Maddi: I thought all the time about, am I going to be the first fat person that this person's ever had sex with? And a lot of the times I think I was.

This is Death, Sex & Money. 

Listener: I've been trying to date and I'm like, not on the skinny side.

The show from WNYC about the things we think about a lot…

Listener: Our mojo just mixes and that has remained true as our bodies have shifted.

...and need to talk about more.

I’m Anna Sale. 

A listener named Fitz Rush lives in the Bay Area. In the past year in a half, he has fallen hard for a woman in Colombia. Her name is Gia. 

Fitz Rush: She's nicknamed me her "flaco." [Laughs]

AS: Flaco means thin, like thin man?

FR: Yes. Always makes me laugh. That's not who I see in the mirror when I look.

I first talked with Fitz six years ago for an episode we did about infidelity. Back then, he told me he had dated several women who were cheating on their partners with him. And he described himself as overweight. Fitz went by Joe in our cheating episode, but he wanted to go by his real name this time.

FR: I'm public now.

AS: You're public now. So I will call you Fitz. I will call you by your real name.

FR: Sure.

AS: When we talked before, it was about the series of relationships you had had with women who were in other relationships. You were feeling like you always had to be the sideshow and it didn't sound like it was a situation that was working for you. You described back then that you thought it might be because of what your body looked like. Do you still think of that time in that way?

FR: I know that I definitely attributed a lot of it back then to that. What I wasn't doing was just taking control of the situation and realizing that even if that is the case, there is something I can do about it. I just started building more and more confidence that I'm worth more than being a sideshow.

Part of that confidence came from meeting women from outside of the U.S. He’d been on Tinder before, but at the start of the pandemic, the dating app allowed people to find matches across the globe. And Fitz noticed a big shift in interest. 

FR: My experience with these dating sites has always been that where it's very few and far between forming that I make a connection with somebody compared to when I talk to other friends that, oh, maybe went on three dates this weekend. So it's always been a different deal for me. For some reason, when I landed in Columbia, I was getting a lot of likes.

AS: Colombia likes Fitz!

FR: Yeah. In the Bay Area, I feel like there's just so much competition out there or something that everybody believes that they would not just settle. When they see somebody like me, I think I'm like the symbol of, oh, that would just mean I'm settling. They won't go that route.

AS: It feels like it comes down to your body size and weight.

FR: I've always felt that.

One of those people who swiped right on Fitz in Colombia was his now-girlfriend Gia. They started trading photos and talking on daily video calls. They were falling in love. And then, a few months after they started talking… Fitz had a health scare, when a blood test determined he was pre-diabetic. 

FR: It was important that, you know, she kind of accepted me when I was probably going into my worst, you know, I had been in years, like physically as far as, you know, when I got my test and stuff. So, uh, she was there with me through that. And then she was there with me through my transformation through this last year.

AS: How would you describe your body now?

FR: I'm still a large man, at six foot tall and, I mean, the number doesn't necessarily matter, I guess, but I do - the one joke I tell myself in my head a lot is just some stranger is going to look at me today and say, "Look at that fat guy." I'm going to in my head be laughing and saying, "Wow, I lost 80 pounds this year." It's just all perspective and I can't really change other people's thoughts on what they see or what they think. I can only worry about mine, so that's what I'm going to do.

And together with Gia, Fitz is figuring out what comes next in this relationship. He just met Gia in person for the first time during a recent six-week trip to Colombia, and it went really well. Now they’re talking about whether she may move to be with him. 

FR: Even though I had fooled myself in the past, that like when I was maybe intimate with a, um, another woman that like this was real feelings I had for her. It just felt more real, you know, it felt like, uh, it meant something. And it never really felt like this, not like this.

[music]

Intimacy can be hard for anyone. It requires vulnerability and deep trust in your partner. Which can be particularly challenging for people who are told their bodies are not beautiful or desirable.

We heard this a lot when we asked for your stories about how body size and weight have impacted your romantic relationships. We got a wide range of responses, from people who identify as thin, fat, overweight, plus size...

You told us how navigating weight can be a tricky thing in relationships, especially with weight changes. But also, we heard stories about how communicating about weight with your partner can deepen your relationship.

Like for this listener, Katie Ernst, who is 36 and lives in Minneapolis.

Katie Ernst: I identify as fat. That's been on a long time coming, you know, I, I haven't proudly claimed that my whole life. I had this view on other fat people that they were disgusting. I'm a little ashamed to admit that. Because "disgust," that's a word. And of course the classic projection. If I saw other fat bodies as disgusting, I saw myself as disgusting.

