The Cyclical Phenomenon of the Shrinking Woman

Welcome to episode 12, season 5 of the Woman Uncaged podcast! Heroin chic did not come back by accident, and neither did the sudden cultural obsession with getting smaller. In this week's episode, we follow that thread until it reveals something darker: diet culture and body image pressure can work like a leash, keeping women hungry, insecure, and busy policing themselves while real power moves in the background.

We talk candidly about how restrictive beauty standards spread, from celebrity culture to influencer feeds, and why that speed matters for girls who are still forming their sense of self. Linda brings in art history that shows how “good women” were once idealized as physically weak and slumped, while strength was treated as a threat, and we connect that legacy to today’s mix of weight loss drugs, cosmetic procedures, anti-aging demands, and the nonstop commentary on what women eat and how they look.

We also get personal. We share how eating disorders can be tangled up with control in chaotic times, why fatphobia keeps rising even when people have more exposure to different bodies, and how “I’m just worried about your health” often masks prejudice rather than care. Then we offer a grounded way forward that doesn’t rely on more rules or more restriction: start by naming this as a cultural problem, build from what’s already working, and ask what is nourishing, pleasurable, and true in your body.

If you’ve felt trapped by diet culture, exhausted by body comparison, or angry about the way women’s rights and women’s bodies get policed at the same time, this one is for you. Subscribe, share this with a friend, leave a review, and tell us: what helps you ask “How does this feel to me?” more often than “How does this look?”

Resources:

Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia by Kate Manne

Life Coach & Writer Susan Hyatt 

Transcript

Warm Welcome And Friendship

Linda 0:02

Hello, and welcome to episode 12, season 5 of the Woman Uncaged Podcast. I am Linda Katz, and I'm here with my beloved and dear friend, Miss Laura Gates Lupton, who it is just always such a pleasure to come together on Fridays and talk about sometimes the our big dreams, the world that we wish to create, what that looks like, and occasionally, like today, the things that we find extremely disturbing. And Laura, there's just, I mean, I've said this before, but I just adore you. And Laura is just this person with such a whip smart intellect that matches with a huge heart, a kind soul, somebody who is truly caring and also really smart, really strategic in her thinking, can do the big things in life and also down to kind of the nitty-gritty practical things. And I think that's one of the factors that makes Laura such an amazing coach for women is that you are able to hold all of these different aspects really beautifully and make space for them for all of the women in your life, including your clients and also me as your friend. And it's just really lovely and it makes who you are and the work that you do in the world so impactful. And I just couldn't be more excited to be here with you today. And if you want to follow Laura, make sure you follow the Good With Money Substack. Which to soon get to add a new feature too, but we won't tell you about that yet. Related to this very podcast. Thank you so much, Linda. That was so sweet. I'm like, yeah, you know, I'm like, what can I say now?

SPEAKER_00 1:55

It's always hard going second. You're like, Ditto.

Linda 1:59

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You know, if you've been around here at all for any length of time, you know that Linda is one of my best friends, and for good reason, because she is everything you hear here on the podcast. She's articulate, she's funny, she's smart, she's so wise. Like, and and to me, there's a difference between smart and wise. Like, there's a depth of her wisdom that I know when I first met you, Linda, and you were in your 30s, I was like, who is this person? She is you're just so much more wise than her age would suggest she should be. Um, and that's just grown and deepened over time, and that's part of the joy of being with you, but you also hold things lightly, which I really appreciate. And we can take things serious and we can cry together, which we do a lot, but we also laugh together a lot. And you know, it's like you're one of those people, like I you're one of the few people actually that I want to go through these very difficult times with because of your orientation to them, which is both with wisdom and caring and some degree of optimism, but also a healthy dose of skepticism.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

And it's like, oh, I'll just tell that to my husband.

Linda 3:11

Eric and I can have a chat later. Um, but it's true because there's so many things that happen in a day, and I'm so grateful we can vox because it Linda helps me make sense of things. Sometimes just having her listening ear helps me make sense of things, and also because she shares her wisdom when I'm struggling is just super helpful. And you know, she's not coaching right now, so you can't really access that other than here on this podcast, unless you check out her Substack, which is fabulous, which is called Wild Woman in the Burbs. She just wrote a great one. I just read it uh yesterday and really loved it. It was very like it's like Linda, it had a lot of depth to it, it was very articulate, it was just beautiful. Um, yeah, and then you know, there's her book, which I also highly recommend, which is called Homecoming. It's on Amazon. It tells Linda's story, it talks about her point of view and her work and the work she does with clients like me. I was lucky enough to be one of her clients. All the great ways to be in touch with the wonderful and beautiful, and then the cats who I feel lucky to be here with right now.

