EP. 70 — Guy Branum

Jameela: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of I Weigh with Jameela Jamil. I hope that you’re well, I’m fine. I’m fucking exhausted. This job is exhausting, but so much fun. I’m having a great time. I’m not allowed to say anything else other than that, other than I’m having a lot of fun in the MCU and the women I work with on the show are absolutely amazing. And I’m madly in love with all of them. And I can’t believe I’ve made such great friends a job. And I feel so lucky to have found this work in this time and found these people in a moment where sometimes the world has felt so divided and divisive and and I’ve just been surrounded by some really wonderful, loving humans. So I’m in a good place for a change. And I thought I would just share that with you, if that’s OK. OK, so today’s episode is where the Guy Branum, Guy Branum is a comedian and an author and an actor, just a great veteran entertainer. He was also the first person who ever allowed me to come on to his podcast long before I had The Good Place or any other job. I don’t think I even had a visa when he allowed me on his podcast five or six years ago. And and I have just remained since then. I even probably just a bit before then, just so star struck by him because he’s so smart, he’s so funny and and he really let me into his whole heart I feel like on this episode. A trigger warning that we talk a lot about diet, culture and fat phobia. And, um, and so I just want to make sure that you are aware of what this episode is about. But Guy Branum as a larger man, is someone who has had to reckon with fat phobic culture his entire life, basically. We also talk a lot about his sexuality. He is someone who is a gay man. And we also talk about the complexities of also being a gay man who doesn’t have the societally acceptable body of a gay man because there’s so much body image pressure in the gay community, especially for men. So we talk about the relationship between his coming out and his mental health struggles with depression. In this episode, we talk about how The Biggest Loser damaged people’s understanding of fatness. We talk about the problem with how queer people are represented in media and how fat people are represented in media and how this has impacted him and even the way he writes for himself or for other people. And we talk a lot about his experience of dating as a fat person. And he’s just the best and the smartest and the coolest. And I wish I thought like him. I wish I spoke like him. Every time I watch him on a late night show, I just feel I feel a bit jealous because it’s just so cool and good. And so I hope you love him as much as I do. This was such a joy of an episode to be able to participate in, and I feel very lucky to have had him on the podcast. So this is the excellent guy Branum. Guy Branum, welcome to I Weigh. How are you? [00:03:08][188.8]

Guy: [00:03:09] I’m doing very well. How are you doing, Jameela? [00:03:11][1.8]

Jameela: [00:03:12] I’m very good. You just come back from a holiday. How are you feeling? Is this your first holiday post pandemic I know we are still in a pandemic but you know what I mean. [00:03:19][6.5]

Guy: [00:03:19] Yes, it was a very long holiday with many legs to it, but it was very nice to splashily reenter society. [00:03:28][8.4]

Jameela: [00:03:29] How long are we talking? I haven’t been on holiday in years. [00:03:31][1.9]

Guy: [00:03:33] Well, it added up to like three weeks because I went to France for two weeks and then my friends had cajoled me to go to Provincetown. I’d never gone to Provincetown. I am a West Coast gay and I went to Provincetown for the first time. And it was a different kind of exhausting. [00:03:49][16.2]

Jameela: [00:03:51] What do you mean? [00:03:51][0.5]

Guy: [00:03:52] Oh, it was just like it was like a really wonderful boot camp to return me to male homosexuality. You know, it was like I’ve been staying at home, being very solidly middle aged for the past 15 months and, you know, just going back and like having fun and like dancing and doing, you know, like making bad choices generally was really fun for four, seven, six or seven days. [00:04:23][31.2]

Jameela: [00:04:24] What’s the difference between being gay in Provincetown and being a West Coast gay? [00:04:29][4.3]

Guy: [00:04:29] Well, I mean, the thing is, is like on the East Coast, you have Provincetown and you have Fire Island. There are these destinations where people go during the summertime and as a West Coast gay, we’re already somewhere with nice weather and beaches. And so we just have Palm Springs, which we, of course, take advantage of in like March and November. But, you know, there are also our different energies where, you know, in Provincetown, there’s a lot of biking about. There’s a lot of adorable little seaside town. There are many lobster rolls where Palm Springs is far more like community theater and pools. [00:05:07][37.2]

Jameela: [00:05:10] OK good to know. Thank you for schooling me. I am. I want to go I want to go all the way back just to to find your road to where you are at now. The first thing I want to ask you before I do, though, is how would you say your mental health has been your whole life? [00:05:25][15.2]

Guy: [00:05:29] Like, I think I was somebody I come from a working class background. And I think that figuring out that mental health was something that I needed to care about was a discovery for me. And I think, you know, for me, figuring out that I was somebody who needed to like I think we all need to take care of our mental health. And I figured that out around the same time that I was figuring out I had to come out of the closet and tell people I was gay. And up until that time, I think I had suffered a lot of depression and sense of inadequacy in various ways. And, you know, it was only I went to law school. I entered like a real significant depression. And then I came out of the closet. And after that, I sought mental health care for the first time. And I think it was after that that I started doing the work of, you know, trying to make sure that I was taking care of myself and trying to repair some of the damage that I had allowed to happen by by not maintaining my mental health care, my mental health before that. [00:06:43][74.1]

Jameela: [00:06:44] Yeah, I. I wonder if your upbringing had anything to do with why it took you such. I don’t mean such a long time in a judgmental way. I mean, I didn’t ever think about that. But I, I was wondering if you could talk to me about your upbringing and how that may have contributed either to your depression or to your taking a while to come out or if the Depression was because you hadn’t come out? [00:07:08][23.3]

