The Burnt Toast Podcast

All the feelings about a work-in-progress relationship with social media and screens.You’re listening to Burnt Toast!We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it’s time for your April Indulgence Gospel! These episodes are usually only for paid subscribers but we’re releasing this one for free! If you like it, you can get even more Virginia by becoming a paid Burnt Toast subscriber.There has been so much conversation in online spaces over the past few months about divesting from social media. Folks are dropping X, Facebook, Instagram as a form of protest against billionaire tech bros like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. And a lot of us are also feeling the need to doom scroll less as a form of self care. Plus, when Tiktok drops a new Chubby filter, it doesn’t really make us want to be there. So today we’re chatting about how we’re both feeling about social media. What are we divesting from? How’s it going? And does any of this feel like a diet?PS. You can always listen to our episodes right here in your email, where you’ll also receive full transcripts (edited and condensed for clarity). But please also follow us in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and/or Pocket Casts! This transcript does contain affiliate links; shopping our links is a great way to support Burnt Toast!Episode 187 TranscriptCorinneWell, you’ve really been a leader in this field.VirginiaA pioneer, would we say?CorinneYou’ve been a pioneer in the field of quitting Instagram.VirginiaSince December? I feel I cannot really claim pioneer status for something I’ve been doing for three months! But let’s start at the beginning.What was your starting point in feeling like you wanted to start reevaluating your relationship with social media?CorinneWell, to be honest, I don’t know. I still feel mixed about it. We maybe should start by acknowledging that the “quitting Instagram” conversation just feels like it’s been going on forever.VirginiaForever!CorinneIt feels like it has been years of people being like, “I’m so tired of Instagram blah, blah, blah.” And I’m someone who has always sort of felt like, “whatever, it’s fine.” I don’t necessarily feel like I go down an Instagram rabbit hole and then feel terrible about myself. Maybe in some specific circumstances.So maybe for me, it started with our screen time episode.VirginiaWhere we looked at how much time we were spending on our phones. That was a hard day for both of us.CorinneI saw some stat recently that was like, if you spend two hours a day on Instagram, at the end of your life, you will have spent 10 years on Instagram. And that felt a little bleak.VirginiaOkay, I don’t love that.CorinneYeah, I didn’t love it. But there are also things I enjoy about Instagram. I do have a lot of friends and community there. SoI thought, well, why don’t I just delete it for the weekend?VirginiaAnd that’s what you’ve started with.CorinneAnd that’s what I’ve started with.What about you? What was your starting point?VirginiaMine was a little bit of a whim. I’ve been trying different things for a few years now to manage my relationship with Instagram specifically and with my phone more generally. And some of that was realizing that as a business strategy, it was not serving me to keep putting a lot of time into making reels and elaborate content for Instagram. Instagram is so siloed. It wasn’t translating to people coming over and finding Burnt Toast and the podcast. Maybe a handful of people do every week. But it’s not our main driver, and never has been.So once I connected those dotes, I had to ask: Why am I spending an hour+ per day making content, for free, for this evil billionaire-led corporation? It didn’t feel right to me. So I’ve been scaling back and scaling back. But then it was really a total whim that in December, right as my kids’ winter break was starting, I was just like, you know what? I’m going to just fully delete it while my kids are off school. It’s the holidays, and I want to be able to focus on that.And I will say, that was the first time I’d ever deleted it. I’ve often, in the past, on vacation, logged out or taken it off my home screen or taken a two week break, or a one week break, just by hiding it in my phone somewhere. But I always knew the tricks to find it again. So if I wanted to get back on I could. And this time, I was like, nope, it is not on my phone anymore. And that felt really huge.And then. I really did not miss it at all. I really loved not having it in my space over the holidays in particular. And while I would agree with you that I’m also not someone who was spending a lot of time looking at beauty influencers and feeling bad about my skin or whatever, it turns out that I was getting locked into a comparison trap I didn’t even recognize. Especially around the holidays when a lot of people are posting their perfect family photos—I realized I enjoyed my own Christmas much more when I wasn’t comparing the messy reality of my family navigating the holidays with what people are curating for social media.CorinneTotally. That makes a lot of sense.VirginiaI hadn’t even realized how much that bummed me out! But I was like, oh, I don’t want to see people’s Happy Family photos! Which makes me feel like a jerk, but it’s where I was.CorinneI think that’s very honest, and good to be aware of.VirginiaSo that was an interesting data point. And then after the holidays, I really was not dying to get it back on my phone, but I felt like I needed to bring it back for work. So here’s what I’m doing now: A couple of times a week, when we have a new podcast episode or new newsletter to promote, I’m logging on. I’m putting some stuff in stories. I’m spending a little bit of time responding to DMs. And then I delete it again until the next time I need to do that. So I’m really only downloading it like three or four times a week for an hour or two at a time.CorinneWow, that’s awesome.VirginiaYeah, it’s a big change.What have you noticed about not having it during the weekends?CorinneI think I’ve done it for three weekends, so hasn’t been super long. The first weekend, I was still looking for Instagram on my phone all the time. And then the second weekend, I think I actually forgot to delete it and just didn’t look at it.VirginiaInteresting.CorinneOne thing I’ve noticed is, I think we’re in a day and age where a lot of useful information is on Instagram. I was trying to look up whether something was open.VirginiaOh, like local businesses.CorinneAnd the only thing I actually trust would be Instagram. But you can still kind of use it in the web browser app.VirginiaYes, and it’s not at all addictive there because it’s so bad. You can quickly look something up if you need to. That’s how I’ve been using it for podcast episode research or story research is strictly web browser. Yeah, the local business thing. I definitely hear you on that.CorinneI’ve also noticed how quickly I can just use something else the same way. Like Substack notes have kind of turned into a similar thing. Or I also used to be really into playing Candy Crush, and so I’ve gotten a little bit back into Candy Crush as a zone out phone thing.VirginiaBecause you still need the dopamine hit and the “I’m going to just check out for a minute and do something mindless on my phone” break.So when I went on vacation in February, I deleted Instagram, I deleted Substack, which felt terrifying because that’s my lifeline to my whole business, and I deleted my email off my phone, which felt even more terrifying. But was actually great. And I had the privilege of saying to Corinne, “If something explodes with Burnt Toast while I’m away, please text me.” And I would do the same for you. So it’s nice we have that option.But now on the weekends, I’m trying to remember to delete all three of them to cut down a little bit on that mindlessly-looking-at-my-phone thing. I would so much rather be reading a book if I’m going do something where I just need a brain break. I would rather be reading a feminist romance novel than scrolling an app! It’s going to be more relaxing for me. I know this—but I have not yet broken the pickup phone check. I have not broken the muscle memory of that and I don’t know how we do that.see the shape of my phone out of the corner of my eye sometimes it’s distracting, you know?VirginiaI’m also such a power texter. And I do love texting for the connections it brings me. I don’t live with another adult and my kids are amazing, but I need adult conversation. Texting helps me feel like a part of my community. So that means I’m looking at my phone more for texting. And then once you’re texting, it’s like, oh, let me just check… And so I’m really on top of my New York Times word games. I’ll often find myself mindlessly doodling around my phone being like, wait, I’m not doing anything because there’s nothing here.So I don’t know if that just fades eventually, or if I need, we need to do something more concrete to break that cycle.Have you ever tried the brick?CorinneNo, but I’ve been hearing about that. I’ve been hearing a lot about the brick, and also this app Opal, that similarly blocks certain stuff on your phone.VirginiaI bought a brick maybe a year ago, and I did use it for a little bit. I was totally like, “This is going to be my Butter on the next podcast episode because it’s changing my life!” And then I put it down and never used it again.CorinneThat’s so funny.VirginiaBut as we’re talking I’m like, should I try it again? Maybe it would turn my phone into a texting only vehicle.CorinneI’ve heard about people using it so as you go out the door on the way to work, you tap it and then it blocks stuff while you’re at work. But as a person who works from home, it doesn’t feel like that makes as much sense for me.VirginiaYou would just get up and go get the brick when you wanted to break into your phone, right? That’s what was happening to me.CorinneAnd I feel like it’s more like, I want to block stuff on my phone when I’m at home.VirginiaI’m like, should I brick everything except text messages over the weekend? It’s something to play around with, maybe. Except, like, Google Maps or something, the essential things. Like, can you make your phone as unfun as possible?CorinneThere are also now all those smartphone alternatives. I think there’s one called, Wisephone where they have the basics, but they just try to make it not fun. I think they’re black and white and don’t have social media apps, but still have phone calls, maps, texting stuff.VirginiaHave you noticed any differences in terms of how you’re feeling about your body just because you’re less on Instagram and Tiktok?CorinneTo be honest, I haven’t noticed. I feel like my body stuff is more influenced by real life and discomfort in the actual world.I guess I do notice on Tiktok especially, that there is just a lot of filtering, I guess. Both skin and body stuff. Right now, there is a lot of talk about the new AI chubby filter, where you can use this certain filter and it makes you into a chubby person.VirginiaI want to know what it would do to actual fat people. (Spoiler: Not much!!!)CorinneYeah, I have seen fat people using it. It does not do a lot.But the thing I’ll say about it is: It’s Disney chubby. It makes you into a cute cartoon fat person. Like chubby arms, but they’re smooth and you still have a waist. And then I also was realizing Tiktok has this app called CapCut that is a video editing app, and there are so many things you can do to your body. There are little things you can click like “square shoulders” or “shrink in waist,” just all these tiny little edits that you can totally mess with your your body.VirginiaI mean, it’s not hard to see the potential for harm there is from that. Like, if you are uploading content of yourself and using these filters to digitally alter as much about yourself as possible, it is going to create a major disconnect with how you feel about your actual body.I don’t use CapCut. But when I am editing photos, I use A Color Story, which is a photo editing app. I mostly doing it to brighten up a photo that didn’t have good lighting, or cropping it to fit into how I want it to look on Substack or something. But I do brighten, and I sometimes use a filter that makes the photo look higher quality. But of course, in doing that, it also is smoothing out my skin, or making me look a little more tan, that kind of thing. And there are times when I then look at an actual mirror and I’m like, oh, wait, I don’t have the Color Story “Welcome Home” filter on me. I am less glowy in real life. And it is weird. And that’s like, such a mild use of it.CorinneTotally. When you’re recording TikTok videos, I think maybe the default is to have some kind of beauty filter on that like smooths out your skin.VirginiaOh god! So wild! Do you ever use filters when you make Tiktok content?CorinneI think I have unknowingly in that way where it’s just the default.VirginiaI’ve been coerced into it.CorinneYeah, not that I’ve looked at my face and been like, dang, put something on there. But I’ve also played around with some of the like, makeup-y filters, and usually I hate the way they make me look.I recently posted a TikTok where I was like, Does this not work on me because I’m fat or because I’m gay? I just don’t like how it makes me look. So, yeah, I think I’m maybe like, less susceptible. But I mean, it’s really strange. It’s just weird.VirginiaIt is really weird! We will link to Elise Hu, who was on the podcast a while back, talking about her book about Korean beauty culture. She has a greatTED talk she did recently about digital beauty standards and how they are messing with all of us, and particularly teenagers. It is a grim piece of this.CorinneThe other thing I think about a lot with this is plastic surgery. Because the filters are one thing. But then I also think there’s just a lot of really popular people who are doing a lot of stuff to their face.VirginiaIt’s just like intentional weight loss. It’s a necessary survival strategy in a capitalist society for a lot of people, a lot of job descriptions hinge on it. So it’s there. And it also then has these ripple effects, of the more we look at those images, the more our brains normalize to those images, and the more we expect out of ourselves and others, and that way danger lies.CorinneRight? And it’s one thing to like be doing that and disclosing it, and then it’s another thing to not be.VirginiaTotally.Are you deleting Tiktok as well on the weekends? Or just Instagram?CorinneI have been deleting Tiktok as well. Tiktok is way more of a problem for me. I have this thing where I’m like, I’m just going to look at Tiktok for 15 minutes before I go to sleep. And then it’s literally two hours later, and I’m like, what?VirginiaSo then that leads me to the next thing on our outline, which is we are going to check our phone time.I am curious to know if not having Tiktok is actually lowering your screen time.CorinneWell, not having Tiktok for two days. But yeah.VirginiaSo for anyone who missed our previous episode, Corinne and I were both averaging around eight hours of screen time a day according to our phones. Now I will put a caveat in that, which is, I talked toTheGamerEducatorafter that episode came out. And Ash told me that the iPhone screen time is not actually accurate, because it keeps recording after you put your phone down if you haven’t quit out of an app. So, like, there are lots of ways the phone is amplifying your screen time, which I think is very important for us to know.However we can at least compare. It was somewhere around eight hours before. What is it now? So let’s look at last weekend.How did you do, Corinne?CorinneLast Friday, I had six and a half hours. I had eight hours on Saturday, but I had 12 hours on Thursday and 11 hours on Wednesday.VirginiaI had 13 hours on Thursday.CorinneYeah, I’m really questioning how accurate this is.VirginiaI’m really questioning how accurate it is, but I’m also like, wow, so it doesn’t fucking matter? Because even if it’s not accurate, it’s still roughly the same as what we had before, when we were on Instagram and Tiktok all the time?CorinneI mean, it doesn’t look like it’s making a huge difference. For me it looks like there’s maybe like, one hour difference. I don’t know.VirginiaI mean, my most used app before was texting, and that’s still true. Like last Saturday, 8 hours and 39 minutes of total time, 3 hours and 22 minutes on texting. And what can I say? I had my kids last weekend, and I need adult conversation when I’m parenting. So there we are. But there is no Instagram time listed because I had deleted it.CorinneYeah, yep. Definitely spending less time on Instagram. Is that a net positive?VirginiaI don’t know, but it is distilling for me what the problems are. It tells you how many times you picked up your phone in one day, and I’m picking up my phone like 150 times a day. So maybe that’s the next piece of this I need to work on.CorinneYeah, my daily average is 140.VirginiaYep, that sounds right. Wow, cool, great. So that’s depressing. We’re getting no better, but we are noticing benefits from being on these particular apps less.CorinneYeah, right. We are? What are they?VirginiaDid we just like ruin our entire sense of accomplishment? Oh, my gosh.I mean, I think what’s interesting is we had both verbalized concrete ways this was making our lives better, and then we looked at the numbers and we felt like garbage.And what does that remind us of, Corinne?CorinneHmmm, dieting?VirginiaSo how do we think about wanting to use our phones less and not get caught up in a perfectionistic diet-y mindset?CorinneAs you said, the tracking is not accurate. So I think we need to just not track. And not turn this into an information thing.VirginiaIt really should be more about how we feel. I also think there’s still some work that I personally need to do untangling morality and screen time. Like when I said earlier, oh, I’d be so much happier reading a book. I know that is true in the way that my brain feels after reading versus the way my brain feels after scrolling. I know I feel calmer and less stressed.But what I don’t know is how much of that is because I think reading a book is a morally superior activity to being on my phone.CorinneI mean, I think it’s also really easy to make a diet culture parallel there. It’s like, sometimes I might actually physically feel better if I eat some salad with my pizza, rather than just eating a ton of—I don’t know, pizza is not a problem for me. But I think there’s an argument sometimes, where it’s like, I do feel better when I eat this way, and it’s not the whole story.VirginiaHow much of that is “I feel better because I’ve been told this is better” versus “I’m really noticing some physiological shifts.” And I think it can also be both, right? And I think with me, with books versus phone, it is both. But it is that is a piece of it. And I think I have to be careful to interrogate that part of it, in order to prevent this from becoming like…the phone diet.CorinneTotally. I also feel like you’ve pretty clearly identified what part of the phone using is helpful and valuable to you, like texting.VirginiaYeah, that’s true. So there’s no reason to feel bad if there’s a lot of hours spent texting, because that’s me being in touch with my community. What about you? Do you feel like there’s a clear way your phone is valuable to you?CorinneI feel very clear on what I don’t like, which is scrolling TikTok for three hours before I fall asleep. But that also seems to be one of the most impossible things for me to kick.VirginiaWhat if you deleted it before bed?CorinneI mean, it’s just like, would I? There are all kinds of tips that are, like, put your phone in the other room, blah, blah, blah, and I’m just like, I’m going to put my phone in the other room after I look on TikTok for five minutes. So I don’t know if deleting it would be any different.VirginiaI used to put my phone in the other room when I shared my room with someone else who had their phone on the nightstand, and now that I don’t, I want my phone in my room in case of emergencies. I want it in my room if my kids are not with me, in case, a kid gets sick in the middle of the night and, God forbid, I need to be notified. And I want it in my room when the kids are with me, in case the killer breaks into our house. So I can’t do that one anymore. And I think that’s fine.But I do think editing down what’s available on the phone is helpful for the bedtime thing. But I also understand it’s like, are you going to do it? Maybe that’s where one of those apps, or the brick or something, could come in handy. But we haven’t gotten there yet.I mean to that note of us being like we need our phones in our rooms for safety, which I think is valid for people who live alone, we should also talk about like the function of privilege in all of this, and how much divesting from screen time is, in and of itself, for privilege,CorinneAnd just the privilege to have a ton of screen time.VirginiaYeah, yeah, to have the time to do it. But also, I really, again, love Ash Brandin’s work on this. They talk about screen time and kids. So they’re not really talking about social media. They’re usually talking about video games and younger kids. And Ash wrote:If we fear a child has too much screen time? Perhaps the question to ask is, what underlying need is not being met for this child? And if we do think that’s related to screen time, the question becomes, what need is this screen time meeting? Is it replacing a lack of parental leave, child care, a regulated parent, outdoor access movement? How do we address that need? Focusing on the screen will only make the caregiver feel shame, and that doesn’t help anyone, especially the child.And I read that, and thought, yes. Because I know in addition to me needing my phone with me more as a single parent, my kids get more screen time now that they live in two single parent households, because there are not two people there all the time to have other things going on. And it does meet some needs.And I think we can definitely extrapolate that to ourselves and ask what need is our screen time meeting?CorinneYeah, that’s a great question.VirginiaSo what need does three hours of TikTok scrolling meet for you?CorinneI don’t think I have an answer, but I will definitely be thinking about it.VirginiaI do think a lot of it is social connection. I mean, I think all of our screen time increased during the pandemic because social media became a replacement for community. I think there’s a lot going on there. And I think talking more honestly about that piece of it and understanding, what are you actually getting out of this, seems more useful than just, it’s bad, it’s bad. I’m bad for using it.---ButterCorinneVirginia. Do you have a Butter this week?VirginiaI do. I’m going to suggest a fun, non screen time activity to do with kids. Not because I think screen time is bad, but just because it has been really fun in my house lately. It is giant coloring sheets, where you just put this giant poster roll of paper with a printed coloring thing on it, on a table with some markers, and you and your kids or your friends or whoever go to town on it, and it is really soothing and lovely.Some recent coffee table coloring at Virginia’s houseCorinneWow, that sounds fun.VirginiaYeah, I got the first ones at Christmas, and I did buy them off Amazon, which we are no longer shopping at. And I had them out over the holidays when grandparents were visiting, and it was really nice for giving them an easy way to hang out with the grandkids, and just like, anyone could do it. There’s no skill. There is not really a lot of skill in coloring, and it’s just a nice it’s a nice way to be together. I don’t know, it’s great.And then I posted about it on Instagram, and said I was looking for some non-Amazon options. And folks sent me two good ones. One is Friends Art Lab, which makes some really cute 10 foot long coloring rolls. So I’ve ordered some of those. And then I got some from Grove Collaborative. They’re smaller, but that was actually kind of nice. They fit better on our coffee table. And we’ve been doing those. I just keep it out on the coffee table with some markers. And I particularly find when we’ve had a cranky day, or there has been a lot of squabbling, that sitting down to color calms me down, and then inevitably a kid will join me. And maybe we’re not really talking, but we’re kind of like co-regulating ourselves.CorinneThat sounds really nice!VirginiaIt’s also good to do while you’re watching TV. if I don’t have a puzzle going, it’s the same kind of like, keeps my hands busy, keeps me off my phone.CorinneI love that.VirginiaWhat about you?CorinneMy Butter this week is maybe a little bit niche.VirginiaI love a niche butter.CorinneI was really struggling with the water pressure in my shower, my shower hose head thing was broken, and like all this water was just leaking out of it. Anyways, I replaced my shower head. It’s incredible. I highly recommend replacing your shower head, especially if you have hard water.VirginiaOh really?CorinneWe have really hard water here and minerals build up and break everything and clog all the little shower holes. But I got a new shower hose and shower head, and it’s incredible. Like, what was I doing? Was I even washing shampoo out of my hair? Or was I just leaving it there? I always kind of dread stuff like that, but it was literally like, I could do the whole thing with my hand. I needed a wrench to get the old one off, just a tiny bit. But then you just hand tighten it. It doesn’t leak. it It’s so great. It’s such an easy little upgrade. So, highly recommend getting a new shower head.VirginiaI love when any house thing that I think is going to be a nightmare turns out to actually be quite easy. A lot of them do. Not all of them! And then you’re like, oh, this dramatically improved my daily quality of life. Why didn’t I do it a year ago?CorinneYeah, it has really, really improved my quality of life. So, something to think about!

