The Burnt Toast Podcast

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.

In this episode, the hosts discuss weight loss, anti-fat bias, and the challenges of making dietary changes. They also talk about their summer plans for Pride week, discuss gardening tips for dahlias, and share strategies for reframing dietary restrictions. One interesting topic they address is the use of weight loss drugs with children and the importance of avoiding toxic conversations around size.

Today Virginia is chatting with Kyle Ganson, PhD, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work who studies eating disorders in boys and young men. This is an episode a lot of you have been asking for—we don’t talk enough about boys and how they struggle with all of these issues. 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.Content Warning: We talk about specific disordered eating behaviors and eating disorder symptoms in this episode. If any of that is going to be tricky for you, feel free to skip.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 LINKSChapter Nine of Fat TalkCanadian Study of Adolescent Health BehaviorsJessica Wilson on Burnt ToastCloud Cuckoo LandTomorrow, and Tomorrow, and TomorrowFAT 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 99KyleI’ve long had this experience of being in clinical spaces with women with eating disorders and just wondering, like: Where are all the guys? What’s going on here? This is not what I hear when I talk to other males about their bodies or how they feel about themselves or their eating practices. It didn’t really align with what I was hearing with my friend groups or people I would speak to. That led me towards the path of researching eating disorders among the male population.VirginiaSo we met when I interviewed you for Chapter Nine of Fat Talk about your research on dads and their role in eating disorder treatment. I have to say: That chapter really did require me to put aside a lot of my own biases and preconceived notions and to realize I had been assuming that eating disorders were an exclusively female or gender-nonconforming experience. Which is very incorrect.Let’s talk about that a little bit. Why do you think we are so quick to assume that these are issues that men and boys just don’t struggle with?KyleIt’s such a great question and you’re certainly not alone with those preconceived notions of how we think about eating disorders. I think if people who are listening also have that thought or are surprised by that, I think that’s totally okay and totally normal.I think there’s a couple of different factors here. One of them is certainly just media and how we’ve described people with eating disorders in popular culture has often been mostly women, mostly affluent females, white females, young females, adolescents, young adults. So that’s number one. And secondly, I think another piece of it is research and clinical spaces, which obviously do reflect a bit of the culture but also reflect what we see in the culture.Consider the diagnostic criteria for anorexia: Up until very recently, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual actually required amenorrhea, which is loss of periods, in order to be diagnosed with anorexia. So, a male prior to 2013 actually could not be diagnosed with anorexia because they technically don’t lose their period. So, that’s a huge piece of the puzzle that we often overlook and don’t think about.Males are just less likely to complain about their bodies, talk about their bodies, get support around body image and food, just because the spaces where we treat people are not so much focused on the male experience. And again, that’s changed a bit more recently. But it’s still a hard process to get males in the door. And last is socialization. It goes back to culture of course, too, but females are often more socialized to talk about feelings and food and body. Whereas males—and I think we could talk about gender as being a lot more diverse than that—but males are a lot more focused on the performance of their bodies. When you watch a sporting event, you always see statistics about males bodies, like how big they are, how strong they are, how fast they can run. Whereas females are much more criticized based on their physical appearance as far as aesthetic purposes. I think that kind of differentiation also allows males to fall into this different bucket where they may not be perceived as having a problem because that male is just exercising to become faster in their sport or stronger in their sport or to be able to lift this amount of weight or have the six pack abs. I think that’s a little bit different than the female experienceVirginiaThat feels like a really important reframe. So, you’re saying women and girls are subjected to these aesthetic standards about bodies. Men have maybe less of the aesthetic focus and more of the output, the what can your body do? What can you lift, all of that? But that is allowing us to ignore that that can also be a driver of disorders.KyleTotally, absolutely. I think that’s a big part of it. And not to say that males don’t experience aesthetic pressures! I think you’ve probably seen more of that recently, especially since the advent of social media. And obviously, males have been sexualized in popular culture, as well, of course.But I do think that generally it’s a lot more based on how male bodies can perform. That does drive some of the behaviors that they engage in, like excessive exercising or use of performance enhancers, which, again, obviously has an aesthetic approach to it. There are aesthetic purposes and aesthetic repercussions, I’d say, but there is also a lot of driving for performative aspects of their bodies.VirginiaI’m just thinking how often we normalize men’s relationship with exercise because we’re like, “Oh, they just really care about their running time.” That allows us to ignore the fact that there might be something disordered about caring that much about your running time or your triathlon performance or whatever it is. We’ll be like, “Oh, but it’s not about body image so it’s not the same thing.” KyleSame thing with eating behaviors. I think we often overlook binge eating among males. I’ve heard this a lot in my prior clinical practice or even just in social and family relationship conversations. Like, “oh, he can sit down and eat a whole pint of ice cream and it’s no big deal.” That actually might be a bingeing behavior for that young male but because we socialize it as like, “He’s a male. He’s got a fast metabolism because he’s growing. He’s a teenager,” it becomes very okay for that behavior to happen and we just overlook it. Whereas, again, not to generalize, but if a female was doing the same behavior, there is probably a lot more emotion attached to that. That would be perceived as problematic, right? Like, “you can’t do that. You can’t eat that much. That’s not okay.” And I’m using quotation marks here—it’s not what I actually believe. But that would be framed in a very different way.I think that opens doors for males to engage in behaviors without much support and it does lead to this idea of males not even knowing they have a problem. They might engage in that behavior every night or a couple of times a week. In some of the qualitative interviews that we’ve seen, they don’t even know they have a problem. They’re like, “I just thought this is what I did.” And that’s a big problem. VirginiaNo one ever investigates the underlying stuff. What is the restriction that led to eating the pint of ice cream? No one is peeling back those layers for them in the same way.Your research has looked at some of the the behaviors that boys tend to engage in and so many of these things are just the vernacular of modern diet culture concepts, like cheat meals, bulking and cutting, intermittent fasting. What have you learned about how boys engage in this stuff? I’m also curious how we start to differentiate between what’s the culture and what’s the disorder—when maybe it’s a little bit all one and the same.KyleThe last part of that question is the never ending conundrum of what we’re trying to figure out. These behaviors that I’ve focused on have been very common in the popular culture for a while now, like cheat meals, bulking, cutting, intermittent fasting. For those of those listeners who don’t know, I’ll explain each of those as I go through them. Cheat meals are essentially a deviation from a typical dietary practice, generally more restrictive in some senses, where you might not allow yourself to eat like an entire pizza in one sitting or two or three Big Macs in one sitting. That is what the cheat meal is, it allows you a single meal, where you can “cheat” based on your restrictive diet.Now, in the muscle building community, cheat meals have actually become a catalyst for muscular growth and caloric overconsumption, again, to boost one’s ability to build muscle. I think that even goes for popular culture figures, like The Rock has often posted on Instagram his cheat meals, like what he eats. Social media has obviously been a huge driver of cheat meals. You can search #cheatmeals and see people’s images of what they’re eating.VirginiaGuys, don’t search it. It’s not worth it. But yes, it’s all over TikTok.KyleWe actually asked people their engagement, like what did they do? How much did they eat? Things of that nature. And what we found was actually 60 percent of boys and young men, aged 16 to 30 said they engaged in at least one cheat meal in the past year. That was pretty high across the sample. It was 54 percent or so for girls and young women and about 50 percent for transgender and gender expansive people. So it’s pretty common for people to engage in at least one cheat meal.And generally the foods that people are engaging in were sweet foods, calorically dense foods. We found that the people who engage in cheat meals were much more likely to experience eating disorder attitude and behaviors, in particular binge eating. So you can likely imagine that experience of a cheat meal is a binge eating episode where they might feel a loss of control. They might experience guilt as as consequence of engaging in the behavior. And then, of course, there’s oftentimes compensatory behaviors attached to that, as well. Participants reported engaging in compensatory behaviors, like purging. So it’s definitely wrapped up in that experience of eating disorder pathology. VirginiaIt’s so interesting because the concept of the cheat meal or the the rhetoric around it is very much like you’re giving yourself permission to enjoy these foods that you have restricted the rest of the week. Now you get to have them with no consequences. And it just goes to show how much the bias is all baked in. You can’t actually escape the consequences. Because if you weren’t restricting the whole week beforehand, you wouldn’t need the cheat meal, right? You wouldn’t need to frame it as this day of sin or whatever.KyleIt goes into a lot of things you’ve written about and talked about. Like, just allowing yourself to eat the foods that you want to eat alleviates you from this idea of having to engage in a “cheat meal” in order to eat the pizza. Allow yourself to eat the food that you want to eat, right? And hopefully avoid some of these problems that might be associated with it.VirginiaLet’s talk about bulking and cutting. Those are terms I hear and barely know what they are. KyleBulking and cutting are also very common in the muscle building community. Generally, it’s a similar sort of dietary practice where you oscillate between a bulking phase, which is generally a period of time where you consume more calories than you need and it’s coupled with muscle building exercise. So generally, people are weight training in this time and the point of it is to bulk up, to increase your muscle mass. And then that switches to what would be called the cutting phase, which is basically the opposite. It’s a caloric restriction and that then allows you to reduce the body fat you might have gained during the bulking phase without losing too much of the muscle mass that you’ve gained. VirginiaIt just sounds like so much to keep track of and manipulate and to constantly be objectifying your body in that way. I’m just feeling sad for people.KyleIt does include a lot obsessiveness around food and only allowing yourself to eat at particular places, kind of interfering with social activities, things of that nature. There are lots of problems attached to it for sure. We found that 50 percent of boys and young men reported engaging in at least one bulk and cut cycle in the past 12 months. So again, a pretty high percentage of them are manipulating their body in some capacity through bulking and cutting phases. And again, not surprisingly, we looked at different associated factors with bulking and cutting, and not surprisingly, eating disorder psychopathology, attitudes, and behaviors were associated with it. VirginiaLet’s quickly talk about muscle dysmorphia, because that might be a newer term for my audience. Can you define that and talk to us specifically about how it shows up for boys?KyleMuscle dysmorphia has previously been known as reverse anorexia, which might be the most easy way to understand it, even though it’s maybe not the best characterization. It’s the pathological pursuit of muscularity. The “reverse anorexia” part comes in because people with anorexia usually see themselves as larger than they actually are whereas people with muscle dysmorphia actually see themselves as smaller than they actually are. So, someone with muscle dysmorphia is actually usually quite large, quite strong, quite lean, quite cut, but they see themselves as being too small. It’s actually a specifier of body dysmorphic disorder. So it’s not really an eating disorder, per se, though it has a lot of eating disorder qualities to it, of course. The body image component, and a lot of dietary practices and pathological behaviors aimed at increasing musculature and strength.VirginiaWhat do we understand about treatment for it?KyleThat’s a great question. There is just a very, very, very small amount of literature on clinical samples of muscle dysmorphia. It’s actually a huge problem in the research community and the clinical community that we just don’t actually know what the best way to treat people with muscle dysmorphia is because we just don’t have a lot of clinical data on them. Most of the studies on muscle dysmorphia are gym goers or bodybuilders—again, not surprising those people would be at be at most risk for muscle dysmorphia.The study that I did, we did look at muscle dysmorphia. It’s one of the first real studies to look at an epidemiology sample like a community sample of young people and ask how does muscle dysmorphia present among that group. Again, not clinical muscle dysmorphia, but the symptomology, which would be like that drive for muscularity, appearance intolerance as it relates to one’s muscles, and then also functional impairment. So, how does their behaviors, their body image in relation to their muscle building, interfere with their ability to go to work and socialize and things of that nature? Even our data, it’s actually still lacking because it doesn’t really get at what actually works as far as treating this population.VirginiaAnd I’m sure to there are probably some comorbidities with anorexia or with other eating disorders, right? You’re trying to suss out what you’re treating and in some ways all these different labels can be problematic in the pursuit of actually helping people and seeing them for where they are.KyleRight. And you can imagine, male just aren’t socialized to talk about their bodies, to seek mental health treatment, period. And then think about a male in a bodybuilding gym who’s totally ripped and people are coming up to him and being like, “Hey, man, what’s your secret? You’re doing all the right things.” Like maybe they’re competing in bodybuilding and they’re winning or having that feedback loop that just keeps telling them they’re doing the right thing. It is going to be very hard to convince that person to go to treatment to get help for it, right?VirginiaWe love to reinforce people’s eating disorders, that seems universal across gender as something that just shows up. But that does make it so difficult. And I’m sure, too, there are ways in which it feels safer to exist in the world in that body. This starts to tie into issues of privilege, access. All of that probably comes into play as well. KyleMasculinity is hugely intertwined with muscularity. You can imagine that a male who wants to portray a certain level of masculinity and certain level of strength, a sort of dominance over other males and over females, would likely want to strive for that bigger, stronger body. There has been some research that has shown that people with muscle dysmorphia or even symptoms of muscle dysmorphia have had experiences of violence and victimization themselves or childhood adverse experiences. So, lots of trauma can be wrapped up in that, not to mention poly substance use and suicidality and all that kind of stuff. It’s definitely clinically a really complex issue that has multiple layers to it.VirginiaWhen we’re talking about men here, is your research looking mostly at straight men? At a mix of straight and gay? How does that all come into play? KyleThe study that I led, which is called the Canadian Study of Adolescent Health Behaviors, was about 2700 young people across all 13 provinces and territories in Canada. It’s also very demographically diverse. We actually have a lot of marginalized, racialized participants. There’s a large sample in the study of sexual and gender minorities. So we look at transgender and gender expansive people as well as gay, lesbian, queer, questioning, and other young people. Generally, when I’m speaking about boys and men, I’m speaking about cisgender boys and men. When I’m talking about girls and women, I’m generally speaking about cisgender girls and women. Referencing transgender or gender expansive people, that includes people who identify as not cisgender in some capacity and definitely includes a large sample of sexual minority young people as well.VirginiaSo do we see eating disorders among gay and queer boys and men playing out differently than straight boys and men?KyleYeah, certainly. Males who want to be more attractive to other males are certainly trying to achieve a body that’s going to do that. And similarly, for males who are attracted to females and want females to be attracted to them, they’re going to engage in certain behaviors. Same thing with the trans group, as well. People are going to engage in behaviors to align their body to be right. So, for example, a trans man might engage in a lot more body building and muscle building activities, where a trans female might engage in more thinness-oriented behaviors in order to potentially suppress sex characteristics and also to achieve that thin ideal which is more common among the female population.VirginiaAnd then, too, there is the question of if someone is trying to feel safe in their body, then we need gender affirming care for that person. We don’t want the disordered behaviors, of course, but it’s understandable to be trying to transition your body into the body that feels right for you.KyleIt’s multi-layered, right? That’s where the policy pieces and healthcare systems become really important. People are engaging in eating disorder behaviors for a reason. They’re not just doing it for fun. VirginiaGreat point. KyleThey’re engaging in it for mental health reasons, of course, especially for those marginalized groups as they’ve experienced minority stressors and discrimination, marginalization. They’re actually trying to manipulate their body in a way to make it feel and align more with the gender they are. If we can actually provide appropriate, evidence-based treatments in the healthcare system, that would probably do a lot of good.VirginiaI had Jessica Wilson on the podcast a few weeks ago. She’s a Black dietitian and body liberation activist and has a book about black women’s relationships with eating disorders. She challenges the idea that we even would label the behaviors as a disorder when someone is just trying to find safety in a marginalized body. I think about that all the time now.KyleIf we think about all disorders, they’re all ways of coping, a lot of times are about emotion regulation, about trauma. If people don’t have the resources to deal with their trauma or deal with their emotions, for various reasons—it could be internal resources, external resources, or just the social community they live in—they’re going to find ways to survive, right? It’s about survival.VirginiaAnd when we make it all about body image, we ignore all of those other factors that are at play. It feels like in the conversation around men and boys, we’re really just starting to scratch the surface on on all of those factors. KylePeople are multi-dimensional, right? There are gay men, there are straight men, there are Black men, there are white men. There are all of these different intersections and identities. We often talk about these things in generalizations when in reality, there are lots of layers and teasing out of details that we can’t even get at with data because it’s so granular and unique among certain populations. Oftentimes the boys and men who are furthest from that ideal, like the marginalized groups, the groups that perceive themselves to be less masculine based on hegemonic masculinity, those are the males that are most impacted.Like, it’s generally not the males who are aligning with the masculine and muscular ideal. It’s the males who aren’t, right? It’s maybe males who are in larger bodies or the males who are maybe more emotional than other males. Generally, those males are actually having a lot more distress as it relates to their body or how they present to engage in the world.VirginiaGhat feels really important to name. Now, of course, I’m thinking about all the parents and caregivers listening who are thinking about their sons and are freaking out, understandably. What should parents be looking for? How do you recommend parents start to engage with their sons on this topic?KyleSomething that I recommend for parents is this idea of respectful curiosity. It can be really quick to judge behaviors, it can be very quick to jump to conclusions about what certain behaviors mean or don’t mean. I think it’s this idea of respectful curiosity. It’s about asking questions, it’s about being present. Especially when we talk about boys and young men, they’re not really going to sit down across the table from you and tell that you how they feel about their body. That’s probably the last thing they’re going to do. I would say most of them probably aren’t going to do that.But what they might do is they might talk to you as you’re engaging in the activity with them or showing some curiosity about what they’re doing. I often say, join them. Like, join