Guy: [00:07:08] Well, I mean, the thing is, it’s like the specificities of being from a working class background in rural northern California. Of course, like culturally mental health care was not something that people thought about or you thought was appropriate. But also, I would just say that, you know, another part of your upbringing is just the time that you were in. I was born in nineteen seventy five. The world told me that being gay was a super gross thing for the first 20 years of my life. But, you know, even beyond that, you know, it was. Like, it is very easy for us to dismiss these cultural forces and messages that tell people that they are not valuable, and you you know, it’s really easy to listen to the culture that you’re raised it like it’s really easy to just absorb the lessons that you’re learning about yourself from the wider world. And it took me, you know, I think coming to a point where you’re ready to look conventional wisdom in the face and say, no, no, I disagree with that. It requires forming some identity. And so, you know, I think it’s perfectly like, you know, Oprah tells us that regret is the misapprehension that the past could have been other than what it was. I don’t know if that’s bullshit or not, but I do think I needed to find my identity on my own before I was able to turn around and tell people my identity does not comport with your values, but I still think it’s valuable. [00:08:43][94.7]

Jameela: [00:08:44] And you had people kind of trying to push certain traditional values on you when you were younger, especially because, you know, you’re very tall, you’re very broad. And so, you know, I remember reading about you saying that, you know, I think a lot of people wanted you to be like a linebacker or a footballer and and a fighter. And you just wanted to be a waitress when you grew up. How old were you when you discovered that you wanted to be a waitress? [00:09:07][23.0]

Guy: [00:09:09] I at like three or four I fell in love with the idea of being a waitress. They are very glamorous. They had access to pancakes. They chit chatted with people all day long. And like the people around me, were just like. You’re big, you should want to play football, and I was like, that’s not a viable career path. Like everyone in this town was like you should or like every guy I went to school with was like, I want to be a football player. And it’s like you’re not going to get to be a professional football player. You should maybe, like, consider insurance or something, maybe get an accounting degree. So it was just, you know, yeah, there were a lot of those forces. But I think we all grow up with a bunch of stuff that’s telling us who we should be. And it can take a while before you figure out that you’re allowed to make those decisions. [00:09:58][48.9]

Jameela: [00:10:00] 100%. You actually played football in the end for like four years, right? [00:10:03][2.5]

Guy: [00:10:03] I played football in high school just because it was a very small high school and everyone had to like every able bodied man needed to, you know, play football or else they weren’t going to have a team. The thing is, it’s like it wasn’t. I think that there is a reason that gay men end up in solo sports more than team sports, because I think there is this degree of, like, camaraderie that is really hard to pull off when you have a terrible secret that you’re trying to hide from everybody. And also, you know, when you just don’t like part of the culture around you doesn’t make sense to you. And, you know, it’s definitely not entirely true. There are many gay men who have succeeded in team sports, but like by and large. [00:10:56][53.2]

Jameela: [00:10:57] Very few who went into it out, you know what I mean? Like many come out several years into it. [00:11:03][6.3]

Guy: [00:11:04] Right. Right. And also, just like but when it comes to divers or figure skaters, you know, we’re all over the place. [00:11:09][5.7]

Jameela: [00:11:13] So true. I um when we were speaking a couple of days ago, prior to this interview, we were talking about the fact that, in fact, in your life, it wasn’t as much of sexuality. I know that you grew up in such a bigoted time where you were made to feel otherised and wrong for your sexuality. But you talked a lot about body image being something that made you feel more otherized throughout your life. And I want to talk to you about that, because it’s very rare to have a man come on and talk openly about these issues. And I’m dying to hear what you think. [00:11:43][29.9]

Guy: [00:11:43] And I think it is very easy for us to dismiss the idea that men’s bodies I mean, men’s bodies are not placed in the same way that women’s bodies are, but they are still policed. And I think [00:11:55][11.7]

Jameela: [00:11:56] actually in the gay community, I hear well, [00:11:59][2.5]

Guy: [00:11:59] especially in the gay community and also to some extent, I would say in straight perception and consumption of of queer people. Like I cannot divorce my issues around my sexuality or my gender performance from my body because I’ve only ever been this person, I’ve only ever been in this body. I’ve only ever had this sexuality. I’ve only ever been within this range of gender performance. But I do think that there are ways that we have a like with a very restricted idea of what a gay man can be. We have, you know, just a limited little idea. And I think part of it is that for for such a long time, like we had such a huge stigma on queer people that the idea was to be worthwhile a gay man had to be like giving you like he wasn’t giving you perfection on all fronts. If he wasn’t a decorative little thing to be helpful and supportive to you, then what could he be? There’s also a way that, you know, you know, we presume that gay men will be little and adorable and well dressed. And I am so frequently not those things. There was one time I was in a room, a writer’s room, and a director came in and there were three writers there and the showrunner and I said to the showrunner, Oh, you this was a queer person. Oh, you you said that you had to two new two gay writers. It’s pretty obvious which ones it is. And they thought that they were being very hilarious. And, you know, would only be that they didn’t think they were saying anything insulting because they thought I was a gay guy or a straight guy who would be congratulated that I was so obviously straight. But it just you know, it contributes to the larger notion of, you know, [00:13:57][117.9]

Jameela: [00:13:59] Stereotype [00:13:59][0.0]

Guy: [00:14:00] Well and also just me being an anomaly mean not fitting in like me not making sense in in what gay is. And, you know, like that can be hard. I think that gay men have a really restricted idea of what we can present and be worthy of approval. You know, there’s. Are you familiar with the book Velvet Rage? [00:14:25][24.9]

Jameela: [00:14:26] I have not read the book, but I have heard about it. [00:14:29][2.6]

