"Happy Gals" is an anti-diet community founded by writer and director Alessia Galatini and inspired by her most recent short film. "Happy Gals - The Podcast" discusses body neautrality and mental health with several activists working in the field. Find out more at @happygals___ on Instragram.
HAPPY GALS: Men suffer from eating disorders, weight loss products are a scam and wearing crop tops is fab [feat Devon Johnson]
TW: substance abuse, graphic descriptions, self-harm.
Episode 10 is a chat with Devon Johnson, a British-Jamaican actor and writer with a complicated history of eating disorders and laxative abuse. Devon is the first male guest on the podcast and he's incredibly inspiring in the way he breaks the silence around the difficulties of men suffering from eating disorders. Starting from the pressure of his child actor career all the way to the compulsive obsession for weight loss products as a teenager, Devon breaks down the way our capitalistic society and multi-million dollar companies actually gain money from preying on our insecurities.
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22 Jun 2020
HAPPY GALS: Recognising abuse, what to do about trauma and why it's never about what we wear [feat Annie Wade Smith]
TW: sexual abuse, victim blaming and trauma.
Episode 10 is a chat with Annie Wade Smith, a charity mental health worker specialising in abuse survivors. She also has a background in curve modelling. Today we chat about the stereotypes associated with "professional women", but also go into detail about her experience learning about trauma and helping her patients address it. Annie explains all the insidious ways trauma can manifest and addresses our cultural issues with victim blaming.
Follow @happygals____ on IG to stay up to date with our latest episodes.
15 Jun 2020
HAPPY GALS: Poetry reading, feminism in school curricula, chub rub and other "flaws" [feat Aimee Tahir]
Episode 9 is a chat with Amee Tahir, a poet, writer and Instragram ambassador for body positivity. Aimee can be found at @aimeetahir and @thewayshespoke, an account solely dedicated to her poetry. Today we talk about the liberation from beauty norms through her ambassador work, brands that address issues such as chafing, but also about her experience with feminism as a student and the alarming lack of women authors in school curricula. The podcast includes an exclusive performance of an original poem by Aimee.
8 Jun 2020
HAPPY GALS: Unlearning privilege, getting naked together and destroying hierarchies [feat Jennifer Adler]
Episode 8 is a chat with Jennifer Adler, a feminist German photographer that works primarily with naked models. She runs a successful IG page @fotografin.fraun.feministin, where she showcases her photographs. She deals with many different body shapes and taboo topics such as vaginas and menstruation. Today we talk about the intention behind her slogan "Nudity is not sexual, your gaze is", how she builds a safe space on her sets and the work she has done to unlearn her white and cis privilege.
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1 Jun 2020
HAPPY GALS: The facade of social media, representation in art and how lockdown drew out our aspirations [feat Linear Bodies]
Episode 7 is a chat with Juliette from Linear Bodies, a rather new yet extremely successful instagram account where Juliette showcases her linear drawings of diverse naked women. She has just recently opened up a shop and is now taking commissions and selling prints. What's funny though is that Juliette is actually a musician (we can't tell you who, she's keeping it a secret) with a very established following. During the lockdown, she decided to step away from the negativity of her feed and sat with her body-related discomfort, which led to the creation of Linear Bodies. Today we talk about the risks and demands of online marketing, the power of reconsidering our aspirations and how to address our unhealthy relationship with social media.
Follow @happygals____ on IG to stay up to date with the latest episodes.
25 May 2020
HAPPY GALS: Body image coaching, binge eating disorder and the struggle of getting a diagnosis [feat Sarah Bryan]
Episode 6 is a chat with Sarah Bryan, who runs @kindfulbodymind. Sarah is a mental health and body image coach from Melbourne, Australia. She supports clients who are struggling with negative body image by using a non-diet approach and, instead, helps them focus on reframing their mindset and beliefs about themselves and their bodies. She is an eating disorder survivor herself and today we discuss binge eating and the struggle of getting a diagnosis in the face of medical discrimination.
Follow @happygals___ on Instagram to stay up to date with our community.
18 May 2020
HAPPY GALS: Nipples, censorship, art modelling and the female gaze [feat Emma Shapiro]
Episode 5 is a chat with Emma Shapiro. Emma Shapiro is an American artist and feminist activist, founder of the international art project and movement Exposure Therapy (https://www.exposuretherapyproject.com/), promoting exposure for the #freethenipple cause. She sees her body as a vessel for ancestral history -- a link to family lost to anti-semitism and the Irish Famine -- and thus a primal act of resistance against injustice, and a representation of hope. Today we discuss censorship, promoting women artists and the power of a naked body.
Follow @happygals___ on Instagram to stay up to date with our community.
10 May 2020
HAPPY GALS: Eating disorders, fitness obsession and the importance of therapy [feat Elena Carraro]
Episode 4 is a chat with Elena Carraro. Elena worked as Happy Gals' make-up artist but in her everyday life she is a therapist with a BA and Master degree in psychology. She has worked in the UK as well as in Italy. She runs an Italian Youtube channel @elenac. where she discusses topics surrounding psychology. Today we discuss eating disorders: how to spot them, how to recover and the importance of therapy.
Follow @happygals___ on Instagram to stay up to date with our community.
8 May 2020
HAPPY GALS: Body hair, Federico Fellini and stripping away judgement [feat Lucrezia Pollice]
Episode 3 is a chat with Lucrezia Pollice, an Italian London-based filmmaker. She works as a color assistant for CHEAT mainly on short-form film/commercial content. This year she directed/edited music video “Strip It” which was selected for LIFF, ShortsonTap and for the Italian Directors Guild AIR3. Today we discuss her work on the music video, the stigma around body hair and how cinema influences our ideas around beauty.
Follow @happygals___ on IG to stay up to date with our community.
6 May 2020
HAPPY GALS: Set your boundaries and build communities [feat Benedetta Lo Zito]
Episode 2 is a chat with Benedetta Lo Zito, a fellow Italian in London, Feminist and Body Positivity Lecturer, Social Media Strategist and Women of Brixton Co-founder. She's the face behind popular IG accounts @vitadibi and @WomenofBrixton. Today we discuss the need to call out hate, how diet culture has become an intrinsic part of our society and how healthy boundaries can make life easier when dealing with fatphobia.
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4 May 2020
HAPPY GALS: Eat the dessert, don't sit on the floor and cleanse your instagram [feat Rachel Vogler]
Episode 1 is a chat with Rachel Vogler about her experience as a fat person eating out in restaurants and taking up more space than society sees fit. Rachel works in sexual violence prevention but can mainly be found in the pub, dancing to Lizzo or swimming in open water. She is the proud owner of a TEDx talk, 'Shame and Me: Adventures in Fat Land' and mum to a brand new arrival, @FatChicksRunning on Instagram.
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