them in the process as much as you can. Maybe that means going to the gym with them. If that’s something you want to do or feel inclined to do. Noticing, like, “Oh, I’m seeing that you’re, using this whey protein supplement. Where did you learn about that? Tell me about it. I didn’t know that was a thing.” It’s not about accusing. It’s not about “Don’t do that.” It’s just about, like, “Hey, where did you learn about that? What does it do for you? How does it make you feel after you work out? Who told you about it? Where do you buy it?” Those types of things can be really, really important. Again, it’s not about accusing them. It’s just about gathering information and data. And then with that data, you can make decisions about what to do next.VirginiaI get the concept of joining them. On the other hand, some of these kids are going to be engaging with this stuff in dangerous ways. A common story that comes out in my reporting is the kid who says, “I wanted to lose weight. And my mother gave me a diet and we went on the diet together.”So how are we joining them without reinforcing what’s dangerous about it? How do we join them and then recognize when it’s something else?KyleThat’s a great point. I think when I’m saying “join them,” I’m coming from the stance of a parent who may not have any real insight or knowledge of their engagement in some of these behaviors. Like, they may just not really know. I think that’s where I’m talking about joining them.You can imagine, a lot of parents, like fathers for example, are coaches of sports teams or are helping the kid train because they see that their kid is a really good athlete and might be able to get a scholarship and that might make college a better possibility. There’s obviously lots of dreams about professional sports and all that stuff. So yeah, you can imagine that that would become a lot more complicated. In that stance, I think I don’t even know what the answer to that. It kind of just muddies the waters of being able to recognize what’s safe and not safe and what’s helpful and what’s not helpful. I think ultimately it is up to parents to hopefully be able to recognize some of the other symptoms that might be arising, which would be some of that like obsessiveness around one’s dietary practices or exercise routine. You might notice drops in educational performance or socializing becomes a lot less important or they’re not doing as much of it or they’ve lost some friends. Maybe they’re just generally seeming more depressed or low or their sleep has been kind of messed up or they are spending time on social media more. There are other ancillary symptoms that might be occurring which might be raising some flags around more serious mental health issues which I think parents should hopefully be thinking about as they potentially are joining them in more maladaptive or promoting some of the behaviors that they might be engaging in. Does that make sense? VirginiaIt does make sense. I think what’s useful to tease out here is: You might be aware your son seems disconnected socially, and depressed. But because of our social conditioning, you might not connect that to he’s going to the gym a lot, he started using protein powder, we’re making him smoothies. So what you’re saying is, pay attention to the whole picture and know that just because he is a boy he is not immune to all this stuff. This could be the underlying thing causing some other distress that you would need to look at.I also think, going even further back and thinking for parents of younger kids, how do you start building emotional vocabulary? Especially for boys when the world is going to steer them away from that. KyleLabeling and helping them. I mean, I have young kids. “I noticed when you’re doing this, you look really mad,” right? That is very important to do. I was talking about the performance aspect before. You know, a lot of males, again, not all males, but a lot of males are interested in sports. And as I said, you can’t watch a sporting event without hearing about someone’s speed or someone’s height and weight and all that stuff . Even just asking, “I noticed we’re watching this football game and they just keep talking about these guys bodies. What are you thinking when you hear that?” Those types of questions. Or, “When I hear that, I’m like why are they focusing so much on this guy’s body? Can’t they just watch what he does on the field?”You might get a response like, “What are you talking about? Who cares?” But that is also information, right? Or they might be like, “No, that’s actually really important because he’s got this much speed and blah, blah,” and that just gives you more data, more information for you to understand.VirginiaYes, I am extremely sports illiterate, but I come from a football family and they do put the football players’ weights up on the TV screen. I am just realizing that now and wondering why on Earth?Okay, just putting some puzzle pieces together about my own family.I think it’s good to name that often when we present our kids with these opening moments, they don’t necessarily open right up and dive in deep with us. But you’re just continuing to make yourself available and show that you’re paying attention.KyleFor parents, recognizing that they are susceptible to promoting these behaviors just like culture promotes them as this is what a boy should do without really second guessing. Is that the right thing to be doing? Is that what I shouldn’t be doing? Is my son okay with this behavior? Are they happy here? Those types of questions, I think, are really important to reflect on.VirginiaAnd it seems like there’s an opportunity to be learning this alongside your kid. Maybe as you’re trying to, yes, go to the gym with them, understand that world, understand who they’re following on TikTok, you can also be sharing what you’re learning about diet culture and anti-fat bias so that it’s a more robust discussion. It’s not just “Teach me your workout routine.” It’s also, “Let’s talk about why workout routines can be problematic.” There can be a way of engaging on multiple levels.And it may, for a lot of parents, involve saying, “I’m trying to unlearn some stuff here. I think I’ve pushed you to be excellent at the sport or to fulfill my lacrosse dreams and that was not the right call. So let’s try a different way.”KyleThat unlearning piece is, I think, really important. Just as much as we probably talked about that for female caregivers or mothers as it relates to dieting and things of that nature, I think fathers and male caregivers need to do a very similar look in the mirror and reflect on what are the behaviors that I’m engaging in? How do I engage in exercise or eating that aligns with the sociocultural norms around muscularity and body ideals around men? How does that infiltrate and influence my young male, my son, or whoever it might be? VirginiaYes, we are waiting for dads to do this work, Kyle. We are waiting for them. I can tell you about 90 percent of the listening audience here is not a dad. But we’re welcoming them with open arms and we’re hoping that there will be more dads doing the work. KyleDads, fathers, male caregivers, they definitely need to do the work to be reflective on how they perpetuate these norms and how it ultimately hurts their sons.VirginiaAnd daughters, too. It is harder because, as you and I’ve talked about so much, they don’t have scripts. This isn’t normative, but hopefully we are starting to shift in that direction and your research is a huge piece of that. So, thank you so much. This is so helpful. KyleOf course. ButterKyleCan I share a few things?VirginiaI love when people have a few things.KyleSo, a couple books that I read recently that have been so good that it’s been hard to read new books are Cloud Cuckoo Land which is just like a phenomenal book. I would highly recommend it to any and all people. And then Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow which also was just phenomenal. I’m not even a video game person, but I love video games now.VirginiaI know. I have a lot of video game people in my life and I’ve always been mystified and now I’m like, okay, I kind of get it. The section at the end, the chapter in the form of a video game? Mind blowing. KyleYeah, that book is just great.Then, I can’t help it, I am a sports person. I’ll admit that. I’m a big hockey fan. So the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs is definitely brought me a lot of butter these days. Then lastly, hiking with my kids. I have a three-and-a-half year old, so he thrives on being on the trails. And I have a 15 month old who likes to be in the backpack.VirginiaLet me tell you, hike with the backpack, enjoy the backpack hiking, because it gets really hard. Mine are both out of the backpack stage and it’s like now I have to persuade you both to walk.KyleWalk in the same direction. VirginiaAnd not need 50 million breaks and we’ll never get anywhere. There’s a dark period of hiking with kids. It’s when they’re both between the ages of like three and seven and then it starts to get much better. Your mileage may vary. Of course, if you’re hiking with a three year old, you’re doing better than me. KyleYeah, he loves it, so that’s good. But I imagine that when the other one is out of the backpack and has an opinion about which direction we go.VirginiaSomeone always wants to sit down. Someone is always tired. I’m always informed about very tired legs. And we’ve walked 10 feet. We’re in the parking lot still. Well, my Butter is kind of on theme with what we were talking about in terms of like joining your kids where they are and making space for conversations. I have two girls and so much of our time is us together. I’ve suddenly become aware of needing more one-on-one time with each of them. Particularly with my younger one because she goes to bed earlier. My older daughter and I tend to get a chunk of time together in the evenings—we are watching Gilmore Girls together right now. But my younger one, I realized, wasn’t getting one-on-one time. Last weekend, I took her out and asked her what she wanted to do and she wanted to get cookies. So we went to our local coffee shop and got big chocolate chip cookies and just sat and chatted. And it was great. She told me all sorts of random facts about friends at school, drama, and just little things about her day that hadn’t come out and that she needed to let out. Then we went to the bookstore and got books, too. So we’re calling it our Cookie and Book Date. I recommend a cookie and book date or whatever your child’s favorite things are to give that connection opportunity, especially if you have multiple kids and you feel like, “have I actually looked directly at you in a while?”KyleDefinitely. It’s true. They go in cycles of who needs more attention?VirginiaYou just suddenly realize, “Oh, one child has needed a lot and the other child also needs..”KyleThat’s great. I like that a lot.VirginiaAnd it was fun because I also love cookies and books, to be clear. It was great for me, too. It wasn’t just a kid thing that I would be pretending to enjoy. That’s a parenting achievement unlocked, when you like to do the same thing.KyleYour next book is called “Cookie and Book Date.” VirginiaThe children’s book that my kids are so disappointed I don’t write. KyleThere you go! VirginiaAwesome. Kyle, thank you so much for being here. This was fantastic. Tell us where we can follow you how we can support your work.KyleI’m on Twitter and Instagram, so you certainly can follow me along there. I try to put easy ways to understand some of the research that I’ve been doing as infographics and visuals on those spaces. I’m really excited to continue to work on some of this data that I’ve collected over the last few years.We have all this new data about how they engage in the health care system and so we’re really going to look at teasing out a bit about how we can understand how the behaviors are related to health and healthcare utilization. I often tell people, “Oh, if you’re concerned about your son, go to your health care provider and talk to them.” But I often say that and then also remember their health care provider might not have ever heard of a cheat meal before. So, I’m really dedicated to translating some of this stuff to the healthcare space so that people can actually go to their health care provider and be like my son is engaging in cheat meals and the healthcare provider can be like, okay I know what that is. 

Today Virginia is chatting with Jo Piazza, best selling author, journalist, and podcast creator. You might know her from her awesome podcast Under the Influence, or her very excellent Substack Over the Influence. And her new book, co-authored with Christine Pride entitled You Were Always Mine, just came out this month.Remember, if you order Jo's book (or any books we mention on the pod!) from the Burnt Toast Bookshop, you can get 10 percent off that purchase if you also order (or have already ordered!) Fat Talk! (Just use the code FATTALK at checkout.)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 LINKS@jopiazzaauthorJo's other books:We Are Not Like ThemFitness JunkieOther book recs:Jasmine Guillory’s booksRosaline Palmer Takes the CakeBig Girl by Mecca Jamilah SullivanGet a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia HibbertOur Little Kitchen by Jillian TamakiStarfish by Lisa FippsBodies Are Cool and Dancing at the Pity Party by Tyler FederMisc & Butterwhat do I do with my best friend who’s dieting and I’m sick of hearing about it?Navigating Chick-fil-A“Those who don’t cook don’t get to complain.” the video for Waterloo Weed Family OrchardsThe Whispers by Ashley Audrainice cream bowls from East Forkstyle section cover story about East ForkThe Mugsthe bitty bowls 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 98JoI keep telling everyone, I’m warning them in my interviews, that I didn’t realize until right now that all of our books—the titles use a lot of pronouns.The first one is We Are Not Like Them and this one is You Were Always Mine. The one that we’re writing right now is I Never Knew You At All. So I’m really fucking it up in these interviews because I’m like, You Were Never Ours. What?This one is You Were Always Mine.VirginiaYou Were Always Mine, a book about pronouns?Well, I think it’s just a wonderful, wonderful book. I could not put it down. I’ve been doing a lot of heavy nonfiction reading and it was just so what I needed after burnout on other kinds of reading. I just spent the last four days with you both and it was delightful.JoThank you, I really appreciate it. That’s what we wanted. There’s a lot of heavy shit in the world right now and this book brings up things to think about, but we also wanted to give people a soft place to land for a little while. VirginiaI’m a little bit of a fragile flower and I can’t do trauma porn at all, but I like books with substance and that deal with issues. I want there to be a name for this type of book because this is what I’m always looking for! Where it’s about real issues and real people and complicated stuff, but I’m not traumatized reading it. I’m crying in like a cathartic positive way. JoYes, and not in an I-want-to-lock-myself-in-the-dark-and-not-come-out way. VirginiaNot in an I’m-now-going-to-have-intrusive-thoughts way.JoWhich is a different cry.VirginiaIt just is. So, the book is out. We’re very excited about it. Everyone needs to go get it. But what we’re actually going to talk about today is the importance of seeing women enjoy food in fiction.JoI think about it so much. I’m starting to dive into fiction with my daughter, right? She’s three and a half but this is where you start to read chapter books to them. This is where you start to parse out what kinds of things do I want in my daughter’s head? What kinds of things have been in my head for the past 30 years?And I was a big fan of the standard 90’s chick lit. Bridget Jones, Emily Giffin’s books, all the Jane Greens, loved them. And I feel like for so long in commercial women’s fiction, when they talked about food at all, if they talked about food at all, it was in a very restrictive way. Bridget Jones is the worst offender and it’s one of my favorite books.VirginiaThe calorie count of a banana, I will never not know that. I didn’t know it before I read the book.JoRight? And now you will always know it. We tried to satirize that in my novel Fitness Junkie, to just send up how ridiculous this world can be. It’s a shift to simply normalizing women loving food as much as we love food and as much as I adore french fries and potato chips and steaks. I don’t want to think in terms of diets and calories and seeing that on the page. In You Were Always Mine it was it was important to us that Cinnamon just love eating, without hitting the reader over the head being like “she loves it.”VirginiaIt’s not an annoying trope.JoIt’s just like, you’ve got some like shrimp sizzling in butter on the stove and eat it and then have sex. Amazing! All of the pleasures for you. You deserve all of that. That was really important to both Christine and I.My next book is set in Sicily and my main character for that is a butcher. She owns a steak restaurant. I’ve been writing food porn for the past year and now all I want to do is read more books where women are enjoying eating. VirginiaI mean, it would be a crime to set a book in Sicily and not have food porn.In You Were Always Mine the food stuff is not the main focus of the book at all. It’s this nice detail of her character that you get to see her enjoying food. I don’t think it gives away too much to say she had a hard childhood, food scarcity is something she’d experienced. So there’s some nuance to her food story, too. It’s not just loving it for the sake of loving it. You really invest in her loving.JoYou have this and you can really enjoy it. Christine and I, we’re two women who love food and love eating. We’ve celebrated every one of our book milestones at a delicious, amazing restaurant. It’s funny because when we found out that our last book was a Good Morning America book club pick—they tell you six months in advance and then they’re like, and by the way, it’s a secret.VirginiaOh, I wouldn’t do well with that. JoWell, we didn’t. We totally failed. We immediately left Christine’s apartment in Harlem and went out to one of our favorite pizza places, ate all the pizza and drink all the tequila and told Tiffany, the bartender, that we were a Good Morning America book club pick.VirginiaI feel like Tiffany could keep a lid on it, though.JoI don’t think she told anyone. VirginiaShe was probably like, “that’s great.”JoShe’s like, “I don’t even know what you mean. But here’s some more parmesan fries.”We get our best writing done while we’re eating meals together. I think that that is because our books do have to deal with hard conversations sometimes. We talk about race and we talk about friendship and class and those things. I think the best conversations happen over meals, when you sit down and you share food and you can just be open and free and give each other grace. And so most of our books have been written over meals and meals that then end up in our books. VirginiaSo you’re literally sitting there with your laptops and your food.JoLaptops open and french fries and burgers. This is why we keep writing books together, because it’s really fun. VirginiaIt’s delicious. That’s a great writing process. There’s often writing that I need to do with a snack—I’m big on the chocolate chips at the desk, that’s a real power through when I’m trying to get many thousands of words done quickly kind of thing. But now I’m like, oh, I have been not putting enough thought into this. JoI also write a lot, when I’m writing solo, in restaurants. I’m in Philly and Philadelphia is just such a good restaurant city. But After COVID when I was locked up for so long, there’s so many restaurants that I missed. So I take myself out to lunch a couple of times a week, and I’ll try a new restaurant from the best of Philly list and just take my laptop. That’s an hour and a half where I’m enjoying a new meal and I’m writing and it’s so much nicer than just sitting at a desk. It’s awesome. VirginiaWell, that’s incredible. That’s leveling up the coffee shop writing experience, which I was never very good at. I get distracted and the chairs aren’t comfortable. And the stress of holding your table. But in a restaurant, you can get up and go to the bathroom and not worry that people are going to steal your stuff without having to negotiate with someone. JoExactly. My entire literary life and the past two years has been very infused with delicious food. VirginiaAnother irritating trope that comes up in fiction with women and food where they are eating to delight a man. Gilmore Girls is an example I’m thinking of, which is not a novel. But the way that Gilmore Girls eat and men marveling at it, which is really irritating to me. And like marveling that “you’re thin and you can eat this way,” and all of that. There was like a little of that where like her husband comments on her eating, but doesn’t really understand it because it’s got this whole backstory. So I loved how you played with that trope there. I thought that was really smart.The other thing that I loved was the way she eats with her best friend. There’s a great scene of her and Lucia sharing the popcorn watching a movie. Food as this tool of bonding between women is really cool. JoOne of my favorite things is the picture of Lucia on Cinnamon’s phone is a picture of her eating peanut butter out of a jar at 3 in the morning. VirginiaSuch a good detail.JoThey bonded because they both eat peanut butter out of a jar at 3 in the morning. So that’s the picture on each other’s phones. And I’m like, yes, that is me. That was my friend and I, we bond over those little, tiny things. VirginiaThere’s a lot of stereotypes about women being very diet-y together and going to the restaurant and only ordering salads and “are you going to get dessert? I don’t know if I’m going to get dessert.” And all of that. And what a delight not to have that. JoWhich I had in some of my past books, too. I know that I did, like looking back at them. And I don’t know if it was a case of just imitating what I had seen, imitating what I see thrown at us in culture generally or what I thought that I should be writing. I just don’t think I was nearly aware enough of it until I had my daughters. And it’s one of those things like, Oh, I’m nearsighted and I put on glasses and now I see something. Now I do see it and I’m glad that I can see it. I think so many things about how we write about women need to change generally. But that is one of the things that I don’t think gets talked about enough. VirginiaIt’s a fine line, too, because a lot of times women’s friendships have this diet component. This is a common question I get asked, like, what do I do with my best friend who’s dieting and I’m sick of hearing about it? So it makes sense to incorporate some of that. I was also interested