Victoria Kleinsman (00:01.07)
Cool, and we are recording. Well, Jessie, it’s an honor to have you here. Thank you for being here on the podcast. So those that don’t know you, who are you, what do you do, and why do you do what you do?

Jessi (00:08.699)
Thanks for having me.

Jessi (00:16.923)
Starting with big questions. Okay, so I’m a body image coach. I am the author of the book Body Neutral. And I help people improve their relationship with their bodies through something, body neutrality, which is what my book is about, which is all about stripping the body of undo, like false or inflated significance or meaning, as opposed to trying to like,

love how you look. So that is what I help people do is get to a place where their body just doesn’t feel as important and doesn’t have the power to like, you know, ruin their day or their mood or their life. As opposed to what I think a lot of people want to happen or like what body positivity maybe started telling us to do, which is like sort of posing it like a choice, like just decide that you’re beautiful and feel beautiful. And if that’s an option,

Take that option, it’s great, but for most people it’s not. that’s why I do what I do, is it’s more effective and realistic for most people. Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (01:23.466)
I love that.

because you’re right, it depends on what lens you look at body positivity through. I see it as like an extra, as like the icing on top of the cake if it’s available to you, but we always start with neutrality in my opinion too. Okay, there’s so much I wanna ask you. I’ve got notes here, I’ve written a few things down today. So let’s bring up something that you have on your website. In fact, I found you through a lady called Kara sending me this exact screenshot from your website. So I checked her website and I was like, there’s so much here.

Jessi (01:31.515)
Yeah.

Jessi (01:36.462)
Exactly.

Jessi (01:45.883)
Thank

Jessi (01:49.956)
Okay.

Victoria Kleinsman (01:54.528)
so much to offer. And so I’m going to start there because that’s how I find you. And that’s why I just love so much of your work. And that’s why I’m with you as well for people who don’t know. So you said, you will not be able to overcome your body image issues until you no longer need them.

Jessi (02:01.04)
Right.

Thank you.

Victoria Kleinsman (02:11.552)
on any level and you say four things. One, we experience body image suffering when we’ve assigned, in fact, I’ll let you say it in your own words because this is, yeah, this is big. So what does that all mean for people who don’t know?

Jessi (02:25.5)
Which part? I’m not sure where on my website you’re referring to, so tell me which part.

Victoria Kleinsman (02:29.036)
Okay, so you say about when we assign, you mentioned it previously, when we assign our body a task role or purpose it can’t fulfill, then you say we experience body image suffering when we’ve assigned our body a false excess or significant meaning or moral interpretation, and our body image issues are always trying to help us. And while any part of our mind believes that we need the help of our body image issues, they will never go away.

Jessi (02:35.995)
Mm-mm.

Jessi (02:48.9)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessi (02:55.247)
Right. So the reason, the reason that we experience body image distress, which is different than just like an insecurity or, you know, a preference. I always compare it to preferences is because there is some inappropriate amount of meaning or significance being assigned to the body. And I say that because you can, and inside of body neutrality, most of us do have things that we prefer would be different, right? You might look in the mirror.

If you have like a bad hair day or like a big zit and you might be like, wow, I definitely prefer this to look different. And maybe you’re kind of irritable about it for a minute. You you figure out what you want to do. You’re going to like put your hair up or put concealer on. And then you move on with your day. It doesn’t like have this big power over you. It doesn’t make you feel like you’ve failed in some way for most of us. You know, it doesn’t, it doesn’t feel like we’re less deserving or worthy or that we’re like,

morally inferior, it doesn’t have that power to impact us because we don’t typically associate like a bad hair day or is it with our sense of self and worth. Whereas we do often associate like our body shape or size, you know, our attractiveness overall. So sometimes the examples I just gave actually can feel really meaningful depending on the person. But like,

Victoria Kleinsman (04:02.883)
Mm.

Jessi (04:18.085)
There’s such a difference between having a preference and looking in the mirror and going, this isn’t what I want. And having it have that power to really impact you, to like send you into an emotional tailspin, to make you feel panicky, to make you cancel plans. And so when I talk about body image issues, I’m usually talking about the distress, right? Like the inappropriate amount or disproportional response to something that ultimately isn’t that important.

but feels incredibly important. We learn that it’s incredibly important. And body shape and size and sort of how close we conform or don’t conform to conventional ideals of attractiveness. Those we are taught are super, super important. So that is what we are responding to. We’re not really responding to the preference. Because we have tons of preferences all the time. You probably have preferences about the place you live.

You know your kids behavior, maybe your partner whether they have a beard or not like we all have preferences They just don’t have that power because they’re not linked to something That feels so significant or meaningful. So that’s what we’re talking about when we talk about body image distress

Victoria Kleinsman (05:21.154)
Mm.

Victoria Kleinsman (05:26.03)
Yeah, heard you, I think it was on one of your paid programme that I’m in, one of the modules you, I think you, you related, and I loved this, you said something like, in terms of body image and neutrality and preference, you said something about your house, for example, you might prefer to live in a bigger house, but every time you walk through the front door, you don’t feel immense shame, embarrassment and panic. And I was like, oh my God, that’s such a good explanation.

Jessi (05:48.635)
Right.

Yeah, and that’s how you know that something deeper is going on too. If someone came to me and they’re like, I want to overcome my body image issues, they don’t really bother me, but I would prefer to look different, I’d say we don’t actually have any work to do, you’re pretty body neutral. Like that’s sort of the goal, you want to be able to hold gently that you have preferences for a reality that isn’t happening, because that is just part of life. But if it’s not having bigger, deeper consequences, then you’re good, that’s neutrality.

Victoria Kleinsman (05:56.237)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (06:15.118)
Mm-hmm.

Jessi (06:20.955)
If it is having bigger, deeper consequences, like most people who come to me are experiencing these really big emotional highs and lows linked to how they look, you know, I step on the scale and I feel euphoric because I’ve lost weight and then a week later I step on the scale and I feel miserable because I’ve gained weight. That’s disproportional. Something deeper is going on. There’s some significance being assigned to that number or to your body that is not appropriate.

Victoria Kleinsman (06:20.995)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (06:46.412)
Yeah, and where I know everyone’s different, but where do you see within your clients, most of us learn this misplaced significance to our bodies in general.

Jessi (06:49.019)
Thank

Jessi (06:55.611)
you know, Victoria, everywhere. Just basically everywhere. mean, we live in a world like under patriarchy, especially this is, I would say actually really escalating for men, but has historically been something that impacted women way more intensely because women’s worthiness and deservingness and value.

Victoria Kleinsman (06:59.511)
yeah, I know.

