A new podcast from the award-winning body hair and care brand Flamingo, hosted by author, curator, and critic Kimberly Drew. Each week on Unruly, we unpack the quiet ways women’s bodies are commodified, defined, and regulated by social media, the medical profession, the beauty industry, and more. Then we name them, out loud — because information is power, and your body is your business. New episodes drop on Wednesdays.
Episode 1 Transcript | Social Media: The Body's Big Brother
[MUSIC IN]
TIFFANY: “There are so many places that people can land when it comes to body image. Like some people prefer to be completely body neutral. And some people prefer to be on the side where they're like, I love everything about my body. Which, I actually think both of those things are really hard and most people land somewhere in the middle. And I help guide people towards what works for them instead of trying to say like, ‘Oh, you need to do this, you need to do that.’ It's more about, you know, they can choose what works best for them and pursue that with intention and with consistency, and that is how you find healing with your body image.”
Kimberly Drew: Social media is a complicated beast. In some ways, I’m grateful for the opportunities it has provided me with. It’s connected me with art communities, queer communities, other poc.
But, I’ve also had to regulate the content I consume online. Social media can crush our confidence and our relationship to our body image. It can even change our perception of our own self worth in the privacy of our own heads.
What ideas are women learning about their bodies online today? And how have different movements – like body positivity and body neutrality - tried to help women navigate the messages that society and social media are giving us?
On this podcast, we’re going to tackle these kinds of questions together. We know about the ways our bodies are regulated in the news, but what about the issues we face every day all around us?
I’m your host Kimberly Drew. I’m an author, curator, and all-around cultural enthusiast.
And from Flamingo, this is Unruly. Where we take the quiet ways women’s bodies are commodified, defined, regulated and we name them – out loud. We want to educate and support each other. Because your body is your business.
This is Episode 1: Social Media: The Body's Big Brother.
Today, I’m joined by body confidence coach Tiffany Ima to hear how she helps her clients work through these issues.
Kimberly: Hello!
Tiffany: Hi. I'm so happy to be here.
Kimberly: Yes, I'm so happy to be with you digitally to be having this conversation, which is very near and dear to my heart. And so I appreciate you bringing your energy and your expertise to this conversation. One thing that I've been trying to enact in my own practice, especially in media and being forward facing, is to think about access and accessibility. And so I wonder if, before we go further – especially too, thinking about being a body image coach – if we could do the exercise of visual description just so that folks know who we are and how we want people to understand our own images.
For me, I am a Black woman. I have a copper colored afro. I am quite tall – I’m five nine – and more slender, muscular build because I've been in the gym, and I'm excited to talk about that part of our identities as well. And I have a bunch of jewelry on because adorning myself is a big part of how I construct my own body image. I also have a Taurus moon and yeah, Tiffany, if you wouldn't mind taking your turn.
Tiffany: I love that description and I hear some similarities between us as you describe yourself. I am also a Black woman. I have shoulder-length locks that are deep brown, black, and I also love to adorn myself with tattoos and jewelry. So I'm currently wearing a lot of those. I love big glasses. And I am described, to make it simple, people would put me in the mid-size category: curvy, athletic build.
Kimberly: So let's start at the start. How long have you been a body image coach? And for those who might not know, how would you define the work that you do?
Tiffany: I teach creative women how to break free from body shame so that they can experience more joy and peace in their life. And I've been doing this work for about four years now. And my story is coming from a place where I had to heal my own eating disorder. I did it on my own, and I do not suggest this for anyone. Go to therapy if you have an eating disorder. But what I did was, I gathered as much research as I could about body image, about eating disorders, about what to do, how to heal. And I spent about seven years just being a student of what it meant to have a positive body image. And so I was managing it through journaling, through exercise, and through shifting my perspective and deprogramming my mind from all the things I've learned growing up in a society that we live in. And once I did all that healing, I started being like, ‘There are so many people struggling. How can I be an encouragement to those women?’ And so when you have a mindset where you know that body diversity is a real thing and exists. You have to combat the messages that you're getting when you get on social media, when you're looking at movies. And I think that's a constant thing for myself. If I find myself slipping into old mindsets, I remind myself like, ‘No, that is not true. It’s literally not truth’. And I find myself going back to the truth and also understanding that, living in this society, you will probably still have insecurities. And not trying to convince myself that I love every single thing about my appearance because it’s not even necessary to experience body confidence and to have freedom and to have joy in your life. So you have to kind of be okay with the insecurities. And instead of trying to fight them and lie to yourself, basically, telling yourself like, ‘No, you love everything about your appearance, you do, you do,’ and screaming affirmations in the mirror, you just say, okay, I don't feel good about my tummy today. I don't feel good about the way my arms look in this, but I'm still valuable. That's how I combat that.
