The Burnt Toast Podcast

It’s time for your November Indulgence Gospel. Today, we’re doing an old fashioned mailbag episode for you.We are going to chat about grocery shopping.We’re going to talk about what to do if you are “not fat enough” to be in a fat space.We are going to talk about how to get divorced.We’re going to talk about a mom who wants to stop her adult daughter from getting diabetes.And we’re both going to dig into our phones and face up to…just how much time we spend on them and why.To hear the whole conversation or read the whole transcript, you'll need to become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. Subscribe here.If you are already a paid subscriber, you’ll have this entire episode in your podcast feed and access to the entire transcript in your inbox and on the Burnt Toast Substack. You can also subscribe to Corinne's newsletter, Big Undies, for 20% off using this special link. To get all of the links and resources mentioned in this episode, as well as a complete transcript, visit our show page.Also, don't forget to order Fat Talk: Parenting In the Age of Diet Culture! Get your signed copy now from Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the USA). You can also order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, Kobo or anywhere you like to buy books. (Or get the UK edition or the audiobook!) Disclaimer: Virginia and Corinne are humans with a lot of informed opinions. They are not nutritionists, therapists, doctors, or any kind of healthcare providers. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions they give are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.CREDITSThe 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!Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.This transcript contains affiliate links. Shopping our links is another great way to support Burnt Toast!Episode 169 TranscriptVirginiaCorinne, what’s new in your world?CorinneIt finally got cool today. The high today is 72. VirginiaThat’s not cool! CorinneIt’s been like 85-88. I’ve been dying to wear pants, so I’m really excited for the coming week.VirginiaDo you have pants you’re excited about, or are you just revisiting old pants right now?CorinneI think I’m coming to terms with the fact that I need to do a pants assessment. I need to pull out all the pants, see what I like, see what fits, see what I need.Since this is the first cool, fall-feeling week we’ve had in Albuquerque, I took all my shorts off their shelf to stash away for the winter. Which means that I also pulled out all my pants to evaluate…VirginiaI feel like I am missing a category of pants, but I don’t know what it is? I’m very happy with my joggers. I have a pair of skinny jeans for when I go back into being that person. And I do still like the Universal Standard jeans that we both love from last year. They still fit. So I don’t know my heart wants something else, and I don’t know what it wants. Do I want a barrel pants? Do I want a boot cut? I had a thought about boot cut jeans. We swore we’d never go back there, but I saw someone on Instagram wearing boot cut jeans, and I was like, do I love boot cut jeans? I don’t know what’s happening. CorinneI’m excited for you to try them. VirginiaI don’t know. That’s my pants news. Should we do some questions?CorinneYes, I’ll read the first one.I loved the episode where you described your work week. Now that the newsletter comes out on Friday, what does your new work week look like? I would also love to learn more about Corinne’s work week now that she is doing such a great job withBig Undies.VirginiaCorinne is doing such a great job withBig UndiesThank you for noticing. You should be reading it.Don’t forget,you get a 20 percent discount when you subscribe, so you should.If you’re not, you’re missing out! This is what I would first like to say. I also love this question, because I thought for sure we were boring everybody by talking about our work process, like that feels like such a boring question. And yet I love these details of how do people spend their work week!So yeah, if you are like, “That is a boring question, why did you answer this first?” feel free to skip ahead to where we get to more juicy stuff. But we’re going to talk about process. Do you want to talk about what working on Big Undies and Burnt Toast is feeling like?CorinneYes, I’m just still wrapping my head around it. It’s going good. Because Big Undies posts come out on Monday and Wednesday, usually I’m trying to have the Monday post done by Friday. And sometimes working on it on the weekend.VirginiaWork in progress, that’s alright. CorinneYes. And usually doing the Wednesday post on Monday, and then you usually do your Tuesday post, which is now the open thread?VirginiaIs it a thread? Is it an essay? Is it a link roundup? Tuesday is finding itself. Tuesday’s on a journey right now. It was Friday Thread, but now Substack is pushing to replace threads with Chat, so we’re doing more in Chat. Which is great, I actually love Chat!Join Virginia Sole-Smith’s subscriber chatAvailable in the Substack app and on webBut it means now I’m feeling like the Tuesday piece is more of a little short essay plus some links, or sometimes just links, or, I don’t know. I would love feedback on what people want to see on Tuesdays!The way my week goes is Monday is my long work day, because the kids are always with their dad until at least through dinner time on Mondays. So that is my big writing day, where I try to now write the essay that will run that Friday of that week. The other thing that happens on Monday is Corinne and I have our weekly editorial meeting, which Corinne instituted as self defense measure against the thousands of texts I otherwise send. And that was smart.CorinneFor listeners: That is not how I would describe what happened. Just so we’re clear. VirginiaI think it was reasonable. I think it’s a really good solution to the number of times I would text you, “What was that thing I texted you that I should write about that I don’t remember?”CorinneI think the problem with texting is we would text stuff and be like, “Yes, great idea!” and then no one would remember it.VirginiaIt would not get written down anywhere useful.CorinneIt maybe speaks more to perimenopause or something. VirginiaAnyway. Now we have the Monday meetings, and we go over both of our lineups for a Big Undies and Burnt Toast, and we’re just so efficient. So I write on Mondays. I meet with Corinne on Mondays. And if I’m recording a podcast episode on Tuesday or Wednesday, I get prepped for that. Then Tuesdays, I am usually finishing up the Friday essay to get Corinne a draft. That’s thing one. Thing Two is editing Big Undies for Corinne when she’s ready for me. Thing Three is maybe recording a podcast episode, or starting to work on the following week’s essay if there’s reporting that needs to happen for the following week’s essay. I’m trying to get that going.Then Wednesday, Big Undies comes out, and Corinne has gotten me the transcript for the podcast, and Tommy, our audio engineer, is always working behind the scenes getting us podcast edits. So Wednesday is when I do the final pass on that week’s podcast episode. And now it’s also when Corinne and I record. We are coming to you from a Wednesday in real time. So, we record or I record with a guest, and then Thursday the podcast comes out, I finish up the Friday essay and schedule it. And for the following Tuesday, I write whatever that’s going to be. And usually I’ve been dropping links in a draft all week, so then it’s just putting that together. Then Fridays are kind of my catch up on everything day, and maybe I don’t have to work if I was really on top of my shit, but otherwise, I do whatever needs to get done.The new Friday essay thing is really helping my brain and I can’t quite explain why it feels better. But I think before I used to have my big writing day be Thursday, and my bandwidth for the week was already draining, so then I would almost always end up having to write a bunch on Friday and be really tapped out. So that’s been nice, but we’re always tinkering with it. And, I feel like doing the two newsletters together, we’re still finding the rhythm, but I think it’s going pretty well. CorinneYeah, I think it’s going good.VirginiaI like it. Everyone readBig Undies!Aright, this next question is mortifying. Prepare to be mortified on our behalf. This reader would like to know what is our weekly screen time.CorinneWe are looking this up in real time because neither of us knew. I’m not even sure I know how to look. You go first.VirginiaOkay, my daily average so far for this week is… 8 hours and 10 minutes.CorinneOkay. Wait, mine just changed? Okay, mine just updated from 8 hours 15 minutes to 7 hours 30 minutes, and it says down 20% from last week. VirginiaI’m down 14% from last week!CorinneWhat was happening last week? Well we’re in the same ballpark of about eight hours.VirginiaEight hours a day looking at our phone. Jesus Christ, I am so upset about that. Let’s just stop. CorinneWhat’s your most used app?VirginiaMine is Messages.CorinneMine is TikTok. VirginiaWell, we knew it was going to be TikTok. But that’s research. You’re doing work! My most used category is texting. It looks like today I’ve texted for an hour and 46 minutes. How am I getting my job done?CorinneThat’s a great question honestly. How are you? Mine is—I’m looking at the weekly but it’s telling me 8 hours and 45 minutes for TikTok. That’s like an entire day. What the hell?VirginiaOh my God, this question is so upsetting. CorinneAnd then I have 5.5 hours on Instagram and 5.5 hours on Messages. How am I getting anything done? VirginiaMy daily average for Messages is… 3 hours and 41 minutes.CorinneWow.VirginiaI guess I’m not allowed to say I’m too busy. I’m just chatting away with people.CorinneMy daily average for messages is 22 minutes, just for the record. VirginiaOkay. Well. I don’t have TikTok. CorinneI am way less popular than you.VirginiaI’m going to blameSara Petersen. I love you, Sara, but you’re a power texter as well, and we are bad for each other. We are enabling. I’m also going to blameAmy PalanjianandMelinda Wenner Moyer. And… I’m not going to comment on who else I’m texting with. But it takes up a lot of my time, is what I’ll say.Ok but I am on Instagram much less than I used to be, and that was deliberate, so I am proud to see that’s working. I stopped making reels, which was a huge time suck—it really got in the way of my texting! And I did put a one hour limit on Instagram, and my daily average is 1 hour 9 minutes. So that feels pretty good, I’m not wildly exceeding it. Because you can obviously override all the limits. But I think I’ve done what I need to do on Instagram. That’s plenty.CorinneI need to put a limit on TikTok.VirginiaI mean, it’s something to look at? It’s something to reflect on, I guess.I’m not putting a limit on texting, though. I need to be in communication with my people. Apparently I spent 14 hours and 44 minutes texting last week. CorinneWhat are we supposed to do with this information? I don’t know. VirginiaWhy were we asked that? Why did we have to know? CorinneI’m curious if our numbers are high or low.VirginiaI think we are very online people by dint of our professions. So I think it’s high compared to less online people, for sure. And I also feel okay about like, being in touch with loved ones. And you should feel okay about watching JewelryTok. We all have the things we need. We’re not here to shame anyone’s screen time. We would obviously be in no position to do that. CorinneLet’s move on!Talk to me about grocery shopping. My five year old would like nothing but Pringles and mac and cheese. My two year old, bananas and gummies. I feel like I still need to provide them some sort of structure with nutrition available. We also need to stick to some sort of budget. How do I shop? Right now, I take suggestions and put them on a list and refuse to go to more than one store a week. But is there a better way?VirginiaFirst I’ll say that Pringles, mac and cheese, bananas, and gummies are all foods that provide nutrition and also pleasure, so I don’t think they are foods you need to restrict. Also, I’m trying to avoid giving people advice specifically on how to feed their children now, but we can link back to some other stuff we’ve done about this in the past. I think kids can understand that you’re on a budget, and so you only buy however many boxes of these things you buy per week. They can understand that once they’re gone for the week, we’ll buy more next week. I think the key with these kinds of preferred foods is that you are offering them often, so kids don’t have a scarcity mindset about them. But what “often” means can vary. It’s just about maintaining some predictability, so the kids know those foods will be in rotation and they can count on them. That’s the key to not having them be overly fixated on them.Sticking to a grocery budget is not a talent of mine, I will say. I have done it in the past. I am in a season of life where I’m leaning into ease and therefore not doing great with grocery budgeting. It’s really, really hard, and also food is crazy expensive right now. What are your thoughts, Corinne?CorinneI’m always interested in how people are grocery shopping, because it’s one of those things that your parents did it, and then you have to figure out how to do it for yourself and it’s always changing. Stuff exists now that didn’t exist then. VirginiaYeah, I talked about in the newsletter about how I’m leaning into Instacart as one of my single parenting strategies. And I did have the thought the other day that it means my kids have not been to a grocery store in a really long time. I think sometimes they go with their dad. But I think he often grocery shops before they get to his house. And I was like, when will they learn that skill? It’s not at age seven, because we’re not doing it right now. CorinneIt is a real skill. I can really easily fall prey to DoorDash or GrubHub if I don’t have readily available food. I grocery shop once a week, or sometimes less frequently, like every 10 days or something. I have a well-stocked pantry. I pretty much always have like pasta and sauce on hand and something from Trader Joe’s in the freezer,. Sometimes I would go to the farmers market or something, but I’ll try to pick out one or two things I’m going to make, and put that stuff on my my grocery list, and then make a note in my phone of what the stuff is. VirginiaOh, that’s smart. CorinneBecause I feel like it’s so hard. Shopping and cooking, it’s all so hard. It’s so much work. I just sometimes can buy stuff and forget. So that’s what I’m trying to do now. But having ingredients on hand to be able to make a few things, and also always having backup stuff, like cans of soup, freezer stuff, whatever, Trader Joe’s.VirginiaYeah. I do a big Instacart order weekly, on Fridays usually. I love their “buy it again” feature, because we go through a certain amount of oat milk each week, a certain amount of regular milk, a certain amount of strawberries. So I just reorder all of that. Then when I have my shit together and I meal plan a few meals, I would add on things to go with those meals. But a lot of times lately I’m doing less meal planning and more, like, “I know I will always make pesto pasta on Tuesdays.” There are certain meals I make every week that I just know I need to have the ingredients on hand for. Then there are certain snacks we go through every week that I just restock. I often, due to lack of efficiency, end up having to do a Monday or a Tuesday second order, because I miscalculated. I mean, the thing with kids, too, is they’ll go through a phase of not really eating a thing, and then they’ll eat all of it in one day. Like, wait, I actually need eight more frozen burritos to make it through the week. So there’s often this second grocery shop.So I’m useless. I have no good ideas. But I like what this mom is saying about taking suggestions and putting them on the list. I think it’s fine to say you’re only going to one store a week, and I think you’re both hearing them and putting some structure around it. I think that’s pretty good. CorinneYeah, I agree. VirginiaAll right. I’ll read the next one, because I really want to hear your answer.Can I show up in fat spaces if I’m not “fat enough?” I consider myself small fat, but also benefit from some level of thin privilege. I love the idea of fat community, fat swim, etc, but I wonder if I am fat enough to participate. Last summer, I attended a vintage sale for plus size people. The invitation said my size was welcome. There was a minimum threshold listed, but when I was there, almost everyone was larger than me, and many were much larger than me. Nothing happened to make me feel unwelcome, but my own social anxiety made me feel like I was infringing on someone else’s space. So I guess my question is, if I still experience some thin privilege, can I show up in fat spaces, or do I sit those opportunities out?CorinneThis is such a complicated question. VirginiaYeah, it is.CorinneBut I feel like my answer would be: If you are small fat, then you are fat and you are welcome in those spaces.VirginiaI mean, as a small fat person whose life work is about fatness, I agree! But I’m glad to hear you say it. CorinneI’ve run into this a little bit when I’ve hosted that fat swim event, where people are like, “am I allowed to go?” Or, you know, like, “I’m an ally.” And, body size is something that changes. So, there are people who used to be fat, or there are people who used to be thin. And the fatness scale exists. So you can look at and say, like, “I’m on this,” or “I’m not.” Though I will say, about the fatness scale (which I did not create): The smallest sizes on there, I would hesitate to call fat. I think it’s like a women’s size 10 or something. VirginiaYeah, I’d hesitate to call that fat. CorinneThat’s like a Torrid 00 or whatever. But I do think there is a line that has been established by other people that you can use as a guide.VirginiaI think, too, anti-fatness harms everyone. And thin privilege benefits almost everyone in different ways. Do you know what I mean? Like, you can be pretty fat and still have certain contexts where you are going to have more privilege than someone fatter than you. So I think what matters to me more is that we’re doing what we can to make space for folks with less privilege to be centered in whatever conversations or spaces we’re in. It is also true that there’s a problem with small fat people dominating fat spaces at times. We see this in online contexts like chat groups, that kind of thing. Certainly in the way fatness is portrayed on social media, we see smaller fat creators getting way more attention and influence than fatter creators. So I think those of us on the smaller end have a real responsibility to be looking closely at this and navigating how we are moving in these spaces. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be in the room at all, I guess is where I land. CorinneYeah, I agree. I think you should be in the room. You can be in the room and you have some amount of responsibility to advocate for other people. VirginiaI think where it can sometimes go badly is when a small fat person is overly fixated on the specific context where they feel the fattest and are the fattest. So, for example: In Los Angeles, in New York City, in women’s magazines, a size 10 is a fat person. But that does not mean that a size 10 experiences anti-fatness the way a size 26 or a size 32 does. I think sometimes people overly focus on the context where they feel the most marginalized, and it stops them from thinking bigger than that.One example of this is when I’ll talk to friends who are small fat or mid-size, and we’ll talk a lot about clothing access, clothing access, clothing access—which is real and a barrier we face, and yet, they won’t know that chairs have weight limits. Or they won’t have thought about airplanes at all. Or doctor’s offices. So there are other ways in which their privilege is is not making them aware of different pieces of this. Kate Mannehas been writingsome really thoughtful stuffabout this. Kate is someone who has been fatter, is currently in a small fat, mid-sized body, and has been navigating buying a formal dress, which is a nightmare for everybody. She wrote really thoughtfully about who can claim fatness? What does this mean? I think one layer of my thin privilege is having grown up as a thin kid, so I’ve had to get used to being a fat adult, but I don’t have the childhood trauma associated with fatness being weaponized against me. Whereas someone like Kate, who’s thinner than I am now, grew up in a bigger body and experienced horrific bullying. Kate has a claim to fatness that I don’t have, even though I’m fatter than her right now. Does that make sense? CorinneTotally. VirginiaSo it is really, really nuanced. CorinneI also always think about the way height plays into it. Short people who are technically mid-sized, are sometimes still perceived as fat, and really tall people who are fat look less fat. Think about plus size models who are six feet tall and a size 12 or a size 16. There’s just a lot that goes into it.VirginiaThere definitely is. And I think just the fact this person’s thinking about it suggests to me that they’re probably doing okay, but yeah, keep thinking about it.CorinneHere’s the next question:I’m curious how you feel about others buying you clothes. My mom keeps buying me stuff, even after I’ve politely asked her to stop. I don’t know why, but it makes me feel uncomfortable. I’m still figuring out my style at age 44 and how clothes fit my body. She seems to just buy a 2X or 3X and think it will fit without actually looking at the item and seeing if it seems like the appropriate size for me. She’s formerly small fat and now in a straight sized body and lives with us. I’m experiencing a similar difficulty with my mom buying clothes for my almost nine year old, as I’ve shared on here before. She’s in a slightly larger body and developing before some of her peers. Grandma buying her and her six year old very thin little sister clothes is causing a lot of problems around here. Completely innocent intentions, of course, but nonetheless.VirginiaI don’t think anyone in my life buys me clothes. I think maybe you can say to your mom, “I would love it if you bought me plants.” Give her something else to do because maybe just telling her to stop buying clothes left her too at sea. For the kids, say “I’d love if we could give you their wish lists.” I think removing this variable seems fine, it’s well intentioned but it’s going to constantly create stress for you and your kids, which is not the intention of a gift. I think it’s okay to say, “This is so lovely but I’m just really hard to shop for and I’m so particular, and