PLEASE NOTE: This is a minimally-edited transcript that originates from a program that uses AI.
Anita Rao 0:01
Every year since my niece and nephew were born, I've gifted them a book, either one that I loved as a child, like chicka, chicka, boom, boom and corduroy, or one that I found as an adult that tells a story that delights me. A few years ago, I got my nephew a book that's since become my go to baby gift. It's called bodies are cool. I've read it to him countless times, and now I do the same with my four year old niece, Mira.
Anita reading to Mira
Soft, tuggy tummies, flat or sticky, outy tummies, innies, outies, pregnant tummies. Bodies are cool. What do you think about your tummy? It's brown. It's brown and a belly button, and it has a belly button, this body, that body, his and her and their body, however you define your body, bodies...
Mira 1:00
are cool.
Anita Rao 1:09
As adults, our relationships with our own bodies are at once abstract, fraught and politicized, but picture books offer a space where we can meet our bodies with joy and curiosity and impart those sentiments to the next generation. I'm Anita Rao, and this is Embodied our show tackling sex relationships and your health.
Teaching kids to think in nuanced ways about bodies and how they work is an art. It involves careful attention to words, illustrations and all the blank space in between. So how exactly do children's book writers do that? We're going to get into those details today, starting with author and illustrator Tyler Feder. She's behind the book. Bodies are cool. Hey, Tyler, welcome to embodied.
Tyler Feder 2:02
Thank you so much for having me.
Anita Rao 2:05
So listeners were just able to hear a bit of the text of bodies are cool through me reading to my niece. But I just want to kind of describe the visual spectacle of this book. Each page is filled with bodies of all shapes, sizes, skin tones, hair colors, abilities, and there's so much detail that you've added to each one. It really speaks to, I think, the wonder that you were trying to evoke with this book. You came to it as an early 30 something illustrator, but you were trying to capture a feeling that you had as a kid. Can you talk to me about those memories of wonder about the body.
Tyler Feder 2:41
Yeah so I was born in 1989 so the majority of my adolescence was like late 90s, early 2000s like peak diet culture, same size zero, explosion. So, but then I think about this little sliver of time before I got all those messages and how I just didn't have any negative feelings about bodies, about my body, or anyone else's body. I have this memory that I talk about a lot, where I was up early one morning in the basement with my dad, and he was working out just like doing sit ups and walking on a treadmill and stuff, and he told me that he wanted his stomach to be hard. I just have this memory of thinking like, why would you not want to be soft? And like, remembering that now is so jarring, because it's so automatic to not want to be soft, given all the messages that we get everywhere. But kids don't feel that way yet, until they hear it from somewhere else.
Anita Rao 3:51
They really don't. And I think you know, in asking that question to my niece, like, what do you notice? It's like, oh, what do I notice? Like, and it's all very kind of neutral, like, it looks this way, it feels this way, it has this softness. And I know that you reached out to a bunch of people on Instagram before you wrote this book, because you asked people, what are the parts of your body that you learned to love when you were little? Talk to me about what you heard and what your takeaway was from those messages.
Tyler Feder 4:19
Yeah. So actually, I asked people what body parts they wished that they had learned to love when they were looking that's a key difference. Okay, it was really jarring. The responses people are just so eager to talk about the parts of themselves that they didn't like, and it made me so sad. And I read through them, and I compiled them into a big list that I categorized. So I put, like, all the hair stuff in one and all the skin stuff in another. It was like, any possible way a person can look. People feel bad about it, and I wanted little kids to see. All those different ways a person can look and just be excited about them.
Anita Rao 5:05
So you took a very kind of meticulous and specific approach to the depiction of bodies in this book. And I think every single time that I read it, I notice something new. There's like a kid in the corner who has a colostomy bag, and I want to hear about how you figured out about the bodies that you're going to depict. I know there was a spreadsheet involved, so tell me about this spread.
Tyler Feder 5:29
There was a spreadsheet was very short lived, because it very quickly became unmanageable, because there were like a billion columns and a billion rows. But basically, what I wanted was to have a lot of diversity on each spread, but I also wanted to have diversity through the whole book. So I didn't want it to be like, every person who uses a cane is white. I wanted to have each person with a cane looks different. It was like, the most challenging part of the book really was to just try to, like, make sure that each person was really distinct from each other person.