in the character of Daisy, who is the other protagonist of the book, and who’s in a bigger body. There’s some discussion of her weight loss attempts. For listeners: I want to be clear that it’s not pro “Daisy needs to lose weight,” there’s no weight loss narrative arc, but there are references to that being part of her past.I was curious if you want to talk a little bit about how you thought about Daisy in all of this. JoDaisy in our book, she is in a bit of a bigger body. Daisy has a pregnancy that no one around her notices, so really one of the only ways to get around that was to have her start out in a bigger body, and as a person who usually wears bigger clothes. But Christine and I wanted to be as sensitive as possible when we were writing Daisy. Because I struggle with my weight. Like, I can go up and down four or five sizes over the course of a year. Struggle is the wrong word, but I fluctuate. So we didn’t want Daisy to be a caricature. I never wanted anyone to look at any pictures of Christine or me and be like, how dare they write Daisy? And we never want Daisy to be fixated on diet culture.We want to Daisy to feel strong. Daisy wants to be a pilot. She’s been told for so long that’s something that’s ridiculous. Like, how will you sit in the front of a plane? And we wanted to break down that stereotype, too. But then Cinnamon and Daisy bond over eating french fries. And Cinnamon is like, “Oh, I saw her working out? What should I do? Like should I not offer her French fries? Screw it, I’m buying her French fries. She loves french fries. We’re gonna eat our french fries together.”VirginiaI thought it was very thoughtfully done. I admit, I had a moment of like, is this two straight-size authors writing about a fat person? There was that travesty of The Whale. And I want to be real clear, this is not in that category at all. She’s a very nuanced character and her weight is not the barrier to what she wants in her life. She’s not sad, not pathetic. She’s super complicated. JoHer life is hard, but it has nothing to do with her weight. That’s the thing. And I’m happy for Daisy at the end of the book. I am happy with where she ends up. VirginiaAgreed. JoThat’s another conversation I think that authors need to be having more of, like how are we sensitive as we write characters and what characters should we be more sensitive as we’re writing? I don’t think that there’s enough talk about when we’re writing about size and bodies, especially when it comes to women.VirginiaI think there’s a few folks doing it well. I think Jasmine Guillory’s books have done a lot to center protagonists and great food scenes. But who else do you think is doing it well?JoI was going to say Jasmine. Because still not nearly enough authors, I could not tell you that I read something recently where I was like, “oh, yeah, they nailed it.”I’m constantly looking for more and I don’t see enough. Who else are you seeing? VirginiaRosaline Palmer Takes the Cake was one that was a great food book. The protagonist is straight size—they don’t really talk about her body at all—but it’s sort of styled on The Great British Bake Off.JoI haven’t even heard of this.VirginiaCorinne Fay, who works on the newsletter with me, told me to read it. And she was right.There are great food scenes because they’re making these elaborate cakes all the time.A book I really loved for body stuff was Big Girl by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, which is about a teenager growing up in Harlem, a Black girl who is fat. I mean, it’s a tough read, because her mom is very directly and abusively putting weight loss on her a lot of the time. But it’s ultimately incredibly empowering. And there are a lot of really interesting discussions of what her size means for her moving through the neighborhood, how she’s perceived by other Black people, how she’s perceived by white people. It’s just one of those books you can’t stop thinking about.JoI think Jen Weiner’s evolution in writing about size. Because she always has—I’ve been a fan of Jen forever, since her first books. She lives not far from me, so I actually get to see her in person and talk to her and have her be a person who lives in my world, which is wonderful.But In the beginning, she had characters of all sizes, but there was still the focus on dieting and being so uncomfortable with their bodies. And now, in her more recent books all sizes are so much more normalized. It’s not an issue. But that’s definitely an evolution and it’s one that you notice if you read through her whole amazing canon of books. VirginiaYeah and food is always pretty great in a Jen Weiner novel. Jo Food has always been great in a Jen Weiner novel.I interviewed her probably 20 years ago, when I was a baby at the New York Daily News back when newspapers still had books sections. I remember Jen saying that she wanted to write more about women enjoying their food. And that always stuck with me. VirginiaAnother one I really love is Talia Hibbert. Have you read her novels? She’s a British writer with a trio of novels about the Brown sisters. Get a Life, Chloe Brown.JoYes, I have a copy of Get a Life, Chloe Brown in one of my many TBR piles.VirginiaIt’s so fun. You will read it in an afternoon. It’s like really good sex, really good food, and a fat, Black protagonist. My friend Heidi who owns our local independent bookstore in my town and my friend Mary—shout out to Heidi and Mary—we are starting a feminist romance book club.JoShut your mouth!VirginiaYeah, it’s pretty good. Mary and I are also in a Hot Tub Book Club with our friends, where we just sit in people’s hot tubs and talk about whatever book. That’s also great. Jo How many friends do you have with hot tubs? VirginiaOnly two of us. I think we realized there were two hot tubs in our social group and then quickly arranged a book club around can we sit in these hot tubs?JoWhere do you live again? And can I get to the hot tubs at some point?VirginiaYou are invited anytime! We’re in the Hudson Valley. JoOh shut your mouth, I’m in the Catskills half the time! I’m going to come down and get in the hot tub. We could do a whole podcast episode from the hot tub.I love these two book clubs for you. VirginiaMy book club life is very rich right now. But what I was going to say is so for feminist romance we are always like: What is the next Talia Hibbert? Because I feel like she is the queen of the genre. She and Jasmine Guillory, it’s a tie. We’ve tried some where we’re like, “this is gonna be it,” and then it’s another skinny blonde chick getting the guy. And okay, it was a fun read, but you didn’t advance us at all. And not enough food!JoNot enough food.So both Christine and I have solo projects that we’re working on right now.VirginiaHow are you writing so many books at once?JoI’m very fast. You know, I’m never going to be Hemingway, even though he’s overrated, but I’m very fast because I was a newspaper reporter for so long. As a tabloid newspaper reporter, if you didn’t deliver your copy at 5pm, a drunk Australian editor-in-chief was like throwing a coffee mug at your head, back in the early 2000s.So I mean, I’m broken. I’m just broken and trained to write fast.But, Christine’s new novel is going to be a feminist romance. You can’t read it for two years, but I’ve already read it. It’s loosely based on her own love story about how she reconnected with her first boyfriend from New York City who she dated 27 years ago. And they reconnected two years ago and now they’re madly in love and she’s in a super serious bicoastal romance. The book is about a love triangle and it’s loosely called To All The Men I’ve Loved Before. Her first two boyfriends from adulthood come back and then she has to choose. But it will be super feminist-y and food forward. VirginiaOkay, well, I’m booking it for my book club in two years. Christine, I love that personal journey for you. That sounds amazing. JoShe’s just she’s madly in love and so happy. VirginiaWhat do you hear from readers? Do people notice the food details in your work often? What do they tell you? JoYeah, they do. Especially with early readers, we got so much great feedback from readers saying, “oh my gosh, the shrimp scene,” where it’s like a prelude to sex with her husband. There’s not that many happy scenes with her husband, but this one is where he’s popping garlicky buttery shrimp in her mouth. And there’s so many delicious smells wafting around the house.We also have her daily routine is stopping and picking up her Chick-fil-A and her French fries and just how much she loves it. So many readers responded to that. They’re like, “that’s my lunch routine, too! I get my my basket of chicken and I sit and I read on a bench and like that is my perfect lunch.”So more readers than I expected are commenting on that to me and I think the comments come because people are—no pun intended—actually hungry for it.When I was writing the Sicily book, I kept thinking about Eat, Pray, Love, which has a lot to recommend it but also just fetishized the eating in a way that I didn’t love. VirginiaYeah. I agree.JoAnd I didn’t want to do that. I was very intentional about not fetishizing the eating, just making it a part of the story. VirginiaI don’t know Liz Gilbert and her eating habits, so this is not a comment her, but I think sometimes I can tell the difference between an author who’s including food because they love food, and an author who’s including food because maybe they don’t let themselves love food.JoThat is an important distinction. And I can also tell that right off the bat.For a long time, I thought that I had to be a certain size and that that mattered so much to me. It was after having having my babies and watching my body change and watching my body be so strong and do these things that I was like, size doesn’t matter to me anymore. I want to be happy and I want to be healthy and strong. But the happiness part is a really big thing to me. I got so much happier. I find so much joy in so many of your newsletters because I got so much happier when I stopped thinking about it all the time. When I stopped thinking about size and just enjoying my life in a way that I wish I could have when I was younger and in a way that I would like for my daughters. VirginiaIt’s hard to explain to someone who’s in it, how much brain space and energy it frees up to step out of it. There’s a lot of privilege we need to name and not everybody can step out of it that easily. I don’t want to simplify that. But really, once you are on the other side, or even just somewhere in the middle but closer to the other side, it’s kind of amazing to have that. JoMy daughter is the most beautifully adventurous eater. She’ll try anything and she loves almost anything. Except mozzarella sticks. She rejects beige food. She’s like, “mozzarella sticks are disgusting.”VirginiaWell, that’s wrong, but okay.JoI’m like, that’s not true, but she really revels in it. She loves that she loves food. This is just a message that I never got as a kid. I remember my mom doing sweating to the oldies video and always being on SlimFast or Jenny Craig or Nutrisystem—the fact that I can just rattle these companies off from my childhood brain.And my daughter is probably going to be fucked up for so many other reasons, but that’s not gonna be one of them. VirginiaLet’s talk about kids books a little bit, since you mentioned this was when you first started thinking about it. Are there any kids books you love for food or any kids books you’ve been horrified about the food? JoSo the book that really got me thinking about this was Blubber.VirginiaBlubber is rough. Man, it is rough. JoIt’s so rough. I was down in Key West at Judy Blume’s awesome bookstore and bought copies of all the books and had Judy sign a bunch of them for the kids. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, As Long As We’re Together, Sally J. Friedman. I love Judy. She’s one of the reasons that I wanted to be a writer because I devoured all of Judy’s books as a kid.And then I paused at Blubber—it has a new cover now. Do you remember the cover when we were younger? It is burned in my brain. It’s the little girl standing in front of a chalkboard. VirginiaYes, yes. JoAnd girls are snickering at her. And, by the way, there’s nothing to even discuss when it comes to this little girl’s size. VirginiaThey didn’t make her fat, which is weird choice. They were like we we need to show the bullying but we can’t even show a fat child on the cover of this. JoWe can’t bring ourselves to show a fat child on the cover. She’s drawing a picture of a sperm whale and then in the new Blubber it’s just a whale’s tail with a heart that says Blubber really small, as if the Blubber part of it is shameful, which it is like the whole premise of the book is.VirginiaI reread it when my oldest daughter was like reading Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. And I was like, I’m going to read this one first before I pass it over to her. JoYou can’t pass it on. VirginiaI didn’t pass it on. Because the way they treat the fat character, she is a non-entity in the book. She has no agency, she is just a student that gets made fun of. The parents never correct the bullying. There’s no reclaiming of her body as a good body. It’s very much a product of its time. But also, unfortunately, what’s happening to fat kids today, as well. JoIt’s still happening. I was like, Is this a good book to start discussions about bullying? Like, as a conversation point? And I’m like, nope, not even that. I can’t save Blubber. So that one, I think is what a lot of like people our age think about when we think about these children’s books that failed us and also drilled these stereotypes into our heads that were already in our heads as we were watching our mothers go through the diet culture of the 80’s and the 90’s. VirginiaThe Berenstain Bears and Too Much Junk Food by Stan and Jan Berenstain is another one that I think lives really large in people’s heads. I had forgotten how bad it was. There was a meme on Instagram last week and I shared the meme about it and all these people were in my DMs like “this was the book that screwed me up so much!” But what was interesting about it was several people said to me, “I read this book as a kid because the drawings of the food were so appealing, I just focused on how good the food looked.” And I thought that was so interesting. Maybe there’s a way to subversively reclaim The Berenstain Bears, to celebrate the food part of it without the rest. But still, this is not one I would read to my kids today without being able to have a very nuanced conversation about it.JoI didn’t remember that until you just mentioned it. The food did look good. VirginiaThey were good illustrations of food. Berenstain Bears is such a weird series in general.Jo It’s problematic for a lot of for a lot of different reasons. VirginiaGender norms, Christianity. There’s just a lot packed in there but that one is really a dark spot. JoIn most of the picture books that I read for kids, I have noticed that there are a lot of fatter bodies on kids these days and bodies of all different sizes.VirginiaFor picture books, my favorites are Our Little Kitchen by Jillian Tamaki, which is a lovely, beautiful food celebration book about these neighbors in a community kitchen making a really amazing dinner together. There are queer folks, there are disabled folks, there are fat folks. There are kids. That’s a favorite. My favorite line that’s become canon in my family is there’s a line where someone’s like, “chili again?” and the guy at the stove is like, “Those who don’t cook don’t get to complain.” And my kids know that if they sit down to the table and whine, I’m just like, “Those who don’t cook don’t get to complain.” And the other night, they were like, “but why not?” And I was like, “because we are making labor visible!” They were not thrilled about it. But they do love the book. It’s really joyful with that excellent moral lesson.And then Big by Vashti Harrison, which just came out and is a really beautiful one about a fat ballerina. It does center on her being told she’s taking up too much space but there’s a reclaiming. I think those books are really important and we need the books where the characters just fat and nobody is really talking about it.We’re still building up that repertoire for sure. My favorite middle grade novel. hands down—I used a quote from it as the front quote in Fat Talk—is Starfish by Lisa Fipps, which is just exquisite. Heart wrenching. Such a powerful book.JoMy kids really like Bodies Are Cool. VirginiaOh, yeah. Tyler Feder, she’s great. She’s been on the pod. Tyler is amazing. My older daughter is now obsessed with her Dancing at the Pity Party graphic memoir about her dead mom, which is more of an adult book, but Violet is really running with that one right now.JoThat sounds wonderful. VirginiaIt’s a really fantastic memoir. Tyler is brilliant. JoMy kids love Bodies Are Cool because of the hair and stretch marks which look more like our bodies.VirginiaShe was so meticulous about how much diversity she included in that one. I mean, there’s kids with scars. There’s kids with the diabetes port.JoThe woman with the prosthetic foot. There’s all there’s all of it.My kids both don’t like Disney movies because a parent always dies in them and they’re scary and there’s always like a really, really bad villain. So I let them watch age inappropriate musicals. So they watch Mamma Mia and Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again and Grease and all the adult stuff goes over their heads. They just like the dancing. Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again has the best body inclusive dance sequence. VirginiaI never saw it. JoI’m going to send you the video for Waterloo. There’s all shapes and all sizes. There’s an amazing dancer in a wheelchair. She has the coolest dance moves and she’s spinning around, but they never talk about it. It’s just like, oh, this is just a wildly inclusive musical dance scene. My kids notice it, though. They’ve said, “There is everyone in this dance scene!”[Virginia’s post-recording note: The scene is fantastic and I’ll never say a bad word about Abba, but while it’s great on race and ability, the number doesn’t have much fat rep. Mamma Mia 3: Fat Dancing Queens, please!]VirginiaI mean, I loved Mamma Mia. I am now really wrestling with how I didn’t see Mamma Mia Two and I need to fix that.JoYou should probably fix it. It’s a slower burn than Mamma Mia One. But that said, Cher is in it And the last song is “Fernando,” which is missing from Mamma Mia One. VirginiaIt’s a huge oversight. Okay, well, I’ll be fixing that this weekend.ButterJoWell, when I read the description of what you wanted for butter, I immediately did think of toast.VirginiaEverybody does. JoThere’s this farm called Weed Family Orchards in the in the Hudson Valley and they do pick your own, so we always stop there on our way to the Catskills. They have this jalapeno jelly that I eat with a spoon. VirginiaThat sounds so good.JoIt’s the perfect mix of spicy and sweet and salty. I put it on everything. I put it on toast. But I’ve also put it on steak. I really like thinly sliced seared steak with jalapeno jelly. It’s really chef’s kiss.Then my non-toast recommendation is a book that just came out today, which I loved so much called The Whispers by Ashley Audrain who wrote the thriller The Push a few years ago. It digs into women and desire and wanting more than we’re allowed to have in life. It’s also a thriller in just such a smart way and I think Ashley is a national treasure. I finished it a few months ago and I’m actually really happy to get to recommend her book on her pub day today because I think that people will really really love reading it. It’s a great great summer read. VirginiaThose are both excellent butters! Mine is—I put this in a newsletter recently that I was thinking about purchasing some ice cream bowls from East Fork and I feel like people might want closure on that anecdote, to know that I did purchase the ice cream bowls. They are being delivered today. So this is an anticipatory butter, but I’m very excited about it.JoTell me which ones you ordered! I am an East Fork freak. My friend Regan is the one who wrote that style section cover story about them that was so good.VirginiaSo, I have The Mugs and last year for Christmas, I got Corinne and Tommy, who both work on the podcast, the mugs because I was like we all need the mugs. It’s very important. And now I have a couple of the big bowls for pasta. I got those last year at some point as a little gift to myself. So I’m easing into my East Fork era, because it’s pricey.JoYeah, it feels like a collector’s item. For my birthday last year I got the rainbow bowls that were limited. VirginiaI got the ice cream bowls in the piglet color which is like a blush pink they just did. It’s sort of funny because like neither of my kids like pink. But I was like, this will be for our ice cream time and I will be happy that the bowls are pink and they’ll just be excited about ice cream time. Then I also got a couple of the bitty bowls, the little ones and I got those in the butter color because how can I not get them in butter? I’m not really sure what we’re going to use the bitty bowls for, I admit that was an impulse purchase. I’d gone in for the ice cream bowls. JoHow small are they?VirginiaWell, I’ll tell you when they arrived because I got the notification they’re being delivered today. My understanding is they would be for if you’re putting out like small toppings of things or like nuts or something.JoI bought similar bowls when we were on my eat-my-way-through-Paris babymoon in September. They’re small and I bought them at like a street fair and I use them to put honey on a cheese plate or like I put my jalapeno jam in them. VirginiaI was just about to say, you could decant the jelly into this.So yeah, like I said, that was an impulse, but I’m excited about it.JoI feel good about that. [Post-recording note from Virginia: All the bowls arrived and are fantastic! We’re using the ice cream bowls constantly for both ice cream and sides of fruit on the dinner table. The bitty bowls are indeed the perfect size for jam, or for snacking on my beloved dark chocolate chips.]VirginiaJo, thank you. This was delightful. It’s so fun to talk to you. Tell folks where they can find you how we can support your work. JoSo much of my stuff remains on the Instagram even though I don’t love Instagram, but it’s the easiest way to just post where I’m going to be and what books are coming out. So that’s @jopiazzaauthor and then I’m doingOver the Influencewhich I’ve been doing for two months. I love Substack so much, it just it feels like the first nice place for writers to land on the internet in a really long time. So yeah, those are the two places. I’m also just around in the world. I love running into all of you in real life. And I’ll be in your hot tub. VirginiaSoon to be located in my hot tub!Awesome. Thank you, Jo. 