Jessi (07:23.727)
have all been measured by their attractiveness for a really, really long time. So we still get those messages everywhere. And unfortunately, it’s just super hard to take that apart, even if no one ever explicitly said to you, like, you are less worthy and deserving if you’re less attractive. We learn it anyway, you know, through representation, through media, through comments that you hear growing up through…

Victoria Kleinsman (07:28.088)
Yeah.

Jessi (07:51.269)
conversations with your friends, you know, I need to lose weight. I’m so bad because I these, you know, this dessert or a second helping. Like you just learn it everywhere. Diet culture teaches us that thin is better. Patriarchy and beauty ideals and beauty culture teach us that a very specific aesthetic is better. And if you’re not meeting those things, if you are failing in some way, then it’s not just neutral. We don’t ever learn that it’s just a neutral fact. We learn that it’s super important and it makes you

less deserving, less valuable.

Victoria Kleinsman (08:24.856)
And then we go through our lives believing that. And then I believe that we attract towards what we believe about ourselves. So if we believe that we’re unworthy because we don’t look a certain way, our brain finds proof that our belief is true. And then it’s like, see, I need to look this way in order to be happy, have the relationship, be loved, whatever it is.

Jessi (08:41.476)
Yeah.

Jessi (08:48.057)
Yeah, honestly, the brain is really good at that. Like, because of the confirmation bias, it’s just super excellent at gathering, like, massive containers of evidence to prove a point that it already believed and to ignore anything that goes against that. So that is one of the reasons that this work can be really complicated, is like, a person who feels unattractive, fat, ugly, unworthy, like, you know,

Victoria Kleinsman (09:09.422)
you

Jessi (09:16.879)
her mom, her friend, her partner might be like, no, no, you’re beautiful. Like, I’m obsessed with the way you look and it will mean nothing. And then she’ll feel even crazier. She’ll be like, what is wrong with me that I can’t believe these people? So it’s a lot of like self-gaslighting that happens and very crazy making for the people who experience like a lifetime of evidence that say one thing and then encounter.

evidence that supposedly contrasts it, they can’t take it in. It doesn’t feel true.

Victoria Kleinsman (09:46.594)
Yeah, I used to think that people were lying to me. They’re just trying to be nice. They don’t mean it. They’re just trying nice.

Jessi (09:49.679)
Yeah, yes, I hear that all the time. Sometimes I’ll have a client break it, I’ll be like, walk me through it. Your partner secretly isn’t attracted to you and is lying to you, now what? Like, tell me this, how does your brain interpret why a person would ever go through that process? And you know, it can get very funny, which is why I think I like to bring sometimes like a playful element into it. Like, walk me through the psychology of a person who…

Victoria Kleinsman (09:58.541)
it

Victoria Kleinsman (10:10.328)
Mm.

Jessi (10:15.705)
desperately wants to keep having sex with someone he is not attracted to. Like why and how. And it kind of falls apart at a certain point, but it doesn’t really matter because it just feels deeply true. It’s not logical. It’s not rational. It’s it’s deep. Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (10:19.372)
Thanks.

Victoria Kleinsman (10:30.958)
Yeah, but the brain believes it, doesn’t it? And like you say, it just completely just disregards anything that goes against the beliefs and that can keep us stuck. Let me bring something that I wrote down today. I was listening to one of your things today and I think it’s under patriarchy in terms of, let’s say a woman’s going on a date with a man or a man’s going on a date with a woman, whatever, they’ve not met each other before. And you said that the man is often thinking, oh, will I like her? And the woman’s often thinking, will he like me? And I was like, oh my God, that is just…

When you, it’s so true when you put like, the fuck’s going on there? Why are we doing that?

Jessi (11:04.559)
Yeah. So one of the things from the website thing that you read, one of the points that’s really important is that our body image issues exist for a reason. And that deeper subconscious reason is about trying to help us get something we want, avoid something we don’t want, protect us, solve a problem, meet a need. It feels deeply important because on that level it is deeply important. Again, based on a

false or inflated sense of meaning and significance, but like often what we end up learning, especially as women, is that our worth and value is based on making other people feel happy and comfortable, sort of being of service, and providing other people with what they want rather than going after what we want. You know, what we want is sort of secondary, other people’s desires of us as primary. And it’s partly why we learn to see ourselves from the outside in, you know, so many people.

Victoria Kleinsman (11:37.058)
Yeah.

Jessi (12:03.611)
that I work with will say I almost don’t even have a sense of myself that doesn’t involve other people looking at me, you know? So some of the like problem that we’re trying to solve or whatever by looking a certain way is to check that box, to fulfill our purpose and give us value by being what other people want. So.

Victoria Kleinsman (12:10.87)
Yep, can relate.

Jessi (12:26.595)
It’s all kind of wrapped up in the same thing. A lot of times if you go on a date, you want to look attractive, but you also want them to like you because that is kind of the same thing. You are focused on what other people think about you and how you look is sort of all just part of that. But women often learn not to think about what they want and what they need because that has nothing to do with their, you know, under patriarchy, their like purpose on earth. Their purpose on earth is to make other people feel good, not to feel good themselves.

Victoria Kleinsman (12:34.656)
Mmm, yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (12:51.138)
Yeah.

Jessi (12:54.925)
So it would be sort of irrelevant to figure out what you wanted and liked and felt and needed. And that’s often how it feels, is that’s totally like, well, that doesn’t seem relevant. I’m focused on what other people think about me, feel about me, want from me, like about me, or don’t like about me. And so appearance is just all mixed up in that, but fundamentally a lot of women learn to move through the world that way.

Victoria Kleinsman (13:15.832)
Yeah, I did. And then I felt safe and loved and accepted when the outside world was like, yeah, good job. You’re thin enough. You’re pretty enough. Your hair’s long enough. Well done.

Jessi (13:26.011)
Yeah, I sometimes think back to like the sex that I had in my early 20s when I felt this way and I don’t think I felt I don’t know that I had any sense of actual pleasure or desire of my own like I’m It’s possible, but I don’t really remember it that way because I was fully focused on the experience of did I turn them on and make them feel satisfied and I loved it I would have told you I was having great sex which

Victoria Kleinsman (13:33.165)
Yeah.

Jessi (13:52.697)
compared to what I think of as great sex now is absolutely not true. But it was because of that. It’s like I literally measured how good sex was based on how much they liked it. Whether or not I liked it wasn’t, I didn’t have an opinion on it. I didn’t care. It was based on did they seem really satisfied, you know?

Victoria Kleinsman (14:03.096)
Yes.