I already buy the clothes I want.” And you know, “The kids are getting more particular about what they want to wear. It would just be great if we could shift off clothes” I don’t know how that would work, but that’s my starting point.CorinneI think that’s good advice. It kind of sounds like the grandma isn’t going to stop buying clothes, because she’s already been asked. So I don’t know. I was wondering about being like, “Could we all go shopping together somewhere, so we could avoid the buying and returning and just figure out what we like, especially with the kids. Like, why don’t you take them all to Target or something?VirginiaThis came in through the Substack Chat, and a couple of folks suggested giving the mom measurements for everybody so that she can really check that the sizing is going to work. And I think that’s really good advice.It might be worth trying to give your mom some more information about why plus size clothes fit so badly and irregularly. Like, send her the podcast interview we did with a plus size fashion designer talking about how bad the sizing is. Maybe give her a little more information, because the fact that she’s seeking out plus sizes for you and buying the 2X and 3X tells me she’s half aware of the problem. But is just like, hoping, oh, I found a cute thing in 2x this will work. She doesn’t understand why 2X is not the same everywhere. I mean number one, when she realizes how hard it is, she might just be like, “Fine, I’ll buy plants. This is too hard.” And not want to do it. But also, if she does genuinely want to do it, if this really gives her joy, maybe you can be more straightforward about this is the legwork I do. And maybe it’s even just talking about modeling when you’re shopping for a clothing item for yourself, bring her into it and be like, oh, I’m trying to read these size charts to figure out what size jeans I am now. And show her that labor a little. Okay, we’ve got another family one here, this person writes,My mother in law and brother in law are both fat and often are on diets. Weight Watchers. Noom, you get the picture. We don’t live near them, but we’ll see them a lot during the holidays. I am straight sized. I never know what to say when they are talking about their diets being good or bad this week, how much they lost last week, how many points they have left, etc. It breaks my heart how much energy they put into trying to make themselves smaller, and I think they both look great just as they are, but it’s not my body, and I am not fat, so I never say anything. I don’t want my young kids internalizing that there is anything inherently wrong with their grandmother and uncle. Any advice on how to be a loving ally here?CorinneI can totally understand wanting to say something. And I also kind of think, like, it’s probably not going to have an effect. VirginiaI’m loving all the ally energy today! Everyone wanting to show up for fat people. We love that.I think you can reflect to them when they share stuff like that, you you can just say you always look great to me, or I’m glad you’re feeling good in your body. If they’re talking about being good or something. I think you can just find ways to validate that from your perspective, their body is not a problem.And maybe also making sure when you see them, like, have you looked at your dining room chairs? Have you made sure that your space is welcoming for them?Not that you would say to them, “I just purchased some higher weight limit chairs for you.” Like, don’t perform it. But can you make sure that your home, if you’re hosting them, is a space where their body feels comfortable? It’s just little things that we can all be doing, and it might go a long way. I mean, I don’t know if this is what’s happening, but sometimes I think that folks feel like they have to perform weight loss as part of being the good fattie. It’s possible if your home feels more welcoming in this front, they will feel less like they have to perform that for you.CorinneI think you could also just say, “It breaks my heart how much energy you are putting into trying to make yourself smaller.” But yeah, it might be a hard thing to slip into a conversation.VirginiaAs for the kids, I wouldn’t stress about that so much. If they’re talking about the stuff in front of your kids, you can later say, “We love grandma so much. This world is really tough for fat folks, and it’s hard to hear her talking about her body that way. But we don’t expect that for you.”You want to read the next one? CorinneYes.My daughter is extremely overweight. Her grandmother was a needle carrying diabetic, and it runs in the family. I love my daughter with all my heart, but what should I encourage her to do to avoid becoming diabetic?VirginiaNothing. You should say nothing. Nobody asked you!You don’t need to encourage her to avoid becoming diabetic. That’s not your job.What do you want to add?CorinneI think you could encourage her to not have an eating disorder.VirginiaI would stop using phrases like “extremely overweight” and “needle carrying diabetic.” That is such stigmatizing language.It also sounds like you have really framed diabetes in your mind as something that people choose to opt into or opt out of, because you want to encourage her to avoid becoming one, as if that’s a train she can take off the tracks. This is not something she has as much control over as you think. But even if it was, it’s not your job to police her eating habits, her body size, her workout choices, any of that. It’s not your job.CorinneYeah, leave her alone.VirginiaI’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you sent in a question, but please stop. She doesn’t need this from you. She needs you to love her and support her. And if she does get diabetes, she needs your support and not any of that energy. We don’t need this energy. Okay, that is enough family drama questions. Those were some heavy family drama questions. Now we will return to judging our media consumption. This person would like to know,what piece of media do you consume, even though it’s problematic?CorinneI mean, hard to limit myself to one!VirginiaCorinne only consumes problematic media.CorinneAlmost everything could be problematic. The one that has been coming up for me a lot recently is—I have watched most seasons of Love Is Blind. And I just increasingly feel like reality television is almost unethical, because they are borderline torturing people. Like putting them in a weird space and then filming them, using that footage to create narratives. Especially with the alcohol stuff. I was just noticing on this recent season, just the drinking. Like, I would not be drinking in that context. And I have wondered if they turn away people who are sober.VirginiaOh, interesting. If they’ll even cast them.CorinneYeah, that’s what I mean.VirginiaAre they casting with an eye towards “you seem to have a complicated relationship with booze, come on and drink with us!”CorinneRight. And I’m a little bit older, you know? I’m 38 but I feel like I know so many people who don’t drink, and I’ve never seen a person not drink on one of these shows. I don’t know, it feels very problematic to me.VirginiaAnd yet you’re watching. CorinneAnd yet I watch. VirginiaNo judgment. I was trying to think. A lot of my TV viewing happens with my 11-year-old. We watch shows together in the evening, and we revisit a lot of shows that I have already watched, which often means they’re problematic. Like right now we’re rewatching Parks & Recreation. Her first watch, my re-watch, and it’s full of anti-fatness. The way they talk about diabetes on that show is horrific. There’s also a lot of homophobia, and it’s very much a product of its time. And, Leslie Knope is an iconic, great character. And there’s lots of really funny, great stuff. But, like, Aziz Ansari is on it, and I forgot Louis CK has a part in one season. There’s one episode where it was like, Aziz and Louis CK, and I was like, “This is a lot of problematic men in a sitcom for me!” I pause frequently, and say, let’s talk about that! And she’s like, I know, I know, I know. Please stop. The other night, she said to me, “eEvery show you make me watch has so much anti-fatness.” I was like, “Fair, fair. That’s true.” So, yeah, old sitcoms are a big one, but at least we’re using it as a jumping off point to discuss things.Also, we were just talking about in the Substack Chat today about the new Netflix show Nobody Wants This, which I did really love and think is problematic. There are some really not great portrayals of Jewish women on that show, and that was upsetting to me. And, Adam Brody is so hot, so it was hard to not keep watching because of his hotness. That was hard for me. I obviously chose to watch it all, and will probably watch season two. But yeah, it sucks. Media is problematic. CorinneIt is. The next question is for you.Any advice on how to make the legal divorce process easier?VirginiaI’m just like, can I be helpful? I am not qualified to weigh in on anyone else’s divorce, because every divorce is so different and so much depends on the financial impact of divorce on your life. It varies tremendously and tends to be awful for everyone, but like, different flavors of awful. The degree to which finances will be up for negotiation and the degree to which whoever you’re divorcing is just baseline not an asshole. Those two things really determine whether the divorce process is easy or not. The legal system is not set up to work well for anybody. It doesn’t advocate well for anyone. So the best case scenario is to bypass the legal system as much as possible and do mediation or collaborative divorce, which is what we did. Collaborative divorce is where you do each have a lawyer. And there’s no mediator. But your lawyers have all agreed ahead of time that they will not represent you if it goes to litigation. They are committed to a collaborative process. So if you were to decide you couldn’t work it out directly, you’d have to hire a whole new lawyer to go to court. These lawyers will not go to court with you. So it’s kind of like mediation, but you do have a little more personal support in terms of the lawyer, and then there’s also a neutral financial advisor and a neutral parenting plan person who you work with. And it was great. Our divorce was very streamlined. But it was streamlined through a fuck ton of privilege. So I cannot say, definitely do that, because if your ex is abusive or emotionally toxic, that may not be a safe way for you to go. But if it is a situation where you’re like, “We should not be married but we don’t outright hate each other, and I am safe and I’m not experiencing abuse of any kind,” then I would suggest mediation or collaborative divorce will get you through it faster and cheaper. Mediation is cheaper than collaborative divorce, just because there are fewer people to hire, and it can be great. Also it’s still so much paperwork. I’m never going to convince the electrical company that a single woman can have a utility in her own name, It’s just never going to happen. So just sending solidarity, it’s a lot of paperwork and annoying phone calls on top of all of the other not fun parts.Let’s talk about food. Bring it up with some food. CorinneThank God. VirginiaFavorite Thanksgiving / fall dish?CorinneWow. I mean, hard to single out just one! VirginiaInteresting. I don’t love a lot of Thanksgiving food. Does that make me a weirdo?CorinneWhat about fall? VirginiaI guess I like fall?CorinneThis probably does make you a weirdo.VirginiaI feel like a lot of Thanksgiving food is kind of bland and mushy. It’s just not a spicy holiday. CorinneNo, it’s not. It’s not. VirginiaI like a spicier holiday.CorinneOkay? Well, the one that’s coming up for me right now is chicken pot pie. VirginiaOkay, yeah, that’s good. CorinneYou’re like, meh. I feel like it’s really good with leftover turkey. And as discussed, I’m like starting to get cooler weather, so I can’t freaking wait to be eating soup and biscuits and chicken pot pie and lasagna and pumpkin bread.VirginiaYou are all in on the fall food. I do like pumpkin bread. I do like pumpkin flavored things. I used to think I didn’t, but I do like some pumpkin and apple crisp. I really enjoy a really good apple crisp.CorinneAnything apple. VirginiaI like the pie options and the crisp options. CorinnePumpkin pie?VirginiaYeah, it’s fine? I’m not, like, getting out of bed jazzed for it, but it’s fine. But in general, I like spicier cuisine than a lot of standard American fall cooking tends to be. So Thanksgiving is just not my favorite food holiday. I’m sorry.[Post-recording note from Virginia: I am validated, Samin Nosrat agrees with me!!!]CorinneMaybe you need to make a spicy relish or something. VirginiaThe thing I do bring to Thanksgiving every year is a very good fresh cranberry relish that is quite delicious. That peps it up for me a little bit. (This recipe is close, but mine also contains a little canned pineapple, chopped apple, and pecans.)Do you want to read the next one?CorinneYes.I’m fighting a cold and grumpy that my smart watch is judging me for not working out this week.VirginiaI mean, fuck your smart watch! Put that bitch in a drawer! You don’t need it. CorinneYeah. Seems like a good week to take the smart watch off.VirginiaYour phone has a clock. I don’t wear a watch at all. It’s fine. As discussed, I do look at my phone far too often, but that’s neither here nor there. You don’t need this in your life. CorinneYeah, I have been a smart watch wearer sometimes, or like a Fitbit wearer, and if it was bothering me, I would definitely just take it off.VirginiaI’ve never done it because I know my brain and that kind of tracking—this is why I don’t look at my screen time. I don’t need to know these numbers. They’re not going to be helpful for me. They’re just going to make me feel bad. ShareOkay, these last two are kind of wacky, but I think they’re going to be fun. So the first one is, If you had the power to conjure a perfect item of clothing for yourself, what would it be and what would it feature? For example, a green leather jacket with fringe and a giant back patch of your favorite band; a rainbow brite costume that turned you into cartoons maybe; a neon wig with enough room in it that could function as a purse; a gold lame quilted fannypack. I mean, this person gave such amazing answers. I don’t know that we can top this.Those are all so good. My answer is jeans that always fit. Jeans that don’t stretch out after two wearings and always fit. I depressingly think that’s what mine would be.CorinneI have so many thoughts. This is bringing back the $700 denim jacket for me, because I’m like, well, and how much would it cost?Big UndiesWould You Spend $700 on a Shirt?A couple of weeks ago I saw this post about the brand Toteme on Harriet Hadfield’s Substack and was immediately captivated by the denim shirt (coat? shacket?) in the collage image. A simple collar, nice pockets, snaps, good drape—it looked perfect. When I scrolled down to read about it, I learned that the midsize Harriet is wearing an XXS—meaning it runs…Read morea year ago · 159 likes · 83 comments · Corinne FayVirginiaYeah, fair question. I think if we’re conjuring the item, we can assume it’s on sale. CorinneAnd I feel like it’s also hard not to get into, like, superpowers, like what about a jetpack?VirginiaA coat that’s also a jet.CorinneOr an invisibility cloak.VirginiaThat’s the obvious place to go is invisibility clothing.CorinneThe other thing that I was thinking was, like, I don’t want to invent it. I want to be surprised by what someone else comes up with!VirginiaYou’re like, the perfect item of clothing is something that requires no mental load from me, thank you. CorinneYeah, I feel like it’s something I see on some website that only comes in size small, and I’m like, oh, I want that. But I didn’t come up with it. I want it because it’s cool and different. VirginiaMaybe what you want is the power to be able to resize any item to be size inclusive. That would be really awesome. So everything can fit you. CorinneYeah, perfect. Thats all I want. VirginiaI mean, I’m also into the neon wig that can function as a purse. I’m not ruling it out, but I think our needs are more humble. We just want clothes that fit.CorinneI mean, I love the idea of a green leather jacket with fringe. I can’t see myself wearing it, but you never know.VirginiaNo, I agree, but I’m here for it.And this last ridiculous question is,If you could have a different liquid shoot out of each of your fingers like a soda gun, what liquids would you choose? CorinneSo we’re talking five liquids? VirginiaYeah, I don’t think we have to do all 10. We can assume both hands are the same.CorinneOne of mine would be ice water. Or, if we’re really making this a magical situation, water with like crushed ice in it, like pebble ice. VirginiaI love that your answer could be any liquid and you’re like, just water. CorinneWell, do you know how frustrating it would be to be walking around with soda coming out of your fingers and you just wanted water? VirginiaThat’s a fair point, and you you’re still having to refill your Stanley Cup to have enough water in the day. This way it’s like your finger is an unlimited Stanley Cup.CorinneAnd I really love crushed ice. If I could just have crushed ice shooting out of a finger, I would take it.VirginiaOkay, so that’s one. What else?CorinneMine are going to be so boring. VirginiaI’m waiting for electrolytes. CorinneOkay, Sure. Gatorade. I also want to say, like, iced tea or something. I feel like it would be water, Gatorade, iced tea, lemonade. And what’s the last one I feel like I need something more fun?VirginiaA mocktail?CorinneChampagne.VirginiaThe pinky finger is champagne. Why not?CorinneJust for special occasions.VirginiaAlright, I think mine would be—I mean, now you sold me on water because it does seem very practical. Obviously Diet Coke, obviously, also my mandarin orange aspartame seltzer that I’m obsessed with. I mean, coffee. Are we allowed to have different temperatures? Can I have a latte finger?CorinneOooh, a latte finger.VirginiaWill it foam the milk properly? I think so. And then I was thinking, I think my last one might be hand sanitizer because that just seems practical, right? Yeah, then you’re never caught off guard. CorinneAnd you could drink it to get drunk.VirginiaNo, I’ll wait for you to fill up my champagne. Even though I can’t drink champagne, it gives me a migraine. I think I have no alcohol in my fingers for now, anyway. We’ll see. Well, that was delightful, and absolutely absurd.CorinneI hope everyone puts their answers in the comments. VirginiaWe want to know what clothing item you’re inventing. We want to know what’s in your fingers. We want to know your screen time so we feel less ashamed. CorinneYes, please.VirginiaI feel so good ours was the same. I really was worried I was going to be like double you or something.CorinneOh, I thought I was going to be double you! You have children, you have to at least look up sometimes.VirginiaLets not talk about how I’m looking at my phone too much around my kids. Now you made it worse again!CorinneOh God.VirginiaBut I feel like, okay, we’re in the same boat of too much phone.ButterCorinneI’m realizing that I think my last Butter was also a salad, which is just makes me sound like a different kind of person than I am. But I want to recommend this salad that I’ve been eating fromJulia Turshen’snew cookbook, and it’s just called “my usual chopped salad.” It has a really nice mustardy dressing, and then it’s chopped romaine and red cabbage, roasted almonds and grated carrots, chickpeas, feta and raisins. And it’s a really good combo. It’s very delicious.And it’s also one of those things where, I usually have all that stuff on hand, and you can kind of tweak it based on what you do have on hand. So that has been a really good lunch for me the past couple of weeks. VirginiaI really need to make that one, that seems great. CorinneYeah, it’s delicious. It’s sweet, salty. It’s really good. VirginiaOkay, you’re inspiring me to make a salad at some point soon. I love that for me as a goal. CorinneYeah, it’s good. What’s your Butter? VirginiaMy Butter is my new heavy weights that I’m lifting. I’m not on Corinne’s power lifting train yet, or probably ever, because you have to go to the gym for that and I don’t like gyms. But I did recently upgrade my weights.Mass Moves MassCorinne Fay·February 21, 2023Read full storyAnd I’m going to use numbers, so content warning, if the numbers are not good for you. I don’t know how to talk about this without numbers. Do I need to use numbers? Maybe I don’t. CorinneI think you can use numbers. VirginiaOkay. When I first started strength training, I was using two pounds and five pounds, and then after a few months, I upgraded to ten. I mean, not upgraded. I still used the fives, but I added in some tens. And then after, like, a year and a half of that, I finally worked up my nerve to say to Lauren Leavell (whose videos I do every week): “Should I have heavier weights than 10?” And she was basically like, Dear God, yes. You can do more at this point.And so I added in some eights that have mostly replaced what I was doing with the fives. And then I got 15s and 20s. And, man, it is hard, but fun! It’s so much more fun to lift hard weights. It’s weird!CorinneUm yeah. Lifting heavy weights is fun.VirginiaIt’s very fun. And I was really surprised I didn’t die! Like, I lifted three times last week, and I was fine. I didn’t throw out my back. I was sore the next day, but not like what-did-I-do sore. Just like, oh I used muscles sore. It was super satisfying. I know there’s so many strength trainers and power lifters in the audience, and you’re all just like, “Welcome, Virginia. Thank you for realizing the obvious.”But I just want to say: Physical strength didn’t feel available to me for most of my life. I think especially if you’ve had like back issues, there are ways in which we can start to ascribe to a narrative that our bodies are fragile. And it’s interesting to realize that this isn’t for everyone. All bodies are good bodies, but for me, pushing myself to do something harder has actually not only made me feel stronger, but actually made my body feel sturdier, if that makes sense.CorinneMakes complete sense. VirginiaSo it’s really wild. I mean, I’m very new into it, but we’ll see how it keeps going. But yeah, I mean, I am a pretty injury prone person, so I am a little anxious, but I’m going to keep going. I think it’s good. CorinneThat’s awesome, yeah. VirginiaSo if that anyone else is out there with your five pound and your ten pounds or whatever, you could probably do more than you think, and that’s a cool feeling. And also, no moral obligation to ever do any of it. It’s fine. You don’t have to like it.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!

Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark! It's time for your November Extra Butter! This month we’re talking about Emily Oster—and her evolving views on kids, weight and health.We recorded this before the election. But as we all continue to grapple with how America slid to the right, the story of a public health advocate and scholar who is now aligned with conservative media feels especially timely. That said, we also want to hold space for how much Emily’s work has meant to so many of us (including Virginia!).If you are already an Extra Butter subscriber, you’ll have this entire episode in your podcast feed and access to the entire transcript in your inbox and on the Burnt Toast Patreon. To get all of the links and resources mentioned in this episode, as well as a complete transcript, visit our show page.Otherwise, to hear the whole conversation or read the whole transcript, you'll need to join Extra Butter. It's just $99 per year, and is the hands down best way to keep Burnt Toast an ad- and sponsor-free space. PS. Don't forget to order Fat Talk: Parenting In the Age of Diet Culture! Get your signed copy now from Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the USA). You can also order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, Kobo or anywhere you like to buy books. (Or get the UK edition or the audiobook!) Disclaimer: Virginia and Corinne are humans with a lot of informed opinions. They are not nutritionists, therapists, doctors, or any kind of healthcare providers. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions they give are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.CREDITSThe 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!---Episode 168 TranscriptVirginiaI’m just going to say up front, I am nervous about doing this episode. It is a complicated one. People have very strong feelings about Emily Oster. But we are in our Extra Butter safe space, and I am trusting that.So Corinne. You are coming in somewhat cold to this topic, because you don’t have kids, and Emily is primarily a parenting expert. What do you know about Emily Oster and her work?CorinneI know two things about Emily Oster. One is that she wrote a book about parenting or maybe pregnancy? And my main takeaway about that book is that it’s okay for you to drink a small amount of alcohol when you are pregnant. VirginiaYes. This is a gift that Emily has given to the world. Unquestionably.CorinneAnd I basically just know about that from having friends who are pregnant. Then the other thing I know is that she was involved in some COVID controversies. VirginiaUh huh. CorinneThe book came out before COVID, and then during COVID she started to become a controversial figure.VirginiaShe actually had two books come out before COVID, Expecting Better, about pregnancy, and then Crib Sheet, which is a parenting book. Expecting Better actually came out in 2013, the same year my first child was born. So it’s 11 years old. She’s been around for a long time!CorinneDid you use those books as a pregnant and child-having person?VirginiaWell, Expecting Better was published on August 20, 2013 and Violet was born on August 18. So I did not use it for that pregnancy. But I did later read a lot of Emily’s work, and in particular the work she was doing around breastfeeding not being the most essential you-have-to-do-it-or-you’re-a-terrible-mother thing. She did a lot of really great research breaking down some of those myths and showing that the benefits of breastfeeding over formula are not as extreme as we’ve been told. All of that was super helpful to me during my own breastfeeding situations. So yes, she’s definitely been a parenting voice on my radar for a long time. Emily is also actually from New Haven, Connecticut, as am I. We are around the same age, but I don’t think we knew each other as kids. But we are both ladies from Connecticut. Emily has a PhD in economics from Harvard. She then went on to pursue research in health economics and is a professor of economics at Brown University. She is a mother of two, and her official bio says, “Emily was inspired by her own pregnancy and lack of clear information to guide her decisions. She decided to use her expertise in reviewing and analyzing data to help other parents navigate those topics. She’s a New York Times best-selling author.”So we are both 40-something moms, originally from Connecticut. I think the other place our work has overlapped is that we both do some of this work of, “here is this mainstream thing you’ve been told that’s actually quite punitive towards mothers, and what if we looked at the data and flipped some of that on its head.” The work she did on pregnancy and breastfeeding was super helpful to me. It’s been super helpful to so many of my friends. My younger sister just had her first baby this summer, and she was reading Expecting Better. So I just want to go into this conversation saying I really think all of that work is valuable. Then more recently, as you noted, Emily launched ParentData, which started as a Substack newsletter that she sent out during COVID. Now it is its own standalone website. And during COVID she started sending out these newsletters that I think a lot of us, as parents, were living and dying by, because she was helping us calculate the risks. And then she started to push for schools to reopen before a lot of people were ready for schools to reopen. There was a lot of controversy around her takes at that point and how she was calculating risks. And in particular, I think, how she was calculating risks for kids from more marginalized backgrounds. It often started to sound more like she was just thinking about, “I want my kids back in school.” It was messy. I’m not going to talk a lot about her COVID stuff today, because we have a whole other issue to work through. But I do want to acknowledge that COVID is when a lot of folks started to feel very divisive about Emily. I also want to acknowledge right off the top that Emily blurbed Fat Talk and was a big supporter of Fat Talk and of my work. She’s interviewed me on ParentData twice, once before Fat Talk came out, once after. A lot of the early Burnt Toast community came from Emily’s community. So this is all the more reason why we should have this conversation. There are a lot of Emily Oster fans in our community. There are a lot of Emily Oster critics. We’re gonna talk about all of it. CorinneI feel like we should say the reason that people have been asking us to do this episode is because she has recently joined forces with conservative journalist Bari Weiss and they are doing a podcast together. And there was an episode about childhood obesity? Feeding kids? Which a bunch of people have written to you, with questions about. VirginiaThe new podcast is called Raising Parents with Emily Oster. It is produced in partnership with The Free Press, which is Bari Weiss’s publishing empire.Do you want to talk to us a little bit about what The Free Press is, and that whole piece of things before we talk about this episode?CorinneSure, yes. The Free Press is a website started by Bari Weiss. Bari Weiss is a journalist. She was hired by The New York Times after Trump was elected in 2016, in an effort to platform conservative voices at The New York Times. VirginiaThey were trying to both sides it.CorinneYes. And she notoriously quit with a manifesto-y letter, claiming that she was bullied or not really taken seriously. And then I think after that, she started this website, The Free Press. She’s someone who started out as somewhat moderate, and has become more of a conservative person. She’s very “anti woke,” I guess is what I would say. She’s very pro-free speech and anti-identity politics, that kind of thing.VirginiaYeah. I think Emily’s involvement with The Free Press is surprising and not surprising. I think what’s interesting about Emily Oster, kind of all the way along, is that she’s an incredibly smart person. I think her work really connects with a certain kind of smart, data conscious parent or person—especially moms. And I think she would say her personal values or political beliefs should not be in the mix at all, that what she’s doing is not political. And yet, of course, it is political. Health is political. If you’re going to talk about COVID, if you’re going to talk about breastfeeding, if you’re going to talk about—as we’re going to talk about—kids’ weight, it’s going to get political very quickly. It’s been interesting to watch this evolution. I think this sort of smart, data driven mom—which I certainly identify as. A lot of those types of moms who would identify as feminist were like, “yes, let me drink during pregnancy.” “Yes, tell me I don’t have to breastfeed.” That felt really resonant to us. And then there was this move in this other direction that’s been subtle, and sort of confusing at times. But I think aligning yourself with The Free Press is not subtle or confusing. So yes, we’ve got the new podcast, “Raising Parents with Emily Oster.” And episode three of the new season is called, Are We Feeding Kids The Wrong Foods? And this is the episode that a ton of you have been in my DMs and my email being like, what is happening here? So Corinne, do you want to read this quote from the top of the episode? This is from Emily, and it lays out the premise that she took into this projectCorinneYes.While BMI is just a number and doesn’t magically determine health, it is the case that BMI in this higher range is associated with a substantially elevated risk of many metabolic or other chronic illnesses. The United States ranks 12th worldwide on obesity prevalence. The question is, why? And why haven’t we been able to reduce childhood obesity rates?VirginiaSo what’s your thought about just that quick summary?CorinneIt seems like she’s both saying that BMI is a bad marker of health, and using it to determine that there is a problem.VirginiaShe’s saying the question is, “why do we have high rates of obesity in the United States?” She’s not saying, why should we care? Is that even the question? Is that even the problem? CorinneShe’s saying BMI is just a number. And also, let’s use that number to say that we have a problem. VirginiaThere’s some both/and-ing here that’s uncomfortable to me. And, a refusal to question the basic premise. If we have elevated risks and metabolic and other chronic illnesses, why are we not talking about those illnesses? Why are we focusing the conversation squarely on BMI, which we just acknowledged is not a useful measurement? So that’s the starting point for the whole episode.I’m not going spend a lot of time explaining why BMI is a bad measurement. I’m assuming a lot of us have that working knowledge, but we can link in the transcript to some background if you are new and are like, but wait a second, I thought BMI was great, and what is the problem? I will also link to a really great analysis that Christy Harrison wrote about this episode that we’re going to refer to a few times during this conversation. Because she did dig more into what is really just bad, lazy science that Emily is doing here. So I have a little snippet if you want to read. This isChristy Harrison, MPH, RDnow talking about what has kind of gone wrong at face value here:CorinneIn her previous work, Oster has always harped on how correlation, aka Association, is not causation, and how there are many other confounding variables that can explain these sorts of relationships. Yet in this episode, she takes at face value that the link between BMI and the risk of some diseases automatically means higher weight is unhealthy. In fact, there are many confounding variables to challenge and complicate that narrative.VirginiaAnd then Christy links to a whole bunch of other resources that we can include as well. Rethinking WellnessWhy Is Emily Oster Suddenly Pro–Diet Culture?Welcome to another installment of the Rethinking Wellness link roundup! Every other week, I’m offering a small collection of links from around the internet that are relevant to the conversations we have here, along with some quick takes and occasional deeper dives for paid subscribers…Read morea year ago · 40 likes · 21 comments · Christy Harrison, MPH, RDSo right off the bat, I was just struck by, Wait a second, Emily. My understanding of your work is that you are data driven. You analyze this so carefully, and yet, these basic tenets of good data analysis—correlation, not causation, and understanding the confounding variables—you are suddenly willing to throw out the window in order to do a whole episode about how do we get kids’ BMIs down. And then immediately after setting up the problem, she’s like, “We’ve tried all these things, to fight childhood obesity, and none of them have worked.” And she specifically starts to talk about, Let’s Move, which was Michelle Obama’s big initiative in 2008 where she danced with Big Bird and overhauled school lunches and was really focused on, we are going to get the childhood obesity rate down by 5 percent. And instead, that did not happen. Child obesity rates went up. So, you know, by its own metrics, Let’s Move was a pretty big failure. Then Emily also talks about Cookie Monster, who was part of the whole Michelle Obama stuff. There’s a famous Cookie Monster bit where he’s debating whether to eat cookies or broccoli. Then she says, “Cookies are very tempting. At the core of concerns about children’s weight is the fact that kids are eating an inordinate amount of unhealthy food.”CorinneYikes. VirginiaI’m just already frustrated because we’re leapfrogging wildly. To be fair, the title of the episode is, “Are we feeding kids the wrong foods?” She wanted to do an episode about food. But then why do we need to frame it in weight?CorinneSo her rise to popularity was for questioning these correlations we have between babies’ health and breastfeeding, or pregnancy and alcohol, but now that it’s about weight…she’s just buying into it. VirginiaIt’s a really strange pivot. The next chunk of the episode is where Emily starts getting upset about food advertising and talking about how much advertising kids get, which, like, I don’t disagree. Food advertising to children is shady. She quotes a mom from Ohio who talks about her kids getting influenced by Mr. Beast to want to drink some sugary energy drink. But then she also starts to blame parents, and in particular, she talks about how the average parent now only cooks four meals per week, as if this is like a major fail.CorinneYikes. I mean, who has time? I might only cook four meals a week.VirginiaI mean, that’s actually a lot of meals. Like, that’s most weeknights. You figure Friday and Saturday you might do something more fun and you probably need a break some other night. Why I Hate Cooking Right NowVirginia Sole-Smith·October 25, 2024Read full storyCorinneEspecially if you’re working 40 hours a week or more than that. VirginiaOr work a job that has you out of the house at dinner time.There are a million reasons why the average parent only cooks four meals a week. What I’m also noticing is this subtle, parent-blaming thread starting to come through. Which, again, feels so at odds with her earlier work, which was so grounded in the data. You can make your own choices about whether to drink. You can make your own choices about breastfeeding. Let’s give people the information and let them make their own choices. This is not that.CorinneIt also seems like even if you were kind of following her logic up until this point, you could reach a different conclusion. Even if you’re saying, okay, yes, certain chronic diseases are on the rise, maybe part of the problem is the food system. Then leaping to blame parents for not cooking enough is just… tough. VirginiaWell, and it’s a very conservative approach, right? To use that angle, as opposed to looking at what are the larger systemic reasons. If we really need all American parents to be cooking dinner, what support do American parents need to be cooking dinner? You need to let people go home from their jobs at four o’clock. There needs to be an entire culture or shift that we have not made, and have made no steps towards. CorinneYeah, I’m thinking the problem might be capitalism, white supremacy culture, perfectionism. Lack of community care and involvement in raising children. VirginiaYes, yes, yes. Who’s watching your kids while you’re cooking dinner? So many reasons why. Like, relying on American parents—and let’s be honest, we’re saying American mothers to cook dinner, to fight the childhood obesity epidemic? This cannot be the answer, guys. This is some Michael Pollan retrograde bullshit that I can’t believe I’m still having to talk about. CorinneAnd that’s not even the end.VirginiaOh we are nowhere near the end. So the episode then pivots into a weird clip which is not credited, and I could not tell who it was, but it was some body positive influencer talking about the evils of diet culture. It’s a little sound bite she throws in and then Emily responds to the sound bite. So, Corinne, can you read this next block?CorinneThere is today less stigma about weight, which is good. It’s really good. When I was growing up, I remember how cruel people were to overweight kids, and I know from being a mom that that kind of bullying still sometimes happens. What I think has changed is that such behavior is now considered wrong and despicable, and there is a growing stigma against people who bully in that way, rather than towards the overweight person. But the other thing that’s happened, perhaps inadvertently, is that people, including health experts, have stopped speaking out loud about the real health risks of obesity.VirginiaCorinne, how do you feel about that the weight stigma is gone now?CorinneI mean. Said like a true thin person. Like, how the heck would she know?VirginiaWell, she just knows. As a mother, she knows? CorinneI really haven’t heard about anyone being stigmatized for bullying fat people. VirginiaNo, that is new to me.CorinneIs there any evidence to back this up? Or is this just pure Emily Oster speculation?VirginiaJust her musings, I think. I do think that, much like you were saying about the whole Bari Weiss, anti-woke culture, there is a certain group that complains, like, “you can’t even make fat jokes anymore.” In kind of the same vein as, “men can’t even harass their secretaries anymore!” I think it is hard that now we have standards for not being an asshole to people. But I actually don’t think that standard is that rigorous around weight. In a lot of social settings, fat jokes are still pretty accepted. I don’t think that we have made this much progress!CorinneThis kind of reminds me of the whole #MeToo thing and how people were like, “But Louis CK’s career is ruined!”  VirginiaHow will these white frat boys get to a good law firm after Stanford?CorinneObviously this is speculation on my part, but is she saying this because…you wrote a book? VirginiaI fixed it. Did you not know that? Did you not know that my book fixed it? CorinneIs this your fault actually??VirginiaYou’re welcome.CorinneYou wrote a book about fat stigma, and it stopped existing, and so this is your fault.VirginiaI erased it, so now you can go back to being mean about fatness, because we have to make everyone thin. That was actually the master plan all along. I mean, this was a real heartbreak moment for me, because again, Emily has been personally lovely about my work and supportive of it in many ways in the past.But I think that a lot of folks who work on “obesity prevention” have started to really grasp that it is important that they name the existence of weight stigma or anti-fatness. Anytime I interview someone who does mainstream obesity research now, they are fully willing to acknowledge that that is a terrible thing. Whereas five years ago, 10 years ago, when I was reporting on these issues, they were not willing to acknowledge stigma was real. They were framing weight as a personal responsibility problem. And now the party line is absolutely, weight is not a matter of personal responsibility. It’s biology—and that’s why we made these drugs. So we can fix it for you. That’s where they’ve gone. But that is not the same as saying that there is no stigma.Their rhetoric against weight stigma is being used to sell more weight loss, which perpetuates the stigma. CorinneYeah. I mean, it’s obvious to me that weight stigma still exists.VirginiaBecause you fly on airplanes and buy clothes and move through the world.CorinneBecause I live in the world. Is there a way to measure weight stigma? VirginiaWell, actually, yes. We can link to the interview I did with Jeff Hunger. Jeff Hunger is a weight stigma researcher who I think would be quite surprised to hear that weight stigma no longer exists. Can We Conquer Anti-Fat Bias?Virginia Sole-Smith·December 1, 2022Read full storyCorinneYeah, I recall him saying in that episode that there was a lot of proof that becoming aware of stigma and doing implicit bias training didn’t actually get rid of stigma.VirginiaYes. They don’t really know yet what works to reduce the stigma from a data perspective, because the traditional things have not been working. Because the stigma has not been going down. Then there is a study that came out of Harvard in 2019 which found that while some forms of bias are decreasing—like we are making some progress towards less homophobia, less anti-Black racism, there’s some shift towards neutrality there, not to say those biases aren’t still huge problems because they absolutely are. [Post-recording note: Again, this was recorded before the election!] But we were seeing tiny drops. We are not seeing that drop when it comes to anti-fat bias, and that was the bias in the study that was actually increasing the most. CorinneOh.VirginiaOkay, so it’s going to get even worse. Well, I don’t know if worse is the right word? But it’s definitely going to get really weird and super, super retrograde. Something I kept thinking throughout this whole episode was: Did you make this podcast in 2009 because so much of the conversation just feels like, how are we still having this conversation? The thing that happens next is Emily brings on Sam Kass, who is the Obama’s former private chef. He made them dinner every night when they were in the White House. And he also partnered with Michelle Obama on Let’s Move. He was kind of like her chef consultant. So I want to be clear that Sam Kass is not a nutritionist. He is not a public health researcher. He is not a doctor. He is a private chef who has a lot of opinions about food. He’s also now on the board of Plezi Nutrition, which is Michelle Obama’s fruit juice brand, which I wrote about last year.Michelle Obama Is Not Coming To Save UsVirginia Sole-Smith·May 23, 2023Read full storyI don’t consider him a thought leader on the question of our children’s health, because he has no medical or scientific qualifications to be a thought leader on children’s health. But Emily brings him on the podcast and he starts to explain to Emily that his plan was to get into the White House, and the big thing that he and Michelle originally wanted to do was to get rid of the crop subsidies for corn and sugar that have made the American diet so unhealthy. Which, I don’t know how much you followed that story, especially back in the mid 2000s.CorinneI remember that being a big Michael Pollan thing. VirginiaTotally, totally. And I think that there’s a lot of logic towards changing the way the crop subsidy situation works, and not giving industry so much incentive to grow so much corn.However, the Obamas were not able to achieve that in Washington. They made zero progress on crop subsidies. And so, as Sam Kass explains to Emily, that actually wasn’t ever the solution. That wasn’t the right thing that they should have done in the first place. So, why don’t you read the Sam Kass quote here?CorinneI came running into the White House ready to go, like we’re empowered now we can fix this. It’s not the subsidies that are producing our food environment, it’s our culture. And it’s our culture that has been influenced and shaped by the industry who has pumped billions, probably trillions of dollars, over the last 40 to 50 years to shape our attitudes, norms and behaviors, but fundamentally, our culture is supporting what we choose. I think we have a culture that has separated the connection between what we put in our bodies and the impact it has on our health.VirginiaSo again, this is another way of saying, “it’s our fault.”But what is culture? That is a vague entity.CorinneIt kind of feels like they were like, “Actually, you know what? It’s too hard to fight back against the billions of dollars that the industry is using to lobby our government, and instead we’re going to blame individual personal behavior.”VirginiaWhich, again, is a weird conservative pivot. And there are lots of food activists and child health activists who have been critical of Let’s Move because of this, because they didn’t get this done. And clearly he has decided that it didn’t matter that they didn’t get it done, because if American moms would just fucking cook dinner, then we wouldn’t have this problem. Okay, so that was a lot. But then Emily brings on Pamela Druckerman. So Corinne, do you know who Pamela Druckerman is?CorinneI do not.VirginiaOkay. Pamela Druckerman, is best known for writing a book called Bringing Up Bebe. She is a journalist who lives in France and writes about French culture. Bringing Up Bebe —which came out in 2011 so it’s almost 15 years old— is a book all about how the way French children are brought up leads them to be gourmet eaters and the way American kids are brought up leads them to be terrible eaters.My main memory of her—the book came out before I was a parent, but I remember her appearing on The Today Show wearing a beret. And again, she’s American. But she was living in France and deciding to write about how amazing French children are and how amazing the whole French parenting system is. So it is a book about how to parent like a French person, and how to feed your child like a French person.CorinneYou know what else I hear is really amazing about France?VirginiaWhat’s that?CorinneThe healthcare and postpartum care and stuff. I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.VirginiaThe government-funded free preschool is probably also a pretty amazing thing. But Pamela Druckerman says no, specifically it’s the way French kids eat. Because, according to her, French kids from the age of like three are capable of sitting through a multi course dinner. They are capable of having dinner later at night. This is somehow super important, I guess, because it makes you cooler if you don’t eat dinner at 5pm? They can behave in restaurants. They don’t need to bring iPads into restaurants. They don’t eat Goldfish. They don’t need sippy cups, they are eating like tiny gourmet adults at all times.CorinneThis also reminds me of the French Women Don’t Get Fat thing. VirginiaCorrect, correct. CorinneIt’s also just like, what? So the solution is just we all moved to France? Or…?VirginiaYes, yes, that is one solution on the table.CorinneOr we get government-funded childcare? VirginiaThat would probably do so much more. That never gets suggested in this episode. Emily never suggests that the government should fund child care. But she does talk to Pamela for a long time about how the French people get their kids to like food.Pamela explains that you can make kids like vegetables, if you just tell them they are delicious and serve them sitting down at a table.So that’s some really useful advice for all of us. CorinneYeah, it notoriously works great to just tell someone they like something they don’t.Virginia“Carrots are delicious!” I can just imagine my children staring at me in absolute disgust. So Emily responds to Pamela talking about the carrot thing by saying, “I can hear all the American parents now, but what about my picky eater? In their defense, there’s pretty clear data that between the ages of two and six, children get pickier, but France has a fix for that!”And then Pamela explains what the fix is. This is a really long quote, but do you want to read this?CorinnePartly, what happens in France is that kids don’t eat between meals. So when they come to the table, they’re hungry. You kind of learn from an early age to tolerate not starvation level hungriness, but like having a slight pit in your stomach where you want to eat, and that pit has not been satisfied. So you get to the table and you’re more apt to eat what’s put in front of you because you’re hungry for it. You haven’t been snacking. You know, your mom didn’t give you a banana 20 minutes ago, because you were whining, she said, We’re going to eat in 20 minutes. Go play and come back, and then the first thing that’s served in this moment in the meal is a vegetable. It’s not rocket science, any of this.VirginiaI want Pamela to come to my house and talk to my children 20 minutes before dinner. I just am so annoyed about this! I don’t know. Tell me what you’re thinking.CorinneIt just sounds like if your kids are hungry enough, they’ll eat vegetables.VirginiaYes, and that they should be accustomed to walking around with a pit in their stomach all the time because you don’t let them have snacks.CorinneHungry children are annoying. VirginiaThey are!  