Burnt Toast by Virginia Sole-Smith

Weekly conversations about how we dismantle diet culture and fatphobia, especially through parenting, health and fashion. (But non-parents like it too!) Hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith, journalist and author of THE EATING INSTINCT. virginiasolesmith.substack.com

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Feb 17, 2022 • 41min

"Healthcare for Fat People is Based on the Premise that it's Acceptable to Kill Us to Make Us Thin."

Hello, and welcome to another audio version of Burnt Toast!Today, I am so so thrilled to be chatting with Ragen Chastain, who is a professional speaker and writer, trained researcher, and co-author of The HAES Health Sheets. Ragen is also a multi-certified health and fitness professional, and a queer fat woman. Ragen, thank you so much for being here!RagenThanks for having me. I love your work so much. I’m giddy as a school girl! VirginiaRagen and I have been in each other’s orbits for a very long time. We were talking about something that we worked on where the website doesn’t even exist anymore. RagenVirginia gave me my very first paid freelance work in this space. She was leaving a platform and recommended me, so she’s been supporting my work, and just be an awesome leader in her own right, for a long time.VirginiaThat’s very lovely of you to say. When I first found your work in the mid-2000s you were extremely patient with my learning curve. For folks who don’t know, Ragen created the beloved fat activism blog Dances With Fat. She is now writing a Substack called Weight and Healthcare. So let’s start with that, Ragen. You have this amazing blog, you’ve been doing it forever, you have, I don’t even know, 1000 posts there. What inspired you to also say I need a newsletter?RagenI started Dances With Fat in 2009. There are a little over 1800 posts on there now. In the same year, I started doing talks for healthcare professionals around working with higher weight patients: Best practices, weight, stigma, weight science, health care. I wrote about that on Dances With Fat, but recently I’ve started to do more of that work and to do it at a higher level, and when I’m talking with a VP of a major healthcare group, sending them to Dances with Fat is not ideal, even though I’m very proud of that blog. It’s not quite the the thing that they’re looking for. I knew about Substack and I knew about Burnt Toast, so I reached out to Virginia, who helped give me a sense of how Substack worked. It seemed like a really good platform for this type of work. I got a little logo made from Toni Tails, a little researcher Ragen icon, and then put together some of the posts from Dances With Fat that were classics. Now I’m going to be writing new stuff, as well. VirginiaI sort of love the idea of healthcare CEOs going to Dances With Fat. It gives me a lot of joy. But it’s a smart activism strategy to have it all in one place. We’re recording this, I should say, right after your first launch week. So you’ve been putting up a lot of pieces that I will be linking to forever. You are covering these really fundamental questions that can be kind of exasperating, like, “This question is coming up again?” But for people who are new to challenging this huge paradigm, you do have to start with these fundamental questions and grapple with stuff. One question people often ask is, “Isn’t obesity a disease?” So, walk us through it, Ragen.RagenThis is something that has been coming up more and more, this idea that just existing in a fat body is a chronic lifelong health condition for which people should get treatment. This has been pushed for a while now by people who sell dangerous and expensive “treatments” for weight loss. I first started seeing it happening in the most insidious way, with organizations that claim to be advocacy organizations—like the Obesity Action Coalition—but that are actually well-funded by diet drug manufacturers and weight loss surgery purveyors. For the diet drugs, for example, their product doesn’t work long term. People gain the weight back as soon as they go off the drugs. So the drug companies say, “Oh, well, it’s a chronic and lifelong condition, then we can just keep them on the drugs forever,” which is exactly what Novo Nordisk is doing, and why they’re pushing this so hard right now. It also expands their market to every fat person alive. That helps them with what is their golden goose, which is insurance coverage. They can’t get insurance to cover these things because they’re expensive and because they don’t work. So by saying, “Oh, well, it’s because you haven’t let us do it long enough,” they are expanding their market. But that it doesn’t make any sense, and here’s why: Thin people get all the same health issues that fat people do. So, being thin can neither be a sure preventative nor a sure cure. That’s just not how that works. This idea that if fat people experience a health problem more often than thin people, then obviously their body size is the problem and making them thinner is the solution is not a science-based conclusion. We have to look at what are the confounding variables that could be causing this? And in this case, weight cycling, weight stigma, and healthcare inequalities are well researched for their negative impacts on fat people’s health. And this idea of fat being a chronic condition increases those three things. I want to be super clear, there is no shame in having a health condition. There is no shame in seeking treatment. The shame here is trying to make simply existing a pathologized condition for which people can sell dangerous treatments that risk people’s lives for an outcome that isn’t shown to be positive. It’s actually shown to be harmful a lot of the time. So, the AMA studied this. They had their Committee on Science of Public Health study whether or not being fat should be a disease and the committee came back and said no. And the AMA said, “Okay, well, thanks for your time, but we’re gonna go ahead and declare it a disease anyway.” VirginiaI just want people to really take that in. The American Medical Association’s committee that was asked to study that question, should we medicalize weight higher body weights, said no, the evidence does not support that. And the AMA said, Okay, so we’re gonna do it. RagenYeah, it’s a “let me just take a minute to bang my head on the desk and then I’ll complete this post that I’m writing” sort of situation.It’s important because this seems so science-y and medical-y, right? BMI is an equation and that’s math and math is science. We have these words like “obesity” that pathologize body size, and that can sound really legitimate, right? But then you start digging and learn that Body Mass Index is just a complicated ratio of weight and height that is racist in its origins. Sabrina String’s Fearing the Black Body and Da'Shaun Harrison’s Belly of the Beast are books I recommend to everyone to read about this and other racism and body size intersections. The term obesity comes from a Latin word meaning “to eat until fat.” This is not science. It’s a term that was created to pathologize bodies. It was invented for that purpose. The AMA saying, “Oh, yes, this is this constitutes a chronic health condition or disease,” sounds very science-y until you find out that the actual science had to be ignored to make that happen.VirginiaYes and this “chronic lifelong condition” we’re talking about, the treatments that they are pushing actually exacerbate the condition, because the condition is living with weight stigma, living with social inequities around health care, all of these other issues that these treatments further. Fat is not a chronic lifelong health condition.RagenIt really isn’t. It’s gotten out that intentional weight loss interventions fail the vast majority of the time. The majority of the time weight loss has the opposite of the intended effect, right? People gain back all of their weight and up to 66% of people gain back more than they lost. But the response wasn’t, “Hey, there’s a mountain of evidence that shows that there are better ways to support the health of fat people than trying to make them lose weight.” The suggestion was, “Well, then let’s do it harder, and more and more dangerously.” And that’s what we’re seeing with the pharmaceuticals. That’s what we’re seeing with the surgery. We’re getting healthcare for fat people based on the premise that it is acceptable to kill fat people in an effort to make them thin.VirginiaAnd yet they’re saying we need to get insurance coverage for these things, even though they don’t work. They frame that as an example of the stigma. They’re like, “Look, it’s so misunderstood that the insurance companies won’t even pay for these treatments that these people desperately need.” They don’t see the inherent disconnect there. RagenI’m going to say they aggressively don’t see the disconnect, possibly negligently, purposefully don’t see it. They’re saying, “We don’t want to stigmatize