Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign hey love. Welcome back to Untamed Ember, the podcast where we set fire to shame scripts, throw glitter on our trauma responses and reclaim pleasure like it owes us money. I'm Dr. Misty, your resident sex therapist, trauma brain navigator, and certified burner of patriarchal nonsense. And today we're asking the question, why did your body get scripted to shrink in the first place? Because you didn't just wake up one day and decide your thighs were offensive. That shit was planted, watered, fertilized with shame, and probably handed to you in the form of a teen magazine quiz called Are youe Hot or not in 2003. Let's talk about who wrote that script and how to set it on fire. Foreign, you were born into a body curvy, loud, soft, stretchy, melanated, fat, neurodivergent, disabled, different. And before you even hit puberty, the world started offering unsolicited edits. Tone that down. Cover that up. Don't be too loud, too opinionated, too sexual, too weird. And it wasn't just a few bad apples whispering insecurity into your ear. This shit was industrialized. Let's take it back. Way back. Historically, Eurocentric beauty standards didn't just appear, they were colonially enforced. During European colonization, especially in Africa, Asia and the Americas, the bodies of black, brown and indigenous people were categorized as deviant, animalistic and hypersexual precisely because they didn't conform to the white Victorian ideal of quiet, pale and modest. Bodies that were larger, darker, louder, or expressed pleasure were framed as dangerous. In fact, during slavery in the U.S. black women were sexualized and dehumanized while simultaneously shamed and controlled. The image of the Jezebel was used to justify rape while blaming the victim. And this contradictory bullshit became baked into cultural scripts. We still carry it told the world that some bodies are available but not desirable, visible but not worthy of protection. Meanwhile, white women were placed on the fragile pedestal of purity and delicacy as long as they stayed thin, obedient and sexually repressed. Fatphobia, too, has a deeply colonial origin. Sabrina String's research in her book Fearing the Black Body traces fatphobia back to the 18th century, when anti blackness and anti fatness became linked. White European elites began associating thinness with moral and racial superiority, defining fatness as the opposite of self control, intelligence and whiteness. So when diet culture tells you thin equals moral, that's white supremacy whispering in your ear through a Weight Watchers app. And let's talk ableism, the idea that only able bodied folks are sexy or worthy of Love is literally a media construction. Films, books and TV have consistently portrayed disabled people as tragic, dependent or infertilized. Rarely sexual, rarely centered, and definitely not the lead in a steamy romance. Ableism scripts the belief that pleasure is for healthy, flexible, predictable bodies. If you stim during sex, need mobility, support, or communicate non verbally, the world rarely hands you a script that says you're desirable as fuck. Neurodivergent folks have also been edged out of the narrative. Sex ed often assumes linear arousal, eye contact, verbal expression and sensory tolerance. If you don't fit the mold, you're labeled as broken instead of brilliantly wired. Even gender norms play a role in shrink scripts. Think about the phrase she's too much, too loud, too big, too bold, too sexual. That phrase was built to shut us down. Historically, powerful women were labeled as witches, hysterics, or unstable. Men who didn't conform to toxic masculinity were ridiculed or criminalized. These weren't isolated messages. They were part of a coordinated vibe called control. And if these systems could convince you that your body was a problem, they could sell you the solution. Buy the skin lightening cream, join the gym, stop eating, flatten your stomach, whisper during sex, say yes when you mean no. Perform. Please comply, because compliant bodies don't rebel. But here's the kicker, babe. You weren't born compliant. You were born knowing how to wiggle, scream, stretch, crave and laugh until you snort. They wrote a script so early that you forgot what your original language even sounded like. It's time to remember foreign let's talk media, babe. Because media didn't just tell us stories. It wrote our shame scripts in glitter gel pen and broadcast them in hd. Remember the makeover montage? The moment the quirky fat girl finally got a blowout, dished your glasses, lost 40 pounds off screen and suddenly became worthy of a prom date? That was Hollywood's way of saying your value is conditional. Or those very special episodes where the disabled character wasn't allowed to be sexy, just brave their entire character arc, Learning to smile while being excluded. Or the rom coms where every desirable love interest looked like a Pinterest board on Ozempic. This stuff wasn't just annoying, it was scripted. It taught us bodies are projects to be fixed, never celebrated as is. Desire is reserved for the thin, white, straight cis able bodied norm. Everyone else gets to be the sassy friend, the tragic side character, or the obstacle to overcome. And don't even get me started on the transformation tropes. You know, the ones she was Fat. But then she got hot and finally found love. He was nerdy and awkward, but now he has abs and confidence, so now he matters. These narratives weren't just mean, they were behavioral training. Meanwhile, advertisers were over here selling you shame in a bottle. Cellulite cream, skin lightening, lotion, Spanx for your entire personality. All whispering, don't like your body? Good, we can monetize that. And let's not forget religion. The church didn't just say, don't have sex. It said, your body is a weapon and you're the cause of temptation. In purity culture, girls were told their shoulders caused lust. Their virginity was their value and their desire was a threat. Boys were told they couldn't control themselves and therefore women must be modest so they don't fall into sin. Translation? If someone wanted you, it was your fault. If they didn't, it was still your fault. If you had any agency at all, well, that was witchcraft. Religious doctrine was basically the original shame flavored mlm. Guilt was the product in the roi. Generations of people who couldn't look at their genitals without blushing. These messages weren't just metaphorical, they were literal neural training. You are taught from cartoons, commercials, sermons and textbooks that your body is a project. Your pleasure is suspicious. Your desire needs to be managed like a liability. By the time you hit adulthood, you didn't need external control anymore. You had internalized the watchtower. You had become your own censor. So now, when you feel pleasure, it gets tangled with guilt. When you see yourself in the mirror and feel powerful, it gets interrupted by a voice you didn't ask for whispering, you sure about that? That's the power of cultural messaging, babe. It doesn't just influence you, it lives inside you until you decide to evict it loudly with glitter and rage.
