For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, vibrant cities, safe spaces, peaceful collaboration, and more—we encouraged our writers to dream big, to hope, and to courageously share their ideas and wish lists for our collective better future. Here’s to another 50 years!

Living as a fat person in this world is hard—really fucking hard. As a fat woman, I’m exposed to near-constant discussion about my body by those who have no right to discuss it. It’s a never-ending fight not to be undermined and viewed as physically, economically, or emotionally unnecessary.

Every person’s body journey is different. While finding your voice, you can encounter several different types of activism, different types of empowerment and draw inspiration from people both online and offline. And then there’s the unexpected stuff: hate from within the fat activism community, cliquey attitudes, and false empowerment deemed as activism.

Here is the thing: body politics are complicated and uncomfortable. But that doesn’t mean we can’t strive to be better and more inclusive—to ensure the dialogue we’re promoting isn’t as harmful as the feared body-shamers that many of us battle each and every single day.

When I co-founded the blog Fat Girl Food Squad, I created a platform to share thoughts and opinions in the body positivity community. The aim of our blog, which developed into a community space, was to “provide a safe, positive space for all bodies, while showcasing those who identify themselves as fat.” It is not okay to dismiss another fat person’s experiences just because they are “only” a size 16. It’s not empowering or uplifting to call out others in the fat community as “skinny-fats” and tell them their opinions don’t matter.

Privilege does exist, but at the end of the day, fat bodies still matter—all fat bodies. It’s incredibly frustrating that so-called “skinny-fats” are shamed and shunned from the straight-sized community and also deemed unworthy by the fat community. We’re allowed to feel complicated feels and we’re allowed to feel discomfort, but we need to ask ourselves: When do those feelings border on bullying? Where do we draw the line?

There is so much to unpack when we use the word fat. It’s a powerful word, one that we’re still fighting hard to reclaim and one that still makes many people uncomfortable. It’s a three letter word and yet it holds so much power. People are afraid of fatness, they are afraid of you owning your fatness, and they are afraid of your fat being a source of political energy. Let’s stop separating which fat bodies are right and which fat bodies are wrong. Fat holds so much energy over others. Rather than using that energy to tear down one another, we should use it to uplift, empower, and liberate other fat bodies.

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, vibrant cities, safe spaces, peaceful collaboration, and more—we encouraged our writers to dream big, to hope, and to courageously share their ideas and wish lists for our collective better future. Here’s to another 50 years!

I am of the generation of women academics too young to remember the 1989 Montreal Massacre—the moment that promised to be our turning point, our watershed moment. I am, however, old enough to see how this was a failed promise: too many incidents of violence and harassment in academic spaces have made it hard for myself, my colleagues, my mentors, and my students to imagine how post-secondary institutions in Canada might, once and for all, put an end to the spectrum of aggressions and oppressions that push so many women— particularly queer women, trans women, and women of colour— out of the intellectual communities they rightfully deserve to participate in.

I cannot suggest another think-tank, another task force, or another deployment of brute intellectualism to address what fundamentally requires us to deal with how bodies move through academic spaces. How many of these reports are simply shelved and forgotten? Our bodies register the urgency of dealing with violence and harassment: our racing hearts, our clammy hands, our clenched teeth. And so, in a life of the mind, it is perhaps the body that contains the answers we so desperately crave.

To address violence and harassment in colleges and universities, we need to talk about the body. We need to acknowledge which bodies occupy positions of power and maintain the most visibility in academic communities. We need to discuss the embodied experiences that we bring into our work as faculty, staff, and students, and the many effects of bodily violence—fatphobia, homophobia, transphobia, racism, ableism, sexism— that we carry with us, whether we experience them in public, private, professional, or personal spaces.

I understand the resistance: after all, bodies are messy things. We would rather talk about the minutiae of policy development or engage in discussions of trauma that are often so abstract as to obscure the lived experience of violence; we would rather talk about the statistics of sexual violence and harassment on campus than to talk about churning stomachs or bruises or pain in the most intimate parts of our body.