fat people, we just want to eradicate them from the earth and make sure no more ever exist.” That’s not an anti-stigma message. It’s a profitable one. One of the things that frustrates me is the way that they are co-opting the rhetoric of anti-weight stigma, which the fat liberation community has spent so long trying to get out there, and then using that to sell even more dangerous intentional weight loss methods. It is super gross.They are creating weight stigma and then selling their dangerous product as a “solution.” It’s this idea that if you don’t want to be oppressed, you should change yourself to suit your oppressors.VirginiaThat’s what I want my kids to learn: Make the bully like you better.RagenGive them your lunch money, and maybe they’ll stop beating you up! It’s not a perfect comparison, obviously, but as someone who is both queer and fat and who came out in the mid-90s in Texas, I see parallels between that and this idea of just doing whatever dangerous thing you need to do to make yourself straight, so that you don’t experience homophobia; this idea of changing yourself to move yourself out of the oppressed category, rather than fighting oppression. I spent years fighting my body on behalf of weight stigma. Weight stigma is real and weight stigma does real harm, including to me, but now I fight weight stigma on behalf of my body.VirginiaThat’s a really helpful framing. You took one for the team by taking on one of the most common and irritating troll comments around fat activism: That all these fat people are a drain on the system because they’re costing us so much money in terms of tax dollars in health care. This is an argument that hits me really personally, not around weight, but I have a daughter with a chronic heart condition. I wrote a piece for Slate about the fact that we had $3 million in medical bills before she turned three years old. That’s why universal health care is essential, to help families avoid destroying themselves financially to save their children. The number one troll response I got was: “She’s a drain on the system. Some kids aren’t meant to live.”RagenIn the piece I tackle that from two aspects: The reality and then if it were true that fat people are this drain on the system. The first thing I always do when somebody comes at me with this “my tax dollars” argument is I say, “Well, I want to see your yes/no tax list.” They say, “What yes/no tax list?” And I say, “Oh, the one that shows all the things your taxes pay for broken down into what you do and don’t want to pay for, and the interventions you’re involved in for everything you don’t want to pay for.” This isn’t about their tax dollars. This is about trying to find a justification for their fat bigotry. This is what they’ve arrived at that people sort of find acceptable. Like, “Oh, well, I’m paying for their health care.” But that’s what civilized societies do, right? I am paying for the health care of people who jumped out of helicopters wearing skis and people whose attempts to climb mountains are dramatically unsuccessful. I want to do that. Anytime you say, “Okay, this group of people who we can identify by sight is a drain on society and we should eradicate them to make things cheaper for everyone,” you have gone down a bad bad road. This is a straight up eugenics argument. We have to really recognize that. I find that people who want to say this about me don’t want other people to be doing it to them. Whether they are a raw foods vegan or a keto or paleo person, they believe that they’re right, and they are not interested in other points of view. This is where it really starts to break down. Who gets to decide for all of us? If somebody finds that, for example, a raw food vegan diet is the most healthy, do we all have to do that? VirginiaAnd do we all have to do that in order to access healthcare? What do we owe in order to access healthcare?RagenExactly. This is a really dangerous argument that’s being made by people flippantly, in many cases, just to justify discriminating against fat people, just to justify their weight bigotry. They don’t follow it to the end of where that goes. So that’s really dangerous. And also, fat people pay taxes, too. My taxes go to fund a government war on “obesity” that makes my life terrible and has negative impacts on my health. In general, this argument, when you scratch the surface even a little bit, just becomes a thin veil for fat bigotry that is unsupportable by any kind of evidence.VirginiaAnd ableism! It’s saying that the only people worthy of health care are people who are making virtuous choices that we approve of or who won the genetic lottery and don’t really need health care. What strikes me when it’s levied against fat folks is that it’s often because people are blaming people for their body size and assuming that it’s your lifestyle that led to this, as opposed to the fact that people just come in different body sizes. With something like my daughter, you can’t say, “The baby’s responsible for her heart condition, but we still don’t want to pay for it.” Either way, it becomes this ableist thing to say some lives are more valuable because they have this genetic luck. RagenThere are a lot of places where the intersections of ableism and healthism and fatphobia come together, and this is certainly one. One of the things that is also frustrating is that the idea of body size as a choice is obviously really problematic, but even if we believed that that was true, also a choice is playing sports, which cost billions of dollars in sports injuries every year that are completely unnecessary. Research shows that moderate walking gives us the health benefits that can come out of movement, so nobody needs to be playing sports.VirginiaI love this so much as someone who just hates sports.RagenI’m someone who loves sports and who does ridiculous fitness-y things. Just to be super clear, health and fitness, by any definition, is not an obligation, not a barometer of worthiness, not entirely within our control. There is this good fatty / bad fatty thing, so I always want to be clear that completing a marathon or having a Netflix marathon are morally equivalent activities. I’ve done both, so I can tell you for sure. So, it’s not about that, but I enjoy fitness. I’m also aware that when you go to a triathlon or when you watch the CrossFit Games and people have an exoskeleton of physio tape, that’s a lot of injuries that people don’t need to have in their lives, but they’re choosing that lifestyle. Shaq got knee surgery even though he for sure caused his knee problem and was going right back to the lifestyle that caused it. The NFL was created to risk people’s short and long term mental and physical health in the hopes that one day their team will score enough points to get a shiny piece of jewelry. You’re allowed to do that, but let’s not act like it prioritizes health because it doesn’t. This is a whole group of people purposefully not prioritizing their health and the average player is broke by two years out of the league. VirginiaAnother piece I love is where you break down why diets fail. A line that really jumped out to me, in your piece, is “the entire basis of prescribing weight loss for greater health is built on the decidedly unscientific premise that if we make fat people look like thin people, they will have the same health outcomes.” RagenWhen I did my original literature review of weight loss, looking for the best diet, I was still in diet culture, but my background is research methods and statistics and I’d never really researched this. I had been yo-yo dieting for years. I decided to read every study and break it down and find the best diet. What I found was that, as you said, there wasn’t a single study were more than a tiny fraction of people were succeeding at long term, significant weight loss. The thing that really blew me away was that there wasn’t a single study that showed that the people who were successful had better out health outcomes or similar health outcomes to thin people. That study doesn’t exist, in large part because there aren’t enough people who are successful to commission such a study.VirginiaIt’s hard to do research on unicorns.RagenThe National Weight Control Registry tried it, they’ve got 10,000 successes since 1994. There have been over a billion attempts, but okay. What they found were just some commonalities among outliers. 