Guy: [00:14:29] I mean, it’s not a great book, but it does have some interesting ideas in it. And one of the central idea is that gay men growing up feeling uncomfortable and like we are not satisfying our family and the people around us trying desperately to overcompensate by achieving in various ways. But that underlying that is always some degree of anger at being sort of like stigmatized from birth, otherized from birth. So that and, you know, it’s like it’s a rough game because however much I can get frustrated with other gay men who police or enforce these ideas, I also understand very well the forces that make them feel that way, that make them think that way. Like, I understand that they had a rough journey as well, and they think they’re doing the best possible thing and they think that they are protecting themselves. They like much in the way that for, you know, within gay male communities so frequently stigmatizing or otherizing extremely effeminate man has been something that people that some gay men do to try to protect themselves from the scrutiny of outsiders. Are you familiar with the term schadenfreude of goyam? [00:15:52][82.2]

Jameela: [00:15:55] No, I’m not. I can’t wait to find out what it means. [00:15:57][2.3]

Guy: [00:15:58] It’s a Yiddish term. It’s a Yiddish term. That means essentially you’re embarrassing us in front of the Gentiles. So it’s an idea among Jews that if, like a Jewish person doing a bad thing makes Gentiles think that way about all of us. And I think that there can be a little bit of a shadenfreude goyam mentality among queer people of, uh oh, this other person by being vocal, by being effeminate, by being political or whatever, is making the rest of the straight people think I’m like that too. I have to distance myself from that person. [00:16:37][39.6]

Jameela: [00:16:38] I often I often wonder if that’s why there’s so much homophobia in among ethnic minorities, you know, like where I come from. I wonder if it’s just like fucking hell we’re already brown. Don’t be gay too, don’t humiliate us. I wonder about it. [00:16:54][15.7]

Guy: [00:16:54] Well, and also there’s a way that when you have all representations of queerness center whiteness, people don’t know how it can be hard for people to understand how it fits or how it works for somebody to be gay and from whatever culture or community that they’re from, which is why it’s very exciting that today Jameela Jamil Bowen Yang is an Emmy nominee. I am very excited for that little bit of representation we’re getting. [00:17:23][28.3]

Jameela: [00:17:24] And 100 percent. Yeah, I god it was it was so tricky, especially a media representation in the 90s in two separate ways, which is why which is where I feel like the only representations of gay men were white, as you say, but also very, very especially effeminate and only one type of effeminate, like hugely, hugely camp, hugely feminine. And it felt as though those were almost all I think maybe Will, from Will and Grace was the first time I’d seen a gay man be portrayed not in a very exaggerated way. And they kind of had Jack, you know, to represent the more traditional gay men we were allowed to see in mainstream media. [00:18:04][40.8]

Guy: [00:18:07] But it’s also rough because Will’s whole like the whole idea with Will was, oh, he’s not being too much like Jack is, like he’s being very circumscribed. He’s he’s the good kind. And it’s also really problematic when you have representation that emphasizes, oh, he’s the good kind. So, you know, I mean, like when you don’t have a variety of representation, everything like starts becoming a referendum on the people, which is why my friend Karen Tocsin, she’s a professor at USC and she insists that there were no real lesbians on TV until Top Chef. And it sounds ridiculous, but it’s just true. Once you started having lesbians who weren’t scripted, who were just there to like sear a scallop, then you were suddenly able to have this great variety of queer women and not just lesbians, but bisexuals and a non binary people who like were able to just be themselves. And I think it helped everybody get out of their heads and just start thinking, oh, it can be people, but it’s hard when you have such limited representation. [00:19:20][72.9]

Jameela: [00:19:22] Yeah. Oh, my God, that’s such a funny and hysterical quote and also so true, because especially like even to this very day, but still this kind of struggle to not represent lesbians as always, only in as if I only own plaid shirt and terrible jeans. [00:19:36][14.4]

Guy: [00:19:37] There are two stories we knew how to tell about queer women before 2010. And they were oh, she’s hot, but she’s not into the dude or she’s not hot. What’s she good for her? She’s just not like, you know, it really was either plaid or sexy lady played by a straight woman who’s like the issue was entirely are you appealing to straight men? And, you know, that’s like for queer representation. I think an important thing is just stepping away from what do we mean to straight people. And I think when it comes to gay men, there was a time when we were primarily represented as fixtures and handbags of straight women, and that was not the worst because it was nineteen ninety seven or whatever, and America was figuring out how to deal with us. But also we have to move past that like, you know, that maybe served its role in its time. But now when you look at the gay roles that come out, they’re still just looking for a sassy assistant. [00:20:49][72.0]

Jameela: [00:20:51] I’ve heard you talk about this before. The fact that you feel like we have been conditioned to believe that the people we see in mainstream media, which is simply the best. These people all happen to be traditionally straight, white, cis, thin. And so we have been conditioned to believe, oh, no, they got that leading role just because they were the best actor where actually you say that and I completely agree with you and I think we’re now starting to finally see the fruits of that, is that there are so many incredibly talented, possibly probably much more talented people than the people we see in the mainstream. But they’re shut out because they don’t fit into the narrow societal standards. [00:21:27][36.7]

