The Burnt Toast Podcast

Dr. Devorah Heitner, author of 'Growing Up in Public', explores topics such as navigating privacy and consent in the digital age, the negative effects of monitoring kids' digital communications, rethinking sexting, and a tech-related recommendation for a family organization tool called Skylake.

Phoebe Wahl, an award-winning illustrator, surface designer, and author, discusses her new young adult novel, body positivity, and her favorite drawing tools. She reflects on embracing body acceptance through art and the process of including fat characters in her books. The conversation also touches on balancing work and parenting, writing a sequel, and a mutual appreciation for graphic novels and dahlias.

Virginia talks with Amy Palanjian, creator of Yummy Toddler Food and author of the cookbook Dinnertime SOS. They discuss the challenges of family dinner, diet culture in kid food, and the importance of prioritizing needs. They also share their experiences testing recipes, their long-term friendship, and their excitement over finding a rare houseplant.

The podcast covers topics such as power lifting, menstrual taboos, YouTubers' advice on eating, empowering others with knowledge, challenges of wearing long sleeve one-pieces, frozen cherry treats, weight classes in powerlifting competitions, inclusivity in sports, and the struggle of finding items that fit different body variations.

Today Virginia is chatting with Mary Carney, the founder of Towel, a new size inclusive lifestyle brand. Because a towel that doesn't wrap around your body is just a classic example of anti-fat bias in action. If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber to get all of Virginia's reporting and bonus subscriber-only episodes—including the director's cut of this conversation where VA and AHP answer all of your gardening questions. Disclaimer: Virginia is a journalist and human with a lot of informed opinions. Virginia is not a nutritionist, therapist, doctor, or any kind of health care provider. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions she gives are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.BUTTER & OTHER LINKSTowelMeet the towels: Ava, Joni, and GemmaTowel on Instagram BT episode on Old Navy's failed plus size promisesMia O’Malley on making sure your life fits your bodywe have mentioned chairsReally Big Towelthe viral pajamasMaddeningly, Virginia's jumpsuit seems to have sold out right before publishing, BUT there is a really good buy / sell / trade group for Universal Standard on Facebook. FAT TALK is out! Order your signed copy from Virginia's favorite independent bookstore, Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the US!). Or order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, or Kobo or anywhere else you like to buy books. You can also order the audio book from Libro.fm or Audible.CREDITSThe Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia 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!Episode 106 TranscriptMarySo I got out of the shower last year and I had a towel and it didn’t wrap around my body. And I was like, enough is enough. Someone has to fix this. This is a towel. Something I use every single day. I was standing there, just out of the shower and I was like, well, some of my towels are in the wash. Some of them are a little bigger. This one happened to be one from childhood, ironically. But it doesn’t wrap around my body. And I know that I’m not the only person who experiences this. So in that moment, I was set. I was like, I’m going to make towels. It’s should be pretty simple. In hindsight it’s not simple, but…VirginiaIt really feels like it would be! It’s one piece of fabric.MaryYes, it does, right? It’s one piece of fabric. I was just like, “Why hasn’t anybody done this?” So in that moment, I decided to name it Towel because I was like, it’s so simple. It’s an essential. It’s pretty ironic, as well, that it is just one strip of fabric and yet, this one strip of fabric we have in our houses doesn’t fit many, many bodies. And so Towel was conceived.My first step, because I really love designing and branding is, was to build an Instagram and start to build community. What I realized then is that there are actually so many more people resonating with this idea than I even imagined. At that point, I think, it became about more than even towels. This is a community and these people deserve more in terms of access to essentials and clothing. For me, working in the fashion industry, I’ve seen small brands trying to start and know what’s involved. So, a towel is just one item to focus on. I was like, I think I can do that well, and yeah, here we are. So this past spring, we successfully funded a Kickstarter, which is amazing. We had 695 backers, and we raised just over $72,000.VirginiaWow. Congratulations. MaryThank you. VirginiaSo now the towels are going into production?MaryYes. So that round of funding was essentially to launch us into the industry, but also to get the production run started. I want Towel to be a lifestyle brand. There are many more items that we can expand on, but right now, it’s just towels. So yes, the production is happening. We’ve had a couple of bumps in the road, but I’m working with a great team to make it happen and they will hopefully be here within a month. We have things going on in the back end.VirginiaSo we are recording this at the end of July and your episode is going to run in August or September. So, as people are listening, towels will either be here soon or may already be here. You are very close to realizing your towel dreams if you are someone looking for this kind of towel, which I definitely am. I can’t even tell you how many nice hotels I go to and the towels are like a travesty, right? A travesty!MaryIt’s in every house, at the pool, at the spa. And because they don’t have it at the spa or they’re not provided at the hotel, that makes people in larger bodies have to do more work when they enter those spaces, right? They either have to bring a towel or they know that they’re going to prepare themselves to be uncomfortable. Maybe they bring a robe. I would love for one day where all bodies can go into spaces and they know that they’re going to have a towel that’s going to wrap around their body so they’re able to have that comfort that everyone else has.VirginiaYeah, anytime I’m in a nice hotel and the towel does not wrap around me I just think, how much am I paying? And I can’t dry myself? This is ridiculous.MaryNo, no, it’s crazy. I used to do a lot of road trips with my family as a child from the Midwest. I grew up with a dad who was in a larger body and I just remember as a kid, we would bring our own towels for him, or his robe. I think as a kid I didn’t quite understand it. And then when it came time, growing into teenage adulthood, you remember when your towel begins to not fit you. And everyone deserves to have that experience of it fitting, right? There’s so much emotion that go into it, as well. There is a lot of healing of child wounds in this brand for me.VirginiaDefinitely. MaryHopefully, for other people, too. I have a friend who has one of my samples right now. And she told me that the first time she put it on, she cried. She said it was the only towel that she’s ever had that actually fit her.VirginiaThat’s so powerful.MaryI think that this is something that is not only for the fat community and people in larger bodies, it’s for everyone. Because I want my children and your children to grow up knowing that their body is great and all bodies are good bodies, which is what Towel’s mission is. I think just having that message around the house is nice.VirginiaWhether it’s clothes or whatever it is, these things that we buy should fit our bodies, we shouldn’t be feeling like our bodies don’t fit into these spaces or fit into into these things. That’s such an important shift to make.MaryI’ve seen a couple of TikToks online where influencers have a towel wrapped around and it doesn’t fully close. And they say out loud, “my goal is to be small enough to fit into the towel.” And it’s like, let’s flip the narrative. It’s not your body, it’s the towel. VirginiaWhy do you have to meet the standards of this terry cloth?MaryLet’s just get better towels. And the same thing for jeans, pants, whatever. It’s not your body, it’s the clothes. So if the clothes don’t fit, let’s get new clothes, alter them, figure out a way. I know that’s not always accessible, but it’s definitely not your body’s fault.VirginiaWhat you’re saying is really pretty radical because I think capitalism, and retail, has trained us as consumers to think we need to fit into what is being offered to us. You’re talking about something that would overhaul a lot of industries, if the industry is shifted to thinking, “How are we making products that are inclusive for all people?”MaryYeah, absolutely. Old Navy specifically is one brand that comes to mind. I grew up lower middle class. Old Navy was kind of like my bread and butter when I was a kid. I loved Old Navy. I wanted to wear their swimsuits in the summer, and their bright, colorful campaigns, etc. I was really excited for their body diversity campaign.VirginiaBodequality was the most recent version. We did an episode on it.MaryWhen the Bodequality campaign came out, I was super excited, I was like, wow, this is beautiful. And I went into the store, and I tried on their pants and I was like, “Oh my God, these are terrible.”I will say, I’m definitely more critical of fit than probably your everyday person because I understand how clothing fits. I understand how they’re made and the technical fit aspect especially. So when I tried on my size, which I believe was an 18, and I had to go up to at 20 or 22 for me to even zip them, I was like, “Something is wrong here.”In that moment, it’s like, wow, I’m standing in this dressing room. I’m already in a vulnerable place, as we all are in dressing rooms. To be honest, I generally don’t even go into dressing rooms anymore. I don’t know if you do, but I buy my clothes online, I try them on at home, and I return them. But this day, I happened to be out and I was like, let me do it. And so I was in the dressing room and I think I had like five or six jeans and none of them zipped up in my size. And I’m saying that in air quotes, because sizing is all just—it’s all made up, all of it is made up. But the fact that they rolled out this campaign that was supposed to be accessible or they were saying, like, we are including all people. I know, because my background is in design, that it’s not my body, it’s actually that the technical design and the pattern making were wrong. But people don’t know that. They’re gonna go in, they’re gonna feel bad about themselves. Even if they do fit, they’re kind of uncomfortable.And anyways, at the end of it, we know it flopped, we all know what happened. They ended up pulling a lot of the sizes off the floor. I think that they ended up claiming that the community had failed them. But it was like, you failed us! We didn’t have clothes. And not only that, we were in a space where you actually made us feel worse about ourselves because your sizing was incorrect. VirginiaI just want to jump in quickly and say, it’s not that it’s a problem to be like, “I think of myself as an 18 and I’m in the 22.” The problem is the person who wears the 22 now needs the 24. And the person who wears the 24 doesn’t even have a size in the store anymore. That’s the problem when you need to size up.MaryExactly, exactly. When we have sizing standards, they’re all made up and it back dates even probably to like the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s. And designers follow a standard. They follow their company standard and just as with any family, the company generationally changes. There are certain brands where you’re like, “Oh, I know that’s not going to fit me, because their size standard is not made for my body.”There’s also something that’s called vanity sizing. Vanity sizing is when they take a size that’s traditionally a larger fit and they put a smaller label on it. And so if you see the smaller size and you normally wear a bigger size, when you go to their store, you wear the smaller size. They’re using fatphobia to make you feel bad about yourself to shop at their store. And it happens all the time.It’s hard because I know sizing and I know pattern making, but there is this twinge of this old thinking that when I fit a smaller size, there’s a little bit of boost. You’re constantly deconstructing that. VirginiaThere’s a weird intersection, too, then, of the vanity sizing, which is training us all to think we wear smaller sizes than we do—using air quotes because sizing, as you said, is all made up—combined with the fact that in the plus size range, you’re sizing up because they’re claiming they’ve added those bigger sizes, but they haven’t made them big enough. It’s like vanity sizing in both directions or something. I don’t know, it’s making my brain hurt.Mary100 percent. Well, and that gets into extended sizing versus plus sizing, right? Extended sizing brands traditionally use a size medium or a median in their size range, and that’s traditionally on a straight size model. Then they’re going to grade the sizes up. They’re going to expand the sizes into plus sizing or their “extended sizing,” air quotes again. So that pattern is made off of a straight size body. Well, that doesn’t work for the extended sizing. So that’s why when you go in and buy something that you think is your size but it fits much smaller. It’s because of that extended sizing. Whereas in brands when they add in plus size, we can hope that they’re going to be fitting on a range of bodies, as well as plus sized bodies, and hopefully their pattern making is going to get better. VirginiaRight? Fingers crossed. Some brands are doing a much better job than others. And some brands really don’t seem to be trying.I had Mia O’Malley on the podcast last year—she’s a fat fashion influencer and talks a lot about fat life in general. She talked about how often when we get stuck in these bad body feelings and feeling really at war with our body, it can really help to step back and say, is my life comfortable for my body?I think what you’re doing with Towel is a great example of that because it’s really saying, do these things in my life support me? Does my chair at my desk fit my body? Does my car fit my body? Do my clothes fit, etc?I’d love to hear you talk about what else beyond Towel, what else do you want to tackle that comes up so often in this space?MarySo many things. I know you have mentioned chairs previously, and I would definitely love to eventually design a chair. I think for now I’m going to try and stick to the soft goods category and the next thing I’d like to tackle is robes.VirginiaOh, great. MaryI’ve never really had a robe that I like to wear. They’re either really silky and dainty and they feel kind of small and they always fall open. I tried to buy a robe from IKEA and it was their XXL and I think it still didn’t fit me, but here we are, right? So that is what I am going to tackle next, is robes.And beyond that, I think coming back to sizing standards, I really would love to help deconstruct the sizing system. There’s so much that we can do as a community when we all come together.There are definitely brands out there that are already tackling this, like Universal Standard does a really great job. They have all the sizes, their size chart shows their sizing versus standards that you see out in the world. They don’t break it up into categories, either. I think that’s another piece that I feel really is important is that people in larger bodies are already feeling othered because we can’t go into certain stores. And I think there are so many different terms and identifications that we as a community have used to empower us. But I think in terms of clothing, now, as we know, the average American woman is a size 14/16 or higher. So when you’re saying, oh that’s a medium, medium came because it was a medium size. Well, medium is not a medium is not the medium anymore.VirginiaIt’s not the medium of anyone, anymore.MaryNope. So we need to chuck out the system and create a new system. I think that’s a long line of work, but I would love to be a brand that champions that and helps move the pendulum forward.VirginiaThat’s amazing. Yes, we need this desperately. Can you do it tomorrow, is my main question? No pressure, Mary.MaryYeah, no, I would love to, I think the thing, too, is really giving people the tools to learn about their sizing and to learn about fit. I grew up in the Midwest, and I went to school in a really small town and Walmart was the only thing. I was reading a statistic during the Kickstarter that was like Walmart has the largest market of plus size shoppers and so on. We could talk about Walmart and their issues all day as a capitalistic company, but the thing is, people shop at Walmart because they have clothes that fit them. If other companies made clothes that fit us, we would buy them.VirginiaI hear all the time from people, like, “I would spend the money but there’s nowhere to spend the money,” so figuring that out is huge.I think it’s so crucial to demystify sizing, the way you’re talking about. We have such emotional attachments to these numbers without understanding how arbitrary they are. People don’t really understand the process behind it. Empowering people to think differently about sizing, to think more in terms of knowing your measurements because it’s going to help you read a size chart, but also having brands do that education just makes so much sense. It would take so much of the stress out of this.MaryThat’s why I decided to name our towels with style names rather than sizes, because right now especially if you’re shopping in a store, it says “oversized towel,” or “really large towel” or “extra large towel,” and it’s like, yeah, I live in this body, I get it, my body is larger or it’s large. I exist. I think we just need to retrain our brains and give ourselves a better opportunity to reform these habits. We have our Ava, Joni, and Gemma. Ava is suggested fit up to 3x, Gemma suggested fit up to 7x, and Joni suggested fit up to 5x. I would love to one day have it to be where I didn’t need to explain the standard sizing behind it because someone is like, hey, I’m going to grab an Ava or I’m going to grab a Joni and they know that that fits them but we don’t need to talk about the numerical sizing behind it. Not that there’s anything wrong with numbers, but the way that society has framed the larger numbers has put a lot of mental strain on people that are living in larger bodies. Sometimes you can choose the model on your e-commerce website, right? Like, oh, you have extra small or you have large or you have 1x, but even the 1x, they’re not a 1x. And I know that because I’ve worked on these photo shoots. They’re saying this is our 1x plus size model, but she’s actually like a size eight or something.VirginiaIt’s infuriating.Mary It’s just smoke and mirrors. So anyways, right now with Towel, I want to see how that