You’re listening to Burnt Toast!We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it’s time for a bonus March Indulgence Gospel!Today we’re chatting about:⭐️ How to talk to your kids about (your) weight loss and/or GLP-1 use.⭐️ How to handle medically-advised diets without getting…diet-y.⭐️Our favorite leggings (we stand by all these recs!)⭐️Dealing with haters… and more!To hear the full story, you’ll need to be a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. If you’re already a paid subscriber, you can add on a subscription to Big Undies, Corinne’s newsletter about clothes, for 20% off.Today’s episode is a rerun; we’re bringing you episode 100, which ran in June 2023—such a simpler time! But we had a really valuable conversation about how to talk to kids about body changes, especially if you’re losing weight on Ozempic and we thought it might be a helpful one to revisit now. Plus there is our usual smattering of assorted random Indulgence Gospel topics. And dahlias! Enjoy.PS. This transcript does contain affiliate links; shopping our links is a great way to support Burnt Toast!Episode 186 TranscriptVirginiaYou’re listening to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast about diet culture, anti-fat bias, parenting, and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith and I also write the Burnt Toast newsletter.CorinneAnd I’m Corinne Fay. I work on Burnt Toast and run @selltradeplus an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.VirginiaIt is time for your June Indulgence Gospel! We are going to answer your questions like we do every month. We are going to read a little hate mail—I have a fun one teed up for you. And we are going to celebrate! Because this is the 100th episode of the Burnt Toast podcast.CorinneWooo!VirginiaThat’s wild. Corinne, how are you? I’m happy you are here with me on this auspicious occasion.CorinneI am so excited that it’s the 100th episode! It’s fully summer here. It’s hot. It’s Pride. I am trying to find shorts.VirginiaAre you finding any? Or are you frustrated in the shorts journey?CorinneI’m both finding and frustrated. For some reason I’m feeling like all the shorts I wore last summer I don’t like anymore. It’s not that they don’t fit. I just don’t like them anymore.VirginiaI had a similar reaction. I had the Target linen shorts from last summer.CorinneThey just haven’t held up?VirginiaNo. It’s not the highest quality linen, I guess.CorinneI do find that sometimes with fast fashion stuff, the next season it’s dingy.VirginiaYeah. But happy Pride! Are you doing any fun Pride things?CorinneI am! I’m going to an ice cream social on Wednesday which I’m very excited about. And I think I might also get a tattoo.VirginiaWait. Tell us everything.CorinneAt Dyke Night.VirginiaOkay, the mom in me is like, you’re getting a tattoo in a bar? Have you checked it out? Are they reputable?CorinneI don’t know if you recall, but I got COVID at Dyke Night.VirginiaI am recalling that, Corinne.CorinneSo it is like, a disease vector.VirginiaHave we just done like a little background search on this tattoo artist? High quality needles?CorinneThey do seem cool. But yeah, I will wear a mask.VirginiaI will wear a mask, but I will let you put needles in my body.CorinneYes. So I think it’ll be an exciting week!VirginiaAre you a big tattoo person? Do you have a lot of tattoos?CorinneI do. It’s funny that you don’t know that. I have a fair amount of tattoos. I don’t have a ton on my body but I have some on my limbs.VirginiaNice. I am the only millennial who doesn’t have a tattoo. Because I’m very scared of sharp needles.CorinneWell, It’s not too late.VirginiaI know. I’ve just never had a thought of, that is what I would like. Do you know what the tattoo is going to be?CorinneIt’s a flash event which means that they have pre-drawn stuff. And it’s a bunch of weird cute little creatures.VirginiaThis sounds delightful.CorinneI’m excited to get a little creature tattoo. How are you doing?VirginiaI am good. It is it is Pride here as well. It’s also high garden season for me. May and June are like the months. So I’m just gardening as much as I can now that the book stuff is calming down. I planted too many dahlia tubers this weekend.CorinneOh my gosh.VirginiaIt’s gonna be a whole thing. First of all, I just want to say Corinne is being all cool and getting tattoos and I’m now going to tell you a nerdy gardening story. We are who we are. It’s fine.CorinneGardening is very cool.VirginiaSo I failed to successfully overwinter my dahlia tubers is how this story starts. Just so we know how much coolness is involved. I just dumped them in the garage and never packed them up properly. There’s a whole process you have to do. So I killed all my dahlia tubers, and in a panic, because I love dahlias, I ordered a bunch online and ordered way more than I needed. Then that order was delayed infinitely and I thought they weren’t coming. So I bought some locally from my amazing local flower store Parcel. I planted all of those and then my online order arrived. So now I have 66 dahlia tubers in my garden. Too many. I was sticking them anywhere.CorinneIt sounds like it’s going to be awesome though.VirginiaI don’t know. I’m late getting them in the ground. We’re having a drought already. We’ll see. And it was a ton of work to plant them all. But yes, I’m on a dahlia journey this year.The most important thing—and everybody who listens to this podcast, please hold me accountable on this. This November when they freeze, please say: Virginia, dig them up and store them properly. Because you have now spent all the money on dahlia tubers and you cannot ever buy them again.CorinneIt sounds so labor intensive though.VirginiaIt is very labor intensive. But they’re not inexpensive. And I have now bought them twice.Alright, let’s do some questions!We are going to start with a couple of health questions.CorinneYes, here we go.I have recently been diagnosed with a mild case of fatty liver disease. When talking to my GI, who was more compassionate than I expected, he discussed dietary changes I should make to reverse some of the damage over time and maintain a healthy liver. As the mother of a new baby, I’m strongly incentivized to be as healthy as possible to be around for my kid. As a fat woman with a recently healed relationship with food and a firm anti-diet Intuitive Eating approach to life, I’m struggling to find the balance between “this is a diet” and “this is necessary for my health.” Can you make a recommendation for how sick folks can approach adjusted eating regimens in a way that is both effective and respectful of their journey and their own relationship with food and their bodies?VirginiaOkay, so I want to say before we get started: We are not doctors. We’re not dietitians. You are here for our informed opinions. Standard disclaimer. Also, I am not an expert on fatty liver disease and I did not report that out. So we’re not going to talk specifically about what your protocol should be or is this the right thing to be doing.What I really want to talk about is how this happens with all kinds of health conditions, where you get told you have to cut out a food group or make some diet adjustment in order to deal with a physical health ailment. How do you do that in a way that’s supportive and not triggering and not pushing you back into a diet-y place?CorinneYes, that makes sense.VirginiaSo I would first do some research and see how necessary the dietary adjustments are. I think they’re often prescribed—and again, I don’t know about liver conditions, but they’re often prescribed as a knee jerk, one-size-fits-all kind of prescription, without a lot of nuance as to whether it’s really necessary for you. The research often isn’t as clear cut as we would like.So, you might ask your doctor: “Is this dietary change something you would recommend for a thin person with this condition as well? If not, what treatment would you give a thin person?” Just to understand the landscape of are they doing this as a stealth way to prescribe weight loss for you? Or are they doing this because they see a clear-cut relationship between x foods and this condition?CorinneThere is a Health at Every Size health sheet for this condition. That might be a good place to start with what does the research say about what helps.VirginiaRagen Chastain and everyone who works on those does such an incredible job pulling them together. They have a bunch of health conditions covered so that’s a really good starting point, anytime you’re getting a diet or weight loss prescription from a doctor to understand, what is the other take?But okay, let’s say that you do have to make the diet adjustment, like it does seem clear that this is the right thing to do. What are your thoughts on how you do that in a non-triggering way?CorinneIf you decide that you do want to make dietary changes, which I do think is a choice, you could always work with a nutritionist who is aligned with your values around that. If you are someone that struggles with restriction or food stuff, which it sounds like you are, dieting might not be healthy for you. You’re kind of balancing—Virginia—two health conditions.CorinneYeah.VirginiaI think it’s important to be clear with your doctor if this feels unsafe for you. Let’s name that and let’s make sure that your doctor is aware they’re suggesting something that may be unsafe for you. What supports are they going to put in place? Or what other protocols can they consider that would be safer for you?I think that can be hard to do for folks who don’t have a diagnosed eating disorder. It can be hard to do even for folks with a diagnosed eating disorder because often doctors don’t care. And don’t ask about it, or they’re so focused on this little piece of your health, but they’re ignoring the bigger picture. But if you don’t have a diagnosed eating disorder, it can be this very vulnerable thing where you feel like you’re saying, “But it just makes me sad,” and that that doesn’t feel as important. There’s this urgency of your liver numbers or your A1C is in jeopardy and we don’t have time for your feelings.So I just want to name that your feelings in this really matter. You’re not being high maintenance, you’re not being fussy. This is actually really hard to do.CorinneYeah, definitely. The other thing that I have found helpful with stuff like this is if your doctor says “don’t eat X,” sometimes flipping it to be not, “I can never eat Oreos again,” but to be, “I want to eat more vegetables,” or whatever. So you’re thinking of adding rather than restricting.VirginiaI think that’s a super helpful shift to make. I have a child who was on a medically required fat free diet for a period of time. And you lean into making what you can eat as delicious and amazing as possible. And you make sure that you’re trying to take an abundance mindset towards it. Not letting it be a stepping stone towards more restriction. Instead it’s like, “I’m restricting this one thing, but here’s what I can eat. What do I love here that I can eat? How do I get the most delicious and abundant versions of what I can eat in my life?”CorinneYes. Good luck. Let us know how it goes.VirginiaAlright, you want to read the next one?CorinneI’ve just started using Mounjaro as a way to combat type two diabetes. And I wonder what is a good way to discuss / explain this to my children? Because the reality is I’m using it to lose weight and reducing blood glucose levels is almost more of a side effect. Drugs such as Ozempic and Mounjaro and the like have overwhelmed the media. But how do we discuss a medical intervention like this with children? I don’t want it to be a secret, but I also don’t want to toxic conversation around size.VirginiaWhew, I am getting many versions of this question. It’s interesting because the media has been so focused on the Hollywood angle of Ozempic, which is people taking it to be skinnier. But there have been all these people quietly saying to me, “Well, I am taking it mostly for my diabetes, but also to lose weight. What do I do?”And I wanted to have this conversation because I feel like it is important to make space for that experience.CorinneIt is really tough.This is kind of a sidebar, but when was the last time the media was so obsessed with a medication? I just feel like it’s like inescapable right now!VirginiaI mean, I can tell you at least one of the last times was when Orlistat went over the counter and became Alli. Because that’s when I was in women’s magazines covering weight loss drugs and we wrote quite a lot about how great it was that you could get a weight loss drug over the counter.CorinneI haven’t even heard of that.VirginiaWell, it was like 2003.CorinneI was in high school.VirginiaYou’re a baby! You weren’t in high school, you’re not that much younger than me!CorinneYeah, I graduated from high school in 2004.VirginiaWell, you are an infant.CorinneYou were covering weight loss drugs while I was merely graduating high school.VirginiaIt was a whole big thing and definitely all-consuming for a minute. Then we found out that it gives you a really oily poops and it turns out an increased urgency to shit your pants. So it was a flash in the pan. I am waiting for the Ozempic backlash.So here’s the thing: It is a great diabetes drug. And I think if you were just taking it to manage your diabetes, there’s a super straightforward conversation you have with your kids where you say, “I am taking this to manage my diabetes. That’s really important for my health and wellbeing. It is being talked about as a weight loss drug, but that is not what I’m doing it for.” I wish more of the conversation was about its purpose as a diabetes medication because folks who need it for diabetes can’t even access it in some places because the weight loss stuff has gotten so loud.But that’s not what this person is asking. Because she’s saying that the blood glucose is a side effect.CorinneMy response to this was just like, why do you need to talk to your kids about the fact that you’re excited about weight loss? Like, is that something that they need to know?VirginiaThat’s interesting.CorinneBut I’m also not a parent.VirginiaWell, I guess the thing is, whether you speak to it or not—your kids probably know you’re excited about weight loss. Because if you’re losing weight on the drug, they’re going to be aware of that. And if you’re getting positive feedback for that weight loss, which you probably are, they’re going to be aware of that. Kids are just exquisitely sensitive to how we interact with our bodies, so they’re going to know if that’s a thing.I do think it’s really important to have some ground rules for yourself that you don’t demonize your bigger body or anybody else’s bigger body. That you don’t talk negatively about your body in front of your kids. I would also ask, big picture: What are you doing to celebrate fat people, as a family? In the art on your walls? In the books you read, in the TV shows you watch? Are you celebrating and supporting fat people in general? Are you naming anti-fat bias and calling it out as harmful when you encounter it?CorinneIt seems like a good opportunity to have a conversation about the systemic reasons that people might want to lose weight.VirginiaYour individual choices to lose weight or not lose weight and how that’s tangled up in your health—all of that is the part I’m the least interested in. I want to know, what are you doing on anti fat-bias in general? What are you doing to make your home a safe space for all bodies? And I do think it’s valid to ask, if I am pursuing intentional weight loss, is my home a safe space for all bodies? Because if your kids are fat, maybe that’s going to feel unsafe to them.But I do think we are allowed to have our personal struggles, and we can still be committed to the larger cause. I’m more interested in how you’re showing up in the world on these issues than I am in your own personal choices. And it’s super complicated if you have been told this feels very necessary for you to do in some way. I’m not here to talk you out of that. I’m just here to say yeah, okay, but what are you doing for fat people?CorinneAnd if it feels necessary for accessibility stuff, I think that’s really valid.VirginiaI mean, so many fat folks are doing Ozempic or getting weight loss surgery, and it’s not an aesthetic decision for them. It’s because it’s necessary in order to access other healthcare they need.CorinneI also think if it’s possible, it might be nice to not be celebrating the weight loss. Not making it into a moral celebration that you lost weight because you’re a good person or you did something right.VirginiaThat’s a great point. Make sure you’re limiting it to “this felt necessary to improve my health.” Or, “this felt necessary for accessibility reasons.” Stick to the clear, practical reasons that this felt like the right choice for you.She doesn’t say how old her kids are, but I’m thinking about my nine year old. If this was something going on in our house, if I got positive feedback for weight loss, I would name for her why that was problematic. Even if I said thank you to the person for the compliment in the moment, because sometimes that’s awkward, I would later say something like, “The way so-and-so talked about how my body is changing, that is really a sign of how much we value certain bodies and that’s really problematic. I just want you to know that how your body changes has no bearing on your value as a person.” And invite them to talk about what they think when they hear those kinds of comments.CorinneThis probably isn’t the first time this stuff has come up. Maybe it’s the first time the medication has come up. But if you’re excited about weight loss, your kids probably know that.VirginiaMaybe think about how have you talked about this in the past? And do you need talk about what you’re unlearning or how your thinking has changed.Alright, the next one, this person writes:I’m trying to work on my relationship with food and address some functional GI issues, but the two books I’ve read so far, The Mind Gut Connection and Trust Your Gut, are full of anti-fat bias. Do you know of any other resources?CorinneGut stuff is so complicated. It just feels like it’s like one of those topics right now that is really huge in the wellness world. And yeah, there is a lot of anti-fat bias there.VirginiaIt’s pretty much always prescribed elimination diet, prescribed restriction is the treatment protocol. And this is an area I’ve looked into a little bit and there is very little evidence to support elimination diet protocols being helpful, particularly if it’s something you’re experimenting with on your own or with the help of one of these books, which I did just Google and yeah, they’re both filled with diet culture, anti-fat bias is very apparent.So I think it is tricky because there’s a lot of people pushing stuff that’s not evidence based but they sort of glom it onto like one little study. There’s a lot of pseudoscience in the way this gets talked about.I would definitely recommend, if you haven’t already, listen back to our episode with Christy Harrison on her new book The Wellness Trap. Definitely get The Wellness Trap or check it out from your library because she goes into a lot of detail about the myths and misconceptions and misinformation that circulates about GI conditions in wellness culture. She doesn’t drill so much into here’s what to do for a specific condition. But I think it will just be helpful for grounding you as you start to navigate what you want to do with all of these things.“And as I learned in my research: Not only is it not evidence-based to cut out foods and do elimination diets for these conditions. But actually, there’s not really good evidence that these conditions even exist.”Read full storyThe other thing to know is, there’s a very high, almost like a complete Venn diagram overlap between GI issues and disordered eating or eating disorders. So, so often they prescribe some kind of elimination diet to treat your GI issue, when in fact restriction is an underlying cause of, or a major contributing factor to, your GI issue. More restriction is not going to solve it.CorinneYou actually need the opposite.VirginiaYou need to eat and you’re not eating enough food. You might be thinking no, no, no I eat too much, way too much food because that’s often the way people feel when they’re stuck in a restrict or restrict/binge cycle. But it’s really worth looking into that.Two other resources I would check out Marci Evans, who is a great anti-diet, fat positive dietitian based in Boston, who specializes in GI issues and disordered eating. And Emily Fonnesbeck, who I believe is in Utah and has a similar focus. I actually interviewed her for my first book about her experience going down that wellness culture rabbit hole of trying to solve her own GI issues through elimination diets, and how that ended up in orthorexia, and coming back out of it. They both have great Instagrams and websites with lots of good information.CorinneThat’s awesome. Those are good resources.VirginiaAlright. I think that wraps up our health segment.I call this next segment just Existing in Diet Culture. It’s a lot sometimes.CorinneSo real. Okay, let me read the next one.Do you have any coping strategies when it feels hard to be okay with my body? It comes in waves.VirginiaI think it’s good that this person is noticing that it comes in waves. Because if you can notice that when you’re in the wave, you can maybe also remember that it’s not going to last forever.CorinneGood point.VirginiaAnd that you’re riding a wave right now. You’re not drowning.CorinneMy thought was to sort of fight against that feeling by doing something that feels good in your body, like, I don’t know. It could that could be some kind of physical activity like walking or swimming or like laying on the couch, eating food.VirginiaFurry blankets are helpful.CorinneSmelling smells. And I would also say, if it’s something that comes up for you a lot, make a list of what helps you feel better in the moment. And you can refer to it when you’re like having one of those waves.VirginiaThat’s a nice idea. I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: Look underneath the body feelings, to figure out what’s driving the body feelings. Because often this is where I go when my social anxiety is high. So what is really going on? If you’re feeling destabilized in a relationship, this may be where you go, to blame your body or blame yourself. So many different things.CorinneI always remember the episode where Mia O’Malley came on and she was like: Is your life comfortable for your body? Are you feeling this way because your pants don’t fit or your chair is too small?VirginiaThat is such a great point. What about your physical environment or your clothes or whatever needs to change to support your body as it is versus you feeling like I don’t fit or I need to change.I think I’m like, pretty broken up with skinny jeans.CorinneOh, wait, this is breaking news. This is crazy. We might need a new jeans science. Are you breaking up with jeans?VirginiaI don’t know. I don’t know? It’s complicated. My relationship status with jeans is “it’s complicated.” But I’m wearing my straight leg jeans right now and I’ve been wearing them more. I like the style of straight leg jeans but they tend to be a little bit cropped and then in the winter it’s really hard in the Northeast because like what do you do with socks and boots? But it’s summer now so when I’m wearing jeans, it makes sense to wear my cropped jeans. And I’ve just been having this realization of, they are just so much more comfortable than my skinny jeans in just all the ways and what a gift that is to my body to be comfortable in my pants.I mean, my other solution on this is I’ve been living in leggings when it was colder. I’m just like so comfy in leggings. But it was interesting to actually pull out a pair of jeans and not be tortured by them and be like, oh, right. Some of that was a choice of just being wedded to a style that did not feel good.CorinneI’m very curious where these straight or wide leg jeans came from.VirginiaThey are the Gap ones, they’re the same ones from Jeans Science. I have not bought new jeans. I have bought all the jeans.CorinneThat’s very amazing.VirginiaI actually did just go on gap.com to see if I could get a second pair because I do like them so much. And they’re sold out of my size right now. [EDIT: They were when we recorded, but have restocked, so this fluctuates!]And, you know, Gap is not super inclusive. I’m wearing the 34 it only goes up to 35. Or maybe I’m in the 35. They are not a solution, or a pair of jeans I want to shout from the rooftops.But to the larger point of this person’s question, something that’s been helping with my feelings in my body is being really comfortable in my clothes.CorinneYeah, totally. That was a big revelation of Glennon Doyle, where she talks about how the clothes were policing her body.VirginiaIt’s nice not to be policed. So I think looking for small things like that and then just knowing that you’re gonna ride this wave. It’s going to get better. Then you’ll ride another wave. Maybe each week gets a little easier, you know?CorinneYeah, it will come and go.VirginiaAlright, this person writes:I am struggling with how to respond to a very small friend who is struggling with the fact that she’s gained weight, unnoticeable to me, due to a more demanding job. I am a new mom of a nine month old whose body has gone up in size since giving birth and working really hard on dismantling my own anti-fat bias, with help from you and Aubrey Gordon, and accepting my new size without shame. How do I balance being a supportive friend while also setting boundaries that protect the self-acceptance I have been working so hard on?VirginiaThis comes up a lot. What do I do with my friends?CorinneI feel like you have to talk to your friends.VirginiaYou do. You have to let them know that this is harmful for you, which is vulnerable, but is also kind of the most respectful way to do it. They should know and it shouldn’t be your work to do but they may not understand the degree to which they’re harming you.CorinneYou can start the conversation from a place of empathy. “Changes are hard, no matter what kind of changes they are. Especially when it’s your body. And, what you’re saying is really bothering me.”VirginiaYeah, “This is really bumming me out.” Also, you’ve probably done some of this reframing already because I’m sure you’re a supportive friend, but when people’s bodies change related to a clear life circumstance, like more demanding job, pandemic lockdown…CorinneHaving a baby.VirginiaAll of the things. I just wish we, as a culture, could just let that stand. Like, that is fine. That is your body responding to a set of circumstances that you didn’t have a lot of control over and you don’t have control over how your body’s responding to it. And to put all your energy into “my body has changed and that is a failure and I need to fight to get it back” instead of “my body has changed because I have a very demanding job or I just had a baby or I’m surviving” or whatever million reasons. And just noticing that and like letting it be.I mean, this goes all the way back to the messages we give kids in childhood. This is what I wrote about in Fat Talk, reframing the puberty narrative. From the get go we frame to kids that changes in your body are a problem to be solved, and a thing to be dreaded and pushed off as long as possible. Instead of saying, yeah, it’s totally normal. Your body is going to change constantly throughout your life, and you’re still going to be you, and your value is not going to change.CorinneI think that’s a really good point and something that people forget.VirginiaIt is not your job to explain that to your friend who is asking for a lot of emotional