[00:08:03] Here's where it gets sneaky. Shame doesn't always roll in wearing a neon sign and a dunce cap. It tiptoes in dressed as self discipline, self awareness, self improvement. It disguises itself as health, as modesty, as being polite. It doesn't just show up during sex or in front of a mirror. It shows up when you apologize for taking up space on a couch. You suck in your stomach on zoom. You overthink posting a selfie. You say yes to touch you don't want because you feel like you should be grateful someone even wants to touch you. You pick outfits not based on what feels good, but what hides the most. You avoid joy until your to do list is finished and your kitchen is clean. You hold in your laughter because someone once said your laugh was too loud. That's not a personal flaw. That's conditioning. That's your nervous system adapting to a world that told you your body, your joy, your needs were dangerous. That's your brain trying to keep you safe by minimizing the parts of you that have always been magic. And if you're feeling rage right now, good. That means your body remembers. She remembers who she was before the edits, before the shrink script, before the world made her trade pleasure for politeness and expression for acceptance. That fire in your chest, that's not dysfunction. That's a fucking resurrection. You're not broken for struggling with this. You're surviving a lifelong script that tried to shrink your voice, your appetite, your boundaries, your curves. And you're wild. And maybe, just maybe, that rage is the breadcrumb trail back to the parts of you they tried to erase.
[00:09:52] Say it with me. My body is not a problem to solve. You didn't create the shame. It was handed to you like a cursed heirloom wrapped in diet tips and apology language. But now you get to break the chain. You get to be the glitch in the system. You get to be the full bodied, loud, laughing, unapologetic spark that makes someone else say, wait, I think I want that kind of freedom too.
[00:10:24] You don't have to become someone new. You don't have to shrink to fit the frame. You don't have to wait until you've earned it to feel hot, worthy, or lit up by your own reflection. You get to take up space like it's your birthright. Because it fucking is. You are not too much. You are not broken. You are not a side character in someone else's body fantasy. You are the fucking main event. And anyone who told you otherwise can stay pressed. And if you want a little help reclaiming your spotlight, if you're ready to rewrite the script with more rage, more glitter and more fuck it energy, I've made something for you.
[00:11:07] We're shaking things up a bit. And instead of hosting our exclusive content in mighty networks, we've moved it all to a brand new super sexy corner of the Internet called the Ember Vault. It's your backstage pass to weekly podcast worksheets, journal prompts and reflection deep dives. A growing on demand learning library, access to upcoming live workshops and member only podcast episodes. Weekly challenges and enough pleasure fueled rebellion to make the patriarchy sweat. This week's worksheet is called who Wrote this Bullshit? And it walks you through identifying those cultural scripts, calling out the garbage and choosing a micro rebellion that feels like a damn homecoming. You'll roast your inner critic, write your own story, and start reclaiming space one audacious step at a time. Join now@untamed ember.com it's just $15 a month for everything inside and a community of fellow pleasure nerds who are just as done with shrinking as you are. And while you're marinating in all this unlearning, here's something to journal on. Who taught you to shrink? Where do you still feel that script running? And what might it look like to start writing your own? That's it for this week, babe. But before you go, take this with you. You were never meant to disappear. You were meant to disrupt, to dislike, and to take up fucking space. So wear the outfit, eat the dessert, moan a little louder, and if the system gets nervous. Good. I'll see you in the Ember vault and right back here next week for another round of radical, rebellious, unfiltered truth. Stay wild, stay loud, and stay ember.
