The bottom right corner the video will be available immediately following the broadcast. Upcoming programs include los angeles and Edward Snowden and meanwhile so check out the media tab and town hall and the Nonprofit Community if we made a donation and hope you will consider supporting us during this time becoming a member through the website. And those that have been hit by the negative effects of the covert outbreak. And with those local independent bookstores. Please use the link on the live stream. The conversation will last around 35 minutes. Please submit your questions in the ask a question button. The town halls work is made possible with your support. We like to thank all of our members. The chicago author and essayist and comedy writer and the call writer of that comedy advice blog. And the gets in glory. And also based on her popular book and has appeared on jezebel and her vote we are never meeting in real life was on the New York Times bestseller less. Into a nonfiction writer a narrative Nonfiction Book talk about the cultural myth of pregnancy. And then the Washington State book award then has been featured on npr fresh air. And the book no thank you is the subject of tonights talk. Please join me to welcome our gas. Thank you magan and townhall. Is 10 00 oclock p. M. I will turn into pumpkin at some point. We appreciate your presence even more. I did a test run with the townhall staff and said 90 minutes i said i dont think we will be here for 91 90 minutes it seems like a lot of time. I cant do anything for more than an hour. Little keye even moments of joy and within a moment its all right with the world is falling apart and we have no plans i feel happiness and it doesnt feel complicated or what im just going to fall off. Then lets talk about this. The book has been, okay im going to keep going your book was an instant New York Times bestseller that is just one measure and the last six weeks have been a bookstore bestsell bestseller. Its kind of to say you are killing it during this pandemic. But when i was thinking about it that way its another reason ist it brought me true joy because if anyone should be telling it in the pandemic is that black queer lady doth not long ago was an hourly wage worker with multiple comorbidity, like you are the demographic our society has decided like its okay. Guest when i was trying to come up with a title im glad we didnt go with it but one of them on my list was dying is fine. Im glad they talked me out of it. Your success has been a joy to me because it feels like in this moment theres like some bit of justice that we might not otherwise have so i just want to say that. I dont know how to gracefully accept a compliment but i will just say thank you. I am making it weird. Most normal people, there is no normal but most people have a hard time with that. We can move on. I would much rather be hearing it over a loudspeaker and to be looking at my own pace. Guest this was a request. My favorite thing is for someone to tell me what they want to hear and angela wanted to hear a little bit from body negativity from this but i hope you all will purchase. It is essentially about all of the things we are told we have to do to have a body and have a good body and healthy body or good looking body and how i dont think any of those things is possible for any normal person. Whats happening on your back right now, do you even know how much hair is on it, is the skin soft, has years of spending every day in a straight jacket draw left marks, what i is up wh that weird scaly patch. Are you already so tired from the stuff you have to keep track of you cant be bothered to worry about the part of the body that you cant even speak a to fucking c. . I get that. The last time i thought about it is in 2002 i was sleeping with a guy and he would moan here shit like i love looking at your back. [inaudible] i am not such a asshole i would try to make it nicer, so i bought a loufa and then would try to slater it on because i was worried about how the hardest part of my body to reach was having dead cells off of it. I would rub up against a dry towel to get the ocean to absorb into my wounded skin. My freshly baby back didnt feet feel right for weeks, but the next time they knocked on the door late at night with nothing but with eyes and a throbbing erection heated up accidentally and say did you fall on your back, good old thermometer dick reminding me no good deed goes unpunished and you should never do anything nice ever for anyo anyone. Lets examine all the stuff you could do but wont because who could possibly keep track of all of this to have a nice chest. I dont mean your boobs because they should be addressed on your own but that piece between her neck and where they began. Heres how i take care of my chest. Sometimes when i wash my face but only after ive taken a shower i will accidentally gets too much moisturizer or too much or you were missed in the palm of my hand and as im frantically looking around the bathroom to find a way of disposing of it that doesnt include dribbling it over the floor, it will dawn on me that i could just rub it on my chest and have a shiny plate for the rest of the day. I know that back acne is the same but im pretty sure i also have chest ask me. I dont know if thats what it is that sometimes i get these little bumps and what did i survive puberty for it years later i would be squinting in the eye on the drugstore are trying to figure out which of the options available work best on a saggy thorax. Your breasts are supposed to stay under your chin from the moment they sprout until youre 99th birthday. You know what, i cannot do it. I do not have perky tits and thats okay. I think pinning them to my neck days are over. One of the things i keep telling myself over and over again like a mantra is people already know what your body looks like so you dont have to try anymore. I breasts are shaped like summer squash. Im unwilling to grasp with gravity, these large bags of sand hanging dolomite clavicle are no longer going into daily battle. Are they even, lifted, separated, does the band if it come is because right, does the underwire big come is it flat, does it create lumps under your sweater, is it breathable, is that scratchy, does it with moisture, i heard that is what you are supposed to want. Wait