I had a conversation with Emilia Márquez, who was the director of the gender department at the NGO where I worked in Colombia. She has always been involved in gender and advocacy issues, especially in topics related to public policies and inclusitivy.

I told her a bit about my project and asked her, from her experience, what gap she thinks is still not being addressed or what we should pay more attention to. She shared the following insights:

She challenged me on the lens through which I’m understanding gender and how I’m considering an inclusive perspective, since these conversations usually have a cis-centered and white-centered focus. It assumes an idea of gender based on what is understood by white people: a thin, petite woman with a body shape different from the average man.

She mentioned that an interesting topic for her could be the creation of clothing sizes, based on a study done by two people in the USA, which gave rise to the statues of Norman and Norma, the model of what was considered “normal” in the USA in the 1950s. This still has a direct impact on how we relate to sizes today.

For her, a relevant issue is: what are the definitions of “normal” in statistics? Because this creates a huge bias and directly impacts how we relate to things.

The materialization of objects ends up materializing us in return. Materiality ultimately produces us.

What if we create a lab to explore new ways of relating to objects?

Regarding intersectionality: clearly, you won’t be able to test your intervention on all body types, but it’s important that your theoretical framework be applicable to all bodies, so that each person, through their life experience, can relate to what you’re proposing. That’s intersectionality.

It would be interesting to look at it from a participatory methodology where people can express how they relate to the subject, using experiential methodologies that spark curiosity to imagine parallel worlds.

What do we need? To talk about new sizes? To create new sizes? To not care about sizes? Size justice for overweight people?

This was for me one of the most important conversations I had during the masters becuase she invited me to challenge an specific issue that I can relate too.