Anita Rao 6:07
When you were in the thick of it, is there something that you remember, kind of like, control effing for in your spreadsheet to be like, did I represent this? Like, anything that stands out that you were kind of really meticulous about at the end?
Tyler Feder 6:18
I'm trying to think, I do remember at the end, before I turned in the art, I went back and looked at that big master sheet of all the people's responses from Instagram, and there was one category that was like, moles and scars and freckles and all that stuff. And I went through the book and I put all of them in there, I was like sprinkling beauty marks on everyone. I love that. Yeah, it was fun.
Anita Rao 6:46
The word choice is really powerful in children's books, and there is one word in particular that comes up and bodies are cool that stands out to me when I'm sharing it with my niece and nephew, because I'm so aware of how infrequently the word fat and fatness is kind of named in kids books in any way or in a way that is kind of neutral. Can you talk to me about how you use it in your book and the kind of conversations that you're hoping to start by using it the way that you do?
Tyler Feder 7:19
Yeah, so I have been in the like body positive, fat liberation kind of space on social media for many years now, and I I've learned a lot, and I think that a lot of people in larger bodies are reclaiming the word fat that has previously been used as just an insult. People think fat and they think gluttonous or lazy or ugly, but none of those are part of the actual definition of the word. The word is just a neutral thing, the same as tall or short, and so I wanted to just present it in the book in a way that was like, not super drawing attention to itself, like, it's not like, there's a page that's all about fatness, but to just put it in there as like, that's just one way of being. And it doesn't have to be a negative thing. It can be a neutral thing or a beautiful thing. Just like any other kind of body,
Anita Rao 8:17
There is a really sing song equality to this book, or at least that's how that's how it feels when I'm reading it. And I'm curious about how that and kind of other style elements evolve throughout the feedback and editing process. Like, did you get any notes on what kind of style would help the message resonate or stick with kids?
Tyler Feder 8:38
The sing songy thing kind of just came out of nowhere. I like knew the general idea that I wanted the book to have, the rhythmy thing popped into my head one day there. So I have two younger sisters, and when we were little, my mom used to sit in the hallway between our rooms and read books to us before bed, and there was this one book that she read to us so often that had a similar sing songy quality that I found out later that she wasn't even reading from the book anymore. She had just memorized it. And I really love that idea that it's kind of like a song. It's like a message that is fun to remember. It can stick in people's heads even when they're not looking at the page.
Anita Rao 9:26
So this combination of kind of words that describe particular bodies and name that they exist while also celebrating a wide diversity of bodies, I want to ask you about that because I had this interesting experience with your book. I was with my nephew. We were at a coffee shop, I think, and there was someone there who used a ventilator, and my nephew was kind of loudly commenting to me, like asking about the ventilator and pointing out what it was. And I remember that my immediate instinct was sort of like, no, like, we don't talk about other people. Bodies, like we don't comment about other people's bodies. And then I was like, Wait a second, I literally bought you a book that I read to you that says, like, this body, that body, bodies are cool. So I'm curious about how you think about the role of the book in these kind of real life moments where we're navigating social mores around what and how to comment about someone else's body.
Tyler Feder 10:21
I have gotten a lot of messages from parents and caretakers who have said that they sort of use the book as a way for their kids to get all their staring out so that they don't do it in public, because there are so many types of bodies in the book that maybe kids haven't seen before, but in terms of, like, actually saying something in person, I think what I'm hoping people get from the book is to sort of keep bringing it back to like, yeah, all bodies are different, and having that be kind of like a neutral to positive place to bring the conversation back to. So even if the kid is saying, like, you know, why does that person use a wheelchair? Or whatever you can say, like, different people's bodies move in different ways, and like, that person rolls because all bodies are different and bodies are cool. It's like a pretty simple, basic message, but it's really intended for, like, super little kids, and I think if they hear it enough, it'll just become a part of how they understand the world.
Anita Rao 11:31
Having access to neutral language about your body at young age is so important, especially because negativity and self consciousness can start really early. So how do you meet a kid at that moment of first noticing differences between their bodies and others and help them reframe it as something positive. An author who writes with young, brown kids in mind will help us answer that question right after the break. Please stay with us.