98% of the people who have lost 30 pounds and kept it off for a year ate breakfast. They don’t know how many of the other billion also ate breakfast. VirginiaA lot of us eat breakfast without successfully losing weight. RagenHad I turned in the study plan of the National Weight Control Registry research in my freshman year research methods class, the dean would have been telling me, “There are a lot of majors here and I think you should choose another one because you don’t understand this at a pretty basic level.” We know that cis male pattern baldness is highly correlated with cardiac incidents. So it would be like if they stopped there and said, “We have to get these people to grow hair” And when their initial attempts didn’t work, they were like, “We need more dangerous ways to grow hair! Drugs and surgeries and a war on baldness!” That is exactly what they did when it came to weight and health. They simply stopped and those who didn’t stop are getting ignored. Lucy Aphramor did an incredible paper about the validity of the research within dietetic articles. It’s a great piece and I recommend it for people who are trying to look into this. VirginiaI’m thinking of a doctor I saw when I was six months postpartum and my baby wasn’t sleeping through the night. The doctor was concerned about my weight. She was like, “Oh, well, I walked an hour a day when I had a newborn.” And I was like, “That’s nice for you, but I have a job and two children and I don’t have an hour to walk. If I had an hour to walk, I would sleep.” It’s just not realistic. A friend of mine was just telling me that she’s pursuing treatment for various medical conditions and the guy was like, “Intermittent fasting will solve all your problems.” And she’s like, “I am parenting and working full time, during a pandemic. I have two chronic conditions. Starvation is not a great way for me to go.” The way that diet and fatphobia show up in the healthy habits conversation feels really problematic to me. It ends up becoming another form of shame and stigma. What can we do, as patients, to advocate for ourselves in these conversations? RagenOne way to go is to try to bypass it. My magic question is, “What would you recommend to a thin person in this situation?” Often that bypasses some of the fatphobia and some of the recommending of healthy habits just because they believe if you did them, you would lose weight. I was at a regular physical with a new doctor and at the end he said, “I just need you to do something for me and it’s going to be so hard. So hard. But if you can do it, it is going to change your life.” And he said, “I just need you to start walking ten minutes a day.” And to his credit, ten minutes a day is reasonable! He didn’t say you have to walk an hour, like your doctor said. But I was training for my first marathon and I had done eighteen miles the night before. So I told him that and said, “I’d be glad to do ten minutes a day because I’m going to claw back a lot of time that way, but I don’t think it’s going to meet my goals at all.” And he said, “Look, you don’t have to lie about it if you’re not going to do it.” So one thing to always know is that this isn’t your fault. This shouldn’t be happening. You can’t make a doctor practice ethical, evidence-based medicine. I also teach ego management techniques—because I live in LA, I can fire a doctor a day, and I will, there there are tons of them around—but if someone lives in a rural area and there’s only one doctor, they have different options. So you can say things like, “oh, I’m actually already doing a weight loss diet, and I’ve lost some weight, but it hasn’t really helped.” This doesn’t have to be true, by the way. Then you say, “What would you do for a thin person? Let’s try that as well.” Like, “Sure, I’m gonna take this diet advice you’re giving me and I can’t wait to put food in baggies of certain caloric amounts. I’m super excited. But in the meantime my cousin had this and she was given this medication.” When a thin person gets an evidence based treatment for their symptoms and a fat person gets a diet, it delays them getting that evidence based treatment for who knows how long. Probably forever, because that diet isn’t gonna work. So, unless the doctor says, “Okay, this isn’t working, I’ll give you the treatment,” it can delay treatment forever. The person maybe doesn’t go back. This is just one of the ways that these healthcare inequalities impact fat people’s health. Just to be clear, don’t do the diet. And I also want to be clear that lying to your healthcare practitioner is not ideal. Ideally, you wouldn’t need to do that. The fact is that weight stigma in healthcare forces fat people to make some really difficult choices that we shouldn’t have to make. This is one of them. In the past when I needed care and was not been able to get it, I said, “I already lost 75 pounds. It hasn’t helped at all. What else is there? What else do you have?” That was, in that moment, effective. Suddenly I’m somebody who is compliant and deserves ethical, evidence-based care. But what they recommended was also recommendable ten minutes before, when I was just fat. Our choices are often not ideal.VirginiaIt’s frustrating because you are then stuck needing to play into that “good fatty” stereotype. But if that gets you the treatment you need and it’s a way to preserve your mental health through the shitty ordeal, then it’s worth doing.RagenA lot of privilege goes into this too. Not just good fatty privilege, but like as a white, cisgender, currently able-bodied, currently neurotypical person. For those with multiple marginalizations, for those who are higher weight, these solutions are less effective because of intersectional oppression and because of the greater oppression that higher weight people face. That’s a your-mileage-may-vary-due-to-oppression -situation.VirginiaThe HAES health sheet website that you’ve put together, is a phenomenal resource for folks. Ragen worked with Dr. Louise Metz and Tiana Dodson, who are amazing as well. They’ve put together this whole library of different health conditions and information on the weight inclusive approach to this health condition, as opposed to the weight-loss-centered approach that many doctors take. If you’re preparing for a medical encounter, this is a great place to go and prep yourself for what’s to come. So we’re gonna wrap up with our recommendation segment. It can be about a product anything and experience you’ve had recently so, Regan, what have you got for us?RagenI have for you Latoya Shauntay Snell’s Running Fat Chef podcast. Latoya Shauntay Snell is this incredible, Black, fat, disabled athlete and activist. She put together this podcast with different athletes talking about the intersections of weight stigma and fitness in the athletic world and how to overcome that. I love all of her work, and her podcast is incredible.VirginiaThat sounds phenomenal. I will definitely be subscribing and downloading immediately. That’s an awesome recommendation. Mine is a little more out of left field, given the whole context of our conversation, but very much in the field for the context of my life right now. It is a parenting book I’m finding very helpful called Why Is My Child in Charge? by Claire Lerner. If you have a preschooler or a toddler who is often trying to be in charge of your life this book is great. I am not a big fan of parenting writing, which is weird to say since I get labeled as parenting writer, but it’s true. Melinda Wenner Moyer, who’s a friend and parenting writer I love, actually loaned me her copy because I was texting her about various tantrums happening in the house. Lerner frames parenting as understanding that you cannot control your child’s behavior. So your job is not to persuade them to agree with every rule you make or to get them to change their minds about stuff, but actually to keep providing the framework they need to be loved and nurtured without needing to stay up an hour past bedtime and ruin your life.It actually applies to a lot, like what we were just talking about with doctors, you can’t change their minds either. It’s a useful message for going through life. I’m not here to change other people’s behavior. I’m just here to set my boundaries and set the framework I need to function. It’s been very helpful for me with a certain four year old at the moment. (Virginia Note: I finished the book after recording this episode and sadly, cannot recommend the chapter on mealtimes. But the rest is still great!)RagenI feel like I need to read it for my little Maltese. We named him after three drag queens and he acts like it. Don’t name your dog after three drag queens.VirginiaWe also have a dog whose behavior I cannot control, but I can control the framework. Alright Ragen, where can Burnt Toast fans find more of your work?RagenSo my newsletter is Weight and Health Care. You had mentioned the HAES Health Sheets and then Dances with Fat. I also do a monthly workshop and the one coming up is on dealing with fatphobia at the holidays. We will be talking a lot about how we can’t control their people’s behavior but we can control our reactions and boundary setting. If you go to Dances with Fat, you’ll also find all of my social media and past writing outside of the healthcare sphere. VirginiaAwesome. Ragen, thank you so much for doing this.Thank you all so much for listening to Burnt Toast! 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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

Nov 18, 2021 • 29min

"Ankles Don't Get Fat at the Same Rate as Butts."