Today Virginia is chatting with Martinus Evans, the author of the brand new book Slow AF Run Club: The Ultimate Guide for Anyone Who Wants to Run. He runs Slow AF Run Club, a running community for folks to run in the bodies they have, and is @300poundsandrunning on Instagram.Remember, if you order Martinus's book (or any books we mention on the pod!) from the Burnt Toast Bookshop, you can get 10 percent off that purchase if you also order (or have already ordered!) Fat Talk! (Just use the code FATTALK at checkout.)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 LINKSMartinus on the cover of Runner’s WorldMartinus naked in Men’s HealthPioneers Run CrewLauren LeavellBlack Girl SunscreenHoka shoesSlow AF Run Club Merch (sizes XS to 6X!)the season of book launchFAT 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 97MartinusAlrighty, so, good morning, good evening, good afternoon to wherever you’re at in the world! My name is Martinus Evans and I’m a fat runner. I said it. I said the F word.VirginiaWe love it. We say all the time here.Martinus Hide your kids, hide your wives because we’re gonna say a lot of F words. I’m talking about fat.VirginiaWe can say the other ones, too.MartinusWe’re gonna say a lot. I’m a fat runner. I’m also a run coach. I’m the founder of a community called Slow AF Run Club. We have about 10,000 members worldwide. You may have seen me on the cover of Runner’s World, you may have seen my naked body in Men’s Health. My journey and my goal right now is to get 1 million people to start running in the bodies they have right now.VirginiaAnd we are here to talk about your awesome new book, Slow AF Run Club: The Ultimate Guide for Anyone Who Wants to Run. Tell us your running origin story.MartinusI was working at Men’s Wearhouse on my feet all day, commission sales in hard bottom dress shoes. Walking on concrete, like it’s carpet with concrete at the bottom. So, I start to develop some hip issues, which one would think would happen if you’re walking on concrete for 10 hours, right? When I go see my doctor who sent me to an orthopedic specialist, as I’m sitting there running down all the things: “Hey, Doc, I used to play football, currently working at Men’s Wearhouse. I’m on my feet all the time. My hip hurts like hell.” And he’s like, “Oh, I know what’s wrong with you.”Me: “Okay, what’s wrong with me?”Him: “You’re fat and if you don’t lose weight, you’re gonna die.”VirginiaI mean, just not even dressing it up at all. Not even pretending.MartinusTell me how you really feel. So I was like, I know I’m gonna die one day, but whats that got to do my hip? VirginiaI’m here for hip pain.MartinusSo then he goes on this whole thing of like you’re fat, you need to start walking, your stomach is a pregnant woman, all this other stuff. Like, “You need to get healthy.” And I just got fed up with his ass talking. So I was like, “I’m going to run a marathon, screw you, screw this. I’m going to run a marathon.” He laughs at me and tells me that’s the most stupidest thing he heard in all of his years of practicing medicine and then he went on to say if I did attempt to run a marathon, I’d die on the course.So I am fuming. I want to bless him with these hands, but I know that’s not generally accepted anymore. But I stormed out the doctor’s office. I’m ruminating about this experience. I’m driving home and I drive past a running shoe store, make an illegal U-turn, go inside of there and tell them I need shoes and I need them now. They get me some shoes.I then go home and in my apartment complex, there are three treadmills, two of them are already filled up with gazelles. So I’m inconveniently sandwiched between two gazelles who are running like bats out of hell. I’m sizing them up. One guy is going like 10 other guys going like 9. I think to myself, I can at least go 7. Fifteen seconds later when I pick myself up off the ground…Y’all, I fell. I fell off the treadmill. The treadmill rejected me or my body rejected it.VirginiaIt was a mutual rejection. It was not happening that day.Martinus It was like two magnets, polar opposites. Rejection. I was on the ground. The treadmill was still running. And I was mortified. So, I gathered everything and got the hell up out of there with tears in my eyes and thinking to myself, maybe this doctor is right.And when I got home, I had this tattoo on my right wrist. And I reached out to get the door and I see my tattoo. The tattoo says “no struggle, no progress.” This is a nod to the 1857 speech by Frederick Douglass. It goes something along the lines of:If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.And Frederick Douglass goes on to say that the struggle might be a physical one, it may be a moral one, it may be a mental one, but there needs to be some type of struggle in order to get progress with power. So, that speech always resonated with me as a younger child. Like, damn, imagine just sitting there like, “Fuck yes, we’re going to war. Freedom!” I want to be there.I got this tattoo when I was pretty young and all of that was going through my head as I reached for the door knob, and I was like, Okay, I know what I need to do. And the next day, I went back out there, and the day after that, and the day after that, and ended up running my first marathon about 18 months later. And ran eight marathons since then, and 100 other different distances.VirginiaThat’s incredible. You said in the book you don’t remember that doctor’s name. I really, really hope he sees the book and he sees your Instagram and he just he knows in his heart what he did. I think he does. So you started because you wanted to prove the doctor wrong. But when did you really start to love running? And what do you love about it?MartinusOh, my first race. Before then I’m pretty much training in a vacuum. I’m going to run early so nobody can see me because I’m still embarrassed in my body. Mortified. So I sign up for this 5k and I get there and I’m like, Alright, I know I’m slow so I’m just going to park myself in the back. So I go way back, Virginia. I go where there are moms with strollers and Golden Retrievers attached to them. I thought a mom and a stroller and two golden retrievers was going to run faster than me.And then the gun goes off and I’m like, fuck, these moms and strollers are in my fucking way! I thought they were going to run faster than me. And as I’m continuing, I run past people and run past the moms. And then I run past like the people who are walking. And then I started to run past people who are actually running. And like, that’s when it hit me. I said holy shit, I’m doing this running thing.VirginiaYou are doing it.MartinusAnd when I crossed that finish line, I had the biggest smile on my face because it hit me. I was bitten by the running bug that day.VirginiaAnd you were passing people, I’m assuming, who were thinner, who had that “runner’s body” that is obviously bullshit. MartinusI was shocking people. Like, imagine you’re running, you’re in your groove and this  fat man runs past your ass. You’re like, “Wait a minute, I need to run faster.” So that was happening, too. People would be like, “Holy shit, I need to run faster. He’s running fast. I need to run faster.” I’m like, I’m just living life.VirginiaKeep up if you can. I do want to talk about that, because a huge barrier for so many fat runners, for Black runners, for anyone running in a non-traditional runner’s body, who isn’t the gazelle on the treadmill, is this experience of feeling unsafe running in public places, of not wanting to go to the gym with the treadmills or go to the park because of what you’re going to experience. MartinusYeah, let’s talk fat talk. This is something I had to experience my whole life. One of the experiences that that will be for the next book is when I was 10, or 11, I wanted to play Little League football. However, there is a weight limit like there is an age range. So like, age 10 to 12, or 9 to 11, and there’s also a weight limit that goes with that. So they put you on a scale.VirginiaNo! I’m already mad.MartinusThey put you on the scale in front of everybody. And if you’re over a certain weight, what I experienced was a coach saying, “get that man a garbage bag.”VirginiaTo do what with? To put that terrible scale in and throw out?MartinusI wish! They made every kid who was over the weight limit run in trash bags to sweat the fat off.VirginiaAnd you are how old?Martinus10 or 11? No older than 12. So it’s something that I had to experience early on in life. It’s a great metaphor for life. You’re fat, you’re overweight, you’re over this arbitrary weight, but you’re not old enough to go to the next to the next age range.VirginiaAnd then when we talk about the stereotypes of fat people being unathletic and lazy. Could it be because we aren’t allowing them on the teams and they’re running in trash bags?MartinusImagine internalizing that. Like, literally inside of a trash bag, you’re running. You put the trash bag on like a little shirt and poke holes in it. You’re a running trash bag. Kids are yelling at you, laughing, pointing, calling you garbage kid.So as I get older, I have to be a lot quicker on my feet because as you get bullied, there’s two ways you can handle this. You can either accept it and cry. Or you can fight back. Martinus was the one who fought back and also talked shit about somebody. So, like, you called me fat. I’m gonna find that one thing about you and I’m going to harp on it. Your shoes are dirty, your mama is ugly, whatever, I’m going to let you know, right? So as I get older and I’m out running, and I’m dealing with the stuff, these are some of the things that I’m also dealing with. People are honking their horns, people calling me fat, yada, yada, yada. And one of the things that I have to do is fight back. When they go low, we go high. Screw that, sometimes you got to troll the trolls.Virginia It’s true. It’s really true. MartinusSometimes you got to troll their ass back and that’s the that’s the mode that I tend to take. Somebody honking at me in their raggedy ass car, let them have some of their own. You’re fat? Your car is raggedy. But this is where mindset comes into play, right? One of the things that I do as a coach is to provide psychological safety so that the people that I am coaching are able to be able to fail or stumble along the way as they are embarking in his new journey of fitness.VirginiaTell us a little bit about what that looks like.MartinusWhat that looks like is like letting them know that obstacles and rising up in the face of adversity is a good thing. Because for a lot of people, they think it’s a bad thing. Like, oh, I face adversity, I’m slow. Here’s the thing I always get is “I started running. And then I got a little tired. And I started walking. And I felt absolutely horrible that I had to walk.” And then I come in and say well, what was wrong with that? Did you start running again? “Yeah, I did.” What the fuck? Like, let’s celebrate that then.It’s that thing of letting people know that it’s okay to bumble and stumble and figure this thing out. Because you’re doing something with your body that you have not been A. celebrated to do and B. you’re kind of stifled. Like being a plus size person, you may have even been stifled with your with movement because you haven’t had the liberty to actually explore the things that your body might be able to do. You got to explore and figure all this stuff out. So that’s where providing psychological safety is letting them know that it’s okay.It’s almost like, imagine the kid who’s like riding a bike for the first time. They ride the bike, you let it go. They lose their balance. They fall, they scrape their knee, they are going to cry. They’re going to be like, “Oh, I don’t want to ride this bike anymore. It’s horrible. I don’t want to do this. Don’t make me do this.” But as a good parent, or as a good coach, you’re going to be like, “Okay. Let’s cry it out. You done crying. Okay, now let’s get your ass back on that bike.” Right? Right.The same thing is true with physical activity. Alright, you did it. You got a side stitch. Okay, cool. Let’s figure this out. Oh, you got shin splints? Okay, cool. Let’s figure this out. Oh, oh, you got delayed onset muscle soreness? Great. Let’s figure this out. But guess what? Your ass is going to continue to move. That’s the approach that I take. We’re going to fall off.Somewhere around us being grown it starts to be embedded in us like that doing something and then failing or not getting it right on the first time is a bad thing. I think it’s school. I blame school.VirginiaYeah, I think school is a lot of it. I’m thinking like when a baby’s learning to walk, they fall a million times and people aren’t like, you should stop trying to walk. You know what I mean?MartinusImagine that, watching a baby trying to walk and saying, “Screw you, baby. You suck. Damn you for trying to walk.”Virginia“You’re a fat baby who can’t walk.”And yet, we have this narrative that then kicks in of somehow, if I have to stop to walk during my run, that’s a moral failing. Like, walking and running are morally equivalent activities, right? Like, if you’re walking some of it, if you’re running some of it. If you are slow, that is still running. There’s no need to be attaching all these values to it. But it does seem like the culture of running at large is so built on that paradigm and you are really challenging an entire paradigm here.MartinusYes, I am. Here’s why. If you’re not an elite athlete whose life depends on winning prize money, and going to the Olympics, all of us are then paying for a participation medal to participate in a parade.VirginiaI really love relabeling marathons and other races as parades. That is what they are.MartinusDepending on some municipalities, when you go get the permit is literally a parade permit. So we are all paying to participate in the parade and to get a medal at the end if there is a participation medal. So if that’s the case, then none of this shit matters, whether we get there slower than the the elite runners or the last person because we’re all participating in this parade.VirginiaTalk a little about course time limits, because that’s a really clear way that not everyone is allowed in the parade. MartinusIt is a big problem. Last time I checked, my money is still as green as somebody who finished the race before I did. Yet, a lot of these races, like I said, they fall on the laurels of doing it the old school way, where racing was just for white men or even women. So all of that stuff is based off that and then they they fall on a thing of like, well, municipalities and blah, blah, blah, and like we’re working with all these other people to make this happen and there’s no way we can we can add an extra hour. And we’ve been here all day, volunteers, blah, blah, blah. And my thing is, get creative. Get creaive. As a slow runner, I understand you can’t have a city open all day long for a parade. However, can you get creative with it? Can you give us a rolling start? Can you give the people who actually want to participate in this and let them know “hey, you can start before everybody else but you may not be supported. But when the race is officially open, you will be supported.” Yeah, I can tolerate that.VirginiaEspecially because in the beginning you’re starting out strong and you’re less likely to need the support versus the final five miles or whatever. MartinusExactly. But what they do is they line us up speedwise, they put all the fast people in the front, they put all the slow people in the back and say good luck.VirginiaIn the book, you talk about your experiences of harassment from support wagons. These are the people who are there to make sure people finish the race safely.MartinusYes. All of that goes into like my anger. Now I’m as infuriated as you are when I mentioned trash bags.VirginiaOh my god, I’m so angry about that.What else do we need to do to make running a more inclusive sport across the board?MartinusI go to these conferences where race directors come together and try to figure out how to do better and all this other shit. Their big thing is diversity. But it’s always diversity from a race standpoint or diversity from a gender politics standpoint, right? So while they’re arguing and trying to figure that out, they need to really think about pace diversity and people who are also in the back of the pack. Because we pay money as well to participate.When you go back to the olden days, the old schools, the good old days of running it is usually a sport for white men, right? Women didn’t even participate in this because they thought your uterus was gonna fall out or some shit. VirginiaThat was a big concern of ours. Uteruses just flying out of us all the time. MartinusI don’t know why they thought that. It wasn’t falling out before a run but it’s like, well, if they ran 26 miles it is just gonna drop. VirginiaAll these uteruses at the finish line, just piling up.MartinusWhat are we gonna do with all these uteruses?VirginiaI mean, it would have been messy. You can see why they were concerned. But somehow we’ve managed. MartinusY’all persisted somehow. Kegels or whatever kept your uterus from falling out.Get 20% off for 1 yearVirginiaWe did it.So it was a very white male sport, a very thin white men’s sport, too.Martinus As a Black man, I think that there are things that people in general just need to think about as being a person of color, right? There have been situations where I’ve been slammed on police cars. I’ve been investigated or stopped during a run because it’s like, “what are you doing running?”VirginiaLiterally just that.MartinusI mean, I’m in the brightest gear ever. And the police are talking about like, “as soon as you saw my car, you started running.” I was like, “well that’s a lie. I was already, running. I got 20 miles, why are you stopping me?”So I think like those are other things that we also really need to think about. How do we protect all of our all our populations so they can feel feel good and feel safe to participate in the sport?For example, I was at Boston Marathon and the big thing was mile 21 is where like the proverbial wall is. So there are tons of people cheering and things of that sort. And this group called the Pioneers Run Crew are also there. Historically, they are people of color and they’re not doing anything different from a traditional race spectator. However, the police presence there is a lot more, because they are “impeding on the racers.” However, there are people who have got like balloon arches and are passing out beers and shots and things of that sort and there’s no police presence there.VirginiaThat’s really infuriating and needs to be something that the people organizing the races are talking more directly with the municipalities and with the police forces ahead of time, about how we’re going to create a safe space for everybody.As opposed to right now, where people are noting it when it happens and sort of reacting backwards as opposed to actually addressing this issue head on.MartinusYes. It’s like nobody has forethought. VirginiaWhich is interesting because it’s not like it’s only just happening for the first time.MartinusYes. And then the last thing is—and this is just the hill that I’m willing to die on—that if I’m paying for this race, y’all should have a shirt size to fucking fit me.VirginiaThat seems too basic.MartinusI feel like it’s lazy. Or they’re like, “a larger size costs more.” So what? Pay the extra $2 or $3.VirginiaAs you said, everybody is paying to be in the race, so you’re all entitled to a shirt.Martinus If you got a race that has 20,000 people in there, what you maybe have 50 people who need a 3x or larger shirt?VirginiaWhich, right there is a problem because you should have way more than 50 people who need that shirt if you’re making it an inclusive sport.MartinusDo a fucking dollar cost average analysis across all the other 20,000 fucking shirts you just bought.VirginiaI think you can work it out. I appreciated in the book when you were talking about post-race recovery and depression. I really appreciated your mention of working with a therapist during that time. And I do just want to name especially for a lot of the folks listening to this, running can be so amazing, but it can also be a disordered behavior for lots of folks. I wondered if we could just talk a little bit about that piece of things.How do you think about that? How have you made sure your own relationship with running stays positive?MartinusWell, anything that can be counted can be a distorted activity. And something about running is numbers and paces and all the other shit that comes along with it. So one of the things that I work on or things I do—of course, therapy, I’m a big advocate for that—is make sure there’s some boundaries around running, making sure like running is not my end all be all. I think that is a big thing that for most people, getting them to understand is that running should not be your end all be all. And if that’s it, that’s the problem.So with that being said, I do other things. I like playing video games, I like walking, playing fetch with my dog. I like spending time with my wife, I make sure to add those things in there so I’m not obsessive over the numbers. Because anything that has numbers, we can be obsessive over. The other thing that I really do is I make a plan and I stick to it. Or, or at least try to stick to 80 percent of it.VirginiaYeah, that seems fair.MartinusThat way I’m not beating myself up. Knowing that it’s averages. That’s something as a coach that I spend a lot of time getting people to feel comfortable with, is that, hey, you don’t have to run every day to be considered a runner. VirginiaYeah, that’s a big one.MartinusIt’s okay to take breaks and this is what you’re doing in the breaks. I think for a lot of people, they just need the permission to do that.I got an email earlier today where, I asked people on my email list what’s one thing that you’re struggling with? And somebody was like, “Well, I just don’t have the motivation to do it. I don’t know what to do.” And others responded back to says, “this is your permission to get your ass off the couch and go run.” And I was like, “this is just what I needed.”VirginiaSo it can go both ways. People need permission to do this and people need permission to not do it. MartinusSo really getting really to understand for you which one it is because you’re either going to be one of those types of people, somebody who needs permission to go do it, or the permission to say, hey, it’s okay to take a break and you’re golden. Yeah, I’m more on the other end.VirginiaI feel like I can be both of those people at different times of day.And then let’s talk a little bit about the weight loss piece of it. You are someone who has certainly been in the intentional weight loss space. Now you’re really big on running for the joy of it. I’m sure that also helps with keeping the running in a positive place for you,MartinusI think that since I’ve been on both sides of the scale, I get it. I go back to the story of the garbage kid, right? I go back to thinking my whole life that my body is disgusting so that I need to fix it and go through this whole intentional weight loss thing, right? Like so much so, Virginia, that my first degree was in exercise science in hopes that I can learn everything possible so I can make myself a particular weight.VirginiaI think that is so common among folks who go into exercise science and also nutrition. MartinusI think one of the things that happened to me, the come to Jesus moment, or to come to Allah moment, or to come to Buddha moment is: I had a car accident after my first first marathon. So, I ran my first marathon, lost some weight, and got into a bad car accident, totaled my car, couldn’t run for about seven months, lost everything that I lost or gained, lost all the progress. Got sad, got depressive, got suicidal.And I remember, I was at UConn at this time. So I was a grad student at Uconn and I remember it was the first 50 degree day, I’m driving. And if anybody has ever been on UConn campus, you go over this hill and it’s all these runners running and shit. And I remember talking to myself and telling myself, if I’m able to run again, I’m gonna run for the joy of it. I don’t care if I’m 100 pounds lighter or 400 pounds, I don’t care. I just want to run.Because when I lost this weight, I wasn’t 90 pounds happier. I wasn’t happier because I lost this weight. Most of the time, it came with more strife because it’s one thing for you to be plus size and people be like, Oh, you need to lose weight, be healthier, blah, blah, blah. But it’s another stab in the heart when somebody tells you I like the Fat Martinus better. Like, “I liked you better when you was fatter.” I don’t like this person you are now because you’ve lost this weight.VirginiaWhat didn’t they like?Martinus You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. So to go through that whole situation, and be like I’m not 90 pounds happier. My life did not necessarily miraculously change like all the infomercials told me it would. But what I enjoyed the most was the running aspect of it. The talking to random strangers while I’m running this race, participating in this parade and getting my medal, that provided me the joy that I really enjoyed, versus all the other shit that came along with weigh in Wednesdays and all the other bullshit that came along with that. So that was more or less my metamorphosis.The cool thing was, since I did have this degree in exercise science and I learned all this information about cardiac rehab and strength training and all this other shit, I can pretty much flip it on its head and use it against all the diet culture trolls, because their knowledge comes from… I want to say a Ponzi scheme.VirginiaNot wrong, not wrong.MartinusTheir information comes from false science and all this other stuff. But I actually took the courses and have the research to back up the things that I was saying. So when people were like, why don’t you lose weight, you’ll be healthier. You know, I can have that that that conversation with them. Is it a healthy aesthetic? Or Is it actually health? Do you actually know my A1C, blood pressure, any of that stuff? No, you don’t. So that means you’re just assuming I have those things because of my outer appearance. What you’re pretty much telling me is, “Why don’t you have more acceptable aesthetic?”VirginiaIt’s never really about health when they say, “But what about health.” And I can see how that helps you stay focused just on the joy of running and then keep running in proportion to the rest of your life in a in an important way.MartinusThe other thing through that, Virginia, is that I’m also able to have insight to the people I work with because I’ve also been been a part of that journey.VirginiaI hear so often from folks and I feel this, too: Finding people [running or doing whatever kind of exercise you enjoy] that you feel safe with and who get your experience is so crucial. I’m just so over going to a class and having to mentally turn down the volume on the diet-y talk from the skinny instructor. I’m done with it. I’m not doing it anymore. And so finding folks like you, like Lauren Leavell, like all these people who are giving us programs that center our bodies, is so so powerful. One last piece of this is that running is also a sport that’s pretty inherently ableist. It’s obviously based on being able to run, which not everybody can do. And as we’re talking about making the sport more inclusive, I’m wondering if you have thoughts on that piece of it as well.MartinusWell, here’s the thing is that when you get to marathoning, right? It’s a super ableist sport. Some of these marathons do have hand cycles or wheelchair stuff, but that shit is expensive.VirginiaDefinitely. MartinusYou have to have the money to even have one of those things, to even afford a not even just one cycle but multiple cycle bikes or multiple racing wheelchairs. And I think that that’s another thing that a lot of people may not be able to get into. Because that shit takes a lot of money. So it goes back to the race directors getting creative. How we can we get creative so that more people can participate in the sport? And really enjoy the gravitas that comes with like running a marathon or running a half-marathon everybody can participate in. But it really goes back to the race directors, like, what are you doing to be creative? What resources are you doing? How are you educating yourself? Are you staying within your same circle of people that you have conferences with? Then you’re not necessarily growing. You need to go to a conference that focuses on disabled individuals or disabled athletes to really understand where they’re coming from, their point of view in order to help make the sport more equitable.ButterMartinusCan I have two pieces of butter?VirginiaYou can have multiple butters. MartinusOkay. Black Girl Sunscreen.VirginiaOh, I don’t know about this. Tell me.MartinusIt is a sunscreen that was created by women of color. And it’s one sunscreen that does not give me one of those white hazy thing faces that comes along with sunscreen. They have it in like—I want to say flavors? They have multiple different ways where it’s like they have one that’s like a gel basis, like matte, so if you sweat it is more of a matte. They have one that’s like make it glow where it kind of glows on you.VirginiaThat’s a great butter.MartinusI like that. Also, Hoka shoes. I love a good Hoka.VirginiaThey’re everywhere now.Martinus Yes, they are everywhere. I really just love this shoe. I really love what they stand for and it’s by far one of the most comfortable shoes that I wear outside of running.VirginiaI was gonna say it really lives up to the comfort hype.MartinusAnd then the last piece, I might do a shameless plug for myself: Slow AF Run Club Merch. I’ve spent a lot of time and effort in order to make clothing that’s accessible. So most of my clothing goes from XS to a 5x or 6x. One of the things that I really love about that for this piece of butter is that it shows that someone who does not have the experience in clothing—because I don’t—can figure it the fuck out with no budget. Just the little budget that I have.It proves that these brands can do it. They just choose not to.VirginiaTo your point about let’s get creative. Well, that is awesome butter.My butter this week is something I was thinking about as I was reading your book. I’ve talked about this a little bit on the pod, but I had a pretty disordered relationship with running in my 20s. It was definitely not not a good space for me and I had to put it down for a long time and really put down all exercise for a long time. I have gotten back to exercise in the last five years or so and found a lot of joy in different forms of exercise.And then in the last three months or so, as I’ve been in the season of book launch, I have not been exercising because I am just too damn tired. But I realized I also haven’t been spiraling about the lack of exercise. Like, I trust that it will be back.I trust that I’m in that season of I need the nap on a Saturday afternoon more. I need time in my garden, which is also movement and joyful, but I also need just still, peaceful time in my garden and to trust that it’s coming back. And I would just like to shout out to taking those recovery periods when you need them and recognizing that not every season of life is marathon season or whatever your equivalent is.MartinusAbsolutely. I agree. I like that piece of butter.VirginiaWell, this was great. Tell folks where they can follow you. How we can support your work? Everyone needs to go get the book, that is your number one assignment. But what else do you need from us?Get SLOW AF RUN CLUB!MartinusYes, go get the book! It’s available wherever books are sold. If you want to know more about the slow AF Run Club, you can visit the website. We also have an app on iOS and Android so after you get done with this podcast, open up your app store and download our app. Come on in, we have 10,000+ individuals who are here to love on you and get you running in the body that you have right now.And then you can find out more about me on my personal Instagram. And yeah, if you’re interested in Slow AF Club merch, you can go to slowafstore.com.VirginiaAmazing. We will do all of that. Thank you, Martinus, for being here.

