[PREVIEW] Did Virginia Get Divorced Over Butter?

Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark!

🧈🧈🧈It’s time for your June Extra Butter! Today we are giving you a behind-the-scenes look at how we make Burnt Toast. And yes, finally addressing some of the butter-related Internet rumors about Virginia’s personal life. 🧈🧈🧈

To listen to the full episode and read the full transcript, you’ll need to join Extra Butter, our premium subscription tier. THIS WEEK ONLY, Extra Butter is on sale for just $75 per year!

In addition to these monthly episodes (where we get into the GOOD stuff like why all the fat influencers are getting skinny, is Kids Eat In Color anti-diet? and post-divorce bodies), you’ll also get a comp to Cult of Perfect, occasional live thread discussions, and (coming soon!) dedicated Friday Threads.

Plus Extra Butter ensures that the Burnt Toast community can always stay an ad- and sponsor-free space—which is crucial for body liberation journalism. Join us here!

(Questions? Glitches? Email me all the details)

PS. If Extra Butter isn’t the right tier for you, remember that you still get access behind almost every other paywall with a regular paid subscription.

Extra Butter Episode 4 Transcript

Corinne

Today is a really special episode of Extra Butter because we are celebrating three years of Burnt Toast. Virginia, can you believe it has been three years?

Virginia

It feels like it’s been forever and also no, not at all. It’s wild.

Corinne

How are you celebrating?

Virginia

Probably buy a plant. 

Corinne

Oh, yeah. I was going to say brownies. Or cake. 

Virginia

Oh, I should see if my mom wants to make me a butter cake!

Corinne

Oh my God. Yes!

Virginia

For people that don’t know, my mother is an amazing cake baker, and we have a family tradition where she takes requests to make elaborate cakes for many occasions, including the dumpling cake she just made for my sister’s baby shower. 

Corinne

It was extremely cute.

Virginia

Yeah, so three years is very cool and weird. We have definitely grown in ways I could not have predicted when I decided I was going to turn on paid subscribers. We had 700 people on the list. Now there are over 54,000. I have to not think about the numbers too much sometimes. It’s a big stage. 

But it’s it’s exciting! And I’m excited to dish a little today about how we make it happen. So we’re going to talk about how the podcast is made, we’re going to reflect a little bit on where we started, where we’ve come from, the journey of Burnt Toast. And we’re going to talk a little bit about the recent New York Times profile. 

Corinne

I thought the best place to start might be to talk a little bit about how Burnt Toast started. How did you get the idea to start a Substack? How did you know about Substack? What was your vision for the newsletter?

Virginia

Well, I have to give credit to who is the pre-you. She was my research assistant who worked with me a lot on my first book and various articles and things. We were doing a newsletter to market my first book on TinyLetter, but Jessica is younger and cooler than me and writes a great environmental Substack called Pinch of Dirt that I encourage folks to check out. It’s very fun, especially if you like lots of hiking and nature writing. So Jessica was like, “The youths are on Substack.” And I was like, “What is a Substack.”

She migrated the list from TinyLetter over to Substack and helped me figure out what we were doing. And I remember her saying, sort of in passing at that point, “Oh and lot of people are turning on paid subscriptions and maybe you’ll want to do that sometime.” And at that point, I was still locked into “I write for mainstream media outlets.” I was just like, no, why would I do that? 

And then I started following a lot of Substacks, and reading more and it became, Wait, why would I not do this? Because I was also becoming increasingly frustrated with doing the kinds of stories I wanted to do at mainstream media outlets. And then I lost two big anchor clients in 2019 and 2020. I’d been writing a column about kids and food and body image for the New York Times Parenting section. And I had been doing a lot of work for Medium. Medium was great. I had great editors there and they would let me do pretty in-depth diet culture investigations, but then they changed their whole structure and were like, “LOL we don’t pay writers anymore.”

I was like, “Well, it’s interesting because I am a writer who still needs to be paid, so that won’t work.”Then The Times reorganized and cut my column, which is just the perennial freelancer thing where you have a couple of anchor clients, they run their course and then you pivot and start hustling up some new anchor clients. And I had been doing this for almost 20 years, I was so tired. This was also January 2021. That’s when I was like, Let’s make Burnt Toast into a thing. I spent about six months working on it before I turned on paid subscriptions that June.

Corinne

And how did the podcast start? Did you always know that that was in the future of Burnt Toast?

Virginia

No, not at all. I would have told you when I started, “I’m absolutely never doing a podcast.” My best friend and I had done a podcast together, Comfort Food. We did 80-something episodes and it was really fun, but we made zero dollars on it. It cost us quite a lot of money to make because we had to pay an audio editor, and it was just a ton of time.

It’s really hard to start an independent podcast and make money at it, because you have to get your numbers so big to get advertisers interested, or to get picked up by a podcasting network. Podcasting as an industry has gotten really messy.

So during 2020 when both of us had no childcare we were like, “we have got to put Comfort Food to bed,” which was the right decision. I really liked making a podcast, but I was like, “There’s no way to do it that makes financial sense for my life.” Maybe in retirement or something. 

But soon after I became working on Burnt Toast more wholeheartedly, Substack was like, “We are in the podcasting game!” And because they knew I’d done a podcast, they reached out and were like, you should really do a podcast for Burnt Toast. And I was like, no thank you, I would not like to do that. But then they covered the cost of Tommy, our amazing audio engineer, for the first year. So I knew I could make it sound good. And Tommy is amazing to work with and makes it so much easier.