This is Embodied. I'm Anita Rao. Children's books may be easy to read, but writing a good one is not so simple. Today we are talking about how authors and illustrators create children's books, specifically about bodies and what it's like to distill complex ideas into messages that kids can understand, like how to make sense of a moment when someone points out something about your body that's different, which is what a little girl named Laxmi experiences in the book Laxmi's Mooch.
Shelly Anand reading "Laxmi's Mooch" 12:37
Hi, I'm Laxmi. Come here. Closer you see that that's my much. What's a much? You ask these little hairs above my lip, it's okay you can look
Anita Rao 12:52
Spoiler alert, Laxmi learns to love her much, even after some kids make her feel self conscious about it. Here to talk about writing that story is author, Shelly. Anand. Shelly, welcome to embodied.
Shelly Anand 13:05
Thanks so much for having me.
Anita Rao 13:07
So we've been talking with Tyler about writing to kids when they're at this stage of noticing differences between their bodies and other people's bodies for the first time, and I know that a real life example of that is, in part, what inspired Laxmi's Mooch. So can you tell me that story that started you on the path to writing the book?
Shelly Anand 13:28
Yeah, absolutely. So I have two kids, boy and a girl, ages 10 and seven. And so when my daughter, the my second child, was born, I was on maternity leave, and a friend of mine called me and said, her her daughter. And this is another South Asian Mother, you know, raising Harry, brown child in the south. And she called me, though, because her daughter was only six, and she came home crying because someone had made fun of her mustache. And I was instantly flooded with memories of, you know, my own kind of shame around my body hair, the first time I got teased. I think I was older. I was in fifth grade, so I think I was taken aback that as young as six years old. Now, you know, this young girl was made to feel self conscious, and I looked down at my daughter, who, you know, is biracial. My husband's white and I'm Indian, but she definitely inherited my hairiness. And I just, I really wanted something different for my friend's daughter and for my daughter and for all the the hairy girls and kids out there, because the journey of hair removal, what I found with the book coming out, it's a very traumatic thing. My mother, as a young immigrant, would put, you know, bleach on my hair on my face, and I would break out in rashes. And I was like, Why? Why are you turning my hair blonde? That doesn't make sense to me. And why is this itching so bad? And then just, you know, years of waxing and threading and and all these things. And, you know, wanting to imagine. A world where, rather than shame or embarrassment, kids could, you know, kind of, like what Tyler was talking about, have, like, a sense of wonder or excitement, even about, like, bodies are cool. And so I think the experience of writing the book and having it out in the world now for over three years has been really amazing, because I have parents and children and adults from all over the world. You know, adults messaging me. I wish I had this book when I was growing up, but then caretakers of young children sharing with me that, hey, I read your book, and this little girl or this little boy got excited about the fact that they have arm hair or that they have leg hair, and so that first time that they're recognizing their body hair being a point of like, excitement rather than shame. I didn't even know that was a possibility when I wrote the book. It was something I aspired to, but I didn't know if it would work. And it's been really, really cool to hear the response from people from all walks of life and all backgrounds, kind of talk about how healing the book has been. And it was certainly healing for me to write it, and, you know, share it.
Anita Rao 16:11
I love, I love what you're mentioning there about that, like, kind of drilling it down to what the core concept is, or the core message that you want to be able to impart with a kid, but I think one of the challenges, and something I've noticed as I've kind of picked up various kids books, is like, there is an art from taking that core message into one that makes sense for an adult and making it makes sense for a kid. And it's not as simple as, like, oh, just use plain language. Like it is a very intense process of iteration and workshopping. And I know that you had a full kind of view of that, because this was your first book, and you went into it, you know, maybe with ideas about children's books, like what you grew up reading in the 90s, like I did the Bernstein bears, which were very, very word dense and very like mama bear does this, and that means this, but books today are not, not quite like that. So I'd love to know kind of how you turned your initial concept into one that fit the publishing standards of today.
