A Conversation with Jenny Bruso
What it truly means to be inclusive
Photo credit: Jenny Bruso/Unlikely Hikers.
A lot has been said about “inclusivity.” So much has been said, in fact, that the word “inclusivity” itself can be used by corporations, brands, and the individuals who represent them in a way that makes the word a shadow of itself.
Since 2020, when protests and activism caused much of the country to see the racism and police violence that people with intersecting marginalized identities have faced for hundreds of years, so much has been said about inclusivity and diversity that the words often ring hollow.
What does this have to do with outdoor gear and clothing, though? How do our conversations about justice and equity parallel the clothes that we can buy, the brands we support with our dollars, the gear that can safely fit our bodies, and the images we see in our local outdoor retailers and on our feeds?
In my conversation with Jenny Bruso, founder of Unlikely Hikers, I talk about what it truly means to be inclusive—long after the buzz has worn off and funding is seemingly scarce.
We also talked about her newest collaboration with Gregory Mountain Products, and how working with brands like Gregory who are still invested in size inclusivity is essential.
Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited for clarity.
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Jenny Bruso: “I started Unlikely Hikers in June of 2016, so it’s been about eight years. At the time I started, I had only been hiking doing ‘outdoorsy’ things for a few years, like two to three years, maybe. I was having this really transformative revelatory, beautiful relationship with nature in a way that I hadn’t felt since I was a kid.”
Bruso, who is based in Oregon, tells me of a childhood spent outside: gardening with her mother, skateboarding, always at the ocean, always on a bike. “I was the most present in nature and being outside, and that was a key part of my very being.”
She goes on to explain an adolescence and early adulthood spent with a distance to the outdoors, until she was 30 and reconnected with hiking and camping. “It was truly a revelation,” she tells me, and details how she started following outdoor brands on their social media accounts, back when Instagram was just getting popular around 2012.
“One thing I was finding was that even though I was so excited to connect with all of these other outdoorsy platforms and people and things like that, I was only finding this very cookie-cutter image of what is considered outdoorsy, and I definitely did not fit into it.” Jenny tells me, “Aside from being white, which is a major privilege and a major access point, I was sort of bowled over, disgusted maybe, over how homogeneous the image of the outdoor adventurer was. You know, we would really only see cisgender, hetero, often young (but not always)— people who very much fit into this narrow definition of what is outdoorsy.”
Bruso’s outdoor life did not reflect the images she found online and in the advertisements and websites, and she felt driven to find a community that truly represented who she was and the vastness of those who also find joy and peace in the outdoors. “I was a person who fell in love with hiking because joyful movement had been taken away from me as I entered my teen years and realized that people in bigger bodies are harassed and alienated and told that their very existence is wrong whenever we do anything that’s physical.”
She shares with me of a deep yearning to find community with folks with intersecting marginalized identities, not just other fat and queer people, but People of Color, Indigenous, Black, and others who have relationships with the outdoors “since time immemorial.” From that yearning, Unlikely Hikers was born in 2016, an effort to interrupt the narrative that only one type of person, only one body size and skin color and gender identity, could be outdoorsy.
Bruso did not expect Unlikely Hikers to grow in popularity and visibility as quickly as it did. , telling me, “I just thought it would be like a picture, social media type thing,” she said.. “It caught on very quickly though, and , like, blew up, honestly. People were immediately talking about group hikes and all of these things, and I’m like, well, there’s a need for this, so maybe I’ll experiment with group hikes, and it just became bigger than I ever thought it could be from that point forward.”
An interaction with Unlikely Hikers can be as simple as buying something from the Gregory Packs collaboration to looking at the folks who are featured on UH’s Instagram page, or attending a hike when they are being held. From all of these interactions, Jenny hopes that people come away feeling seen and supported. She hopes folks feel “personal empowerment, embodiment, permission to interact with the outdoors in the body that we are in right now, not a past body or a future body that we’re hoping to exist in.”
Bruso describes what setsAt Unlikely Hikers hikes apart from other meetups., “We get a lot of people who show up who probably wouldn’t join an event at, like, a popular outdoor retailer, because they don’t know if the thing they’re going to join, if they’re going to be the slowest or most inexperienced, or the only fat person, the only person of color,” she told us. “All of the things that a lot of us show up with, and if you have intersecting identities, that we might have a lot of fears about how we will be received in those kinds of spaces.”