Also: Part of what makes a successful Substack is publishing multiple times a week. I cannot churn out a reported essay or a first-person essay more than once a week. Honestly even that is a big lift, so I knew that I needed another type of content in the mix.

But I would say for at least the first year, I was still like, is the podcast working? Or is this just so much more work? Are we getting anything out of it? Once we were able to start adding paywalls to the podcast episodes, it started to make a lot more sense to do. Because it’s impossible to grow an independent podcast to big numbers, but if you already have your newsletter community, then it’s a different thing. So we’re never going to be Maintenance Phase—and we’re not trying to be Maintenance Phase. It’s a different model. 

Then of course once I started making it with you—I think that was the other point where I was like, “Well now I really want to make the podcast.” It’s so much more fun to do it with someone.

Corinne

It has been really fun! Should we talk a little bit about how the podcast and newsletter get made? 

Virginia

Or how many texts I send you a week?

Corinne

I mean, texting works for me. How do you find people to bring on the podcast?

Virginia

You and I are constantly brainstorming. You’ll see something, I’ll see something. We do get pitched a lot, too, but I think we’re a hard podcast to pitch. I get sent a lot of books, so I’m always looking at authors. And we want to support other fat activists and other feminists and folks working in these same spheres. Then also, we’ll get a reader question and we’ll be like, oh, who would be a good expert to answer that? Or like some crazy fatphobic thing happens in the media, right? 

Corinne

A news thing.

Virginia

We’ve started having editorial meetings now, too. So we’re more official. That’s an exciting recent development since our retreat. We stepped it up.

Corinne

How does production flow work? Like, once we have like an idea for a podcast? We kind of plan out like, “this week we’ll be running Indulgence Gospel.” And then how do we make it happen?

Virginia

We go over the calendar together in our editorial planning meetings, which are twice a month, plus we text all the time. I’m usually booking guest interviews, like one or two a month, whenever I’m like, crap, we’ve run out of guest interviews. Let me go book some more. You and I record Mondays. Any Monday we’re not having a meeting, we’re recording an episode.

Before we record, one of us writes an outline for the episode. If I’m interviewing a guest, I write up interview questions. For Indulgence Gospel, one of us dumps it all, all the questions we’re going to answer into a Google Doc. And then we record and then we send Tommy our recording files and Tommy puts them together through his wizardry into a master file. Then Corinne heroically wrestles that into a transcript using Otter. She doesn’t have to hand transcribe the entire interview. But AI still gives you plenty to do, I think.

Corinne

Yes, we use an AI transcription service that transcribes the recordings and then I go through and make it actual words. 

Virginia

Because whenever I interview another white lady, it doesn’t know who’s talking, and that kind of thing.

Corinne

I divide up who’s talking when and put in the names. I make it make sense. And then I will also just go through and mark where we should cut stuff, like asides in the conversation or somebody saying um six times—that’s usually me.

Virginia

Or “Absolutely, absolutely.”

Corinne

Or someone’s dog is barking, things like that. Then I send it back to Tommy and Virginia.

Virginia

And then I go through and do another ruthless pass where I’m usually meanest to myself. I’m trying to cut out all my Valley Girl speech so my mother doesn’t text me too much about how many times I say like and um and you know. Then Tommy’s always the nicest about it, and he’s like, “No, we don’t have to cut that many!”

Are you used to the sound of your own voice? 

Corinne

No.

Virginia

I’m pretty used to it but there are things I say that when I’m listening back—

Corinne

Yeah, the things I say over and over again drive me crazy. When I’m editing the transcript for myself, I do think I’m way harsher. 

Virginia

I think we’re harshest on ourselves. Sometimes Corinne will cut something and I’ll be like, no, put that back because that’s funny. But most of the time, it’s like cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. Get it down to something we can use. 

Then Tommy takes the Google Doc with all of the cuts and he makes those cuts in the audio file, and sends it back to us to approve. Meanwhile, Corinne is getting the cleaned up transcript into Substack. You do a lot of work there. 

Corinne

Yes, I edit it again to try and make it more readable. I take out even more weird verbal tics to make it easier to read.

Virginia

It’s interesting that editing for reading is actually different than editing for audio. You can leave in more verbal tics with audio because they’ll go by fast. But in a sentence that your eyes are going to go over, you have to take out all the likes and pauses and things. 

Corinne

Then I add photos and links.

Virginia

And I do another pass on it. So this is every episode. The recording happens whenever we can schedule with people, but then this process we’re talking about is spread out over the week before the episode runs. So on Wednesdays, which is the day before the episode runs, Tommy gets us the final audio. Corinne has the transcript draft in Substack. And I spend an hour or two doing a final pass and schedule it.

Transcripts are a ton of work, so I’m really glad so many of you do read them. It’s probably the thing we spend the most hours on, the bulk of the work. Which is weird to think about. 

And then, at the same time that we’re keeping a podcast going, we’re also always working on whatever essay I’m running on the Tuesday. That’s its own process. Usually a week before, I’m panic texting Corinne, “What am I writing about? What is that story idea I told you about three weeks ago that maybe I should write about but I forgot what it was?” And we brainstorm and then I write a draft and try to get you the draft by Thursday afternoon is my goal. And then you edit it. 