AS: Looking back, how do you think the way you've thought about your body affected your romantic life?

KE: Mm. In every way. I grew up in the '90s during the "obesity epidemic" and all those narratives coming my way. I can remember, I don't know what show it was, it was some daytime talk show and they had couples on the show that were fat women with good looking skinny men. They were speculating basically, and taking questions from the audience about why would a good-looking, fit man be with a fat woman? The answer really was either because the woman was a beard, the man was gay, or it was a fetish of some kind, because there's just no possible way that a man would love a fat woman. I think I really internalized that and I could remember this one time I was driving home - and I'm the person that talks to themselves in the car and works things out.

AS: Wait. You have full-on conversations by yourself?

KE: Oh, for sure. Yes.

AS: [Laughs] Okay. "On the other hand, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."

[Laughter]

KE: "You don't say." Yeah, and I was pretending as if I was talking. I must had a crush on a guy or something like that and I was almost giving a monologue for why he would want to date me. It started with, "I know I'm not the typical feminine standard of beauty, but -" and then I'd be like, "I'm loyal. I make a good, I don't know, apple pie. I'm smart. I'm intelligent. I care deeply." I gave all these things that were things that I was a proud of about myself, but at the cost of my physicality and beauty and desirability. At the time I remember thinking that was, like, "Wow, I love myself so much, I think so highly of myself." And it was so sad because I was just pretty much giving a list of why someone would want to date a fat person that had nothing to do with other beauty or desirability.

Katie didn't date much as a teenager. In their early twenties, they dated a guy for a few months, but they really had a hard time believing he could be attracted to them. And then around 10 years ago, Katie met Julian. And everything was different.

KE: They loved my body. Also, part of it is that Julian was the first queer person that I was with, as well as my first queer relationship. So there was a lot going on.

AS: That is a lot, all at once. [Laughs]

KE: It was a lot all at once, but I went all in. I didn't second guess it. I wasn't like, "Really?" like I didn't feel insecure about it. I was like, "Whoa, you do," because the actions meant the words. It was very clear they loved me and they wanted me and all that I was. Not just, not just those things in the car that I talked about, but because of my body as well.

Like for example, when I think we were spooning one evening and - I was the little spoon, I like to be the little spoon.

AS: Oh, uh huh.

KE: They had my hand on my stomach and they grabbed it, grabbed my stomach and I got really quiet. Back then, I would get quiet in times of feeling strong emotions. Julian was like, "What's up?" I started to cry. I was like, oh, that - my brother and sister used to knead my fat. They would pin me down and they would - like a Doughboy. Do you remember the Doughboy, the commercial? That was upsetting and horrible. When Julian grabbed my stomach like that, it just triggered that reaction. They're like, "Can I just hold you? Can I just hold your stomach?" I was like, "Yes, you can just hold my stomach." We just laid there and they held it.

Julian is thin. Katie describes them as straight size, meaning they don't wear plus size clothes. They've been married seven years now, and they're both genderqueer. Julian was the first to change their pronouns about six years ago. Around that time, Julian also changed their name and started taking testosterone.

AS: Was it difficult to be able to watch Julian be able to manipulate their body with hormones into how they wanted their body to look when your experience has been very different? Your experience has been having to change the way you think about your body so you can find self-acceptance.

KE: The funny thing is, is that even in their ability to take hormones and have their body change, it doesn't necessarily result in love and acceptance of that new body. I feel like part of what I've had to overcome for myself is, is to shed or let go of that desire in myself like dieting or um that there's ways that I could just engage in something to then change my body, to then love and accept it, which I think is a false narrative as well, so. So even though yes, they have taken hormone, they've done things that has physically changed their body, they're working just as hard as I am to love that body and accept that body. There's ways in which Julian and their own experience of their body, it helps me to explain to them my experience in my body, especially as being fat. It's like a big Jenga puzzle. It takes a decent amount of work.

AS: A Jenga puzzle, I like that. I like that way of thinking about intersectionality. You really have to pay attention to each piece.

KE: Mmhmm. I talk about it's "the gift of queerness" in some ways. That we both have experiences with being on the outside of railing against a dominant system that is telling us that we don't belong. That we get to claim joy in our body, in our own expression of our body.

Coming up, we hear from a couple who used to describe their bodies in the same way but now their bodies are different.

