"I'm not pregnant -- but the night is young"

Joy Nash offers women some snappy comebacks to nasty remarks about their bodies.

Published June 24, 2008 4:35PM (EDT)

Before I discovered Sarah Haskins, Joy Nash was my No. 1 Internet video love, based on her YouTube classic, "A Fat Rant." Unsurprisingly, that video -- in which Nash exhorts larger people to go out and live their lives instead of putting off everything fun until they lose weight -- quickly spread on size-acceptance blogs. Less predictably, it also caught the attention of the national media, after which even my thin friends were forwarding it to me with subject lines like, "This is awesome!" Within about six months of her posting it, the video had been viewed more than a million times. Girlfriend hit a big, fat nerve. (It's almost like this culture fosters crippling body image issues or something! Go figure!)

Full disclosure: Nash and I have since become pals, and she even made another video I "co-wrote" (it was actually just based on a jokey conversation I had with a friend), but before I ever met her, I was a huge fan. I squeed when she followed up "A Fat Rant" with "More Fat Rant: Confessions of the Compulsive," and again last week, when she released "Fat Rant 3: Staircase Wit" (below), in which she tackles the problem of thinking up perfect responses to nasty remarks about one's body 10 minutes too late.

The secret to being ready with a good comeback? Practice. Also, not being afraid to go with "Bite me!" in a pinch.


By Kate Harding

Kate Harding is the author of Asking For It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture--and What We Can Do About It, available from Da Capo Press in August 2015. Previously, she collaborated with Anna Holmes, Amanda Hess, and a cast of thousands on The Book of Jezebel, and with Marianne Kirby on Lessons from the Fat-o-Sphere. You might also remember her as the founding editor of Shapely Prose (2007-2010). Kate's essays have appeared in the anthologies Madonna & Me, Yes Means Yes, Feed Me, and Airmail: Women of Letters. She holds an M.F.A. in fiction from Vermont College of Fine Arts and a B.A. in English from University of Toronto, and is currently at work on a Ph.D. in creative writing from Bath Spa University

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