Thinness As Political Control

SPEAKER_00 4:15

Oh, thank you so much. I feel all warm and gooe inside, which is a really lovely starting feeling for our topic today. Let's carry that through. I was like, oh, I'm optimistic. Oh, I'd like to hear that. Okay. So Laura. Enough optimism. Okay, totally. That's true. That's true.

Linda 4:36

You have to have some dose of optimism in even just to be critical of the way things are, because otherwise we you're trying to change shit.

unknown 4:43

Yeah.

Art History And The “Good Woman”

Eating Disorders And Peer Pressure

Linda 4:44

So what are we talking about today? Changing. Oh, God, if only. Um, so today's topic was inspired by an email that I got earlier this week from my former mentor, Susan Hyatt, um, about I would like to say it's a new thing, but that's part of what's so depressing about it, is not new at all. And it's it's about the way in which our culture depresses women. And I mean depress as in the physical action of depression, um, by stripping them of their rights on one hand, and also having us be preoccupied with our size on the other hand. And I love the way Susan put it. She talks about the how the political movement has stripped women of their rights and is engineering a culture that keeps women too hungry, too insecure, and too consumed with size of their of the size with their thighs to do anything about that political situation. Oh, and it pisses me off. So I sent it to Linda to read. Um, and then we decided we would talk about it today because I'm I'm seeing this everywhere that this rise in like a reassertion, really, because it's never gone away. But there are times when it becomes more present. This thing about being super thin. The return we had, you know, like the body positivity movement, which felt like it was gaining ground, and then kind of the return of heroin chic that we've seen from the, you know, from my when I was growing up, when I was a young woman and we had the the Kate Mosses of the world who really kind of embodied that wafish um body, body structure or body image, if you will. And yeah, we're just seeing that really, I think, um come to the fore. And I don't think it's a coincidence. I don't think that it's a coincidence based upon what is happening in our country and in the world politically and societally, that it is coming into this resurgence now of very also clearly defining what an ideal woman is meant to be. And part of that is very much focused on what we are supposed to look like, how we're supposed to control and tame our bodies. Um and it is very much, you know, steeped in this kind of patriarchal racist shit. Oh, yeah, it absolutely is. And part of me feels a little bit like, you know what, we're getting too powerful, they don't like it. So they're throwing out everything they can at this problem right now with trying to strip our rights, you know, charging women who have miscarriages with murder, you know, which is just insane, absolutely insane. And, you know, all the and all that kind of thing. And then at the same time, this movement toward the ultra-thinness, they're scared of us. They're scared of us. So that's so I keep that in mind because that helps me feel a little better about the situation, that it's because we're so powerful that this is their reaction to that. Yeah. But on the other hand, it makes me so sad for the girls who are gonna absorb this message. And just before we got into record, Linda had a great point about well, maybe you should just say it about how in history how the message was spread versus how it is now. Yeah. So this was something that when we were talking about this before, um, I have this book by Bram, or I don't know how to pronounce his last name. It's like Dykstra, D-E-I-J-K-S-T-R-A. It's called Naked, the Nude in America. So you may know I was a fine arts major. I've done a lot, you know, I love life drawing and painting from life. And she's a beautiful painter. Oh, thank you all. Um, and I loved painting the female nude. And so I got I was got this book, I don't even know, 15 plus years ago, probably, that talks about the nude in America. And he goes into it's, you know, this kind of big ass coffee table book with images, but he goes into how the depiction of the nude has shifted in America over time and what that has, how that has reflected the culture at large, and also to Laura's point, disseminated the culture at large. So I'm gonna read just a quick paragraph from this book about um from chapter three called The New Woman, Fading Flower or Scourge of Nature. I know. Laura was like, oh God, because I was reading this. So it said the beginning of chapter three said, the art world of the late 19th century was obsessed with images of women who could barely keep themselves upright. They could be found lying about in the most awkward positions, their backs thrown out, their limbs akimbo. If they were still caught sitting up, they were usually slumped forward or backward as if their bodies were devoid of any musculature. These were the quote-unquote good women. The bad ones were those who still showed some life. In diametrical opposition to the image of the supermuscular male, proof of female virtue was equated with physical incompetence, vice with strength. Hence, for every slumping or supine woman, there was one whose health and beauty radiated enough sexual attraction to strike fear into the masculine mind. And I think that that's what this is about, this is what has been coming up for me when you know we see the rise of, you know, a lot of these like weight loss drugs, which I'm not saying do or don't have a place, right? If if it's for health reasons or whatnot. Um, but we're seeing women just shrinking, shrinking, shrinking, shrinking. And it reminds me of this, and it was so interesting too, that it was coinciding almost identically as it is now with the rise of this Superman ideal when it comes to the male body. Like this, you know, the whole drinking milk with our shirts off in the hot tub situation that we have going on here. Like, I'm a tough guy and I eat lots of meat and I drink whole milk, and like, you know, that whole aesthetic. But what we were talking about too was, you know, in the 1800s, the way that these beauty standards were disseminated was a lot slower, and you know, they were kind of more confined to pockets of kind of bougie people who had access to the art world, versus now I feel like they are proliferating so rapidly and across the entire society through celebrity