Embrace Every Body: Uniting for Systemic Equity

[00:00:00] Joy Rios: Hello there and welcome to another episode of HIT Like a Girl podcast. My name is Joy Rios. I am this show's host. This is a show where we talk about how complicated the world of healthcare is. I liken it to a 30,000 piece puzzle and each one of our guests gets to bring on their area of expertise and share their puzzle piece so we get a better picture of the whole.

So I'm very excited for today's guest. I'm going to give you a minute to introduce yourself. Cate, please tell us all about you.

[00:00:38] Cate Navarrete: Thank you, Joy. Hi, everyone. My name is Cate Navarrete. I am a 19 year old college sophomore currently studying at Emory University, originally from the DC area. I'm the founder and executive director of Body Positive Alliance, which is a nonprofit that I started back in 2020 to promote the fair treatment representation and systemic equity of all bodies, regardless of background, appearance, or other identity.

And I'm a really passionate body positive advocate. I'm really committed to promoting greater inclusivity in pop culture. And otherwise, thank you, Joy, for having me. I'm excited to talk with you today.

[00:01:19] Joy Rios: I am thrilled. So first of all, I can't believe how young you are and how much you have actually accomplished in your short time.

I was thinking this morning, I think I'm more than twice your age. Holy cow. You've done quite a bit in your life. Can you talk to me and our audience about how did you get involved in this? And what started you? What gave you the impetus to do this, to start a Body Positivity Alliance? And it sounds like it was something that started when you were in high school, is that accurate?

[00:01:46] Cate Navarrete: I had a personal struggle with body image, which I think really motivated me to do this line of work, which for a lot of other people in this space you'll find is a common thread between most of us. I entered high school and developed two eating disorders and as an athlete, and as someone who had considered themselves an athlete their whole life, and this being a really prominent fixture of my identity, when my eating disorder started to get in the way of my performance, I found myself at a loss for deciding between my sport or my recovery.

And. I also felt a lack of inspiration because when you've identified with one thing your whole life it's pretty difficult to pivot to a different set of interests or a different set of beliefs. And so I really prioritized my recovery during this time and the pandemic sort of forced that anyways, not being able to compete anymore. But I gave up swimming in a completely competitive capacity and still maintain the commitment otherwise and more of the fun side of things, the team aspect. But I had previously started a body positive club at my high school when I was transitioning out of the sport and I really wanted this to be a place where people could discuss what they thought about body positivity.

How body image had affected their lives and just really be a safe space to convene and talk about it. This was something that I noticed that my peers alongside myself. We're struggling with and we really needed a space to talk about that. And so when the pandemic hit. I really wanted to be able to build upon the work that I was doing at my high school in some ways.

And body positivity was becoming really prominent on social media, especially with platforms like TikTok, which really took off during the pandemic. And so I started doing some online. Out of the sea of work, I ended up getting an article of mine published at 15 in a UK magazine and after that really became passionate about pop culture inclusivity after a couple months working in the online space.

I really wanted to latch on to something more substantive and I ended up getting the idea to expand my club that I'd started at my high school to neighboring high schools. And using my network as a swimmer who had friends from different schools in different parts of the country, I took it upon myself to reach out to these people, do some external sourcing and ended up gaining interest at a few neighboring high schools to launch these clubs. And once I realized that there was a demand, I think it was really easy to recruit team members and think of it more as an organization and an umbrella, if anything.

And so at that point, it was probably around January of 2021 when I started bringing on team members. It was around that time also where I started my own podcast focus on the subject. And after that point, we've just continued to grow. And now being a sophomore in college four years later, I'm still running the organization and it's now a 501c3.

And I am so proud of how much we've been able to spread our mission and now bringing it to the elementary school level for an anti bias program. And yeah, that's a little bit more about how it's been.

[00:05:10] Joy Rios: That is so impressive. I have a lot of questions and one is around social media. I feel like that is a conversation that is in the general public when we talk about its effect on young people, and I imagine with filters and the way that people change their appearance and AI and how much of that is part of your guys's conversations.

And is it something that you are cognizant and aware of the effect that it's having on you as it's happening. And I say that just because we're all influenced by technology and what we see on our small screens and big screens and whatnot. But It's hard to have the awareness that you're also being influenced by it and how it's affecting you in some way positive or negative.

