WEBVTT

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A few months ago I became famous,

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for stripping down half nude,

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as a fat 40-year-old mom
at a farmer's market downtown Boise.

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(Cheers) (Applause)

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A video of the event quickly went viral,

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showing me in a black bikini,


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blind-folded,

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with a handful of washable markers
from my daughter's art kit,

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and a chalk board sign
at my feet that read:

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"If you've ever struggled
with a self-esteem issue like me,

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and believe all bodies are valuable,
draw a heart on my body."

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It was a feminist art performance piece,

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Just one in a series I've done
over the past seven years,

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as a body-positive activist,

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calling for radical self-acceptance.

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I wrote a blog post about it
after that hour in the market,

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titled: "A stand for self-love."

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And hence forth,

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media, celebrities,
and writers around the world

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glommed on to those words like I did,

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referring to my acts that day
as "The stand for self-love,"

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or,

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as I affectionately refer to it now,

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the shortened version,

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"The Stand."

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This of course wasn't the first time
I stood up for myself or for something,

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I've stood up a lot of times in my life.

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The theologian Mary Daly says,
"Courage requires couraging,"

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much like learning to ski requires, 
well, skiing a lot,

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and piano playing requires practice.

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And just as many times,
like I'm sure you can all relate to,

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I've gotten shoved back into my seat,
knocked down flat on the floor,

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crawled, and slowly pulled myself
to standing again.

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Each time, a bit taller,

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wiser,

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louder,

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braver.

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We all have a story
that can lead to a stand,

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and I'm going to share bits of mine.

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How I've stood up several times
over the course of my life

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paving the way to "The Stand" for me.

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Like that time as a young teenager,
when I wrote a letter to the editor

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of my local newspaper,

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because there was an outcry

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to abolish the only chapter
on sex education

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from our health class curriculum,

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and I got called a slut.

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I curled up in my bedroom and cried.

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But crawled back to school,

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wiser.

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And in my 20s,

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when a boyfriend turned to me one day
and screamed in my face,

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"I'm so tired of hearing
about your feminist garbage,

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will you just shut up?!"

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And I broke up with him, that same day.

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Louder!

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(Whistles) (Applause)

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And in my 30s, when I landed 
the dream job of my career,

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only to fight for fair treatment,
equal pay, appropriate family leave,

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and time to breastfeed my baby,

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and I'm deemed "difficult to work with."

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Self-righteous.

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I lost that job,

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and it knocked me flat on my back.

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But I slowly pulled myself
to standing again.

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Braver.

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I forged my own 
new career path as a writer,

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and continued questioning
archaic ideals of the past,

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and began making my own rules.

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Seven years ago,

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I literally googled the words:
"Why am I fat and happy?"

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Because, I personally knew no one else

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who was not buying 
into our consumerist culture's crap,

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and thought one, "Am I crazy?"

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Or two,

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"If not, there's got to be
someone else out there

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that feels this way too, right?"

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And after scrolling 
through pages and pages of ads

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for the diet industry complex,

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and news articles telling me
I was unhappy because I was fat,

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I finally found what I was looking for.

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Two blogs that forever changed my life 
and catapulted me into ideas,

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about health at every size,
and body positivity,

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and fat acceptance.

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I read every book, and news article,
and scientific study.

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I followed Fat Fierce Feminist
on Facebook and Twitter.

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For three years, I immersed myself
in the education,

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and it started showing up,
more and more,

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in my art,

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in my writing,

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on my Facebook wall,

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and coming out of my mouth.

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Four years ago, I did my first
public performance piece

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on how to be fat, fit,
and fabulous, here in Boise

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and earned my place as a radical feminist,

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with ideas about all bodies
being good bodies,

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and that there is in fact
no wrong way to have a body.

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It went pretty well.

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But my second performance

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did not.

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At an event to an audience
similar to this,

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I proposed a public art
social activism project

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for International No Diet Day.

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And for the first time in my life,

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earned myself a vile internet troll.

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A man who was anonymously
writing hateful things

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about me and my body on Twitter,
while I was on stage.

