Let’s Talk About Bodies with Evan Neilson

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 fucked 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 much hyper-fixating on Hamilton right now. And so, for me, I’ve moved on, but at that time, for me, it was very intense. Ask anybody I know. The Hamilton era for me was extremely intense. So given that, you know, I’m like, oh yeah, I know everything you’re talking about, this girl who’s kind of just getting into it. Then yeah, trying to just keep a cool head in situations. You know, just these young men that just get so angry, that are angry at themselves, angry at, you know, authority figures in their lives, angry at politicians or whoever else, just trying to show them to accept things and, of course, be be kind and loving to the women in their lives as well.

I mean, going back to this line of gender, really just not how I’ll talk to a female student or a male student. I’m the same calm person, and for these kids of the school that I’m at, you know, these are kids that struggle to get to school, many of them. And so, I’m gonna do everything I can to get them to want to come back. So, you know, be someone who is – you know, I think back. I had a couple, like – yeah, sometimes elementary school teachers, they get weirdly comfortable, and they’ll make a weird comment about your belly or something. Like, those are things that stuck with me, you know?

Megan Gill: Yeah.

Evan Neilson: I was getting in a costume for, it was a musical or a school play or something. And my belly got poked, and she was like, “Just watch that, there.” There was a poke. I’m certain there was a poke. So I mean, yeah, no it’s crazy.

Megan Gill: An educator.

Evan Neilson: Yeah. It wasn’t my teacher, but it was someone who was helping with the school play, or something like that.

Megan Gill: Still!

Evan Neilson: They were like, “We want to make sure this costume stays on you, buddy.” You know, that kind of thing. And so, I’m probably overly cautious to a lot of these issues, but it’s better than the alternative, you know?

Megan Gill: Absolutely. I think we need some more of that, you know?

Evan Neilson: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Just drawing those clear boundaries, you know, and yeah, just showing kids what the right things are to say, and the right ways to respond in situations and what the clearly wrong ways are. And yeah, so just doing what I can to – you know, I mean, it’s tough for these young guys, you know, in this very – going back to, I mean, this is a whole can of worms, but right-wing politics and body standards, there’s some synergy there.

Megan Gill: Yep. There sure is.

Evan Neilson: So, trying to communicate all of that with my eyes and not being able to say it, you know, as much as possible.

Megan Gill: You’re like, “I am transmuting messages to you right now, from my brain to your brain!”

Evan Neilson: I really try to. I really try to.

Megan Gill: Yeah. That’s gotta be tough, though, to not be able to maybe, as an educator, educate on things that are so important to us, you know? Because it’s not the place in a school. That’s tough. It’s gotta be tough.

Evan Neilson: Yeah. Yeah. It’s a tough time right now for educators. Yeah, I mean, for me, you know, I think, yeah, you really can just try and embody your political views and how you see the world just by the way you act, right? So yeah, I don’t know. I’m in a school where we’re really just happy that they’re there, and we’re so thrilled and happy to get them to the finish line of graduation that I couldn’t see how anybody who, you know – I couldn’t see anybody who is okay with everything going on in this school environment that is all about, you know, picking these kids up that really need it, really need it, and don’t have the support at home. And somehow, SNAP benefits and free school lunch, that became a talking point within the last few months. And all these, all these kids get that. And just being sure to not make different obstacles that students go through, not trying to, you know, have those things be the kids’ defining features. And yeah, just being that kind, calm person every day. That’s always kind of the goal. And yeah, specifically thinking about body image and all that. At this point, I’m feeling very body neutral, body neutral-positive right now. So I’m just trying to communicate that with my eyes, as I said.

“ I do love my brain. There's a lot of silly knowledge in there. I'm a trivia person, so I like to say there's some stuff I wish that I could clear out so there could be room for more useful stuff, but I do like that about my body a lot. But then on a more physical level, I love to run. I love to run on a primal level. I love to run for no reason. I love to run from my car to the doors of Jewel Osco for no reason. When I'm out walking the dog, and the dog starts to run, I'm going with. It's very primal.”

- Evan Neilson

Evan is a special education teacher and lover of many things- movies, theatre, music, dogs, basketball, running, biking… OH, and ice cream! Outside of the classroom, one could often find him at the movie theater if he’s not busy coaching speech team or working on a stage production.

Evan doesn’t post much on socials but feel free to give him a follow on Twitter @hellomrevan (he will never call it X) or on Letterboxd @evan_neil.

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A couple of notes to ensure this is a safe space for my guests to share their intimate and vulnerable body image stories in:

* These conversations are quite nuanced, complex, and oftentimes very vulnerable. Remember that everyone has their own body image story, and while someone else’s might look differently than yours, I encourage you to keep an open mind and stay empathetic.

* That being said, I welcome your support of my guests in the comments. Please be kind and considerate with your words.

* Thank you for being here. By sharing this type of content, my hope is to inspire collective reflection and cultural questioning. Thank you for supporting me in exploring the effects of our society’s beauty norms and body standards on human beings existing in today’s world.

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While I’m not a licensed therapist, registered dietician, or medical health professional and cannot speak to body image topics from a clinical, trauma-informed place, I am an expert of lived experience. I’m an academic of my own body, and I’m passionate about facilitating conversations with other humans about their relationships with their bodies. I believe it’s important to continue conversations about healthy body image in creative spaces as a means to heal individuals as well as the collective whole. But just know the information presented in this medium is not professional mental health advice or medical advice, and any questions or concerns you have should always be directed to your health providers.