Farrah: Something that I am pushing him on a little bit more these days is allowing himself to have fun with food, and not just use it as a means to an end.

[music]

KE: In my tradition, blessings are used not to make something holy, but to name what is already holy.

In their day-to-day, the listener you just heard goes by the Reverend Katie Ernst. They're an Episcopal priest, and shared with us this blessing for thunder thighs.

KE: As I read this thunder thigh blessing, I would invite you to put your hand on your thigh to make contact with your holy flesh. May the thundering clap of your thighs echo in the valleys of your spirit. May the dotting of dimples remind you of the sweet joy of the journey you have been on. May the markings and lines that frame the top of your thighs lead you on a path of discovery and enchantment. May you know the power that resides between your thighs and the strength buried beneath the soft covering of fat flesh. May your thunder thighs clap back. May you know that you are holy and whole.

—

This is Death, Sex and Money from WNYC. I'm Anna Sale. Part of making a commitment to someone is making a commitment to their body knowing that all bodies change over time. This is a fact of life and something all of us must navigate in long-term relationships. And with all the stigma around weight, changes in body size can be particularly loaded, like for this couple who've been married for 17 years.

Farrah: Hi Anna. My name is Farrah. I live in Louisville, Kentucky, with my husband, Jim.

Jim: Hi, Anna. I'm Jim. In May of 2018, I weighed 341 pounds, and over the last about three and a half years, I've lost about 165 pounds slowly and methodically, no surgery or anything like that.

Farrah: I am still overweight. It's harder for women to lose weight than men. Jim and I, you know, we're in great shape relationship-wise, but his weight loss and the way that he is able to move through our society now has changed over those last three and a half years. And to hear your call for couples who have been through one person's body changes together. That's just exactly where we are right now.

I called Jim and Farrah when they were at home in Louisville. They told me that when they got married in 2004, they each described their bodies as being overweight. And while they've both been losing weight over the past three years, Jim's dramatic weight loss has made a much bigger impact on his daily life. 

Jim: I remember even relatively early on commenting to her when I got home from a trip about the first time that I got on an airplane and really confidently did not ask the flight attendant for a seatbelt extension.

AS: When you are somewhere in public and you're seeing people who haven't seen you in some time, what are some of the things that they say to you?

Jim: I still never know exactly how to react when someone tells you you look better because I, I didn't think I looked like crap before.

AS: Farrah, how would you describe your body right now? How do you identify when it comes to body size?

Farrah: I call myself plus size. I follow a lot of fat acceptance, body positivity kind of social media accounts and I try to examine my own thoughts around this stuff, but I very rarely will refer to myself as fat. I'm trying to reclaim that term and let it be just like a factual statement rather than full of judgment, but obviously, it feels full of judgment for most people, myself included, so I don't use that term a ton. I can't say that I talk about my body enough to really have ever really thought about the answer to this question before, to be frank.

AS: And Farrah, as the partner of someone who is going through such a transformation incremental as it is, but a big transformation, have you always known when to be a cheerleader and a support and sort of, say, keep going and when to say I love you however you are?

Farrah: Knowing that, ideally, he would be half the size that he started at, it was just all cheerleading all the time for the first three years, probably. He knows I love him at any size. I've never been concerned that he's going to think like I'm overly excited that he's losing weight or anything like that. More recently, the tension has actually been me saying like, "Hey, Buddy, what is the goal? How are you going to know when to stop? When are you going to start eating dessert again?" The last round of pants that we bought, I said to him jokingly, well, I mean, I said jokingly, but it was kind of serious. I was like, "Okay, this is the last time we're doing this. These are size 34 pants, so we're not going to buy any more pants. You need to stop." And he was like, "Yeah, I'll try." I was like, "What the - no. You're in control of all of this. Like, this isn't something that's happening to you, this is actually a reality that you're creating, so I really want you to think critically about what is the stopping point for you?" I've said to him, like, "I'm worried now that you are becoming guy who loses weight instead of a guy who lost weight."

AS: What do you think about that, Jim?

Jim: You know, that has been part of the experience for me is recognizing that kind of autonomy that I have. I'll be honest, there have been moments where maybe the sort of achiever in me had - that were like, "Well, if I can do this, what else can this thing do?" I can get very, not just rigid, but sometimes narrow in my thinking about something. I think over at least the first three years when I was losing weight, my approach to my relationship with food was, how am I manipulating the ways that I eat and how I eat and when and how much in order to affect change in my physical body? And so, I have - it's been three and a half years, at least, since I have known what it's like to eat a meal that's intended to keep me at the same size. If I were this size for the rest of my life, I'd be thrilled.