culture, through influencer culture, through social media, the internet. Um, I think it's just gonna spread so much more quickly and thus powerfully if we unconsciously engage with it, which I recognize that when you're young, you don't have that level of awareness oftentimes to even realize that you're doing. Yeah, well, and if everybody around you is doing it too, there's the peer pressure to, you know, to look the same. But um, when I was in school, it was definitely thinness was in, like, you know, it's a lot of pressure, a lot of pressure to not eat, a lot of pressure to be thin. Yeah. I had an I had an eating disorder in high school, and I remember being on drill team and somebody saying, like, oh my god, you have such great abs. I legitimately was a skeleton. I had no fat. I had lost my period. Um, and I think that there's this is something that I find like from my own perspective also, because obviously, like I have some wounding around that and like body image, especially from that time in my life. And so I try to or want to tread lightly here as well, because I'm somebody who is naturally thin. And so there oftentimes will be, I've had many times in my life people come up and being like, oh my God, you need to eat something. Oh my God, you're not eating enough, you know? And so there can be that backlash too in the other direction. Um, and I want to be cognizant of that because we all do have different body types. And I think that that was the idea behind the body positivity movement, or even like the body neutrality movement that kind of coincided with it, is that it's not about this one shape and structure, whether that be, you know, the tiny waist and the big boobs and like or the complete rail with like no waist and no boobs, you know, or whatever it, whatever the flavor du jour is that we're supposed to be trying to emulate. Which is crazy. It doesn't matter. It's like it's just this um, it's a mechanism, I think, of controlling women by having us control and police ourselves. Yes. Well, when you're starving, which if you're very thin, you you often are. Um, not you know, not always, sometimes there's a naturally occurring thinness for sure. But if you're what if you're caught up in the diet culture, then a lot of women are hungry, yeah, um, all the time. And you're not able to really access your power. I mean, you're you're consumed literally with thinking about your body and whether if you're moving it enough, if you're overfeeding it, if you're all the things, right? All the things. Like, do I look okay? Do maybe I should buy new clothes, maybe I should do this, maybe I should do that. It's it becomes a part-time job, if not more. And so you're not thinking necessarily about like, oh wow, they're really taking our rights away. Or gee, what about those Epstein files? Like whatever happened with that, yeah. Yeah, it's like, how come how come I haven't learned all the who all the perpetrators are? Like how come everything's redacted? Like, how come, you know, all the no, you're there are just no room for these questions, or even the energy, because it does take a lot of energy to deal with this stuff, to put forth some kind of sustained resistance. Yeah. Yep. Which is why it doesn't feel like it's a coincidence, like we were saying at the beginning. Yeah, it's like you keep if if women are focused, if we're taught to just look inward and not even in a good way, like, but just kind of obsess about our appearance or how we're doing or how we can be seen as more good women, then we're not looking out at dismantling the systems and of oppression that exist. And yeah, we don't have the energy. If you're not feeding yourself, if you're not sleeping enough, nourishing yourself, like how the fuck are you supposed to stand up, you know? Right. And I also wonder, you know, with this control piece, because obviously it's a mechanism of oppressive control from the outside, but I also wonder if there can be a certain degree of in a time where things feel so uncertain. And of course, life is always uncertain, but there are times when it feels more so. That there can also be, like, I mean, an eating disorder and any kind is oftentimes associated with the need to exercise some kind of control. And so we can have control over what we eat, how we shape our body, how we move, these kind of obsessive things in a world that feels increasingly chaotic. And so I also wonder if we pile that in there, there's so many forces from both within and from externally that coincide to make these movements more prevalent and these tendencies more prevalent. Absolutely. I totally agree. I did not have an eating disorder in high school, but I was really close. Like I was heading down the anorexic path. Um, and lucky for me, somebody else I knew became fully anorexic, and I saw what happened to her and that woke me up. Like I realized, oh, I'm doing the exact same thing. And thankfully it didn't happen. But part of it for me was absolutely, I was trying to fit in with a thin aesthetic for sure, but it was also about control because things were pretty out of control in the rest of my life. And it was one thing I did have some say in. And it also, frankly, drove my mother crazy. So it was one way two birds with one stone. It was one way that I could assert some power in a situation in which I felt like I didn't have much. Isn't that the fuckery, right? Just what you exactly what you said there. It was some way to assert some power in a situation where it didn't feel like I had much. And I think that that can be part of it too, is that it's the it is this total mind fuck where instead of actually asserting our power and asserting our agency, we do it in these kind of in inverted and um self-destructive ways. Self-punishing, yeah. Self-punishing, that are then also being given like the gold star by society, like doing great, yay. Kind of. I mean, yes. I mean, in some ways, like among peers, but I had the same situation you did where people were constantly commenting about like you're too thin, you're too thin, you're too thin. No, I do find it super annoying how often people comment on how women look. Yes. Or in general. Uh-huh. In general, yep. And that that people feel free to share their opinions about what you should and shouldn't be doing, you know. You should cut your hair, you should wear it long, you should smile, you should eat more, you should eat less, you should exercise. If you walked, if you did this, if you did that. I think you should shut your face.

