Episode 1 - Checking our Bias & Creating Inclusion with Dr Tiffany Jana

 

Christine:
Welcome Dr. Jana to the podcast. I am so excited to have you on today's episode.
 
Dr Jana:
Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited.

Christine:
My goal in launching this podcast was to really break body biases, break down what people think and feel and change the way people think and feel about health and fitness. Really, we all have biases, and after reading your book, I realized that even more so, and I wanted to share your work, what you're doing and really help other people . Again, after reading your book, it really changed the way I do my work. And I hope that our listeners that are fitness professionals, I hope it changes the way that they do their work to help more people. And really just everybody out there. Because when I talk about bias and we all have bias, so why don't you start with what biases and does everybody really have bias?

Dr Jana:
So bias itself is not the problem, right? We all have bias. It is a function of the way the brain works bias is simply a preference for, or against a particular thing or a particular subject. And if we're talking about,  what's my favorite flavor of ice cream. It's chocolate. If you say your favorite flavor of ice cream is vanilla. No one really cares. We have a chocolate vanilla bias, but if we talk about what is your favorite flavor of people, and I say chocolate, and you say vanilla, that's when we start to get into challenges. So every message that we've ever read, heard or seen about people and their value and their place in society and what they're predisposed to or not, those messages get locked in our hard drive and they inform the way that we treat people. So it's not an indictment of your character. Like good people don't have bias, no human people who are breathing all have bias because the brain just makes shortcuts. If you have a, a best friend who got mugged in the middle of the night by a six foot tall Asian man with tattoos on his neck. And you went and visited her in the hospital. She tells you the story. You're mortified. The next time you walk down the street and you see a six foot tall Asian man with tattoos on his neck, you're going to bristle up and be afraid and have an innate bias based on someone else's experience, not even yours. So when you see messages over and over again, telling you. You know that certain body types are more sexy or more valuable and certain personality types or genders are more suitable for leadership. We see male CEOs all the time. How many women CEOs do we see those messages become part of our expectations. They inform our stereotypes, which is another kind of bias and it affects the way we treat people.
 
Christine:
So it can actually do a lot of harm when we have that bias.
 
Jana:
Yes. And that's the problem is it's not the bias itself. It's our, it's our lack of consciousness about it. So, you know, there are some people who based on maybe their religious upbringing or whatever it is, They know that they don't like certain people or that they don't agree with certain ways of  living or being that's an overt bias, you know, about that, the biases and those can be harmful too. But the biases that I wrote about in overcoming bias are the unconscious bias is the ones that you don't even realize you have, because what happens with those is let's say that you're a hiring manager and you have an opportunity to affect someone's, promotion their job, their wages, if you don't believe. Subconsciously that certain kinds of people are worth as much as other kinds of people, you will absolutely treat people less, give people less opportunity based on a bias that you don't know you have. So where the rubber meets the road is in our responsibility to unearth those biases and interrupt
 
Christine:
so important because , in the fitness world, we see a lot of that. In the hiring process if you look at fitness professionals, . I for one have had an experience where I've had a manager encourage me to lose weight , for my job. Yes. Very, very hard. Especially I was in a place that no, I wasn't. Feeling that great about myself so that wasn't good. And I've had no other fitness professionals that have been turned down for jobs because of the way that they look, not even getting the opportunity to show their performance, to show what they can actually do. Just a judgment based on the way that they look. So what can we do? To help, correct that like, if I know for myself after reading your book, I've struggled with weight. I spent far too many years dieting, weight cycling, having bought poor body image, but I felt like I can't have any bias against people in larger bodies because here I am. In, not the perfect body, but I found quite the opposite. I had a lot of judgment. The stereotype for a larger bodies is that they are lazy or they are they don't work out. Or that they don't value themselves, how do we change that?

