Trigger Warning: in our conversation, we discuss weight, weight loss, diet culture, over-exercise, disordered eating habits, and more. Please take care of yourselves as you listen and avoid if these topics might be triggering for you. Everyone please welcome Evan Neilson to Continued Conversations! Evan is my very first male guest on this series!!! Evan and I were connected through his sister, Megan Neilson (who I’ve known for many years now), and I’m so grateful he was open to chatting body image in the arts with me! Evan comes from the high school and college theatre world, as do I, and he is now an educator with special ed students and still works within the arts and performs today. Our self-image stories of growing up as young kids and coming into adulthood were oddly aligned, so it was truly a joy to dive into this topic with Evan. In our conversation, we discuss… * Being the token “non-thin” (or, as we said in the nineties, “husky”) role both onstage and in real life in high school * The intersection of thin bodies being cast in leading roles and Evan’s journey with that very experience both in his acting and in his real life - and flipping that on me, where I share my story with this exact experience as well * The dieting industry and the explosion of social media impacting our self-image as young people * The freshman 15, a negative/toxic “grindset” in college, and the competition amongst male friend groups when it comes to fitness * The college environment driving Evan to adopt disordered eating habits * The lack of education on how to best fuel our bodies: “All food is better than no food” * Moving out of the all-or-nothing mindset when it comes to food and exercise * Rewiring our brains to be kinder to ourselves and our bodies * Leading from a place of grace and care and joy - and most importantly, by example of being true and genuine to yourself * Supporting kids (and all people) operating at medium capacity instead of 100% evry single day * The harmful impacts of “looksmaxxing” on men in our current society Evan is a joy of a gentleman, and I have been thinking about this conversation ever since we recorded. There are so many important points we touched on here. We opened the book and talked through a lot of poignant themes within body image specifically when it comes to the male experience, and I cannot wait for you to hear our very important conversation! “ Like you mentioned, how guys talk about it or engage with it or not engage with it, it's just different, you know? Just kind of the one-off comments of, “Ah,” you know, “I'll get in shape one of these times.” That's kind of the vibe, and it becomes a competitive thing with the people within male friend groups. And going to a college gym, I mean, a frightening idea. There are so many things I would do before stepping into the lower level of the Arc [college gym] again, you know? Working out around people, it's just not for me.” - Evan Neilson Below is a text insert of our conversation that stuck with me, starting at around the 30-minute and 55-second mark: Evan Neilson: I don’t know who said it or where I heard it from, but it’s been in my brain more recently is those moments where either you say something unkind to yourself, or you think, “Oh, maybe I don’t need this,” or, “Yeah, maybe I want this, but I’m not gonna get it.” Everyone in the arts community, especially, we all want to put good out there into the world and be good people to be around. You are also a person, you know? You are also a person to be nice to, and so, you being nice to yourself will have as much, if not more, of an impact compared to you being nice to another. And so, that goes beyond just body stuff, but just, you know, doing things that you like, doing stuff that brings yourself joy. Going back to hustle culture, you know, I’m on spring break, and I’m like, I just feel so – what am I – what can I be doing right now? I’m wasting this time. And then it’s like, oh, there are actually many things I enjoy doing that are just as helpful for me in the long term and in the short term than me doing something that feels more productive or important, what have you. Yeah. Megan Gill: Yeah, it’s rewiring our brains. Evan Neilson: Kind of. Kind of, yeah. And it just takes time. It really does take a lot of time. And thinking back to – I’m not in therapy currently, but I did a little bit of therapy after getting outta school. Not to focus on the body stuff, because I had therapy for a couple of years during school. It was more focused on my anxiety. My anxiety got really bad right after finishing school. And I actually learned that’s kind of a common thing is right after you graduate college, your worries become less about your grades – your worries about your grades go away, and then it becomes, “I think I’m gonna get murdered,” you know? That’s what it turned into for me, for whatever reason. And so, I was going and seeing a therapist for that, and once we kind of started to finish up, you know, for whatever reason, a few months in, he was like, “It’s interesting.” Even at that point, he was like, “You’ll say, ‘I struggle with my body,’ but that’s good. I’m done with that now.’” I still, at that point, was kind of pushing it away like, you know, a box that you don’t wanna unpack, you know, in the basement or whatever. I was still kind of treating it that way. But now, with just some more distance and looking back on it, and then yeah, thinking about it in the sense of I treated myself that way, in the same way you think about if I treated another person that way. It’s like, have grace for yourself and patience, but also like, yeah, it’s f****d up I did that. So I’m at that point now where more stuff is maybe – with some more distance, I can kind of process and intellectualize things a little bit more. Again, not always the best thing to do, to intellectualize your feelings and your body and stuff, but I feel like I’m at a point now where I think just the more and more experience I have in working with students that, you know, frankly, have way more difficult and complicated lives than I had as a child. Those things that you say to them or things that you want them to understand or process, they start to make their way back to you, eventually, as the teacher. And so, yeah, now I think working in special ed where some students may have learning disabilities, some students come from an emotionally difficult home, so they struggle to regulate their emotions in the school environment and stuff. Again, going back to internalizing a bunch of stuff you saw as a kid, you know, I’m trying to put messages out there, and the other people I work with are trying to put messages out there to kids. And some of that stuff does start to, you know, work back to you. Like, for example, I have a colleague who’s just awesome, an xperienced special ed teacher. She’s firm in expectations, but also is just the most gentle person. She started throwing out there at least medium effort as an expectation, where, yeah, we’ve been told that we need to do as much as we possibly can at every second, operate on 100%, you know, capacity. But it’s like, not every day is gonna be that. I feel like I’ve said that to – I’ve said, “Not every day is gonna be an 100% day,” to kids, a lot. But then when you start to take in what it means yourself, as a, you know – I mean, I’m almost 26, so again, I am an adult. I’m almost there. In a few years, I’ll be there. Yeah, if you’re operating at 50% capacity, that’s okay. Megan Gill: Yeah. Evan Neilson: Especially if you already worked the previous day or, you know, have other stuff going on. Not every day is gonna be your, your rockstar day, and that’s fine. Fill that space with, you know, the more joyful things you want to do and that kind of stuff. Megan Gill: Yeah, because joy is so important, for sure. And also, we have to give ourselves grace. We have to give our bodies grace. We have to give our minds grace. And I think that that’s so, so wonderful that you and your colleague are putting that information out there, especially planting it in young people’s minds. I’m curious to know if there’s anything else that – everything that you had gone through in terms of your upbringing and your relationship to your physical body, if there’s anything else like that that you are doing with your students or things that are a part of your story that you’re trying to almost give back to the young people you’re working with today, in a sense. Evan Neilson: Yeah, I mean, like anybody who became a teacher, you have the teachers you think back on. It’s like, okay, I really would like to emulate what those guys were doing for me and my peers. And going along with that, you have the bad ones. And it’s like, okay, I definitely do not want to emulate that person. So that’s a thing for me, for sure. I think for, I mean, now obviously all young people need a boost, need our help, need everything we can give them. But young men, you know, these guys aren’t gonna see as many male teachers coming up through high school and stuff, just given the political state of things and how easy all these guys can get ensnared into this stuff, you know, and just try to show – well, unfortunately, I’m not really allowed to make, you know, soapbox political stuff in the classroom, even though, you know, I may like to. I’m trying to show a more realistic – I don’t know if realistic is the right word, but, you know, not traditionally masculine in the classic Hollywood sense. But, so just being someone who, you know, is willing to look silly. That’s a big part of being a teacher. You know, showing them that you can make a fool of yourself. I’m pretty open with the passions I’m into, so there is a student who is very m