Today Virginia is chatting with Elise Hu, the author of the brand new book Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital, which explores the intersections of beauty culture and diet culture in South Korea. If you have ever purchased a sheet mask or a babyfoot peel or any other K beauty products or if you’ve just been aware of the absolute phenomenon of Korean beauty culture, you need to read Flawless.Remember, if you order Elise's book (or any books we mention on the pod!) from the Burnt Toast Bookshop, you can get 10 percent off that purchase if you also order (or have already ordered!) Fat Talk! (Just use the code FATTALK at checkout.)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 LINKSTED Talks Dailybabyfoot peelmothers get held responsible for their children’s weightbut what if I just want to lose weight?Heather WiddowsEscape the Corset the squiggly noodles from Trader Joe’s new spring Birkenstocks.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 96VirginiaYou lived in Seoul for four years to be the NPR bureau chief there. What did you know about Korean beauty culture going into it? Did you think there would be a book in it?EliseNever. No. I did not think there was going to be a book in it at the time and I still can’t believe one exists, knowing my personality. I have a very short attention span. I also don’t like to write alone or even be alone with my thoughts. And as you know… VirginiaThere is some of that required. It’s hard to get around that. EliseI didn’t know a whole lot about Korea, period, when I got posted out there. I think that was part of the motivation for NPR. They liked my journalistic style of being a fish out of water and exploring a place and explaining it and reporting it out with the listener. That was the end of 2014 when we first started having conversations about opening up a Northeast Asia Bureau. So by the beginning of 2015, never having set foot in South Korea before, I moved my husband, my toddler, my geriatric Beagle, two cats, and a baby in my belly all over to Seoul, a place where I hadn’t so much as had a layover at the airport.Part of the excitement in it for me was that it was Northeast Asia, a place where we hadn’t turned the lights on as a news organization before. We just really hadn’t had anybody permanently posted there. So I would cover not just South Korea, but also North Korea and Japan—and what an exciting region. There’s a huge US military presence there, too, that I think gets under-covered. I think half of all of US military stationed overseas is in Korea and Japan. VirginiaOh, wow. I didn’t know that. EliseThere was so much to learn. What did I know about Korean beauty culture at the time? I knew that sheet masks were getting cool. A lot of my friends who were the more in-the-know, hip ones, the ones that read The Cut every day and knew about all the coolest ingredients and the best treatments that were available, they were really into K beauty culture already. Because K beauty culture, as I found, is often not just years ahead, but a decade ahead when it comes to various skincare innovations.So I knew about sheet masks, I knew a little bit about the packaging, I knew that Chinese tourists were going to Seoul a lot to try and load up on various products. I knew about the plastic surgery. I think I really saw it as vanity at the time. I had my Western judgmental attitude about it, when I first got to Seoul.VirginiaYou really explode this concept of vanity and this myth that women engage in beauty work because we’re shallow or we’re looks-obsessed. You talk about understanding beauty work—whether it’s skincare, plastic surgery, weight loss, all of it—is a survival strategy, particularly in a culture with high rates of lookism and fatphobia.EliseIt absolutely is. I mean, the entire concept, the term “lookism,” was new to me. When we say lookism, it’s appearance-based discrimination. Lookism works in all these insidious ways, obviously to marginalize people, but also it can reward those who do focus on their appearance and do the work of improving it to better match the prevailing culture and beauty standards of the day.Having good looks is framed as your personal responsibility. Obviously it’s a very feminine look—you’ve seen Korean K-pop girl groups—so that generally is the model for how a Korean woman should look. If you don’t at least try to match that standard or if you fail, it’s seen as a personal failing. And hard work then means work on your body. And it problematizes all sorts of bodies that don’t fit. Something that I learned very early on was that my size wasn’t welcome in Korea.VirginiaI do want to talk about the concept of the “free size,” which is one size fits all/one size fits no one? I mean, what?EliseI have a chapter called “Free Size Isn’t Free.” Because at so many of the boutiques for the cutest clothes—the stylish ones, the indie boutiques—the clothes come in “free size,” but free size is the equivalent to the to a US size 2. I felt so unwelcome in Seoul in my own body and just appearing as I did. It wasn’t just size, though I think thinness is such a pillar of global beauty standards that it cannot be divorced from lookism, the venn diagram almost overlaps such that it’s one circle. But it was also having freckles! VirginiaYes! I was fascinated by the freckles thing!EliseHaving freckles, it was like I might as well have had pus-eating boils on my face.But freckles are a window into how South Korea not only exports these images of beautiful Koreans and sells that all tangled up with K-pop, K-drama and its pop culture might around the world. It also exports the medical aesthetic upgrades that you can get to improve your face and skin and bodies. The comments I would get were something like, “Oh, you have freckles, we can fix that. Why wouldn’t you fix that?” So, if the technology or the solution exists to fix the problem, of course you should get rid of your freckles. Of course you’re not good enough as you are. When we have a solution, like, why not? It makes no sense.VirginiaIt’s a really strong parallel with the conversation we’re having now around Ozempic, where people are like, well, if it finally exists, there’s a drug that you can help you lose weight, why wouldn’t you lose the weight? And there’s no discussion. Well, Burnt Toast knows I’m discussing it, but the mainstream conversation has not been discussing how much that is erasure of people’s bodies. Freckles are natural, they are part of skin! Like, why do we need to erase them?EliseDiversity is part of the human experience. It’s actually part of nature, too. I don’t go to a pet adoption center and only find Golden Retrievers worthy, right? It just doesn’t make any sense to me. Our adherence to beauty culture, our adherence to lookism is so familiar that we barely notice it. But as you have said, the appropriate response to homophobia isn’t to make everyone straight, and the appropriate response to anti-fat bias isn’t to make everybody skinny. The appropriate response to lookism isn’t to make everybody pretty. Except when I lived in South Korea, I found that it was completely logical to make yourself prettier—because of the professional and personal and social costs if you didn’t.VirginiaIt is asking people to pay this high price to opt out of a system when it’s that entrenched.Another piece of this that was really helpful for me to learn about was I thought I understood a lot of the Korean beauty ideals as being rooted in Whiteness, but they’re really not. I wondered if you could talk us through that a little bit because that was super fascinating.EliseThe desire for white skin certainly predates war and colonization, even. The desire for white skin was about a class performance dating to the earliest dynasties in China, Korea and Japan. The aristocratic women, the ones who didn’t have to go outside, had the fairest skin. And those who had to work the fields had darker skin. So there was a real aspiration to Whiteness that was about class. We see throughout civilizations and various time periods that beauty work really is about class. So often, when we see people who you would describe as conventionally pretty, you’re really describing that they’re conventionally wealthy.VirginiaIt’s money. EliseRight. The people who can look the closest to physical ideals are often the ones who can afford to spend the most money. Another strain that comes out of this is the idea of the no-makeup makeup look, or affecting effortlessness out of effort. Being able to look like you just got out of bed and didn’t put on any makeup is largely the work of lasers or eyelash extensions or skincare treatments that cost thousands and thousands of dollars and lots of time and research and the labor of other people, which can be extractive, especially in the US. And that doesn’t get factored into the equation at all. We should just be aware of it.VirginiaAnd concepts like glass skin. That was another fascinating concept and how that is a completely manufactured attempt to look natural, sort of.EliseRight, right. Think about how many serums or how much care and attention and how much free time you would have to have to devote to getting your skin to a level of looking reflective like glass. I don’t have that kind of time. I think most women do not.VirginiaNo, I know you’re a mom of three. I’m a mom of two. I don’t have ten step cleaning practices in my day. I don’t want a recipe to have 10 steps. Nothing can have ten steps.EliseSome of the interview questions I’ve gotten as I’ve launched this book include “What do you do for your skin?” And first of all, it focuses on the wrong thing because this is not the an individual thing, right? When I get questions like, “should your daughter shave or laser?” I actually think that we’re putting the focus on individuals when we shouldn’t because it ends up resulting in us judging one another when the focus really should be these cultural forces that keep us on a hamster wheel.But also, my answers are so just boring. I’m just like, “well, I wash my skin and I moisturize.”VirginiaSunscreen seems nice. EliseSunscreen is the main takeaway. I am a thinker on beauty topics, but I am no beauty blogger. These are separate things.VirginiaI get a lot of those “what do you do?” questions, too, and I think it also speaks to how much the system has sold us this idea of personal responsibility and personal labor, as you’re saying. That this is your job, to take care of your body in this way. So then even when we’re critiquing it, we’re like, “but what do you do?” because we want you to tell us what we can opt out of. It’s a very diet culture mindset.EliseThis personal responsibility then extends to maternal responsibility or parental responsibility. Like the way that mothers get held responsible for their children’s weight is something that I saw in South Korea not just with regard to weight, but also with regard to their children’s looks. So mothers and grandmothers were often the ones who were gifting plastic surgery to their high school graduates because they wanted to ensure a brighter and happier future for them.Never mind that we have tangled up health and happiness with good looks. That is already questionable and problematic and wrong, but then your maternal love gets wrapped up into whether you are helping and assisting your child in or teenager in looking “better.” And that was really heartbreaking.An anecdote that was shared with me by one of the women that I interviewed who talked about how her father made her watch pageant videos so that she could learn how to walk properly and learn how to walk more like a lady. So she would have to watch those videos every night and then and feel anxious and self conscious about her body and then she would have to actually walk and perform for her father to see whether she had absorbed the lessons of what she was watching on the pageant videos.And I asked her, “What happened if you didn’t? What happened if you refused?” and there was just no notion that she could even refuse. There was the filial piety involved. But she said she worried that her parents would have starved her because it mattered to them so much that she be able to have a fulfilling life and that meant being thin enough to find a husband.VirginiaYes, she said, “They basically already were so I just thought it would get so much worse.” It was chilling. And it’s so easy to want to judge those parents and think, like, what a creepy thing to do to your kid.EliseBut it’s economically rational.VirginiaIt’s hard to know that your child will face such stigma and derision if you don’t participate in this. EliseI’m curious, with the parents that you talked to who felt as though they needed to restrict their children’s eating, where did they end up landing for the most part? After being presented evidence on how the long tail effects aren’t good, nor do they even necessarily maintain whatever weight they were trying to achieve. VirginiaIt was a real range. There’s one mom in the book who I still think about a lot who was really on board with wanting to do things differently and then the pediatrician shamed her for how much weight her son gained during the pandemic. And she was like, “I’m back on Weight Watchers. He’s going to the Healthy Weight clinic. We’re back in.” And then there were others who were really relieved to realize they could opt out of the system. But I think there’s a lot of privilege involved and who can safely opt out. EliseThat’s true for opting out of beauty culture, as well. There are plenty of women who don’t have the privilege of being able to opt out. Notably, the trans women of South Korea. There’s still no anti-discrimination law in South Korea and trans women feel unsafe all over the world, but in South Korea they are such outcasts. There’s not a lot of social understanding about transgender people. There are plenty of trans women who said, “We do not support the beauty culture that we live in and find it oppressive. At the same time, appearing femme is a matter of survival for us. We need to pass in order to safely move about the world without being assaulted.”VirginiaIt is so scary. There were parts that were so familiar, too, like the way you said the only Korean words your daughters learned were cute and pretty because that’s how everyone addressed them. That’s true for American little girls, too, right? You’re in the diner and the waitress is like, “You’re so pretty.” And I’m just like, “and smart…”There’s definitely a universality to how we engage with girls as objects from childhood. But it did seem like there were specific ways it played out that seemed quite different from how it plays out in America. EliseOne reason why the beauty culture in South Korea is so extreme—and there are many factors, one is technology. The technology infrastructure and its status as one of the world’s first fully wired nations means that it’s an increasingly visual and virtual society and it’s becoming more visual and virtual faster than the rest of the world. So that’s a huge component.But there are also cultural reasons that make the beauty culture a little bit more oppressive, or noticeably oppressive. And it’s that 97 percent of Korea is Koreans, which is certainly not the case in the United States. So it was really hard, for example, for me to find cover up makeup, the BB cream cushion that I get into the history of, I couldn’t find it in my shade because I’m a little bit of a darker Asian.And it follows with “free size” as well. There’s such a critical mass of people with the same shape and people of the same size that the companies don’t go to the trouble of expanding their lines. So instead of the clothes changing to fit you, you change to fit the clothes. Instead of the cover up needing to come in different shades, you stay out of the sun or you just wear a lighter shade. There were often times where I would go get makeup done for a television interview in Seoul, and they would just make me chalky white because it was like, “This is what we got.”VirginiaAnd we’ve covered your freckles. We assume you’re thrilled about that.EliseOh yes. The freckles were gone.VirginiaI was really fascinated by how it played into the revering of elders. Kids don’t really have these other options, like the for the girl to say to her father, “I’m not going to practice the walk,” is just not part of the conversation at all. EliseThere was this theme of choice but not a choice. So much of our aesthetic labor under capitalism gets coded as empowerment. You think you’re choosing the new injectable, you’re thinking you’re choosing the laser removal of your blemishes or whatever. And while that is a choice, it’s not necessarily liberation and freedom to be however you want to be.VirginiaI think about that a lot when people say to me, "but what if I just want to lose weight? Just for me. I just want to lose it for me.” There’s no making that choice in a vacuum here. EliseWe’re not islands. VirginiaThere’s no “just for you” because you’re part of this whole thing. I was thinking a lot about pedicures as I was reading this, because I remember during COVID, I tracked down the baby foot peel things because I couldn’t go get pedicures. And I remember doing them one night and being like, “I’m not even leaving house. Am I enjoying sitting with my feet in the bathtub for half an hour so that the skin will all peel off in two days? I don’t know if I like this.”EliseThere’s so much beauty work that I do enjoy so long as it doesn’t feel like I’m doing it because I’m worried about what others will think. When I wrote about older Korean women, the ajummas, they found a way or arrived at a place where they care for one another and care for their bodies in a way that’s kind of reciprocal. It’s like showing respect for one another. So they’re not completely unkempt because it’s group cohesion. They’re not competing against one another. I think in younger women’s groups we can often kind of get into competitive or hierarchical thinking or feel as though we have to keep up with everybody else’s Botox, whatever it is.I think interrogation is key. Like, ask yourself, is this an ego driven decision? Or does this come from an inner appreciation for my body and what I what I want for it, what I want to do to care for it.And I write about how when women are outliving men, so often the touch of a beauty worker, somebody who is giving you a pedicure or or giving you a massage or a facial might be the only time you are touched by another person in the course of a week or a day even. So there is something really lovely about the touch and that nurturing feeling of beauty workers, so I don’t reject it out of hand. I certainly don’t want Flawless to come off as a polemic. VirginiaNo, and it doesn’t.EliseIt actually wrestles with with it. There’s a lot to celebrate, I think, about the way we can care for one another and our bodies. I just think that it needs to be in a framework of community, always, and not like, “what about me?”VirginiaRight and being realistic about what is a necessary cost of doing business to exist in this world or in this profession or whatever. In Korea, it’s common for people have to put their height and weight and photos on their job applications for any career. EliseThat’s a huge example of the lookism. Another example is there’s myriad matchmaking firms in South Korea, so you can date through the apps, but you can also just go to a matchmaking firm, and there’s thousands of them. And the matchmaking firms will rate people with in terms of specs, like the way that we use specs to describe the specs of my MacBook Air or the size of my phone. So specs have an entire range of things that you’re supposed to look like, right? Your specs can include your height, your weight, your bra size, whether you possess a certain cuteness that that will get ranked by the agencies. So it’s just insidious. It’s pervasive. It’s everywhere.VirginiaTalk to me more about the cuteness thing because that was something really interesting that was threaded throughout. The cuteness of the packaging. The celebration of cuteness. Cuteness is a beauty ideal in a way that I hadn’t really thought about. And then again, when we’re thinking about children, it also helps them market all these products younger and younger.EliseSo the social and ethnographic research by a philosopher named Heather Widdows, whose research undergirds a lot of my book, found that there are four global beauty pillars: Thinness, firmness, smoothness, and youth. I really see cuteness as tied in with the youthfulness.So it’s a beauty ideal on one hand, but it also shows up in the way that beauty products are sold. So something that’s really distinctive about K beauty products is the way that packaging is made to look like food, or the form factor continually changes. It will start as lip color that that came in a tube like lipstick has always, but they’ll change it to make it a lip stain that comes out of a nail polish container. And then it’ll change into something else. The churn is very fast. And then you can retire and introduce new products constantly.And then, because of the cuteness, it seems as though younger and younger groups, younger and younger demographics could participate in it. So if you’re a teenager, you’ve already been surrounded by these little fruit shaped lip balms, moisturizer in milk carton containers since you were in elementary school. It’s only natural that you would creep into using skincare and using using makeup products very young because it almost seems childlike.VirginiaThey seem like toys. You talk about the stats on how young kids start wearing makeup there.EliseYeah it’s usually like six or seven, but not for everyone.VirginiaThat is young.EliseEspecially because it is time and energy that we could be spending elsewhere. And when kids are also having to internalize this idea that their their existence is for somebody else’s eyes, for somebody else’s gaze so young. My eldest daughter is now 10—how old is your oldest?VirginiaShe’s almost 10 as well. EliseI feel like she’s now at the age where she’s noticing the way she is seen and is able to articulate it. I’m sure that they noticed this much younger. But it just breaks my heart a little bit that they’re getting this notion very, very young that they have to perform. Korean girls get little lipstick pockets. Lipstick pockets are part of their school uniforms. So there’s an idea that you need to have lip balm or lip tint inside.VirginiaIt’s like a school supply. You need your pencils and your lip tint. That is definitely something I had to sit with.I feel like a core argument of what I’m doing is to talk about body autonomy. One of the casual tips I often give parents is don’t fight so hard on the hairbrushing. Let them pick out their own outfits. And I’m just realizing that there’s a lot of Western privilege underpinning that as a strategy. That I can give my kids that kind of freedom and they won’t be policed if they go to school with their hair unbrushed. I think our school is just like, “well, that’s Virginia’s kids.” There’s no social cost to it, especially for little thin white girls, to show up looking messy.EliseI join you in these conversations and in the struggle for progress, because to me progress would be being able to opt out and not pay a price. Because the demands of beauty culture require tremendous resources and the costs right now—the social costs, the economic costs to opting out—are too great. So technology is a big part of a lot of these conversations because we are presented and barraged with beauty ideals and thinness ideals through social media.But the other end of technology that I think doesn’t get talked about enough is all of the self-improvement technology that is now available. Because when there are advances like, self checkout, people are like, well, I’m going to change my behavior to use it. So when there are advances like lasering off those blemishes or those freckles from your skin, then there’s an assumption that I will use it. But crucially, these are all markets that are created for us. And often I think the supply creates the demand. That’s certainly true for a lot of things happening with plastic surgery and cosmetic fixes in general, like this buccal fat removal which is the most searched procedure in the United States in 2023.VirginiaI still don’t totally understand what it is and I’m okay with that. But you should also tell us about it.EliseIt’s just removing removing excess fat from the jawline so that your jaw looks a lot more defined, gets rid of the double chin. But why are double chins bad? Like, why can’t some people have puffy faces? Why can’t my fat distribute however it’s gonna distribute?VirginiaIt will land where it lands! As someone who identifies as small fat I’m like, we can take it off my chin, but I’d still be fat. So I guess I just sort of ignored that one. But I can understand why that’s getting pushed so hard. The economics of all of this is just fascinating.I do want you to tell us about the Escape the Corset movement, because I feel like we need a little hope.EliseSo, in South Korea, women are ridiculed for attempting to capitalize on their appearance. So if you get too much plastic surgery or you seem like you care too much, then you’re ridiculed. But then you’re even more ridiculed if you seem like you don’t care at all and don’t do anything.VirginiaThere’s a very narrow lane of getting it right.EliseAnd it’s usually that effortless look, right? So the Escape the Corset women are Korean feminists who in 2018, my last year in South Korea, took part in what I would describe as a general strike against aesthetic labor. They were just like, “we’re not going to do this anymore.” And they catalogued how much money and time and energy they were spending on trying to look like the ideal Korean woman. They crushed their compacts and took photos of them with the hashtag #proofofdiscardedcorset. They made videos of them cutting off all their hair. They now wear largely unisex clothing and appear as they want in a country where their appearance matters the most.And they are often uninvited from family gatherings, they are bullied by their peers, they are chastised by their managers. Some have lost jobs, some have even been reportedly assaulted as a result of not participating and not looking like the ideal Korean woman.But they’re so brave and also inspiring because the risks that they take in order to just have bodily autonomy are so much greater than the risks that I take in appearing as I do, which is much like them, on the streets of Los Angeles. They really stick out and they continue to.I had a Zoom with them on Saturday night and it was probably my favorite thing that I’ve done in the promotion for Flawless. They said under this conservative administration that they’re under now, male pattern baldness and treatment for that is covered by the National Health Insurance, but treatment for eating disorders is not.VirginiaI mean, that’s only the most fatal mental health condition. Why would we do that?EliseBut male pattern baldness is now covered! Anyway, so they are really down and discouraged and disillusioned, but continue to fight and continue to organize. And they talked to me about how they want to be good ancestors. They don’t want the next generation of men and women coming up in South Korea to feel the same lack of safety and lack of feeling welcome in their own society and then just the oppressiveness of a lookist culture. So they’re continuing to do the work and I admire it so much because these are huge risks to take.VirginiaTruly, icons. Yeah, I don’t know what we can do from here to support it, but if you know where we can send dollars or support of any kind, please tell us because that’s really important. EliseI will do that.ButterVirginiaWell, Elise, I would love to know what your Butter is. EliseMine are the squiggly noodles from Trader Joe’s. Eating them as a snack. Squiggly noodles come in a pack like instant ramen noodles would come in a pack. And they come with a soy and sesame sauce. And they take I think four minutes to prepare. I chop up some cucumbers and maybe some tofu and gussy up my squiggly noodles a little bit.But they are inspired by the knife cut noodles of the Shanxi province in China. And they are awesome. So they come out really squiggly because they mimic the way that knife cut noodles, when you’re shaving them off a block, they’ll come out squiggly. And they are delicious. My Tiktok just sends me like convenient food ideas constantly.VirginiaMy Tiktok needs to do that.EliseThat’s a sub-tiktok world that I’ve fallen into and I love it. It brings me so much joy.VirginiaThat’s great.EliseThe squiggly noodles take four minutes and I think they cost like $4.VirginiaThat is an excellent Butter. Thank you. Mine is I just got my new spring Birkenstocks. I have a little bit of a love/hate with Birkenstocks because they’re very expensive. And you really don’t get more than like two seasons out of them. So I feel like I buy a new pair every year. But they are the most comfortable shoes and it makes me so happy.It really always gives me this moment of reflection because when I first left New York City and moved—I live in the Hudson Valley now—I had a whole emotional journey about was I going to become a Birkenstock person. This was before they were cool. This was like 2008, before they were like on runways and had gotten their glow up. I just think a lot about like 20-something me with so many pairs of high heels at the office. I still pay for it with the lower back issues. So yeah, I’m in my 40s and I just wear my Birkenstocks and I’m really happy. I got them in this cool olive green and I’m very excited about it.EliseI love it. That does sound so comfortable. It reminds me of that test for what we do or don’t do with our bodies when it comes to body care and rituals. If it feels like a greater step into yourself, like the Birkenstocks are for you, then absolutely that’s the way to go. But if it feels like you are wearing something or doing something that is more tantamount to a costume, like high heels, then that that choice is also made for you. VirginiaI just think how hard it was to walk around Manhattan for years. It was so difficult. But I worked in women’s magazines, there was no world in which you didn’t wear heels to the office. EliseIt was what the culture required of you, so much like the Korean women. This is what the culture requires and so I have to occupy space this way. VirginiaSo I would walk to work in my flip flops and then I left on my shoes under my desk. When the last magazine I worked for folded, I had to messenger home like 30 pairs of shoes.EliseI’m so glad that that experience has helped inform what you were doing now as a body liberation journalist.VirginiaWell, I am so grateful for your work, Elise. The book is incredible. It is called Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital. Everyone needs to check it out. Tell us how can we support you. Where can we find your work? EliseYou can find me at EliseHu.com That’s where all the events on the book tour are going to show up and where you can find out more information about the book. I hang out on the dredges of Twitter only occasionally now—what’s left of Twitter. I’m @elisewho and I’m hanging out more on Instagram @elisewho.