Victoria Kleinsman (14:12.078)
Yeah, oh my god, I’m so glad you brought that up, because so many of my clients can relate to that, and the past version of me would relate to that. And in fact, it reminds me of two things. One, this was before I started my healing journey, but it actually was the catalyst to make me think about my appearance in a different way. was a random comment. I got out of the car, walked somewhere, and this man walked past me, and he shouted out, he said, oh my god, you’re beautiful, well done. And then I was like.

Wait a minute, that’s a really odd thing to say, but the way he said that, well done, and I was with my mum at the time, and I remember saying, well done for being born with the genetics I have, like, that was the first time I was like, what the fuck does that even mean?

Jessi (14:49.989)
Yeah.

And I will say this is where it gets weird right because if a woman learns all these things internalizes all these things fully And let’s say has the best possible experience of the world which isn’t really what happens But best possible experience is everyone thinks she’s stunning Everyone thinks she’s beautiful and gives her praise

Victoria Kleinsman (15:01.88)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (15:10.274)
Mm-hmm.

Jessi (15:13.803)
It actually still sucks. It doesn’t feel deeply fulfilling because she’s not going to feel deeply seen or known or valued or respected for who she is. It’s always going to feel like a disconnect. And that’s one of the reasons why it’s like when people praise you for something you didn’t have any control over, it can only penetrate so far into your into receiving it as like, wow, thank you. I feel so appreciated and seen.

Victoria Kleinsman (15:31.245)
Yeah.

Jessi (15:40.205)
I always felt that way about, cause I had like big boobs, I didn’t make them, I didn’t do it. I got so many compliments on them for so long though, like, wow, great rack. And I’m like, thank you. Like that doesn’t make me feel good about myself other than this, in this one way that I’m like, yes, other people like what they’re seeing. But that is so, that’s like breadcrumbs compared to actually feeling seen and valued. But I didn’t know that then, which of course is like.

Victoria Kleinsman (15:44.617)
Thank

Victoria Kleinsman (16:00.782)
Mm.

Jessi (16:09.315)
where this work comes in. But now if someone were to say that to me, I’d be like, why would I want to hear that? Like that actually would feel very rude and weird. But also it just feels irrelevant to me. Like I didn’t do that, so why are we talking about it?

Victoria Kleinsman (16:23.342)
Yeah, I totally get that. And actually for someone who hasn’t done the work to heal, it just perpetuates a self objectification cycle because in my experience anyway, like I was the most popular girl at school, know, who everyone wants to be. But actually there was so much pressure that I felt to keep this thing that someone put me on. my God, so much pressure. And that’s when the eating disorder started as well.

Jessi (16:32.933)
Yeah.

Jessi (16:48.719)
Yeah. And that’s often what happens. This is one of the reasons that I’m so firmly against commenting on people’s bodies even in positive ways is because for people who are fairly close to the conventional ideal, this is what they’ll hear their whole lives is how cute, pretty, beautiful, sexy, whatever, right? Like people are constantly going to be complimenting them on how they look and each individual compliment can’t do that much, you know, impact.

Victoria Kleinsman (16:58.114)
Yeah.

Jessi (17:19.109)
but a lifetime of them really basically just reinforces the message that how you look is the most important thing about you and it’s basically where your value comes from. And again, that goes back to that like closet of evidence that we have where it actually starts to feel terrifying to lose the way you look, whether that’s because you stop, you know, wearing your hair, like if you want to cut your hair short or like stop wearing makeup, or you’re just going to like go through the human aging process. You’re screwed no matter what. You can’t maintain this thing.

Victoria Kleinsman (17:47.202)
Mm.

Jessi (17:47.577)
and you’ve learned that this thing is the only thing everybody wants to focus on and they love about you. So it’s really actually, it does build up a lot of pressure like you say, and a lot of girls and women who experience that, they do develop things like eating disorders and really intense body anxiety for that reason.

Victoria Kleinsman (18:06.498)
Yes, and also what you said, I’m just reflecting back all these amazing truth bombs you’ve said, going back to women being here to create an experience for others, you said women are taught that we’re not human beings, we’re human givers of experiences. And I was pausing it again and I was like, my God, I’ve done a lot of my own healing work. But the things you say and the way you say it just…

Jessi (18:11.076)
Yeah.

Jessi (18:28.218)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (18:31.754)
lands in a completely different way. can you talk about, know you’ve briefly spoken it, but it’s so common for my clients to be existing, to give someone else a good experience. A lot of people pleasing comes into this as well.

Jessi (18:42.277)
Yeah.

Yeah, so I gave a TEDx talk like over 10 years ago now, it’s so old. But like the first couple of lines are basically talking about this, that like the first things you hear as a little girl, the compliments that you’ve got as a little girl tend to be like about how you look, like you’re cute or pretty, you know, you’re a beautiful princess, whatever it might be, or it’s about how you’re nice.

You know, you’re sweet, right? And both of these categories of compliments are about other people experiencing you. They’re not about you at all. Because being nice and sweet is about congratulations you’ve given someone else a pleasant experience and being cute and pretty is congratulations you’ve given someone else a pleasant experience. Neither of them are about your own experience. Whereas if you were to compliment a little boy, you might be like, you’re so strong, so fast, so smart. You know, like those are much more about like you and…

Victoria Kleinsman (19:21.964)
Mmm, yeah.

Jessi (19:43.513)
and they center you in a way where your experience is clearly important, what we say to little girls centers other people and gives the impression that that’s what’s really important. And so we take that into adulthood. And we learn that like, my experience is again, kind of irrelevant, maybe optional, maybe secondary. know, like when we think about like, motherhood, a great mother is a mother who puts her needs last and focuses on everyone else and sacrifices for everyone else, right?

So we have all of these messages that just continue throughout a lifetime where we learn that our like the highest height of goodness for us the best thing we can do in the world is to give other people a nice experience rather than Anything to do with literally who we are or what we experience ourselves

Victoria Kleinsman (20:30.862)
Yeah, let’s shift into the body image avatar. So obviously you talk about these in your book. How many are there and what are they and just roughly like so someone can perhaps identify with, that one’s me or I’m both of these.

Jessi (20:42.595)
Yeah. So, is my mic good? It just turned orange for some reason. Okay. So, the body image avatars are a system that I created. are like umbrella categories. There’s four of them. And I created them as umbrella categories for the four like main ways that body image issues tend to function. As I said before, body image issues exist for a reason.

Victoria Kleinsman (20:48.546)
Yeah, so good.

Victoria Kleinsman (21:07.661)
Yeah.

