A Q&A with Love Your Bodd host Heather Boddy

It’s no secret that body image in the arts can be discouraging — which is why Heather Boddy decided to try to tackle the topic in her podcast Love Your Bodd.  Launching on Valentine’s Day 2017, Love Your Bodd is a near-weekly podcast where Heather interviews professionals in fields as varied as art, activism, and health & fitness to create a dialogue on what can be an uncomfortable topic.

We had the chance to sit down with Heather to chat about the podcast, the community, and She-Hulk. (Yes, She-Hulk.)

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Thanks for joining us, Heather! Tell us a little bit about what you do at Love Your Bodd.

Thank you so much for having me! Where can I begin when it comes to what I do with Love Your Bodd? To put it simply, I am the Host and Creator of Love Your Bodd, a podcast where I interview artists, activists, and health/fitness professionals in order to create a dialogue around body image, diversity, and representation in the media.

Before starting your podcast, do you feel that you had a community that supported you at the intersection of your interests and needs?

It’s so funny you ask this, because the short answer is no.

Here’s the long one: I knew that in artistic and fitness industries there is an “ideal body type,” but I was also aware of how taboo the subject is. I knew people were being shunned or put in boxes in these industries but that society seemed to be going along with it. So I felt like there was a gap that I wanted to fill, which is why I started Love Your Bodd.

I had no idea there was a community of body positive activists out there! I kind of knew about the body positive movement, but I wasn’t aware of how it was growing and I was totally naive to how both inclusive and exclusive it can be. Since starting Love Your Bodd, I have become much more informed and I continue to learn and figure out where Love Your Bodd “fits in” in the Body Positive movement. So I suppose that’s the journey my listeners go on with me: we learn and grow together. But my goal in creating a dialogue remains the same, and that’s the important part: we are talking about it.

Women across entertainment do tend to have similar body types, especially in comics and animation… Are there any women or female characters in entertainment you feel are more empowering when it comes to fitness and self-love?

I love talking about this so I’m really glad you asked! My friend Adare and I just released a special segment for Love Your Bodd called “The Slimdown,” where we discuss body, gender, and racial diversity in the media. This most recent edition was about fear of the word “fat.” So you can check out that episode for our examples!

Specific to your question though, YES, I do have a few female characters who I feel are more empowering when it comes to self-love and fitness. SHE-HULK is my number one example! She is my personal inspiration when it comes to both fitness AND self-love.

When I started my own personal “weight loss journey” I also happened to be reading the She-Hulk comic books by Charles Soule. A little about my background before I get into this: I have been overweight my whole life… I grew up in the Midwest, and it was just kind of normal for me. I knew I was fat, and I had come to terms with “being the fat friend” until I moved to New York City and my weight caught up to me. I was exhausted and couldn’t keep up with the pace of the city, so I made some changes and started exercising.

VERY LONG story short, I had started reading She-Hulk exactly when I started a new workout program called PiYo. And for the first time in my LIFE, I wanted to be STRONG instead of that silly media ideal “skinny.” She-Hulk has a unique body type compared to what you usually see in comic books of a slender and lean female superhero. She’s bulky, she’s tall, and my favorite thing about her is that she possesses the control to go back to her smaller/average “human form” yet she CHOOSES to stay large and green.

However, she’s so much more than just physically strong. She has an inspirational inner strength that I think is just as important. Jennifer Walters is sassy, independent, confident, and she takes no bullshit from anyone. She loves her large green self and OWNS it. So what I took away from reading the She-Hulk comics: Be a badass. Losing weight no longer was my end goal.

A couple other examples real quick – since I took up most of the time with my green girl – would be Faith from FAITH (Valiant Comic Books) and Gert of Marvel’s The Runaways. These are two superhero women who just happen to be plus-sized and they are badass, dress SO stylish, and own their body! It’s truly inspiring to see.

A couple on-screen examples of body diversity that combine fitness (being a badass) with self love:

1. The Crystal Gems in the animated series Steven Universe (Specifically Garnet: a tall, broad woman of color, and Amethyst a short and stout purple woman)
2. In the female driven TV show GLOW on Netflix you see all shapes, sizes, and races with a range of athletic ability (this show also plays with stereotypes in a way that’s rarely shown on screen).

Love Your Bodd has been running for a little more than a year now. Tell us a little bit about starting the podcast and your journey along the way.

It has been quite the journey to say the least! When I first set out to do this, I had no idea what I was doing. I mean, I still don’t  but I have learned so much! All I knew was that I wanted to inspire people. So let’s start with the inception of the idea of Love Your Bodd to give you an idea of how it has evolved over time. Again, this is kind of a long story but I’ll try and keep in concise.

