Joy Tribble is a radio-TV personality, model, comedian, public speaker, and entrepreneur who founded The Plus Strut, which is known as the curviest 5K on the planet. Tribble wanted to create a space that includes the plus-size community in the areas of health and fitness. Her goal is to help all women feel beautiful no matter what stage they are in during their fitness journey.
Tribble opened up about what inspired her to create the annual race.
What inspired you to establish The Plus Strut?
[Well] the statistic is 68 [percent] of the women in the U.S. are a size 14 and above. We are closer to 100 percent of the women in the U.S. being in the size demographic than we are to 0 percent. This is the U.S. woman, so how come there isn’t more widespread representation, that we don’t see more things in mass that look like who this woman is? That’s why we felt like The Plus Strut was so important. It shines the light on this, it lets us see who we are, and really takes up that space. There was a White space in the runner space. There wasn’t an event that catered to us, in health and wellness. Listen, do people say that bigger people should lose weight? They should say that all the time, but it’s not in a celebratory manner. It’s more of a, “We’re talking down to you, you need to do this, you need to make this change,” versus just celebrating who we are as we are. Right. That was sort of what was the driving factor in us wanting to do this because that statistic was just eye-opening for us.
What work still needs to be done in the community in regard to supporting the plus-size community?
The work is being on blast for people to know and for people to see because again when you can see it, you can believe it. Then we won’t have to do so much encouraging or convincing. Rather, that this is necessary, or a necessity. When you can see we’ve got social proof, we are showing you what is happening, so we won’t have to work so hard for you to believe that we can do what we can do. I think what we have to just do more of is to be steadfast and continue to emerge with ideas that showcase this woman being all that she can be. Listen, we want people to be who they are, where they are, as they are. If you want to make a change to that, sure, do it. We’re not forcing you to do that. If change comes as a result of that, then fantastic but we are giving the masses a mirror. We’re saying check us out, take a look, and we can show you baby better than we can tell you because we’re here. That’s the big thing for us.
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