a minute, what were we talking about again . Theoretically, everyone loves a strong broad shoulder but no one tells you how to get one, so i guess you either have to be born with them or that is what those odd machines at the gym that make you look like a bird flapping with heavy wing are for. Michelle obama is the Gold Standard for arms and im sure there is an interview with her trainer on how they got that way, but life is fucking short. Invest in some cardigans, put vaseline on your elbows, where sweatshirts 365 days a year, get definition lifting a coffee cup. Armpit hair maintenance, you could just let it go like i do, occasionally spraying some deodorant and doesnt work into your dark arm cave to keep wild dogs off or you could wax or sugar or shave or laser the hair off, dab it with something to prevent and ingrowns. Everyday, every couple of days, weekly, i guess that depends on what kind you have and whether or not you are taking beauty vitamins. I definitely am, by the way, because i love an easy fix even if it isnt real. The number of available to you to choose from is staggering. I dont know how a person could make an informed decision without getting a bachelors degree in chemistry first. It used to just be like do you want to spell my baby powder or Cherry Blossom every time you waved your arm in class but now what would you rather be spidey 100 of the time or destroy your fucking brain. Was i supposed to keep reading, do you want me to keep reading . I cant hear you, you are muted. Im back. Sorry, everybody. I felt like this is the case i love hearing you. Nice told me that they thermometer dick joke out loud. [laughter] guest i forgot where you told me to stop and i was like this whole thing is really long. Me i privately have you sent me voice mail. Guest i will call you and give you a personal reading after this. And then just what else, i will do it. Host thank you for that. So many things your work touches on but what i love about it is fundamentally it is about being in your body and when you write about your body coming you are writing about every way that it interacts with every level of societies whether it is institutions, interpersonal, how you see your self. And i feel like that is probably why it resonates with so many people. What you are saying is the standards that we are supposed to hold our standards to our impossible and order you have to be rich to even come close to be able to do that. Every once body is a mess in a different way falling apart and failing us. There is no such thing as a good body is one that he is alive and here. So i think what you are saying is its enough to have a body and its okay t its okay to sore least with it. Guest to feel overwhelmed at the end of the chapter i kind of get into and this is the thing that has vexed me as a person dealing with Crohns Disease its like all of the things you are supposed to eat to keep your body going, and its like if you truly eight the 12th of tale or whatever and broccoli, you would never stop eating. In addition to all of the things you want to eat. So the things you are supposed to eat and then the things you want to eat, like i need 14 cow stomachs to eat all of that. Theres an idea someone some way or is doing it, getting all of the folic acid they need in the day and all of the vitamins. But it is no one ive ever met. The idea that it could ever be me is impossible. Its basically like a fulltime job, like you want some joy. Im not someone that could ever be full, although sometimes i do like a salad. Guest i had one for dinner and i felt very much like i loved myself for the five minutes. For the rest of the time i was eating the salad i was like this is a lot of work. I really wish this was something else. I just want us all to be free enough to say im not getting in all of the beans and thats fine. Like if i dont eat enough revolution, that will be good. Host i think theres also this idea in our culture that say if you were to do your ultimate tale situation and somehow it would be more healthy were perfectly healthy and that is a good life because theres this idea that if you are healthy you are morally superior to other people, whereas what about people that are disabled and People Living with these problematic inconvenience bodies and they are no less good. Guest right. I would much rather do whatever im going to do and have got shave a few years off. I was talking to my friends dad had watched a documentary and he was like you know how people watch a documentary and think they are a professor all of a sudden. I was like you watched one thing he came to me like youve got to cut out this and do that and i was like man, if you are 72 and counting your potatoes or whatever, what is the point, why even live to be that age if you cant eat ice cream all day if you want . So you can be around 90, no way. Im actively decomposing all the time. Im going to do whatever i can do to get to the next day. Sometimes its a salad but sometimes its cheese. [laughter] guest i want to ask you you write so much about your body and so openly. Where do you think that came from . It wasnt like im going to become a writer now and this is my thing. But i wondered where does that come from, because that has a lot of people a lot of people are uncomfortable with. Guest i definitely didnt grow up with smart progressive people. Nobody gave me a hard time because i was fat, but they were not like embrace your body. It was like you look like we were. So thats fine. I didnt grow up with any radicals or anything. I was definitely wallowing in selfhatred. But when i started writing, and started performing my work especially, it was like its still scares me. Like im fat but i love walking into that sort of thing. Its like writing about it even as uncomfortable as it makes me feel at least you know what you are getting when you get it. I know who i am and i cant hide from that. If you read something i pretend that you know im going to be in the bathroom for like 35 minutes and dont call an ambulance. I had an okay cupid profile and people know what they are getting because my screen name. [laughter] all of my pictures were honest so at least then youre not like i thought they were tiny and im like actually i would write a loan and then it takes a lot of people who dont talk to me about it to