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The social media bigotry continued
onto my Facebook wall,

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this time by both men and women
I actually knew in real life,

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and coupled with the fact,

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that unbeknownst to all of them,

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I was also suffering
from my first miscarriage.

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At home,

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alone,

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I shut down.

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Both physically and literally I shut down.

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Closing all my social media
accounts for the summer,

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taking a much needed break
to heal my mind,

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my heart,

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and my body at home.

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I had felt so strong, so brave
in my body positivity,

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and it had all failed me.

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Both the body
I had worked so hard to love,

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and the activism
I had felt so strongly about.

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I rose up though.

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Taller.

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And rejoined social media and started
"The Boise Rad Fat Collective."

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A private Facebook group,

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that began with a few like-minded
friends and acquaintances

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who wanted a safe space

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to share body-positive links
and news articles,

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in both a kind and scholarly way.

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It was in this group,

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where I first posted the video of Jae West
and The Liberators International,

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a group of Australians
who stage public social experiments

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geared around
participatory acts of kindness.

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The video featured Jae,

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in her bra and undies
in Piccadilly Circus in London,

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with a sign, blindfold, and markers.

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It was heart-warming.

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And I thought about it hard
with all my body positive feminist theory,

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and socially acceptable
standards of beauty,

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and questioned,

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"How might this experiment
be perceived differently

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if the woman was say,
twice Jae's size,

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like around 226 pounds?

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And twice her age,

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like say 40 and a mom,

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and in a much more
conservative place like Boise, Idaho?

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(Laughter)

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Well,

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I decided to find out,

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and asked photographer Melanie Folwell
to document the stand

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and picked a date about two weeks out

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at the busiest
pedestrian spot in the city,

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the capital city public market at noon.

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To say I was terrified
would be an understatement.

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I woke up that morning and puked.

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I kept the whole thing "hush hush,"

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as I didn't want to stuff the crowd
with friends and body-positive people,

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but wanted to let it organically evolve.

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Even if that meant people
yelled mean things at me,

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the police asked me to leave or worse,
no one shared in my message of self-love.

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Psyching myself up right before

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stepping into the crowd
and taking off my dress,

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I suddenly felt the need to set
parameters for success.

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My goal that day was,

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if five people stop 
and draw a heart on me,

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if I get five people to dig deep
and think hard about their bodies,

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and loving them and hating them

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then it's a success.

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Just five.

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Well,

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as you may know by now,

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I touched a lot more
than five people that day.

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In fact,

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our video has been viewed
over 130 million times.

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(Cheers) (Applause)

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And the messages in my in-box
were in the thousands,

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and from all corners of the world,

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saying, "Thank you for standing
for me, and with courage."

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I wasn't wearing much that day,

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but what I was wearing,
is important to note.

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I decided on a bikini,

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instead of a bra and panties,

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as I thought that might be more palatable
to a conservative city like Boise.

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By stripping off my clothes,

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I was stripping away 
negative body image, and saying,

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"I'm at peace with my body
and I have been for many years,

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and I think you should be too."

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Plus,

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logistically, it gave the participants
more skin to write on.

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(Laughter)

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I wore the blindfold for many reasons.

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To make myself more anonymous,

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so the viewer could look at me,
and see in my body their body,

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and every body.

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It made me vulnerable, obviously.

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And it represented years of mistreatment
of the fat body and media,

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as people who were often depicted
with a black bar across their faces,

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or their heads entirely cut off,
in news articles and magazine stories,

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as if they are nothing more
than a body to be reviled.

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In addition to what I was wearing,
or not wearing,

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you can see other things in the photos
and the video from that day.

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Like sweat, pouring down
my rolls of back-fat,

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cellulite, stretchmarks,

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sagging breasts,
that have nursed three babies,

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and a wonky halter top.

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But I know you can see more than that too.

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You can see the humanity,

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the kindness,

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the acceptance.

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Immediately upon stepping into that crowd,
people began swarming around me,

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and feeling that first marker slip 
from my hands was such a relief,

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such a rush of emotion,
so intense, that I began crying.

