Interview: Jess Weiner, host of Dominant Stories on Shifting Ideas of Fitness, Bodies and Beauty

In this episode Amira Rose Davis interviews Jess Weiner, host of the new podcast Dominant Stories. They discuss Jess's involvement in Dove’s real beauty campaign, Mattel’s inclusive Barbie line and how we challenge and shift the Dominant Stories we tell about fitness, bodies and beauty.

This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.

Transcript

Amira: Welcome to Burn It All Down. Amira here, and I am thrilled today to be joined by Jess Weiner – cultural expert, and host of the new podcast, Dominant Stories. Jess, welcome to Burn It All Down.

Jess: Amira, I’m so happy to be here with you.

Amira: Oh, I'm thrilled. Well, first and foremost, you're a Nittany lion!

Jess: I sure am! From a million years ago, but I hear it doesn’t it expire? [laughter]

Amira: They will keep claiming you. Me and my daughter joke that Penn State folks are everywhere, and we didn't realize that until I started working at Penn State, and it's literally like…We have been out of the country and the first person we saw was wearing a Penn State hat. My daughter was vintage shopping in Austin yesterday, literally, and found a row of Penn State, like, grungy bar crawl shirts. [Jess laughs] And we were just like, we can't escape it. We never can to escape it. 

Jess: No. 

Amira: Well, you know, you've had quite a journey from Penn State to Dominant Stories and I'm thrilled to have you on, because I really want to talk about some of the things you've worked on and build up to these discussions about dominant stories, because you know, obviously here at Burn It All Down, we’re all about narratives and disrupting stories, and it feels very parallel to a lot of the things we're working on. And so the two campaigns that you had a huge part in was Dove's Real Beauty, and you've also worked with Mattel on their kind of expansive Barbie line. And I was thinking about Dove's Real Beauty campaign and what kind of game changer it was at the time to broaden our understanding of bodies and beauty.

And it reminded me a lot of what we're seeing in the WNBA with their new partnership with Glossier, and even like friend of the show, Tziarra King, who was like, well, a silhouetted ponytail doesn't represent me and athletes with short hair, athletes with one arm. When you look back on that campaign, how do you assess its importance, and how do you see it continuing to have this kind of legacy on our ideas of what a beautiful body looks like? 

Jess: It's a great question. You know, the campaign itself is going on 17, 18 years. I've been a partner with…Unilever’s the parent company and Dove is the brand, obviously. But you know, what you said made me think about my original roots around talking about body image and beauty, which started for me working consciously at Penn State. That's where I was given kind of like a framework and of course a dialogue in the classes that I took to start to understand what I was experiencing as a woman absorbing media at the time – and full disclosure, I went to school in the early 90s, when I graduated. So, we're talking pre-internet, we're talking pre-streaming services. So there was still a lot of control in the media about what they told us was a beautiful body or an acceptable image to be seen.

And that at least I was aware of. And I had been aware of that as a kid growing up in Miami. I knew that there was a traditional or a normalized view of beauty. It was white, it was tall, it was thin, it had blonde hair, light eyes, very European looking. And that wasn't me growing up. It wasn't my friends growing up. So I knew that there was a disconnect, but I think what I know now about the campaign we created in the end, the legacy that it’s left, is that that campaign – which happened in 2004, so again, let's put ourselves back there. That's still pretty nascent in the internet journey. You know, there's still a gatekeeper around beauty and body image. And Dove was pretty revolutionary to call bullshit on their own industry. I hope I'm allowed to cuss on your show–

Amira: Oh, please!

Jess: Okay!

Amira: This is Burn It All Fucking Down!

Jess: Okay, alright! Good! [Amira laughs] I mean, I figured. But you know, they called bullshit on the beauty industry, of which they're a part of. And they said, hey, look, all these images that you absorb every day – mindlessly, most of us – have been airbrushed, retouched and manipulated. And you know, now that doesn't seem like new news, but then it was pretty revolutionary because while we assumed it, there was a language and a framework, much like my own learning, you know, that happened. All of a sudden you're like, oh, this is what the industry does. This is the process. And it is manipulative and it is intentional and it is not by accident that people are left off of this view of beauty, and there is a real loss of agency and power when you disappear somebody from mainstream media.