unknown 18:33

Yes.

Linda 18:36

Yes. Or even when talking about somebody, so frequently we'll mention how they look. And I just it drives me insane. I I've I've been trying to to not do that myself. Sometimes I'll sometimes comp compliment somebody on something they're wearing, or if they get a new haircut, or something like that. But I try very hard to not just compliment women on how they look.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

Yeah.

Why Fatphobia Keeps Rising

Linda 18:59

Because it's so distressing to me that that is seen as the number one most important thing is how we look, not how we feel, not what we're contributing, not what we're dealing with in life, not what we're supporting, none of our talents. Just how how we look. Yeah. And I think that makes it also really, again, it's it makes it a little bit more difficult and we tread lightly when criticizing these systems, right? Because obviously part of it is we're looking at how women look. Like we are looking at the incredibly shrinking woman. We're looking at the rise of cosmetic procedures, botox, fillers, anti-aging, more and more invasive ways that women are shifting and shaping their bodies to adhere to some kind of unrealistic beauty standard. And it, I think it's so it's like holding both of those things. It was kind of like when we spoke about Martha Stewart on the cover of uh Supports Illustrated, right? It's this how do we not perpetuate this culture of commenting on women's appearances, but at the same time, how do we not ignore some of these large forces and you know, like that are are shaping culture and that women are expected to adhere to? It's it makes it really tricky. It is it is it is really tricky. I think part of it for each of us individually, but also as a collective, when we talk to each other, it's about making it conscious. Like, you know, what we're actually doing and what we're deciding about how we want to be in these bodies of ours, making it conscious because so much of it is directed to us and you know, held up as the standard. And at the same time that we have this rise in the desire for thinness, like extreme thinness, we also have a rise in fat phobia. I've been reading this book, I'm I'm I don't even know how far in I am, maybe a third of the way in, called Unshrinking by Kate Mann. And it's about it's called Unshrinking, How to Face Fat Phobia. And one of the things that she points out in there is that unlike other prejudices, which have except for probably transgender people, but unlike other prejudice prejudices where you have, when you get to know somebody who's of one of those groups, so if you get to know more black people, if you get to know more brown people, if you get to know more lesbians, your bias tends to shift. And so it tends to decrease. And in most cases, when they look at prejudice and the culture, they see a decrease across various things, except for in body size. Body size of infatphobia has risen, it's gotten worse over time, not less. And it doesn't seem to matter how many large people. You know, proximity does not decrease prejudice or implicit bias.

unknown 22:06

Wow.

