The Burnt Toast Podcast

Teacher librarian and The Gamer Educator, Ash Brandin, discusses screen time boundaries intersecting with diet culture and anti-fatness. Topics include unlearning screen habits, social media's diet culture influence, balancing children's screen time preferences, and engaging in creative sticker stories with kids for relaxation.

You’re listening to Burnt Toast!We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it’s time for your January Indulgence Gospel.Today, we’re getting into three big questions for you:Does sugar destroy your immune system?How do we stay hopeful when fat activism gets hard?What’s the deal with 1000 Hours Outside—is it good parenting, or is it diet culture?And we’re going to get into favorite books, favorite snacks, good shows to puzzle by, Corinne’s new favorite jeans, and (inexplicably?) Virginia’s strong feelings about children’s birthday parties.This is a paywalled episode. That means to hear the whole thing you’ll need to be a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. This transcript contains affiliate links. Shopping our links is another great way to support Burnt Toast!Episode 127 TranscriptCorinneVirginia. It’s time for our monthly check-in about pants.VirginiaI don’t think I have any breaking pants news. I’m wearing the literal same pants I was when we last recorded. I’m almost wearing the same exact outfit I was when we recorded a month ago?CorinneWell, I feel like that’s a testament to how awesome those pants are.VirginiaThe Beyond Yoga joggers. I just live in them now. CorinneEvery day I’m like I need those pants. And then I’m like, am I going to spend $100 on joggers? VirginiaI know. But my cost per wear is incredibly low right now! I’ve worn no other pants in like three months.I have decided jeans are really a formalwear option for me. That’s how I’m reclassifying them. Like, I’m going out to dinner with friends on Friday night—in theory, as we were just discussing off mic, COVID rates are rising. But if I’m still leaving my house by Friday, I’m going out to dinner and I was like, I’ll wear jeans to that. I’ll dress up for those ladies! CorinneSo fancy for you. VirginiaI can be fancy. But at the end of day, man, I am not getting out of these. CorinneWell, I feel like I might be headed in the opposite direction. I just finished my 2024 Ins/Outs list. And I have decided that linen pants are out for 2024 and white denim is in.VirginiaWhite denim! I can get on board with this. Well, I can definitely get on board with linen pants being out because they seem comfortable but they are deceptively high maintenance. CorinneThey just don’t last. VirginiaYou have to decide if you’re ironing or not ironing. CorinneBecause they’re kind of nubbly they wear out in the thighs so quickly. And if you don’t iron or steam them, they just look kind of… VirginiaLike you rolled out of bed?CorinneKind of schlubby sometimes. Which is fine. Anyways, white denim. I’m currently wearing white denim pants, which you can’t see. I’m excited to be having more white denim in 2024.VirginiaYou’re also wearing white denim in winter. That feels like a very bold move for me.Dacy Gillespiehas worked with me on trying to unlearn my “no white after Labor Day” rule. I’m from Connecticut so this is a big emotional journey for me. And I’m not quite there. CorinneIf anything, I feel like white makes more sense in winter because you’re not sitting in the grass. VirginiaI hear you. I want to be there.CorinneAlso, as a fat person, reclaiming white can be a fun activity.VirginiaAbsolutely. Do you have white jeans you’re excited about?CorinneI’m currently wearing this pair from Madewell. They’re not the best fitting jeans I’ve ever owned. I also just ordered a pair from Target. As a confirmation of this being a trend and not just me being like, “everyone should wear a solar shield,” I did see Helen Rosner post in her stories that maybe white jeans would be her thing this year. VirginiaOh, and she’s a very good dresser. CorinneSo if you don’t trust me, maybe trust her. We’ll see.VirginiaI mean, I always trust you. Although I did not buy a solar shield. CorinneYeah not sure what I was thinking there. VirginiaBut on sartorial questions, I always trust you. CorinneAnd if people have other white jean suggestions, I’m taking them.VirginiaWhite jeans in the chat, please. I could do white jeans as one of my fancy options, as one of my formal wear options.CorinneI do think it feels slightly more elevated than regular jeans.VirginiaWhat shoes are you wearing with white jeans in winter? CorinneYou’re not going to like it. I’ve just been wearing them with my Blundstones and they’re a straight leg so they just go over the top of the Blundstones and probably look really dorky. I’m just doing what I’m doing. VirginiaI’m here for it. I mean, I definitely feel like they’re good once we return to clog weather or any cute sneaker.CorinneYes, white sneakers. I can usually wear sneakers in New Mexico in the winter. VirginiaOn a related winter pants question, I think I need snow pants but I can’t decide if I really want to spend the money on snow pants. And also, can I find snow pants? CorinneI have to admit the thought of looking for plus sized snow pants is very daunting to me. VirginiaI did some precursory research. I have a link in the outline to this brand called Halfdays. They go up to a 2x. If anyone has purchased Halfdays, I need intel.CorinneThey’re so cute. Beautiful colors. VirginiaThey come in amazing colors, but they are $345. It’s like, what is happening? I was talking to my kids’ dad about this question, because he’s a big outdoor gear guy. He was like, “Yeah, I mean, my best winter coat was at least that and that’s just what good outdoor gear costs.” Why is nobody talking about this? I didn’t know outdoor gear was so expensive because I don’t own a lot of specialized outdoor gear. CorinneI know Patagonia is really expensive. I feel like Marielle has done some snow pants research because I think she goes skiing.VirginiaI will say LL Bean has a pretty cute turquoise pair that I’m thinking about and they’re only like $170. My problem with this is right now I want snow pants because there’s snow on the ground and my kids spent hours playing in the snow this weekend. I stayed in the hot tub where it was warm because I don’t have snow pants. But I was like, would I be a better mother if I had snow pants and could play in the snow with them? Or at least like for shoveling and whatnot? But also, how many times a year am I going to need to wear snow pants? Even living in a very wintry place. I don’t ski. I’m never going to ski. That’s not happening. So I don’t know how crucial snow pants are to my life. So to spend over $100 on something that I’m gonna wear like five times? CorinneOver 100? Over 300!VirginiaI know. I know. But even at the Land’s End, LL Bean prices. I also know when you when you have the right gear, it makes the experience so much more pleasant.CorinneI’m just thinking, this would be such a nice situation to be like, “you should look for some used ones!”Virginiaoh, good thought. I will look that’s a good idea. I need to be reminded constantly to look for used for things. I need to rewire my brain to remember to do that.[UPDATE: Virginia found used Eddie Bauer snow pants on Sell Trade Plus! They have not arrived yet, but they were only $65, stand by for full review.]CorinneIt’s also hard. It takes a lot of work. It’s hard enough to even find new plus size snowpants, so who knows? But yeah, maybe post on Instagram and see if anyone is getting rid of any!VirginiaAnd I do want them in a cute color because I’m me. Preferably in a cute color. I would love a turquoise or maybe a hot pink, just manifesting that to the universe right now.CorinneOkay, well, we’ll check in about snow pants next month.VirginiaWhen spring will be coming and I don’t need them anymore. It might be a passing whim.Alright, we’re going to get into questions.CorinneI’m going to read the first question because I have no idea what it’s talking about. I would be very curious to hear your thoughts on the 1000 hours outside trend. It feels like the 75 hard for parenting. VirginiaYou don’t know about 1000 hours outside? CorinneWho? No. Wait, what? By when? Virginia1000 hours per year.CorinnePer year!?! Oh my gosh!Virginia1000 hours outside is an Instagram account with 653,000 followers—except not Corinne. It is founded by a Michigan mom of five. She has also published a book about this. And it is a mission. It is a resolution. It is a lifestyle. The whole goal is that every year, we’re going to spend 1000 hours outside. They say it’s “a movement to reclaim childhood, reconnect families, and live a fuller life.”CorinneFor anyone wondering, that’s 41 days!! Virginia41 days that you will be outdoors with your kids.CorinneSo if you just go camping for 41 days, you’ll be done.VirginiaLike, that’s hard. CorinneNo big deal.VirginiaThere are these charts she puts up about how, this time of year when the weather is cold you only have to do like an hour a day. But then once the weather gets warmer, you’re going to need to be doing three hours a day to hit it. There’s all this math people do about it.CorinneIs this like 10,000 steps where it is just a random number or does that come from somewhere?VirginiaOne thousand hours is clearly a random number. I mean, I don’t know the backstory on how she got there. Who has who has ever spent 41 days outside? CorinneSorry, I’m just like really focused on the numbers. Three hours a day outside? VirginiaI just sent you a link to the post that breaks down how many hours per day over the course of the year you want to do.CorinneWho can spend five hours a day outside? VirginiaWell in May and June, people don’t have jobs so it’s fine. They can spend five hours a day outside.CorinneOh, okay. Okay. Sure. Yeah. Okay. VirginiaYou know how everybody quits work in June and July and just goes outside.CorinneBut it’s for kids? Or it’s for adults??VirginiaIt’s for everybody, Corinne. But it’s definitely for families. It’s a family resolution you would make. There is, obviously, so much privilege involved. You need to have lots of access to outdoor space, and things to do out there, and the desire to be out there all the time in bugs and cold and rain and whatever.So you need to afford the gear. You need the $300 snow pants, right? I was thinking about that this weekend, my kids had a blast playing in the snow. I spent a bunch of money this year because they had outgrown all their snow gear. I probably spent $500 at Land’s End on really good snow gear for them this year. And I did size up, so hopefully we’ll get many years out of it all. The older one will pass down hers to the younger one. But $500 on snow suits and snow pants and mittens is not within reach of every family, at all.CorinneRight and your kids definitely aren’t spending an hour outside in the snow in January if they don’t have snow gear.VirginiaNo, absolutely not. Snow play is a nightmare if you don’t have the right gear. Your kid is crying and cold and it takes you 20 minutes to get them into whatever you have. Then you get out there and they’re crying and cold so fast. It’s terrible.CorinneIt’s also kind of assuming that you will be monitoring this, like your kid doesn’t go to daycare or have a babysitter.VirginiaI guess you can count it if they go outside at recess at school? Which not all schools are able to support at all times of the year. We can unpack why that’s not ideal for education, but the resources of many schools are such that they do indoor recess when the weather is bad. So yes, there is a lot of implied classism and elitism. And I’m sure I would not have to dig too deep to intersect with the anti-fatness, like I’m sure there is some underlying “this prevents the scourge of childhood obesity” rhetoric.And yet, I will be honest, almost every January I look at this woman’s account and think, should we do it? This is one of those resolution culture things that does sit in my brain because because in the winter your kids tend to have more screen time. You’re not getting outside very much and you start to feel guilty about it. And it’s because of accounts like this. This is why! But it goes into my brain and I think maybe we should do 1000 hours outside. I don’t know, it’s pretty doable. In the summer, we do go outside a lot. And then I remember that tracking things makes me unhappy in a lot of ways! I can imagine no faster way to suck the fun out of going outdoors than if I had some chart up where I was like, okay, guys, next time you go outside, fill in this box. We haven’t been outside enough, you have got to get out there. I don’t know if 75 Hard is the right parallel, but it definitely feels the same as step counting where it seems like this kinder, gentler way into movement, but can also become really restrictive and controlling, and setting yourself up for feeling like a failure. CorinneWell, it feels like you’re setting like a goal that will drastically improve everything. But then you kind of just take the joy out of stuff that should be joyful.VirginiaPeople, I’m sure, are going to say they’ve tried it and have had all different experiences. I am someone who sort of forgets to go outside when the weather is bad. And when I do go outside, I’m then like, right. I’m a nicer person when I go outside. You know what I mean? It’s one of those annoying things like actually getting up and going outside for 10 minutes can totally reset a bad mood. If my kids are being cranky, going outside is often a fix for it. Like, going outside is great and wonderful. Just let it be great and wonderful. Just do it to whatever extent makes sense and brings you joy and don’t attach metrics and judgment to it. CorinneRight and if it feels helpful for you to someway track it, there are ways you could track it where it would be less daunting! What about just go outside every day? 1000 hours just feels like a lot.VirginiaYeah, this time of year I do often put “outside” on my daily to-do list, just so it will be in my brain somewhere. Because I know I can literally, as a work from home person, I can go a week without leaving my house if I’m not careful, other than like running a quick errand. So I’ll put outside on my to-do list and I won’t get there every day, but it will just sort of jog me to be like, oh, you know what? I’m going to go check the mail anyway, why don’t I take a 10 minute walk? I get wanting to prioritize this and prioritize this with your family but I also know that the idea of tracking it and having such a big number I need to hit feels really daunting and problematic. CorinneI mean, poor parents! They already have so much shit to do and now they have to keep track of 1000 hours outside.VirginiaFor 41 days they have to live in the wilderness.CorinneI feel like when you put it that way, it really does start to seem crazy, right?! Or is it just me?VirginiaThis is really a lot of hours. CorinneOkay, I’m going to read the next question as well. This person says,I am all in on the philosophy you write about here, and it has helped me a lot. I’m currently trying to establish these principles as I raise my two-year-old and figuring out how that looks. I have adopted many of your suggestions, including serving dessert with dinner, which so far has worked well for us. I have a specific question related to sugar and immune systems. We have been getting absolutely destroyed by illness brought home from daycare. So much so that I sought out additional help from a naturopath. I haven’t really ventured into non-conventional medicine territory before but I figured why not try? I was told at the appointment that white sugar can depress the immune system and that I should try to avoid it. Thoughts on this?VirginiaI have thoughts. I have thoughts.CorinneThis is such a pervasive idea.VirginiaAnd there is nothing to it. It is not true that eating sugar weakens your immune system. All of the research on this is either experiments they’re doing in petri dishes (where they’re injecting cell samples with stuff and studying how the cells respond) or it’s research on mice. And you can do a lot of things to mice. But that doesn’t mean it is true for humans as well. This is infancy stage research. And yet, if you google this, you will immediately see mainstream news outlets claiming it’s bad for your immune system to eat sugar. But it is based on very minimal data. The best article I found is this link to Business Insider. We’re going to ignore the very fatphobic framing of this article because most of it is helpful:The idea that sugar weakens the immune system likely arose in the early '70s, when a study was published reporting that phagocytes, a type of white blood cell that kills bacteria and pathogens, were less active in people who had recently consumed straight sugar or sugary foods, including honey and orange juice. The measurements were taken within 5 hours of sugar consumption. However, over the last 4.5 decades, this study's results have yet to be replicated and there are no other studies proving that sugar directly impacts the immune system. In fact, the average healthy adult, will clear simple sugars from their system within two hours, says Peter Mancuso, an associate professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Michigan. "It's only people with diabetes where [blood sugar levels] could be high enough to impair immune function. Even a liter of Coke a day would be unlikely to impair immune function," Mancuso says.So, we had one study in the early 1970s done on humans that got everyone panicked, and then they were never able to replicate the results. And then we have a handful of studies on cells in petri dishes and mice. And that’s what the naturopath community is pulling from. I read many articles about this and whenever I clicked through to see what their citations were, they were rats and petri dishes. Or studies on people with severe diabetes, talking about hyperglycemia. Hyperglycemia is not eating a lot of sugar. It has nothing to do with eating a lot of sugar. It’s completely unrelated.I don’t want to downplay the immune system concerns for folks with severe diabetes. Of course, that’s a very serious issue. But this is a question from a mom of a toddler in preschool.So no, you don’t need to cut out sugar. CorinneAnd what does Laura have to say? VirginiaI emailedLaura Thomas, PhD, RNutrwho is a great dietitian who specializes in family feeding. I wanted to make sure I was not missing something in the research. She wrote back, “Okay, well, how would this even work because our brains run on glucose? You need to eat sugar.” Excellent point, Laura. And then she says:There is no evidence that cutting sugar out of your diet would make the immune system less susceptible to kid’s bugs. The only evidence-based approach to boost the immune system is to get vaccinated, so your body can produce antibodies for a specific antigen Remember, too, that the cells that make up our immune system, like most of the cells in the body, run on glucose, a type of sugar. We don’t need to be scared of it. It literally keeps us going. And then she goes on to talk about how, if you are someone with a history of disordered eating, cutting out a food group in order to achieve a specific health goal can be really dicey. She says:If this were my client, I would want to make sure 1. that they are eating enough, 2. they aren’t feeling anxious or worried about what they eat. And then if they feel like practicing some gentle nutrition, adding a multivitamin to help meet needs. Adding things in rather than taking things out would be the way to go. And consider: How is your sleep? Are you over-exercising? Which can definitely suppress immune systems. Are you overstressed and anxious? That can also be a factor. But this thing really is everywhere. I’ve seen this all over Instagram lately, too.CorinneAnd there’s that old thing that’s like, starve a fever but feed a cold? Or is it the other way around? I can never remember. I do feel like there’s always all this advice that you shouldn’t eat sugar all the time, but especially when you’re getting sick. Also, like we’re talking about last month, when I’m sick sometimes I crave sugar more, I think just because it’s easy to eat.VirginiaAnd this parent is feeding a two-year-old! Life is hard enough. We don’t need to be adding in this anxiety that letting them have white sugar is depressing their immune system. There is no scientific support for this. CorinneAnd isn’t starting daycare also a classic time that you get tons of sickness?VirginiaWhat your child is experiencing is what every child in daycare experiences. I mean, my younger kid is six and this is the first winter I feel like we haven’t been just relentlessly pummeled by sickness. And both my kids have already still at least missed one day of school. Kid sickness is a fact of life. It is a very irritating fact of life. CorinneEspecially if it’s a young kid that’s just starting to be around tons of other kids for the first time. Also, toddlers are notoriously not that great at washing hands. VirginiaIf you’re going to have your two-year-old work on something, rather than cutting out sugar, work on hand washing.CorinnePretty sure I once went to a two-year-old’s birthday party where everyone then got norovirus. VirginiaThat sounds right.CorinneIt wasn’t the sugar. VirginiaIt was not the cupcakes.All right, I will read the next question.I would love to have a discussion of how everyone keeps it together when they go out on a limb to do the right thing in terms of fat activism and get shot down. I found I do okay asking someone once to meet a need. But if their response is to defend the inaccessibility, or if they placate me in conversation, but don’t make real change, I get angry or depressed. In particularly egregious cases, I’ll stop going to the business. But that’s not always possible. How do you keep your spirits intact?CorinneI feel like there’s actually a difference between fat activism and what this person is feeling discouraged by, which is asking for their accessibility needs to be met. When I think of fat activism, I’m thinking of stuff that you’re doing in solidarity with other people, not necessarily just for your own needs to be met. And I think that can be really rewarding and fulfilling and feel good. But I think relentlessly having to ask to be able to access stuff that you should be able to access is really exhausting and depressing. That would make anyone angry. So I just want to validate that that’s really real. And I think yes, stopping going to that business, if it is possible is a reasonable response.VirginiaI wasn’t sure from the way the question got worded if they were asking about their own accessibility needs or trying to advocate, maybe as a straight-sized person at a restaurant being like, “Wow, you have only shitty small chairs,” or whatever.CorinneThat’s a good point. VirginiaBut I think your point is better and really important to say, because I think a lot of folks listening to this are in that position, all the time, of having to advocate for themselves. And I guess I would say, if that’s you, let’s think about how to ask friends and allies to do some of that work for you. It shouldn’t be your job to ask all the time if we’re working on building fat community and fat allied community like this. How can those of us with more privilege make that road smoother for folks who are facing those barriers?CorinneI do think it is frustrating to ask for things to change and for them to not change. I also think it’s like pretty normal, unfortunately. Is this too depressing? How do you keep your spirits intact?VirginiaI’m thinking about the tip you gave on the last Extra Butter episode. You talked about how it’s helpful when you have a bad experience at the gym or whatever, to go on Instagram and vent about it. This can be helpful because then you’ll get some validation and affirmation from your community. VirginiaSo even if you don’t have a friend who can go with you in the moment and do this advocating, figuring out who to come back to, when you need some support. Come tell us about it in the Burnt Toast comments! We will be mad on your behalf and at least then you’re reminded as lonely as it felt to be the person asking and getting shut down, you are not the only person doing that asking or who cares about this.Oh and that recent thread where everyone shared their ideas for how they’re going to stand up for people fatter than them—that filled me with so much hope. Because there were so many great ideas and people taking small steps, taking big steps, whatever. But just like, oh, right, there are so many of us trying. That is helpful.CorinneMaybe the answer is more about how you build your own tolerance and resiliency around this stuff. Because it’s not necessarily realistic to expect drastic, immediate change. I would wonder about can you start a space or an event or something that feels more accessible and lead by example in that way? That might feel more rewarding than getting shut down by other people.VirginiaI also think that sometimes the reason people defend inaccessibility or placate but don’t make change is—and this isn’t to defend those shitty actions, which are shitty. But I think a reason that happens is because people cannot envision what the alternative would look like. They don’t understand what you’re asking them to do.So it can help, again, coming back to your community. If you’ve been talking to your doctor’s office about seating and blood pressure cuffs and they’re like, “how would we ever manage to do that?” Finding an example of a place that’s doing it and offering that up as a resource. Sometimes it takes them being able to see this isn’t this crazy, outlandish idea. This is something that other places are doing as a matter of course. We could do this, we could find out where they ordered their gowns from and switch our suppliers, you know? That’s asking you to do a lot of legwork. But, if you’re thinking about, how do I follow up if I got shut down?In schools, too. I get asked to speak at schools and I also hear a lot from readers who are frustrated about the state of their schools. I’m finding there’s just such a range of awareness about this issue. Some schools are at why would we ever change the health curriculum or the cafeteria messaging to be size inclusive and other schools are like, of course, this is a huge priority, where do we start. And so being able to pull examples from other places.CorinneI do also think it’s a very natural response to being like told that you’re doing something wrong, essentially, is to be defensive or shut it down. Unfortunately. VirginiaThat’s kind of a human response. A flawed human response, but it’s a human response.CorinneMaybe just learning to expect that or how to respond to that in a way that feels less  stressful to you.VirginiaWell, it’s at least maybe helpful to realize that it’s not personal to you. It may be that this person is overworked and stretched thin in their job in a lot of different ways. And it’s not that they want to be an awful human being, but you’re suggesting something that sounds complicated and they don’t know where to start with it. I sound like, I’m being an apologist for people failing to do this work.  If we’re going to work towards change on these things, we have to understand that this issue intersects with so many other issues and it is useful to think through from the person who you’re asking to make the change, think things through from their perspective. Why does it feel hard or limiting? What other hurdles are they facing? Just because they’re never going to make the change if they can’t see their way through that stuff. But also, it’s okay to be really curious when this happens because, and to your earlier point, you shouldn’t have to be consistently asking the world to make space for you. That’s ridiculous. VirginiaAlright. Next question.Do you ask people if calling them fat is okay? I did it once and they were okay with that, but I’m not sure about others. CorinneHmm. Yeah, this is a tough one. Fat is both a neutral descriptor word and also can still be used as like an insult. I don’t think I’ve ever asked anyone directly, is it okay if I call you fat? I think I usually follow people’s lead on that and also try to lead by example by using that word with myself. I think what I would say instead of fat is like, in a larger body, which we’ve talked about before. It’s like a little euphemistic, but also just like less—VirginiaA little more neutral?CorinneYeah, it feels less like a hot topic or something.VirginiaMy first response in reading this was: Why do you need to describe people’s bodies for them?CorinneThat’s a good question.VirginiaI have to ask this question as a journalist frequently because I have to describe somebody’s body when writing about them and their experience as a fat person, or a person in a larger body. So I always start by saying: Tell me what words you like and don’t like to describe your body. And then I use only those words.But in my personal life, I don’t find myself having to describe my friends’ bodies, my kids’ bodies, my family members’ bodies. Like, I don’t meet strangers and immediately think how can I describe your body?CorinneGreat points. Tthe way you’re asking that in a journalistic context is a good way to ask it, though. Rather than saying, “Is it okay if I call you fat?” which could be upsetting to someone who doesn’t think of themselves that way, saying, “What language do you like to use?”VirginiaBecause what context do you need to label my body for me? I don’t know. Something about that seems off. Obviously, if you’re a journalist, and I think medical professionals would do great to ask this question at the start of appointments. I want doctors to not just assume that your patient wants to hear the o words, they probably don’t. So there are definitely professional scenarios where I get it.With friends, I think I would do exactly what you’re saying. Follow their lead, identify myself how I want to be identified and not assume that I need to use words about their body for them. CorinneNext question.I have a baby due in two weeks and I need book recs! Any good pre-orders coming soon? New books? Fiction, too.VirginiaFirst of all, bless this person that they think they’re going to get a lot of reading done with a baby due in two weeks. CorinneI couldn’t tell if they’re asking for books about like raising a baby or if they wanted books to read.VirginiaWell they said fiction, too.Your mileage may vary.Amy Palanjianis my best friend but I did almost break up with her when she told me how much she read during one of her maternity leaves. Because baby Tula was a very easy baby who slept a ton, and I think Amy just like lay in bed with her reading all the time? And Amy, I’m still mad and jealous about that. Anyway! I didn’t read for the first year of either of my children’s lives, like other than necessity for work. That part of my brain just didn’t work. I was like I need easy, soft, comforting television. I’m rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I’m rewatching The West Wing. I’m not watching anything that was made after 2002. I have reverted completely to comfort zone.CorinneWhat about an audiobook?VirginiaAudiobooks seem great, sure. I don’t know, my brain didn’t work to retain information for at least a few months. But nevertheless, I’m happy to give some book recs.For pre-orders, this is a really funny one to lead with. This person didn’t share context about their life, but I’m assuming baby due in two weeks means maybe this is a partnered person. And I’m still going to say go ahead and preorder lyz Lenz’s This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life. It comes out this month. It’s fantastic! If you want some extremely readable, funny, smart, well researched nonfiction exploding the institution of heterosexual marriage and how it has undermined women for generations, that seemed like a good thing to read on maternity leave.CorinneYeah, why not?VirginiaWhat do you have Corinne?CorinneI wish I had some good fiction recs. The thing that came to mind was Harry Potter or something. VirginiaOh, that’s fun. CorinneSomething where there is a lot of volume and it’s easy to listen to. But I hesitate to recommend JK Rowling.VirginiaYeah, obviously. But it is a great fantasy series. CorinneWhat’s the one everyone is reading right now? VirginiaA Court of Thorns and Roses.CorinneYeah, that one.VirginiaPeople love that one. A good fantasy rabbit hole seems like a great place to go down. That’s not super challenging. Emily Henry has a new book coming out called Funny Story. If we want light, non-challenging romance fiction. It’s not very sexy romance, just so you understand. It’s more rom-com. But that feels like a nice easy one. I have recommended before The Secret Scientists of London trilogy, which is a good feminist romance set in Regency England about a group of secret lady scientists and then their various love affairs and shenanigans. So that would also and there’s three of those. So that would be another good easy audiobook or easy read.CorinneListeners, other recommendations?VirginiaAnd I want to hear… well, I maybe I don’t want to hear if you read a lot during your maternity leave! I might just be jealous. It’s okay. I’m reading a lot now that my children are 6 and 10. I also just want to say if you have this baby number one, congratulations. I hope it goes wonderfully. Hope you get lots of sleep. Number two, if you find you’re unable to read any of these things, do not feel bad about it. It will come back. It might not be the season of life that’s a lot of reading for you. But maybe it will be and that’s great.CorinneThat’s fair. I have not had a baby and I still really go through seasons with reading.  VirginiaIt can be a very ebb and flow kind of thing.But for sure, if you’re not sleeping, it can really be in an ebb. CorinneOkay, Virginia, this is a question for you.What is your TV choice for puzzling?VirginiaThis is a very good question, because you cannot puzzle and look at the screen at the same time. So nothing with subtitles, no shows with strong accents because I sometimes like to put subtitles on for a show with strong accents. That’s not going to work for me which is unfortunate. And also, some shows have more non dialog stretches than other shows. Like moody following a character walk and I’m like, I can can’t work with this.CorinneExchanging glances. It needs to all be verbalized. Gilmore Girls.VirginiaYeah, I need the snappy dialogue. So yeah Gilmore Girls, obviously a good one. I have just finished Bridgerton and the spin off series Queen Charlotte, those were great puzzle shows. Did you watch either of those? CorinneI haven’t watched Queen Charlotte, but I did watch and really enjoy Bridgerton.VirginiaI think Queen Charlotte is even better. I don’t know if that’s an unpopular take. That’s my take.CorinneI had watched Bridgerton with my mom and she started Queen Charlotte and said she didn’t like it so I didn’t even try.VirginiaWow. Okay, well, I don’t want to go against Corinne’s mom.CorinneI know. She likes a lot of your book recommendations, too. So surprising. VirginiaI thought it wasfascinating. It is a real love story of single women. Especially older women like just like kicking ass. I mean, there is the love story of Queen Charlotte and King George and I had mixed feelings about that, to be honest with you. But Queen Charlotte is a really amazing character. I felt lukewarm about King George. He was pretty high maintenance. But I really loved it. Lady Danbury forever. CorinneOkay, so Gilmore Girls and Bridgerton. Queen Charlotte.VirginiaThose are my recent ones. I’m watching all of Modern Family with my 10-year-old right now. We’re getting through it. There are so many seasons. I don’t think I watched them all the first time around. Any light sitcom definitely works, too. I can puzzle away during that. CorinneSo when you’re watching TV with your 10-year-old, is that when you’re doing most of your TV puzzling?VirginiaYes, yes. CorinneIs she also puzzling?VirginiaNo, she is curled up in a blanket eating a burrito. That’s her preferred evening TV mode. CorinneThat sounds lovely. VirginiaBut we watch shows together every night and so I puzzle during that time, and then when she’s not with me is when I watch Bridgerton and Queen Charlotte because they are not 10-year-old appropriate. A little bit too sexy. She can handle some but I don’t need to have to unpack it all.CorinneTotally.VirginiaAll right. Next question.Help. I need snack ideas. I get hungry between meals that I keep thinking I need healthy snacks. We have done Friday threads about snacks so we have talked about favorite snacks. But I really picked this question because I want to talk about this healthy snack concept. CorinneYeah! I mean, I would say if you’re feeling hungry between meals, and you need a snack, any snack is healthy! Eating a snack is healthy. VirginiaEating is healthy. Eating when you’re hungry is healthy.CorinneSnacking is healthy. What are the healthy snacks you’re thinking you need? Like an apple?VirginiaI feel like it’s probably an apple. Grape tomatoes. Some kind of fruit or celery sticks.CorinneI definitely am never eating grape tomatoes as a snack. But I do like an apple and cheese or cucumbers and cream cheese or something.VirginiaI actually like grape tomatoes if I—this a little high maintenance—but if I cut them put on some good sea salt and olive oil and have a nice piece of sourdough with them. A whole little situation there. CorinneThat does sound good. VirginiaAnd some cheese, too.CorinneI would also say candy. I like candy as a snack. Chocolate.VirginiaSomeone suggested peanut butter cups in a live thread, and I was like, why am I not eating more peanut butter cups? That is such a good snack. CorinneMy snacks often involve cheese, like sometimes just straight up cheese. Or a quesadilla.VirginiaI’m on a white cheddar and Triscuits kick right now. I had forgotten all about Triscuits for like, I don’t know, 20 years. They are salty and really good.CorinneThey have those rosemary ones that are also really good.VirginiaI feel like yogurt gets suggested as a snack a lot and yogurt is not enough for me. I will be hungry after I eat a yogurt. I don’t understand the yogurt thing. CorinneI agree. I guess I’m maybe a little cold right now but yogurt seems so cold. I want a warm snack. What else? Chips?VirginiaChips are always good. I definitely think you want a little fat and protein, not to be nutrition-y about it. You want some carbs, you want some fat, you want some protein, you want some salt. You want that mix to be satisfying. I think that’s another thing where the healthy snack messaging can underserve you. I’m just thinking back to my women’s magazine days, and so many pages that were photos of healthy snack ideas and it was like two cubes of cheese and a small handful of pretzels. Very restrained, produce heavy, and just not enough fat or carbs. CorinneMore like half a bag of pretzels and half a block of cheese.VirginiaYou may be thinking a snack needs to be very small. Give yourself permission to actually decide how hungry you are for the snack. I think that’s important. The healthy snack mentality—I apologize, again, for my women’s magazine years. I think we did a number on us. CorinneWhat was Obama’s thing? Like seven almonds?VirginiaThe saddest ever of snacks! I think he was trolling the reporter.CorinneOh, really? That’s hilarious. That makes much more sense.VirginiaI want that to be true. Although, when we combine that information with what we know about Michelle Obama and feelings about snacking, I don’t know if it was true.[Update: It wasn’t true, but it was still…pretty diet-y.]CorinneI will also say I feel like nuts is a popular “healthy snack” and Nuts also aren’t usually enough for me. Not even like a hearty handful. I need it with something else.VirginiaI need my nuts to be mixed with cereal and some chocolate chips. CorinneHere’s another question for you because I have no idea.VirginiaI feel like you do know the answer to this one, though.CorinneHow elaborate does a five year old’s birthday party need to be? I will just say I’m struggling with the same question for myself. How elaborate does a 38-year-old’s birthday party needs to be?VirginiaI’m going to say a 38-year-old’s birthday party needs to be much more elaborate.CorinneI am heading in a more elaborate direction. VirginiaA five-year-old’s birthday party does not need to be elaborate at all, full stop. Period, end of sentence. Every parent of every other five-year-old you invite to that party will be more grateful the less elaborate you make it. Because when one child has an elaborate birthday party, they ruin it for everybody. They are a drain on the system. CorinneThat is a great point. VirginiaI do not need that pressure. I do not need to hear about the birthday party with the magician and the 74 craft projects. I do not need to hear about how someone rented out some big elaborate place.CorinneDo you have ideas about what good non-elaborate birthday party ideas are?VirginiaWell, I have hosted two five-year-old birthday parties. The thing that’s tricky about five is that in a lot of places, you are still going to have a mix of some parents are fine to drop off their kid and some parents are going to want to stay. Birthday parties get much easier once you fully move into drop-off years because then it’s like whatever happens stays at the party. There are no parents judging. The kids figure it out. You can kind of just let them be. My birthday parties have gotten less and less intense because I’m like, “Okay, have two friends for sleepover. Have two friends over to swim.” I don’t care. I mean, I do think one very simple activity is useful as a starting point. Because often five-year-olds coming in, they’re going to be a little nervous or a little weird. At Beatrix’s fifth birthday party, we had these balloons that you could put unicorn face stickers on, to make a unicorn balloon when you walk in. It was just putting stickers on the balloon. Very simple. Otherwise, you just want there to be a place for them to run around, and some pizza and cake. Don’t overthink it because they’ll figure it out. Kids are going to play, they don’t need more than that. Your party should be no more than two hours because you are going to be exhausted. And you do not need goodie bags. That is an unpopular opinion, but I stand by it. And you should not have your child open presents in front of everybody because that always makes somebody feel weird and sad and is boring.CorinneOh, I love that advice. I feel like that was always such a stressful part.VirginiaOh, I hated that as a child! I hated opening my presents in front of other people. What if I didn’t like it? And I hated watching other kids open their presents. I will never forgot that someone’s 10th birthday party I went to where I didn’t know it was a birthday party because it was on Halloween, so I thought it was a Halloween party and I didn’t bring a present. And then everyone was like, “where’s your present?”CorinneYeah, that’s so traumatic.VirginiaYeah, these things leave scars. Just don’t make a big deal about the presents.---ButterVirginiaMy Butter was going to be Queen Charlotte, but we already talked about Queen Charlotte. So I’m going to give another Butter which is for this metal insulated thermos thing, which I got for making hot chocolate.CorinneWhat kind of hot chocolate are you making?VirginiaI just use mixes, like the hot chocolate powder, that I mix with warm milk. I am partial to the Ghirardelli brand mix because obviously, with my brownie affiliation.CorinneSponsor us, Ghirardelli.VirginiaWe don’t take sponsors, but we would take that one.CorinneJust kidding, we don’t take sponsors.Virginia.That is the one sponsor we would happily take.Okay, so I bought this thermos pot thing before Christmas because we did a hot chocolate bar at Christmas, which was really fun. And it was so helpful because you can make a whole bunch and then it’ll just stay hot on the counter for a couple hours. It’s the type where you push the top down and it dispenses.CorinneOkay, yeah, I’m going to say this is not called a thermos. VirginiaOkay, what do you call it? CorinneAren’t they called push pots or something? VirginiaOkay, it’s a push pot. Is that a term?CorinneIt’s like the thing that you dispense coffee from that has the push button on top. It says air pot.VirginiaOkay. It’s a thing where you push the top, it’s an air pot.CorinneThis does seem useful. And now that you have said this, now I want one.VirginiaWell it is great for parties. I will tell you my other hack with it was it was when we had our first snowstorm and I knew the kids were going to want to go out and play in the snow right away. And I know because I have been doing this parenting thing for a while that when they come back in, they would want hot chocolate immediately and that there would be tears and recriminations. So I made the hot chocolate and put it in the air port before we went outside. And then when we came in, they just had to fill up their little mugs.CorinneThat is genius. You deserve an award.VirginiaThank you. Thank you. CorinneWell now I want to buy this to use for my 38th birthday party and fill it with hot alcohol?VirginiaYes, you should. You should.CorinneWe’ll see. It looks great. VirginiaOkay, what do you have? CorinneI want to recommend making your own personal In and Out list and I want to say that it’s not too late. There’s no reason you need to do it in January or February, you can do it whenever you want. I feel like it’s fun to reflect on stuff that you feel like you’re done with, and stuff that you want to focus more on. I’ve been having fun just doing it myself and I’ve also been having a lot of fun talking to friends about it, like what they are feeling for the yea and oftentimes discovering that our ins and outs are in direct contrast with each other.VirginiaOh, that’s amazing. Your other friends are like, we love linen pants. CorinneOne of my friends said, hard pants were out and I’m like, white denim is hard pants is in. But yeah, I think it’s just a fun opportunity to reflect and take it as seriously or as silly as you want.VirginiaI want to hear more of your ins and outs.CorinneOkay, well, maybe I’ll put them in the in the transcript. If anyone else does this, send them to me or post them. VirginiaWe can do this as a Friday threat. CorinneOh, I would love that. Because I also want to see yours, Virginia!VirginiaAlright, I’ll work on it. I will say when we were talking about resolution culture, someone commented that they’d seen the in and out list being used for ill intent. Like you could obviously be like, “carbs are out.” Let’s not have any of that! CorinneNo. Carbs are always in. VirginiaThat’s a foregone conclusion. Carbs are in. CorinneAt least the way I do it is, it’s very personal. Like, it’s just stuff that’s in or out for me.VirginiaOkay, I’m down. I’m going to think about it. And we’ll do it in the Friday Thread this week.Alright, guys. Thank you so much for listening to Burnt Toast!---The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.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!

