A prominent American feminist has absolutely laid into Australian website Mamamia, over an incredibly dumb take from its founder and publisher, Mia Freedman.
Roxane Gay, who shot to fame with her groundbreaking collection of essays ‘Bad Feminist‘, was recently in town for the Sydney Writer’s Festival.
Her latest book, ‘Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body‘, is a searing account of her lifelong struggle with weight (Gay is morbidly obese) and a battlecry against the industries that promote skinniness above everything else. It’s her most personal book yet, and not in the tiniest bit least because she describes deliberately gaining weight after a traumatic childhood incident in which she was gang raped at the age of 12.
“They did things I’ve never been able to talk about, and will never be able to talk about,” she writes. “Those boys treated me like nothing so I became nothing.”
Enter: Freedman, whose desire to put her own two cents into literally everything never fails to disappoint.
She interviewed Gay for Mamamia’s podcast ‘No Filter‘, but to promote the episode, literally breached Gay’s confidence to breathlessly describe the private communications between the Mamamia producer and Gay’s people about the interview and Gay’s weight.
“‘Hunger’ is a memoir about Roxane Gay’s body,” Freedman writes in a since-deleted article on Mamamia. “And I would never normally breach the confidence of what goes on behind the scenes while organising an interview but in this case, it’s a fundamental part of her story and what her book is about.”
Check out the podcast episode description – which, at the time of writing, is still available.
Oh Mamamia. When good intentions just do so much damage… this is appalling pic.twitter.com/Kni2nKpvkp
— courtney robinson (@courtney_ro) June 13, 2017
Gay has absolutely laid into Mamamia, calling the interview a “shit show” and blasting the specific phrases used by Freedman to describe her weight.
I am appalled by Mamamia. It was a shit show. I can walk a fucking mile. https://t.co/14RNv2Ig0B
— roxane gay (@rgay) June 13, 2017
“Can she fit into the lift?” Shame on you @Mamamia https://t.co/14RNv2Ig0B
— roxane gay (@rgay) June 13, 2017
Whatever. Just what the fuck ever.
— roxane gay (@rgay) June 13, 2017
It is cruel and humiliating. https://t.co/XY2AU0XPFG
— roxane gay (@rgay) June 13, 2017
Mamamia has since deleted the post, but you can read it via webcache here.
At the time of writing, neither Mamamia nor Mia Freedman have issued an apology.
Photo: Graham Denholm / Getty.