labor from you that you don’t need to give, but just something to hold on to for yourself.CorinneGood luck.Next one:The subject of leggings has snuck its way into many of your recent newsletters, but I’m looking for a bit more info. I’ve never been into sports and when I did work out I was more of a sweatpants and t-shirt kind of gal. About a year ago, I took up yoga and found a few leggings that worked well for me: Athleta and Girlfriend Collective.However, this week I started roller derby and what works for bending and stretching does not work for running, jumping, and moving fast. I’m about a size 20 with a considerable belly and large thighs, but a fairly defined waist above my belly. Waistbands just love to roll under the belly when I move. What else is out there? I am of somewhat modest means but I do seem to really luck out when looking at used clothes. Do you have advice for a newly active person who needs to expand her workout wardrobe?VirginiaFirst, I love that she noticed how often leggings creep into this newsletter.CorinneThat was really funny. Because also, we just mentioned leggings.VirginiaI mean, it’s a favorite topic, recurring theme, because all the jeans are bad. I am not a roller derby-ist, roller derby-er? I don’t know what your preferred nomenclature is. I don’t like to move fast or run or so I don’t know. I mean, the brands she mentioned are the brands I wear. Girlfriend Collective or Universal Standard. I do wonder about Universal Standard because the waistband is very high. It comes like up to my bra, basically. I really don’t have rolling down issues with that. I would maybe try that. But I do know what she’s talking about just from hiking. Like walking vigorously, leggings that are good for yoga do not always translate to walking. It’s so weird. Why are pants so bad?CorinneI was gonna recommend the Universal Standard next-to-naked leggings. I have a very long torso and they also come up to my bra. They’re pretty thin. I think they would be good for this.VirginiaYeah, they are very light weight. Whereas Girlfriend Collective are so thick. I feel like that’s part of what makes them possibly not work so well for her for running. Because the thickness, they start to drag on you a little. Like the time I wore a wetsuit in the water and realized I wanted to die.CorinneUniversal standard also has these leggings, Roya leggings, that are more cotton-y.VirginiaOh, I don’t think I’ve tried those.CorinneThey have an elastic band waist, so I feel like those could also work. But I don’t know if the cotton-y thing would be okay for roller derby-ing.VirginiaYeah, that’s a good question.CorinneMy other leggings that I like are Superfit Hero but you might have the same problem with them.VirginiaIt’s the same thicker fabric right?CorinneThey are the same, all one piece.VirginiaWetsuit-style leggings.CorinneBut I do think the fit is really good on those.VirginiaSo that’s good. It’s also so body specific.CorinneI know. And I feel like this may be not my body shape.VirginiaI mean, defined waist? She lost me.CorinneSame.VirginiaWe are not the best people to ask this. But we have had lots of other legging recs come in from Burnt Toasties, so drop them in the comments. And hopefully this person will check that out and get more advice, because I know there are a lot of other legging options out there besides our go-tos.CorinneBut I would say yeah, try the Universal Standard’s Next To Naked. I would also maybe try size down because I feel like they may be run a little bit big.VirginiaOkay, good. Alright. This person just wrote:How do you deal with the haters? Do you have any practices for mentally blocking them out?It’s a very sweet question. Well, I make videos where I eat snacks while I read them. That’s a big one.CorinneDo you find yourself bothered?VirginiaWhen I was in the first few weeks of the book launch, when it got really loud, like it was like constant. I was feeling bombarded, feeling like I couldn’t open my inbox. Otherwise no. When it’s now down to the more usual volume of a few per week. I mostly just read, delete, move on. Don’t even think about it again.But everyone’s allowed to respond to that in their own way. It’s okay, if it’s upsetting you. I’m not saying that’s the way you have to respond. The comments are horrible. You’re allowed to be upset by horrible comments.But I think for me, it helps to have this community where I feel like there’s a lot of people on the same page and so one random dude finding my Instagram DMs, his opinion means less than nothing. And because they’re so repetitive in the themes they hit when they get mad at me that I’ve already worked through my like feelings so I’m not thrown by it.I more get thrown if someone critiques something that I have also really like wondered about. Like if someone were to critique something about my writing I would be like, you’re right. You’ve caught the annoying phrases I’m always trying to get rid of or just like a more of a literary critique. That, I think, I could really walk around with and struggle, but the stuff where it’s like about what I report on, I’m like, no, I already have dealt with that enough.CorinneThat makes sense.VirginiaDo you ever get haters on @selltradeplus? Is that a safe community?CorinneHonestly, no. But I do live in fear of it happening. I feel like I don’t share a ton of personal stuff on there.VirginiaI just worry because it’s clearly a community of lovely fat people, that people would come be assholes.CorinneYeah, I definitely felt a little disturbed by the Fox News stuff that was happening to you. I was just like, oh my God. No.VirginiaYeah that was depressing,CorinneHopefully that will never happen to me. Hopefully, it will never happen to anyone ever again.VirginiaUnfortunately, it will absolutely happen again. But that was a very specific thing. I just don’t want to give them more power than they are already desperately trying to claw at from their mother’s basements.CorinneOkay, next one:How did you stop / postpone / continue your old job and write your first book?VirginiaI’m confused by this question because I didn’t stop a job. I don’t know if they saw something and misunderstood. So I’ve been a full-time freelance writer since 2005. So I was a magazine editor for a few years and then went full-time freelance in 2005. I got my first book deal in 2016. And that book was published in 2018. So I was continuing to freelance while I was writing that book.I did scale back the types of assignments I took. At that point, I was doing a lot of longform narrative features and more investigative type features which are themselves kind of like mini book projects. They’re really all consuming for a few months. So, I knew I couldn’t do those and write the book. So I was doing a different mix of assignments, but I did keep writing freelance assignments and somehow wrote the book and was also pregnant that year. So it was a big year. I don’t recommend it.Then for the second book—because it also occurred to me, maybe this person doesn’t know Fat Talk is my second book? For the second book, I was writing that while going all in on Burnt Toast being my full-time job. So what was bad about that was I was essentially launching a new business while writing a book. But what was better about that was I had more total control over the schedule than when I was freelancing for lots of different editors and the two worlds are very enmeshed. And a lot of the research I was doing for the book was giving me content for the newsletter and vice versa. So I was able to do both projects simultaneously. But I will say it sure is nice that now that I’m coming out of book launch season only doing the newsletter and I have just one job for a while. Yeah, don’t hate that.CorinneIt seems like the answer is, it’s really hard.VirginiaIf this is a writer who’s asking for advice, I suppose I should say something useful. If this is something you’re thinking about doing: If you get a big enough advance then leaving a job in order to focus on the book may be an option. But most of the time, that’s not the case, especially with a first book. So it’s about getting clear on when you can find blocks of time. Like I did a lot of the first book writing from 6 to 7am in the morning before my daughter woke up and our like, day started. I would get like a ton of work done then and then during the day be doing my day job of freelancing. So, you know, it’s just like looking for those chunks, but it’s a lot. It’s super hard.CorinneOkay. Here’s a personal question:How much do you spend on gardening? Just having plants in an apartment is not cheap.VirginiaIt’s not cheap! I’m not going to like give a number because I don’t think that would be good for us. For me, personally, I don’t believe in numbers. I don’t weigh myself. So I don’t put numbers on things like plants and the amount of joy they can bring us. Why would I? Why would I count the joy that the garden brings me? Why would I quantify it?CorinneNo need to quantify it. But okay, this is making me have a question, which is like, do you have a gardening budget?VirginiaOkay, so we need to distinguish between, like, there are some big projects we have done on our yard that I would say are akin to having done like a home renovation. And that was a separate budget.CorinneLike hardscaping type of things?VirginiaYeah, like we put in a patio and we added a bunch of trees, which are expensive because you’re putting big things. So that’s like, a separate conversation. I’m not going to get into that. All I’m going to say is, you’re investing in the value of your home. And also, gardens are a money pit. For sure.But what I think this person may be talking about this, like when I post a video with my car full of plants, which, like, yeah, it was my birthday. And my book had hit the New York Times bestseller list, so I got a lot of plants. And good for me. That’s all I’m going to say.As previously referenced in this episode, I recently bought double the number of dahlia tubers I needed. This is not an area of my life, where I believe in restriction. It is a big source of my joy. And, you know, in our family budget, I have a certain amount of discretionary spending money, both my husband and I get a chunk of do-whatever-you-want-with money every month, and pretty much all mine goes on plants.CorinneOh my God, that is so funny.VirginiaIn the gardens months, yeah. And all I can say is it brings me so much joy. I think there are no real budget strategies because the other thing is, like, it’s not just the plants but also like, I need a new garden hose because this one cracked. Like, there’s so much equipment. There’s a great meme I’ve seen going around that’s like listing all of like the costs of the raised beds and the dirt and the this and that. And then it’s like, now to enjoy my 25 cent tomato. There’s no math where growing your own food or growing your own plants is going to be cheaper than not doing that.And this is why I don’t worry about growing vegetables, because I know it wouldn’t be saving us any money and it doesn’t bring me as much joy. So I’ll just buy my vegetables from the grocery store. It’s fine.But um, so number one, only buy as many dahlia tubers as you need. That’s one budget strategy I have for you. Also, starting more things from seeds can be cheaper. I tend to forget to do that, but it’s a goal of mine. These are all the things I would do if I could get my act together.I don’t know, I mean, you’re a gardener, too. What are your thoughts?CorinneYeah, I’m a very low key gardener. And I was going to say, I’m someone who does have a bunch of houseplants and I have spent almost no money on them.VirginiaHOW.CorinneI think I bought some pots so they would kind of match. Yeah, but I don’t really care about houseplants so I’m not going to spend money on them. But at my old job, people used to bring in cuttings so I would take cuttings. I also know a lot of cities will have seed exchanges or seed libraries where you can go and get seeds for free. And also there’s also a lot of plant swap groups now. I’m pretty sure there’s an Albuquerque plant swap on either Reddit or Facebook where people will like trade cuttings.VirginiaWell, I definitely need to get in on that.CorinneSo there are definitely ways to get plants for low cost. I will say there’s certain plants that I feel like people are constantly giving away because it’s so annoying how fast they grow. Like, please do not give me that plant because I can’t deal with how fast it grows.VirginiaWait which plants?CorinneI feel like it’s like pothos and spider plants. Mother of thousands or whatever.VirginiaOh God, mother of thousands. We’ve talked about that.CorinneYes, I threw mine away because I was like, stop.VirginiaI threw mine away, too, and it’s still popping up in the other pot. I can’t get rid of it. Truly a nightmare.This is reminding me I do have a truly absurd number of hostas in my garden and a gardener friend of mine has an old Victorian and someone planted hostas a million years ago. So there were so many hostas and she didn’t want them so I went and dug up all her hostas and then divided them. So what was like 100 hostas became like 300 hostas, I’m not even kidding. Because hostas, you can just divide and divide.This year my asters are going nuts, so I was able to call her and be like, come pick up as many asters as you want because you gave me hostas. And so that’s lovely. And dividing over time will give you more of everything. So if you can’t buy a lot of plants in the first year, you can build up towards that. Then like they get bigger and then you can divide them, but it just requires so much patience.CorinneYeah, it’s true. If you have specific plants you want in your apartment, you might not be able to get them for free or cheap. But yeah, check Facebook marketplace.VirginiaListen to Corinne, she’s got great tips.CorinneMake friends with other people who like plants and give them away all the time.VirginiaIt’s true, if you come to my house, you might be leaving with one. And I do encourage people to take cuttings of my house plants, like my polka dot begonias. I’ve given a lot of cuttings.CorinneYeah, or like a probably illegal strategy of walking through the succulent section of a plant store and picking up the fallen leaves.VirginiaOh, the fallen leaves. I thought you were going to say breaking off a little piece.CorinneNo, no, I would never suggest that. That sounds illegal. However, if they have fallen and you pick them up, you’re basically just helping them clean.VirginiaThat’s really good. With talking about this, though, is I’m feeling a lot better about the money I have spent because I’m thinking about how all of the plants I have are actually many more plants. So my cost per plant is going down as we discuss because I’ll just keep dividing things and making more plants. So yeah, so I’m really actually quite a budget garden chopper and I’m glad we had this talk. Okay. Next question!CorinneAlso plant-related.Plants for shade gardening? And can we talk about Solomon’s Seal?I do not know what Solomon’s Seal is.VirginiaOh, Solomon’s Seal. This is someone from Instagram because I posted pictures of my Solomon’s Seal. It’s a really lovely native, although I think I don’t have the native ones. I have a variegated one. Kind of like a fern, it arcs. It’s like an arc-ing plant with leaves and it has little flowers to hang off it in the spring. And it’s lovely in shade gardens because it looks like waves like it like it’s really pretty. I will post some pictures from my garden of my Solomon’s Seal.The big question about shade gardens is do you have dry shade or moist shade? Because most of the good shade plants are moist shade plants because they want to grow along streams in the woodlands or like in a rain forest. And you know, and I live on a very rocky mountain with a lot of big oak trees that take up all of the root space in my garden. So I have a lot of very dry shade, which is I would say the hardest gardening condition and the reason I have to buy so many plants because it takes a long time for my beds to fill in. But some stuff that’s working for me is the Solomon Seal for sure.Brunnera is another one that has like really pretty silvery green sort of swirly leaves and little blue flowers in the spring.Pulmonaria which has super cute polka dot leaves and little pink flowers in the spring. And that gets big and you can divide that a lot.And what else do I really love in my shade garden? My favorite shrub in my shade garden is the oak leaf hydrangea which is really beautiful.Do you have shade gardens in New Mexico? Is there shade in New Mexico?CorinneNo. I’m going to say no. There is neither shade nor wet. It’s like finding plants that can survive full insane sun. And I mean, I think most people who have gardens here have irrigation which I am contemplating having put in, so we’ll see.Do you have good shade gardening resource recommendations? Is there somewhere you look for info about that stuff?VirginiaSo my favorite garden blogger is Margaret Roach who blogs as A Way to Garden and she also has a podcast. She regularly has on Ken Druse who is a garden writer who has written I think at least one if not several books about shade gardening. I’ve gotten a lot of great tips from both of them.And I should also say Anne Helen Petersen (now writing Garden Study!) and I text regularly. She has both sun and shade, more sun than me, plus she is in zone 8.CorinneThat’s funny, I feel like I’m like zone 8.VirginiaThere are clearly a very different zone 8s. It’s New Mexico and Washington State. Not the same zone, but yeah, I’m over here in zone 5, where it’s cold forever. So it’s rough. But yeah, AHP and I text a lot about shade plants and she was just posting a bunch of stuff in her Instagram stories which will not be up by the time this runs. But our running joke is that we are going to, in our retirement, start a gardening blog. So stay tuned.CorinneI love that idea.VirginiaWe both do not actually have time for it, but yeah. May have a name. May have working title.CorinneMy God, amazing.(Hate) Mail CornerVirginiaAlright, I thought we could add on a fun little read some hate mail because you guys liked when we did that in May. So I’m going to pull up this delightful one. This is just a quick little comment that came up on Twitter.CorinneHere we go. I’m opening it. Oh, I don’t know want to read this. Okay, here we go.Obnoxious glasses? Check.Greasy thin hair? Check.Porcine body? Check.This woman is a Democrat.Wait. Okay, I just have to say, what photo did this person see because you do not have greasy thin hair. I’ve seen you on Zoom a lot and you have luscious thick beautiful hair.VirginiaThank you. I really needed that. The comments don’t live in my head but with this one, I was like, I’m sorry what? That is just wrong.CorinneWho are you talking about? And also your glasses are not obnoxious?VirginiaNo. My glasses are obviously amazing. This person is wrongCorinneThey are extremely cool.VirginiaBut I loved that the first time I got seriously offended I was like, “I don’t have thin greasy hair.” Which like, I’m not hair-shaming people. All hair is good hair.CorinneBut no one who has seen your hair would describe it that way.VirginiaAnyone who has to deal with my eyebrows can confirm that thin hair is not a struggle in my life.CorinneOoh, jealous, honestly.VirginiaLack of hair has not been a problem.CorinneWow. Well, I guess I know what a Democrat looks like now.VirginiaI mean, and what he doesn’t even know is the Democrats are often not liberal enough for me. Actually pretty annoyed with them a lot of the time. But okay.CorinneTell him that.ButterVirginiaThat was just a little fun hate mail for us. Now let’s do some butter.CorinneOkay, so as discussed it is summer. It is very hot. I’m sweating so much, because also I’m spending so much time in the gym right now. So one thing that I’m really enjoying and is making my life much more livable is electrolytes. So I want to recommend two different electrolyte delivery vehicles. The first one is Gatorade.VirginiaNice.CorinneBut specifically the cucumber lime flavor. That’s the only flavor of Gatorade. The only flavor anyone should be drinking. And the other thing that I’m really enjoying is these Nuun electrolyte tablets. They’re a little easier to carry around than Gatorade. And they have more interesting flavors like cherry limeade. And some of them have caffeine which also is really fun.VirginiaAnd you really do like the taste?CorinneI do like the taste. I mean, it’s not like delicious but it’s drinkable. And I do like the results of drinking electrolytes. I just find that I feel better.VirginiaIt’s so important, especially in the heat. How is the weightlifting? How’s it going?CorinneIt’s going good. Feeling a little stressed about the meet, which will be done by the next time we record.VirginiaSo we’re gonna get a full report. I can’t wait. That’s very exciting. Well, I’m glad you’re taking care of yourself on this journey.CorinneWhat’s your butter?VirginiaMy butter, which I have to give credit to Kim Baldwin who is on Instagram as @theblondemule and also theblondemule.com and she blogs a lot at Joy the Baker. Anyway, she posted a lovely shot of a bunch of books, including Fat Talk, which is how I saw this. They were all on a cart, a little cart. And it turns out, this is her TBR cart—you may know TBR stands for to be read. So all the books that she’s waiting to read, she has organized on a cart. And I was like, this is genius because I get sent so many books because of my work and blurbing people’s books or interviewing people for the podcast. And I also purchase a lot of books—when I said I spent all my money on plants, that was false. I also buy a lot of books.So the nightstand is not going to cut it for my TBR pile. The nightstand would be up to the ceiling. So I now have this little cart. It’s from Target, it was $40. And I’ve got all my TBRs organized by podcast guests and fiction. It’s making me so happy.CorinneThat’s so cool. That’s a great idea.VirginiaBecause you don’t want to shelve them on your bookshelves because then you’ll forget if they’re in the archives. You want them where you’re going to remember that this is what I’m reading. And just having them laying around was not a good system.CorinneI love that idea. I like that a cart is movable.VirginiaI have it in my office, but you could totally put it in a bedroom. I also got one for my kids art supplies which tend to cover our house. So now we have art supplies contained and the TBR contained.CorinneWow, that’s awesome. That’s a great butter.VirginiaI think Kim really is onto something and we should all be getting into the TBR cart game.CorinneI love that.VirginiaAll right, I think we did an episode. Thank you so much for listening to Burnt Toast.The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, and Big Undies.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Farideh.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

You’re listening to Burnt Toast!We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it’s time for your March Extra Butter.Today we’re talking about Dr. Becky Kennedy, the beloved parenting influencer. We’ll get into:⭐️ The Dr. Becky mantra that Virginia uses…often.⭐️Why you don’t need to cook dinner for your kids at 3pm.⭐️ The infamous “school nurse call” post.⭐️ Is Dr. Becky — and parenting content more broadly— a diet or diet-adjacent?This episode contains affiliate links. Shopping our links is a great way to support Burnt Toast! You’ll find all of the links aggregated here.Episode 185 TranscriptVirginiaWe’re talking about Dr. Becky Kennedy! I am excited. I think this is going to be a very interesting one, because Corinne, I don’t know if you are aware, people love Dr. Becky. Like, really, really love her. If you look at testimonials online, people will credit her with saving their marriages, saving their parenting life.CorinneSo she has fans.VirginiaYes. And I think there’s a lot to love about her work and her messaging. But, as we’re going to get into, there are also some strange themes in her work. It’s a little bit diet culture. It’s a little bit Nice White Lady.And I think there are ways in which all of that ends up making her advice less useful to the average parent than her Internet following wants us to believe. So I’m bracing for impact on this episode. Ee may get some emails.To kick it off, Corinne—what do you know about Dr Becky, as someone who doesn’t have kids and doesn’t have to understand how to manage tantrums?CorinneWell, just a few weeks ago, a friend of mine sent me one of her Instagram reels, which was about learning to fail, living with failure, and how that can be useful. I liked it. I thought it was great. And then I went to look at her profile, and I was like, OH, this is that Dr. Becky??I guess I thought she did more parenting and kid feeding stuff and her Instagram wasn’t really about that.VirginiaSo she is a clinical psychologist, and she specializes in parenting advice, not just feeding. She definitely talks about feeding, but it’s much more big picture. I will read you her official bio:“I’m a clinical psychologist, mom of three, and founder of Good Inside. When I was first starting out, I practiced a popular behavior, first reward and punishment model of parent coaching. But after a while, something struck me. Those methods feel awful for kids and parents, so I got to work taking everything I know about attachment, mindfulness, emotion, emotional regulation and internal family systems theory, and translated those ideas into a new method for working with parents.”So it’s like every aspect of parenting, potty training, sleep issues, whether or not to use punishments.CorinneI do not know what a “behavior first reward and punishment system” is. I don’t know what that means.VirginiaSo this is where I’m very much in agreement with Dr. Becky. She’s critical of authoritarian style parenting, where it’s very like, “ou have to follow the rules and do what we say, or there are punishments,” and the punishments maybe don’t always make sense.CorinneLike, eat your vegetables or you won’t get screen time?VirginiaRight? Eat your vegetables or no dessert. No TV because you didn’t make your bed. All stuff that maybe seems sort of random to the kids.She’s also critical of using rewards if kids do a good job, like using a lot of gold stars and prizes and things to get them to behave the way you want. Which is a very compliance-based approach to parenting.I’m describing her work — I’m not blaming anyone who was raised in that model, or who finds themselves parenting in that model. There are definitely times where you’re like, “The only thing that’s going to get me through this is figuring out a bribe, and that’s just where we are.” And you know what, it’s real.We can link to some work from folks like Melinda Wenner Moyer who reports on this in a lot more detail. (Check out: This piece, this piece and this one, plus Melinda’s episode of this podcast about why both pressure and rewards can backfire.)Across parenting research, there has been a shift away from “let’s use prizes and punishments to get kids to behave,” towards “let’s understand what makes kids ‘misbehave.’” What’s going on underneath the outbursts or the lack of cooperation, or whatever you’re encountering? And so that’s what Dr Becky really talks about. She’s pulling together attachment theory, mindfulness, and Internal Family Systems theory.CorinneSo is this what would be called gentle parenting, or is this different?VirginiaYes, this is definitely gentle parenting. Gentle parenting is a term that gets thrown around but it has no official definition. There are many different flavors of gentle parenting. But Dr Becky is, I think a lot of people would agree, the most famous face of the gentle parenting movement.I think there are a lot of