goes with Ava, Joni, and Gemma, and hopefully people will resonate with that. There’s a couple other brands out there—one brand that’s called Fat Towel.1 There’s another brand called Really Big Towel. And like, how about you deserve a towel, period?VirginiaI mean, I think there’s so much power in reclaiming the language around size. You should just be able to walk into any store and get a towel in your size and not have it be this siloed, special thing. Mary100 percent.VirginiaBut one of the things that Old Navy got wrong with Bodequality was that they were like we’re taking away the plus size section and all the sizes will be together. And for those of us who are trained to walk into Old Navy and try to find the plus size section, it just meant that you thought there was nothing there for you anymore. It’s was this weird attempt at equality that totally backfired. MaryYeah. And it’s really a fine line because it hadn’t been done correctly. If the instruction was there for where your sizes would be, then we would know. That goes for other brands like Loft, as well. I really actually loved Loft’s fit. During the pandemic, they pulled all their plus sizes, which was such a shame because so many so many women were really huge Loft fans for workwear, for just everyday clothes. They were like, well, people aren’t buying them. It’s like, no, maybe it’s not that people aren’t buying them, it’s that you’re not giving us access to purchase them. Are they not in the store? Are you not marketing them enough?It needs to be a whole shift and relearning and I think that is going to take some time. I do identify as plus size and I shop at plus size stores and I think I ideally one day it would be amazing if we weren’t broken up into categories. Like you said, it is helpful, but it would be great to just go and buy clothing and not have to sift through. VirginiaIt feels like the shift we need to make is for brands to be thinking not only how do I offer bigger sizes, but really how do we show the customer that we are truly inclusive and that our clothes and products are designed with all bodies in mind. I think that’s the difference, we are used to being shoved off to the plus size corner and having this second best experience—or not even second best. You need to feel centered by the brand. Then you can move towards a store where there are no plus and straight size sections. It’s all together because it would be understood in all of the advertising and all of the models that get used, you would be always seeing body diversity, you’d always be seeing larger bodies.MaryI think about Target. They’ve really upped their marketing with all bodies and that’s really beautiful. That’s absolutely visible to me. But then I’ve gone in to find the clothes and they’re not there and I get so disappointed. I’m from Minnesota, I’m from Minneapolis. I’m a big Target fan! It’s so frustrating. It’s like, wow, okay, so you have all these bodies of all different sizes. I’m literally looking at the ad in front of me. There’s a woman who is a 5x in the ad and literally you don’t even have anything over an extra large. This is a joke.VirginiaIt’s wild. I do think some of that has to be because of the shift to online shopping, but it’s also like, okay, they still have stores. They’re telling us who they really prioritize by what sizes they put in the stores, for sure.MaryYeah, absolutely. Beyond what’s in the stores, people don’t even know that they have plus size for certain clothing categories at places like Target. Like the viral pajamas! Everybody loves the pajamas. I don’t know if you know if you have the pajamas. VirginiaI don’t know the pajamas.MaryOh my god! They’re these soft modal, comfy pajamas. They’re amazing. I actually found them—I’m not really big on TikTok, although I know it was all over TikTok, I found out later—but I found them in the store. They were like an XXL and I bought them and I squeezed into them at home. Then I went online and I saw that they had all the plus sizes online and I was like, holy cow, this is amazing.There’s such a huge component where it’s like, people don’t even know that you offer plus size because it’s not in the store. And I get it, yes, we do shop online, as well. But there’s definitely a fine line with big box companies like Target where it’s like, you haven’t rolled out a campaign that says, hey, we have sizes in all these categories, so people aren’t coming to you to shop for them in the first place.VirginiaOh, there’s so much to do. I’m so grateful you are working on all of that. I know it is a huge mountain to scale, so we really appreciate your efforts. ButterMarySo I am a big like, maker of things. I always have a craft. And I’ve recently gotten back into ceramics and I love it. It’s a really great time for me to go into ceramics, put my phone away. Especially because it’s messy, you don’t want to have your stuff out anyways. But like, put the phone away. Just sit down, work with some clay and have it be about like the process, rather than the end goal. I’ve made a lot of work and art over time for monetary gain and for business, and it’s so nice to just find something that’s creative. And that I can just hang out with other people in a space and just get messy and make art.VirginiaI love anything that helps you get off your phone and be in your body in a physical way. MaryYes. Absolutely.VirginiaIt’s super tactile.MaryIt is so much more therapeutic than I even remembered—the last time I did ceramics was in high school. You use your whole body when you’re throwing on the wheel and when I’m doing handbuilding. It’s just it’s really nice.VirginiaI love it. My butter is actually something I was thinking about as you were talking about the need to be cozy, be comfortable. I was thinking, what is the item of clothing that is most doing that for me right now? I don’t have a robe I love, so I’ll be waiting for your robes.MaryI will get you one!VirginiaIn the meantime, I have this jumpsuit from Universal Standard. MaryIt’s hard to find a good jumpsuit.VirginiaIt’s really hard to find a good jumpsuit. This is the Superfine French Terry jumpsuit.2 I have it in the “deep sea” color. It’s so cozy and their fit is excellent. I am someone who women’s magazines would call “apple shape,” like I’m very round in the torso and then my legs are skinnier. So I have a hard time with jumpsuits. If they fit my middle, they’re giant in the legs. These guys have a tapered jogger cuff, so they are good if you have that similar kind of build because the leg actually tapers in the right way. Not like a skinny jean or anything, but it just fits.It is one item of clothing that fits both my waist and my legs, which is something that almost never happens for me. And it goes on sale quite a lot. It is expensive, but I got it on sale, so watch for sales. I’m hoping they’ll do it in some more colors because I have the deep sea and I’m like do I need the black? Do I need mustard?MaryThis is a thing, actually, that I’ve been really wanting to like talk to, like the Towel community about. I feel this need that when I find an item of clothing that fits me I have to buy it in every color because I’m like, oh my gosh, I’m not going to get it again. I don’t know.VirginiaTotally, but sometimes it doesn’t work! Like, I have done that and sometimes the different color just doesn’t hit in quite the same way. I think color is more important than we realize sometimes. So, I’ve been holding back, although if they go on super sale, I’ll probably grab the black. What I also love about it is I’m wearing it right now in July when it’s super hot because it’s blousy and roomy. But I think it’s going to transition to fall really well, like with a little denim jacket. One of those pieces, those rare transitional, multi-season pieces.Well, Mary, this was so much fun. Thank you so much for coming to talk to us. I am assuming folks are going to be clicking in droves to go preorder Towel, but tell us what we can do and how we can support your work.MaryYou can go to wearetowel.com and you can find us on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook at We Are Towel. Our preorders are live right now and your towels are going to be shipping this fall. It’s a little bit of a wait, but I think it’s absolutely worth it. We also have Shop Pay, which is amazing, so if you find that something is out of your price point, you can also use Shop Pay to pay in installments, which I just think is really helpful.And stay tuned! Robes are coming and hopefully some more exciting stuff as well. VirginiaOh, my gosh, I’m so excited for all of us with our towels. It’s going to be the coziest thing ever. Thank you, Mary. This was wonderful. ---From what we can tell, Fat Towel isn’t a fat-owned company and seems to sell straight-sized towels? Bleh.Maddeningly, this jumpsuit seems to have sold out right before publishing, BUT there is a really good buy / sell / trade group for Universal Standard on Facebook.

You’re listening to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast about anti-fat bias, diet culture, parenting, and health. I am Virginia Sole Smith. Today I am chatting with Lindsey Guile. Lindsey is an Associate Professor of Art at Dutchess Community College, and a body and fat liberation artist.  Lindsey uses large format drawing and ceramics to explore concepts of self image, body image and self worth through the lens of contemporary feminist theory. Her work has been exhibited at The Arnot Museum, The Dorsky Museum, The Birke Art Gallery, The Mary Cosgrove Dolphin Gallery, Untitled Space Gallery, Women’s Work Gallery, The Williamsburg Art & Historical Center, and so many others. Lindsey currently lives in Poughkeepsie, and is someone I know locally through fat activism work here in the Hudson Valley. She is awesome! Seeing Lindsey’s eight foot tall drawings of fat bodies in person was one of the most powerful experiences I’ve had since I started writing and thinking about bodies in the way that I do. We are putting lots of images in the show notes, so definitely check them out and definitely follow her on Instagram. But know that these images are not doing her work justice. The actual size and scale of these drawings is something you have to experience in real life. Lindsey is a total delight. I love talking to her about her process, about how she thinks about this work, and about the power of drawing bodies. So here’s Lindsey! PS. 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 105 TranscriptLindseyI am a self-described feminist, body neutral, fat liberationist, body liberationist, figurative artist. I know there are a lot of terms there, but there is a lot that I want to embrace. I work mainly in large-scale drawings that explore the idea of femininity from the feminine gaze. I have people who model for me, they can be clothed or nude. It’s totally up to them. I create an atmosphere that’s really based on consent. And I’ve been doing this regularly for about five years, although the series started about 10 years ago.VirginiaBring us back to 10 years ago. What made you say “I not only want to draw bodies, I not only want to draw people, but I would like to draw them eight feet tall. I would like them to take up all of the space?”LindseyHow often do feminine folks get to just take up space unapologetically? That’s one thing that really stuck in my brain in terms of size, is that I wanted them to really just command a room—quietly though, because I do draw versus paint. And I think painting, while wonderful, is a lot louder. I think there can be such a power and sometimes subtlety to drawing. But where it started was me white knuckling my way through my own recovery from diet culture and disordered eating which was just so difficult for me, especially when I was in my Master’s of Fine Arts program. I remember laying on the floor in my studio apartment having a panic attack, knowing that I could either continue to engage in diet culture or I could pass my classes. It took up so much of my brain power to do all that. And it got to the point where it just was not sustainable. I finally had to be like, I can’t do this anymore. I started following some folks online who were fat and I was like, look, these people are doing this. It’s okay, I can let this go. I’ve always been a figurative artist. I love drawing the human figure. So I was like, “You know what, maybe I need to draw myself nude.” I had always been interested in being a nude model. But my body shape wasn’t what people drew when I was a student. So it seemed very cut off to me. One of my friends was like, “Hey, I think you need to draw yourself.” So I drew myself, collarbone to thigh. It actually hangs in my bedroom now, that drawing. And it was difficult, because I was dealing with my own body image issues—but then people were coming into my studio like, “Oh my gosh, like, look at the draping on the stomach from all the weight fluctuations. This is really beautiful. And this is such a great drawing. I love how you’re honoring that body.” I didn’t tell people it was me.VirginiaOh, that’s interesting. So you’re really getting their unfiltered response. They weren’t like, “Oh, it’s Lindsey so I should say something nice to Lindsey about Lindsey.” LindseyYeah. Then it was like a light bulb that went off, which was: I can use the system and the hierarchy of art to start flipping the narrative and draw fat bodies. And figures that are not just fat—although I think a lot of larger people come to me because I am larger, and it’s a safe space to start to tell people’s stories in that way. Also, having drawn myself and understanding how difficult it was to look at myself in that way, I think it gave me extra compassion for the people coming in, where I know this is a very scary thing for them to do.VirginiaSince you brought up drawing yourself, I’m curious to hear how that experience changed how you relate to your body? LindseySo I joke with people that the only time I’ve ever been small was when I was born because I was super early. I’m also just shy of six feet tall, so I’ve never fit into a certain beauty narrative. And even when I was the most engaged in diet culture, I still have always been plus-sized. To see myself there in this drawing and to see it as an artist and as the person who drew it was really profound. I did my first drawing of me on a large scale in 2019 and it was really nerve wracking to see that in a gallery and people interacting with it. I remember actually it was in a college I teach at, one of my students was like, “Does that look like the person?” and I felt like saying “Well, I don’t know, does it?”I guess it’s a little weird to put yourself out there, but I’ve learned to look at myself with the eyes of an artist rather than the eyes of the patriarchy and diet culture. It’s taught me a lot of kindness towards myself. I’m not saying I don’t struggle with it, but it’s given me so much more.VirginiaIt feels like a way of reclaiming your body.LindseyOne thousand percent. That’s actually a big theme for a lot of people I work with: Reclaiming their body in some way, shape, or form. Actually, I was telling a friend this morning I just started a new drawing of myself. I’d wanted to do one when I hit 40 and then I just wasn’t in the space to do it. But I’ve done a lot recently with therapy. I got a bunch of tattoos, a nose ring. I was like, “I think I’m ready to tell that story of me again.”VirginiaI was just thinking how tattoos are often another way people reclaim their body. And so many of your subjects have tattoos and you draw tattoos really beautifully. LindseyThe first tattooed model I drew, that’s specifically what she talked about. She’s a larger woman and she talked a lot about how people would stare at her and she decided that she was going to give them something to stare at. She has so many tattoos. In fact, it’s funny—she’s a dear friend now—she’ll be like, “Lindsey, I have more tattoos. When do you want to draw me again?” She’s also a tattoo apprentice so it’s like wrapping around.VirginiaLet’s talk about your process a little bit. I don’t speak Fine Art particularly fluently, but I do think there’s an image we have of figure drawing of the model being just this sort of amorphous body, right? It’s like men painting women because they’re beautiful and nothing else. They’re not people apart from the bodies. But your process is so different from that. LindseyI’ve been working as a figurative artist for for over 20 years and I’ve seen exactly what you’re talking about. I’ve even joked with my students that [the model is] a still life that breathes. And I realized I was still objectifying our models which, obviously was a problem. With my process, I usually use social media and I’m like, “Hey, I’m looking for models.” I explain the whole process, that you don’t have to be nude. It’s consent driven, so you can tell me—I had a model once who was like, I’m okay with being fully nude but I don’t want you to show my vulva. And I was like, perfect, not a problem, we’ll pose around it. So they reach out to me, we set up, we usually have a little bit of a chat. And I utilize the college’s drawing studio to photograph because I just don’t have room in my studio at home. And while they are up on a podium, that’s more for just so I can get the right angles. I try to create this atmosphere that is just really respectful. Usually, when they come in, they get to the level of dress or undress that they’re comfortable with. We get ready to start and I say, tell me about the story of your body. What are those things that have influenced you? They know that they can tell me anything. But they can also say, “Please don’t utilize this in an artist talk.” So I do tell them, “I’m going to give talks. What can I say? And what can’t I say?” And we go from there. Some models are like “I don’t know how to pose” and I say I just want something really natural, what feels comfortable to you? How do you like to stand? How do you like to sit? And a lot of times my goal when I first start in talking with them and just getting them comfortable, is so that they stopped noticing the camera.VirginiaI have a similar thing with hoping they don’t notice the tape recorder, so I can relate to that. LindseyAnd it’s also important to know that if at any point it becomes very emotional for them, which it definitely has, that I will actually put the camera down. Because I’m not there to exploit feelings. It’s happened a few times where a model was just so overcome with that moment that I set the camera down and they said “You can keep photographing.” I’m like, I want you to have this moment for you. So it usually takes about an hour to photograph. I zoom around, like I’m on the floor, I’m on a roll-y stool. I photograph all the models from below so that when you as a viewer are in a gallery and they’re larger than life, they look down on you. It’s very deliberate to put the viewers in a position of submission to the figures. It’s usually pretty subtle because I don’t want to smack the viewer side of the head with it. But I really want them to feel it. VirginiaI wonder is that vulnerable for your subjects? Because I’m just thinking