Jessi (21:11.507)
And in my practice, I was noticing that there tend to be four root causes. These are not specific at all. These are just like a way of locating yourself on the map of like what could be going on because it’s a huge map. And part of the work that I was doing with clients for so long was like spending months figuring out where to even start digging. So I invented the avatars, created the system. I have like a quiz that you can take to kind of start locating yourself.

Victoria Kleinsman (21:29.752)
Yeah.

Jessi (21:35.387)
just to start giving people a sense of what might be going on so you know where to get specific and start looking. Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (21:41.218)
And can I just say to the listeners, that quiz, I did the quiz, because who doesn’t love a quiz, right? The questions, when I was doing it, this is when I first like found your work, I was like, these questions are fucking awesome. They’re not just like a typical like really, you know what, like you build a quiz in like five minutes. They’re really thought provoking. And I was like, this girl is awesome. So I turned out as a self-objectifier, but please continue. It’s so interesting to find out.

Jessi (21:46.625)
Yeah.

Jessi (21:54.747)
Yeah.

Jessi (22:04.195)
Yeah. And that doesn’t surprise me because of what we’ve been talking about, right? so, yeah, so the, the, it’s the self-objectifier, the outsider, the high achiever and the runner is what I call them. Each one has a general underlying purpose and a general way that they tend to show up. Like what that person tends to experience or struggle with is sort of similar. So,

Victoria Kleinsman (22:08.792)
Yes.

Victoria Kleinsman (22:18.915)
Mm-hmm.

Jessi (22:32.475)
For the self-objectifier, you learn that attractiveness is the key to getting everything you want and to having value. And so it’s exactly the experience we’ve just been describing, right? For a high achiever, often attractiveness is not really relevant. It’s more about like superiority and having external validation through the things you do, which often includes like,

Victoria Kleinsman (22:41.272)
Yes.

Jessi (22:57.401)
being super fit and maybe controlling your weight or body in a super disciplined way because that’s, you know, kind of viewed as like morally superior, like, wow, everyone admires that, you know, there’s a lot of external validation for that. So that person might be like, I don’t care if I’m hot or not, I just wanna be like thin and toned and I want everyone to look at me and admire me, right? So totally different motivation for where those body image issues might be coming from. The outsider is coming from a desire,

Victoria Kleinsman (23:07.17)
in

Jessi (23:26.947)
to either gain social belonging and connection or avoid social humiliation and disconnection. So this can look like a person who maybe never felt socially safe and just kind of wants to blend in and doesn’t want negative attention for how they look. So they’re focused on, if I could just lose weight, nobody would bully me kind of thing. And then on the flip side of that, it can sometimes be like,

Victoria Kleinsman (23:50.989)
Yeah.

Jessi (23:54.883)
I have a specific peer group I wanna fit in with and they all get Botox and fillers. So like, I need to do that in order to like, again, not be kicked out of this peer group, you know? So a lot of times it’s just focused on where we feel like we belong and what we feel like we have to do and prove in order to belong there. And then the runner is typically, I always say the runner is focused on coping and surviving. So this might be like a person who,

Victoria Kleinsman (24:04.643)
Yeah.

Jessi (24:23.287)
It’s a trickier one to kind of explain because I think it has the broadest possibilities, but this is someone who’s maybe obsession, like fixation on how they look or obsession with food or exercise is actually protecting them from like maybe facing or feeling deeper things that they don’t feel safe facing and feeling. So they’re literally coping and surviving.

Victoria Kleinsman (24:42.862)
you

Jessi (24:47.545)
And likewise, think about, like our body’s just there. So if you need to be distracted from something or avoid something, you can obsess over your body and food for the rest of your life. It’s an extremely convenient place to kind of project these things and, you know, find other things to think about basically. But then it also often will be like, if you have trauma and you feel

Victoria Kleinsman (25:02.701)
Yes.

Jessi (25:16.749)
you know, totally disconnected from your body, then it also can be a thing of like, basically like, I don’t feel safe in here. So I hate what I see in here, right? It can be about like, I need to escape the place where pain lives. So I need to be as thin as possible, or I need to like control this as much as possible. So it’s complex, but it’s always about some level of coping or surviving.

Victoria Kleinsman (25:41.208)
Yes, I think I identify the past me with all of those things. I’m sure it’s quite common. There’s a major one which for me was a self-objectifier, but I recognise myself in, apart from the fitting in one, actually, I was pretty good with socialising stuff, but the high achiever, the running away from emotions, because anorexia just numbs.

Jessi (25:46.458)
Yeah.

Jessi (25:55.739)
you

Jessi (26:00.879)
Yeah, exactly. That’s a great example. Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (26:03.894)
Yeah, well, let’s focus now on because you send anyone who’s not signed up to Jessie’s emails do it because she sends awesome emails every week. And there was one email a couple of weeks ago you sent and it reminds me on my website, I have a line that says something like if I were to be called average, it would be the biggest insult of all talking about that to me. Right. And so many people come to me being like, my God, that

Jessi (26:22.555)
yeah, that’s high achiever, typically. Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (26:30.114)
quote like resonates with so much. And you sent an email describing why that’s the case. So describe like, why is it not okay for us to be normal or average, do you think?

Jessi (26:30.648)
Yes.

Jessi (26:35.344)
Yeah.

Jessi (26:43.705)
Well, so again, not everyone learns this, right? Same as self-objectify. There are plenty of women who just don’t care about being attractive, right? You can kind of just escape certain messaging. It depends on a lot. But not everyone experiences the same feeling that like our worth is linked with our accomplishments and our superiority. But for a high achiever, that is basically the whole deal.

Victoria Kleinsman (27:06.531)
Yeah.

Jessi (27:11.459)
So in that case, being average or being like everybody else is truly an insult because it means you’re not special. And the only way you can have worth is to be special and sort of set apart and superior. So a lot of times what we’re looking at in this area is like eating disorders and things that are basically like, have more discipline than everybody else. I’m special. you know, I’m able.

Victoria Kleinsman (27:17.667)
Yes.

Victoria Kleinsman (27:25.068)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (27:34.178)
Mm-hmm.

Jessi (27:38.597)
to restrict food or exercise more or whatever it is in a way that most people struggle with. So I’m special. It’s where their worth comes from. And unfortunately, since there’s only like a teeny tiny percentage of people who can be better than everyone else if we were ranking, if this were a real ranking system, it basically means that even if you’re doing great and you’re at the top, you’re living in constant fear that you’ll be like displaced.