misconceptions about gentle parenting, which are important to say, too. People often think gentle parenting means you never use a consequence for your kid, or you never give them boundaries. And that’s not what she’s saying. She actually gives quite a lot of boundaries. We’ll talk about that. But it is much more of a child-centered approach, where you try to understand them as people with complicated emotions and needs, versus “Why don’t you just do what I say!” I’m painting with a very broad brush, of course.I will also say, unlike Mel Robbins our trial-lawyer-turned-self-help-guru, Dr. Becky is a real psychologist. She has all the degrees and clinical training. She has worked with families and has clinical skills and training. So that definitely makes me appreciate her perspective more.I would say, though, as someone who’s reported parenting stories for a long time—a lot of her messaging is a repackaging of other people’s research and work. These are not necessarily her own innovative ideas. I think she’s very good at pulling together a lot of what other people are talking about, and figuring out how to distill it in a way that works well in Instagram reels.Which is not necessarily a bad thing. I’m not saying it’s like a plagiarism situation like we had with Mel Robbins. But I just think it’s worth noting that she is benefiting from decades of other people’s work in order to come up with her new method for working with parents.CorinneHmm. Interesting.VirginiaOkay, I’ve got a couple of Dr. Becky reels that represent the aspects of her work I first connected with. I mean, she’s someone who’s definitely helped me out of some tough spots. My kid’s dad also really likes her content.So you can pick one that sounds interesting to you, and we can look at it.CorinneI’m just going to click on the first one:VirginiaWhat’s your take?CorinneIt’s interesting. It seems like the first thing is she’s acknowledging the feelings happening, but then also saying, like, “I’m acknowledging your feelings and—Virginia“We still have to get in the car.”Corinne“We still need to do what we need to do.”VirginiaThis is a common misconception about gentle parenting—that it’s only acknowledging the feelings. Because then. with a lot of kids, you just get caught in this loop. I think a lot of us, when we try it, get caught in that place. It’s really hard to move past the part where you acknowledge your child’s feelings, because no child in the middle of a tantrum or transition anxiety or anything is ever like, “Thank you for acknowledging my feelings. I will now put my shoes on.” They stay there venting and emoting, and you’re like, But I’ve acknowledged your feelings! Now I need to get you in the car.CorinneDoes acknowledging a kid’s feelings help before you have to grab their arm and drag them out the door?VirginiaI think it’s better to do it that way than to just drag them out the door?As someone who’s been trying to do this for most of my parenting, I do think my kids have a strong sense that their feelings matter and should be heard. So I think there is value in it. But what it’s not, is it’s not a quick fix. It doesn’t instantly regulate the kid who’s gotten dysregulated and upset.It helps you steer the ship through the chaos, but the chaos continues around you. So I think that’s where sometimes people get tripped up about it.CorinneIt kind of reminds me of Division of Responsibility in some ways, because it’s sort of like outlining who’s in charge of what, and then stating it and then doing it.VirginiaDr. Becky is a big fan of division of responsibility. Parents are in charge of what’s offered. Kids are in charge of whether they eat it. Kids are in charge of their hunger.CorinneHere parents are in charge of making sure that you get places on time.VirginiaYou’re in charge of how you feel about it. Yeah, that’s really true and that is basically it, right? Like, I still have to get you to go to bed, but you can be in charge of how angry you are about the fact that it’s bedtime.Okay, the second reel that I put is something else I really like that she does, which kind of helps me understand the broader picture.CorinneOkay, this one is called getting good at repair.Okay, I like that. I like that. Seems good for all relationships.VirginiaYes, exactly. We all need to learn repair in all of our relationships. It is definitely not a skill that comes naturally to me, I will own. And so, I have worked on it. And what I especially like about it is Dr Becky acknowledging that you can try “I validated your feelings. I know this is hard. I have to hold the boundary,” and a lot of the time, you’re still going to end up screaming at your kid because you’re human. You just can’t stay calm and navigate them through every storm with the perfect script that she’s given you.I read an interview with her where she said, her three kids only get the perfect Dr Becky parent, like, I don’t know, 30% of the time or something. And the rest of the time she’s just like us, just losing her mind and then repairing. And I was like, okay, this makes me like you. You’re not expecting us all to be robotically parroting these scripts to our kids all the time, because it doesn’t feel authentic.CorinneNo. And that does seem important to teach kids about, too. How to face the facts when you have done harm or made a mistake.VirginiaYes, you’re modeling to them that if you screw up and yell at them, you’re going to come back and say you’re sorry. And open the conversation and make space for their being upset about that. And hopefully that then they would also start to learn to do that when they are the ones.And I think it lets you parent as a real person who gets upset. Our emotions are not our kids responsibility—a seven year old should not be worrying about whether her mom’s a happy person, right? That’s not an appropriate dynamic. But our kids can know that we are human beings who get frustrated and cranky as well, and that this is a two way relationship. And their parents are not just robots who live to serve them. As I like to remind my middle schooler when she’s asking me to get her a glass of water when she’s sitting right next to the sink and I’m across the room.CorinneOkay, this next video is called How to Respond to Whining.I mean, does seem insightful.VirginiaI gotta say, I used this one yesterday actually! Because I watched this reel yesterday as I was preparing for this episode. And then, as it happens, one of my children presented me with the perfect opportunity to practice this. And the mantra piece in particular was so helpful. When I first watched the reel, I was like, “ugh, it’s Mel Robbins and high fiving yourself in the mirror.” But saying, “I’m safe, this is not an emergency,” actually did make me take a second and stay calmer before I launched into negotiations with this child.And it definitely felt super cheesy. But I need to remember that I don’t have to join that party, and be at a 10 with her. I can stay in charge of my feelings. So it was very helpful.CorinneI think that’s good advice. Generally, this is just good interpersonal advice. Like, take a moment before you react. Someone else’s negative feelings are not your house being on fire.VirginiaOkay, now let’s talk about some other notes that come up a lot in Dr. Becky’s work, which I feel more complicated about. In some cases, I think is this just because she settled on a brand that requires her to make Instagram content seven days a week? Some are going to be a swing and a miss, right? You’re throwing spaghetti at the wall, and it doesn’t all stick. Or is there an underlying theme? But the more I think about it, I think there is a little bit of an underlying theme. I don’t think it negates what’s good about her work. But I do think it’s something people should be clear on. The first one is actually something I wrote about last year. Why don’t we revisit the concept of the 4pm dinner?CorinneYes, I remember this. She’s presenting a parenting hack, and the hack is that you serve your kids dinner right after school instead of giving them a snack. And then you eat dinner later?VirginiaYes. So your kids come home from school or camp absolutely ravenous. That’s when you feed them a full meal with like the vegetables and the protein and the things you want them to eat at dinner. And then you have your normal dinner, and they get an evening snack, like a bedtime snack, while you’re having your regular dinner at six or seven, and then they go to bed.And this is one of these Internet parenting hacks that you hear it, and there is some logic to it, right? Because it’s totally true. My kids come from starving at the end of the school day, and they eat a million snacks, and then often they aren’t hungry for dinner, and it is frustrating. And—anyone who works cannot be cooking dinner at 2pm!CorinneI mean, I feel this myself. Sometimes I’m ready for dinner at 4:30 but I also have to cook myself dinner.VirginiaAnd when was I supposed to start doing that?CorinneI would be stopping working at like 2pm.VirginiaI mean, you and I both have very flexible work from home lives, and it does not make sense for us to be like, “Okay, no, we can’t podcast record at that time because we have to start our dinner prep at 1pm so that we can be eating.” It’s like, no, it still makes sense for me to start making dinner at five o’clock, And that’s frankly, some days, ambitious.CorinneYes. And it does feel like there’s a little bit of morality that a meal is better than a snack.VirginiaAbsolutely.This is a little snippet I wrote in the piece:Super early dinner is advertised as a way to get kids eating more “real food” and fewer snacks. It’s a perfect distillation of so many of the diet culture messages we grew up internalizing: The romanticization (by Michael Pollan and later his disciple Gwyneth Paltrow) of eating “real food, mostly plants, not too much;” the “don’t eat after 7pm” rule; the fear mongering around ultra processed foods, and our perpetual parenting anxiety that our children are eating too many snacks.Parents have been taught to fear kids snack foods on so many levels.And another way to reframe this is to say, my kids come home from school ravenous. I am finishing work, or they are in an after school program, or whatever you have for your afternoon child care block. It makes sense for them to have portable, readymade packaged snacks that they can eat to fill up then, and they may not eat an amazing dinner later. Or, you know, maybe they will. But it’s just not the time where I can serve them a home cooked meal. And that’s okay. So isn’t it great that we have prepared packaged foods that make that time easier to feed our kids?I think the other piece of it is the privilege involved. Either you have a stay-at-home parent who can do this cooking, or you have a nanny. I strongly suspect, given that Dr Becky Kennedy runs her empire from the Upper East Side of New York, that there is a nanny. Which I have no problems with! Childcare is very important work, and I hope that person is being very well compensated for their labor. But there’s no naming of that in her reel. She doesn’t say, “I’m so fortunate that our nanny can make dinner for the kids at four o’clock.”Okay, so now let’s click on when the school nurse calls.CorinneThis feels similar. She’s not acknowledging that a lot of parents are working during the day.VirginiaThey’re not like, “I’m having coffee with a friend. How disappointing I have to cancel that.” They’re like, yeah, if, I leave my job…CorinneWhich is also totally reasonable but, like, have you ever considered how stressful it is to have to tell your boss that you have to leave?VirginiaWhat if you are a doctor seeing patients, or a teacher with a classroom of kids, or a retail worker who is dependent on that shift?There are so many jobs that are not easy to just walk out of because your kid is sick. Your boss isn’t going to be like, sure, no worries. Have a good day. Good luck with everything. And there’s just no mention of that.CorinneYeah, that is very interesting. She’s literally like, “When your kids are at daycare, that’s your time to for yourself.”VirginiaYou’re filling up your cup by…earning the money that pays for the daycare and also the groceries or the rent or the mortgage.CorinneIt’s just weird because that can’t be her situation really! She’s clearly working a lot.VirginiaYeah, I don’t understand. I mean, she’s working, but she obviously loves her job. Maybe this does fill her up.I will say, too, when I did her podcast during the Fat Talk book tour, we were chatting a little bit before we started recording, and she mentioned that she had just come from her Thursday morning breakfast and workout that she does with her best friends to make sure she sees her friends during the week. They all meet up after the kids go to school, workout in the gym in her building, and then make a breakfast together every Thursday morning. And I was like, huh, my life doesn’t involve a standing two hour socialization opportunity on a weekday morning. So I don’t know. I mean, it sounded lovely, but that is not a typical way that most working parents are spending Thursday morning.CorinneThat is interesting,VirginiaBetween the dinner thing and the school nurse one, I just started to feel like there is a level of privilege that is not being acknowledged in this parenting content. And again to draw a parallel with intuitive eating, it reminds me of how intuitive eating often gets very rightful criticism for not taking into account like class issues and racism and things like that. Or how Division of Responsibility has a lot of ableism that means it doesn’t meet every neurodivergent kid where they are. There’s not this this awareness of the fact that not everyone can waste food. Not everyone has the flexibility and the privilege to eat intuitively all the time. And I think there’s a similar dynamic here where, yes, this does sound lovely. This does sounds like a lovely way to parent, to make dinner at four o’clock. But how does this translate to real people’s lives? It doesn’t.I think the last one I want to look at is her thoughts on how to share the mental load.CorinneAt least from what I’ve heard or observed about this, usually the conflict comes from even trying to get someone to acknowledge that you’re doing more of the mental load?VirginiaThat it exists at all. Yeah, yeah, that’s, that’s the first step.CorinneSo this sort of seems like it’s assuming absolutely no conflict around it.VirginiaAnd that it’s just a total accident that one partner has been doing more, but as soon as you point it out, they’re gonna be like, “Great, let’s sit down and make a plan and even that right out, no problem.”I also think it’s really interesting that there’s no mention of gender in that post.CorinneGood point.VirginiaOn the one hand, maybe she’s trying to be inclusive of same sex partners who struggle with this dynamic, and that’s great. But knowing who the majority of her audience is, and the majority of people who struggle with mental load imbalances in their relationships, it’s straight women married to straight men. And there is no acknowledgement of that context, or of the larger systems of oppression that have created that dynamic.So it’s like she thinks she can just help people work this out on an emotional level with their partner, without taking into account the fact that the entire world is built to make it happen this way.CorinneShe’s never acknowledging the greater systems at play that would make being able to cook dinner at 3pm impossible or having your kid’s daycare be ‘me time’ or partners not equally splitting labor. It’s always just framed as an individual issue.VirginiaExactly. And on the one hand, I guess I can understand that her training is clinical psychology. She works on an individual level with people. That’s what she does, right? She coaches parents and people in relationships on how to problem solve these things. But to do that without the larger systems at least being named—that feels like it’s limiting how much good her advice can do. Because the real world application of it is always going to happen in a context where those systems exist.I will also say, on the feeding kids stuff, while she is a big fan of Division of Responsibility, it’s kind of the same thing. She presents division of responsibility very simplistically: You’re in charge of what’s offered, kids are in charge of whether they eat it. And she’ll throw out the example of, “you’re serving meatballs, pasta, and tomatoes for dinner. The kid only eats pasta. That’s fine.” That’s how you leave it.But in my house, there’s often one kid who wouldn’t eat any of those things, and would also need a second thing on the table to account for the fact that they won’t eat any parts of that meal. There are neurodivergent kids who have a different set of needs. There’s budget and the fact that the kids are only going to eat pasta and you made these meatballs, which leads to food waste issues.And I think it is also heavily implied that you’re doing this division of responsibility thing because you want kids who are not picky, and by “not picky,” we mean “eats a lot of vegetables,” ultimately.So that’s the overall theme that I see cropping up. Again, this is not a takedown episode. I don’t think Dr. Becky is a full-on grifter or anything like that. But I do notice this recurring theme of entitlement and lack of context. And maybe that’s just a factor of being an online advice giver, where there can’t really be any context, and maybe we should all be considering why we get advice from people talking into their phones on the Internet. But it’s something I’ve really been noticing and wanted to talk about.CorinneOK, so where do we land? Is Dr. Becky a diet?VirginiaI…think she is not? Well? I was going to say no, but the more I thought about it as we’ve worked on this episode, I think the diet part is that she’s holding up a promise of what your parenting life can be like, that is likely always going to be just out of reach. That you will always be able to validate their feelings. That your child can emotionally regulate themselves. That you can stay calm and in control. That you can have this deep connection with your kids that will make you feel like you’re excelling at parenthood…I don’t think that’s realistic for us to expect to achieve in any 100 percent of the time sense. I was just telling you about having a really lovely dinner with my kids last night, and then one of them going off the rails right after. It just feels, for a lot of us, that even when it’s good, the hard parts are just, like, 20 minutes away? And I think a lot of this parenting content can make us feel worse about that because it feels like we’re doing something wrong if we’re not achieving the vision that she’s selling.CorinneI feel similarly. Is she a diet? Not in the sense that a diet is a way of modifying your eating habits to lose weight.VirginiaWe’re talking about metaphorical diets, in these conversations. We’re not saying she’s trying to make kids lose weight. We’re using “diet” as a metaphor here, as we frequently do on Burnt Toast, to explore where is this person replicating some of the harm we see coming out of diet culture.CorinneYeah. It is a sort of dream world that she’s selling.VirginiaAnd there is still a lot of prescriptive advice. There’s a lot of “follow these scripts” and “take these steps” to notice a change. And that feels diet culture-adjacent to me.Alright! That was our look inside Dr. Becky. I’m very curious to hear what folks think about her. I’m sure a lot of people in the Burnt Toast community have been following her advice for a long time, so I’d love to hear what worked, what didn’t work, what your takeaways are. Tell us everything.CorinneYeah, and I’m really happy that now I know who Dr Becky is.VirginiaYou’re such a good sport when we do this parenting content. I appreciate you.ButterCorinneDo you have a Butter?VirginiaI do have a Butter. I am going to talk about a Butter that I feel a little shy to talk about on the podcast. But we are a body positive space, and that is core to what we do, and so I am going to talk about vulva balm.CorinneWow, incredible. I feel like this has been coming up in the comments a lot. I guess because I was talking about moisturizing.VirginiaOh yeah, over on Big Undies you’ve been talking a lot about skincare and moisturizing.CorinneIt has come up multiple times.VirginiaWell, so what I will say is, if you are in perimenopause, or you are just a person with a vulva, this can happen in many stages of life, but particularly in perimenopause, you may be feeling more dry and chafed at times. And itchy, perhaps. And if that is sounding familiar, those terms, this product, which was recommended by my gynecologist, is great. It’s a brand called Medicine Mama, and the product I use is called VMagic Vulva Balm, and it’s just basically a mix of organic oils and whatnot. It’s for discomfort, dryness, safe for daily use, good for sensitive skin. I just went through my first jar, and I will be doing their Subscribe and Save option now, because I really like having this on hand. It is quite useful.CorinneIt looks amazing.VirginiaObviously, talk to your gynecologist or your midwife or whoever as well if you’re having these symptoms, there can be more things going on. We love an antibiotic, etc. But just for relieving immediate discomfort, Vulva Balm is great.CorinneYeah, all parts of your body need moisturizing.VirginiaThey really do. We are hoping to do more episodes on perimenopause. We’re reaching out to some potential guests. So if you guys have questions about perimenopause, body things, we want to get into it. It’s pertinent to our interests. At least my interests! Corinne is an infant.CorinneIt’s coming for me.VirginiaIt’s coming for you, babe.All right, what’s your Butter?CorinneMy Butter is also skincare related. I want to recommend a sunscreen as we are getting into the warmer months. I have this one I really like called Dune. I forget how I first discovered this. It is a little bit expensive. I want to say this little bottle is like $25, but it says invisible gel. I will say it doesn’t come out clear. It’s like kind of a greenish color, but it really goes in very easily, and it’s not super greasy. I love it. It feels almost more watery. So I really like it, and I recommend it.VirginiaThat is really good. I feel like I’m always looking for a good face sunscreen. Do you use it for your face?CorinneYeah, this brand has different ones, but this one is the mug guard, so it’s specifically for your face. And some of the other ones I’ve tried are scented, and I’m really picky about scented stuff, but this one is not.VirginiaExcellent. Well, we’re looking out for your faces and your labia, and you’re welcome. That’s what we come here to do.The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, and Big Undies.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Farideh.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

You’re listening to Burnt Toast!We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it’s time for your March Indulgence Gospel!Indulgence Gospel episodes are usually only for paid subscribers but we’re releasing this one for free! If you like it, you can get even more Virginia by becoming a paid Burnt Toast subscriber.Today we’re chatting about:⭐️ Navigating fitness spaces designed for smaller bodies!⭐️ Feelings about hair color!⭐️ Do Virginia and Corinne like sports now? 👀⭐️ And what to do when it seems like everyone is on a weight loss drug.The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, and Big Undies.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Farideh.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!Episode 184 TranscriptVirginiaOkay, I just want to say: We got a lot of clothing-related questions this month, which we’re sending over to the Big Undies space. Not that we’ll never talk about clothes on Burnt Toast! But if you’re someone who’s coming to us for that content, you really need to be reading Big Undies because Corinne is doing the Lord’s work over there.CorinneYep,. I am doing the Lord’s work.VirginiaYou are the most size-inclusive fashion Substack. I’m going to just claim that title for you. I think it’s correct?CorinneI mean, a size-inclusive fashion Substack.VirginiaWell, admittedly, the competition for Most Size-Inclusive is not stiff, since most fashion Substacks are not at all size inclusive. But there are a handful of great ones! You are just my favorite.CorinneYou can always DM or email me your questions!VirginiaCorinne has answered many of my fashion questions. So send more of them to Corinne!Okay, so what’s new? How are you doing?CorinneI’m doing good. Is there something I should talk about other than the weather?VirginiaWell, it’s March, which is my least favorite month of the year weather-wise in New York. So if you have good weather tidings, you can bring them to us. Because I don’t.CorinneWe have had a few unseasonably warm days, I’m talking low 70s, and the bulbs are starting to come up.VirginiaI’m jealous of everybody else’s spring. I live in a very cold part of the world and it will not be spring for many, many more weeks. But that’s nice for you.CorinneYes. Shall we get to the questions? I’ll read the first one.I turned 49 in January. My hair is brown, ash blonde and going silver along the hairline. I have a hair stylist who loves to do color and is very good at it. I’ve been thinking about doing color or streaks as a way to mark this fifth decade. But what color? In my dreams, it’s sparkling gold, but I’m not actually Galadriel. I don’t want anything neon. If you’ve colored your hair, how did you choose which color? Especially if it wasn’t for overall beauty labor reasons, but more as pleasure.VirginiaI love this. I love the idea of dyeing your hair to mark turning 50, specifically dyeing it what sounds like a not found-in-nature color.How many hair colors have you had Corinne?CorinneMainly one. I dyed my hair pink in high school. I think I dyed my hair darker brown in college once, just box dye. I’ve never seen a professional hair colorist. But I have been thinking a lot about this because, you know, I recently got my colors done.VirginiaOh, that’s right! We are going to have a whole episode about getting your colors done, people! The early teaser for that is that I’m still waiting for my results. But yes, so you got your colors done. And did it make you rethink your hair color?CorinneWell, yes, and no. I think a lot of people use that framework for choosing hair color when dyeing their hair. So that is one way to think about it. And I did sort of have the question, like: Well, if gray isn’t one of my colors, and my hair is starting to go gray, what does that mean? Should I think about coloring it?VirginiaBut wouldn’t your hair naturally go the right gray for you?CorinneI mean, I think there are different interpretations.VirginiaIs there a right gray? Maybe you have no grays in your approved colors.CorinneI’m a true spring so I think I would want like a lighter gray? I don’t know.VirginiaMore of like a blonde gray ? There’s so much to discuss on this whole colors thing, because I am something of a skeptic. I started as a devotee, now I’m a skeptic. So stay tuned for the colors episode. But I could see it being both helpful and stressful when it comes to thinking about hair color.I have never had fun colored hair. I have a child with blue hair, so I do know quite a lot about the maintenance involved in living with fun color hair, and it’s a part time job of mine to maintain that. But I’ve never had it for myself. I had a brief blonde period in college—if I can find photographic evidence, I will consider revealing that to the world. You can see the color of my eyebrows. They are dark, dark brown, so it was very like 90’s Tori Spelling. It was not a natural state for me.So that was a