Today Virginia is chatting with Cole Kazdin, author of What's Eating Us: Women, Food, and the Epidemic of Body Anxiety, which explodes a lot of the problems with our current eating disorder treatment system.Remember, if you order Cole's book (or any books we mention on the pod!) from the Burnt Toast Bookshop, you can get 10 percent off that purchase if you also order (or have already ordered!) Fat Talk! (Just use the code FATTALK at checkout.)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 LINKSShira RosenbluthFor anyone who needs to recover into a fat body, you’re asking them to sacrifice the safety of their eating disorder in the sense that it’s harder to exist in this world in a fat body than in a thinner one.Gloria Lucasjust journal or do a crossword puzzlebacklash against the diagnosis of atypical anorexiaa very good piece about atypical anorexiaVirginia's story on KurboMadeline DonahueLindsey GuileCole on InstagramFAT 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 95 TranscriptColeI’m a journalist and now author. I worked in television news for many, many years and then left that work about 10 years ago to return to print journalism. If you’re a freelance journalist, you end up reporting about everything, right? Crime and the environment and breaking news. But I found myself focusing more and more on mental health reporting and in part that was because I was in a very unsatisfying moment of eating disorder recovery myself. And when I started reporting on mental health, specifically mental health around eating disorder recovery and the eating disorder epidemic, it really shifted the focus of my work to the point where it was all I wanted to really write about and thus the book. VirginiaIt’s called What's Eating Us: Women, Food, and the Epidemic of Body Anxiety. It’s incredible, Cole. Your reporting is top notch and then you also put your own story into this which I know can be difficult to do—to really go there—and you weave in other people’s stories. It’s just a beautiful mix of memoir and reporting.ColeThank you. VirginiaWhat made you decide this needed to be a book and this kind of book?ColeI had an eating disorder on and off through most of college and into my adult life. When I finally got treatment, I was very prepared for that treatment to be excellent and I’m done and now we don’t have an eating disorder anymore. It was so unsatisfying to me that it wasn’t remotely like that. It was more than the residue of the eating disorder. I was not very healed.So, I started approaching it as a journalist, with the idea of seeing if I was the only one that felt this way. Is this in my own head? Am I crazy? Am I not able to recover because it’s just me? And also, as you know, as a journalist you can access people that would never talk to you if you are a patient. VirginiaOh yes. It’s a definite perk. ColeSo I was writing short pieces about why doesn’t eating disorder recovery feel better? And what are the inequities in eating disorder care and in diagnosis? And the more I started reporting this, and the more people I spoke with both everyday people like myself who were suffering, and the clinicians, the researchers, the more I started to understand that not only was this not just in my head, this is the way it is. And understanding the scope of that, I felt an urgency to write a longer piece about this, to write a full book where I could reach all those points.I use a lot of memoir because I think the transparency piece is very important. Eating disorders are very lonely and you really feel like you’re the only one suffering even though you know on paper that you’re not. So, I just wanted people to know how messy and difficult it is, to normalize that. And that no one is alone if they’re suffering from this.VirginiaI mean, this whole concept of “full recovery” is so interesting. I feel like I’m beginning to see some pushback about that in the eating disorder therapist community. My good friend Shira Rosenbluth has talked a lot about her own eating disorder journey and this idea of full recovery being frankly unrealistic for so many people, given the current reality of treatments. Who currently gets to be fully recovered from an eating disorder?ColeWhat is so tricky about this is that no one can agree fully on what it means to be recovered from an eating disorder.VirginiaI mean, that’s mind blowing right there. ColeRight. So, some organizations and clinicians define it as “you’re no longer engaging in the symptoms:” Starving, binging and purging, or whatever combination of those. Like, that would be a metric of recovery, that you’re no longer engaging in those symptoms. But then, in so many treatments, your underlying traumas or anything else that’s contributing to why you might have developed that eating disorder are not addressed.I had a very good treatment, cognitive behavioral therapy, which is considered a gold standard—I don’t want to use the word “standard,” because there really is no standard of care with eating disorders. But the definition of recovery is so nebulous. NEDA, that National Eating Disorder Association, has a kind of definition where they say it’s addressing the physical medical issues, so whatever medical issues arose as a result of one’s eating disorder, then the behavioral symptoms, again whatever behaviors you’re engaging in that are disordered. And then the third category is the psychological piece, which no one can really define.VirginiaThat’s what we can’t nail down. And even right there, that feels complicated because you might make progress on behaviors and even the psychological piece, but have lingering medical complications, right? So that feels like a troubling metric. And then: In the same way that abstinence is not full recovery from alcoholism or drug abuse, just making someone “behavior abstinent” is not the same thing as actually working through the disorder.ColeRight. And that’s why I think it feels so tricky, especially because we move around in this world where all of these behaviors that supported our disordered way of being—dieting, restricting food, giving up whatever the thing is, they are completely normalized in our culture. So if we have a feeling, oh, I don’t think I want to eat pasta. Okay, is that the eating disorder? Is that just our world that we live in?I passed a store or restaurant in LA that said “Pasta! But with the calories of a salad.” Like, I don’t even know what that means. I won’t even unpack that here, we don’t have the time. But if that’s the world we’re moving around in once we’re recovered, then that’s the psychological piece—and that’s not even thinking about what your family history is and any other contributing factors.One thing I’m starting to shape in my mind when I think about recovery is this idea of safety. And I think that’s the missing piece of recovery: Safety in our own bodies, and safety in the world that we’re living in. If we don’t have a sense of safety, we cannot be recovered. And I think the way you insulate yourself from the diet culture world we live in is with community. So, I think safety and community go hand in hand. And that’s what makes recovery feasible.Because for especially people in marginalized communities who may feel the stress of say everyday racism, that person who may go through eating disorder treatment comes out into the world and still feels unsafe in their body. So will they be recovered? So, I don’t think you can have recovery without safety. And I think that’s one piece that’s not really being talked about.VirginiaThat becomes such a complicated piece of it. For anyone who needs to recover into a fat body, you’re asking them to sacrifice the safety of their eating disorder in the sense that it’s harder to exist in this world in a fat body than in a thinner one. So there’s that layer to it. And then also all of that plays into who even accesses treatment in the first place. Like, who gets diagnosed, right?ColeI spoke with Gloria Lucas for the book, who’s an educator who’s doing some really interesting work in this area. She works with a lot of indigenous people who have a real connection of their body to the land. Their body is the land, the land is their body. She said, “how can anyone recover until they give the land back?” I thought, oh shit. VirginiaThat’s not something we can sort out in our treatment protocols. It shows the need for systemic change here. It’s not just people’s personal work to do.ColeExactly. So we have to parse out what is the personal work that I can do? How can I kind of cobble this together? And you do, unfortunately, have to cobble this together. Because even if a person speaks to their general physician, that person may not know how to refer them or what what is the best treatment for them. So you have to piece this together yourself and know that there are a lot of systemic elements here that may not shift anytime soon.VirginiaYou have a lot of examples in the book of these moments in therapy where it’s just so clear that the treatment is not serving you or really anyone. There was one anecdote of the therapist who told you that when the need to purge arose, you should just journal or do a crossword puzzle. And you were like, Have you ever purged?I’d love to talk about some other examples of this one-size-fits-no-one advice and how that also becomes such a barrier to recovery for people.ColeI mean, one-size-fits-no-one is the perfect way to put it because I cannot imagine any actual human who could benefit from some of this guidance. It shows a profound lack of understanding of the disorder and I think that’s also why so many people who have suffered from eating disorders may go into the field of treatment because they actually understand what someone is going through.I think another not helpful and I would go so far as to say harmful piece of therapy was a sort of exposure therapy where the therapist wanted me to begin to include foods in my diet that I had previously restricted.Now, that is not a bad idea.VirginiaIt’s the goal ultimately. ColeRight. I think it’s important to have a diet where you can eat anything and you’ll choose what you like and don’t like, right? You don’t have to eat everything, but you can.So, she would give me assignments like “eat a food this week that you previously restricted.” Now, it was, I think, way too early in my recovery. Especially cognitive behavioral therapy, which did help me in many, many ways I do want to say, but there is a real textbook. This is a 20 week program. This is what we do week one, this is what we do week two, and there is no real attempt made to understand the individual because that’s not even what they’re trying to do. They want to change your behaviors using this way. I just envision that being studied for a population of people and not looking at individuals.So she would ask, “what’s something you never ate?” “Well, pancakes.” “Okay, so this week, eat pancakes.” Well, I don’t think I was ready to eat pancakes.And if we had talked a little bit more, just her getting to know me, Cole, and my behaviors, maybe she would have seen that and said, “let’s do that next year instead of week six or whatever,” right? Because then you’re white knuckling your way through the assignments And of course, many, many people with eating disorders do have black and white thinking, very rigid thinking. I went into treatment, really wanting to get an A+ so I was going to do every single thing she told me, whether it felt right or not, because I was still very sick. But it felt like a force feeding and it felt really violating. At the time, I went along with these things because I didn’t trust myself. And I shouldn’t have trusted myself, right? Because I had gone a very long time making very harmful choices. But there is somewhere in there where you also feel heard. Instead, I really felt like I have no agency. I’m kind of choosing to hand this over, because obviously I’m making harmful decisions. I want to get better, A+ to me for even wanting that, and I’ll do whatever you tell me.VirginiaI mean the parallels there to diet culture are so strong, right? Like, I can’t trust myself, I have to follow somebody else, I have to follow this program perfectly. If I don’t follow it perfectly and it doesn’t work, it’s my fault. That’s what diets teach us. So that’s disturbing when this is supposed to have the opposite goal.ColeI empathize with the clinicians sometimes, even the ones that give us advice that’s not helpful or that can even be harmful. Because eating disorders are so complex. For many people there is a neurological underpinning here that doesn’t explain the entire eating disorder, but explains part of it. I did not get hungry, I needed to be told when to eat. I still do that. I need to sometimes treat food like medicine, like, “you have to eat a yogurt right now. You’re not even remotely hungry, just eat it because you’re crashing right now.” So it’s difficult to understand that, while also understanding that someone may have grown up a certain way, where they treat food a certain way, maybe they had food scarcity, maybe they had a mother who always dieted.There are just so many factors in why these eating disorders manifest the way they do. And it can be different for every person, but the therapy does not usually approach eating disorders in that way.VirginiaRight. We have multiple diagnoses, but we still have this kind of catch-all approach. Like, we don’t really know what category you are. So we’ll lump you over here, in this diagnosis. And obviously, that’s doing such a disservice. Even within within a category like anorexia or bulimia, there’s going to be so many different versions of that. So to have the therapy be this kind of cookie cutter approach… and I don’t even know if classifying it as subtypes would be helpful or just like further stigmatizing, honestly. But at least, meet people where they are. And when it’s time to eat the pancakes, put the emotional support in place to help you eat the pancakes instead of just making it a homework assignment.ColeRight, and weight being still such a factor throughout. We’re hearing more backlash against the diagnosis of atypical anorexia, a diagnosis which still drives me crazy. And when I went into therapy for the first time, I was not weighed or medically checked or recommended to go to a doctor. I was very, very, very thin but I did not look like someone who could be cast in a movie about anorexia. So that made me wonder, Oh, am I not that sick? Am I not thin enough to be that sick? And and this was before the atypical anorexia classification emerged, when I was in treatment. But you can’t look at weight and we know that now. Like, we can’t look at weight as any indicator of whether someone is ill or not. But that is still a metric.VirginiaThe whole atypical anorexia thing is a nightmare. I mean, there’s nothing atypical about it. It’s most of the people with anorexia. ColeIt’s infuriating. VirginiaThat stereotype is so harmful. I’ve interviewed folks who’ve talked about eating disorder therapists trying to be reassuring and being like, “I won’t let you gain that much weight.” So the way weight is sort of handled throughout the recovery process is also pretty fraught.ColeAnd is the idea of weight restoration correlated with BMI? Yes, it is. We don’t have to pivot to a BMI conversation, because you have those banked, but if that’s the definition of weight restoration, that’s problematic.VirginiaCan you define what weight restoration is? We might not be as familiar with that term.ColeRight, of course. So if a person comes into treatment, when a doctor is thinking about how do we restore them to a “normal,” “healthy” weight, where do they go for that information? The BMI chart. I have heard people who when they get to a certain weight in a residential treatment, they are told they can now go back to restricting their food a certain way or you can return to exercise. Often people are not permitted to exercise if they are at a low weight.And again, if someone has the same behaviors, but is in a larger body, I was told by people I spoke with in the book that they are told they can exercise because they’re in a larger body.VirginiaIt’s just wild. And we’ll link to a very good piece about atypical anorexia for anyone who needs to learn more about that whole conversation. Folks who come in bigger bodies are less likely to get diagnosed in the first place. They’re often sicker when they finally get to treatment. And then, yes, the behaviors are not taken as seriously or they’re even like, well, we don’t want you to gain too much, like that kind of narrative around their weight restoration as opposed to what do we need to get you back to. ColeAnd the classifications are tricky, because there’s the catch-all for everyone who doesn’t fall into anorexia, atypical anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, purging. There’s a catch-all for those people who don’t meet all of the dynamic diagnostic criteria to fall into one. Most of the people who show up in community clinics for eating disorders are in that catch-all, so that tells us something. I mean, the catch-all is exasperating but good because someone could maybe get insurance.VirginiaRight, you can get some treatment covered. ColeHahaha. As if, but maybe! VirginiaIn theory.ColeIn some universe. On paper.VirginiaIn a European country, perhaps.ColeIf you are in Norway. Those criteria are necessary, and maybe helpful for some people, but they also show us how off we are as a scientific community, and as a medical community, in understanding eating disorders, the fact that there’s this “and everyone else” category. Virginia“We don’t know, you seem sick.” It’s maddening. It’s so reductive and overly simplifying people’s struggles.We also need to talk about the therapist who, as you say in the book, did legitimately help you in a lot of ways. And then later, when you got back in touch with her, you discovered she was consulting for a weight loss company. That’s a real record scratch moment for a lot of us. I don’t know that people understand how much of a revolving door there is between eating disorder treatment and weight loss management. ColeI wanted to be so careful with this because it not only makes me angry, but it breaks my heart. It really feels like a betrayal when you discover that not only someone maybe you worked with but other people in the field in high positions, in research treating patients or in relationships, sitting on the board of a diet company or working with a diet company. It’s crushing and I don’t understand it.That’s how I am as a human, but when I flip to the journalist part, I want to really hold myself to task for what I’m not seeing, because I went through this first person. So come on, what’s the reason that someone in an eating disorder field would form a relationship with a weight loss company? There’s got to be something I’m missing. And I don’t think there is.I think weight loss companies have a lot of money. Being an eating disorder clinician is a rough job, a lot of your patients do not get better. There is no standard of care. If you are in this field, it’s because I believe—I want to believe, I have to believe—you care about people suffering from these disorders that you understand. So those people are not people who are, like, trying to make fast cash. So, I’m trying to navigate in my own head why there’s crossover because there’s so much crossover.Weight loss companies have booths at eating disorder conferences. Noom is in the eating disorder game. They’re doing a ton of research, they have grants, they are creating programs to treat binge eating disorder. Some of those programs look a lot like weight loss apps, but have maybe therapy combined with the weight loss apps. It’s still this weight loss centered model. Many people I spoke with who use weight loss apps also said it re-triggered an eating disorder for them. These weight loss apps are very dangerous. Potentially very dangerous, no very dangerous. I can say that. And the eating disorder crossover, if one wants to be cynical about it —one researcher I spoke with said, “they are creating a customer base.”VirginiaI mean, that’s where I go. ColeAnd when that researcher said it, I said, “Well you said it, I’m just writing it down.” VirginiaI also think from the weight loss company’s perspective, it makes total sense because the thing they are always criticized for is that they are promoting disordered eating. So, if they can say “no, no, we’re treating eating disorders,” that’s like their solution to what is a PR nightmare. I remember reporting a story on Kurbo, which was Weight Watchers’ weight loss app for kids. And their spokespeople were very much like, no, no, this is preventing eating disorders because we’re helping people do family meals and have schedules and regular snacks. And the fact that we have a list of red foods you’re not supposed to eat that includes avocados and bagels is like, what, don’t worry about that. A lot of it, from the industry’s perspective, makes sense to me.ColeAnd it doesn’t mean it’s not out there, but I haven’t seen a lot of weight loss sponsored research on anorexia. VirginiaThere was that wild study I cited it in my first book, the subject was something like lessons obesity treatment can learn from anorexia.ColeI mean, I guess what I’m saying is that none of these weight loss brands are trying to treat anorexia. All of those studies that companies are doing, that is still not even thinly veiled obesity treatment.VirginiaOh, because they’re like, “we’re solving binge eating disorder.”Cole“We’re solving binge eating because we’ve got all these people that are using our app and losing weight, maybe for six months. We don’t talk to anybody after. Bye!”So it’s all under that same umbrella of getting people smaller. And it still implies that people with binge eating disorder would be larger bodies out, of control, can’t stop eating. It doesn’t address anything underlying.VirginiaRight. It just assumes that the binge is the whole problem and if you can solve that by teaching them restriction, how could that ever backfire? How could that ever go wrong?ColeAnd a lot of these programs have food logs and calories. It’s still the same thing and I’m not sure it can really help anybody.VirginiaNo. The other thing I’m thinking, hearing you talk about what is the motivation on the therapist side, I think it’s the underlying anti-fat bias, right? It’s the thinking that if we can just make everyone thin or “normal” weight, then we won’t have to worry about all of this. Like, if we can just find that solution, then our problems go away. ColeAbsolutely. And even in not just the more nefarious weight loss companies doing research in the eating disorder field, you see a lot of these university affiliated centers for eating disorders and obesity, right? You see that title everywhere. I mean, that was one thing when I was researching my book, I did not want to interview anyone that was connected with a center that is “treating obesity” the way you treat eating disorders. I mean, that, to me, I find so offensive. VirginiaYeah, that’s the study of what can we learn from anorexia to solve the obesity crisis? Where you’re just like, what are you doing? How did we lose the plot? ColeExactly. We lost the thread here, guys. Get it back. VirginiaLife-threatening mental illness is not the solution.ColeI still don’t understand. I mean, I do understand, of course, but it’s just very disheartening when you see the eating disorder numbers. There was a line from your book, I keep thinking of over and over again, this idea of to make a cake, you got to break a few eggs.VirginiaAnd also, don’t let your kids eat cake. ColeAnd also, don’t let your kids eat cake. VirginiaThat is the mindset for sure.ColeThere’s this idea that at least people with eating disorders are controlling what they eat.VirginiaIt’s considered the lesser evil, instead of being understood for the immediate, urgent threat that it is to somebody’s health. If you are concerned about kids’ future health, if you’re concerned about their metabolic health down the road or their heart health down the road, preventing the eating disorder is a good thing to do. Eating disorders are not great for heart health and metabolic health. So maybe that’s step one, before you get all in a lather about type two diabetes. Just a thought, just a thought. ColePeople with eating disorders are at an elevated risk to attempt suicide. I mean, there are things that have nothing to do with body that people with this mental illness are at a higher risk for. And we don’t think about that as much as much either, but it’s an important part of the conversation.VirginiaThat’s really the lie on the whole “well it’s all about health” argument for the war on obesity. If it was all about health, this would be the more urgent matter in front of you. I mean, there’s no question.ButterVirginiaWe wrap up Burnt Toast with our butter segment. Do you have a recommendation for us?ColeOkay. Tom Wambsgans on Succession. Everyone is so unhinged on that show and I just really am enjoying that. I’m here for all of it. But I’m also loving the work of this artist. I discovered her through reading a piece in New York Magazine. I don’t want people to think I understand art! Madeline Donahue, she does these beautiful paintings about motherhood and sort of all the tender tumult of motherhood. Which I think is my real butter, which is human contact right now. I want to just touch my friends and snuggle my son. That just is my real answer. Human contact is my butter at the moment.VirginiaYeah, thats a great answer, but I’m excited to check out her work as well. I’m actually going to do an art recommendation, too.ColeHow fancy!VirginiaMy butter this week is Lindsey Guile who is an amazing body liberation feminist artist who I’ve just started to get to know. She’s also in the Hudson Valley and she had this incredible exhibit and our local art center and it is, I’m not kidding, like eight foot tall charcoal drawings of beautiful, naked, fat women and they are exquisite.ColeAmazing! VirginiaI’m just obsessed with her. She’s got a great Instagram where you can see her work. She draws bodies in the most incredible way and she’s also delightful and a wonderful human being. So, excited to shout out two amazing artists and, of course, the train wreck that is Succession. So good. I love it. Cole, thank you so much for doing this. This was so delightful!ColeThank you so much for having me and for what you’re doing here with this podcast and Burnt Toast. I think it really is building the solution. It’s the only way to do it to talk about it and grab more people into it.VirginiaThank you. I really appreciate that. Tell folks where we can find you follow you and how to support your work.ColeOh, thank you so much. I’m on Instagram and my website is my name. My book can be purchased wherever books are sold, but especially at your local indie bookstore!Read WHAT'S EATING US