Corinne

I read through the draft and put it in Substack, make any notes for Virginia, and add photos. 

Virginia

Then Monday I do my final obsessive editing and we do a lot of texting about headlines usually. That’s a big focus. Headlines cannot be written alone. You need a sounding board.

Corinne

You’ve really become a Substack Headline expert, I feel.

Virginia

Really? Thank you. Years of  women’s magazine training. 

Corinne

Yes, that makes sense. 

Virginia

It translates. So we do a lot of thinking about headlines and paywall placement.

Corinne

Now that you’ve been doing this for three years, I’m curious how things have changed. How is the podcast different now than it was when you started? How is the newsletter different?

Virginia

The most fun difference is that now I do it with you! So, Jessica, who I adore, left and—when did she leave? 

Corinne

I was just thinking about that! I didn’t realize the podcast hadn’t been going on for now very long, because I think I started in October 2021. 

Virginia

So the first six months I was just muddling along. I had Jessica, who was fantastic. But this is less her world. She is a really amazing environmental reporter. 

So when Corinne came on board, I realized, having someone work on the newsletter with me who was also very in the community and gets the issues, would be so fun and useful. And I think makes this work a lot more collaborative and creatively satisfying. I really love that. So the podcast is something we’ve really grown together at this point. Indulgence Gospel has become its own thing and that’s the last year really.

Corinne

I mean, also, when I started I had a full-time day job, while also doing SellTradePlus.

Virginia

Yeah. And then when you left your day job, you were like, “Okay, I want to do more with this.” That transitioned us into a different thing, which has been really cool. So that’s a really big change. 

I think the other thing that I just did not predict and that’s so wonderful is the community! When you write for mainstream media outlets, you know who your reader is in this very abstract way. Women’s magazines would always be like, “our girl shops at The Gap.” And “our girl is career-focused!” There was this marketing rhetoric around who your reader was, what brands she shopped at, how many kids she had, whatever. That was helpful to a point, but not actually reflective of a real human being. 

The only other job I ever had that felt even remotely close to this was Seventeen Magazine, where teenagers did write to us all the time and as an editorial assistant, a big part of my job was answering reader emails. So I did talk to our readers and really feel connected to them. And I always missed that at every other place I ever wrote for. Especially as a freelancer, you’re just writing the piece. You’re not thinking as much about who the reader is, that’s the editor’s job. 

So when I started writing a Substack, I was intrigued by the idea that people were building these communities, but I did not think I would be very good at that. I did not think this would be something that people would want from me. I remember doing my first thread and being like, “Well, this will be awkward. No one wants to talk.” And it turns out, a lot of people love to talk! We have our regulars who I feel like I’m really getting to know in the comments section. And that is just spectacular to me and makes me feel really proud of the thing we’re all building together, you know? 

Corinne

It’s so interesting because in a lot of traditional media, like, for example, The New York Times, the comment sections are such a horrible place. And the comment section on Substack or on Burnt Toast specifically is so great. 

Virginia

So lovely. I mean, obviously, the fact that we limit it to paid subscribers helps. We just don’t have drive-by trolls very frequently. We have occasionally been like, “Well that person paid $5 just to yell at us.” And you know what, okay. We’ll take your five bucks. But that’s maybe three times total.

And whenever I do go out into the rest of the world, the response is so different. So it’s a real safe haven for me to have Burnt Toast. 

I always say, as a mom, my favorite thing is my kids’ relationship with each other and how that doesn’t really have anything to do with me. But I’ll just be like, oh my gosh, my kids! when they’re playing together. It makes me so happy. And my favorite favorite thing on Burnt Toast is when the comment section kind of takes on a life of its own and people are talking to each other, giving recs or when we did the where are you from post and people are organizing meetups. Like, what! That stuff makes me so happy. I’m just like, yes. Talk amongst yourselves. Find each other! That’s not something I ever thought I would be good at facilitating, or it’s not something I’d ever thought about doing, but it’s so satisfying.

Corinne

What about the scope of subject matter? Are there things we are talking about now that you’ve never thought you’d be writing about?

Virginia

There are two answers to that. I mean, one is that I initially thought I would only be able to write about body image, eating disorders, weight and health, like Health at Every Size, that sort of niche set of topics. And it’s fun that I’ve been able to be like, “Sometimes I’m going to do a gardening essay!” And obviously when we do reader surveys, it’s not like the most popular topic is the gardening content. But people are sort of happy to go along with like, oh, what conversation does Virginia want us to have? Sure, let’s talk about Stanley Cups. Let’s talk about 1000 Hours Outside, whatever. So that has been really satisfying 

Not that there was anything wrong with those core topics, but you can get to a point on a beat where you feel like you’re repeating yourself. Or like, “Am I really helping if we always come back to that?” So it’s fun, creatively, to be able to go in other directions. 

Then the other thing is, I come from what’s called service journalism. Every story you write for a women’s magazine or a parenting outlet, even if it’s an essay, not a reported feature, has to have a takeaway for the reader. It has to have some tips or some service sidebars. So I’m just used to thinking of my writing as something that’s going to help people do X, Y, and Z.

And that’s wonderful. This is not me hating on service journalism at all, I think it’s a really valuable genre of writing. But I’ve been interested over the last year in particular, the pieces that are getting the biggest responses are not that. It is more stuff like the Stanley Cup piece did great, or the Huberman Husband essay, which isn’t me telling you how to feed your kids or how to do a thing. It’s just cultural analysis. It’s a think piece, I guess. And those are super satisfying and hard and challenging for me to write, in a really good way. 

