Something similar happened last April at Climate Camp in the City in London. The reporter was from Grazia magazine, and they didn't specify that they wanted to interview someone white - instead, either overtly or otherwise, it was made clear that they only wanted Climate Campers who were young, female, and cute. And the Climate Campers quite happily complied.

A lot of people think that body fascism isn't "real" oppression, in the way that racism and homophobia are real. In fact 16,000 people a year die of anorexia, between 1 and 2% of women between 15 and 30 have an eating disorder, and many more are unable to live full and happy lives because they cannot get over their feelings of shame about not having the "correct" body shape. This is oppression, and it is very real. The fact that women are bombarded with the twin messages that how they look is more important than what they do, and that there is only one correct way to look, contributes to the fact that women on average have lower pay and are less likely to occupy positions of power. Our society is still a patriarchy, meaning that most power is held by a small elite, and this elite is almost exclusively male. Body fascism helps keep it that way.

Of course it is true that the Climate Camp has always made compromises when dealing with the mainstream media. For instance the media team invited the Daily Mail to do interviews, even though the Daily Mail often prints articles that are very racist. The difference though is that while many Daily Mail articles are racist, when the Daily Mail does an interview with a Climate Camper, the Climate Camper does not express or agree with racist views. However when Climate Campers agreed to do the Grazia interview, with the understanding that only Climate Camp women who more or less fit into the standard "correct" body shape demanded by body fascism would be welcome to do it, they implicitly agreed with and promoted the extremely oppressive ideas that there is only one correct way for a woman to look, and that a woman's physical appearance is the most important thing about her. The Climate Campers could have insisted that anyone who wanted to be in the photo-shoot could be in it. They could have insisted on having a range of ages and body types. They didn't do this (presumably because it would have led to Grazia refusing to do the article at all).

It could be argued that the Grazia article was justified because it brought information about the Climate Camp to a wider audience, and thus could lead to more people getting involved in Climate Camp. This may be true. However the Grazia article has contributed to the loss of at least one Climate Camper. While I have been involved in the Climate Camp movement since 2006, I have been a feminist far longer than that. As a teenager I bought into the ideas of body fascism, and thus I viewed myself as a failure because I was "ugly" and "fat". I spent years deconstructing the oppressive messages that we are bombarded with every day, and teaching myself to view my actions as being more important than my body shape. I had to become a feminist before I could become an activist. If I had not become a feminist I would not have had the confidence and the self-belief necessary to help run a social centre, to participate in large meetings, or to blockade a factory. After all that I have been through, belonging to an organization that thinks this Grazia article is alright, or at least harmless, feels like a massive step backwards. As a result of this I will be less a lot less up for doing Climate Camp stuff in the future.