti fatness is a beast, so we're never gonna get all of the fat people to stand up for their own rights because some of the fat people believe themselves that. The solution is for them to lose weight, not for policies to change or systems to change or environments to change. And so, like, that's a really tough truth, right? Is that if there are, you know, who depending on whose numbers you take into account and knowing fully full well that the numbers that you know the government and the medical system use are all based on flawed tools like BMI, flawed being the best, nicest word I can use about it. Um, and but if you take those numbers into account, there are somewhere between 93 million and 100 million fat people in the United States. There are not a hundred million fat liberationists in the United States, right? There are a lot of people in the fat category and people outside of the fat category who've internalized a bunch of anti-fatness and genuinely believe that the solution to fat people's problems is for fat people not to be fat. And that's what we're always working up against with airlive. And so when we have allies, for those of us who are not going to stay home all the time just because things are unfair for us out in the world, we're gonna advocate for ourselves. When we also have other people advocating for and alongside us, it is incredibly impactful. And so when just the fat people say we're not gonna fly Southwest anymore, if everybody else still flies Southwest, Southwest doesn't have as much incentive to change as they would if you and your thin husband and your thin mother-in-law and your thin cousin and your whole thin baseball team, if they're all not gonna fly Southwest because Southwest is unfair to fat people, or they're all gonna not fly any airline until the airlines change their policies, right? Then we have a lot more possibility of that change.

SPEAKER_00 45:42

So I was hoping they would see a financial impact from when they changed the policy and they'd be like, oh shit, we didn't realize how many fat people are actually paying our bills. And so I was like hoping that they would notice a big number and be like, oh, we gotta go backwards.

SPEAKER_01 45:52

I know it's a fantasy that I had, but I always comparing against the numbers they think they can get, right? Not the numbers they missed to get. So if we can make these changes and and we lose all those people, but we gain all these other people

Donor Support And Sticker Thank-Yous

SPEAKER_01 46:05

who will like our new snazzy policies and procedures and planes and whatever better, you know, we're just becoming a different airline, right? But it we can't focus it all on Southwest because um, you know, Southwest is a little bit like Target right now, in that people's disappointment is because you were one of the brands we thought we could count on to do better than your competitors, right? Your target's DEI policies are better than Walmart's, Southwest's current policies are are better than every airline on Earth except for Alaska, and Alaska has fewer routes than Southwest. So Alaska having the same policy as Southwest doesn't help as many people as if Delta had that policy or American had that policy or whatever, right? But we weren't counting on Delta and American. We weren't counting on Walmart, right? We were counting for DEI purposes, for inclusion, like genuine inclusion, not DEI as a buzzword, um, which is, you know, some the way some businesses used it and why they're abandoning it. But like as true inclusion, we were counting on these companies that we'd come to count on because they made us the promise. And then they withdrew the promise. And so that's why Southwest stings more than other airlines that are shitty to fat people, is because we thought they had learned their lesson and they were genuinely trying to do better. And for years they did better. Um, so I don't know, Crystal. I mean, I think the best thing that fat people can do right now is, you know, everybody's got to make their choice about whether they just like just like the target boycott, right? Like, are you so disappointed that they backpedaled that you won't use them again? It's a little bit different with Southwest because some people are limited by where they live and which airports, you know, which airlines serve the airport where they live and things like that. Budget for sure. Yeah, Southwest is still more affordable for a lot of people. It's everybody's got to make their decisions. We're not gonna call for a national boycott of Southwest. Um, we're going to encourage people to make informed choices and we're gonna try to keep making sure that people have the best information. You know, Southwest is also a little mealy-mouthed when they release information or like they're not as clear or they emphasize, you know, there's this whole wave of of publicity of like Southwest is going back to their policies. No, they weren't, they didn't do anything like that. It wasn't even remotely close to them going back. Um, you know, but they rode that wave for a minute. And um, and so part of what part of what our work is as an advocacy organization is helping folks understand what the policies really are. Like we, you know, we we're gonna keep advocating for businesses to change their policies and for laws to change so they don't have a choice about it, and we're gonna lose a lot of those battles. That's just what it is. We're gonna lose. I mean, sorry, that's not my most hopeful. We'll talk about something more hopeful. You can ask me a hopeful question in a minute. But like, but the hope is like the hope is that we this is the hopeful part. The hopeful part part is the hopeful part is we don't just lay down every time the policies change, that we still keep being a pest and we still keep, you know, being uh a thorn in their side or mosquito in their ear or whatever it is. Um, and that we still keep and that we don't all stop going places, right? Like all the fat people can't stop going places because the policies are shitty. The more we still show up, the more they have to think about accommodating us.