Kimberly: One hundred percent. I mean, in my own personal journey, I also have lived with eating disorder. And, for me, it was so much about control. I was in a really toxic relationship, I was in a really toxic set of friendships. And the one thing I knew I had control over was my body and these edits. And finding excuses to have cashews for lunch, you know, just these ways in which I thought I was empowering myself. And then I got so much congratulations from people as I slimmed down. Then you're contending with yourself and what you know your body needs because you kind of know better. But then you're also getting all of this affirmation. And I think for me, I'm so happy to know that you're doing the work that you're doing, because I did go to therapy and I had tremendous therapeutic support. But it's getting the courage to even call a nutritionist.
Tiffany: Mm hmm.
Kimberly: Um, but one of the things I really admire about your practice is how it is accessible. And this is a long way of asking: what are people looking for or what in your mind are people looking for when they're coming to you for guidance? What do you hope people find once they find you?
Tiffany: So the biggest thing that I teach and I teach from three principles. The principles of body confidence is what my framework is called. And I want to keep it simple because I think that in essence, when you boil it all down, it is simple. Now the work is hard, like the act – putting in the work to deprogram myself, that is hard work. But I teach from the principles that in order to have body confidence, you need compassionate wellness, you need to learn how to be in tune with your body, and you need to embrace self-expression. So what I want people to learn is that it’s not about learning to love your body. It's about learning to free up your time so that you can go experience life. And so I want people to step out of this place where they're so bogged down by body shame that they can't even live. Because, Kimberly, the experience you describe is very common for people with eating disorders. It's about control. And we get it in our mind that we can control our bodies and honestly, our bodies, like they regulate themselves. When you're engaging in joyful movement and getting nutritious foods and doing things that you love and taking care of your mental health like your body is going to settle into whatever size it’s supposed to be. When people come to me, I want them to know that, ‘Yes, you can – you can live your life in whatever body size you're in’. And people have a lot of trouble reframing because they're so used to body shame and they're so used to making the focus just on their body. So when people come to me, they're like, ‘Well, you know, I still feel like I want to lose weight, but I know, you know, diets don't work.’ And they have so much trouble stepping outside of the start of weight loss. But really, like, if you shift the focus to living, you'll have an easier time healing.
Kimberly: You know, the deeper that we move into social media moment, I think it started as this kind of like really unwieldy – I mean, it's like the body in many ways – like we didn't know where it was going, but it's very clear that it's becoming cemented as a way that we connect with each other. And I always have this anxiety and worry, how to maintain autonomy and how to maintain an offline commitment to healing that doesn't need to immediately be brought back to an audience to report to.
Tiffany: Yeah, and that, that's pretty hard, especially as someone who is in this work. For me, when I get offline, I do the things I'm telling people to do. I'm like, I'm living my life like I'm going to dinner, I'm spending time with my friends, I'm reading, I'm journaling, because it's important to remember that it's not just about focusing on your body. It's about freeing up your time. And so, as you know, people who create content in this space, I think it can be hard to separate that from, you know, your actual life and what you're doing outside of social media. And I think, you know, especially with the pandemic, 2020, people were spending more time inside than ever. And a lot of us were on social media. And you even see a shift from body – how we engage with body confidence and body image from 2020 to now, because then everyone was trying to feel, you know, better about gaining weight. And then in the 2022, it's, you know, back to, ‘Let's lose weight however we can.’ And you know, they started pushing ozempic and things like that and it became about being thin again. And so I'm seeing people disengaging from the body image conversation because they are back to trying to lose as much weight as possible.
We're gonna get into all the ways we can detangle ourselves from social media in just a moment. Normally, this is where you’d hear an ad – and honestly, maybe you’d skip through it. But instead, we’ve got a story from a nonprofit that supports women's bodily autonomy and mental health. It’s one of the organizations that Flamingo donates to as part of its mission to “keep your body in mind.”