CorinneI mean, even just speaking for myself, I am not the nicest, funnest, smartest person when I’m hungry.VirginiaNope, nope. I find this really insidious, this idea that we should teach kids to tolerate hunger is a really creepy notion to me. because I think any girl who came of age in the 90s has a lot of experience with learning to, quote, tolerate hunger. And it didn’t work out great for us. This is not the goal. This is a dieting behavior. CorinneIsn’t the whole thing that when you feel really hungry, that often backfires and ends up with like bingeing or overeating?VirginiaIt just seems like you’re teaching kids to live with this experience of deprivation, which some kids bodies might do totally fine with, right? People get hungry at different rates. There are people who can eat only three times a day, and that works really well for them, and that’s awesome. But that doesn’t mean that’s going to work really well for everybody. And little kids in particular have small stomachs that empty fast. They don’t want to go six hours without eating. That is going to be meltdown city.CorinneIt’s also like, when does this start? Because I don’t think anyone’s telling breastfeeding mothers, “Wait until your baby is starving and has a pit in their stomach to feed them.” You know?ShareVirginiaI think as soon as they’re off, breast milk is when it starts. Because she talks about being at the playground at 10am with the toddlers, and nobody’s carrying around little bags of Cheerios because the kids don’t expect to have snacks at the playground. Because they know they’re going to wait till they go home and eat lunch. I drive around in my Subaru at all times with a box in the back of my car filled with snacks. And we don’t always need them. It’s fine. But I don’t want to get caught somewhere with a hungry, grumpy child. If I’m sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office and it’s taking 40 minutes when I thought it was going to take 15, I’m really glad to have that bag of Goldfish. She’s equating snacking with sloth and excess when it’s just like parenting your child, responding to their needs, recognizing that they are getting hungry, and maybe you are too, and everyone will feel better with a snack.CorinneYeah, it feels like a confusing solution.VirginiaAnd again, just not very replicable. She describes the way the French schools serve lunch and how it’s this very elaborate presentation, and they get three year olds to sit around a table and use silverware. Nobody is trying that in the United States. Even if there are lessons we can learn from that, nobody is attempting to replicate that here. So any individual parent trying to replicate that at home is just making their lives really complicated.CorinneThis is where we get into the systemic versus personal stuff again, too. Maybe it works in France because they have a totally different system. Maybe parents have more energy to tolerate kids screaming when they’re hungry because they’re not working 60 hours a week. Maybe kids are less hungry when they get home from school because they have a nice five course meal at school. You can’t take one part of the system and and bring it over here and just blame parents for not doing enough. VirginiaExactly.So then Emily decides she needs to find an American mother who is doing this so we can all learn from her. She brings in a woman named Ellie, who I think we would affectionately call an almond mom. Ellie never lets her kids buy the school lunch. She cooks from scratch at home. They are a vegetarian household. She doesn’t shop the middle of the grocery store. She only shops the perimeter, and she doesn’t let her kids have fast food or really, any processed food. Do you want to read this quote? CorinneWait, I need more information. Is Ellie, like a friend of Emily’s? Who the f is Ellie?VirginiaNo. She’s just a mom. Sprinkled throughout this episode, she just brings in regular moms to share their stories of feeding their kids. Her producers probably cast around to find people.CorinneUm, does she also share Ellie’s income?VirginiaShe does not.  CorinneOkay. Anyways, Ellie says about her children. They say, can we have Cheetos and mac and cheese? And we’re like, there’s nothing in that that nourishes you. Every single element of that meal is chemicals. So we might look at the box or something and talk about the difference between the way chemicals make things taste good and just the taste of food.VirginiaSo to be clear, this quote is presented with zero context or follow up, even though it contains wildly inaccurate statements. First of all, all food is chemicals, water is a chemical, air is a chemical. Christy Harrison broke this down really clearly about why Emily should have called out the chemical thing as just being blatantly wrong. You cannot say that mac and cheese contains more chemicals than homemade pasta. They are all foods. So Emily is bringing in this woman’s story and holding her up as an example, even though the woman’s position is “no processed foods, no matter what.” But Emily has already written about the fact that the processed foods debate is overblown and the health risks have not been proven by the data.CorinneYeah, it’s also like, what is the proof that this parent is doing something better? That her kids aren’t fat?VirginiaYeah, that’s a great point. We never hear actually any details about her kids. But I’m going to go out on a limb and guess they aren’t fat just because I don’t think Emily would have brought in the mom of a fat kid and held her up as an example.CorinneBut also, just because the kids aren’t fat now doesn’t mean that they won’t be fat someday.VirginiaIt also doesn’t mean they’re not freaking losing their minds and eating all the Cheetos when they go to their friend’s house.CorinneYeah, they go to your house and eat nine Oreos. VirginiaYou don’t let them buy school lunch and you control the food in your house, but your kids are growing up and going out into the world where all of this food is—and you have been telling them that it’s poison and they shouldn’t want it, and yet they know it tastes good.And Emily really celebrates that this mom says, “we have a dialogue about it. And we always explain why something is bad and they can’t have it.” And that is held up as if, that’s good communication between the parent and child. But it reminds me a lot more of the protein mom weighing her food and explaining to her daughter why she’s weighing her food. Just because you’re giving your child a lot of information about your food decisions does not mean you are teaching them to have a healthy relationship with food. Protein Moms and the "Eating Enough" MythVirginia Sole-Smith·October 18, 2024Read full storyThe other reason I know Ellie’s kids are not fat is then because Emily does want to hear from the mom of a kid in a bigger body. So she brings on Karen, and Karen has a six year old in a bigger body who she’s really worried about in terms of feeding her child. And Karen’s story in this episode really breaks my heart, because she’s the only person in this whole episode who has directly experienced any anti-fat bias. She talks about having experienced herself growing up, and then how it’s kind of doubled since she had a child who’s in a bigger body. She’s constantly made to feel like she’s doing something wrong, that it’s a moral failing that her daughter is in a bigger body. She also talks a lot about her guilt that she had to formula feed her daughter as a baby, and how she was constantly wondering if she was overfeeding her or if formula is the reason why she’s bigger.She says the constant thought in the back of her mind was, “Are you giving your baby too much food?”CorinneOh, that’s so sad.VirginiaIt’s so sad. I’ve heard that story a lot, that that is the message, especially parents of bigger babies get around formula. And it’s just, I mean, to your point earlier, no one would say to a breastfeeding mom, are you feeding them too much? Like it’s such hypocrisy.This clip, I think, was Emily’s attempt to throw a bone towards the importance of combating anti-fatness, because Karen does sound like she’s really trying to push back against that pressure. She wants to raise her daughter to feel good about her body. She tells a story of a kid at a birthday party called her daughter fat, and her daughter was just like, we don’t talk about people’s bodies. And good for that kid, for handling that so well. So she sounds conflicted, but like she’s trying to not raise her daughter to feel ashamed about all of this. But then Emily just kind of drops that story and gives no support for that perspective. And she makes this really odd speech. So another long one for you to read, Corinne.CorinneKaren’s experience with her daughter brings up the bigger question, how much of obesity and overweight is in our control and how much is just biological? Shaming people for being overweight is unequivocally wrong, but sometimes, especially in recent years, the goal of trying not to offend people has led to a shift in the conversation and a lot of confusion about the very real effects of obesity on health.You might hear it’s possible to be healthy at Every Size. While yes, it’s absolutely possible to be healthy at a range of weights and sizes. And no, not everyone needs to be a size two to be healthy. And in fact, for some people, a size two would mean they are not healthy. But it’s also true that, on average, many diseases and health complications and health outcomes are more likely for people who are obese.VirginiaSo again, it’s like, “Don’t shame people. Shaming people is so bad. Also, people are so unhealthy if they’re fat.”CorinneShe’s saying people have become scared to say that the problem is being fat or something. VirginiaYes, yes. They’re being silenced. And again, I think every fat person who’s been to the doctor really feels like that message isn’t getting out to us.CorinneRight? And again, the correlation versus causation thing, she’s implying that all of these diseases, health complications, and health outcomes are the cause of obesity, when we really don’t know that.VirginiaJust to break down correlation causation further: When we say these diseases are more likely for people with high BMI, we don’t know that the high BMI is what causes the increased risk for thes diseases. We know that these two things happen together in some cases, but we don’t understand the relationship. So it could be that the diseases cause the weight increase. It could be that the weight increase sometimes causes the diseases. It could be that they are two unrelated things, but they have a shared root cause.And in every one of those scenarios, the concern should be the disease, not the body size. What can you do for the disease? And if that changes body size, fine. But if it doesn’t change body size, that doesn’t mean you’ve failed if you can make improvements on the disease.I feel like I have been making a version of that speech for 10 years now, and yet this episode is still out there, so that’s fine. I’m tired. CorinneIt just sucks because it felt like Emily Oster was someone who could wrap her head around that.VirginiaI did think that.But part of why I think she is not wrapping her head around that anymore—at least in this episode,—is because she then brings in another expert, this guy, Robert Davis, PhD, who is the author of The Healthy Skeptic. He is a health journalist with a public health PhD, but again, he’s not a doctor or a researcher. He writes mainstream, commercial books. But if you didn’t understand his background, you would interpret him in this episode as being the voice of medicine and science. He is brought in as a very credentialed expert who we are going to take seriously as having the final word on this topic. And this is what Robert Davis has to say about Health at Every Size:CorinneThe pendulum has swung too far when it comes to the idea of body positivity and HAES. The effort to fight those ideas from diet culture is a good thing. But if we then say, well, let’s just forget about promoting weight loss or promoting a healthy weight and let’s just say people should be able to sort of eat what they feel like and eat dessert at dinner and go with intuitive eating and what they feel like eating. I think that’s a big mistake, because, again, we know that these foods that we’re talking about are designed to trick our brains and make us want more of them.VirginiaSo, it’s great to fight back against diet culture, but don’t go so far as to eat dessert at dinner. That’s a bridge too far for Robert Davis.CorinneFighting diet culture is good, but we shouldn’t go far as to say that weight loss isn’t good.VirginiaIt’s unclear what he wants to fight from diet culture, because he really wants to keep quite a lot of diet culture. And I should also say Robert Davis just published an article on The Free Press, with the headline, “Diets are Bad. Ignoring Childhood Obesity is Even Worse.” The subhead is “Activists tell parents not to fat shame an overweight child, or make them go on a diet, but parents who refuse to tackle the issue are putting their kids’ lives at risk.”And by activists, he means me, because he calls me out in the article as a “prominent ‘fat activist,’” who he thinks is getting everything wrong about this. So obviously, Robert and I are not going to, like, go to dinner and hang. CorinneEven if we agreed that child obesity was a problem, there’s still not a solution. Dieting or putting your kid on a diet isn’t going to solve it. So it’s just very confusing to be like, “parents aren’t fighting back against this thing.”What does Robert want us to do? VirginiaI’m glad you asked. Let’s go to his article, because he does have a lot of a lot of specific ideas that I will try to read with a straight face. So he says: “Avoid restrictive diets. They don’t work and they can make the problem even worse. Instead, children should be encouraged to eat mainly whole foods, including colorful fruits, veggies, beets, beans, nuts, seeds, fish, lean poultry and whole grains.”Children, famously fans of seeds.CorinneAnd fish. VirginiaThat’s an easy sell. Virginia“Involving kids in grocery shopping and cooking their own food gives them a sense of agency and will get them excited about eating well and using cookie cutters to slice fruits and vegetables into fun shapes like hearts and stars, where serving veggies with dips can make these foods more enticing.”CorinneThis is really reminding me of Kids Eat In Color.The Ballerina Farm of Kid Food InstagramCorinne Fay and Virginia Sole-Smith·March 7, 2024Read full storyVirginiaYes, yes, it is. CorinneAnd once again, I feel like the problem is capitalism. Like, sure, I will cut celery into stars if I don’t have to have a job.VirginiaI cannot listen to a white man tell women to cut their kids fucking vegetables into hearts and stars. I cannot do it.I am incandescent with rage about this. I am sorry.  Mothers have enough to do. We do not need your guilt trip. I do not need to hear that I need to stop using Instacart and take my kids to the grocery store, an experience that will make all of us cranky and tired.CorinneDo we think that Robert J. Davis has children? VirginiaHe probably does? But does he have a wife who does all of this? Also probably yes.This advice is so simplistic. It is so ignorant of the context of family’s lives.If you have a kid who is picky, I mean, genuinely picky and rigid around food choices.If you have a neurodivergent kid who’s reliant on a lot of processed foods as the safe foods.If you are on a tight budget.There are one thousand reasons that you cannot eat like this.He does go on to say, “How about we also get rid of screen time?” So that’s another helpful suggestion. “Have a regular game day on weekends where the entire family enjoys a fun physical activity out of the house, like hiking or bike riding.”CorinneMy God. I just really feel like these people don’t live in the real world.VirginiaLike, my kid’s dad takes them hiking every weekend. They may still end up in bigger bodies. If it’s something you all enjoy, that’s wonderful. This may not move the needle on body size, because body size is not determined solely by lifestyle habits. And if you’re telling people that they have to do all of these things to control body size, and it doesn’t work, that’s going to backfire and cause bigger problems.So I’m just very tired. I’m very tired of all of this. CorinneI am determined to find out if this guy has kids, and just for the record, he’s not wearing a wedding ring in his videos. I just feel like there’s no way this guy is speaking from personal experience, you know? Like he’s just spouting bullshit that he read somewhere. VirginiaHe talks about having been in a bigger body himself and his mom putting him on diets as a child. And I have all the empathy in the world for that. But please do not think you are helping anybody by telling us to cut fruit into a fucking heart shape. I will take my cookie cutters and melt them down. My child would not eat a kiwi if it was shaped like a star if I paid her. It’s not gonna happen.  So, I think it’s pretty clear where we land on all of this, but Emily does have one final speech in the episode which sums up where she is landing on this. And we can read that and then have feelings. CorinneWhat will it take to get more vegetables and fruits into the hands of kids and families? That, in my view, is the core question. But the cultural problem is just as pernicious. As we learned from Pamela in France, Carrots are just delicious, objectively. In America, that’s not a fact. I’d say here, Doritos are objectively delicious, and therein lies the problem.What would it take to have more parents like Ellie who simply refuses to give her kids fast food, who prioritizes fruits and vegetables for them because she knows and has told her children that that’s what’s good for bodies. She’s setting them up for a much better chance at good health.VirginiaShe’s also setting them up for a much higher risk of an eating disorder. I mean, the fact that we’re ending the episode by saying Ellie—who is the most restrictive parent in the episode—is doing it right, really says a lot to me about where Emily is landing on these issues now. And, just how useful this whole conversation could be to any parent, if the takeaway is you need to be rigorously cooking from scratch, getting your kids to like fruits and vegetables at any cost.None of this is new advice. None of this has worked before. This is the Let’s Move playbook, which Emily herself acknowledges did not do anything to move the needle on childhood obesity. CorinneYeah, and this whole thing about it being like a cultural problem is so mind boggling to me, because when I hear “but it’s a cultural problem,” I’m like, yes, it’s a systemic problem. How is Ellie telling her kids that carrots are delicious solving a cultural problem? That’s just one person? VirginiaYou’re defining culture as social systems and structures, and she’s defining culture as personal preferences. And that is not accurate. This whole pivot into personal responsibility, again, I feel like, is really at odds with her earlier work. And it’s just very aligned with The Free Press and with being in a more conservative media outlet, which is what’s happening here. And I’m sorry to see it.Again, I do think Emily is fundamentally a smart person. I’ve had a lot of respect for her work over the years, and it’s hard to see this transition. The last thing I’ll say is on a personal note: Emily, if you listen to this episode, I hope you’re still letting your kids eat their Halloween candy. Because one thing I did achieve a few years ago was persuading her not to count out her kids Halloween candy anymore. And I just hope you haven’t changed on that one, because I really want your kids to enjoy their candy. All right, well, I’m excited to hear what everyone thinks about all of this. I’m sure there will be many diverse opinions. We welcomeThis section contains affiliate links. Shopping our links is a great way to support Burnt Toast!ButterCorinneFor my Butter, I want to shout out this new collaboration between Universal Standard and Jordan Underwood. They did send me a pair of pants and a tank top for free, So little caveat there. And I will say that I tried them on and then ordered some more stuff, so…VirginiaThey sent it for free and and were effective in getting you to buy more of it! CorinneYeah, it definitely worked. It’s a little capsule collection of some clothes that I think Jordan had something to do with designing, and they’re more androgynous pieces. There’s a pair of cargo pants and a cropped tank and a flannel and some sweats. But they’re really cool, and I think people should check them out.VirginiaI am obsessed with the crop tank. I think I need it.CorinneYeah, it’s really nice because it’s both high neck, which I feel like can be kind of hard to find in a tank, and it hits right at your pants waistline. VirginiaIt’s like, the perfect amount of crop. It’s not belly-baring, which would be fine, but we’re getting into colder weather here. It’s just the right fit. CorinneAlso seems like it would be really great to wear under stuff, because sometimes you don’t want a long tank under a shorter shirt.VirginiaI’m very excited to check out the collaboration. CorinneWhat’s your Butter?VirginiaMy Butter is something I have talked about many times, but it is not in the official library of Butter, which seems important to remedy. So my Butter is Meredith Dairy Marinated Sheep and Goat Cheese, which is the world’s best cheese. I will die on this mountain forever. I thanked this cheese in the acknowledgements of my book, CorinneOh my gosh. VirginiaI thanked other people, too, Corinne. I thanked you! But you know, I did shout out the cheese. And when I updated the paperback edition, I continued to shout out the cheese. Stand by that forever.It is a really good creamy goat slash sheep cheese, and it comes in this really delicious oil. Again, I’ve talked about it so many times. I feel like people are gonna be like, yeah, yeah, we know the cheese. But I just need it to be officially in the records as the best cheese. CorinneI have never tried it, so I am going to search this out. VirginiaI know Costco sells it. It’s not a super hard to find thing anymore. A lot of grocery stores are carrying it. I know at Costco you can even get a bigger jar. I get it from a local grocery store, but I’ve definitely seen it more and more places. Because whenever I talk about it, people around the country tell me how much they love this cheese. So I know people in Wisconsin are having it, people in Oregon are having it.It is a great cheese, and you can eat it straight. You can put it on toast with some jam of some sort. It’s very delicious. I also like to as when the jar is almost empty, save the like final bit of cheese in the oil and use that in pasta or salad dressing, and it’s life changing and delicious. CorinneThat sounds really good. VirginiaYep, I’m just glad to have it officially in the record of butter. That was something I needed to remedy, so thank you.Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Mara Gordon, a family physician and advocate for size-inclusive medicine, dives deep into the shortcomings of the healthcare system regarding fatphobia. She discusses how traditional practices often neglect the needs of individuals in larger bodies and emphasizes the importance of patient-centered care. Mara also highlights the launch of an initiative for weight-inclusive medicine and navigates the complexities of prediabetes, arguing for a more personalized healthcare approach. The conversation is both enlightening and a call to action for better advocacy in medical spaces.

In this engaging conversation, Amy Palanjian, a beloved blogger and author known for Yummy Toddler Food, dives deep into the realities of single motherhood. She and Virginia Sole-Smith explore the shift in meal prep after divorce, the humor in navigating cooking as a single parent, and the emotional healing through food. They share practical meal planning tips, celebrate the joys of air frying, and reflect on the significance of enjoying meals alone. This insightful chat combines heartfelt anecdotes with practical advice for those in similar situations.

