Mel spoke with Joy Nash who is guest starring on Grey’s Anatomy tonight. She can’t talk too much about the story line, but it does involve something close to her heart which is body positivity.
Her big career moment kind of happened when she did a YouTube video called fat rant and it went viral. It has had almost two million views. Joy says which seems like nothing today but at the time YouTube was one year old and it was a huge deal; there were newspaper articles written, New York Times, LA Times, they flew me out to New York to do morning shows and it was a little moment but I still stand by what I said at the time. She says it was early on the wave of what became body positivity, radical fat acceptance, that kind of thing.
When asked if she thought we came far enough in the last 14 years, Joy says we’ve come real far, it’s not as far as it needs to go. She says she can’t quote the statistics but fat people on television is a small amount compared to how many fat people there are in the world. We are a big part of the population and we should be able to see ourselves on TV. She says if I have any regrets about my career it is that I didn’t feel entitled early enough like in my twenties I didn’t see anyone who looks like me on TV.
Joy says what really lit the fire under her was when she was in her early 20’s and her best friend go brain cancer and died. She says I was so infuriated listening to other people talk about the things they couldn’t do. It was crystal clear to her that today is all we have and what you’ve got right now is what you got and it’s not that bad.
You can watch Grey’s Anatomy tonight right here on Channel 7 at 9pm.