Linda 22:07

Does she state why, like why they think that is, or why does the author think that to be the case? Or have you gotten that far yet? I haven't gotten that far. There's some talk about it in there. I mean, and it's it's from all angles too. I mean, the the medical stuff that she talks about, the studies that that have really well-done studies that have shown that there isn't the correlation we often think of between larger sizes and lack of health. It's it, you know, that the those studies have just been blown apart by people with prejudice. It's like not anything factual, just like uh, you know, that's uh that's an irresponsible study. That's horrible. You can't, you shouldn't, you know, that kind of thing. We have all these ideas of what we think about larger bodies that aren't necessarily true. So some of our prejudice we say is, oh, it's I just worry about their health. Right. But that's it's not factual that people who are larger are automatically unhealthy. There is no correlation necessarily. Right. And people would people say the same thing, you know, like I have friends who are very thin who because they're they've they have very fast metabolism, they can eat all kinds of things and not gain weight, but end up with high cholesterol or you know, other health issues because it, but it just doesn't show on the outside. Like, are but do we say the same thing, like, oh, I'm so concerned about their health? Probably not, right? Not usually no, even if we see, you know, it's like, oh, well, if she can get away with eating, whatever must be nice, you know, kind of a thing. Right. No, and when you get older too, it's not as healthy to be so thin, particularly for like falls and things like that. And you know, I've had to talk to my mom about this because she's always been weight-obsessed, and she's a tiny person, she's four foot eleven, and she needs to have a little padding on her body. And you know, she looks perfectly great the way she is, but she's always been weight-obsessed. And I, you know, I've told her like you're actually a little bit healthier at your age, having a little bit more weight. And it's hard for her to accept.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

Yeah.

Diet Culture Myths And Capitalism

Linda 24:06

There's yeah, it's so, it's so tricky. There's so many, again, there's so many different forces, but I think now I have to get that book because that's really disheartening to read. And it's also, yeah, it makes you wonder like what are what are those underlying biases that are so hard to dismantle. The part I just started. Yeah, and the part I just started reading that I haven't gotten very far in, but it's fascinating, is a real what do I want to say, a really close look at diet culture and about diets themselves. These studies that have been done that have shown that they're not effective over the long run. And in fact, losing a lot of weight and gaining it back and losing it and gaining it back is actually way more dangerous for your body than having the weight in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 24:52

Yeah.

Linda 24:53

And just the way she's like sort of tearing that apart is fascinating to me because they were fed, I mean, how many different diets? How many, if you walk into Barnes and Noble and go to the quote unquote health section, yeah, how many books are about diets and about ways to eat? And like, and some of them are flat out bizarre, but they sell because we're always looking for another possibility. Oh, well, this one didn't work, I'll try this one. This one didn't, and instead of questioning, like, wait, why aren't these working? Yeah, yeah. Maybe maybe they're not working because our bodies aren't meant to do that. Right. And maybe it's I I feel like we've just made so many things really weird in our culture, you know, things that are just very natural, like eating. You know, it's become this fraught exercise of measuring our self-discipline or our level of goodness or badness, or all of these things, which very I maybe happens slightly for men, but I think less so by a huge degree, yeah, than it does for women. Um, I think there is some of that now because of the rise of kind of the same like the super masculine, where you know, I think I think we spoke about it on a recent podcast, you know, they're seeing like for the first time in many years, like meat consumption and red meat consumption has gone up, and is particularly because of men and these like these these messages around real men eat meat, you know, like that that's what you need, a lot of protein. And I was just watching a thing with uh Dan Butner who did the blue zone thing, and he was like, Oh, well, based on our studies, you actually don't need as much protein. Like people who eat less protein tend to live longer. It's actually that good for your kidneys, but you know, it's like, and most Americans we're not for the most part, most of us. This isn't true for everybody, but most of us are not starving. Most of us have plenty of resources when it comes to food. And if you have enough resources, need a varied enough diet, you're automatically getting enough protein. That's even true for vegan people. Yeah, you know, it's like people used to say to me, like, oh, you're pregnant? Like, how can you do that on a vegetarian diet? Like, how can you I produce three very healthy babies, you know? And my third one was eight pounds, three ounces three weeks early. So yeah. It's like there was no problem there. But we have all these preconceived ideas. We think that, you know, you've got more protein. Oh my gosh, you need the protein. What how are you getting proteins? Everybody asks me, dry. Oh my god. I mean, there's such a that is such a craze now, especially if you're like paramenopausal or menopausal. It's like, oh, you are you're not getting enough protein. And I'm like, how the fucker is anybody supposed to eat this much protein?