 

Dr Jana:
So one of the things to one of the effects. So the first thing is we need to recognize that we're never going to get rid of bias, right? So if anybody thinks they're going to read my book and then there'll be cured of bias, that's not going to happen. All you can do is address individual biases. You can mitigate them and interrupt them, and then you have to practice over time. Making informed and conscious choices, you have to believe and internalize objectively that, that whatever is underlying your bias is simply not true. That is bad messaging and bad data that you've internalized. So one of the great ways to do that as counter stereotyping, right? So if you you, what you do is you like look up examples of. People in large bodies, for instance, who are very fit. There are many like yoga instructors and fitness instructors who, who reside in large bodies, who are incredibly flexible, who have really good heart strength who have really good lung strength and are incredibly strong. They just happen to be in bigger bodies.
So, giving yourself access to images and stories and realities of people who are in all different shapes and sizes, but who are physically fit would be one way of doing that. Understanding the truth about how our bodies function is also important.  There are people who spend an inordinate amount of time creating, a, you know, I'll honestly, it's very sexualized, right? We've deemed a certain kind of body strength and body image as a, sexually viable, you know, whatever. So there are a lot of people who focus on that, external, who actually aren't maintaining really great internal health. Right. So understanding that, there are some people who are not lazy, who are not eating badly, who are not. Failing to take care of themselves who just have a different body substrate. And that is not an indication of their personality or their priorities. It is just the bodies that they live in. So really getting into , a solid understanding that  different folks come in different bodies. And that is not a reflection of their reality. If you're hiring. For fitness job, then you need to put your assumption of side based on what you see and you need to inquire as to what is this person committed to? What is the reflection of their lifestyle? I've been everything from a size four to a size 16, and, you know, at various stages of that I've been, I've always been very, very strong and I've had great health in different, in different ways and different capacities, like for a woman. You know, if you have just recently had a baby, you can be a brick and marathon runner and you can put on all kinds of weight and lose what is considered to be the sexy phenotype of, you know, female fitness and female form. And that's just a life stage that you pass through , and that may or may not change. Most of us know that when you have a baby, your body. Yeah, absolutely. I've got three. No. Um, but that is not a reflection of my commitment to my health. Uh, or my strength, my busy, my physionomy nothing. Right. It is just what you see on the outside. So we've got to get beyond skin deep and that's, what's interesting about the human biases is that we internalize, we look at a signal. It can be somebody's accent. It can be somebody's skin color. I have a blue Afro, right? Somebody might look at my blue eyes Afro and identified me as clown, but without knowing me and having a conversation with me and giving me an opportunity to perform the job that I came to perform, you actually have no idea. It's just based on your previous internalization of messages.
 
Christine:
Yeah, so true. And it's really important for us in the fitness world as practitioners that we go a little deeper, like you had mentioned, not just looking at the physical, but then also I really liked what you said about reversing those stereotypes, because we are constantly bombarded with the image that Fitness than white woman. Or strong white man, or however, whatever those stereotypes are. And if we're constantly bombarded with them, Then we're going to, that's going to affect all of our decisions. We're going to believe actually very true.

Dr Jana:
I mean, I was a model in my twenties and early thirties and, same, like, you know, you shared with me in terms of your employers asking you or suggesting nicely that you lose a few. Right. And in the seasons where I was my smallest, I also suffered with a eating disorder. I was bulimic when I was in high school and. When I think about the seasons where I was at my smallest, like a size four was not good for me. I was not healthy. I looked good air quotes, right? According to, you know, our standardize, our standard, you know, images of beauty, but I was not my strongest. And I was not my healthiest at that time. And what I was doing to achieve that was either the result of depression or the result of eating disorder and the result of gross negligence. Towards my physical and emotional health. Right. So sometimes the cost of fitting that stereotype when your natural body substrate, I'm a Mesomorph, right. I'm going to be a little bit thicker. I do build muscle very quickly and I need a little bit more muscle and on a African-American identify as non-binary, but you know, I was assigned female at birth that can end up looking all different kinds of ways, depending on what's going on. So sometimes what looks. Healthy or what might, what the bar studio by one, a higher, because of it. And it looks like a good reflection of their brand might not actually be the healthiest person emotionally and physically. And you might want to look to, you know, being a little bit more reasonable in your standards.

Christine:
100% and having suffered from eating disorders to this, it is. We are told during those dark moments, when we are at our unhealthiest, how wonderful we look and then it just feeds it. And then our mental health is at its worst to it's really a bad cycle. And it all goes back to that image that we're trying to fit into, that's harming us as we're trying to fit the image. And it's just bad all around. I want to change that industry.