Guy: [00:21:28] So frequently fitting matters more than what people are bringing to the table. And when it comes to acting so frequently, writers are, you know, creating a type and you have casting directors who are just trying to fill that type. And, you know, specificity. I don’t know. All I know is people have definitely found a lot of reasons that I didn’t make sense in things. And I am frustrated by the extent to which I agreed and cooperated with them for such a long time. It is frustrating to constantly have to be trying to shove yourself into an industry and a field and into roles that people don’t imagine. Like you have a place and you know, there aren’t really that many super successful gay male stand up comics like just the work of having to do that has been kind of frustrating. And, you know, with some of this other stuff, I was maybe a little bit like, hey, pick your battles. But also, you know, looks like somebody’s got to do it. And it has been really lovely seeing the variety of ways that people have been pushing the industry to change how it sees people. But I do think when it comes to bodies and fatness, particularly like there has been, you know, people don’t necessarily understand that that’s something to think about. I mean, one of the great frustrations of the recent past is there’s a pilot that’s coming out that’s about fat people. And they had a role for a fat gay guy. And then they cast a not fat gay guy, that’s like the one situation where there was actually a role for a fat gay guy. They cast a not fat gay guy, which I think is just so reflective of our inability to work outside of the boundaries of the way we think about things. A couple of shows that I worked on wrote characters that were in two situations, gay men of color and then the industry. One of them was older and the industry was just like, we can’t pass this. This is impossible. There’s no one with the capacity to do this. And it was so galling to me because there are so many people who have been trying so hard for so long and haven’t gotten opportunities. And finally, when there is a role that’s for them, people are going to say, because there were no rules there for you in 1995 and 2005, you don’t get a stab at this. And you know, I just did everything I could as a writer and producer on those shows to say that’s ridiculous. Like, you know, luckily it was both situations where they needed a gay man of color. And I fucking know a lot of gay men of color who could kill the job. And in both situations, wonderful people were able to get the job and show everybody just how great they could be, [00:24:28][180.1]

Jameela: [00:24:29] but it was a fight. [00:24:30][1.5]

Guy: [00:24:30] It was a fight. It was a fight. And I think I you know, it’s it can be hard to fight for yourself as as readily as you can for somebody else’s talent. [00:24:42][11.5]

Jameela: [00:24:43] Yeah, I feel this way all the time. I’ve been approached three times in the last 12, 18 months for roles for disabled people. And I’m just like for, for the love of fuck guys, come on now. I have an invisible disability. If you ever need someone to play that, maybe I could do that. But I don’t have a visible disability where only I could play that role. Go to someone with how many times more do we have to hear this? How many more times is Hollywood have to be told this to stop taking the most traditional offensive and exclusionary stop making that move. Stop taking that option. It’s so infuriating and I feel so extraordinarily lucky and privileged to have joined Hollywood in twenty sixteen where it felt like people were starting to wake up and people were starting to listen to social media. And I think I’ve been I’ve been lucky that I’ve swooped in just as progressiveness as being rewarded in Hollywood rather than considered this like terrible but in a blasphemous omen. I want to ask you how all of this has impacted your body image, I mean, you you struggled a little bit, I think, when you were younger, the body image. I don’t know if that was as young as school, but I know that you would involve yourself in diets and trying to lose weight. And I think you called unfatting yourself, which I think is a sad, funny expression. [00:26:13][89.9]

Guy: [00:26:14] I have always struggled with my body because my body isn’t something that readily fits into the world and it’s not something that readily fits into the gay man world. It’s not something, you know, I mean, talking about it from like the perspective of the industry, like I can’t even presume when not even when I’m cast in a role when I have my own talk show. The first season we had a wardrobe, people who just didn’t buy things that fit me like I want to thank God I went in for, you know, like fittings and everything like that. And they just got stuff that, like didn’t work a lot of the time. And it was, you know, it was put on me. It was my problem. And there was one day when there was a shirt that didn’t quite fit and it was pulling and the director wasn’t liking that. And so they were just like, well, we’re going to have to sew you into this. And it was so frustrating and like it was like really awkward. And then I realized that one of the people on the panel of the talk show right then was Nicole Buyer. And I was able to be like, this is happening to me right now to another fat person who was able to be like, let me tell you what happened on my MTV show. And then she told me, you know, a horrible story of her wardrobe department not being able to deal with her body. And it made me feel better. But just, you know, like this stuff happens all the time. Like I have a body that is hard to get cool clothes for. I have a body that, you know, can be rough on an airplane and being able to have a positive idea about that and a positive relationship to that body is work. And, you know, there’s also this way that there is a narrative and a story that fatness is exclusively a moral failing and that if I were simply a better person, my fatness would be unmade. And that’s the unfatting thing that you’re that you’re referencing is, is that when the dream is the unfatting of yourself, when the when the dream when the idea is that if you do everything right, you’re going to be a regular person who does not have to deal with fatness. You, like most people, never get there. And it makes it very easy to just be like, why try? And the thing is, is like you do still need to exercise. You do don’t like I’ve always exercised, I’ve always cared about what I’ve eaten, but I still am fat and being able to say that that’s just the way things are and that like. That it isn’t a moral failing and that it’s not a crisis is like really important and like doctors have not been good or helpful about that, like two years ago, I was at home longer than those three years ago. I went to do comedy dates in Wilmington, North Carolina, and I tripped on the sidewalk and I hurt my knee. And then I went I came home and I went to the doctor and I didn’t go to my normal doctor. I went to a different doctor at an all gay male medical clinic, and he wouldn’t talk to me about my knee. All he wanted to tell me is that I was too fat and I had to get bariatric surgery and he wouldn’t talk to me about anything else. Like and then like six months later, a massage therapist was like, oh, your it band is tight. Like, he’ll tight. You just need to stretch it like this and then I stretch it like that. And then my knee was better. But instead of having a doctor who was capable of telling me that I had a doctor who needed to catastrophize my body [00:30:29][255.4]

Jameela: [00:30:30] and and resort to the only the the most extreme and dangerous life endangering form of resolution. [00:30:37][6.8]