And so that campaign was revolutionary because it touched a third rail of conversation. It told on ourselves in a way. But you know, Amira, the biggest part for me that we don't get to talk about a lot was there were a lot of women who didn't like that campaign when it launched. Because you know this, I know you talk about this on your program. We internalize and absorb our racism, sexism, patriarchy, and all of the learning that we've had growing up. And so when that campaign came out and we showed real bodies – dimpled, pimpled, wrinkled, cellulite – it was offensive to some women. It was hard to look at. It was too real, in a way.

And I remember standing behind two women walking in Times Square when the big billboard first debuted. One woman was in her early twenties, one was in her mid-fifties or so. And the woman in her mid-fifties stopped in her tracks and went, oh my god, that's me. And the younger woman stopped and went, ugh, that's so gross. And just in that response, you could tell where we had been socialized, where we have been programmed, where media was really influential in shaping what we thought was permissible.

Amira: Yeah. Well, you know, I really love this genealogy that you gave us of this, because I think it's so interesting to think of the 90s and to think of how things were disseminated, and it's right at the cusp of the explosion of reality TV and this concept of “real” is transforming right before your eyes. Now, for me, 2004, I was a sophomore in high school, and you're right. Social media was just right there, right? Like, my friends who are two years older than me got those college emails, were able to get on Facebook, you know? And so we were kind of right there, but we already were on AIM, right? We already had these ways that things were starting to populate. And now I look at my teenager, who will be 14 next week – wow! She is VSCO and Snapchat, and I mean, she is so much of the streaming generation that I've watched her age out of Instagram. And I can barely wrap my head...And I was a teen mom! I was young, and I can barely wrap my head around how inundated she is with these things.

And so you have on one hand social media and these images, like just seeping in easier and easier. You also have this discourse coming out of the 90s of empowerment, of girl power. I'm thinking Spice Girls, I’m thinking Mia Hamm. And it's colliding into these kinds of new campaigns. And it just feels like combustion, where we're still working out what empowerment looks like when we're talking about these deep-seated, ingrained, often patriarchal concepts of what is beautiful. And so maybe two steps forward, a couple of steps to the side and over and under. It’s never linear! [laughs]

Jess: Always. And you know, I think about what is different for your daughter's generation also is the burden of responsibility, because when I was growing up, look, I was obsessed with teen magazines. That was my form of internet. And, you know, I was obsessed with pop culture and media, but I also knew that I didn't create pop culture, right? Like, a lot of very special select people got to make those images. I didn't feel the burden of creating content at 14. And I think what's interesting now is, yes, our teens are inundated, but a positive is that social media has democratized who gets to be out there, right? Who gets to have a voice, who gets to have a platform, who gets to have imagery. And the flip side of that, the con of that, is this incredible weight and burden of needing to perform culturally, to provide content, to be engaged at a level that just for me growing up, it wasn't there. And I don't think one is worse or better. I just think they're different. And it's really interesting to dissect.

Amira: No, I think that's great, and I want to push it a step further because the other thing that we see is even in these new modalities, old things are reinscribed. So we all know, like, we followed the TikTok controversies, we followed the Black content creators who are not going to be Addison Rae, who's not going to be the D’Amelio girls, you know, who aren't going to get paid and compensated for their labor. And especially when you put the aesthetics side by side, there's that pressure, you know, to have a certain look. I mean, I love when Anne Helen Petersen writes about the Baylor influencing twins, right? Like, this idea of influencing is somewhat democratized, and also reinscribing what we've always known.

And we just had this discussion around name, image, and likeness, because we now are half a year into name, image and likeness; football is far outpacing other sports in terms of those deals. Football is 48%. The second sport is women's basketball at 26%. And there's a huge drop-off from there to men's basketball at 18, and then everybody else…Nobody’s really approaching double digits outside of that. And I think about that because one of the things we've talked about is how it was like the Sharapova effect, right? Like, you have this kind of myth of the marketplace and meritocracy and whatever, and we just are seeing kind of the same things repeated. And so it's interesting to see what continues to stay and permeate. And I think, you know, these are actually where we can see the roots of these dominant stories continuing to be watered.

Jess: Oh yeah. And by the way, the gatekeepers have not changed that much, even though we have the burden of performing and creating all of this content at these companies that still hold the biggest gateways, right? You still have predominantly white leadership, male leadership, and a socioeconomic class that, you know, still maintains their status quo. So there's a lot of mixed messaging happening around the profitability of influencers, be an athlete, be it teenager, be, you know? And appropriation of people's content and culture without a lot of accountability, because again, those gatekeepers are there. I mean, TikTok, you know, and the rise of the folks that you mentioned, have been on the backs of Black creators, have been stealing content for a while, and morphing that.