Today Virginia is chatting with fat rights advocate Tigress Osborn. Tigress is Chair of the Board of NAAFA, The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, and helping to lead the Campaign for Size Freedom, which just scored a huge victory in New York City and there is more to come. Remember, if you order books we mention in today's pod from the Burnt Toast Bookshop, you can get 10 percent off that purchase if you also order (or have already ordered!) Fat Talk! (Just use the code FATTALK at checkout.)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 LINKSCampaign for Size FreedomNAAFA FLAREPHX Fat Force Smith College magazine profile of TigressClothestimeThe Overweight Lovers In The House & Heavy DDante Earle Tubbs from Contrast PhotosThe Crown ActTipping the Scales of Justice: Fighting Weight Based DiscriminationVirginia's piece for Slate in 2021International Weight Stigma ConferenceLast year Burnt Toast worked with The States Projectgive to NAAFAthe Association for Size Diversity And HealthNOLOSEsign the petitionWondermineBlack Fae Day@IoftheTigress.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 94 TranscriptTigressSo I am the chair of NAAFA, which is the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance and I have been the chair since the beginning of 2021 and on the board for several years before that. But I actually started my life as a public figure of fat visibility and fat activism as a nightclub promoter in Oakland, where I created an event called Full Figure Fridays. So I’ve been doing some form of fat activism since about 2008.VirginiaAs I was prepping for our conversation, I read the profile on you that ran in the Smith College magazine. Burnt Toast’s own Corinne Fay went to Smith, my sister went to Smith and another friend of mine—so I had multiple people sending me that, like, look at Tigress on the cover!TigressLook at this fat lady on this magazine!VirginiaThey knew I would be overjoyed and I was. There was one quote I really loved in the piece where you said, “My aunts were the Lizzos of my neighborhood, but they still talked about how they should be on SlimFast.” Tell us a little bit about how you grew up understanding fatness.TigressI’m from a mixed race family and I had fat aunts on both sides of my family. My Black aunts were confident and were sexy and wore tight dresses and got dressed up to do fancy things and go out. My fat aunts on the other side of the family and the other people on the other side of my family who were fat or thought of themselves as fat didn’t have that same boldness. And I really received that as a racial difference.But I think we ended up with that quote in the magazine was because I was talking to the reporter about people’s perception that Black women have it easy when it comes to body image. I definitely saw a racial difference in my family, but I also still saw my aunts thinking that they were supposed to lose weight. I still saw other people talking about their bodies. As a smaller kid, I was a slim. Then puberty came around. My biology kicked in and I was a teenager who was curvy. I probably wasn’t even officially plus-sized until I was a late teenager, but I remember having a difficult time finding clothes for my graduation because we’d been advised to wear white under our gowns and finding something white and plus size in the limited stores that were available… I was a teenager before Torrid. There was none of this “just go to Torrid.”There was a store here called Stewart’s Plus and it was the trendiest of 90’s fashion, like bright prints and bright colors and stuff like that. It was the closest thing I could get to a teenager look because Lane Bryant, back then especially, was really matronly. Everybody else was going to Clothestime to buy their Guess jeans or whatever.And I was one of those teenagers who had subscriptions to all of the teen girl magazines. Those magazines were for me what Instagram and Tiktok are for teenagers today. Like, where you see the body standards that you are supposed to aspire to, where you’re told how to be beautiful, how you’re supposed to be as a girl or as a young lady. But they weren’t like Instagram and Tiktok in that they didn’t have also a vein of alternatives to that, right? In Seventeen magazine, the person who was supposed to be like the person who looks like me as a young Black girl is Whitney Houston. I don’t look like Whitney.VirginiaThat’s a realistic standard for one to aspire to.TigressExactly. So I grew up with all the messages from the culture—I’m an early MTV kid, I was really into really into music videos, I watched music videos any chance I had to watch them. And you didn’t see curvy people, let alone actually fat people, in music videos, except for a handful of men.I was thinking the other day about how much I love the rapper Heavy D when I was a teenager. One of the only places where I will allow the term ‘overweight’ is his song The Overweight Lovers In The House. So I had a burgeoning identity as a fat girl, not just in a sort of this-is-a-way-I’m-an-outsider or this-is-a-way-I-don’t-fit-in kind of way. I remember trying to write something for one of my teen magazines that I was going to send to them about how important it was for me to see the fat boys, to see that you could be cool even though you were fat.VirginiaWhy can’t we see fat girls, too?TigressYeah, it never occurred to me to be like, “where are the fat girls?” The only fat person was Oprah and her whole little red wagon thing was when I was in 8th or 9th grade.VirginiaShe’s fat but she’s actively, determinedly, pursuing not-fatness.TigressI remember as a late teenager I discovered BBW Magazine, Big Beautiful Woman magazine. I can remember my aunt being like, “Oh, these are fat ladies who aren’t really fat because they’re fancy.”VirginiaThese are Fancy Fat Ladies.TigressBecause they had access to a completely different kind of clothes, because they are fashion models. As limited as that was, a magazine has access to different clothes than we had access to in small town Arizona. VirginiaYeah, and they can shoot you in a dress that doesn’t zip up in the back and it looks like it fits from the front. There’s this whole smoke and mirrors piece of it that they can manipulate. TigressYeah, all of that, but it was really meaningful to me to start to see. I can remember the expansion of print magazines in my early 20s because there was BBW. There was one called Grace, then there was there was a Black fat positive magazine called Bell. VirginiaYeah, I remember Grace and Bell. TigressI remember seeing that when I moved to California and I was in an area where there were more Black folks, then there were more Black magazines available to me. When I grew up, where I grew up, it was Essence and Jet only. Essence might have someone a little larger in it from time to time back then, but there wasn’t regular plus-size representation when I was a teenager in those magazines. And of course, Jet Magazine had the Jet Beauty of the Week that was like, a woman in a swimsuit. I remember them as being curvier than some of the women I saw in other magazines, but they were not arguably fat, right? VirginiaWhen you talked about your aunts still on the SlimFast, and still struggling in that way, even though they were also representing to you this joy in fatness that you weren’t seeing from your white relatives—do you think that the way Black magazines were portraying Black bodies at the time was a factor in that? Or where do you think that came from?TigressI think there sometimes are actually cultural differences around what body types are accepted. I think a lot of it was male gaze kind of stuff. Like, “men still find me attractive.” And there was a kind of creativity and community-mindedness around finding clothes or making clothes that was different. My community was a community of Black folks who love to show out. So when you have to show out, you’re going to find or make some clothes. You’re not going to just settle for whatever the clothes are available to you, if that’s limited. And so there was partly that. I think there were personality differences, there was cultural difference. It wasn’t all racial, but as a kid, I definitely received it as racial.As an adult, I can see more nuance. I can see all the ways that even if there is some community protection around body image, there is still body shaming and you’re still ingesting the messages of the regular culture.I was trying to explain to a Gen Z colleague, upon the passing of Sir Jerry Springer, what it was really like to be coming of age in the era of daytime talk shows and how much of that was very specifically body shaming. They would have these episodes all the time that were like, “Too Fat For That!” The Too Fat For That episode was the one where your BFF comes on with you to try to get the world to help save you from yourself, because you are wearing biker shorts and cut-off tops. “Just because they make it in your size or you can stretch it to your size doesn’t mean you should wear it in your size, girlfriend.” I think my aunts were somewhere along that spectrum of like, well, maybe I will wear these biker shorts or maybe I would be the friend who’s on TV telling her, girl, you shouldn’t be wearing that. I think the magazines were reflective of the culture, but also reflective of respectability politics. Respectability politics allow for a certain kind of fat, they allow for the church ladies to be fat, but there’s still all this stuff about appetite and control and what’s ladylike. So, I think it’s just a mixed bag across the culture and shows up in some really racialized ways and gets experienced in some really racialized ways. Whatever you’re getting in your home culture, you still have to participate in the mainstream culture, right? Because unless you go to an HBCU, you go to a predominantly white college. Unless you start or work for a Black-owned company, you are working for and with white folks. There are some protective elements around community standards or different beauty ideals, but you still have to operate in the whole rest of the world. Weight Watchers is still just dominating daytime television commercials and Oprah with her little red wagon and People Magazine every time you go to the grocery store with the “I lost 100 pounds and I’m half of myself.” All of that stuff is still there. And that was still there for me, even though I have these aunts who were just really glamorous and amazing to me.The folks that stand out to me the most from my younger childhood as glamorous were fat women—including one of my mom’s friends who was not a Black woman and who had this cloud of Miss Piggy hair. She just reminded me of Miss Piggy and she was an Avon lady so she always had the makeup. And my Aunt Linda is still doing it, with her and her wigs and her all things, outshining everybody when she shows up at a barbecue. I don’t know how much of that is just personality. I don’t know how much of it is despite being fat or how much of it is because of being fat. Like, “I better make sure I’m the best dressed and the best makeup and the best hair and the best everything else because I don’t have the body everybody thinks I’m supposed to have.”VirginiaYeah, there’s a little bit of the Good Fatty, maybe.TigressI think so.Virginia“I need to perform this in a certain way.” But it also sounds like it gives them a lot of joy.TigressAnd it gave me a lot of joy! But I was still very clear, especially as a teenager, that if you have a choice, you shouldn’t be fat. And if you have enough willpower you do have a choice. VirginiaOf course, that’s how bodies work. TigressI was in that sort of infomercial era of my early teen years my early years at Smith where the sort of like Richard Simmons Deal-A-Meal era and the Susan Powter Stop the Insanity era. Do you remember her? Everybody remembers Richard Simmons probably.VirginiaI think that’s safe to assume. Or if not: Children, Google your history.TigressLearn who Richard Simmons is. He is very important to our cultural understanding of bodies. I’m not even exaggerating, like, Richard Simmons is very important to our cultural understanding of bodies. But Susan Powter pitched herself as a feminist and was loud and unapologetic and had long nails and makeup and red lipstick and this platinum buzz cut haircut. She wouldn’t be exercising in stilettos, but she was posed in stilettos. She was an “it’s okay to be sexy” feminist. There were many things I loved about her message but she was always on these infomercials screaming about how dieting is insanity, stop the insanity! Here, buy all of my diet my exercise videos because they are the only ones that are not insanity.VirginiaJust starting to head in the right direction and then doubling back.TigressLooking back at some of that 80’s and 90’s super diet-y or intended to be anti-fat stuff, I think there’s a sort of rebellious read on it. Richard Simmons videos were the places of highest fat visibility for me outside of my own family and neighborhood. I could see fat people dressed in bright, colorful, fun clothes, dancing and sweating to the oldies as a dance party. My favorite part of those videos when I was in my late teens and early 20s was the part at the end where it’s almost like a soul train line and everyone dances down and then they put up the numbers of how much weight they lost. If you remove those numbers, that’s some of the best fat joy exploration! I think you could reclaim that stuff by by sweating to the oldies for 50 cents on the DVD at your local thrift store. You’re not supporting diet culture, but you can have a subversive read.VirginiaThere definitely needs to be a deep dive into this, because Richard Simmons was certainly making some deliberate choices in casting his videos in that way. In not just showing all the thin aerobics models. But then, of course, pairing it with the weight loss message.TigressExactly. It’s really an example of how everything came at me at that era of my life. I think I’m watching this at the end for the weight loss inspo, but really what I end up remembering about it 20 years later, is just how much fun those people looked like they were having and how they were getting in shape regardless of whether they had those numbers to put up. But they wouldn’t have been in that video if they didn’t have those numbers to put up, so that’s where the it takes the turn.VirginiaBut, they were in their bodies. They were joyful in their bodies. TigressSo in the midst of all this, I did learn about NAAFA when I was in my first year at Smith because we had this early 1990s campus diversity day called Otelia Cromwell Day. It was named after the first Black Smith grad. And in the spread of workshops, there was stuff about race, there was stuff about gender, and there was a workshop by Carrie Hemenway who worked in the Career Development Office at Smith, that was called something like “Large-Bodied Women.” She was an active member of the Boston chapter of NAAFA. Back in those days, NAAFA had chapters in major cities. Now we’re more virtually based, but Carrie was really active in the Boston chapter and did this workshop at this women’s college in the early 90s.This would have been the fall of 1992, so long before #bodypositivity or anything like that. That was where I learned about NAAFA and I didn’t get involved directly in NAAFA until years later, but just the idea that there is an organization that exists. That was first time I’d heard the idea of just using fat in a positive way. Like, what we were talking about earlier about my aunts and stuff—you still called those ladies full-figured or big-boned. You didn’t call them fat. Even if you were somebody who loved fat women, you still didn’t say that, at least in the circles around that were around me. So that idea, that was where I was introduced to the idea that you could just use fat as a descriptor or even as a positive identifier. And I’ve never forgotten that. Just knowing NAAFA was out there in the world doing something different than what Richard Simmons and Susan Powter were doing when it came to fat people was so empowering to me. I remember one of my friends going home for fall break and trying to explain to her mom that she wasn’t going to diet anymore because it was okay to be fat. I don’t remember her mom’s reaction either, but I just remember us planning that conversation on the bus on the way home, because it was going to be this groundbreaking new approach.VirginiaYeah, and unfortunately it still feels too groundbreaking, right? TigressIt always feels like one step forward, two steps back. Sometimes it feels like one giant leap for humankind and then a bouncy house of bouncing back from that leap.VirginiaThat bouncy house image is very much how I feel at the moment. TigressOh, I bet. I can’t even imagine what is coming at you. People are so mad at fat people for daring to be. Like, how dare you be? You’re inconveniencing me by being. It’s the level of vitriol directed at people because they have the nerve to stay fat and not be constantly trying to apologize to the world and demonstrate that apology through actively dying and—actively dieting. Well, actively dying, that might not have been a slip. That is actually often also true in terms of what diet culture expects of us. There’s a perception that we’re dying because we’re fat and there’s just not enough discussion about how the things we’re doing trying to not be fat are actually the things that are killing us. But people get really mad.NAAFA is supporting fat rights legislation all over the country and I wandered into the comments on one of the New York Times articles about this. The article itself was already framed too much as a like, should they exist or not? And can legislation help allow fat people to exist? I mean, overall, there were lots of great points in the article and I’m grateful that the New York Times is even talking about this issue. But also: Please don’t start the fat rights article with an anecdote about the founder of Weight Watchers. Like, I don’t know, just don’t. But the article itself is for a mainstream news outlet, at least it’s highlighting some fat points. And then I wandered into the comment section, and I was like, “Oh, right.”VirginiaHere we are in the dumpster. TigressWe are not even in the dumpster. We’re in the mud underneath the dumpster.VirginiaThat oozy material.TigressThat’s right. When the dumpster has been so bad that it rusted out the bottom and underneath there is sludge. That’s where we are. We can’t even see the light from the top of the dumpster. Sometimes the worst is the people who think they’re most helpful. I got one letter from this woman who was mad about the magazine cover, because—for people who haven’t seen the magazine cover, it’s me in a tight dress with all my back rolls out.VirginiaIt’s fantastic, it’s beautiful.TigressThank you so much, shout out to my photographer, Dante Earle Tubbs from Contrast Photos in Arizona. It is a gorgeous photo and I have no shame in having my fat vanity and saying that is a gorgeous photo. And, she pulled this quote that I never could have imagined would be on the cover of a magazine about how the world should be prepared for fat people to be audacious because we’re not going to stay in the shadows, in the corners, anymore.VirginiaIt’s amazing!TigressAnd so, some people, both in positive and negative ways, just reacted to the cover without reading any of the rest of the magazine.VirginiaMost of the sludge under the dumpster has not read. They’re not reading.TigressThat’s right. “What! Fat people and audacity? Let me have my thindacity and contact them to tell them how they’re gonna die.”So this lady writes to me—well, she had clearly written this to the editor of the magazine, but just wanted to make sure NAAFA didn’t miss it so sent a copy directly to us. And it was just like, “I’m a retired ophthalmologist and Tigress and Lizzo would not fit in my exam chair.” Well, first of all, lady, I’m wearing glasses in some of the pictures. So clearly, I’ve been to an opthamologist. That’s not really the point. But also kind of the point.VirginiaMaybe have better exam chairs? That sounds like a you problem..TigressTalk about audacity! You have the audacity to write to a civil rights organization and say, “I am fully admitting that my office was inaccessible to people and that’s their fault and they’re going die?” Because she did the whole “and if they ever had to have eye surgery, their eyes would explode.” “And if, in fact, they had to have any surgery, they’d be more likely to die.” And then she closed on, “I don’t think fat people should be discriminated against, but I pity them.”Well, first of all, you clearly do think we should be discriminated against because you didn’t do anything about that exam chair in your office while you had a whole career. But also, you reached out to a stranger to tell them that you think they’re gonna die and then you patted yourself on the back for being smarter than them. I guess that’s not legal discrimination. We can’t legislate against you. We can legislate against that problematic chair. VirginiaFor sure.TigressWe can’t legislate against you just having this attitude, but you don’t get to tell yourself that you’re not discriminatory. You don’t get to say, “I’m not a bigot, but I just pity these fat people and had to tell you that I pity you.” You’re not being the bigger person here. I’m the bigger person, literally and