Guy: [00:30:38] Jameela, I said to him, like, I would love to talk about like I want to manage my body. I want to take good care of it. I was like, can we talk about something other like short of that? And he was like, no. And I like I think that [00:30:55][16.4]

Jameela: [00:30:55] What is that? Is that like is that the kind of, you know, the the gross medical nightmare of America where they’re trying to push the most expensive surgeries on people? Or is that just a hatred like an emergency when it comes to fat bodies where they’re just like, we need to cut it off now? [00:31:11][16.7]

Guy: [00:31:12] I think you cannot divorce it from things like The Biggest Loser, where you take fat people to a place and just yell at them, yell at them, imagining that they can unfat themselves, like yell at them, that if they were better people, they would be able to not be fat. And then, you know, they all gained the weight back like not all of them, but the vast majority of them did. And the vast majority of them did like very negative health consequences of what that experience was. [00:31:45][33.1]

Jameela: [00:31:46] Like what? I don’t I don’t know about that. I know a lot of them kind of gained the weight back by then, but they had health implications. [00:31:51][5.2]

Guy: [00:31:52] Yeah. I mean, I think I personally know somebody who was on The Biggest Loser and then gained the weight back, had bariatric surgery and then died of a stroke. Very young, like, [00:32:07][14.9]

Jameela: [00:32:08] Oh my God, [00:32:08][0.1]

Guy: [00:32:09] you know, like I think it’s rough. And I think when you are when the world is constantly telling you that your body is wrong and if you were only a better person, your body wouldn’t be wrong, that your body is a direct reflection of your moral validity. It’s hard not to agree with them. And, you know, we all we we like there’s something so appealing about the the correct path of trying to be on the correct path. And, you know, I think a lot of people try to do what they’re supposed to do. And a lot of the time it doesn’t work. I think we should reevaluate what we’re telling people they should do. [00:32:52][42.9]

Jameela: [00:32:53] Hundred percent. It’s also so fucking dangerous just to make a purely like scientific and biological point of view, this attempt, this obsession with, you know, and I as a woman, we also face a lot of this in among women that this like emergency speed, weight loss. It’s so bad for you. You know, the first thing that your body is more likely to lose is water. And then muscle tissue rather than fat. You know, what’s a muscle, your fucking heart. So when you have people on shows like The Biggest Loser and all these like speed weight loss shows where they’re trying to drop like ten pounds a week, eight pounds a week, which is such a dangerous amount of weight to lose. First of all, a lot of it is water. They’re just shitting it out. But second of all, they are thinning their heart. That’s why so many people with anorexia, which I suffered with for a long time, I have a weak, weaker heart than someone else who hadn’t starved themselves for almost 20 years. It’s really fucking sad that still we consider fat to be so, so awful and shameful and wrong and ugly and evil that we risk people’s lives. Whilst preaching to them about their fucking health, quote unquote, we are just sending them straight to the fucking morgue as fast as possible by by these ridiculous and extreme, almost medieval sometimes method. Have you seen that new magnet on the teeth. Did you see this? [00:34:13][79.4]

Guy: [00:34:13] Oh, my God. It’s like, [00:34:16][2.6]

Jameela: [00:34:17] yeah, it’s a it’s a brace that you wear on, like, two of your teeth, like a clamp and then magnetized so that it clamps your jaw shut and you can only have liquids. That is terrible for you, terrible for your metabolism. Terrible for your digestive system and mediæval, [00:34:33][16.0]

Guy: [00:34:34] I also just think all of this comes down to trying to torture people trying to guide people with negativity, like trying to find that there’s something that there’s something virtuous about yelling at people and making them feel bad, like the Biggest Loser also did a real job of trying to convince us that every fat person was only fat because they had some great pain and that once they could, you know, admit their great pain, then they would be fixed and then they would unfat. And, you know, I think being able to accept that, like different bodies are different [00:35:14][39.3]

Jameela: [00:35:15] is is the fat gene. It’s called leptin also, but they’re also polycystic ovarian syndrome. There are also just being genetically larger because your whole family. You know what I mean? There’s a million different reasons. It’s not psychological. [00:35:28][12.5]

Guy: [00:35:29] There’s a million different things. It’s also hugely reflective of class in America. I mean, you know, like I come from a community where people a generation ago were all working really, really tough physical labor and people led recreational lives and dietary lives that were structured around that. And as things have changed, I mean, like, you know, fatness is so frequently reflective of coming from a working class background in America. And part of why we love to snicker and condescend to it is because of that. [00:36:11][42.1]

Jameela: [00:36:12] Yeah, it’s so true. I mean, growing up, I grew up poor and it was just a no brainer that an organic chicken breast cost the same as like two weeks worth of smiley face potatoes. You know I mean, so that’s the thing that we were going to get. We were going to get the frozen fast food that we could microwave because we could afford to eat of that for two weeks rather than one single meal for a rich person. [00:36:34][22.1]

Guy: [00:36:35] You want to know what a construction worker doesn’t do on the weekend? Play tennis, like when you know, when your whole life is physical labor, you know, you’re not necessarily going to like aerobic activity as you’re good to [00:36:52][17.3]

Jameela: [00:36:52] have child care, you know what I mean? Like, you don’t have somebody you’re running around with your own family or cleaning your own house. You don’t have other people to come in and do that for you. If you’re busy when you don’t have money or busy and you don’t have money for the kind of like the quote unquote healthiest, I hate coding any kind of food. But, you know, the most I like unfucked with food, my American food. [00:37:14][21.5]

Guy: [00:37:15] And then there’s, you know, there’s that entire game of us having an agricultural system that that was built to make us very good at winning World War Two and having a lot of corn around that, you know, isn’t necessarily built to [00:37:33][17.8]