Shelly Anand 17:12
Yeah. So when the idea for Laxmi came to me, I was really, you know, trying to think for this young girl, like, Okay, who do we have out there? Right? Women with mustaches, if you will. Obviously, Frida Kahlo came to mind. But also just thinking about, you know, women from the subcontinent, women from Iran, from Persia, and how there were hairier women and so that, that line in the book about us hairy women, coming from a tradition of hairiness, including Mughal empresses and state the Iranians, like all of these types of different types of people, having body hair. That was kind of the first, almost whatever, if you want to call it a stanza or lines, that kind of came to me as I was ideating on the book. So my agent, Saba soli Amman, with talcut notch literary, her and I went to college together, and so I reached out to her about the idea and about, you know, everything that I had witnessed my friend's daughter go through, and she herself, is a mother, and she's like, you know, Shelly, if you're really serious about this, go to the library and read how picture books are written today. And so that's what I did. I went to the library. And I only checked out books that were published, you know, after maybe 2014 2015 on a whole range of topics. But, you know, books having to do a difference or bullying to kind of see how they were written. And then actually, there's a picture book author named Joshua funk, and he has this really cool guide on his website called How to Write a picture book. And he basically talks about this, almost like a formula, if you will. Of like, how picture books are written these days. And so, like, the word count is smaller, so it's around 500 words is the number. It can vary. And then yeah, kind of thinking about taking out those things, like, do I need to say I have a pink backpack? Is it a part of the story, or is the illustration going to show that? Yeah. And so when I first wrote Lakshmi, it was definitely like Bernstein bears, Dora the Explorer, like I'm walking to school and I have, you know, new shoes on and and all of those things. And so there were a lot of evolutions of the draft, and I worked on it for like, maybe eight or nine months. And then my agent, or she wasn't my agent, then she was like, Okay, wow, you put a lot of work into this. And we started having a back and forth, and she ended up taking me on. But then we had when we were ready to go on submission to publishers. You know, a lot of the editors had a lot of different reactions to to the book and the way it was originally written.
Anita Rao 19:49
I want you to talk about one of those pieces of feedback, because I think there's one that will take us an interesting direction, which is a piece of feedback about the bullying in the book being two. Harsh for the age range. I'd love to know a little bit more about that and how you ended up kind of shifting the message of the book with that critique.
Shelly Anand 20:09
Yeah, I think I'll be honest, like when I first wrote the book, I think for me, I mean, I've always loved writing, I've always loved reading, but I didn't imagine myself becoming a picture book author, but then I saw a need for a very specific book about girls with mustaches. But I think there was, like, a kind of release or catharsis I needed to go through from like, being a Harry Brown Girl in Georgia my whole life and the bullying I endured, and so in the original iteration, Lakshmi's friend Zoe isn't as nice as she is in the in the final version of the book, and she's more teasing and more like making fun rather than pointing out. And yeah, the responses I got were either, you know, she was too self conscious about her body hair or the bullying was too intense. And my response to that was, you know, how many of the editors that said she's too self conscious, you know, have children currently have children you know, that are that are in kindergarten right now, and know what it's like to be raising, you know, a young child at this time. And then my other question was, how many of the people that said the bullying was too intense, are people of color versus not. And so by and large, the people that said she was too self conscious, you know, didn't have kids. And what I was noticing as a young mom and as an auntie in you know, my community is that children were becoming more more self conscious at a younger age than we were. And then the folks that were saying that the bullying was too intense, they were mostly white, and so they didn't really know the experience of what it's like to be a person of color and to be bullied and teased for the way that you look or the way that you don't have proximity to whiteness and how you're not meeting those, those standards. And you know, my agent, Saba, was very, very supportive. And like, you know, this is your story, so if, like, you don't have to take this feedback that you're getting. But I really sat with it, and I wanted also there to be some reconciliation between, you know, I didn't want to vilify the girl who was like, Hey, you have a mustache. Like, yeah, and so, and I think you were talking about this earlier with Tyler, like, how children inevitably are going to say, hey, that person has a ventilator, or, Hey, that girl has a mustache. Like, there's just no way around it, like, that's going to happen. And so what's the way to do it? Right? Like, it's not to say you you have a mustache, like you look like a man, but it's like a curiosity, like, oh, you should be a cat, because you have whiskers and, like, a playfulness to it. And so that, that idea came to me as I was, like, kind of, I was just trying to think of a situation like, okay, if I'm a six year old or I'm a five year old, how my mustache come up in conversation? I love that. And then it kind of went, it went from there. And so those were the kind of guide posts that kind of helped me. But I think I still stayed true to the sentiment and what I wanted to get across. And I know people, some people really enjoy the fact that she's able to, you know, point out to her, her friend Zoe, like, Hey, you have a much too. It's just blonde. So I think those are things that we did to kind of balance it out.