SPEAKER_00 49:25

The good news is nowadays it's really easy to reach out to brands like Southwest Airlines because I used to say this a lot when you have a great experience on Southwest Airlines, please go send them a tweet or send them a DM or whatever and let them know how great that was. And now I'm saying every time somebody has a bad experience, we all need to go and tweet them or DM them or email them and make sure that they're always hearing from us because I used to.

SPEAKER_01 49:48

Why should they get to live in peace with their with like with their disrespect of us, right? Right. Why should they get to live in peace? So, like for some people, what that's gonna look like is I'm gonna take my money and walk away and tell you, I'm gonna leave my air air travel points on the table. You know, I closed my Southwest credit card. I I'm not promising I'm never gonna fly Southwest ever again in my life, especially as somebody who like that's one of the best airlines to fly out of my local airport. But I'm gonna make those steps. I've already, you know, I've taken other flights, I've driven instead. Some of you know I drove 2200 miles across the Midwest this this year. Um, you know, I've I've I've made the choice, you know, for Southern California to to drive instead of flying from if I got to go from here. Like, you know, there are there are choices that I'm that I'm making related to this. Um, and you know, one of them was like I closed my Southwest credit card, and that means I don't get some of the perks, you know. But that's that's my that's where it landed for me. Everybody's got to decide where it lands for them. But again, like our job at NAFA is to help make sure you have the right information so you can make the best decision for you.

SPEAKER_00 50:52

Thank you. I want to give NAFA a little bit of a shout out about something that is rarely talked about, and I hear that you all talk about it a lot. I don't know if this is your influence or someone else's influence, but I love how you all always talk about people that don't have budgets, that don't have the finances. It seems like you're one of the few in uh organizations I ever hear talk about. Maybe some people have just never been really poor poor, but if you've ever been poor, poor, whenever I hear you talk about that, it makes me so it warms my heart because there are some people that just don't have the budget. They want to do these things, they want to do, they want to donate or whatever, but they they don't have extra money. And um, y'all are really one of the only organizations I ever hear even mentioned. And I really appreciate it because I've been poor poor and it's not fun. And I I like here's one thing that whenever people talk about how come that there's a hurricane going on and those people don't leave, they should get in their car and go stay in a hotel. Like, oh, you've never been poor poor. I'll tell you why some people don't leave it when there's a hurricane or whatever, because some people don't have those kinds of resources, and so I appreciate that you all always try to include that well, what do you call it, that group?

SPEAKER_01 51:57

Well, I think I mean we're trying to think about we're trying to think of we're trying to have class consciousness, is what I think you're thank you is that we but we because we're a social justice group, and like as a social justice group, you know, if our if we're gonna say that our den our identity is us is as a civil rights organization or a community-based organization or a social justice group or a fat liberation organization, you know, not just a size acceptance or fat acceptance organization, like we still use our legacy name, association, to advance fat acceptance, but we orient as a fat liberation group these days. Some of that is my influence, and some of that is the board that we have now who come from, you know, these and you know, NAFA throughout its history had radical people in on the board and you know, people who had been part of the Fat Underground or part of other radical organizations, um, or you know, came from, you know, these feminist perspectives where they were hopefully thinking intersectionally, even be we weren't, you know, using that kind of language in the early NAFA days. But like all of that stuff means that we need to be, you know, we can't get, we're not gonna get everything right all the time in every way, right? We didn't say enough about this, we didn't do enough about that. Um, but we do work really hard to like live our values, um, you know, as a board, as an organization, and to be thinking about um how our own lived experiences inform those those values for ourselves personally and for the organization. And some of us have been poor former, as you said, right? You know, we're if we come from working class backgrounds, or you know, you know what it's like to like, no, I literally don't have five dollars. We we there's a lot of like everybody's got at least five dollars and thinking, no, everybody doesn't have at least five dollars. There's you know, there's there are times when, you know, like I had an experience with I had a mutual aid experience at a point in my life where I was really struggling, and I had to message someone and say, I'm giving five dollars a month to you on Patreon. I want to let you know that I'm not gonna give it this month. And because I was that, because I was that poor in that moment, I was like, well, if she's that poor in this moment too, I don't want her to be jacked up because she's $5 short. So let me give her a heads up. I'm not gonna give you the $5. And she was like, oh, honey, it sounds like you need help more than I do. Can I send you some money? Right. It was and then and then connected me with somebody else who gave me some money and like it was a life-changing experience for me. But it was literally a moment where, and I was working three jobs at the time. It wasn't like, why don't you get off your lazy ass at work and then you'll have five dollars. I was working three jobs at the time. And I did not have five extra dollars. My student loan payment was going to overdraw my checking account. So I've been there, right? And so we want to make sure there is a way for people to be clean, be included, whether they have money or not. And we have to think about things like, you know, if we want people to come and, you know, and testify because there's a bill being heard

Airline Travel And Ally Power

SPEAKER_01 54:55

somewhere and they don't have Uber money to get to the state house. How do we get them there? Who's picking them up, or how do we arrange a carpool? Or do we have Uber money? Can we, you know, send them a put, you know, send them an Uber gift card or like a Lyft gift card or local taxi gift card, however, but whatever the things are that we have to do, right? Because like sometimes that is very, very real.