Kimberly: So, Tiffany. We were just speaking about how during the pandemic, we kind of were collectively a lot kinder with ourselves about weight gain. The focus was on being healthy and keeping others healthy. And now, we’re right in the middle of the ozempic craze, where people are taking a drug meant for diabetes to lose as much weight as possible. How did we get here? Nobody is supposed to be here! I’m just like it actually, it befuddles me.
Tiffany: And it just goes to show how the way that the media treats bodies as trends, how that just really affects the conversation. And it's so hurtful because I feel like we did so much work in 2020 and 2021, and I thought I was seeing real lasting change. And, you know, I think on an individual level, a lot of people were able to shift their perspective and the way that they personally engage with that, they were able to shift. But, like, as a whole, in society as a whole, it's like I feel like we're back where we started and, you know, we're just really out here trying to encourage people to go live and to stop shaming themselves into a smaller body just because the world is telling you you need to be smaller.
Kimberly: Yeah. I mean, countless hours of my life have been spent on what I'm going to eat and what it's going to do. And being able to free up from those things are so valuable. And even thinking in this pandemic context, for so many of us, we had to learn how to nurture ourselves again. And unfortunately, it resulted in many ways in these darn ‘What I Eat in a Day’ videos. And I wonder if we could talk about just the implications of these videos, how you and your own practice work alongside them. I'm curious your thought on this, on this pivot.
Tiffany: Yeah, um, I have very strong opinions about those type of videos because you see a ‘What I Eat in a Day’ video, but it's not giving the whole picture at all. And so a lot of times these videos are created especially by people who are, you know, thin and a lot of them, they're based on, ‘oh, this is what I eat to have abs or this is what I eat to stay thin. This is what I eat to manage my weight.’ And you see a disordered practice being filmed and edited and curated. You see someone saying, ‘Oh, I ate three salads and, you know, this superfood bowl’, and they don't tell you about the fact that they were so hungry at the end of the day that they binged on three chocolate bars. And I know that that's happening because I had– I have a ten-year-long experience with eating disorders and disordered eating practices. So I know that a lot of times you see these videos, but they're not talking about the binging. They're not talking about the snacks that they threw in. They're not talking about the donuts that people brought into the office. And they, I'm putting this in air quotes, ‘gave in to temptation to eat’. And they are painting this curated picture of what they're eating. And it's not true for everyone. And there's no one-size-fit-all for nutrition. So you might be someone trying to lose weight, watching these videos, not knowing that this person has been working out for 3 hours a day. And that they have the time and access and privilege to do that. And you hear this thing where it's like, ‘well, if I can lose weight, you can lose weight’ or ‘If I can do it, you can do it’. And a lot of times these messages are coming from people who are already like, naturally in thin bodies. And then they, they work out and say, ‘this is what I'm doing to maintain my weight’. Meanwhile, they've been thin their whole life and it's like you're not doing anything but posting on social media. You know, there are people who have like worked to lose weight and kept it off. But that is an exception to the rule. Most people gain weight back within about 3 to 5 years. And then a lot of times those that lose weight and keep it off, they, they're still crash dieting every month and they're still engaging in over exercise. And instead of calling it what it is, disordered eating, they call it discipline and they call it healthy living, and I'm like -
Tiffany: They’re like, ‘No, I just made I made healthy lifestyle changes.’ And, you know, these are all veiled words for ‘I crash diet every month.’ And, and it's very dangerous. You know, it's way healthier to stay at one weight range than to fluctuate up and down. And so that's why we all have like the aunties and the cousins that been trying to lose ten pounds for ten years. And now we have people who are taking drugs to lose weight and then not talking about it. And I believe in body autonomy. I think that if someone chooses to do that, please don't get online and claim that they just put hard work in to lose weight. It’s not a judgment to say like, you know, ‘these people are wrong for taking it.’ But I think selling lies is what's wrong. Selling the idea that you can be thin, everyone can be thin, selling the idea that you should pursue thinness by all means necessary. That is what is wrong.
Kimberly: I mean, it is, it is this really old school preaching of thinness as greatness. That is the true issue here, because I'm with you 100%. I'm here. I'm like, if you want to get fillers, you want to get it – Let have. Like, do it as safely as possible. But also, understand that it is your personal journey. It doesn't always need to get posted, and if it does, it's important to be somewhat mindful about the language that you're using, as also just an honoring of your autonomy. It don’t have to be good, bad or otherwise. It's like ‘I went to Dr. Miami.’ I'm like, period.
Tiffany: Right? Like, go do you, like, do it.