Dr Jana:
And one of my degrees is in marketing and I'm always thinking about, you know, the business of things, right? So there's the social justice and the creating space for all kinds of people to live their beautiful lives and be their beautiful selves. But , from the marketing perspective of it, if I own some kind of a fitness studio, I would much rather have. A person who fits outside of our collective standard of fitness and beauty, who is a reflection of the reality of human bodies, right? If we think the average size woman in America is a size 12, and you put a fitness instructor, who's a size 12 in front of a group X class who is strong, who is spirit, who's healthy, who's breathing whose heart is pumping and who has a healthy. Emotional outlook who is vibrant, right? That is so much more inspiring and realistic to be able to show people an example of you can look outside of this very small spectrum of what we deem to be, you know, sexy, beautiful, healthy, and have someone who's really, really vibrant and inspiring versus. A, you know, a person now, if you have a, fit by the, by, by the beauty standards of America, um, who happens to be smaller, who's actually really healthy. That's totally fine. But if you're not minding the shop and paying attention to mind, body, spirit, and what that is projecting to your customers, then you could actually be missing a huge opportunity and doing a disservice to the people around you. Because if your instructors are hurting themselves, In order to maintain that standard of beauty, that messaging that's going to come out in their instruction is very, very antithetical to what we want people to really achieve. And that is health and balance.

Christine:
Very true. And it's, I felt like a hypocrite when people would say what are you eating in a day? What are you, what are you doing to do this? And during times, and I know other people too, that are in that same position, I, this is an awful story, but someone, a fitness professional that I've really looked up to that films, videos said that when she filmed a video . The pressure to look a certain way, forced her to not eat anything but black coffee and hard-boiled eggs for the week leading up to the filming. And she said that when she filmed the video, she didn't, she felt so tired and weak. Well, of course you're not eating any food and you're supposed to be this. This perfect image of fitness of strength. It was a strength workout. And she said, the moment she got off the stage, he thought she was going to pass out. So like, that is not an example of fitness. Get, this is what you're telling people at home that this is, I mean, there's lots of stories I could share about fitness professionals, filming workout videos. I filmed my workout video myself. After eating disorders when I got to a much healthier place. And there's a whole other story about how they asked me to be in the plus size, uh, category. And that's another whole story for another day, but yes I took that opportunity to say, I am not going to diet down for this. This is. This is what I am this unhealthy right now. This is what my body looks like. And I'm going to do the workout and anyone at home that wants to do the workout with me. That's what we're going to do. And because I've heard so many horror stories about that, not being healthy, but looking healthy, air quotes kind of thing. So I want to talk a little bit about privilege. I know this, that you talk about some really hard subjects, but so important. I know that privilege comes in. So many various forms, I mean, can have to do with our gender. It can do with our color of our skin. It can do, it can have to do with our, like what we talk about the size of our body. And I was stunned when I started to think about this, especially after reading your book, that I never thought I had them privileged because you put that word privilege in there. Because I've struggled so much. I had negative body image , I was told repeatedly, growing up, you don't have a dancer's body and dance class, so I wasn't ever going to be Janet Jackson's backup dancer. So how does  privilege really work and how do we use it for good.
 