Anita Rao 23:16
And I think it gets to the fact that, you know, kids have play like a playful sensibility and a playful orientation toward the world. And Tyler, I want to bring you back in here because I know that you think a lot about humor. I know you're a comedy lover. You did some training at Second City, I think even which is awesome. And I want to know about how you think about kind of tapping into humor in your writing for kids, and how that can be a tool to kind of invite, I don't know, invite some new kinds of curiosity.
Tyler Feder 23:50
Yeah, I feel like silliness is just like the magic potion cut through anything. There are so many difficult things that my family has gone through that we're able to laugh about, and it makes it so much easier, and sort of like lowers the barrier to entry for the conversation. So yeah, I think like bringing in little bit of laughter or whimsy, it makes kids more interested also in learning about something than if they feel like they're being preached to completely.
Anita Rao 24:29
Yeah, there's that fine line between inviting them in and making them feel like they're being, you know, beat over the head with a particular message. And you also kind of went through a process, an editorial process. You invited sensitivity readers to look at your book. You had three different readers, I think, one for race, one for disability, one for trans representation. And I'd love to know about anything that those readers told you, any feedback that you got that informed a. Direction that you took with the book.
Tyler Feder 25:02
Yeah, something that was really cool for me was with the disability sensitivity reader, who was autistic and had all these cool ideas about how to incorporate autistic characters into the book. And like one might think of autism as an invisible disability. So like, how would you include that in a picture book? But there were all these cool ideas about, like, on the spread, about body hair. There's a little kid who's like, arranging a bunch of leaves on the ground. Special pattern, because they said that these repetitive patterns can be really comforting for autistic people. There's also, like, on the hands page, one of the adult hands is drawing a repeating pattern. And that was their idea. And they showed me how to, like, make sure people's wheelchairs, like, fit them properly. Like, at first I had one where they were like, that person's ankles would hurt because the little pedals that their feet go on are at the wrong height. So this is stuff that, like, there's no way that I would have known, even with all my best intentions going into it. So I just think sensitivity reader is like the coolest, most helpful job. I appreciated it so much.
Anita Rao 26:25
It's also a great example of, you know, the story that the images tell that the words don't explicitly like you don't explicitly name. You know, there are autistic bodies and neurodivergent bodies, but you you're showing that through the the bodies that you illustrate. And I'm curious about like, how you think about the artistic depiction of bodies when you are just in the role of Illustrator. You recently did two companion books called all about volvism, all about vulvas and vaginas and all about penises. And you didn't write these books. They were written by sex educators, but as you illustrated like, I'd love to know how you thought about how you wanted to approach body representation through your images.
Tyler Feder 27:13
Yeah, that that process had a whole other layer of complexity that I didn't have to tackle with. Bodies are cool. You know, showing private parts is something that's complicated on its own, and then for it to be a children's book, there was a lot of care that we had to put in place. But overall, the attitude I have is very similar. Of just like, how many different types of people can I fit in this book. And there's no need for every person to have straight hair or to, you know, it's a book about private parts. It's not about mobility. So why should someone be in a wheelchair? But it's because there are people with wheelchairs and they have private parts too, yeah. So, yeah, I just tried to, like, include anything that I could, where it would fit and not distract from the story, which I don't think it should.
Anita Rao 28:12
Yeah, well, I, and I'd love to end there with you Shelly on on that line between, like, entertaining and distracting, and maybe as a parent, as you read books to your kids and you think about kind of children's literature, what is that kind of subtlety and style and form and picture books that you think kind of opens the door for a kid or closes it?
