Fancy Meeting You Here: The Podcast

A print version of this essay is available here.

Credits

Produced and Engineered by Lisa Weaklim

Written by Kelly Rafferty

Music by Mutt

Notes

Ragen ChastainRagen writes Weight and Healthcare, a research-packed newsletter “examining weight science, weight stigma, and what evidence, ethics, and lived experience teach us about best healthcare and public health practices for higher weight people.” Regan has been doing this for a long time and is a national treasure. She has covered the science and marketing of weight loss drugs extensively. Start with Ragen’s work if you want to know what the drugs are and what the research actually says. Here are some highlights:

Virgie Tovar The title of this essay is a play on Virgie Tovar’s You Have the Right to Remain Fat. She’s another longtime fat activist, writer, and trusted resource with a newsletter here on Substack. This smart, heartfelt piece is behind a paywall and well worth the subscription:

Chrissy King’s The Liberation CollectiveChrissy has created The Liberation Collective, a space here on Substack for “body liberation, personal liberation, and collective liberation.” The title of this first piece is the perfect mantra for this moment:

This second piece is a round up of excellent books by Black women that will help us stand up to this moment while also tending to our relationship with our bodies and nourishment:

Frankie de la Cretaz Frankie’s newsletter, Out of Your League, covers the intersection of queer sports and pop culture. It’s smart, funny, and consistently ahead of the curve. I’ve cited Frankie’s work here before, and they’ve hit it out of the park, yet again, with this coverage of the way ads for weight loss drugs are showing up in women’s sports:

Tell me what permission means to you! What does it do or not do for you? Tell me about a time when permission changed you. Tell me about other counter-programming you’re finding helpful as we weather this particularly hateful, anti-fat time. I want to know.

Credits

Produced and Engineered by Lisa Weaklim

Written by Kelly Rafferty

Music by Mutt

Links

Tressie McMillan Cottom

Blonde NYT Opinion Piece

Here’s the original video:

Here’s one of her responses to commenters:

This duet is hilarious:

Finally, here’s a little wrap-up video she made at the end of a day and a half of talking about blonde:

Cameron Esposito

Cameron on IGThe Autostraddle PieceThe Just For Laughs set:

The Politics of Personal Aesthetics

Tressie McMillan Cottom on WickedPlus writing from Corinne Fay and Jessica DeFino:

Salons I Love

Marmalade Salon in Berkeley

Goldfinch Salon in Oakland

Salon 01 in Carmel, Indiana

Welcome to season two of Fancy Meeting You Here!

I’m Kelly Rafferty, a writer and an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning documentary producer based in Alameda, CA, a little island between Oakland and San Francisco. In this newsletter, I send you personal essays in text and audio from the land of queer embodiment. If you listen to the audio version of Fancy Meeting You Here, you’ll get to know Lisa Weaklim, my fiancée and producer. She’s a musician, filmmaker, and all-around creative genius. (I’m biased but also picky.) We end up talking a lot about the politics of sports, eating disorders, feminist theory, family, sapphic culture, and, one time, Florida’s finest frozen yogurt establishments.

Season one began on a golf course and ended in a strongman gym. Where will season two take us? I have no idea! Wherever we go, I’ll be sharing monthly (instead of weekly) dispatches along the way. I have a book manuscript that needs some attention, so I’m adjusting the newsletter’s cadence this time around. If you’re new around these parts, you can catch up on season one in the archive, or just jump into season two.

Thanks for being here with us. It’s been quite fun and meaningful to do this work with all of you. 

If you’d like to read this month’s essay, you can find it over here.

Want to support Aubrey, Patrick, and other people who are helping us build bridges?

I have some links for you:

* Watch Daughters on Netflix

* Read about ways to get involved through the Daughters impact campaign.

* Participate in the San Quentin Film Festival! You can stream short films by filmmakers who are currently or formerly incarcerated for the next two weeks. Buy your festival pass here. I recommend starting with the documentary short Healing Through Hula.