Kimberly: Yeah, Like tip your driver. [laughs] I don't know, you know.
Tiffany: Right. And you mentioned this, thinness is greatness. And there's this deep set idea that, you know, being in a larger body just means that you're lazy. And people still haven't deprogrammed that. Because I, you know, I know people of all body sizes that exercise and eat nutritiously, and they eat similarly. And some of them are larger, some of them are smaller. And that's because of body diversity that was literally coded into our DNA. And there's the set point range theory that everyone has a body weight that is right for them and it ranges for, you know, five to 20 pounds for most people. And there are some people who have, who are in smaller bodies that have about a five-pound range and they stay small most of their life. There are people who are, can easily move between weight or like their body changes very adaptably to lifestyle. So actual lifestyle changes, not diets. And then their range is like 15 to 20 pounds. And that's me, so like if I start working out, if I start lifting, my body changes and that's just the way my body works. And then there are people who are in larger bodies who have about a five-pound range and they stay there. And all of that is perfectly okay. And this idea that we're supposed to, you know, all have small bodies or that we're all supposed to say the same, our entire life is just not – is just not correct.
Kimberly: You know, I mean, we just have to move away from conversations about bodily failure.
Tiffany: Mmhm. Because, because it's not a moral thing.
Kimberly: It's not a moral thing. It's just not a moral thing. Which is the perfect pivot for my next question, just even thinking about conversations of healthiness or movement. These are incredibly ableist constructs. And invite us to consistently be at war with our bodies, regardless of the fact that you want it to be bigger or smaller. And we have to, I think, really really challenge that part of ourselves. It's so invisibilized in our daily discourse. ‘That's crazy. The weather is bipolar.’ Like we just have these deep-seated comforts with shame, with judgment. And so I wonder, what does a typical day look like, whether it's for you or when you're working with your base?
Tiffany: Yeah, there really is no typical. The journey looks slightly different for every person. And there are so many places that people can land when it comes to body image. Like some people prefer to be completely body neutral. And some people prefer to be on the side where they're like, ‘I love everything about my body.’ Which, I actually think both of those things are really hard and most people land somewhere in the middle. And I help guide people towards what works for them instead of trying to say like, ‘Oh, you need to do this, you need to do that.’ It's more about, you know, they can choose what works best for them and pursue that with intention and with consistency, and that is how you find healing with your body image.
Kimberly: Mmm. You put out the term body neutrality, which I have to admit I was very ignorant to, and I wonder if you could define that for anybody, who like me, is just getting to learn about this concept.
Tiffany: Absolutely. And I think if you ask different people, you might get slightly different answers. But, the way that I define body neutrality is when you are simply saying I have a body, it gets me through life. I'm not overly positive or overly negative about it. It exists. And I think this is a hard term to say because body positivity for me has some negative connotations because of the way social media took the word and co-opted the movement. But if I define it as having a positive body image, that doesn't necessarily mean that you are overly in love with your body either. So I would define it as ‘body love’ when you, you know, feel overly positive about your body and you're like, ‘I love everything about myself. I love my curves, I love, you know, my legs. I love it all.’ And I think that some people want to be there. And that's great. But most people are in the middle, neither neutral or overly positive, and people are going to land in-between.
Kimberly: One of the things that I really struggle with in these conversations around body confidence on that end of the spectrum, is the social media imprint of body positivity. Can you talk about the shift to social media?
Tiffany: You know, I see a lot of things in the body image community as a whole that are seemingly positive but actually harmful. And I think just the shift to the body-positive movement, to social media, it got co-opted because when you think about where body positivity originated, it was started by fat activists in the sixties who were saying, ‘We need space for marginalized bodies. We need that space.’ And it wasn't just about people saying, like, ‘Just love us because we're fat’. That's like the least of it. It was saying, we need to go in a doctor's office and get appropriate care and not have a doctor just say, ‘Oh, just lose weight’ when they have some, you know, deep medical issue that needs addressed. And, you know, we are finding that people will go to the doctor and not get the same care as a thin person because of their body size. You know, taking the stigma out of being in a fat body. And, now I would say on social media, body positivity got co-opted and turned into kind of like this more toxic positivity where it's just the people saying, ‘Just love yourself.’ And then even going so far as you know, when people are in the marginalized body speaking up against it, they're saying, well, you know, ‘You're being negative’. And it's like, no, we're not. We're just trying to say we need rights.