mistake. And then I stayed my natural color, which is dark brown, all through my 20’s and 30’s. But sometime after I had my second child, my hair stylist—who is one of the most important long-term relationships of my life, she’s been cutting my hair since I was maybe 29—slowly nudged me over into color, and now I do get my hair colored, and it’s a mix of a base color and highlights. I don’t really understand what happens, I just let her do what she wants because I trust her implicitly with my head. And I like not having to make decisions about it, and that it always looks good.But it is a point of reckoning, because I don’t actually care about the beauty labor piece. Like, I don’t actually care about covering my grays, but she is covering my grays most of the time anyway.CorinneSo how do you know you don’t care about it?VirginiaBecause when they grow back in, I’m like, “Oh, hey, that’s fun. Gray hairs!" When I’m in between, you know? I’m not, like, I want to cover the grays. That’s not why I’m doing it. I’m doing it because I like going to see her and hanging out with my friend, and I enjoy what it looks like when she’s done. Like, it is pleasure. And it’s pleasure that upholds a beauty standard, so I feel complicated about it.But the way I choose the color is I just go to the salon and I trust the person who knows very well what to do. And it sounds like this reader, this listener, has someone in their life who does that. So I think I would start there! Go to your hair stylist and be like, “Okay, let’s do something fun.” And I feel like she’s going to blow your mind.CorinneI agree. And I also think I wouldn’t let not being Galadriel stop you from getting or wanting sparkling gold hair.VirginiaI think it could be pretty sparkling! Hair color technology has come a really long way. If you’re doing salon color, they can do quite a lot, especially if you have some silver you’ve already got some bleached parts. I think it could be pretty awesome.CorinneJust based on your description, brown ash blonde, going silver, sounds like a good match for sparkling gold.VirginiaIf you do it, please send us pictures! We would love to see this.Okay, next question:Even though I’ve been in the anti-diet space for years, once in a while, I think maybe I should just try Zepbound and see what happens. Has anyone else been pulled into these thoughts?Corinne“See what happens.” What are we talking about here?VirginiaWe’re talking about weight loss. We’re talking about seeing how much weight loss will happen.CorinneOne good thing to remember about these drugs is that they do cause weight loss in most people, but they don’t cause weight loss in everyone. And, if you ever want to stop taking them, you will likely regain the weight.So I think the question is: Do you want to go on this drug, see how much weight you can lose, then go off it and regain the weight? Is that a net positive?VirginiaThat’s a really useful framing. Because what you’re essentially saying is: Do you want to go back on a diet? It’s not that different from what I presume most of us have done with intentional weight loss in the past. It’s just a different delivery vehicle. You want to try the drug approach versus the diet approach now. Or a lot of people end up doing both, whatever.I think all of us have had these thoughts, right? It’s hard. The drugs are everywhere. People are talking about them constantly. We’re human. Of course there are moments where I’m like, “Am I going to be the last fat mom in the Hudson Valley?”CorinneOh God!I do just want to also make the point now though, that a lot of people also go on these drugs, lose a lot of weight, and are still fat.VirginiaThank you for saying that. Excellent note. Or don’t even lose that much weight. Not everybody responds the same way. That’s the thing.So you can have the thought. There’s nothing wrong with having the thought. But it’s important to put the thought into the context of what’s actually happening with these drugs. Which is the same thing that always happens with dieting. Yes, some people are losing weight on it for some unspecified amount of time. And not everybody is losing dramatic amounts. It’s just dieting. So yes, we’re constantly tempted to reconsider an anti-diet stance because we live in a culture that’s constantly telling us to.CorinneTotally. I do think within the anti-diet space, we’ve become so anti-these drugs that I can sort of understand being like, “What if I just tried it,” you know? And I think if you want to try it, that’s fine. But I do think it’s good to just have a reality check of what that’s actually going to look like.VirginiaBe realistic about where you’re going with it.CorinneYou could even just start by looking into how much it might cost.VirginiaOh, yeah. That might clarify some choices.CorinneYeah. It might be like, well, if I can get it for free, sure, I’ll try it. But if I have to pay $2,000 a month, no thank you.VirginiaIf it’s a second mortgage payment.Yeah, and how do I feel about chronic nausea? I was thinking about this because I just had food poisoning at the end of my vacation, and we won’t talk about it because Corinne is very triggered by discussions of food poisoning and specifically airplane-adjacent vomiting.But when it happened I was like, people are signing up to feel this way? It feels so awful feeling nauseous! It’s an awful feeling. If you’re on the drugs and you don’t feel nauseous—I get it, not everybody does. But that’s the most common side effect. And to voluntarily be like, “Let me do something where I’m going to walk around feeling nauseous.” I’m like, I have been pregnant twice. I have had stomach bugs. I could be retired from that feeling, thank you.CorinneI think nausea is one of the worst feelings in the world. And, I can understand the calculus between, would I trade feeling nauseous to experience less fatphobia? Like, that’s real. There’s a lot to think about.VirginiaI think we’re saying it makes sense you’re pulled into these thoughts. We’re offering some larger context in which to put the thoughts. We support you doing whatever you want to do, but that’s the calculus we’re landing on. We get the thoughts, and then we put it in the larger context and we move on in our fat lives. But your mileage may vary, and that’s fair. You’re still welcome here.CorinneGood luck!Alright, here’s the next question.I would love to hear a discussion on the ways movement spaces are geared towards smaller bodies, even in subtle ways—because it pisses me off, and I can’t be alone in this! For instance, I enjoy a morning spin class with a friend of mine, and when the gym got new bikes, the new models moved the lever to adjust intensity to the front/middle. Now, as a fat person, my stomach bumps the dang thing and resets it throughout my workout. Clearly, bigger bodied people were not considered when creating this piece of exercise equipment. Not shocking, but super frustrating! Keep your anti-fatness out of my delightful morning spin.VirginiaI’m so annoyed about this.CorinneYeah, that’s horrible.VirginiaOt’s so dumb. I hope you’ve complained to the gym, because they should know they bought equipment that does not serve their clients. That’s irritating.CorinneYou should definitely complain to the gym and possibly also the company that manufactures the bikes.VirginiaIt’s just rude. I mean, my solution to this is that I don’t work out in mainstream fitness spaces. I work out in my home where it is sized to me. Because I find this constantly maddening.And I think it is subtle stuff. It’s the equipment, it’s the physical built space, and it’s also the felt experience of being the fat person in a space that is oriented around thinness. I just don’t like putting myself into it.So that’s not very helpful. I’ve spent a bunch of money on weights for my house, and I have space to use them. But that’s not everybody.CorinneThis question was interesting to me, because I actually feel like I don’t encounter this a lot at my gym.VirginiaSay more.CorinneI feel like a lot of the equipment at my gym is designed to hold really heavy weights, because people are lifting really heavy weights. And a lot of the equipment is extremely adjustable. There are two bikes at my gym—they’re what are called assault bikes. Is that the real name? You pump your arms and pedal your feet. But the seat moves up and down, and it moves forward and back. So you can really kind of adjust it. When one arm is pulled all the way back, sometimes I do hit my belly, but it’s fine.VirginiaI am googling an assault bike. We’ll put a visual for people like me who have not heard of this. I just have to say, there’s just no end to fitness equipment that looks like torture devices. And why do they keep inventing these things?CorinneIt’s literally just a bike with with arm pedals. One thing I really like about it is the front is, I guess it’s like a flywheel or something? So it blows air on you. It’s cooling.VirginiaOh, that’s nice. Why does that have such an aggressive name, though?CorinneI do not know. That’s why I was like, is that the real name? I’m not sure.VirginiaWhy can’t it be called the breezy bike?CorinneOkay, I don’t know.But my other thought about this was, I was recalling that I encountered this a lot in yoga studios where you would get a strap and sometimes it wouldn’t be long enough. If there was a place I was going all the time, I would know which strap I had to get.VirginiaAnd yoga mats are not cut for everybody, they can be too skinny.CorinneYeah, not wide enough or not long enough.VirginiaAnd depending on the number of people they’re trying to cram into the class if you go into a popular yoga studio, you can feel really cramped. The space my body will need to move comfortably here is not available. I hate that.It makes sense that a sport like powerlifting would be better on this since lots of different body sizes powerlift and you’re lifting heavier weights. And I think there’s more inclusivity in terms of the size of athlete it attracts. Whereas something like spin or yoga, which are thin lady sports, are going to be really annoying on this front. Which is not to say you have to be a powerlifter, but I think if you love a sport that really emphasizes thinness or has a thin ideal, you’re going to have to advocate more.CorinneI am also curious: Are you sure the bike doesn’t adjust at all? But maybe it doesn’t adjust in a helpful way.VirginiaI’m kind of guessing maybe this person has already explored that.CorinneI will say I experienced this a lot in other spaces. Anywhere else that has seats. Bathrooms sometimes. Why is the toilet paper blocking where I need to sit.VirginiaBathroom stalls are so narrow. That’s really real. Oh, I will link Dr. Rachel Millner, who is a wonderful eating disorder therapist and fat activist. She has been posting a lot of content on Instagram—she’s on a mission to become a fat Peloton instructor. She’s posted a lot of great content talking about adjustments you can make riding your Peloton bike, and how to do that as a fat person more comfortably. So we can link to that. Rachel is amazing.I just think this speaks to the lack of inclusivity. Like, Peloton still has only ever had one fat instructor, Ash Pryor, who is a rowing instructor, not a spin instructor. So that’s not great. I mean, she’s great, but the inclusivity is not great there. Peloton fans, you don’t have to email me. I know how much you love your Pelotons. But even brands that nod towards being anti-diet, or even attempt to represent anti-diet are not always fat inclusive. Like, it’s skinny ladies talking about being anti-diet.I mean, this comes up for me even in the workouts I do at home. I mean, I do videos by two women I absolutely adore and have relationships with, so I can offer this feedback. But sometimes I’ll be like, yeah, that twist didn’t work for my belly, you know? There’s just a lot where someone in a smaller body, might suggest a child’s pose where your knees press into your stomach, and as a fat person, you’re like, yeah, that is not my ministry. I’m not going to enjoy that one. And I think the onus is really on the industry, and I think there are people really trying to do better at this, but if they haven’t had that experience they just don’t know if they’re not really making an effort to talk to fat clients about what they need.CorinneI’m sorry this is happening to you. I hope you can get a good solution.VirginiaThis next question is very funny to me. This person wrote:Do you like to watch sports? How did you become a fan? Are you becoming a fan? What’s that like? And what do you wish you were a fan of? Will you never be a fan?CorinneWow, a lot of questions packed right in there.VirginiaOkay, do we like to watch sports? We’ll go one by one. We can both answer it. Do you like to watch sports?CorinneYes.VirginiaOkay. I would say no, until quite recently.CorinneOkay, I will say yes, but I know nothing about them. But I have always enjoyed the Super Bowl, because I really enjoy the Super Bowl snacks. And I think it’s cool to watch people doing athletics.VirginiaI feel about watching sports the same way I feel about exercise, which is that I’m never naturally going to want to do it. But sometimes I end up being glad I did and enjoying it more than I expected?CorinneThat’s fair. I mean, I’m watching it, and I’m like, well, don’t really know what’s going on, but cool to watch.VirginiaSo I have someone in my life who’s a big football fan now. Which means I did watch quite a lot of football this past season. And I don’t understand what they do, and I am concerned about the traumatic brain injury stuff, and I have many feminist critiques of the NFL. And I will also say, it’s fun when they suddenly do run really fast across the field, and you’re like, well that seems impressive. And I enjoy the player backstories. I can be here for the gossip. I know a lot of player backstories now. I don’t understand what’s happening in the game, but I like that part.CorinneDid you become a fan? Are you becoming a fan?VirginiaI don’t want to commit to a position on being a fan. That feels like a big step for me. I mean, I have historically been probably the most anti-sports person you could meet. This is all quite new and disconcerting for me. My dad is a lifelong fan, loves all the sports. My extended family are hardcore football and basketball fans. I grew up just being completely allergic to the whole thing.CorinneWell, this year I’m trying to get into watching the WNBA.VirginiaThis is the other thing we need to talk about. I do feel like women’s sports finally getting a modicum of more attention is helping me quite a lot. I mean, obviously this NFL thing is not a women’s sport. But I feel like Simone Biles helped me understand that maybe I could care about sports a little bit. Certainly, the Williams sisters have done a lot on that front. And then now women’s basketball.CorinneYeah, I will say basketball is fun to watch because it’s really fast and not very long.VirginiaWhich is the opposite of football. That is the slowest game. I did not understand. One minute can be three hours. It’s wild. It makes you question the entire concept of time.My mom is really into women’s basketball, so I feel very basketball adjacent. Even if I’m not watching it, I’m often being informed about it.CorinneYeah, it is really fun to watch. Also fun to learn the gossip backstories. I have been watching, along with the Out of Your League Substack chat, which was has also been fun.VirginiaI mean, Frankie de la Cretaz makes sports very fun. I read Frankie—and of course, we can link to Frankie’s interview on Burnt Toast—even though I am not following any sport closely enough. They always make me laugh and also blow my mind.CorinneTotally. So I think we’re both getting more into watching sports.VirginiaAnd some of us feel complicated about it? Some of us might have to write a think piece about it at some point?CorinnePlease write a think piece. And I’m curious what other Burnt Toasties are watching or not watching!VirginiaI will say, after I wrote about the Super Bowl, I realized we do have some die hard football fans, because those were people who got cranky with me about that Super Bowl piece.In some cases, rightfully so, but also just don’t mess with sports fans. It’s exhausting. They feel so strongly and so deeply. And it’s like, You do realize this is all made up? Some people are on a field with a ball and nothing changes in the world? Sorry sports fans. I support you. I see you. But your fervor is sometimes absurd to me. I mean, it’s like Taylor Swift fans.CorinneI was just going to say that. Yes, Swifties.VirginiaThe sports fans and Swifties and all of the fandoms. People feel this strongly. It’s understandable. Want to read the last question?CorinneYes. The next question is:This question is both late and like THE question right now, to the point that it can feel trite. But also, I’m desperate to hear people’s ongoing thoughts and ideas around how to stay sane in this onslaught of terribleness. Not hoping for any big solutions—though, absolutely welcome if you have any, maybe just one or two things you guys are finding helpful right now.VirginiaI mean, just to put into context, we are recording this on February 26. You’re going to hear it in early March. So the terribleness this week is the Republicans just absolutely gutting Medicaid yesterday in their budget vote. The federal government layoffs continuing apace, and oh also, now suddenly we’re blaming Ukraine for the war with Russia. Like, yeah, cool, cool. So the terribleness is intense, and obviously by the time this episode airs, there will be 50 million new terrible things, and what I just said will be completely out of date.So I’m just situating us in this moment of terribleness before we give our answers here.CorinneYep. What are we doing?VirginiaI would say the number one thing I am doing that is helping me is calling my reps. You taught me about this last year when we were advocating for ceasefire in Gaza— just use the five calls app.I think people know about the five calls app, but if you’re like me, you might have downloaded it and not used it yet or for a while. Because I definitely did that for a while after you first told me about it, where I was like, yeah, I’m going to use it, but it’s scary. It’s scary. I don’t want to make the calls! It’s scary! I’ll just have it on my phone for a while.And then I did finally do the first Gaza call. I was like, okay. And now I’ve re-upped using five calls, and I don’t manage to call every day, but I definitely try to call like, three or so times a week is kind of my baseline. I have it on my to-do list every day. It always only takes three minutes. There was one scary time where I had to talk to a person, but mostly I’m leaving voicemails. You can call after hours if you would prefer to just leave voicemails. And it does make me feel like, okay, I am doing the one thing that we as constituents can do right now. I am using my voice to inform my representatives of my disgust and tell them what I want them to be doing.And it’s helping me focus in a little bit. I knew that budget vote was the big thing happening this week, because the app will be like, vote on this day is happening now. So you can kind of be like, “This is the fire I’m actually going to pay attention to,” because there are so many things on fire all the time now, and it’s overwhelming. But like, okay, I’m tackling this one.Like, when RFK was going to be confirmed, I was like, I am calling about RFK this week. I can do this one thing. So that is really a game changer for me. It makes me feel informed, and also then like I can step away the rest of the day a little bit and preserve my own sanity, because I did the one thing.CorinneIt just feels a little bit less like shouting into a void. I feel like there’s so much posting on social media, and not that that has no value, but it’s like, what value does it have? I don’t know. I would just rather make one phone call than post like five Instagram stories about whatever.VirginiaI mean, we’re so polarized. It’s very unlikely that anything I post on my Instagram Stories is being seen by people, A with the power to do anything, or B who don’t already agree with me. So the performative nature of that was getting really old to me. I mean, it’s sometimes informative. There are sometimes things I hear about on social media before I read about it in the news. And that’s valuable. But it feels otherwise, just like a waste of energy. And so making the calls is like, okay, I used my voice in the most productive way I can.CorinneYeah. The other thing I want to recommend on that front is the Substack Chop Wood, Carry Water. Do you follow that one? It’s a daily political action email. So every day they give you a thing to do, and I think a lot of it is kind of focused on Democrats and its more national electoral politics focused, but if that’s your thing, I do think it’s helpful.VirginiaOkay, I love that.This is related to what we just talked about with doing a little less on social media. But ever since I did my Instagram break over the holidays—we’re now in March, almost March, as we’re recording this, and I have continued. I still go on Instagram, but only when I’m going to post, and then I delete the app. I’m not using it for doomscrolling anymore. And I think that is really, really helping.Like, it hasn’t been perfect. I had random insomnia one night, and I was like, well, fuck it. I’m going to download it and stare at Instagram till my eyes burn. But for the most part, I’m much less on it. And there has been absolutely no downside.CorinneWow, I gotta do that.VirginiaIt just really feels great. Don’t miss it at all. I don’t know that I’m going to quit it completely because, for business purposes, whatever, whatever. And I haven’t added Bluesky, I haven’t added any new replacement social media. I’m just on Substack, which doesn’t feel like social media to me in quite the same way. I think it’s just giving me a little bit of space. So I think finding space is important.CorinneOne thing that’s completely unrelated, but, one of my friends sent me a care package the other day, and it was so nice. And now one thing I want to do to distract myself from the terribleness is send people care packages so I’m going to endorse that as a large-scale solution for everyone.VirginiaEven if you can’t send a care package, maybe you can send a card? I do think, like, time with our people. Everyone’s been saying this, but I do really feel that.Another thing that we’re doing locally in my house is Friend Friday. My seven-year-old named it. Where on Friday nights when I have the kids, we invite some friends over for takeout and all the kids play or watch a movie. It’s not revolutionary. I was actually doing it for a long time before we named it, but I’ve now told a group of friends that it’s a standing invite.I’ll send the text to remind but standing invite if you want to come over this Friday and then if you don’t make it, you can come to another Friday. Because I have them two Fridays a month, and that’s making me feel like I’m continuing to invest in my local people in a way that feels good.CorinneYeah, I have a standing dinner date with some friends once a week, and it’s so nice.VirginiaOh, that’s beautiful. Do you go out?CorinneNo, we rotate whose house it’s at. So someone cooks, but then it’s like, if you’re doing it with three other people, you basically only have to cook once a month for four people.VirginiaRight.CorinneIt’s really nice.VirginiaI want more things like that in my life. More like we have these touch points of when we’ll see people and just having those breaks. And I mean, you know, as someone who does long solo parenting stretches, I really need the adult time to pace myself with that. And it really helps, and it makes my kids happy, and I feel like it’s making my kids have a sense of us as part of a larger community. And you know, that feels really useful right now.We had more helpful advice for that one than I thought. I thought we were just going to be depressed and have nothing and just be sad. But, yeah, we’re doing what we can. We’re chipping away at it. I guess.CorinneWe’re trying, for sure.VirginiaWe’re trying. I’m trying.ButterCorinneWell, speaking of staying sane, what’s your Butter this week?VirginiaMy Butter this week is going to be meatballs. I’ve been on a meatball kick because I regularly cook for one vegetarian pasta lover, but I love pasta sauces with meat in it. And then I have another child who doesn’t like any kind of tomato sauce. And I realized that making a batch of meatballs and keeping them separate from the sauce to spare the vegetarian means that the child who doesn’t like tomato sauce will eat the meatballs because they are not tainted by the sauce. So you see, you see what my life is?But I then get to eat pasta with meatballs one night, which I love, and then I have a bunch of leftover meatballs for the week.A recent spaghetti and meatballs night, with separate components. (And Julia Turshen’s Italian Salad!)And today for lunch right before we got on to record, I’d made some lamb meatballs. They were really good, and I’d throw them in with a cup of Minute Rice, and then I had some leftover salad that didn’t have any dressing on it, that I just added, and then, dumped a bunch of creamy dressing all over the top of the whole thing. And it was such a good lunch.CorinneThat sounds delicious!VirginiaHaving those meatballs made in my fridge made lunch come together in a very useful way. So yeah, Sunday meatballs! That’s my Butter.CorinneWow, more meatballs. My Butter is probably one of those things everyone already knows about, but I’ve been watching Severance.VirginiaOh, I need to start the new season.CorinneYeah, I needed to go back and re-watch the first season, because I started watching season two, and I was like, I remember nothing. But it’s great. I’m really enjoying it. Also just want to shout out that there’s a tiny bit of fat rep. The character Dylan on Severance is a fat man, and he does some really important things. Hopefully he continues to be a good character in season two. But yeah, I’m really enjoying the show, and just wanted to shout out that there’s a fat person without, at least so far, a weight loss storyline.VirginiaWe love it. We love to see it. I’m excited to get into that. I also need to re watch season one, and then I want to do White Lotus too. So I’m like, oh, that’s two stressful shows. I gotta pick which stressful show I’m going to watch, because I can only handle so much. But they’re both on my list.The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, and Big Undies.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Farideh.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

In this engaging conversation, food blogger Amy Palanjian, known for her Yummy Toddler Food and the Dinnertime SOS cookbook, joins her long-time friend Virginia Sole-Smith. They dive into the evolving nature of family dinners, especially after divorce, and share candid thoughts on cooking with kids. Amy hilariously reveals Virginia's secret love for protein powder while discussing the unrealistic expectations surrounding cooking and motherhood. They also emphasize the fun of fostering positive mealtime experiences and cultivating body positivity in children.

In this lively conversation, Brianna Campos, a licensed professional counselor and body image coach, shares her wisdom on body grief and acceptance. She emphasizes the often-overlooked emotional toll of societal beauty standards and how addressing body grief has transformed her own self-relationship. Bri discusses the importance of authentic connections in dating, navigating insecurities, and the power of self-acceptance, especially for those who feel marginalized. Tune in for insights on overcoming fears, enhancing self-worth, and celebrating body positivity!