What I find interesting though is that within these communities of social media platforms, I really dig the fact that we can call them out within their own platform – which, again, by the way, we wouldn't have been able to do in more traditional media models because it would have been shut down.

Amira: Exactly. And I like that, because oftentimes it feels like we're playing in that gap. You know, I'm thinking about the way that all of these athletic leagues for so long were trying to femme up athletes so much, you know, I'm thinking of when boxing was introduced in the Olympics and they were like, you have to wear skirts, how will you know you’re women? And blah, blah, blah, blah. And now we're in this place where, you know, one of the things that impressed me so much with the WNBA's partnership is that when they launched their beauty campaign, they said, like, I sweat, right? Some people have very minimalist routines. Some people were really femme’d out, like, there was actually a range that they were holding space for.

And I think about that gap on like, say, Twitter, when we're watching, say, the women's Final Four, and we're like, somebody sponsored lashes! Like, the lash glue is impeccable. DiJonai’s lashes have not moved and she's getting…Like, all of this stuff. But your point about gatekeepers is so important. We just now got the first lash endorsement, beauty campaign in for a WNBA player this offseason. 

Jess: Wow. 

Amira: And it’s like, when you have that discourse saying, hey, we can recognize this, we see it, whatever – but you don't have those resources to step up and say, yeah, actually I'm going to tear up the marketing playbook. Those market logics, which is what dictates these ad campaigns and things like that in sports, have been so tightly wound towards this idea of like, okay, well, we know for men we're doing watches and razors and cars and…Marketing logics have always been faulty because they've never figured out what it means, right? Without being patronizing or insulting or whatever. And so I think that these gaps are where we're kind of stepping into and saying, what does it mean to actually market to diverse fans, with diverse athletes, with the ability to hold things that might feel like they're contradicting truths, but actually are part and parcel of being complicated, fully realized human beings?

Jess: Yeah. I feel kind of lucky in some of the brands that I work with now. We have very, I think, very progressive conversations around where sports representation is going and the kinds of athletes that we seek to work with. I think a lot of the things that we've seen come out of the candidness from Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles and lots of other young female athletes has been this really progressive conversation around mental wellness and consumption of, you know, a human and their labor and their role and responsibility. And I actually have found…It’s been helpful for me as a cultural person, because what I do within these businesses, the way that my team and I work, is we're really there to help kind of push the ball forward, to use a nice sports analogy, around representation. But to do that, we need to be marrying into culture and really reflecting culture.

And when you start to see the systems crumble, when you have the conversations that Naomi and Simone and lots of other people before them have been having, but these two with particular platforms that were able to really capture an attention in a moment. It's been helpful for me within brands to be able to say, yeah, you know, when you make a partnership, you want it to be a well-rounded partnership with an athlete. You want to be in their value system. You want to be in their vision of culture, not just in the performance of their sport. And I think we're going to start to see, at least for the companies that I advise and work with, we're looking at a much deeper relationship than just an endorsement. We're looking for a way to partner to solve a greater good. And that, I hope, is a trend that stays, because it allows each party then to be a lot more human, but especially, you know, the athletes and the partners that we work with.

Amira: And that leads me into, you know, the Mattel, you know, Barbie. So, I talk about Flo Jo Barbie, which wasn't actually from Barbie, but I write about it and I have one, et cetera. But one of my favorite things that happens every so often around the Olympics or international women's day is that, you know, they tease all these athletes Barbies, right? And Naomi had hers, of course; I remember when Ibtihaj became the first hijabi Barbie, which was so important. And then Dina and para Olympians, and everybody gets so excited, you know, when they see this kind of likeness. And then they're like, never for sale.

And now obviously at Burn It All Down we're not exactly like rah rah capitalism, [laughter] but I do think it's really interesting to think about the role that athletic Barbies can play, because so often you get this kind of thing where you're like, okay, you can do sports or you can play with dolls. And the thing I love about the concept of a Naomi Osaka doll is that it actually merges it. And just to see representations of all of these bodies, bodies with different abilities, bodies that are strong in a variety of ways. I love what they do with athletic Barbie. And then it's like, it always feels like such a tease. Does it feel like a tease to you? It feels like a tease. [laughter]

Jess: I think I can help unpack that a little bit, to talk about the place of it. But first I want to kind of back up and say that the journey to expand Barbie's body, which is a journey I've been on for over 12 years now, as partner to this company. There's a lot that we don't get to talk about publicly about the journey to do that. But one of the things is it's this very interesting relationship between product supply and consumer demand. You want to go into the capitalism model, right, which is that I have worked and have seen us put forth dolls, let’s say, that when they go to market are rejected by consumers. And they can be rejected for a variety of reasons. And I'll give you an example: before we even have the four different body types – now there's like nine different body types of Barbie, including Barbie with prosthetic limbs and in a wheelchair. And Barbie has launched, before I joined them, they launched all different kinds of hair textures for a while. But the number one play pattern with dolls is to brush hair.