Dr Jana:
Yeah. So I love this topic. It's so funny. It's like you said, as soon as you insert the word privilege, we immediately default to. But, but, but, but, but, you know, but I worked so hard, but I struggled, but I this right. So we get defensive when we hear the word. So let's just tease out there. There's a couple different kinds of privilege. There is. The there's earned privilege and unearned privilege. Okay. So unearned privilege privileged by itself is just any aspect, any variable that makes your life a little bit easier. That's it very simple. Anything that makes your life easier? And that could be anything from education to accent, to body size, to like I was a model. I have a symmetrical face. People like looking at me and people have literally opened doors and given me more opportunities because they find me attractive. That is pretty privileged, right? Anything that just makes your life easier is considered privileged. Of course, wealth, gender, you know, sexual orientation, you know, being heterosexual. There's a lots of things that can just make your life easier. One less. Obstacle for you to overcome. Okay. So then there's earned privilege and unearned privilege, unearned privileges, like beauty is an unearned privilege. Um, wealth, if it's inherited is an unearned privilege. Anything that is that you didn't have to work for that just showed up or shut up really easily is considered an unearned privilege and earned privilege is the opposite. Right? So if you know, if you got yourself an education and there could be some unknown privileged, Tied to how easy it was for you to access education, to get you where you go. But there are levels that you actually are in, you know, in your career. And for the folks who have worked really hard to get strong and fit bodies there is some earned privilege there, but the privilege part is where the challenge comes in. Having an aspect of your life that makes your life a little bit smoother and knock some challenges out of the way is not a crime, right? It's not an indictment to have privilege. It's just a reality. The most important thing is what do you do with that privilege? Right? So if it is, if I have a really fast metabolism and it's super easy for me to be skinny and I build muscle really quickly, and you know, maybe I don't have to work out. I mean, I remember at one point. When I was, when I was at my most fit looking, I was working out three hours a day and I was not a fitness instructor. I was just obsessing over my body image. You know, what I was doing to access that was a, was a little bit much, and it was very much all about me. The important thing about our privileges, what do we do with it? To actually help humanity. Like what are we doing to make the world a better place? What are we doing to help other people? If I'm running around here looking like, the goddess Aphrodite and I'm using it to shame people, right. And I'm using it to exclude people because, if we think about Maine girls and we think about, well, here I am on my pillar of. Beauty and look at you, you lazy, you know what? Right. That's not good. Right? We are using our privilege and we are weaponizing it against people. So it is prudent to remain as humble as possible and recognize that like, for instance, Disability is the one diversity category that any of us can enter at any moment, you can walk out on the street today, get hit by a bus and become, you know, differently, able, disabled, unable to use your body. And then all of these fitness things that we privilege so much. I become a non-option. So it is important that we recognize that as we are moving on these journeys, particularly as it pertains to body and body image, that we don't weaponize our privilege against other people, or do things like what you were saying with that happened with the fitness instructor, right. We mustn't pretend that we attained this privilege by some, easy, your supernatural means and advertise falsely that if you just do these things, you'll be just fine. Like me. If you really struggled to get there, then you need to share that struggle because you earned that privilege and sharing that struggle and being honest about what it takes to do that. And being honest about both you and I have sat here and claimed that we've had eating disorders. That's. That's a difficult thing to share. We don't have to share that with people, but people need to know that. We privilege internally in our own minds, how we look and feel, and it at points in our lives, we privileged how we looked over how we felt and over our actual health. And that was to our detriment. So now we can share our, our size privilege now that we're on the lower end of the size scale. In service of the other people who are struggling to find their balance. So privilege itself is fine. Go ahead and enjoy the ease of life that it gives you, but be honest and have integrity with the use of that privilege and definitely do not weaponize it and do not mislead people about how you got to where you got.

Christine:
Yes, so, so good. And it's often weaponized in a way that's under the guise of, I care about your health. So I'm going to shame you or talk about. Larger bodies that I care about their health. When you have no idea what their health is by just looking at them a and if you cared about their health, you would know that mental health is part of their health and body shaming can do a lot of damage and it really doesn't help people Mo it's not a motivator to to get people, to make lifestyle changes if that's really what your goal is. So yeah that weaponizing is quite common.

Dr Jana:
And how dare we? Right. So, like I said, I've been a size 16 and at one point I just stopped getting on the scale and I just, you know, ran around wearing, you know, moose and don't know what size I was. But how dare, particularly those of us who have, you know, swung along the privilege pendulum and have experienced these things firsthand. How dare we. Choose not to hire someone because they're large when we've been there. And it doesn't matter what kind of business you have. Like the number of people that I see, like people who are larger, have a hard time getting a job when it's not a fitness related career, at least in the fitness space, there is like a connection you can make between, Oh, well this is not a brand ambassador. I think that you're wrong. I think that it actually would, would add to your brand to show a spectrum of. Uh, people and healthy people and people who were on the journey to health, but in non fitness-related careers, people exploited, weight bias and size bias, and don't give people opportunities because they make assumptions about their character and their values. And that's so inappropriate. We do not know. Where people are in their journey or what is the cause or the underlying reality for where they are. And that if it like, just like my blue hair, I tell people my, my blue hair does not make me any less. Dr. Jonna. It does not strip me of the accomplishments that I've done. And it does not make me any less effective at my work. If my size has nothing to do with the job that you're hiring me for, then you have absolutely no right to discriminate against me as a result.