Hello, and welcome to another audio version of Burnt Toast!Today, I'm delighted to be chatting with Corinne Fay, who is my awesome newsletter assistant and the founder of @SellTradePlus, an amazing Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.VirginiaWelcome! Thanks for being here.CorinneThanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be a tiny crumb of Burnt Toast.VirginiaIf we're going to use this metaphor, you would be the butter or some other very important component. The crust? You are a really crucial part of Burnt Toast, behind the scenes. For folks who don't know, Corinne edits the newsletters every week. She catches my many typos and word repetitions and things like that. She also, even more crucially, edits the transcripts (that you may well be reading right now) and makes them legible. She takes out all the times I say “you know,” and “um,” which is really a gift. You also do many other amazing things. So, tell us a little bit about yourself—where you live, what else you do professionally, and anything else you want to share.CorinneI live in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My main full-time gig is doing social media—mostly Instagram, actually—for a local design and manufacturing studio. Our main product is very high-end commercial wall covering. It's the kind of thing that you would see in the Bank of America corporate offices or a tech company office. It's made out of merino wool felt and has very geometric designs. It’s sound absorbing. It’s a very nice product! I have no children, but I do have a very rambunctious dog named Bunny. Hopefully we will not hear her barking in the background. If you follow me on Instagram, I post many photos of her. VirginiaShe's so freaking cute. She's gray and adorable. And you're in New Mexico, home to the most amazing burritos, which we're going to talk about later. I am regularly jealous of your burrito content. More importantly, you do @SellTradePlus! Tell us about that. Tell us the origin story of what inspired you to to launch this because it is a very crucial service in the plus size community.CorinneI started @SellTradePlus in 2018. At the time, I was following two other sell/trade accounts on Instagram. I was following them because they were reselling clothes that I was interested in buying, but also could not afford. I had post notifications on, so I'd get a little ding on my phone every time something posted. But every time something posted, I'd get incredibly sad and frustrated because it was never my size. Maybe like one piece out of hundreds might fit me. So, I started thinking about how if I were shopping in real life—at a thrift or secondhand store—I would just go to the section that was my size. That made so much more sense to me, as a way to shop. I decided that I would start an account that focused on size, first and foremost.When I started @SellTradePlus in 2018, it felt like there were no slow fashion brands or independent designers doing plus sizes. I was also interested in meeting other people who were interested in the same kind of clothes and who wanted to chat about which brands we could squeeze into or make work.The way @SellTradePlus works is, if you have something you want to sell, you send in an email. In the body of the email is the text of the post—we have a format we use with the item, size, condition price, etc—and then you attach photos of the garment. Then it goes into a queue and eventually, I post it on Instagram. People who are interested will leave their zip codes in the comments. Twenty-four hours after the post goes up, the seller randomly selects a person to sell the piece to. This is a little different than some other sell/trade accounts. We do it that way just so people have more of a window to think, “Do I want this? Is this something I need?”VirginiaThat's nice. It takes away the pressure of first come first serve, and maybe you don't actually need the thing but you’re afraid you'll miss your chance. CorinneExactly. So it's not always just the first person commenting who wins. And then, if and when the garment sells, I take a small fee. That’s how I keep things running.VirginiaAs well, you should, because this is a lot of work you’re doing. It's such a smart model. I really hear you about that experience of just wanting to be able to go to my size range and cut out all that other noise. It is so difficult to do, both because in person shopping has become increasingly not a thing for many of us for reasons, and then even when you're shopping online, it's exhausting. Then if you add in that you are wanting more ethically produced fashion, there are so few brands doing that in the plus size space. There have been some improvements, but not enough. So buying buying secondhand is a nice workaround for that. It's very genius. I think you're doing a real service. In addition to solving all these practical problems for people, you've been building this really lovely Instagram community. You have these great, awesome open thread posts that you do on Fridays where people talk about all kinds of different things. I got advice recently on plus size underwear brands, which was useful to me. All different topics come up. I'm curious, was that also part of your original goal? Was it something you cultivated? Or did it just kind of happen that way?CorinneIt was definitely part of my original goal. I was really looking for a place where I could connect with other people who were a similar size, who were interested in similar types of clothes, so that we could share info about what brands fit us or what things we could make work. The community aspect has definitely become a huge part of it for me. Even sharing stuff like fast fashion pieces that are better than you think they would be. If there's a really good Target jumpsuit that fits plus size bodies and is made out of a nice material, it's just a good place to share info like that. [Corinne Edit: The jumpsuit linked there is good, but it isn’t as good as last year’s version!]And I actually have a few people that I've met through @SellTradePlus who live in Albuquerque that I've met in real life. Someone just did an in-person plus size clothing swap in Philadelphia. The community is definitely a big part of it for me and when I think about what might be next for @SellTradePlus, I don't want to lose that element.VirginiaI agree. I think it's really special. It's interesting, too, because I'm noticing a lot of tension over which brands do we want to support, which brands do we not want to support. We don't have to get into specifics, especially because by the time this airs the whole conversation will change. That tension comes from a very real place, right? This is a marginalized group who hasn't had enough options and emotions, understandably, run very high. But I appreciate that you have created a space that's positive and supportive. There is space for people to have those feelings, of course, but is more focused on solutions and helping each other, rather than some of the tear-each-other-down stuff I’m seeing in other spaces.CorinneWe definitely have drama sometimes—but who doesn’t? We're realizing now that is the very nature of social media: Drama makes it work.VirginiaOnce you start to get a little bit bigger, it's inevitable because you're not talking to only 300 people anymore—it’s thousands of people. Overall, I feel like you keep a very positive tone and I appreciate it.CorinneThank you. I feel lucky that—maybe because it's clothes—we're not on the troll radar. I fear that as we get bigger, that might change. VirginiaIt's good that you don't talk about parenting or health, because I can say from experience those are troll-heavy subjects, especially where they intersect with weight. A lot of my life choices I have to question.CorinneOh God, I'm so sorry!VirginiaIt's fine. It's all part of the gig. It's a fraction of what I deal with, honestly. I mostly have really positive interactions with people, but it is a part of the job. I'm just glad you can protect yourself from that to some extent. Let's talk a little bit more about fat fashion. I've seen really beautiful pieces go up on @SellTradePlus. There are great clothes, but you're also seeing things that haven't worked for people, right? That's why they're passing them on. I'm curious if you've identified any themes. Are there certain brands where the sizing is really inconsistent so they don't work out for people? Are there certain types of garments? Other things that are real problem areas in fat fashion?CorinneThis is something I could talk about for hours. The number one biggest thing that comes up over and over again is sizing. When brands decide they're going to start making plus sizes, a lot of times it seems like they just go for it without doing any research. Sometimes there's a whole different sizing scale where you think you're ordering a 3X but it's actually the equivalent of like a standard plus size 18.Often there are huge issues with pattern grading. Pattern grading is really complicated, but basically when an item of clothing is designed, they design one base size, and then grade that up and grade it down from there. The problem is that when you grade up or down, eventually the pattern becomes distorted. If a brand offers sizes 0-12 and wants to expand to a size 26, they have to create a whole new base pattern. If they don't do that, the typical problems you see are things like the sleeve on the upper arm is too tight or the ankle is like weirdly big and not in line with the original look of the pants. It turns out ankles don't get fat at the same rate as butts! It's a problem of trying to linearly make a piece of clothing bigger and that's not how fatness and bodies work. That's probably the number one problem. There are some brands where it's just so obvious that they haven't done the grading right.There are also certain fabrics that are just really hard to get right, like linen pants where you're going to wear out the thighs really fast if your thighs rub together or wear out the seams if they're a little bit tight. Also non-stretch stuff, like 100% cotton denim or canvas. It can just be uncomfortable sometimes. There's so much variance in