figuratively, because you failed at being a bigger person, if that’s what you thought you were doing. Because that’s just a put-you-in-your-place letter. That is not a concern for your health letter. That was not like, here’s a list of optometrists near you that might have a chair that can accommodate you because I care about your eyesight, right? It’s none of that. It’s just a holier than thou expression of dismay that you have the nerve to live.VirginiaSo, let’s talk about the legislation piece of things, because this is really exciting work you all are doing. Tell us about the Campaign for Size Freedom.TigressSo the campaign for size freedom was founded by NAAFA and FLARE. FLARE is the Fat Legal Advocacy Rights and Education Project, which is a project with the law office of Brandie Solovay and was started by Sondra Solovay, who’s one of the icons, and has been the voice of common sense and good legal sense around anti-fat discrimination for for many, many years. So the FLARE project does all this really incredible work. We work with them all the time.We started the Campaign for Size Freedom with them to support passing more legislation that is related to protections around body size. And the project is supported also by Dove. So it’s really exciting in that way, in that it is really the largest corporate social responsibility investment in fat liberation, ever. There’s no record of anything like what Dove is showing up to do there. And, I know that there are a lot of folks in fat community who hear Dove and they kind of go, “hmm body positivity, they stole it.”VirginiaI did want to ask about this. I mean, they were definitely one of the first brands to embrace body diversity. But there’s a fair critique that they often co-opt the rhetoric.TigressI was literally in one of the protests campaigns about Dove in the mid-2000s. It was called Beyond Beauty. Dove launches their “Real Beauty” thing and then there was this Beyond Beauty photoshoot with all of these visibly fat, Black and brown people and visibly disabled people and just a variety of ages and identities and all that stuff. This is either a supplement to or in protest of the way that Dove is showing these images, even as they’re trying as much as you can expect capitalism to try. We want to always give credit to the folks who are genuinely trying and also hold accountable the folks who are trying and missing it. But I do think that Dove has come a long way.And, there’s still always going to be a segment of fat liberation community who are anti-capitalist and just don’t work with organizations like Dove, ever.VirginiaRight, the Green Peace of this movement. We need that voice as well.TigressWe need lots of different kinds of voices and lots of different kinds of approaches in the movement. And for us, we really, really vetted Dove. We really liked some of the work that Dove was doing, a lot of work around supporting The Crown Act. So when they showed up with us saying we want to support you around legislation, they didn’t show up as like, “we want to develop a stretch mark soap and so we need some fat consultation,” it wasn’t a thing like that.The Burnt Toast Podcast"The Way Our Hair Grows Out of Our Heads is a Problem for People."Virginia Sole-Smith and Sharon Hurley Hall·July 28, 2022Listen now (27 min) | I think it's important for people to recognize that no matter how fascinated you might be by a Black person’s hair, we are not an exhibit or curiosity. You're listening to Burnt Toast. This is the podcast about diet culture, fatphobia, parenting, and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith, and I also write theRead full storyIt was like, we are really looking at our corporate responsibility practices and this is a thing we’re seeing in the research. Because they do so much research around girls and self esteem and I think with an increasing awareness around expansive ideas about gender, but they’re still pretty centered in this “girls and women” language and space, but they’re working on it. We’re going to keep working on that. But they do so much research around girls and self esteem and they were just seeing more and more in their research about how much body oppression and size discrimination affects girls and their self esteem. And so they were like, what’s a thing we can do about this?And they have several campaigns that they’ve run that are looking at how kids see their bodies and highlighting how teenagers are affected by beauty standards and body standards. So the legislative piece is really important because their research was showing people are reporting all of this discrimination. Like, when we talk not just to the kids but also to the moms about how they live in their bodies, we’re seeing all of these things about discrimination in our research and we want to be part of the solution to that. So, I’m excited about the support from from Dove. And they’ve been very good about letting the fat people drive this.VirginiaI’m here for this.TigressNAAFA and FLARE really are out in the front of the project. And right now there is pending legislation in New York City that is super exciting because it’s about to pass which will make New York one of the most populous places on earth that has protections against height and weight discrimination. By the middle of this summer, we will have a law in New York.VirginiaI just got chills!TigressBut what a lot of people don’t know is just how rare that is. Because we have this sense as Americans that if somebody does something wrong to you, you can sue them. And you can, you can sue people, whether there’s explicit law protecting you or not, but your chances of being able to win when there’s not an actual law about the thing that you are trying to sue over becomes increasingly more difficult. Especially around an issue where there’s such cultural pervasiveness about people’s own attitudes. So Sondra wisely says in her book, we could be already treating fat people fairly under the law with other laws that exist just around general fairness, but we don’t apply those laws. The lawyers don’t know how to apply those laws, the judges don’t know how to apply those laws. Having the explicit protections helps.VirginiaI just want to quickly say Sondra’s book is Tipping the Scales of Justice: Fighting Weight Based Discrimination. It is an incredible resource for learning more about all of this.Shop the Burnt Toast Bookstore!TigressIt’s incredible resource and it’s also an incredible artifact of how slow this change has been because Sondra wrote that book in the the late 90’s and it’s really accurate still.VirginiaI did a piece for Slate in 2021 about how body size comes up in custody, states taking custody of children. I wrote about this in my book, too, and referred back to all the research she did on that in the book about BMI being a criteria. These were cases that were coming out in the early 2000s. And it is still happening, that BMI can be a reason to lose your children.TigressAbsolutely. A lot of people don’t people don’t know that, unless it happens to them or unless it becomes so sensational of a story that it hits the headlines. And when it hits the headlines, it’s really devastating. Not just for those families, but also for all kinds of other families who begin to be really, really afraid. That work is so important. Sondra’s work over the course of fat liberation, her whole career is so important, but also it is a shame for us as a culture that her book is still so contemporary. But that is part of what the Campaign for Size Freedom is trying to change.We’re trying to amplify the issue so that people understand this is a really serious civil rights issue. The list of where anti-fatness shows up in our social justice concerns is really short, right? When do people put it on the list as a social justice concern? That that happens very rarely. But the list of places that we care about social justice and anti-fatness shows up within that is a very, very long list because it’s basically every area where we care about social justice. If you care about racial justice, if you care about economic disparity, if you care about gender oppression, if you care about queer antagonism, if you care about issues about the carceral system, if you care about immigration, if you care about reproductive rights. If you feel like all of those are areas where anti-fatness shows up and adds an additional layer of oppression for people, an additional set of hurdles for people in everything from can you get fertility treatment to can you get a desk that fits you at the school you’re trying to attend?VirginiaCan you get an exam chair that fits you at the ophthalmologist?TigressAnd can you get people to care about that and see it as an issue that they should change things instead of an issue that you should change your body?But the tide is turning. Public opinion polls show that people are in favor of protective legislation. People are starting to recognize things as discrimination. I was at the International Weight Stigma Conference last year and one of the researchers there was presenting some research they were doing about asking people to self-assess whether they’d been discriminated against or not. What they found was, when you just asked fat people, “have you ever experienced discrimination because you’re fat?” Many of them will say no. But then when you start breaking down the questions: Have you ever experienced this in your workplace or that in the doctor’s office? Have you ever experienced this in your educational setting? Those same people who said no actually check a bunch of things that they are experiencing discrimination, they just haven’t thought of it that way.VirginiaIt’s kind of reminding me of the way the #MeToo conversation helped us understand what sexual harassment and sexual assault really are. Because for so long, we only had kind of like the movie version of these concepts. And realizing, like, oh, wait, actually your boss making this kind of comment. TigressThat’s right. VirginiaBut we miss the nuances of it, because we’ve been fed one narrative of what is okay.TigressI don’t want to overemphasize that parallel, but something else I see in that parallel is the blame the person that’s happening to dynamic. If your boss said something funky to you, well, you shouldn’t have worn that shirt to work, right? And it’s the same if your boss said something funky to you about your weight, well, you just shouldn’t have been fat and then that would have happened to you. And cultural attitudes around that are changing. Now there’s that under the dumpster sludge clash. There’s a loud voice, especially on the Internet, of how you’re gross and you’re going to die. But also, there’s so many more fat people and people of all sizes saying that’s just not true. And even if that’s what you think, what does that have to do with fat people having civil rights? The older I get, the less invested I am about whether I care what people think about what I look like in this body. It’s still there for me because that’s how pervasive it is. I’ve been doing fat liberation work in some way or another for 15 years and the voices are still there for me. So if you’re new to this of course you’re still going to struggle with it, right? It’s still tough, because we do still live in that SlimFast culture.I know you know Marilyn Wann because I’ve heard you talk about her on the pod. What I loved about Marilyn’s book when it came out was, again, just the existence of this reminds me of something. It is Fat! exclamation point, So? question mark. And that’s so  is really important and it’s really important in the work that we do at NAAFA now. Because when people say, like, you’re just a hater because you can’t lose weight. No, we’re not. And even if that were true, even if I’m just a lazy fat person who is mad at all the thin people because they’re thin and I’m not and I can’t wear your Kim Kardashian clothes or whatever—even if all of that is true, my employer should still have to pay me fairly.VirginiaRight.TigressMy doctor should still have medical equipment that allows me to get information I need about my health. All of these pieces that fall under this legal discrimination umbrella are all things that should not happen to fat people, regardless of what you think about our health or our attractiveness.VirginiaOr how much it’s our fault or that whole willpower conversation that’s really besides the point.TigressCompletely beside the point. There are some audiences where I just will refuse to talk about health. I lead a civil rights group. We can talk about health in so much as there are health disparities that are represented by anti-fatness and weight bias within the healthcare system. We can talk about that. But if you just want to talk about like, do I have high blood pressure? Not your business, not my employer’s business, not my landlord’s business. That’s my doctor’s business and my business and my momma’s business—and sometimes not even hers.That’s what the Campaign for Size Freedom is doing, it is lifting this conversation so that more people are aware that there are so few places in the world that have made it explicitly illegal to discriminate based on body size. In the United States, that list is really short. Michigan has a civil rights law. Washington State has it in part of disability law. And there are a handful of municipalities across the country with either appearance based discrimination law or civil rights law. And it is soon to be New York City. [Virginia’s note: The NYC bill passed right after we recorded this!]It is also hopefully soon to be New Jersey, New York at the state level, Massachusetts and Vermont, all of whom have pending legislation in the wake of New York City. And there’s at least one other state coming but we haven’t publicly talked about it yet. But there’s a non-coastal state coming. We’re not only doing this on the East Coast.Virginia We like the middle of the country states. TigressThat’s right. These East Coast places are places where it arose organically. In Massachusetts, this work has been being done for years. And I mean, like, 10-12 years ago, people like Sondra and people from NAAFA. Back then there was an organization called the Society for Short Statured Americans who was partnering with NAAFA. That organization doesn’t exists today, but we are partnering with Little People of America. People have been doing this work in Massachusetts for years. They’ve been making attempts at the state level in New York for years. But it’s brand new in New Jersey and Vermont, but it all rose organically there by either legislative leaders who looked around the world and said what’s missing from our civil rights laws? What can I take on here? Or by people listening to their constituents who brought issues to their offices. Now we are looking at the whole country and thinking about where do we want to push next? The dream is a federal civil rights law. VirginiaAbsolutely. TigressWe don’t think that in the current federal political culture that we can do that. And especially without having done it in several states. VirginiaYeah, you need to incubate it in a few states. Tigress I mean, we see that with the Crown Act. We saw that with marriage equality, we’ve seen this with other civil rights issues. VirginiaLet’s talk about what the Burnt Toast community can do. We are big supporters of state legislation being the seat of power and where things happen. Last year Burnt Toast worked with The States Project and we raised a ton of money for state government elections to turn some states blue—actually Arizona was our focus state! TigressThank you!VirginiaYeah, it was rough out there, but we did raise a bunch of money and had some key victories. This is something that the Burnt Toast community feels really passionate about. Obviously, this legislation is something we feel hugely passionate about. So, tell us where you need us.TigressYou can follow NAAFA and follow the Campaign for Size Freedom, the hashtag we’re using is #sizefreedom. You can like and comment and reshare and all the things that help boost the signal. If you have money to give, you can give to NAAFA. We are a 501(c)(3) charity. Even though we have this investment and support coming from Dove, we are still an under resourced and understaffed organization, as is all of fat liberation.Donate to NAAFA!If this is an issue you care about and if NAAFA is not the right organization for you—if we’re too moderate, we’re too conservative, we’re too focused on legislation and you care about other things—there are other fat organizations that you can give to. ASDAH, the Association for Size Diversity And Health, they are the Health at Every Size people and they are also now the examining Health at Every Size to see if that’s even the right framework anymore. Super radical work happening at ASDAH, Black led, queer led radical work.Donate to ASDAH!And in the health care space, NOLOSE is also a 501(c)(3). So if you care about that, if you care about the tax receipt. NOLOSE is a queer-centered fat liberation organization.Donate to NOLOSEBut also, you can give money to the folks who aren’t going to have a tax receipt for you but are doing mutual aid in the community, are doing really important activism in the community. Look around your own local communities and see where you can put some dollars into fat things, if you have dollars to give.Whether you have monetary contributions you can make or not, you can sign the petition on our website. And if you sign the petition there, the reason we’re asking for your address is so that if we start doing work in your area we can get in touch with you directly. You can get on our main mailing list to just get other updates about other work. We’re an advocacy organization, we’re not a lobbying organization. There’s all kinds of other work we’re still trying to do. We run a pretty robust program of virtual events so that folks can get to us online and get to each other online for everything from education to joy. August is fat liberation month, so we’ll have even more programming during fat liberation month. And: If you’re still working on using the word fat, keep working on it. It is good for you, it is good for folks around you. And it’s a sort of bat signal to other fat people of whether you have some politics around this. I live in Arizona, there’s all kinds of fat people here. But there’s not all kinds of fat community here because the amount of folks who have a fat liberation framework is not the same as the number of fat people who exist here, right? Finding each other in your local community can be hard. And it is one of the best things, as much as the Internet can be toxic, it is one of the best things about the internet, finding your own. And if you’re local to me, hit me up in my DMs! We can plan some fatty rabble rousing in the Phoenix area.But, give your time, give your energy, give your money, give your platform. Those are the things that people can do. When you can’t physically give your energy, send vibes, good vibes. We take all the good fat vibes.VirginiaWell, this platform is always available to you. So please let us know when there’s a specific thing on the docket and you’re like, “I need a lot of people to sign this petition, I need a lot of people to call representatives.” We are here for it. TigressAnd do that you get in touch with your representatives after they vote for these things, because we want we want to keep those kinds of people in office. We want to keep them knowing that this is a community issue. We want to expand the bills, expand the regulations in places where they’re not protective enough or next time the fight comes back around. The New York City Law is incredible. It will be life changing to people and it is limited to housing, employment, and public accommodation. So there are still other spaces that it’s not taking on.When we do the next round to cover those spaces, we want the people who supported us on this round to know that we paid attention to that. And we want people who didn’t support us on this round to know that we paid attention, too. So don’t just write the pressure letters, write the follow up thank you. Those are really important.VirginiaThat’s so smart.ButterVirginiaAlright, Tigress, what is your Butter today?TigressMy butter today is I’m really loving watching Midnight Diner on Netflix. It’s it’s not new. It’s a Japanese. It’s a half an hour Japanese serial. It’s a little bit soap opera-ish. I’m just really, really loving that as my bedtime story every night. I’m relatively new to podcast world, so I really am loving Wondermine, which is a podcast about about joy and community. Those are two of my favorite things lately.VirginiaThat is wonderful. Mine this week is that Somebody Somwhere is back for season two. I don’t know if you watched, Bridget Everett is a treasure, just a treasure.TigressI watched the first season and I didn’t know it was coming back. Right now I’m just kind of head down, catching up on some work things so I’m only watching Midnight Diner at night and then listening to all of my fat podcasts. But, the second season, I can’t wait. Have you started it already?VirginiaI just watched the first episode and it was just delightful. Her chemistry with her best friend—I’m terrible at remembering character names, but everyone knows who I’m talking about. TigressI love that character.VirginiaI love them so much together. I would watch them to hang out and just talk about nothing and I would be so delighted. TigressI’m going to have to get into that this weekend.Can I say one more butter? The second Saturday in May is Black Fae Day, for Black folks who are into the whole magical creature realm, who do cosplays and meetups and stuff like that. So I’m also working on getting together my Black Fae Day costume. I haven’t found an Arizona meet up yet, but I’m going to do a photoshoot with the same photographer who did my Smith cover. I’m super excited about that. So y’all can follow me on Instagram, you’ll see my Black Fae Day costumes. But also you can just follow that hashtag and like support Black creators who are doing this really incredible cosplay. I think for some of them this is not even cosplay, Fae is their aesthetic and that is why they just look like fairies every day. But I am really, really excited about that.VirginiaI’m so glad, I didn’t know about that. And I’m really excited to look on Instagram for the hashtag with my five year old because she is a fan of fairy things.Thank you. Please come back anytime. Tell folks where we can follow you and support your work.TigressYou can learn more about NAAFA and you can follow us on most of your favorite social media sites. We’re most active on Instagram and Facebook. And you can follow me on Instagram at @IoftheTigress.VirginiaWonderful. Thank you so much, Tigress. It was really a pleasure having you here.TigressIt was so great to be here. I cannot wait to I got my copy of the book. I can’t wait to dig in. I’m really excited for to interact with the the Burnt Toast family. Do you call your fans Toasties or something?VirginiaCorinne came up with Burnt Toasties recently, and I sort of love that. Also one of my favorite little bits of troll commentary was the guy who called me high priestess of the indulgence gospel, so I’m kind of running with high priestess these days. I think we are all part of the indulgence gospel.TigressI love that.VirginiaHe definitely meant it as a burn and I took it as the honor of my life.TigressOne of my favorites lately was somebody who inboxed me to tell me that I’m so fat I look like Kung Fu Panda. And I was like, I will see your Kung Fu Panda and raise you one. I posted this picture of me with a giant hippo statue. Please look for that on my Instagram. I love that picture. And also, fuck that guy. Reclaiming the troll trash and turning it into treasures is way more fun than the whole don’t feed the trolls thing. Like, yes, don’t feed them. But also take everything they say and make it a hashtag that you love.VirginiaNow I need a high priestess costume.TigressWell, I hope to interact more with followers of the indulgence gospel and all the Burnt Toasties out there. Please do find me and say hello.