Welcome to a very special episode of Burnt Toast!We recorded this on December 3, at Seattle’s Town Hall, with an absolutely delightful crowd. This was the official end of the Fat Talk book tour, but I promise it’s not a regular book promo conversation. Because it’s Angela Garbes and me, talking about books sure, but also talking about bodies and big life transitions and other good stuff.Both of Angela’s books, and mine, are available in the Burnt Toast Bookshop!Don’t forget, you can always take 10 percent off that purchase if you also order (or have already ordered!) Fat Talk from Split Rock Books! (Just use the code FATTALK at checkout.)If you’re enjoying the podcast, make sure you’re following us (it’s free!) in your podcast player! We’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Pocket Casts! And while you’re there, please leave us a rating or review. (We like 5 stars!)Episode 126 TranscriptVirginiaWelcome to the first ever live recording of Burnt Toast!This is the podcast about anti-fat bias, diet culture, parenting and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. AngelaAnd I’mAngela Garbes. That’s right. We’re here in Seattle, Washington! Live at Town Hall!VirginiaAngela is my co-host, and hype woman, tonight because we are in Seattle! Thank you, Town Hall. Thank you all, for coming out. Let’s do this! Let’s make a podcast!AngelaSo as you can see, there’s a large projection of Virginia’s book Fat Talk here. We’re here to talk about Virginia’s book, Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture. We’re also going to talk about bodies and we’re going to talk about big life transitions—but we’ll put a little pin in that for the moment.I had the pleasure of reading Fat Talk before it came out, and I remember being so blown away by it. I think in the blurb I wrote like, “Virginia Sole-Smith is a visionary.” But it’s true because Virginia took so many disparate things that I understood about American culture and about bodies and about diet culture and put it all together. One of the things that I was just saying—we had dinner before this. We were talking about the male gaze—you can boo for things like that. VirginiaIt might come up a few times.AngelaBut I was like, when we talk about the male gaze, we’re talking about American culture in many ways. We’re talking about diet culture. And what Virginia helped me see when she threaded together beautifully through research and reportage is that American culture is diet culture is white supremacist culture is anti-fat culture is all of these things. When we talk about one, they are inextricably linked. No matter how much we would like to separate them out, and the powers that be would like us to separate them out, or not talk about them at all, they’re so deeply linked. And she presented that in such a way that I was like, “Well, there’s no turning back now.” I see it differently.The other thing that I love about this book is, it’s about parenting. And I’m the mother of children, but I desperately needed this book for myself! There’s so much that we, as the grownups, have to unlearn. There’s a lot of parenting and reparenting that we have to do for ourselves around diet culture and anti fat bias. Virginia’s work has been very meaningful to me. I was so honored that she asked me to read it. I was so honored when Virginia blurbed my book, and I asked her to blurb mine after. I think we have kind of cute meeting story, actually. We met in our Instagram DMs. VirginiaI think I slipped into your DMs! Or did you slip into mine?AngelaYou slipped into mine. I had posted a picture, when I was working on Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change, of The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image, and Guilt in America, which is Virginia’s first book—which nobody should sleep on! Shout out for The Eating Instinct, real ones know! It was a huge part of my research process and informed several chapters of my book. So I had posted, you know, like, behind the scenes process shot, and one of Virginia’s friends sent the post to her.VirginiaAnd was like, “OMG, Angela Garbes read your book!” And it was a really big deal because Angela is a really big deal. AngelaSo then we had a real meet cute. We’re like, “No, I’m a huge fan.” “No I’m a huge fan.”And now we get to be on stage!VirginiaMutually fangirling. AngelaIn our year of becoming friends.Okay, so we are going to talk about BLTs—big life transitions. I just coined that right now.And one of the hugest transitions—and I know this—as a writer, is when you transition from being in intense research and writing mode, which is private. I mean, you have a podcast and a newsletter, but it’s very intense, private work. Sometimes I feel like until the book is out, I’m just sitting on my ass. That’s all I’ve been doing. Just thinking and having thoughts.What is it like to have published a book that was an instant New York Times bestseller? Which, we don’t live for measures of success! But that’s a pretty big one, right? Any writer who tells you it’s not a big deal is lying. So it’s been an intense time of having that come out. I’d love to know, what does it feel like to have been living with this book out in public to have it be a transformative book for your career and what has the transition to book promotion been like? VirginiaWell, some really good advice you gave me back in the spring was: You won’t really know how to answer that question for three years. So I don’t totally know. But I mean, it’s been a really surreal year, for a lot of reasons. And a lot of that was going from being very private with this conversation, to being very public with this conversation, which of course was the goal of having the conversation—for other people to come to the conversation.And obviously, while researching the book I was pretty sure anti-fat bias was a thing. But publishing a book about anti-fat bias and going out to talk about it as a fat person really confirmed for me that anti-fat bias is alive and well! Mostly for the men who email and send me DMs and have comments.And, you know, I was prepared for it—AngelaI think anyone who writes about fatness…VirginiaAnd is a woman on the Internet… AngelaYou expect a certain amount of feedback and trolling, I guess. VirginiaBut you’re still somehow surprised by how personal it can feel at times. Which isn’t to say it’s always upsetting! Like, Steve on the internet telling me that he doesn’t find me attractive is not something that’s keeping me up at night. The DMs that are like, “but men don’t like fat chicks.” I didn’t actually write this book for them? So it’s okay. I’m not looking for that. And look, although I do identify as a fat person and have lived for the last decade or so in a fat body, I was a skinny kid and then a thin younger adult, through intensive dieting efforts, not through genetics. So I grew up with a lot of thin privilege, which is a concept I talk about in the book. Thin privilege is the experience of the world as being built for your body. You fit into the seats on airplanes, the chairs here are supporting your body. You’re not worried when you go to an event like this, will the chair hold me?And I’m still what’s called small fat, which is on the lower end of the plus side spectrum. So there are a lot of ways that being fat doesn’t negatively impact my daily life because I’m not experiencing the constant oppression that folks in bigger bodies are experiencing. But going out as a Public Fat Person kind of inches you a little closer to that experience. So it gave me a firsthand appreciation of: This is what we’re asking fat people to navigate all the time without making them New York Times bestsellers. Just because they live in fat bodies, they are going into doctor’s offices unable to access health care. They’re being turned away and told to lose weight before they’re given fertility treatments or other basic medical care. They’re earning less at jobs. And for our kids in schools, they’re experiencing bullying and discrimination on a daily basis. So yeah, it really just drove all that home, thanks to Steve on the internet. AngelaYeah, thanks Steve.Obviously you did a lot of interviews, including Fresh Air with Tanya Mosley. But you told me about one, I’m assuming it was local news?VirginiaNo, it was WGN, Chicago Morning News. It was a live TV interview for the book and the thin white male news anchor audibly sighed before he could talk to me. He was like, “It sounds like you blame parents for being concerned with their kids’ health?” He was so upset to have me there. AngelaPeople really don’t want to hear this stuff.  The average size of females in America is a 16 or an 18, right? There is this idea of the standard of beauty, which is thinness, which is whiteness, like, we’re coming for you. That was a construct and it’s falling away. VirginiaIn the book, I unpack everything that’s wrong with the BMI, but yes, around 60 percent of Americans have an overweight or obese BMI. So in terms of bias, this is everyone. This is not a tiny, marginalized group of people who, even if it was tiny, wouldn’t deserve the treatment they get, of course. But like, this is everyone. AngelaThis is the majority of the population. VirginiaWe can’t pretend it doesn’t exist. This is humans in bodies. AngelaSo we spent some time on Steve on the internet. But by and large, the reception and the process of being out in the world with this book is, I’m hoping, has been positive.VirginiaI get teary just thinking about the emails I’ve gotten from parents saying this helps me think about how to keep my kids safe in the bodies that they have, how to advocate for them at the pediatrician’s office. It is marketed as a parenting book, but people saying “I don’t have kids, but this is helping me understand stuff that I experienced in my own childhood.”One person said to me, “For so long, I understood my body as a problem, that it was my job and my responsibility to make myself fit in as opposed to understanding this is a whole system that wasn’t built for my body. And that’s a systemic problem.” Even more exciting to is hearing from doctors, hearing from medical researchers saying, yes, you’re right, we have not been paying attention to the impact of anti-fat bias on people’s health. When we are studying diets, we are never controlling for the fact that when we’re documenting health benefits from weight loss, we’re never documenting the fact that if you lose some degree of weight, you will experience less anti-fatness. And that might be some of the reasons that your health appears, quote unquote, better, right? Because the world is now treating you differently, because suddenly you’re able to access the health care you weren’t able to access before. It’s opening doors, and maybe that’s the problem. Maybe it’s not how do we make everyone thinner so that they can be treated better? Maybe we flip that a little bit. AngelaI mean, that’s really a dream, as writers who work in this space of service journalism, but also wanting to give voice to these things, and then be like, hey, this is going on, this is important. This is significant. That feeling of, I don’t know, sometimes I feel like, I’m part of changing the cultural conversation. But that’s so nebulous. Like, what is that? But hearing from someone like that, it’s small, but it’s significant. That idea of change happening within those institutions is huge. VirginiaIf we can change the way weight and health get studied, to make sure any study on weight and health has to examine the presence of weight stigma and the impact on people’s health. They have to look at when people go on diets and lose weight in the short term and you get excited because their biomarkers improve, what happens to them in five years when the weight has been regained, both in terms of physical health, but also in terms of things like disordered eating and increased rates of eating disorders. None of that is getting tracked most of the time because of all of this baked in bias that says, well, fat people must want to lose weight that must make them healthier.AngelaI’m thinking about when I wrote my first book which was about pregnancy and why don’t we know anything about pregnancy? Why hasn’t it been studied? The idea that just having a fat body is like an aberration, not just a variance of a body or just having a different body. I learned this when writing Like a Mother that it wasn’t until 1993 that Congress passed a law saying that if you receive funding for clinical trials from like the federal government, which is most clinical trials and anything in a research based institution, you have to include females and people of color. Our very definition, not even just of health and wellness, of like what a human being is, doesn’t include most of us who are here. We’re up against really nothing less than that. So it’s really heartening to hear about change. VirginiaMost studies that are done on anorexia nervosa, or actually most eating disorders, use BMI cut offs when they screen for applicants. So people with a BMI above 25, which is the cutoff for the “normal” range, don’t get included in the study. Because they think that fat people don’t get eating disorders. So then we have no research on the fact that actually that happens quite a lot. Because when fat people engage in disordered eating relationships, doctors are likely to congratulate us, ask us to do it more, ask us to go further with it. That bias, those are people’s lives we’re talking about. One of the most deadly mental health conditions. AngelaOkay, do you want to talk about our our own big life transitions and how our bodies are doing with that? Because it takes a little bit of what’s hard and what’s good and what is just showing up in our vessels every day. We’ve continued throughout this year, with lots of text messages and DMs about these changes that we’ve made in our life, which is that I am coming up on one year of sobriety. I made that change for a number of reasons. One being that I realized I was an alcoholic. But so that’s big. I’m 11 months sober. And there are so many changes that show up in my body.And Virginia’s big news, if you don’t know—I’ll let you say. What’s going on in your life, Virginia? VirginiaOh, I’m getting divorced. So that’s a big change. You can clap! That’s right, you can clap that one, too. Thank you all for not just immediately going awwww. It’s good, it’s a hard thing. But a good thing. AngelaSo I’d like to ask you, the experience of separating and getting a divorce and being in the process of that—how does your body feel in that? Where do you see that showing up? VirginiaI’ve talked about this a little bit on the podcast already, but there has been this real freedom in how I feel about my body. I’m not going to talk negatively about my ex husband, who’s a really good guy and a good dad. But suddenly my body is not in relationship to anyone else. I mean, it’s also being out of the early years of motherhood, where your body belongs to your children so intensely. AngelaI think that’s a huge piece of it. VirginiaWe don’t talk enough about that. AngelaMy youngest child is now five and she and I are still very close, but it’s different. It’s just different. I’m not wiping anything anymore. There’s a lot less contact with fluids.VirginiaI’m allowed to pee with the door closed, which feels big. This is an established thing now, that company is not welcome.AngelaSo you have freedom from your children.VirginiaThere’s just this added layer, which is really interesting. It wasn’t immediate. And I think at first—this was the male gaze thing we were talking about—I was very aware of when I would be alone in my house, when my kids would be at their dad’s. The first few weekends, I felt like I was watching myself. I was observing my body still. Maybe my brain was like, well, no one’s watching you anymore, so I will. Like, someone should still be watching, right?Because especially for women, this is how we’re conditioned, to always assume our bodies will be somewhat objectified and to self-objectify our bodies. This is diet culture, teaching us that even when you’re just existing in your home, just watching tv on the couch…AngelaSomehow how you look still really matters.VirginiaSome part of my brain had really bought into that, despite the fact that it’s been almost a decade since I was last actively dieting, and trying to make myself smaller. It helped me identify that there’s this way that I’ve still been feeling like I need to contain or control this aspect of my body. So that’s been really interesting. I mean, the other piece that’s interesting is, if you get on DivorceTok—which I don’t recommend. But if you’re on TikTok, and you start getting getting fed divorce content, you’re going to come across the Revenge Body concept pretty fast. AngelaTell us more. There was an audible gasp.VirginiaPeople had a big feeling about that.So the Revenge Body is basically the idea that as soon as you get divorced, you need to start losing weight and be as hot as possible so that you can get your next man and also make your ex feel bad, I guess. And I just want no part of that. That’s not anything I’m interested in.And what’s really insidious about the revenge body is that often the narrative is, I was so stressed out by my divorce that I started losing weight, isn’t that great. Shouldn’t I ride that train all the way? AngelaShouldn’t I ride that unhealthy train into the sunset?VirginiaCorrect. Like, “Thank God, I went through this trauma that caused me to lose weight and now I can keep losing weight.”AngelaBut—correct me if I’m wrong—isn’t part of getting a divorce so you can you can worry less about what that person thinks of you?VirginiaI mean, one would hope. One would hope that would be a big part of it. But when trauma equals weight loss, we consider that a good thing. I’ve heard people say like, “Oh, when I got divorced, the weight just fell off me. I was so stressed out, I just couldn’t eat, I couldn’t eat.”I can eat still. I’m doing great with eating. I’m really doing it multiple times a day, like lots of different food groups. It’s going really well and I’m happy about that. AngelaOne might say, it’s helping you survive. And not just divorce, but life. VirginiaYes. When did we decide that not eating is the right way to respond to stress? That this is a desired effect of stress, that it would hone your body down. I want no part of that. I’m really happy I’m still eating.I mean, I understand there is a spectrum of experiences, right? I’ve had friends get divorced and say “this appetite loss is super scary.” And they don’t want to be congratulated for that. But the other thing we often hear about fat people is like, what trauma caused that body? And so why are we congratulating people for achieving Revenge Body, but demonizing people who respond to trauma by eating?AngelaWe should be asking thin people that: What trauma caused this? What racist oppressive system caused this? VirginiaExactly. I think the bottom line is: Don’t talk about people’s bodies when they’re going through big life stuff. And maybe just don’t congratulate people’s bodies ever? Don’t assume that weight loss is always good. Don’t assume that weight gain is always bad. AngelaThat’s something I think about a lot as I get older. I used to have this fixed idea of what my body was—pregnancy will really do a number on you with that, right? VirginiaTurns out, nothing is fixed. AngelaBut now I’m always like, oh, like, I’ve seen my friends go through this. Our bodies change all the time for different reasons. And now that I’m in this nebulous perimenopausal zone, I feel like my body is changing in ways. And it’s like, it’s always meant to do this. VirginiaIt’s constantly meant to do it. AngelaSo the idea of tying your body size to any sort of reflection of how you are, is flawed from the beginning, right? VirginiaI get into this in the book because the narrative we give kids about puberty is really rooted in anti-fatness. We basically say to kids, it’s going to be awful, your body is going to change. You’re not going to know what’s going on. Like, it’s so bad. It’s so scary. Periods, boobs, whatever—all of this is terrible, and to be avoided. And we really idealize a skinny child’s body, which first of all, not all kids are skinny! There are lots of fat kids before puberty. Their bodies are great. But I remember this is a former skinny kid, being afraid of the puberty weight gain which was being built up as this huge, scary thing. What if we reframed that narrative with kids, and said: Bodies are changing forever. You’re going to go through a huge amount of change in the next few years. And, you’re still going to be you. Some of it’s going to be weird. Some of it’s going to be great. Your experience is your experience. AngelaEspecially to young girls, to be like: This is your body helping you take up space in the world. Because that’s the other fear is you get too big. We’re like, “We don’t want the girls to get too big and demand things.”VirginiaWell, it’s fear of fatness. It’s also fear of sexuality. Girls becoming more easily sexualized, there are just a lot of layers there. But it really comes down to, instead of saying there’s something really messed up about our culture that a grown man would hit on a fifth grader with boobs, we’re like, “How do we get this fifth grader with boobs to look as much like a little child as possible?” But: Some 10 year olds have boobs. That’s a normal way to have a body. And we make it the child’s problem, which then sets girls up to feel like I’m just in this race to control my body as much as possible, take up as little space as possible. AngelaI’m just thinking about something that I think I heard or had this thought six or seven years ago that is something that I come back to all the time, which is: A body or a person is never a problem. I feel like I needed to hear that every day as a child. But I think about it now. It’s like, no, there are other factors, right? It’s never just you. It’s never inherently you. It’s not a thing that you need to fix. VirginiaAnd I think this is the number one message I hope anyone who either is a parent or works with kids in any way takes away from the book and that I hope any kids who read the book at some point takeaway. We want kids to understand their body is never a problem to be solved. Your body is to be trusted, for kids in all body sizes. This isn’t like, asterisk, as long as you stay thin.And the problem is is right now so many of us, because of the culture we live in, the water we’re all swimming in, we’re always attaching an asterisk. We’re putting these conditions on who’s allowed to take up space, who’s allowed to feel safe in their bodies who’s allowed to love their bodies. That’s the fundamental thing we need to change.AngelaI want to go back to this idea that your body is just for you. Does that freedom feel like relief? Does it look like sweat pants on a day to day basis? VirginiaFor sure, sweatpants.It’s a thing I didn’t realize I was missing, you know? So I don’t even know exactly what it looks like yet. But I am really enjoying the idea that it is just for me, that there is no external gaze on it. I mean, other than all of you right now, I guess.But when I’m not on a stage, I’m enjoying—I was going to say being invisible, but I don’t mean I want to be invisible. But the privilege of a little bit of invisibility, I guess. I like being past a stage of life where walking down the street—it’s a nice thing about middle age, that you’re no longer constantly receiving feedback from people. AngelaNo longer even being perceived by people. VirginiaRight. So the lack of perception is obviously rooted in ageism and terrible, but also sort of nice sometimes. AngelaSo for me, I’m going to start with positive: Since I got sober, my skin is really, really looking good. It’s really cool. I also just got back from vacation. I look in the mirror and I’m like, whoa. I’m not putting all this stuff into my system that is like, manifesting in my face. Like, it’s less puffy. It’s still very round, but it’s not as puffy. It’s not as pink and it makes me feel really good. It’s a totally vain, silly thing. And it’s not being perceived by anyone but myself in the mirror every day. It feels really good. VirginiaIt’s giving you joy. AngelaThe thing that’s interesting is I didn’t realize it until it didn’t happen. Like what you said, this is the water we swim in. It hadn’t occurred to me—I did not get sober to lose weight. But until I didn’t miraculously lose like 30 pounds, I was like, oh, I thought I thought I would lose weight. VirginiaWell the trauma thing, right? We think, we’ll go through these stressful things and we just won’t be able to eat.AngelaAnd actually, it was the opposite. So I was like, weight isn’t just falling off of my body. That’s interesting. Also, it’s kind of a cliche, but it is true—I don’t know if it’s to replace the sugar that used to be part of drinking, but I’m definitely an ice cream with hot fudge every night guy now. I was like oh, maybe that’s also part of why I’m not losing weight.Like, it’s a change in my body, but the idea that sobriety would, I would be associating that with weight or thinking about it. It was just really interesting to me the way I felt like I was playing myself. I was like, oh, like some little part of me thought this was going to happen and was slightly disappointed that it didn’t. I mean, I feel like I’ve dealt with it and there’s so many more pluses in my life, but…VirginiaWe like you being alive and all.AngelaI like myself being alive. I like self compassion for myself, and all these other things. Also I know that sobriety is a huge investment in my health, mental and physical. This idea of wellness and how it’s just automatically on some level linked to thinness. Even I, who like, I reject this frame, I reject all of that, but it’s like, oh, it’s the call is coming from inside the house. It’s very humbling.VirginiaI mean, think of the way we’re taught to approach weight and pregnancy, right? You’re going to gain this weight, not too much weight, but some approved amount of weight during pregnancy. And then you’re going to lose it of course. People say, “Breastfeed so the weight falls off,” which is a total bullshit myth by the way. We are taught to only embrace change if it equals thinness. There are a lot of transitions in life that we think should automatically lead to thinness, right? It is this insidious narrative that keeps coming up over and over again.It’s helpful just to notice and not beat yourself up. You were programmed to think that way. AngelaYeah. Like I wanted this thing, and then I was like, well, I could stop eating ice cream. or…VirginiaThat sounds crazy. AngelaI can spend my time thinking about this thing that I realized I wanted, or I could enjoy every good thing that’s happened. It is sort of similar to postpartum stuff, where there’s pressure that I think comes mostly from the outside, this idea to lose that weight. If it was me, I’d be like, just leave me alone to continue my fourth trimester crazy period where my body is directly tied to another person’s. Like, just leave me alone. Let me have this body that’s just for that. But instead, you start thinking about external things. VirginiaI feel like there’s some fantasy, too, that these changes will equal more time to work out, more time to be healthy in these very wellness culture-y ways. Even though the reality, as anyone who’s gone through a big life transition knows, is this is not the greatest time to adopt an aggressive new workout routine? Your days are probably chaotic and maybe more downtime and more rest would be nice.But I think all of that is tied into hustle culture and productivity culture. That somehow, whatever changes we’re going through only get gold stars if you can also prove them with your body. AngelaPeople who know me know that one of my lines is, “I work really hard and I’m never trying to work harder.” I grew up in a very, like, you have to excel, excel, excel household. And I’m like low=key lazy, I thought, like, compared to my family. I had a lot of shame around that. Now I’m like, I have a lot of output and I need time to recover and restore.The first month of being sober, I was like, I am a baby, who is feeling all these things that I have purposely been trying not to feel and all I can do is cry and take naps like a baby. I did that a lot.One thing that I realized going forward is part of my healing and taking care of myself is I’m resting and chilling out a lot more. I’m lucky at this particular place in my career and time that I can do those things. But I have struggled with feeling guilty. I’m like oh, I should be doing more. But actually, rest is really suiting me. And I feel like a season of rest is coming for you. VirginiaI am available for a season of rest. I am clearing my schedule.AngelaYou’ll have a custody agreement where you’ll have some time by yourself for resting. VirginiaYes. Prior to the separation, I would get a weekend all to myself once or twice a year. It would be this rare thing. And maybe not everybody does this, but I would do this thing of like, all the things I don’t normally get time to do, I’m going to cram them into this weekend. I’m going to like have lunch with a friend and do some kind of shopping I can’t do with kids around and also clean out a bunch of closets and organize half the house. I did spend my first couple solo weekends organizing a lot of closets. And then I was like, what am I doing?I mean, if you’re a stress organizer, you get it. There’s something very cathartic about doing that. But then I was just like, oh, wow, I’m really tired. And I don’t want to make plans.  AngelaI’m definitely not a stress organizer. Why would you do that? VirginiaNext time I’m stressed, I’ll come to your house. It’s a weird compulsion and it’s often quite helpful? But yeah, then my kids would get back and I would be exhausted because I did stuff all weekend. I think again, it was the self objectification. I was like, I’ll judge me if I just like lay on the couch and watch Good Girls on Netflix. AngelaWhat trauma caused this stress organizing?VirginiaForget anti-fatness. We need to get to the bottom of this.AngelaIt was sort of a rhetorical question for laughs, so don’t feel like you need to answer that. But if you want to go there, I’m here for you. VirginiaI’m just like, what did cause it?? I’ll book it for therapy next week. Making a note, making a note. We’ll get into it.AngelaDo you want to talk a little bit about dinner before we go to audience questions?VirginiaYes! So. Dinner is this thing that we have a lot of ideals and expectations around. And I think both of us have also been talking about how big life transitions can really fuck with your expectations of dinner and what you thought you needed to be doing.AngelaI grew up in a household where both my parents worked full time, but we had dinner together every night. I realized that I bring all of that to dinner every night. Expecting a four year old and a five year old to be like, like you know what I mean?Virginia“I would love to sit at the table and discuss current events.” AngelaI’m like can’t you just stay at the table?? And my husband is like, literally, they can’t.VirginiaLiterally they don’t have the motor skills, or coordination.AngelaOne of the things that I got I’ve gotten from your work is this idea of like, what is dinner about? What is our real goal for dinner? VirginiaYeah, I mean, it’s diet culture. That’s the goal. There is all this research that families that eat dinner together regularly, kids do better in school and have fewer substance abuse issues. There are all these benefits, but every media story you see about the importance of family dinner leads with less childhood obesity. That’s the big headline, always. Right there, you have like embedded into the premise that we are doing this to prevent fatness or correct fatness.Some really interesting research I looked at for the book compared the family dinner experiences of thin kids and fat kids and they found that for thin kids, it really did give them more chances to talk to their parents and their confidence was higher and their grades were better in school and all these things. But for fat kids, family dinner was a nightmare. Because it was like, are you sure you’re going to eat that? You already had enough pasta. How about you have the broccoli? No, no dessert tonight. It was this constant policing. Angela“You can only have dessert if you eat XYZ.”VirginiaRight. You need three more bites of this and then you can have one small cookie. It was this constant policing and micromanaging of their bodies of their understanding of themselves. Like, “are you really still hungry?”AngelaCan you trust yourself? VirginiaSo when I saw that study, I started thinking, okay, so there’s this embedded anti-fatness in the way we’ve emphasized the importance of dinner, of family dinner.But there’s also a lot of classism, there’s a lot of other privileges involved, like having the time to cook, having the budget. Angela It’s also assuming a nuclear family, which is not how most people live these days.VirginiaYes, yes. I mean, so many different pieces of it started to seem really messed up, but particularly the body piece. I think, if we want our kids to grow up being able to say no in situations where it’s good to be able to say no. You know, I have two daughters, I’m thinking about teenagers, parties and dating, and whatever. I want my daughters to be able to say no and have that no respected. And if that means they get to say no to me at the dinner table about broccoli, I’m going to respect it so they know their no really matters. That is really worth them not eating some broccoli!AngelaAlright, so a couple of questions are rolling in. When we talk about all of these intersecting oppressions, it’s impossible to not see the roots of them all are capitalism. How can we fight to change the system of capitalism rather than just try and make it a kinder oppressive system?Just starting off with a softball.VirginiaThank you for that very low stakes question. I feel no pressure whatsoever. I’m just going to solve capitalism now. AngelaI’m just going to be clear. Virginia and I don’t know how to solve capitalism. VirginiaIt’s not really my expertise. AngelaBut I’m interested in this idea that I don’t want to just make a kinder oppressive system. I think that I feel really implicated in that because I think that’s something that a lot of us do. But, I mean, do you agree the root of this is capitalism? VirginiaYeah, I mean, at the root of this is a $60 billion industry that wants to sell you weight loss drugs, and diet books and plans and all the rest of it. I am really wary of making this anyone’s personal responsibility. I don’t think that’s a really useful model for social change. I think we need systemic change. We need, as I talked about, the research models to be different. We need healthcare to be radically different, all of that.Because right now, medical research is propping up the diet industry is propping up for profit health care. It’s all intertwined. So we need a big dismantling of all of this.On a personal level, one thing I do is when I do want to exercise, I don’t give money to gyms anymore. Which is not to say there’s not there are great fat positive gyms, but not where I live. So they do not get my money because I no longer want to have the experience of like tuning out the anti-fatness all around me in that kind of experience. I’d rather give it to Lauren Leavell’s online workouts—shout out to Lauren.Or any fat positive creator of color, or someone doing awesome work I’d rather support. I think it can be liberating to realize, I don’t have to keep paying for this in the ways that we are often unconsciously and deliberately paying for it. The reason I’m really wary of saying this is all on us to make better consumer decisions is one of the key ways anti-fatness plays out is by limiting the options of fat people. Clothing, for example, is a huge one. And so I am not going to demonize any fat person who’s buying fast fashion because some companies that have really terrible workers’ rights practices and are a part of the problem in all these other ways are some of the few brands making their size. AngelaAlso, fast fashion is what’s affordable for people.VirginiaIt’s affordable. It’s really complicated but to whatever degree your privilege allows you to be making different choices, that’s a good place to start. AngelaIt’s worth just repeating, you know, there’s no ethical consumption in capitalism. Until we can dismantle the entire system, we’re all complicit and implicated in a certain way. And I think we can make better choices within that. It’s not on us to bring down the whole thing. I think making good choices where you can, making deliberate choices where you can, I think is really important. We’re just going to do a few little quick ones here.How would you discuss the health effects of ultra processed foods with a child without relying on anti-fat tropes? VirginiaThe thing to understand about ultra processed foods—this is a hard one to do quickly. If you want the deep dive on this, I did two whole podcast episodes on ultra processed foods. But the short version is to understand that a lot of the research on ultra processed foods is really in its infancy.A lot of the reasons these foods get demonized is not because of their nutritional makeup. It’s because these are the foods that we associate with poverty and with people of color and fatness. There is a lot of bias bound up in the fact that we are demonizing ultra processed foods as unhealthy. If you are on a budget, if you are very time pressed, if you need to eat something quickly and this is what’s available to you, an ultra processed food is a healthy choice. It is going to always be more healthy to feed yourself than to not feed yourself. It’s always going to be healthier to feed your child than to not feed your child. We really need to keep this in mind, especially those of us who are white and privileged, when we start talking about the problems with ultra processed foods. Because they actually serve a real good in the world. That’s not the same thing as me thinking the corporations that make them are good, I don’t. So in terms of talking to kids: All foods are good foods. All foods play a role. There’s no reason not to eat any particular food unless you have a life threatening allergy to it. There’s no need to demonize these foods. So I don’t think it’s something you actually need to overly discuss with kids. You can just say, “It’s not good for us to eat the same foods all day, every day. We’d get sick if we ate broccoli for every meal, just like we’d get sick if we ate Cheetos for every meal.”AngelaAs you’ve been traveling and promoting fat talk, are there things that you’ve heard or that are helpful supports for fat parents raising fat kids? Any highlights to share?VirginiaWell, I think finding community is super important and helpful. I mean, ideally in person community, but often online community is really important. The BurntToast newsletter is a really good resource. Sorry!AngelaTrue, conveniently also true.VirginiaBut I think where fat parents often experience the most bias is when they go to the pediatricians office, because pediatricians have high levels of anti-fat bias. There’s a lot of judgment, if you have a fat kid and you’re a fat parent. It’s like a whole situation. This may sound ridiculous, but bringing a thin friend to the doctor’s office helps a lot. Like my kids’ dad is straight-sized, he has had a lot more success talking to the pediatrician about why we’re not going to get on them about only eating beige foods or whatever. So don’t be afraid to bring in that privilege to back you up when you need it. AngelaI bring my husband to anything financial. And anything like that involves forms and stuff because it just eases the tension. He’s a really nice white guy, it really helps.I like this question a lot.Any shifts in how you think about friendships? How has sobriety/fat positive lens/divorce impacted friendships? VirginiaFriendships are the best.Tracy Clark-Flory just wrote a piece on her newsletter about platonically dating your friends. AngelaI think I talked about this when I was on your podcast. I had just come from a blissful weekend where I spent a lot of time in bed with a friend watching Love is Blind. It was wonderful. VirginiaI think a big shift I’ve made as I’m now not partnered is understanding we have this hierarchy of relationships in our culture and heterosexual romantic partnership is the top of the pinnacle. When you’re doing that, you often end up leaving all these other relationships, even if you’re still invested in them. They’re just like getting less of you. So I really love that my friends are getting more of me now. And that I’m getting more of my friends.AngelaI love my friends and my people, my community is everything to me. Like, I have found deep meaningful friendships with people who I met in Zoom rooms talking about sobriety. There are people with this particular disease that I have, that community of people, I’m just able to go there with them and talk to them. It’s been everything. I don’t think that sobriety is something that I could have done alone. I know it. There’s no way I could have done it. I needed people beyond the people who knew me just as much for myself because I didn’t want to feel, I didn’t have to feel ashamed or anything. I could talk to people who understood exactly what I was going through.And you know, with other friends, it’s like, I could get it. It could be tiresome to talk about these things over and over. So yeah, you can always make new friends and find new wonderful friendships.VirginiaI love that. And I was just going to add, I think for fat folks, having other fat friends is crucial because I think there is a shorthand and shared experience. I mean, I have a lot of thin friends and they’re great, but yeah.AngelaOkay, this will be our last question before we move on into closing. And I’m sorry, we couldn’t get to all of the questions!I have zero qualms about being the family member to interrupt racist, colonialist, sexist classes et al narratives. So why am I totally unable to talk with people I love, most notably my family, about the ways their anti-fatness harms not only me and my family, but them, too?VirginiaThis is one of the most common questions I get asked. And, you know, I don’t believe in an Oppression Olympics at all. Like all of these issues are hard and complicated and nuanced in their own ways. But fat is the bias that I think, well, we don’t have a lot of fat pride parades. Do you know what I mean? We’re still working on building fat pride. I mean, we’re doing it, we’re getting there. And there are decades of fat activism that have laid this foundation.But this is one bias where we internalize it, and we put it on ourselves in a way that I think it can be easier to call out racism and be clear that this person is the bad guy for saying the racist thing. I am not bad. You know, I’m not saying that’s the universal experience. Obviously, I’m white and I don’t experience it. But you feel like “I can name this thing that I can see is unequivocally bad.” And when it comes to fatness, we’re much quicker to be like, “Well, I feel uncomfortable like this, but it’s probably my fault. And if I was thin I wouldn’t have to feel bad about this.” We’re just much quicker to buy into the system. I think a helpful exercise is sometimes if you’re hearing a fat joke, or an anti-fat statement, and you’re like, “Should I call it out? Should I not call it out?” Ask yourself, “What if they said black? What if they said gay?” And if the answer is, “Oh, I would immediately name this.” Then this is the same. Recognize that you do the work here, too. AngelaYeah, I think it’s it is really, really hard. Like, that piece of the question that’s like, how do you tell someone this is harming you, too, right? I think that’s hard because people don’t want to hear it. People don’t want to believe it. It’s a hard thing to say. Like, you are lobbing these things at me. But actually, what does it reflect about you? That’s a really hard thing to say to family, and I think I don’t necessarily have an answer.But I think that there’s that way of like, what do we have in common and what do we lose? It goes back to that question of what trauma caused your thinness? Right, like, maybe it’s just your body type or maybe it’s years of being controlled or years of trying to please people or, I don’t know. Thinking about the ways in which our fates are tied together.VirginiaThe reason I think it is also hard to call out is people are often saying deprecating things about themselves. Like, you know, “I’m so fat” or “I shouldn’t eat the cookie” or whatever it is. We often want to rush in and say, like, well, no you’re not fat, which is problematic, because now you’ve just—AngelaSometimes I’m like, no, I am a little. It’s okay. VirginiaIt’s great! And you don’t want to reinforce the idea that fatness is bad. But if you instead say something, like, “I really hate that our culture makes us feel like we have to apologize for eating.” That immediately shifts the blame over to the system and to the larger issue. Now you have formed an allyship with them. We are both experiencing this. And without you saying to them, “You, grandma, are experiencing anti-fatness.” She may not be ready for that. But you can say, “I really hate the way society makes us feel so bad about our bodies all the time.” And now you’ve just joined forces a little bit. ---ButterAngelaOkay, so I was getting dressed to come here. And I was like, Which of my cute outfits do I want to wear? And I obviously settled on a giant, one piece denim romper1 and this oversized blazer, because I’ve been thinking for the last few weeks about this idea. Someone was like, “oh, it’s really flattering.” And I was like: What do we mean, when we say flattering? Like “you should wear something that’s flattering,” like, “black is so flattering,” or like “a high waist is really flattering on you.” It means it’s thin. It makes you look thinner. It means it’s flattening, right? VirginiaLiterally. Flattening.AngelaSo I was like, I don’t think I like that. Flattering should be what makes you or what makes something look its best. And when I feel my best, I’m comfortable.And so I’m in my oversize era. And I’ve decided that flattering can be oversized and drapey. And my butter, I guess, is sort of flipping that idea of what flattering is to being what do I think flattering is? And what makes me feel my best?Leave a commentVirginiaI love that we both wore oversized denim.2 We were having a mind meld. We did not plan it. I did specify comfortable shoes, which we did both do, but but yeah, we did the oversized denim, which I love. My Butter is very related. In packing for this trip—which is the last stop on the Fat Talk book tour. As I packed my suitcase to come here, I packed no jeans. I packed no heels. And I packed no underwire bras. This feels really big for me. So. We are recommending comfortable clothes, that you can take up space in. AngelaYeah, it’s so flattering! Whatever that means to you.VirginiaWell, thank you all so much. This was an amazing conversation. AngelaAnd thank you so much to Town Hall and to Seattle for being here with us!---The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me on Instagram.Follow Angela Garbes on Donita Reason or on Instagram.Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.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!1 - Sold out, but from this designer who has many other amazing jumpsuits.2 - Virginia’s dress. (affiliate link)