It’s time for your October Indulgence Gospel. And today… we’re going to look back at all of our Butters!If you’re new here, Butter is the recommendation segment that runs at the end of every podcast episode. Butter is sometimes things you can buy, but it can also be a show or book we love, something great that we ate, a current mood, etc. Butter is any small moment of joy. (It can also, ofc, be literal butter, which we all know to be synonymous with joy.) But sometimes joy is fleeting!So today, paid subscribers get to hear which Butters have stood the test of time:Is Virginia still wearing her trad wife dress?Does Corinne still love her $100 baseball hat?Are we still into the bra that made us break up with underwire?Plus a few low-key life-changing household appliances, Virginia’s favorite thing about her bedroom, and what we’re definitely going to STOP recommending from now on… To hear the whole conversation or read the whole transcript, you'll need to become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. Subscribe here.If you are already a paid subscriber, you’ll have this entire episode in your podcast feed and access to the entire transcript in your inbox and on the Burnt Toast Patreon. You can also subscribe to Corinne's newsletter, Big Undies, for 20% off using this special link. To get all of the links and resources mentioned in this episode, as well as a complete transcript, visit our show page. Also, don't forget to order Fat Talk: Parenting In the Age of Diet Culture! Get your signed copy now from Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the USA). You can also order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, Kobo or anywhere you like to buy books. (Or get the UK edition or the audiobook!) Disclaimer: Virginia and Corinne are humans with a lot of informed opinions. They are not nutritionists, therapists, doctors, or any kind of healthcare providers. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions they give are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.CREDITSThe 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!Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.This transcript contains affiliate links. Shopping our links is another great way to support Burnt Toast!Episode 165 TranscriptVirginiaSo the theme of this episode was determined not just by the fact I forgot to ask people for listener questions before planning this episode. It is a theme we were going to do regardless at some point! We are going to look at all of our Butters.CorinneI’m really excited to do this because I feel like there are some that have not held up for me. And I’m just excited to remember all the things that I’ve recommended. VirginiaYeah, do we stand by that Butter? That’s really the headline here. I think this us a good thing for us to do periodically, since we are a show that both regularly recommends products and yet also wrestles with our relationship with consumerism. I, in particular, am on the receiving end of some valid criticisms on that front, and it’s good for me to look at that. And also look back at this and be like, wow I bought that thing and I don’t use it at all anymore.But first, Corinne, we need to talk about your closet. How is your closet?CorinneYes, so I’m I’m taking the tiniest steps towards a closet clean out.VirginiaVery excited for you. CorinneYes, I decluttered my gym clothes, which was a mini version of my whole closet. There’s a lot more to do. I also I’m going to a clothing swap tomorrow, so I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to bring to that.VirginiaThat’s a good chance to get rid of a lot of things and hopefully not acquire too many more things. But no judgment! This is a safe space.CorinneI know. I have made the mistake in the past of getting stuff from clothing swaps, I guess because it’s free, and then just never wearing it. VirginiaOh, 100 percent. I remember, a million years ago, going to a clothing swap with a lot of other women’s magazines editors. So the style and quality level was high. It was not a size inclusive event, let’s be very clear. But I did get this amazing red leather purse that I used for years afterwards. I don’t know what happened to that bag. That was a good bag. CorinneThis is a group of people where we probably do it twice a year, and everyone is plus size, and we always joke that it’s like, one person passes all their stuff to this person. That person passes all their stuff to that person.VirginiaYou could just call the person you always give stuff to and be like, “Here’s your bag of clothes.”CorinneAnd actually, one of the people saw my post and was like, is this stuff coming to the clothing swap? And I was like, oh, shoot, no. I sold it.VirginiaSold the clogs! I was very interested, you had those high-heeled clogs in that post. That was a non-Corinne shoe choice. CorinneWell, I think I literally got them in like 2018 and I’ve just had them sitting around. I’m not a good declutterer.VirginiaYou’re on your decluttering journey. You’re working towards decluttering. It’s very exciting.CorinneI’m also really guilty of, like, I’ll declutter stuff from my closet and then still keep it. I have boxes of stuff in my entryway that is just stuff I need to get rid of.VirginiaI’ve been working on my basement, which was a real situation, because my kids’ dad moved out and left some stuff. And neither one of us knew how to deal with this chaos basement. And I’ve got it almost all under control. His stuff is in a clear pile for him to come over and decide what to do, there’s a big donate pile. And then there’s this closet that I’m just calling the Closet of Doom. And I just don’t open it and I don’t know what’s in it, and I don’t want to know. CorinneI think it’s okay to have one doom closet.VirginiaI think everyone needs a Closet of Doom. But your primary clothing closet should not be your closet of doom.I’m also excited for you because I know there are various infrastructure concerns like your house has old, small closets and everything—but there is going to come a point where you’re going to get to go to The Container Store or something and get the cute stuff to organize the closet. And I personally—see previous statement about complicated relationship with consumerism—find that part of closet organization very affirming. CorinneTotally, yeah. I’m kind of using that as my carrot to get through this. VirginiaYou’re getting there. You’re getting there. I feel it coming. And you can follow along on Corinne’s whole closet journey onBig Undies.It’s really good stuff, definitely make sure you’re on the list. The Burnt Toast Review of ButtersWe’ll drop links throughout but if you want links to everything Virginia loved in this episode, find them here.For links to everything Corinne loved in this episode, find them here.VirginiaCorinne, the first one I have for you is a recipe called Trouble Cookies from a cookbook called Mother Grains.CorinneOkay, that is a really good cookie recipe. And I’m glad to be reminded of it.VirginiaWell, that’s exciting. CorinneI still own that cookbook, although I haven’t used it in a bit, but that is a good recipe. I stand by it. VirginiaYou will be re-making these.CorinneOkay, your first one is “breaking up with underwire bras,” and then specifically, True and Co bras, and the Paloma bra from Girlfriend Collective. VirginiaI totally stand by breaking up with underwire bras. I still do have a couple, because I feel like there are certain fashion situations where you need a certain style of bra to work with a thing. So they come out for very limited use. I feel like they’re…event-focused. If I wear an underwire bra for more than two hours, I did it wrong. Day to day, absolutely not. Which is a big evolution for me. I will say the True and Co bras—I cannot stand by anymore as a daytime, leave the house bra. I’m not someone who needs a bra to sleep, but there are just points in the month, thanks perimenopause, where everything’s sensitive and I don’t want to go bra-less at all. The True and Co bra is really good for sleeping in, or wearing around the house, where you just feel like you need a little something. But it is not a very supportive bra, so I don’t wear it out in the world anymore.But the Paloma bras from Girlfriend Collective, I do still wear pretty frequently. And then I think what really replaced the True and Co Bras for me were the Evelyn and Bobbie bras. I’m wearing one as we speak.Find all the bras we recommend here.CorinneI am also wearing one as we speak. VirginiaThey are really, really great bras, really supportive. Well-made, non-underwire bras. I just love them. I do have one update from when we recorded that episode about Evelyn and Bobbie, though, which is I did need to go one size up, again. I now wear the 2X. According to their size chart, I had started in the XL, then I’d gone up to the 1X and I’m in the 2X and I have less band rolling with the 2x and the cups aren’t gapping or whatever. So I don’t know, you have to try all the sizes. CorinneYeah, that’s fascinating, because I think I have 3X and I had been thinking maybe I needed to size down, but that would be crazy if we were both wearing 2X.VirginiaI mean, they’re very stretchy, and yet also non stretchy? It’s hard to explain. But that’s the bra update.All right, next up. I mean, I already know the answer to this.Corinne, do you still endorse cucumber lime flavored Gatorade and the Nuun electrolyte tablets? And electrolytes as your personal religion?CorinneI am drinking water with Nuun electrolytes in it right now as we speak. But I feel like the real update here is that Virginia, you came to New Mexico, and I forced you to try some electrolytes.VirginiaYou did. CorinneAnd you hated them. VirginiaI did.They cured my altitude sickness, and made me pray for death at the same time. So they were not delicious to me. I don’t understand. They taste so salty and weird. And I don’t want a beverage to be salty unless it’s like a margarita, which this was not.CorinneI was going to say, it’s just like a margarita! VirginiaIt’s totally not like a margarita. CorinneWell, I am sure there are some other electrolyte girlies listening to this episode. I still recommend Nuun. My my current favorite flavor is strawberry lemonade, which I think is the one you tried and hated. VirginiaSome of us are electrolyte fans, some of us are aspartame fans. But I’m glad to know that you still endorse them for people who are electrolyte-curious, which is not me.CorinneOkay, your next one was a little cart from Target that you use as a To Be Read Cart.VirginiaYes, I am looking right at it, across my office. This was an idea that came fromKim BaldwinofThe Blonde Mulewho is a Burnt Toast fan, but also a great Substack-er in her own right. She had posted about having this little cart from Target which was where she put all the books that she hasn’t read yet in her TBR pile. And I was like, “I also need this in my life.” It’s great!It is never empty, so it is not accomplishing the goal of getting me to read through my TBR pile, but it is holding all of it and I just keep adding to it and I really like it.This is a job where we get sent a lot of books for like, people we’re interviewing for the podcast or people who want us to cover their books on Burnt Toast. And I always feel bad when those just sort of pile up in the corner of my office, and I don’t look at them. Because I mean to look at them. But life is, you know, a lot, and now I’m at least like, “Well, they’re all in one spot,” so I can periodically be like, oh, let me go catch up on all the books that we’ve been sent.But I think even if you don’t work with books for a living, you probably need a cart for books.All right, another banger recommendation from Corinne is just… hot dogs.CorinneI mean, what is there to say? I stand by that. Hot dogs are amazing. VirginiaWhy would you ever back away from that position? CorinneYeah, this is a good reminder to me. I need more hot dogs. VirginiaWe’re actually just meal planning now. You had specifically endorsed a fancy Co-Op brand of hot dogs. But hot dogs in general is a platform you stand behind. CorinneWhat about kittens?VirginiaYes, obviously, still pro-kittens. I think all the time about how bad I feel for my dog since we got two kittens. I do still love Penelope. Don’t worry everyone, Penelope is loved and cared for. However, she definitely knows that she’s been replaced a little bit in my heart by our cats. I want to say there’s enough love for everyone. There is. But I do play favorites with animals. And the cats are great. They’re just super chill, friendly cats that are good with my kids and adorable. They sleep all curled up together and then they eat each other’s faces. What’s not to love?And Penelope has actually come a long way with them. There’s one cat in particular she’s pretty bonded to, and then one cat who is in charge of everybody.I want to hear if you still love this ring, which is from Struggle Glass. CorinneOkay, I do still really like it. It has not broken or cracked or chipped in any way. But I will say, I have to take it off. The band part of it is round. It’s not flat, like a gold ring would be. So it’s mostly a special occasions thing. I would recommend it with that understanding. VirginiaIt’s chunky, so I can see why you just couldn’t wear it everywhere. But it’s very pretty. CorinneHow about the garden apron from the Hilton Carter Target collection?VirginiaStill love the garden apron. I didn’t wear it as much in the heat of summer, which was more about temperature. Once it gets really hot, I don’t want to be wearing a heavy waxed canvas apron in the garden. But now that I’m getting more into fall gardening, it’s definitely coming back. I think it’s very useful. It has a place to put your phone. I have lost my tools way less this summer because of using the apron.Now we’re getting into some beverage things…Little instant pour over coffee things from a brand called Copper Cow.CorinneI still like these! I shouldn’t have called them instant. They’re just ready made, pour over things. They are disposable. They’re great for traveling.VirginiaI want to get this for travel. I stayed in a hotel recently that had the worst hotel coffee and the worst hotel breakfast in general. Just stale muffins. And I was like, I need to figure out something easy to travel with. Because you just feel trapped in hotels. There’s no way to get out to the coffee! And how do I make decisions until I have the coffee? CorinneTotally, it’s a very convenient thing to have. I like it, too, because it kind of feels like a little treat. It’s delicious, and you can get them with sweetened condensed milk, which is really fun.VirginiaAnd you just add hot water?CorinneIt’s like a pop up, pour over thing. So you pour the grounds in the in this little paper thing, pour in the hot water, and it comes with a little tube of sweetened condensed milk. So I stand by that as well. VirginiaSo far all of our Butters are holding up pretty well here.CorinneWe’re going back in time and I feel like that’s where we might—Virginia It’s going to get worse. CorinneYour Ninja Portable Blender. VirginiaI love it for travel because we are a big smoothie household and you can’t always rely on a—well, certainly not a hotel, but even an Airbnb to have a blender, I’ve learned. But I also use it when it’s just me, when the kids are with their dad and I just want to make a me-size smoothie.And the other thing it’s really handy for, I’ve discovered is, like, I was making a cookie recipe, and it was rolled oats, but the recipe wanted me to grind them up first. And rather than pull out the big food processor, I could just put them in this little blender. It was so much less cleanup. You can put cheese in it, or pine nuts, or any of those little annoying chopping tasks. I’ve been using it for that, so that’s cool. This is a great tiny little baby blender. I love it. CorinneThat’s awesome. VirginiaThe Julia Louis-Dreyfus podcast, Wiser Than Me.CorinneYes. Stand by it. There’s a new season. Listen to it.1VirginiaI have still not listened to this. CorinneOh my God, what are you doing?VirginiaI will do it after we’re done recording! I will download Julia. CorinneOkay, pool snacks? VirginiaObviously, no one’s going to back away from pool snacks. If you’re going to the pool, you need snacks. I think I specifically recommended popsicles and potato chips. And you were like, electrolytes. I need the salt. And I was like, yes, but potato chips are a more delicious way to do that. And those are definitely still our main go-tos. But I do want to experiment as we now get more into hot tub weather, I might have to mix it up. We’ll see. Stay tuned. I’ll do some research.This is a particular pair of shorts you loved from Old Navy.CorinneThese were one of my most worn pairs of shorts this summer. That said, I don’t know how they’re going to hold up for next summer. And they have some issues. VirginiaWhat are the issues? CorinneI wish they had a drawstring in addition to an elastic. I could never carry my wallet in my pocket because it would drag them down. Honestly, I wish they were maybe an inch or two longer. I don’t know. You know how sometimes when you’re wearing shorts and you have belly, it’s like, the leg is too open? Are people going to be able to see my underwear? VirginiaYou feel like you’re in a skirt.CorinneSo I liked these shorts. I wore them a lot. And, they’re not perfect, which I feel like is what you expect from Old Navy.VirginiaI think I have a similar take on my next one.CorinneYour next one is the maxi shirt dress from Target.VirginiaI ended up buying two of these. I bought the green and white striped one first, and then I bought the navy blue one. And I was obsessed with them briefly, for all of late spring.CorinneIt was a button up shirt dress that had a tie at the waist, right? VirginiaIt’s a very long maxi dress but it does button and it has slits on the side, so it’s not total trad wife but there’s a little trad wife vibe to it. And part of what makes it feel Trad wife-y is rather than having a waistband, it just goes in the front the it doesn’t go around your waist. CorinneOh, I see. The front cinches. VirginiaBut not the rest. And it did start to feel—we’ve discussed before, I am someone who can sometimes get mistaken for pregnant. I don’t feel it is my work to combat that. On the other hand, do I need to wear maternity clothes? Like, it’s a fine line, you know? And I was like, “I think I am actively communicating to the world that this is a maternity dress,” at times. And that’s misleading. But it is such a comfy, breezy, easy dress. I think I’ll keep one, probably the striped one, as a pool cover up kind of dress.But I remember wearing the navy one and something about the dark color on such a big dress. I was like, I just feel like I’m drowning. It felt funereal, you know? It was just too much dress, too much dark color.CorinneThis is reminding me that with the those Old Navy shorts, I got them in blue and white, and then I got them in a green and white. And I have just have not worn the green and white at all. I feel like sometimes a mistake I make is “I like this, so I’ll get it in another color.” And then I’m like, no, the thing I actually liked was the color.VirginiaDacy Gillespiehas advised me against this many times, and she’s almost always been right. Like, often what makes you like a garment is the color. So thinking I need to own the whole rainbow of this is wrong.I also think this Target dress went kind of viral in the spring. A lot of influencers were wearing it and I think I got caught up in that. It was hard to then assess how much I actually liked it. For me, I was definitely doing, like, “oh, I look a little bit like these people.”And then the other thing is, it’s so frustrating. But Target and Old Navy, these are fast fashion brands and the clothes just don’t last that long. You wash them a few times, and the fit is not as crisp as it once was. So this is like, let’s reflect on our consumerism and buy fewer things from these brands. But also—these are the size inclusive brands.CorinneI know. I have a shirt from Target right now that I love and have been wearing a lot, and I bought another one. And because I bought one, wore it for a while, and then bought the other. I’m like, oh, these shrink so much when you wash them. Like, they still fit, but they fit really different, which sucks. VirginiaI mean, similarly, these were never a Butter but I talked a lot about the linen button down shirt and short sets this summer I wore from Target, and I loved them, but by August, they were just dingy. And I was like, this doesn’t feel cute to wear anymore. But I didn’t even see that same concept from a higher end brand that would have lasted longer. Certainly I didn’t see it in my size. So I don’t know what the solution is. I mean, I know the solution is to not support these brands if you can afford to shop elsewhere and to have fewer clothes. But I’m not doing great with that goal.CorinneI know. It’s really hard.VirginiaI know what the answer is, but I don’t like the answer. But I also don’t like the reality of these not being as good at quality as I want them to be. CorinneIt’s also so hard because I think stuff like that does exist, but you would have to be planning and watching out for it. It’s just so much extra work VirginiaIt is a lot of labor. Someone talked recently in the comments about the labor of shopping clothes and finding clothes. And it was such an excellent point because it is actually quite a lot of work to think about what you want to be wearing for a season. Plan it all out. Like, what do you really need? Like, make smart shopping choices. And sometimes I’m just going to need to be like, “This looks cute at Target. Let’s wear this, while I’m also in here picking up kitty litter.”CorinneYeah, and sometimes stuff comes up that you can’t plan for. Like, it’s like a wedding in May, and you didn’t think to buy a matching linen shorts last August. VirginiaTrue. So, fast fashion is problematic, but maybe we should be more wary of recommending them for Butters. Because we can say with an asterix, it’s probably not going to be something you wear in the long term.Are you still in love with jewelry TikTok?Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserCorinneOkay, I’m still receiving jewelry Tiktok content. I’m still enjoying jewelry Tiktok. I’m not as fully obsessed as I was. VirginiaThat was the moment in time.CorinneYes, I still really enjoying watching it, and I still aspire to build my own jewelry collection. I think I need to be realistic about how much stuff I’m wearing and what I’m wearing. I bought some little charms and stuff. And I’m like, wait, how am I going to wear these? So, still enjoying and reassessing a little bit.VirginiaOkay, that’s fair. That’s understandable.CorinneWhat about the Georgia O’Keeffe house? VirginiaTimeless, classic, never going to go out of style. Could wear it forever. Would live there forever. I still think about it, like once a week probably. If you are in New Mexico, you have to go to the Georgia O’Keeffe house.CorinneIt’s in Abiquiu, and it’s the home and studio tour.VirginiaOh God, it’s so magical. It’s such a special place. As problematic as I know as she is, the house is gorgeous, and the views are gorgeous. And just all empowered energy of this old lady making art and having lovers, who knows, in this house. Really here for it.Okay, going back to clothes for a minute. What about your men’s Abercrombie and Fitch shirt?CorinneThis is kind of a similar thing. The one that I got, I stand by, I still like and wear (similar here). and I have tried to buy a few similar ones. Notably, I bought another one this summer, and I like it okay, it just doesn’t fit quite as well. And the armpit ripped. So I’m like, oh yeah, these are actually bad quality, maybe.VirginiaIt is annoying because as someone who’s very uniform prone, when I get into a certain silhouette or a certain combination, I just want to wear it all week and not make decisions. But it can be hard because you’re like, well, I need more than one of these a week, but then how to buy duplicates without ending up in this situation? It’s very tricky. CorinneThe first Abercrombie shirt I bought, I think was from last summer, so I was trying to buy another one this summer, but it seemed like the quality and fit was different. So it’s just hard to replace stuff like that. VirginiaI am definitely noting a theme that the clothing recs are where this all starts to fall apart. CorinneWhat about your New Balance sneakers?VirginiaThese are still good. I wear these a lot for dog walking and anytime I need to do a lot of walking. I will say they’re not my day to day, going to run errands or going to whatever, because they have laces, and I am a broken person who doesn’t like to tie laces. So unless I need laces for the added ankle support, because I’m going to be moving a lot, I still day to day am wearing my Veja sneakers, which I replace the laces with slip on laces, or my Charlotte Stone rainbow sneakers, which are Velcro that I am just obsessed with.CorinneThat’s cool. VirginiaOkay. Corinne, what about bran muffins? Are we still pro-bran muffin? CorinneI’m definitely still pro-bran muffin. I will say this was a specific bran muffin recipe where you make this huge amount of batter and then each morning bake one. I still like the concept, haven’t really stuck with it.VirginiaThis is making me want to do it, though!CorinneI know it’s making me want to revisit it again. They were good. So yes, mostly yes.VirginiaYou’re allowed to eat other breakfast foods, not saying you have to have breakfast monogamy here, but I could see it’s fall now, a bran muffin might be delightful. CorinneHow about Blue? The leopard gecko? How’s Blue doing?VirginiaBlue is doing great. I’m not going to recap that one. It’s too long of a tale, so link in the show notes to get the backstory. But once we got through the syringe feeding and medication rehabilitation stage, she is a delightful, extremely low maintenance pet. She lives in her tank. The other gecko, Kat, lives in her tank. My daughter’s room is 50 percent gecko tanks, I would say. They take up a ton of space, but she’s very happy to have them both.Other than feeding them worms every other day, I think about them not at all. So of all the living creatures I am responsible for, which in my house is seven living creatures—two children, two cats, a dog, and two geckos. The geckos might be my favorite because they need so little from me. And they’re cute. I mean, they’re kind of boring pets, to be honest? But if your kid is into reptiles, they are the reptile they get. They are super low maintenance and literally impossible