Somebody else walks in the room and they just happen to have more discipline. Now you’re nothing. Now you’re worthless. Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (28:10.106)
fuck that. I used to scan the room, like, am I the thinnest? Does anyone else have abs? What do my body steps look like? And if I was the best one, I’d be like, okay, now I can be happy in my life.

Jessi (28:14.807)
Yeah. Yeah.

You can relax. Exactly. And that’s the thing. It really, comes from this like ranking system that society teaches us to do. I mean, it’s very explicitly told to us that there are some people who are better and more deserving and worthy than others. So it’s not like we invent this ranking system, but some people are more prone to really internalizing it deeply and kind of like living by it as a life philosophy. And the high achiever tends to be those kinds of people.

A lot of times they are drawn to like a lot of structure and rules and I have a client who calls it like her constant like ranking spreadsheet or something. It’s like literally like every room she’s in, she’s doing like math to figure out where everybody is positioned, you know? And the reason for that is because you’re only safe if you’re at the top. From this, again, we talk about coping and surviving or like how deeply important it is.

Victoria Kleinsman (29:05.228)
Yeah.

Jessi (29:15.535)
This is not vanity. You literally feel like I would be nothing. I would have no worth or value. Yeah, there would be no reason for me to even be here if I’m not at the top. So that whole mentality is a lie. Like that’s not true. But again, it feels deeply true and it comes down to the feeling of like panic almost if you think, okay, well, if I’m not the best, then I’m nobody. And it’s like existential panic, you know?

Victoria Kleinsman (29:45.42)
Yeah, and what you said before in terms of neutrality, that if you’re in a neutral place, there’s no hierarchy. so with a hierarchy, comparison comes with a hierarchy or vice versa. So if you’re, I know it’s like innate for humans to compare, but if we practise just letting go of comparison when it comes, there is no hierarchy to compare against. So I say that our overachievers are just trying to be good enough.

but actually when you take away the comparison good enough doesn’t make sense because you can only be good enough or not good enough in comparison to something or someone.

Jessi (30:21.359)
That’s exactly it. And that’s what they learn. That’s what we learn is that like our value is relative and only relative. It only exists in comparison to other people. So body neutrality and the reason that body neutrality requires like building a resilient sense of self-worth is for this reason. You have to be able to say, well, I see my own value and it’s not actually related to anyone else.

Victoria Kleinsman (30:31.085)
Yes.

Yeah.

Jessi (30:49.701)
Therefore it can’t be threatened by anyone else, nor can it feel boosted by anyone else. Like, I don’t feel better when I see someone who is lower on the ranking because this ranking no longer means anything to me, you know?

Victoria Kleinsman (30:52.599)
Yes.

Victoria Kleinsman (30:56.714)
In both ways.

Victoria Kleinsman (31:04.267)
Yes, I remember before recovery when I used to watch movies and they, was, I was furious. I was like raging inside. If I’ll be sitting with my boyfriend and they’ll be zooming in on Margot Robbie, for example, I’ll be like so angry. Like why the fuck are you zooming in on her in a underwear? Because I, I was felt.

Jessi (31:16.277)
I know.

Jessi (31:22.297)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (31:25.496)
that it was taking everything away from me and giving everything to her. But now I can look at her and be like, she is aesthetically beautiful. And I also value myself the same. My value of me hasn’t gone down because she’s incredibly beautiful.

Jessi (31:39.429)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And again, this is one of those places where if you use like kind of a little bit of levity and try to rationalize, like, great, tell me about how Margot Robbie’s butt is a threat to you. Like, walk me through it. Again, it gets like silly. Like the only way that it would be a threat is she walks in through your living room door and presents herself to your boyfriend and he says, yes, you know, like it’s not actually a threat in any way, but

Victoria Kleinsman (31:52.863)
Yes.

Victoria Kleinsman (32:02.662)
Yes.

Jessi (32:06.959)
The fact that we perceive it that way just shows how, again, deeply important we’ve learned that ranking system is. And anybody who threatens our position on it, it’s very scary. It feels very threatening.

Victoria Kleinsman (32:14.765)
Yes.

Victoria Kleinsman (32:21.324)
Yeah, it does. And that leads to the self-objectifier only thinking their worth is within their appearance. Then what if someone else is more is prettier because there’s always going to be someone prettier, smarter, funnier, the new.

Jessi (32:34.224)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (32:37.044)
Always. And so if we’re constantly on edge trying to be the best, we’ll never be happy, we’ll never be at peace. And something you said also, and this is what I also share with my clients, it’s okay for you or your partner to look at another person and think they’re attractive without breaking the relationship or thinking of cheating on that person. We simply are humans and we have opinions and preferences. Like I would prefer…

Jessi (32:56.859)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (33:04.31)
in the Netherlands, they have very shit chocolate brownies, they’re like cake. I would prefer if they had like gooey, delicious brownies and I’m annoyed that they’re not, but I’m not gonna leave the Netherlands because…

Jessi (33:15.557)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (33:16.458)
The brownies I haven’t got into my preference. So talk about how a healed person, because you’ve spoke about this in your work, can see another person and think they’re attractive and even perhaps have a few flirty feelings towards another, but it actually not be a threat to the security and the loving connection of the relationship that they’re in.

Jessi (33:18.159)
Yeah.

Jessi (33:37.071)
Well, so I’m coming at this with a real passion for this topic because I am not monogamous. And so I’m like, this is some of the best parts to me of non-monogamy is getting to be like flirty and sort of playing in this space. So I know that that’s not necessarily gonna like be resonant with everybody, but I will just say that essentially it is, when you feel that way, it represents like a

terrible misunderstanding for how we choose partners. How attraction works, how love works, how commitment works, like it’s a terrible misrepresentation of that that we’re working with. If like a celebrity’s butt can feel threatening or your partner looking at someone else can feel threatening, that presumes that the reason they are choosing you, that the security of your relationship or your connection in some way is based on

Victoria Kleinsman (34:10.189)
Yeah.

Jessi (34:33.305)
an objective ranking system of attractiveness that they did their spreadsheet, you were at the top, so they chose you, and now they will stay committed to you as long as you’re at the top, but if someone else is at the top, they’ll get rid of you and choose them. Now I think intuitively, most of us understand that’s not, it’s not what we do, but it can feel very difficult to be like, yeah, that’s not what my partner is doing. Especially when our partners are men, I think.

Victoria Kleinsman (34:38.038)
Yeah. Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (34:52.226)
Hmm.

Victoria Kleinsman (34:57.43)
Yeah, it’s the feeling, it’s the feeling other than the rational thoughts about it, isn’t it?