AS: Because what I hear you saying is like, you use the word autonomy. You could also use the word like control, you could also use the word empowerment, like realizing you could make choices that would have certain consequences for how your body looked, and I, and I, but I didn't quite hear if you think these are the last new pants.

Jim: [Laughs] Yeah. I would actually love if these could be the last new pants. That would be great.

Farrah: As if there's like an outside force determining whether he can stay at this size like, "Dude, it's your choice. It's your choice." Again, back when we bought this round of pants a couple of weeks ago, I was like, "These are the last pants, so like if these start looking baggy, I'm going to make you eat some whipped cream or something."

AS: And um, have there been moments of where there have been flashes of - where this tension has shown up?

Farrah: Well. The one that came to mind was, um, I think we were getting ready to walk to dinner or something and we were getting ready to leave and he was like, I think I'm going to grab this pullover and I was like okay, whatever. It wasn't cold enough for me, but Jim, like being sort of gentlemanly in the moment, I guess he was like, do you want to wear my pullover? And I was like, okay, your pullover doesn't freaking fit me anymore. Like I cannot wear your pullover. And that did irritate me. And I said like, okay, that pullover comment bothered me because it then reminds me that like now I'm bigger than my husband. 

AS: How did you feel when she explained that to you, Jim?

Jim: Oh, I felt like crap in the moment, not because she had called me out and said it, but because I should be adjusting my own behaviors and responses to things based on that self-awareness of how dynamics might be different because my size is different.

Farrah: I think this is pretty gendered. I don't like it, but I do feel some way about being a bigger size than my husband. I think in our culture, that just - yes, there's a lot of self-judgment there.

Coming up, a listener who lived through what she calls "every fat person's worst nightmare."

Maddi: I knew in that instant that it was over. I was so…I was just...It was like a fog had been lifted.

[music]

When our intern Sarah pitched the idea for this episode, we all immediately thought of a podcast called Maintenance Phase we are fans of. It takes a critical look at diet and wellness culture and what scientific research really supports.

One of the show’s hosts is Aubrey Gordon. When I called her on Zoom, she was in a thematically appropriate setting: sitting in a closet at her mother’s house...behind her was a giant medical scale.

Aubrey Gordon: The layers of like a queer person in their mom's closet and like the scale - it's just like, there's a lot!

Aubrey has been researching and writing about body size and culture for years. And she told me there is a lot missing from the conversation around weight and romantic relationships. 

AG: I will say as a fat person, I have had the experience of being pressured into weight loss by partners and given weight loss ultimatums. It feels like living under the shadow of this massive cultural idea that we've all just sort of passively accepted, that it is categorically impossible to desire or love a fat person.

A lot of that, she says, stems from the way that our culture conflates fatness with unhealthiness. Which, by extension, suggests if you’re fat, you need to fix something. But Aubrey says, the science on health and body size is more complicated than many of us are taught. 

Aubrey: People who have BMI's that are considered to be overweight, um, actually live longer than people in the quote unquote normal weight category on the BMI. Researchers call it the obesity paradox, which I would say is only a paradox if you can't imagine a healthy fat person. Like that, that doesn't actually need to be a paradox. That's actually just - the research is pretty clear on this thing. You can be pretty healthy and be a little fat and that's fine.

If you are interested in learning more about these topics, or want a well-researched podcast to suggest if anyone makes rude remarks about pandemic weight gain during the upcoming holidays, we highly suggest Maintenance Phase. Aubrey recommends starting at “The Body Mass Index” episode...I do too. The history of BMI, it turns out, is totally bananas.

—

This is Death, Sex & Money from WNYC. I'm Anna Sale. We heard from many of you who told us how important The Fat Liberation Movement has been in your lives, especially for younger people who grew up within it. Maddi is 24 and she spoke with me from her home in Oakland, California.

Maddi: So, I would describe myself as plus size, I describe myself as fat. More specifically in the context of the fat-positive world, I would be described as a small fat, sometimes mid-fat.

Maddi grew up in San Diego in a predominantly white and thin community. Maddi’s Latina.