to kill. CorinneCan survive in a closet for months. VirginiaThey definitely can.I’m curious about this one, because you were excited about this, but this is going back aways. The Pomodoro Timer?There was something related to this, too? Was there an app or something you were doing?CorinneI just use this website, pomofocus.io that does a Pomodoro timer, and I have been using it less, but I stand by the concept.VirginiaEven if you don’t use it? CorinneI should go back to using this! I mean, it’s a timer, it’s a free thing. It’s not like you have to buy something and then you have something stuck in your house. It’s a website. But I do still like the concept of working for 20 minutes, and then you take a five minute break.VirginiaGod, my physical therapist would be so happy with me if I did this, and if I stood up at the 20 minute mark. My lower back would probably be bulletproof. CorinneYeah, I do think it’s a good way to work, but it does require something from you, which is…sticking to it.VirginiaI also can’t work that way. I am a tunnel vision worker. I get hyper-focused if I’m writing. I don’t want to get up every 20 minutes. CorinneYeah, I and to be fair, I have never used it for writing. I use it for editing transcripts.2 And I do think it’s pretty good for that. VirginiaThat makes sense. CorinneI could see it being good for cleaning? Like, vacuum for 25 minutes, take a five minute break. Or decluttering perhaps!VirginiaMy concern, not for you, but just in general, with these concepts, is that it often feels like the thing that’s going to transform your productivity. And then if you don’t stick with it, you feel failure about it. And I find that unhelpful, because of course, it wasn’t going to transform everything. We don’t need to hold ourselves to that standard.But I think if you can have the mindset of I am doing this project today where I know it’s going to be hard to stay focused, so let me use this for the next two hours. As opposed to day in, day out, I have to work this way.CorinneIt’s a tool available. I was definitely never using it day in day out. I guess what I have found it helpful for is a task that you’re dreading because you think it’s going to take a big amount of time. Instead of being like, “Okay, I need to dedicate four hours to doing this.” Be like, “Okay, I’m going to do it for 25 minutes and then I can look at my phone for five minutes.”VirginiaI like that. CorinneWhat about the Universal Standard foundation turtleneck? VirginiaYou know, this one I think is holding up. I haven’t brought them back out yet because it’s not turtleneck weather here. But I was looking at that end of my closet the other day, and I was like, “Oh, I’m excited to wear those again.” I own the deep sea and the blue, and they’re both really pretty colors. I think as long as I can avoid the boob stain, I will be wearing them again this year. CorinneThat’s great.The next one we have is “grumpy little walks.” Virginia?VirginiaI am still taking them, yes, about twice a week. I walk Penelope over to her doggy daycare. It is my grumpy little walk time, and I continue to feel annoyed by how effective they are at making me less grumpy and also probably generally healthier. I am not a fan, but that remains constant. I kind of wish I lived in a more walkable neighborhood where I did more of it. And I also don’t mind that I live a car-based existence, and I just am who I am?CorinneIt’s fair. VirginiaOkay, I’m excited to talk about your next one.This was a pair of joggers and a sweater (similar) from Naadam, the cashmere company.CorinneYes. I still recommend Naadam with some reservations. I think those joggers I got, the butt seam immediately ripped, but I think they refunded me. And I do think it’s actually a pretty good option for plus size cashmere. Their sizing runs big, like the 3x is generous, as opposed to J Crew. VirginiaYou see what I just put on? CorinneIs that your cashmere hoodie?VirginiaI got the Naadam cashmere hoodie recently, and I’m obsessed with it. I’m wearing it so much. I am in the 1X so I agree about the sizing. CorinneI have stuff from them that I’ve had for multiple years. VirginiaI did also buy the joggers. The one thing I don’t like about them is it’s a 14 day return window. 14 days, people! So it’s possible we need to do a cashmere jogger giveaway as well, because I have some extra ones that are too big for me. CorinneThe first time I bought from them it wasn’t like that. And I think as many with many companies, it’s been getting smaller. VirginiaI don’t like that at all.Also, what’s interesting is I think their plus sizing is very generous, but their straight sizing—for those of us who sometimes go in both directions—is definitely not because some of the plus sizes were so generous I then ordered an XL cardigan from the straight sized section, thinking maybe that would be more of the fit I liked for something I wanted very fitted. And it’s like, doll sized. I have to send it back, and I’m really stressed about the 14 day return window.I do think their quality and their colors are beautiful and and it’s a super ethical company we can feel good about supporting it. It’s not Old Navy and Target. But I wish it was easier to shop from.CorinneYeah, that makes sense.How are you feeling about your robot vacuum?VirginiaOkay, I have two robot vacuums. They are currently both lying on their backs turned off. They still vacuum great, but something has happened with the schedule, where they think they should turn on at 10pm at night and so I keep having these ghost vacuums waking from the dead to try to vacuum. And it’s not always 10pm sometimes it’s 8:45 sometimes it’s 9pm. I don’t know. So they’re great vacuums, but are they haunted? Question mark. Cannot confirm nor deny.CorinneI also can’t believe that these work with cats. Your cats aren’t bothered? VirginiaOh no, the cats are fine with them. My kids really dream of the day we can get the cats to ride on them, and that has not happened yet. They’re great vacuums. They really help allergies, especially if you have pets, and like me, are allergic to the cats you love so much. They’re really helpful. I notice if I don’t robot vacuum my bedroom for two or three days, my allergies immediately get worse. When I do it consistently, it’s better.But I don’t know why they’re haunted and going on at weird hours of the day. I need to sit down with the manual and figure that out. So that is my caveat. I think they’re excellent, but I don’t know the programming is… other people might be fine with it, but for me it’s complicated. What about your in/out lists?CorinneI mean, I still like the process of making an in/out list. I don’t know if I’ll make one this year, remains to be seen. And I have not revisited mine from last year.VirginiaThat’s what I wanted to know. Do you feel like it’s holding up so far this year?CorinneI think it’s probably really out of date... VirginiaBut it was a fun exercise. CorinneWhat about your push pot? Just as a reminder, this is what I would call a carafe, perhaps? Something you fill with a hot a hot drink and then push the top to dispense. VirginiaYes. I don’t know why we decided it was called a push pot, but we did. Yes, it is this giant carafe. You can fill it with 85 ounces of any hot beverage, push the top, and it dispenses it. I had visions of this being really magical for hot chocolate season and I think we used it twice? And it felt magical-ish, but then we never uses it again.I haven’t gotten rid of it. I don’t know. It seems useful, but I’m willing to admit this might have been last year’s holiday stress making me think I had to create a lot of Christmas magic for my children. CorinneI feel like the real test will be whether you use it this winter. If you pull it out and use it this winter, I feel like it could be worth it.VirginiaEven if I only use it one time?CorinneI feel like, if you use it once a year for a few years, that’s pretty good.VirginiaIt is a very specialized item. CorinneIt’s not like you’re going to use it weekly.VirginiaOkay, that makes me feel better. Stay tuned. Okay, okay, another clothing, one for you: The Pammy blouse from Fashion Brand Company.CorinneYes, I love this shirt, though I will say I’ve not worn it at all this summer.VirginiaWhy? It is such a great shirt? It’s your Indigo Girl shirt!CorinneIt is. But I didn’t bring it with me to Maine, so it’s just out of the rotation. VirginiaBut it might come back. CorinneYeah, I’m not ready to get rid of it. And it does feel like a higher quality piece.VirginiaThis feels like a classic to me. Again, we’re describing a black shirt with many silver tassels on it.CorinneIt’s a black shirt with silver fringe on the front and embroidered barbed wire around the collar. VirginiaLike I said, a true wardrobe staple. A closet classic. Something the grandmothers of New England would wear. CorinneAlso, this is another example of don’t buy all the colors. I bought a version in bright green, which I have not worn.VirginiaThat starts to feel like Halloween costume-y to me, in bright green. Whereas the black is badass. The black is the LLBean of the fringed, barbed wired embroidered shirts and the green would just be not right.But I think this is a classic Corinne wardrobe staple, and you should not declutter it, and it will come back around in a year or two, you’ll be wearing it a lot.CorinneI hope so.How are your dollhouse renovations going?VirginiaI admit they stalled. We reached a certain point where my bandwidth for this project did not continue. So it is half-renovated and sitting in my sun room downstairs. I never got the exterior painted. I really would like to paint the exterior this winter.I think the big thing that happened was warm weather happened, and I no longer want an indoor craft project. And now that that’s changing soon, I really would like to paint the exterior of this, because that impacts how it looks sitting in my house. If it was cuter from the outside, I would feel less like, “Oh, I have this half finished project in my house.”What is also interesting about this is my children are very imaginative. They do a ton of imaginative play, especially the younger one. But they decided amongst themselves that the dollhouse can only be played with if I’m participating. Like I have to do the pretend play too. And I am bad at pretend play! I’m not that mom. And they know this about me in all other contexts. But I have a character I have to play with the dollhouse. I think they’re like, “Because it’s your dollhouse, like it was yours when you were a kid.” And I can’t break their hearts and be like, “just so you know, when you get older, you lose all these skills.”So it’s a little bit of a funny thing. I love it. I’m glad we worked on it together. And when my kid is like, “Can we play doll house?” I’m like, why did I do this? CorinneYeah, thats interesting.VirginiaI don’t know. I’m glad it’s a part of our family. I do forever love tiny dollhouse things. Okay, your super socks from Shiny By Nature.CorinneI still wear these a lot. I am trying to not buy new ones, because I just have mixed feelings about Shiny by Nature, and I think I’ve come to prefer a slightly taller sock. But I still have these. I still wear them. They’re fine.VirginiaWe will link to theBig Undiespiece on crew socks, so people can do a deep dive on your feelings about socks. And we will also link to the extra butter episodewhere we talked about fat influencers losing weight, for folks who want context on why Shiny By Nature is no longer a brand we’re like all in on. It’s complicated. But I’m glad the socks are still working. I think this next one is you, too—the Blluemade hat.CorinneYes, this is one that I was really ridiculed for, because it’s a $100 baseball cap. However I stand by this hat. I still think it is a really good hat. It’s a nice linen baseball cap. The thing about it is the brim is made of interfacing, not cardboard, so you can wash it in the washing machine. I have a few of these, I am embarrassed to admit. And I still wear them. I’m not telling you exactly how many, VirginiaSome number of hats. CorinneWell, it’s also, it’s also something like, I probably bought one for the first time, like, three or four years ago, and then I have acquired more when they have different colors and stuff. VirginiaI mean, I am in no place to judge this. The next one is my favorite sun hat, which I just opened the link on Target, and it’s not even available anymore. And I also am pretty sure I didn’t wear it last summer. So see previous conversation about fast fashion does not hold up. Oh, I know what’s happening with this hat. Some birds built a nest in it on the back porch, and my kid would not let me move it. So actually, from an environmental perspective…CorinneIt’s been repurposed. VirginiaIt’s living its best life. Is it is fostering life! Some Eastern Phoebes took that over.CorinneWow, that’s cool. The next one is your grow light from Soltech.VirginiaOh yeah, I love this still. This is in my bedroom. I have a bedroom without a lot of natural light and I wanted plants in there, and I put up this fairly expensive grow light pendant, and it is great. What’s really cool about it is, it’s a very natural light quality. So when it turns on at 8am every morning, the room suddenly feels like, oh, it’s daylight and it really brightens up the room in a nice way. Then I have it programmed to go on from 8am to 3pm. So it’s not like in the evening I have a weird, harsh light. It’s just during the day, and my plants are doing really well. So that’s awesome. Grow lights are a game changer. Okay, what about your infinity hoops?CorinneThese were good. These were kind of a gateway earring for me. And now I have moved on to small gold hoops, but I still like these.VirginiaI ended up buying these for my eleven year old and they are the only hoops that she can wear and not react to. So she sleeps in them. They’re super comfortable.CorinneYeah, they’re good. What about your set of stackable laundry baskets?VirginiaOh, amazing. This was a great purchase. If you are someone who has to do multiple loads of laundry a week, buy this six pack of laundry baskets (weirdly now sold as a 12-pack or a 4-pack or individually). The square shape is easy to carry. You can have designated laundry baskets for every load you need to do in your house. It’s so wonderful. VirginiaAlright. And then your last one from 2023 are these pretty Maine candles. So I want you to still like them.CorinneYes, I do still like these. This is maybe another thing where I bought a bunch of them, and I have not used them all. They’re still great candles. I think they make a really nice gift. VirginiaYeah, you don’t even use all your candles at once. CorinneThey’re just tapers. VirginiaCandle season is coming. You’ll use them. CorinneAnd your last one is art.“Coastal Layer” by Katie CraigVirginiaOh yes. Katie Craig was the artist that I picked for the last one. I love Katie Craig’s work. She paints these really beautiful, mostly stripes and some plaids. She also has prints that are less expensive, and I have two little, small stripey paintings (here and here) by her, and they make me happy every single day. I feel like we really did learn some things about ourselves, which is maybe spend money on some high quality items, like art you’re not going to regret. Target, maybe. Maybe, Virginia, back off the Target purchases.CorinneI’m never regretting the food and the media. VirginiaWe didn’t even go over all the books and TV shows we recommended because we still like all those. You don’t regret food. You don’t regret stuff you watch and read if you liked it enough to recommend it here. But clothing and household items seem to be a little more of a gray area. [New!] ButterCorinneAre we going to do Butter?VirginiaYeah, let’s do Butter. What do you have? CorinneOkay, well, mine is media, so no regrets here. I want to recommend this TV show called I Kissed A Girl. It is a British lesbian reality dating show. It’s basically like all the other ones, like Love Island. I’ve actually never watched Love Island, but I think it’s like Love Island. Except the premise is that as they’re bringing people on, the two people have to kiss before they even speak. So these two people are walking across the stage and then make out. Then there’s all kinds of interior drama where they end up wanting to be with other people and blah, blah, blah.VirginiaI mean, you can learn a lot from that first kiss. I feel like that’s revealing information.CorinneAnd it’s just really fun to watch all the British UK lesbians and their regional accents. So, I recommend “I Kissed A Girl.” There’s also, apparently “I Kissed A Boy,” which is all men, and you can watch it on Hulu. So that’s my rec.VirginiaThat’s a really good one.CorinneWhat’s your Butter?VirginiaOkay, so obviously I’m evolving away from fast fashion. So I’m not going to endorse anything from Target today after these epiphanies, but since we talked a little bit about jewelry, I do have a jewelry brand I’ve been really enjoying that I feel good about, which is called Made By Mary. It is a lot of very pretty delicate gold jewelry if you are on that train. So I have this little necklace. It’s like a little half circle and hammered half circle. And I will also confess I am completely copying my best friend Amy Palanjian, who wears this necklace, and then she also wears these rings, and I am wearing the same rings. When I saw her the other week, she’d gotten a bunch more of their rings. And I was like, oh, I too need more of their rings. So, yeah, they do a lot of these, like, thin, little stackable rings. CorinneOh, cute. VirginiaThey’re just delicate and low key. And I can also put a link to the necklace extenders I found, which sometimes for these delicate gold pieces, I need a necklace extender. And I found some really good ones that add a couple of inches to a necklace and make a big difference for plus size jewelry. CorinneThat’s good. VirginiaWell, this was fun. I feel like we learned a lot about ourselves. CorinneI feel like we did 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!

Join Julia Turshen, a New York Times bestselling cookbook author, as she simplifies the complexities of meal preparation. Julia shares her fresh take on how understanding flavor can elevate home cooking. Discover her innovative cooking charts that support diverse learning styles and explore the emotional dynamics of family meals. She offers practical tips for meal planning while challenging traditional recipes with flexible serving sizes. With humor and honesty, Julia encourages a more relaxed relationship with food, making cooking joyful for everyone!

Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark! It's time for your October Extra Butter! This month we’re diving into some big, hard questions, like:How do you mourn big body changes?What happens if your body size really is the reason you can’t do something you used to love?Does the “Health At Every Size” framework ever fail fat people?When is it systemic oppression and when is it just…physics?Or…do we all just need a Fat Day?If you are already an Extra Butter subscriber, you’ll have this entire episode in your podcast feed and access to the entire transcript in your inbox and on the Burnt Toast Patreon. To get all of the links and resources mentioned in this episode, as well as a complete transcript, visit our show page. Otherwise, to hear the whole conversation or read the whole transcript, you'll need to join Extra Butter. It's just $99 per year, and is the hands down best way to keep Burnt Toast an ad- and sponsor-free space. PS. Don't forget to order Fat Talk: Parenting In the Age of Diet Culture! Get your signed copy now from Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the USA). You can also order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, Kobo or anywhere you like to buy books. (Or get the UK edition or the audiobook!) Disclaimer: Virginia and Corinne are humans with a lot of informed opinions. They are not nutritionists, therapists, doctors, or any kind of healthcare providers. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions they give are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.CREDITSThe 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!Episode 163 TranscriptVirginiaThis is a very complicated question. I feel like we need a lot of caveats, but I don’t even know what the caveats should be. But it’s a complicated one. CorinneIt is. I’ve been thinking about the question a lot like since the first time I read it. VirginiaSame. I guess I’ll just say—I encourage conversation in the comment section. We will probably not get all of this right, but we are going to do our best. So this listener writes, I’ve been pretty immersed in the anti-diet, Health at Every Size space for about five years now. I’ve listened to hundreds of hours of podcasts and read tons of books and articles. I follow lots of body positive influencers on social media, and yet I have never seen the issue I’m facing addressed. I have been doing manual labor full time for a decade now. I started doing trail work, then wildland firefighting, and now I’ve been a climbing arborist for eight years. When I realized five years ago, I had a disordered relationship with food, I thought properly nourishing my body would make me better at my job. Instead, I gained so much weight—I went up seven sizes in just two years—that I can no longer safely do my job.I’ve spent the last decade building towards a career that is no longer doable for me because of my body. I thought if I remained active, I would build up even more strength and keep up with the demands of the job as I gained weight. It hasn’t worked that way. I didn’t realize just how much more difficult it is to move in a larger body. Sure, there are many people in larger bodies doing physically demanding activities like rock climbing, running, skiing, you name it. But I haven’t seen anyone in a larger body doing these activities as a job. It’s a fun recreational activity for them. It’s totally different when it’s your job to perform physically demanding tasks at certain speed and level of expertise expected of a professional.It’s easy to criticize the systemic oppression that exists in our fatphobic world, but not everything that is inaccessible to people in larger bodies is a construct of our society, right? Trees are organic living things. There is nothing anyone can do to make a tree stronger and able to hold my body weight. It’s just physics. Gear companies could increase the breaking strength of equipment, but it doesn’t matter if the tree itself is the weakest link in the system.I just can’t stop thinking about all the things I can’t do now, in addition to my job. I can’t hike through a slot canyon or go caving ever again. I can’t do flying trapeze. I can’t do acro yoga. None of these are systemic things that can be changed. It’s just how the natural world exists and or physics. These are all things I love doing or really want to do, but now I can’t.I’m not even really sure I have a question, I guess this is more of a complaint. The anti-diet Health at Every Size space led me to believe I could still be active and do the activities and job that I love. It has not been true for me. I feel like I was tricked and now I have to give up a career I love and start over from scratch because all of my work experience is relevant to jobs I can’t do.So, Corinne. Can you just answer that real quick, thanks.CorinneI really feel for this person and I feel like this is really sad and hard. There isn’t a quick and easy solution.VirginiaSame. And I’ve certainly not experienced this. You can be a writer at any body size, I will say confidently. This is not a career path that requires any physical body at all, to be honest. But I think anyone whose body changes—which is everybody—but anyone who experiences dramatic body changes, encounters certain aspects of their life that don’t feel the same as they once did. CorinneIt’s definitely true. VirginiaAnd that’s a factor of size, aging—so many things. I don’t get off the floor as easily as I used to. I think it is important to name and grieve for these changes.CorinneI do think there is a lot of grieving that comes up for this kind of stuff, and at the same time, I think it’s okay for there to be things that you can’t do that you want to do. I think everyone experiences that on a certain level. Not just fat people. If we’re going to think about natural body diversity, you wouldn’t tell a short person “you need to change your body in order to be able to do a certain job.”VirginiaSimone Biles is just never going to be a WNBA player. CorinneWell, okay, don’t get me started. Have you seen that video where she can jump like—VirginiaOkay, fine. Simone Biles can do literally anything. I forgot about the jumping.CorinneShe probably would be really good in the NBA.VirginiaAs we’ve discussed before, Olympic athletes are their own conversation. They are superheroes and we are not in that family.But setting that aside, yes, there are certain sports where certain body traits are an asset. And that doesn’t mean you’re not going to do them at all, but it does mean you’re maybe not going to do them professionally or at a certain level. That can be devastating. Sometimes there are systemic barriers that need to change to make a space more inclusive. And sometimes, I think often, it’s a mix.But one thing I was thinking about in reading the question is that I don’t know that we can always say, in a very black and white way, “Is this a systemic change or is this a limit of body?” It can be a bit of both. There are some, like airplane seats can just fucking be bigger. Obviously, that one is systemic change. But when it comes to this question of what can our bodies do and what limits can we push ourselves to? I think that’s often a combination of many things, not just size, not just systemic barriers. So many factors go into that.CorinneThis person is really focused on all the things they can’t do because of their body size. And I wanted to mention that there are things that are great about having a bigger body and ways that people in bigger bodies have advantages. So that’s something you could think about. You have more body mass, which can make moving things easier. Probably lots of other things.