like how large bodies carry weight so it's just so hard to get the fit right sometimes.VirginiaWhen I was doing my jeans research people kept saying—because I kept complaining that the jeans were stretching out so fast—that I need non-stretch denim. Maybe? But, in plus sizes, that is very hard to find. And if it doesn't work that's going to feel miserable on my body, like wearing a suit of armor. CorinneExactly. With the 100% cotton denim, you either have to stretch it out—so you're wearing it while it’s incredibly uncomfortable, which can be really triggering for some people—or they don’t stretch at all. I also had a non-stretch pair that I just ripped bending over because… they don't stretch.VirginiaThey don’t move with your body. That's a good point about it being triggering for folks.When clothes don’t fit, it’s a really emotional thing.CorinneFor people that already struggle with feeling comfortable in their bodies, it just doesn't feel good.Another thing is that now that we live in this post-/ongoing pandemic, there are a lot of styles that just are not selling right now. Like business casual stuff. Like Ann Taylor, LOFT, blazers, blouse-y stuff. This may change when people go back to the office, but who knows? Maybe the world has changed forever. And the other thing that is consistently a hard sell is shoes. I think they're just really hard to buy online, especially if you can't return them.VirginiaThat's fair. If the shoe doesn’t fit, there’s no faking it. CorinneNo. No one's going to tell you to stretch out the shoe. Or maybe they are, I don't know.VirginiaIt's not going to work.The business casual stuff totally makes sense, that you would be seeing more of that right now. The sizing thing is so, so tricky. That's why I think this is such a smart resource. I had an experience recently where I ordered two jumpsuits from Big Bud Press. And I’ll call them out: The sizing was atrocious! I measured myself, I used the chart, and I couldn't get them up over my hips. And then to return them, I had to send an email within 14 days of purchase and get blessed to return them, which is a lot of hassle. I did manage to get them in under the wire and get my money back, but the whole time I was thinking, well maybe I could post them on @SellTradePlus because this is so stressful. CorinneTheir sizing is just whack.VirginiaIt makes no sense and it's very frustrating. So I like having this alternative option if you get screwed on returns, which unfortunately happens a lot.You're seeing what trends people are really responding to and getting excited about. What kinds of items are gold on @SellTradePlus? Things you know will go fast. CorinneThe most popular posts, the ones that have just dozens and dozens of people interested in them, are often the most colorful stuff: a pair of like Lucy & Yak overalls with a bright floral pattern, or the NorBlack NorWhite dress with the rainbow-y plaid, or even a sweater from Target that's just like a really good shade. Those items are just the most consistently popular, across brands and across sizes. Fat people have been told, “Wear a black sweater.” And either because everyone already has twenty-five black sweaters and they are not as hard to find, or maybe because a black sweater doesn't stand out in the grid as much, sometimes that more generic stuff is a little bit harder to sell, even when it's a popular brand. The colorful stuff really gets people, I think.VirginiaThat makes sense. I think it is speaking to a craving a lot of people have. You're working within the Instagram model, too, like what stands out when people are scrolling.CorinneI'm always really excited to see larger sizes just because they are less common—like size 24 and up. We just don't get as much of that and also that's my size range. I'm way less picky with the larger size stuff and way more picky with the smaller sizes.VirginiaThat totally makes sense. The smaller sizes have more options, period. Well, I have a couple of things I think I have to send you soon. I have a very sad story about a Tanya Taylor dress I bought it for my sister's wedding. I ended up with a different dress for the wedding, but I missed the return window and Tanya Taylor dresses are an investment. It's a really cool dress. I think it will be fabulous for somebody. So I will get some pictures. CorinneGreat, I will keep an eye out. If you need Big Bud Press sizing advice, I may be able to help you.VirginiaI was left with such a bad taste in my mouth. I have to have some distance before I'm ready to try again. CorinneI understand that. That's definitely one brand that shows up a lot.VirginiaIt's frustrating because there's a lot to love about what they're doing. If you want to support a small brand, they check all those boxes. But I don't feel like they're doing the best job with their size chart. So maybe they'll improve.CorinneYeah, they have been improving. I don't know when you ordered or which item, but they're improving sizing garment by garment. It’s hard to keep track of whether you're in the new sizing or the old sizing.VirginiaOkay, that's encouraging. I'll try them again down the road, I guess. It’s too cold for jumpsuits right now, so that's another reason to put it on hold. So this is where we each recommend something we're loving lately. Corinne, what do you have for us?CorinneThis is very niche, but I'm hoping it's something everyone can appreciate in some way. I live in New Mexico and breakfast burritos are a huge thing here. I'm from the East Coast originally, and breakfast burritos have a real culture here. There are tons of places in Albuquerque where you can go and get a drive-thru breakfast burrito. Probably most listeners won't be able to do that. If you can't get a drive-thru breakfast burrito, you could make one. Just make sure it has green or red chile on it.VirginiaI want to plan a trip to New Mexico solely based around the breakfast burritos. Whenever you post one, I'm filled with sadness that I live in the Hudson Valley, where we have really good Mexican food, but we do not have breakfast burritos like that. CorinneIt’s such a specific thing! I didn't understand until I lived here. So, have a breakfast burrito. If you need some inspiration, you can look at my personal Instagram where I do post a lot of breakfast burrito pictures.VirginiaVery impressive and inspiring. I should make them, you’re right. One of my kids would really go for them and one of my kids would just eat the tortilla. You're inspiring me. I feel like they're also not just for breakfast, like I can make this for dinner.CorinneThey’re good for every meal.VirginiaThey just have eggs in them. That's what makes them breakfast, right? An egg burrito? That sounds sort of gross, I can see why they branded it differently. Well that is a very good recommendation.I'm actually going to recommend two things. The first is a novel called Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters. It is out in paperback, so a lot of people may have already read it, but I just got to it. It's a hard read, at times, but it's a really beautiful book about the trans community in New York City. It’s about what happens in this relationship—it's two trans women—when one of them detransitions and goes back to living as a man even though he/she (pronouns change frequently throughout the book) doesn't identify as a cisgender man either. That whole journey is so fraught for both of them. The book really takes you into that community in New York City and the history and how folks in the trans community have had to be each other's parents and look out for each other across generations.CorinneI read this and I also endorse. It's so good. Actually, I listened to it and the audiobook is also really good.VirginiaThis is a double recommendation! I could see it being good listen. It was great. I'm dying for it to be a movie. It would be a really amazing movie. It’s one you keep thinking about afterwards. My second recommendation isn’t really related, except that they both take place in New York City. Last week, we watched the movie Can You Ever Forgive Me? starring Melissa McCarthy. It came out in 2018 and I had a baby in 2017, so I have cultural black spots related to the years my children were little. But I'm a longtime Melissa McCarthy fan. It's a serious film—but you know, it's Melissa McCarthy, so there's humor too. She plays Lee Israel, who was a queer writer in the 90’s, who couldn't make a living as an artist. She ended up becoming a literary forger and forging letters by Dorothy Parker and Noel Coward and selling them. The movie follows her whole journey of doing that and getting caught—I'm not spoiling anything because it's a real thing, she got caught. The movie takes you into this little community in New York, her friendships, her life, and I love it. I love it because it's the type of story that we would not remember necessarily. Her narrative is not one that gets told often. It was another one that I just keep thinking about. So if you haven't seen that, I recommend. Corinne, thank you so much. This was a really great conversation. I'm so glad to be able to share @SellTradePlus with Burnt Toast folks who haven't already discovered it. Tell us where we can find more of you and more of your work.CorinneThank you so much for having me! You can find @SellTradePlus on Instagram and you can find my personal account (where I'm posting breakfast burritos) at @SelfieFay. VirginiaThank you to everyone listening to Burnt Toast today. If you liked this episode, and you aren't yet subscribed, please do that. If you are a subscriber, thank you for being here and please consider sharing burnt toast on social media or forwarding this to a friend (maybe a friend who is shopping for clothes!) Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by the fantastic 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.I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. You can find more of my work at virginiasolesmith.com or come say hi on Instagram or Twitter. Thanks for listening. Talk to you soon! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

Nov 4, 2021 • 37min

"I Spent My Whole Life Wondering if There Was Room for Fat Folks to Fall in Love."