Maddi: I really didn't date at all in middle or high school. I definitely was not the person that anyone would go for publicly in the area that I grew up in. When I got to college, the world kind of opened up for me a little bit more, but I went to this small town on the Central Coast of California and it is predominantly white as well. The standard is very much white, thin, blonde. So I started kind of dating in college, but it was always very casual hookups. I jumped into it really, really quickly, I would say, because I had no experience at all. I hadn't even kissed anyone when I went to college. I had sex for the first time the same day that I kissed someone for the first time, um, which was really a pretty intense experience.

AS: Wow. What were the circumstances of that day?

Maddi: Like, uh, what happened?

AS: Yes. You got a lot done in one day.

Maddi: I know. [Laughs] It's actually a really funny story. This friend who I'm actually still friends with, um I had been crushing on him since I basically met him. He lived across the hall in the dorms from me. One day I went up to him and I just told him, like, "If you ever want to hook up, just so you know, I'm down."

AS: Maddi!

Maddi: I know. [Laughs] I did that and he was like, "Good to know." It was literally like months later, I feel like, and then we were hanging out with um friends and slowly people kind of dwindled back to their rooms. I think Clockwork Orange was on the TV. I mean it was very -

AS: So romantic.

Maddi: Absolutely. Everything that you'd ever dream of, right? It was so coming of age movie type of situation. Then we started kissing and then we went to his room and I had sex on the top bunk of a twin XL. [laughs] Um, so. It was extremely - it was a very college experience.

AS: Did you think about your body when you thought about how casual some of those encounters were?

Maddi: Yeah, definitely, um.

AS: In what way?

Maddi: I think I was aware on some level that maybe I would have a harder time finding something more serious because of my body. I think a lot of men specifically, um it's not that they're not attracted to fat or plus size women, I think that they're scared to say that they are? And I knew that and I knew the culture was not going to be very forgiving of that.

Maddi eventually got tired of short term hookups and started looking for a relationship. She got on some dating apps and carefully curated her profile.

Maddi: Definitely a mixture of selfies and full-body photos and saying outright that I'm a very proud, plus-size woman. In my bio, God, I never wanted to have one of those situations where I showed up at the coffee shop and they were disappointed in what they saw or felt I was displaying myself as thinner than I was.

She eventually swiped on someone who wanted to meet; another student from her university. He became her first boyfriend.

Maddi: The first time I met him was literally my first date, at a coffee shop. And I screamed the whole way there driving. I was so nervous that I screamed in my car to get my anxiety out before getting out and looking completely casual, put together, and meeting him.

AS: Did you talk about your body with him?

Maddi: Oh, yes, all the time. I had a lot of traumatic things happen to me related to my body that we talked about. I would get calls every day in middle school from anonymous numbers of girls at my school calling me like - I'm going to cuss. They would call me a fat ass cunt and tell me that I deserve to die.

AS: When you would share these painful memories, what was his way of listening?

Maddi: He would hold me when I would cry about it and he tried, I think, to reassure me about my body and the fact that he thought I was beautiful and sexy and all these things.

AS: What was his body like at the time?

Maddi: Uh, thin. Very conventionally attractive, white.

AS: Did you love him?

Maddi: I think I did or I think I thought I did, but when I look back with the context that I have now I think that a lot of what I felt was actually the result of pretty intense manipulation. I don't think it's the same love that I would hope to have in future relationships.

Maddi was with her boyfriend for almost three years. Then when COVID hit in the U.S. in March of 2020, they decided to lock down together at her apartment. He was asleep in her bed and she was up late.

Maddi: And I was out in the living room and I saw his phone on the table kinda light up. I had his password but I had never used it. And something in my gut - I had been having weird gut feelings for a while that something was going on. Um and I just knew, I was like, "You got to check his phone." And I saw years' worth of text messages between his sister, his brother-in-law, his mom, his dad talking about a girl named Shandy, um like it was his girlfriend. Them saying, "Oh is Shandy going to come join us for the holidays? We'd love to meet Shandy. When are we going to meet Shandy? I hope she's doing okay." Um I just knew, I was like, "Either he's been cheating on me and has another girlfriend which would be pretty incredible because we spent almost every day together or he's made someone else up.

Maddi woke him up, phone in hand, and asked him what was going on.

Maddi: He told me that he had made up a fake girlfriend with a whole other background story and details, et cetera, because he was too embarrassed to tell his family that he was dating someone who was fat.

She knew right then that the relationship was over. He went back to sleep. She called a friend to pick her up and spent the night away from him, but the next morning she came back.

Maddi: And I sat down in bed next to him. And I said like, "This is the last time that we will be in a bed together."