You’re listening to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast about anti-fat bias, diet culture, parenting and health. I’m Virginia Sole Smith.Today I am chatting with author and feminist philosopher Kate Manne, about her new book Unshrinking: How To Face Fatphobia.Kate is also an associate professor of philosophy at Cornell University and author of Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny and Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women.In Unshrinking Kate has given us an impeccably researched history of how anti-fat bias developed and develops within us all, as well as a thorough and incisive dissection of our modern moral panic about fatness, all woven throughout with her powerful story of reclaiming her own body. If you have ever struggled to feel safe in your body as it is, if you have ever wondered who your body is for, Kate has the answers. Our bodies belong to us. All of Kate’s books, including Unshrinking, are available in the Burnt Toast Bookshop!Don’t forget, you can always take 10 percent off that purchase if you also order (or have already ordered!) Fat Talk from Split Rock Books! (Just use the code FATTALK at checkout.)And if you love today’s conversation you should come see Kate and I together at Community Bookstore in Brooklyn on January 26. We’ll be celebrating the launch of Unshrinking and we would love to see you there!If you’re enjoying the podcast, make sure you’re following us (it’s free!) in your podcast player! We’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Pocket Casts! And while you’re there, please leave us a rating or review. (We like 5 stars!)Episode 125 TranscriptKateSo I am a philosopher by trade. I’m an academic. Most of my work for the last 10 years, on paper at least, has been about misogyny. So I’ve been very much mired in thinking about incels, and thinking about the misogyny women face online, and thinking about ways in which women and girls face harassment, and the forms of misogyny that can be also very subtle on a daily basis. And in the last three years, I turned my attention to the intersection between misogyny and fatphobia or anti-fatness. It’s kind of a dark topic to work on. But it’s also one I find kind of liberating to try to think through in community with others.VirginiaWe’re so grateful for your work. We are talking about your new book Unshrinking, which explores how anti-fat bias develops in all of us. It is profoundly well researched, because everything you do is, but this is one where you’re also using your personal story of reclaiming your body and identifying as a fat person. So I wondered if we could, if you don’t mind, starting by just sharing a little bit of that now?KateSo, in this work that I have been doing on misogyny, people often want to know: Why did you get invested in this topic? And I have been unable to tell my story about how misogyny came to affect me personally, without telling a story about fatphobia. So to me, misogyny and fatphobia were crucially interconnected and intersected in this really deep way back when I was growing up in Australia. Because I was, at the age of 16, one of three girls who joined an all-boys school the year it integrated. VirginiaYou have told me that before and it will never not blow my mind. KateIt was such a strange decision to send me there. The backstory was, I wanted to do this special international baccalaureate certificate so that I could potentially come to the States to study, which didn’t end up happening for a bunch of reasons. But yeah, I was just someone who walked into this all male environment and was very much perceived as a girl who was on the boys’ hitherto undisputed turf. And so it was an incredibly misogynistic environment to be in. I think it’s fair to say, it was a really traumatic two years after a pretty happy childhood. And the way that the misogyny was often practiced was via fatphobia and by making my body a kind of punch line, a target for jeering and teasing and bullying, from the ostensibly littler things, like having fat bitch scrawled on my locker—VirginiaYeah, just those little things. Tiny, little micro aggression like that.KateYeah, kind of macro aggression when I say it out loud. I was just labeled the fat one, the fat girl who was undesirable, and who wasn’t serving male interest by not being quote, unquote “hot.”So there was this particular incident that I talk about in the book, at the high school assembly where, you know, it’s always kind of horrifying. We had these prizes that are always awarded for “person most likely to commit white collar crime” and “person most likely to have children out of wedlock,” and all sorts of really actually noxious stuff that’s presented as a joke. But then they said, “and the person most likely to have to pay for sex is…” and I kind of braced myself ready for it. And sure enough, it was “that person is Kate Manne.” And the auditorium just roared with laughter. Because my body was a joke.And I should say, I am speaking as someone who has a certain amount of privilege when it comes to size. I identify as a small fat person, I was at most a small fat at the time. And I can’t even imagine how horrifying the treatment would have been for someone who was a larger fat person. But it was a really eye-opening way of being exposed to the sheer cruelty, as well as the material barriers that fat people face, and the way that misogyny weaponizes any hierarchy that’s ready to hand and derogates a girl a woman in terms of it. We value intelligence, so call her stupid. We value rationality, so call her hysterical. We value thinness, so call her fat. And we value sexiness, so call her the kind of person that no one could ever want.That is how it came to be something that I became fascinated with because even though I knew the word misogyny, it wasn’t a word that I reached for to explain the kind of treatment I’d faced. Similarly, I didn’t even have a word like anti-fatness or fatphobia back at the age of 16. It wasn’t until a few years later that I discovered an online community of people who were really pushing back against anti-fatness. People like Kate Harding, people like Marianne Kirby and Lesley Kinzel, who I discovered in the early 2000s, doing this amazing work of reclaiming the bodies that had been so socially derogated partly through this intersection of misogyny and fatphobia that was my formative political experience. And it’s an experience that I tried to get personal about in the book because I have found opening up about these things is a great way, for me at least, of finding community and finding other people who have similarly been shamed, who’ve been othered. It’s that moment when we can lift our heads and meet each other’s gaze that often feels really empowering and liberating, after having had our heads bowed in shame for so long.VirginiaI had so many emotions when I read that scene in the book, and I’m revisiting them right now. I just really hope some of those boys who are now grown men read this book and feel in their hearts that they know what they did. I want them to have that moment of That was that was what I did. And I have to look at it.So that is perhaps petty. But I am actively hoping for that. KateI love that. That’s one of the reasons for this subtitle How to Face Fatphobia. Like, it’s not just me facing it. I want others who, you know, we’ve all been complicit in it to some extent, but those who have been really active in it. I have that same hope that it will be something that we collectively reckon with and face in ways. People who’ve often thought of themselves as kind and progressive and not complicit in oppression, have often perpetuated fatphobia in these ways that remain really under examined.VirginiaI’m also thinking about how you didn’t even have the word of fatphobia or anti-fatness to name what you’re experiencing. That really was such a lack back then. I mean, it’s still a lack in too many places. And what it meant was that what we often did was to try to deny fatness. The counter argument would be, “She’s not even that fat. Why are you saying that about her?” KateCompletely. Imagine how liberating it would have been for someone to say to me, instead of, “well, you’re not really fat—” because I was kind of on the borderline at that stage—but “fat people are awesome and this is such a warped value system.”And I was someone who had been raised with really strong, anti-racist values and was taught to recognize problems in society. So that critical thinking lens was something that I think could have been opened up and widened to include thinking about how irrational and immoral anti-fatness is, and also how it intersects with those forms of oppression that I had already been taught to be critical of.When I came to the early 2000s fatosphere, it was this wild moment of wait, what if there’s nothing wrong with fatness? What if fat bodies are awesome and valuable and just as good and don’t need to change to comply with these values that are so noxious and oppressive? That was a lesson that I didn’t have any trouble digesting as a political message. It took me a long time to get there in my personal practices. But it was a political message I found so powerful and so resonant. VirginiaI’d love to talk about some of the other big misconceptions around what it means to be anti-fat. You spend a lot of time in the book really eloquently talking to the weight and health myths, which we talk about a lot here on this podcast, but I’d love to go even a level deeper. What do you think people misunderstand about fatness, sort of fundamentally? And how does that make the bias so hard to unlearn?KateI think one of the pieces of this puzzle that was really striking to me when researching the book is the finding that it’s actually not that we find fat bodies unsexy or undesirable or inherently aesthetically inferior. I mean, just a little statistic about this is: Fat bodies are one of the most common search terms in pornography. So people are, at least when they’re in the privacy of their own bedrooms or studies or wherever, they’re finding fat bodies actually quite desirable and quite sexy and quite hot. But fat bodies are derogated socially in ways that make that desire and that attraction really verboten and forbidden. So oftentimes we think, well it’s just a fact of life that we don’t find fat bodies sexy. And it’s just not true. I mean, we need to look at the history of this. So fatphobia anti-fat bias is something that is a very recent prejudice. This is something brilliantly brought out by the work of Sabrina Strings, the sociologist who has shown that it really wasn’t until the mid-18th century, that fatphobia really took off. And that was in response to the burgeoning transatlantic slave trade. That meant that in Britain and France, white people had to cast about kind of desperately for a way that Black bodies were, quote unquote, inferior in order to differentiate Black bodies who are being enslaved so quickly, and so brutally, in numbers that were previously unseen. They had to cast around for a way of differentiating Black and white bodies, and there began to be this association of Blackness and fatness, which meant that for the first time, fatness became to be this socially recognized code for a body that was primitive and, quote unquote, inferior.So it’s not that fatness was derogated and then Blackness began to be associated with fatness, it’s the other way around. Fatness was first associated with Blackness and then fatness came to be derogated in this really widespread and systemic way, for kind of the first time. I mean, it’s not that there are no hints of anti-fatness in previous history, but it’s more of a mixed bag until white people needed a way to differentiate their white bodies, from the Black bodies who they were treating in such brutal and dehumanizing ways.VirginiaAnd that’s when we start to see it institutionalized, embraced in this structural way, as opposed to just beauty ideals. You can look at how the Ancient Greeks certainly prized very muscular lean bodies, but this brought it to a different level.KateAnd, in some ways, in Plato and Aristotle, there’s a lot of judgment about gluttony, but there isn’t a lot of judgment about fat or “mega bodies,” which is kind of interesting, partly because, according to the historian Susan Hill, Plato and Aristotle recognize that a body can be bigger and maybe fat, without that having anything to do with someone’s eating habits. Gluttony they certainly frowned on, in ways that I’m critical of in the book. Because bring on the food pleasure, bring on the gluttony.VirginiaAbsolutely. KateSo the dislike of fatness is this very recent historical phenomenon. And it’s very contingent on historical processes steeped in anti-Blackness. It’s not something that is this inevitable product of human history or human preferences. And even today, we see that fat bodies continue to be liked and considered sexy. It’s just that people are reticent about expressing these preferences in as much as they’re trying to access social capital via the dating and mating as public history. So it’s not that we down-rank fat bodies because we inherently dislike them. We don’t inherently dislike them. Rather, we dislike them, because they’re often down-ranked nowadays, due to this highly contingent, historically recent way of thinking about fat bodies that is steeped in anti-Black racism.To go back to the earlier part of your question, I do think that makes this kind of bias difficult to unlearn. Because, of course, we all want to have access to forms of capital and forms of just human interaction that are going to confer prestige on us and going to be something that it’s hard for someone who is dating or someone who is just trying to be a person in the world to realize that their body is being rated on this hierarchy, that is based on this category weight, that is linear and infinitely gradable. And is sort of, in some ways, superficially, or at least temporarily, changeable. So it became so tempting to try to lose weight in order to access more capital in the dating market, especially for girls and women whose value is so often seen as dependent on how we present to a white male and non-disabled, wealthy audience of kind of imagined or real people viewing our bodies and judging us and comparing us with others. VirginiaIt’s just wild. I mean, I’m thinking again, about that moment for you, in the high school award ceremony with all of those boys performing anti-fatness, and performing this idea that fat bodies can’t be sexually attractive in order to uphold their own social capital, when, as your research shows—the reality is probably that plenty of them thought you were attractive. We’re all performing this dance around that that’s not actually reflecting what people really value or really find attractive is.KateAs fat women, we are often regarded as fuckable, but not lovable, to put it really bluntly. I know for a fact that many of those boys did find me attractive, but they felt ashamed of that attraction. You see how the system is so set up to just perpetuate these human hierarchies. Weight is a quality that is so gradable that it allows us to place everybody on this kind of linear hierarchy in proportion to body mass, or in inverse proportion to body mass. So it’s this very, very powerful, ready to hand way of ranking every single body in ways that keep us scrambling to find a higher place in a human hierarchy designed to make us not only shrink our bodies, but shrink ourselves. VirginiaAnother piece that the book does a really excellent job with, is dealing with the issue of body positivity, which I think has been pushed for too long as the solution to all of this. Like, Kate, if only you had known you were fuckable and lovable in high school, then it wouldn’t have been so harmful for you when the entire school ridiculed your body? And so you really rightly take that to task in the book. And you’re also critical of body neutrality and argue instead for what you’re calling body reflexivity. KateTo be clear, body positivity has radical and kind of cool roots in Black feminism and in the ‘60s, was a pretty revolutionary idea. I also think that even today, it’s many people’s point of contact with body liberation, or something that deserves a kind of more full throated embrace. I don’t mean to suggest that body positivity doesn’t have an important role in all of this. But I think, as I’ve heard discussed on the podcast before in really brilliant ways, it’s kind of been coopted by thin, white women who would just be embracing a handful of cellulite, or “here’s my three stretch marks from having babies.”VirginiaA single belly roll that only appears when you sit down and hunch over.KateExactly, exactly.So, I think body positivity has been leached of much of its radical political roots. And I also find the idea of body neutrality closer to what I believe in, but it’s also kind of lackluster. The idea that we should be neutral about all bodies, including our own, feels often really hard to achieve with a subject as fraught as our own bodies. But it also feels like faint praise is bad enough, but no praise is really dispiriting. So the idea of being entirely neutral about our bodies, it feels to me a bit wan as an option. One of the things I began to think about when I was researching this book is: Why are we proposing one kind of monolithic attitude towards bodies at all? We should be positive about bodies, we should be neutral about bodies. Why do we have to have one attitude and regard bodies as good or bad or neutral? Why are we ranking bodies in the first place? To me a more transformative idea is the idea that my body is for me and that my body isn’t for comparison or ranking or rating or consumption, or for that matter, colonization or correction. My body is for me. And that’s the idea that I call body reflexivity. This idea that my perspective on my body is the only one that matters. It’s very much linked with a kind of radical politics of autonomy. But it’s also the idea that my attitude towards my body doesn’t have to be any one thing, it doesn’t have to be a rating or a ranking any more than I go around ranking or rating sunsets. I can appreciate sunsets without thinking, oh, that one was a 7 out of 10. For that matter, being entirely neutral about sunsets feels a bit strange, too. We don’t have to have that kind of lens of this body deserves a number and let’s make it a positive or neutral one rather than a potentially negative one. Let’s just take the numbers out of it altogether. And recognize that, yeah, my body is for me, your body is for you. And that applies just as much to every single body, including the bodies of children. Their bodies are so often regarded as not for them.VirginiaIt’s so liberating to think my body is just for me, it is not for anyone else, and no one else gets to measure it. I want listeners to really just sit with that concept, because it’s super powerful and super important.KateThank you. It helps me in practical ways like learning to resist the male gaze, which for me is a lifetime’s work. Even stuff like, should I walk around the house with no bra on? Or would my breasts not look right if I didn’t wear a bra? It’s like, wait, my body is for me! I’m going to do what I want, when I want, in terms of how I dress, how I present, whether or not I wear a bra. That lens had this concrete and pretty immediate repercussions for me of like, okay, what is the goal here, when I self present? It’s all for me. How I look, how I dress, how I feel in my body becomes the priority. Does this texture of clothing feel good on my skin much more than what does the silhouette look like in ways that are often implicitly anti-fat? So, the idea of this reframe is kind of abstract and philosophical. But I can apply it to questions as concrete as do I want to dye my gray hair or do I want to wear a bra in this circumstance?VirginiaIt’s just so mind blowing to realize how insidious that male gaze has been. I mean, I’ve talked about wrestling with this now that I’m separated and I have time alone in my house. The first few weekends alone, I was still putting a bra on. There was literally nobody looking at me. I was inserting a male gaze that wasn’t even in the house. I had to remind myself, it’s just for you now. And it’s been truly, really liberating. But it was fascinating. I for sure identified as someone who’s done a lot of work divesting from diet culture and then to realize, Oh, but on these subtle levels, I was still letting it all in. KateI mean, we internalize that gaze. When we talk about the male gaze, it’s of course not just coming from men, predominantly powerful men. It’s not just an a potentially appreciative glance, either. It’s that internalization of a gaze that is often threatening or disgusted. That’s why for me it’s so linked to shame, like the shame of how do I look in this particular outfit or do I look, quote unquote, frumpy? I am all about embracing my frump and crone eras, but there’s still this internalization piece of it that is very much this shame faced echo of the fact that disgusted glances come at us from the outside world, and make us feel ashamed, make us want to bow our heads and kind of disappear oftentimes.We learn to anticipate that potentially disgusted gaze, and we carry it around in our own heads in ways that are really sapping, really pointless, and really harmful. Again, even for those of us who have done all this work in divesting from that performance. VirginiaI really appreciate how your lens on all of this is to connect the work of fat liberation with feminism. Because, a real drawback of mainstream feminism has been that it has often left fat liberation out of the conversation, even though they’re clearly so intersected, as you’re explaining here. KateI’m someone who’s been in feminist circles in a way since I was 10. I identified as a feminist from a really young age. When I went to grad school, I was around feminist philosophical communities, where, first of all, the topic of anti-fatness rarely came up. I mean, almost never that I recall. A lot of the bodies that I was seeing—and this is true across the academy, but may be true in philosophy in an even more pervasive way—a lot of the bodies I was seeing of women in philosophy were very thin.For those listeners who don’t know, philosophy is the most white male dominated of the humanities by a large margin, with history a distant second, but we are basically on par with things like pure math and physics in terms of our number of women. We’re about 17 percent tenure track or tenured women in the academy in the US, at least. I was seeing a lot of people who had access to the capital of philosophical thinking because they were a woman, but they were white, they were thin, they were wealthy, they were non-disabled, they were otherwise privileged and talking about ways in which various categories intersect with that of womanhood was certainly superficially on the menu as an important topic of discussion. But fatness just wasn’t something that got talked about. I don’t think we can do feminism without combating anti-fatness, without thinking through fatphobia in this really deep way. Just to name a few of the asymmetries here: Parents are twice as likely to Google whether their daughter is overweight compared with whether their son is overweight, despite the fact that boys are actually slightly likelier to be in that completely shitty and meaningless BMI category.VirginiaBecause girls will pay a higher price.KateParents also want to know whether their daughter is ugly. I mean, I don’t know how a Google search is meant to turn up the answer to that question, but they are Googling it. And again, I don’t want to suggest that boys and men aren’t subject to anti-fatness. Of course they are, in really important ways. But when it comes to the sexual fatphobia piece of it, we see that mom bods are derogated and dismissed, while dad bods are considered sexy, we see that about 90 percent of women are teased and bullied in their relationships with straight men. So for heterosexual women, about 90 percent of women have been, I would say, abused emotionally in their relationships with a man based on their body size, whereas the converse is at least anecdotally much less common. We see this incredibly intensely noxious practice of “hogging” or a “pig roast,” where fraternity brothers will actually compete with each other to see who can bed the heaviest or fattest woman. And this has taken place recently at Cornell, where I have taught for a decade. I just found myself when I read those news articles wondering, has this been done to female students of mine? Are these fraternity bros in my class? Like, just all of the feelings.This is just to point to the ways the intersection of misogyny and fatphobia is so powerful that I would go as far as to say you cannot understand misogyny, without understanding fatphobia, and you cannot fight misogyny without fighting fatphobia.And that’s the fight I’m in.VirginiaMe too.I do have some empathy for the the battles that feminism has fought and, and made progress on. We couldn’t do it all at once, right? So it makes sense that this wasn’t always in the conversation. If you’re fighting your way into equal hiring practices or equal wages, there’s ways you have to play the game in order to get into the boardroom. I sort of understand that logic, but that has only gotten us so far. And arguably, at this point, that mindset is really holding us back. KateI have that same sort of ambivalence, because one of the interesting things about feminism is it’s the only political movement that’s reputed to come in waves. And that wave metaphor really fills me with suspicion because the idea is like, inbuilt obsolescence. And then, a whole new branch of thought that just replaces the old thinking. Why do we think that about feminism and literally no other political movement as that model of undertow taking out one wave and a new wave crashes, and then it’s over?Misogyny directed at feminists is a big thing. So we somehow need to do this, we need to manage to be critical of feminism’s huge failures and at the same time, build on strengths. Building on the brilliance and inclusivity is something that we continue to work on learning from our feminist elders, while still recognizing we have a really long way to go. VirginiaThe wave metaphor also puts the blame on these generations of feminists. But throughout second wave feminism, there were always feminists arguing for intersectionality. It’s not like we just invented that in 2015, or whatever. KateAnd let’s blame, too, which speakers have been prioritized. I say this as someone who has a lot of forms of privilege that have allowed me to have the institutional position that I have and to be able to speak out on issues that matter to me. But that is done as someone who has white privilege and who has the privilege of being someone who is non-disabled and cis and het, as well as someone who is currently—this didn’t used to be the case—but who now identifies as a small fat person.So part of the blame for this is who has been allowed to speak by overarching systems of oppression in ways that have meant that the most privileged women have had access to the platforms and that we have forgotten the voices of the brilliant women who are Black feminists and fat feminists and disabled feminists and so on because they have been literally excluded from the conversation, and often silenced in ways that it is the job of every feminist who has somewhat of a platform to amplify those voices now, and to listen attentively to our trans feminist sisters, our fat feminists and Black feminists who may still be excluded from mainstream conversations within the movement in ways that owe to broader overarching systems of oppression, that we need to be fighting intersectionally all the way. VirginiaOkay. So for those of us who are in this fight, who are ready to be doing this work, who want to be pushing our unlearning of fatphobia, talk a little more about what that work can look like. What do we know about how to lower especially our internalized anti-fatness?KateI get a lot of energy and momentum, and just sheer joy in a way, out of letting myself be angry at the overall systems that are oppressing me and so many others and more vulnerable others in countless ways. What that often looks like for me is being angry at being enmeshed in systems that are profiting off our self hatred, are profiting off our shame in these really discernible ways. And are simply wanting us to buy more, and buy rubbish that no one needs, in order to have access to forms of social capital. So, sometimes it’s not just a matter of buying things, too. Sometimes it’s a matter of a system that profits off mutilating our bodies in ways that are just really violent. An example of this is how angry that I have been lately at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. The conversation about bariatric surgery is complicated and all my love to any listener who has gone down that road I nearly went down that road myself, but this is a hospital just churning through cases and taking shortcuts in a surgery that is a very delicate thing to do to a human body, to effectively amputate up to 80 percent of a human stomach that is functioning normally, for the sake of weight loss. This particular hospital is effectively butchering patients by rushing through these surgeries, not screening people properly, not having adequate equipment or technicians or assistance. Patients are ending up with these horrific outcomes, patients who are disproportionately poor and Black and brown Americans, because the system is set up such that Medicaid reimbursements mean the hospital is profiting to the tune of about $34 million just this year, based on conservative estimates, by getting these Medicaid reimbursements for patients who are disproportionately vulnerable and are even incarcerated in some cases. So they’re getting patients from Rikers Island and recruiting from jail and operating on these prisoners.So I can step back from that and say, wait, my negative thoughts about my fat body are both the result of and benefit a system that profits so handsomely, just sheer capitalist profiteering and racist profiteering and profiteering that exploits poor folks. That system, my thinking in negative ways about my body is often wrapped up in a system that is about profiting from that shame. So, that to me is a helpful thought because it immediately identifies the thought as one that in a way isn’t really mine. I feel something about my body that traces to anti-fatness, the thought isn’t really attributable to me, it’s a thought that is enmeshed in this whole system that is so immensely profitable, and is so readily exploited for capitalists gain. It kind of almost marks the thought as one that is foreign to my own thinking. And it makes it easier to divest myself from the actions I might take on the basis of that thought. The weight loss industry as a whole is projected to be worth about $400 billion dollars annually, globally, by 2030. Novo Nordisk, the manufacturer of Ozempic and Wegovy, now has profitability that outstrips that of its native Denmark. It is the most profitable company in the entirety of Europe. So, just to think: Anti-fatness is big business. And I don’t want to be a part of that. And I’m angry at the ways my body is being used as a site for that capitalist profiteering.I think that is the kind of thought that can place us in solidarity with other folks in a similar position, rather than searching for solutions to the non problems of our body parts that don’t fit the white supremacist, capitalist and ableist as well as misogynistic mold that we’re supposed to fit.VirginiaThe Bellevue story—I can’t remember the last time I was quite that angry reading that story. I mean, the part about how they accidentally operated on a pregnant woman? The fact that they weren’t giving people adequate information? it’s not just a delicate surgery, it changes the entire course of your life. People were like, “Well, they kind of made it sound like no big deal,” and now they’re left to live with the consequences.KateThey had one information session for many patients who are disproportionately people who may not have access to all of the information about these surgeries independently. So they will just suffer for the daily practice of trying to nourish their bodies, which, by the way, as you know, will end up malnourished in so many cases. That together with the serious side effects and the serious long term consequences, including increased suicidality.So patients were being given one mental health consult prior to these surgeries that are known to increase risks of suicide at least twofold, probably fourfold. It’s so irresponsible that it really just shocks the conscience, even for someone like me, who is like, not very easily shocked by by these things. More to HateIt Was Never About HealthContent warning for fatphobia, medical trauma, and death. One patient, Jasmine Nieves, 30, wound up in agony after her surgery; when she called for help repeatedly, nobody at the clinic answered. A month later, she passed out on a couch, and her sister called an ambulance. A CT scan revealed fluid pooling in her abdomen. She required emergency surgery, …Read more2 years ago · 141 likes · 22 comments · Kate ManneVirginiaYou think you’ve seen it all and then you see that.KateCan I turn the question back to you though? And I know it’s a big one, but how would you answer that same question for people ready to do that unlearning?VirginiaI tend to go to the same place of you have to recognize that it’s the system. I also find it really liberating to recognize that it’s a system I can opt out of by giving my body permission to exist as it is, by having my body be just for me, as you say. That is a small but important act of rebellion against this larger system. I think it doesn’t get you all the way there. There is still, what do you do when you need to access health care and you’re going to be the person in the exam room getting pushed into these things? And there is a lot more to it. But that starting point feels really like a really profound shift. And it then helps you start to spot it. Because that’s the other thing, right? This can be so insidious that sometimes you can be experiencing anti-fatness and not realize you’re experiencing anti-fatness. I mean, just like what happened to you in high school, at the time you didn’t have the name for that that was anti-fatness. That happens in so many more subtle ways.And just because you were talking about the bariatric surgery suicide risk, I was flashing back to a podcast interview I did a few months ago with a white male podcast host—and now my publicist knows that we vet those more carefully when the requests come in. I was talking about the relationship between bariatric surgery and suicide risk and while he was interviewing me, he just quickly googled and read the first Google results, without looking at what study it was, didn’t give me the citation. He’s just like, “Well, I’m seeing a study that says it didn’t raise suicide risk. So I don’t know. There we go.”KateYes, one study. Instead of the careful meta analyses you were citing that looked at the whole big picture.VirginiaIt was so jarring to me in the moment. But we all experience 1000 moments like that, right? Where someone is like, “No, I’m just falling back on data here. It’s just science, it’s about weight and health, about fat being bad.” These knee-jerk lazy assumptions that people make, they can really catch you off guard and start to undermine your sense of doing this unlearning. I’m trying to hold on to this different way of thinking about this. Then someone comes in and cuts your knees off from you. That was him trying to do that. And I mean, it didn’t work because I have done some of this and I was able to be like, well thank you for that one Google result.But I think you need to keep coming back to that awareness of the system. You can at least come back to it for yourself and say, what did I just experience when that doctor told me I should lose weight to treat my ear infection? KateTotally, that that really resonates. I’ve found myself often around this work in conversations where someone will sound like a little bit like an old me of maybe 20 years ago saying, “Well, you know, I’m all on board with this political project but I just don’t feel right at this weight and I just want to lose a little weight and what about Ozempic?” And, again, all my love to those who are considering or going down this path, it is very hard to survive in an anti-fat world. I am critical of the larger social systems and the practices, not the individuals enmeshed in them. I don’t know your body, and you know your body best. I’m all for body autonomy in this and you do you.But as a data point: I used to be 60 pounds heavier and I fully expect to get back to that weight and I think that will be where my body is most comfortable, actually. I’m this weight because as I talk about in the book, I had a period immediately prior to my big political reckoning with all of this where I did go on an extreme diet and it was really disordered. Like, you know, getting into territory that bordered on a full blown eating disorder, atypical anorexia was where I was headed. But I’m still at a lower weight than I was. And you know what, I still sweat walking up a hill because it’s not that I was fat, it’s that walking up a hill can make you sweaty, especially if you’re pushing up 30 pound person in a stroller, you know?And if anything at a lower weight, I happen to sweat more because, in fact, I’m less fit because I just don’t happen to exercise at the moment, even though unlike dieting, exercise would be good for me I think and I just happen not to be doing it right now, which is fine. VirginiaSeasons of life.KateBut we attribute all of these things to our weight, instead of people sweat or people snore or people have knee pain and back pain. VirginiaWalking up stairs is just hard. KateWalking up stairs is hard! It’s just having the thought that kind of treats our weight as, especially when we are in larger bodies, a go to explanation for what ails us. It’s so natural in a society where authority figures, especially doctors, and nurses and other medical professionals are going there, too. But when we can step back and be more critical of it and be like, well wait is it actually just that? I am allowed to sweat and I am feeling uncomfortable because I’m looking at myself sweating and not because there’s anything inherently wrong with feeling out of breath after doing some exercise.I think that kind of thought is also something that helps me avoid treating weight as a scapegoat for things that might be a problem or they might actually be kind of a non-problem, and about having internalized that male gaze more than about inherently needing for things to be different in my life, or in the way I move through the world.VirginiaIt comes back to your body is for you. And so, if that’s the case, your body can sweat because it is for you. No one gets to tell you that sweating is a is a moral failing. Butter often includes affiliate links. Shopping our links is a great way to support Burnt Toast!ButterKateSo, as our listeners might have deduced from my accent, I sort of have a silly hybrid accent now, because I’ve lived in the States for a long time. But I’m Australian. And I feel like I would be remiss not to have Tim Tams be my Butter.VirginiaOh, tell us about Tim Tams. KateDo you know what a Tim Tam is? VirginiaI do not.KateThey are an Australian cookie. They are a storebought cookie that is, I think, the greatest store bought cookie of all time. Obviously nostalgia is a piece of it for me, but my American husband happens to agree. They’re a chocolate biscuit. They’re a kind of chocolate cookie texture wrapped in usually milk chocolate. You can also get a dark chocolate variant. And they have this special cream inside.And I should say Tim Tams are very widely available, which wasn’t true maybe 10 years ago, but now you can buy them at Target. You can buy them at my local Wegmans.[Note: We’re not currently finding them online at Target, but here they are at Walmart, Wegman’s, and Amazon.]VirginiaInstacart has them for me. I will get them. KateAnd they’re delicious just plain, but the best way to eat them is very distinctive. You nibble off a diagonal corner, and then you suck hot tea or cocoa or hot chocolate, a warm liquid, through the Tim Tam. And the center goes molten and just mushy and delicious. And the chocolate melts a little bit. And then you kind of gobble up the whole thing before it has a chance to collapse.So it’s this delightful experience. It is very fun to do with a friend or a kid or partner or whoever is your jam to share these kinds of intimate food experiences with. But it is so fun, and they are so delicious. I recommend the double caramel flavor. It’s not what a purist would recommend, but it is a delicious flavor that is almost more Tim Tam than the original.I think there’s a deeper moral here though, Virginia, which is that temperature contrast plays a huge part of food pleasure for me. So in a way my like broader butter, and you know, I sound like a philosopher now, my broader overarching butter is temperature contrast is this huge part of food joy for me in terms of obviously ice cream with a hot fudge sauce. But also think like the savory side of it. What about like, a very warm, soft, doughy, kind of spongy bread with a cold dip?VirginiaYou’re right, temperature contrasts are big.KateIt’s great isn’t it? I’m all about maximizing food pleasure at this point in my life. I’m just a huge believer in having divested from diet culture and like it’s actually such a reliable way to get comfort and joy and pleasure in your life. Like, what do I look forward to in a day? Well, it’s partly the meals as well as conversations and walks outside and sunset. But Food is a huge part of it!So my Butter is Tim Tams but also the kind of glory of temperature contrast and food is just so my jam right now.VirginiaThe hot/cold. I love it. I love it. That’s such a good Butter, a multi-layered Butter.Alright, so mine is a show I just finished watching which I think I totally missed when it first came on the air. And it’s like one of the best feminist shows I’ve seen on Netflix in a long time. It’s Good Girls. It’s so delightful. KateIt’s so good!VirginiaNow what I am going to say is: There are four seasons and they got canceled. So you have to know going into it that the end of season four is a big letdown because it they got cancelled fast and it all just kind of falls apart in the end. It was a rocky dismount for me because they didn’t get to wrap it up the way they wanted. But it’s Christina Hendricks, Retta, and Mae Whitman play these three suburban moms who are well, Christina Hendricks and Mae Whitman are sisters and then Retta is their best friend. You have to suspend a little bit of disbelief, just go with it, just enjoy that they’re best friends. They all are dealing with different types of financial hardship and so they turn to a life of crime, as suburban moms do. They start holding up grocery stores. And then they get into laundering money, and then printing money and they just really go down a dark, sort of Breaking Bad-esque path. But it’s much campier and funnier than Breaking Bad.There’s just so much good implicit and explicit critiquing of the patriarchy and how their roles as moms is to hold it all the fuck together and how hard that is. And then, people judge them, and they’re like, I’m sorry, what would you have done in this situation? Anyway, there’s just a lot to love and you know, great fat rep with Retta and Christina Hendricks is not fat, but she is atypical for Hollywood standards. And their bodies are never anything other than considered spectacular. Tthere’s no anti-fatness, Retta’s as husband thinks she is smoking hot. It’s just great. KateAnd boy is she! I mean, I’m such a rabid fan. I have seen every episode and I am so here for this butter. I was going to say the cancellation was such a bitter blow for me. But the nice thing about it is you get to imagine how it would go.VirginiaBut you you agree it gets a little messy? It gets a little messy.KateYeah, I had a lot of forgiveness for ways in which it maybe lost its way a little in certain strands and iterations. But it’s such a good show. And yeah, the way that it’s so anti-capitalist. Such a good critique of the ways these women are just caught in the crosshairs of capitalism and they do what they have to do.VirginiaThey do what they have to do. And they’re very careful about not harming people.KateThey don’t harm people. I had a paper that I wrote just out of grad school “is stealing really wrong?” And I was like, kind of not!So as a moral philosopher I was very excited to see this show that embodied my thought about like we have all these like hang ups about stealing from big corporations still, but it’s more honestly that it would be embarrassing than that it’s actually wrong. So that is my my rogue thought for the day.I mean, insert critique of ways in which we’re seeing endless discussions of stealing at Target and all these things that are a huge media beat up, and are just designed to outsource security for Target to cops. Its not about actually increases in theft, it’s about wanting to get police involvement in security and the policing of especially poor folks in certain stores. So anyway, yeah, I think Good Girls is a show for our times.VirginiaIt really has a perfect little jewel box of a show you can dive into if you haven’t seen it. So Kate, this was wonderful, as I knew it would be. Everyone needs to go get Unshrinking and tell your friends and let’s make this book blow up, please. That is our mission on Burnt Toast. KateWell, thank you so much for having me on! Such a dream for me. I’ve been such a fan of the show and and you for so long. And yeah, you can follow me on Twitter—I am not going to say X—at Kate_Manne. Same on Instagram where I have a very small presence, but I’m trying to build that up a little. And my Substack is More to Hate.VirginiaThank you so much, Kate. This was great.KateThank you, Virginia. What a pleasure What a dream.---The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me on Instagram.Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.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 independent anti diet journalism!

Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark!It’s time for your January Extra Butter episode. This month, we’re doing a few listener questions on how to find fat-friendly fitness spaces, how to deal with those coded “you look so great!” compliments, and how to tune out the mainstream media’s often relentless fatphobia (especially in January).To listen to the full episode and read the full transcript, you’ll need to join Extra Butter, our premium subscription tier.TranscriptThis episode includes affiliate links. Shopping our links is another great way to support Burnt Toast!CorinneSo if you’re listening to this, you’re already an Extra Butter, which means you are one of our favorite Burnt Toasties!VirginiaYour support makes all our work possible and keeps Burnt Toast an ad- and sponsor-free space. So, Happy New Year, friends! It is 2024!CorinneHappy New Year!VirginiaExcept not when we’re recording this. But we are imagining that we have all survived.CorinneAre you doing any New Year’s resolutions?VirginiaWe had the funniest conversation last night at dinner with my six-year-old. This is one of those moments where you’re like, well damn, the kids are going to be alright. I said something to her about, like, “Are you thinking about making any new year’s resolutions?” And she goes, “I don’t believe in resolutions.” Only she called them regulations. She goes, “I don’t believe in regulations.”CorinneI mean.VirginiaShe said, “I’m just going to try to have a really good New Year.” I was like, done!CorinneOh, that is so sweet. I love that. VirginiaSo I think that’s going to be where I am, too? I don’t believe in regulations. I just want us to have a good new year. Seems right, after this past year.CorinneNo regulations in 2024!I was recently talking to my friend and recalling that last year the Instagram meme trend thing for the New Year was people doing their notes app lists of ins and outs. For example:VirginiaOh God.CorinneMy friend and I actually did them, and shared them just with each other, and it was really fun to look back at them.VirginiaWhat were your ins and outs?CorinneThe only one I can remember off the top of my head was that I said “out” for me was really high-waisted, wide-legged, cropped jeans and “in” was baggy tapered jeans, which I don't really know if I've achieved.VirginiaWell we are on a perpetual quest for the right baggy tapered jean, as frequently discussed by us.CorinneI bought a pair of Universal Standard barrel leg jeans that I feel that are fitting that bill. Another thing that was on mine as “out” was dressing for your season color or whatever.VirginiaBut I feel like that’s so much back in, in general?CorinneThat’s the thing. It’s what is out for me. VirginiaGot it. That’s out for me, too. CorinneSo I have been thinking about whether I might do that again, just because it’s fun.VirginiaThat does sound really fun.CorinneYeah, but it’s not really about resolutions.VirginiaRight. No regulations. Well look, we know this is the time of year when diet culture gets loud. It gets extremely loud. So we’re going to do some questions that we picked because we’re hoping this will both help the people who asked the questions and help you stay the course. And just try to have a good New Year’s, despite what’s happening all around you.So this first person writes:I would love to hear your thoughts on how to find fat friendly fitness spaces. What works? How do you set boundaries? Over to you, Corinne, because I just don’t go to gyms anymore.CorinneI thought a lot about this one because there are a few different answers. One is I think you can find safe spaces online, like Lauren Leavell or like Jessamyn Stanley's Underbelly Yoga. VirginiaJessie Diaz, yup. CorinneAnd I feel like if you live in an enormous and progressive city, you might be able to find an all bodies gym. I feel like in the Bay Area, stuff like that exists. Otherwise, basically, give up. Sorry. VirginiaIt’s not going to happen.CorinneIt’s not going to happen. What you have to do instead is accept that you’re going to have to stand up for your values and stick with what you know to be true. And try to just do your best to block everything else out.VirginiaDo you want to tell the story of what happened when you went to your new gym in Maine this month? Because I think this really drives your point home.CorinneOkay, I feel like everyone knows, but I have now been weightlifting/powerlifting for one year. I started last December. I work with a coach who I love. She is a straight size person, but does a lot of work to be informed about other bodies and trauma informed.But this is the first time I’ve done any longer traveling while I’ve been weightlifting and I decided that while I was in Maine for the month, I’d join a gym here with barbell equipment so I could continue working working with my coach, Cassi.So I went to this new gym last week. I’d never been to it before. And I did my first workout. I was feeling proud of myself because I was not looking forward to this experience. VirginiaYeah, new gym. Enough said. CorinneAnd it’s in a basement. So even when I signed up, I was just like, This is going to be a slog. But I went. I did my first workout. And I was feeling proud of myself for figuring out how to use this different equipment.And then, as I was leaving, this guy came up to me. And he said, “For whatever it’s worth, I see you here all the time and I’m proud of you.”And I was just like, “Oh, no. This is my first time here. You’ve never seen me here before.”VirginiaAll fat people do not look alike!CorinneYeah. And he was like, “Oh, well, there’s some other lady who wears glasses and is always at the squat rack.”VirginiaRight because it was the glasses, sir.CorinneIt was definitely the glasses. And then I was like, “Hopefully I eventually run into this person and we can become friends.”VirginiaI mean. I’m convinced this is a meet cute. This is going to be a whole thing.CorinneI mean, fingers crossed!! VirginiaI’m really invested in that stranger. CorinneYeah, same. And also just like, “I’m so proud of you?” Like, sir, you have no idea.VirginiaMy skin literally crawls thinking about it. Like, fuck you, sir. I’m so proud of you because you are an asshole and yet you still got out of bed this morning. CorinneI did go back to the gym yesterday and I did see him again and he waved.VirginiaI mean, now I’m like, how do you fuck with him? What do we do? I just want to throw him off his game a little bit. We’re going to walk up and be like, “Buddy, so proud of you today!”CorinneI know, I wish I could be like, “I see you all the time at XYZ thing” that would be embarrassing to him.VirginiaLike a strip club or something.Corinne“I saw you on Grindr.” Something like that?VirginiaThese moments are so awful. And in the moment, you just kind of freeze up and it’s horrible. And you’re never going to say the perfect thing in the moment. CorinneI mean, I think if it hadn’t been literally my first time there, I would have just been like, “Haha, thanks.” But I was like, “Oh, I’ve never been here before.”VirginiaYou could not be more wrong.CorinneAnd it’s ironic because I was proud of myself for showing up to this weird space I’ve never been to!VirginiaThat’s an intimidating experience. I do feel like that story doesn’t encourage this person to go to the gym. So, I apologize, but I think Corinne’s point is really good that you’re going to probably experience some of this, and maybe it helps to just know it going in.I also think it’s valid to decide that that is not a space you want to put yourself in. Like I just won’t—both because I hate gyms for these reasons and because of my schedule. My windows of opportunity to work out are so limited. I can do a 45-minute workout at home, but if I was going to spend 15 minutes driving each way to the gym, I can only do 15 minutes while I’m there. So online workouts have just been such a lovely safe space for me. But I think going in, and knowing it’s going to happen, and that you don’t owe these people anything is also smart. You don’t owe anyone an explanation or an apology for your body. You’re just as entitled to be there as everyone else. I mean, what does Martinus Evans say? We’re all paying to be in the same parade. CorinneYeah, exactly. VirginiaYou belong there.CorinneIt’s very hard to find a fat friendly fitness space. But one thing you probably could find is a fat friend that you could go to the gym with and complain about the gym with. Or a coach.VirginiaI was going to say, maybe even a straight-sized person who will be a good ally.CorinneI was actually noticing that at this gym—because the first time I went, I didn’t even see any other women. VirginiaThat feels like a problem. CorinneNot that women can’t be problematic! But then this most recent time, I did see some women, but they were all there in pairs. And I was like, oh, yeah, I would feel so much better if I had a friend here with me.VirginiaWho is in Maine who wants to work out with Corinne? Hit us up in the comments.Subscribe nowCorinneBy the time this airs, God willing, I will be back in New Mexico. VirginiaBut for your next visit! Corinne needs a Maine weightlifting buddy. I’m sure we can make this happen. Are you the person that this man is proud of? This is our missed connections moment. I’m determined to make this happen.CorinneOkay. I’m going to read the next question. I’ve lost a significant amount of weight from being super sick over the past few years. Tumors will do that! Luckily, people no longer go “OMG, you’ve lost weight!” But they do keep saying “OMG, you look amazing,” and it’s clearly about the weight loss. How should I respond?VirginiaThis question makes me so angry. CorinneThis is why we don’t do this. VirginiaYeah, this is why this is why we don’t talk about people’s bodies. You don’t know what you’re congratulating. You could be congratulating someone’s eating disorder. You could be congratulating their tumor. You could be congratulating a recent death of a loved one. Just keep your mouth shut about people’s bodies.And, why are we only congratulating weight loss and not ever weight gain? Obviously, this just plays into the assumption that any weight loss is good, and any weight gain is bad. When I would fully expect someone who has gone through a really difficult medical ordeal to have some weight regain now, assuming that you’re doing well and are less super sick than you’ve been. We want you to weight restore, to be nourished and be able to eat and all those things. And so, for people to then not recognize that the weight gain that will hopefully happen is a sign of health and progress is equally enraging to me. CorinneI feel like how you respond to a person saying this probably depends on your relationship to the person. Like, I think if you don’t know the person and you’re just like, get me the eff out of here, it’s okay to just be like, “Thanks.” And then vent to someone about it later. VirginiaYou could add a, “Thanks, I really love this shirt!” Like assume they are congratulating you on your shoes or a new haircut or something. Assume it’s something else and kind of steer them away from weight.CorinneIf this is someone you want to actually have a conversation with, I think you could say something like, “Thanks. Sometimes when people say that I wonder if they’re just commenting on my weight.”VirginiaOh that’s good.CorinneThe other thing I would consider doing in this situation is posting about it on Instagram. Like, I posted about the this guy at the gym on Instagram and just got so many responses. I guess it is kind of passive aggressive. But you’re making a low key public service announcement, like how about don’t do this?VirginiaYou’re table setting for people who follow you and know you. They’ll see that post and they’ll be like, “Oh, right. That is really weird that someone is congratulating the weight you lost due to the tumor trying to kill you.”CorinneOr even if it’s just like, now other people have a mental note that this person doesn’t want me to comment on their appearance. Hopefully? Maybe? I don’t know. It might have no effect. But it might have an effect. VirginiaAnd you’ll probably get support from the people who get it, which feels affirming because these comments can be very triggering, right? Like a lot of eating disorders, when we look at like teenagers, for example, often the initial weight loss isn’t necessarily a dedicated effort to lose weight. A very, very common pathway is, they got sick, like they got mono and they lost weight, or a stomach bug and they lost weight and then that gets super reinforced by people praising them. And then that puts the kid on the slippery slope into disordered eating. So these comments are not good for your health. I think just being vocal, in some way, whether it’s on Instagram, or in person with friends so that the people closest to you know that you don’t want this praise and affirmation and don’t find it affirming. That’s helpful. And it will give you a place to process what it might be bringing up for you.CorinneI mean, I also think if you feel bold, you could, if someone’s like, “OMG, you look amazing,” you could say what you said in this email. “Tumors will do that.”VirginiaThat does kind of call them right out on what did I just congratulate?A softer one might be like, “I’m so grateful to be healthy and to be doing better.” “I’m so grateful to be where I am right now,” or something. Just, again, steer them away from weight talk and more like yes, it is great that I am not no longer super sick and that is okay to be happy about. People, just don’t talk about people’s bodies. I mean, if you want to make a resolution for 2024, that is your resolution. Don’t talk about people’s bodies. Just don’t do it. CorinneYeah, that would be a good one.VirginiaAll right. Do you want to read our last question?CorinneA daily or weekly occurrence I run into is perusing content from news sources like the New York Times or NPR and bookmarking interesting stories to read or listen to, then hitting obesity and anti-fat coverage. Even though I don’t read or listen to it, just seeing the headline is triggering and for the next 30 minutes, I’m draining my brainpower on internal arguments with no one or everyone until I finally notice that all my energy to go about my task of the moment has been exhausted.Any advice you can give as a journalist on how to cope with media and news sources we otherwise rely on?VirginiaI mean, this is such an important one for right now. Because one of the things that irritates me the most about January is that every mainstream media outlet that that wouldn’t normally—I mean, they all do cover the ob*sity epidemic all the goddamn time. But these outlets wouldn’t normally think of themselves as purveyors of diet culture, right? They’re above that. They’re covering hard news. But somehow in January, they all become women’s magazines from 2003. The NYT Well section, the Washington Post, USA Today, they all just throw in all this diet content. They’re like, “It’s January, we can just hate fatness and talk about not eating carbs and it’s totally fine!”And to be honest —and this doesn’t make me sound like the most responsible human. But I have been reading the news a lot less lately and disconnecting from news quite a bit. Some of that has been because we are in a horrific moment globally. I know there are all these arguments for why we have to see the footage of the children in Gaza. But I cannot be re-triggered in that way daily. I have been still donating money, calling my reps, trying to do what I can—but I can’t take the firehose of content about it, and function as a person, and not just cry all the time. I think in January, it is reasonable to say, I’m going to not follow the news very closely right now. Because it’s just going to be loud, and it’s just going to be fatphobic and obnoxious. Put some buffers up so you don’t have to take it in. You encountering all this triggering content doesn’t actually help anybody. It only makes you feel miserable.CorinneI wish I had more helpful advice with this one. I was really trying to think because I feel like the other thing is—you don’t only encounter the news when you seek it out. You will probably see it on social media. You will see it on the TV in the bar or the doctor’s office. So I don’t know, I guess my thought was more: Is there a way you can build up your tolerance or your resilience? Because you are going to encounter it whether you avoid it or not.VirginiaI mean, as part of my avoiding the news, I spend less time on Instagram.CorinneTotally.VirginiaIt might be a good month to take a social media break if thats something that’s available to you.CorinneI was also thinking if there’s some way—this isn’t like a really fleshed out idea—but if you’re like, “Every time I see an article about the ob*sity epidemic or clean eating or whatever, I’m gonna do XYZ thing.” And maybe that’s giving yourself some kind of treat.VirginiaIt’s drinking game but maybe not with booze all month long? I like that!CorinneOr like, post a screenshot on Instagram?VirginiaWith a #fuckdietculture hashtag. That’s a great thought.I mean, I think that’s a little bit why I’m able to do this work. There’s a part of my brain that has had to learn to almost gamify this. Because these stories are always coming in, and some of them hit me really hard, and some of them are so egregiously fatphobic it really takes my breath away for a moment and makes me super sad, of course. But a lot of the times I’m like, “oop, there they go again, New York Times Well section.” Taking a slightly more like playful attitude towards it of just like, “well, how many stories can they do about Ozempic in a week?” It can help gird you for it a little bit, I think. I like the idea of every time I see one I’m going to post a screenshot on my Insta Stories, with a hashtag of #fuckdietculture. Then you do that and then you move on. That could backfire because that could lead to a lot of people like being like, outraged with you and wanting to really talk about it constantly. Maybe that’s more than you need. Maybe it’s something more straightforward like every time I see that I’m getting a Hershey kiss or something. What is your private rebellion against this content?CorinneOr if you have a group chat, put it in your group chat or something.VirginiaWe could do a Friday thread about this so you can drop all the things that are making you angry there, maybe.CorinneThat’s a good idea. VirginiaWe’d have to figure out the right content warnings to put around that, because not everybody wants to be inundated with that, but but I think we can make a safe space maybe to sound off about that. And on the getting caught up in the internal arguments with no one thing: I do think that is not productive. It’s sapping your energy. It’s making it difficult for you to get through the day. I think it’s a reasonable place to be, and I think a lot of people when they are in this process of first, identifying diet culture, it’s really hard not to take every bait, if that makes sense. Everything is activating your old trauma around this and you have connected these dots. And you’re like, how are people not seeing this? But I don’t think that’s a good use of energy.I have seen some friends get really burnt out by staying in a rage spiral about it all the time and always posting on social media in their outrage. I don’t think that actually helps them fully divest from diet culture, because it’s a way of staying connected. This is maybe overstating it but: It’s like still talking to your abusive ex boyfriend? You’re still letting them get to you. CorinneYou’re still in the tug of war.VirginiaYes, you’re still in the cycle of getting activated. Maybe you’re being activated because you’re feeling insecure. And you’re feeling like maybe this is something I need to believe. But if I can just come up with an argument, I don’t have to agree, you know? And you’re just in this constant cycle that’s not really great for you.I think that’s where I was going with, can you just turn it off or turn off as many sources of it as possible? Because January is going to January. People are going to do this, the diet industry preps all year for the news stories we’re going to see in the next few weeks. You don’t have to live in that space.You can know that there are trained professionals like us, standing by to give you the hot take you need when the Ozempic story comes down the pipeline. We got this, you can take a break.CorinneYeah, good luck.---Extra Buttery ButterCorinneAll right. My Butter is that while I was driving across the country from New Mexico to Maine, I listened to the audiobook of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens.Part of the reason I was listening to it is I was driving with my mom and she had been talking about that new Barbara Kingsolver book Demon, Copperhead, which is a re-telling of David Copperfield. And I really want to read that book, but I haven’t yet. So we were like, well, we should listen to David Copperfield first. And it turns out that David Copperfield is 34 hours or something, which isthe exact length of the drive from New Mexico to Maine. VirginiaThat’s amazing. CorinneAnd it was also just so funny. It’s really funny. There’s a really good narrator. And some of the characters are just hilarious. We were laughing and just kind of adopting these little things that they say over and over again. So yeah, just recommending David Copperfield, I guess.VirginiaI love that you did that with your mom. What a fun road trip bonding activity. And I love the idea of revisiting a big classic, although I admit to having a big Charles Dickens bias.CorinneAgainst?VirginiaYeah.CorinneOh, interesting.VirginiaI mean, we can unpack it another time. But suffice to say, when I was in college and an English major, I was really focused on 19th century literature, I could do with a little less Charles Dickens and a little more of the Jane Austen and the Brontes. I was all about the women writers who were not getting their due. The canon is very white male.But that does make me want to do one of my favorite regular projects, which is rereading all of the Jane Austen novels, which I haven’t done in a few years. CorinneThat also sounds very fun. VirginiaI need a road trip because I bet there are good audio versions. Or maybe that’s just a good 2024—look at me making resolutions. CorinneOh yeah, here we go. VirginiaBut I’m into revisiting a good classic. CorinneI think I would have struggled to get through it if I was just listening to it in my everyday life, but having the long drive to do it. And just like so much funnier than I expected.VirginiaMy six year old is really in her audiobook era. She’s a good reader, as well, but she can obviously listen to books that she can’t read yet. And it’s been really fun because there are books that I’ll suggest a reading to her and somehow the attention span for that is different. She has a longer attention span for an audiobook and so she’s done some classics. I mean, kid classics, like Charlotte’s Web. She went all the way through all the Ramona books. It’s so fun to see her like really light up about these audiobooks. I’m looking forward to her being a few years older and us being able to do family audiobooks. We’re not quite quite there yet, because the 10-year-old doesn’t like the younger one’s reading tastes. CorinneSo funny. What’s your Butter?VirginiaSo speaking of audiobooks, I wrote an essay recently about how she was doing audiobooks at dinner, because single mom dinner has been a big evolution. At first, audiobooks and books were helping us all come back to the table together. Everyone reading was a nice buffer. I mean, we still read probably at least like one dinner a week, everyone’s in a book. She’s on audiobook, the older kid and I are reading our own books and that’s lovely. But it stopped being like—this is the only way to get them to the table.And something else that has really worked is this game called Table Topics. They’re these little boxes of conversation starter cards. Just an endless supply of random questions that you can take turns asking each other. It’s hilarious to hear my kids answer questions like, you know, where do you want to be in 10 years? They’re very all over the map. I think this is what inspired the resolution discussion.We take turns being the question reader versus answerers. What’s interesting about that is neither of my kids do well at dinner if I’m like “how was your day” or “what did you do at school today?” There are all these questions that really turn off my kids and I think, a lot of kids. But these are so random. So if you’ve got angsty tweens or teens, who are going to think it’s really dumb. They’re gonna be like, this is so cheesy. I can’t believe you’re making us play a question game. But there’s something about it.CorinneYou have to participate once you hear it happening.VirginiaMaybe they won’t answer every single one. But there will be one where they’re like, okay, actually, I do want to say something. And it’s really cool. CorinneThat’s awesome. VirginiaI’m just keeping them out on my dinner table now for whoever comes over. Like, let’s do some questions. I ended up explaining the AIDS epidemic the other night because of this. I wasn’t expecting that to take us there, but it did and you know what, you gotta get there some point.CorinneFascinating. How did you discover these?VirginiaYou know, what? A home design influencer. Chris Loves Julia, Julia Marcum. I wrote about her in that essay.Still following her content.All right. I think we did our Extra Butter! Amazing. ---The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter.Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.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 independent anti diet journalism. I’ll talk to you soon.--- 1 - In case you haven’t noticed, Substack makes this whole “premium tier” concept extra wonky—so email us with any questions or tech challenges!