This may be difficult. Awkward. Messy. But once violence is no longer easily translatable back into the bureaucratic language of press releases and policy documents, once sexual violence and harassment are truly understood as injuries to flesh and blood and spirit rather than to prized ideals of intellectual communities or to corporate values, then, perhaps, our watershed moments will finally arrive.

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, vibrant cities, safe spaces, peaceful collaboration, and more—we encouraged our writers to dream big, to hope, and to courageously share their ideas and wish lists for our collective better future. Here’s to another 50 years!

As a Canadian with disabilities, I spent many years looking for the so-called perfect job. From student jobs to call centres, I was doing my best to be employed in a normal job “just like everyone else.” As I did my best to clamber and climb up the corporate ladder trying to make my mark and stand out from my peers, I also had a little voice in my head urging me to do something different—something that spoke to who I was and my experiences as a queer man with disabilities.

Eventually, I decided to quit the rat race and work for myself. I branded myself as a disability awareness consultant and with 10 years of academia and my lived experience as my guide I made it my mission to make disability accessible to everyone. My goal has always been to tell the truth about the disabled experience, and to invite people into that reality. As I began to branch out and take hold of more opportunities born out of my willingness to be accessible Deliciously Disabled took shape. I remember that Now interviewed me and asked me how I wanted to be described in the piece. I smiled coyly and said, “Call me deliciously disabled.”

Under Deliciously Disabled, I built a brand that aimed to shift our cultural understanding of disability in Canada and abroad. Deliciously Disabled worked to invite everyone to have honest, frank, and real discussions about how it feels to live with a disability everyday. I believe that we aren’t talking about disability the right way. Many of us are too afraid to talk about how disability scares us, how sometimes we don’t know what to say, how we don’t want to be disabled or become disabled. In our collective fear we have neglected the fact that disability can also be an enriching experience full of humour, truth, and fun. In my work, I strive to strike a balance between those two worlds.

Now, as I shift away from Deliciously Disabled, I’m taking that conversation even further with my new work under Disability with Drew. I intend to go deeper into the lived experience of disability, so that the next generation of disabled Canadians can see themselves represented—so that they can feel like they have a voice and an identity that actually encompasses their reality without feeling fear or shame. And it is my hope for the future that by making the experiences of disability accessible to everyone, they will see just how truly delectable disability can be.

Photo courtesy of Andrew Gurza/Twitter

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, vibrant cities, safe spaces, peaceful collaboration, and more—we encouraged our writers to dream big, to hope, and to courageously share their ideas and wish lists for our collective better future. Here’s to another 50 years!

I’ve witnessed it countless times: at my favourite bar on Friday nights, walking down the street, riding Toronto’s subway line. These are the places I most often see women shrinking—adjusting their bodies to make space for others. Access to public space is political. White, hetereosexual, cisgendered men are generally privileged enough to be able to take the bus or subway without daily harassment or intimidation. But our public transit systems are unsafe spaces for women, especially women of colour and those who identify as LGBTQ2S. I do it too: make myself smaller. I see a vast divide between my fellow feminists’ and my willingness to speak out and the way we contort our individual bodies to accommodate perfect strangers.

The average dude I see on my daily commute who takes up more than one seat—also known as “manspreading”—isn’t doing it consciously. He’s doing it because no one taught him not to; because he wasn’t raised to keep his knees together and his head bowed. Research suggests women take on a “Wonder Woman” stance (feet wide, hands on hips) during important business meetings because it’s a posture that evokes power and confidence—sadly, it’s one we don’t often use. That’s because our society has linked smallness with femininity. We’re constantly the target of weight loss campaigns and plastic surgery advertisements. Our Instagram feeds are inundated with celebrities hawking waist trainers and tea that promises a smaller belly. We’re even told to settle for smaller pay. Historically, the message has been to stay in our lane (that is to say, don’t you dare take up a single inch more space than you absolutely need to. Suck it in. Cross your legs. Fold your arms.)

