What We Get Wrong About Body Positivity: Debating Jillian Michaels with Paula D. Atkinson

Remember that time when a bunch of body positivity activists debated Jillian Michaels on Surrounded? Today we are talking to one who lived to tell the tale. Paula D. Atkinson is a queer, woo-woo desert witch and a liberation-focused psychotherapist. She has been working for almost two decades with those who suffer from disordered eating, food obsession, exercise addiction, and body hatred. Clients of all sizes and identities are treated with a weight neutral, anti-diet, body liberation approach. For many years she taught courses on the history of fat phobia, eating disorders and body fascism as a professor of Weight & Society at George Washington University. Paula also trains other professionals, clinics, and organizations in doing less harm in a thin-obsessed world. She has been interviewed for various articles and broadcasts, including NPR, podcasts, an episode of Jubilee’s Surrounded with Jillian Michaels (!!), and she co-hosts her own podcast that explores how psychotherapy can at times conspire with the systems that cause the majority of mental suffering. Paula is a second-generation yoga teacher, a psychic healer, an artist, an aspiring DJ, and a pretty constant writer. On this episode we talk about: How Paula found herself sitting across a table from Jillian Michaels. What it was really like to be a part of the infamous Jubilee/Surrounded debate.What she wishes she would have been able to say in the moment.What we get wrong when we talk about body positivity.Why we don't think anyone actually won that debate.Why applying nuance in all directions is so important.The flaws of MAHA.The intersections of thin worship & white supremacy/misogyny/colonialism/classism/fascism, etc. So many other good things!Work with Paula Follow Paula on InstagramFollow Paula on TikTokFollow Paula on FacebookSurrounded Episode⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Work with me⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Download Resistance Training⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow & tag me on Instagram⁠