You’re listening to Burnt Toast! We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay.Today we're exploring the work of attorney turned self-help guru Mel Robbins.Did Mel steal the concept of “let them?”Is she just Andrew Huberman for the “We Can Do Hard Things” crowd?Is high-fiving yourself in the mirror every morning a diet?As you’ll hear, Corinne and I didn’t totally agree… until we did. Let’s get into it.Episode 181 TranscriptCorinneToday, we are talking about motivational speaker and author Mel Robbins and we have maybe some surprising opinions on this topic.VirginiaWe have different takes about Mel Robbins. Some evolving takes as well. In the course of researching this episode, I think we went on a little Mel Robbins journey.CorinneI’m going to introduce this topic by saying that I first heard about Mel Robbins a few weeks ago. My coach at the gym was like, “Have you heard of Mel Robbins?” And I was like, “Hmm, sounds familiar? What is that?” And she was like, “I just listened to her on this podcast, and I saw she was on Glennon Doyle, and I was just wondering if you knew who she was.” And I didn’t know who she was, but I was like I’ll listen to her Glennon Doyle episode.I listened to it, and I liked it. I found it interesting and helpful.And then, just a few days later, you messaged me, and you were like, “should we talk about this person on the podcast?”VirginiaYes, because I had no idea who she was. We should be clear, this is someone with 22 million followers on Instagram. Us not knowing her was an oversight. She’s an enormous celebrity, but I had somehow missed her completely. Amy texted me one of her reels and was like, this feels like a Burnt Toast episode waiting to happen and I sent it to you.CorinneAnd I was kind of like… No.VirginiaYou were like, she’s not a diet. I like her. It’s fine.CorinneI enjoyed her episode on We Can Do Hard Things. She’s a run of the mill self help-y person.Just to give a little background, she has been a self help person for a long time. One of her first biggest things was she did one of the early TEDx talks that went insanely viral.VirginiaIn about 2011 or 2012.CorinneShe had this book called The Five Second Rule. The concept is basically if you’re thinking about doing something, count down to five and then do it. Which, like, how is that helpful? But okay, a lot of people found it extremely helpful.VirginiaIs it that it’s supposed to make quicker to do a thing you don’t want to do, or make you pause before doing a thing you should not do?CorinneI think it’s preventing you from overthinking / talking out yourself out of something.VirginiaI guess that’s not my struggle. But I can see for people for whom that is a struggle, having somebody push you off the diving board—I mean, as someone who would never jump off a diving board, I would need to be pushed. I get it.CorinneShe also has a podcast.VirginiaThe Wall Street Journal calls her “a billion view podcaster,” and Time Magazine says she gives millions of listeners around the globe a reason to believe in themselves.CorinneShe’s very, very, very popular.VirginiaVery popular. I also want to note that she is someone who is writing books about how to change your habits, how to overcome emotional hurdles. She is not a psychologist. She is not a social worker. She is not a therapist of any kind. She is a former attorney who first became famous because she started doing legal analysis on CNN. She covered the George Zimmerman trial for them and then that led to her first book in 2011 which was called, Stop Saying You’re Fine. So this high powered lawyer backstory to self help Guru is a is an interesting path.CorinneSo I did get her book to research for this episode—VirginiaYou got the newest book?CorinneI have her newest book, The Let Them Theory, but I want to talk about that later.But at the beginning of that book, she goes over her story, and to be honest, sitting here right now, can’t remember the details. But she has a struggle. Either she or husband got laid off, they’re having a hard time, and then she’s depressed, and that’s where the five second rule comes from. You’re saying she’s this high powered lawyer who goes into self help, but her story is like “I was struggling. I came up with this theory.”VirginiaOkay, I also just want to note that—not to take away from her truth about herself—but Wikipedia also taught me that she and her husband own homes in three locations.CorinneI mean, she’s very wealthy right now.VirginiaI’m just holding her personal struggle, overcoming how hard things were, and she is a former-attorney-turned-self-help-guru who owns three homes. So we can just hold those things together.CorinneHer struggle was 15 years ago.VirginiaDifferent time! Maybe one home, one-and-a-half homes tops at that point.CorinneDo you want to talk kind of about her Instagram reels and the diet culture of it all?VirginiaYes. My assignment for this episode was Mel Robbins’ social media, which I spent some time on, and I’m still recovering from a little bit.Her whole aesthetic on Instagram—you know how every influencer has their branding? Hers is very talk-to-the-camera, intense little pep talk videos. Or it’s excerpts from the podcast. She always starts the intense pep talks with like, “Hey, it’s your buddy Mel.” That’s her little like, “Hey, it’s your buddy Mel.” So this is our buddy, Mel, we’re going to talk about.And, you know, they’re a real mix. Some of them are the five second rule. Sometimes it’s about letting go of your expectations for other people.There was one reel I really liked where she’s just saying, like, if you’re going through a really hard time, like you have a terrible ex, or you are surviving some kind of trauma and you’re feeling overwhelmed and stressed out, that is actually what you should be doing. That’s not you failing, that’s you having a logical reaction to a hard thing. And I was like, yes, okay, I’m on board that seems right. It is important that it’s okay for us to be sad when things are sad and angry, when things are unfair. Especially given the current state of the world. That vibe I’m here for.But in this reel, she talks about how important it is to drink a glass of water in the morning before you drink your coffee.And again, this is a former attorney turned life guru, so I’m not clear why is Mel Robbins the expert for me on water before coffee?CorinneI mean, I don’t know, but it does seem like a good idea.VirginiaI’m not saying it’s not a good idea. I’m just saying, why is she presenting it?CorinneShe’s famous now, she gets to give advice on anything she wants.VirginiaShe starts talking about hormones and it gets very science-y, but there are no citations. There’s not even a nutritionist sitting next to her. Maybe this is from a podcast interview she did with a nutritionist? I don’t know. But there is no sourcing. She has this very emphatic way of speaking, and she’s like, this is the thing you need to do. And I just watched this, and I was like, oh, so she’s a Huberman bro! This is Huberman husband stuff, right?CorinneI mean, it’s self help! She’s telling you what to do.VirginiaMel Robbins would love to tell us all what to do.CorinneIn the intro to her book, where she’s talking about how she got into writing these books, she refers to having done PhD levels of research.VirginiaBut on what? Because the science about hydration and coffee intake is very different from the research on how we move through big feelings during trauma. These are not related concepts, Corinne. So she’s doing PhD level research on everything?CorinneShe has a PhD in giving advice.VirginiaDo you want to talk us through the morning routine post?CorinneSo, “this is the morning routine that’ll supercharge your energy all day.”Virginia“Backed by science,” that’s what she says.CorinneStarts with getting up when the alarm goes off. Once again, it’s not bad advice. Like, yes. But also is Mel Robbins telling you to do it going to make you do it? I don’t know.VirginiaSometimes you’re just not going to do that, and you might still have an okay day. It doesn’t mean the whole day fell apart because you didn’t get up the second your alarm went off.CorinneThe next thing, making your bed, tidying your space—another very common self help tip!VirginiaIt’s “the simplest way to practice discipline,” Corinne. “A promise kept no matter what.”CorinneI’m going to be honest, I feel okay with the first two. Number three, “high five yourself in the mirror.” Like, no. I’m never going to do that. I hate that. I really hate it.VirginiaI can’t stop laughing. She’s so serious in the photo. She has a selfie of her high fiving herself, and she’s so serious in the photo. Like she is earnestly high fiving herself.CorinneLet me tell you, “giving yourself a high five in the mirror rewires your brain to focus on self love and positive reinforcement.”VirginiaThe science behind that is all in her book, The High Five Habit. So there you go. The PhD level science that she’s done to confirm. I just imagine saying to someone actually struggling with depression or anxiety, like, “why don’t you just high five yourself in the mirror?” And, like, I think they would be justified in throat punching you. Like, “I’m sorry your mom just died. Have you tried high fiving yourself in the mirror?” Like, fuck you.CorinneThis is the thing, right? This is what we talk about. It’s like, exercising does make us feel better, but you can’t tell someone struggling, “Just exercise.” Like, this advice is good. Like, get out of bed, have a glass of water. Exercise. And, no one needs that advice. Everyone knows that.VirginiaHigh fiving yourself in the mirror I’m going to say is not good advice. Like, I’m going to say for most of us, that’s not going to be transformative in any way. It’s just going to be dumb.Okay, then we get to the hydration stuff again. “Delay your caffeine one to two hours.” And then here we are. Andrew Huberman again, “Take in the morning light. Get outside ASAP.”I currently have to wake up at five o’clock to get my middle schooler on the bus and it is dark for the next two hours. So I would be going outside in the dark. I do take in the morning light when I then drag an exhausted 11 year old out to the bus stop every morning. That counts. Okay, I get a gold star.CorinneSo she definitely has a self help-y thing going on.VirginiaThen the next reel I want you to look at is the one that references intermittent fasting.In this one, she says, if you’re going through a divorce, if you’re feeling kind of lost in life, if you have no clue what you want to do, here’s a tip from your friend Mel Robbins, just do something really, really hard. As well as doing the really hard thing you’re going through. So she did five days of intensive intermittent fasting “for her gut health”—I’m using air quotes—and that is how she got through some hard time.CorinneYeah. I mean, her other suggestion is training for a marathon. I sort of see a kernel of something here, but I can’t imagine actually giving someone this advice.VirginiaHaving gone through a divorce in recent memory, we can use me as an example. I felt like during those months, I was doing pretty good to keep the ball moving on my divorce. Like, keep parenting my children as best I could. Keep my business afloat. I did not need to be intermittent fasting on top of any of that. I didn’t. I was doing a lot. It was hard. I was doing all these hard things. I felt like I had enough. I don’t think training for a marathon would have done fucking anything for me. I just truly don’t. And I just needed to get through. The hard thing was enough.I never want to demonize coping strategies, and so if someone’s like, training for my marathon did help me through my divorce. Like, amazing. But it feels like choosing a coping strategy that will give you a big block of time that’s filled with something else to distract you. And I just think, if it wasn’t diet- or exercise-related. Like, if it was like, “I’m binge drinking every Saturday night as my coping strategy,” that also fills a lot of time, also distracts you, takes your mind off your problems. But then suddenly we have a totally different narrative around it, you know? So it’s like the combining of we’re going to give you this big, all consuming thing, and we’re going to make it something that we attach a lot of moral virtue and like social performance to. And that somehow is going to be why it’s going to be helpful.CorinneYes, the things she’s suggesting are committing to dry January fitness goals, building better money habits.VirginiaYeah, all good. But are they all projects you need? They’re all in and of themselves hard, complicated projects. Do you need to do them while in some other crisis?CorinneNo, I don’t think you do.VirginiaSo this is why I’m saying yes, Mel Robbins is a diet. There’s just this make it as hard as possible, push yourself to do more. Everything Sounds like a simple, easy tip, but she wants you to do 900 of them. That’s what I’m pushing back against. And then, I mean, there were a couple other reels. We don’t need to take them one by one, but, she’s done podcast episodes on how to boost your metabolism for weight loss. She’s done podcast episodes about working out for menopause, where they’re just like, you want to be strong, not skinny. But everyone talking in that conversation is extremely skinny.CorinneOkay, I want to talk a little bit about her book. Probably the reason we both have just come across her is because she has a new book out. The book is called The Let Them Theory. And this is what she was talking about on We Can Do Hard Things. So this is what I listened to a podcast episode about and was like, I like it.The Let Them Theory is basically letting other people do what they want to do. So it’s like, instead of making yourself miserable trying to control what other people are doing, let them. The story that she gives at the beginning to set this all up is her kid was going to prom, and they went to go take Prom pictures with a big group of kids before the event, and it started pouring rain. And then it turns out her son didn’t have a restaurant reservation for where to eat with his 20 friends before prom, and he decided he wanted to go to an outdoor taco restaurant. And she was just like, everyone is going to get soaking wet. It’s going to be horrible. Blah, blah, blah. And then her daughter was just like, Mom, let them. If they want to get soaking wet eating tacos, let them.And I do think that’s helpful. I also think there’s a way in which, that is anti-diet, you know? Like, let people eat what they want to eat. Let kids eat brownies before dinner, whatever.VirginiaNot to get too personal with my buddy Mel, but you were really going to control your child’s prom experience that much? They’re 17 years old and you’re weighing in on where they need to go for dinner. It’s their problem!CorinneIt’s an anxiety thing, right? It’s like, oh my God, 20 kids are going to walk into a restaurant without a reservation. I think we all have those type of spirals where other people are doing things in a way that bothers us. And instead of getting worked up about it, I’m just going to let it go.VirginiaI mean, I fully subscribe to this. I wrote an essay maybe two years ago about working on my own control issues and then realizing control isn’t love. And yes, this resonates very deeply with me. It is something that I am a perpetual work in progress on. And I feel like I’m having a really hard time squaring this “release people, stop trying to change people, don’t control other people” with have a 12 step morning routine. She’s like, I can’t control other people, but here’s what I can control.CorinneHow does the let them theory square with giving anyone else advice really?VirginiaAlso that.CorinneSo that is something that I’ve been thinking about, just as we’ve been talking.Another thing I wanted to mention was the book definitely mentions weight loss, like she uses it as an example of if someone’s wanting to lose weight or something, but they’re not eating in that way, like, let them. Let other people’s problems be other people’s problems. But like, just noting it as this is not a person who’s necessarily versed in body liberation.VirginiaShe has clearly done no work interrogating the idea that you maybe don’t need to lose weight. She’s willing to just take that as a foregone conclusion, which is common to this kind of self help person.CorinneOne thing that I found myself grating up against was she has a few kids. She has two daughters, and I guess they have really different bodies, and she talks about her older daughter’s feelings about her younger daughter’s body. And I have no idea how old the daughter is. I think the daughter is an adult or close to being adult. But I was just like, I really don’t like this.VirginiaYeah, did you have to go there? Even if they consented, why are you telling your kid’s story and talking about your kid’s body in that way?CorinneAnd, as you said, there are episodes about, weight loss, how to boost your metabolism, eat these five things or whatever.VirginiaShe brings on “experts” for all of those episodes. But this is a former attorney. I’m just like, what is your vetting process for these guests? How are you deciding? What criteria are you using? All of that is very unclear.CorinneThen the last thing that I want to mention is that this morning, as I was getting ready to record this episode, getting ready for my day, doing my morning routine—VirginiaHigh fiving yourself.CorinneAs I was not high fiving myself in the mirror.VirginiaYou do a high 10, you do both hands.CorinneI was like, I’m going to relisten to the Glennon Doyle episode, just so I can remember some of the things that Mel Robbins was saying on that podcast episode, which I enjoyed. So I opened my podcast player, I went to my We Can Do Hard Things feed, and the episode was gone! [1]And I was like, this must be some phone glitch. I checked every podcast app. I texted a friend, also gone in their feed. I texted you, you also couldn’t find it. So then I start Googling, and there’s a Reddit thread about this podcast episode disappearing, and someone links to a Substack post where a person is accusing Mel Robbins of plagiarism.VirginiaOh my God!CorinneThis other person named Cassie Phillips had written a poem that basically has the words and the concept “let them” and “let me,” which is like the basis of the book. And I guess that poem went really viral in 2022 and then Mel Robbins came up with the let them theory in 2023 so very close timelines.I did read the Substack post. I feel like it’s one of those kind of like, one person says one thing, the other person says something else, situations. I don’t know if you could ever prove that Mel Robbins heard it from the poem. And in fact, Mel Robbins says that she heard it from her daughter, so I don’t know what the truth is.Then the other thing I just wanted to mention, and this is something I had been thinking about, is that idea of “let them” and not trying to control other people. Like, that’s also just not Mel Robbins’s idea. A lot of different cultures use that. I know a lot of people in Al Anon who have embraced that as a way of just being like, you can’t control other people’s drinking, that kind of thing. So just want to acknowledge that it’s not an original idea. It’s possibly plagiarized. We don’t know.VirginiaWe cannot know about the plagiarism. But those are valid questions to be raising, given the timeline. But even if that was not a contributing factor, she definitely took this very well established concept—again, like, I wrote an essay two years ago about my own work in therapy on this idea. It’s out there. And it’s not that she can’t write about it. I wrote about it! But to then turn it into the Mel Robbins’ secret method of fixing your life, which is very much how the book is marketed and how her Instagram is marketed. It’s very much like, only Mel Robbins can tell you this hard truth. That is a real neat trick. And I think speaks much more to her ability to build a brand and build an audience than it does to her actually being a wise and research-based expert on personal growth. That’s not necessarily what she is, but she is a pretty genius marketer and packager of an idea.VirginiaI’m just really struggling to square it with the rest of her messaging. It doesn’t actually feel very consistent. Like, let them I understand. It’s more about other people. But you count to five and throw yourself out of bed the second the alarm goes off. Like, what? It just doesn’t feel internally consistent to me at all.CorinneTo me it’s just like if you’re just going to let them then why are you giving people advice? Why are you trying to control how people get out of bed?VirginiaYeah, and whether they drink coffee or water first? It’s not just that she’s giving advice. She gives really specific, granular advice about how to structure your day. She wanted to control whether her son took his friends to a taco place or not on prom night. Like, she’s real interested in people doing very tiny things, especially according to her specifications. So it’s kind of feels like maybe she got really into this idea because she knows it’s her own biggest struggle, which is totally fair. But there’s a lack of introspection to then peel back a few more layers and be like, well, where am I not letting them? I’m not letting people do a lot of things.Another thing that feels slightly like a disconnect to me with the “let them” and this let people go thing is, when you look at how Mel Robbins is presenting herself, it’s a very specific aesthetic. She is definitely someone who—I mean, she talks about working out a lot, intermittent fasting, all of that. Her body is presenting as a highly controlled body. She’s very thin, she’s very blonde. That is not a natural blonde. That’s her body, her choice, of course. But again, it’s this interesting tension between this message that is very expansive and trying to give you room to take up space in your life, and then what she’s presenting to us in in her embodied self feels very different. And again, this is not a criticism, because it’s also like one of those things where, like, what other option does she have? She got famous as a CNN commentator. She’s now a big deal on Instagram. Thinness, blondeness, whiteness, all of that is required for those jobs. So it’s just interesting seeing that like someone else with this message, who is not a tiny blonde woman would probably not be able to blow it up to the level that she is.CorinneYeah. And I also think she is older. I think she’s in her 50s.VirginiaShe has got to play the game.CorinneThis is how people are going to pay attention to her.VirginiaWell, that’s Mel Robbins. We learned a lot. We now know who she is, and also quite a lot about her. I’m interested to hear from listeners who have been following her. You may have more thoughts on the whole plagiarism piece, or the missing Glennon episode piece, or just have more nuanced takes on her work. So I’m excited to hear what people think.CorinneDo we want to definitively say, Is Mel Robbins a diet?VirginiaI’m comfortable definitively saying it is. You have been on more of a journey. I don’t know if you’re ready to say it.CorinneI don’t know if I would say that Mel Robbins is a diet. I do think she’s a whole thing.VirginiaShe’s a whole thing.CorinneI think she’s like perfectionism culture maybe?VirginiaShe is high fiving herself in the mirror so hard.CorinneIs high fiving yourself in the mirror a diet?VirginiaIt’s not not a diet is where I’m going to land on that.CorinneWow. I don’t know if I agree with that, but there’s a lot to think about.VirginiaOkay, let’s do butter, because my butter is going to possibly undermine my credibility for this entire episode.CorinneIs your butter drinking a cup of water before you drink coffee?VirginiaI am not doing that, but my butter is my new hydration tracking app that I’m using!CorinneAre you freaking kidding me?VirginiaI knew I was going to... I knew this was going to..CorinneA hydration tracking app.VirginiaIt’s called Water llama. It’s adorable. Every day there’s a different animal. Today I’m tracking on this little bunny. And then it shows how much of how the water fills up on the little illustration. So I’ve drunk 2/3 of a bunny according to my goal. I am not doing this as a diet. This is not a weight loss goal. It has nothing to do with that.I have so many migraines. My migraines have been getting worse in the last couple months. I was looking back at how often they are happening. They’ve really increased. I live in a frozen tundra. My house is so dry. I’m waking up every morning with headaches and sore throats. I have a humidifier. But I realized I really think I need to work on hydration. I’m also going to get a work up with my neurologist, but the appointment is three months out. So I was like, this is something I can work on in the meantime and see if it makes a difference.And I have tried to just be mindful about water consumption in the past, but I will forget all about it. I hyper focus on work all day long and drink nothing, and then it’s eight o’clock and I’m very thirsty. So I was like, alright, I’m going to do this water tracking app. And I’m a week into it, and I’ve drunk so much water in the last week.CorinneDoes it give you reminders?VirginiaYou can set it to remind you every one or two hours, if you want. So it nudges you. I haven’t even really needed the reminders, because so far I’m just excited to fill in my little numbers.I will say I put in a custom goal that I made up. I’m not going to say what my goal is, because I think it’s somewhat absurd honestly. I’m really just trying to drink as much as possible until I don’t wake up with a headache, and then use that number as the target and see if it helps.I deliberately put in a custom goal, because otherwise they calculate it based on your weight. So if you don’t want to mess around with that, you can just put in your own goal.There is a weight loss challenge thing you could do, but there is an option to hide that, and I did that right away, so I don’t have to look at any weight loss content.So you know it’s with a caveat. Like, tracking is not for everybody. Tracking is usually not for me. If this doesn’t feel good for you, please don’t do it. But if you are thirsty and need to drink more water, I’m liking it.CorinneCool.VirginiaDo you feel like I’m such a hypocrite right now?CorinneUm, I don’t know if I would say hypocrite? The tracking thing is interesting. Like when tracking is triggering versus when it’s not.VirginiaI think because I have a very specific metric, which is no headaches. Like, I’m doing this for a very niche reason. It feels okay and that’s what I can come up with.But I’m also paying attention to it, and if it starts becoming stressful, I’m putting some parameters around it where I’m like, okay, then we delete the app. But water llama, it’s pretty cute.CorinneWell, I hope water llama helps your migraines.VirginiaTBD. What about you?CorinneI want to recommend a book that I just read. It’s called The Safekeep. I don’t want to say too much about it, because I went into it knowing almost nothing and was shocked at various points.VirginiaBy Yael van der Wouden.CorinneYes, I think she’s Dutch. What will I say about it?VirginiaI can read the summary line, which is “an exhilarating, twisted tale of desire, suspicion and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961.”CorinneThat seems like a good summary.VirginiaI mean, I want to read it. That sounds really good.CorinneIt takes a few different turns and I think has a surprising ending that seems like it wouldn’t work, and it kind of did work for me. And I would say, like, I also just did not expect it to be as spicy as it was!So, I recommend The Safekeep and I would say, don’t read too much about it before you read it!VirginiaJust dive in. That’s a great butterWell, should we high five on Zoom to wrap up this episode? Because our buddy Mel would want us to?CorinneI need some science behind why high five.VirigniaYou can read her whole book called The High Five Habit and just start high fiving everybody all the time.CorinneNo.The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who writes Big Undies—subscribe for 20% off!The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Farideh.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!---You can still find the transcript of the episode here: https://momastery.com/blog/we-can-do-hard-things-ep-373/

In a lively conversation, Helen Rosner, a celebrated New Yorker staff writer and James Beard Award winner, dives deep into the complex relationship between food, body image, and societal pressures. They discuss the transformative effects of Ozempic on diet culture and advocate for body liberation amidst capitalist ideals. With a blend of humor and personal anecdotes, Helen and Virginia explore parenting's role in shaping healthy attitudes toward food and body image, urging a shift toward joy and connection over restrictive norms.