Kimberly: Right. We struggling.
Tiffany: Exactly like, we are literally struggling, like we can't get appropriate care. We don't have access to all these things that you're claiming that we need for health. Because of that, a lot of people who are actually activists have moved away from the term body positivity and you'll see ‘fat acceptance,’ ‘fat liberation,’ ‘fat positive’ versus like body positivity. And for me, as a– as a creator that is not in a plus-sized body and who is not in some people, you know, this is, whatever some people would call me fat, but you know, I'm not actually in a fat body. I generally like to amplify those voices over mine because I think that having that experience in the world, you're the only one who can really say what it's like. And just like me as a Black woman, like nobody is going to be able to tell me, that's not a Black woman, what it's like to live as a Black woman. It's the same thing. So, I've come to a place where I take social media with a grain of salt because a lot of times you come in contact with these single, one-off posts that give you a snippet of what it's, you know, what body image healing is or what it's like to engage in, you know, having a positive body image. But it takes a lot more deep work than that. So, in my position on social media, I try to encourage people to take this work offline because you're going to need to go deeper than just interacting with a post that came up on your feed.
Kimberly: What advice do you have for people who are on social media or adjacent to social media? Because even some of the Luddites in my life, like they're like, ‘Oh yeah, I saw that Tik Tok’. How do you advise people on how to exist when seeing this content, when being up against this content, when being suddenly surprised? I mean, I hate when I roll through and I'm like, ‘I don't want this’. What advice do you have for those of us who are trying to figure out our own choreographies in these spaces?
Tiffany: There really is no perfect answer to this. You could decide that you're going to disengage with social media altogether, but that's not realistic because we literally are in an age where social media is just, it really is ingrained in our society now. So I think the habits that you create around social media, you can try to train your algorithms. You can actually go in and say, like, ‘I don't want to see diet ads.’ You can try your best to avoid these messages, but no matter how hard you try, like there's always going to be some sneaky thing that pops in. So it's really hard to avoid that type of content. Especially if you like things like, for instance, if you like fashion, it's hard to engage in fashion. I love me some fashion. It's hard to engage in fashion content without also seeing dieting content. If you like, like self-improvement content, because of the connection that society has to thinness being greatness, like you said earlier – I teach people to create a resilience in their mind and to always revert back to truth and the understanding that, just because this is what people are saying doesn't mean that I have to engage in it. And you have to remind yourself of that every single time. And the repetition is important because they're repeating their diet messages. So how are you going to combat that without the repetition? And so, you know, you'll see me saying the same things five different ways, because these people, they need to hear the message over and over and over, because the opposite message has been pushed since we were little kids. So it takes years to deprogram. It takes time.
Kimberly: I just I'm so, so honored to have been a witness...
[MUSIC IN]
Kimberly: …to this information that you're sharing and to be able to follow you on social media to figure out how to teach my algorithm to be kinder to me so that I can be kinder to myself. Thank you so much, Tiffany, for joining us on the pod.
Tiffany: Well, thank you so much for having me. Follow me on Instagram @TiffanyIma, and find some joy in your life. Don't focus so much on the body shame that you're experiencing, because that is how you find the healing, is having these experiences that actually bring you joy and peace.
Kimberly: Period.
Kimberly Drew: It can feel overwhelming coming up against societal pressures about what our bodies “should be” on social media. But, let’s be real, it’s not the only way that women face cultural expectations that don’t serve us. This season we’ll dive into many of them. Face them head on. And, step by step, together, we’ll work towards becoming a bit more….well, Unruly.
I’m Kimberly Drew. For a transcript of the episodes and more resources visit www.shopflamingo.com/unrulypodcast.
Unruly is a podcast created by Anna Wesche and produced by Pineapple Street Studios in collaboration with Flamingo. Our associate producer is Marialexa Kavanaugh. Our lead producer is Natalie Brennan. Our mid-episode profiles are produced by Sophie Bridges. Our managing producer is Kamilah Kashanie. Our editor is Darby Maloney. Our Head of Sound & Engineering is Raj Makhija. Our Senior Audio Engineers are Pedro Alvira and Marina Paiz. This episode was mixed by Pedro Alvira. Our Assistant Audio Engineers are Jade Brooks and Sharon Bardales who also gave scoring assistance. Our Executive Producers are Je-Anne Berry and Aggi Ashagre. Our Music is from Epidemic Sounds.