of how women are trained to photograph ourselves and from below is never the angle that we’re told is the right angle.LindseyNo one’s really ever said much because I do explain why this is. They can also say, “I’m really insecure about this part of me or that,” and we’ll work around it in photographing. But I can also say, “well, let let me try this shot and then I can let you see if you want to see.” I think I’ve only had three models who actually wanted to see the photographs of them. Oftentimes they’re like, “I trust you to do what you do.” And we’ll go from there. Then I choose the image that I draw from. I haven’t had anyone complain yet because I usually find an image that felt like our session. I try to keep the technical aspects of a drawing out of it and just think, what did this feel like for them? Were they really tentative? Were they just really empowered? Were they somewhere in between? And go for it. There have been a few times where I’m photographing and I knew the shot the minute I got it. There was a model, she’d model for me once, and she was like, “Can I model for you again?” And I said, “Yeah, let’s do it.” She came in. She’s like, “I don’t want to talk.” Okay. She was like, “I have some emotions I have to get out and I know you’re a safe person. I’m okay with you photographing it. And I’m just gonna move around. I’m probably going to cry. I just want to get it out.”VirginiaWow.Lindsey And she did it. And I knew the minute I took the photograph, it was just incredibly powerful.I work primarily in drawing because I feel that charcoal especially is just so beautiful. It’s very tactile. I wanted them to feel the hand of the artist in there. One thing that comes up is when people are like “Oh, people who don’t love themselves, they must stand in front of the mirror and like shake their stomachs,” or something like that. For me, it was very different. For me, I disassociated from myself. I just pretended I wasn’t there from the neck down. VirginiaPrior to drawing yourself?LindseyPrior to drawing myself. So I don’t go to hyper realistic drawing because I feel like I’ve been given such a gift by the people who model for me. I want there to be a sense of touch, that they’ve been loved and cared for, this image that they’ve given, and that’s one of the most important parts to me. That they know that in this space that they’ve been cherished and their stories are so important. And charcoal does that for me. I think it’s just very eloquent and can do a lot without telling people how to feel at least in the way that I handle it. VirginiaI was going to say there’s such a softness to your work, which isn’t quite right. There is softness to the bodies. The work itself feels very strong to me, but there’s a loving quality to it that comes through. I’m guessing that’s what you’re talking about here with the medium and wanting to be clear that this isn’t a photo of somebody’s body, even though you also are amazingly realistic. Like, the way you draw people’s tattoos is mind blowing. There is a level of insane precision here, just so we’re clear. But yes, it is clearly an artist’s view of someone, not a photo of someone.LindseyI love it when people bring up the tattoos. My piece “Brazen” is of the woman I mentioned earlier who talked about using her body to reclaim tattoos. I have three drawings of folks who are heavily tattooed. One I just finished this summer [above] and it probably was the most nerve wracking thing for me to figure out artistically. I thought I had it with the first two drawings I did. And then the one I just finished, the title is called “Unwavering” if people want to look it up. She has so many tattoos. Usually I draw the form of the body first, and then I add the tattoos on. I had to draw the tattoos first.VirginiaOh, wow. You put her body around her tattoos. That’s fascinating.LindseyAnd I was like, how do I do this? You’re drawing other people’s artwork.VirginiaSo no pressure there. LindseyYeah, no pressure, no pressure. And it’s on a 3D form. And all three of those models are tattoo artists.VirginiaSo they would know if you miss something. LindseyAnd they’re all good friends of mine. And I every now and then I’ll message them, like I did the model I just finished, I was like, “I kind of guessed.” She’s like, “I won’t tell anybody.” I’m like, “Okay, perfect.”VirginiaLet’s talk a little bit about the response to your work. I’m curious both what the models think but then more broadly, when you’re doing shows and showing your work, what kind of reactions do you get?LindseyYou know, overwhelmingly positive. I have not had a model say, “I don’t like it.” Probably one of my favorites was early on in the series, I had worked from a former student and she came to a show early to see the piece. She was crying in front of the piece and she said, “you made me look beautiful.” And I said, “I didn’t make you anything you aren’t already.” It’s funny because I’m a bit of an awkward person, socially awkward.VirginiaI mean, I disagree, but keep going.LindseyI project a lot of confidence. Years of working retail, right? But inwardly, sometimes I’m screaming “I don’t know how to interact.” But I love it when people are like, “I want to show this to my friend or my daughter,” or something like that. There’s been a few times though, where I’ve gotten a few like “ew, gross.” I had a small solo show here in Poughkeepsie and I was watching the gallery and a gentleman came in, and probably gentleman is a kind word here. VirginiaGenerous. LindseyAnd he didn’t see me. He was like, “ugh, ugh,” and he kept making these gross sounds. Then he looked at me, looked me up and down, and said, “you must be the artist.” And I was like, “Yes, I am.” And he was like, “Well, I wouldn’t hang these in my bedroom. Why can’t you draw normal people?” And of course, this is the town I work in and I’m kind of a public figure so I had to be very nice, which hurt me. VirginiaI love that he thought art should be drawn for him to…hang in his bedroom. That’s such an interesting way to think about art. Do you know what I mean? That’s how entitled he feels to these bodies. Interesting.LindseyHe was like, “I wouldn’t want to wake up to them.” And I’m like, “well, I don’t want you to wake up to my drawings regardless.”VirginiaSir, I would not want to wake up to you.LindseySomeone didn’t say it to me, they said it to someone related to the gallery, that they thought my work was pornography.VirginiaJust because some people are naked?LindseyYeah, just because the nudity. And actually I go out of my way to not portray anything overtly sexual. It’s just not what I’m focusing on. So part of me wants to be like, “Wow, your porn must be really boring.”VirginiaNot a lot happens in your porn.LindseyTo each their own!VirginiaI mean, I guess there is a group of people who just think nudity equals pornography no matter what. Do they not ever go to Italy? Did they not hear of the Renaissance? I don’t understand because we have centuries upon centuries of naked people in art. But I wonder if there are some folks who are especially quick to go there because you are showing are fat bodies?LindseyI think so. Because the work does make people uncomfortable. Because they’re not Photoshopped, because they’re not the beauty ideal. I think it forces a lot of people to confront their own biases. So it might be an easy way to say, “This is inappropriate.” Hopefully those are the people that even afterwards think about the work and let it kind of sit in the back of their head and maybe changes a little bit of what they think. You know, that’s all I can hope.VirginiaThis is like the same with the trolls who message me about my work saying, “I don’t think fat chicks are attractive.” And it’s so interesting to me, because nothing I write about has to do with whether men find fat woman attractive. I think it taps into the fact that there are some men who do find fat women attractive and yet feel like they can’t be public about it. So then they have to turn that negatively onto fat women. I said that, awkwardly, but you know what I mean? LindseyIt’s their denial. It’s interesting that the few people I’ve known that have said this about my images being pornographic are older women.VirginiaOh, so it’s tapping into their own stuff.LindseyI think a lot of the way that they grew up, that thinness was ideal, you got it through whatever means necessary. To then see people really living in their own bodies, and not just in bodies, but then modeling in art, and nude. It challenges a lot of those preconceived notions.VirginiaThis is making me think of something you told me previously, I can’t remember if it was a professor of yours or someone who commented on a pose, and was like, “Oh, she’s so ashamed of her body because she’s covering.” Do you want to tell that story? LindseyYeah, it was about my first large drawing of myself, actually. When I took the photo, I’d cross my arms and one is kind of underneath my chest and one’s kind of going over top and it’s meant to be like this hug. It was more of like, “It’s going to be okay” for myself. And because I’m busty, I kind of caught my bust in my arm. I remember my professor was like, “Well, that’s not correct anatomically.” And I’m like, “Pretty sure it is.” And she was like, “well, I feel like this figure is just ashamed of herself. And like, she’s sitting in the mirror hiding.” And I’m like, “This is a very kind of loving hug. And she’s not covering anything unless you count the sternum, right?” The stomach was there. The vulva is there. The breasts are there. And I said, “I really think that you’re projecting your own insecurities onto my figure.” And everybody was just kind of quiet. VirginiaI think they knew. I mean, the first time I saw your pieces in person, you were there— I cried. And, I was thinking before we started recording, like, why did I cry and what it was. It felt just very visceral. It was so healing to be in the presence of fat, beautiful bodies like that, and feel the power that they held. But I can see, for someone who’s in a different place with fatness with their own body, it’s going to bring that up and be really challenging and that’s also really good. LindseyThat’s exactly what I want. I want people to go in there and really start investigating for themselves and reevaluating how they see themselves and see others and how they judge others. I generally don’t care what people think about my artwork. Took a long, long time to get over that.VirginiaThat sounds very evolved of you. I’m impressed.LindseyWell I kind of had to, because I’m a very sensitive person and I want people to like me. But it took a long time for me to realize that this is what I want to do. People are not going to like it. But there are people who it’s going to move. VirginiaTell us a little bit about your teaching process, and how this comes into play.LindseyI’m an associate professor of visual art at Dutchess Community College. In particular, I teach the figure drawing class. You know, when we look at art history—which, I love art history, but a lot of it is women drawn by men, women in a very subservient position in the pieces—it’s very much drawn from the male gaze. So I’m very aware of that. One of the things I do when I teach the class is, I focus a lot on bringing in contemporary figurative artists. I tell my students that this represent sthe wonderful diversity that we have in the class. But also, in many ways, I take body liberation and stretch it out to not just include weight. The classroom is, to me, fully inclusive, to the best of my ability and I will keep learning. We have trans and non binary models, we talk about using language beyond the binary. I talk with my models ahead of time, and I say, “when I talk about your figure, and I’m going to have to, what terms are you most comfortable with?” But then it’s also making sure I have a lot of body diversity, as much as I can. Though sometimes you’re limited by just the model roster. I’ve also been known to say like, “Okay, we’re looking at this model, and this is how this anatomy shows, but it’s going to show on someone different like me who is larger.” And it neutralizes this idea of fat and largeness. They seem to respond really well, which has been great. For a while, we didn’t have many curvy models. We had one of our long-standing models, she can only model once a semester. She came in and after she left, the next class, they were like, When is she coming back? We love her. You can see so many different things.”VirginiaWhat a powerful way to give them an appreciation of body diversity.LindseyI used to be very insecure about my chest. And I saw how chests come in all shapes and sizes and I’m no longer self conscious about that anymore. In fact, I’m a nude model myself.VirginiaSo do you do that for other artist friends? How does that work?LindseyI model up at Woodstock School of Art in the summers. I just tell them when I’m prepared and I model for their classes and their open studios. So I get to work with a lot of different artists there. VirginiaWhat is that like, the experience of nude modeling? It feels like it’s probably a lot more work than people realize.LindseyYes, I joke that all I have to do is sit still look pretty, right? Or just sit still. I don’t have to look pretty. But sitting still can be so hard.VirginiaSo hard! Oh, I’m terrible at it. I would not last five minutes.LindseyUsually you get a break every 25 minutes. But if you go into a 25 minute pose oftentimes you’re like, “Is my leg still there? Oh, no, my leg is there. It really hurts.” Or, “I have sweat running down my back, or my nose itches.”VirginiaThe nose itches would be killer. I bet you regret a lot of poses like 18 minutes in. You’re like, this was not the pose.LindseyYou learn the capabilities of your body as you’ve been doing it. But sometimes I’m like, “Oh, yeah, I totally put my hand there and it’s supporting all my weight.” I said it’d be fine for 20 minutes and then like 10 minutes in and you’re like, I’m going to die. VirginiaI don’t have a wrist anymore. It’s fine.LindseyBut it’s also very empowering because it is a safe space. There’s only been one instance where I’ve been modeling and someone was clearly upset that they had a plus size model. And I just stared them down. Because he wasn’t drawing! VirginiaOh, he was just sitting there sulking?LindseyYeah, he was sitting there sulking. And that is not acceptable. As someone who also teaches the course, you do work. I never stare people down because I don’t want artists to get nervous. But I stared him down until he started working.VirginiaI enjoy that greatly. ButterLindseyI hope it’s okay to just give a shout out. And I think it’s to tattoos.VirginiaYay. That’s fun!LindseyThe way we reclaim our bodies with them, and the inspiration they’ve given me. Particularly a shop that I absolutely love, if that’s alright, is Guts'n Glory in Rosendale. That’s where those three tattoo artists work. They’ve given me such amazing work and made me feel so much more myself and empowered me. It’s an amazing shop. There are queer folks there. It’s just absolutely beautiful. So they’re my butter.VirginiaI love that. I do not have any tattoos. Yet, I should say. Life is long, we’ll see. I’ve just never been able to commit, but I have a deep appreciation for them. I think that’s the overthinking thing I can really relate to. I’m like, “They’re so wonderful I couldn’t possibly pick one!” Which is, you know, anyway, we can unpack that later. But I love hearing what they do for people and their relationship with their body. So, that’s such a great butter. I was also overthinking what my butter should be today, when I realized it’s very obvious. Since I am talking to Lindsey Guile my butter is “Valiant” by Lindsey Guile, [above] which is the most incredible drawing that I just got from your “Unapologetic” series. This is a present that Dan and my family all went in on together, as a congratulations for my book. So it’s really special that they wanted to do something nice to celebrate the book. But also the fact that they picked Lindsey’s artwork and then it led me to get to know Lindsey—I’m so excited about it. I’m currently on the hunt to find a framer who can frame something this large.LindseyIt’s only almost 80 inches. It’s fine. VirginiaI emailed my local frame shop who are so lovely and do such good work, and they were like, “We are not set up for that.” But you’ve given me names of a couple places. So this is my Butter Project. I’m going on a little framing odyssey with it. And you came over and we picked the wall in my house that it’s going to hang on. It will not be done by the time this episode airs, but I will definitely do a follow up when I have it in the house so everyone can see it. It’s just amazing. And there is an incredible space tattoo on Hannah. It was one of the details I really loved about it. And I just love her expression. LindseyI’m so glad, too, because Hannah was fantastic to work with as well. And one of the few times I’ve actually gotten to talk with someone who occupies this body liberation space.VirginiaWe should say the model is Hannah Noel Smith, who is a therapist and fat activist who specializes in eating disorder recovery. She’s also a buddy of mine from the Body Liberation Hiking Club. Did you get to know her through drawing her? Or how did that work?LindseySo I had an artist residency at the Blue Mountain Center and I put out a call on social media that was looking for local models and she got right ahold of me. It was really funny because when we met, she was like, “I found you shared by another fat creator.” And then was like, “Oh, my gosh, you’re in Poughkeepsie? I’m in Poughkeepsie!”VirginiaSmallest world. Well, it is really exciting because the fat activism community is, of course, large and spread out all over. But here in the Hudson Valley, we don’t have so many of us. It’s been fun to start to come together a little more. LindseyI think all my friends are like, “Yes, we know Virginia, you posted about her.” I’m like, “She’s really cool.”VirginiaSame, same. Definitely a mutual admiration society. Lindsey, thank you for doing this. Why don’t we wrap up telling folks where we can follow you? And how we can support your work?LindseyFirst of all, again, thank you for having me. This has been absolutely delightful. You can follow me on Instagram at Lindsey Guile Studio and I have a website. In terms of support, I have no shows right now. I’m working right now to show later. I do have two solo shows coming up in the spring of 2024, one here in the Hudson Valley, one out in the Rochester area. So if you follow me and you can come to an opening, that’s absolutely wonderful. And if you ever have an interest in buying something, just send me an email. I’d love to have a shop, but I already have a full time job.VirginiaWell, when you have details on the show, we’ll put them in the newsletter and make sure folks know and go. And I can’t wait to go to the next one. LindseyThank you so much. ---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 and also co-hosts mailbag episodes!The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.