You’re listening to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast about anti-fat bias, diet culture, parenting and health. I’m Virginia Sole Smith.Since we’re on winter break this week, I picked one of my favorite episodes to rerun for you—and it’s a conversation that feels more relevant (to my life, anyway!) than ever.Today we’re chatting with lyz about divorce in diet culture.This conversation was inspired in part by a piece I wrote in fall of 2022 about how diet culture shows up in co-parenting. And it was previously paywalled, but I’m releasing the whole episode for free today because it’s just such a good one!Lyz writes the excellent newsletter Men Yell at Me. She’s also the author of God Land: A Story of Faith, Loss, and Renewal in Middle America, and Belabored: A Vindication of the Rights of Pregnant Women. And she just launched a brand new podcast, This American Ex-Wife, which is also the title of her next book, coming out in February and available to preorder now!Don’t forget, you can always take 10 percent off that purchase at Split Rock Books if you also order (or have already ordered!) Fat Talk! (Just use the code FATTALK at checkout.)If you’re enjoying the podcast, make sure you’re following us (it’s free!) in your podcast player! We’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Pocket Casts! And while you’re there, please leave us a rating or review. (We like 5 stars!)Episode 123 TranscriptVirginiaSo Lyz, you have written so brilliantly about divorce. You are the smartest person I know about divorce. I text you whenever I want to know about divorce.LyzWhich isn’t that often, for her husband who’s listening.VirginiaJust… when I have general questions. About people. In general. You are extremely knowledgeable about this topic and your next book, This American Ex-Wife, is about divorce. So you are here as my divorce expert and I’m curious: Do you see diet culture playing a role in American divorces?LyzOh, absolutely. Something initially with divorce that hits on diet culture is the “revenge body.” Anybody who’s gotten divorced will tell you about the stress and the weight loss associated with it—or not! Sometimes it’s weight gain. But there is the expectation of having that “post-breakup revenge body.” I’ve seen TikToks that are kind of making jokes like, you want to sit on the couch and relax, but you remember you have to be the hot one in the breakup.VirginiaI never thought about this. LyzYou know, like the “getting back out there” body. I know for a lot of men, divorce involves some free time, which, that time used to be managed by someone and now they don’t know what to do. So there is an aspect to the culture of the Divorced Dad in the gym. I follow quite a few TikTok accounts of divorce influencers which are out there…VirginiaWow, divorce influencers.LyzSo the divorced dad going to the gym, the mom trying to get hot and get back out there. It hit me so personally when I got divorced because I was so stressed out, and my response to stress is to not eat. I lost a lot of weight, and it was not healthy. And I remember people being like, “Oh, you look so good,” and me being like, “I’m so stressed out, I’m not sleeping or eating. You should be asking me if I’m okay.” I would get so angry about it, too, because then also people—as you know—people treat you differently. All of a sudden the men would see me differently because it was a very unhealthy amount of weight [to lose].VirginiaIt sounds like a a parallel with postpartum “get your body back” pressure.LyzYes. VirginiaSo for a lot of women you’ll have just done that in recent years and now you have to do the “revenge body.” And why are we not allowed to just let our bodies be during times of stress and trauma?LyzRight, right. And I think, too, it’s so hard when you layer on that the idea that exists in the divorce world that you now have to find someone else. I hate that. I hate that whole idea. That’s what most divorce books are. It’s like, okay, well, you did it, now how do you find love again? So that comes with that added pressure of being good looking which then translates to diet culture. Thinness, muscles.VirginiaI’m just remembering a piece of yours where you were like, “actually all women want is to live alone in the woods with our wolves.” No, we don’t want to get remarried. That’s not the goal but that is immediately the expectation. Why do you want to get right back into the thing you just got out of?LyzWell, I think there’s that pressure of singleness, right? There’s that stigma of singleness. But you’re right, most women post-divorce don’t remarry. It’s the men who remarry. It’s somewhere around 70% of women initiate divorces and I think it’s less than 40%—I need to fact check myself on that.2 But it is a lower number who then get remarried. It’s an overwhelming number of men who then try to remarry because, like, “I don’t know how to find mustard in the grocery store without a woman.” But no, you’re right. I mean, every married woman I know wants to just live alone in the woods with a wolf, so.VirginiaAnd part of that freedom would be not needing to be hot while you do it, just being able to be. LyzYes, not being a hot witch. VirginiaJust want to be a witch.LyzWhy do we have to have weird witch beauty standards? There’s this great moment I think about a lot in the book Don Quixote where he’s traveling along and he meets all these shepherds. And they’re like, “There’s this one bitch, she’s awful. She broke all of our hearts. She’s so beautiful. We hate her. She’s evil.” And then they’re talking about her and she just walks up to them and goes, “I’m not evil. I don’t like any of you. Stop talking to me. I didn’t try to seduce you. I just existed and you thought I was in love with you.” And then she’s basically like, “I don’t want to be in your narrative.” And then she goes back into the woods and she never shows up in the book ever again. VirginiaShe’s our queen. LyzI think about her all the time. VirginiaThat’s icon behavior for sure. So, what else besides revenge body comes up? Anything about divorce and diet culture.LyzThen there’s that whole aspect of divesting yourself of the body ideas that come from the relationship. I think there are so many ways that happens. You might have married a person looking a very specific way but, as we all know, time and life and children take a toll. And then the other person is like, “Well, you don’t look how you used to” and you’re like, “Well, I never will.”VirginiaThat’s life. That’s time passing.LyzAnd marriage is so physical. It’s a bodily connection, right? So having divorce enables you—especially if you’re in a bad marriage. I mean, obviously people can have good marriages. My bias is that I think marriage is inherently unequal and bad. You can have good relationships within a bad system, but it’s still a bad system. So I’m gonna get that out there.But so when you do divorce, part of that rebuilding of identity and rebuilding of sense of self comes with, like, who am I now? Like, what is my body now? And now I don’t have to manage that other person’s toxic body / diet stuff. I don’t have to manage the expectations of another person on my body and on my sense of self. I don’t have to have somebody judging what I’m eating. And then you can also make your own food. That was something that blew my mind that I didn’t expect. Like, I am not cooking for this other person who wants boneless, skinless chicken breasts every single fucking night. VirginiaThe saddest of proteins, trulyLyzHe would have lived on boneless, skinless chicken breast and microwaved frozen vegetables. I’m like, “let’s roast a chicken from Ina Garten. Let’s make vegan stew!” and none of that would fly. So, yeah, being able to feed yourself without the observation of someone around you just really changes things. And since we have 50/50 custody—and it’s always different with children around—but I get to sit and be like, “what is it that I actually want to eat? And when do I want to eat? And how do I want to eat?” It just makes me so much more thoughtful and grateful about what I’m consuming in my body.VirginiaOne woman I interviewed described it as a “food rumspringa” because she was free from his expectations. For her it was embracing stuff like Annie’s Mac and Cheese—like I don’t have to cook, I can just enjoy eating a box of mac and cheese for dinner and watching Gilmore Girls and be so happy. What was your favorite thing you ate when you realized this liberation? LyzFor a while I got really into cooking complicated recipes from the New York Times. That kind of stopped. I did the opposite of everybody in 2020, in the shutdown year. Everybody got into cooking and I was like, “I’m done, peace out. I will now be ordering food exclusively.” So another one was eating out because my ex does not like to go out to eat and and it was very stressful around, like, if you go out to eat and then what you order. You know, should you get a glass of wine or god forbid order dessert? That’s, like, so extra and why are you doing that? So just going out to eat by myself and an ordering whatever I wanted and dessert was a game changer. VirginiaI love that.LyzAnd then I’d make complicated recipes just for myself because I’m like, “oh, he didn’t like curry so now I will make curry.”VirginiaNow you can have all the curry! Revenge curry seems way better than revenge body, I’m just gonna put that out there. LyzYes, yes. And all bodies handle stress in different ways. Divorce is stressful, even if it’s a good change. And that expectation that you then get thinner because of stress is not everybody’s experience.VirginiaSomething that came up in my conversations with the women I interviewed for this story was was how little faith they had that a judge or the legal system would do anything to intervene when they were seeing their ex continue to parent in very controlling ways around food. Like the dad who, if you didn’t finish dinner, you got it served for breakfast the next morning, so the kid was showing up at school hungry and having meltdowns because he hadn’t eaten two meals. That seems so clearly problematic to me. But I guess I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about why family court systems aren’t set up to deal with this.LyzFamily court systems aren’t set up to deal with a lot of different types of abuse. Going to my lawyer—who was great and wonderful—she basically was like, family court operates like an equation. You punch in the numbers, you just assume everything’s equal, and there really isn’t room for understanding some of those nuances and the different ways of talking about abuse. I mean, it’s abuse. If a parent is controlling their food access, that is abusive behavior. But you have to navigate it very, very, very delicately. Because I think, especially for women, you’re getting divorced, so already there’s a little bit of a stigma on you, right? Like, you’re a little shrewish. I noticed people treated me differently, too, around their husbands. I was like, “listen, I don’t want your nasty husband, I don’t even want my nasty husband. I don’t want anybody’s husband .”VirginiaWeird energy.LyzSo there was a little bit of weird energy. My lawyer was just really upfront, like, “Listen, if you go before a judge in Iowa or a mediator—we got everything mediated—most of them are middle aged white men. They’re look exactly like your husband. You go in and you start making all these claims, well these could be things that they do to their children.”VirginiaThis could be their parenting style. LyzYou could turn them against you. So, it’s like, if you go in there being the “shrill divorced lady” who only nitpicks and says horrible things about her husband, which I got actually. Divorced women, when I was getting a divorce, told me not to be the “negative divorced lady.”VirginiaBut like, you’re getting divorced for all these reasons, right? Some of which are negative, right? LyzI think the problem is that we don’t talk honestly about our relationships. Nobody knows what is actually supposed to be good in a marriage because we’ve spent so much time hiding some of these things. I would tell people, “Oh, we’re not gonna go out to eat” or “How about you just come over to our house?” just to manage things, so we wouldn’t have to get into a fight later if I had a glass of wine. But I’m not being honest with my friends about that. I’m not like, “No, we can’t go to a restaurant because jerkface over there won’t let me order wine.”VirginiaRight. LyzSo anyway, you are coming into a system that very much thinks its objective but as we all know, objectivity favors the white man and favors the system. So it really is a balancing act. I’ll just tell a story that about religion. My ex was saying that I was awful because I wanted to go to a liberal Lutheran Church—and now I go to no church, which is even worse. He was telling the mediator, “She will not raise her children with the values that she agreed to when we entered the marriage contract so it is a breach of contract,” and my lawyer is like, “You can’t react. You can’t nod. Even if he’s being unreasonable, you just have to be calm and placid so that you look like the reasonable one here.”VirginiaSo you’re not the angry divorced lady.LyzRight. You’re managing so much just to get out of this situation and letting so many things go. And I know women whose exes did awful things and even then the courts were just like, “well, it’s a he said/she said situation.” So you’re just doing what you can to get out with the skin of your teeth.VirginiaAnother thing I heard was women worrying about how their bodies would be perceived by lawyers and judges. Like, if you’re fat, that’s going to be an added strike against you coming into that, especially if you have a thin ex.LyzYes. Oh, yes. The clothes you wear. I had to buy a whole new outfit for mediation. I mean, I’m a writer, I don’t have a lot of business clothes. My lawyer gave me suggestions. She’s like, “button up, nothing low cut.” Which works for me because I have no boobs. But God forbid you actually have boobs and then they’re like, “don’t dress slutty.” And you’re like, well, they’re there. Like, I have a body.VirginiaI can almost never get them to go away. LyzRight? Like, where shall I put them that would make you feel more comfortable. The whole courtroom appearance, which of course, again, is judged more for women. Men just have a uniform they can pop into or out of, you know. I can’t just buy a dress shirt.VirginiaIt has to be an outfit.LyzAnd of course, it’s expensive to do this. And you’re already like, I don’t have any money. That’s such a big aspect I think, not just of divorce but of our court and legal systems. VirginiaThe body policing. LyzYeah. We’ll judge you immediately based on appearance.VirginiaAnd how we judge mothers in general, right? The fitness of motherhood is often tied to bodies and presentation of bodies.LyzAnd then if you and your ex have very different types of bodies, then people are thinking “Well, of course they’re getting divorced because she really let herself go.” And then you get into co-parenting, which is fun.VirginiaThis is maybe a very naive question, but how much advice do you get on how to co-parent and co-parent around food?LyzEvery state does it a little differently. Iowa, God bless, is a no fault divorce state. So it’s really hard to upset the balance of that, like it’s going to be 50/50 no matter what, unless you get your former partner on video doing something horrific, right? It would be very, very, very hard. So, we had to take mandatory divorce parenting classes. And I’m sure it’s different in every state, but what that involved was going to this nonprofit called Kids First Law Center here in Iowa. They’re really great. They do amazing work, helping to represent children for low cost or free. So, you sign up for your time and you go sit in a conference room with a bunch of other divorced parents and then you watch a video that’s like a basically about how not to put your kids in the middle of fights. First of all, it’s kind of shaming because the beginning of the video, at least the one I watched was just kids being like, “this is awful. My parents are ruining my life.”VirginiaLike you’re not already worrying about that!LyzI just remember a child literally drawing a broken home and I’m like, wow, already I feel like the worst person in the world. And then it shows these different scenarios of couples fighting. There’s one where the harried divorce mom comes in from her late work shift and the kids are watching television and they’re like, “we’re so hungry mom.” And she’s like, “well, we don’t have food cause your father’s late with the child support check.” Then it’s like, “don’t do this.”There’s another one where it was like, a dad is dropping his son off back at the sad mom’s divorce department. And he’s like, “Oh, son, I would really love to take you to the big game this Saturday, but it’s your mom’s day and she won’t let me take you.” And then it’s like, “don’t do this.” VirginiaI mean, agreed, that seems not helpful to your child. But it’s not giving you a lot to work with. Like, what do you do instead would be helpful.LyzAnd it does show you better ways to say it. But it’s really basic, it’s like, “Talk to the other adult, don’t talk to the children. Don’t send messages through the children.” And I remember at the time being like, “God, this is so basic,” but then going through divorce and then having to constantly remind my ex like, “Hey you need to just text me instead of telling the kid” or whatever.VirginiaThe video is assuming that you can still communicate with this other adult.LyzYes. And that was something I had to go to therapy to talk about. There are so many times when my ex, I’ll say something to his face and he will not respond. I’ll send an email, he won’t respond.VirginiaYou can’t force two people to be grownups if one of them isn’t being a grown up.LyzThat was a lot of my summer was trying to handle some of these diet culture things that were being taught to my daughter. Our daughter, who is 11, is going through puberty and is in swimming. At her dad’s house they were restricting access to food and snacks, I think out of concern for her weight—which, already lots of different layers of problems there. Her response was to start hoarding snacks and hiding them and this is immediately terrifying to me because this is the age when girls develop eating disorders. Out of everything that I want for my children, I want them to love themselves, right? And to not think that there’s something wrong with themselves.So that was something where I’m like, Okay, how do I send this email which I know will get read, but I know will not be responded to. But you can’t be combative, right? And you can’t betray the confidence of the child. A lot of the things she’s told me have been in confidence. I had to have multiple therapy sessions where it was just writing an email about how to tackle diet culture with your ex and his wife, the kids’ stepmom. There is no handbook.VirginiaNone of this written into the custody agreement. You’re just figuring it out in these murky spaces. LyzAnd you have to assume that you have a therapist who understands these things, which I’m so lucky. My therapist specializes in disordered eating, which is something that she and I tackle a lot, and I’m still unpacking in my own life, right? So I’m lucky. She was already right there with me. I mean one of the reasons I wanted to write a divorce book was because I was looking for books about divorce, and they’re all like, “the happy divorce how to” and that’s just basically tips on how to manage your ex’s emotions.VirginiaLike, the reason you’re not married is because you don’t want to keep managing his emotions.LyzRight, which, learning how to stop managing their emotions is pretty dang difficult, especially when there are kids involved. So no, there is no manual and they’re not talking about it in that divorce class, which by at the end of the video, we all had to get into little small groups and talk about little scenarios, and then talk about what’s the good way to handle this scenario.VirginiaHow can you ever cover all the scenarios you’re actually going to encounter?LyzThey’re mostly focusing on like, money.VirginiaAnd schedule, like, I want to do something this Saturday and it’s your day with the kids, which are logistical issues. Which are not not stressful, but they’re not emotional in the same way as something like how we’re feeding the kids or how we’re talking about bodies. These are things that just trigger such deep core beliefs and emotions for everybody.LyzAnd I think something that is really, really difficult—and I think I’ve talked to you about this, too—is then trying to help your child unlearn a lot of things that they’re learning from your partner, which you’re also trying to unlearn. Like, I am on a journey and I will always be on a journey, right? I’m trying to help my kid unlearn stuff that I don’t even fully have unlearned and it triggers me to remember those moments from my own childhood. But you can’t put that on your kid because they’re different. You are just unraveling this whole complicated issue in the moment with somebody who doesn’t want to work with you. VirginiaOh, man, it’s so much. I do want to quickly say—you and I have talked about this, of course, but I want to say for listeners—what your daughter was doing hoarding food, this came up in the piece as well. I really appreciated the advice from Hilary Kinavey, one of the therapists I interviewed, of reframing that as a really smart strategy for a kid in that situation. It’s a really smart coping strategy to get herself fed when that wasn’t available.So for anyone parenting through the same kind of dynamic, it’s so important that we recognize the wisdom of how our kids are responding to these moments. Like, of course we don’t want that to be her only coping strategy in life, but I think what she was doing was actually brilliant.LyzYes. Virginia and I have a little text thread about our newsletters, but also I’m just asking Virginia for advice on parenting. So I remember telling you that and you saying, “that’s so great that she’s feeding herself,” and that helped me to immediately reframe the way I was thinking about it.And another thing I really liked in the piece was about kids correcting with food. Like the mother who talked about how her kids might seem like they binge a little when they come back to her house. I notice those kinds of behaviors at my house, and of course that really stresses me out because you’re raised to be like, “no more chips! No more candy!” and just learning how to see that as a positive thing, as a way of your child getting their needs met. Now I say, “in our house, if you’re hungry, you eat.” Know what you’re hungry for, trust yourself, trust your body. That helped alleviate a lot of my fears.Because again, this is not something that is really talked about. Hearing that it happens in someone else’s house immediately makes me think, Okay, this is a normal coping mechanism.VirginiaIt is obviously not ideal for a kid to be moving from a restrictive household and then having to respond in that way. It is a stress response and that’s concerning. But it also is a real power of divorce, that you have control over what’s happening in your house, and you can make your house the safe space for food. If you were still in the marriage, those safe spaces would be much harder to find.LyzYes. That that is something I think about a lot because I’ve got regrets about the person I chose to have children with. We all decide we’re going to be better than our parents, and we’re going to do things. So I think one of the biggest heartbreaks of my life was being in this marriage and realizing I’m not any different. I did the exact same thing. The only way out is by breaking this all apart and relearning life again. But then knowing that some of those same things will now be happening to your kid because that’s what you chose. I can’t control what happens in that house. I think, especially, too, for mothers, it’s really hard, because you’re used to controlling every single aspect. Like, you know where the shoes are, you know where everything is, you know where the milk is and the ketchup is. And then divorce is letting go of that control. And it’s really scary, because you’re like, are they even gonna get fed? And what are they gonna get fed? And how?But it also helps you build something better. I just have to focus on in my house. I can create a space where we can talk about these issues without fear, where we’re not managing other people’s emotions, where I can have a candy bowl on the kitchen counter. You know, just feed yourself, feed your body, and de-stigmatize a lot of the food.Something my ex would do and does is say, “You have to eat so many bites of so many things.” It just makes dinnertime miserable! Especially, like, my son is the most stubborn. He’s just a sweet little boy and everything’s easygoing until the moment you see his little jaw kind of like click into place. And then you can’t move him. He will not.VirginiaHe will die on this mountain forever. Good luck to you. LyzAnd sometimes the mountain is his foot is on the table, and you say, “hHey, buddy could you get your foot off the table?” And then you look under the table and he’s got his foot up touching the top of the table because he is not gonna let you win. So you can imagine that energy when… VirginiaCounting broccoli bites. LyzRight, one more bite of broccoli. When he was a toddler and he moved to solids, he dropped off the weight scale for a little while which was very scary for me. We had to get him monitored because they were like, does he have a healthy home? Which of course is like, oh my god, I’m a terrible parent. And I did have to unlearn some things! I remember the doctor being like, “well, what protein will he eat?” And I was like, “Go-Gurt, but they’re so full of sugar I don’t like to feed them.” I know, I’m terrible!VirginiaNo, no, I had the same thing.LyzAnd I’ve been going to this doctor for, gosh, 17 years now. So, you know, we know each other and it’s a small town, so we know each other. But she’s just like, “Lyz. If he’s eating it, feed him.”VirginiaFeed him the Go-Gurt.LyzYeah, feed him the Go-Gurt! And so making dinnertime a place that is not stressful is is just so nice.VirginiaYes. I’m so glad you can do that for them. Cooking complicated recipes that make you happy or not cooking because that also makes you happy.LyzOh my god, eating cheese over the sink for dinner. Amazing. Love it. VirginiaLove that.---Butter for Your Burnt ToastVirginiaSo what is your butter for us? LyzMy recommendation is not going to be super deep, but when I saw that question, I immediately thought that the thing I recommend right now is “Wednesday,” a TV show on Netflix. It’s so good. I’m watching it with my 11 year old daughter. I love it. She loves it. It’s so fun. It’s so smart. It’s so interesting. The mother / daughter relationship is great. VirginiaOh, I can’t wait. Do you think my 9 year old can watch it? Will she be into it?LyzMy 9 year old is kind of a weenie beanie and got scared by the horse in “Tangled.” VirginiaThat was a very large horse, in their defense. I can understand that. LyzWhat I’m trying to say is my kid’s threshold for scary things is very low and I know other people’s kids’ are much higher. So, it is too intense for my 9 year old but my 11 year old loves it. But I think if I was 9. I’d be totally into it because I was a weirdo. VirginiaShe is really into the Lemony Snicket show which we’ve been watching and that is quite dark. LyzIf she can do Lemony Snicket she can do Wednesday. It’s also very hilarious and smart and interesting. This should be fun because at least this has a happy ending. I remember watching Lemony Snicket with my daughter and getting to the end and her being like, there has to be another episode and it was like, “No, honey, sometimes life is just bad like that.” And then I was like, Oh my God, you’re the worst parent ever. But also, suck it up.VirginiaWell, my recommendation is a game that my kids and I have all been really into called Ransom Note. Have you ever played this? I think you and your kids would like it too, Lyz. So it’s magnetic poetry, the little word tiles. It’s basically a box full of the word tiles and then everyone gets their own little board and you draw a question and it’s like a prompt. Like the reason it’s ransom notes, it could be like “write a ransom note for kidnapping someone,” or it’s like write a parking ticket for very absurd, funny scenarios. And then you have however much time to play with all your magnetic poetry words and write your own little sentences. And then you just judge whose is funniest. That’s the whole game.We really love it, our nine year old is weirdly great at it. She’s very funny and often wins the round. Also we’re just judging each other which is a fun family activity. Even my five year old, she’ll play on a team with me because she’s like half-reading and she can pick out high frequency words. Or we just let her pick random words and then it’s funny to see what she comes up with. Anyway, it’s so fun. It’s low stakes because I guess you could play it in a competitive way, but we just like to make up the word things. It is marketed for ages 17 and up, so if you care you can edit the cards and the words a little bit because there’s some vulgarity. But my nine year old did a great job with a sentence involving genitals the other day.LyzI love those games, especially now as they’re getting older. We played one on my sister’s Switch. I don’t remember what it was called, but it was something a little similar where you had they come up with scenarios and you had to invent a solution to the problem. And the scenario was how do you make a fish be modest? My daughter’s solution was to was to convert fish to Christianity. And I mean, like she’s obviously joking but I was just like, you’re twisted. Your mind is twisted. It’s just so rewarding as a parent because you’re like, “Oh thank God, you have a personality.”VirginiaWell, and as writer parents to be so proud when they come up with clever little word combinations. I was like, Oh, I think this may actually be an educational game but we will not think of it that way. It’s a very cards against humanity kind of vibe but you can play it with your kids because the skills translate. LyzWell, we love games so we will be picking this one up. VirginiaLyz, thank you so much for being here! This was awesome. I am very excited for everyone to read your book even though I know it’s not out for a while. But stay tuned for that. Tell folks where they can follow you and support your work.LyzI also have a newsletter! It’s calledMen Yell at Me. You can find me there. I’m also on Twitter but I guess the internet’s dying. But I’ll be there tweeting along until I get hit by a meteor. Those are two of the best places to find me unless you’re in Iowa, then you know how to find me because you live here.Thanks so much for listening to Burnt Toast. If you’d like to support the show, please subscribe for free in your podcast player and tell a friend about this episode.---The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter.Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.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 independent anti diet journalism. I’ll talk to you soon. 

You’re listening to Burnt Toast!VirginiaThis is the podcast about diet culture, anti-fat bias parenting and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith.CorinneAnd I’m Corinne Fay, I work on Burnt Toast and run @selltradeplus an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus sized clothing.VirginiaAnd we are here with your December Indulgence Gospel.We have so many good questions this month. We’re going to get into holiday diet culture. We’re also getting into fat travel, which is a really complicated one. And of course, we’ll have your fat fashion recs.This is also a paywalled episode. That means to hear the whole thing you’ll need to be a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. This transcript contains affiliate links. Shopping our links is another great way to support Burnt Toast!CorinneWell, we are not going to talk about the weather, we are going to talk about pants. However, I also really want to talk about your sweater. VirginiaWell, my sweater is very related to my pants, so I’m glad you brought that up.CorinneI just want to say, it’s a very beautiful color. It’s like a vibrant pink and it matches the painting behind you.VirginiaWe’ll have to put a shot in the show notes of my Zoom background, which is this lovely painting by my mom’s good friend, Nancy Rutter. It is pinks and oranges. And I don’t deliberately dress to match it every day, but I’m not going to say it doesn’t happen a lot. And this week, it’s happening every day because I have worn this sweater every day, maybe for almost two weeks at this point. I’m really into it. It’s the Vince Camuto sweater from Nordstrom that I have in about four colors. So here’s what I will say about it. I was very annoyed to realize that the straight sizes come in more colors than the plus sizes. Why? But this is the XXL and it is roomier than the 1X. So it’s in the straight-size listing, but fits more like a 2X. So for folks who are in that range, consider. I bought the 1X and I bought the XXL and I was like, wait, XXL is bigger. Who knows why! But it’s a delightful Barbie pink color and it makes me really happy. CorinneIt’s really beautiful.VirginiaAnd so I’m wearing it with my new pants that I’m obsessed with, which are these joggers from Beyond Yoga. Corinne. They’re changing my life. Haven’t worn other pants in weeks. I don’t know if I’m ever going back.Sara Peterseninfluenced me and I was skeptical but their plus options are pretty decent.CorinneI have the Beyond Yoga leggings and I wear them to the gym. They’re really soft, buttery soft.VirginiaSo I have the turquoise, which is under “seasonal colors.” And then in the Black Friday sale, I got the black and the navy as well. And now I’m just rotating between these sweaters and these joggers. CorinneI might get some of these. They look like really nice soft pants.VirginiaAnd you know how we’ve talked about how, sometimes with pants, the legs stay wide, because ankles don’t get fat at the same rate as butts, as you’re famous for saying. These are cut in the right way, so that there is the taper. CorinneMy question is, how is the like waistband? Do they stay up? I mean, it looks like they don’t have elastic, right?VirginiaThey’re really high. And they are stretchy. It’s a good waistband. Doesn’t dig. As always, everyone’s mileage may vary. We’re going to hear from a whole bunch of people who don’t have my body, who are going to be like, those are the worst joggers in the world. But If you are a round midsection person and you don’t like waistbands, they’re good. CorinneOkay, well, I’m getting really into overalls. In our gift guide, I recommended the Alder Apparel overalls, which I’m now wearing. And I’m mostly happy with them. I have one complaint, which is that they have a hammer loop, which is cool. Always wanted pants with a hammer loop, despite using a hammer maybe once a year. VirginiaBut you just walk around with a hammer uselessly all the time, like, where do I put this? CorinneYeah. But the it’s one of those things where they scaled it up and it got weird. VirginiaWait, they scaled up the hammer loop? Oh! They totally did.CorinneIt’s so big. Like, a dog could fit in there. It’s just like, they did a weird job. VirginiaFat people don’t use fatter hammers. CorinneI know. So the overalls themselves are really cute, but I’m trying to decide if I’m going to cut it off or try to sew it down. VirginiaI was going to say I would want to cut that off. That would drive me nuts. Because it’s going to get caught on stuff!CorinneYes. And it just looks like you’re wearing a wallet chain from your back pocket to your side leg. It’s just really bizarre.VirginiaI mean, if you had a lot of carabiners? You could fit a lot of carabiners on there. Many sets of keys.CorinneI feel like they tried to make something utilitarian. And now it’s not utilitarian.VirginiaI mean, you for sure cannot use that for a hammer. It’s way too large. Like a water bottle with a clip, maybe? And everyone wants that attached to their leg? CorinneYeah, but otherwise, they’re very cute and comfortable so I’m trying to embrace them despite the weird hammer loop.If people have other overall recommendations, I’d be curious to hear them. So far I have ones from Madewell, Old Navy, and these Alder Apparel ones. VirginiaI have had good luck with Target overalls in the past. I had their short-alls the summer and I loved them. Well that was some good pants talk. This is our last episode of 2023, we should also just briefly say, which is exciting. It has been a really good year of Indulgence Gospeling. And we know that for a lot of us, we’re in the thick of winter holidays, so let’s do some holiday questions.CorinneWhat advice can you offer for being an anti-diet model for other people’s children in our lives?I’ve got nieces and nephews whose parents fall into just about every diet culture trap—restricting treats as punishment, withholding dessert if kids don’t eat to their satisfaction, categorizing foods as healthy or not, requiring protein on a plate, etc. How can I tell the parents I won’t participate in any use of food as punishment? And how can I be a positive anti-diet role model for kids without explicitly undermining their parents?VirginiaI think a lot depends on how much time you spend with these kids and their parents. Are you a relative who comes in once a year for the holidays? In which case, you really can’t get a lot done. You’re only seeing them on these very specific occasions. You coming in with a lot of different opinions is just not going to be welcome at a high stress time. Or are you someone who lives nearby and you’re seeing them weekly or once a month, so you’re a regular presence in their lives? I think in that case, you could do more. I don’t know that it will be effective to say, “I will not participate in your use of food as punishment.” Right off the bat, that seems like we’re setting up a very combative dynamic. They’re going to be defensive and feel judged. I think, instead, you have to go for more of a subtle chaos gremlin approach, where there are just different rules at your house. When the kids come to your house, they know that that’s a free food zone and that they don’t have to worry about that. You may still get some pushback from the parents, but I think it’s important for parents to understand that kids go into other food environments and not everybody who feeds your child is going to do it exactly the way you want it done. That’s true for those of us who are feeding from an anti-diet perspective too, right? We have to be okay with the fact that our kids are going to eat with relatives, who are diet-y and trust that what we’re doing at home is going to offset that. Kids can be excited to come to your house and have that safe space. You can be the aunt who gives them all the sugar and that’s great. What are your thoughts?CorinneMy first thought was, can you give them a copy of Fat Talk for Christmas? VirginiaGood starting point.CorinneBut I was also going to say, I mean, I think just letting yourself eat whatever and modeling that kind of good behavior is helpful.I was also wondering about having a conversation with the parents—I guess this is what I would do or what I would probably try to do. I would be like, “Man, it was so interesting having a meal with you and the kids. It was making me think so much about how dinner was in my house growing up and how traumatized I was by being punished with food or required to eat XYZ thing. And like, I don’t know, just curious what you think about that.”VirginiaI mean, especially if this is your sibling, so you grew up in the same food house. Maybe you can even say like, “oh, seeing so-and-so not want to finish their broccoli was reminding me how much we hated when Mom made us finish the broccoli to get the cookies. That’s actually something I’ve had to do a lot of work on as an adult to let go of.” Maybe try being a little vulnerable and sharing your experiences and maybe even doing that without connecting it to what you’re observing with their kids. Finding an unrelated way to bring that up and share that. Because the other thing I’ll say is: Obviously, I don’t love what I’m hearing, right? Withholding dessert, categorizing foods—all of this is tough. And it is probably making feeding their kids tougher than it needs to be. But if you yourself are not a parent, you are not in the trenches of the nightmare that is daily feeding children. So have some empathy for the fact that they are doing these things because this is really hard. This is what they think is best. They’re not doing this to be mean or overly controlling. They’re having a hard time.Maybe you can create some space for them to talk about what they’re up against. It is really hard to feed a picky kid and it is really hard to feel like, “I don’t remember the last time they protein and we’re going to the doctor for a checkup and what if they get on my case about that?” CorinneThis is an experience I have a lot because I’m not a parent and I have a lot of friends who have kids. The situation where you’re eating with them, and you’re just like, oh, this is terrible. But I also am so aware of how overtired and stressed and…VirginiaI see what a shell of yourself you are now. CorinneYeah, basically. If I had to deal with that on my most tired, grumpy day, I would probably just be like, “eat the fucking broccoli!!!” too.VirginiaIt’s a rough gig. And it doesn’t mean that what they’re doing is okay. I think you’ll get further planting some seeds if you lead with empathy for how hard it is. “Oh, looks like you’re having a really hard time with dinner right now. How are you feeling about this?” And just giving them space to vent. CorinneYeah, I think lead with your personal experience, too. Rather than being like, “I’m judging what you’re doing,” just being like, this is something that I’ve experienced or has affected me.VirginiaAnd as they get older, it may really help these kids to have an adult in their life who takes a different approach.Alright, I’m gonna read the next one. Can we talk about family and friends who want to give clothing as gifts? When our kids were babies, it was the main gift they received from family. They’re three and four now and they don’t wear the standard size for their age. Plus, they’re exploring their own style. Just pausing to say I love a three year old who is exploring their own style. Any tips for suggesting non-clothing gifts without upsetting grandma? Same question for me. Honestly, I don’t think I can graciously accept another sweater that doesn’t fit and isn’t my style. What are your thoughts? Does anyone in your life try to give you clothes?CorinneMy mom has occasionally. This is another one where I feel like it really depends on your relationship with the gift giver. Part of me is like, “Can you just return it and use the credit? Do you have a friend who’s in the size of the thing you’re being gifted?” Also, it might be too late for this year! Like, my mom is probably already done Christmas shopping. So if I were going to be now like, “Don’t get me a sweater,” and she’d already bought it…VirginiaThat would be bad. I went to donate or pass it on first as well, because I’m sorry, but at three and four, as much as they’re into their own style—respect— they are going to get enough other presents that this present not being a big hit is fine. They don’t need to love every gift they open. It’s good for kids to have the experience of receiving a gift that’s not quite what they wanted. We all have to learn that awkward dance.And, it may self-correct now that they’re old enough to be more verbal and possibly not have the best response, too. That may be the cue Grandma needs so that next year she’ll say, “What are the kids into? Give me some ideas for gifts.”CorinneIt’s one of those situations where you have to weigh whether the confrontation of being like, “We don’t want any more sweaters,” is worth it. Would you rather smooth over the relationship and deal with donating the stuff? Or would you rather actually say something? VirginiaI am a big believer in, if someone is going to the effort to give you a gift, that’s such a generous and loving thing to do. A solution we’ve had in my family is we don’t really give adult gifts anymore. People pretty much only buy for the kids just because it was stressful. I can’t think of the perfect gift for every adult in my family. People’s tastes change and whatever—so we just don’t do it, which has been super liberating to have fewer gifts at the holidays. It’s a big way to reduce stress. That’s something you can suggest, but not everybody loves that idea of course. I’m thinking about you accepting the sweater that doesn’t fit and I am feeling for you that that probably makes you feel really unseen, that someone was like, “I’m sure the medium will be fine.” And maybe that’s completely wrong, and that sucks.CorinneCould it be as simple as just trying it on then and there? You know, like, if it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t fit.VirginiaI don’t know. I think this is one where I would not make this a big mountain to die on. I think I would roll with the fact that not every gift your kids get, and not every gift you get, is perfect. But maybe for next year, you could say, “What if we did fewer gifts? Or what if we gave experiences instead of gifts?” You can let her know ahead of time, like, “We’d love a zoo membership.”CorinneWhat about preemptively sending a list? You could send this person a thing that’s like, “This kid is interested in this. This kid is interested in this. You could include their sizes?”VirginiaIt’s tricky when people don’t request the list. I feel like, maybe the problem here is this grandmother doesn’t ask for ideas and just assumes that she knows what they want. And while I agree, that’s frustrating, I still fall back on the etiquette of we don’t get to dictate how people give us gifts.CorinneAlso I feel like she’s probably trying to give something useful by giving clothing?VirginiaIt’s not more plastic crap like, “great more Legos to step on in the dark,” or more My Little Pony nonsense. Could be worse. Could be more Squishmallows. My houses is, conservative estimate, 37 percent Squishmallow at this point, and I don’t see that trend reversing.CorinneIs that a stuffed