Above: You Don't Owe Anyone Pretty

About

Kimberly Dark is an award-winning writer and storyteller who shows us how to reclaim our power as social creators. Her engaging and interactive lectures offer tools for us to live our best lives, and build the culture in which we want to live.

Kimberly is also a sociologist, and popular author of Fat, Pretty and Soon to be Old, and Damaged Like Me, among others. She has been using humor and intimacy to bring complex ideas to campus audiences since the late 1990s. Lectures such as Gender, Race and Money help students understand the social causes of income and wealth disparities in America and what we can do. Lectures such as You Don’t Owe Anyone Pretty and Sex and Society offer students deep understanding of body and personal sovereignty, along with clear information about how to reclaim one’s time and resources from social expectations that keep us constantly seeking approval.

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Kimberly Dark is a superior story teller... She expertly blends teaching with entertaining and takes the audience into her story circle where we are welcomed and challenged!

William J. Doan, PhD, Penn State University

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Bestselling Author of Permanent Midnight and I, Fatty

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popular PROGRAMS

Click the image below for a digital one-sheet with
more details about Kimberly's latest offering.
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Reframing the Discussion
Reframing the Discussion: Ten Truths About Sexual Assault and Child Sexual Abuse
Author, sociologist, and award-winning speaker, Dr. Kimberly Dark is offering an engaging new program to empower students, staff, and faculty on college campuses to discuss the difficult topics of sexual assault and child sexual abuse. Full of QR code-based resources, this one-hour program is available online or in person.
 
Though there’s certainly not just one way to discuss these themes, Dark uses timely, deliberate examples that will leave participants energized and hopeful with a clear ability to:
  • Recognize and intervene the cultural patterns that support sexual assault. It’s never just a personal problem!
  • Keep the conversation on topic when someone says “not all men…”
  • Recognize and intervene sexual grooming from those in positions of power.
  • Recognize the pre-cursors to sexual violence in dating and everyday culture. 
  • Understand media and cultural messages like a smart consumer. You can both enjoy popular culture and also fight back against harmful messages.
  • Understand why law enforcement and prison are not working to end assault and child sexual abuse, and what communities are doing instead that works.
  • Practice being a better bystander and friend when challenging situations arise.
 
It’s time to ask what it’s costing your students, faculty, and campus community not to have clear, complex conversations about these themes. Student engagement, academic success, safety, and confident communication are just a few examples of where change and growth can be fostered.
 
For deeper engagement, add on small-group follow-up sessions (in person or via Zoom) for participants to practice discussion skills on these topics, along with bystander intervention skills to help peers prevent difficult situations. 
YOU DON'T OWE ANYONE PRETTY
In this program, storyteller and sociologist Kimberly Dark explores how appearance privilege works in the U.S. and why focusing too often on our own appearance cannot lead us to personal peace, nor social equality.
 
Students will laugh as they learn:
  • How to listen for and see the social hierarchies that normally remain hidden because they’re so common.
  • How to disrupt everyday injustice and shame through witness, kindness, humor and straightforward common sense.
  • How to stand in their own “is-ness” – the power of being that transcends appearance (because our looks change through our lives, y’all).
  • How to practice love and pleasure – in our own bodies and as advocates for others’ well-being and dignity as well.
 
Appearance privilege includes being pretty or handsome, but also relates to racism, fat stigma, disability justice and more. This smart, funny program includes relatable stories and involves the audience in building strategies of resistance. The audience leaves empowered, and aware of their tools and brilliance as social creators.

custom Programs/Workshops
With a wealth of experience speaking and writing on the above topics and much more, Kimberly can tailor her presentations and workshops to your needs. Peruse her past publications to pick-and-choose the content that your audience seeks to learn about, or ask us about how we can best apply her lessons to your needs.
Above: Gender, Race, and Money
Past NACA Showcasing Act

Named one of the
Top 6 LGBT Speakers on College Campuses
by The Advocate

Named one of the
Top 25 LGBT “Best of the Best”
by Campus Pride

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