SPEAKER_00 55:17

It's very, very real. Just thank you from the bottom of my heart because I I really appreciate and I do see y'all talking about on occasion. It just makes me very happy because not a lot of people, not a lot of organizations actually say if they do support it, they don't say it out loud.

SPEAKER_01 55:30

So I mean this is also the reason why that the people, because this is the thing, is like we one thing we also know is that sometimes the percentage at a percentage level, the most generous donors in the country are the people who give at the smaller increment. It's a bigger percentage of their income or their disposable income than what people with more money are giving. What that means is if you are one of the people who can give more than $5, give it to somebody. Give it to us if you like our work. Again, if you like fat community, but you don't like our work and you have $500 to invest in a fat community organization and it's not NAFA, I will still talk to you about helping you figure out who you should invest in because I just want to see the community thrive, right? And so if you are that person, ooh, you know, thank you, $5 donors. I love y'all, I'm serious. And also, yeah, and also thank you, $500 donors and $5,000 donors, and come on, $50,000, come on. Where are you at, $50,000 donor? One of y'all are listening, right? Come, you know, like that's why the folks who have the resources, especially if they really do believe in the work of the organization, organizations, not just us, you know, we are a very particular thing in fat community. And again, we're not the only thing in fact community. And and that's part of like my belief in this work. I I believe that the people who believe in us will show up and support us. And I don't have to try to win over everybody who really should be somewhere else, right? Um, I want to reach more of the people who would who would believe in us and who we are the right fit for. So that's the other thing you can do if you're like, well, how can I help NAFA? Yeah, let's end on that. Like, how can people help? What can people do?

SPEAKER_00 57:06

What do you all need?

SPEAKER_01 57:07

Well, Crystal, I know you've like you've been an evangelist of this for like a decade that I've known you of like and comment and share stuff from the small businesses that you care about, and treat the organizations that you care about the same way that you treat the brands that you care about or the influencers that you care about, or whatever you like and comment on their stuff, like and comment on our share, share our stuff, share it, share it, save it if you're on one of the apps that has a way for you to save it, save it, share it, like and comment, and you know, and like say something that's kind of meaningful. So nobody, you know, so you're not look like a just another bot or whatever, but like the ripple effects of that is huge, cute in terms of making sure that more people see the things that we're doing, if those things are beneficial to them and can support the things that we're doing, right? And so, like, that's the low-hanging fruit. If you have the spoons to do that, if you have the energy, the patience, the time, the attention span to do that, you can do that for free, right?

SPEAKER_00 58:04

And you all are just NAFA on everything, all the apps?

SPEAKER_01 58:06

We are NAFA official on almost everything. Okay. Um, we're not, you know, we're most active on Instagram. That's where we see the most growth over the last few years. We still have a very dedicated Facebook following. Um, you know, Facebook is just weirder. Um, but we're on LinkedIn, we have a YouTube channel, NAFA official. Um, it's hard for us to gain traction on YouTube because we won't turn on the comments on YouTube because it's such a sesspool for fat people, even more so than some of the other spaces. We would, you know, happily be on TikTok if we had a committed group of volunteers who wanted to help us be on TikTok. So if you're a TikTok geek out there and that you got some volunteer time and you want to talk about that, you can reach out to us. Um, our volunteer form is on our website, our donor form is on our website. The Fat Liberation Month auction is you know, will be again open by the time y'all are listening to this on our website. There's some great fat community businesses and creators and artists and um and consultants who are offering like you know, sessions with them and um and items from gift cards and art and all kinds of stuff. And and you know, if we have a we, you know, we hope to raise ten thousand dollars with this auction. And that's part of how we can keep Fat Liberation Month free so that everybody can get participation, yeah. So can participate. Crystal got an item, Crystal, y'all. Crystal put a vibrator in our auction. I think this might be the first time in the history of NAFA that there's a picture of the vibrator on our website. It's your logo. We put your logo. Um figures, yeah. But um, but like, but you know, but like it's I think it's probably the first time last year. Last year it was you and Murph. It wasn't a picture of a vibrator as your logo. And um Rawya uh yeah, like they won last year, and now this year they're they um and this year they're speaking at your event, right? Your event, they're the keto speaker. So yeah, Rawiya is fantastic. Um yeah, last year the last year big sexy chat item in in our auction was uh you could bid for a chance to be a guest on the show, a guest on the podcast. Yeah, um this but this year, Crystal is, you know, Crystal's buzzing people up with the you know with the romance toy.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:15

