Hi friend,
First, a couple of announcements: I’m excited to support the SeekHer Foundation as a mentor for their new program ‘Our Bodies Belong’. Check out their
site to learn more and apply for their Winter 2024 Cohort.
Also, I'll be more or less unavailable from now through mid-January as I do a little hibernation, spend time with friends and family, and work on a really exciting new program that I'm hoping to roll out in January. There may or may not be regular newsletters during that time.
Now, to this week's letter:
I've been thinking so much about the cost of things lately, and how they interact with cost of living and marginalization and capitalism and labor and psychology.
Last week, I had the privilege of a behind-the-scenes chat with the organizer of Seattle Fat Con (affiliate link), an event happening in January here in town.
I'd known about the event for months, since it's local and the subject of much chatter in my friends circle, but I hadn't really looked into it or decided whether to go.
When I popped over to the Fat Con website to refresh my memory before meeting with Mx. Pucks, the first thing I was really impressed by was the event's COVID policy (vaccination required and masks encouraged), which is the best I've personally seen in a while.
The thoughtfulness that created that policy was so clear as I talked with organizer Pucks about the effort that went into their choice of hotel for the event, their pricing considerations, and the way they're structuring everything so that everyone has as good a time as possible (not just the VIP ticket holders).
As I found out in 2022 when I hosted a retreat, the more you focus on accessibility and inclusion, the harder it is to run your event, the less money you make, and the more people complain. (More on that last bit later.)
Let me tell you about the last big fat-centered event that happened here in Seattle, years ago.