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But to my surprise,
so did that first woman,

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who not only drew a heart on my body,

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but I could also feel wrote a word,

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and she spoke to me.

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She said, "This is so brave,
you are so powerful, thank you."

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And this continued, over and over,
by men and women

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this whispering of stories 
of pain and joy, love and suffering.

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And they told me what the crowd
around me was doing.

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"You can't see any of this," they said,

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"but you are touching people 
in ways unimaginable.

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Even if they are stopping to glare at you,

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they are reading your sign and 
taking to heart their own self-loathing."

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One father knelt down near me
with his two young sons,

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read them my sign,

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and said, "This is what
a beautiful woman looks like."

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And I know he was talking about more
than my physical appearance alone.

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This overwhelming sense
that I was, in fact,

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a voice of a revolution 
they'd all been waiting for,

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continued for the next hour 
I stood in that market.

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I only finally decided 
to take off my blindfold,

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when people began telling me there was
no more available skin to write on

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and my markers had run out of ink.

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Everyone there that day knew 
something extraordinary was happening.

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And once I saw Melanie's photographs,
I knew that was a fact.

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People of all ages, sizes, genders,
nationalities, abilities, religions,

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had participated in my project that day,

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and I couldn't wait to share the news
with the rest of Boise.

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Because I thought 
they would be pretty excited too.

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Two days later, 
I wrote a heartfelt blog-post

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accompanied by some
of Melanie's amazing photographs.

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She and I got together one night,

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and sat up until about 2 AM, 
with some wine and the IMovie app,

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and made a video.

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The photos and video 
feature unretouched images,

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keeping true to the spirit
of the project and my body,

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and all its imperfections.

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We dropped it all out 
into the Internet universe on a Thursday,

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and immediately my message
spread like wildfire.

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All our Facebook friends 
were sharing my blog post,

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accompanied with 
more personal status updates

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about their own struggles
with self-esteem, and body image.

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Within 24 hours, the local media 
had picked up the story.

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And within 48 hours,
I got my first phone call from USA Today.

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And from there it was a whirlwind
of international press.

00:13:11.866 --> 00:13:15.641
From NPR Radio to appearing live on CNN,

00:13:16.030 --> 00:13:18.497
from People Magazine to Cosmopolitan.

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From being featured on both 
the homepages of Yahoo and MSN,

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to Kevin Bacon and Alanis Morissette

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both tweeting to me 
and about me on Twitter.

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I set up a Google alert on myself
and it couldn't even keep up

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with the stories that were being written
aboutmy stand for self-love,

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all over the world in languages
I didn't even recognize.

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Spiraling so quickly 
into international fame

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for something so beautiful and raw,

00:13:47.009 --> 00:13:49.962
was staggering,
in the best possible way.

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I've been overwhelmed 
with the tears and support

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that have been shared with me.

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I don't think I have stopped crying
for months now.

00:13:58.648 --> 00:14:01.161
But that's the thing 
about vulnerability, right?

00:14:01.804 --> 00:14:03.109
When you open up,

00:14:03.109 --> 00:14:05.217
and you start to live 
with your full heart,

00:14:05.537 --> 00:14:07.251
there is no going back.

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:09.323 --> 00:14:10.451
My stand for self-love


00:14:10.451 --> 00:14:13.521
hasn't come without its difficult
and dark moments, however.

00:14:14.483 --> 00:14:19.013
The internet is a place where people
feel free to spew unkind untruths.

00:14:20.149 --> 00:14:23.155
I have been accused of being lazy, ugly,

00:14:23.711 --> 00:14:28.837
stupid, uneducated,
a bad mother, and a Californian.

00:14:29.420 --> 00:14:31.598
(Laughter)

00:14:32.035 --> 00:14:34.884
Apparently an insult
some people like to throw around.

00:14:34.939 --> 00:14:36.590
(Laughter)

00:14:37.273 --> 00:14:38.455
I have thick skin,

00:14:38.622 --> 00:14:40.857
and I know that ignorant 
and mean comments

00:14:40.857 --> 00:14:44.354
almost always have more to do 
with the writer's personal problems,

00:14:44.378 --> 00:14:46.354
than the person they are directed at.

