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(CNN) — In the year In 2016, Playboy model Danny Mathers was at a Los Angeles gym when she snapped a photo of herself pointing at an older woman in the locker room and laughing. Mathers shared a photo of the woman’s bare body with the caption, “If I can’t see this, neither can you.”
However, most people assumed that the woman in the locker room was teasing.
Summer Michaud-Skog was one of them.
“When I was jogging[one day]a dude said, ‘Well, you can really feel the earth move when she walks, because I’m fat,'” she recalled.
That’s the biggest irony: People with large bodies are constantly told to exercise, but they’re laughed at when they do. And while there are plenty of clubs and organizations for hikers, bikers, climbers and other fitness enthusiasts, Michad-Skog has seen how intimidating they can be for people like her.
It wasn’t the way she expected it to go. In fact, Michaud-Skog, who grew up in Minnesota, hated outdoor activities, so he would have to trick his then-girlfriend into walking by pretending she was driving somewhere.
“I think I just had this idea that hiking had to be done a certain way…I didn’t know I could go at my own pace and just take my time. I didn’t know that. I didn’t have to finish hiking to be able to go as far as I wanted.”
While working as a nanny, Michad-Skog began charging for her daughter’s outdoor activities. Then she went for a walk alone with her dog. Walking began to change from something she did to please other people to something that gave her peace and tranquility.
She also became more interested in nature by learning the names of the different trees, flowers, plants and birds she saw along the way.
Michaud-Skog Silver Falls State Park in Oregon
Summer Michaud-Skog
Within a few years, the girl who had complained about how much she hated hiking was always out of the house in a car in rural Oregon. And she uses the online platform to bring other women with her.
The Fat Girls Walk was started by Mikaud-Skog’s personal Instagram account. But once she established a following, various members – called ambassadors – started their own chapters in the United States, Canada and England, all with her blessing. (Some of these chapters closed or were inactive during the pandemic, but she is always accepting applications for new ambassadors.)
Members organized group hikes, allowing women to experience hiking on their own and connect with women in their own communities who shared their interests.
The adage that there is strength in numbers has also been found to be true when it comes to online and physical harassment.
“such as [Fat Girls Hiking] I grew into a community, realizing that it was something I really needed for myself to have representation, and to have other people who understood what it was like to be an outcast in these outer spaces. He says.
Enjoying the outdoors for its own sake is important to Mikad-Skog, not as a weight-loss tool.
The Fat Girls Walk has a strict rule of no diet talk or unsolicited advice in its groups. “We’re really focusing on happiness, and connection, and community, and healing, and all the things that the outdoors can offer us instead of focusing on what our bodies look like,” explains Michaud-Skog.
Despite the group’s name, she also recognizes that inclusivity is about more than body size. Fat Girls marching groups strive to be inclusive of non-binary people, trans women, people of color, and people with disabilities.
“There’s no wrong way to hike,” Michaud-Skog says. And she has a lot of people who agree with her.
Top Image: A group hike in Minnesota. Credit: Summer Michaud-Skog
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