You’re listening to Burnt Toast!We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it’s time for your February Indulgence Gospel.Today we’re updating you on our great experiment: How did we do with 30 days of NO AMAZON? We’re going to get into:⭐️ Why did we quit Amazon in the first place?⭐️ Is quitting Amazon a diet—or at least, diet culture-adjacent?⭐️ What was our biggest fail?⭐️ Will we keep going???To hear the full story, you'll need to be a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. To hear more, visit patreon.com/virginiasolesmith This episode contains affiliate links. Shopping our links is a great way to support Burnt Toast! You’ll find all of the links aggregated here.Episode 179 TranscriptVirginiaOkay, before we report on how we did, we need to give a little context, in case folks missed the episode where we announced the challenge.So Corinne, do you want to talk about why we did this?CorinneI think it originated in the post-election chaos. We were feeling like we wanted to do something to step away from the billionaire oligarchs who have taken control of our country.VirginiaYep, yep, yep, definitely.CorinneAnd also at that time, there was a call to boycott Amazon because of union stuff.VirginiaAnd then Bezos gave Trump a bunch of money for the inauguration. There was just a whole bunch of Amazon setting the world on fire stuff all at once. So it felt like a tipping point for some of us.CorinneWe also had recently reviewed all of our 2024 Butters. And it was like, wow, some of these shopping ones are not so good.VirginiaYes.CorinneLet’s re-examine our shopping habits.VirginiaI think I’m in a perpetual I-should-reexamine-my-shopping-habits state of being. But this is the first time I’ve taken a concrete step towards changing my shopping habits. So whatever else happens, I am proud of myself for taking that step. That was big for me.CorinneWe talked about this a little bit in the chat, but we just also want to acknowledge here that quitting Amazon is not something everyone can or wants to do. We are not at all trying to suggest that this is any kind of moral high ground, or something everyone needs to do.VirginiaThat chat was very interesting, because some folks were mad at us for not having done this sooner. There was definitely that vibe of “Oh, you’re just getting to this party,” which, okay, fair note. We have Amazon-ed for a long time. But also, it’s maybe not the most helpful call-in to be like, “Why didn’t you do this already?” Like, we’re here now. We’re trying!But then lots of other folks—I think understandably—felt threatened by the prospect of us doing this. No buy challenges of any kind can trigger a diet mentality for lots of us. And if that is true for you, this will not be a healthy thing for you to do.Which is okay! There are other ways you can make positive change in the world. This is not the best, or only, way.CorinneSome of the folks who spoke up about a No Amazon Challenge not being a good fit for them are some disabled folks and folks who live in rural areas where getting stuff delivered to your house is really challenging any other way. We completely hear that.VirginiaAnd I also just want to say: If you are a new parent, I really firmly believe that Amazon is filling in for our lack of structural supports. Especially in the infant and toddlerhood stages. I Amazon Primed so many things to try to make my baby sleep in those years, none of which were particularly helpful. But it speaks to the larger issue of how little support we have for new moms trying to make babies sleep. So the $90 bassinet thing feels like it’s going to be the answer, and it probably isn’t.CorinneYeah, I think that comes up around a lot of different life situations, like illness, taking care of ill people, or ill parents. Any caregiving work. It definitely can be a coping mechanism, or just a helpful tool.VirginiaYou’re overwhelmed and buying this thing is a problem you can solve, unlike whatever larger issues you can’t solve. We can all reflect on whether this is something we can do, or want to do, but it’s okay if this is not the right fit for you, especially right now. It might be in a few years or in six months.Now let’s get into it. Corinne, how did you do?CorinneIt was such an interesting exercise. I think a lot of the time, I found myself feeling confused. Like, this is something I would normally buy on Amazon. If I’m not buying it on Amazon, do I actually need this? And one thing about Amazon that I just hadn’t thought a ton about before, is—it’s kind of reliable. When I was thinking about ordering something from another website, I would just find myself thinking, “Is this a real website? Is this actually going to come? Do they have a return policy?” Like, what’s happening?VirginiaThere’s an infrastructure and a predictability to Amazon that we’ve all been trained to expect. They’re able to do it because of all of the terrible things they’re doing, exploiting their workers. That’s how this stuff shows up so fast. It’s not good, but we are conditioned to expect it, and then it feels like this scary leap of faith to be, like, two weeks shipping? I mean, who knows?CorinneAnd because they’re so big, they can deal with it when stuff goes wrong. If something arrives broken, or it’s the wrong thing, they just credit you back really quickly.VirginiaRight, because they’re taking it from the supplier.I mean, I think the main reason it didn’t feel more restrictive for me was because of Target. And so I want to fully own that I didn’t divest from big box shopping. Many things that I would have bought on Amazon, I bought on Target.But I do think I still bought somewhat less. There’s a category of product that only get on Amazon, where it’s like a very specific solution to a niche problem that you’ve sort of made up. For example, my worst offense—I mean, there are so many! But one I remember from last year is when I was getting really annoyed, because when my kids ate snacks on the couch, they made a mess. And I was like, “We need little tray tables for them to eat their snacks on.” And so I went on this whole research mission, trying to buy tray tables. And I ended up buying these tables that have compartments that are designed to hold a cup and a remote control and whatever else. And we have never used them because the compartments are weird shapes that don’t fit anything. It was just an absolute waste of time. Like, it was just an absolute waste of money. It was this over-designed, overly complicated solution to a problem that I could just solve by putting a towel on the couch.And there’s just so much on Amazon that you can be like, “I’m going to go down this rabbit hole and find this really specific, weird product that’s going to change my life.” And most of them don’t. Target doesn’t have quite that same volume of merchandise, so it prevented me from making some purchases like that. Which I’m really glad about.But I needed to buy a printer because my printer broke, and I bought it from Target instead. And I was like, well, planet, did I do anything for you with that? Probably not. But here we are.CorinneI think for me, it was the the inability to just buy something really quickly from Amazon kind of made me question buying stuff in general a bit more. I feel like I’ve bought almost nothing aside from food, which we can also get into. It’s been really interesting.VirginiaI agree. I didn’t buy nothing, but I definitely bought less.I will also admit I was so panicked before we started, that I texted you on December 31 and was like, “I did my Last Supper order.” I panic-bought a whole bunch of random shit from Amazon on December 31. So also, I may not have felt as deprived, because I think I may need to do it longer.CorinneTo be fair, I think I actually started quite a bit early because I was traveling.VirginiaOh, yeah. I’m coming up on a month now, and you’ve been doing it for six weeks probably.CorinneOne thing that I wanted to look back on was how much I spent on Amazon last January, and the most and least amounts I spent at Amazon last year, 2024. Last January, I looked back, I spent $86 at Amazon.VirginiaWhat!CorinneBut wait! Then I looked at what month would have been the highest? And I was like, probably November, because that’s when I do a lot of shopping. It was $600!VirginiaThere we are.CorinneAnd when I look at that, I’m like, I have no idea what I spent that on. Like, I don’t know what that $86 was last January nor do I know exactly what the $600 was in November. I can only think of a couple of things.VirginiaA heated mattress pad, I know is one of them.CorinneYes, a heated mattress pad.VirginiaShould we talk about what we were tempted to buy?CorinneIt’s that category of stuff you were talking about. The first thing I wanted to buy was an adjustable phone stand.VirginiaThat is such an Amazon purchase.CorinneYeah. And I probably would use that. But I have a phone tripod, which is the same thing. And I have a laptop stand. But I definitely would have bought that if I’d been using Amazon.VirginiaThat’s a good one.I needed a hygrometer to check the humidity in my house, because I live in a frozen tundra and we’ve been sick. So I did buy a humidifier for my bedroom, not on Amazon. And then I realized I didn’t know whether it was doing anything, and that I needed a hygrometer to measure the humidity in my bedroom. And I acquired both of those from non-Amazon sources. But I was like, do other places even sell a hygrometer? Yes, Target sold one for like $11.So that was one I got elsewhere. I got the printer elsewhere. I needed refills for my razor, bird seed I think I would have ordered off Amazon in the past, which is ridiculous. That’s so heavy to ship! I went to Tractor Supply Company and bought it in person, which is how you should do it.A big one, though, that I had a stumbling block over was when we all got the flu. We were running low on masks, and I needed more masks because we were trying to mask around the sick person so we did not all catch it. And I was like, Oh, I’ve always only bought masks on Amazon, like, it’s the cheap way to get, like, a big pack. And I ended up buying a 10 pack from my local drugstore when I went to pick up our prescriptions. And it was fine, I’m glad to support the local business, but this was the more expensive way to do this. Masks are disposable. I do need more than ten in my life. So I still need to find a way to bulk order masks that’s not Amazon. I’m sure it exists, but there’s a mental load to solving these problems.What else is on your list?CorinneA safety deposit box.VirginiaI love how random these are. I love it.CorinneAdjustable phone stand was definitely from TikTok. Safety deposit box was because of the fires. I was like, “Oh shit, I do not have all my documents in a safety deposit box.” I would definitely just order that from Amazon. And now I’m like, I know I can get it in person, but I haven’t done it yet.VirginiaYes, well to be fair, we have a safety deposit box with our passports and stuff in it and I lost the key to it a long time ago, so it’s never locked. So in a fire, I have to remember to run it out holding it closed, because it’s like a suitcase. I always picture that I’m going to pick it up, but it’s all just going to fly everywhere.CorinneMight be time for you to get a new one.VirginiaBut, like, I’m not going to, right? Because it works. It’s a fireproof box. Maybe you just leave it? Is that the idea? Because it’ll survive the fire?CorinneWell, TikTok was saying a lot of them are only made to withstand like 10 minutes or something.VirginiaOkay, so you do have to try to grab it.CorinneI think you’re supposed to.VirginiaOkay, well, that’s definitely something I’m not going to remember in the moment of a crisis, but I’m glad we had this talk anyway.Okay, so safety deposit box you still need to get.CorinneYeah, I also wanted to buy a sewing gauge, which is a little ruler with things you can slide on it to hem stuff. I ended up getting that from Joann’s but, it did take longer. It wasn’t an immediate thing.VirginiaSo I have two things I didn’t end up buying, that I would have previously bought on Amazon.One was I did the book event at Split Rock last weekend, and we wanted to have microphones, which the bookstore doesn’t have on hand. So I emailed with Tommy about what would be good microphones, he was like, “It’s hard to get this done in under a week off Amazon!”So we ended up borrowing them from the library. And I was like, this is better. Nobody needed to spend $400 on a microphone that’s going to get used three times. Great community effort!There is one that’s still haunting me though. This is a big one. I’m out of Marmite. This is an essential British condiment. I have it every morning on a bagel or toast, butter and Marmite. And it’s hard to find in American grocery stores. And I have Amazoned it in the past, and I’ve just been without it now, for like, three weeks.CorinneThere has got to be somewhere else you can order that online.VirginiaI know but it’s weirdly hard to find! Target doesn’t carry it. My local grocery stores don’t.CorinneWell and that’s the thing where then I feel like you’re buying from some website where you’re like, “Is this legit?”VirginiaAnd is it also just Amazon, right? That’s the other thing. Amazon is a complicated web. I think for now, my solution is going to be to go to my mom’s this weekend and steal some Marmite from her. Because she always has it on hand. But I need a US hook up on the marmite.CorinneSo here are my two fails.One, I haven’t bought yet. But there’s a book that I want to read on my Kindle, and my library doesn’t have it. And so I at some point I am going to just buy it from the Kindle store. Like, I’ve been waiting because we’re doing this thing, but I’m like, I’m just going to buy it from the Kindle store.VirginiaYou can’t just buy a hard copy?CorinneI want to have it on my Kindle. I have a hard copy. It’s really thick. I want a Kindle copy.VirginiaOh, interesting. Okay.CorinneThen my other fail—I’ve also been doing no Whole Foods, since they are owned by Amazon. This was much harder for me. I’ve just probably gotten grocery shopping less. And I have been leaning heavily on Instacart. I have this thing where going to Whole Foods is a treat. Any other grocery shopping is a chore. And so if I have to go somewhere else, I’m like, “Oh, I’ll just Instacart.” But Instacart is also just so flawed! The shoppers are so bad. The other day, I was like, oh, I’m I’ll just Instacart it. And then they didn’t have any of the ingredients, Now I have to pay to cancel the order, it was just so frustrating.And then my real fail was when my friend was visiting, we wanted to make a specific brisket recipe. We went to three grocery stores, and none of them had brisket. And I ended up just going to Whole Foods and buying it.VirginiaI mean, that feels pretty mundane, on the level of fails. You’re not going to buy a brisket every week.CorinneI mean, it was fine. I made the decision, you know? I was like, ah, well, I tried. And everything else I didn’t buy from Whole Foods.VirginiaYou tried, and that is one specialty item that might be hard to find at other grocery stores. You tried them first, and then you ended up at Whole Foods for one thing. I feel like that’s not that big of a fail.CorinneDid you have a fail?VirginiaI did have a fail. I forgot about Prime Video.It’s on my children’s iPads, and on our TV, and is a way that they watch a lot of shows. And then I thought about it, and I was like, okay, I could have a conversation with them, and ask the kids, “Do you guys want to participate in the challenge?” But I didn’t do that. You can argue that I should have, but I failed.And then the moment of real failure was last Saturday night, when Amy and I were leaving to go to our bookstore event for Fat Talk. We were leaving the children home alone with the middle schoolers were in charge, and the plan that we had sold them on, to ensure three hours of peace, was that they were going to stream Wicked.So I had to purchase Wicked from Prime Video. So that’s $30 I spent on Prime Video. And it is also on Apple TV, but I didn’t have the login and we were trying to get out the door, and the kids are like, “Where’s Wicked?!” And I was just like, Yeah, fine. Fuck it. I’ll get it on Prime Video. Amy was like, “Do you want to log in as me? Because I already got it.” I was like, it’s fine. We’re going to want to have it.CorinneMy friend was also like, “What if I buy the brisket?”VirginiaYeah, totally. So Wicked was my downfall. And I feel okay about that, because it wasn’t for me, it was for the kids. It was my babysitter for the evening. And I didn’t actually feel that guilty! Because I feel like overall, we’re really trying and being more thoughtful, and that’s the goal of the challenge, not to achieve Amazon perfection.I mean, it did feel a little ironic that I spent $30 at Amazon before going to do an independent bookstore event. I didn’t love that. But I certainly spend more at that independent bookstore, so I’m going to trust that comes out in the wash.So what do we think? Are we going to keep going? Are we going to do something different?CorinneI think what I’m going to do is probably continue to not have Prime and I think that will force me to be a little bit more selective about what I’m actually buying from Amazon.I think I will probably go back to shopping from Whole Foods.VirginiaI feel like having to change your grocery store is such an emotional thing. I don’t want you to have to do that.CorinneIt’s not like I go to Whole Foods every week, sometimes I go to the regular grocery store here, which is Smith’s. And then when I do go to Smiths, I’m like, everything is so much cheaper. But I do sort of feel like sometimes Whole Foods has better produce and obviously, like, brisket.VirginiaI don’t shop at Whole Foods only because there’s not one within an hour of me. If I had one, I’d probably shop there. And when I went to your Whole Foods with you last year, I was like, “Well this is a magical grocery experience.”CorinneIt just feels more like a treat.VirginiaEverything there was a treat! I mean, we were also buying treats while we were there, but I get it. That’s hard to give up.I think I’m going to keep the app deleted off my phone. I didn’t miss that at all. That was totally fine. I like challenging myself to find things somewhere else. That part was good.The two things I haven’t decided about are Prime Video, again, because that’s for my kids. I don’t really watch stuff on Prime Video, but it impacts my kids, so I have to talk to them about that.And then… my protein powder. My workaround was that was in my December 31 Last Supper order. I got three so we would last through the month, and I wouldn’t be tempted. We go through so many, I don’t know how many we go through a month.CorinneWhat brand is it?VirginiaIt’s Orgain Chocolate Protein Powder. I mean, I’m sure I can get it somewhere else. I haven’t done the homework yet to figure that out. Because I do Subscribe and Save on it, I’m getting it pretty cheap on Amazon, which matters at the volume I go through it. I’m like, “Do I keep my Prime membership for one Subscribe and Save item?” That feels dumb. I recognize that.So I need to solve the protein powder thing. And then I think I could let go of my Amazon Prime account. The kids could watch Prime Video on their dad’s prime account, but our household would otherwise be divested.I guess what I’m also wondering is, and we have not done the reporting on this: If I’m mostly just switching over to shopping from Target or Instacart, other chain big box solutions, is it making a meaningful difference in the world? I suspect the answer to that is no. Because I do think all billionaires are evil. They’re all going to be problematic. We’re kidding ourselves to think that Target hasn’t done something egregious.So it feels like the bigger work to do is figuring out how to divest more from this type of shopping as a category—convenience-based shopping, convenience-based online shopping. And I’m naming that that’s the big work to do. I don’t know that I’m ready to do that big work. I don’t know that I am quite ready to take that on, but I am thinking about that.CorinneIt’s just interesting also to think about those kind of purchases like, the tray table or whatever. When you’re feeling that type of stress, of “I need to solve this problem,” how often do you actually have something that would work? Like, you have a towel or you have a sheet pan you could put down.VirginiaMy house so full of stuff. I have so many things.CorinneYes. So it has just been interesting, at least for me, to think about just the immediacy. Do I need this in two days? Or do I just want it in two days? Like, yeah, I haven’t gotten a safety deposit box. I should get one. That’s something an adult should have. And also, like, it’s okay, but I don’t have one yet.VirginiaAgreed. All of that is really challenging,CorinneAmazon creates this kind of fake urgency, where you’re like, I need to have this thing now.VirginiaYeah, yeah. And it’s something we talked about where instead of putting on your to do list, “I need to get a safety deposit box,” you would just go open the Prime app, get the safety deposit box. And it feels more efficient.And it’s true, it’s going to take you at least another month to get the safety deposit box. I just know how I would be with that kind of chore.CorinneI was looking up where could I buy one locally? It’s like Walmart or Harbor Freight. Those are both also really problematic companies. But I was like, okay, here I go, I’m going to put on my shoes. I’m gonna go to Harbor Freight. And then I was like, no. I don’t want to do that. I’m not going to do that. I don’t need this right now.VirginiaI’m not going to take an hour out of my day and solve this.CorinneIt’s actually just not urgent. And same with the sewing gage hemming thing. I wanted to hem something. But I was like, “I don’t need to do this today. I’ll just do it the next time I go to Joann’s.”VirginiaIn some ways that’s relaxing to me. We were giving a lot of false urgency to things that weren’t crises. And solving things with shopping that didn’t need to be solved. So stepping back from that a little bit feels very clarifying.I’m just like, okay, do I keep stepping back?My goal for the next month should be solve the protein powder thing. Try to tie off these loose ends around my Amazon mess.CorinneActually, one thing I saw I think on TikTok during this month was someone was saying, if you don’t have Prime, but you want to order from Amazon, the free shipping threshold is like, $35.VirginiaSomebody said that in chat!CorinneYou can just not have Prime and still get the free shipping. So it’s another thing where it’s like, if you just have enough patience…VirginiaWait until you’ve accumulated a list. And that’s probably a better use of Amazon.CorinneThree protein powders are probably $35.VirginiaOh, yeah, for sure. That would do it. That’s a great point.CorinneBut is that better? I don’t know.VirginiaIt’s still shopping from Amazon,CorinneBut at least you’re not giving them $120 a year just for the privilege to shop.VirginiaThat is fucked up. When we say it like that, that is some garbage.CorinneSo I think I’m definitely at least going to cancel Prime. I will probably still shop at Whole Foods, and I may still shop at Amazon from time to time. But I’m going to try to at least get rid of Prime.VirginiaNot have it be the default, knee jerk reaction. I think this is a big shift for both of us, and it feels like a great starting point. And maybe I work on Target next. But maybe I give myself some time before I feel like I have to keep adding on here.As a suburban mom, my joke is that I’m always shopping at Target. Like, I’m never not placing a Target order? At least it feels that way.CorinneBut it’s actually just kind of hard to find stuff on the Target app sometimes.VirginiaYeah, it’s not great, and that’s good. Adding that friction is good. I think for me, the waste point with Target is the fast fashion. It is one of the few places to get decent, affordably priced plus size clothing. But then you often end up doing the buying multiples of the thing, or buying the thing that doesn’t really hold up very long. It’s just very easy to waste money there on clothes.Then if I go in person, the cute home stuff always gets me. I have less of a hard time with that on the app, because I can just not look at the Hearth and Home things.Well, I’m proud of us. I think we did great. I think we did a super job with this challenge, and I hope other folks who are trying it, I want to hear how it went for them!If people have other strategies they figured out, if anyone knows where I can get Marmite and protein powder, please drop that in the comments.ButterVirginiaBecause it is fucking freezing in New York—it was zero degrees at the bus stop this morning—I am wearing all of my clothes all of the time, and my feet are not leaving my shearling, big buckle, Birkenstock clogs. They are my house shoes. I can make it out to the driveway, and that’s about it shoes. I get about two or three winters out of a pair. I wish they last a little longer. The shearling really mats down after a while and that they’re not as comfy, but I have a new pair this year, and, man, they’re saving me on these very cold days.CorinneThat sounds so nice. Do you get the same size in the shearling ones? Or you have to size up?VirginiaI do get the same size. Although you have to be prepared that when the shearling is it peak fluffiness, you’ll be like, “They’re too small.” And then it mats down a little bit, and it’s totally fine. You could go up a size, but they don’t do half sizes, and I don’t know that I’d want to go up a whole size. I would say, just tough out two weeks of them feeling a little snug.CorinneMy Butter is a movie I saw, actually a couple months ago, but the movie is called Anora. Did you see it?VirginiaNo, I never see movies. That’s cute you thought I would have. I’ll Google it, though.CorinneOkay, it came out in 2024, and it’s about a sex worker who meets a young Russian guy who’s the son of a Russian oligarch, and it just kind of turns into this caper story, and it’s really funny. And it’s one of those movies where you laugh a lot, you also might cry, but I just left it feeling like, oh, I love humanity in all its flaws.VirginiaOh, I love a movie like that.CorinneYeah. I would definitely recommend Anora if you haven’t seen it.VirginiaThe lead is someone who’s so familiar to me, I’m trying to figure out—CorinneShe was in that show with Pamela Adlon.VirginiaOh, yes! She’s the daughter from Better Things.Oh, I really want to see this now. Is it streaming somewhere other than Amazon Prime?CorinneI actually don’t even know if it’s streaming yet, because I saw it in the theaters, but I’m sure if it’s not yet, it will be soon.VirginiaOkay, I’m really excited to see that when it eventually comes to my television, I will watch it, but not on Prime Video! At least, I hope not.Well, this was great. Thank you for doing this challenge with me. I’m very proud of us for making it through and excited to hear what other folks think.CorinneYeah, me, too.The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, and Big Undies—subscribe for 20% off!The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Farideh.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