After I first noticed my own self-shrinking tendencies, I began to obsess over the way women occupy space. Through listening to others’ success stories, I learned that the more we refuse to shrink, the more respect we command. When we resist the instinct to make ourselves smaller on public transit, we’re making a political statement: I will not apologize for existing. And as much as it empowers us to take up our space, it’s important for those of us with privilege to look out for those with less privilege when it comes to defending all our personal spaces— an act as simple as a friendly smile, a quick “are you OK?” or moving to casually stand between a person and a stranger who’s making them uncomfortable can let folks know you’re watching out for them.

In her poem “Take Up Space,” British slam poet Vanessa Kasuule says, “Don’t shrink yourself into a sliver of self-loathing soap when you walk down the street. Don’t cower in anticipation of catcalls and stares. It is they who should shrivel and slouch in shame, not you. You go ahead and take up some more space.” The first time I made the decision to occupy my subway seat without squeezing my thighs together and squishing my arms against my torso, I felt surprisingly light. I wouldn’t let myself feel ashamed that my thigh spilled over onto the seat next to mine. Instead, I told myself: This is the body I am in and this is the space it occupies—and that’s not something I’m going to apologize for any longer. And in my vision for the future, neither will any other woman. Ever.

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, vibrant cities, safe spaces, peaceful collaboration, and more—we encouraged our writers to dream big, to hope, and to courageously share their ideas and wish lists for our collective better future. Here’s to another 50 years!

In my TED Talk on fat-shaming and the thin epidemic, I proclaimed, “Fat is just a description. It is not a prescription nor an invitation for hate!” Size discrimination has lasting effects. From micro-aggressive stares to overt verbal, physical, and sexual violence, fat bodies, especially those of women and girls (though accounts of men and boys are rising), are often the targets of unmitigated judgment and groundless assumptions about our value, health, productivity—in essence our potential for being good, successful citizens. It’s as though living in a fat body begets failure. Insidious myths on fatness create environments where fat talk, fat stigma, general body-shaming, and body-based harassment on the basis of size, weight, and shape flourish without accountability.

Children as young as four have thigh gaps on their wish lists. Calling someone a “fat cow,” I’ve been told, “is the ultimate come back.” Body image and more specifically body-based harassment is also a primary source of bullying, according to the 2006 Toronto District School Board student census report. In 2011, the student census showed that 58 percent of students in Grades 9-12 and 67 percent in Grades 7-8 said they liked how they looked—a passing grade, but not exactly an “A.”

Adults like to tell bullied children “it gets better,” but does it really? Without legal protection against sizeism, employers, health care providers, and educators are able to discriminate against fat people without fear of recourse. Fat people are less likely to be hired or promoted and on average are paid less than non-fat employees. Particularly in the workplace, sizeism intersecting with sexism and racism can have a triple effect for women of colour. In health care, fat people have been misdiagnosed or refused services by providers who immediately assume their health issues are associated with their weight—an assumption that has been debated for years in scholarly, scientific, Health at Every Size, and fat activist communities. And lastly, some educators assume fat students are less intelligent or committed to taking on leadership roles. Ironically, absenteeism is often linked with “obesity.” Yet, has it ever occurred to anyone that someone’s choice to discriminate or that being fat in environments where fat talk is left unchallenged might be the actual culprit?

Sizeism must be illegal. I am advocating to have size recognized as a protected ground in our provincial and territorial human right codes and the Canadian Human Rights Act. I am also advocating for the explicit addition of sizeism within all human rights policies in school boards across Canada as well as an instituted Body Confidence Awareness Week across school boards that incorporates body-based harassment and body image issues from a human rights social justice lens. When surveys indicate some young girls are more afraid of being fat than of cancer, nuclear war or losing their parents, I think it’s time we take action. Join me.

Photo courtesy of Jill Andrew/Twitter