00:14:46.815 --> 00:14:48.449
There have been times though,

00:14:48.497 --> 00:14:51.418
when I've wanted to shove
my heart back safely under wraps

00:14:51.466 --> 00:14:54.433
where it used to belong,
because it's scary out here,

00:14:54.918 --> 00:14:58.251
this "wholehearted living,"
as Brene Brown calls it.

00:14:59.055 --> 00:15:03.042
But while I may trip up a bit,
I don't fall much anymore.

00:15:03.485 --> 00:15:05.885
And I leave my heart right out here.

00:15:07.390 --> 00:15:08.723
It's age old wisdom,

00:15:08.794 --> 00:15:12.434
summoning the bravery to stand
back up after falling down,

00:15:12.612 --> 00:15:14.479
from that old cowboy saying,

00:15:14.509 --> 00:15:17.096
"Always get back on the horse 
that threw you,"

00:15:17.438 --> 00:15:20.105
to the contemporary work of Brene Brown.

00:15:20.839 --> 00:15:22.883
I took a stand in August for self-love,

00:15:22.883 --> 00:15:24.362
and I can't think of anything

00:15:24.362 --> 00:15:27.352
more important 
to stand up for than myself.

00:15:27.842 --> 00:15:31.436
Boise proved that day it was ready 
for a body positive revolution,

00:15:31.436 --> 00:15:34.420
and hundreds of thousands 
around the world followed suit.

00:15:35.010 --> 00:15:36.516
"We've been waiting for you,"

00:15:37.095 --> 00:15:40.039
I heard, "but we need
some help standing up".

00:15:41.923 --> 00:15:44.317
Well, I'm honored to stand by your side.

00:15:45.063 --> 00:15:48.309
Take my hand if you need
and I'll pull you up.

00:15:49.778 --> 00:15:52.842
In a society that profits 
from your self doubt,

00:15:52.853 --> 00:15:55.393
liking yourself is a rebellious act.

00:15:55.731 --> 00:15:58.096
The artist and wordsmith 
Caroline Caldwell says,

00:15:58.096 --> 00:16:00.406
and I couldn't agree more,

00:16:00.996 --> 00:16:04.963
"We can't truly love one another
until we love ourselves."

00:16:05.700 --> 00:16:08.500
The personal revolution is the first step.

00:16:09.470 --> 00:16:12.914
When a handful of us
or a few hundred of us,

00:16:13.478 --> 00:16:15.530
or a few millions of us love ourselves,

00:16:15.554 --> 00:16:18.154
that's when the real revolution begins.

00:16:19.488 --> 00:16:21.822
We are often our own biggest bully.

00:16:22.465 --> 00:16:24.853
Our biggest obstacle is our self.

00:16:25.952 --> 00:16:28.679
Life is much too short
to go on hating yourself

00:16:28.679 --> 00:16:30.325
or your body
one minute longer.

00:16:30.865 --> 00:16:32.593
But you have to do the hard work.

00:16:33.175 --> 00:16:36.777
You have to dig deep, and learn,
and flail, and educate yourself,

00:16:36.777 --> 00:16:38.501
and fall down and get back up.

00:16:39.802 --> 00:16:42.202
It's not easy, but it's so worth it.

00:16:43.850 --> 00:16:46.228
My story shows that people are good,

00:16:46.260 --> 00:16:50.392
and kind, and ready,
and willing to engage in new ideas.

00:16:51.083 --> 00:16:52.350
What is your story?

00:16:53.361 --> 00:16:54.828
What do you stand for?

00:16:56.266 --> 00:16:57.466
Write that letter.

00:16:58.273 --> 00:17:00.154
Leave that toxic job.

00:17:00.901 --> 00:17:04.968
Quit that unhealthy relationship,
strip off that self-doubt.

00:17:05.885 --> 00:17:07.885
Be rebellious and take a risk.

00:17:08.063 --> 00:17:09.213
Stand up.

00:17:10.944 --> 00:17:12.182
Thank you.

00:17:12.222 --> 00:17:14.920
(Cheers) (Applause)