Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Rebecca Agosta. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Rebecca, thanks for joining us today. Can you tell us the backstory behind how you came up with the idea?

I’ve written and shared photos of myself in the context of plus size fashion for over a decade, but it wasn’t until this last year that I began considering going public through a podcast about my experience as a fat person. This was only possible because I began having local friends who were also fat, and when we would get together, we would have these conversations about topics we had never talked about before in our lifetimes. Suddenly new conversations, new perspectives were at my reach because I had people who understood but also experienced the world through a similar perspective. These conversations got deeper and more essential to my well-being, and we thought we needed to let people into them. That was the start of the podcast The Fab Fatties. We were a friend group who we had never experienced before in our lives, and we wanted others to be able to listen in and engage with us and have friends that they could talk to about their lives as fat people. We knew it was a worthwhile thing to do because it had become such an important part of understanding ourselves, giving ourselves grace, but also motivation to live our lives right now at the sizes we are.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Rebecca Agosta, and I am a writing instructor in higher education, plus size fashion content creator, and co-host of The Fab Fatties podcast. I started as a plus size content creator when I was just 22, 14 years ago. I grew up being a fat child, a fat teenager, and was becoming a fat adult, and I was very much struggling with negative body image but also a lack of general confidence. When I was about to graduate from college, I went to buy a graduation dress at Macy’s. It was the first time I had seen a plus-size clothing selection that I liked, and it made me excited to the point of going on to the internet and searching for similar dresses. It was then that I found plus size bloggers sharing their outfits of the day. Back in 2010, bloggers all linked to each other and commented on each other’s posts. They would run challenges where they dressed up in different ways, and I was immediately enamored with these women sharing themselves, confidently showing their bodies, and really just exploring their creativity through fashion and community. I read and engaged for about 2 months before I started my own blog theplussideofme.com, and I was off from there. I kept to just sharing fashion and little stories of mine that involved fashion for the first couple years, and then I began going to community events like Full Figured Fashion Week in New York City and eventually even a body positive fat camp in the mountains of North Carolina. These experiences got me interested in sharing more about my life, and I started a YouTube channel where I do share a lot of fashion things but I also share experiences about flying while fat or my dating life. I’ve found that going public and sharing my voice has for the most part really encouraged others to be honest and real with me, to form connections to think about their own lives, and it’s also helped me be more of my authentic self as well as push at limits I’ve given myself. I like to think that I am a peer who is talking to other peers about my experiences. I’m not here to be someone’s guru or to tell them how to live their life or how to feel about their body, but I invite them in to talk with me, to think about their own needs and feelings, and to experiment, have fun, and enjoy life.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Sometimes it’s hard for me to think about how I’ve grown my audience because it’s been over a decade, and I accumulated them very slowly. I’ve never had a viral moment or had one big break that brought people my way. I grew my audience through consistency in posting, through making the kinds of content I like to engage with as a viewer or reader, and by communicating with my community. For almost all content creators, there are other people out there doing the same thing as you, and most of their followers want to follow other people making similar content. It’s important to engage in other creators’ posts, to comment, to share, to encourage, and be part of the community. A) it’s going to bring you connections and opportunities within your niche. B) it’s going to create a community that you want to be part of. And C) other people will see those relationships and be interested in following your story as well. Now that I’ve started a new podcast in January, I am starting over from scratch, a bit, in getting an audience for the podcast. Even though I have a large audience on my own, not all of them are podcast listeners, so it hasn’t translated that everyone who has followed me is immediately going to the podcast. I’m having to find a new audience who wants to engage in that kind of media. What we’ve been doing there is really focusing on getting our message out about the podcast through alternate media, like reels or clips, making sure our audience knows who each of the co-hosts are individually, and then also making sure we show them the friendship aspect of our podcast. We’re now at the stage where we are engaging in other podcasts, going on as guests or having them on ours as guests because, again, that shows you in conversation with your peers, and it makes people who are already engaged in that content interested in learning about another person that they can follow. My advice is to make good relationships in your community, make it a space that you want to be part of, which means encouraging others if you want encouragement, and to not expect growth overnight. It is showing up and sharing over and over and over again that will make people understand you’re worth following.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I’m going to take this question in the direction of what do I think non-content creators will struggle to understand about my journey as a content creator. I think a lot of people see content creation and think it’s easy or fun and glitzy and glam. And some of it is. I’ve gotten to try clothes from brands that I wouldn’t have access to if it was just within my financial means, which is really fun. I’ve also attended events that have changed my life, like Fat Girls Traveling fat camp. One thing that non-content craters might struggle to understand is that I have to actively be working on this all the time for those opportunities to present themselves. I’ve disappeared before, and you become forgettable. There are so many voices out there that if you’re not engaging constantly, your audience will move on. I think that’s kind of obvious but also maybe doesn’t translate into people understanding the mental labor that goes into constantly producing new content. The other thing is that going public invites a lot of cool opportunities and relationships, but also whenever your topic is something that society may not like, like being fat, it also invites a lot of push back. Even though I feel like I’m just out here living my life online, I do sometimes wake up to a really nasty message of somebody hating me and my body. I get criticism for minor things like eating off of my friends’ plate with them, and people will use this to say things about me as a fat person. It can be hard to push past the negative messages a content creator might get, and it can feel like you’re serving up your life to be picked apart. I think this is where it’s really essential to have followers who do want to encourage you and do want to cheer for you. It’s not their job, but those supportive comments go a long way in making being a public person an easier experience to handle. So they have a lot of power for content creators. They’re the reason we’re out there, and their encouragement and support helps us feel motivated to keep sharing ourselves online.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://theplussideofme.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theplussideofme
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/theplussideofme
• Other: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4PJkYCGqctH1WpPiyD3xzg