Shelly Anand 28:38
I mean, I think it really depends on the story and the kid and what you're trying to convey. I think there are different forms of getting kids roped in and getting them interested in a topic and getting them to relate to a book. I do think that being able to see yourself or see people that look like you or look like people you know is important, but then also depicting all sorts of life experiences so that kids can have exposure and can, you know, ask questions and know that not a single topic is off limits, right? So I have both of Tyler's books on that she illustrated, that I've shared with my kids, you know, as someone who was not raised in a sex positive household and trying to do that, and so being able to have, you know, a book about penises and vaginas that I'm reading with my kids, and they can, like, look at it and ask questions. And, you know, I think those, those are really, really important tools, not only for kids, but for parents and educators to be able to have conversations that have historically or culturally been really, really difficult to have. And so I think finding, finding thoughtful ways that, you know, a. Allow kids to explore and be curious, I think helps. And I know Tyler brought up, you know, kids not wanting to be lectured at, I think that is an important piece of it and so, and that's something I struggle with sometimes, too, as a writer that's also in a parent role, and a lot of the books I write are about topics that I think are important with messages I want to convey to my kids and others, but that balance between it being a narrative and like the child discovering something for themselves, versus, you know, having some sort of adult figure come in to the narrative and provide some sort of support, versus something that's more poetic and lyrical. It just depends on the story and what works and what doesn't work. And that's where it's important to get, you know, feedback from readers, sensitivity readers, but also kids and other parents. It's all part of the process. And so, you know, I'm trying to write a book about partition. For example, I'm the granddaughter of partition refugees. And you know, my kids know that there's this event that happened in 1947 that really impacted our family. It's relating to what's happening in the world today, in Palestine and all of these things and so. But how do you convey a topic like that to a child, right? And so those are the things you have to kind of explore. You don't want to have a book about a grandmother sobbing and telling you the story about partition, I think. But that's a reality of what you know, what how many of us heard about it? But how do we reach, you know, the masses of not just those directly impacted, but but others that might not know about the topic that they're reading about?
Anita Rao 31:43
Shelly and Tyler both write from a place that acknowledges that kids understand so much more than what we're giving them credit for, and in the process of refining and honing the messages in their children's books, they've also found ways to heal their own body wounds. I'll ask them both about that after the break, one will also touch on how their work is affected by book bans and the current politics around children's literature. Stay tuned.
This is Embodied. I'm Anita Rao, how do picture books teach kids about their bodies? That's the question we've been talking about today with authors, Tyler Feder and Shelly Anand, they've taken us behind the scenes on idea formation, parsing the roles of art and illustration and the editing process. Now we are going to explore how these messages have landed with both kids and adults, and what this might mean for the future of kids books about bodies. So Shelly. I want to talk with you about the character of Laxmi's mom in the book, and this is one that you said you struggled a bit with writing how you wanted to convey her relationship with her body, and I'd love for you to talk a bit about that with us, because how our parents talk about their bodies informs how we think about our bodies when we're young kids. And I know that was on your mind when you were writing this book,
Shelly Anand 33:07
Yeah, exactly. I think Laxmi's mother I haven't encountered, or maybe I have encountered someone like her, but it wasn't modeled when I was growing up to have someone who is like, yeah, I have a much like. So what definitely was not the attitude with my mother and, you know, all the aunties and you know, family, both here in the US and back back in India and so, but wanting to have a model of like, what, what kind of parent I want to be, right? I grew up in a home where there was anxiety and fear around appearance, growing up in, you know, as the daughter of immigrants, and being in a majority white culture and not looking like, you know, the girls on TV. And then also there, there is a lot of fat phobia and body negativity, if you will, in just so it's so pervasive in our society, but it's also very specifically a part of South Asian culture that's not really talked about or I think it's starting to be talked about more. And when I had my kids, I instantly knew that how I behaved and talked about myself was going to impact the way they my children viewed and talked about their bodies, and so I felt this weight of responsibility, and these are habits that die hard. You know, the body negativity, like saying negative things, wanting to change things about your body, it becomes like this constant refrain that actually, if you do it for for so long, it it's very hard to unlearn. And so I think there was like this unlearning process I was doing. And so when I was imagining writing about Lakshmi's mom, I was like, Okay, what kind of mom would I want to be if I. Had my kid come home and complain about their hair, or, you know, be embarrassed about their body hair. And so imagining, you know, a mother who doesn't remove her hair and is like, so what that was kind of what I was, I was trying to explore, and it actually ended up happening for me for a whole slew of reasons. You know, Lakshmi's mooch came out in March of 2021, during the pandemic. And so I had not gotten my eyebrows or my much removed in months and weeks. And so the book actually kind of helped me into this place of my own body hair acceptance I love, to the point that even my daughter would if she sees me shaving my legs. She's like, you shouldn't do that. It makes your hair prickly. If you don't shave it, it stays nice and soft, like it just completely changed the way we talk about body hair. And with my with the second book, I love my body because, you know, same thing having this like refrain of that it does help me. It does help me in those moments where I have been taught that so many people and women, especially have been taught to to not like our bodies, having gratitude for this vessel that is carrying me through this life, this vessel that has given life kind of ideating on what an ideal situation would be, environment would be and then, and I'm not perfect. There are days where I'm like, I hate my body because, like I'm human, but it still is a is a way. I think the books that Tyler has written, and I've written, and so many other authors have written that are in this space are not just for the children. They're for us, too for us to do that healing work, to heal our inner child and to bring back that sense of wonder and acceptance and, you know, create the adults and the people in our lives where we can have honest conversations about respecting and loving ourselves.
