My team was sharing some questions with me from our community, asking if I had any advice on showing up in the business world as a fat founder, a CEO, or entrepreneur. As someone whose business is still in the early startup stages, I was not (and am not fully still) sure I was the right person to answer this, as I haven’t had to stand before VCs (venture capitalist investors, aka the sharks of the business world) to present my business.
But as someone who does show up often in rooms of powerful business people, people with financial privilege, and who are choice makers, I thought I would do my best to share some advice and encouragement. Those rooms I just mentioned? If you’re asking if I feel qualified to be in them, the answer is often a resounding no. For me, that often comes from my lack of a traditional background in the space, the fact that I am a cis-woman, and yes, often my size.
Beyond that, and as a note on intersectionality, showing up in those rooms is hard, unless you are an able bodied cis-gender white man (and maybe if you are? I have no experience being one but they seem pretty confident and those rooms are full of them, so I think it's probably easier, no?). For anyone of color, anyone feminine or gender non-conforming, LGBTQ+, disabled, or fat, just showing up in those spaces that seem to be not made for you, can feel courageous, and it is. I am going to focus on my lived experience as a fat woman, but just as a quick aside, did you know that:
- In the US, the majority of entrepreneurs 56-58.5%1, business owners “Men own more than half of the stock or equity in 61.0% of U.S. businesses with employees”2, and CEO´s 68% in general business data3 up to 88% in top major corporate indices4 are men
- Only 10-31% of any of those categories are BIPOC5
- and most are able bodied, as only 3% of C-suite leaders of large public corporations identify as having a disability.6
- Not to mention that 2%-5% or less of top companies CEOs, according to Forbes and Yahoo Finance, are openly LGBTQ+, and only 0.8% of the board seats of fortune 500 companies are filled with LGBTQ+ individuals7.
To get back to fatness, it is hard to find broad demographic data on investors. But for CEO´s and Founders, the statistics line up with what you might (grimly) expect:
- Only 5% of Male and female CEOs had a BMI of 30 or higher and only 5-22% of female CEOs have a BMI of 25-30, while 45-65% of men (note the gender difference here!) have a BMI of 25-308 (note: BMI is a terrible and outdated health metric, but sadly the only tool used to record data on body size)
What we also know based on numerous studies, including one published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, is that fat people have harder time even getting hired for a job, and when up for promotion, “the odds of receiving a workplace promotion were 34% lower”9. It stands to reason from all this overwhelming data, that it is harder for us to show up as entrepreneurs, CEO´s and even investors, especially if we are female or gender nonconforming.
So what can we do in the face of such huge and clear biases?
What I have found most helpful myself in showing up in these spaces as a person who is often excluded, and as part of a marginalized group (fat and female), is to first educate myself, deal with my own biases, and learn how to accept (and maybe even love! ) myself.
What do I mean by this? Well I spoke a lot about educating myself on anti-fat bias in one of our recent posts @vivavoce.live, and I encourage you to go read it and find more resources ( linked here). But for a brief synopsis, we all have internalized biases. We have them for all sorts of issues, racial biases, sexuality and gender biases, etc, but we can even have them for groups of which we are a part, and most often we do. The onus is ours to learn about and dismantle these biases within ourselves, but this can be especially hard to do when the biases are about the body or experience you live in.
What I have found for myself though, is that I first have to undo the same and bias within me. Otherwise, since I am so used to hearing the hate, the shame, and the disgust from inside, I expect and receive it without a second thought from outside myself.
This is obviously easier said than done. I heard it said recently that confidence is built by repeated actions of courage, and I have found that to be the case for me. Stepping into these rooms of powerful people and owning my size takes courage. Showing up in spaces that are often only set up for smaller bodies takes courage. Using my voice to speak about the biases we all accept like air takes courage. As I continue to show up over and over, the risk goes down, it gets easier, the confidence comes more naturally. But, it’s scary at first. It’s normal to be afraid- but it is also crucial that you show up.
Having diverse leaders, fat people represented, and especially fat women in entrepreneurial and business spaces is crucial as a form of resistance and reclamation of power, not to mention all the good ideas that need to not be silenced any longer. When you take up space, you also make it easier for the next person to come and take the space they need too.
I know, also, that as inspiring as it may be to make that space, that finding the clothes for the meeting is hard. That dealing with the comments hurts, that facing the looks and sitting in the tight chairs all can bring up feelings of inadequacy. The key here is to remember that the system is the problem, not your body.
The other key is community. You need people who have your back as you do this hard work. You need diverse bodies who understand what you are going through, as well as good friends who see your beauty as you are and don’t participate in anti-fat biases and behaviors, who are willing to hear you when you share your experiences and learnings.
I have had many moments when I needed the encouragement of friends, or chosen family, of team members I trust, right before I stepped out and into these harder situations where I needed boldness and confidence. Your people will remind you who you are when you forget, let them show up for you, let them encourage you, and try to receive their compliments even in the moments you struggle to believe them. You also will need them on the days when it doesn’t go well, when you feel unseen, when you experience marginalization.
Finding this community is hard, I know, but I believe it is possible for all of us- as we discover who we are and practice showing up as our authentic selves, as we participate in community and care for those around us, we can find our people (I think I need to share more on this soon too… stay tuned).
To try and wrap this up succinctly, it is hard to show up in the business world, or any professional situation, as a fat person, and gets even harder when you carry other marginalized identities. It is work, but I believe it is worth it. I believe we need you to go stand in those rooms of powerful people, with your voice, and your ideas, and your unique perspective. I believe if we are going to change the way society perceives fat people, we are going to need to have the courage to believe in ourselves, and also step into these scary places. It takes us speaking up, it takes allies alongside us, it takes education and the growth of community, but the more we show up and take up space together, the more space we make for everyone to belong.
1 source zippia.com estimate from over 30million profiles; and careerexplorer.com
2 LendingTree analysis of the date from U.S. Census Bureau 2022 Annual Business Survey
3 source careerexplorer.com
4 source Journal of accountancy article “Diversity among CEOs, CFOs continues to rise”By Bryan Strickland August 23, 2022
5 sources; U.S. Census Bureau Annual Business Survey (ABS), Industry Data via Forbes / Crunchbase, Spencer Stuart Fortune 500 C-Suite Snapshot
6 source The Valuable 500
7 sources: Forbes, Yahoo Finance, and Association of LGBTQ+ Corporate Directors
8 source: research article originally published in Equal Opportunities international, found on emerald.com https://doi.org/10.1108/02610150910937916
9 source odinlake.com article citing a The Journal of Obesity study