* If you’re in the Bay Area this weekend, you’re officially invited to attend Patrick’s performance on Friday 10/18 or Sunday 10/20. I’d love to see you there. Together we can stare into the void and contemplate the resources we recruit when it’s time to grow through the unknown. Click the link below to reserve your tickets.

* Share Patrick’s crowdfunding campaign! He has 48 hours left to raise money for his upcoming tour. Even if you aren’t able to donate, watch the video and maybe send it to the people in your life who are working on their own daddy issues.

* Here’s our interview with Patrick Barnes from last season:

Credits

Produced and Engineered by Lisa Weaklim

Written by Kelly Rafferty

Music by Mutt

Over the past month, Lisa and I had conversations about trauma-informed movement training with four experts in the Bay Area that I have come to trust over the years:

As we wrap up this series on trauma and movement, I want to share three of the gems I’ve been treasuring. These are the insights I find myself returning to, mulling over, and trying to incorporate into my life. I’d also REALLY love to hear what stuck with you. What did you find yourself nodding along to? Sharing with a friend? Pondering the next day? I’d like nothing more than to read about it in the comments.

Credits

Produced and Engineered by Lisa Weaklim

Written by Kelly Rafferty

Music by Mutt

For the last installment in our series of conversations about trauma-informed training, we’re talking with Patrick Barnes. Patrick is based in Oakland and he is the swiss army knife of movement coaches. He coaches ballet, weightlifting, powerlifting, strongman, parkour, kettlebells, martial arts, swordfighting, and basic gymnastics. This is the last interview in our series of conversations about trauma-informed training, and it’s a fun one.

Patrick’s available for personal training, hybrid remote coaching, and something that he calls “movement problem solving.” If you have a persistent problem that is hindering your existing practice and you want to workshop that problem, Patrick can do that. Check out his website for more info.

If you’d like to see a lightly-edited transcript of this conversation, it’s over here.

Credits

Produced and Engineered by Lisa Weaklim

Written by Kelly Rafferty

Music by Mutt

Series on Trauma-Informed Movement

Want to check out the rest of this series of essays and interviews on trauma-informed movement?

We’re continuing our series of interviews about trauma-informed movement with this conversation with marriage and family therapist Erica Gibbons. If you’d rather read instead of listen, there’s a lightly-edited transcript of this conversation here.

Links

1000% Me: Growing Up Mixed

Radically Fit

Erica’s Therapy Practice

Credits

Produced and Engineered by Lisa Weaklim

Written by Kelly Rafferty

Music by Mutt

Series on Trauma-Informed Movement

Want to check out the rest of this series of essays and interviews on trauma-informed movement?

Are you new to Fancy Meeting You Here? Welcome!

If you like personal essays about sports, queer stuff, critical theory, or bodies, you’re in the right place. I’m an academic who became a documentary producer. I record this podcast with my partner, Lisa Weaklim, who is a filmmaker and musician. For some more context on who we are and what we’re doing here, you can listen to Podcast Episode 1: Do my golf clubs go in the U-Haul?

We’re currently in the middle of a series of interviews about trauma-informed movement practices. For more about the origins of this particular side mission, you can listen to Podcast Episode 17: New Gym, Old Business and Podcast Episode 18: I’m thinking about the Kavanaugh hearing again.

This week I’m excited to share an interview with one of my favorite yoga teachers, Ceri. She describes herself as a student who lives in the watershed of the Sausal that runs to the Pacific Ocean. She’s a sister and seeker, sometimes a minister and a mover. Hoping to be a healer and a unifier. Currently, she studies Divinity at the San Francisco Theological Seminary.

She says that folks who want to know more about the topics we cover in this conversation should look at the teachers and healers Jeff Chu, Abby Tucker, and Ashley Sharp. 

You can find a lightly-edited transcript of this interview over here.

Credits

Produced and Engineered by Lisa Weaklim

Written by Kelly Rafferty

Music by Mutt

Erin’s Website + Instagram

Sign up here for her weekly email, Living Room Yoga.

Looking for the transcript? It’s over here.

Credits

Produced and Engineered by Lisa Weaklim

Written by Kelly Rafferty

Music by Mutt