Anita Rao 36:59
Tyler, what has that adult journey been like for you and your two adult sisters upon you know, reflecting on this book, engaging with kind of the adult versions of this message.
Tyler Feder 37:15
Yeah, it's been a real journey my two sisters and I have all dealt with varying levels of eating disorders over the years. My middle sister has been in and out of inpatient treatment centers for like, a decade, and so we've spent a lot of time as a family, kind of working through this stuff together. And it's pretty cool to see how the three of us who grew up in this very body negative culture have all really pivoted to this like positive accepting space, and now it's it's really noticeable how generational of an issue this can be, yeah, when I was working on the book, I showed it to my grandma, who was like, in her late 80s, maybe at the time, who thinks that I'm the greatest person in the world. She's very, very just in as, you know, as a grandma, but I showed her the book, and she was looking through it, and she was like, This person needs to lose weight. Like, what's that person doing? And I'm like, Oh, my God, you have so much compassion for me as a person, but when you're thinking about bodies in general, you know these are fictional people, and you're still having all these opinions about them. So it's been cool since the book came out to hear from readers, or I should say, parents, who have been reading the books to their kids, they will often tell me that they'll overhear their parents. So the kids grandparents reading the books to them, and it's cool for them to hear their like, baby boomer parents talking about how all kinds of bodies are great.
Anita Rao 39:08
I love that.
Tyler Feder 39:09
I'm really hoping that that's an impact that continues to happen.
Anita Rao 39:13
Do you have the internal narrative of bodies are cool for yourself? Like, have you gotten to that point?
Tyler Feder 39:21
Ooh, that's the goal. Every day. I can't say that I'm always in that space. I think for me, it's always easier to accept other people's bodies and their differences than it is to accept my own. But I'm definitely at the point now where, like, when I have those negative feelings about my body, there's like space in my brain where I can kind of separate them from myself and be like these are messages that I've gotten, and the messages are wrong, but it makes sense that I feel this way because I've been hearing it my whole life. Yeah, but it doesn't have to keep being like this. Yeah?
Anita Rao 39:59
I want to bring you both to this moment that we are in right now, in children's literature and in American culture, there are book bans happening around the country. Tyler, your book has been flagged for possible removal under some state laws about book bans. It was formally banned in the fall of 2022 from a school district in Texas. So I want to hear you both kind of talking about what's at stake for young readers as books like these get banned, and Tyler, since we're talking about your book being flagged, let me start with you
Tyler Feder 40:40
Sure. So the main thing that people have an issue with in my book is that I show adults with top surgery scars. That's the big scandal, that there are people with scars on their bodies. It's really hard to empathize, I have to say, with these people who are so scandalized by the idea of their kids seeing a person who they would see in real life anyway, it makes me sad that they think there's something inherently sexual or Dangerous about kids just seeing clothed bodies, and I feel like there are probably always going to be people who feel like that, and who push back against books that are trying to have this message that's maybe different from what we've seen in the past. I think for me, I try to focus more on the people who kind of fall in the middle ground, almost like undecided voters. There are people who are just like, fat people are bad, trans people are bad, blah, blah, blah, like, I think those people are wrong, but also it's very unlikely that they're going to be swayed by a cute children's book for the people who are in the middle, you know, where they have a little bit more potential flexibility in their thought processes. I think that's where I'm hoping that we can move the needle a little bit.
Anita Rao 42:17
I love where you took us with that answer. And Shelly. I want to pose that same question to you like, is there a version of a family in the middle, or folks in the middle who are kind of at this intersection of how they're thinking about difference, how they're talking to kids, about their bodies that you're hoping to speak to?