Jameela: [00:37:34] I don’t know about this. What’s the link between World War Two and corn? [00:37:36][2.5]

Guy: [00:37:37] Oh, I’m just sort of like that. The war effort for World War Two, the federal government like like supported certain crops that were like storable things, dried cheese, corn, that kind of stuff, so that if we needed to go to war, we had enough stuff to send there. And that means that our agricultural subsidies are very much targeted towards those commodities like [00:38:07][29.8]

Jameela: [00:38:07] corn syrup is in everything. [00:38:08][1.0]

Guy: [00:38:09] Yeah, yeah. That like because we were doing a lot to support like corn, we then needed to find more things to do with all of this corn that we had around, you know, like. It’s not great. But also like on top of that, just different people have different bodies, you know, to to make it always a case of morality or to make it a case of, oh, those pathetic poor people don’t know better than to eat like that. It’s like, you know, you don’t necessarily need to have an opinion about someone else’s body in that way. [00:38:49][40.1]

Jameela: [00:38:50] What the fuck do we do about it? Do you know do you have any ideas? Can we apply any of the previous like do you think media representation, for example? I think it was fairly significant in being able to help the way that we look at other minorities. Do we do we apply the same to fat people? [00:39:09][18.9]

Guy: [00:39:10] What if we cast fat people in roles that didn’t demand their fatness? Like the thing is, is. A fair amount of the time when somebody is asking me to come be in something it is like when they are wanting a very fat person, they want somebody that’s pathetic, you know, and that’s not always the case for things I have been in. A lot of them were just like we know Guy, we love Guy. But like sometimes fat is used as a byword for pathetic. Fat is used to like, reflect abjection and being able to have fat people be doing things, not just be to be subjects, not objects, to be people who achieve things and do things as opposed to just being victims or sad people. And I also think that not removing yourself like I try to go to places that don’t welcome fat people and enjoy myself in them as much as possible. Well, last week I was in Provincetown and it was Circuit Week. I did not know it was going to be circuit week. [00:40:30][79.8]

Jameela: [00:40:31] What’s a circuit week? [00:40:32][1.1]

Guy: [00:40:32] OK, so like, I was just going because it was the Fourth of July weekend that my friends were like, we’re going for Fourth of July weekend. They didn’t know that it was a circuit party. So like, you know, ripped mostly white gay guys who go and dance shirtless to thumpy thumpy music. Like, I went and danced like I did not get shirtless. Like I have been shirtless and passed on a dance floor before, but just sort of like and there were definitely people there who were like, no, I’m only supposed to be surrounded by ripped low body fat persons like myself. What do you think you are doing here creepy man? [00:41:08][36.1]

Jameela: [00:41:09] There were people who there were people who spoke to you like that. [00:41:12][3.0]

Guy: [00:41:12] They didn’t speak to me. They just reacted poorly to my presence. And the thing is, is like the vast majority of gay guys are really lovely. Like, you know, it’s like I think it is easy to project and I think it is easy to project your own sense of distance or alienation. And like the vast majority of people I experience or talk to in queer spaces are lovely. I mean, does it help that a lot of the time they know who I am because they watch the TV shows I was on ten years ago? Yes. But I also think that we are a group of people who do know oppression and alienation. And I think we don’t all like sometimes we can be our worst selves. Sometimes we can react from fear. But most of the time I think gay people are pretty great. But yes, there were some people who were like, this is not a space for you. And, you know, I have had people say that to me more directly and I just don’t listen to them like, you know, I I think I’m a better person when I’m having fun. So I go have fun. [00:42:26][73.2]

Jameela: [00:42:27] Yeah, I agree, I always wonder where that comes from because I always feel, you know, a lot of colorism where I’m from and and there’s a kind of hierarchy of the lighter skinned you are the closer you are to whiteness, the smaller your nose is, the lighter your eyes, etc. the better you are, the more marry-able you are, etc., etc.. And I was one. I get so frustrated with it when I was younger and nobody wanted me to play in the sun because I become very dark and I love being in the sun and I love being dark. Now I love the way it makes my body and my bones feel. And I love the way it looks. But I, I always thought God was so ostracized by so many white people around the world. We know what being otherized feels like. Why, even just regardless of skin color, culturally, we know what that feels like, why as an otherized outsider who knows how that feels alienating, that can feel, how can we do that to each other? And then I guess, you know, when I was young, someone explained to me that for some of these people, it’s their way of taking control of being like, well, at least I’m not at the bottom of the food chain, OK, I’m different, OK? I’m otherized but I’m not as bad as them. They are different. I’m going to take the power of otherizing them, of pushing them down. So I get that feeling of superiority that I never had until now. Does that make sense? [00:43:47][79.8]

Guy: [00:43:48] Absolutely. It’s people trying to preserve their proximity to the good place in the hierarchy. Like last week in Provincetown, there were two situations where people like left the dance floor because they were near me. And one of the times it was an older guy who was older than the group of people he was with. And I was like, I can kind of understand what’s going on in his head right now [00:44:09][21.8]

Jameela: [00:44:11] I don’t understand what’s going on in his head [00:44:11][0.7]

Guy: [00:44:12] But the thing is, it’s like [00:44:13][1.4]

Jameela: [00:44:14] He left the dance floor because of you. I don’t understand. [00:44:16][2.2]