Today Virginia is chatting with Anne Helen Petersen, author of four books and co-host of the Work Appropriate podcast, who also writes the newsletter Culture Study—and its recently launched little sister, Garden Study. We're exploring how gardening can be part of perfectionism and productivity culture—or its radical undoing. If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber to get all of Virginia's reporting and bonus subscriber-only episodes—including the director's cut of this conversation where VA and AHP answer all of your gardening questions. Disclaimer: Virginia is a journalist and human with a lot of informed opinions. Virginia is not a nutritionist, therapist, doctor, or any kind of health care provider. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions she gives are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.BUTTER & OTHER LINKSthe reader surveythe Sunset handbookMonty Don as “gardening god” and fashion iconclematis pruning groupsgrowing vegetables for a lot of diet culture reasonsGreat Dixter and the Vita Sackville West gardenThe Optimization Sinkholerenovation culturediet culture happening in garden cultureDuluth Trading Co overallsoverall shorts from Targeta gardeners tool beltA Good House for Children by Kate Collinsthrow pillows from Anchal ProjectFAT TALK is out! Order your signed copy from Virginia's favorite independent bookstore, Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the US!). Or order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, or Kobo or anywhere else you like to buy books. You can also order the audio book from Libro.fm or Audible.CREDITSThe Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia 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!Episode 104 TranscriptOur gardener origin stories:AnneI grew up in a house that had a ton of gardens. My mom’s a huge gardener. I grew up in really arid Idaho, not in the mountains—actually the lowest point in Idaho. But my mom had over 250 roses and a huge vegetable garden and all sorts of things and planted all of it herself because it was a vacant lot before we built our house. So, many of my memories as a kid are “oh, your mom’s out in the garden.” And I was not really interested in it at the time. I was not that kid was like, “Mom show me how to plant a pea,” or whatever. There were some flowers that I liked in the garden. I really loved the bleeding hearts. And then when I graduated from college, I came to Seattle and was a nanny for several years and I got so bored when we were out walking. You know, the two year old that I was walking with, we talked to about trucks and stuff like that.VirginiaThere’s only so much discourse there. AnneThis was before phones, so I couldn’t even be a bad nanny and look at my phone all the time. I just had my own mind. I would go on a walk 2-3 times a day in this little Seattle neighborhood and I learned all of the plants. The parents of the kiddo I was nannying for had a Sunset handbook, which is the bible of gardening out here in the West. Also, the house that I was living in at the time with my friends had a pretty substantial garden. I was like, okay, I’ll do some gardening out here and that taught me a lot about those plants. Then when I was in grad school, the first place that I lived in Oregon, I had a pretty robust vegetable garden that was really fun to do. And then I moved to Texas and I was like, I know nothing. VirginiaOh wow, totally different. AnneI tried to grow some things on my balcony. It was horrible, just abysmal, and I didn’t garden again. Then I did a little bit of vegetable gardening in Montana, especially during the pandemic, like a lot of people. But then I moved to an island off the coast of Washington that had an incredible, luscious garden that was really mindfully put in by the previous owners of the house. It has like 40 to 50 rhododendrons and azaleas that succession bloom. It has a climbing hydrangea that’s 40 feet tall and probably 40 feet wide. There’s several of them that come together seamlessly.VirginiaWhich is ancient, those grow so slowly! Rhododendrons and climbing hydrangeas are some of the slowest things to establish.AnneIt was probably planted in the 1960. And I’ve just fallen in love with gardening, like deeply in love with it, the last couple of years. VirginiaI love this.My origin story is also mother-related. My mom is British. Gardening is the national pastime there. And it’s a big part of mainstream culture in a way that it’s just not here in the United States. (See: Monty Don as “gardening god” and fashion icon.) So my grandfather was a really serious gardener, my aunt, my cousins, just that whole side of my family. And I wanted nothing to do with it, like, zero interest as a kid and a teenager and even throughout my 20s. You getting interested in plants at 24 I feel like is quite a child prodigy with gardening.AnneI really have to emphasize how much this had to do with having nothing else to do.VirginiaI went to college in New York City and then stayed in New York City through my 20s and so it was not really on my radar. But then we moved up to the Hudson Valley and when we bought our first house here, I was immediately overwhelmed because there was a yard. And then I had a friend that spring take me to lunch. I think we went to sushi and got sake and I was like, a little tipsy. And then she was like, “We’re going to go to Home Depot and look at seeds.” And I was like, oh, yeah, that seems great. And I got totally hooked that year. I started with a couple of pots and then by the end of the summer I was ripping up beds and remaking everything.AnneThat’s so funny that you started with seeds from Home Depot!VirginiaThe most basic gardening experts.AnneYeah, like, maybe not even viable, right?VirginiaNo, none of them. But I just needed a little toehold. I needed one little piece to feel doable and then it was like all this genetic predisposition kicked in. It turns out you turn 30 and all of your British gardening DNA becomes activated. And now here we are 12 years later and it’s my main hobby and obsession.I do think with gardening it feels like learning a foreign language at first. It’s not just naming the plants, also every plant has its own particular ecosystem and story and pruning strategy. I feel about it the way I felt about learning the New York City subway system the first year I lived there. I just had to plan on the fact that I was going to go the wrong direction and end up in Brooklyn all the time.AnneFor me it was go the wrong direction and end up on—what’s that little island? If you take the F, you end up on that little island.VirginiaRoosevelt Island! Yes. It’s because it was this thing that was put together with no master plan and it’s just like, it is what it is.AnneI still feel that way about so much with gardening, too. Clematis still scare me so much. VirginiaOh yeah, with the pruning groups. How do you ever know what pruning group you’re in?AnneType one, two, three!VirginiaSo, we were both at one point vegetable garden gardeners. And now we have zero vegetable gardens.Well, I have some tomatoes. AnneNot even tomatoes. The closest I get is rosemary. VirginiaTell me, why is it not vegetables anymore for you? What are your main garden passions at this point?AnneI loved vegetables when I was starting out because I think it is a great entry point. It’s a lot more straightforward. It’s like, I plant the spinach seeds at this time, you can see it in the books.VirginiaIt’s very mapped out. AnneThere are great books that show, here’s when you plant the spinach seeds, here is when you plant these other things. There are a lot of things, though, that I think oftentimes frustrate people because there are just there are vegetables that are very hard to grow. Carrots! Really hard to grow.VirginiaRight! Shockingly hard. AnneAnd we in the Pacific Northwest, we have great weather to grow a ton of crops, but bad weather to grow a lot of the fun stuff, like peppers. You can’t grow any sort of melons really, like maybe you get one. You can grow hard squash and that sort of thing. But most people, just like everywhere else, just grow a billion zucchini and then drop them off at everyone’s doorstep.VirginiaI will not grow zucchini. AnneI think also there was something lovely about planning every year. But then also like there was a lot of work, too. And every year is an empty bed. VirginiaYeah, that’s true.AnneMost of my containers are annuals with a couple perennials, like each pot has maybe one perennial. So I wanted that space for things that were there during the winter, too. That’s the other thing. I think as you continue gardening, you figure out that in the winter, when I feel so gloomy and sad, I want to be able to look out the window and see something.VirginiaYes, the winter interest of it all. You talked about that in a recent piece. It is the funniest phrase. And yes, it’s all I want.For me, there were two pieces to giving up vegetable gardening. One was we were not eating a lot of the stuff. I realized I was growing vegetables for a lot of diet culture reasons, right? And a lot of the Michael Pollan, foodie, mid 2000s - 2010s stuff that I was then ready to get out of.But two, it didn’t feel as satisfying creatively. With perennials and annuals, you play around much more with color. There are a lot of design elements. For me gardening is more of a creative expression. I don’t know, we can unpack that, maybe that’s very bougie and privileged, but it’s what actually I love about it.AnneFor beginners: A perennial is a plant that comes back every year and an annual is a plant that thrives for a season and then dies.We recently had a conversation in one of my newsletters about why would you plant annuals if they die every year? But a lot of gorgeous, gorgeous plants—especially plants with a lot of color—are annuals and that’s part of why people plant annuals.VirginiaAnd they bloom the whole season, usually. Whereas perennials, like lilacs, it’s an amazing two weeks. And then the peonies are an amazing two weeks. There are a few perennials, like my Oakleaf hydrangea shrubs will bloom for a longer stretch but a lot of perennials have this brief spectacular moment and then they’re done. Whereas annuals can then tide you over.AnneAnd I’ll say, too, that I think part of the reason I vegetable gardened in the first place was that I could justify it as like I’m saving money by growing vegetables.VirginiaYeah, sure.AnneActually, I think when I garden in grad school, there was some truth to that because I would eat the same thing all the time. The fact that I had two zucchini that I could take from a plant basically every day for two months of the year, yeah, sure. Although, zucchini are really cheap.VirginiaReally inexpensive. AnneTomatoes, maybe a little bit more. There actually are all these calculators and stuff in different books that show you which plant saves you the most money. Like growing this saves you the most money.VirginiaI do think tomatoes are one, once you’ve invested in the raised bed or whatever. There are a lot of sunk costs to gardening. But sure, if you have a place already to put them, buying a couple of seedlings or starting from seed if that’s your ministry—it’s not mine. Buying a couple of seedlings for $4 at the beginning of the season and then you will have pounds and pounds and pounds of tomatoes, but you will also spend lots of time watering and fertilizing and all of that has a value as well. AnneWhen I was very into vegetable gardening, it’s no mistake that it was also during grad school when I was very invested in productivity culture. Like if I wasn’t working on something, my leisure had to be work in some capacity. And now as I’ve tried to divest myself from productivity culture, I am so much more open to like, I’m just piddling around, just doing stuff. Even if I’m the only person who sees it, it doesn’t matter.VirginiaLeisure can be just having something pretty and enjoying it. It’s easy to look at your garden and see only a to-do list at a certain point. But instead, just enjoying going out and doing a five minute like deadhead or the small little things. Just that puttering around is something so soothing and regulating to me about just like the quick evening garden putter or the early morning garden putter. It’s so nice.AnneCharlie, my partner says if he doesn’t know where I am in the house—because we both work from home—at least in the summertime, he’s like, “I know, you’re just out with your plants.” And sometimes it will be that, oh, I just went to take the garbage out and I’m just looking at my dahlias.VirginiaMy kids know the same thing. They know to come find me in the garden, always. And a lot of it is like, “I’m going to check the mail” and I’m just out there.AnneI find it’s so useful when I’m concentrating on something. I have days that are writing days where I’ll sit in one spot for a long time just trying to pound out a draft of something. And I used to check Twitter during that time. But now I’ll go out and I’ll look at my flowers. It really scratches an itch in a similar way.VirginiaI agree! Without the nasty screen hangover part.AnneRight, because I’m still looking for things that have changed. And I think you could actually honestly do this if you had like three pots on your windowsill. Like, plants change so much. They change overnight. They change over the course of a day if they’ve been watered, right? There’s just so much that you can look for, not to sound weird and boring. You and I have talked a little bit about this. I think about how it’s kind of like a puzzle to figure out.VirginiaI was thinking about how I’m doing less jigsaw puzzles right now. I realized the other week it’s because it’s garden season. It is this constant puzzle and there is a lot of constant troubleshooting, like why is this not happy here?I’m in the Hudson Valley. We live on a small mountain, so it’s very rocky woodland. It claims to be zone six, but it really behaves more like a zone five because we’re up a little bit. And lots of shade. Lots of rocky soil, lots of dry shade. In my first garden, we had a Victorian with a small, sunny lot in town. It was such a shift to come here and figure out gardening in a rocky, woodland-y  kind of place. But that has been really satisfying too, I’ve actually really gotten into shade gardening here.AnneI should say that I am in zone eight. And I live on the water—it’s not fancy! There’s a lot of sand from the sandstone that’s the native rock here. And there are a ton of native plants everywhere you look just because it’s a very rural island. I live next to two houses, but the native stuff is taking over all over the place. This is, I think, kind of interesting and something that people don’t always talk about with gardening. The county regulations, especially with our island, are very specific about what you can and can’t plant on the shoreline. VirginiaYeah, that makes sense. AnneWithin so much distance of the shoreline. I have a grandfathered in lawn that you could never get away with planting now, but I’m slowly getting rid of it. VirginiaBecause you need more garden space!AnneTotally, I am slowly tearing out the grass. Like, what if I just make a little bed over here? VirginiaWhat if this one just got a little wider over here?AnneYeah, just a little bigger. But we also get a ton of wind coming in from the water and it changes what you can grow on one side of the house and the other. Things have to be very robust to stick up to that icy winter wind. Figuring it out is part of the fun, too, right? Like oh, this lupine loves it here. Why don’t I get more lupines and put it there? VirginiaOr will it please make more for me? That’s always satisfying, when something actually starts to really spread out. You moved into a very established garden, which was my experience with my first house. But with this house, the previous owners had put in zero garden basically. It was a total blank slate, which was wonderful in lots of ways. Because it is hard sometimes with an established garden when you’re battling against somebody else’s vision or, like, why did they put this here and it’s so hard to get out.AnneFortunately, we didn’t have any of this, but I’m sure so many people listening have battled the weed netting.VirginiaYes, yes. I had that in my first house.Pus there are trends in plants, right? Our first garden had so many small, striped variegated hostas, not the good fat hostas, but the little ones. People love to put those everywhere here. And I dug up millions of them in my last house. So I didn’t have that problem here. But I did have nothing, which was also intimidating and hard to figure out. I have spent years watching these beds that we did put in finally starting to knit together, like finally figuring out what works and will actually self-sow and make itself bigger here. My whole mission in life is always less visible mulch. I don’t want to see the mulch! I want the plants to knit together. And it takes a long time. AnneWell and this where I think that gardening is sometimes a hard hobby to imagine, specifically when you don’t own the house, when you’re moving a lot. Because perennial gardens in particular, part of the reason the plants cost more money is because they last theoretically forever. And to be able to envision yourself in one place is really hard for a lot of people for all sorts of different reasons, right?Precarity is the defining characteristic of our contemporary existence. So if precarity is the enemy of long term planning, I always think of having kids is like the the biggest protest that people make in terms of precarity. They’re like, screw it, I’m still going to have kids, right? And I’m still gonna have a garden. VirginiaGardening is fundamentally quite illogical in a lot of ways. And sometimes it’s discouraging when you plant something, like will I even be here to see this? I do sometimes drive past my old house and there is a fence so you can’t totally see what they’ve done, but I know it’s not the same garden that I left them with. There’s a little heartbreak there.AnneOh, it is my mom’s greatest sadness that the people who bought that house, our house with all of those roses, they tore out all of the rose beds. All of them. VirginiaIt is now my greatest sadness.AnneCan we talk about roses a little bit?Because I actually think that there’s a really interesting generational divide. I think of them as Boomer plants.VirginiaAgreed. And they are so high maintenance and they can be very fussy. The way you have to prune them back to the leaves of three or five or whatever it is. My British grandfather was big on roses and I remember learning about roses, but I have never planted a lot of roses.AnneBut I think that they’re coming back now. I think that I’ve seen a lot of millennials getting into roses. VirginiaOkay. Well, stay tuned, guys. If there’s a plant trend, I’ll probably be on it. Even though my sun garden is so small and there’s so much competition. Because I have so much shade I have to really love a plant to give it some real estate because I just don’t have that much. I don’t think roses are going to be it, but I do really appreciate the big beautiful cottage roses, the ones that get like almost like peonies. I’m really here for that.AnneI have a couple that I inherited and one of them is a tea rose. It’s like a baby pink sort of thing that I would never ever plant and I keep being like do I need to love this plant?VirginiaCan you give it to your mom? AnneShe just downsized and moved to my island, actually. But she is very specifically for the first time in her life not planting anything. She’s going to eventually have a few things. VirginiaI don’t believe it. That’s just the moving transition. She is a gardener.AnneI know. But she’s like, “Whenever I want to piddle, I’ll just come over to your house.”VirginiaWell, that’s great for you.AnneIt is great for me! She pruned all of my ferns this year. VirginiaI feel like she’s going to want that tea rose. Give it a year.AnneAlright. But I do have a climbing rose which I just love. That’s one great thing about roses is you can kind of be assholes to them if they’re in the right place they will still do whatever they want. They’re still going to come back. That’s something I admire about native plants, especially. You’re like, I’m doing everything that I can to eliminate you and they’re like nope this is mine.VirginiaYeah, oh my gosh my asters and my milkweed right now! They are just taking over. It’s a land grab, which is fair, it’s their land. But all the other stuff is like “I’m trying to do something here guys?” The asters are like, “Yeah, I don’t think so.” I want to make sure we talked about Garden Study the new sub newsletter of Culture Study. You’re calling it Cup of Jo, but for gardens. I am obsessed with it. AnneThis is something you and I workshopped together.VirginiaI’m being recruited. But I’m so far resisting?AnneI asked on Instagram: I want something that’s like Cup of Joe for plants. People gave me different answers of what they thought that could be and none of them were quite it. I was like Virginia, we should just do this and we’re like okay, here’s what our posting schedule would be.VirginiaWe’re not ruling it out.AnneWe’re not ruling it out, like having a spin off of both of our publications subscribers get free access as they do to Garden Study now.VirginiaYou’re continuing to evolve it.AnnePart of the reason it’d be great is, we garden in different zones! We have very different ways that we approach it and limitations on what we can do and can’t do and that sort of thing. We’d have so many great guest contributors. It’d be amazing!But as it is, Garden Study is also amazing. It’s basically a gardening blog for people who are incredibly enthusiastic but not judge-y experts. So much gardening content that I have consumed on Instagram, in books, wherever is from master gardeners. I love expertise, but not with these gorgeous gardens that just make me feel bad about my garden.VirginiaThere’s definitely a piece I want to write at some point, possibly for our garden blog.  