In July PopSugar released a video about the aerobics class I created, Fat Kid Dance Party (For All Sizes to Heal from Body Oppression). The video went viral—it has had almost 4 million views to date. Since it was mostly hosted on Facebook my fan page Queer Fat Femme was my social media account that saw the biggest bump.
With this bump in likes I wanted to figure out a way to engage my new and longtime followers in a new way. I also had been thinking of ways of taking what I was teaching with movement at FKDP and deepening those lessons about self love and healing from body oppression. Something outside of aerobics class that uses additional teaching modalities to light a healing path for folks.
I can’t NOT photo credit! It’s a part of who I am! But my friend McKay who took these great photos doesn’t want photo credit so I’ll just leave it as a casual mention with lots of gratitude.
Enter Marisa Murgatroyd, business coach and motivator. My pal Christine Dunn (an effective relationship coach) had been posting about Marisa’s work. I seriously considered attending Marisa’s conference Message to Money Live last February but I didn’t have the funds to attend.
In late July Marisa created a 21 Day Facebook Live challenge. It was free to join and if you went live on Facebook for the 21 consecutive days of the program you would win a free ticket to Message to Money Live! At $1,000 value, this was not a small incentive for me.
I wasn’t ready to start going live every day. I had a ton of reasons I could have used to keep from embarking on this live journey. Timing! I was about to go visit my mom in a remote area of the Olympic Penninsula, what if her wifi was spotty? I didn’t know what exactly my live videos would consist of. Some days I am not in any shape to “perform,” how easy would it be to maintain my authentic voice? A cornerstone of my “brand” is being exactly who I am, no compromise. What if I ran out of things to say? What if no one tuned in?
When I began my journey to love my body I wasn’t ready. I just started. I used the tool fake it ’til you make it big time until I finally just did love my body without having to fake it. There’s a great business strategy, start before you’re ready. Same concept. The incentive and the timeline were a great opportunity so I did the thing, joined the challenge and started doing daily Facebook live videos. I could have easily sat in that resistance space spinning what if questions in a procrastination hamster wheel.
It has been almost five months and the results have been fabulous. In those first three weeks I ended up having another viral video. I was in a coffee shop answering media interview questions about Fat Kid Dance Party, literally writing about the effects of oppression on the body while a woman next to me said some horribly fatphobic things to a group of five people. Not one person stood up for justice in that moment and after I got done staring at her in shock I felt a surge of rage. I couldn’t sit there one second longer without going off on that woman, so I took a self care walk, leaving Dara with my computer.
I had the commitment to go live every day and here I was in a self care crisis rage spiral and I decided to get messy. The video of me processing that moment has 74,000 views. That was more than enough of a high five from the Universe for me to commit to continuing this daily live video project. The viral video also won me an additional $500 gift certificate for Marisa’s other coaching projects, I’m excited to use it to help develop the Fat Kid Dance Party digital workout platform once the pre-sale crowd fund (launching next week) finances my first video project.
Going live on Facebook every day answered a lot of the things I had been ruminating. It gave me a great outlet to engage people around the core tenants of what I teach at Fat Kid Dance Party in a much deeper way. It was on Facebook so it deepened the connection to all those new and long-time followers, and there’s really nothing like eyeball to eyeball contact to develop trust and intimacy. I have been a blogger for going on fifteen years and doing a live video takes me as little as five minutes including posting it, whereas a blog post takes me a minimum of five hours (usually more like 20 on a meaty post) between writing, editing, html coding, photos and social media amplification.
It has been a fabulous record of my life, a great way to share information I have learned in service to making the world safe for people to love themselves, and a wonderful training ground for my true career goal—a self love talk show. In many ways, it already is my self love talk show. It’s like a lab where I get to work on my on camera skills, develop my verbal storytelling, and learn what engages my audience the most.
Since my daily live show goes with me wherever I travel I get to share the cool places I go and great conversations with my incredibly wise friends. I have always wanted an Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown element to my talk show/reality show. (I just did a tour of Dolly Parton’s Chasing Rainbows museum this weekend!)
Since it’s live and daily, I feel less need for it to be polished. I don’t wear make-up every day so I don’t wear it in all of my videos. I let myself be messy, especially when I’m going through hard times. I’ve also learned that I don’t come off nearly as messy as I feel on those days I’m not as confident, which is a relevant lesson for everyone, we’re probably not as messy appearing as we feel.
It requires a level of daily self reflection that has allowed me to do more deep personal work and reminds me to look for lessons and tools. I think it makes me super relatable and my audience engagement is totally enhanced. I’ve gotten new Reiki energy healing clients from it and it has helped me work through new offerings as I develop as an entrepreneur looking to support my family with my art and healing work.
My friends have shared with me that my live videos feel like they are hanging out with me and that they love them because it’s an easy way to keep up with what ever-bustling Bevin is up to. I absolutely LOVE that! I want my viewers to feel like I am a healer, ally and supportive bestie in this journey with them, so the fact that my friends reflect that it’s like hanging out with me IRL is the best feedback.
My self love talk show was always a dream of mine and now it is a reality, I didn’t realize it until about three months into this project when the theme of my daily live videos emerged. I am in a continual process of deepening my self love and I deal with issues that come up that are so relevant to any step in the journey. Start before you’re ready applied to me as much in 2002 as in 2017.
This Saturday, December 16th at 5:30PM Pacific I am going live with my first ever holiday special. I LOVE the holidays so here’s another dream coming true. This year I have a musical guest, La Louma (if you love Sleater-Kinney or layered beautiful instrumentation get into her!!), we’re lighting the menorah, doing a solstice ritual and I am evoking Dolly vibes by having a raffle you can win from your living room for tons of Dolly fan art. Buy tickets here!
By turning on notifications for my live videos I am inviting you to have tea with me every day!
At the end of that PopSugar viral video I say, “When you love yourself you can move mountains.” Loving yourself makes everything easier. Join me daily! You can click the “follow” drop down menu to turn on notifications when I go live so you don’t miss an episode or tune into the ones that are most relevant to your journey.
Thank you for sharing your live videos. I found them insightful and you give me confidence with handling my own body image issues. Keep it up beautiful!