animal? That sounds like something my dog would like to rip apart, so if you ever need to get rid of any.VirginiaPenelope does help. She does take out a few every now, and we thin the herd. CorinneThat is so funny. Oh my gosh. Yeah, these are exactly like dog toys. VirginiaThere’s a zillion of them. They’re cute. But it’s just like, how many stuffed round things with googly eyes do we need in our lives? I would have argued none.CorinneI’m reading the next question. Another holiday one. What are your hot takes on holiday magic pressure? What brings you joy? Or stress?VirginiaOh, man. Wow, holiday magic pressure is so high.CorinneI can really see the stress. This is an interesting one for me. This doesn’t apply to me because I’m in a weird zone where I’m an adult and neither me nor my sister have kids. VirginiaSo no one needs magic. CorinneThere is no magic. Or it’s whatever you make.VirginiaThat sounds so calm. You all just probably have a nice conversation and eat a good meal and go to bed.CorinneI mean, yeah. VirginiaSounds great. I have complicated feelings about this, especially this year. Of course this is our first Christmas since separating. So we are doing a shared holiday but not every piece of it—like we each got our own tree. So the girls had two Christmas tree experiences, which actually worked out great. But I was like, “Will they be devastated that we’re doing two trees?” Every piece of it this year is weird and different, and we’re finding our way. But I did take it as a cue to think about what I could do less of and what I enjoyed and would still want to do. I have done the family photo card for a long time. And at first I was like, I’m going to retire the photo card. And then I was like, no, I would love to send a card from me and the girls, that feels really nice, actually. So I did that, but I did cut down my my card list quite a bit, so that it wouldn’t be such a production.We’re still seeing all the relatives, but we’re spreading it out, versus I used to host a big 24 person Christmas dinner. That didn’t feel right anymore. And I feel great about having adjusted the schedule to still see everyone we love but not all at one meal that I have to cook. CorinneThat sounds really wise. VirginiaBut it’s hard! I was really scared to do that, because what if I’m going to upset 24 people who had an expectation of what this day was going to be? It turns out everyone was like, “Great! Do what you need to do! We got it.” Which makes me love my whole family. I think if you are feeling the balance of stress to joy really tip toward stress, it is totally worth deciding you can cut out a few things. The kids don’t need Christmas to be quite as highly produced as social media tells us. I think it’s helpful to recognize that a lot of these expectations around—Christmas traditions in particular are what I’m talking about, because that’s the holiday I celebrate, but I’m sure this applies to other winter holidays as well—The expectations have gotten bigger and bigger. Again, I’ve done the family photo card. I do the Christmas Eve pajamas, and they get a book on Christmas Eve, and we do a lot of gifts on Christmas morning and stockings and we do Boxing Day presents. It’s so many layers. And it is worth thinking, like, do we need all of this? Or could we skip a few and they would still feel plenty magical?CorinneDo you do Santa Claus? VirginiaYes.CONTENT WARNING: If you have children listening, we’re going to discuss Santa Claus now. Okay. I’m giving you a moment, evacuate the room. Sorry, this is a big deal. One child is in the loop but plays along well, and one child still fully believes. And, you know, it’s fun and magical to be in that space. You don’t get that many years with that phase, so that actually helped me figure out what I wanted to prioritize, right? Knowing that I’m in the sweet spot of two kids still being into a super magical Christmas. So right now gifts do matter to them. But gifts do not matter to any of the adults. So we have stripped that part out of our lives and that feels great. And with Christmas pajamas, they do really like that. So we’ll do that one. But if they stopped liking it, I’m not going to force them into Christmas pajamas because I want that Instagram photo.Oh, one big change we made this this year was: We got a fake tree instead of going to cut down a live one. That’s a really big deal for me. I grew up always cutting them down. You know in New England, you always go out in the snow and everybody cries and you’re cold. You’d lug the thing back and it won’t go on the car. And then you’d lug it in the house and everyone’s swearing, trying to get it to stand up. I felt like that was a mandatory part of Christmas but I didn’t want to do it all by myself. So it was making me stressed and I said to the girls, like, what do we think? Do we need a real tree this year? Should we do a fake one? And they were both like, We need a fake one! Animal habitats are being destroyed.CorinneOh my God. I love that.VirginiaI know that’s not entirely true, but whatever. I was like, “Agreed. Let’s preserve the animal habitat.”CorinneAnd my sanity. VirginiaSo we got a fake one. It was so easy to set up. Yes, it’s a giant hunk of plastic and it was expensive, but it’s going to pay for itself in like two years, based on what I pay for fresh trees. So that was a big one that I took off my list. CorinneThat sounds nice. VirginiaAny other thoughts on holiday magic? Anything you’re like oh, we should add that in? Or you’re just like, it’s fine, we are low key magic these days?CorinneWell my dad is dead. And he died in December, so it’s also kind of a heavy time. It’s hard. But I think also sometimes it’s freeing to just be like, do whatever. You know.VirginiaI think that’s how I’m feeling this year. We’re going to do some different stuff and we’re going to see if we want to keep doing it that way or do we want to change it up again? It’s helping me to be open to the idea that Christmas can look different every year based on where you are and what you need and what feels special to you. CorinneTotally. VirginiaAll right. Well, on that cheery holiday note! Let’s do some diet culture/ fat life questions. This person would like recs for comfy underwear for apron bellies to help prevent sweating. I have tried so many.Corinne. You are the resident underwear scientist for Burnt Toast.CorinneI mean, I’m starting to feel like my science is a little lacking because I feel like I basically just have one recommendation and everyone already knows by now. I like Thunderpants.VirginiaI am excited to try them.CorinneI hope you do try them.VirginiaI will. I’m in a real fight with my underwear right now.CorinneOkay, well then I won’t ask you to recommend any.I guess the other thing I do want to say about this is I feel like you’re not going to find underwear that prevents sweating. What I’m extrapolating from this question is that you might be getting a skinfold rash under your belly? I have seen people selling these like belly liners. I’ve never tried them because it seems hard to have a piece of fabric tucked between your skin folds.VirginiaLike, it’s an add on?CorinneIt’s like basically like the shape of like a pad. You put it between your folds and it absorbs moisture. VirginiaLike dress shields.CorinneI could imagine wearing them under my boobs, if I was not wearing a bra or something. But what I like for the sweat rash belly situation is diaper rash cream. I like the brand Weleda. I like the one that has the purple on the tube.So get out of the shower. Make sure all your skin is fully dry, which might involve using extra towels or laying down and still for a while. Then put on the diaper rash cream and live your life. But I don’t think underwear can prevent the sweating. VirginiaI mean, it’s not going to stop you sweating. I guess the right underwear maybe would help with wicking it away? But I agree, this cream sounds like a better way to create a barrier. CorinneOh and the Thunderpants are not 100 percent cotton. I think they’re like 90 percent because they are very stretchy. For 100 percent cotton, I don’t know. VirginiaThere’s ARQ?CorinneBut are ARQ even 100 percent?1VirginiaIt’s very cottony. I don’t know.CorinneI think there’s still a little stretch, but I could be wrong.VirginiaI do think you need some stretch, right? CorinneI mean, I do, for sure.VirginiaI’m not going to get something over my belly without stretch.CorinneI think someone in the comments was recommending some 100 percent cotton for sensory things, so maybe our commenters will help you. But that’s my take on the sweating underwear.VirginiaI mean, I’m still on the quest to find some that don’t roll down. I’m wearing some from Birdsong. And I do the thing where once I find a pair of underwear I like, I buy 12 pairs and then wear them until they fall apart. And it’s possible we’ve just reached their lifespan? I think I’ve had this set of 12 pairs of underwear for at least two years and that’s all I’ve been wearing. CorinneImpressive, impressive. VirginiaBut now they’re definitely rolling down a lot. They’re doing the thing where if I’m wearing these joggers or jeans on the rare occasion I wear jeans, and I walk more than 10 feet, I’m suddenly aware of my underwear being around my knees basically.CorinneI do not like that. VirginiaNobody talks enough about that trauma. I also have a friend who swears by not wearing underwear as often as possible.CorinneI hate that idea so much.Virginia I mean, I’m just going to throw it out for people to experiment with if they want. CorinneI’m hoping that you try Thunderpants before the next time someone asks us an underwear question. VirginiaOkay. CorinneDo you know of any ankle boots that fit extremely thick ankles? If so, please spread that butter.VirginiaI’m here to say not Nisolo. Don’t even bother. CorinneInteresting.VirginiaI don’t think I’d realized that boots could be slim cut to this degree and they definitely are. So that’s a don’t buy rec. What about you? Do you have any good sources for this?CorinneI mean, I feel like I have normal fat-sized ankles so I don’t know if these are going to be helpful. But what I find is the shorter the boot, the better. You have less problems if it’s hitting you at your actual ankle bone versus your lower calf. VirginiaWhich is thankfully a trend right now. I mean, there are a lot of booties.CorinneYes. And then for wide fit, which I’m assuming is going to be better, people like Torrid wide fit shoes and ASOS also has some wide fit shoes. Those are both sort of on the that cheaper end.2VirginiaLane Bryant, too. Mia O’Malley was talking about really loving their boots recently. CorinneAnd then I also know there’s this brand Adelante Shoe Company.VirginiaOh, yes. I have tall boots from them and they’re amazing.CorinneYeah, they do custom widths. So I would assume that you could include ankles in that.VirginiaYou do. You measure your ankles, and if you’re getting the knee high boots, several places on your calves. They are an investment. They’re very expensive. CorinneThey’re like $2-300.VirginiaBut I will never need to buy another pair of tall boots. The other thing about boots that’s annoying is the trends on boots changes subtly every year. These are still working. I’ve had them for probably, oh gosh, pre-COVID. Like maybe since 2018? And I feel like they’re still working. Maybe not the trendiest boots you’re going to see. They’re not the Nisolo that everyone’s wearing right now. But they’re a very classic shape. So I would definitely check them out and you can just get your exact measurements and the quality is amazing. CorinneI love that. VirginiaThis person says: I am getting in a tizzy over my recent bloodwork numbers, diet thoughts, Ugh. I really feel this person, as someone who recently had a high cholesterol reading. It’s weird how a biomarker can still trigger all the diet stuff. Because I feel like so often the Health at Every Size community is like, don’t focus on weight. Let’s focus on biomarkers instead as a measure of health. And then it turns out, if one of your biomarkers is off, you still feel like shit about it.CorinneRight? VirginiaIt’s the same thing. CorinneThat’s where the healthism stuff comes in, where HAES is not necessarily helpful.I mean, it’s hard to know exactly what to say without knowing what bloodwork numbers we’re talking about. But generally, I would say that most diets have not been proven to improve bloodwork. One thing that has been proven to have negative health impacts is stress.So instead of focusing on the bloodwork, you could focus on stuff that does make you feel good. Like eating breakfast, stretching, going for a walk, spending time with people you love.Virginia Love it.CorinneAnd I think also, like, sometimes this stuff is not as much in our control as we wish it were. I wish my body worked in ways that it doesn’t, but going on a diet isn’t going to change it. And it sucks to realize that. But what are you going to do? Make yourself miserable?VirginiaSo much of what happens with our biomarkers is genetically determined. CorinneOr environmentally, or other stuff we don’t have control over.VirginiaWhatever your numbers are, they aren’t your fault. They just aren’t your fault. This isn’t something you did to yourself by being irresponsible or lazy or unhealthy. None of that really applies here, even though that’s the mainstream narrative. And, you deserve treatment. That’s the other thing I want to say. Whatever the number is and whatever shame spiral it’s triggering, you deserve treatment and support to navigate this. Healthcare is supposed to meet us where we are in the bodies we have right now. You’re not supposed to have to prove some kind of gold star patient status in order to be treated with dignity and respect for a health issue.CorinneObviously, this isn’t how it works. But if there was a blood work number that was a death sentence—I mean, whatever. That’s a complicated thing to say because everyone is going to die anyways. But if there was a blood work number that was like, “this is really bad, you’re going to die.” Going on a diet isn’t going to fix that. So how would you want to live your life in the meantime, you know? VirginiaOh, I love that.All right, the next question is a really tough one. This person writes,I’m going to NYC with a group of my all straight size college friends. As a super fat person who will be at that time seven months pregnant, I am very anxious about the experience of being fat in New York. I lived there for a while, so I’m already speaking from some experience of the tiniest of cafe tables squished together like sardines. But my biggest worry is about going to see a show on Broadway. Any tips for how I can scope out the seating in the theaters? And also any advice for how to communicate either my need for special seating or my inability to go to my friends who seem not to have any awareness of this?CorinneThis is such a tough one. I’m really feeling for this person.VirginiaI’m mad at all your friends.CorinneI know.VirginiaBe better, friends. I just want to talk to the straight size people and say can you be a better person and a better friend to your friend? This is unacceptable to me.CorinneSadly, I do think that you need to talk to them. I feel like you should just say, like, Guys, I’m really worried. I also think being pregnant maybe gives you a little extra sway here. VirginiaYou shouldn’t need it, but yeah.CorinneOf course. You can just be like, “Guys, I’m so worried. I already have issues with seating and I’m going to be pregnant.” I would also ask them to help you! Like, if we have plans to go to restaurants, ask can you scope out the seating and send me a picture? Or can they call and see what type of seating they have?VirginiaWhoever is organizing these Broadway tickets, this is on their to do list. It’s their job. If you’re the one being like, we all have to go see Hamilton, do some freaking research on the seats and figure out if your friend can go. CorinneI have two tips for this. The first tip is I would I would try to reach out to some fat people, either in New York or in the theater community, and be like, hey, like, is there a fat person who’s seen this show? What are the seats like? There’s a Facebook group that’s like, I think it might be fat girls traveling or something? I feel like that would be a good place to try. Or on Instagram, you could try on selltradeplus open threads on Fridays. Thats a great place. VirginiaSend me more details and I’ll post it on my Instagram! We’ll see what Burnt Toast followers know. If you want to tell me what show or what restaurants they’re looking at, I have a lot of New York followers who might have some good info.CorinneAnd then the one theater thing I know is from Jordan Underwood, who does this little fat hacks series on Tiktok. They did one about theater seating and public venues are required to have accessible seating. They should have wheelchair transfer seats, which are seats that don’t have arms so that you can transfer from a wheelchair to the seat. So if you are a fat person that needs a seat without arms, you can use the wheelchair transfer seats. You may need to call the theater and ask. And I would also just say, you’re not going to be the first person who has called a theater to be like, “What is your seating like? I’m fat, how can you help me?” I think people running theaters have experience with this. VirginiaIt’s their job to be building a space for your body, not your body’s job to be fitting into their space.CorinneSo you can just try to call and talk to someone you can ask them to measure the seats, ask them about wheelchair transfer seats, or sometimes they can also set up a chair in a spot for a wheelchair. I know it probably feels weird and embarrassing. And like, I don’t know if that means you’ll have to sit separately from your friends.VirginiaYou’re mad at them anyway. CorinneI feel like it’s just worth it to not have to be in physical pain for three hours or however long a musical is.VirginiaSofie Hagen has a good video, where they call a venue to ask about seat sizing, if you want a script to practice. They’ve done a couple of these where they call an airline or whatever and you hear the actual conversation. It might help you think through how you’re going to handle that call. Because, I mean, I have phone fear, so I get that that is a fear provoking prospect.CorinneI guess my main advice is just: You’re not alone. Try to find people who have had this experience or can give you support throughout the experience.VirginiaI hate that it’s on you to have to talk to your friends. I wish they were just being better humans. I’ll talk to them for you if you want. I’m really annoyed with these ladies. But if you talk to them and they don’t get it and aren’t immediately supportive, you deserve better friends. You don’t have to accept that either.You can say, “This isn’t the trip I’m going to go on. This is not going to feel good for me.” If they’re your friends and they love you, they’re either going to work really hard to make it work for you, or they’re going to make sure they plan a better trip next time. CorinneI mean, that’s another good point, too. It’s like, do you want to go to the Broadway show? Because you could just say, “I’m not going to go because I’m too stressed about the seating,” and do something that sounds more fun to you.VirginiaOh my God, lay in your hotel room and watch Netflix. Get room service? Have yourself a whole great evening. I love that. What are your favorite flu or COVID sick day meals or snack ideas? This is a fun one. And by that I mean how fun that we are four years into a pandemic and still talking about it.CorinneOkay, I usually just do canned soup and saltines. I really like saltines when I’m sick. I also sometimes really like candy when I’m sick. That’s one of those things people are going to tell you not to do, but like gummy candy or something like that. VirginiaOh, interesting. Corinneif you get COVID or whatever and you can’t taste or smell, mint Mentos. I ate one million tubes of those when I had COVID. VirginiaOh, wow. CorinneI’m also a huge electrolyte drink fan, as we know. So either cucumber lime Gatorade, or the Nuun tablets which you dissolve yourself are my are my top electrolyte recommendations.VirginiaI’m not a fan, but I’m glad for you.CorinneThank you. Yes. What about you?VirginiaI go back to the childhood comfort foods. Marmite on buttered toast is my go-to sick meal because I grew up eating Marmite on toast. If you didn’t eat Marmite as a child, and you’re not British, you won’t like it. So that’s not helpful for you. You will hate it. But yeah, comforting toast is really great, whatever your comfort toast is.And when I need like something sort of snack-y but also semi would fill me up, I like to mix dry Cheerios and chocolate chips and sometimes some slivered almonds as like a very lazy trail mix situation. My 10 year old and I will make it as an after dinner snack sometimes.CorinneSounds like it would be good on ice cream. VirginiaIt would be great on ice cream. I’m not usually getting that complicated, but I support.CorinneAlright.I need more puzzle content. Do you redo your puzzles multiple times or buy new ones frequently and get rid of the old ones? Any favorite brands or places to get them? I’m trying to figure this out as I’m feeling puzzle season approaching. VirginiaI mean, puzzle season is here! It is upon us. We are in the thick of it. It is peak puzzling time. So yes, I have thoughts on this. I do not redo puzzles so much myself, but I will when I want a social puzzle experience. I have no problem redoing it when I’m sharing them with other people. But the real secret to a steady puzzle supply is other puzzle friends that you trade with. That’s the whole secret. My friend Tracy is like, I don’t know if there’s like puzzling as an Olympic sport, but Tracy is this person. She will do a 2000 piece puzzle in two days. She’s always puzzling. So she’ll just drop off bags of puzzles. When I go to her house, I bring a few puzzles to drop off. We’re just constantly swapping puzzles, so that keeps me in new puzzles pretty easily without having to buy a lot of new ones. although I do also buy them because that’s nice. One brand I really like is EeBoo. They’re really high quality puzzles. Have a good clicky texture. This is just an important piece of it. So that’s a really good one Two other brands. I really like are Piecework Puzzles, but I will say theirs are hard. This bread puzzle, it’s called Breadhead which is great name for a puzzle, but it has defeated me twice now. I’m probably going to send it to Tracy and make her do it and then maybe try again. But some of them are not quite so hard. But they’re really beautiful beautiful puzzles.And then Cavallini & Co’s vintage puzzle series—this is probably my favorite type of puzzle because it is discrete objects. It’s very satisfying. This one I’m trying right now is vintage fish. Did you know fish could be vintage? Anyway. It’s satisfying because you’re like, I’m going to do all the red fish, blue fish and you kind of work your way through it very methodically. So those are three brands that make really high quality puzzles.Oh, and then the other brand that’s like sort of a surprising sleeper hit is New Yorker puzzles. I don’t tend to find the illustrations as beautiful because they’re New Yorker magazine covers. That’s a certain aesthetic. But they’re really well made. And they come together very satisfyingly. Not all puzzle brands are created equal. There are some bad puzzles out there. But yeah, really get yourself in a puzzle swap situation. with some people in your neighborhood. That’s the whole key.CorinneI bet there are Facebook groups or something. VirginiaThere is also a rental puzzle service, which I have not tried because my local puzzle supply is quite rich. But it is on my radar to try that as needed.CorinneThat’s a really good idea. VirginiaYeah, it totally makes sense. Because I will say I now have an entire drawer in my office devoted to puzzles and downstairs in our living room a whole bookcase of puzzles. There is just a limit to how many puzzles you want to store in your house. CorinneAnd I don’t think it’s very fun to redo them. VirginiaNo, but again, socially, it’s fine. It feels different. ---ButterCorinneMy Butter is a TV show called Slow Horses on Apple TV. Have you watched this? VirginiaNo. CorinneOkay. It’s like a spy thriller starring Gary Oldman. Well, it’s British. So he’s MI5 and he runs this department that’s all the MI5 rejects. So they all are stuck doing all the bad jobs and paperwork and filing and stuff. Everyone there has done something bad to end up there. But they always get into crazy, actually dangerous situations. He just plays this like disgusting slovenly drunk guy. It’s just kind of fun to watch because he just looks like greasy and like un-showered all the time and is sarcastic but also just brilliant and has a good heart at the core.VirginiaIt’s sounding a little bit like House?CorinneA little bit. It’s British so there are only like six episodes every season or whatever, which is like so sad. But it’s in the third season, so if you haven’t watched it, you have a few episodes to get through.VirginiaI’m in the market for a new show. I’m going to put that on my list. CorinneVery, very binge-able.VirginiaWe love a good binge. CorinneWhat’s your Butter?VirginiaMy butter is actually related to our recent Friday thread about laundry, where you asked how many laundry hampers everyone has and I had really strong opinions. So I wanted to share the laundry hampers that I am obsessed with which are so good because they come in a six pack. CorinneOh my gosh!VirginiaYou may even need six laundry hampers, Corinne. Anyone who needs to sort laundry. Like, it’s so great. And what’s really good about them is, they are square. A lot of laundry hampers are rectangles. And I think this is probably true for everybody, but especially for people in bigger bodies, holding a rectangular laundry basket and trying to fit through a door is a thing. And with a square laundry basket, you will fit through the door. You can hold it in front of you and you can fit through the door. I didn’t even realize until I got these, how delightful that was for me to not be awkwardly coming down my basement stairs like how’s this going to go?It’s a set of six square white plastic laundry baskets. They were very highly rated from one of the places that rates usefulness because we had broken a bunch of cheap Target laundry baskets. So I actually did some research before I bought these and they’ve been holding up really well. They look small, but they hold a solid load for sure. They’re deep. And it’s so great because I can have basically a basket for every need. I’m never like, where’s the laundry basket? There’s a laundry basket ready to go all the time for whatever load I’m doing. CorinneWow, these look great. VirginiaA friend of mine got the same set after I got them and he was like, “we had had a hodgepodge collection of laundry baskets—”which I think is more typical, right? Like you have the one that you had in college, you have your first apartment laundry. You just accumulate them. And he was like, “Something about replacing the hodgepodge with this a uniform collection of laundry baskets just made the whole thing feel less stressful in a way that I don’t understand.” But I completely agree. CorinneThese look really good. VirginiaYeah, they’re excellent. Just getting through doors with your laundry is such a freakin thing. That’s my Butter. They’re great laundry baskets.CorinneGood Butter.VirginiaAll right, well, we did it. Thank you so much for listening to Burnt Toast.---The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter.Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.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!---1 - ARQ is 92 percent cotton, 8 percent Spandex and Thunderpants are 90 percent cotton, 10 percent Spandex.2 - We didn’t mention these, but you could also try a boot with a stretchy sweater cuff, like these. (affiliate link)

You’re listening to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast about anti-fat bias, diet culture, parenting and health. I’m Virginia Sole Smith.Today I am chatting with Jessie Diaz-Herrera. Jessie is a body affirming dancer, health and wellness influencer, and fitness enthusiast. You might know her on Instagram as @curveswithmoves, or from her Free the Jiggle classes.The first half of this episode is for everyone, and then paid subscribers will get to hear Jessie answering your listener questions about size-inclusive fitness. We’re going to talk about:How to take our focus off how we look and onto how our bodies feel during exercise.How to feel safe and supported at the gym in a fat body.How to find time to exercise in the first place, especially for exhausted new parents.Here’s how to join us to hear the whole (amazing!) conversation!If you’re enjoying the podcast, make sure you’re following us (it’s free!) in your podcast player! We’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Pocket Casts! And while you’re there, please leave us a rating or review. (We like 5 stars!)Episode 121 TranscriptJessieSo I am a body affirming fitness instructor. I own Power Plus Wellness, where we curate fitness and wellness events for plus-sized bodies to practice wellness in safe spaces. My work revolves around movement and what that looks like outside of diet culture.VirginiaYou were a dancer as a kid, but you stopped around age 12. It took a while for you to get back to it, to rediscover the passion. JessieAs a kid, I was very active. I had ADHD as a kid and still do now. At the time, my parents were just like, “We need to tire this girl out.” So I was in a myriad of programs and I’m very grateful to my family, to my parents, for putting me in a bunch of different things. Dance was one of the things that I felt the most focused in and also the program I wanted to go to the most. I couldn’t wait to go to dance classes on Saturdays. I was a ballet, tap, and jazz girly from four years old until we hit the teen programs. And I was committed to the studio in Brooklyn for my whole childhood basically, I grew up in the studio. And it was in the 90s, so prime diet culture, very skinny era. And also I’m in the world of ballet. VirginiaDouble whammy, triple whammy. JessieSo like, put all of that together. And I remember, we had to audition to the ballet academy. It was this certificate that you got and it was this huge honor to get into the program, especially as kids who grew up in ballet, tap, and jazz. You’re looking forward to like, Oh, I’m going to graduate to this next phase in in this program and in my life as a dancer.Puberty hit for me pretty early on, I think I was 9 or 10. I just started developing a lot faster than the other girls in my program. So I remember practicing really hard for this program and for the certificate from the Ballet Academy of Dance. I did the audition, I felt great. And afterwards one of the instructors told me, “You were really great.” And I got in, but they advised me to lose weight. I can’t remember the way they said it.You have to remember how much I looked up to these people. These were my instructors that I wanted to impress and I wanted to do well. Also just thinking about being a kid in that era, like, what does dieting even look like? What is that? You know, there’s no advice out there.VirginiaRight, what were they asking you to do? JessieIt was just like, “You need to lose10 pounds,” or whatever. The head ballerina in our program, she was very skinny. She was a beautiful Russian teenager. I just was like, “Why don’t I look like that? I don’t understand. My body doesn’t fit the program anymore.” I started to feel shame. I didn’t tell my mom that they told me to lose weight, because I knew that was wrong. But also because I was motivated to do it and I know that my mom would just be upset about it. I just sort of started skipping meals. Like, I’m not hungry, I don’t feel well. And my mom was like, you don’t have a fever. Like, what’s wrong? So I consistently started skipping meals and eventually I fainted. My mom was super pissed. “What is going on? Tell me what it is.” And I told her they had told me to lose weight and I was just trying to lose 10 more pounds. My mom is ’s one of the people that you don’t mess with her daughters. She’s Nuyorican, she is just a spicy New York Latina. So she stormed off into the studio. Nobody tells my daughter, what to do, how to how to eat. And she cursed everybody out. I was so mortified. At the time, I was mortified. I was like, “My mom ruined my life. She ruined my chances with the program.” I didn’t know that she was defending me at a time that I couldn’t. So yeah, I kind of left dance for a while after my mom pulled me out of the program. VirginiaShe was like, “We are not doing this.”JessieRightfully so, but I was devastated because that was what I loved to do. But I was also in sports at the time, and so I dedicated my life to sports after that. I played softball, I played basketball, if there was another sport, even like a recreational sport, I was playing. Anything that I could do to keep active because I knew that when my body was active, my brain wasn’t going crazy and I wasn’t stressing out. I even knew that as a kid, I just wanted to always move. I needed to expel this energy. But it wasn’t until college really, that I started dancing again. And there was a big change from being ballet, tap, and jazz in the 90s and then going into college in the 2000s into the hip hop kind of time where it was just more acceptable to have a different body. They were seeing dancers of every color. In that way, college felt a little bit more acceptable. But even then, there were times where everyone had to wear this costume and they would send you the link to buy your costume and of course it only went up to a large. But because I felt so guilty, I would never tell the instructor. I actually found—I was trying to think about her name the other day, bless her heart—I found someone in Idaho who was actually making me custom outfits. VirginiaOh, wow.JessieFor every single show I had! I think of how ridiculous that is now, but at that time I would be so mortified to tell them that they would have to change their costume because it doesn’t come in my size.VirginiaBut they should have. That shouldn’t have been your burden to have to find a custom costume lady. JessieYeah. It’s funny, we think about how we consider ourselves big. I think I was maybe a size 12/14. So it was an interesting time. But I know that when I danced, everyone was like, “Man, you’re so good at dancing. You’re so great, this energy, this personality.” I started just to gain more confidence in myself. So something that I felt like was stripped away from from my body actually, in a way, gave me confidence later on. VirginiaI have to say, big props to your mom. It was definitely the right move but also such a hard call, right? Of course she knew she was breaking your heart, but also keeping you safe. That is such an impossible position to be put in as a parent. But I think it’s a great takeaway for parents. You might have to make a tough call. And it’s helpful to hear that even if my kid doesn’t do this program this year, and it feels like a big missed opportunity, it doesn’t mean the door to dance is closed forever for this kid.JessieI will say, I recently took a ballet class for the first time since that had happened, like maybe two months ago. It was with a fat instructor, it was someone that I felt comfortable. We actually were testing them for one of our newest classes for Power Plus Wellness. But I remember being in the class and feeling anxiety, and I was like, oh my god, like, I really want this feeling to go away. And eventually it did. I mean, it may not be ballet for me anymore, but it may be something else.VirginiaI was just thinking: Maybe it’s not ballet for anyone, you know? Should we be reclaiming and remaking this institution into something that’s inclusive and welcoming for everyone or should we be saying ballet, your track record is pretty bad. At what point do you decide it cant be reclaimed? It’s not my call to make. I’m not a dancer. JessieTotally. Yeah, I will say probably that would be like — we’ve made it.VirginiaIf we have fully body inclusive ballet.JessieTotally. I think it is probably the most restrictive in my head. VirginiaIt really is. So once you started designing your own dance classes and moving more into the fitness space, both these worlds are so laden with diet culture, how did you navigate through it? JessieBecause of diet culture, I had to create my own lane after college. I was in social dance clubs. Even though I was a great choreographer, in those situations they wouldn’t let me be a choreographer. People wouldn’t understand, like, “Man, you’re so good at dancing, why is it that she’s not putting you in this space?” And I’m like, it is what it is.I realized that I was always following by other people’s rules, about what they wanted to see for their company or what they wanted to see for their vision of what it looked like on stage. I just was limiting myself because I was putting myself in these positions where people were telling me what I can and can’t do when it comes to dance. At the time I was in my 20s already and I was like, I don’t have to really confine to that. So I was actually working with a bunch of different choreographers, just taking classes weekly just to perfect my craft. And I got really close with an instructor—shout out to Rick. He knew I was a great dancer and he knew that I taught and so he was like, “You know all my routines whenever I’m out, would you mind covering the class? Like, everyone knows you and you’re such a great, energetic person.” And I was like, oh my God, yes. So I would sub for him every now and then he gave me my first break to start teaching classes in New York, outside of a social dance club. That felt really, really great to have someone who saw my work ethic who saw my commitment and knew that I could do this, regardless of my body. You know, not only am I plus size, but I’m short. And the idea of a dancer is long and graceful and I just wasn’t fitting that criteria of what we normally think of as a dancer.It was just really nice to have those opportunities and I think that’s what really led me to start creating classes myself. So in the 2010s, we started what we then called body positive dance classes. That was at the time where body positivity was really claimed by the plus size community before it was more universal, I want to say? And it was actually a two hour workshop. We held these once a month, it wasn’t something that I did regularly every week. But it was a lot of intention behind it.A lot of the time, when I was dancing, I would realize I’m the only plus size and sometimes the only person of color in the room. I was like I know there are other dancers out there like me. I know that I’m not an anomaly. I danced with other people in college, where are they?So I started posting on social media and creating these classes. I really wanted to create intention behind it. I realized people were saying to me online, “I wish I could go to class, but I don’t have the courage.” A lot of it was like, finding the confidence just to get to the class. So I was saying, “Hey, I look like you. I am also in this space where I know it can be scary. Come and let’s be scared together.”So the first half hour, we didn’t dance. We talked. We gave out affirmation cards. Sometimes we would talk about like, hey, does that resonate with you? Why? We’ve had vision boards. We’ve had stuff where we did some cord cutting, where we wrote notes about things that we didn’t want to take with us in the New Year and burned them. There’s just so many things that we really did that felt like we had a close knit community before we started to move. We also got silly, and I think that’s what people are afraid of—sometimes they’re afraid to look silly. But when we’re all purposely being silly, It just takes away that barrier of like, "Ph, I don’t want to look silly.” It’s, “Oh, wait, we’re supposed to be silly here.”VirginiaYou were making a safe space for people to show up in their bodies.JessieThis was after I had my daughter and my body changed. Because tour body just changes immensely once you have a kid. I think some people don’t realize this, but it’s not about the weight or anything, it’s more just like even the shape. Just like looking at your body saying this is not the body I’m normally seeing in the mirror. So now I have to adjust myself to what I’m now seeing. I think all of that kind of plays a role. VirginiaI’m glad you brought up your daughter because I wanted to talk about her a little bit. We both have daughters named Violet.JessieOh my God, I love that. VirginiaI love how you talk about modeling fitness for yourself and how you’re modeling it for her. It feels really different from the diet culture version of “mom fitness” that we are sold so often.JessieIt will say again, I think it’s the silliness factor. I’m not afraid to be silly. And I think sometimes as parents, we sometimes we lose that silliness a little bit. But especially with our kids, we can be silly! With our kids there’s a comfort in being silly. I know that especially with my daughter, she loves to be active. And I always wanted to make sure that she felt comfortable doing whatever activity that that it is for her. But also that mom can participate if she wants to. For me, fitness is really all about the functional, like what I want to do as a parent, what I want to do in my life. I want to have more endurance to keep up with my kid. She likes to be carried a lot still—my daughter is on the spectrum and really loves being held. And she’s just going to be tall, like her dad. She’s almost 8 and four feet, and I’m five feet. VirginiaYou need to be strong. JessieI want to be able to hold my kid if she wants to be held. After becoming a mom I think just my shift of fitness changed into what I want to continue to keep doing and how I want to move through life with her with with my with my future kids. Even just talking about bodies in general. It’s so interesting because my daughter is obsessed with my boobs!VirginiaKids are so helpful that way!JessieThey are so funny, right? She’s like, “They’re so wiggly.” My daughter is saying, like, I love how wiggly they are. It’s playful, and it’s fun and I like to touch it. It makes me happy. It makes me giggle. Like, she’s laughing. It brings her joy. So, you know, you start to look at it differently. And not just with bodies, but just with movement in general, we just want to look at things a little bit differently. VirginiaSo you posted a reel recently of you at a trampoline place with your daughter. My kids love trampolines. I don’t love them. What I really don’t love, honestly—I actually like trampolines. I don’t love the trampoline place, which is like a sensory nightmare to me.JessieYeah, it’s chaotic.VirginiaAll the kids and then the ball pit and I’m like, “Someone’s gonna get pinkeye.” The whole thing is just is not my jam. And their dad is the fun dad who will take them to the trampoline place. But my older daughter has been saying to me lately, “I want you to come to the trampoline place. Why don’t you go with us?” And I’m like, “Damn it, I’ve got to do it, right?” I don’t want her to think only her skinny dad who’s a big runner guy—he’s very traditionally fit—I don’t want her to think that that’s the only type of body that goes to the trampoline place. JessieLook, I’m one of the only moms that is jumping out there, regardless of body. Two things I will say: 1. Find out the times where there are not a lot of kids around because I rarely go when it’s the busiest. And 2. I think is overstimulating for both of us. And sometimes I’m like, “There are a lot of kids there, I don’t think I need to jump. I think you’re good.”But I think it forces us to—when there are not that many kids—kind of play around with her, too. I tend to jump for a couple minutes, but I’m very much just on there kind of bouncing a little bit. I’m like, “What cool tricks can you do? I’m timing you for races!” There are all these lazy mom ways to get your kids active and you can stay still. We’re playing all kinds of games. VirginiaOkay, I’m going to work on it. I do think there’s real value in that. And I also want to be mindful that not everybody has the physical ability to do these things and it doesn’t make you any less of a mom or a person, of course. But I am a mom who gets in the pool and who wears the swimsuit, and isn’t afraid to play in the water with my kids. That was something I was very intentional about. And so when this came up, I was like, “Oh, am I doing that with the trampoline place?” So I’m on my trampoline journey.JessieTake the journey. VirginiaAnother thing I would love to hear about, if you’re comfortable sharing, is I know you had a really big health experience recently. Would you be up for sharing that story and how that has further evolved your relationship with movement?JessieI had a stroke in August of 2022, about a year and a half ago. We found out that I had a hole in my heart that I was born with, which was small enough not to create a murmur. So this blood clot apparently just transferred through this hole into my brain and it happened suddenly. It was very sudden. I had some signs of fatigue the month before—I actually went to the hospital twice because I was just feeling very lethargic. My blood pressure was pretty low. They were figuring that I was dehydrated, so they kept giving me IVs. Everyone thinks I’m young and I wasn’t showing signs of any neurological issues. And I just thought, “Yeah, maybe I am just dehydrated.”I was also working insane amount of hours around that time. I realized later on, I was on the couch for maybe like 16 hours. Especially when I start to get hyper focused, I could be on the couch for five hours without a drink of water, getting up to use the bathroom, eating anything. I’ll get up feeling really dizzy. I’m like, “Man, I keep doing that to myself.” So I realized the way I was working, I was either sitting for like 16 hours at a time and then going the next day to teach two classes in a row. The balance wasn’t there and I was putting my body in these extreme situations where I was just either really sedentary or really, really active. My body was just like, whoa, what’s happening here. So that’s what will cause a blood clot, because we haven’t found to this day any other blood clots. It was just a situational thing that had happened. And I say that because I was in the hospital for a week doing just a multitude of tests after the stroke, because we couldn’t figure out where this blood clot came from. or why it happened. When I went to my primary doctor, whom I love—I could go on a whole other rant, but make sure that you really have a medical team that is for you and about you. You have the right to do that. That is your call. But anyway, that’s another rant. It’s important to say, she was like, sometimes science just can’t find the answer.VirginiaIt’s so true. It’s so irritatingJessieStress is such a high cause of sickness and situations. I was just putting myself in a stressful situation where my body was like, “Hey, we can’t work like this anymore,” and so I collapsed. Ironically, it was right after a couples therapy session on Zoom. It was so crazy, because later my therapist said, “You seemed so fine.” And I know, I thought I was fine, too! And I go to charge my phone, and I’m on the floor and I have no idea why I’m on the floor. The only reason that I knew I was having a stroke is because I went on a YouTube spiral six months prior. There was a doctor who had had a stroke and studied her own brain. Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, My Stroke of Insight is a great, great TED Talk. She talks about how she realized she was having a stroke and she was in and out of it. And so because I felt no sensation on my left side, I felt my face start to droop and I was like, “I have to call 911 immediately.”I was actually home alone. Luckily, my daughter was in Dominican Republic. We were supposed to meet her four days later. She was there with her cousins, spending time with her aunt and her grandparents, and we were supposed to meet them.So, luckily she wasn’t home, but my husband was out. And I had collapsed and I had called him. And he was like, “What is happening”? And I was trying to tell him what’s happening. But I was starting to, like, get flustered because I couldn’t talk. I remember I called 911 to try to give them my address. And in my head, I was saying the right numbers, but the wrong numbers were coming out. And I was just like, this is insane. Like, I’m getting upset at myself. I could see the number and it was just, it was it was super interesting to know that I was experiencing this but couldn’t do anything to try to fix my speech or try to get up. Luckily, the ambulance came within maybe 10 minutes. But I didn’t want them to break down my door because because like safety things, right? My door is right in front of the elevator. I’m like, “Ff they break down my door, like it’s going to be open.”VirginiaSomeone’s going to have to fix that at some point. How’s that gonna happen?JessieBut I love that as I’m having a stroke…VirginiaI would be doing the same thing, though. Like, “This is going to be a hassle I don’t want.”JessieEven though I’m on the verge of death, I don’t want them to break my house. I have to laugh at myself. So I’m on the floor and I’m just pulling myself and pushing myself on my body to go to my front door—I was in my bedroom. So that was rough. But luckily I was in the hospital within 45 minutes of everything happening. And because I got the medicine so quickly was able to reverse a high percentage of my movement, my speech.So that was just a godsend really, just to know that I was okay. Because it all happened so fast. And you know, I was in the hospital for so long, and I was starting to feel better, I could move, My speech was coming back. I felt really in high spirits. And I was really grateful because apparently, I had a major stroke. I don’t know what kind of sign this was for my life, but I knew that movement wasn’t taken away from me. And so I think for me, that’s something worth celebrating and something to continue working on. Because that’s my career. My career is moving. I took that as I took that as a huge sign to just figure out life balance. That’s really when I started to think of movement more functionally, especially after having a brain injury, right? It’s like, most of my strength is gone, I want to rebuild my strength, rebuild my core, I want to get rid of some of these headaches, using breath work, and all of these different kinds of things that we don’t tap into enough. If I only thought working out was to lose weight, then what do I want to work out for? I don’t want to be part of that culture.We see that movement increases dopamine, increases serotonin, all these happy hormones, and all these things that are stress relievers. In that same vein, even for mental health, for brain health, I knew that I had to continue moving in a way that felt good for me.VirginiaI so appreciate you sharing that story. I know that’s obviously a super harrowing experience you’ve been through and I just want to hold space for you sharing that and reflecting on it in such a thoughtful way for us because I think that’s helpful.Bodies do really tell us what’s good. I have a lower back that will let me know when I am pushing it too hard. It’s like, you pushed it too far. You didn’t take care of yourself. Of course, we all don’t have the same resources or bandwidth or access to these things. And that’s a huge part of the conversation, too. But it does sound like shifting your lens from a diet culture definition of fitness to more just what you want it to be is a really powerful tool. JessieI think movement has been tied into diet culture for so long because we because it was always how do you lose weight? Diet and exercise, diet and exercise, diet and exercise. But exercise is not part of dieting. You know what I mean? Just because it got lumped into it and we now associate it or it can have a triggering association with fitness and diet culture. My goal is to encourage, especially those of us in plus-sized bodies, to reclaim exercise from diet culture. I really want to reclaim what movement looks like for us and and just personally what it can look like for you because regardless of your shape or your body size, fitness is personal. It’s super personal for you. VirginiaWell to that end, I’ve got a bunch of listener questions I want us to run through, because you have a ton of fans in the Burnt Toast community. And these are all really about how do we untangle movement and fitness from diet culture because that is such a project for all of us.The first question is:Do you have any tips for focusing on how you’re feeling in your body versus imagining how your body could look? This feels especially hard with dance.JessieThis is a very honest and vulnerable question, but also very real. Especially in any group setting, whether it’s group fitness, group dance classes, there’s always this like, “How am I perceived by other people? How am I looking at myself in the mirror?” and that can be really hard. But dance is an art form, right? So let’s relate it to art, right? Let’s say our bodies are paint brushes. If I’m a paintbrush and you’re a paintbrush, you may have slightly different widths right. And my strokes are not going to be the same as yours, right? But we’re still creating art. We’re both still moving. We’re both still working through this. I think sometimes we like to compare ourselves to other people. Like, “I don’t look like the instructor.” But the instructor is more of a facilitator, right? They’re there to help you and guide you. Obviously, in more fitness classes, there’s a form and there are things that you want to make sure that you’re doing safely. But if it’s a feel good class, if you’re like in a cardio dance class where you’re just there to feel the rhythm and dance or like a Zumba type class and there’s nerves, bring a friend and laugh. Be in the back and laugh.Like, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been nervous about a class and I’ve taken a friend and we’re like, “We’re just gonna be in the back and try our best but also just laugh at each other if we’re a hot mess.” Let’s give ourselves permission to say, “We’re probably going to mess up and that’s going to be totally fine because we have the intention today of laughing at ourselves and being silly with with ourselves and trying something new.” And you’re just not going to look like the next person, so get that out of your head. Because this is your body, this is what you’ve been given. And how you move in this world is different. So sometimes, especially in dance, when it is an art form, I say own it. Own how you dance. Own how you move. It does not have to look like the the instructor or the person next to you. If you feel good, if you are feeling the energy. I know when I dance, there’s a weariness that goes away. There’s this feeling of “Yes, I just feel so good.” Like, I’m sweating. This is my favorite song. Tap into those other things, too.Maybe you’re not there yet with your body journey. Maybe you’re like, “I can’t stop comparing myself.” Well then maybe you’re thinking about other things within the class, like is this your favorite song? Are you hitting those basses? Can you get that move? Or is the rhythm really hype? Do you want to cheer on the person next to you?  I tell people at the beginning of class, “Hey, if you don’t want to dance, cheer for the person next to you.” Take a water break and just encourage them. VirginiaI also want to say to this person, do some of Jessie’s online videos. Because I am someone who has no dance experience. You know, white girl dance moves—that’s what I’ve got. It is what it is. JessieAll of those are safe here.VirginiaAnd especially being in a bigger body, I would feel self-conscious going into a group dance class. But what was really fun for me was doing Jessie’s videos in a room in my house without mirrors, because then I wasn’t constantly looking at myself and critiquing how I looked. I could just be in my body and I was able to tap into the joy you’re talking about because there wasn’t an audience. I was just doing it for me. If you’re someone who really doesn’t have a dance background, maybe try that first before you do the group class where you’re just going to feel really intimidated and depending on the context, maybe less welcome.JessieI teach kind of a myriad of different classes, but one of our mainstays is called “Free the Jiggle,” and we purposely jiggle. We purposely do things that we would say, like, I’m afraid to do this, we will do it. Kind of to laugh and also in spite of and really to say, why not?VirginiaIt’s a body. It’s moving. JessieYeah, exactly. Bodies do jiggle.VirginiaI love that.Okay, this person writes,My office has started to include a group exercise program and our work day. How can I advocate for this to not be fatphobic? This is tricky. JessieDon’t let them do weigh-ins!VirginiaAbsolutely.JessieJust don’t. When I was in a corporate work culture, I participated in these programs and we really were weighing ourselves.VirginiaHow is that not an obvious HR violation?JessieOh, man. Sometimes there are these markers of collective weight loss in your teams. And so I would just really, really strongly make sure that that is not something that is a part of your work culture. I will say in New York, and I know a couple other states, there are laws that we just put into place for size and weight discrimination. So check out the Campaign for Size Freedom.But let’s also think about some other ways that you can calculate success. Maybe you’re offering a myriad of classes and you have bingo cards.So the challenge isn’t weight loss, but just how many of these can I do? Can I take a class here? Can I do a breathwork session? Can I share a special movement that I love to do?There are different ways that you can create exercise programs that doesn’t make it about the weight or about how many miles I can run, how many steps.It could be very easy for someone to get 10,000 steps, it might be really hard for another person, especially if they’re starting from not having as many steps previously. So I always encourage people to try to create some sort of choose your adventure type of situation. A bingo card is really fun because there are many different ways that you can win.VirginiaWe aren’t all being measured the same way. JessieExactly. We’re all in different bodies. Someone who’s a marathon runner may find this really easy versus someone who is new to exercise and just wants to use this program as a way to slide into that world. VirginiaI love the framing of “How can this be for all bodies?” These programs are supposed to inspire people to be more active and they end up being a way for the cool kid marathon guy to show off and it’s like, that guy’s already fine. He doesn’t need this.JessieHe’s already jogging. He’s already running this many steps every morning. Of course he’s going to make his goal every day. VirginiaNo one wants to see your step count, Brad. It’s fine. Maintenance Phase did a great podcast episode about wellness programming in workplaces, which has a lot of resources too. It’s a good deep dive into why these programs are set up, why there’s so much anti-fat bias in them and what you can do about it. Okay, this is a really good one. I would love to hear your thoughts, Jessie. When do I find the time to work out? I’m a new mom nearly back at work and always tired but I do want to move my body.This is such a hard phase.JessieOh my gosh. I feel for you, mom. If you’re out there, any new moms out there, sending you hugs if you’re listening.VirginiaEspecially if you’re in the first year.JessieYeah and back at work. Sending you so much love.I will say if you can’t make time in your schedule to go outside and do it, do it from home. I think people assume that “working out” means “I must do an hour of working out every day.” It doesn’t mean that. Set the bar low. If you work out just once a week for a whole year, that is 52 times that you worked out this year! You don’t think about that, right? You’re just like, “Oh, that doesn’t sound like a lot.”Give yourself grace. It may not be every day, and that’s okay. That’s okay. Set the bar low. There’s already a lot that you’re doing. That said, if you’re always tired and you’re looking for that energy boost, I have a great energy tip. When I’m feeling stressed out or just like I need to shake some things out, I will literally shake my whole body for one minute straight. That means I’m shaking my legs, I’m flailing my arms, I’m flicking my wrist. I’m really just flailing. And what is that doing? That’s waking up our lymphatic system. It is increasing blood flow within our bodies. It is increasing the oxygen we have in our bodies. It’s releasing stress in our bodies. That is creating happier hormones, that is increasing dopamine and more just excitement in our bodies. And that’s something that you can do for one minute. It’ll give you a little bit more energy to keep going for the day. And again, it looks silly. I love the analogy of, if your foot falls asleep, you kind of have to like wiggle it, you have to slap it around, because it fell asleep. So in the same way, you’re kind of shaking your body up and waking it up. Jump around a little bit if you feel inclined to, if you can. Even as even as little as five minutes, put on your favorite song and jam out in the bathroom. Do whatever you need to find those little moments of time. It doesn’t have to be an hour. It doesn’t have to be 30 minutes. And it certainly doesn’t have to be every day. So give yourself that grace.VirginiaThat’s such good advice. I also just want to say if your baby is still not sleeping through the night, it’s okay if you’re choosing sleep over exercise for a while. If you’re like I can sleep in an extra hour in the morning because I was up in the night, that feels really valid to me. Movement is something that can come back later. You don’t have to do it all at once. Okay. So, last question and I really love this one.Any favorite clap backs or mantras that help when you’re navigating a regular gym in a fat body?JessieOh, I love this question. There is prep work that I do before and after a workout. I want to stress the before and after. I go to a smaller boutique gym, so if you can find a smaller boutique gym in your area, especially if they’re a smaller business, those often just feel safer to be in. It just doesn’t feel as overwhelming. So that’s kind of number one. Number two is prepping yourself mentally. If there are only these big box gyms in your area and you really want to get yourself to move, have a plan. I think sometimes we say, “Oh, I’m just gonna go on the elliptical for 30 minutes. That’s what I’m going to do.” But why do we do that? Like, is that what your favorite activity is? Is that what you actually want to do? Do some research. Maybe look at some videos, maybe look at some other fitness creators, content creators that you like, or that feel accessible to you.But I always say, especially if you’re going to a big box gym, maybe it’s not just walking on the treadmill. Maybe you try a little bit of everything. Maybe it’s a treadmill for 10, the elliptical for 10.Also: Tell yourself that you’re allowed to be there and leave whenever you want. There is no time constraint to be at the gym. It is on your time. You pay the membership to be there. You’re not on anyone’s time. It’s not work, right? I think some people are worried about oh my God, they saw me here and leave right away or leave in 10 minutes. That’s great! You got here!VirginiaAnd if other people are timing your gym visit, they can find a hobby. It’s not anyone’s business how long you stay. No one should be paying attention to that. JessieExactly, exactly. So I think that there’s a mental preparation of telling yourself, “There is no timeline for how long I need to be at the gym." I don’t need to be on a machine for a certain time. I’m allowed to try new things. I can come up with a plan and feel better about that.”Also, remember that you can ask questions. So I try to find someone who works at the gym and say, hey, I want to try this machine. I just want to make sure that I know that I’m using it the right way.And again, that sometimes can be intimidating. But I think asking upfront without trying to like figure out oh my God, what to do, and I have to look good. I have to try to do something before someone looks at me and someone’s waiting for the machine and now I’m overwhelmed. All of these things we think about in our heads. So all of that’s the before.And during, like I said, give yourself whatever time you need. And increase, like I said, it doesn’t have to be an hour. You could work out for 10 minutes. If you have a half an hour to get to and from the gym, you can take those 10 minutes to get to the gym workout for 10 and come back home. Like, it does not have to be intense. Then after is affirming your body, saying thank you. Thank you body for allowing me to move today. Thank you for just giving me the space to do it in a way that I want to do it for myself. Thank you for today, I feel healthier today. I feel stronger. Today I feel motivated. I know sometimes it can sound corny for some people, but I cannot tell you how much affirmations mean to people.When I do a dance class, we always add in affirmations and more often than not when I have new people come in and do the affirmations for the first time there are tears of just like, “Man, like I didn’t think I could do this. I didn’t think I could move my body like this. I didn’t think I could even get emotional just thanking my body.”And it’s true. Maybe we left the gym not feeling like oh, I did I didn’t get to do everything or am I going to see my progress? So there’s just all these things that we can try to combat ourself by just saying like, thank you. Thank you for showing up today. Thank you for doing the work. It doesn’t matter if it was five minutes of work or 15 minutes of work. Thank you for doing the work. Because it’s that validation that we need sometimes. We have to, we can find that within ourselves to say like, wow, we did that today.VirginiaI hope that helps some folks get to the gym or do whatever type of movement they’ve been wanting to do. Know that you deserve to be there.---ButterJessieOkay, I have just finished Britney’s book, The Woman in Me.One of my big takeaways that kind of relates to diet culture in general is: I just felt like wow, we treat women and their bodies so insanely different than we do the male counterpart of said icons. It was really disheartening because you think about when you’re a kid and have idols that you looked up to and think, wow their life seems so perfect. Everything must be so great. And to know that they were struggling with how people were talking about their body constantly and their mental health and all of this.It just goes to show you that the the world has a lot of opinions about women’s bodies.VirginiaIt really does.JessieBut it also left me thinking: How can I think about as a fan of said artists?How can you, now as a fan, be responsible? Because after reading this book, I can see how fans can be very good, they can be for you, or really just like not for you. And I took that into my own life too. So like, even with negative comments, I just delete them. I don’t even engage with them at all. It’s delete and block. I don’t have time for that energy. VirginiaYou don’t need to waste time. JessieAnd it’s a reminder of how I want to perceive people that I look up to, and when their bodies change and if I see their body change—That can be an observation. But that is it for me.VirginiaThat’s not actually something I need to have an opinion on. JessieI don’t need to have an opinion. I don’t need to discuss it. It’s like, oh, I see that now. Great. And I still love you for your music or I still love you for this. Learning to really separate the the person from the art was a really important lesson for me out of that book. And just in general, to think more about how we treat bodies.VirginiaI thought a lot, as I was reading it, about how we manufacture celebrity and I think especially now in this post-influencer world, where you have these kind of intense parasocial relationships with people you’ve never met. How much do they owe you? We thought Britney owed us so much.So, my Butter is fitness-related. And it is strength training, which I just want to give a little shoutout to!This is not a workout for everybody. I’m not saying everyone needs to strength train. But I was someone who never thought of myself as someone who would do strength training. I still don’t go to a gym, I do it at home. I have some home weights and I do Lauren Leavell’s workouts which are awesome. But I think I thought of as something only men do. I don’t know.JessieBut that’s not your fault. That is a very common misconception.VirginiaI was like, It is not for me. And I think especially when my fitness was much more diet culture based, I was caught up in, oh, you can’t get bulky and blah, blah, blah. But yeah, I’ve gotten really until Lauren’s videos in the last year, ever since she was on the podcast. I do it once or twice a week, so it’s not a huge part of my life. But it is always a really joyful part of my life when I do it. And it’s made me realize: I don’t need to think that something is not for me. I can do this on my own terms. And the benefits of doing it without a diet mindset are so many. Strength training does really help if you’re struggling with low back problems and so many things.And I should say to clarify: Corinne Fay who works on this podcast with me, does powerlifting, which is a whole other amazing thing. I am lifting 5 and 10 pound weights and I feel really good about that.JessieYeah, you should. Because this is about functional movement. You’re carrying your groceries to and from the house. You’re carrying your kid. There are so many things that you do that requires you to lift, right?VirginiaRight. I garden a lot, so I’m carrying around heavy bags of mulch and stuff. JessieExactly. And strength training is now increasing or enhancing your everyday life and helping you do things that you normally do. So that’s so cool. VirginiaYeah, it’s been a really nice discovery. And embracing the idea of getting stronger and feeling strong is just useful. This has been an intense year for me personally, listeners know. I’m going through a divorce. Strong is useful to me right now.So, shout out to strength training and also just to pushing through some of those “Oh, that’s not for me” stories in our heads about movement in general. Because you never know. It could be for you.JessieIt could be for you. That’s right. VirginiaWell, Jessie, thank you. This was absolutely wonderful. Tell listeners where we can follow you, how we can support your work, all the things. JessieSo you can follow me online @curveswithmoves. And if you’re in the New York City area, we also have a fitness company called Power Plus Wellness and we curate fitness events for plus-sized bodies. We’re doing aerial yoga, Aqua Zumba, really cool stuff that you would never think your body could do, but it absolutely can. So come join us in New York. And if you’re not in New York, but you just want to dance with me at any point in time, you can come join us online. You can check out @freethejiggle, we have a virtual studio, and it’s super fun. All of our live classes that we do in person we have hybrid. So you’re part of our community. We have some people that we’ve been dancing since the pandemic together and it’s just been great. So yeah, come jiggle with us anytime.VirginiaAerial yoga is on my list, I’m gonna go to one of your aerial yoga classes.---The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter.Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.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.

You’re listening to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast about anti-fat bias, diet culture, parenting and health. I’m Virginia Sole Smith.Today I am chatting with Crystal Maldonado, a YA author who writes inclusive rom-com novels about fat brown girls.Crystal is the author of Fat Chance, Charlie Vega, which was a New England Book Award winner and a Cricket’s Best YA fiction of 2021; No Filter and Other Lies which was named a Pop Sugar and Seventeen Best New YA. Her latest book is The Fall of Whit Rivera which we’re going to talk about today. Crystal’s books explore body politics, Latine and queer identity, relationships, complex family dynamics, and love. And they’re all available in the Burnt Toast Bookshop!Don’t forget, you can always take 10 percent off that purchase if you also order (or have already ordered!) Fat Talk! (Just use the code FATTALK at checkout.)Or you can take 10 percent off if you order all three of Crystal’s books, or any three books from the Burnt Toast Gift Guide with the code TREAT.We’re going to get into Crystal’s new book, which I especially love because it features a protagonist who is navigating PCOS, which makes all sorts of things about bodies more complicated, while also just trying to be a normal teenage girl and planning her Fall Fest and having an awesome time. We’re also going to get into Britney Spears, which just doesn’t fit into anything except I needed to talk about Britney Spears to someone and Crystal is who you do that with.Then, because Crystal is so very awesome, I asked her to stick around for an extended Butter segment. We have a bunch of amazing recs that you may want for yourself, but you will definitely find useful if you’re shopping for any teens and tweens, or young adult fans in general. You will need to be a paid subscriber to get all the good recs!If you’re enjoying the podcast, make sure you’re following us (it’s free!) in your podcast player! We’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Pocket Casts! And while you’re there, please leave us a rating or review. (We like 5 stars!)Episode 120 TranscriptVirginiaIt’s so great to have you back on Burnt Toast! CrystalI’m so excited to be back. It must mean you liked me last time.VirginiaSo for any folks who missed your first episode, why don’t you just quickly introduce yourself?CrystalI am Crystal Maldonado. I’m a young adult author who writes romcoms for fat brown girls. My first my debut novel was called Fat Chance, Charlie Vega. That came out in 2021 and it followed the story of Charlie who was a 16 year old girl who had never been kissed before. Her whole story was about trying to get that first kiss, falling in love for the first time and learning to love and appreciate her body, her fat body, for what it was.I also wrote No Filter and Other Lies which came out in 2022. This is another young adult story but it follows a 17 year old named Kat Sanchez, who was also Puerto Rican and also fat. She was drawn to catfishing and the life of just lying.VirginiaShe really goes on a journey. She gets into some stuff. CrystalYeah, it’s complicated. But there are lots of dogs, so that adds the wholesome factor where her story otherwise could be a little dicey.Then most recently, I wrote The Fall of Whit Rivera, which just came out in October. And this tells the story of Whit Rivera who is a 17-year-old fat Puerto Rican girl who is obsessed with fall. She’s just coming off of a really tough summer and has vowed to make her fall semester the best one ever. She’s hoping to plan her school’s homecoming dance, which they call the Fall Fest, but then it all kind of goes sideways when she gets paired up with her ex boyfriend to do the planning. And, oh no! He’s kind of cute.VirginiaYeah he’s really cute. Can confirm. Not in creepy way! Like, imagining myself as a teenager while reading the book. Now I’m making it weird. Continue. CrystalExactly. So I write those books. I’m also in higher ed marketing for my day job. I’m a mom. I have a four year old. I’m a wife. I have a dog. I love glitter. I love Beyonce. I think that about covers it.VirginiaI do want to talk a little more about Whit since she is the newest in the Crystal Cannon. As you said, she’s starting her senior year. She wants everything to be perfect. So those of us who are sort of compulsive overachievers can relate to her journey. But she’s also dealing with this new diagnosis of PCOS—polycystic ovarian syndrome. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a novel about a character with PCOS, let alone a young adult novel.CrystalOh, well, thank you. I don’t want to say this is the first because I don’t know for sure. But, I hadn’t read a novel that focused on this illness ever really.I was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome when I was 16 years old. And I just think about how much of a difference a story like this could have made in my life if I had been exposed to something like this, if I felt like it wasn’t just me that had PCOS. That was really a driving force behind the story. Like, of course, I wanted to write another romance. Of course, there’s the autumn aspect, and all of the fun fall apple picking, and all of that. There’s a lot of fun and joy. But I also wanted this story to have something a little bit more to it. For Whit that comes in the form of this chronic illness that is technically invisible—nobody can see it by looking at her—but it definitely affects her daily life. She, as you said, just got the diagnosis. That’s what derailed a lot of her summer because she spent all of this time going to these doctor’s appointments and figuring out how to deal with the symptoms that have been seeing pop up. And does she want to tell her friends? And what does this mean for her her daily life? It gets complicated very quickly for her. VirginiaIt just feels so important. I mean, like, I’m a 42-year-old who deals with a lot of facial hair in my life. And I find it awkward to talk about and navigate. A 16-year-old dealing with that? I just want to hug her! Like, it’s just like so vulnerable. And there’s so little understanding for it. Obviously facial hair is not the most important part of PCOS, but I think, when you’re 16, it feels like one of them.CrystalOh, totally. There is this scene very early on where Whit has already had this terrible phone call with her soon to be ex-boyfriend—I swear it’s not a spoiler, you know from page one, they’re not going to end up together. She’s coming off of all of these things where she hasn’t been talking to her friends and she’s trying to get ready and hype herself up for this first day of school. Then she sees she’s got this facial hair that she hadn’t noticed before and it really throws her off. It sends her into this spiral of, Oh my God, how long have I had this facial hair and how do I get rid of it? She totally panics.I think that that’s a very real reaction to the realization that you’re not meeting society’s beauty expectations in yet another category. There are already so many ways Whit feels like she doesn’t check the boxes of beauty. She’s not thin, she’s not white, she is queer, all of these things. And now she’s adding growing facial hair. That is now a thing that I have to deal with in my day to day. I had that same thing. Facial hair was one of my symptoms and is one of my symptoms. And there is so much shame, I will say, around facial hair. Sometimes we talk about how we have little mustache hairs or little chin hairs. But it can be so much more for people who have PCOS. Sometimes it is a beard or sometimes it’s sideburns, or it’s a lot of hair to deal with. Nobody talks about that. It feels very much like you’re on your own dealing with these symptoms, even though I think the statistic is something like one in five people who have uteruses have PCOS.1 It’s a very prevalent and “common” illness, but still one that is couched in so much shame and one that we don’t talk about very often. VirginiaI just want to say, too: A lot of folks claim their facial hair and are really into their facial hair. That’s amazing. We’re here for facial hair. I absolutely don’t want anyone to feel weird about that, or othered. But it’s part of this whole thing Whit is going through of feeling out of control in her body. And again, when you’re 16 and everything is rough, it’s a lot. CrystalI also want to reiterate, Go team facial hair. You do you!For Whit, it ends up being just yet another way that her body feels like it’s not hers. She finds it difficult to deal with on top of all of these other symptoms and all these other ways that her body feels like it’s not listening to her. So I thought that is a kind of an in your face way to talk about one of the more common symptoms of PCOS. Especially because this illness is something that really varies for each person. In the book, there’s this long list that Whit has where she talks about all of these different ways that PCOS can manifest in your body. She’s very clear, like, oh, but it’s different for every single person. So you actually have no idea which of these symptoms are going to show up. And that’s part of the exhaustion, too. Because as doctors do, they often are like, “just lose weight and it’ll fix itself.” And of course with PCOS, it’s extremely difficult to lose weight.Weight and HealthcareHigher-Weight Patients, Gynecological Care, and PCOSThis is the Weight and Healthcare newsletter! If you like what you are reading, please consider subscribing and/or sharing! Recently I’ve received a number of reader questions about ob/gyn care for fat* patients, so I reached out to Nicola Salmon, fat-positive fertility coach and author of “Fat and Fertile" who agreed to work with me on a series of artic…Read more4 years ago · 7 likes · Ragen ChastainVirginiaIt’s such a frustrating diagnosis and such a frustrating treatment to be given for this diagnosis.I live with endometriosis, which also no one really understands. With all of these menstrual conditions, there is just so much stigma and there’s such a lack of knowledge and sensitivity and nuance in how they get talked about. I think it’s just great to have a novel dealing with that right at the edge when a lot of kids are getting these diagnoses and trying to navigate them. CrystalThat’s really meaningful for me to hear. My diagnosis was 100 percent self diagnosis. I had been going to doctors sporadically because I was a fat kid. Very early on, I did not want to go to the doctor. That became a pain point for me. I did not regularly want to see medical professionals and everyone in my family was also fat, so they were also anti-doctor. So we weren’t really seeing doctors regularly, but I knew something was going on with my body around the time I was 14, 15, 16. Usually people notice it when their periods are all over the place and are not predictable. That was what was happening with me so that was a very clear one.I ended up just reading one of those magazines like Cosmo Girl or YM, and it was in the health section, there was this teeny tiny paragraph about this little known illness that some women can experience. That was how I found out about it. I clipped that out and I was like, “I have to go to the doctor and talk to them about this illness, this PCOS thing.” I had to do a bunch of tests, and it turned out to be correct. But I just think God, if this book can help even one person do that self diagnosis or even just feel less alone in their diagnosis, then that will be all I can ask for.VirginiaIt gives them something to ask their doctors about to advocate for themselves. I love that you found it in a teen magazine. You know I started my career in teen magazines. I’m like, Okay, we did a few good things. CrystalYou did. You certainly did. Especially for the families that didn’t talk at all. I had teen magazines and that was about it.VirginiaThere were a lot of great editors at those magazines who were thinking about how do we get more body literacy in here in between all of the CoverGirl ads and bikini body stories. CrystalReaders like me appreciated that. VirginiaTalk a little more about how you see the PCOS stigma continuing to show up?CrystalThere is more familiarity with it now, which I’m very grateful for. At the same time, the narrative still very much feels the same when it comes to PCOS. I don’t want to say that every person out there is still saying just lose weight and it’ll fix itself. But overwhelmingly, that is the advice.I am a fat activist and I am anti-diet culture. So trying to examine having this illness, while also trying not to set myself back in terms of all of this work that I’ve done to push back on dieting and to try and appreciate my body as it is—those two things often feel like they don’t go well together at all. It’s like oil and water. It’s difficult, I think, to find specialists who understand that and who are talking about it in that meaningful, kind of nuanced way. Let’s be honest, a lot of medical advice out there now is from influencers and that’s always dicey. How do you navigate finding someone who understands what your illness is, gives you correct and healthy and safe advice, and isn’t trying to do harm or trying to monetize your illness. That’s a really difficult landscape that we’re in right now. People who have been harmed by the medical industry, who have been harmed by doctors, who have dealt with these biases are seeking out alternative forms of support, of medicine in general. We’re just trying to find some some people out there who understand us. I think that’s especially true of typically issues that people who identify as women end up having, like endometriosis and PCOS. We tend to have to find these pockets of the Internet where we feel like we’re being talked about and heard in a respectful way. But that also brings up these other issues. So it’s like yes, we’ve made some progress. We’re talking about these things now. But also, have we really?VirginiaI think these menstruation related conditions are really vulnerable to diet culture and wellness culture marketing because you’re struggling with them, aren’t getting good information from doctors, often they’re being dismissed. It can take years to get a diagnosis.So then, you, you know, because you’re still suffering and struggling, you turn to other sources for information. These diets that are geared all around supporting your menstrual cycle, the seed cycling of it all, all of that stuff. Some of that may be really beneficial to folks, but nobody’s really vetting it yet. People deserve to be heard. And yet the people now, the brands and the influencers, are stepping up and saying, we hear you. We see you. Like, they aren’t necessarily doing anything all that different from what the mainstream doctors are. It’s still kind of one size fits all advice about diet and exercise and that kind of thing. CrystalAnd I think it’s really frustrating and also scary when we think about teenagers or really anybody at any age, looking this information up and just being so desperate to find that sense of community. But who is looking at this information and who’s vetting it and who’s making sure that we’re not causing more harm? I don’t have good answers for that. So I thought, well, at least I can write a book and talk about this and hopefully raise some awareness around this. I wanted Whit to be the kind of person who exists both as someone who has this illness, but who is also anti-diet culture and who appreciates her body. VirginiaI thought you threaded that needle incredibly well.I was really interested in how you wrote about weight in this book. In Fat Chance, Charlie Vega, that very much is Charlie’s story of coming to terms with her body, finding fat politics, finding fat community. Whit’s relationship with her weight, even with the PCOS stuff, is a little more in the background in a in an interesting way. I love that as she embarks on the relationship that is the big relationship in the book, she never really questions whether he’s going to find her attractive. CrystalI went back and forth a lot on how just how much of a role did I want her weight to play in this. Just because weight gain is such a part of PCOS and I wasn’t sure did I want her to be totally fine with it or did I want her to be grappling with it? I ultimately settled on Whit being kind of a matter of fact about her weight. When we meet her at the beginning, she talks about how she has lost weight previously so she knows what it’s like to be on the smaller fat side. And now she also knows what it’s like to be on this other side of things. I thought it was a nice way to be able to talk about some of that small fat privilege that we sometimes forget exists. I’m someone who my weight has been all over the place, So I felt like I could speak to this from personal experience. I wanted to talk about how no matter where you are on the spectrum, it doesn’t devalue your existence. And how sometimes when we lose weight, we think we’ve beaten the demons like, oh, well, I’m cured. I am so much better now and I don’t think about fatness and all of this stuff. But really, it’s just we’re thinner and society’s nicer to us. VirginiaYou articulated that so well, that she was like. “I thought I was really all the way there on fat positivity.” Turns out, it was just easier to be a size 14. And I was like, oh, damn.CrystalI think that a lot of us deal with that. And honestly, I don’t blame any of us for feeling that way. Because it is this huge shift in the world around you, how they see you, how they talk about you, how they think about you, how they think about your body.So I wanted to get to the heart of that through this character who’s just 16. She’s observant but also kind of self obsessed, right? She would be able to see like, “Oh, my teachers are making comments about my body in ways that they really should not be doing.” When you’re fat that happens all the time. It’s just changes the types of comments that you get. You might get a question from a teacher after you’re a small fat like, “Ph, well, how did you lose the weight?” Versus, oh gosh, you look different. That’s a coded way of saying, like, you got fatter. So I wanted to explore all of that, which I think I didn’t get to do as much in Charlie Vega. It was nice to talk about this in a more nuanced way, where even when you’re fat, there are still levels of fatphobia and internalized fatphobia that you deal with and how that can be really tough sometimes, VirginiaI love Charlie, I’m Team Charlie forever. But I was just fascinated to see you really evolving this conversation and play with how you talk about weight through these characters. CrystalWherever you are in your journey, you’ll hopefully find a character that lines up with how you’re feeling, right? So if you’re newer to fat activism, then I think Charlie’s story is going to be the thing that really gets to the heart and soul of what you’re going through. But if you’ve kind of been at this for a bit, and you’re tired, then Whit might be a character that you’re like, yeah, it is exhausting. I know I’m really attractive, but it doesn’t make it any less difficult to deal with everyone else. VirginiaOkay, I have no good segue for this, but we need to talk about Britney Spears. We just need to. CrystalLet’s do it. I am so excited. But also so sad because there’s almost no fun part of talking about the Britney memoir and just all that has happened to her. It’s just I want to scream from rage I think because of how sad and tragic I find her story.You read the memoir? VirginiaI listened to it, I listened to Michelle Williams. (Note: That’s an affiliate link to Libro.fm, the audiobook platform that supports indie bookstores!)CrystalI listened to it, too. Michelle was phenomenal. And just as an aside, the TikTokers who made the audio version of Michelle Williams impression of Justin Timberlake saying fo shiz, fo shiz? Shout out to them. VirginiaDoing the Lord’s work.CrystalI could picture it, with his little cornrows from back in the day.VirginiaOh God. It’s just mortifying that he exists and walks around in the world. CrystalI know. I am right there with you. VirginiaBut before we talk too much about them, tell us: What’s your relationship with Britney? CrystalYes. I thought you’d never ask.I am a long-time lover of Britney Spears. I honestly have this weird memory of being in Florida back when “Baby One More Time” just hit the radio. I was at a flea market with my whole family. I was walking around a tree because I was bored and done with the day of shopping, and this song came on and I’m like, “This is the greatest song I’ve ever heard. Who is this?” And of course at the time, there was no way to look up anything. I’m just like, “Well, I hope I can find out someday who sang that cool song.”VirginiaHow old are you for this? CrystalI would have been probably around like 10 or 11. VirginiaSo, a little bit younger than her. CrystalYeah. I was just infatuated. And then because in the late 90s, early 2000s women were told that they had to hate other women, I did go through that phase of “Oh never mind I don’t love Britney Spears,” even though I’m buying all of her