Mamamia apologises for ‘fat shaming’ podcast guest by revealing behind-the-scenes requirements
Mia Freedman’s content platform Mamamia has apologised for disclosing the behind-the-scenes requests of podcast guest Roxane Gay. 
A backlash against what was labelled as “fat shaming” began when the No Filter podcast, fronted by Freedman, posted a description of the interview, which included posing the question: “Will she fit in the office lift?”
In the podcast opener, Freedman said: “Now, I would normally never breach the confidence of what goes on behind the scenes of organising an interview, but in this case, I’ve thought a lot about it and the fundamental part of her story and what her book is about. She writes about it in the book, I’m sure she won’t mind me telling you any of this,” before detailing a number of phone calls and emails between Mamamia’s staff and Gay’s team which included requests around chairs, questions about elevators and requirements for photographs for private use.
Gay, a New York Times best-selling author and well-known feminist commentator, responded on Twitter noting: “I am appalled by Mamamia. It was a shit show. I can walk a fucking mile.”
Jeez that Rosie waterland is a piece of work. Nobody would know who she is without that site. So much hate in the leftie media biasphere
‘I’m sure she won’t mind me telling any of this’. Because massively overweight people like having attention drawn to this on a public forum?
so either Mia/the other people who signed off that column are incredibly f ing stupid if they legitimately didn’t think she was going to mind what they disclosed
or they’re really f ing mean and unethical to realise they were breaching confidence and most likely humiliating her but chose to do it anyway
epic error of judgement and probably a good job for Mia that she owns the website and so can’t be fired
Fleshpeddler, as with most things, it’s actually not as simple or black and white as it seems. The book that Gaye is currently promoting internationally, and which was the subject of the interview is precisely about her difficulties living in the world as a morbidly obese person.
So Freedman was referencing direct examples in her intro in a bid to set context.
It was clumsy obviously, but to suggest that she or Mamamia as a business would purposefully show malice towards a writer who they have in the past, and were again supporting, and a cause around which Freedman has built an entire career and business, just doesn’t add up.
On top of this, be aware that Gaye has publicly said in the past (and reiterated in the interview) that she loves a Twitter dust up…
I do appreciate the womansplain you delivered because I’m not capable of understanding nuance. But I actually am suggesting that they purposefully published demeaning info about Gaye in order to generate advantage for themselves one way or another
I wish people would stop allowing for ‘other people in the office who signed off’ to be used as scapegoats for this behaviour. There is one person responsible for what was said, written and served up to MM readers and that is Mia. It is about shock value/clicks/whatever gets traffic – at anyone’s expense. Always has been. The only exception to this rule is the few ‘charity angle/deliberately contrived philanthropic’ stories thrown in for token value and to act as a defence against when pulled up on the negative majority.
Breaching the confidence would have been weighed up carefully and the $$$CLICKS$$$ returned too tantalising not to. Morals/human decency/empathy/reader backlash wouldn’t have even been a consideration.
Rosie Waterland…no words. What disapointong behavior from her. Inserting herself into every situation involving Mia