When Eve Bogdanove set out to conquer Mount Kilimanjaro, she never thought her journey might be one to inspire others.
“It’s a real honor to be in a position of influencing others and helping them change their attitudes,” said Bogdanove, who lives and works in Greenfield. “I did this trip because of where I was in my life and wanting to feel wildly alive … I never knew the trek would become this thing that inspired so many people.”
In 2019, Bogdanove was among 20 plus-sized women to hike the highest mountain in Africa, at 19,341 feet. The women — who have dubbed themselves the Curvy Kili Crew — were followed throughout their journey by filmmaker Ida Joglar, whose documentary, “Kili Big,” has been available for streaming on Chicken Soup for the Soul’s Streaming service since Aug. 18.
“She made a beautiful film,” Bogdanove said. “I feel lucky to have been part of that … I think she got to the heart of what this trip was about for most of us.”
Before Bogdanove embarked on the seven-day journey, she trained for a year, working with a trainer who was familiar with high altitudes to ensure her cardiovascular system was at its most efficient. She walked regularly and swam, and she hiked trails throughout the region. She also completed the Greenfield Triathlon.
“It’s not like Mount Everest, where you have oxygen on your back,” she said. “We took five days to go up the mountain and two days to go down. I think it’s a total of 50 miles of hiking.”
At base camp, which was located at just over 16,000 feet above sea level, the conditions were not good, she said. The wind was “maddening.”
“I was definitely not well at that point,” she recalled. Her oxygen level was checked and she was advised it would be unsafe for her to ascend to the peak. “I was fine doing that. Safety over summit. I did 16,000 (feet) and change, so I didn’t feel I had failed in any way.”
Bogdanove said the journey was less about the feat of climbing the mountain, and more about doing an active adventure with fat women — women she’d met, in this case, in one of the various Facebook groups she belongs to with other women who are fat and interested in fitness.
“As a fat person, I hiked all the time with my kid,” she said. “I hike all the time with my friends. I’m often one of very few fat people on the trail.”
The hike in 2019 forged an “incredible sisterhood” between the women, she said, many of whom remain close with one another to this day.
“We all know what it’s like to experience other people’s discrimination,” she said.
Bogdanove noted while she is comfortable using the word fat, that wasn’t the case for everyone on the hike — not initially, at least.
“For them, it was still a slur; for me, it’s an adjective,” she said.
The way people use the word — whispering it, for example — conveys judgment and negative attitudes, she explained. But the word fat, she added, doesn’t need to be synonymous with something bad.
“People often assume that if you’re fat, you’re unhealthy,” she said. “Fat is not a disease. Sometimes it’s a consequence of a disease, but not always.”
She pointed out that while diabetes, for example, is associated with overweight people, skinny people can have it, too.
“It goes beyond ‘love the body you’re in’ and body positivity. It’s about breaking our own stereotypes, breaking other people’s stereotypes,” Bogdanove said. “Seeing (the other women) figure that out was so incredibly joyous.”
And that’s, in part, what Bogdanove hopes viewers take away from their viewing of the documentary.
“Fat is an adjective and as human beings, we need to not make assumptions about what another body’s worth is based on size,” she said. “People look at people who are fat and make all kinds of judgments and assumptions about how they got fat, what it means, what their future looks like — lots of assumptions that are based not on anything but their pre-conceived, negative judgments.”
Reporter Mary Byrne can be reached at mbyrne@recorder.com or 413-930-4429. Twitter: @MaryEByrne.