·VirginiaIs there any part of this you relate to? Anything where you’re like, oh, that doesn’t feel accessible for me anymore? I mean, I know you weren’t an arborist. CorinneI definitely relate but I don’t know if I have a specific example. I think for me, sometimes it’s more the mental load. Having to consider whether or not something can hold your weight is really hard. But there’s a piece of this that’s like, “Now I can’t do my job,” and I don’t think I’ve really experienced that.VirginiaThat’s another layer, for sure. I mean financial ramifications, something you’ve invested years in training for, that doesn’t feel is available now—that’s really hard. For me, this kind of thing comes up with cardiovascular fitness for sure. That is something that has changed for me. And, it’s something I could absolutely improve and not change my weight. To be clear, there are lots of fat people in great cardiovascular health. I am not one of them. So that’s something that, in my mind, gets sort of linked together. And it’s one that sometimes I miss—not that I ever was never like an amazing runner had amazing stamina, but it was better than it is currently. CorinneThat’s a good point too, though. If there are specific physical abilities that you’re missing, like mobility or cardiovascular stuff—those are things you could focus on improving without weight loss.VirginiaIn the body you have now. CorinneYou could do some mobility exercises or training. VirginiaAgreed. Okay, I also want to talk about this piece where this person says they feel “tricked” by Health at Every Size. I think there often is a misconception, or a misperception of HAES, that it’s saying literally everybody will be healthy and be able to do everything, no matter what size they are. We can link to the episode we did with Ani and Angel from ASDAH who are the keepers of the Health at Every Size framework, and really get into what that means. I think they’ve done a lot of work to rework it and be more conscious of that ableism. But I do think the influencer version of HAES is very, “Look at me, I can rock climb in my fat body.” “Look at me, I can do all of that,” you know? And that is frustrating, CorinneI think maybe one of the things I feel that the most around is travel. I see fat people traveling, and I’m like, wait, how are you doing that? Like, are you scoping out all these places before you go? Is someone doing that for you? VirginiaDo you have an endless budget for first class? CorinneDo you have a partner flying with you so it’s less of an issue? I don’t know. VirginiaThere are a lot of folks not naming the privilege required to do certain things in a fat body. There are certain privileges that make the barriers easier to surmount, which is important to talk about. But I get so frustrated because when I do media interviews about this stuff, people will always say, “Wait, are you saying everybody’s healthy?” And it’s such a twisting of what we’re trying to say.We’re not saying everybody will be healthy at any body weight. We’re saying everyone has the right to pursue health in the body they have now, at whatever size they are, without also pursuing weight loss. Which is something quite different, right?We’re not discounting that people in all body sizes can have complicated health stories, and we’re not discounting that being in a larger body can be connected to certain health conditions. But for a long time, it felt so radical just to say, basically, that fat people can be healthy. That felt like such a radical point that people were really stuck on emphasizing and explaining that, to the exclusion of many people’s lived experience.I think the job thing is just really real and really sucks. I know nothing about being an arborist. I am trusting this person’s analysis of that industry. I don’t know even how being an arborist is structured in terms of the companies. Is this a field you can stay in in a managerial position where you are not the one climbing the trees, but you are the one coordinating from the ground? I would be curious to learn more about what the work involves. If this is your passion, what are ways to stay tied to this passion, even if the literal work you do has to change?And there might be still a lot of like satisfaction in doing a different version of it, which I think happens for lots of different reasons in lots of different careers, that you end up morphing into a different focus or a different role within the industry or something.CorinneI think that’s really true. There probably would come a point at which you could not or did not want to be climbing trees.VirginiaI would assume aging plays a role in that as well.CorinneThat’s what I mean. VirginiaThis is a career with a shelf life anyway. But you have hit the shelf life much earlier, perhaps, than you thought you were going to, which sucks.  But when it comes to doing slot canyons and caving and flying trapeze and all of that—I don’t want to discount that those are things you love. And I wish you could still do things you love. I do wonder if these are systemic or physical limits. Can you really not do flying trapeze? Or do we need to design a better trapeze? I think here we’re getting into some questions that are less, like, “it’s just physics,” and more, maybe your body doesn’t feel safe and welcomed in those spaces. In an acrobatic yoga class.It reminds me of that question we had a few months ago about riding roller coasters. And Corinne, you said, “Well, what else can you do at the fair that you do love if you’re not going to go on the roller coasters?” I just think sometimes, we both need to grieve—this is something I really enjoy and it doesn’t feel accessible to me anymore. And there can be something exciting about thinking, well, what else do I love? What else would I love? What else could I do? What new thing haven’t I tried? Because maybe it seemed less accessible in your smaller body, or it just wasn’t on your radar at that point.CorinneI am 100 percent certain you can hike through a slot canyon. Maybe not the tiniest slot canyon ever, but I live in New Mexico and I’ve yet to encounter a slot canyon that I have not been able to fit through.Corinne in a slot canyon on the left, and two other slot canyons Corinne has walked throughVirginiaI need to know what a slot canyon is to really understand this question. CorinneOkay, it’s basically a canyon that’s kind of narrow on both sides. And I’ve been to a bunch of slot canyons and I’ve never found one that I haven’t fit through. And I’m, like, pretty fat. VirginiaTheres this hike near me called the Lemon Squeeze.CorinneOh, that sounds terrifying. VirginiaYes and please know I have a massive heights phobia. So these things are not for me, but I did it anyway at one point. So you’re going up these tiny ladders on the side of a cliff, through increasingly narrow tunnels in the cliff. And the final one you do, it’s called the lemon squeeze, because you do have to push and lever yourself out of this tiny hole at the end. And I definitely was like, “This is not built for my body. I will be stuck in this thing.” But I got through it. CorinneThat sounds horrible. VirginiaSo I can understand there might be some hikes that are impenetrable. But when we’re talking about aggressive outdoor activity, that might be true for many reasons. Access to extreme outdoor sports requires so many intersecting privileges.CorinneThere may be some slot canyons that you can no longer go through. I think there are also probably a lot that you could go through. And it might take more research and planning to get to them. Like, maybe you need to plan a trip to Utah. I just think there are options. I’ve also seen fat people doing acro yoga. And it may be harder. It may be a matter of doing some training beforehand or starting at a lower level.VirginiaAnd having patience with yourself about what this looks like.CorinneAnd let’s focus on stuff that does feel better or easier or different in a bigger body. Like, I don’t know, swimming, floating, being in the water. What feels good in your body now? VirginiaI think that’s really, really right. I think that’s hard to do. And it sounds like this is a person just still in the grief stage, which is really real. But I think there is something on the other side of the grief stage.CorinneI feel like the conclusion is, yes, it totally makes sense that you’re going to be grieving these changes. That’s really valid. It does suck. Some of it might be the natural world. Some of it might be society. And hopefully, you will get to a point where also you are able to find joy in doing things in your body as it is. Whether those are new things or old things.VirginiaI think there’s a little piece of this that is always our own mindset, as well. Which is not to blame you. We don’t need to blame ourselves for that, but we have been conditioned in this culture to understand our bodies in certain ways and then when we come up against these new limits, that old programming is going to be really loud and telling you it’s all your body’s fault. And that’s something we have to be aware of. CorinneOne thing we didn’t really touch on is that this person does say “I did have a disordered relationship with food.” And I’m thinking of the roller coaster letter, I guess. Maybe you’re not acknowledging how much of an effect that disordered eating had on your life before. And you don’t have that piece of things now.VirginiaSo this person did send me a follow up with more details on that piece. Do you want to read the follow up, and then we’ll talk about this chunk of it? CorinneThis feels all the more difficult for me because I didn’t have a very fraught relationship with food before I found intuitive eating. I just always found it very difficult to eat whenever I was depressed, so I would end up losing some weight if I fell into a depressive episode.When I wasn’t depressed, I had a pretty normal and healthy relationship with food and existed in a small body my entire life. Perhaps I was unintentionally restricting food even when I wasn’t depressed, but it never felt that way. When I wasn’t depressed, I never dieted or purposefully restricted food. I never counted calories. I never felt the need to exercise. I never worried about the size of my body.The only thing I changed is that I made sure to keep eating enough food when I was depressed. When I hear other people talk about coping with the difficulties of existing in a larger body, they always talk about how it’s still better than what they had to do to exist in a smaller body. I cannot make this comparison, since existing in a smaller body, until a few years ago, was easy and took no intentional effort for me. It’s certainly not the case anymore, but it’s hard to accept my body now, when in the past I existed in a smaller body without any problems.VirginiaOkay, so I’m going to say this with a lot of love. It was a problem that you couldn’t eat when you were depressed. You were existing in your smaller body but clearly—given what you are telling us about what’s happened to your body since—you were existing in that smaller body because you were struggling with depression severe enough that you were not eating. And not eating for long enough periods of time to result in significant weight loss or weight suppression. And you deserve to not have that. You deserve to be nourished when you are depressed. CorinneIt sort of sounds like they’re saying that they preferred existing in a smaller body with severe bouts of depression to existing in a larger body and nourishing themselves.VirginiaYes, yes. And presumably still experiencing the depression. They don’t say the depression is gone, but they’re managing the depression differently—and I would say with a more health promoting strategy— by eating during their depression.So I understand why you might not be connecting to this experience when other people articulate it, because their characterization may feel more extreme than what you think you did.I can understand that it didn’t feel like work to you because you had the depression creating these episodes of not eating. So you didn’t have to choose to diet. You weren’t walking around wanting to be eating and not eating. I understand that the depression was suppressing all of that. But you were still functionally restricting. Your body was still working really hard to keep you small, you were still putting your body through a lot in order to stay small. You didn’t experience it as work to stay small because you were experiencing it as a facet of your depression.CorinneYeah, and also not eating enough food to fuel your body, whether or not you felt this way or remember it this way, does have an effect on your systems. Your brain doesn’t function as well. You can’t build muscle. Whether or not you felt those effects, they were probably happening.VirginiaI would be curious to hear more about what the depression feels like now that they are being nourished through it. To be clear, we have the disclaimer on every episode, Corinne and I are not doctors. We are not mental health professionals. We are not diagnosing or treating your struggles here.But I am just curious to know: Does nourishing yourself through your depression helps in the management of your depression? Because if so, that’s something to really value and hold on to and be proud that you’re doing now as a way of taking care of yourself. It’s something you really deserve. CorinneIt just sounds like this person was in a place of really missing the way things were, and that’s really valid. You’re allowed to feel grief and anger and whatever about things changing and hopefully you will at some point in the future find some positives to this experience. VirginiaI also want to say, I think this letter is very much framed in “I don’t hear this conversation happening. My struggle is not being reflected.” And I think that’s true to a degree, because, as we talked about, I do think the way Health at Every Size gets marketed often leaves out this piece of things. There are realities of fatness that just aren’t talked about. And at the same time, I have heard so many people long for their smaller bodies, for so many reasons. I’ve heard so many people say, well, maybe it wasn’t actually that hard to eat that way to stay small. That is a classic response to becoming bigger and struggling to adjust to that, to start to romanticize we didn’t have to do that much. I only had to not eat for days or weeks at a time when I was depressed, in your case. I wasn’t dieting, but I was just making better choices. Or, as long as I wasn’t dieting, but I was eating enough protein. There are so many versions of this.It kind of comes down to the same thing, which is what you’re dealing with right now feels really hard. Is really hard. You’re grieving a lot. And so you start to look back at old pictures, you start to kind of recast what was before, to feel like, well, that was the easier path. And in a fatphobic society, having the smaller body was the easier path in some ways. But it doesn’t mean it was actually easier inside your body in terms of what you were putting yourself through.CorinneI have two thoughts right now. One is like, it’s almost like we should call Health at Every Size, Unhealth at Every Size. Or Existing at Every Size Should Be Allowed. People in thin bodies have tons of “unhealthy” behaviors that they’re allowed to do, and fat people don’t. The other thing I keep thinking about is this conversation about “Health at Every Size let me down” does feel very related to some of the intentional weight loss influencer stuff. It’s making me think about Rosey Beeme. VirginiaYes, to be clear, we’re not equating you with her. But I think it is something to think about. In a previous Extra Butter episode, we talked about this current trend, particularly fueled right now by Wegovy and Ozempic and everything, of fat influencers losing weight and talking about how they experience their bodies differently now, but framing it as if their bodies were really wrong before, because their bodies faced limitations when they were bigger, because they had mobility issues, or the fitting into seats thing. Like experiencing that as like, “Well, thank God I solved this.”As opposed to, “Wow, wouldn’t it be better for fat people everywhere if we made systemic change?” And what I do with my own personal body is my business, but is not actually the narrative we should be centering. So that was an exhausting episode, and if you missed it, you should definitely go back and listen. But with all the content warnings that there is a lot of explicit fatphobia in the posts we talk about.And we’re still seeing this. We’re still seeing so many influencers getting on that train and making that point, and it is really hard to untangle. I think you are allowed to do what you want with your own body, but stop pretending that you getting thinner is benefiting anyone other than you.CorinneThat’s also the thing that’s unsaid here. You could pursue intentional weight loss. That is an option. VirginiaAnd then I guess the layer is you could pursue intentional weight loss that might make your arborist career last a few years longer that could buy you a few more years in this field you love. And I don’t want to discount that that might be really powerful and important for you. And: What would it feel like to go back to the level of restriction that was required to do that? CorinneYeah, it might be very miserable. VirginiaIt might be very miserable. CorinneAnd it might not be permanent. It usually isn’t. VirginiaAnd, if you are going to do that, though, what I also want to say is: You can do that and still show up for fat people. We will not cast you out into the darkness. These are survival strategies. And everyone has to decide for themselves what survival strategies they can live with.But just make sure you’re still showing up for fat people.CorinneI would definitely encourage this person to try to just find something that makes you feel better in your body. Whether it’s like swimming or—VirginiaCorinne really wants you to come to a Fat Swim.CorinneThere has got to be something where you feel okay being embodied.VirginiaYou know, what I’m also thinking is this person doesn’t sound like they have a lot of fat community. There’s a really sweet post on Instagram right now with Mia Kaplan, who is the star of Empire Waist, this new film that we  just talked about on the podcast. And they are saying something like, “I need my fat community. I just text my friends and say, ‘I need a fat day.’” Like, it’s so cute. I was like, I need a fat day!CorinneThat is really cute. VirginiaIt’s really cute. And it sounds like you need a fat day. Because you need to be with people who you’re not comparing yourself to constantly in terms of like, oh, they can do more because they’re thinner. You need to be with people who are going to be safe, feel safe for your body. You need a fat day. You need to be reminded that this is a whole community you are part of it and you are valued. We all need a fat day. Just sounds delightful.And who knows, maybe there are other fat arborists in the Burnt Toast community, and I really hope they jump into the comments. CorinneYeah, that would be very cool.VirginiaCan we get a fat arborist subthread going please? That would be amazing.CorinneDo you know this person fat as the sea on Instagram? I feel like they would be a good resource. I think they do fat embodiment workshop kind of stuff. And I think they do just a bunch of stuff about feeling into your body.VirginiaThey call it so-fat-ics, like somatics. That’s very cute. I’ve shouted her out before butBrianna Campos, who isbodyimagewithBri on Instagramand Substack, talks a lot about the grieving process of this and also is very upfront about her own like mobility limitations and the way she has to navigate this in the world as a fat person. She’s also been doing a lot on just starting to date again as a fat person. So circling back to last month’s episode, it’s pretty fun to follow Bri right now and her cute date looks.Well, I hope this was helpful. We are all rooting for you. I know you wrote this feeling like you were articulating something that no one is really talking about. I hope we can be talking about it. And I also hope you feel less alone, and especially like comment section, like, let’s go. CorinnePersonally, I would love to hire a fat arborist.VirginiaI have a lot of trees! I live in the woods. ButterCorinneMy butter is something that I’ve mentioned before, but I want to give it a shout out, because it’s really making my life good, which is the Oddbird towels. VirginiaOh, yes, you linked these from Big Undies recently when you did your Maine packing list. I gotta get these towels.As discussed, last week I drove back to New Mexico, where I live, from Maine, where I grew up. For the past few years, I have driven out to my mom’s house for an indefinite visit, sometimes in winter, sometimes in summer. I bring my dog and work from my mom’s basement while I eat seafood and go swimming and help my mom fix the screen door and stock the chest freezer…CorinneOddbird is this company that does sleepwear and loungewear. I think all of it is Turkish textiles. So the towels are Turkish towels. They’re very thin, and they dry quickly and easily. I think they’re 78 inches long, so they would fit a lot of people, but maybe not everyone. And they roll up pretty small. So now I’m just bringing one in my suitcase every time I go anywhere. It’s just so nice to have—VirginiaA towel that’s gonna fit in any freaking hotel room? I just have such rage about hotel room towels. I am paying so much to be there!CorinneAnd it’s one thing, if you’re staying in a hotel room alone. Like, okay, fine, I don’t need it. VirginiaNo one is going to see you walk around naked. CorinneBut I just went on a weekend trip with some friends and we stayed at an Airbnb. And I was like, “You know what, I’m just going to bring my towel because I don’t want to be walking through the communal hallway with my butt hanging out.”VirginiaIt’s so aggravating. I understand that industrial laundry is probably really expensive and blah, blah, blah, but there should always be an option for bigger towels. Even if you’re not putting them in every room. And also just put them in every room! No one is mad to have a big towel. This underserves nobody.CorinneAnd I think at this point there are a bunch of sort of bigger towel options, but I just find these are really nice and also pretty small.VirginiaThe packability is really nice, because I have the ones from Towel that we featured on the podcast a year ago in my bathroom. And they’re delicious. They’re big and fleecy, and you’re just like, wrapped up in this cozy thing. But I would never pack it because it’s really heavy. So these are a great option.How are their clothes? Have you tried Oddbird clothes?CorinneI have tried their loungewear and it’s pretty nice. And sizing-wise, I think they go up to a 5x.VirginiaDo I need a mumu? Probably? I’m seeing some cute pajamas, too.CorinneYeah, the textiles are really nice. VirginiaThis is very exciting. Excellent Butter.CorinneWhat’s your better?VirginiaMy butter has a little bit of a sad backstory, which is I am temporarily giving up Diet Coke on weekdays and seltzer because of my acid reflux. I’ve been working with this amazing vocal coach, Rachel Rynick, who is a Burnt Toast listener as well.  Ever since I recorded the audiobook of Fat Talk, and actually even before, I’ve been struggling with hoarseness and coughing and periodic laryngitis. Which is a problem for someone who records a weekly podcast. So last February, I started working with Rachel, who has been amazing, and we figured out so many strategies. I don’t know if y’all can hear it, but when I listen to old episodes, I can really hear the difference in how my voice is improving, quality wise. So it’s really great.But we took off the summer and then when I came back at the start of September, I was like, oh man, it’s all back. The hoarseness is back, this raspiness, needing to clear my throat more during recordings. And we’ve really dealt with a lot of other things. So she was like, “I’m wondering about your reflux, and maybe the carbonation is a factor, because it’s very acidic.”So I am trying to go Sunday to Thursday, because those would encompass our recording days, without carbonation. This is the first week. To be clear, this is not a diet. I am cutting out diet soda and seltzer with aspartame in it. I’m cutting out aspartame temporarily.But I really struggled the first day, because I do need that extra hit of caffeine. And so now getting to my butter—sorry, that was so much backstory! My butter is Harney and Sons hot cinnamon spice tea, which is a black tea, so it has a little bit of caffeine in it. And it is replacing my morning Diet Coke. It is delicious. It’s a little spicy. I love it. CorinneWow, that sounds really good.VirginiaI’m cautiously optimistic. I also drop in a Throat Coat Tea as well. Because why not? I don’t like the taste of Throat Coat Tea because I’ve drunk so much of it while dealing with all these vocal issues, so the cinnamon spice really covers it up. But I’m still getting whatever slippery elm benefits. So this is my new little tea hack. CorinneWait, so in the morning, you were normally drinking coffee and Diet Coke? VirginiaYes. I have a small cup of coffee in the morning, which, because I have children, I rarely get to finish. So I have like, four ounces of coffee in the morning, and then when I would sit down at my desk. I would have a nice cold Diet Coke, like, around 9am yeah, to kick off Productivity Virginia. But. I’m trying to do without it. CorinneCan I tell you the one thing that really made a difference for my acid reflux?VirginiaIs it going to make me even sadder than giving up Diet Coke?CorinneIt was giving up coffee. VirginiaNo, Corinne.CorinneI’m sorry. I still have coffee as a treat sometimes, but when I drink coffee versus when I don’t is like night and day.VirginiaI truly don’t know if I would love my children?CorinneI know it’s horrible. Coffee is delicious, it’s a wonderful thing.VirginiaAnd it’s just, I just need that warm, cozy feeling. I guess I could try the tea. I mean, this is black tea. It still has some caffeine. CorinneWell for me, it’s not the caffeine. Because decaf coffee has the same effect on me.VirginiaOkay, so we think caffeine is okay. Again, we are not doctors. Consult your own specialist. I’m also going to say, right now I don’t need a lot of unsolicited acid reflux advice. I’ve been managing acid reflux since I was a skinny 14 year old! So it is not a weight-linked condition for me. It is just a way my body is made. And it is possible that a lifelong Diet Coke addiction is playing a role. So yeah, here we are, cinnamon spiced tea. That’s what I’ve got for you. CorinneIt sounds delicious, and I’m excited to hear how it works. VirginiaIt is delicious. I will report back and also shout out to Rachel, my vocal coach, who has made a lot of difference even with me drinking Diet Coke. Sometimes during our vocal sessions.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!