Hello and welcome to another audio version of Burnt Toast!Today I’m delighted to be chatting with Crystal Maldonado who is the author of Fat Chance, Charlie Vega, one of my favorite YA books—maybe one of my favorite books, period. Crystal also has a new book coming out in February called No Filter and Other Lies.CrystalThank you so much for having me. I can’t believe you said it’s maybe one of your favorite books. I’m gonna go cry.VirginiaI cried when I read it. I love it very deeply. So I’m excited to talk about it. I’ve been fangirling you on social media since the book came out. CrystalI fangirl you! When you reached out, I was like, “Oh my god, my dreams are coming true!”VirginiaWell, get ready for a mutual fangirl episode because that’s what we’re doing. Why don’t you start by telling us a little more about yourself?CrystalAs you mentioned, I am the author of Fat Chance, Charlie Vega, which was my first book ever. I have a day job where I do social media marketing for higher education. I live in Western Massachusetts. I have a great husband, who was the inspiration behind the love story in Fat Chance, Charlie Vega. Together we have this adorable dog, Toby, and we have a two-year-old named Maya. I love things like glitter. I love Beyoncé. I love having a lot of feelings and I love trying to dismantle things like fatphobia and capitalism.VirginiaI am so here for dismantling fatphobia and capitalism with glitter.CrystalWe all bring something, and I bring glitter.VirginiaGlitter is a controversial topic in my house because my husband hates cleaning it up. He can’t even talk about it without becoming enraged. My daughters and I are like, “But, GLITTER!”CrystalIt sparkles! What more do you need?VirginiaI’m always like, “Okay, let’s do the glitter project outside,” because I want to hold space for his mess intolerance. It’s fair. But glitter nail polish isn’t messy, so… CrystalGlitter nail polish, that’s a good one! I’m going to keep that in my back pocket because my husband wants me to feel like I can do whatever I want with glitter, but then sometimes he finds a rogue glitter on his head.VirginiaIt is true that once glitter enters your home, it will never not be in your home. I don’t think we’ve purchased glitter for an art project in five years and I still find it places. It is problematic in that way, but it is also very joy-inducing. CrystalIt’s just sprinkling joy that you find later. VirginiaSome joy on your bathroom floor!Okay, let’s talk about Fat Chance, Charlie Vega. When I read it last year, it was such a bright spot in pandemic life. I love so much about Charlie and how you’ve subverted a lot of expectations and stereotypes about her. What is Charlie’s origin story for you?CrystalI really went into this book wanting to write a fat romcom. As someone who just loved reading love stories and romances, especially within the young adult genre, I felt like I spent my whole life wondering if there was room for fat folks to fall in love. It seemed like I never saw that. I was lucky if fat people existed at all in young adult books. If they did exist, they had to fit into these weird boxes that didn’t make sense and certainly weren’t anything like me. I was a total dreamer, like Charlie, and I wanted to be kissed and I wanted someone to love me. I wanted to make Charlie into this person who is soft. She is dreamy, and wants what she wants. She embraces that yearning, in ways that I think fat people don’t always get to do.I have always felt that if I, as a fat person, yearn for something, it’s considered pathetic. I’m not supposed to want anything, you know? That’s weird! I am a human. I’m allowed to want.I wanted this fluffy book that had all of these typical romance tropes, but for a fat girl to be the main character. She gets to be desired. She doesn’t lose weight. And she gets to fall in love with herself, too. I wrote the book during the 2016 election, as well. I was really going through it at that time, feeling like I was living in a society that was telling me I didn’t belong in any realm. This book was my response. Like, “Oh yeah? Well, I’m going to write a book that celebrates all the things you don’t like about me.” VirginiaYearning is such a big part of that life stage! But we don’t have representation of kids yearning and getting what they yearn for when they are in marginalized bodies. I love that she has desires. Those are some of the most fun parts to read. It’s really sweet and sexy. I can imagine so many girls in all body types, but particularly bigger girls, appreciating that.CrystalWe deserve that, too.VirginiaLet’s talk a little bit about what you were writing against. Obviously there was Trump, but also the way fat kids are portrayed in YA literature. Charlie does talk about her weight. She is aware of her size and how her mom is dealing with it, but it is not a book about her needing to change. She just has to own the fact that she does accept herself. Can you talk about what you were trying not to do?CrystalIt’s really important for fat folks to have both stories that talk a lot about being fat and that don’t acknowledge fatness at all. With this book, I was trying to immerse the reader in being fat and how it invades everything you think about because it is what society sees. That’s the world Charlie’s living in. She knows she would probably love herself a whole lot more if the rest of the world didn’t have big opinions about her body and her eating habits and exercise habits.But I wanted to push back on the idea that all fat people hate themselves inherently. Charlie doesn’t hate herself. Is she down on herself? Yeah, of course. Does she experience insecurities? Yes, she’s a teenager. She’s a human. We all feel that. I wanted to show that it’s way more complicated than that. So she’s not this fat girl who wants to hide herself. She wants to wear cute clothes and she wants to have all of these great experiences. I wanted her to have all of that without ever dieting or losing weight. I’ve read a lot of books where there’s a fat person and then they lose weight, or they get thin, and then they live happily ever after.VirginiaI love Jennifer Weiner’s books so much, but I still remember in Good in Bed when Cannie starts riding her bike a lot. She doesn’t lose weight, but it says she “shifts it around.” I just remember thinking, why was that necessary? We love Cannie! We’ve been rooting for Cannie this whole book. Why does weight have to be part of it? [VA Note: It’s possible I’m thinking of Rose in In Her Shoes here. It’s also possible they both have this plot line!]CrystalIt feels so demoralizing when you’re the fat girl reading these stories. It’s like, “Well, I guess I inevitably have to lose weight if I want happiness or love.” There’s also this idea that the fat people in stories are the sidekick-bestie-asexual-funny person. They don’t get to desire or be desired. I didn’t want that for Charlie. I wanted her to come out first thing and say, “I dream about being kissed.” I think that’s way more accurate. She is this person who wants to go buy a cute bra and also be super funny and sarcastic. Why not both?VirginiaSpeaking of sidekicks, you populate her world with such an amazing friend group. They are not one-dimensional sidekicks at all. All of her friends are very fully formed characters, dealing with their own stuff in different ways. You layer in many intersections of race and gender identity along with body diversity. And also, Charlie lives in this mostly white town and struggles with that experience. How did you think about what other stories you wanted to tell through her friends?CrystalIn my experience growing up in a mostly white town, anyone with any semblance of a marginalized identity is drawn together and finds community with one another because, for whatever reason, you don’t fit in with the majority. That is how I viewed Charlie and her friends, as this tight group of people who come together because they feel othered in some way. I wanted her friends to have beautifully robust and nuanced lives with