What does it mean for people to show up as they are, authentically, in outdoor spaces that are structured and led in ways that aren’t culturally responsive or inclusive of various abilities and identities? For Bruso, it means that the fears people with intersecting marginalized identities hold surrounding how they interact with the outdoors restrain them from seeing themselves as truly belonging in nature.
“I’m hoping that people [on her hikes and who interact with UH] discover that there is a place and a reality where those things don’t have to exist. I also deeply want people to know that those fears and anxieties that we have are also not our fault. They are not a weakness of spirit or of self. They are learned. It’s the dominant culture’s trash, it’s not our trash.”
“I do want to say really clearly that anti-fat bias, homophobia, transphobia, racism, all of our impossible beauty standards, all of these things affect all of us, regardless of our identities, body type, and lived experiences. With Unlikely Hikers, I’m not going to say that it’s a perfect utopia that does not exist, but I have done everything I can, and it is constantly evolving to mitigate the possibilities of those negative interactions or experiences,” Bruso said.
“When we lead an adventure, we stay together as a group. Nobody is left behind. No pace is too slow. There’s no negative self-talk and no moral value put on movement ability, body type, fitness, exercise, all of those things. There’s no good and there’s no bad.”
Bruso chuckles before bringing up pizza, how dominant narratives in society have most of us believing that we “deserve” something as delicious as pizza because we moved our bodies or exercised. “No, you deserve pizza just because you exist, and pizza is awesome. Food is neutral, our bodies are neutral.”
“I always say that our hikes are about community and nature first. Being in community in nature first [environment], we are not about getting to the destination point or finishing the hike. Those are second or maybe third, but it’s really about us being together in nature, building the community we wish to see.”
I ask Bruso next about the changes that she has seen in the funding, resources, and visibility that outdoor brands and corporations have undergone in the years since 2020, when many of them proudly proclaimed their commitment to inclusivity. Bruso sighs at this question, one that stretches beyond just her work with Unlikely Hikers and speaks to larger trend shifts in not only the outdoor community but the society at large’s moves away from the diversity and inclusion efforts that were accelerated in 2020. “I’m gonna be really honest, it feels difficult to know where to start with this, because I have a lot of really hard feelings about it, and I’m also just not the kind of person who knows how to say things in a PR voice, and I don’t want to be that kind of person.
“In 2020, when our entire country was finally paying some kind of attention to the racism from the top down of people who were supposed to protect us—police, etc.— it felt like people, mostly white people—were finally realizing that there are people, Black people and people of color, who were experiencing injustice every day in small and massive ways.”
She describes how the murder of George Floyd by police in Minnesota was “an unfortunate jumping off point for real conversations about racism, and was also a place for other people’s experiences with harm and oppression, and anti-fat bias, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and others, to finally be heard a bit more. For a while it seemed like people were more willing to believe people’s actual stories about what they say happened to them, and the outdoor industry really made a big show of trying to, or supposedly trying to, show up for that.”
We all remember how our local businesses, large corporations, schools and universities, and media of all types were suddenly starting conversations and initiatives surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion. Bruso’s smile is tight as she tells me, “I know I sound bitter about it, and it’s because I am. I think there are brands that did more than others and are still trying. But a lot of brands made these promises, these public declarations that they were going to really tuck into, you know, diversity and inclusion…they created these task forces and programs to uplift people who are underrepresented in outdoor culture and also experiencing harm and oppression in outdoor culture. We definitely saw for a little while, our social media feeds get a little more diverse.”
She brings up industry leaders who made commitments to expanding their size offerings, who promised futures where all clothing sold at their brick and mortar stores and online would be size inclusive. Because of major announcements such as these, outdoor brands that we look to for leadership started making plus sizes or expanding what small offerings they already had.
“Finally, they’re doing it, making it, it’s there, you know? A lot of brands did a little bit, some did a lot. And we ate it up because we finally got some crumbs thrown around. And now, of course, in 2024 or just four years later in what we’re calling a ‘post-pandemic world,’ we’re seeing all of those programs ending. We’re seeing a lot of those plus-size lines ending, being put on clearance, and being phased out forever.”
“I personally have been let go of pretty much every brand I work with, and it’s because all of these programs are ending. So I have watched not just a backslide in terms of available clothing and gear, but also in the efforts that actually affect people’s well being, their livelihood, their ability to create community doing outdoorsy things.”