AS: And did he, um, was he contrite? Was he ashamed? 

Maddi: It was like talking to like, like a little boy that got like, got caught stealing candy in a, like a store, you know? Um, he seemed really ashamed. I remember he, he was crying when we said goodbye and he said, I just, I just don't want you to, you know, internalize this and think that it's about you. It's me. I'm the problem. And I was thinking to myself, like, of course you're the problem. [Laughs] Um, no shit. But also it is about me. And it's also about me and like a larger context and it felt more like about me in the context of like what fat women have to go through. Um, and everything that led up to this, like all of the societal pressure, um, and, and thoughts about fat people and, and, um, everything that had to happen for, for, for me to have to go through this.

AS: Can we talk about "Shandy?"

[Laughter]

Maddi: I know. Okay this is what everyone says when they first hear it, myself included. It's like, I mean - no offense to anyone who's with Shandy out there, but what the fuck? I mean honestly, I was just like, That's the name. That's it? I mean, his family had to have known he was lying because he picked the name Shandy.

[laughter]

It's so strange.

AS: I also love that you clarified, "No shade to the real-life Shandys out there. The made-up girlfriend Shandys, that's what we think -"

Maddi: No, it's just so absurd like, "You didn't pick like Michelle or a Kayla or a Jessica, but a Shandy?" I don't know.

AS: Are the types of bodies that you're attracted to, have they changed at all after having this experience with your ex?

Maddi: I think I am a little more hesitant about dating white conventionally attractive men. I'm queer, so I've definitely been talking to women, non-binary people more than I did before. Also, I don't know if you can hear my guinea pigs right now.

AS: I can't, I would like to, little like squeals [squeals].

Maddi: Exactly. But yes, I have actually been seeing someone casually for the last year. [Chuckles] And um, but it's very different from anything that I've ever had. For example, when we first started dating, he um we had a conversation about fatphobia. And he went out of his way to read this really dense history book called Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fatphobia. Um and he read the whole thing when I recommended it. We had a conversation about it and, I don't know, just things like that. It's a lot more - I feel a lot more seen.

AS: And why is it casual? What does that mean?

Maddi: We are not in a monogamous committed relationship um and I think that's complicated. I think that I have a lot to work through still. Um, I honestly, I think as anyone could understand what happened was really traumatizing for me. So I'm just not ready to dive into a relationship in the same way that I would if we decided to take that, that next step.

AS: You said when I asked you if you were in love in your relationship, you said I hope for a different kind of love in future relationships.

Maddi: Yes.

AS: When you think about the kind of love you want in your romantic life, what do you think of now?

Maddi: I think about that relationship and I was like, "Oh, on birthdays, we'll go get a burrito." I was like, "I'm totally fine with that. Yeah, I don't mind that we don't do things for anniversaries and birthdays." That was bullshit. I was totally lying to myself because I want someone to make a big deal out of me. And if I have to wait, then that's okay.

AS: In my mind, there's another dimension where you and Shandy become really great friends.

Maddi: You know what's funny is that I actually know who he based it off of.

AS: Oh, really?

Maddi: Yes.

AS: Shandy lives.

Maddi: Yes, she's real.

[laughter]

Maddi: She is wonderful, by the way. [laughs] Poor Shandy.

AS: I don't know how you feel about this, Maddi, but I just want you to know that one of our producers just slacked, "What if Shandy's queer and it's a love story?"

[laughter]

Maddi: That'd be wonderful, Shandy, if you're listening to this. Hit me up. My number is--

[laughter]

That would be fantastic.

That's Maddi in Oakland. Thanks to all of our listeners who share their stories with us about their relationships and their bodies.

Death, Sex and Money is a listener-supported production of WNYC Studios in New York. This episode was produced by Caitlin Pierce and Sarah Dealy. Sarah has been our intern this semester, and she pitched, worked on and finished this episode with us all in the course of her internship. What a contribution you made. Thank you, Sarah. The rest of our team includes Katie Bishop, Emily Botein, Afi Yellow-Duke, and Andrew Dunn. The Reverend John DeLore and Steve Lewis wrote our theme music.

I'm on Instagram @annasalepics, P-I-C-S, and the show is @deathsexmoney on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Thank you to Karina Puttieva in Washington DC who is a sustaining member of Death, Sex and Money. Join Karina and support what we do here, by going to deathsexmoney.org/donate.

I'm Anna Sale, and this is Death, Sex and Money from WNYC. 

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