their own things going on. I spent a lot of time on Tumblr when I was growing up. We would complain about how there’s a wonderful black best friend, but they never get to do anything. They clearly exist only to help this white main character achieve something. I wanted to think of every one of Charlie’s friends as characters who I would want to read a book about. That’s what it’s like in real life! People have their own lives, they have their own experiences. At the same time, I am a fat Puerto Rican girl and I’m cisgender. I didn’t feel, with some of those identities, that I could tackle them in that first person, intimate way that I can with Charlie. Amelia is black, pansexual, and very sporty. I don’t know about any of those identities (I identify as bi, not pan) but I have friends who have had these experiences. I wanted to talk about these experiences but not in a first person way because I didn’t feel like I could do them justice. At the same time, I wanted to shed light on some of these different identities to make you think about things in ways that you might not have. Especially if you’re from a very white town, or a town that doesn’t have these other identities, you can meet these people through Charlie.VirginiaWhen Amelia comes out to her parents, it’s so moving. I love how you followed those journeys and wove them in.What are you hearing from readers? What kind of responses have you gotten, especially from fat kids reading the book?CrystalIt has been so incredible. People have reached out and shared an appreciation and a sense of validation in reading Charlie’s story. It’s not just people who are her age and it’s not just people who are fat, it’s different age ranges and it’s different body types. Some people who reach out are fat, but they're not brown, or they're brown, but they're not fat. To hear from people who have a similar identity to me, to hear them say they get to look at this book and see a character that looks like them, is meaningful. That’s exactly what I wanted and yearned for when I was fourteen or fifteen. It’s been really humbling to hear from people who are like, “Oh, I consider myself a Charlie” and “I have an Amelia.” That is the best. I’ve even had a couple of people who have recreated the cover. I’m like, “Oh my God, can I just be besties with all of you? Because you’re incredible.”VirginiaWhat I often hear from parents of kids in bigger bodies is that they want a book where the fat kid is just the hero or the heroine, where it’s not about their body acceptance journey. As much as Charlie is reckoning with her weight in this book, your book is one of the best examples of that. She has her own journey. So, for parents who are looking for that, this is the book that you’re looking for. There is no weight loss. This is a really good one to have in family libraries for that reason. My older daughter is eight and she’s probably a couple years out from reading it, but not that far. I think it works for a wide variety of age ranges. CrystalEspecially as you’re getting into those awkward middle school years, Charlie’s your girl because she has not been kissed at the start of the book. She’s sixteen and she feels like her peers have surpassed her. She’s dealing with a complicated mom and grief in her household. There’s a lot that younger folks might relate to. Some YA is more mature, and we need that, too, but when we meet Charlie, she still feels like she is just at the beginning. VirginiaAnother thing that you navigate in the book is the online communities that Charlie is a part of. She finds fat influencers and she’s in that body positive space online. That’s something I really struggle with, with our kids, especially right now with everything we’re hearing about Instagram and how great it is at teaching kids to have eating disorders. I am definitely wrestling with thr desire to never let my children online. Your book is a reminder to me that kids in marginalized bodies need to find community and if they’re not finding community at school, which not everyone is going to in middle school in high school, online can be that portal. Do you see online communities as a force for good? Or a force that needs to be tempered? How are you thinking about it?CrystalI think it can be good and it can have very toxic sides as well. I see this a lot as someone who manages social media for a brand. I use social media as myself, of course, but I also see the flip side where there’s a lot of hate and a lot of anger. I wanted to show that social media has the power to be toxic, but at the same time it can bring you together with people who are like you, that you might otherwise struggle to meet. When I was growing up, I was very much the girl on Tumblr and—I’m dating myself—I was also on LiveJournal a lot. There was this amazing community there called the Fatshionista community. It was just fat people posting pictures of themselves wearing clothes. It was before the super posed, beautiful Instagram photos. It was truly just fat people being like “Here’s what I’m wearing today. What do you think?” At that time, the internet was very ugly and toxic, and especially for fat folks. Let’s be real, it still is, but this was a little safe haven. It was a nice place where I could go and see bodies that looked like mine for the first time in my life. So I think social media can be super, super powerful. But when you’re part of a marginalized community, you have to curate your feed. Sometimes that means not following mainstream media, even well-meaning ones. You’re following hashtags or you’re finding people through those hashtags. You can find influencers or people who are thinking about this stuff and talking about it.For Charlie, the most powerful thing is just being able to see girls like her who are out there rocking cute outfits, and getting style inspiration. That helps her build her confidence because she’s like, “Hey, this person has a body like mine, and they look amazing. So could I look amazing.” I would say unfollow literally anybody who makes you feel even a tiny bit bad about yourself.VirginiaAs parents, we’re figuring out how to teach our kids media literacy skills, which we all need to learn, too. We are 100 percent learning with our kids. If your kid is begging to get on Instagram and you’re on the verge of losing that battle, how can you experience it with them and help them seek out these little pockets of goodness, as opposed to just mindlessly following every influencer?CrystalIgnore who Instagram suggests you should follow and you make the list.VirginiaThis is the type of stuff I wish they were teaching in middle school and high school. I think teaching kids how to navigate these spaces would be really powerful. You are a writer and you have a day job and you’re a mom, so you’re juggling all of the things. I love to ask fellow writers a little bit about their writing process, like where do you write? When do you write? What do you like about your process? What do you hate about it? It sounds like you’re probably fitting it in around a lot of things, so tell us what that’s like.CrystalBefore I had my kid, my writing routine was more about the vibe and curating this feeling and going to coffee shops. Now I’ve gotten pretty good at writing anywhere. I just need my laptop and my headphones and a good playlist on Spotify and my toddler not to be ripping my laptop out of my hands.I have a desk set up in my bedroom, in this small alcove, and it feels really cozy. I hung up little twinkle lights and it’s got some natural light. I’m very much a feelings and mood person, so that combo helps me get out of my head and move into a different space so that I can think about characters and dialogue. As long as I can put my headphones in and turn the world off, that’s where I’m at.The thing I hate the most about my current writing process is that it is so chaotic. I never know when I’m going to have the time to actually sit down and write. Sometimes, at the end of the day, if my kid went to sleep early, and I don’t have any chores to do (knock