And I remember hearing this story anecdotally, because I wasn't working with them yet, around them launching a natural hair Barbie in the late 90s, to give us again an example of progress. And when that doll hit the shelves, it was unfortunately wildly rejected by consumers, including Black and brown consumers, because that wasn't what their little children wanted to play with. They had been socialized to want long, straight hair. And so there wasn't this unpacking inside of the company to understand, again, the internalized beauty beliefs, right? And how that was going to play out. And then now fast forward to I helped Mattel launch the first gender neutral line of dolls in 2018 called Creatable World. And we had a very hard time finding retail space for that because you have to rely…Barbie has to rely on retail partners to have space. And so they don't have unlimited space to put in store. And also it has to fit girl aisle, boy aisle.

So there are lots of like, again…This is not necessarily the topic of your show, but it's interesting for those listening to understand there is an ecosystem that needs to be disrupted and we do need to burn it down, and that's something I'm trying to do internally with these groups. But there are some business challenges. Now, when we get to the dolls you're talking about, we call those these one of a kind shero dolls. And the reason that they're one of a kind, I think, and somebody from the brand could probably speak more eloquently to this than I can. But my understanding is that there are different ways that we produce dolls to raise attention and to share a story, and then there's mass marketability.

Now, the worst thing that could happen, Amira, is that we produce incredible role model dolls that go mass market and don't get sold, because then you're actually telling a different story to retail partners like Target or Walmart, which is, oh, these need to go in the bargain bin, these are not desirable. And so sometimes we do it to test and push, right? Like, we did Ibtihaj’s Barbie – massive demand, obviously. Nobody had ever seen a hijab Barbie before. Ava DuVernay's doll had a lot of desire for that. I think we're going to get to a place where we can have this to be more mass market, but it's both a learning curve for the business and the consumer, to say, when you see that doll, if it is available, show the hell up and get it.

And I know this is hard because this is where the capitalism is. You vote with your dollar, [Amira laughs] because unfortunately that's their metric of success. You know, you can be well-intended, but if you put out a beautiful line and nobody sees it, then there's a real disadvantage. Like right now, Ida B Wells is our shero doll of the year. I mean, I've been trying to do an Ida B Wells doll with Barbie for almost a decade. It was like not even a conversation a decade ago, and now it is. But I don't know if we had Ida B Wells on every shelf in Target, which I think we should, I don't know if our world is ready to do that yet. So this is an interesting dynamic of we want to push it forward.

Amira: Right. And the next step of that is like, obviously, that there's conversations about commodification, right? 

Jess: Bingo.

Amira: Because then it's like, everybody's with their Ida doll. You know what I mean? And I mean, I really appreciate the discussion because what we do talk a lot about on Burn It All Down are these complicated layers of institutions, right? And I think it's really important to wade into the mess, because then we can kind of see where the stoppages are, right? You know, the other place I'm seeing this conversation, which has kind of morphed from the idea of beauty into the idea of fitness – I'm obviously obsessive Pelotoner. But there have been like two threads this week alone about disrupting what is a “fit” look. But I feel like that is like the new kind of branch too, about, it’s not if you're beautiful, but like, what is a fit body? What's a healthy body? Et cetera.

And so when I'm thinking about all these things, it really leads me to the podcast that you just launched the past year, Dominant Stories, because these ideas…One of the things that I saw popping up on these threads in these kinds of internal Peloton groups, somebody was asking, will we see a plus sized instructor? Will we see an older one? Et cetera, et cetera. And there were people in there who were like, no, I consider myself plus sized and I wouldn't want to see that. And then it became this whole debate. And I thought…Well, I knew I was talking to you today, but I was like, whoa, what dominant stories are they running up against? So I would love for you to tell us a little bit about what you're doing with the podcast, a little bit about who you've had on, which is an illustrious guest list, and how we can kind of think about disrupting these dominant stories?