I talked about this a little bit in the piece I wrote about the response the snack cabinet got. I don’t know if I want to say I’ve been getting it wrong, but I think me giving a lot of prescriptive advice about how to feed kids was always a little bit of a wrong turn. Does that make sense?

Corinne

I mean, yes. Say more.

Virginia

Well, I think if we’re primarily here to work on advancing fat rights, then that’s a complicated topic. Because the personal is political. And the way you talk about food and your family dinner table does impact how your kids feel about their bodies and about other people’s bodies. So it is a place of doing activism. But because we also think of how we feed our kids as this health and nutrition issue, there was this kind of problematic thing of people applying a layer of “Virginia should be teaching us how to raise healthy eaters.” And that’s not my job or what I care about or what I’m qualified to do. 

I think this also speaks to my own evolution, as I’ve become more engaged in fat activism specifically, as opposed to just anti-diet culture more broadly. My first book is much more—I mean, it is an explanation of how we eat. So I’m not like, “How dare people think I have opinions about how we eat!” I wrote this book called The Eating Instinct. I get it. But I think that was part of me grappling with these larger conversations and then in response, I was getting asked really specific questions about what do I do when my kid doesn’t eat vegetables? I don’t think I was ever the right person to answer that question.

Corinne

Yeah, that makes sense. Like, because you wrote a book about eating, people look to you as an expert for advice. And then at some point, giving advice is almost at odds with the larger conversation about body autonomy. 

Virginia

And even that first book is a cultural exploration. It’s not a prescriptive “this is how to feed your kids” book.

Corinne

You’re not a public health professional or a nutritionist.

Virginia

I mean, I know you really want me to write about my snack cabinet.

Corinne

As a person with no kids, I do just find that stuff weirdly fascinating. Probably because I don’t have to face it on a daily basis!

Virginia

I mean, I don’t mind sharing with Extra Butter that when I wrote the essay about, "why is everyone trolling my snack cabinet?” I did first write a whole piece explaining, "here’s how I really use my snack cabinet.” And then I was like, “I’m not running it.” And Corinne was like, “Ok but can we run it next week?”

Corinne

I think deep down all of us just want someone to tell us what to do sometimes.

Virginia

But my whole thing is…that’s diet culture, right?

Corinne

That’s what we’re getting at. Advice and body liberation sometimes are at odds. 

Virginia

They really are. And I don’t think I understood that. Certainly not when I was writing and promoting my first book, but even in the first year or two of Burnt Toast I think I was still sorting that out. And- the places where people are going to get granular advice about how to feed their kids are often so saturated in diet culture and anti-fatness. So we do really need an another model. And I think those sources exist. I think it’s How to Raise an Intuitive Eater by Amee Severson and Sumner Brooks. I think it’s the most recent edition of Intuitive Eating. 

I am not the person to give those tools. I am more of the person to be like, “This is what it’s like trying to execute those tools in my own messy life.” And, “Oh, it’s not working for me. I don’t know what else we do.” And, “Let’s talk more broadly about this cultural message.” I’m here to talk about the culture of it, not the what do I think you should be doing? But I have veered into that lane at times. 

So I think I want to be doing less of that, even though I’m glad that there are some solid resources, like all those Burnt Toast Guides we made. I’m glad to have all that there, if it’s useful to people. But I just don’t want to be put in that box anymore, I guess. 

Corinne

Well, and I think the guides aren’t prescriptive advice really. They’re like, “Here’s a bunch of stuff you could consider.”

Virginia

Then I think the other thing is just, I feel like we have a lot more fun on Burnt Toast now. There’s more humor.

I do really value deep dives into research on weight and health. I think it’s very, very important. I’m very grateful to someone like

Ragen Chastain

who is doing it every single week. And I think I initially thought that’s where readers wanted me to stay. Like, let me explain again why the BMI is trash. Let me explain again causation versus correlation. And, again, I’m glad we have a lot of resources about that on the Substack. I think that’s really helpful. I’m glad we’ve done episodes about that.

And I’m glad that I can sometimes write about this TikTok thing or let’s do a style challenge. 

Maybe that’s, again, the women’s magazine person in me who has always been like, I want to do a little more of everything and have there be fun in it, too.

Corinne

Yeah, that makes sense. 

Virginia

You have helped me figure that out a lot, too. Corinne is very fun is what I’m saying.

Corinne

Extremely fun.

What have been some highlights from the past three years? Any guest interviews that have really stuck with you?

Virginia

Oh, man. This is like when someone asks what you’re reading and your mind just goes blank. I want to know yours first. 

Corinne

One for me that really stands out is Jessica Wilson. When I listened to her, I was just like, wow, my mind is really changing.

Virginia

That was one of the conversations that shifted me. I really don’t want to be giving prescriptive advice after she pointed out how much our own identities and biases impact the kind of advice we think we should give. When she was like, “Eating disorder treatment doesn’t work for Black women because this is a necessary part of survival,” I was just like, “Oh, okay, I truly know nothing. I can tell people nothing.” That was a really great one.

More recently, I’m very partial to the episode about American Girl dolls. 

Corinne

Yeah, that was incredible. 