I would just love to know how that conversation shows up, right?

[00:06:02] Cate Navarrete: It's a huge conversation in our organization, especially since all of the team members, I was joking in our previous call, I think I'm the oldest team member and I'm 19. This conversation is something that's really important to our generation and we understand how much of an impact social media has on each of our body images.

I got on social media when I was nine and that was around 2014, and that's pretty much when social media started to blow up, but at that point there was so little research on it. So I've really grown up in this guinea pig generation where we were too old to have so many regulations around social media, but too young to have avoided social media altogether.

In a lot of ways it feels like that's screwed us over a little bit, but we make do I think talking about social media and body image is incredibly important because it is something that can hinder not only our personal body image, but also our interpersonal relationships.

We're seeing people who are in our lives or around our lives, whether it's our classmates or our friends from a sport or our friends from camp or whatever it may be, we're seeing them in this highlighted way that doesn't actually reflect the day to day interactions or happenings of that person's life. And so I know in my personal life, it occasionally leads to resentment in those personal relationships, right?

I don't think it's necessarily the healthiest thing for maintaining relationships, even though it is supposed to be the source of connection. And technology as a whole has had a huge impact on the way our generation communicates and also the way that we communicate and express ourselves and what we hold to be sacred.

And I think there's a huge lack of privacy that comes with that. And also a huge lack of reality. There's this really harmful aspect of social media. That can make things look so real and so authentic, but behind the scenes, that person's teeth is they've been whitened, their skin has been smoothed, their waist has been slimmed.

And these are things that we're not necessarily always cognizant of, right? Photoshop isn't always the obvious kind of Facetune fails we mock, it is, it's everywhere. And I think this is something that when I was a young person, I engaged with. I was altering my physical appearance on social media because I felt like I had to, and now being a bit more of a veteran user of social media and still having a very complicated and complex relationship with these platforms and typically trying to avoid them altogether, even though that's impossible, but I don't use filters.

I don't do any sort of alterations. I think I've noticed that it doesn't make me feel good about myself when I do that. And I also would prefer to put content out there that doesn't spread that. But at the same time, I understand that it's a really nuanced issue for a lot of people and as someone who's really passionate about photography.

I understand why someone may want to apply a filter to their photo. I think overall, I tend to be pretty opposed to physical alterations, but it's a bit more of a blurry line when it comes to creative expression. That conversation comes up a lot. It's something that we talk about a lot on the team and we make a lot of content on our platforms about it just because it is so relevant to our generation.

I know it's something that our clubs talk about a lot and even now I just started a chapter of the organization on my campus and that's been a topic of discussion that's come up very frequently too just because it is this unavoidable thing within the scope of Gen Z and life as a whole now.

[00:10:04] Joy Rios: I mean I can imagine being excited as a young person to get online and be part of this bigger social media conversation. But even over the last decade with your experience, I'm sure that's ebbed and flowed of just, okay, but maybe you've been over excited and just want to get in super involved and throw yourself out there in the best light. I'm curious about how do you frame those conversations?

Because they will likely be different for elementary school kids, as you said, and then now university kids like they're all in different stages in their life, their ability to participate and post is going to be different. And I'm sure the folks that they follow and what they're consuming is different.

And those are big conversations for young people to be having. So share, please share.

[00:10:54] Cate Navarrete: Yeah. At the university and high school level, we emphasize that social media is a really integral part of our lives. I know I use social media for club communication. It's something that is unavoidable at this point.

When I remember my parents are both Gen X through and growing up, I would complain about social media and say, “Oh, it's so exhausting” or “it makes me feel bad” and my parents would just say, “Okay, then just get off of it”. And I would say to them well that's not really how it works, right?

I use social media to communicate. I use social media to feel in the loop, you know. There's different, it meets different needs that for my generation is really important. And I have spent time off of social media before and enjoyed it. But I think the way that we frame conversations is that you may not be able to get off of social media, but there are ways that you can improve your experience on it, whether it's moderating the content being a more cognizant consumer, following people who make you feel good, again, just techniques to manage usage rather than eliminate it altogether. Because I think again, that all or nothing approach can be really detrimental and unhelpful in this circumstance. And at the elementary school level, it's interesting we don't talk about that as much.