albums, and following her online and all of her photos and I care deeply about what she does, but I don’t like her. That would be that would be silly. So, you know, I was secretly a huge fan.VirginiaThis is me with the Spice Girls, by the way.CrystalWhat an exhausting time, right?VirginiaWhat an exhausting time. Absolutely.CrystalSo that was where I started with her. I know in high school, I just loved her. I was that person who just was obsessed. I had Britney posters in my room. I was like, “Oh, I have a crush on her, but it’s just a girl crush,” which is what we used to call crushes on girls back in the day. And then it turns out, oh, I’m bi and I just love her. I loved her to the point of making—there was this thing called Live Journal back in the day where we would journal. So I would spend hours making icons and layouts of Britney Spears.VirginiaI’m so happy I know this now.CrystalYeah and for those who don’t know, icons are what we now call avatars. But back in the day, it was like you didn’t use yourself, you used a celebrity that you really enjoyed. That was Britney for me. I just adored her. I remember watching her all over MTV. Making videos and behind the scenes, things like that.Do you remember the Diary series on MTV? It would be like the diary of so-and-so? She had one, it was like The MTV Diary of Britney Spears, and she talked about diet culture. I remember learning the word “moderation” fro Britney. Because back then it was always like “how do you keep yourself so skinny?” And she had this monologue where she was like, “Oh, well, I still eat McDonald’s french fries. I just do everything in moderation.” And that’s how I learned the word moderation was because I was like, “Okay, I just have to be like Britney and do everything in moderation.”VirginiaAnd, by the way, “moderation” means I’m dancing 900 hours a day and my dad doesn’t let me eat but okay. Also genetics, she has skinny white girl genes.CrystalShe totally does. And I mean, good for her. So I followed her career very extensively, loved her so much. And then there was this huge backlash. I’m sure you recall how sad I think it was and how scary to watch this happening with her. She got married a couple of times. Then she got pregnant with Kevin Federline’s baby and the world was watching and was like, what’s going on with the princess of pop and it was just like watching this really sad downfall in real time, where she’s hounded by the paparazzi, but society is weirdly fine with it. VirginiaTotally fine with it. And making fun of her body at this point. Like, she obviously gained weight while growing children and yet has never been fat, but softens a bit and people are like, Oh my God, Britney!” and we saw all those tabloid photos of her with a Frappucino or whatever.CrystalShe got so much hatred and the misogyny that was thrown at her was so toxic. I just remember being really influenced by what was being said about her, and thinking, “If she is fat looking like that, what does that say about me?” And how I must be the worst person ever because I enjoy a Frappuccino from time to time. And I remember taking that commentary around her very personally. VirginiaShe was a cautionary tale of bodies, but also mental health and maternal fitness. She was being ripped apart for being a human and being a human under what we now know were pretty appalling circumstances. I mean, I definitely judged her. I was like, “Well, she just seems like a train wreck and what an irresponsible mother.” I totally bought into all of that. Then listening to the memoir, I’m thinking “Oh, you were a terrified young mother, you had no real emotional support. Literally no one has ever cared about your emotions, Britney.”CrystalNo. It was impossible to not be swept up in this storm of just judgment and hatred that was sort of being thrown her way. I wasn’t sticking up for her. And that was just kind of how the media treated women. I remember a similar thing happening with Mariah Carey and her mental breakdown. And then reading her memoir and also thinking what a terrible time it was to be a woman and to be anything less than perfect in the spotlight. I just was thinking about just how symbolic I think a lot of what Britney went through was. It showed how society thought of women and how we thought of ourselves and how we managed to come out on the other side. You can understand people getting into these MLMs that shill these weight loss drugs, right? Because it’s like, I get it, these people have been told their entire lives that their whole worth was tied up in their body and their looks. There are two ways you can go, you can become a an anti-capitalist anti-diet culture. Like, a let’s burn everything to the ground person. Or you can become someone who’s like I have to chase perfection for my whole life. Otherwise, I have no value.VirginiaIt is dark. It is really.CrystalI had so many questions during that memoir. Tell me your your experience and thoughts? VirginiaSo I’m her age. I think I’m a year older than her. So I never had the Britney worship that you had because I think I was like, I’m trying to be Angela Chase from My So Called Life. Like, I’m, like, totally intense. And who is the fluffy cheerleader pop star? I was like that.Crystal I got it. VirginiaAnd yet, obviously, she was still on my radar. I knew all her songs. I wasn’t actually ignoring her as much as I thought it was. It made me realize how much these constructions of femininity through these 90s pop stars—Jessica Simpson is another one—were really a way of marketing purity culture. Like, she’s living with Justin and yet they are still telling America she’s a virgin. CrystalOK so on purity rings. I bought one for myself! My friend bought herself one and was like, “will you buy one and we can just wear these purity rings together?”I know. It was a bad time. Sorry. Please continue. VirginiaI get it. I was not actively a part of purity culture, but I still deeply internalize these good girl/bad girl ideas about sex and what you’re supposed to do all of that. That was really interesting to realize how much we were all being fed the super toxic narrative.I do think there’s something kind of complicated about the fact that we’re now spending a lot of time feeling bad about this white, very successful, marketably beautiful pop star. Lots of people are growing up in abusive households and being exploited by their parents and we’re not buying their memoirs and their memoirs aren’t narrated by Michelle Williams. CrystalYes, it’s true. VirginiaAnd conservatorships actually have much more negative impacts on disabled folks and otherwise marginalized people. So I do sometimes get uncomfortable with how much time do we need to spend interrogating what we did to white women in the 90s. But, I don’t know. I think for all of us who lived through the 90s there is some trauma back there. It was a lot to sit through. CrystalShe is successful. And she’s white. And she’s thin, and she’s beautiful, and all of those things. How much do we need to spend the time on it? But then I also think part of it is justice for the rest of us who weren’t those things and still had to deal with a version of that.Of course, not all of us were put in conservatorships. But I mean, I didn’t grow up in a very supportive household. There was nothing pushing back against these narratives. It almost reinforced the idea that if you aren’t behaving well, this is what’s going to happen to you. I think for a lot of us now, being able to look back on that and be like, wow, she really went through it is almost giving ourselves permission to admit that we really went through it. It was a really difficult time to just exist. We didn’t ask for any of that.It’s almost hard to put into words how big of a celebrity Britney Spears was at the time. But she was everywhere. You could not escape it. Like, you couldn’t go to the grocery store without seeing a magazine calling Britney fat or saying that she was a slut or whatever terrible term.For me, I’m like, okay, I wasn’t, it wasn’t all in my head, right? Like, it really was a difficult time to exist. There is a reason that I felt so bad about myself. It wasn’t just me.There were also parts of the memoir that I did find kind of empowering, too. There was a section where she talks about how she when she was stuck in the conservatorship and had to do the Las Vegas residency she would not do hair flipping. And it was I was like, wait, that’s actually so badass. VirginiaYes, I wrote about that for the newsletter. I loved that. They basically owned her at that point, like she had to do the show. She had to wear the outfits. She was being starved on these diets. And she’s like, but I will not flip my hair. That is my line. CrystalHats off to you, Britney. Good for you. There is beauty in finding the power that you can take back and making the most of that. VirginiaThat was probably one of my favorite parts.It was also interesting, as a writer, to compare the book to what we see on her Instagram today. Like you can see the presence of the ghost writers, for sure. The voice in the book is often very childlike, but she has this very clear lens on everything in the book. When you follow her on Instagram, I don’t know that the clarity is always there.She’s definitely still a person, I would argue, playing out a lot of trauma and mental health crises and in need a lot of support that it’s unclear whether she’s getting.So that was interesting, as someone who’s done some celebrity ghost writing, being like, Oh, yeah, I see how you pulled that one together. I see how we cobbled together this chapter a little bit.CrystalI mean, props to the ghost writer. VirginiaI heard she went through multiple ghost writers, too. Celebrity ghost writing is a trip. But definite props to them for getting a book out of this situation.My least favorite part was definitely Justin with the guitar when she was having her abortion. CrystalI will never get over that. VirginiaOh man, I knew that would be very satisfying to discuss with you. So thank you. CrystalThank you. Clearly I had a lot of feelings.---Buttery YA/Tween/Teen Gift Recs!VirginiaAll right. Since we are in the holiday season, I thought we could do kind of an expanded Butter segment of recs that are also going to work as gifts. And because you are a young adult novelist and an expert on young people—and I’m not obviously since I just said that—we’re gonna focus our recs on gifts for YA readers but also tweens and teens in our life.Because this is a very hard category to shop for, I say as the mother of a tween.I did cheat and consult with my 16-year-old niece for ideas. So, Lorelai, thank you for helping me prepare for this segment! So my recs are coming to us 16-year-old-approved.CrystalI love that. I had the great pleasure of meeting Lorelai at your R.J. Julia event last spring, and she’s phenomenal. I’m excited to hear your recommendations. VirginiaOkay, Crystal. Take it away.CrystalSo for any YA lover in the room, I want to recommend two different books. One is not out yet. But I want to start with literature since that’s kind of what we’re here to talk about.VirginiaOfficially, we’re here to talk about literature, along with Britney Spears. CrystalExactly. So there is this book that came out by Adiba Jaigirdar who is just phenomenal and has written The Henna Wars and so many incredible books, but this one is called The Dos and Donuts of Love. It is about a fat girl who enters a teen baking competition and then yes, and falls in love with one of the competitors who happens to be her ex. It is this delightful read for anyone who’s a fan of Great British Bake Off, anything with Gordon Ramsay, all of those folks, all of the reality TV baking goodness needs to read this book. It’s so amazing. It’s funny, it’s cute. It’s sapphic. There’s so much to love about it. And also, it’ll make you so hungry.Then there’s another book that’s coming out in March, it is by Christen Randall and it is called The No-Girlfriend Rule. I got to read an early copy of it and it features a fat main character. The No-Girlfriend Rule is about how the main character just wants to play Dungeons and Dragons and wants to do it with her boyfriend but the the club that her boyfriend is part of has a no girlfriend rule for the game.So she’s like, whatever, I’m just going to go find my own D&D group. And of course, it’s not called D&D, it’s called something else, but it’s Dungeons and Dragons. So she finds a new group and it’s all girls and nonbinary folks and queer people. She ends up making this really sweet friend group, but she’s dealing with her anxiety of putting yourself out there and potentially being rejected. And how does her boyfriend fit into her life now that she’s got this great new group of friends? And what if I start to have feelings for one of the people in my new D&D group? It’s so good. VirginiaThis is very exciting. I just looked it up and they describe it as Julie Murphy meets Casey McQuiston, which, like, yes, I want that. CrystalSign me up. VirginiaThese are such good picks. I’m very excited.Building off your first one, I was going to actually recommend two cookbooks that I think are super fun. I think a lot of teens and tweens get into baking, it’s just fun to do. But also I think any time you can be like food positive with kids, it’s very important, especially in these years. A lot of people know Snacking Cakes, this really good cookbook by Yossy Arefi and it’s 50 easy everyday cake recipes. First of all, everyday cake is just so good. Sign me up for that life. We need everyday cake, right? Most of these recipes are one bowl, very easy. My 10-year-old could make this if she were so inclined.Then Yossy just brought out a new one, which I don’t have yet, but I have my pre-order in, called Snacking Bakes which is cookies, bars, brownies, cakes and more. I think both of these together would be a great gift or either one like if you know your kid is more into cookies versus cakes, either way. But yeah, and then it’s a fun thing to do together or they can tell their friends whenever they can bake for their D&D group. Their all-girl D&D group. They cannot bake for the boyfriend that I hope she’s breaking up with anyway. CrystalIn my head, I’m picturing, like, you can wrap those books in such a cute way. You could put like a little whisk in with it and put a little ribbon. How cute would that be? You could do like a whole little baking thing, you could get like a cute pan.VirginiaI just think, like, kids are so stressed out. They’re so busy, but like a Sunday afternoon baking project, put on a really good movie, like that can be like such a good chill time.CrystalAgreed. I love that. My next one is actually a sticker recommendation. I think we all love our stickers, whether you’re going to put it on your laptop, I know a lot of people put stickers on their water bottles now. So this is a sticker club subscription from Liberal Jane. I don’t know if you are familiar with their work, but they’re all over Instagram, and they make all of these incredible art pieces.It’s super feminist. They have like cute little cats who fight the patriarchy, they’ve got little witches. There are all kinds of things. I love the sticker subscription club because you get to forget that you’re getting this amazing piece of mail. And it comes with a sticker, it comes usually with a postcard of some kind and they’ll throw some freebies in there, too. feel like teens or tweens would really appreciate this. It’s a gift that continues throughout the whole year, so you buy the subscription and then you get to forget about it. And then they get all of these beautifully created pieces of art by artists who really are trying to move the needle on some very important political issues.And a lot of the bodies are diverse bodies, too. There are disabled bodies, fat bodies, brown bodies. There are all kinds of beautiful bodies that are depicted in the stickers and in the pieces of art. So I am all about Liberal Jane.VirginiaThese are amazing. “Normalize body hair.” “I’m just a little ravioli against fascism”—why does that one make me so happy?? Okay, I want the sticker subscription for myself but also for my kids. Like, how many people do I need to get sticker club for? CrystalI have subscribed. You could get one and then sort of dole them out.VirginiaWell, I also have a sticker pick. I’ve made this sticker recommendation before on the podcast. But I don’t care because Phoebe Wahl stickers are glorious. She has her “I don’t care about your diet” sticker. “Pleasure is good for you,” on a cupcake sticker. “Ditch diets.” She’s got “keep abortion legal,” and then she draws all these like whimsical forest fairy creatures. So there are tons of stickers that are just like gnomes and mushrooms and delightful things. But that is such a good gift add-on item. CrystalTotally. And for the crafty folks, Phoebe also has washi tape that you can add to your collection. VirginiaThis is why I knew I had to have you on for this. I didn’t know about the washi tape!CrystalI know and it’s so cute. I just bought a little three pack. They’ve got like little mushrooms on one of them. It just made my whole life when I saw it. I squealed in the store and I turned to my husband. I was like its Phoebe Wahl! He’s like, I don’t know who that is. VirginiaI’m so happy for you though. Well, and we should also plug Phoebe’s Diary is such a great graphic memoir / graphic novel memoir. No, it’s a novel. CrystalIt’s a it is a novel but there are these beautiful illustrations throughout it. VirginiaYeah, based on her own diary. Phoebe was on the podcast a few months ago and talking about it. She excavated her own teen drama for the good of all of us, which is a real gift.CrystalThank you, Phoebe. Okay, so my next recommendation is some t-shirts or magnets—you can pick your poison—from Nalgona Positivity Pride. They have the most incredible store. Their whole existence is about fighting against stigma around eating disorders so they call themselves an unconventional eating disorder awareness organization. They are specific to talking about eating disorders within the BIPOC community. I find it incredibly empowering.They have some slogans throughout their website that you can buy like on a t-shirt or on a magnet or on a postcard. I wanted to share a couple of those because I just think they’re incredible. One of them is “I am the beauty standard,” And I think that is just so powerful. You could get that as a t-shirt, whatever you’d like. I am my ancestor’s beauty is another one, which is just a beautiful reminder. Then for your artistic tweens out there, they may enjoy one that says fat artists rule. It’s got a depiction of a couple of different artists like Beth Ditto and Brittany Howard. It’s just fun and a reminder that yes, fat artists do rule. And the store, honestly, I could recommend everything but those are some of my favorites. VirginiaI want the one with a possum on it that says my body was made to be adored. It’s just so cute.CrystalThere’s like a little frog that just says I am all sex appeal and desire.VirginiaMy next one is less fat-positivity focused and more just tween/teen audience-focused, again with help from Lorelai. But if you have a teen or tween who is into Gilmore Girls, which I thought none of them were but Lorelai (who is named after Lorelai Gilmore, so obviously was in her heritage to do this), was like, “No, now it’s made a big comeback.” She was Rory Gilmore for Halloween. It was amazing. And also shows like Grey’s Anatomy are back. Like, I’m feeling so cool. So she found this very cute Gilmore Girls Stars Hollow blanket.CrystalIt is perfection. So It’s so delightful. VirginiaMy one criticism is Babette’s house is not on the map and I don’t understand what happened.CrystalJustice for Babette! She is one of the best characters on the whole series.VirginiaHer house is very important and so are the gnomes. So that was one oversight. But otherwise everybody else is there. And it’s so cute. CrystalOh, and how cozy? VirginiaIt just looks so cozy, too. It’s good price point, fleece lined for your cute blanket. Lorelai was really into that. By the time this airs, she will have already received it so I can talk about that. CrystalPerfect. Well, thank you for the recommendation. I’m going to spend all my money on this. VirginiaSo cute. And what a good reminder, any 90s or 2000s Show that you thought was over you might be able to watch with your kid and then you can get the merch related to it. Easy gift giving. CrystalI love that. Then also you can talk about all of the things that we got away with in the 2000s that are no longer things you can say or do because it’s terrible.Gilmore Girls is one of those that I love so much. Whit Rivera is a big fan of Gilmore Girls and there are references throughout the book. But they have really terrible ideas about bodies. So maybe we take the coziness, and we leave the fatphobia in the 2000s.VirginiaI mean, I watched the whole series with my 10-year-old over the summer, and she got so tired of me pressing pause to be like, we just need to quickly unpack something. She was like, can we just watch it? There’s a lot of homophobia too. And yet, obviously, Michel was a queer icon before he was allowed to be out as a queer icon. So like, why were we doing that? CrystalI don’t know. They the jokes weren’t even funny. Oh, what a weird time of life. But I like that the youths are watching it and I’m sure doing their own critical take on it. I think that’s good. My last one is just because I’m a huge fan of Ragen Chastain and I will follow her to the ends of the earth. She has co-written an activity book called Love It!: 234 Inspirations and Activities to Help You Love Your Body. It’s available in paperback and it essentially is this delightful book of just ways you can remind yourself that your body is amazing. VirginiaI have this, its so cute.CrystalIt’s so sweet. And I just love this idea of sometimes you’re in your feelings, and you could totally open this book and just like, Okay, I am going to look at these little illustrations of these fat bodies, or find art that feature someone who looks like you and display it where you’ll see it often. What a great idea. It’s got these little nuggets of suggestions of things to do. Sometimes it’s talking about writing a letter to somebody, and then like not sending it, but obviously, it feels very therapeutic. It’s a whole book of that is not going to have any fatphobia in it. And it’s gonna just tell you different great things that you should do to celebrate yourself. So I love that.VirginiaWell, this was so much fun! Thank you for doing this extended gift recommendation segment with me. Thank you so much for being here.Why don’t we wrap up by just having you tell folks where we can follow you and how we can support your work?CrystalThank you so much for having me. This has been such a delight. I can’t wait to go shopping and get some of these recommendations. Please thank Lorelai for me.If folks would like to follow along with me, my username on pretty much everything is @CrystalWrote. I’m also at Crystalwrote.com. All of my books are listed there. I have a middle grade coming out next year and then a young adult book coming out the year after and the young adult book is actually a brown queer sort of retelling of crossroads, starring Miss Britney Spears. VirginiaOh my gosh. I just got very excited.CrystalYes. It should be a good time and it’s great that we talked about Britney.VirginiaWell, you will be back to talk about that. Thank you, Crystal!---The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter.Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.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 independent anti diet journalism. I’ll talk to you soon.---1 - The CDC reports 6 to 12 percent of American women of reproductive age. (But that may not include folks of other genders who have a uterus.)

Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark!It’s time for your November Extra Butter episode. This month, we’re doing a listener question (on post-divorce bodies!) and a segment if It’s Not NOT a Diet on 75 Hard (or Hard 75, as Virginia likes to call it).To listen to the full episode and read the full transcript, you’ll need to join Extra Butter, our premium subscription tier. These episodes tend to be a little more personal. They’re also where we’re working out ideas, and having conversations that are definitely worth having—but maybe aren’t quite ready for primetime. (Last month we dug into the anti-diet to alt-right pipeline.) And biased, but, we think they’re very fun.And Extra Butter is the hands down best way to support this work. This subscription tier is why we’re able to pay Corinne and Tommy for their invaluable contributions, why we’re able to offer unlimited comp subscriptions (just email! no questions asked!, and why we’re able to pay podcast guests a small honorarium to thank them for their time and labor. And Extra Butter ensures that the Burnt Toast community can always stay an ad- and sponsor-free space—which is crucial for body liberation journalism.TranscriptCorinneOkay Virginia, our listener question today is for you.How have your thoughts and feelings about your body changed since you got separated?VirginiaOh, man. This is a GOOD question. I feel like I’ll probably write about it at some point? But I’m still sorting it out. So I’m giving you all like just some rough off the cuff thoughts today. Don’t expect poetry.CorinneFair. VirginiaAnd I do want to say right up top that my body was not the cause of our divorce. What I’m going to talk about is how I’m feeling now. I’m not talking about my relationship. I just want to make that clear. But one thing that’s been cool, which I didn’t anticipate, is: I do feel more free. There’s a freedom to my relationship with my body right now. I think this is as much to do with being out of a certain stage of motherhood. Because in early motherhood, your body is not your own, in so many ways. My kids are older now so I’m not touched out and all of that.But I think it is also related to suddenly my body feels much more just for me and me only—in a way that is liberating. And again, that’s not a comment on my marriage or even a comment on relationships in general. CorinneDo you think it’s also living alone? I mean, you’re not fully living alone. But having alone time in your house?VirginiaI think that’s what it is. I think there’s this ability to be more in your body when you are not being observed at all.Like, during my first few solo weekends, I had this weird sensation of being observed. I think my brain was adjusting to the idea that I was alone in my house. Because that happened never before. Like, never. So there was a weird part of my brain that was like “I don’t know what this is.” I felt like I was watching myself or something. Like, Oh, this is what Virginia is like when she eats dinner alone. This is what Virginia is like when she’s watching TV on the couch by herself. These things that never happened. It was a strange experience. And then that kind of decreased as I got more like, Oh, right. I’m just in my body now. I’m just in the house alone.Is that making any sense? Or does that sound wackadoo? You can tell me. CorinneNo, it makes total sense. It sounds nice.VirginiaIt’s really nice. It’s really, really nice. There are just little things that I feel more relaxed about. I’m just feeling more… a little more peace, I guess. Or a little more space. And it’s really more to do with having more alone time and no audience.And again, this isn’t to say my ex was a critical audience. But it was still an audience, right? He was still someone who my body was in relationship to, in a way that now it’s not. And it’s kind of cool.CorinneI love that. VirginiaI would say the less good part is like… I am not to dating yet. But the idea of that is complicated feeling. I’ve heard so much from Burnt Toast readers and from other fat friends over the years. And it’s just going to be really different. The last time I dated, I was a skinny 17 year old.CorinneYikes. I mean, it’s got to be better than that.VirginiaRight? Better, but also, like, I don’t know!CorinneJust different.VirginiaDifferent, right? And I think I’d still want to date straight man, which just feels like a poor choice. We had Chrissy King on the podcast a while ago and she talked about her divorce and dating and she was like, “It just really narrows the options.” If you want to date straight men, but you don’t plan to lose weight for the experience and you only want to date people who are fat positive. That’s going to be a strict process o elimination. CorinneYeah, I can see that.VirginiaI don’t know. Do you have thoughts? Do you have advice? I mean, I know you don’t date straight men, but just as someone who dates.CorinneIt’s hard question to answer. I think I told you that I’m just re-entering dating after a long break. And yeah, it’s been fun. It’s also been up and down. I don’t know. I feel hopeful. But who knows?VirginiaI like hopeful. Hopeful sounds good. I’m excited for you. And I’m glad you’re having fun. For me personally, I’m like, “Maybe I don’t need that anymore.” Maybe I’m just done.But I’m aware that I’m fresh. I am where I am on this timeline. Currently, I feel very happy to be un-partnered, but I am aware that there’s a piece of that that’s probably like, “And then I don’t have to worry about the body piece.” You know? Because my body can just be for me, which feels great.CorinneI do think there’s a ton of freedom. And I think it’s great to also just be like, “I’m not going to date for a while.”VirginiaI feel great about that choice for me. CorinneAnd that was a choice that I made as well for a while and feel totally good about.VirginiaI mean, we put such an overemphasis on dating and relationships in this culture, and as someone unpacking a 25 year relationship, I can really see how that overemphasis applied to me. And I’m excited to apply it less.CorinneCool. Good answer.VirginiaIt was a good question and I am sure I will have more to say on all of that as I get further into this. It’s Not NOT A Diet: 75 HardVirginiaAll right, Corinne. You are going to teach me about Hard 75? 75 Hard? I can never remember the name of this thing. CorinneIt’s so cute that you think it’s called Hard 75 because it’s definitely called 75 Hard. VirginiaI love that I put that in the intro. CorinneI was like, “I’m not going to correct her.”VirginiaIt’s a dumb name either way.CorinneI think it’s so great that you haven’t encountered it enough to know what it’s called! I see it on TikTok constantly. VirginiaI did just get an email about it, which I will reference in a little bit. But I think I have a mental block on remembering it? I just keep being like, no, I don’t want to know about that.But we’ve been asked to talk about it. So we’re doing it.CorinneOkay. So, 75 Hard. The first thing to know about it is it is not a fitness challenge. It is not a weight loss challenge. It is a transformative mental toughness program. And the first rule of this transformative mental toughness program is follow a diet. No cheat days, no alcohol. Follow a diet.VirginiaFirst of all, lots of diets let you drink alcohol.CorinneNot this one, Virginia.VirginiaBut then what’s the rest of the diet? CorinneOkay, so let me just give you the basic outline here. So the 75 refers to 75 days. You’re doing this plan for 75 days. And if you mess up, you start over. It was started by this guy Andy Frisella who seems to be kind of an influencer guy. He has a supplements company. I’m sure you never would have guessed that. VirginiaCould not see that coming.CorinneAnother whole thing about 75 Hard, is that he doesn’t sell the plan. It’s pretty openly available. So I think that might be why a lot of people get sucked in.VirginiaSo he makes money off his supplements, but this is like—a marketing strategy?CorinneI think so. There’s a page for it on his website and he does ask for your email, so you can get emails about it or something. And there is an app and stuff. But it’s not like you have to pay to get the program because the program is very simple. Let me tell you the rules: Follow a diet, no cheat days, no alcohol; 2 x 45 minute workouts a day, one must be outside.VirginiaOh my God.CorinneDrink a gallon of water. VirginiaOh my God.CorinneRead 10 pages of nonfiction. No audiobooks. And it should be self improvement books. And take progress pics. Okay, so those are the only rules. But I feel like you can see why it kind of would be appealing because it’s both very strict and very open to interpretation.VirginiaI’m having a lot of thoughts and feelings. CorinneI bet.VirginiaMy first reaction is how is 90 minutes of exercise equivalent to reading for 10 pages? Is reading so hard for this guy?Like, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound rude to people with dyslexia and other reading challenges, but this just tells me a lot about this person. If he’s like, we’re gonna go hard for 90 minutes today, then we’re gonna read 10 whole pages.CorinneTen pages of a self-help book. Like, come on, dude. And I don’t think you’re the one being anti-dyslexia, because he says no audiobooks.VirginiaOkay, so that’s ableist because of course audiobooks count as reading. He’s like, No, you will read those ten pages with your eyes.CorinneThere is something about your eyes here. It’s that your eyes need to get stronger. But it only needs to be ten pages. I guess that’s the Mental Toughness portion.VirginiaThis is a guy who did not do the reading in college is what I’m going to say. CorinneDefinitely not.VirginiaTalk to me when you’re getting through the Norton Anthology in a week, buddy. Former English major over here. If there’s one endurance sport I have, it’s being able to read a lot of pages.CorinneI mean. You would excel at that portion of 75 Hard. VirginiaAnd only that portion. Which I still want to call Hard 75, I think it’s a better name.CorinneSo another interesting thing that has come out of 75 Hard is people doing 75 Soft, which is like 75 Hard, but easier.  I don’t have the rules for that one. But I think it’s like “follow a diet,” but you can have cheat days and alcohol. One 45 minute workout. It’s just slightly less.VirginiaOkay, now I need to send you the Instagram link that was sent to me. Which is another spin on this, that I just learned about.CorinneThe other thing I’m going to say before I open this— I feel like the rule that’s "Take progress pics,” is also part of what has made this go so viral. Because TikTok is just full of people using before and afters.VirginiaThey just want you to make content. And there’s no specific diet. It’s just follow any diet and also don’t drink alcohol. And then, oh my God, the two 45 minute workouts a day. I mean, I cannot do this. Do these people not have jobs? Obviously they don’t have children that they’re raising.CorinneThey obviously don’t have children. Like there’s just, it’s a lot. That’s a lot. VirginiaIf I got two 45 minute pockets of time to myself in a day…CorinneYou would spend them doing 75 Hard. VirginiaI am definitely not spending both of them on exercise. Jesus Christ.So open the link I sent you, because this is another flavor of it.CorinneOkay, so you just sent me a link to an Instagram post, which is called “Introducing 75 Slow, a fully immersive 13 week community wellness challenge hosted by ether designed to guide participants on a transformational journey of self discovery.”VirginiaYou don’t have to read all of it, but her rules are one 45 minute workout per day. But number two is 10,000 steps that have to be outside. In addition to your 45 minute workout, you have to get all of your 10,000 steps outside. And I’m just picturing these people…CorinneThat’s more than 45 minutes. VirginiaI’m picturing these people out in the cold. “I can’t go back inside. I’m only at 9,672 steps. I got to keep walking around my block!” CorinneAlso, it’s kind of insane how similar this one is to the 75 hard. It doesn’t feel slow. It’s not that much slower. It’s one 45 minute workout a day 10,000 steps, two liters of water, follow a nutritious whole foods diet (no refined sugar, no alcohol). And do daily self reflection, habit tracking and journaling, celebrate joy and document your daily magic moments.VirginiaYou don’t have to read with this one? I guess that’s the slow part. There’s no required reading. CorinneYou have to do habit tracking and journaling, which is writing.VirginiaYes, there’s a writing component. And I don’t know how you get that done. Because all you’re doing is walking around outside trying to get your steps in. 10,000 steps all in one go would take you like two hours or something? It sounds like less working out but it’s actually triple the working out. And then I have to document daily magic moments!CorinneOh my God. And also, like, “follow a nutritious whole foods diet.” Okay. No refined sugar. That in itself…VirginiaThese are wild. There’s nothing behind this. These plans are is just people putting words on squares in Canva and marketing this shit. There’s a whole video clip at the end where she’s talking to her friend about her epiphany to develop this 75 Slow situation. And it’s just her sitting on an expensive sofa being like, “and then the name came to me.”CorinneAnd I love the the contrast in the original one. It’s like, “This is a mental toughness program. But take progress pics!” It’s like, yeah, how would I take pics of my mental toughness improving?VirginiaI guess you could show your page counts when you read eleven pages?I mean, as usual, we’re mocking this diet. We’re not mocking people who try this diet.CorinneYeah, I get it. I can I understand the appeal, because 75 days. When you say it, it sounds like manageable. VirginiaDoes it? It sounds like a lot. I don’t think that sounds manageable. For two and a half months?CorinneI mean, I don’t want to do any of that for even one day, but I’m just thinking if someone was like, “read 10 pages every day for 75 days,” I’d be like, “Oh, I could do anything for 75 days.”VirginiaI mean, I can read 10 pages a day. But I could not document daily magic for 75 days. That’s absurd. CorinneSeems like you might need to do 75 Slow.VirginiaThis whole list feels like the kind of overzealous New Year’s resolution you make when you’re 22 and you’re like, “This is the year I’m going to get into such great shape and do all of these self improvement things!” And you’re not going to do any of it. You’re just not going to do any of it. CorinneWell, that is the thing about the 75 I guess, because then what do you do after that? They’re saying, “Oh you’ll be so much more mentally tough,” but like—so what?VirginiaAre we joining the army? Fighting crime? CorinneOkay, so the 75 is over, and then you’re going to go back to your old life. VirginiaJust mental softness from here on out.CorinneIt’s not like they’re saying, “Live the rest of your life hard.”VirginiaOr do they? I’m sure there are people who are linking up 75 days. 75 days hard, 15 days falling apart. I could definitely see people trying to rinse repeat this.But I think it is a certain type of personality who’s going to even make it through one 75 days. And then another type of person who could do multiple 75 days. And in all cases, I’m picturing a straight cis man with no childcare responsibilities and a flexible dotcom job. That’s who this was made for, someone who can be like totally fucking self indulgent all the time. Because that’s what we’re really talking about. If you have 90 minutes a day to exercise, you are not doing a lot of things for other people. You’re just not.CorinneIt’s not about self indulgence, though. It’s about discipline.VirginiaBut it’s a very, very self indulgent form of discipline. It is discipline as a hobby. What does this translate to? Like, are you getting your taxes filed early because of this? Are you getting the laundry done more efficiently because of this? Is your house cleaner? Did you renew Corinne’s passport for her? How are you contributing? Are you going to join the PTA and organize some whole event and do it all single handedly? What are you doing with your time and all this mental toughness?CorinneDo you want me to read you some reviews? VirginiaI mean, no, but yes.Corinne“75 Hard gave me the tools to have a no excuses, zero options mentality, and that is worth more than any class or education. The impact on my life has been nothing but positive. My health is better, mentally and physically. I perform better on a stage with my band. I perform better as a husband because I’m in a better mood, am more organized and pay much more attention to detail than I did before. I had the best financial year of my life after my second round. And I continue to grow in every aspect of my life because of the discipline 75 hard has instilled in me.”VirginiaWe learned everything we needed to know about this guy from, “I perform better on a stage with my band.”CorinneOh, this is making me so tired.VirginiaThis is the scene in the Barbie movie when all the Kens played Push.CorinneOkay, I have to tell you haven’t seen the Barbie movie yet. VirginiaOkay, well, that is something we’ll deal with separately. But there’s a hilarious scene where the Kens who are trying to take over Barbieland are trying to impress their ladies. And it’s by playing that song “Push” by Matchbox20. Yeah, this is that guy.Alright, so we’re saying you don’t have to do Hard 75.CorinneIt’s not a diet. It’s a… what is it? A mental toughness? Mental transformation program. Whose first rule is go on a diet.VirginiaOh my God. But only 10 pages of reading! Please don’t do it.CorinneDon’t do it. Not worth it.---Butter contains some affiliate links. Shopping from our links is a great way to support Burnt Toast!Extra Butter Butter!VirginiaShould we do some Butter?CorinneYes.VirginiaWhat do you have?CorinneOkay, um, I want to recommend this shirt that I got from Anthropologie. I got it this summer and so I got the short sleeved version, but now that there’s a long sleeved version, which is less sold out. So that’s what I’m recommending, because I will probably buy it. It’s a kind of sheer knit-ish top. But it’s mostly cotton. And it’s not too see through and it’s really cute. Just plain but it’s also really good under overalls or something.This is Corinne dropping in to say that since we recorded this, that shirt has now sold out. I'm still linking it in case they restock, but here's some other sheer tops that I’m coveting:Tamara Malas Normandie TopAnthropologie Lace Layering TurtleneckWhat’s your Butter?VirginiaAlright, my Butter is my new little French press. When we separated, I realized I needed a new coffee solution because I drink one cup of coffee in the morning and then I switched to Diet Coke because if I have too much caffeine I don’t sleep. This is just a thing about me, I can’t have caffeine after noon.Diet Coke is a lower caffeine option, so I have my one cup of coffee, and then if I need a little more, which I always do, I have a Diet Coke.So, when Dan moved out, I was left with our giant coffee pot that makes 12 cups, and I was like, “Well, this is inefficient for my needs.” So then I spent all this time researching and I bought a fancy Cuisinart coffee pot that had a regular coffee pot on one side and then it made a single cup of coffee on the other side. And I was like, “Well, this seems perfect.” Because when people come over, I can make the pot of coffee. But for me, I can just make the single cup. But I could never get the single cup right. So I had shitty single cup coffee for the first two months of being separated, which did not add to my feelings of positivity about the whole situation. Like, I’m already trying to get a lot of things together, and I don’t even have good coffee? I was really annoyed about it. So then, I was like, “Am I going to have to be a K cup person?” I feel bad for the planet. I don’t want to be a K cup person. But maybe this is not a season of life where I judge myself?Anyway, then I bought an $11 French press. CorinneIt’s so cute. VirginiaIt makes exactly one cup of coffee. And it has completely solved my problems. It’s excellent coffee, because French presses make really good coffee. I used to be anti-French press when we needed to make a lot of it, because you would need more or like it takes longer. But if you’re making one cup of coffee in a small French press, it takes four minutes, which is the same amount of time that brewing a pot of coffee took. And it’s an $11 solution. So now I do need to sell my Cuisinart coffee maker, because we won’t talk about what I spent on that. But it was more. And I don’t need it. So that’s unfortunate. But I have this and then I just went and bought a bigger French press, for what I do have people over.[Update: After hosting three friends for the weekend, I’ve realized there is still a place for the Cuisinart and that is FOR BRUNCH. So it’s staying but in a cabinet most of the time.]CorinneOh, awesome. This looks like such a good solution.VirginiaAre you a coffee person?CorinneI go back and forth. Right now I’m a coffee as a treat person. If I have coffee I’m going out. VirginiaSo you don’t have it first thing in the morning?CorinneI’ll sometimes either have caffeinated tea or a caffeinated electrolyte drink. VirginiaOh my God. CorinneUm, yeah, sorry. It’s disgusting.VirginiaYou’re a weightlifter. We don’t judge your culture.CorinneBut yeah, I love coffee. I love the flavor of coffee and coffee ice cream and stuff. But it gives me terrible heartburn when I drink it consistently. So I try to just have it as a treat.VirginiaIt probably plays a role in my heartburn, too. But that’s something I’m not looking too closely at right now. CorinneYeah, never mind. VirginiaI’ve been on this one cup kick for years. So I’m like, you cannot take away my last cup. CorinneI know, it does really make life worth living.VirginiaIt’s delightful. And not to sound all portion control about it, but the fact that it only makes one cup means it is like a conscious choice to have a second cup. Because I have to rinse it out and make a second cup. And then that’s helpful to be like, do I really need a second? Whereas when you have a big pot…Coffee is like alcohol, right? It’s very easy to have more than you intended. Because you just keep pouring and you’re like, whoops, oh, yeah, I am now I’m really jittery. I had three cups of coffee. So anyway, it’s so cute. I recommend.CorinneIt is really cute. VirginiaRight? Well, this was a very fun extra butter. ---Today’s episode of the Burnt Toast Podcast was produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.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 independent anti diet journalism!