Fatphobia is one of the issues Alice Snedden explores in the new – and final series – of her hit documentary show Bad News.
The Kiwi comedian and writer says she's always been sensitive about her own weight but now has a much stronger view on its insignificance.
"What I look like or what my body is like has no bearing on whether or not I'm a good person, whether or not I'm smart, whether or not I'm attractive, whether or not I'm sexy, whether or not I'm fit or motivated. [My size] doesn't have the relationship to those things that I had previously thought it did," she tells Kim Hill.
Photo: Andi Crown Photography
The final series of Alice Snedden's Bad News launches on The Spinoff on 13 September.
When she first entered the public eye – writing a "truly bad" column in the Sunday Star-Times – Alice says she was concerned people would make an issue of her weight.
When commented on her size in relation to taxation, she was "proved right almost immediately".
Although New Zealand's health minister Andrew Little refused to acknowledge the stigma around fatness in his conversation with Alice, it's still very real, she says.
"Anyone who's fat or has ever been fat knows that's always in the back of your mind, because that will have been an insult people have levelled against you. It doesn't feel like a good thing to be for the most part."
She has come to believe that individual health is more accurately measured by fitness and nutrition than what a person weighs.
"There may be some people who have health issues that are related to their weight but there may also be some people who have health issues that are unrelated to their weight and making the assumption that one leads to the other actually is bad medicine."
Another episode of Bad News – about New Zealand's wealth gap – was "extremely personally confronting" for Alice, who feels very conflicted about co-owning a house that she bought with university friends at 24.
"That's a huge windfall and it's not one I earned and it's not one I deserve… going forward, I don't know what to do about that because I do get a really strong sense of security from the fact that I have that house. It gives me financial security in a way that allows me to pursue other things.
"But me having that comes at the expense of other people having it. And particularly as a Pākehā person, it comes at the expense of Māori having that, because it's a privilege that's been unfairly afforded to me.
"I don't have the answer yet on if this means I've got to give my house to [the local iwi] Ngāti Whātua, 'cause the house is in Auckland.
"When I said that to people at Ngāti Whātua, because they knew Dad was [business leader and philanthropist Patrick Snedden], they were like 'oh, don't bother, we don't want his house, he's done enough'. I'm like 'oh, but I've done nothing. I need to do something'."
In another episode, Alice chews through some confronting truths about meat.
Conversations about meat-eating make people uncomfortable because they don't want to accept the reality of it, Alice says.
"In order to eat meat and have a dog, we have to practice some sort of cognitive dissonance to make things okay."
Although currently not a vegetarian, she believes that is "probably the morally correct stance".
"Everyone is slowly becoming a vegetarian around me ... [I may, too, because] I want to be on the right side of history if I can."
This season of Bad News felt really different to make, Alice says, because she felt a constant conflict between doing the right thing and her actual ability to follow through on that.
"I'm interested in being a good person with the least inconvenience possible.
"It would be good if it were easy but what do we do in the face of knowing that it's not?"
She's not sure quite sure what the show is or what it's meant to be, but humour is never far off.
"I think in serious issues there's always room for a bit of levity. The darkest issues are usually the funniest."
Alice Snedden is currently based in London, where she has been writing the third series of her friend Rose Matafeo's TV comedy Starstruck.