Today Virginia is chatting with Frankie De La Cretaz.  Frankie is an award-winning journalist whose work sits at the intersection of sports, gender and culture. They are the co-author of Hail Mary, the rise and fall of the National Women’s Football League, and their writing has been featured in The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, The Atlantic and more.Frankie also writes Out of Your League, a newsletter about queer sports and pop culture, which I consider a must-subscribe. If you have been remotely following the issues of trans women in sports, you likely already know how well Frankie calls out that bias and discrimination. As Frankie points out, the way bodies are policed and controlled in the sports world is really just a microcosm of how the bodies of queer, trans, and otherwise marginalized folks are being policed and controlled throughout our culture right now.So even if you think you don’t care about sports, I promise you’ll care about this conversation.If you find today’s episode valuable, please consider supporting our work with a paid subscription!Guest interviews are always free on Burnt Toast, but paid subscriptions enable us to pay guests for their time, labor and expertise. (This is extremely rare in the world of podcasting, but key to centering marginalized voices!)To tell us YOUR thoughts, and to get all of the links and resources mentioned in this episode, as well as a complete transcript, visit our show page.If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber — subscriptions are just $7 per month! —to get all of Virginia's reporting and bonus subscriber-only episodes. And don’t forget to check out our Burnt Toast Podcast Bonus Content! Disclaimer: You’re listening to this episode because you value my input as a journalist who reports on these issues and therefore has a lot of informed opinions. Neither my guest today nor I are healthcare providers, and this conversation is not meant to substitute for medical or therapeutic advice.FAT TALK is out in paperback! 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 and Corinne Fay. Follow Virginia on Instagram, Follow Corinne  @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing and subscribe to Big Undies.Our theme music is by Farideh.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.---Episode 178 TranscriptFrankieMy name is Frankie de la Cretaz. I am an independent journalist, and my work mostly sits at the intersection of sports, gender, and culture.VirginiaEven if you identify as a deeply un-athletic and not-sports-fluent person, such as myself, Frankie’s work will make you understand sports in a whole new way—and how much it intersects with politics, culture, everything else that’s going on.So everyone needs to subscribe toOut of Your League.FrankieI appreciate that. I actually consider myself someone who writes about sports for people who don’t think they care about sports, so I’m glad that’s coming across.VirginiaWe’re going to talk about something that you’ve been writing about for a long time, which is the potential of sports to be fat positive, and the many barriers in place there. But before we go there: I want to acknowledge we are having this conversation a day after the inauguration. It’s going to drop about a week out from the inauguration. It’s a rough time in America right now.And one of Trump’s first presidential actions was to publish an executive order that I have had to read three or four times because it is so jarring to see such anti-trans, misogynist language on the White House website.So Frankie, how are you? Where are we? How are you doing?FrankieI mean, as a trans person, generally, this sucks. But as a journalist who has been documenting the rise of transphobia and anti-trans rhetoric in this country, I’m not surprised. We have been saying for a while that the goal of anti-trans sport legislation is actually this, what we’re seeing—which is to legislate trans people out of existence.This was the ultimate goal of the rightwing anti-trans groups that pushed all of this legislation that now exists in over half of the states Because sports was the place where they could make trans people, and trans women in particular, seem threatening. They could couch it in language around fairness, and advantage, and the real marginalization that cis women, and women in general, have faced over time. So sports became the acceptable place for prejudice and discrimination to happen. But the thing is, once you make trans people or any group of people a threat in one arena, it becomes much easier to make them a threat in other arenas.So a lot of these bills attempted to redefine biological sex. A lot of states that passed these anti-trans sports bills went on to pass more extreme anti-trans legislation against healthcare and education and things like that. So I think there’s this very direct link from the attack on trans people in sports to what we’re seeing now.The other thing I will mention is the reason that so many people were nervous about the bill that the House just passed—which is banning trans women and girls from girls’ school sports—is that bill also has language that defines gender as binary, as one or the other. And we could see the potential for that language to be broadened to all areas of life. And that is what we’re seeing.VirginiaThat’s what this executive order clearly intends to do. It’s really chilling.And as a cis woman, it makes my skin crawl the way the language is framed as if it is protecting fragile women and girls. As if a president who is a sexual predator and an anti-choice administration has our best interests at heart.FrankieYes, and I think that’s what makes me as angry as it does, how they have leveraged real marginalization, real harm, real oppression, that women have faced in our society. Instead of pointing the finger at the patriarchy and agents of the patriarchy—often that is cis men—they point the finger at trans women and girls. Even though trans women and girls are actually the most vulnerable and the most likely to be victims of violence. This prevents actual progress for women as a whole, because it pits these two marginalized groups against each other.This has been a really effective strategy of the anti-trans movement. Instead of allowing cis women to see their own protection and freedom as tied up with trans women, and seeing cis women and trans women as part of the same fight, they have pitted them against each other, and it has endangered both groups even more.VirginiaIt’s dangerous, and it’s just frankly insulting. It’s just like, Trump?? Really?? This known rapist is a heroic protector of women?? I can’t. It’s wild.But obviously, we know there are plenty of women who voted for him. So we have a lot of work to do. But I appreciate you giving us that larger context and helping people understand why it is so important to talk about trans rights in sports, and how that that is the stepping stone that leads to where we are now.FrankieI’ve called it “gateway legislation.” I know that’s making light of something that’s quite serious, but really, the sports legislation has served as that. Because it’s “just sports,” a lot of people didn’t pay attention until it was much too late.VirginiaWell, not to pivot from one depressing topic to another depressing topic—FrankieWelcome to my beat, Virginia.VirginiaThis is where we are! But a story you’ve been following that I really want to talk to you about is the rise of weight loss drug advertising during sports events, specifically during WNBA and women’s college basketball. What is going on here?FrankieGreat question. Just this past weekend I was watching the new women’s basketball league, Unrivaled, which is so exciting. Until I got an ad for Hers injectable weight loss medication right in the middle. And I was like, Oh, we are continuing the trend, I see.I think there are a few reasons that this happens. I think there’s an assumption that people who watch sports, and particularly women who watch sports, are going to be more health conscious than the average person. And, as you know very well, in our culture, we associate health with thinness.For a long time, coverage of women’s sports was folded into fitness coverage, like Health, Women’s Health, and Fitness—those kinds of magazines. And when we talk about fitness culture, we also are talking about these elements of diet culture and beauty culture that come with it.On top of that, we have this massive boom in women’s sports in terms of funding and sponsorships. Audiences are growing massively. Seemingly every month they’re telling us that there’s hundreds of thousands more people watching women’s sports than there were even like last month. So brands love this, right? They’re desperate to cash in on this audience. So it’s Hers, which is specifically marketed for women, that has this very feminine advertising. Ro is another one that markets explicitly for women.So there’s this insidious thing happening where in women’s sports, we have this narrative of women’s empowerment and “by women for women,” and the way we talk about them. And then you’ve got this women’s medication that continues on this theme. I think all of that is coming together to really make women’s sporting events an appealing place for these drugs to market themselves.VirginiaIt does really make a sick kind of sense when you lay it out like that. I spent the first decade or so of my career in women’s magazines and writing for places like Self and Fitness, and we regularly featured women athletes, but asked them about their beauty routine and their diet, you know? It was very much like, let’s take this athlete and let’s make sure we talk about her the same way we talk about an actress or a pop star. We want to know her beauty work. We want to know her diet secret. We want to know how she looks so great. So it completely makes sense to take that same framing which was always really patronizing towards these world class athletes, not at all on par with the kinds of questions male athletes get asked, and then assume that the audience is like, “Well, I want to look like her. I need the weight loss drug as well.”FrankieThe other piece that’s quite paternalistic is the “see her, be her” theme. This is where we position these pro women athletes as role models for the next generation and as inspiration for little girls. And research has shown that girls ages 12 to 18, are the fastest growing market and viewership for women’s sports.So when you add in the fact that they’re being exposed to these ads, that’s cause for concern, right? Because this is the age group where they’re going to be the most vulnerable to eating disorders. Use of weight loss medications among this age group is also skyrocketing right now. Sometimes that’s for the medical conditions that these medications are designed to treat. But often it’s just because teenage girls who are fat are dealing with so much bullying because of the culture that we live in. So they’re being prescribed these drugs for weight loss. They are the fastest growing age group for these drugs. So these ads feel incredibly insidious. They’re preying on our pre-existing culturally ingrained body anxiety. They’re doing so during these sporting events where we assume that the athletes on the field or the court are able to do what they do— this is implied— because they are in “peak shape.” They are not fat, right? So it’s all just, really icky.VirginiaLike, really deeply icky.FrankieI always want to be really clear that the ads that we’re talking about here, they’re not talking about diabetes as the presenting condition. They’re not talking about some other co-morbid or coexisting condition. They’re talking about being fat as the presenting condition. They’re talking about weight loss as the thing they are selling. So this is the difference between marketing for an actual medical condition that these drugs might treat and marketing by fear-mongering about body size.VirginiaYes, super important. I appreciate you teasing that out.It feels like we need to talk about Ilona Maher a little bit in all of this, because she is a peak example of this, of the role model athlete who is inspiring girls. And, you know, I have felt complicated about her. She’s delightful. She has been really outspoken about celebrating that she’s in a bigger body. She is by no means fat. But she’s tall and muscular, and not, kind of, normative, I guess? By some measures?And she did that reel that went viral over the summer, challenging body mass index. So I think a lot of folks spent last summer thinking she represents this major positive sea change for how we think about women’s bodies in sports. But as you and I have discussed on the sidelines, we don’t quite see it this way.FrankieThere’s a world in which she could be representing a sea change, but that’s not the world we live in. I feel kind of bad that Ilona Maher gets caught up in this discussion, because I think it’s emblematic of what happens when we talk about individual people rather than systemic issues. She is being used as an example, perhaps unfairly, right? But I think it’s important because she’s straight and she’s white and she’s cis and her body is acceptable, because of what it can do in a sporting context. I think we’ll probably talk a little bit more about this idea as we keep talking about fatphobia in sports. But her body is acceptable because it otherwise conforms to a lot of traditional ideas of femininity. She wears lipstick, and she was on Dancing with the Stars. She’s joked that she wants to be the next Bachelorette, which is really playing up that straightness.Ben Watts/Sports Illustrated source here.VirginiaThe hair. She’s got very Pretty Girl Hair, for sure.FrankieAnd that’s fantastic. Ilona Maher is an example of someone who can be both athletic and feminine. But what about athletes who aren’t feminine? Where do they fit in here? We don’t celebrate them in the same way.But also: What choice does Ilona Maher really have here? During the Olympics, she was the subject of speculation over her gender because of her presumed “masculine” qualities. We’re in a time of trans investigations in sports, where we are questioning the gender of women athletes who don’t fit into certain ideas of femininity. So what option does she really have, aside from leaning into that femininity? Especially if she wants to continue to get sponsorships and recognition. So she’s kind of been backed into an impossible corner here. And at the same time, she’s upholding a lot of these really oppressive ideas of femininity. But, through no fault of her own, either. And again, that’s where I think we really run into trouble, is upholding one particular person as emblematic of a systemic change, or a systemic issue, because it’s impossible.VirginiaIt’s impossible. She kind of can’t get it right.FrankieSo this is less about actually Ilona Maher and more about the way that culturally, we have responded to her. She’s not the first, or only, woman athlete to put out social media content that challenges beauty norms or body norms. So why is the athlete that we’ve chosen to rally behind the one who is white and straight and cis and all of these more normative factors? There’s a reason that she is the chosen one.VirginiaJust to go back to the weight loss commercials piece of it for a second, I realized we didn’t talk about them in the context of men’s sports. Are we not seeing the same trend there in terms of this advertising to male audiences?FrankieNot as far as I can tell.I think what’s important to note here is most of the time, it’s not the leagues who are accepting these commercials. This is different than a team sponsorship. Eli Lilly, who makes a couple of these drugs, is a patch sponsor for the Indiana Fever. The Minnesota Lynx have a local partnership with this weight loss program that their coach is an ambassador for. Those are intentional choices. But when we’re talking specifically about these commercials airing during games, they’re purchased through buying ad inventory. I have checked with the league, and the companies, and this is how they are purchased.So the league doesn’t actually really have the power here to decide whether to accept these ads. The brands choose what events they want to market to based on the demographics of the audiences for those events. This is probably why we’re not seeing that—even though women do watch men’s sports almost equally. Especially the NFL. Over 50 percent of the NFL fans are women. But people are prejudiced and don’t realize that, so we’re not seeing quite that same shift.But there’s something else happening that I think makes women’s sports particularly appealing to advertisers. These leagues present themselves as progressive and committed to gender equality and empowerment and brands actually find that really appealing. They will choose to align with these brands because it can make them look like they’re more committed to these things, too.Not only that, but when women athletes are abrand ambassadors, there’s so much more engagement from consumers. I found this number that I thought was wild, and I wanted to share it because I think this is really important. I think it highlights how dangerous it is that these ads are being able to run during these events: 44 percent of WNBA fans have visited a brand’s website after seeing WNBA sponsorships during a game.VirginiaOh my God.FrankieAnd 28 percent have bought from a sponsoring brand.VirginiaThat’s wild. Especially when you consider that you’re watching a show with your eyeballs, and seeing the ad on your TV, and then you have to get out your phone and go to the website. That’s multiple steps people are taking to engage like that.FrankieI’ve also seen something like the three athletes who are most likely to convert consumers are all Black women: Simone Biles, Serena Williams, and Angel Reese.VirginiaInteresting.FrankiePeople trust women athletes because of that role model thing. They trust that they wouldn’t align with a brand who didn’t speak to their values in some way. So they’re more likely to buy things when a woman or a women’s sports league told them that it was okay.VirginiaI’m holding my head in my hands because it’s so much darker even than I realized.So okay, we turn these women athletes into our role models. They have to lead the children into the future. And then the weight loss companies are, like, “Perfect! We too would like to be aligned with your progressive values.”FrankieYes, it’s incredible. They’re like, “We hired this new female commissioner. Oh no, we have allegations of workplace harassment that won’t stop.” Women’s leagues! Feminism!VirginiaOh, my God. It’s so dark. It’s so dark. So that explains why we’re not seeing the same type of advertising at the NFL games. Not that they wouldn’t, because obviously, they’ll follow the women wherever they find them.FrankieThey will. And I guess there’s something interesting, too, now that I’ve brought up the NFL, and I think this is related to to things that we’re going to continue to talk about. But you’re much more likely to see fat football players than you are fat basketball players. Like, body diversity exists in basketball, but it’s usually in terms of height, right? You have the players that play in the center, who are 6’ 8” and 6’ 9” and the guards shooting from the perimeter are 5’ 8”. Like, you see that kind of body diversity a lot more. But in a game like football, there’s a lot more body diversity in size, in terms of weight. They don’t talk about football players’ bodies as being lithe. So that may also impact where pharmaceutical companies want to advertise weight loss drugs.VirginiaYeah, so let’s go there a little bit, because I would love to have you talk more about how anti-fatness shows up in sports coverage and discourse, even in these sports where we do see larger bodies centered, like football, like rugby. But there’s still a larger anti-fat narrative coming in.FrankieTotally, right? Because, we just, as a culture, have ideas about who sports are for: Thin people. Which kinds of bodies can be good at sports: Thin bodies. We continue to exclude fat people from narratives about sports, despite the fact that fat people are participating, have participated, and are often excelling at all levels of sport.So these cultural ideas discourage people who are not thin from getting involved in sports at all. But they are also part of how and why eating disorders are so prevalent among athletes. Even in terms of media coverage and how there’s this anti-fat bias woven into it.I think we can go back to the Ilona Maher discussion, right? Because I mentioned her sponsorships. So there’s a lot of things that prevent athletes from getting sponsorships. And in women’s sports, athletes who are more masculine presenting are less likely to get these monies and brand sponsorships.But even if you look at men’s sports, we see disparities. Take football. How often do you see a lineman being the face of a team or the face on the Gatorade bottle? That spotlight ges to the quarterback or the running back or the wide receiver. Their contracts with the NFL are also worth more than lineman contracts. And linemen are more likely to play a much shorter time, and to deal with head injuries later in life. So they actually might need the money more.And that running back doesn’t score without the lineman blocking and creating the hole for him to run through. The quarterback doesn’t have time to complete the pass if the linemen don’t do their job. So they’re this really huge part of the success of the players who do get the spotlight, but they don’t get the same kind of attention. And that, to me, is anti-fat bias in action. We don’t think of those men as athletes or as the people we want to represent as the pinnacle of athleticism because of what their bodies look like.VirginiaAnd you will see their weight casually referenced all the time. The fact that they are so big gets invoked in almost a tokenistic way.FrankieYes, I think about this all the time. I don’t know if people remember this baseball player, his name is Prince Fielder—who is so hot, by the way! I always had a huge crush on him.VirginiaGoogling now.FrankieGoogle his photos from the ESPN Body Issue.Because he is a bigger guy who did these photos for the ESPN Body Issue, and the way they were talked about was kind of fascinating. Because the thing that ESPN Body Issue has always done really well—and something I’ve always appreciated about it—is it has done a really good job of representing the diversity of athlete bodies. And Prince Fielder is a baseball player who is much bigger than most of the people that we associate with being baseball players—unless they’re catchers, right?But it was almost like he was a curiosity. People were making fun of the fact that he was featured in this issue. Because men who are fat can be the butt of jokes. So a lot of times, male athletes who are bigger have nicknames about how fat they are, and it’s supposed to be an endearment or a positive thing, but we don’t see that happen with women athletes in the same way. This is the way that anti-fatness shows up for men.VirginiaI have a childhood memory of my dad talking about a football player that everyone called “The Fridge” and I can’t remember what team he was on. But he had that name because he was as big as a fridge. That was the joke. And when you just think about that afterwards, it’s like, wow, that’s that’s not a nice name.FrankieOr they’re compared to their smaller teammates. Like, “Can you believe these people are on the same team?” There’s also that inspiration porn thing, which happens in disability coverage too. “Look, even a fat person can be good at this thing!” Rather than just getting treated and respected as the athletes that they are. These are ways that we talk about athletes who are in bodies that aren’t thin, or are maybe outliers in terms of [the body norms of] their sport. They’re seen as exceptions, and they don’t get the same level of respect and attention.VirginiaThe Fridge’s real name is William Perry. I had to google it, just so we don’t only refer to him by a harmful nickname. And he was a defensive lineman for the Chicago Bears back in the 80s, and later played for the Philadelphia Eagles.[Post-recording note: William Perry did enjoy quite a bit of celebrity, and sponsorship deals, during his football career, though the media relentlessly reported on his weight and made fat jokes about him. But to Frankie’s point about size-related discrepancies in football contracts and other earning potential, Sports Illustrated reported in 2000 that Perry was working as a brick layer, and in 2016, reported on Perry’s financial debts, substance abuse struggles, and other health problems; at the time he was held in a Britney Spears-style conservatorship by his brother. CW on both links for significant fatphobia.]FrankieSo I mentioned my book, right? For people that aren’t familiar with it, the National Women’s Football League existed in the 1970s and 1980s. The coverage, though, really could have been written today. It was often really shocking to me how little has changed. But one of the things they would do because, again, we’re talking about a sport like football, where there is a wide variety in the size of the bodies that are going to be on the field. And one of the teams had this woman, her name was Bobbie Grant. Her nickname was SuperSugar, and she was in a band. She was a frontperson, that was her stage name.VirginiaThat’s amazing.FrankieAnd she weighed over 300 pounds, and was a lineman. And I know how much she weighed because the newspapers wanted to tell us all the time. And then they would put the weight of the smaller women next to her. You and your listeners are probably familiar with the trope of the headless fattie, right? Those dehumanizing photographs where the media just photographs their body. So Bobbie Grant would often be photographed from behind, sitting on the bench, so you actually couldn’t see her face. Or she’d be in a side by side with the beautiful, thin quarterback. And Bobbie was a Black woman, too. So a lot of these things came into play, right?But this is how the media was talking about her. Instead of being like, “This woman is an incredible lineman and is giving her team an advantage because they have Bobbie Grant and no one else does.” And so we can see that narrative, too.VirginiaIt’s fascinating, and it’s really, I think, deflating. I think about this from the perspective of parents putting kids in sports. And I think often, if you have a kid in a bigger body, you’re hoping they’re going to find a safe place in one of these sports where a larger body is an asset. So to understand that actually, they’re still going to encounter this, and it’s going to play out slightly differently than if your kid in a bigger body was trying to be a ballerina, but it’s still going to come up—that’s really frustrating.FrankieYeah, and even sports that have weight classes, that have heavyweight classes, whether it’s wrestling or boxing, they still have weight limits that they often have to adhere to. And so still, there’s a lot of that really harmful dieting or the equivalent of exercise bulimia type behavior that happens around those sports even though there are weight classes.VirginiaI’ll link back to an episode we did last year, which was an excerpt from Fat Talk, my chapter on sports, where we get into a lot of how the weight classes and the pressure to have the quote right body for the sport impacts kids. And it includes some strategies for how to talk to your kids about this. For anyone listening to this and feeling sort of panicked, but it is. It’s a really, really difficult thing to navigate.Is there anything else you want to add, about how this anti-fatness intersects with the anti-trans stuff, around how we police athletes, bodies, and especially in women’s sports?FrankieYou and your listeners know that fatphobia in sports is coming from the fact that we live in a fatphobic society. But that fatphobia often intersects with, and is rooted in, transphobia and anti-Blackness, right? The beauty standards that idealize thinness are based on white supremacy. And those same beauty standards are going to negatively impact trans athletes, Black athletes, and other marginalized athletes.And we’ve talked about Ilona Maher and the way she is feminine, a particular way that doesn’t fully protect her from some of these questions, but insulates her a little bit.For athletes who are both fat and trans, they’re going to have these intersecting challenges, right? If they’re good at their sport, suddenly it’s because they have an unfair advantage because they’re trans, right? I interviewed a transfeminine power lifter. Her name is Jaycee Cooper. She’s actually suing the state of Minnesota currently because she was banned from women’s powerlifting. But she talked about how, when she has a good competition, or does well, it’s not because she’s a good power lifter, it’s because she has an unfair advantage, because she’s trans. And if she has a doesn’t do well, and her transness isn’t a factor, she is often subjected to comments that might be rooted in weight stigma.VirginiaSo it’s coming from both directions. Well, it’s really from the same direction. But they’re going to hit both boxes if they can.Is there giving you hope right now, any any slivers of progress that you’re seeing? Because as you’ve said, there is so much potential for sports to be truly inclusive. But how do we get there, Frankie?FrankieThere is so much potential, right? Like we’ve named so many different ways a larger body can be an asset in certain sports. And this can allow people and women in particular, whose bodies are hyper-visible and hyper-policed in other aspects of their lives, to find pride in what their body can do, to find belonging and contribute to a team.When I was reporting my book, I saw this happen over and over again. Women who played football thought about their bodies differently after being on the football field. They took that into other areas of their life. They could walk with their chin held high because they knew that whatever society thought about their body, they knew differently. They felt good about themselves. So I think that there’s so much potential there.I think a lot about the conversations happening in sports like gymnastics, post the Karolyis (longtime coaches of the U.S. national team, known for their abusive practices). There are still these very specific body standards, but they are shifting. You’re having people say things like, “It turns out having muscle and eating food for energy actually makes you a better athlete.”VirginiaWho would have thought.FrankieI hate that that is progress, but it is.VirginiaThat’s where we are. That is progress.FrankieSo I hope this continues. I think on a purely recreational level, there are clubs and things that exist, whether it’s just spaces that are going to be inclusive or that are designed specifically for people in fat bodies to participate in a sport or an athletic endeavor without being stigmatized or feeling nervous about having to do that. Those are things that exist.I think, as we navigate this progress and figure out how we can not just be inclusive, but actively fat positive, I think we really need to be aware of not falling into Good Fatty tropes. Like, you might be fat, but it’s okay because you’re good at sport. We’re assigning this moralism to that. So I think that’s the line that we have to walk when we have these conversations, too.VirginiaNo one has a moral obligation to perform athleticism just because they’re in a bigger body. It’s more about getting doors open so people who have wanted to do that, who haven’t been able to, are in the room now.FrankieRight, and the idea that your size doesn’t preclude you from being athletic, but also it’s okay if you’re not athletic, you can do a sport and be terrible at it and find joy in it and that’s pretty, pretty great.VirginiaThat’s so important.ButterFrankieSo I have been watching season 3 of The Traitors, which just started. Are you familiar with The Traitors?VirginiaI know nothing.FrankieSo it’s a competition reality show where a bunch of reality stars from other networks live in a castle and it’s hosted by Alan Cumming, in high camp, and very Scottish. There are always a lot of queer people, which I really, really love. And I’m a huge nerd about MTV’s The Challenge for anyone that remembers The Real World and Road Rules. The Challenge, I’m going to credit with inventing competition reality television. But it also has like what you see in Housewives franchises, where there are storylines from season to season, because the same people keep coming back.VirginiaThat’s satisfying.FrankieSo it’s a combination of the two main kinds of reality shows, but it pre-existed all of them. And there have been OG Challenge cast members. They’ve done like 20 seasons of the show. But I consider the people who do The Challenge regularly to be pro athletes in a way, because it’s a physical competition show. But they’re getting older, and their bodies can’t do that anymore, and some of them are transitioning to these other shows.So I watched Season Two, because my favorite Challenge crush, CT, who they called Castle Daddy, was on it. And no one had heard of The Challenge. Nobody knew who The Challenge players were. And they won that show. They won that season. And they gave interviews afterwards like, “We invented the genre, and we were going to show people that we invented the genre.”So there’s a Challenger again in the cast this season. And then there are always a ton of queer people. And I just love queer people being campy and kind of making a mess. So that is what I am enjoying and thinking way, way too much about, like, narrative and dynamics on reality TV.VirginiaI mean, that sounds like the perfect place for your brain to be, especially this week. That’s deeply comforting and absorbing in exactly the right way.FrankieI can make anything sports, apparently. Reality TV is sports.VirginiaIt’s very impressive. I’ll do a TV Butter as well, which is my 11-year-old and I are watching Schitt’s Creek right now. It’s her first time watching it. I’m re-watching it, I mean, it’s not news to say that’s an amazing show, but it’s such an amazing show, and it’s really fun to watch with a middle schooler.She’s really perfecting her sarcasm, trying to banter back like David and Alexis. So it’s very good for honing those skills, which I think is important in sixth grade. And, you know, it’s obviously amazing queer rep. David and Patrick are our love story for the ages.FrankieIt is a great show. And every time I watch it, there are so many jokes layered in it. Like, it gets better.VirginiaIt gets better.FrankieI also just very much feel like David is… My gender is very David Rose-coded.VirginiaI see that. I fully support that. I mean, he’s amazing. My other rec about it is if you are parenting a sometimes angsty tween, quoting Moira Rose at her is a great way to cut through some of the nonsense.. And then we both laugh and we move on. It’s good stuff.Well, Frankie, thank you. This was such a delight. I appreciate everything you’re doing. Tell folks where we can find you and how we can support you.FrankieThe easiest way to find me is my newsletterOut of Your League. And then I am TheFrankieDLC on Instagram and Blue Sky. I am, like many of us, slowly deleting many social media accounts. So I would definitely say the newsletter is the best place, because I also share the things I publish elsewhere there as well.VirginiaFantastic. Thank you for being here!