Shelly Anand 42:36
I guess I I really think about writing for, writing for and about brown kids, or the kids that are in my life. And so many of the books that you know I had growing up, or the, you know, figures I had of, you know, South Asian representation was APU by Hank Azaria on The Simpsons, right. And so I think I'm really about starting the process of, like, dismantling these really insidious and kind of dangerous messages that are born in in supremacy, like body positivity or fat liberation, you know, is born out of a lot of intersectional issues, like having to do with anti blackness, right? There's this book called fearing the black body that talks about kind of the origins of fat phobia being tied to white supremacy and differentiating white women's bodies, particularly from black bodies. And so I think there is this. The book bans are tied in with other kind of forms of legislation, having to do with reproductive health, having to do with access to health care for transgender folks. And it's these forces that want to maintain supremacy culture. And so I'm more interested in the in the children, right? I'm more worried about the the trans gender child who's maybe family isn't supportive of them figuring out their identity, being able to go to a library, which is a safe haven to get access to information that they they're not going to get at home or or in school. And so it's really about, I think, exposing and giving children some of the fundamental building blocks. They have to be kind of critical thinkers and, you know, global citizens in a world that has so many systems of oppression stacked up, not just against them individually, but against, you know, people in the global south and communities that have been, you know, oppressed for for generations, if we can bring parents along on that journey, awesome. But I think for me, it's not so much about convincing. It's about like it needing to be there. Because. People, if there's a person out there who is, you know, a black, transgender person in a wheelchair and that bothers you, like, that's a you problem, like, that doesn't need to be everyone else's problem. And making sure that we're humanizing every single person. I mean, when I think about book bans, I'm also thinking about this moment that's unfolding with the with the genocide, and I did an event with Hannah Musha back and, you know, her book is called homeland, and it's about about Palestine, and her book has been, you know, removed from from shelves across the country, and erasing an entire people, right? And there are a lot of insidious forces out there that want to make sure we erase people that don't conform to what we think, whatever traditional forms of beauty or gender or whatever it may be, you know, they want to erase those, those signs, and that's a form of oppression. And so the book bans are just, just along with that, you know. And so I think it's, it's a symbol of, you know, very, very scary, problematic fascist regimes that are that are doing these things, and we should be, we should be very, very concerned about it. Tyler,
Anita Rao 46:10
I'd love to end with you on kind of positioning where you think the publishing industry for kids literature sits in this conversation. I know that for a long time, there have not been a ton of diverse characters in children's books, a lot of opportunities for diverse writers to write their own stories. That has shifted slowly. But I'd be curious to know kind of what you want to see in this children's literature landscape when it comes to books about bodies and the kinds of bodies that we're talking about.
Tyler Feder 46:46
Yeah, I feel like things are slowly moving in a good direction, despite all of the opposition to these kinds of books. I mean the thought of like being a little kid and getting to read luxuries much I feel like my whole childhood would have been so different, like I I have a mustache. I've had it since I was a little kid. I remember the burning feeling of the bleach laying on the bathroom floor like these, like little aspects of bodies can make such a big impact. I think maybe, like a couple decades ago, there would be books where it's like, you can be black or white, and they would just, like, simplify it so so intensely that, like, it's almost doing nothing. And so I am encouraged seeing there be more and more books like these, and in terms of the types of books that are getting banned, I think so many of them are books where kids will learn things, and I think learning is part of what keeps kids safe, and it's so sad to want to take that away. So, you know, despite all of the the people who have issues with these kinds of books, it's it feels to me like the majority are excited, and I even hear that, like, the books, like mine and Shelley's are like, not even that. Like, weird to kids, like, I've heard of kids who will see my book and be like, yeah, obviously, bodies are all different.
Anita Rao 48:37
I love it. They're beyond. They're taking us to another place.
Tyler Feder 48:42
That's where I want it.
Anita Rao 48:51
Embodied is a production of North Carolina Public Radio-WUNC, a listener-supported station. If you want to lend your support to this podcast, consider a contribution at wunc.org now. This episode was produced by Kaia Findlay and edited by Amanda Magnus. Nina Scott is our intern and Jenni Lawson is our technical director. Quilla wrote our theme music. If you have thoughts or feelings after listening to this episode, we would love to hear them. You can leave us a voice note in our virtual mailbox SpeakPipe. You could also write us a review and let us know why Listen, or text your favorite episode to a friend. Word of mouth recommendations are the best way to support our podcast.
Until next time, I'm Anita Rao taking on the taboo with you.