There is a really fascinating story to be told about the elitism of American gardening culture. Like the Garden Conservancy, my mom and I go on some of their tours sometimes. Throughout the summer you can go and tour these fancy gardens. But it’s just billionaires with tons of money and land. We went to one last year, there was some billionaire who had a full time gardener who planted some million number of daffodils. So in the spring, it’s a glorious daffodil heaven. But you’re also on this weird estate.There’s a lot going on with the way gardening gets talked about in a lot of those sort of elite, traditional gardening magazines and publications completely ignoring the fact that this is like a rich person with staff able to execute this vision.AnneOr like the money to take a weird spot in your garden and like have a landscape architect come in and fix it for you. That is not a reality for the vast majority of gardeners. A lot of people don’t even have the handy capacity to build a retaining wall. VirginiaNo, that’s so hard.AnneI always will remember, I don’t know where I saw it, but it was this man’s backyard garden on Fire Island. It was small and he had all these great little nooks that you could tell that he cherished. And he didn’t have a staff, at least like it didn’t look like it. VirginiaIt didn’t look like it needed a staff. AnneNo, it was just something that you can tell was his hobby that he adored whenever he came up to Fire Island. I think they lived there most of the year.But really what I like is other people who are like, “my peony is not blooming for the third year, what did I do?” I’ve had so many people volunteer to do garden interviews already because as evidenced by this podcast, people really like talking about their gardens but also no one in their like real lives often likes to talk to them as much as they want to.VirginiaIt is important to find your garden friends. It’s very important. AnneWe’re going to do pictures and, like, please don’t feel like you have to like make it look amazing or anything like that because I think what it does is it lowers the bar to say joyful gardening looks like so many things. It looks like two containers on your porch. It looks like a super weedy patch but you put some wild flowers in there that make you so happy every time that you see them. It can look like so many things. VirginiaThis is one thing that I think British gardening culture has done really well. I mean obviously England has a huge class hierarchy and there are the big estates like Great Dixter and the Vita Sackville West garden. But there’s such a culture of everybody has a garden there. Everybody with their semi-detached house and tiny backyard is doing these amazing things. The nooks and the prize winning whatever, in this very lovely way.My favorite garden in the world was my Auntie Liz’s garden. She had a small cottage in Suffolk and the garden is tiny but there are little rooms and it’s this enclave of magic. Just exquisite. She was a brilliant gardener, but the attitude there is that everybody can do it and it’s accessible. And not just this inspirational, fancy Architectural Digest way.AnneWell, and also I think that the in-person associations can oftentimes become very hierarchical and exclusive. I think a lot of like old biddies who are a part of some of these things that like, unless you are also someone who has been doing this your entire life you’re not invited. Like garden tours. I love them in theory, but I also think people feel like they can’t have their house on a garden tour if it’s not, like…VirginiaThere’s a reason it’s all billionaires estates around here, right? The bar to entry is too high. It’s a problem for the future of gardening. I do think there’s an awareness in the larger gardening community that this shift needs to happen because this is not something that is hand down-able. AnneThere is a coffee klatsch that I go to on my island, where you just go and have coffee and it’s mostly all older ladies. It rotates between people’s houses and one of my favorite parts has been just going and seeing what their gardens are.VirginiaYes, it’s my favorite thing to do on vacation in a new town, walk around the neighborhood and see the gardens, I love it.AnneThey all want to talk about their gardens. So that’s fun. You’re like, oh, you got this to bloom here. A lot of them are retired so they have a lot of time to spend on that.VirginiaThat’s how you get free plants from people. AnneEveryone wants to divide all of their perennials. Division, for people who don’t know, a lot of perennials you need to essentially cut them in half or more than half in order to promote more growth. So you can take a spade to the plant and either throw it away, but hopefully give it away. Sometimes on Nextdoor, people will be like, oh, I have all these divisions out. I am on a committee of people who are in charge of the library garden. And two years ago, it was entirely planted with divisions from people’s houses on the island. VirginiaThat’s so sweet.AnneI know, right? You can get a ton of stuff. If you just post even on like your local group, does anyone have any divisions in the spring?VirginiaThat’s so smart. A piece you wrote this year was The Optimization Sinkhole. You talk about how we’re all conditioned now to want to upgrade and improve everything, especially in terms of domestic space. I really related because I had the same terrible coffeemaker that you tear to pieces. And I did upgrade but I was like, yeah, you’re right. I could have just not. I do feel like gardening can so easily become this. I am aware often of having this never ending list of every corner of my garden, of our property. And we are surrounded by woods so then nature is here, the natives are coming in and the invasives are coming in.I’m never gonna get every corner of my garden into some sort of state of perfect. Do you struggle with that?AnneOh, I struggle with that all the time. VirginiaI feel like this gets us into renovation culture, too, which I would like to talk about a little.AnneYou and I are very similar in that we are perfectionist, type A, people pleasers. And so it’s difficult not to turn that lens onto the garden.I think sometimes you can feel like, oh I have to weed everything. Everything has to be weeded all the time. Or, like you said, it’s easy to look at the garden and it turns into a to do list. Similarly to how it’s easy to look at your house and it becomes this room that needs to be renovated. Like, this needs to be fixed, always just constant dissatisfaction instead of reveling in the things that are amazing about it already. I think I recognize that impulse in myself, so when it starts creeping up, I can name it. Push it back. The other thing that’s been helpful to me is giving myself permission to be like, that’s next year’s project.VirginiaHmm. Yes, I think in terms of the five year plan of the garden a lot, and a lot of the five year plan is quite ambitious. But I have found some things that I put on that list, like when I did it when we first moved in and 2016, there are things on that list that I no longer want to do that I thought felt really essential, but the way we use the space has changed. I don’t need a hardscaped firepit area that I was sure we needed in 2016?! We don’t use our fire pit that much and it’s fine sitting on the grass.AnneRight? And sometimes things will come and wreck your plans. Like we had to replace our septic system in its entirety because it was their original septic system. It’s real bad. But the way that they had to do that is not only did they have to dig a huge hole to put in the new septic system, they had to take out the old septic tank and bury it in another part of our yard. Because the other option, just because of how our property is, was to either helicopter it out or take it out on a barge. Neither of which were viable options.So that tore up so much of the lawn. And we had to decide okay, what parts of the lawn still matter to us? Like, are we going to reseed that? Which is really easy in the Pacific Northwest just because of our conditions. So we could do a little bit of that. But then, oh, the grass was always scraggly there anyway, what if we do this? VirginiaShade garden!AnneBut seriously, like, there are other parts of my yard that I’m like, that’s a disaster zone. I have to make either big changes or I have to be okay with it being what it is. It was like, oh, these weeds are always going to come over from the neighbor’s yard and either I can be mad about it or I can, whenever I’m going down that path, just pick up a few weeds. Just the ones that are bothering me. But then also, thinking proactively, about things that can obviate the need to feel bad about things. So like you said, like, mulch plus ground cover. VirginiaReally helps. Love a ground cover. AnneThings that are easy to take care of that you don’t make you feel like a failure all the time. Like, sometimes you want those challenges and then sometimes you just need a beautiful grass to feel like a success.VirginiaMy first few years, the garden did look a little rough, to be honest. I could do close-in shots of pretty flowers, but because there were so many new beds, there was so much kind of raw space. It was not really hanging together yet. I was aware of it not looking great. People weren’t rude about it, but you know, people will say like, “oh, it’s a new garden,” and these sort of kind but patronizing things where you’d be like, “I’m trying so hard, can you not?”Now, in year four, for most of the garden it’s starting to really feel like a garden. And because I finally found the sun, the sun part looks like it’s like a Year 10 garden because things grow way faster in the sun. So now I’m realizing, I see problems and other people come over and just absolutely would have no idea what I was talking about. AnneOh my gosh, yes, 100%.VirginiaThat is very liberating to realize, and also honestly screw anyone who judges  your garden. That’s weird. But if you’re someone who struggles with that, like the house needs to be picked up before we host people, that mindset can definitely show up in your garden. And it can helpful to be like, no, the garden doesn’t need to be weeded before we have a barbecue this weekend. Nobody cares.AnneNobody’s looking at it. The only person who will even notice it is my mom. She will be like, oh, some dandelions over there. Yeah, Mom, go pick it.VirginiaJump right in.AnneBut no one else. If anything, I feel bad because I think sometimes my friends know that I’m seeing things. But actually, I think when I go to their house, I might see like some nightshade invading their hydrangea, and I just go over there and kind of casually rip it down. Not cause I think they’re bad gardeners, just like…VirginiaIt’s a service I can provide while I’m here.AnneI’m just trying to be nice to that plant. So I think that that’s one thing that we can all benefit from is thinking about, like, no one’s judging you. I’m not judging you.VirginiaAgain, I feel like this is a place where a diet culture shows up.I wrote a piece last year about I think there’s a version of diet culture happening in garden culture with the obsession with only natives and needing to be a purist about natives.AnneDo you want to describe how this usually manifests? VirginiaPart of the problem is we don’t even have clear definitions of natives. But it’s a plant that is native to your region. So, a plant that has been here for many hundreds, if not thousands of years in some form. So there are plants that are not native to a garden and if they get planted there, they will aggressively take over and push out the native plants. This is bad for local ecosystems because wildlife depend on all these native plants. So that’sthe backstory on natives. But what will happen is Anne or I will post something on Instagram, or I posted in a local gardening Facebook group looking for suggestions for a shrub that does well in this climate. And people will just reply “natives.”You’ll post a picture of your lilac or your hydrangea or my tree peony, which is Chinese and beautiful, and people will be like, “Why aren’t you planting more natives?” in this very judgey way.AnneOr I like you and I were talking about how I could be like, “I have all these rhodies and rhodies are native,” and you’re like, “well, they’re probably just gonna point out it’s like some sort of hybrid that’s actually not.”VirginiaNo, no, that’s the Korean Rhododendron and how dare you. Obviously, all the local wildlife will flee it.I think there’s actually a lot of anti-Asian racism bound up in the natives thing because most of the invasives are Asian in origin. It feels bad to me, being this mad about invasives, and calling something Japanese knotweed. I think there’s something there, that a lot of the invasives get identified by their country of origin in that way.AnneRight? Even like the blackberry that’s incredibly invasive here in the Pacific Northwest is called Himalayan Blackberry, for example. But I think there’s a difference that is often lost, which is when you’re planting a tree peony, the tree peony is not going to take over your lawn.VirginiaIt can’t, it’s the slowest growing thing in the world. AnneIt’s not going to take over anyone else’s lawn. It’s not going to change the habitat in your larger neighborhood. It is not an invasive. VirginiaNo. AnneIt’d be different if I, instead of planting a new hydrangea in this little spot, if I was like, oh, you know what I should do? I should go get a bunch of blackberries from one of these Himalayan blackberry plants that are all over the island. I should bury them in my yard and start growing blackberries. There other things that are identified as invasive.VirginiaBurning bush is a big one here. AnneThey’re just different. And it’s, it’s totally different according to your zone, like, something like Wisteria is invasive in parts of the South. And it’s not invasive here. You have to baby wisteria.VirginiaYou have to beg it grow. AnneSo a lot of this depends, too, on like, are you planting with any sort of knowledge or research? Because you can’t just depend on what is sold at the store. Not even your nursery necessarily, because so many people want wisteria so you’re still going to be able to get wisteria.VirginiaI mean, burning bush is one of the most invasive shrubs around here and people love it because it turns bright red in the fall. You know, like New York, New England, we’re supposed to have amazing fall foliage. So they’re ignoring the fact that burning bush is not native here and it seeds itself everywhere. Like you see it in the wilderness, the woods, and it is a big problem. And it’s in every nursery for sure.AnneRight? Right. Because it’s asked for. So that’s different. You’re not like, hey, Facebook group, should I plant this burning bush in the corner?VirginiaNo, I’m like, “I had a lilac here. I’m thinking about something along those lines. What do we think?” And people are like, you should only have a native. So there’s just a purism about it. And there’s a lot of privilege involved. If you’re shopping mostly at Home Depot or big box stores for your plants, because that’s where they’re cheap, you’re not going to get a huge variety of natives. So, to require this of everybody is requiring everybody to have knowledge and expertise and the ability to order things from specialty stores or check out to different nurseries that specialize. It’s just not on everybody’s radar. AnneI will say that one of the cool things that a lot of places do more of now is local gardening associations or county extension offices—which sound like a very official entity but are actually just this very cool thing that’s nationwide where every county has an extension offices, agricultural office—they’ll do native plant sales. If you just want to have a garden that lives, like a native plant sale is an incredibly great place to get stuff that is going to thrive in your garden because it’s native, right?Anytime people are incredibly prescriptive about how people should do something, if they’re not causing harm, it just, it bothers me. There can be people who that is their thing that they are obsessed with in the garden, right? It’s like, I want to have all these natives or I want above all else to have a pollinator garden. And just because you’re not focused on pollinator gardens doesn’t mean that you’re also not providing pollination. VirginiaOr that I’m actively trying to prevent the pollinators.AnneYou’re just spraying Roundup everywhere. VirginiaIts a “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” mentality. So in my property, we have three acres. Most of it is woods, but we have this half acre meadow area that we have spent a significant amount of money and time turning into a native wildflower meadow. And I feel I have done that. And now if I would like to have some non natives, if I would like to grow some giant hostas or some dahlias and poppies and things that are my obsessions, I’m going to do that in the other parts of my garden.AnneAlso, like, people are like “lawns are the devil,” and I’m like, well, I inherited this lawn. I don’t fertilize it. And like most people in the northwest, I don’t water it. VirginiaSo it it actually causing that much harm? Sometimes you need some grass to break it up.AnneI just think the main goal here is other people’s choices with their garden, if they’re not causing harm, is none of your business. If they ask for advice and are like, I’m looking for some plants here, a person could have suggested to you some native plants. VirginiaWithout emphasizing the nativeness. Like, tell me actual plants that might work in the conditions I just described.I think where it gets diet culture for me is like, if I were to limit myself to natives, I would feel restricted. I would feel like I wasn’t allowed to have all of the abundance of pleasure and beauty that I want in my garden. I think natives are beautiful. But milkweed is never going to be a dahlia. They are just two different concepts. And I don’t need to garden with a set of rules like that. AnneAnd people get so legalistic about it in terms of, is it a real native, recent native or naturalized native? It’s like Paleo, where people are arguing over which foods did paleolithic people actually eat. VirginiaI mean, given that we were originally covered with ice, I guess there are no natives. I don’t know how far back we’re going. But at some point, it was very difficult to grow things here.AnneYeah. And sometimes I do think that people seek out those rules when they feel like they need to have restrictions. VirginiaIt’s a control thing. AnneIn that optimization culture piece, the top comment is someone who said, “I think that I took all of the energy that I fed into diet culture and I moved it on to my house.”VirginiaI’m not saying I feel called out by that, but I felt called out by that. Can definitely relate. Okay, we are going to do some listener questions!And there are a bunch of them. We’ll try to do short answers so we can get through a whole bunch.VirginiaOne person wrote:Tips for taking over a garden. What are all these flowers, plants, bushes, and what do I do with them?And someone else asked:Advice for tackling a wild garden after stepping away due to illness? Feeling daunted. And then:Tips for a beginner who’s sort of starting from nothing?Maybe that’s a separate category. Let’s talk first about this idea of like, you’ve either moved into a place or you’ve been away for a while, and the garden can just feel like this mess, like, I don’t even know where to begin.AnneSo when I moved into my garden, there were some things that I knew and then some things I had no idea. A very useful app is the iPlant app or the Seek app is also really good. The identify the plant function on your iPhone is pretty good, depending. I would just save them into the app if you want to. Another thing is a lot of different gardening companies do consults. If you have some money to just like figure out where you are, you can have them come out and they will tell you very basic stuff, like cut this back in fall, those sorts of things if you don’t have that basic knowledge.And this is great for the person who had to step away for a while because of illness or for whatever reason, because of a season in your life where you weren’t able to be attentive to your garden, a perennial garden in particular is going to be fine. If you don’t cut it back, it’s okay. These plants are meant, in some capacity, to be able to live every year without someone babying them. So some things might go wild. Like, there might be some more weediness and that sort of thing. But if you can keep it just alive, which means basic watering, stuff will be fine. That means that you can come back to it and figure out oh, like, I’m supposed to fertilize these once a year. Which is true for most flowering bushes or trees in some capacity, that sort of thing.What’s your advice?VirginiaWe had the situation with our first house and I think I broke it up in my mind into sections and I tackled one section rather than trying to do the whole thing at once. There was one long border that had a beautiful climbing rose and a lot of peonies and then just weeds, so I did the plant ID app to figure out that I could pull out most of it, and just leave the good stuff. Then I just worked on figuring out what I wanted to put there. So you could just tackle one section a year and be like, it’s fine, like three quarters of the yard is gonna look like garbage for a few years. But I’m just working my way around. And I really support getting