Guy: [00:44:16] Everybody is on a journey, like everybody is on a journey. And we just have to try to be in a better place on that journey. But I do think that fatness is really interesting because people experience different places in that hierarchy within their life. It’s it’s sort of like an experience that people have and they cannot understand, you know, like when some gay guy is being hyper weirded out because he’s like 10 pounds heavier than he wants to be and talks about how disgusting and fat is, the first thing on his mind isn’t what that saying about me. You know, he’s just like in his own experience of that. But I do think people. Do need to try to think more about the ways that the way we talk about ourselves in the way we talk about our people around us reflects on others and sort of like instantiates these hierarchy’s also just the way that, like, we we like the hierarchies that benefit us, you know, like and that’s it’s hard to divorce yourself from something that says you’re great. I mean, I really think the reason people love moralizing about fatness is because it makes them feel like they’ve done something right. [00:45:47][90.9]

Jameela: [00:45:55] We need to stop self talk our negative self talk. We need to stop the way that we talk about other people, strangers and ones that we know we need to stop the way that we talk to our families and about our families. Is there a lot of shit talking to be around size and appearance? [00:46:08][12.7]

Guy: [00:46:10] I mean, there there can be to some extent. And it’s it’s very frustrating because I think, you know, within my family, people reiterate the narratives that they’ve heard and they reiterate narratives of their own failure and the failure of people around them. And I think yeah, and I think that coming from a working class background, like there aren’t a lot of narratives of success or like prioritization of happiness. And it can be it can be really frustrating to see the way that those stories get re instantiated. And I try to do my best to sort of like shift the way, particularly people in younger in the younger generation think about themselves and talk about themselves. But I also think the world’s changing is so so as important as like the members of the family shifting what they’re doing, I think that my niece has a much more positive relationship with her body than I did. And that is so much just about the way that the world has changed, [00:47:30][80.2]

Jameela: [00:47:31] which is also pretty fucking extraordinary considering social media has also brought with it a lot of toxicity. But it makes it’s also been counteracted, I guess, with information and social justice [00:47:42][10.8]

Guy: [00:47:42] like it’s democratizing. And it means that people who just want to stir shit, they have more power. But then you also have people like Aubrey who are putting themselves out there, putting themselves at risk to be able to to shift the way that people think. And I think that that kind of bravery, even in very small ways, has very positive impacts, [00:48:06][23.6]

Jameela: [00:48:07] 100 percent every single day Aubrey brings up a fantastic point that makes me complete and turns the world upside down for me and makes me consider things I would never have thought of before and an absolute legend online. So what about dating? Is this is this something that is still impacting dating or less and less so considering the world is starting to stop being this as the world is being less of an asshole. [00:48:32][25.0]

Guy: [00:48:33] I mean, the world is being less of an asshole. But I also think that, you know. Like. There are a lot of there are a lot of gay men who just wouldn’t even consider me as a potential dating prospect, and that’s rough because I think that that has to do with the sexualization. I also think it has to do with gay men trying to project their, like, validity to the world to try to seem like they’re together. And, you know, a picture perfect Instagrammable view of of what a life should be. And, you know, I don’t necessarily always fit into everyone’s vision of that. Like, you work with what you got, you know? And I think that there’s nothing more. [00:49:35][62.1]

Jameela: [00:49:35] I maintain that. I think you’re fucking gorgeous. [00:49:37][1.9]

Guy: [00:49:38] But I also think that’s very sweet. But I don’t think that this is some societal standards or something that we can imagine a way, you know, just you are right and that we have to, like, not allow them to the extent possible, try to not have them encumber us. But there’s there’s also a shit ton of shit that gets dumped into our brains by the world around us. And just imagining that we can, like, imagine a way like those social structures is impossible [00:50:07][29.7]

Jameela: [00:50:09] totally. [00:50:09][0.0]

Guy: [00:50:10] trying to find that balance between finding somebody who’s attracted to you. Like I have frequently joked, if you’re into me like it is to some extent a fetish, and just like [00:50:24][14.1]

Jameela: [00:50:25] you don’t really believe that, it’s just that, yeah, no, [00:50:28][3.0]

Guy: [00:50:28] it’s a joke. But I mean, being able to find people who finds all of the various aspects of me interesting, like has been a journey because some people are very sexually attracted to my body. But, you know, within that sub community, I haven’t always found people who were interested or capable of engaging with me in other ways. And, you know, I have a lot of people with whom I have, you know, very positive, engaging relationships where there isn’t that sexual element. And being able to find that overlap, you know, is a journey. But I also think we can find different things for our lives in different places. I had a long term relationship that ended just before the pandemic and it was really good for me. It was really my first long term relationship. And it was I learned a lot about myself and what I what I need out of a relationship and what I’m good at bringing to a relationship. You know, it’s why it’s why Provincetown was fun was just sort of like checking in with the ways that I’m different than I was a year and a half ago. And also sort of figuring out what I’m looking for out of the world, [00:51:57][89.3]

Jameela: [00:51:58] what you’re looking, can I ask you what you’re looking for out of the world? [00:52:02][3.8]

Guy: [00:52:03] I mean, that’s why it was vague is because I don’t think I have a good answer. I think I am more interested in the idea of partnership than I was before of having somebody um [00:52:19][16.3]

Jameela: [00:52:19] To share with. [00:52:23][4.4]

Guy: [00:52:24] Yeah, I just haven’t been that interested in sort of a long term relationship in that way, but the one I had was good. And I think trying that again with somebody who is, you know, a little bit better for me than the last guy would would be a good you know, would be a fun it would be fun to try [00:52:48][24.4]

