'How many steps were there from the curb to the door of the building? Were there any stairs? How many? How big was the lift and was there a goods lift? How many steps from the lift to the podcast studio? There was also a lot of talk about chairs - making sure we had one sturdy enough to both hold her weight and make sure she was comfortable,' she wrote. In the article accompanying the podcast, Freedman, who is the former chair of the National Body Image Advisory Group, elaborated further on those 'requirements'. 'The requirements that we had to go back and forth with her publishers who brought her out to Australia, to promote Hunger and Bad Feminist and all her books, were extremely detailed.' There’s no other way to put it,' Freedman continued in her podcast. And this is a logistical nightmare for her. Social media quickly erupted with people's thoughts on the treatment of feminist icon Roxane Gay 'But it’s not just that Roxane’s overweight. 'I don’t think the scale goes beyond that. 'There’s obese, then there’s morbidly obese and then there is super morbidly obese,' she continued. 'You see, Roxane Gay… well I’m searching for the right word to use here… I don’t want to say fat so… even though she uses the word fat about herself… I’m going to use the official medical term 'super morbidly obese',' she said.
In the accompanying podcast, Freedman went further. And I would never normally breach the confidence of what goes on behind the scenes while organising an interview but in this case, it’s a fundamental part of her story and what her book is about,' Freedman wrote. 'Hunger is a memoir about Roxane Gay’s body. Roxane responded to the Mamamia article saying on Twitter: 'It is cruel and humiliating'įreedman went on to provide details of what she claimed went on 'behind the scenes' while organising her interview with Roxane, who in her book details how she 'ate and ate and ate to build my body into a fortress' after being gang-raped at age 12. 'I’d estimate there were more than a dozen exchanges back and forth between my producer and her people and the details of them both broke my heart and opened my eyes.' 'But Roxane Gay’s requirements were different,' she went on. The article - that was accompanied by a podcast and published on Mamamia but has since been removed - was written by the website's founder Mia Freedman and was titled: 'Why, for the first time, I have no photo from my interview with Roxane Gay'.įreedman went on to explain that 'when you’re interviewing an international guest or someone very famous, there are always logistics to be organised'.
'Whatever, Just what the f*** ever,' she wrote in another tweet. 'Can she fit into the lift?" Shame on you she continued in another tweet. I can walk a f***ing mile,' the college professor who is author of several books including the best-seller Bad Feminist, said.
Roxane, who weighed 261 kilos at her heaviest, hit back on Twitter, labelling the article 'cruel and humiliating'.