a consult. What we did when we moved into this house where I was very overwhelmed because it was a different type of gardening than what I’ve done before and it’s not like a straightforward lot shape. Like, the way they positioned the house on the lot is not where I would have put it and so there was a lot to figure out.I did hire a garden designer who came and walked around with me and asked a lot of questions about how we wanted to use this space, like where were the kids going to play, where do we want to have people over, and she made me this really beautiful—I really want to frame it at some point—kind of blueprint of what the garden could eventually be. It was money, but it wasn’t tens of thousands of dollars. More than $500, let’s say, but investing in that upfront to have someone kind of break it down, then I have been able to year by year be like, Okay, do I want to work on a chunk of this this year? Like I said, we don’t need to hardscape a fire pit area, that was a whim I had that I’ve moved on from and actually it makes more sense to use the fire pit in this other place. But having that helped me feel less overwhelmed. So you can even do that yourself, but if you’re like a newbie, having an expert help you figure that out is super useful. AnneI also would suggest giving yourself time because you’re not going to know what it all is there until you live an entire year in your garden.VirginiaThis is so important. We should have started with this. This is a huge mistake I see people make all the time. I am so glad that the year we moved into this house I was pregnant and writing a book and I was like no we will not be gardening here this season because it meant I had a summer of just figuring out where we did get little slivers of sun. And even with that, we still got some of it wrong. We put a bunch of stuff in a bed that I then realized a year later was much deeper shade and actually none of that was going to bloom and had to come out.So living somewhere and really getting to understand where you have sun where you have shade, like, where are you? What are your pathways around the property? What are your views out? Which window do you look out of most, where you want to be able to see the garden? Those kinds of things.AnneWhere are there 600,000 Grape hyacinths that you had no idea were there? Where is there a majestic ancient peony that you’re like, Oh, I guess that’s there and I’ve never grown peonies before so I didn’t even know what it was. All of those things are so key. You can put mulch down if the weeds are a problem. I think that’s something that is oftentimes underrated is, like, what’s an easy thing I can do to feel a little bit more in control of this garden that’s already here. I can mulch it.VirginiaAll right. Next question is What to wear for bugs and sun?And also I got a few people asking about ticks. Do you have ticks in the Pacific Northwest? I don’t even know.AnneA tiny bit, but they’re not the Lyme kind.VirginiaI’ll speak to the tick part. I mean, the biggest thing we did, which obviously is not within reach of everyone, but we invested in a deer fence for our property and because it also made it dog-proof. And the upshot of that is way fewer ticks in our yard because the deer aren’t walking through and dropping them. Because we would have herds of deer, every night, coming in. The area that’s now a meadow was just constantly covered in deer poop. It was disgusting. So fencing is useful.AnneI never even thought about that in terms of deer.VirginiaIt really helped because deer and ticks here are just very abundant.But you have the gardener overalls that you love!AnneI love them. They’re from Duluth Trading Co. They come in many different sizes, like they actually are size inclusive. I think they’re up to like 3x maybe? And fit large, like whatever you normally wear they fit larger than that. They come in different lengths and then also different fabrics. And yeah, I just love them. I garden in a baseball hat to protect my skin, but otherwise we don’t really have bugs. We don’t have ticks.VirginiaWell, that must be nice.AnneThe high is like 78 so like, I wear sunscreen on my shoulders.VirginiaAnyway. I have some gardening overall shorts from Target that I will link, because I know they are plus inclusive. I’m pretty laidback because we have the fence. I don’t do a lot of tick prevention. But I do do tick checks every night. So it’s just a requirement when you live in these woods. But I don’t overly obsess about it.We have periods of each season where the mosquitoes get really intense. They’re not all the time, but there are a few weeks in the spring where it’s either mosquitoes or little gnats that fly in your face. Usually if we have a wet summer, which we currently are, September gets pretty bad with mosquitoes, which sucks. I have a lot of citronella torches scattered around the yard. And I often will garden with the torch on and I have a bug net that I will wear when I really need it. I just put it over a little straw hat and it’s not an all year round thing. We are definitely a climate where our screen porch gets a lot of use. I do wear sunscreen for sure. But I also think like it’s important not to get overly precious, like I don’t use gardening gloves unless I’m doing something with thorns. AnneOh interesting. VirginiaI just never wear gardening gloves because I don’t want more things to do. I feel this way about exercise, too, like any sport that requires me to put on a bunch of gear, it’s just not gonna happen.AnneSomething I recently got for a birthday present is the Floret, it’s like a tool belt, essentially, it’s a gardeners tool belt. And it’s leather, it’s beautifully made. You can get knockoffs. There’s a place for your needle nose trimmer, like for the small ones and then also for your normal clippers. You can also stuff your gardening gloves in there and gardening twine or whatever. Then I just have everything in it and it hangs on the hook outside next to the door so I just put it on.Virginia And you’re in gardening mode. AnneI also want to emphasize that, like, I don’t have bugs, but most of the year it’s raining and wet and muddy. I actually use my Carhartt overalls for those situations most of the time, just because it’s cold, and I put them over a sweatshirt and then I have a rain jacket on on top. And I love the permission to just get filthy. And I wash those overalls once a year, maybe. They’re just going to get muddy again, right? Like, it doesn’t matter. I hang them in like the downstairs bathroom and they just stay hanging out there. You don’t have to have special clothes. There’s no uniform, you can garden in cut offs in a tank top. You could garden in whatever you’re wearing now.VirginiaI’m usually in pajamas because first thing in the morning I go out to eat my breakfast and then I start piddling around and I’m like, oh here I am, like aggressively weeding without a bra on. Don’t overthink it. This person saysI grow herbs in small pots because I’m not good with plants but like to cook. Any tips?I would say put them in bigger pots. I think the small pots are the hardest because they grow so fast.AnneYes. And also they freeze really fast. A lot of herbs you can keep overwinter like oregano and thyme and rosemary, but they can also freeze when they’re smaller. It makes it easier for the water to freeze like the whole thing, the whole enterprise.VirginiaPots, the smaller they are the more finicky and high maintenance they are.AnneI would get a bigger pot and then put like three oreganos in it. That’d be so fun to have like lemon oregano and there’s so many different kinds that you can get to serve different purposes. And also, I think that if you can grow herbs, you can grow anything. They’re actually pretty finicky.VirginiaAnother tip for the Mediterranean herbs like oregano, thyme, rosemary, lavender. Mine do well if you have the regular dirt you plant them in, but then if you top them with some gravel, the gravel helps keep the water in and mimics the sort of Mediterranean like rocky hillsides that they want to grow on and they look really pretty.AnneDon’t ever be scared to give them a severe haircut. Anytime they look leggy, oftentimes after they bloom they look like that. Give them a big haircut and as long as they’re healthy they will rejuvenate.VirginiaYeah, they grow back fast to where they’re at.Best fall plants besides mums?AnneOooh you know what’s a huge hit out here? Everyone grows these are ornamental cabbages.VirginiaOh yeah, those are popular here, too.AnneI don’t love them because they start to bolt and then they look all shaggy underneath.VirginiaYeah, I agree. I also hate mums. I am really anti-mum.AnneI also hate mums.VirginiaWe might be controversial, we already went against natives so we might as well just…AnneYou know what I like in the fall, are pansies. VirginiaOh, that’s nice.AnnePansies can overwinter if it’s not horribly cold.VirginiaThey cannot do that here, but they can survive some light frost definitely. Because we had kind of a cooler spring, I planted pansies probably at the end of March and just this week they finally need to come out of their pots. They are really inexpensive and they can just like go a long time. That’s a great choice.AnneYeah, if you’re in a moderate climate like mine, they can you can get them in March. They might like be a little sad in the summer because they don’t like so much heat. But then they’ll come back strong in the fall and then they’ll survive over the winter too and they self seed pretty robustly if you put them in the ground.VirginiaOkay, zone five and six people, that part’s not true for us. Everyone else enjoy, but they are at least a very cheap annual.My favorite fall bloomers for my area:Asters are a great one. They bloom in September/October here. Goldenrod tends to bloom pretty late. And dahlias because we can’t put the tubers out until May, after May 15. So my dahlias won’t start blooming until August at the earliest and they will bloom until frost, like I will pull them out in November.I am someone who lives in the Northeast and actually didn’t like fall for a very long time, because I don’t really like the color orange that much and I don’t really get the whole pumpkin spice thing and it is what it is. I am a summer person. Anyway, dahlias have made me a fall lover because they are so spectacular and I get to have like lots of different colors. They’re my favorite fall flower and they’re way cooler than mums.AnneDon’t sit on geraniums and petunias! My geraniums last until the first hard frost.VirginiaThat’s true. A lot of that kind of stuff. You don’t need to take it all out and replace it with pumpkins right away, slow your roll, guys. It’s fine.Favorites for attracting hummingbirds?AnneYou know what they have fallen in love with? I kind of accidentally planted this giant penstemon in a container and they are in love with it. Foxgloves, I find they like.VirginiaYeah, any tubular kind of thing. I’ve got some annual salvia, the little blue guys, they’ve really been coming for that. AnneFuschias. VirginiaAgastache. There’s one that’s literally called hummingbird agastache, it has like little pinky red flowers and they agree with the branding. They show up for it.AnneI also think that they love my nasturtiums, which are literally the easiest. VirginiaOh, that’s such a good one. AnneYeah, either you can buy them very cheap as seedlings or you could just put the seeds in the ground and they’ll pretty much grown in anything. So, thats a great one.VirginiaOh, and the native honeysuckle, they’ll probably go for any honeysuckle but I do try not to grow the non-native ones because they are invasive in my area. But the native one, which sadly does not smell, but it has red flowers, the humming birds will show up in droves. Okay, I like this question.Why does gardening feel so much more satisfying as a home improvement than a renovation? Hmm, interesting. I don’t even know if it’s totally true for me. I find renovating very satisfying, as well.AnneI’ve never renovated anything, personally. But we actually are redoing our bathrooms and it’s going to feel so amazing. I think that gardening is more joyful, however.VirginiaI think so, too. You’re outside.AnneYou’re outside. You’re doing it. That’s the one thing, I am not doing my renovation.VirginiaNo, I’m not going to tile a bathroom. Maybe somebody is though, and that’s great. I support the DIYers.AnneAnd your bathroom, you do it, and then you’re done. Whereas your garden is a living organism.VirginiaI do think one of my favorite things about home decor, which I both truly enjoy and have to walk that line with optimization issues is, I do like the zhuzhing of home decor. Like deciding, oh, actually, I like this better in this other room. I’m doing it right now, like rearranging a few rooms and like, oh, this picture will look so good in here and putting things together, shopping my own house to spruce up an area that’s bugging me. Or realizing I can solve a problem by like, oh, we just need a stool here and I have a stool in the basement I can bring up and put there and now the kids can reach the sink or whatever it is. I think gardening scratches that same itch. You’re doing a lot of zhuzhing always. It’s a lot of like, okay, the coneflowers got dotted around too much. I need to move them and group them better this way. That’s so satisfying.AnneSo could we talk about one thing that we skipped, which is what to do with weeds?Just because they feel like it’s something that everyone wants to know and then people feel bad because they get judged about different things. I grew up in a Roundup household. I don’t use Roundup at all now. Part of it is that I think if I use Roundup, if it rains, the Roundup then goes straight into the ocean which is terrible. God, we could go into all sorts of stuff about it, but like it’s just not great. It’s not a great thing and my mom is having to unlearn her Roundup tendencies. Because it really is a place where if someone saw you with a Roundup thing, they would come up to you and be like, we don’t do that here, for better for worse.So I just ground cover, man. I love ground cover. Something  that is going to just swallow those weeds. And then just chop at them. Think of them as nemeses.VirginiaI think the more you plant, the fewer weeds you will have, or at least you will not to see the weeds as much. My more densely planted beds, there are weeds in there but it’s crowded, so it’s not really bothering me.I don’t use chemicals in my main perennial gardens at all, but my exception was when we were reclaiming this meadow area, which was a big project. When we moved in this entire like half acre area was waist high mugwort, which is a very difficult weed and knotweed and a couple other pretty difficult to get out things. We tried hand pulling it for a season and quickly realized we were never going to win that way. So we did do one big spraying one year and kind of scorched the earth, mowed it all back after it all died down and seeded it with a native wildflower and grasses mix. It was terrible that year, and I was mortified people were going to see me spraying. But now we’ve had two years of this beautiful native wildflower meadow. So there are times where you’re like, this is the only way out. We have to burn the earth to save it. And that was my one time.AnneYeah, you reclaimed it because of that. Sometimes people here, what you have to do with blackberry is oftentimes just to have someone come in with like an actual machine and then you have to burn it. You have to do a controlled burn on it. Same thing with what is it called? Horsetails. Horsetails are all over the place and they’re rhizomatic. So my friend lives essentially on a rhizome so what they do is they take a little blowtorch and torch it.VirginiaYep, I’ve done that. We had the dragon weeder, which is like this blowtorch thing. That’s really good for cracks where the weeds pop up, gravel or cracks in the driveway. Because it’s easy to control the flaming. We did one time host a party and people came over like, your yard is smoking. And I was like, Oh, right.AnneAlways do it with a hose nearby. Never do it when your island is on a burn ban which we currently are.VirginiaBut I also think, as we talked earlier, embracing that weeds are always going to be there. You don’t need to be a perfectionist about it. They’re just part of the whole thing. A lot of them are not really hurting anything. They’re just not what you put there. AnneA weed is not a failure. It’s not a personal failure.VirginiaWeeds are not a moral failing. That feels like very much like optimization perfectionism culture coming in. We don’t need that in our gardens.Alright, the last question we’re gonna do before we do butter isWhat is your gardening why? Decoration, wildlife, time in your body without anxiety, food?I love that question.AnneThat should be part of my garden study q&a. I think my why is just very embodied observationality. I feel very attuned to whatever I’m doing. Some of it is I think what people call flow state in different capacities. Time disappears for me when I’m gardening. On a meta level, I love that I am obsessed with and gratified by something that isn’t work. And it’s been a long road getting to that point.VirginiaI relate to that, too. I think for me gardening was one of the first ways I enjoyed being in my body in a non diet-y, non-punitive way. So there’s a lot of healing that happened for me that way. I definitely relate to the flow state and to having an obsession that’s not work related, though here we are both bringing it into our work.AnneI know and I was mindful of that. I was like, am I just monetizing my hobby? No, I just actually want to talk about this all the time. VirginiaI think, too, for me, there’s such a visceral joy I get when my poppies bloom, when my dahlias bloom, when these things that I’ve worked for and waited for it. I’m definitely someone to who can be like a little compulsive about shopping or wanting and craving, and the garden is a place where I can have that need met.Of course, there is shopping because there is there’s buying way too many plants every spring, which I always do. But there’s also the reward of like, oh, there it is, like there’s that beautiful moment of beauty that I wanted.AnneBut also teaching us patience, too. My dahlias are about to bloom, because we’re different zone, and every day I walk up and I’m like, are you gonna do it yet? VirginiaWhat do we think guys? Anyone? Anyone?AnneLike waiting for stuff to come up in the spring? It’s just so delightful.VirginiaYes. Yeah, that is true.Well, this was delightful. I’m so glad we did that. ButterAnneI get a lot of books in the mail from people just because I feature a lot of books in my newsletter. Sometimes you pick up a random one that comes in the mail and it’s just amazing. This one arrived on Friday and I started reading it that night. And like, I feel like the book is devouring me instead of me devouring the book. It’s a gothic feminist mystery set in on the cliffs of coastal England. And it’s set in 1970 and it’s about, like, something’s wrong with the house.VirginiaOh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Can you give us the title?AnneI haven’t finished yet. A Good House for Children.VirginiaAnd who is it by?AnneKate Collins, a first time author. Really beautifully written. Sometimes you’re like, oh, this is a great genre book, but writing is a little formulaic. This, the writing is, I think, actually really exquisite. So I highly recommend. VirginiaI can’t wait, I can’t wait.I’m going to recommend a house thing, which is my new obsession. I’ve only bought two and I feel like that’s real restraint for me. It’s these throw pillows from Anchal Project. My sister can be blamed for this new obsession, she turned me on to it.It’s like a very ethically made awesome company. I think it’s kind of like East Fork but for textiles. Oh, and they’re just so pretty. They are pricey, but think of this as like slow fashion. You are investing in people being well paid for talented, skilled labor and it’s important. I’m obsessed with the geometric stitch throw pillows. I just got the offset lumbar.AnneI like the stamp throw one. Virginia. They’re just all really pretty really beautifully made. Again, obviously an investment. This is not your Target throw pillow, which I also own many of. I put them in a room the children don’t go in much because I don’t need melted chocolate chips ruining one of these. But if you’re looking for a really beautiful present for someone or yourself, it’s a cool company. They have clothes, they have bags, and I’m pretty into it. AnneI’m totally getting one of those. VirginiaI feel like it’d be right up your alley.AnneI just have to be okay with a modicum of dog hair on everything. VirginiaYeah, there’s that.Well, this was so much fun. Tell listeners where we can we can support your work. Obviously, everyone needs to go get on the garden study list.AnneYeah. So the way to sign up for garden study, if that’s something that’s up your alley, here is the post that tells you how to do it. It is a subset, an opt-in subset of Culture Study, which is my newsletter. So if you subscribe to just Culture Study, you’re not going to get it. You have to opt in. It is just delightful. The comments are for subscribers only and every comment section is already just…VirginiaIt’s amazing. AnneAnd we’re going to have periodic threads where people troubleshoot things that they want to grapple with in their gardens or just like talk about their nerdy favorite plant. It’s a place for us. VirginiaIt’s a place for us. We needed a place. Thank you. I’m so excited. And we will continue to brainstorm our collaboration. Maybe it’s you being a frequent podcast guests for occasional garden study on the Burnt Toast podcast. AnneI would love that.