We pause for a few minutes, listening to her dog bark. I remember the early days of 2020, and even a few years earlier, when brands and companies proclaimed in press releases and on social media that they were expanding their size ranges, including more visibility of those with marginalized identities, and were promising to dedicate resources and funds to efforts that would increase access for those who traditionally have faced societal and systemic barriers to recreating safely outdoors. Those proclamations feel like distant echoes now, when many brands are seemingly not interested in further expanding their size ranges beyond a 3X or are letting their inventory run out without plans to restock.
This feeling, which feels simultaneously structural and personal, is why Jenny Bruso’s work with Gregory Mountain Products over the years carries the impact that it does. Bruso started working with Gregory Packs about five years ago, working with them until they released the first ever line of plus and extended-size packs. She worked with them as a consultant and product tester, and watched as her suggestions surrounding fit and design were genuinely heard and incorporated into the final design of the bags.
“When we first started doing this, the waist belt was going to be much smaller, the placement of the sternum strap was going to be different. Those are some of the suggestions I made that they actually took to heart and made their amazing products, and I feel really proud of that.”
The initial plus-size line from Gregory wasn’t a measly three or four items, but around 20 packs, giving consumers who need larger bags more options in fit, color, and size. “It wasn’t just a day pack. It was no less than four backpacking packs, a ton of daypacks for all kinds of uses from the trail to the city, and it wasn’t a one off, they kept doing it, which I still feel amazed about because there’s a lot of brands that have scaled back their stuff. While Gregory is actually moving forward with even more products,” Bruso said.
Gregory Mountain Products newest work with Jenny Bruso is in the form of a collaboration of products designed with Bruso’s input, from the colorways of the packs to the Unlikely Hikers x Gregory patch that sits atop every bag.
Bruso reflects on the color choices, which range from deep purples to bright blues and pops of orange. “I knew immediately that I wanted something colorful that looked unlike anything else they offered. By and large, in the outdoor industry, there’s not a lot of style and color when it comes to outdoor gear, which I think also perpetuates that sort of one dimensional outdoorsy image that we tend to see. I knew I wanted something, a line that was both bright and bold and people could express themselves with.”
When it comes to fit testing, Bruso tells me that the bags in the Unlikely Hikers collaboration were based off of Gregory’s pre-existing plus-size bags from their initial drop. That fit testing process, she explains, was heavily influenced by her and the large group of testers that she brought together from her Unlikely Hikers community. “It was very important for me to have people who actually would fit into the larger sizes of the plus-size bags, try them out, and be really honest about what was working for them. The Unlikely Hikers community was a big part of that first process.”
Bruso goes on to talk about the size range, which goes from 2X-6X for the packs with hip belts that top out at 60 inches. “As we know, a lot of outdoor gear stops at a 3X and a lot of times that 3X is smaller than an actual 3X from a store like Old Navy. But the fact of the matter is that a 22 or 24 is not large in terms of sizing and it’s a really low cut-off point.” By providing a fit that goes up to a 6X, Gregory is signaling to customers that they belong outdoors and deserve to have the gear that allows them to do so.
Five percent of proceeds from every Unlikely Hiker x Gregory Packs collaboration purchase goes towards Unlikely Hikers, which will allow Bruso to start group hikes again and to move closer towards a future where Unlikely Hiker chapters are present nationwide and group hikes are regular and frequent.
As we talk about the packs, Bruso tells me that her favorite is the Maya 20: “It fits my body perfectly. I love it, and the design is so thoughtful and the padding is just right. A lot of plus-size people dream of having hip belts, and now we get hip belts.”
She describes the adjustable features, and the intentionality behind having bags that are listed as being ideal fits for women, men, and anyone. “Whatever packs fit for somebody’s body is the right one for them,” Bruso adds. She also expresses her love of the Nano Waistpack, one of the only waist packs made with a hip belt wide enough for plus-size bodies.
Jenny Bruso’s journey, both before Unlikely Hikers’ conception and now, has been one of finding and building community. As trends shift and words like “diversity” and “inclusivity” wax and wane from the minds of brands and corporations, Jenny’s work has remained consistent. With collaborations from brands like Gregory Mountain Products, who display their own commitment to access and inclusion by devoting resources, funding, and partnership, Bruso is moving closer to her goal of creating a world where every person feels the deep care and unique experiences that one can find in the outdoors.
“My body took me here” is one of Unlikely Hikers original slogans, and it still rings true. With people like Jenny Bruso fighting for resources and access, and brands like Gregory making products for those who are too often ignored by the outdoor industry, everyone’s body can experience the beauty of the outdoors, even when it’s not trendy.