SPEAKER_00 27:44

Like, that is way too much. But I feel like it's yeah, it does. Yes.

Linda 27:50

Yes, it's this constant thing. It's what you know, what we were talking about in a recent podcast around, you know, there's always capitalism keeps churning, right? It keeps churning out solutions sometimes to problems that we don't even have. But it's like, oh, are you not doing it this way? Oh, then you're doing it wrong. You need to buy more of this or you need to be doing this. There's always something more that we're taught that we should be doing, which again, I think, is related to exactly what we're talking about now. It keeps women focused, whether it's from a health perspective, a looks perspective, any of it. It's like it keeps us just focused on this like constant uh wheel of needing more approval and improvement, self-improvement, even that word now I cannot stand. Yeah, I can't either. Like the self-improvement, the self-help section. It's like it keeps us from again questioning and looking out at the systems and beginning to instead of trying to improve ourselves, being like, well, what if we improved that? What if we improved the systems and the culture and the nature and all the things that we lived within? What might be possible then? But I mean, that of course that's very dangerous to the status quo. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, what would this world be like if women weren't obsessed at all with how they look, you know, paid an the same amount of attention as men do? A lot of men don't even wash their faces, but whatever. You know, it's like, what if we got up in the morning, threw on clothes that felt good to us, and went out the door to work on projects that had deep meaning and hey, maybe even paid us well, you know, and made a difference in this world?

unknown 29:38

Yep.

Linda 29:38

Like, what would that look like? What if we came home at the end of the day satisfied with the meaningful day that we had, and we also fueled ourselves well during the course of it? What would that look like? Yeah, with like food that brought us pleasure and we had great conversations while we were eating it. We weren't thinking about, oh, where is this gonna stick on my body, or does it have to what does this person sitting across from me think about what because I'm eating this? Oh my god. I yeah, that I feel like that I have definitely have because again, like we were saying, it's there's all these different ways where we are we also we police that, and that is like women's consumption or hunger is policed in so many different ways, and you know it's yeah, yeah. I used to I had to tell my ex-husband, I don't know how many times, like, stop commenting on how much I eat. Yeah, like don't like and then it would only be things like he'd walk in the kitchen, oh you're eating, oh you're eating, or he'd say, Wow, that's a lot of food. Like, but he would eat one meal a day, and it would be a huge one at the end of the day, because he'd be too busy all day, which is also really unhealthy. Yeah, but would always try to comment, and my mom does that sometimes too. Oh, wow, that's a lot of food. Wow, you eat a lot, don't you? Like, I eat three meals a day, okay? I eat what I need for my body to feel full and healthy and happy. Yeah, and I'm the only member of my family who's not on any prescription medication either. So snaps.

SPEAKER_00 31:07

Yeah, you're like, maybe you should comment elsewhere if you're concerned.