Virginia

We definitely do talk about diet culture and how there has not been a fat American Girl doll. That’s important. And we looked at my childhood trauma around Samantha.

Corinne

Which was really fun. 

Virginia

With many embarrassing family photos. That was a really good one. Another really fun one I loved that was also super useful was Martinus Evans. He’s just a delight. So fun to talk to. And anytime we attack the fitness industrial complex, I feel like I’ve done a good day’s work.

Corinne

He was a great podcast guest. I also have really enjoyed some of the authors like Crystal Maldonado. Even when I haven’t read their books. Like, I haven’t read any Crystal’s books. They’ve been on my list for a long time.

Virginia

They are a treat. 

Corinne

I’m sure I will love them. But just really interesting to hear what she has to say even if you haven’t.

Virginia

I’m glad you say that. Listeners should know that author interviews are the lowest performers usually. And it really breaks my heart, as an author and someone who’s here to help platform these other really important authors doing good work. I’ve been starting to think about, how do we change up the format of bringing authors on the show?

It doesn’t make sense to me, because when we do Friday Threads about books, they are super popular. We are a community of readers. People want to share what they are reading and talk about books. And for whatever reason, the author interviews tend to be some of the lower downloaded ones. I don’t know what it is.

Corinne

I always wonder if it’s like, people don’t want to listen if they haven’t read the book yet? 

Virginia

Maybe we need to be clear about no spoilers? But I mean, Fresh Air! Terry Gross interviews authors all the time. 

Corinne

Yeah, it’s true. There are podcasts, though, where if I’m just dipping in, I want to listen to someone that I’ve heard of.

Virginia

I think it’s also a tension with podcasts, especially when you have a format like ours, where sometimes it’s two hosts chatting and sometimes it’s guest interviews. I think the two hosts chatting often works against the guest interviews because people are like, but I want to hear the friends hang out! I want to hang out with you guys! And then the new person comes in. And everyone’s like, “Well, I don’t know about this new person.” That’s not author specific. That’s just guest specific. Like, even though guest episodes are always free and so the whole list can get them and our episodes are always paywalled, we get way more comments on Indulgence Gospel episodes than we do on guest interviews. I think it’s just it’s fun to chat with your friends.

Corinne

Do you have a favorite essay that you’ve written?

Virginia

I really love a piece I wrote last summer about going to The Plaza with my younger kid and digging into the history of Kay Thompson and understanding Eloise as a kind of radical feminist while also a problematic white lady. It’s all there. That was maybe a little bit of a quieter essay, but it just was such a joy to write. It was really fun doing the research for that one and understanding how are we manufacturing girlhood? How are we marketing this pink princess concept when in fact Eloise is not any of that?

Corinne

That was a cool one for me, too, because I got to look up old photos of her and that was really fun. 

Virginia

Yeah, good photo research. What about you? Any essays?

Corinne

I like the ones about eating dinner. 

Virginia

The ones I just said I’m not writing anymore?

Corinne

Yeah. Like dinner table rules and reading at dinner.  

Virginia

Notes on Single Mom Dinner? I do like that piece because I feel like I captured a little bit that feels like a scrapbook for me. I’ll read that in 10 years and be like, oh,that year when we were reading at the dinner table. I have affection towards it. I don’t know, I’m curious to hear what other folks think about this. 

Corinne

I think what part of what I like about those is is not that it’s prescriptive advice, but that I’m peeking into how other people do stuff. I’m not a parent. I just think it’s interesting to see what other people are doing. And I feel like sometimes how people are feeding their kids is helpful for me in feeding myself. 

Virginia

I hear that. I’m curious to hear what other people think about that stuff. I think I’m feeling, as I said in the piece about the snack cabinet, like I cannot keep explaining myself to the world, as a fat mom being asked to justify that. And if I had written a piece about “look how healthy we are like, look what a good job I’m doing,” then that doesn’t make space for the fact that you can be a really good mom who’s not making healthy dinners. Fat people don’t have a moral obligation to do all of that.

Corinne

Right. And you have faced way more scrutiny than any normal person does, or should have to.

Virginia

It’s hard for me to tell how much is me responding to that, versus how much am I really feeling like this doesn’t align with my fat activism body liberation values. But I do think there’s a little tension there that I’m still trying to figure out how to navigate as a writer.

But those dinner pieces are fun to write.

Corinne

Okay! Let’s talk about The New York Times article.

I’m curious to hear a little of the background on how that came to be. How did it work? How much time did this person spend with you? How does being profiled work?

Virginia

This was definitely the most in-depth experience I’ve ever had. I’ve been profiled a few other times and it can vary from basically a 30-minute Zoom conversation with someone to much more time intensive. When The Cut profiled me before the book came out, Erica Schwiegershausen came and spent the day with me as well. We went to lunch and then the photoshoot was happening at the same time. We were just chatting extensively throughout. So it was an interview/photoshoot combo and it was like five hours. And I really loved how that piece turned out.

Corinne

Was she recording you the whole time?

Virginia

Yes. I’ve been on the journalist side of this, too and I want to say, it’s very tiring reporting. You do record. You bring your phone, some people bring a backup recorder as well. And you still take some notes while you’re talking to them. But you’re really just listening super intensely trying to figure out what you’re going to be able to use and where you need to follow up. Then you have to go home and go through just hours and hours of recording to find what’s good. There’s often a lot of nonsense.