I thought about my experiences as an actor and how when I was younger, I used the arts as an escape from my insecurities. Then when I moved to NYC, they became a huge contributing factor to my insecurities. I also thought about how body image had always been an issue for me and my peers in our various stages of life.

At first, I aimed for the podcast to be more focused on the arts, but it has evolved to be about so many things, which I will explain in more detail later. When I first thought about what I wanted to do, I brainstormed ways that I could reach people and talk about body image in a way that said “hey, I’ve been there too, you are not alone. Let’s get through this together.” I thought maybe a blog (I’m a terrible writer), maybe a YouTube channel (still an option, but it’s very image/presentation focused), and the place where it felt “just right” was a podcast.

I had been listening to podcasts for my own personal self development and I thought, why not do this for others? There’s no visual production value needed and one major plus is that my guests don’t have to worry about what they “look like” while we are recording. It’s just a conversation and I believe my guests have been more willing to open up to me because they forget we are recording and have a true, vulnerable conversation.

Love Your Bodd continually evolves as I learn more about myself and how I want to inspire people. I like to think of it as a storytelling podcast where I, as the host, am more or less a guide to help flesh out the personal story of every guest. My goal was always to interview diverse individuals to cover a wide range of topics and talk about body image issues of all kinds. Because of this goal, Love Your Bodd expanded to include athletes, cosplayers, and fitness professionals as well as artists. It became about advocating for CHANGE in representation rather than just telling stories. I now feel more like an activist than a podcast host.

I have also personally evolved since starting Love Your Bodd. The guests I have interviewed have challenged my own opinions on body image, body positivity, and even my very own relationship with my body. I am definitely not the same person I was a year ago when it comes to the mentality I had about food, exercise, and what it means to be “healthy.” I feel like when I first released LYB, I had this subconscious idea that every episode was going to include health, fitness, and how the person included it into their life to ‘feel better about themselves.’

I have since discovered that it’s not about that at all. It’s about creating an honest discussion behind our insecurities, which make us who we are, and then embracing those insecurities to become our best version of ourselves. It’s about creating a dialogue about representation – whether it’s size, race, gender,  ability, etc etc etc, with the hopes that it will create change. And, to come full circle, it’s about reaching that person who thinks they are all alone in this world and letting them know that they, in fact, are not alone and no longer need to isolate themselves for feeling that way. The experience may be unique, but it can also be universal.

Do you have a favorite episode or guest so far?

Am I allowed to say “all of them?” Because every guest I’ve had on has had such a unique story, it’s really hard to pick a favorite! I love hearing about life from another perspective. I really enjoy when the guest and I can come to a realization together. When a guest looks at me and says, “I never thought about it like that before,” that’s how I know it’s a good episode.

For example, in one of my first episodes with my friend Daniel, we talked about his religious upbringing and his sexuality. Together, while recording, we discovered that growing up, he had been put into different “boxes” — or “stereotypes,” so to speak — and as soon as he felt free of one “box” he was automatically put into another: first it was the religion box, then it was the “expectation to be masculine,” then after he came out he was put into the box of the “gay stereotype.” So those are always my favorite episodes, when we discover new things together.

I also really enjoy hosting panel discussions, which is when I get a group of diverse individuals together to discuss a specific topic. Panels are fun because there are multiple perspectives and together we can truly generate a dialogue about the given topic. I love when the panelists challenge each other (and me) with opposing opinions and different perspectives. I feel like I always learn the most even though I’m the one hosting!

Thanks so much for taking time to chat with us. If our readers want to keep up with you and Love Your Bodd, where can they find you online?

Thank you so much for having me! The best way to keep up with Love Your Bodd is to subscribe to the podcast! We post a new episode every Tuesday and it’s available on any podcasting platform (Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, etc) or at HeatherBoddy.com/LoveYourBodd.

Love Your Bodd is also on instagram @love_your_bodd – I use Instagram as my main source for feedback on episodes as well as gauge interest in future LYB topics!

You can like Love Your Bodd on Facebook for updates/discussion topics or follow us on Twitter @LoveYourBodd.

Feel free to contact Love Your Bodd at any time using the email loveyourboddcast@gmail.com. We encourage feedback, welcome questions,  and are happy to give advice! I can easily put you in touch with a previous guest if you have specific questions regarding their episode. And if you wanna find meeee I am on all social media platforms as @HeatherBoddy (Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat).

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Want to hear the Girls in Capes side of the interview? We stopped by Love Your Bodd for a panel discussion — you can listen to the March 6 episode of Love Your Bodd on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play now.

[coffee]