A Podcast Body-Shamed Feminist Author Roxane Gay, & Proved Her Point

By Stephen Gossett in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 14, 2017 10:14PM

Roxane Gay, photo via her Facebook page.

Roxane Gay won't be derailed by anyone's body-shaming bigotry.

The justly celebrated, Indiana-based feminist writer responded on Tuesday to an awful bout of fat-phobia that was recently directed at her—and which prompted a wave of ire.

The offending language, if you're not familiar, actually came from the description of a podcast episode, a podcast that was hosting Gay. “Will she fit into the office lift?” read the episode description of No Filter, a show hosted by Australian website called Mamamia. “How many steps will she have to take to get to the interview?”

For an author who's new book, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, and past work in part considers the dehumanizing effects of that very kind of nastiness, it pretty much proves Gay's point.

Even as she lamented that the focus had partially shifted away from her book (“Really? This is the story?”) and toward the thoughtless cruelty of one particular podcast, Gay also told the New York Times on Tuesday that the episode description was proof positive of just the kind of nasty body-shaming that she faces and unpacks in the book:

“It is helpful, in that I think people get to see, in real time, what fat-phobia looks like and just how careless people can be in considering that fat people deserve dignity. So I suppose it's a useful example of why I wrote the book."

Gay fired back on Twitter on Monday, also.

Mia Freedman, the creative director of Mamamia, in a now-deleted article claimed the requests were sent by Gay's publisher, according to the Guardian. "Her size is imposing and also a logistical nightmare for her," she wrote. "The requirements back and forth with her publishers who had brought her out to Australia to promote her books were extremely detailed... I would normally never breach the confidence of what goes on behind the scenes of an interview but in this case … it’s a fundamental part of the story.

“You see, Roxane Gay is … I’m searching for the right word to use here. I don’t want to say fat so I’m going to use the official medical term: super morbidly obese.” Mamamia later issued an apology in a statement.

Mamamia said in its apology that Gay had mentioned during the interview how it can be stressful to worry about whether a space will accommodate her. Gay called BS on that, as well, telling the Times, “I’ve been to Australia before. She’s actually seen me before. She knows that I’m very capable of entering an elevator, so things like that are just weird and humiliating.”

Gay noted the humiliating treatment back in May, when the podcast was recorded, also.

OK, now that that's behind us, do go read Hunger.