Jessi (35:02.521)
Yeah, like I’ll ask, you know, I’ll ask people, is that how you chose your boyfriend? Was like, he was like the number one most attractive person and you’d get rid of him if you found someone more attractive. They’re like, God, no, but like he’s a man. So that we have this stuff a lot of times around gender that’s like, well men are visual. So I can’t, I can never feel safe in that space, you know? And it can happen with any gender, but I think that’s a particularly compelling narrative. And so,

Victoria Kleinsman (35:15.208)
Mmm, cool!

Victoria Kleinsman (35:28.483)
Yeah.

Jessi (35:30.583)
It also assumes that attractiveness is purely visual. That like, there’s nothing else that goes into it. There’s no sense of like, emotional connection, smell, you know, like taste, touch. There’s just none of that exists. It’s purely visual. Your job is purely to be hot. And so yeah, you can have like way more attraction for someone who is less conventionally attractive because it’s more complex than

Victoria Kleinsman (35:33.751)
Yes.

Victoria Kleinsman (35:57.122)
Mm-hmm.

Jessi (36:00.495)
just those visuals. I can certainly look at some people and go on paper, I acknowledge that they are conventionally like so close to the ideal, they’re very hot, but I don’t feel turned on by them. And then I can look at someone that I’m connecting with and vibing with and feeling chemistry with and be like, this person turns me on and they’re actually not even close to the conventional ideal, you know?

Victoria Kleinsman (36:12.067)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (36:21.858)
Yes, I’ve had that exact experience. I used to date Jim bros, know, with the ones who would go running without the shirt on because everyone would literally just be like this when they’re running past. And then I also like dated this guy. I used to work in a bank randomly and you would not look twice in the street. If you’re on a date and you probably would swipe, but I know which way it is because I’ve not been on them for so long. Like you wouldn’t choose the person from appearance only. And my God, his energy, his vibe, his charisma, just…

Jessi (36:25.485)
Yes!

Jessi (36:30.437)
Yeah.

Jessi (36:48.665)
Yes.

Victoria Kleinsman (36:51.596)
Just him, there was something about him. Sadly, it didn’t work out because he was Asian and his Asian family were like anti-white women. It was quite complicated. But we probably would be together if, I mean, obviously I’m supposed to be with my amazing husband, but we were dating, but it kind of was the whole family dynamic thing that I wouldn’t have been accepted in the family because I wasn’t Asian and I wasn’t this religion and blah, blah.

Jessi (37:00.02)
wow, no

You sure? Yeah.

Jessi (37:15.271)
man.

Victoria Kleinsman (37:16.162)
But it’s interesting that yeah, there was just something about him that I couldn’t, it’s a feeling. It’s not, he ticks this attractiveness box because he didn’t.

Jessi (37:23.695)
Yeah. Yeah. And I will say that that is honestly just a human experience. We can get into our narratives around gender and be like, well, maybe it’s true for me, but is it true for men? It is. The answer is yes. Not all men, not everyone’s gonna experience it the same way, but most people have pretty intense reactions to personality, emotional connection, energy and vibe like.

things that are way below our level of consciousness, like pheromones are all influencing this, you know? Like, I’ve gone on a date with a super hot person and just not felt anything, and I couldn’t even tell you why, so maybe it was like pheromone, immune system, whatever, right? Like, you just, you never really know, but because you can have experiences like that, that just proves that this whole ranking system and this idea that our relationships are based on that, therefore threatened by that.

Victoria Kleinsman (38:19.234)
Yeah. Yes.

Jessi (38:19.255)
is nonsense. And if somebody’s commitment to you or love for you is truly just based on how you look, like I always tell people like, you want to find that out as quickly as possible because that’s not love. That’s objectification and that person sucks and you want to get out of there. So like the sooner that you, you know, show up with your natural face, for example, instead of like pretending, you know, and kind of obscuring and doing beauty work to make sure they think you’re attractive.

Victoria Kleinsman (38:45.261)
Yeah.

Jessi (38:49.039)
The sooner they just see how you look, the better because if they’re like, whoa, ew, I’m out, that’s perfect, get that guy out of there. Like, he didn’t love you. So.

Victoria Kleinsman (38:57.053)
Yes! I’m laughing as well because it was one of the, I don’t know if it was the whole name of your program or one of the modules that you wanted it to be called, and I loved this name, Stop Trying to Get Your Impressors to Fuck You or something. And I was like, yes! That name! Was that one of the modules in the patriarchy course?

Jessi (39:11.779)
Yeah!

think it was, it might have been, I might have turned it into the one under the modules. I have a hard time naming things that are like, I always want them to be like catchy and easy to remember, but then it’s just a go for things like that and I don’t know. But yeah, that is how I feel. Like if you are truly focusing on trying to stay hot so that your partner doesn’t reject you, what you’re actually doing is enabling someone who’s trying to like oppress and objectify you.

and filling that space in your life with someone who doesn’t really love and value you as a person. So like, why? Why would you work so hard to do that? Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (39:57.71)
I love that. And so let’s now, let me check the time. Let’s move on to like healing or whatever word you wanna call it, like overcoming all of this stuff. I know it’s very complex, everyone’s different. Let’s say you have a client come to you, want to work with you because they’re unhappy with their body, all the things. I know you have these four categories that help to start digging. Would you be looking for their triggers to start digging? Like when you don’t know somebody, how would you know where to go?

to find the root cause of what’s happening here.

Jessi (40:31.675)
So this is why I created the quiz, to be honest, was until then, I was basically going off like vibes. I would just sort of like be able to talk to someone and kind of be like, here’s what I’m thinking, does this resonate? And if they said yes, then I would start assuming we knew where to start digging. The quiz gets that part done really quickly. But also, you mentioned resonating with all four of them, and this is very common. So I always tell people like,

Victoria Kleinsman (40:54.349)
Yeah.

Jessi (41:01.185)
Most of us will have resonated with little bits of all four of them at some point, right? Because they all kind of represent a pretty universal experience, just kind of like turned up in volume. So ultimately you might resonate a little bit with all of them, but there’s almost always going to be one or more that are like super impactful that just make you go like, whoa, yes, this is happening for me. This is a thing. So for me, it was self-objectifier and runner.

I totally have experiences of high achiever and outsider that I can point to they just didn’t they weren’t like running the show, you know So typically I’ll say let’s figure out the ones that are really dominant that are sort of running the show and that’s where we’ll start But if you if you score super high and all four we can just flip a coin. It doesn’t matter start anywhere It’s all gonna have to happen eventually, you know And that happens sometimes but yeah, I typically start

Victoria Kleinsman (41:34.083)
Yeah.

