My guest this week is the incredible film maker, speaker & activist Kelli Jean Drinkwater, and she has a huge fire in her belly about how fat people are represented onstage! Fat people have been virtually invisible in the creative arts, but Kelli Jean’s mission is to bring them into the limelight! In order to combat weight stigma and create a world in which all bodies belong, it is VITAL that fat people are represented in the creative arts. And not just as a boring STEREOTYPE, but as fully rounded, amazing, positive and UNAPOLOGETIC humans! Join me for a fantastic conversation as Kelli Jean & I unpack how things are changing in the industry & what still needs to be challenged. And hear all about Kelli Jeans’ simply INCREDIBLE projects! This is a fabulous & inspiring episode from an artist who professionally BLOWS PEOPLE’S MINDS!     Shownotes   My guest is Sydney based film maker, speaker and activist Kelli Jean Drinkwater, who is totally fired up about fat representation in the media. Louise talks about how she & Kelli Jean first met several years ago on the set of Insight, a tv program in which there was an ‘ambush’ of fat activists and Kelli Jean was in the front line of host Jenny Brockie’s fatphobia. Her anger acts as fuel to change how fat people are being represented. We can get fired up in 2 ways, because although on one hand representation and casting of fat characters are getting better, there’s still a long way to go! There’s been a recent spate of films and tv shows especially in the USA which feature fat narratives, but they are still centred around cis gendered, white, heterosexual perspectives, and also the smaller side of fat people being cast. We have stories like Shrill, where the character is fat and staying fat, and Dietland, adapted from the amazing novel by Sarai Walker, where it’s still very good & fat positive but still some decisions made in that process which reflect weight bias. Like in both Shrill & in Dietland the main fat characters had love interests or sexual partners that were just awful men! In Shrill, her love interest feels ashamed of her and makes her leave out of the back door. She’s meant to be this onto it fat woman and wh???? So eventually he comes around and says ok meet my friends, and she doesn’t dump him. And in Dietland the main character is a virgin, and rather than having a good experience she has this awful experience with a fetishist and a feeder who then rapes her. And it’s like - “ok, so that’s the kind of sex we’re going to see?” It could be done differently, and that’s frustrating. And then there’s the movie “Dumplin”, which Louise liked, she never saw anything like that when she was growing up. And it’s lovely to see the thin character (the mum, Jennifer Aniston), as the one always dieting, miserable and insecure. There’s some great characters in this - the fat auntie, who is always supportive of her. But then the aunt dies, and we’re not told why but it’s implied it’s because she was fat!? The love interest in Dumplin was great, he’s the hot guy and he is also lovely, he has no qualms about being attracted to her, and they just get together and it’s all ok. This is a narrative we need to see. Love is possible no matter what you look like. The hot guy can want to be with the fat girl. Kelli Jean related to her love of Dolly Parton, and the camp friends! Also the swimsuit scene at the end - they were in swing dresses and not bikinis??? There are things like that that we’re still not seeing, and Kelli Jean is keen as a film maker to push things further, to include more inclusivity and positivity to fat characters. Having a fat character in a story is not good enough, we need to see it handled properly. Kelli Jean’s first documentary was Aquaporko, all about the fat women’s synchronised swimming team that