Kate Zigrang is an advocate, entrepreneur, impact investor, and the founder of Viva Voce — a size-inclusive fashion marketplace and community rooted in body justice. But before we get to what she’s built, we go back to where it all started.
In this first part of a two-episode conversation, Kate takes us through her personal history with her body. From watching her mom navigate the world in a larger body and absorbing the shame that surrounded her, to puberty changing her own body in ways she wasn’t prepared for, to a disordered relationship with food that developed in her late teens and went unnamed for years. We also get into her OCD diagnosis at 31 — more than a decade after onset — and what it meant to finally have language for what her brain had been doing all along.
This is a conversation about the things diet culture teaches us before we’re old enough to question them, and what it actually takes to unlearn them.
We talk about:
Growing up watching her mom be treated as a problem to be fixed, and inheriting that shame before she had words for it
How her body changed at puberty while she was already carrying that inherited shame and fear
The food rules in her home growing up, the restriction and binge cycle they created, and how it planted seeds for a disordered relationship with food
Moving away from home at 21, marriage, pregnancy, and her body changing again in ways that felt out of her control
The “wellness journey” of naturopathic doctors, juice cleanses, a month-long juice fast, and crying in the shower
Clothing sizes, the lack of inclusivity in fashion, and how that contributes to body image
Getting an OCD diagnosis at 31 and finally understanding what her brain had been doing since she was a teenager
A doctor who told her, simply, that she was healthy (and how much that cracked open)
Finding Maintenance Phase, Aubrey Gordon, and Fearing the Black Body by Sabrina Strings, and what it meant to finally have the research match what she’d lived
This is a conversation I think so many people will feel deep in their bones. Not because it’s dramatic, but because it’s just so recognizable. The inherited shame, the fear of how others perceive us, the exhaustion of fighting our own body…then the tentative, fragile beginning of something else.
I’m really looking forward to hearing what stays with you after you listen. And most of all, I just want to say: thank you for being here. This community gives me so much hope.
PS: Part two (available to paid subscribers next week) picks up with the relational work that made all of this possible, and how Kate’s own healing became the foundation for what she’s now building in the world.
Books mentioned in this episode:
What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat — Aubrey Gordon
Fearing the Black Body — Dr. Sabrina Strings