When I used to do a lot more in person reporting, pre-COVID, I would always just be so stressed out. Because often the best conversation would be happening when we’re in a restaurant and it’s really loud. And then I’m like, I’m not getting the recording! Try to remember, try to remember. It’s an exhausting day, on both sides. 

For The Times piece, we had a pretty extensive conversation off-record ahead of time discussing what the piece would be, and what my boundaries would be, and all of that. And then she came and spent about five hours at my house, first hanging out just with me, and then my kids got home from school, and she stayed through dinner. So she was around all afternoon till like seven o’clock. And then we had multiple follow up phone calls—like probably another four hours over multiple phone calls and texts. 

It’s a little odd having someone in your home. That feels vulnerable to me, always. And it’s a little awkward. She wanted to get this slice of life of me with my kids. So I was thinking the whole time, “Please have good days!” Like, no  judgment on my kids. Kids are allowed to have bad days. And I was like, “What if this is one of the days when a kid comes home and just needs to have a meltdown?” They deserve that privacy.

I did talk to my kids quite a lot ahead of time. I asked, are you comfortable with having this person here? What ground rules do you have? What don’t you want talked about? I got a lot of consent from the kids ahead of time to make sure they felt okay about it. But there’s also the valid argument that children cannot give informed consent because they are minors. 

So for both of these in-person experiences, the reporters were absolutely lovely in person and really fun to hang out with. It was like talking to a friend. And again, I know as a journalist, you’re deliberately cultivating that atmosphere because people are much chattier and more open when they feel relaxed with you. 

So it’s very weird for me having been on both sides of it to notice like, oh, I’m getting relaxed and letting my guard down. They kind of want that to be happening. It’s strange. Very strange.

Corinne

When I think about that—because I’m not a journalist, I don’t have either of these experiences. But if I were trying to make someone relaxed, I’d be telling them my own personal stories. But none of that actually ends up in the profile! 

Virginia

The Cut journalist did a lot of that. The Times reporter did much less of that, although still did some. I always did a lot of that when I would do in-person reporting because I think it does really build a lot of rapport. I mean, it’s a technique that’s taught in journalism school. Share a vulnerable story about yourself. And it is a strange thing because, yeah, that’s not going to end up in the piece. You’re artificially creating rapport with a total stranger. 

Corinne

I feel like I would just be so exhausted. As an introvert, having someone stay with me? I can’t even.

Virginia

Yeah, I was tapped out. They’re in my home, so I’m hosting as well. I’ve written about my stress about hosting. So I definitely am like, cleaning my house really frantically beforehand. And thinking, am I offering them something to drink often enough? All of that social conditioning, gendered stuff is coming into play. It’s really intense. I can’t say I totally recommend it. 

Corinne

Yeah, that’s fair.

Virginia

I think it also can be how you can do really important storytelling. Because you are seeing someone in their space. Just like what you were saying you like about when I write a piece about my family dinner. That enables the journalist to capture that same feeling of we’re in this person’s life with them. And it’s so satisfying. 

I kind of wish in a weird way that I’d had the experience of being profiled years and years ago—no one would have profiled me, I hadn’t done anything interesting. But it gave me a lot of empathy with my previous sources. Just to be like, oh, there are times where you just want this person to go. I just feel journalists should have to be on both sides of it. There’s a lot of value in that.

Corinne

That’s a good point. Was there anything in the article that you felt really good about?

Virginia

My enviable hair.

Corinne

Yes. You did get called out for your incredible hair. 

Virginia

I’m just glad it got appreciated. I mean, the photos are gorgeous. I really loved the photographer. That was fun. 

In terms of the rest: It’s a tricky thing, because we do have this privilege of being mostly in the Burnt Toast space these days, so if I go a few months without doing anything in the mainstream, I forget what the reception is going to be out there. 

I think I both took for granted, and was given reason to believe, that there was going to be a certain amount of empathy and respect for my work. And I didn’t feel was 100 percent communicated in the final piece. There were choices made in the framing of the final piece that felt more tuned towards what will stir up the comments section and what will get a lot of clicks and get this read. 

And I get it. That is also part of their job, right? Just like earlier, when you were like “you’re really good at Substack headlines.” The reason I’m really good at Substack headlines is because I have spent years as a journalist thinking of headlines that will make people want to read a story. So I think you’re always trying to do two things at once with a profile. You’re always trying to both do your subject justice, and empathetically and respectfully tell a story. And you’re trying to write a piece that people are going to want to read and share. Which increasingly, means a piece that is explosive in some way.

And the ways they can make my story explosive—because I’m actually a fairly unexplosive, suburban mom feeding her children snack crackers—are to lean into how radical fat activism is, and to make us all sound a little unhinged, and lean into personal stories about the divorce, and all of that. 

I think the article is still a net positive in terms of a lot of new folks finding our community and more crucially, I hope, folks are finding body liberation work and fat activism who will benefit from it. And, the immediate fallout of a piece like that is exhausting to weather. 

Corinne

Do you want to talk about any of the fallout? You got a lot of angry emails.

Virginia

A lot of angry emails, and a lot of DMs. And I mean, the comment section itself—they had to close it after 800 comments and 95 percent of them were all wretched.

Corinne

When they close the comments, do they tell you they’re doing that? 

