The Full Plate Podcast with Abbie Attwood, MS "I Refuse to Be Good": Women, Bodies, and the Cost of Compliance with Savala Nolan
Mar 2, 2026
Savala Nolan, essayist and professor who directs UC Berkeley Law’s Henderson Center for Social Justice, reflects on her book Good Woman: A Reckoning. She discusses refusing the bargain of being “good.” Short takes cover midlife ruptures, dieting and divorce, body liberation amid GLP-1s, becoming illegible to misogynistic culture, and raising daughters fluent in their bodies.
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Refusal As Survival And Ongoing Process
- Savala Nolan frames refusal of being "good" as survival and a process that requires new language and body work.
- The opening plea maps the inner shift: cerebral expansion plus bodily gestation moving into an unknown wilderness.
Midlife Reveals The Failure Of The Good Woman Bargain
- Nolan describes the "good woman" bargain: dieting, marriage, motherhood promise happiness but left her a husk.
- Midlife revealed the bargain doesn't deliver and catalyzed her reckoning and desire for a different life.
Body Liberation Requires Practice And Community
- Nolan compares body liberation to sobriety: abstaining from the body project requires community and sustained practice.
- She notes GLP-1 marketing threatens that practice by re-priming women into renovation cycles.