on wood) and I’m caught up on things, now I can write—but I’m so tired. Vegging out wins a lot of the time, I’m not going to lie.VirginiaI mean, it needs to happen. You need to rest. There are weeks where I’m like, “There are just no more words. I have nothing. I can’t write today.” CrystalI know some people like writing every day, they live and die by that and that’s what works for them. I am envious, but I’m just going to write when I can. I also like to think that daydreaming is part of the writing process, at least for me, and thinking about characters. I count that as writing now.VirginiaI think that absolutely is the work. It’s the work that we can do while driving and running errands, thinking through an article in my head while walking the dog. You can do that work while you’re doing the rest of your life in a way that you cannot when it’s time to sit down and be at the computer. You need to shut out the world. I think building that daydreaming muscle is actually quite helpful because it makes it easier to focus once you sit down.I feel like there is a parallel between the write-everyday people and the workout-everyday people, where you have to ask, “Is this perfectionism serving you? Or is it an obsession that you can’t step back from?”As a journalist, I literally can’t write every day because often I’m researching and reporting and I need to do that in order to write. I tend to have one week of the month when I’m producing a book chapter that I’ve been researching and reporting all month. I’ll have 3,000-word days of getting out a chapter. For a long time, I felt guilty, like I should be doing it more systematically and writing smaller chunks. And then I just realized, this is how I do it. CrystalIf people write every day and that works for them, I think that’s truly incredible and I’m in awe. Writing is so individual. You can try every method that you hear about from great writers and you could fail at all of them, because it’s just not how your brain works or how you think creatively. You have to find what works for you. VirginiaAnd then you have to make peace with that being what works for you, because it often doesn’t feel very satisfying.CrystalIf you’re not a morning person, being a part of the 5 am writers club is never gong to work, so don’t bother.VirginiaAnd if you are a morning person, like me, trying to push yourself to work after your kids go to bed is always going to fail. TV will win every time. Tell us about the new book that’s coming out in February! CrystalThis book is called No Filter and Other Lies. It’s another young adult book and it features another fat brown girl.VirginiaI was hoping it would!CrsytalWe were just talking about social media and that’s really what this next book deals with, Instagram specifically. It’s about a 17-year-old girl. Her name is Kat Sanchez, and she is a an artist, a photographer. She really wants to gain clout and gain recognition for her work, but it’s not happening. Every time she posts, it falls flat. She’s seeing her classmates get recognition, and her friends followers growing, but not hers. She has this complicated family and weird romance going on. She feels like a fraud in a lot of ways and she doesn’t have everything figured out. Then there’s this particularly bad night that leads her down a rabbit hole of not wanting to be herself anymore. So she decides that she’s going to steal her friends’ pictures and become someone else entirely on Instagram, and be a literal “Kat-fish,” with a “K.”VirginiaOh, I see what you did there.CrystalThe book explores these ideas of what is real versus what is fake on Instagram, and how even people who are the closest to it—like Kat who is a photographer and knows there’s photo editing—still struggle to see that not everything we see is is real. It really dives into how to manage yourself on social media, how to stay sane and come out on the other side and appreciate who you are, and appreciate your existence as it is.VirginiaOh, my gosh, I can’t wait to read that. Again, you’re writing a book that will resonate with kids because they’re struggling with this, and will also be so helpful for adults because we also don’t know how to do this. I always hate to ask, when you’re getting ready to promote one book, if you’re working on another book, but I am curious to know. CrystalI am working on a third book. No Filter and Other Lies comes out February 1, 2022. Then this next book I’m working on returns to a fluffy, rom-com-esque world. It’s about all of the delightful things that come with fall in New England. It features this fat girl who realizes she has polycystic ovarian syndrome and wants to hide this from the world, while also trying to figure herself out. That’s all I’ll say for now. VirginiaI already want to preorder it. I’m so excited, Crystal, that you are writing these books and that there are going to be so many of your books out there for all girls. It is so needed, so thank you. We will wrap up with my new recommendation segment, where we talk about just anything we’re loving. It doesn’t have to be a product, but it can be a product, or it can be an experience. What do you have for us?CrystalSo, speaking of being at the end of the day and just needing to like lean into TV, Nailed It! on Netflix just came out with a new season. It’s the baking show that Nicole Byer hosts. I am a huge fan of Nicole Byer. I just think she’s so funny and she’s also fat and she has these fabulous outfits on in each episode. You get to kick back and watch a bunch of bakers be terrible at baking while she makes jokes at their expense, but in the most wholesome and sweet way. I have been watching this new season and just loving every second because I get to turn my little brain off. I look at her amazing outfits and just wonder if Nicole is looking for a bestie. Virginia I haven’t watched this at all and I’m now asking myself how I’ve missed it. It’s going in the queue.I’m going to recommend pencil cactuses. People who follow me on Instagram know that I am a plant lady. People always ask what’s a good house plant to start with, and there’s a bunch that you see all the time. But pencil cactuses are a really good starter house plant that gets overlooked. They’re very hard to kill. You only have to water this one maybe every two weeks. It does need a fair amount of light; it wants your sunniest window. It’s actually not a cactus—it’s a Euphorbia, if you want to get technical—and it has all these little, narrow shoot things. As it gets colder, they start to develop this red color that’s really pretty. So pencil cactuses are just delightful and I feel like nobody’s talking about them and I want to be the person who makes them trendy.CrystalNote to self: Buy a pencil cactus.VirginiaYou won’t always find them in the big box store plant sections, but any smaller plant store should have them. You can definitely find them on Etsy. You can get a little one and it will grow big, so don’t feel like you have to really invest. (Yes, mine is now giant but it started small!) Just get a small one and put it on your window sill and enjoy.CrystalI really want one, you’ve totally sold me.VirginiaWell, my work here is done. Crystal, tell listeners where they can follow you and stay tuned for all your book updates.CrystalIf you want to follow me and feel my feelings and see Beyoncé pictures and see where glitter is going to end up, I am @CrystalWrote (past tense of write) everywhere. I’m on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok, and my website is CrystalWrote.com.VirginiaThank you, Crystal! And thank you so much for listening to Burnt Toast. If you liked this episode and you aren’t yet a subscriber, please subscribe!If you are a subscriber, thank you so much. Please consider sharing Burnt Toast on social media or forwarding this to a friend.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy & sell plus size clothing.Thanks for listening! Talk to you soon! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

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