The Fat Body as Sacred Heirloom
Ancestral Wisdom for the Skinny Apocalypse
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October 8, 2026
12pm Los Angeles | 3pm New York | 22:00 Bucharest
90 minutes
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This event will be held live on Zoom, and will be recorded.
A recording will be shared with all who register within 48 hours after the event.
About this event
For many self-identified progressives, weight discrimination isn’t a belief they hold. It’s the water they swim in: invisible, unexamined, and compatible with their sense of ethical clarity. Our conversation begins here.
We’ll unpack how fear of fatness happened, who benefits, and what it costs; tracing the roots of fat hatred not just through recent culture, but through longer histories of severance, colonial rupture, and the slow forgetting of bodies tethered to kinship with the Earth.
We’ll make ample space, with sturdy seating, for anyone whose body has been treated as a problem to be solved.
More about the event
We’ll walk through the doorway of fat hatred to better understand how supremacy operates, especially when it moves subtly and self-righteously, among people and in spaces that already consider themselves progressive, ethical, and aware.
We’ll tend the grief of living in the sort of body the world is trying to erase, allowing space for our broken hearts and our rage. We’ll discuss ancestral connection as offering something culture alone cannot: the backing of our wise and well ones, the inherent value of a body in its sacredness of belonging to the greater web of life. We’ll explore this remembering not as a footnote, but as the medicine.
We’re thrilled to welcome Sonalee Rashatwar and Ronald Young Jr. as guests to ask: what if the way we treat fat bodies isn’t a pesky side issue, but a mirror? In this open dialog, we’ll explore how fat hatred operates as a hidden architecture of supremacy, especially inside the spaces that are most certain they’ve already done the work.
Why this? Why now?
With the world in turmoil — climate catastrophe, unchecked colonialism, AI nihilism, and more crises than we could possibly enumerate — why are we talking about fatness?
Fat bias is one of the most globally tolerated forms of discrimination. It’s joked about, moralized, medicalized, and spiritualized with almost no pushback. In Western cultures especially, fatness is treated not as a body state, but a character flaw, a failure of discipline, virtue, intelligence, morality, and human value.
Wherever this kind of logic thrives, it rarely travels alone. Hatred and judgment of fatness reliably coexists alongside racism, classism, misogyny, and eugenic thinking. It is not the root of supremacy culture, but it is one of its most socially tolerated and celebrated expressions.
Most notably, these biases are alive within so called “wellness” culture, which contorts itself in self-aggrandizing expressions of “inclusivity.” Many wellness, spiritual, therapeutic, and activist communities rightly pride themselves on inclusion and social awareness. Language evolves. Pronouns are respected. Land acknowledgments are made. Intentions are named.
And yet: whose bodies are actually welcomed without scrutiny?
Who is subtly assumed to be unwell, undisciplined, irresponsible, or spiritually “out of alignment”?
Who is accommodated and who is not?
Who is revered, listened to, approached, included, invited, and wanted, and who is not?
Who is considered when teachings revere “lightness”?
Fat bias doesn’t usually show up as overt cruelty, just as racism doesn’t often present with the convenience of a direct slur. These ills are more often found in silence, avoidance, quiet exile, and unexamined assumptions.
This talk does not ask that you find yet another something new to feel guilty about. It asks something potentially less comfortable but more useful: What might you learn about how supremacy culture lives in you by examining the forms of hierarchy you still feel justified in, consciously or otherwise?
Register for The Fat Body as Sacred Heirloom
About the Presenters
Sonalee Rashatwar (he-they) LCSW, ME
Somatic sex therapist and political educator
Sonalee (he-they) is a queer trans-masc Hindu (it’s complicated) Indian-American superfat somatic sex therapist and political educator based in Philadelphia, known for their work on decolonial fat liberation, sexual trauma, and South Asian family abuse. He has an MSW and MEd in Human Sexuality from Widener University, working as a clinical social worker and parentified eldest daughter for the last 10 years. Known for popularizing concepts like internalized fatphobia, non-consensual diets in fat childhood, and diet trauma, he is always writing, workshopping, and planning his next swim. You can find him on instagram @TheFatSexTherapist.
Ronald Young Jr.
Audio Producer, Storyteller, Host of Weight For It
Ronald Young Jr. is an audio producer, storyteller and host based in Alexandria, VA. He created and produces the podcast Weight For It, a narrative show about navigating the world as a fat person. An official Tribeca Selection in 2023, Weight For It has received accolades from Vulture, Vogue, and The New York Times; and was awarded a historic three Podcast Academy Awards in 2024 including Best Society and Culture Podcast, Best Indie Podcast and Best Indie Podcast Host, and another in 2025 for Best Podcast Host. His newest project Heartbreaker is a live storytelling show in which he tells the story of his journey to finding love. He is passionate about social justice and equity and helped to tell historical and present accounts of black folks throughout American history with his work.
Lauren Leonardi
Ancestral Medicine Managing Director & Call Host
Lauren is a maker, writer, and forever fat person. She is proud to run Ancestral Medicine alongside Founder and Director, Daniel Foor, bringing clarity and cohesion to this heart-centered, global, mission-driven organization. She attended six seasons of weight loss summer camp as a child, and went on her first diet at nine years old. Since then, she has gained and lost, cumulatively, over one thousand pounds. She marvels daily at the blessing and miracle of a body that’s been through so much and continues to afford so much pleasure. Lauren walks humbly in Earth-honoring ways while working across cultures with respect and care. She’s offering a free download of her recent work, “A Field Guide for Practitioners on Fat Inclusion in Sexual Worldbuilding.”
Most images by Shoog McDaniel @shooglet
Black and white figure by Mollie Cronin @art.brat.comics
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