Jameela: [00:52:49] 100 hundred percent. And what else other than representation do you want to see out in the world? What would you like more of? I’m sure there are a zillion things, but specifically some of the things that we’ve been talking about today, I mean, one of those for me is the health care system. You know, you and I spoke privately about the health care system and how fucked it is and how many of my friends who, if they are over the desired nonsense, racist, fat phobic BMI number, that doesn’t make any sense. It was devised by like a mathematician, not an actual scientist or doctor, medical doctor. If they’re above that, then a lot of the really serious health conditions that even happened to me when I was you know biggest teenager that they missed really serious problems that I had because they were so fixated and obsessed with my exterior. So I feel as though we both have a shared interest in the health care system, not making someone feel too anxious to even go to the doctor. [00:53:40][50.2]

Guy: [00:53:40] I OK, after that happened with my doctor or the other doctor at my clinic, I went back and I found an episode of Good Times. It’s from like season four or five. Are you familiar with the situation from the Good Times, from the 70s? There was an episode I remember seeing. An episode is basically a younger black female physician who’s lighter skinned, who talks down to Thelma about her family. Thelma was her name right. I forget. But what I remembered was the joke. She referred to the family as you people are. She was she was talking about black people being complicit in their own health problems because of the way they eat and that sort of thing. And she says you people and I remember the mom saying that to her, what? And who are you? Debbie Boone, which is a very funny joke to me as a child watching this in syndication. But I went back and watched it to just think about the fact that having somebody talk, having a lower class person talk back to a professional with something that had been modeled for me in art that I saw when I was a child. And it was really nice that at that moment I was able to go back and look at that and think about what that should tell me. I went to law school like I. I’m like of a professional class like I don’t need to be talked down to by a doctor, I am an intelligent person who can talk back to a doctor and explain what my medical needs are. I know what my rights are, and I think more people feeling comfortable advocating for themselves for such a long time as fat people. We didn’t feel like there’s just such a sense of shame. Jameela, I like like just negotiating the I’m going to have to fly on a plane that doesn’t have like a business class option, I have to figure this out in a foreign language flying around in France was so scary. And I just go to this place of shame and know that the people who are dealing with me are going to be like, are you awful fat person. And like, I would like to see myself and more people be better advocates for themselves to end those situations with doctors, with airlines, with all of the situations that are scary, to be able to advocate for ourselves, not from a place of shame, but from a place of, [00:56:21][160.6]

Jameela: [00:56:22] I have a need and it needs to be met like any other customer, like any other paying customer. I have a need. I need that need met. [00:56:28][5.9]

Guy: [00:56:28] I’m a human being with dignity. And it’s like it’s always weird when I see not five people have to make a parallel asks and they’re able to do it without the same sort of like overwhelming shame. And I’m like, maybe I need to learn to be more of that guy. [00:56:46][18.1]

Jameela: [00:56:47] Yeah, I think maybe everyone does. And I think that’s what the future is going to have to look like. You know, something that you said to me when we spoke over the phone was, I can’t expect the world to do more for me than I do for myself. I have to do the work. And I think that that’s a really beautiful and important sentiment to end this on. [00:57:06][18.2]

Guy: [00:57:06] It’s frustrating, but it is tiring like. And it’s tiring. Yeah. But also it’s worth it. And the wonderful thing about being middle aged is that I have seen the world get better. I have seen the world change and like be less shit headed about so many things in that affect me and affects people that I love. And, you know, continuing that work requires more change. I think there is a way that I’m like so many Americans have been taught to think of our country as a journey, as an inexorable journey towards greater freedom. And that’s not true. It has been work. It has been work and work with a lot of setbacks along the way. And, you know, it doesn’t just happen. It takes people putting themselves at risk. [00:58:03][56.7]

Jameela: [00:58:06] 100%. So guy, before I lose you, may I ask you, what do you weigh? [00:58:09][3.3]

Guy: [00:58:11] I weigh one book. I wrote a book. It’s called My Life as a Goddess, available wherever books are sold. And I’m proud of it. And that is definitely a significant aspect of the mass that I have on this planet. I weigh my relationship with my niece I put a lot into and she puts a lot into and gives me back so much. And I weigh the truly weightless time of being on stage like I love I have getting to perform stand up comedy is such a lovely thing and that I get to do it so frequently with so many amazing people in front of so many amazing audiences is a significant aspect of who I am and what I am on this planet in relationship to gravity. [00:59:08][57.1]

Jameela: [00:59:10] I love that. You’re the best. Thank you so much for coming on and having such a meaningful conversation with me about so many different, incredibly personal things. I adore you and I hope I get to see you in person sometime. This has been like six years. [00:59:22][11.7]

Guy: [00:59:22] It’s been a long time. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. [00:59:25][2.6]

Jameela: [00:59:27] Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode. I Weigh with Jameela Jamil is produced and research by myself, Jameela Jamil, Erin Finnegan and Kimmie Gregory. It is edited by Andrew Carson. And the beautiful music you’re hearing now is made by my boyfriend, James Blake. If you haven’t already, please rate, review and subscribe to the show. It’s a great way to show your support. We also have a bonus series exclusively on Stitcher Premium called Ask Jameela Anything check it out. You can get a free month to Stitcher Premium by going to Stitcher.com/premium and using the promo code I Weigh. Lastly, over I Weigh, we would love to hear from you and share what you weigh at the end of this podcast, you can leave us a voicemail at one eight one eight six six zero five five four three. Or email us what you weigh at IWeighpodcast@gmail.com. And now we would love to pass the mic to one of our fabulous listeners. [01:00:16][49.5]

Listener: [01:00:18] My name is Maya, I weigh the love of my two young nieces who admire me so much, without question. I weigh my relationship with my family. I weigh my journey into womanhood as a transgender woman. I weigh my close friends who are chosen family. I weigh my ability to create great art. And. I weigh my spirituality and the love of art. [01:00:18][0.0]

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