body Lib BASICS
What does it mean to live in a ‘marginalized’ body?
While a person who is discriminated against by another individual (also known as interpersonal marginalization) can experience mental, emotional, and physical distress, SYSTEMIC MARGINALIZATION is an integral part of our country’s economic foundation and socially dominant narrative. Unlike interpersonal marginalization, systemic marginalization negatively impacts entire groups of people.
Systemic marginalization occurs at two levels: 1) At the INSTITUTIONAL level, where harmful policies and practices perpetuate oppression and 2) on a STRUCTURAL level, such as education, health, transportation, economy, etc, where oppression is multifaceted and reinforced over time.
Body marginalization is rooted in our history and intentionally maintains imbalanced power dynamics; it excludes and exploits groups of people based on their identity while benefiting members of the perceived dominant group (i.e. cisgender, able-bodied, white, Western European descent, heteronormative, Christian).
Interpersonal, institutional, and structural marginalization all emerge from our societal fabric. A growing body of evidence demonstrates that consistently experiencing systemic marginalization is significant in adverse health outcomes.
These are just a few groups with share social identities that are likely to experience poorer health due to systemic marginalization*:
Those who live and experience the world in large bodies, especially those who identify as “Large Fat,” “Superfat,” or “Infinifat.”
People who have been racialized as Black, brown, or an Indigenous Person of Color, otherwise known as People of the Global Majority
People of historically marginalized genders, including, but not limited to, women, non-binary & gender non-conforming people, trans men
Those who identify as 2SLGBTQIA+
Those who experience generational poverty
Those who identify as having a mental illness, are neurodivergent, experience limited mobility, or otherwise identify as disabled.
*People who belong to three or more of these groups (intersecting social identities) are typically more negatively impacted by systemic marginalization than those who belong to one or two. While many other groups are marginalized, Embody Lib is equipped to discuss issues that affect the above social identities.
What is Body liberation?
Body liberation looks different for everyone.
Body Liberation is not a new idea. Body Positivity and Fat Acceptance thought leaders such as The Fat Underground, Jes Baker, Lindley Ashline, and others initially helped lay the foundation for the term as we use it today. But the application of an intersectional lens to Body Liberation has been primarily due to the scholarship of Black and brown women, nonbinary and gender nonconforming individuals such as Sonya Renee Taylor, Ivy Felicia, Dalia Kinsey, Chrissy King, and Da’Shaun Harrison, among many, many others.
For Embody Lib, Body Liberation is defined as the journey of examining the systems in which we politicize the body while embodying liberatory praxis aimed at freeing BOTH the individual and the collective. It explicitly centers the voices and experiences of higher-weight, queer People of the Global Majority in deconstructing, reclaiming, and rebuilding the concept of health, well-being, and liberation.
“Body Liberation seeks to challenge the systems in which we politicize the body, while also embodying liberatory praxis aimed at freeing BOTH individuals and communities. ”
Embody Lib believes that Body Liberation is more than being body-positive. It is intersectional. It is anti-racist. It is queer. It is feminist. It is sex-positive. It is anti-ableist. It is decolonial. Body liberation is a NECESSARY part of collective liberation.
Recently, nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations have incorporated Body Liberation into their programming and strategic vision. For example, the Center for Health and Wellbeing at the University of Vermont defines Body Liberation as “the freedom from social and political systems of oppression that designate certain bodies as more worthy, healthy, and desirable than others.” UCLA RISE Center and Toronto Food Share have also integrated Body Liberation into their vision and work.
How can embody lib help?
With the ultimate goal of helping People of the Global Majority to reclaim their health & wellbeing, Embody Lib helps organizations and institutions understand how the pursuit of health cannot be separated from broader societal structures of power and oppression. And at the intersection of these various forms of systemic oppression and power dynamics lies the status quo of the narrative around health, nutrition, and wellness.
Embody Lib pairs lived experience with evidence-informed practice and scholarship to partner with a diverse array of organizations and institutions, supporting them in integrating interdisciplinary, multi-dimensional, and body-inclusive strategies that improve the health and wellbeing of systemically marginalized communities.
Why these strategies?
Embody Lib understands the urgent need to break out of our thought silos and incorporate theories and frameworks across a variety of disciplines into our analysis and practice, namely those rooted in social sciences and humanities.
Embody Lib recognizes that health is more than the absence or onset of disease/illness; well-being is multifactorial and multidimensional. We understand these dimensions are interconnected, with one dimension building on another.
Embody Lib rejects the idea that body weight is the sole indicator of a person’s health status and that someone can only be healthy if they fall within a specific weight range. The disdain for large bodies predates the medicalization of fatness, and we understand that weight stigma, weight cycling, and inadequate healthcare play a significant role in the health disparities between large and smaller-bodied people.