We often talk more about behaviors when engaging with media as opposed to specifically social media. Our lesson plans incorporate a lot of techniques in order to be able to be a more conscious consumer what is this advertisement saying what does this ad. This make you think of and we hope that by establishing those foundational mindsets were able to have them develop maybe when they're in later elementary school or middle school and getting on social media, hopefully have better behaviors and techniques to be able to mitigate that. 

[00:13:00] Joy Rios: You said something to me when we talked a little bit ago and it stuck with me and I'm just, “Wow, that is so brilliant”. And I'd love to hear more about it where you said scale is easy but retention is the hard part because you have grown this, you had mentioned it started at your school and how many campuses now is the Body Positive Alliance and you know where are all you guys all having these conversations?

[00:13:30] Cate Navarrete: It's quite extensive. We, it's grown a lot. I want to say I don't have an exact number off the top of my head, but I'd say we're definitely at over 30 at this point campuses. And a lot of them are concentrated in that DC, Maryland, Virginia area where I'm originally from. But we also have chapters in most of the United States, I'd say, and we've begun expanding internationally to shout out to our programming team.

They're awesome. I need to update our little map on the website. That's on me. But yeah, it's the retention aspect is difficult, right? Managing chapters is difficult. You don't want to be overbearing, you want to allow for some aspect of autonomy when you're letting, especially people who are around your age, operate their own thing.

I know these people are capable and they're passionate and I want to give them that, that privilege. But it's also you want people to be engaged members of a community and that requires levels of accountability that we're still working to establish. Again, those are conversations we have really frequently on the team.

What criteria do we need to set in order to retain chapters? What does it look like for them to be engaged with us? We've had fundraisers through chapters before. We've done special chapter community events and those are things that can be incentives for people to join our community on a deeper level beyond just the follow on Instagram.

And so I think it goes hand in hand, being able to incentivize while also like holding people accountable.

[00:15:04] Joy Rios: You're also giving young people quite a bit of responsibility, right? They, I would imagine it's similar to a job or even just club. Would you consider it, it's called an alliance, but is it, does it function as a club meeting?

How often do you guys all meet and have these conversations? What is the cadence?

[00:15:23] Cate Navarrete: The team meets very often. We have a couple of meetings per week at the organization level. And then our chapters operate independently from us, but they may meet on a weekly or bi weekly basis, similar to any other university or high school club.

I know the chapter that I lead now at Emory meets on a biweekly basis. There may be a couple more meetings that there's a special event of some sort, but at the organization again, we're meeting pretty regularly and always on Slack, communicating back and forth. There's just a lot to get done, as you can imagine. 

[00:15:55] Joy Rios: I can imagine. And so what are the, you said tools and I guess defining success, right? What would that look like? What does it look like when you're, okay, everybody has a better understanding of what it means to have a better image of bodies and what they look like and that they're not just one shape and size that we should consider beautiful, right?

[00:16:17] Cate Navarrete: I think something that I always interpret as a measure of success is when someone may say a self deprecating comment, but they immediately snap out of it and correct themselves. I notice that a lot, and that's when I really notice a mental shift for people. It could be, oh my hair looks so bad today, but you know what, it doesn't matter if my hair looks bad today. Because it's that after the fact, there's always that saying that your first thought, is what comes to mind, but your second thought really represents who you are and your values. And I think that corrective mentality is something that I always look for when I'm trying to categorize or characterize rather progress.

I also think having competencies around social justice issues that we discuss is really important, whether that's concepts relating to fatphobia, the interpolation of fatphobia and racism. Concepts related to maybe issues in the medical field that can get a little bit more dicey when it comes to this thinking about the history of the body mass index and that sort of thing.

[00:17:29] Joy Rios: Tell me about that. What do you know about the history of the body mass index?

[00:17:33] Cate Navarrete: Oh, okay. So the BMI, as far as I am concerned, was created, I would have to pull up one of our blogs about this, but created in the late 19th century by a Belgian astronomer and originally used as a transcript. bell curve measure for weight and height distribution among white men and then was later adopted in the 70s by, I want to say the World Health Organization to establish a correlation between height and weight among all people.