Virginia

Oh, no, no, no. And it happened really fast. The piece went up at like 5am on a Sunday morning. And it just got a deluge. And then they closed it. I think they always close it when it reaches a certain amount, probably just so it doesn’t take down the website. This piece just hit that point very quickly, which was a bummer because I think if the comments had moved a little more slowly, maybe Burnt Toast readers or just folks in general who resonate with my work, would have gotten in there as well, and you would have seen more of a mix. But it was very quickly hit by the trolls and very quickly hit by the critics. And then there was no room or time for any other conversation. 

Jeannie Finlay talked about how it flares white hot and then it dies down. And I’ve been through the flare white hot moment a bunch of times in my career with a piece, or with the book launch last year. The difference this time was with this piece, a lot of the flaring white hot was personal attacks. Critiquing me as a journalist feels really different than making judgments about my kids’ health or my kids’ wellbeing, or should CPS be called, and am I abusing my children. 

It’s not that I even take it super personally. I know I’m a good mom. I don’t need random men on the Internet to understand that. But it’s more that there’s this itchy feeling of, they’re judging a kind of a character of me. They’re not actually even seeing my real life. They’re seeing my real life filtered through this journalist, filtered through The New York Times Well section, filtered through their own biases. They’re just responding to a funhouse mirror version of my life.

Corinne

I mean, I truly cannot believe how upset people were that you are giving your kids brownies.

Virginia

I am sad for all the children who don’t get baked goods. I mean, of the the all the terrible things you can do to your children, I don’t think baking them brownies is even anywhere on the list. 

And then of course, we also had the very hilarious second tier coverage of the piece.

Corinne

What was that the headline that was so incredible?

Virginia

Nothing has made me laugh harder in a long time.

Corinne

This is definitely something I didn’t understand until probably last year when your book was coming out. Somewhere like The Cut or The New York Times does an article and then conservative media just picks it up and twists it. 

Virginia

Yes. So The Daily Mail ran a headline: “‘Fat Activist’”—in quotes, always in quotes—“Who Thinks Childhood Obesity Is a Myth Reveals How She Feeds Her Kids Dessert First After Divorcing Fitness Freak Husband Who Lost It When Their Daughter Ate a Stick of Butter.”

Corinne

I mean, put that on your gravestone. 

Virginia

I will never not laugh at it.

Corinne

How does your ex-husband feel about being called “a fitness freak?”

Virginia

I texted him a screenshot of it and he was literally on a run at that moment. He was like, “I see no lies.” I mean, I’m like “this should be our co-parenting Christmas card.” We have laughed about it quite a lot. He did for my birthday bring me a stick of butter with a candle on it and got me a butter knife that says “Keep Calm and Have More Butter.” It’s very cute. So it’s fine. We are fine. Our co-parenting relationship and friendship remains intact.

Corinne

True or false: The divorce was caused by butter.

Virginia

I mean, it’s amazing that I have to explain this to the Internet. No, we did not get divorced over a stick of butter. It is true that one of our children—I don’t even know if they ate the entire stick. But they definitely picked up a stick of butter at the dinner table and chewed on it, the way one would eat cheese. They just really enjoyed this butter. And Dan was appalled by that. I was like, “Well, butter was on the table!” And I will die forever on the mountain of butter is basically cheese. To a two year old, it’s the same thing. 

Corinne

I feel like almost every kid has a story about like, yeah, eating butter, as if it were cheese.

Virginia

And that child, many years later, does still really enjoy butter and would like the butter to be visible. I gave them a bagel with butter for breakfast this weekend and the butter was melted into the bagel. And they were like, “Where’s the butter?” And I was like, I get it. You want the butter to have some presence. But they don’t eat sticks and sticks of it. This didn’t become some ongoing saga of our lives. It’s very funny that the Internet got so upset about that. 

So no, we did not get divorced over butter or even really have much of a fight over it. Because the piece did focus a lot on that question somehow. And there was a moment of the Internet speculating about our marriage. And I noticed that coming from corners of the Internet that weren’t just straightforward trolls. Like, not just people that I would expect to tear me apart. Bt people who I might have thought were kind of on my side, or that were in the same loose conversation.

And I think I just want to say: A core value of body liberation is that you don’t owe anyone your body. And you also don’t owe anyone your life story. I know I have talked and written publicly about being divorced. That does not mean I owe the world any more than I want to say about it.

Corinne

Yeah. I mean, I have never been married. But I have been through a few breakups. And how do you ever distill that down into one thing? 

Virginia

No, it’s never one thing. 

Corinne

Even if it were a stick of butter, it’s never just the stick of butter. I don’t know.

Virginia

And it was not the butter.

Corinne

Obviously.

Virginia

It’s super strange. And this assumption that somebody owes the world more of an explanation or more details than they feel safe giving—it’s just not allowing people to live their lives.

Corinne

Yeah. I feel like it’s one of those things where people just want to know why you got divorced so they can know if they are going to get divorced, you know? They just want to be like, “I want to make sure whatever reason people break up isn’t something I’m doing.” 

Virginia

Well, I will say: If your kid eats a stick of butter, and your partner wants to call CPS on you, then you should divorce them. That is grounds for divorce. That is not what happened in my life. But if your partner responds the way one of my Internet trolls responded, over a child eating butter, that’s a red flag for you.

Corinne

Yeah. I think I would break up with a partner if I found out that they were commenting stuff like that on the Internet. 

Virginia

If you are married to an internet troll…

Corinne

Divorce them.