Topics discussed in this podcast include power lifting, sugar-y breakfast cereals, long hair rules, fat swim talk, anxiety and preparation for a weightlifting meet, attending a fat pool party and summer experiences, teaching table manners and dealing with annoying eating habits, and a parent's struggle with setting food limits for their son.

Laura Thomas, PhD, a Registered Nutritionist specializing in responsive feeding and anti-diet, body affirming nutrition, joins Virginia for a two-part discussion on Ultra Processed Foods. They delve into topics such as the qualities of ultra processed foods, the impact on mental health outcomes, effects on A1C and cholesterol levels, the origins of Michelle Obama's fight against childhood obesity, and the joy of visiting local ice cream places with family and pets.

Welcome to Part 1 of our two-parter on Ultra Processed Foods! Virginia is chatting with Laura Thomas, PhD, a Registered Nutritionist who specializes in responsive feeding and anti-diet, body affirming nutrition. Her work centers on helping parents and families end inter-generation dieting and body shame, and work towards a greater sense of embodiment and ease in their relationship with food. She runs the Substack and podcast Can I Have Another Snack?, and is the author of two books; Just Eat It and How to Just Eat It.If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber to get all of Virginia's reporting and bonus subscriber-only episodes.Disclaimer: Virginia is a journalist and human with a lot of informed opinions. Virginia is not a nutritionist, therapist, doctor, or any kind of health care provider. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions she gives are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.BUTTER & OTHER LINKSLaura's three part series on UPFsVirginia on processed foods here and therelabor rights violations for Amy’s workersFAT TALK is out! Order your signed copy from Virginia's favorite independent bookstore, Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the US!). Or order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, or Kobo or anywhere else you like to buy books. You can also order the audio book from Libro.fm or Audible.CREDITSThe Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia 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!Episode 101 TranscriptLauraI am a Registered nutritionist. I’m based in London, I did live in the States for a while, which is why I’ve got this super messed up accent. All your listeners will be like, where is she from? I grew up in Scotland, lived in the States, and now live in London.I split my time between clinical work, which is focused on family nutrition—I do a lot of work around responsive feeding in kids who have feeding differences, working with families where they’re just stressed about mealtimes with their kids, and also helping parents sort through their own stuff with food and body image. And then I also run a Substack called Can I Have Another Snack? which takes up a lot of time, as I know you know. VirginiaYes. So I basically begged you to come on the podcast to talk about your three part series about ultra processed foods. This is one of those topics I get so many questions about.I’ve reported it out a little bit here and there. And I definitely feel, just as a person in the trenches feeding kids, that I have figured out my own values around this, which is helpful and we may get into talking about that. But I’m not a dietitian or nutritionist. I haven’t done a deep dive of the literature. So when I saw you were doing this series, I was like, thank you, Laura!So everybody, your homework is to go read all three pieces and subscribe to Can I Have Another Snack?. But just as a starting point:Laura, what is an ultra processed food? And why is it so hard for us to agree on that definition?LauraI don’t think we can talk about the definition of an ultra processed food without talking about the NOVA classification system. There are a few different classification systems that have attempted to try and nail down what exactly an ultra processed food is. But what has been most widely accepted in the literature and what we’re seeing a lot of the studies and the headlines coming out about now is something called the NOVA classification system that was developed in 2009 by this Brazilian dude called Carlos Monteiro. NOVA really annoyingly does not stand for anything, it’s not an acronym. That really fucks me up.Carlos is nutrition researcher, he and his team came up with a system whereby he defines four different levels of food processing. So I’m going to walk you through the four different groups. Group 1 is called “unprocessed foods.” This includes anything from a plant, an animal, or a fungus. So that could be fruits and vegetables. It’s eggs and meat. It can be grains, like oats or rice or wheat. It can be chilled or frozen fruits and vegetables without salt or oil added. Basically, it’s any raw ingredient that you could buy from the supermarket or that you could pull straight out of the ground or pick from a tree, that kind of thing.VirginiaSo, oats but not oatmeal or oat bars? Like, just the oats.LauraExactly that, but that’s an important clarification.Then within this unprocessed foods category, there’s this minimally processed subcategory, which are things that are pickled or fermented from those raw ingredients. So, that’s group one.VirginiaI feel like they’re already finding weird loopholes that pickled things are part of group one, but okay, keep going.LauraHonestly, it’s a minefield.Group 2 are processed culinary ingredients. So these are ingredients that are derived from group one. It can be oils, from like olives or sunflower. It can be salt, spices, herbs, lard, butter, honey, maple syrup, that kind of stuff. They’re kind of like extracts or derived from those group one, minimally processed or unprocessed foods.VirginiaGot it.LauraGroup 3, you can think of as group one plus group two, mixed together. And these are called processed foods. It can be anything from fresh bread that you buy at a bakery to cheese that has been fermented and goes through the whole conversion from milk into cheese.But also, it includes virtually anything you make yourself at home or anything that you would buy in a restaurant, right? Because it’s taking those fresh ingredients, plus those culinary ingredients like salts and fats and sugars, and transforming them into what you and I would recognize as a meal.So I think the point that I want people to understand is that the vast majority of the food that we’re eating, even if we’re cooking it by ourselves at home from ingredients that we’ve picked up at the farmers market or the periphery of the grocery store or  whatever, unless we’ve gone and pulled a carrot out of the ground, it’s a processed food.VirginiaProcessed is just another way of saying cooked. Like, processed foods are meals. LauraYeah. Pretty much, unless you’re eating a raw apple.VirginiaAs a meal.LauraIt’s not even a snack. But if you’re dipping your apple in some peanut butter, that’s a processed food.VirginiaGot it. Okay.LauraSo then we get to Group 4, which is ultra processed foods. Now, they’ve tried to pin down a definition, but there are a lot of different criteria. And the bar for what constitutes an ultra processed food is actually really low. So in terms of a technical definition, an ultra processed food is a food that is derived from Group 1 foods. So for example, whey or casein protein that is taken from milk or gluten taken from whole wheat flour—these things would be considered an ultra processed food. So, an ultra processed food is something that contains ingredients derived from whole food products or contains additives that are intended to either imitate or enhance the sensory qualities of food. So, already it’s such a vague definition. VirginiaAgain… cooking.LauraVirtually anything that you would add to a food to make it taste better, those are part of the definition. Another part of the definition is the type of processing that a food has undergone. So things like hydrogenation, extrusion, molding, these are not things that we’re doing at home really, in our kitchen. So it’s essentially anything that is made in a factory, like cornflakes or Cheerios have to go through some sort of extrusion process. A granola bar has to go through like a molding process. So again, some of these common everyday foods are actually ultra processed foods.The third criteria for what constitutes an ultra processed food is that it has to be a branded food product. That means that it comes in a package. It’s convenient. There’s little or minimal cooking and it is marketed somehow at you. Whether that’s through the packaging, whether that’s through a nutrition claim like a health halo type thing. The food manufacturers are doing what they can to try and get you to eat that food.VirginiaRight. Okay.LauraSo there is this really big vague definition which means that the bar for what actually counts as an ultra processed food is really low. You could argue, for example, that a natural peanut butter, which has been pulverized within an inch of its life, you could argue that that’s an ultra processed food.VirginiaThat’s funny, one of the reader questions was, “Is the smashed natural peanut butter better for me than Jif?” And what you’re saying is that they would likely be in the same category. LauraThey would both be ultra processed foods. So it can end up lumping really disparate foods together. So, like I said, Cheerios and supermarket bread that you might buy or bagels, or whatever it might be are alongside like Haribo. I’m trying to think of an American appropriate food.VirginiaCheetos. Flaming Hot Cheetos. LauraYes, exactly.VirginiaSo that is really interesting because it does show all of the media conversations around ultra processed foods are trying to alert us to these threats, like this is this dangerous category of foods you need to be cutting out—which we can talk separately about, like, is that even a helpful strategy for nutrition? But that’s the goal is to fear-monger around all of these foods. And what you’re saying is: If you were really going to use the definition that they’ve laid out, you’d be cutting out like 75 percent of the grocery store.LauraYeah, pretty much. And I think it’s interesting that you say that it’s creating a lot of fear and stress about the food and anxiety about the food that we’re eating, which I think is true. But one thing that I keep coming back to is that NOVA in and of itself wasn’t designed as a hierarchy. But we, in our twisted diet culture brains, have weaponized it as a hierarchy. Because if you think of it from a nutrition perspective, like I said, lard is in Group 2. White rice and white flour are in group one right now. I’m not saying that they’re a bad food, but I don’t think we would also argue that they’re like a health food. But they’re in Groups 1 and 2. So we’ve kind of manipulated it into a hierarchy, but that’s not necessarily what it means.VirginiaIt’s sort of like what we’ve done with growth charts, right? Like, growth charts are just meant to track what percentage point your kid is relative to their peers, like they’re bigger than 80 percent of kids or they’re only bigger than 20 percent of kids. And we attach all this meaning to what those points mean and where’s the good part of the growth chart to be.Well, poor NOVA, I feel bad for Carlos that this work got distorted if that was not the intention.LauraI think he has a part to play in this because he really has pushed this agenda in Brazil. Now the NOVA classification is being used alongside or is sort of amalgamated into the dietary guidelines of Brazil, which I don’t I don’t think is a helpful move.VirginiaIt’s clear from the way you’ve explained the categories and which foods end up in which groups, but it feels important to say very clearly that ‘processed’ is not synonymous with ‘has no nutrition,’ and that actually processing foods is a good thing to do in order to eat, right? LauraAll forms of cooking are process. So unless you want to go down some raw vegan path, you can’t really avoid processing your food to some extent. Now, advocates of NOVA I think would say that’s a bit of a red herring because what we’re actually talking about is this additional level of processing, this ultra processing phenomenon.But even within that category, I think there are merits to processing, even ultra processing, our foods. One of the things that happens when we process food is we extend the shelf life of it. And that means that we are wasting less food overall which I think we would all agree is probably a helpful thing.Industrial food processing also reduces foodborne pathogens. It reduces microbes that would spoil food and make it turn rancid faster.It also significantly cuts down on the time and labor that it requires to cook a meal. And for me, as a parent, and I know for you as well, that’s huge. VirginiaIt’s really everything, honestly, for me personally. Limiting the amount of time I spend cooking dinner is the thing that enables me to eat dinner with my family at night.LauraBut it’s not just super privileged white women that have a lot of nutrition knowledge who benefit from ultra processed foods. I’m also thinking about kids with feeding disorders that would struggle to get all the nutrition that they need without processed foods. I’m thinking about elderly or disabled people who can maintain a level of independence because they can quickly cook some pasta and throw an ultra processed jar of pasta sauce on that and have a nourishing meal. I’m thinking about pregnant people who otherwise might not be able to stomach eating because of morning sickness and nausea—which we know lasts forever, not just the morning.There are so many groups of people that benefit from ultra processed foods and they just seem to be missing entirely from the conversation around these foods.VirginiaSo often there’s this message, “We have to just get poor people cooking more, get them cooking more.” But if you live in a shelter, you don’t have a kitchen. If you are crashing on a couch with family members, in a house with lots of different people and it’s not easy for you to get time in the kitchen. There are so many different scenarios where cooking is not a practical solution and having greater shelf stability is very important.LauraIt also says a lot about where we place our values, right? And who is making decisions about where we put our values, because it’s not everyone’s value system to spend more time cooking from scratch, right? And buying fresh ingredients and spending more time in the kitchen.There’s a line that Carlos Monteiro wrote in a scientific paper and I legitimately cannot understand how this passed peer review because it’s so much about judgment rather than objective scientific argument, where he basically is saying that ultra processed foods prevent families from eating together. And he talks about ultra processed foods as though they’re the undoing of family meals.VirginiaOh, Carlos. No, no, no, no, no.LauraAnd aside from the fact that for me, and I think for you, and probably a lot of people listening, ultra processed foods save family dinners.VirginiaLiterally how I’m achieving it. Literally how I’m getting it done. LauraBut again, it’s like who’s determining how we should be eating and you know what our values are around food and eating? VirginiaYou have a great line in part two of the series:My argument is not that we don’t need to change the food system. My argument is that the headlines have leapfrogged science, allowing people in places of power and privilege to create fear and shame about the food we eat. This keeps us focused on food as the issue, rather than the social, political, and structural forces that shape our lives and our experiences of wellbeing.It just feels like exactly what we’re getting at here. We are letting this one set of values and this real laser focus on food as a moral concept get in the way of actually thinking about people’s lives.LauraAgain, the conversation is just reducing our health and wellbeing down to how processed or otherwise our food is. To me it feels symptomatic of these much deeper sociocultural political problems that we’re facing and just a red herring for deeper structural issues that that need addressing.This is not going to sound like a big number in American terms, but in the UK, in England alone, there’s something like 4 million food insecure children who just simply do not have enough food to eat in a cost of living crisis. I think public health nutrition should be focusing on universal free school meals for those kids and making sure that they have provisions in breakfast clubs and after school clubs, rather than quibbling over whether Weetabix or a can of baked beans is an ultra processed food.VirginiaAnother question that I get often is, “But what about the fact that these processed foods are being produced in ways that are really bad for the environment?” There are huge workers rights violations happening in the factories in the fields. These are human rights issues in terms of how these foods are getting made.I was thinking about this yesterday. My 9-year-old who has a traumatic feeding history and is still a very cautious selective eater, one of her staples is Amy’s frozen bean and cheese burritos. It has to be the Amy’s brand. We cannot substitute brands. It has to be the bean and cheese. It cannot be a different flavor. These burritos are not inexpensive, but we put a good part of our grocery budget towards them because she will eat one every day and it’s a safe food and it’s covering a lot of nutritional bases for her. It’s a great meal for her.But this whole thing that just came out about labor rights violations for Amy’s workers. A friend sent it to me and was like, “we’re so bummed, we’re gonna give up eating them.” Her wife also loves the burritos. She was not at all saying that Violet should, but I just thought, this is not a fair game. I should not have to be thinking, well now I’m buying a product that is contributing to the exploitation of people in order to feed my child lunch. Both of