see it before it is published so it still feels like mine now everyone has read them and we are going to talk about it, but they feel less scary especially now because i just kind of write it in my little and then send it off and months later he comes back in a book. I dont read read it until they sent me the first batch of edi edits. Host the word that seems important to me how i was loose when i was writing about and in a place where im not selfconscious, like this is just what i need to say. There is something when you make yourself free because if youve are already saying the things you imagine people might make fun of you or give you a hard time about, if you have already said it guest i will say anything in service of a joke. Im always trying to get a laugh and i take a nap myself first. I dont know if its punching down but punching latterly, like no one is going to get hurt. But you learn how to deflect bullying or comments when you are young either you cry or youre like im going to make the joke before you make the joke and then it takes the teeth out of your jokes because i already said it. If i walk in the door like im poor and i have shoes from payless. What are you going to say thats going to be worse. So i learned that as a coping mechanism. And internalizing it guest there is some of that but in a moment i will say it before you say it and then later im like whoa they still said it but at least i said it first. Host theres this idea of embodiment. Speak to people who are embodied are somehow super healthy or have a certain kind of body that when i read your work i like this is a deeply embodied person. When you are dealing with all this stuff, like you become an expert. Youre not a scientist, but you acquire some terminology and knowledge of the lived experience. Like thats who you think about, i dont know, does that seem accurate to say i am a deeply embodied person . Guest thats more beautiful than the way that i ever put anything so i appreciate you for giving me that language because now im going to coopt it and say im a deeply embodied person. I think the way i think of myself, thats true like i often feel like my brain is a thing trapped inside this body and because its given me so many problems from so many areas, i am like deeply knowledgeable when you have a lot of problems and you are in a black body and to advocate for your self at the doctor a lot, you learn that you need to learn all the stuff they are saying so that when you see this other doctor that you dont know very well, you can tell them what they need to know. I think when i first started dealing with Crohns Disease, i learned all this stuff because you are seeing a this kind of dr. Into that kind of doctor and youve got to kno do with this e says and that one says. So i learned as a function of making things easier for me. Trying to make my life easier to move through. Then i think once i really started writing about it what is happening . Host we can still hear you, there you go. Guest we live in the country and our intranet is bullshit. Theres probably a raccoon outside shooting on whatever. [laughter] so if i disappear. So i got to know all of the terminology so that i could be more helpful to myself and then when i started writing about it, i think thats when i was like this is this thing i have i think i had a contentious relationship with my body, but ive learned it so well that im right about it and feel deeply in tune with the despite all the problems. Host but thats the thing i think having problems and being in tune with it i feel like im late to the game on this. A couple of years ago i was like you cant be in tune with your body unless it looks a certain way, but that is just bullshit. Guest it isnt a grass is greener situation because i havent had children, i feel like i cant be as in tune with what my body can do as a woman who has grown a child. I feel like youve got to be in tune with your body in a way that i could never understand. Ive grown some tumors. Host just because your body is thought to do something doesnt mean that you should or have to. I think it kind of goes both ways, to know that its not something you want, but being in tune with your body as well. So thats for sure. I was thinking i wanted to ask and i will just go into it now. Lets talk about your endometriosis situation to go back to that idea, it breaks my heart you kind of glossed over it but i am familiar with this feeling. Its not the same, but like when you go into a Doctors Office or Providers Office and are like i am prepared for you to not believe anything im saying and they prefer yoprepared for you. Im fully prepared to have to advocate for myself and maybe even get a little heated if necessary. So i still have a uterus now i will sound like a fucking idiot and those that just dont do anything anymore. I think i must make eggs i know what happens to them i am knocking on the door. You have to ask a real sentence on scientist because there is nothing for them to attach to any more because of the scorched earth. I havent had a period in two or three years. Something like that. And then eventually you just go into menopause. I dont know when you stop producing eggs. I think it is any day now. When you are a fetus you come out with all the eggs you will ever have. This is wild and then they mature so it is a limited numbe number. So i feel like i know i am on my last few eggs. I am 42 and my. It is weird and has changed. And i am curious because you write about this in the book that i just want to take it out. Im not having children. My. It is a source of shame and discomfort and it is terrible for me and i just want you to take it out. It was so unmanageable that i am a Health Hazard when i leave my home like the shining elevator seed all the time. But i felt that was enough and that when insurance gets involved. And then doing everything short of taking it out and then they burned it to a crisp. On that note i think i have on a file have to talk about the uterus and then the knowledge of your body whether you have children or not you talk about having a dnc which is a procedure i had done after losing a pregnancy that you have to do this to scrape out what is left in their. So i am on the flipside that i just want to vacate. And like female Reproductive Health and if you have the righ