Christine:
Very true. So in your book,  you talk a lot about asking questions and listening.
So why don't we get into that topic a little bit that using those two strategies? Especially, I mean, as a fitness instructor, someone walks in our door and I could make an assumption about them based on the way that they look. So how can listening and asking questions?

Dr Jana:
So the asking questions, it's all about staying in curiosity, right?
We are such an intelligent species and that, that tendency towards bias causes us to look or at, or experience something through our senses and then jump to conclusions and we call and in the world of diversity, we call it talk about the diversity iceberg, right? What do we know about the. Berg is only a small percentage that you can see above the water.
And the vast majority of that body is beneath the water. So the above the waterline things are the things that you can see that you can hear, that you can perceive without asking any questions below the water line is where all the value is below. The water line is where the substance is. And so asking questions is about. Finding out what's below the water line without making assumptions. Because what we do is we look above the water line and we just dive down and act like we know based on past experiences. Again, stereotypes, assumptions, judgements, et cetera. So asking questions and staying in curiosity allows you to give people the privilege and the right to show up and be who they are and to communicate with you who they are. If we are fitness professionals. Of which I count myself one because I'm a newly certified yoga instructor. Yay. Um, as, as fitness instructors, we need to treat our customers.  Equitably, right? So I don't know, by looking at you, whether you are a size four or a size 14, I have no idea where you actually are on your journey. All I can do is make assumptions. So if we have a set of questions that we're asking, those questions need to be uniform across our clients. What are your concerns? What are your fitness goals? Tell me about your current regimen. , what things have you had success with? What are you, you know, what are you looking forward to? What, what gets you excited? You know, what are barriers for you? Those questions shouldn't change because you see a different body. Bodies our bodies, our bodies, and what you see on the outside is not a reflection of what's on the inside. And if you're a fitness, if you know, if your business is into, that next level, which is the emotional and the spiritual aspect, if you're looking at the fully integrated holistic view of a person, then you must ask questions to find out where they are on their journey. And if you are indiscriminate about the, you know, the battery of questions and. Essentially the motivation for asking them right. If you look at a person who is large and your motivation for asking them is because you want to fix them and you see them as broken. That's going to come across. Even if you ask the same 10 questions that you ask everyone else. So check your motivations, check your heart and your intent. Because as human animals, we are incredibly adept at reading, beneath the reading between the lines, right? So if you're silently judging me, I freaking know it and I'm going to go somewhere else where I feel more welcome. And is that what you want? Do you just not want large people? You know, polluting your environment, is that the kind of establishment you're running it. If so, then, you know, that's your prerogative, but you're doing a disservice and you're losing a lot of people. So check your heart and remember that you don't know what's happening inside of a person. What motivates them, where they are on their journey, what they've had success with. And if you can treat them equitably, no matter what they look like and who they are, when they walk through the door, then you will build a reputation for being an. Awesome organization and an awesome individual who motivates, inspires and sees people for the human spirits that they are.

Christine:
Yes, yes. Yes. That is everything. That is what we aspire to here at pop fit studio. We train our instructors around the world to re to really. Take that path and create that include that space that is welcoming and that's inclusive. And not just with weight, cause we were talking mostly today about weight. And I know you do work  with corporations, you , you work in the workplace and your books and the work that you do. We're going to share in the show notes. Some of your books and how to reach out to you, how to contact you if you want to work.
Cause you, again, work with With companies to create more inclusion and diversity and you have so much wisdom to share. We could go on for hours here, but we'll try to keep our episodes to 30 minutes. So maybe we'll have you on the show, uh, again, but I can't thank you enough for taking this time. It's like I said, after reading your book, I was like, I, I . I love this person so much. And I thank you so much for taking your time today. And thank you for joining the podcast.

Dr Jana:
Yeah, no problem. Thank you so much. And thank you for what you do. This is such, such, such important work. So we are blessed to have you on this art sister.