Jess: Dominant stories is a term that I've been using in some of my teachings for a while, about the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves. And that can be anything from our looks and our beauty to our talent, to our worthiness. And so much of that doesn't come from thin air, right? A lot of it is, again, socialized. It’s born from family experiences. It's obviously all around us in culture, the messages that we get sent. Where I wanted the show to become more of an exploration was in talking to people not who had gotten rid of their dominant stories completely, but who were, by all of our estimations as a consuming public, popular and successful and admirable, but living with dancing, with challenging, changing, rewriting dominant stories, because we wanted folks to become more inspired about living with and challenging these dominant stories. Because I don't think those stories ever go away.

And so they do tie back to culture and what we've been told is beautiful, strong, athletic, to your point. And I would validate, I mean, so much of what you're just saying right now in the field and the brand category space of fitness, especially in athletic wear. I think one of the biggest conversations happening, both for my clients in this space but broadly, is what is a fit body? What is a well body? And who gets to decide that? Because these industries have often been successful for keeping people out. And when you start to democratize that space, it brings up like the folks in your Facebook group that you were saying, was kind of…They were expressing their own internalized fatphobia, their own internalized body image issues of, you know, this is not acceptable.

And I am friends with a woman in Canada named Louise Green, who wrote a book called Big Fit Girl. And she's incredible. She trains high performance athletes and athletic coaches around how to train large bodies, and I'm really helped to democratize the fitness space from that end. I think this is a new frontier of conversation because I think we're going to look at wellness and fitness, not just in BMI and weight and size, but in mental wellness, in equity, in access. I think there are other ways that we need to start to talk about fitness beyond a physical aesthetic, and that's going to be very challenging to the Lulus and the Nikes and the Athletas and the others who have made a lot of money, you know, historically keeping people out.

Amira: Yeah, because you have to sell ideal. This is a perfect time to shout out Danielle Friedman's new book Let's Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise. It is great. It gives you a history from jogging to Jazzercise; certain Burn It All Down hosts may or may not be quoted in the book! But I do think that it's really useful to think about…I love how you framed it, like this is something that has been predicated on exclusion, on an elusive ideal. And when we talked about our athleisure episode, we talked about that. We talked about, you know, not only making a Nike hijab, but also what it meant to make more expansive clothes, or the invention of the sports bra in the first place.

And things that now…The way that athleisure is a look, but it gets read differently on different bodies. We've talked about traveling, you know what I mean? I'm good for a hoodie and yoga pants all the time, but I'm also conscious, like, they will be Peloton pants and it will be a Johns Hopkins hoodie, because I know that I have to counteract with these other markers. And I think that, you know, it's really interesting to think about this as the new frontier. What has been your favorite thing about doing the podcast Dominant Stories?

Jess: Oh my gosh. Well, first of all, I got to partner with Shonda Rhimes and Shondaland, and they're just…They’re every ounce as incredible as you would imagine them to be. And so between that and partnering with iHeartRadio, I felt like I got a chance to really sort of up-level my game. And also, Dominant Stories came at a time for me where we've all been reckoning with what's important and what really matters. And for me, I've also been really challenging my own dominant story. So it was incredible, as you know from your own experience, to be in conversation with something that's so important to you.

You know, I got to talk to a lot of creative people this season. Our first season sort of opened and closed with two incredible creatives. It opened with Sara Bareilles who’s a friend of mine and is an incredible champion for change and a songwriter and a musician, but just a real passionate person around mental health and has been sharing very candidly her deteriorated mental health during this time, and the proliferation of dominant stories that happens for her. And so then I ended the season talking with Alex Lacamoire, who, you know, is a childhood friend of mine, and is also the musical genius along with Lin Manuel on Hamilton. 

Amira: Oh, my daughter’s just gonna melt. [laughs]

Jess: So, and you know, and Alex has a hearing disability and we were talking about the dominant stories he had in overcoming that and challenging that for himself. So I think this season was marked with pioneers in their space who have not been defined by those stories, but I've certainly had to challenge them publicly, personally, in their careers. And I'm very proud of the depth, I think, this season, and the breadth. You know, we talked about non-binary beauty and fashion, you know, we talked about extreme weight loss and plastic surgery. We were able to really hold a space for a lot of the ways that we kind of form our identity and express it in the world.

Amira: I love that. I want everybody to go check out Dominant Stories. And so, are you working on season two now? Is it coming?

Jess: I mean, we just wrapped season one. 

Amira: [laughs] So you’re like, rest! Let me rest!