Virginia

You deserve better. We want better for you. I think that’s right. If you are married to one of the men who sends me emails calling me a spoiled fat cunt, we want better for you.

Corinne

Okay. Anything you’re excited about for Burnt Toast this year? Any upcoming changes? Anything you’re trying to accomplish this year?

Virginia

Well, I think I’m most excited about . That is the project I am most excited about, Corinne having her own Substack that is in conversation with Burnt Toast. Part of our whole family, I don’t know if sister publication is right. We’ll figure out the right terms. 

Corinne

Spider web? Anthill?

Virginia

Garden?

Corinne

Oh, that’s a good one. Garden. We like garden. 

Virginia

The Burnt Toast garden is now growing Big Undies.

Corinne

The tree has been planted.

Virginia

Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Your hopes and dreams? I feel like this is like the new big thing.

Corinne

Yeah, I’m excited. For a long time I have wanted to start a Substack and now seems to be the moment. I’m excited to be making some content about clothes that feels inclusive of different bodies. 

Virginia

I mean, I was just remembering anIndulgence Gospel many moons ago, we were talking about fashion bloggers. And you just said something about like, “It is perpetually annoying that I’m like, I like this fashion and I’m not going to be able to wear the clothes this person is talking about.” I just am really excited for this to be a place where that is not the case. We need more plus size fashion. You’re not only going to write about fat folks and clothes, but that’s always going to be foundational.

Corinne

Yeah, I mean, that is my lens. 

Virginia

And we want to know, what particular types of clothes do you folks want Corinne to write about? What people who wear clothes that you love do you want to hear more about their style? Send Corinne your ideas and thoughts. 

Are you going to answer reader questions?

Corinne

I mean, remains to be seen! Probably? Maybe? Definitely!

Virginia

If you have fashion questions, you may now direct them to Corinne. I am super excited for that.

Corinne

I’m excited, too. 

Virginia

And over on Burnt Toast I think I’m obviously wrestling with this prescriptive versus not question. But I think the pieces that I’m most excited about are elucidating some phenomenon related to diet culture that helps us continue the divestment work and continue to figure out our own stance on things and our own thought process about stuff.

We’re also doing a lot of brainstorming about theme weeks.

Corinne

I’m super excited about the theme stuff because it’s just nice to be able to look at something a little more like deeply, I guess. We have just done Fat Swim Week. We were talking about doing one in the fall—

Virginia

Fat travel!

Corinne

We’re going to do fat travel.

Virginia

So, more themes. If there is stuff you guys want to hear about, we are here for it. And obviously at some point, I’ll have to do a deep dive butter taste testing. For my haters.

Butter

Corinne

Hell yeah. Do you have a Butter?

Virginia

I do have a good Butter. I think I’ve talked about becoming a single mom and having only one coffee drinker in the house. So I had a whole journey to figure out my single lady, one cup of coffee solution, which is my little French press.

And similarly, my children and I start every day with a big smoothie and I make it in my trusty Vitamix blender that I got as a refurbished blender back in 2014. This thing has been with me 10 years. I hope I get 10 more years out of it. We actually got it at a medical discount because we were using it to make blended food for my daughter’s feeding tube at that point. Vitamixes are expensive! But I’m telling you, I’ve been using a refurbished model for 10 years without any issues. It will stand the test of time. 

But it’s big. So when the kids go to their dad’s and I don’t need to make a 30-ounce smoothie every morning, I’ve been struggling with the proportions of how to make just the size I want. And then like making too much, and blueberries are expensive. 

So I just got a Ninja Portable Blender. And I’m so obsessed with it. I took it with us this weekend to Boston because I wasn’t sure if our Airbnb would have a blender and it did not. I was able to make us each individual smoothies in it every morning. It’s like a USB charger situation, so it doesn’t even need to be plugged in all the time. 

It’s just extremely powerful and effective. I could make my same smoothie, but just make an individual, one person, one portion. It’s holds 16 ounces and it’s super fast and blends really well. And it’s making me so happy. 

Corinne

That’s cool. Yeah, I definitely would never think that a cordless blender would be cutting it. 

Virginia

I was extremely skeptical. And I think this is a very diet culture a thing because I’m sure everyone’s using it to make their green smoothies. The marketing picture is people on a beach with it. And I’m not doing for any of those reasons. I just love my morning smoothie. And it’s a very satisfying way to make a one person smoothie without accidentally using a gallon of oat milk.

Corinne

I have that problem because I live alone. And if I ever want a smoothie, it’s too small for the Vitamix.

Virginia

It can’t work with it, because you didn’t give it enough liquid. This is what you need. What’s your Butter? 

Corinne

I’m a sporadic coffee drinker, I go in and out of it, but when I was traveling recently and not wanting to deal with buying coffee, I got these little instant pour over coffee things from this brand called Copper Cow. It has this really cool little packet and you just like kind of rip off the top and then pour boiling water over it. Then the other really exciting thing is it’s this little pour over coffee and then it just comes with a little tube of sweetened condensed milk. It’s very delicious and easy and travel friendly.

Virginia

Oh my gosh, these looks so good. Look at us just giving you all a nice travel breakfast setup! That is really fun.

---

The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and who runs @SellTradePlus and Big Undies—subscribe for 20% off.

The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.

Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.

Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.

Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

I think I made a mistake calling these instant! It’s apparently “a pre-filled, single serve pour over.” The coffee does not dissolve! It just comes ready to go.