Try, yes. I if I would have had time, I wouldn't have an image of me. I just didn't have time, so don't worry about that.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:21

But people people know what you do, and and they know what romance toys means, right? And so they're gonna bid and they're gonna help us raise money, and it's gonna be fantastic. But thank you for giving. And like, and we the auction is to me like like I hope other people will geek out around this auction the same way as me. Like, it's not just about the money we raise. We need we need to raise money. Like, we have to, you know, our organizations have got to be funded, not just so that we can pay people like me who are employees, but so we could do the programming that the things that you want to see. Um, but also it's a friend raising opportunity, right? Like we have almost 50 people who've given to this auction and and you don't know some of them. And they're cool ass people in fat community with great products or great services or great expertise or whatever. And like, even if you again, like if you don't have any, you know, if if this is not your month to bid in the auction, take a look at it anyway and try to like I know it has the potential to cause a little bit of FOMO, but instead of the FOMO, just think about like think about it as like a catalog of folks that you should know in fact community, you know, and we do have some items that are starting with like five dollars, you know, as the first bid, or you know, seven dollars as the first bid or things like everything in the auction is not a big fig mattress that's gonna go for fifteen hundred dollars. You know, some of the things are gonna go for 20 or 30 bucks. And the reason we include a bunch of things like that is so that there can be more levels of participation, but even if you can't do it at all, like go check out the folks anyway. They're our friends, this is our community, right? Like we can you and you can do the same thing for them that I just asked you to do for us. You can't bid on the option item, but you can go through their Instagram page and like 10 of the things that you like from them, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:05

Sure, sure, sure. Thank you, Tigris. Yeah, it's I could talk to you forever. I know. I always love having you on. And we always, like I said, we refer to you all the time during the our different interviews because you always come up because you're so core to our fat liberation movement right now. I really appreciate all you do and all that Natha does because I know y'all are working really, really hard. I can only imagine because I know how much it takes to put this kind of stuff on and so I really appreciate all the energy you all put into it. So thank you so much. And um, Tigris, do you want to share your um own your own personal handle and how people can reach to you onto you personally or professionally? Or what do you prefer?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:42

I mean, people can always follow me if you want to connect professionally. I am on LinkedIn, I'm not that great at LinkedIn, so I'm not on there all the time, but I'm on there. And you know, under my real name, Tigris Osbourne is my actual name. So that's where I'm on LinkedIn. On Instagram, I'm Eye of the Tigris. That's like the letter I O F T H E Tigris, um, T-I-G-R-E-S-S. And on uh on you know, I I have an Eye of the Tigris page, a public page on

How To Help And Stay Connected

SPEAKER_01 1:03:10

Facebook as well. And uh I have, you know, plans for threads and blue sky and all the things, but I'm not always on there. You can also follow, uh I, you know, I co-edited a book with my colleague Nancy Ellis Wardway. It's called Weight and Wisdom. Um and it's about people who spent 25 or more years of their life doing some kind of body liberation work, like eating disorders, awareness and prevention, health and every size work, fat liberation, fat rights work, and um and my candle on Instagram for the book is Weight and Wisdom Book. Uh and you know, and of course, like NAFA official, like like you said, I am often the face of NAFA. So you see me a lot on the NAFA account as well. Um, and it's just it's NAFA official, no underscores or anything like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:58

Wonderful. Thank you so much, Tigris. I'm really excited and happy fat liberation month, and enjoy the rest of the month. And um am I gonna maybe see you at the end of the month?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:06

Are you gonna be here for the uh to be to be determined still? Um, but if I don't make it to the Bay for the um for the swim at the end of the month, our board chair, Amanda Cooper and our um, you know, one of our uh veteran board members and longtime Bay Area Fat activist Elaine Lee, who organized this event, they will be there. You'll see lots lots of folks from that amazing Bay Area Fat community that I talked about. And Saucy will be there. And maybe Saucy will be there, maybe you will be there. Um and so um definitely in your if you're in the Bay Area, come out to that. But if you're not, don't forget about the Fat Splash, virtual Fat Splash on the 29th. And you can come and uh see Shea Monique's uh mermaid tale and and you know hear drag story hour stories and just hang out with us and have some summary fun that way.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:54

I love it. Thank you so much. I'll talk to you, Steve Tigris. Take care. Bye.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:00

Thank you for checking out this week's episode of Big Sexy Chat. Make sure that you like, share, and subscribe to our YouTube channel. And don't forget to go to our socials, Big SexyChat, on Instagram and Facebook. And don't forget to also stop BigSexy Merch at BigSexymerch.com for all your sassy, spicy, and in your face t-shirt for everybody. Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next time.