Jessi (41:54.113)
asking a person once they have like a sense of where they want to go. The next question is like specific to you, what problem are your body image issues trying to solve? How are they trying to help or protect you? What needs are they trying to get met? And then it goes from like, well, I, you know, if you’re a self-objectifier, it might be, I feel like I have to be attractive in order to have worth. That’s very general. But if you get super specific,

Victoria Kleinsman (42:17.56)
Yeah, yeah.

Jessi (42:19.867)
You want to like name those underlying unique and individual ways that your body image issues are like I believe that if I’m hot enough, no one will ever reject me. Like that’s a lot more specific, you know? And what does that mean? That means that you’re you don’t trust yourself to handle rejection. So the work becomes how to build resilience in the face of rejection. That way you don’t need your body to prevent rejection for you because that

Victoria Kleinsman (42:30.626)
And I’m

Victoria Kleinsman (42:37.101)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (42:41.922)
Yes.

Jessi (42:46.819)
You’ve outsourced a task to your body that it can’t really accomplish, so it’s always gonna be a failure. And it just means you have to obsess over it for the rest of your life. Like, it’s exhausting.

Victoria Kleinsman (42:55.63)
Yeah, it’s exhausting and it sucks and it just gets worse over time. And also we age. So even if you’ve got to a point where it’s like, right, yeah, I’m accepting who I am. Yeah, well, you’re also going to get older and then so you may be at that point, wait, but then your skin’s going to change and then your boobs are going to change and all the things. So.

Jessi (43:00.727)
Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. It’s a failing strategy.

Jessi (43:08.4)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (43:14.84)
Would you say that you live in body neutrality or have you managed to just naturally progress to like loving the way you look or liking the way you look or does it change day to day? I’m curious like where your experience of life is right now in your body.

Jessi (43:31.547)
I would say it’s neutrality and that that’s kind of like what makes sense to me and where I want to be. I don’t particularly feel any urge to feel more like I actually I’ll put it this way. I feel like I love my body and I love myself but not in the way that has anything to do with taking pleasure from how I look. It’s more like how you, you know.

Victoria Kleinsman (43:50.125)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria Kleinsman (43:54.381)
Yeah.

Jessi (43:56.987)
Do you love a family member? Like, I just know that I’m worthy and deserving and my body is the vessel in which I am worthy and deserving. So I respect it, you know? I have a strong relationship to listening to my body, my intuition, my feelings, they all live in my body. I’m so grateful I get to know those things, you know? So I have a really positive relationship with my body, but I, I think what people imagine body positivity, like the sort of next tier, it’s like maybe you get to neutral and then you learn to love it.

Victoria Kleinsman (43:58.476)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (44:13.731)
Yeah.

Jessi (44:26.157)
I don’t feel any urge to go beyond neutral because neutral actually feels like the most kind to myself.

Victoria Kleinsman (44:32.94)
Yeah, I think that’s the most freeing as well because if you’re attached to anything, even if it’s in a positive way, what does Buddha say? The greatest form of attachment is suffering. It’s true. So a lot of clients can sometimes say, you know, I’m noticing I’m losing weight. If you know, I work with all eating disorders, binge eating, bulimia, anorexia.

Jessi (44:35.289)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (44:52.448)
and I’m kind of happy about that, but now I’m triggered and worried because I’m happy about that, which is a good thing because it shows that they care about their recovery. I just reflect back to them like, your body could change tomorrow. It may, it may not. So it’s okay to acknowledge the fact you feel good in your body because your genes are looser, but it’s letting go of the attachment and the meaning and the story that we all have around it. It’s just being like, well, it could change.

Jessi (44:59.225)
Yeah, yeah.

Jessi (45:13.648)
Yeah.

Jessi (45:18.095)
Yeah, it will change. think that’s the thing. I think that’s why it feels like safe and kind to be in neutrality for me is it basically what I mean is I’m not attached to it. Sometimes I do take pleasure in how I look like on a good hair day. I’m like, yes, thank you. Like the curls are curling. And then sometimes I like put together an outfit and I just feel so cool and I nailed the aesthetic I was going for. So it’s not like I don’t have pleasure or joy at times, but none of it is attached.

Victoria Kleinsman (45:20.01)
It will change.

Jessi (45:47.407)
to anything meaningful. It’s truly just like a passing pleasure so that I have the same amount of passing irritability on a day that like, I have perioral dermatitis I put concealer on before this call, which is one of those things that I’m like, it looks very distracting on camera, but I don’t feel bad about myself. I just like, don’t feel like noticing it in my, you know, camera, whatever. But like, I can look at that and feel like, and then move on with the same amount.

that I looked in the mirror and went like, mm. So it just feels like a lack of attachment is important because if I, you know, shave my head again, which I’ve done before, like, I don’t want to feel that that somehow makes me ugly or bad or I don’t want to feel weird about it. You know, if I definitely am going to get older and my skin is going to change, then I don’t want like, you know, clear skin to be some signifier of something that that is good.

Victoria Kleinsman (46:19.49)
Yes.

Jessi (46:45.177)
So for me, lack of attachment and neutrality is the safest, kindest choice. Feels right. Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (46:50.806)
and it’s freedom. So two questions I have for you. One is, is there anything that I’ve not asked you that you’d like to touch on, share, speak about?

Jessi (47:04.217)
I don’t know, I don’t think so.

Victoria Kleinsman (47:06.424)
So in that case, can you touch very briefly, because I want you to also share how people can work with you. Again, one of your epic emails talking about clothing, so that’s a big one, about being kind to your body and choosing clothing that sounds obvious, but that feels good. So can you just touch on what you said in your email about how we dress ourselves?

Jessi (47:10.971)
Jessi (47:28.375)
Yeah, so this, because my emails, you know, I have to like keep things concise. This was one of a million impactful ways that we, I think, need to focus on how we feel rather than how we look when it comes to this healing journey and body neutrality. But it’s an impactful one because we do it every day and there’s a lot of focus placed on it, you know? Like I go on TikTok and I’m surfed like a million outfit of the days and I like fashion. So it’s like,

Victoria Kleinsman (47:43.598)
Yeah.

Jessi (47:57.133)
I enjoy that, but most of us learned that the purpose of putting clothes on our body, again, because our job on earth is to make other people have a nice experience of us, is not to be comfortable, it’s to be flattering. And comfortable is different for everybody. Something I’ve often noticed is like, if you go into the comments of any post about this,

Victoria Kleinsman (48:12.311)
Yes.