And it's been used as an indicator of health ever since. I take issue with the lack of changes being made to the system that don't account for people of color or women especially. I take issue with the lack of consideration for body fat versus muscle mass for general weight fluctuations for the fact that everyone weighs something different and your blood work is probably a better indicator of how healthy you are.

It's a very Western way of thinking about health and I think that it's perpetuated a lot of bias and I would like to deconstruct it.

[00:18:48] Joy Rios: What happens when you see things in the even in the institutions, because thinking about systems in place when you're like, when you go to the doctor and they're looking at your BMI, do you have opinions?

Do you talk to your medical staff about that too? Or where does that conversation fit in?

[00:19:05] Cate Navarrete: Yeah, no, it's interesting because since I'm in eating disorder recovery now, they don't tell me my weight. We don't have conversations about weight anymore, which is awesome. But it's actually, if you are listening to this and you don't know this, you don't have to get weight at the doctor's office.

That's not this legal requirement. You can choose to opt out of it. And there is some privilege being said that if you exist in a smaller body, they may be much more flexible with that decision that you're making. When I started in this line of work, I was very much still struggling with body image and with food, but I was still very vocal at the doctor's office about my thoughts on this. Which I'm sure I was seeing a pediatrician at the time I was probably 16 or 17 years old, you can imagine this was a little annoying for them, but I was always considered more in like the quote, like healthy BMI range. And then as I got older and I just began developing as human women do that changes. And I think that what's really interesting is that when I was at a very low point with my relationship with food and my body, I was considered, “healthier” on the BMI scale than I am now, and I have a very healthy relationship with food and with my body, and I'm very active, and so for me, I've stopped measuring my BMI.

Health in terms of BMI because I know that's just not something that as a Hispanic woman is going to reflect my health and I don't think again It can be a measure of health for most people. I just don't I don't seet that being viable.

[00:20:45] Joy Rios: You brought up something that just ring a bell for me where I'm, I can think of four people on my hand right now that have, we're told that when they were sickest because they had lost a lot of weight and that they in generic terms looked great, but they were, looked their best every day were probably getting more compliments than they'd ever gotten before, but it was actually when they were the least healthy stuff was going on with them.

And it's just interesting that dichotomy of what we experience or what we're told to think of that looks like a healthy human being is often very different.

[00:21:23] Cate Navarrete: Totally. I think this idea that thinness and health are automatically associated with one another is really problematic because again, you can't look at a thin person and know they're healthy. That's not, you don't know anything about their life, their medical history, whatever. You can't make that assumption. You can't make that assumption about people in general, right? Someone could be the most important active, perfect, I don't know if you've seen Parks and Rec, but Chris Traeger esque human being ever, and may just look different than what you consider to be the quote, picture of health.

Our idea of health is really skewed by, again, this Western ideal of someone who is thin and able bodied and white. And this often leads to, again, not only bias in the medical field, but also interpersonal bias and can then lead to internalized prejudice toward people with particular bodies or self deprecation of your own if it's not meeting this ideal.

[00:22:26] Joy Rios: So in what ways do you feel like the, I'm going to say kids, but young people that are part of the alliance, how are you seeing their behavior change or attitudes change? Do you see them being empowered to move through the world differently?

[00:22:42] Cate Navarrete: I think so. I can really only speak to the chapters that I would hope that everyone is this is working and all that great stuff.

But I would say in the chapters that I've led, it's been really rewarding to see that progress among people. I, we did a collaboration the other day with my campus's chapter with a all female fitness group and having conversations with them about what body image looks like in the fitness space and in exercise. 

It was so fascinating because they have all these feelings and all these ideas and they know what the right beliefs are and they're getting there. And if you can just fill in those last little information gaps, it can completely change someone's mentality. Like you discussed this puzzle piece earlier and I think it's the same way with body positivity on an individual and interpersonal and systemic level.

Because when you give people the access to information, it won't automatically cure what they're going through. But having knowledge is the foundation for whether it's recovery, whether it's existing in the world in a better way, that's more tolerant and accepting of all bodies, or whatever the case may be really, and I think that again like seeing people be able to talk out loud about this and think about things that they may be it's just, it's the way of the world, so to speak, is what they're thinking before.