these things matter.LauraThere is no ethical consumption under capitalism, right? The thing that I’ve come to recognize while researching and writing this piece is that there’s exploitation and domination at every single level of the food system, regardless of whether that food is ultra processed or not. Just confining that argument to ultra processed foods, I think, is missing the point because it’s the entirety of the food system, even if we were just eating corn straight off the cob.VirginiaThe people picking the corn are still being exploited. LauraThis is the part that I found most disturbing and upsetting when I was writing was the human human rights violations. And I don’t have an answer to that. I don’t know how we reconcile that. This comes up a lot inCan I Have Another Snack?as well. How can we hold companies and businesses and systems accountable?Because what you’re saying is making it an individual responsibility. We need systemic change and we need systemic action. There are certainly things that I do that where I think, okay, this feels like a more ethical decision than this other decision. But we all have to make these compromises somewhere along the lines. And that’s not letting those companies off the hook. Since this piece published last month, I’ve had so many invitations from the food industry like, oh, come to this roundtable talk or this panel. I’m like, I’m not here to defend you.My one bias in this whole thing is that I’m a nutritionist and I want people to be nourished. That’s my only bias. I am not a shill for the food industry. I’m not here to make you feel better about the shitty things that you’re doing. But I am here to relieve guilt and shame and stigma and judgment about the food choices that we’re making. The person that is eating this food is not responsible for the shitty practices and systems and policies in place.VirginiaAnd the ability to participate in a boycott, to say “I’m going to shop differently and try to only support the most ethical brands I can,” involves a ton of privilege. That is not an option that’s available for me with my 9-year-old right now, because this is her lunch, and I’m not going to take away her lunch. But we try really hard to source ethical coffee because only my husband and I drink it and because we have the financial privilege to be super bougie about our coffee. But that’s not a solution to the fact that coffee workers are treated so terribly—it’s a drop in the bucket. It really does strike me as using a diet culture mindset to solve these problems.LauraAnytime there’s a binary, I get really skeptical. We can say, “I don’t feel great about buying this product and I’m going to write to my representatives,” or whatever you can do within the means that you have and within the resources that you have available to you.VirginiaYeah, that’s a great point. I think it is important to say that I’m not letting us all off the hook and I don’t think Laura is either. I’m not saying we can just sit back and let it all be terrible because my kid needs to get this burrito. I need to find out if there’s a workers rights fund for that company. Can I donate to their strike in some way? That I would love to do. We need to think more creatively about how we can show up on these issues and not just make it about “my grocery list needs to get a gold star on this.” Because we’re never going to achieve that. I also want to drill in a little more on the nutrition piece of this. We’ve been talking about how this category is too broad. It’s super messy. You’ve got my pasta sauce and my Flaming Hot Cheetos all in there. But a lot of folks are going to say okay, but we can all clearly see that the Flaming Hot Cheetos are not nutrition and the pasta sauce is or whatever. I mean, maybe some people would also question my pasta sauce choice, I don’t know.Would it be more useful to develop a fifth category? Does the system need to be more rigid and have a clear category of what we really mean when we talk about ultra processed foods? Or is that also not actually serving us to keep categorizing in this way?LauraI don’t think a fifth category would be helpful because I come back to the idea that this was never intended to be a personal project. This system of categorization in its original inception was designed to be a tool for public health and nutrition researchers to use to study patterns in the diet over time. When we’re not imbuing it with social meaning, I think there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. But I think it’s when we apply it to our personal lives it becomes this hierarchy where you say that we get a gold star if we only have foods from group one and two, which, as we just talked about, is virtually impossible. That’s where it becomes a problem. The evidence around ultra processed foods is not as clear cut as I think the headlines are reporting. VirginiaYes. LauraThis is what I talked about in part two of my series. I spoke withEmily Oster, who helped walk me through some of the problems with these big observational studies that we have around ultra processed foods. There’s been this explosion in the literature in the past five years around ultra processed foods where they are linking ultra processed foods to type two diabetes, to cardiovascular disease, to cancers, to all kinds of really terrifying, scary health outcomes. But even though I say there’s been an explosion in literature, there are actually very few meta-analyses, which is the top tier gold standard study to ratify some of these smaller observational studies. So that’s one problem.VirginiaAnother problem is the media reports on those small observational studies as if they are gold standard meta-analyses involving 5 million people. They’re not saying, “This is extremely new data and we haven’t replicated it very much.” They never give that framing. And that’s why we see the anxiety rise, because it’s all presented as if it’s equally valid data.LauraThere’s a lot of hyperbole and there’s a lot of conjecture in the media reports that I’m seeing because we do have a couple of meta analyses, but they’re not exactly showing these huge effect sizes that we’re seeing in the reporting. The way that it’s been talked about in the reporting is kind of leapfrogging what the the findings of these studies are. So it’s not that there is no effect whatsoever with ultra processed food. I think it’s more about the magnitude of this effect where there’s a disconnect.VirginiaSay more about that.LauraSo, mostly, what you are seeing reported in these studies, is a relative risk. Let’s say for argument’s sake, Virginia, your diet is less than 25% ultra processed food and I’m in the 75% and up group. So I’m in the highest quarter, you’re in the lowest quarter. What these studies are saying—and I’m plucking these numbers out of thin air—is they they might say that my risk of whatever disease is 30% higher than yours. So that’s telling us about the relative risk between you and me. What it’s not telling us is our absolute risk. So if you’re, if you’re starting risk is 2% and mines is 30% more than 2%—I can’t even do that math. It is tiny.VirginiaIt hasn’t even doubled. We’re not even at 4%.LauraExactly. So if we’re reporting the relative risk or the odds ratio, you don’t need to worry about that. But it means that picture is misconstrued as being much, much worse than it might actually be. So that’s one issue that we have with this science. The second issue is that when we look at people in the 25% lowest intake of ultra processed food versus the 75% and higher intake, the people in those groups are different on virtually every single metric that we’re measuring them on. They’re different in terms of family history of things like cancer and heart disease and type two diabetes. They have different incomes, different education levels, they live in different housing, the safety of their neighborhoods is different. They’re just very, very different on virtually every other metric. So we can’t tease apart whether or not that increased relative risk is due to the food that they’re eating or some other variable that we haven’t adjusted for in our statistical modeling. That’s called a confounding or it’s a residual variable.VirginiaSo important.LauraThat’s true of most big observational nutrition studies, not just in ultra processed foods. There are a lot of holes in nutritional research.VirginiaAcross the board.LauraI don’t think it’s wrong to say that if we have a diet high in fruit and vegetables and whole grains, that we will generally have better health outcomes. But it might also be because of some other factor that we’re not measuring. It is probably both. It’s probably partly the food that we’re eating, but also all these other variables like stress, social connection, income, education—all of these other thingsVirginiaAccess to health care.LauraOur experience of anti-fat bias and discrimination, of racism. All of these things are not accounted for in these studies.VirginiaI think this is the thing that feels hardest to communicate, because when we’re talking about ultra processed foods—really, anytime there’s a food bad guy. When it’s carb fear, when it’s sugar fear, when it was fat, the conversation narrows down to talking about that one food in this very unhelpful way. And it’s hard to open the conversation back up. So I really appreciate you laying all that out.This is a topic that comes up at dinners with extended family members. This is a topic that comes up in the doctor’s office where there is this immediate shaming, knee jerk reaction of “Oh, sure, intuitive eating sounds nice but you don’t mean you can just eat as much junk food as you want.” You know, “you don’t mean you can just eat processed foods.”It’s just so important for all of us to hold, even if you can’t say it all in the moment, the science is not as set as people think on this. There are a lot of big questions that we have not answered. And we are drawing majorly speculative conclusions from this data.LauraAnd nutrition isn’t all or nothing. There’s space in our diets for ultra processed food and it doesn’t mean that we are suddenly not eating any fresh foods. That conversation gets tricky as well because there are also some people that have absolutely no choice but to eat ultra processed foods.Again, my bias as a nutritionist is how can we make sure that they are getting all the nutrition they need from those ultra processed foods? There was a study that came out from some Australian researchers which found that if we were to remove ultra processed foods from the diet, because a high proportion of ultra processed foods are fortified with really important nutrients, essential nutrients, that we would actually be putting more people at risk of deficiency. VirginiaThat’s a great point.LauraDoctors are lumping all ultra processed foods together and doing a lot of hand wringing around them when in actual fact, that can be a really important source of nutrients for a lot of people.VirginiaThis is why we don’t have scurvy anymore, guys. It’s a good thing!And I want to name very clearly the classism and the racism bound up in this. There’s a reason I’m drawing out Flaming Hot Cheetos as the example here, right? There’s a knee jerk assumption in public health and the larger discourse around this topic, that certain groups of people are only eating a certain category within the ultra processed foods category. And there’s no examination of A. if that’s even true? Because it’s most likely absolutely not true. And B. what factors might be creating the circumstances. Like, what is driving that? It’s not just people’s ignorance.LauraI think that this is the piece that public health nutrition seem to be missing. When I was researching this, I subjected myself to a lot of continuing professional development, webinars and seminars and things. I sat in on webinars by my colleagues going through ultra processed foods and talking about all of the things that are mentioned about the problems around classification, and how they’re an important source of nutrients for some people. There was this thread running through their conversations of we need to be really careful because people rely on ultra processed foods because they’re really busy. We’re really stressed in our lives and they’re convenient. And that’s where that thread stopped.And I was like, Come on, let’s tug on that a bit more. Pull that thread a bit further. Why are people stressed? Why don’t they have time to cook? I mean, and setting aside that that’s not necessarily everyone’s values, right? But what is going on, what is driving this phenomenon? And we have to bring it back to late stage capitalism, the disillusion of community, hyper individuality, the fact that we have to sell our labor for eight, ten, twelve hours a day, that we don’t have the systems of care and community in place that we that we might otherwise have that help us feed each other, help us nourish each other. And I think unless we are addressing these underlying systems, then we aren’t going to get to a place where Cheetos or whatever other food it is something that you could take or leave. Rather than it being something you have to eat out of necessity.VirginiaYou’re saying it is great to acknowledge that convenience foods are necessary, that people are busy and that we rely on these things. But what if we shift our focus as a public health community to looking at why is this much convenience necessary? What other supports do they need in their lives? Because it’s probably affordable childcare. We’re making the problem Cheetos or ramen noodles, we’re making that the problem when it’s all these other issues.There’s also the classism and racism bound up in who we think is entitled to pleasure with food and who we think is entitled to a break. Why does it feel more comfortable to see a white mom on Instagram making homemade popsicles for her kids and it doesn’t feel comfortable to see a Black mom in a bodega buying slushies? How much and who we think deserves that moment of connection and fun? Who we think deserves fun with food.LauraYeah, 100 percent. There are so many layers to it. It feels like it’s just not really about the food. It’s about all of these other deeper sociopolitical and structural inequalities that determine our health and wellbeing.VirginiaWell, this has been a mind blowingly helpful conversation. I so appreciate you walking us through your extremely extensive research on this. I think a lot of people are going to be coming away just having a lot of this reframed in really useful ways. So thank you so much for this.LauraSure. I hope I have clarified things rather than made things more confusing, but I promise in the pieces that I’ve written, I’ve done little crib sheets so that things are a little more digestible.ButterLauraMy butter is birthday trees. My baby just turned three and we’ve just taken down his birthday tree. This kind of started off as a joke with my nephew where when he was a little younger—he’s like four or five—we were trying to punk my sister in law by saying to our nephew that when you have a birthday, you put up a birthday tree like Jesus does at Christmas.VirginiaYour sister in law was like, thank you for this. LauraHe didn’t do what we were hoping that he would do it and never materialized, so we decided to take this one step further and invest in one when we had our kid, invest in a bright pink snow covered Christmas tree that comes out for everyone’s birthday in our house. So mine, my husband, and my kids. We put all the birthday presents under it and it’s just part of the decoration. Don’t get me wrong, it’s extra. Nobody needs to do that. But it’s fun. It’s just very joyful. And it’s fun to take pictures of Avery next to the the birthday tree.VirginiaOh, this is magical! Do you decorate it with ornaments?LauraOh, God no. I have some string battery lights that say Happy Birthday and if you’re lucky I will put them on it. But no, that’s too much.VirginiaI love a low key birthday tradition. Because he’s only three, but as he gets older this will be the thing that makes him feel like his birthday is super special.Our a family birthday tradition is that you get ice cream in bed on your birthday and again, pretty low key. I can do it on a weekday even when we have school because I’m just scooping out your ice cream and bringing it to you on bed. It’s not a big elaborate thing. It’s sort of a farce when it’s my birthday because I wake up the earliest and I have to go back to bed. I go downstairs and I have my coffee and my breakfast and I go back to bed so then they bring it into me.But it’s been cool. I actually remember my younger daughter sobbing the first time we came in with the birthday ice cream because she was just turning three and she just wasn’t expecting it. It threw off her routine. She was like, “What are you doing? I just want to come downstairs.” So it can feel wonky in the beginning, but now at five and nine, it’s cemented we will bring the birthday ice cream. They are so into it.LauraIt’s really fun. I highly recommend the Birthday Tree.VirginiaI kind of want to steal it. I love it.LauraSteal it. I will take the ice cream breakfast.VirginiaBut also we don’t need two birthday traditions because now we’re making our lives hard. I’ll just enjoy yours.My butter this week, speaking of breakfast, is that it is finally warm enough to eat breakfast outside on my front porch, which is an annual source of major joy in my life because it’s just quiet and I can see my garden and there are birds. Every year I get so excited because it takes a while where we live to get warm enough early in the morning. So I spend most of April and May checking the temperature and I’ll be out there in like a big sweater and a coat.LauraIn your Uggs.VirginiaBut we’re finally reliably getting into warm enough mornings and it just brings me a lot of joy.LauraOh I love summer and spring in New York. They’re so nice after that fucking knee high snow in December and January.VirginiaYeah, we work for it.---No Burnt Toast Bookshop links because they aren’t available in American indie bookstores, alas! But American listeners may have luck on Amazon.