Jess: We’re taking a breath, we're taking a breath. But I really hope so. I hope to be back with more incredible folks. And you know, my work with these brands is a part of my life, Amira. It's an important part of my work, and I love it. But Dominant Stories also lets me get into what I love to do, which is teach, just like you. And it lets me get back into the space of creating important and messy conversations that I think our culture needs right now. So I'm looking forward to just absorbing, and then going back for more, because as you know, our work is not done, not even close. [laughs]

Amira: It's never done. And we absolutely love to live in the mess. I think that all of us, you know, especially in the pandemic, I think you're right about mental wellness and physical wellness and all of this, have really been just bubbling over in conversations with family members and friends and internally. And you know, I started out the pandemic with a huge Peloton addiction. That was like the only structure in my life, because I'm so ADHD. It was like, literally my only raft during the time where I had three kids home and a book, allegedly, to write. [Jess laughs] And so on and so forth.

But thinking about how then that became so much of my life, but then also stories I told about myself – I'm a Pelotoner, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Then I ended up having surgery, and like everything came to a halt. And, you know, even though we had been home for 18 months, it was so hard to sit still and reckon with where we are and who we are and what this moment has revealed. And I think we are asking these questions broader of sporting institutions, of institutions in general. But I think that the internal work of these same questions and what this moment has revealed, and what possibilities have been opened up about ways we can continue to push the conversation forward.

Jess: You know what's interesting? I think as a thread between this entire conversation, I keep hearkening back to the access. Who's been invited historically? Who's been demonstrated? And I have to make a confession, like, I have a real resistance to Peloton and to biking in general, because I used to live in a much larger body. I had a hundred extra pounds on my body for a majority of my twenties and thirties. And I remember actively getting rejected from cycle classes – not necessarily it was Peloton, but I think that my relationship to that as an activity is super jaded. 

Amira: Yeah.

Jess: And as I'm reflecting myself, as you're talking, I'm like, man, everybody loves Peloton! Why don’t I love Peloton? But I remember thinking, like, because I had an ingrained moment where I was like, oh, that activity is not for my body. And I think it's just a really important maybe throughline for us to call out, which is, this is why representation matters, even in a commercial, capitalistic space, because it is a message that gets broadcast to millions and millions and millions of people, which is you deserve to be here. 

Amira: Absolutely. And for me, Peloton was so interesting, because for me it was the flip side, right? Like, I was a huge, avid orange theory person. But the thing about orangetheory…I thrive off the spite, which is great [Jess laughs] and gets degrees done and all this stuff, but sometimes it's not great for resting and chilling, whatever. And so orangetheory, I would thrive off…I travel a lot, going into a new gym and watching people make assumptions about my body and what I could do, and then busting all of their asses, right? But that's a really tiring existence, right? When you're always working out to prove. And the thing about Peloton was that it was in my basement. I was pushing myself harder because I didn't care if I looked out of breath. I wasn't attached to these kind of imagined or real eyeballs, that I could wear whatever. I mean, hell, sometimes I just got on the cycle with like no bra and no, whatever, right?

But the other piece of it was that I found a community of Black women. The Black women's Peloton group grew from 7,000 in May of 2020, now it's at like 25,000, right? And a place where everybody was affirming, and in different parts of A) their fitness journey, and their relationship with their body and all of this. But what happened on the corporate side is that we got people like Chelsea Jackson Roberts, doing yoga, right? With an ass. Doing trap yoga with music that could move you. I hate yoga! I did 26 hours of yoga in my first half year with Peloton. I hate yoga! [Jess laughs] But like you move differently when you feel at home. And I've had this conversation with friend of the show Alison Désir, who has a very good and apt critique on the celebrity culture at Peloton that I think is really valid.

But it was really important for me who was like a lifelong athlete to be able to recognize how it was serving me and why it was compelling, and what that indicated about the way that I had put this kind of burden or shield on these other exercise spaces that I inhabited. And it continues to be what I find very freeing. And so I think these layers, like you're identifying, talking about – that's the internal work, of confronting those dominant stories and unpacking them by yourself, in conversation. Maybe not everybody's going to do it publicly on a podcast, but I think that this is, you know, the gift and the gem of the work that you've done for so long. And whether you're having it in a boardroom or in a bar or in a book or–

Jess: Or in a boxing class!
Amira: Or in a boxing class, you know, they're worthy. And I'm so glad that you are helping facilitate these discussions with the world. So, Jess, thank you so much for joining us here on Burn It All Down.

Jess: Thank you. It was honestly a pleasure. I hope to talk to you again.