Jessi (48:22.629)
People go back and forth and the same thing will be called comfortable and uncomfortable by different people because comfortable is informed by our emotional experience too. So, you know, one person will be like, I never wear a bra because it’s just more comfortable. And then there’s going to be dozens of women being like, I would feel so uncomfortable walking out the door without a bra. That’s crazy. You know? So the reason that I

Victoria Kleinsman (48:42.798)
I’m the no bra hub. I’m breastfeeding so I’m just like easy access. I don’t want to wear bra ever again.

Jessi (48:47.215)
I love that for you. And similar things can be said of like compression wear, know, someone who’s like, I’m just more comfortable in high rise compression leggings because I feel very held. Someone else is going to go, that sounds uncomfortable because it’s squeezing, you know, like our interpretation of comfort is totally different. But the, the thing that I like, I’m never going to tell anybody what to wear, but I do think what’s really important is that we pay attention to how things impact us. We, we center.

Victoria Kleinsman (48:56.45)
day.

Victoria Kleinsman (49:03.096)
Yes.

Jessi (49:16.289)
our experience over the experience of other people looking at us. That can mean that knowing other people are looking at your belly being out or your boobs being out might have an impact on you. But as long as you’re centering the impact on you and not their experience, you can dress in a way that feels more empowering, more authentic, more expressive, honestly more fun and definitely more like affirming of yourself, I think. And that is just

one area in which centering yourself instead of centering other people’s gaze, other people’s preferences, other people’s experience of you, helps you walk toward body neutrality. Because if you are basically doing a practice every day of centering what other people think instead of what you feel, every day, that’s what clothing is for so many people for so long.

Victoria Kleinsman (49:56.675)
Yes.

Victoria Kleinsman (50:03.2)
every day as well.

That’s so true and I notice that now because I’m breastfeeding and I have easy access now I wouldn’t wear a bra and my husband used to say you can completely see your nipples and I’m like well that’s their problem if someone’s looking that’s their problem not mine because I need easy access to my boobs.

Jessi (50:19.481)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (50:24.558)
so interesting. So, Jessie, so how can people work with you? Because I didn’t even actually know you had Patreon until it was on one of your emails one time. So that wasn’t obvious to me when I first found your work. Because I was like, hey, how can we work together? I don’t need like a whole entire package, but I want to be with you. And I was like, oh, wait, this is an option. So how do you work with people? Have you got space for one-to-one clients? All the things.

Jessi (50:25.401)
Yeah.

Jessi (50:31.587)
yes.

Jessi (50:38.532)
yeah.

Jessi (50:46.673)
yeah, yeah, I work with people a variety of ways. There’s a coaching page on my website and you can find me on Patreon. Patreon I tend to make more about like community. it’s depending on the level, you can come to like monthly community calls that I do on little topics. And we just sort of facilitate like a nuanced, interesting discussion on something relevant, know, peripherally relevant to this.

And then I do course material and I’m actually like so excited right now the last couple of days because I just created a new course and it’s going to come out in October, the first module and it’s on age, aging and body image issues, which is something that like feels really resonant in the culture right now. And I’m so excited to apply like my body neutral lens and the avatars and everything to the specific and unique age related issues that come up because they are

Victoria Kleinsman (51:23.477)
nice.

Victoria Kleinsman (51:37.026)
Yes.

Jessi (51:38.437)
completely unique, you know, they’re different. So, or at least they can be. So that’s what I do. I do course material. do like the thing that you and I are doing where there’s like a monthly session as well as all the other stuff. So that’s all on Patreon. Yeah, you can find me there. I don’t promote it even though I always tell myself I will. I just don’t, I gotta figure that out. Otherwise the coaching that I do is either Voxer, which is like a voice and text app.

Victoria Kleinsman (52:00.033)
you

Jessi (52:08.325)
for coaching or coaching sessions over Zoom or some combo. And yeah, absolutely. People can apply. can just chat about what they’re looking for and find a good fit. I love working with new clients. Honestly, a lot of my clients have been with me a long time and it’s more like support work, but I love helping someone tackle like, okay, we’ve got six months. Let’s like solve some shit and move quick and fast. You know what I mean? Yeah, I love that.

Victoria Kleinsman (52:37.957)
And I will say like in your community calls, like I wish I could join the time because for me, the different time zones, it’s too late. I’m asleep and I have my baby. Because it’s like the people that are in your group, like

Jessi (52:43.531)
yeah.

Right.

Victoria Kleinsman (52:51.246)
that there’s a lot of other coaches in there, which doesn’t surprise me. And they really add so much value. Not that you can only add value if you’re a coach. I’m not saying that the people that are in there just add so much value to the conversations. And one thing I can’t remember what the lady said, but it’s relevant to your course that you’re creating about age, ageism, if that’s a word. She said something that just really made me laugh. In one of the course, she said, yeah, there’s this age correcting serum. And I’m like, well, my age is correct. Thank you.

Jessi (52:55.13)
Yeah.

Jessi (52:59.597)
yeah.

Jessi (53:18.149)
haha

Yeah, this course came in part from a community call where we were tackling like anti-aging and I was man, there’s a lot of energy behind this. People are like, they have questions, they have thoughts. Yeah, navigating the anti-aging world is complicated. It obviously overlaps with so much of the stuff that we’ve just talked about because you are aging out of beauty ideals. Like you’re getting older and no longer have the option to fit into them anymore. So if that’s where your worth came from, you are screwed.

Victoria Kleinsman (53:21.826)
That’s safe.

Victoria Kleinsman (53:27.756)
Yeah.

Yeah, sick.

Victoria Kleinsman (53:39.362)
you

Victoria Kleinsman (53:46.519)
Yeah.

Yep.

Jessi (53:50.809)
But also it comes with some really interesting and unique problems like changes to identity as you go through different life eras and existential dread and fear of mortality, right? Like we don’t talk about that in our normal body image stuff, but the way that we’re taught to fight aging is very much like to take control over death. It’s kind of wild when you get into the deeper levels of it. So I’m really excited about that. Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (54:16.694)
Yeah, I’m excited. Dive in. All right, well, if anyone has any questions for you, I guess just go to your website. Everything’s there, your social media and everything’s linked from your website. think.

Jessi (54:27.865)
Yeah, I do have a TikTok, but mostly I use Instagram at jessineeland and other than that, yeah, my website, Patreon.

Victoria Kleinsman (54:36.782)
Cool, well thank you so much, Jessie, for your wisdom and your time. I will see you next week in our coaching call. And listeners, let us know what you thought, share, subscribe, all the things, and I’ll see you next week. Bye-bye.

Jessi (54:40.677)
Thank you. I’m so glad to be here. Thank you for having me.

Jessi (54:50.575)
Yeah. Awesome. Bye.