It's really cool to watch those pieces come together, because it happened for me at one point, it continues to happen for me, and I love seeing it happen for other people, because it can really be a weight off your shoulders. And just to know that it's not your fault. This idea that I'm the only person struggling with body image.

I'm the only one who thinks about this. This person is perfect. This person they couldn't possibly go through this, right? And you realize that's just not the case. You don't know what someone is going through and giving people the access again to that information and that community is really valuable.

[00:24:50] Joy Rios: There's one last piece that I want to touch on and I feel you are in a unique position with this experience that you have had that you now have evidence real evidence that your efforts and what you do matters and makes a difference. Do you ever feel like what you do can it have a much bigger impact?

I think a lot of people as individuals feel like, Oh, what does it matter? What do my participation or lack of participation, me showing up or not showing up, who cares, right? It's just, I'm just a drop in the bucket, but you have evidence that you're dropping the bucket is actually creating a pretty big ripple.

How does that make you feel?

[00:25:30] Cate Navarrete: I appreciate that. First of all, I like to think that it is sometimes I am in college, I'm living the very normal life of a 19 year old, while also living a very not normal life as a 19 year old. And so it's a balance between the two and being so involved on my university's campus.

Also, it's a matter of balancing, okay, I have this thing that I love and it's my baby and I've been with it forever, but then I also want to get involved at my school and I want to make friendships and do all these things.

And so I definitely feel as though what keeps me going is that because these chapters run independently, I have the privilege of knowing that the work that I've done is helping someone who doesn't know who I am. And I think that is rewarding in and of itself, right? There is a chapter in a state thousands of miles away from me that I don't personally know the leaders of I don't personally know the members of they may have no idea who I am and just be thinking to themselves, hey, this nonprofit school, I'm gonna start a chapter of this right now, who who cares who's at the face of it, whatever.

I think it's really rewarding knowing that, again, I don't have to position myself in the center of something to help make a positive impact. Because I think I'm only one person with one story. And although that may be a story that I perceive to be worth sharing, it doesn't mean that it's everyone's story and it doesn't mean that I can represent everyone's experiences.

But being able to cultivate a diverse community will accomplish what I wanted to accomplish and it really takes a village to be able to do that. And I'm so grateful for our chapter leaders and our team and really the collective effort that goes into making this possible. And again, knowing that there was that foundation and now someone in California could be benefiting from something that I'm doing is really cool.

[00:27:40] Joy Rios: I love that so much. And it rings very true to me as well. I've just you don't have to be at the center of it and it's almost better if you're not, if you get to leave a legacy and you have been somebody who started really great conversations that continue on even when you're not part of it.

I would define that as success. That's legendary. Definitely.

[00:28:04] Cate Navarrete: And I, again, I appreciate all your kindness there.

[00:28:07] Joy Rios: Yeah, my pleasure. I'm genuinely impressed with what you're doing and would love to be able to send people your way. So on that note, if somebody wanted to start a chapter or get involved with you or just connect with you and follow your work, where would you send them?

[00:28:22] Cate Navarrete: I am Cate Navarrete on LinkedIn. I'm definitely an active LinkedIn user. If you would like to connect with me personally, feel free to do it there. Otherwise, Body Positive Alliance, we are on pretty much every social media platform you can think of. We're at Body Positive Alliance on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok. And we're also on Twitter slash X, not as active there though. And yeah, we also have a website with all of this information that I've talked about and more bodypositivealliance.org. And if you're interested in starting a chapter or implementing the anti bias curriculum in your community, there is more information on that website and otherwise, yeah, that's about it.

[00:29:05] Joy Rios: Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much for everything that you're doing and the good work that you're putting out into the world and inspiring others to do the same and more of that. So I commend you and thank you for being here with me. Thank you.

[00:29:17] Cate Navarrete: And thank you so much for listening, everyone.

And Joy, thanks for having me again.

[00:29:22] Joy Rios: Thanks for listening. You can learn more about us or this guest by going to our website or visiting us on any of the socials with the handle HIT Like a Girl pod. Thanks again. See you soon.

Again, thank you so much for listening to the HIT Like a Girl podcast. I am truly grateful for you, and I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave us a rating or review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend?

All those things help us podcasters out so much. I'm the show's host, Joy Rios, and I'll see you next time.