Rebuilding Embodiment Through Nourishment

Linda 31:12

I never hear a comment on my brothers, like, wow, he's eating a lot. Look at that. I wonder if he should be eating that much. You might want to think twice about that. Yeah, it's true though. It is, it's just, and it I think it's so frustrating and infuriating. And I what would you say? I know we're coming up towards the the end of our time today, but for what would you offer as like if somebody came to you as a client and said, you know, like I feel all of this like pressure, I don't know how to just be in my body. What would you offer to them? Like, what would be the first entry point? Because yeah. Well, the first thing I always share when something like that comes up is I want to make it really clear it's not a personal problem. It feels like a personal problem, but it it's not. It's one that is absolutely put on women by this culture that we're in. And so it's just to offer that that you know, let's certainly take a look at this, let's figure out what works for you, but just know that it's not a you problem, right? So that's part of it. And then just spend some time figuring out like what would feel what feels good to her, like where is their pleasure in her life? Where is she already feeling some embodiment? Where, you know, where are the pieces that are already working okay that feel good to her? And focus more on those. Like what what you know, like what is I don't like to always just look at problems. I like to look at what's working. But that feels even just I have to stop you right there for a second, because even that feels so countercultural, right? Because right there, what you're doing is breaking the cycle of fixing problems and self-improvement. Yeah. By focusing on let's talk about what's already working. Yeah. So I just I love that because it's such a different frame. It's like, let's look at where you're already doing this. Yeah, let's look at where things are feeling good. Okay, keep going. I was just like, oh, I'll say one more thing because I know we are getting up to the other time. And I'd love to hear your answer to this question too. But um, I also would then like to talk about what is nourishing to her. And I'm use that word not just to try to talk about food, but just in general. So, you know, what can we bring in that's more nourishing? What can we add to what's already working? To, you know, and and usually people know, usually they have some ideas of like what feels good to them and what what would would be fueling, like what fuels you? Those are the kinds of words I like to use. And I don't just mean food, yeah, but includes food. I love that. I love that too because what uh again, I think it's just a very feminist frame in that not only are you looking for the places where things are working, I love the question around like what is nourishing to you. Like I would add, like what is delightful to you, like what delights you, you know, like those, like that deep nourishment and also that like wondrous delight, you know, like oh, an ice cream, or oh, like putting my feet in cold water on a warm day can be delightful. But I also love what you said around what can we bring in? What can we supplement? Because I think this is something that we also do that comes from this culture of female restriction and control, is that what we often hear is what do you need to stop doing? Yes, what do you need to let go of? What do you need to remove? What do you need to take out? Right. That is the culture of restriction that we just continue to perpetuate. And by adding, looking at it from like, oh, what do you want to bring? What do you want more of? What do you want to bring more into your life? How do you want to supplement? Is such it's the opposite of that. It is this more pleasure-based, body-based, not this culture of restriction. It's like whatever the antithesis of that would be. Well, that's on purpose. Yeah, I love that. Well, even if somebody's like, I want to be eating more healthy, I never say, like, and that's not my area of expertise, but sometimes people do talk to me about these things. I never say, well, cut this out or this out or this out. Instead, I say, Well, how can you add more vegetables to your dinner? Like, what vegetables do you already like? Can you have more of those? Can you, you know, put your dinner on a bed of greens or something? You know, like how what can you? And it's adding in, it's not taking out.

SPEAKER_00 35:49

Yeah.

Linda 35:50

Because to me, that makes more sense. It's like it also helps your body adjust more easily.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

Yeah.

A Revolutionary Question To Close

Linda 35:55

You're changing your diet. And as somebody who's been vegetarian and vegan, I know how that works. And I just think it's it makes sense to cut up some raw carrots to have with your dinner, whatever it is that you like, add it in instead of taking stuff out. Yeah, I love that. I love that. I know we're coming up here at the end of the day. I know, and I wanted to hear your answer to that question. I mean, I think you really covered it. It's there's those are such beautiful starting points. I think that, you know, just tuning into our bodies, like just the question of how are you feeling? Like, what do you sense in your body? We're such a heady culture that even going pee, we can forget that like, like we just don't get the signal that we need to pee because we're engrossed in something else. Or, you know, so it's like making it conscious, taking that time to drop in and be like, well, what do I sense in my body first? Like, what can I feel? What can I sense, if anything? And then be like, oh, what would feel really good to me right now? And then doing that or offering yourself a taste of that in a small way, right? Like, whether that's like, oh, I really would love, like, I've been sitting in front of the computer, I need to go take some breaths of fresh air, I need to like stretch out and like raise my arms up and take up more space. Whatever it is, those small moments of just one remembering that we have a body, listening to its signals, and what and honoring, and honoring them, yes, and they it feels so small, but it's really quite monumental. Yeah, it's also just if you're starting, it's a great start too. Well, I think we should end. I will not quote this right because I don't have it in front of me, but in Linda's book, she has a great line about how for a woman to ask herself, how does this feel to me, instead of how does this look to everyone else, is a revolutionary act. And I and that's it's not the direct quote, but it's basically what you say. And it's one of one of the lines that leapt out of me the first time I read your book and every time I've read it after, because it's so true. And I think that's what we're talking about today. Yeah, one of the tenets of KOIA. That's why I love that practice. That's right. I forgot that it was from KOI. Yeah, just I just I think the first time I saw it was in your book, and I was like, yes, I had to stop and think of it. I was like, I can't, I couldn't even keep reading.

SPEAKER_00 38:21

I had to get walk around for a few minutes. Yeah, yeah. It's it's it really is sadly revolutionary. Oh my gosh. Well, we could continue for a while on this topic. We could. We will be back around. We'll it'll come, I'm sure it will be. All right, dear listeners. Until next time.