It's time for your Indulgence Gospel! And today we’re talking all things Fat Travel!We’ll be answering your questions, sharing travel hacks, and just getting into the nitty gritty of how to be a fat person going places in the world.And so much more!To hear the whole conversation or read the whole transcript, you'll need to become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. Subscribe here.If you are already a paid subscriber, you’ll have this entire episode in your podcast feed and access to the entire transcript in your inbox and on the Burnt Toast Patreon. You can also subscribe to Corinne's newsletter, Big Undies, for 20% off using this special link. To get all of the links and resources mentioned in this episode, as well as a complete transcript, visit our show page. Also, don't forget to order Fat Talk: Parenting In the Age of Diet Culture! Get your signed copy now from Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the USA). You can also order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, Kobo or anywhere you like to buy books. (Or get the UK edition or the audiobook!) Disclaimer: Virginia and Corinne are humans with a lot of informed opinions. They are not nutritionists, therapists, doctors, or any kind of healthcare providers. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions they give are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.CREDITSThe 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!Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.You’re listening to Burnt Toast!We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it’s time for your Indulgence Gospel. And today we’re talking all things Fat Travel!We’ll be answering your questions, sharing travel hacks, and just getting into the nitty gritty of how to be a fat person going places in the world.This is a paywalled episode. That means to hear the whole thing you’ll need to be a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. Subscriptions are $7 per month or $70 for the year.If you’re already a paid subscriber, you can add on a subscription to Big Undies, Corinne’s newsletter about clothes, for 20% off.This transcript contains affiliate links. Shopping our links is another great way to support Burnt Toast!Episode 162 TranscriptVirginiaOkay, so I have a quick vent—a rant, if you will—before we get into questions, about being a fat person in public. Which is this: In the last three weeks, I have been mistaken for pregnant twice by strangers. This is something that has happened my whole life, as you know, as we’ve discussed on the pod and in essays many times. And then, it didn’t happen for a long time. And I thought I was out, Corinne. I thought I was done with it. I thought I was old enough and fat enough that I could just present as a fat lady past her reproductive prime.But apparently not.So the first time happened while we were on the platform at Grand Central Station. We were taking the kids to the Natural History Museum and we’re walking along a crowded platform, and this lady rushes up to me. And at first she says, “I love your green Birkenstocks!” So I liked her, because that is an appropriate way to talk to people. Compliment their shoes. And then she said, “You have such a beautiful family!” And I was like, “Thank you! Sure!” I won’t get into the fact that this is actually my ex-husband, you don’t need all that information. You’re right. We are a beautiful family.And then she looks at me, and she goes, “And another girl on the way!”CorinneOh my God!VirginiaAnd I was like, “Where?!”CorinneWatch out!VirginiaAnd then I realized what she meant. And so I just said, “Oh no, just fat.” And then she goes, “Oh, I’ve been there.” And this was a very thin person. I was like, I don’t know that you have?CorinneThat is a wild thing to say. VirginiaBut I was proud of myself because my kids were there and I was proud that I just really took it in stride and was like, “Nope, just fat!” Like, no apology. Just kept walking down the platform. So that was the first one. Then the second one was Sunday night. I was in my driveway, in the privacy of my driveway. My mailbox is across the street from my house, so I was at the end of my driveway about to cross the street to go get my mail. And a lady stopped her car, leaned her head out of her car—a woman I have never seen before—and she said, “Your garden is so beautiful! And are you expecting?”CorinneI don’t like that at all. VirginiaAnd look, I don’t want to be ageist, I don’t want to stereotype. But both of these comments came from over-enthusiastic Boomer ladies who were trying to be complimentary and appreciative of me in these ways. But no. Just talk about people’s shoes and their gardens! Don’t talk about their bodies.CorinneAnd if you had said yes for that second one, then what? VirginiaShe would have been like, “When are you due? Oh, my God, that’s amazing!”CorinneThat’s it? That’s the whole conversation?VirginiaI think? I mean, I said, no. CorinneShe’s not like, trying to give you baby clothes?VirginiaNo, no, no, no, no. She was like, “I live up the road. I’m Vivian.” We’ve never met. She’s not a neighbor I know. She was like, “I just always love your house when I drive by,” which is very lovely. I have done that if I see a neighbor outside I don’t know, and I like their house, I’ll stop and be like, “I love your garden.” But we don’t know each other in a commenting on my stomach way! There are very few people who know me in a commenting on my stomach way. I think that list is limited to my six-year-old honestly.CorinneI do think the takeaway here is that you look very young. As someone in their 40s, I feel like it’s flattering that all these people think you are 25 and pregnant. VirginiaI mean, they don’t say, “You look 25.”CorinneYou’re glowing! VirginiaMaybe I was sweaty?It’s such an annoying phenomenon that I know people in all body sizes experience, so I wanted to discuss it again. In fact, as we’ve talked about—the fatter you are, the less it happens. But it is such a weird way that people insert themselves into someone else’s experience of their body. And then they always feel awkward and you’re expected to make it less awkward. So I was really proud—when the second lady said, “Are you expecting?” I just said, “No.” And then I just stood there. And she goes, “oh, well, I just love your house and I’m sorry I said that.” And I was like, “uh huh,” and then I just went to my mailbox. I’m just going to let you sit in your discomfort. Marinate in that awkward moment, Vivian. Just marinate in the discomfort. I just —I have so many people I love who have struggled with infertility, who, don’t have kids, want them, or whatever. You don’t know what you’re commenting on when you talk about someone’s body in that way. Or maybe someone is pregnant and they just don’t want to share that with a stranger driving by their house. You should be able to check your goddamn mail. CorinneYeah, that’s what I was getting at, too. Like, what is the conversation they imagine happening here? Do you really need to talk to strangers about when their due date is?VirginiaThat’s just not the level of our connection I want with a woman driving by my house yelling at me from her car.CorinneThe audacity.VirginiaAnd then I’m like, what has changed? Because, like I said, it wasn’t happening for such a long time. I’m a little worried it might be our favorite Target sports bra, because I think that’s what I was wearing, as a crop top, in both instances. But I’m not going to stop wearing that. Big UndiesEmbracing the Midlife Crisis Crop TopI am so excited to share with you Virginia Sole-Smith’s style questionnaire…Read morea year ago · 202 likes · 23 comments · Corinne Fay and Virginia Sole-SmithCorinneWell, I don’t know. I was going to say maybe you were spending more time in public, around strangers.VirginiaIn my driveway, checking my mail? I live in a very rural neighborhood, too. I need to underscore, we are not a neighborhood with foot traffic. Like, I can check my mail 30 times a month and not see a human being while I do it. This was not a normal experience. It was very weird.1. Flying While FatVirginiaAll right I feel like the big travel anxiety when you’re traveling fat is airplanes, so we’re going to start with a bunch of flying questions.This first person writes,When do you request a seatbelt extender on a plane? I’ve only traveled a handful of times as a large fat person at the time, I didn’t even know I needed an extender until I walked onto my first flight and the attendant, who was amazing, said discreetly, “ma’am, for your comfort,” and handed it to me. But on subsequent flights, I’ve been snickered at when I requested it while already sitting down in my seat. Should I do it at the ticket counter? At the gate? Do you wait until you board? What is the etiquette here?Corinne, teach us about seatbelt extenders!CorinneOkay. What I do is I request it while boarding. So when I’m boarding, the moment I see a flight attendant, which is usually right after you step onto the plane from the gate.VirginiaYeah, from the from the tunnel thing onto the plane. CorinneI say, “May I please have a seat extender?” Because they’re usually stashed up there, they have them in one of their little storage cubbies, and they’ll just hand you one. And if the flight attendants are not there for some reason, then I still try to grab one or talk to one before I sit down.VirginiaOkay. So you try to sort it out before you’re in your seat.CorinneYeah, otherwise I just feel like it takes too long. VirginiaThen you feel sort of trapped. You’re like, now I’m in my seat and what if they don’t bring it? That feels very anxiety-provoking.CorinneI have never had anyone snicker at me, so I am sorry that that happened to this person. That’s awful. And sometimes they do preempt you, like they see you and will hand you one.VirginiaWe did hear from lots of folks saying that you should buy your own and travel with it. Is that something you do? CorinneI have not bought one. My understanding is that different airlines use different seatbelt designs, so I think if you buy one, it won’t work across all airlines. But if you always fly on the same airline, you could probably figure it out.Leave a commentVirginiaThat’s a good idea. CorinneAnd I would also just say, please don’t steal them because people need them. VirginiaBe a team player. CorinneYeah, save them for me. When I am disembarking, I just bring it up with me and hand it to someone.VirginiaThis should just be a standard thing you could check when you were booking your flight, the same way you can say you need a kosher meal. And then they would just know to bring it to you at your seat. I don’t see how that would create more work for the airlines. I mean, obviously I know nothing about airline workflow process, but it does feel like the stress of the passenger having to get on the plane and ask at the point when the flight attendant is at their busiest trying to get everybody’s stupid rolling bags to fit in the overhead bins, they also have to scramble around and find seatbelt extenders—it’s just creating stress for everybody. The passenger is panicked, the flight attendant is like, oh wait, let me do that, too.Why not have it be known ahead of time and then maybe the person who scans your boarding pass hands it to you as you get on the plane. CorinneI do think that airplane seatbelt lengths vary. So, there are some where you might need one, and some where you might not. VirginiaWell, that’s nice. We definitely like some grey area. CorinneIt’s totally unpredictable. I have always wondered if they might run out, but that’s never happened to me.VirginiaI guess, what’s the worst case scenario. They’re not going to let you fly without a seat belt, so you’d have to get off the plane?CorinneI don’t know. Or maybe they could grab one from another plane. I have no idea.VirginiaIt feels like this is a process that could be improved upon, is what we’re saying.CorinneThat’s why you ask right when you get on the plane. What about you? Do you have a routine?VirginiaI have not needed one yet so I have not navigated this. I will say, when I was flying in Asia and we flew a local Thai airline, the seats were the tiniest I’ve ever been in and I had a moment of like, oh, am I gonna need this? And we’ll talk about that more, because there are some questions about traveling in Asia, and I have some thoughts. But no, I haven’t navigated it personally yet. CorinneI remember a few years ago, I was flying somewhere and literally, on the way there, I was on a super new plane and didn’t need a seat belt extender—which was my usual at the time. And then on the way back, I was on a really old plane, and was like, “Oh, I now need a seat belt extender.” Like, it was over the course of a one week trip.VirginiaThat’s bananas. It’s just good for all of us to know the best practice. And I would also say, I can understand buying one to have with you as a backup. Like, you still ask to use theirs but worst case scenario, you would know you had one. That just makes sense, if that’s accessible to folks. We can link to some options in the transcript, because a few people did send me links for ones they like. And another listener did chime in, this was in the Substack chat where we were talking about this stuff, and said,I’m in Canada and have flown WestJet and Air Canada. When requesting a seatbelt extender, I’ve always asked for one after sitting down at my seat. I usually have to wait a few minutes—they’re a busy bunch—but they have brought me one no problem before the safety demonstration.So just good to know that you should not feel like you are putting people out or being weird by making this request. Like this is their job to make sure you are safe on the airplane. All right. Tips for dealing with tiny bathrooms on airplanes.CorinneI feel like my tip for this is to not go to the bathroom on the plane. VirginiaDehydrate so hard.CorinneOther than that, I don’t think I have any tips.VirginiaThey’re so awful. They’re so small. I have so many fears of being stuck or dying in an airplane bathroom. I’m not afraid of planes in general. I’m not afraid of flying. I’m not a nervous flyer, which I’m grateful for, because I do have a fear of heights. Somehow my brain has decided that the planes don’t leave the ground. But when I go to the airplane bathroom, for some reason, I’m then like, “You are miles in the sky.”CorinneWow. Fascinating. VirginiaIt triggers my stress. Well, one tip, I will say—and we’re going to get into this in the next question—but it is true that business class on long haul flights will probably have a bigger bathroom. So even if you’re not flying business class, if the economy bathroom is too small for your body, I think you have every right to say “I need to use a bigger bathroom,” and find out if there is a bigger one.I’m not saying it’s going to be palatial, but it’s a slightly different layout up there on some business class flights.CorinneI would be curious if people have other tips, too.VirginiaYeah. I mean, to me, it’s like, go at the gate and then do your best. And if you’re traveling with small children who need you to take them to the airplane bathroom, it’s just a whole level of hell. I’m Sorry. My solution there is, we just don’t close the door when a kid uses the airplane bathroom. And I’m sorry everybody!!!I’m thankful my children are now old enough they can go by themselves. But when I was with a three-year-old on a plane, I couldn’t get me and her in the airplane bathroom and close the door. It was not gonna happen. So I just kind of blocked her body as much as I could while she went. I’m sure that was revolting for everybody nearby.CorinneThat is such a nightmare.  VirginiaWhat else can I do? There’s not room for me and her in the bathroom. CorinneTotally fair. It could also be a good reason to book non-direct flights, if you’re like, “I could go three hours without using a restroom, but not seven.” VirginiaI’m also such a skeptic of the non-direct flight, though, because of the inevitable travel shenanigans that result.I also truly wonder about those weird pee bag things people use at rock concerts. Do you know about this?CorinneWhat? What do you mean? What do you mean by pee bag?VirginiaIt’s like… Stadium Pal or something. I think that one is for people with penises, but they have them for people with vulvas too.CorinneI’ve seen those things that will let people with vulvas pee standing up?VirginiaYeah. And then there’s like a bag that attaches to your leg. There’s like a catheter in a bag so you can just pee into the bag.Look, have I ever done it? I have not. Would I ever want to do it? I would not.CorinneBut it’s an option. VirginiaIt is an option. I know people have used them for really long road trips, if they were worried about being able to stop.CorinneThis is fascinating. I gotta look into this. VirginiaIt’s a thing that exists. I cannot offer more notes about it, but it is an option. Best airlines for fat passengers? And: Is it worth buying two economy seats or one first or business class seat?CorinneWell, the best airline is Southwest, because they will let you book two tickets and will either refund you one or there’s also a way to book it without paying for both upfront. But I think you have to talk to someone on the phone or something like that. VirginiaI mean, of course. But why is everyone not doing this? CorinneI don’t know. At other airlines, the policy is usually if you are encroaching on someone else’s space, then you have to buy two seats. But they won’t refund you and it’s hard to buy two seats and how are you supposed to know beforehand whether or not you’re encroaching on someone else’s space?VirginiaI guess we can kind of assume that if you’re flying economy, we’re all encroaching on everybody’s space because the way they design their planes—but then it’s gross that you’re expected to pay for their design flaws!A listener suggested fly Economy Plus and get an aisle seat, and that is usually my go-to. I’m actually okay on a window seat, too. There are pros and cons. I’m usually traveling with a kid, too. So if I have two kids, I’ll go on the aisle and they can fight over the window. But Economy Plus does make a big difference for me. I have also, acknowledging all the privilege involved here, flown business class several times often because my travel is a tax write-off for work so I can justify the expense. And then in one case, we saved credit card points for four years in order to get tickets to Thailand.Packing While Small FatVirginia Sole-Smith·January 17, 2023Read full storyBecause doing that kind of long haul flight with children, I was like we need to sleep. It was a transformative experience on so many levels. Everybody is nicer. It is gross that airlines decided to enforce social class hierarchies like this. But if it’s within reach for you, whether through points or if you’re flying for work and you can get the company to pay for it—when it comes to fitting our bodies in these spaces, it’s a very real difference. CorinneI have only flown first class once and it did seem a lot better. VirginiaYeah, I’ve never flown first. I don’t think.CorinneOh, what’s the difference? VirginiaWell, if you’re doing international, first is like, you have your own room.CorinneWell, I’m literally never flying internationally.VirginiaWait you’ve never flown internationally?CorinneNot since I was in college.VirginiaYou do not like flying.CorinneI hate flying. I guess maybe we should have started with that. I hate flying. I avoid it at all costs. I consider myself someone who doesn’t have a ton of anxiety, but I have so much anxiety about flying. I also get terrible motion sickness. So for most of my life, every flight I’ve been on, I’ve puked. VirginiaThat’s horrible. CorinneAnd I don’t fit in the seats. So it’s just kind of a nightmare for me. It’s a horrible situation. But it does mean that I have a lot of systems where I’m like, “I’m flying Southwest. I’m booking two seats. I’m getting there early.” I have a whole system for how I block off the other seat. ShareVirginiaWell, if you are ever to go somewhere internationally, because I don’t believe Southwest flies internationally—CorinneVery limited, yeah.VirginiaI would recommend saving up for business class, because it will have a huge difference in the experience. It’s gross to me how much nicer it is and how inaccessible that is.If you’re flying an airline where you’ll have to buy two economy seats, I would definitely check the price on one business class seat, because it might not be a huge difference. I think the overall experience of business class, again, as gross as it is that this is the way they’ve set it up, you will be treated more respectfully. I bet they will find your seatbelt extender a lot faster. Like, all of that will be better. And again, as I mentioned, on long haul flights, the bathroom was bigger. I was like, wow, truly, they have everything up here.CorinneThe most amazing thing to me about the first class seats was that there is space between the seats, you know? The armrests are like six inches wide or whatever. That just makes such a difference to not have to be squashed against someone.VirginiaIt’s wild. It’s like colonialism never left, it just became airplanes. So yeah, airplane travel is really stressful. Do you have any other airplane travel systems that you are big on that we want to share with folks?CorinneMy biggest tips are, fly Southwest and book yourself two seats. You do have to get there early if you do that, because you have to go to the check-in part and they give you a little ticket that says this seat is reserved to put on your extra seat.VirginiaDoes Southwest not assign seats? CorinneOh, yeah, no. Southwest doesn’t assign seats. I guess you didn’t know that. They also don’t have first class or business class.VirginiaWell that’s a more democratic process all around and I respect that.CorinneYou get randomly assigned a boarding group. So if you have the extra seat thing, you pre-board, so you get on first and choose your seat, and save the other one.VirginiaBut then give everyone looks so they know it’s really taken.CorinneYou do have to be like, “No, I have an extra seat.” And a couple times that I’ve done it, people have been like, “IS like a dog going to be sitting here? Like, is this reserved for like a pet?” And I’m always like, no. It is also nice for the person who gets to sit in the row with you.VirginiaI was going to say, like, I mean, there’s this whole thing—and we can link to Aubrey Gordon’s writing about airplanes. The way fat folks are treated on airplanes is appalling, but this system solves for so much of that. Because the person who does share your row will have more room too.CorinneIt’s better for everyone. It makes so much sense to just do it that way. But you do have to advocate for the seat to stay empty. VirginiaThat part I don’t like. I want Southwest to smooth that out a little bit. Otherwise, I give them a lot of points for being the only airline attempting to get this right.Post-Recording Note: NAAFA has let us know that Southwest is reconsidering this passenger of size policy, which could be disastrous for fat and disabled passengers! If you haven’t already, please sign their petition here.Share2. Fat Travel GearCorinneI’ll read this one.I’d love to hear recs from other fat folks regarding comfy cross body bags to wear out and about during the day or any backpack recs for personal items.VirginiaCorinne turned me on to Baggu Crescent bags and I just got the the medium-sized one. I haven’t taken it on a trip yet. I will in a few weeks, but I am obsessed. It is such a good bag. And right after I bought mine, I went back on the website, because now I’m like, “How many colors do I need” They’re so great and they just added so many new colors in the extended strap length. I think it’s a 47-inch strap. The one I have is the regular length, which is like 30-something and I extended it all the way and it works for me, who is a size 18/20, just for reference. But for bigger folks, there are now so many more options. I’m very excited, and considering a second purchase in another color. Full outfit details hereCorinneThat’s awesome. VirginiaIt’s the perfect size. It can fit a decent-sized water bottle, like a 20-ounce water bottle, your wallet, phone, snacks, my Kobo for my books. It can fit a decent amount of stuff and it’s just really comfortable to wear.CorinneI don’t like crossbody bags. I don’t like anything that’s going in between my boobs.VirginiaFor people not watching the video, Corinne was just gesturing.CorinneI’m demonstrating. VirginiaWhere the crossbody lands.CorinneIt just never works with the kind of bras I wear. I hate it. For my personal carry on, or whatever it’s called, I like the LL Bean boat and tote. And that comes in two strap lengths. So, I like the LL Bean boat and tote with the zip top and the longer strap length. And that I can carry over my shoulder. The other thing that I really like about that one for traveling is that it stands up by itself. So it’s really nice for under the seat or whatever. VirginiaI haven’t used a Boat and Tote on an airplane. I haven’t used it on a boat either, because I’m not a boat person. But I do like a Boat and Tote for a car trip or beach trip. I think this is related to my myriad back issues, but I really don’t like carrying a shoulder tote when I have any amount of walking to do. CorinneThat’s fair. VirginiaThat is a car-based trip only. So if it’s a long flight and I need more space than my little crossbody bag, I will usually do a crossbody bag with, like, my wallet and my phone, the things I need to be able to reach easily, and then a backpack. And I have one from Walker Family Goods that makes cute colors and it’s very sturdy and has a lot of useful pockets. I like that for my plane day bag.CorinneIt does get heavy, especially if you’re traveling with a laptop. I will say the one annoying thing about the boat and tote is it doesn’t have interior pockets, so I put a bunch of zipper pouches in them. VirginiaWalker Family Goods makes a good shoulder tote, too, for people who do like a shoulder tote, and it does have a laptop sleeve and good interior pockets. And I will say, they clearly thought about parents carrying stuff. The tote bag has two internal water bottles slots, which is so useful because I’ll have mine and then my kid gets tired of carrying hers and I have to carry it. It ends up getting heavy. So that’s my critique. But your back strength mileage may be better than mine. But the Baggu bags, I’m so excited about. I’m thinking about getting the large now, too.CorinneThey’re really cute. VirginiaIt might become a problem. We’ll see. All right, what’s next?CorinneWhat are your favorite carry-on bags? What has lasted the longest, and what do you love the most? VirginiaWe’re talking about suitcases now because we’ve talked about what we’re carrying our water bottles and whatnot in. I am a big fan of the Away hard cases. I have had them for two years. I mean, that brand hasn’t been around long enough for me to have had it for much longer than that. But they are solid. They hold a lot. They they were my first switch to hard-sided cases, and I am a convert. I like the ease the four wheels and the ease of walking them through the airport. They’re very smooth. The mechanics of that are just so smooth. CorinneOne of my other airplane hacks is that I never don’t check a bag. Also because it’s free with Southwest. But I have a bag from Amazon. It comes in a carryon size and bigger sizes, and also has really smooth wheels and is hard sided. The other thing that I like about it—I was influenced to buy this from Tiktok, I will say—is that I think they call it like trunk style? Where it’s like, basically just the top zips off, so it doesn’t have the zipper in the middle of the suitcase. It opens like a jewelry box. It’s like a box and a top flaps open. I feel like it’s so much better.VirginiaIsn’t everything kind of stacked on top of each other? CorinneYeah, but it’s only eight inches or whatever. VirginiaOh I see! Instead of folding open like a sandwich, like a regular suitcase does, where the two halves fold open and lay side by side. Corinne’s suitcase, opens like a door into the magical cave of your suitcase.CorinneIt gets less messy when you’re traveling. VirginiaYou could put it on the luggage rack in the hotel and open it, which always defies me with a clamshell style one, because you’re like, well, here’s the luggage rack. But now to actually open my suitcase, I have to put it on the bed.CorinneWho has room for that? VirginiaThis is very cool. I did just buy the Away pretty recently. I have no reason to upgrade, but, yeah, intriguing.CorinneI do also think it’s like—I forget how much the Away stuff is—but this suitcase is like, $175. I think I was going to buy Away and then I was just like, wait, this is cheaper. I was definitely influenced by some Tiktok person. VirginiaLet’s talk about the checking bags thing. Because I used to be a ruthless carry on person. And then I realized that was a function of my marriage, and I am liberated now. CorinneThis is another anxiety thing for me where I’m just, like, “I will pay any amount to have less shit to worry about,” because I have so much other anxiety about traveling. VirginiaMy kid’s dad, he’s a backpacker type. So he’s very good at thinking through how to fit a week’s worth of stuff into a small bag, because that’s what you do if you’re going to go live in the back country. I don’t want to be in the back country. They don’t have flush toilets there. That’s not for me. So for me, if I’m packing—and again, often if I’m traveling with my kids, but even by myself, I am someone who is comforted having options and having my things. I have a lot of anxiety about being somewhere and not having my things, so I would much rather be able to have a larger suitcase and bring what I need to bring.And now, I don’t quite understand why everyone tries so hard to carry on. What is the gold star everybody thinks they’re getting for packing light? What is the achievement of packing light?CorinneI think it is nice to not have to wait for your suitcase after you get off the plane. It is annoying to have to wait for a checked luggage.VirginiaThat can be an additional 30 minutes.CorinneBut I can handle that. I would rather wait the 30 minutes, pay the $50 if you have to do that, and not have to lug it through the airport.VirginiaAnd then have all your stuff for the whole trip.CorinneYou get on the plane, you’re literally sweating. You throw out your back trying to get it up into the bins. Just no thank you. No. VirginiaThere was a phase in my life where a man would always offer to lift my suitcase. Those days are done.CorinneBecause you were pregnant?VirginiaRight? Maybe now it would happen again if I really lean into my pregnancy vibe. CorinneWhy not? You might as well.VirginiaBut now I will be lifting it myself and I will be cranky. I’m team check the bag, too. I think it reduces stress. The one exception, I will say, is if you don’t have a direct flight and your odds of getting rerouted are high. Like, Corinne, when I came to see you!CorinneI never have a direct flight, because I’m always flying from Albuquerque to Maine, and there are no direct flights.VirginiaBut remember when I came to see you, I did carry on that week, because I was like, “Oh, it’s just me. I think I can do it.” And all we were going to be doing was sitting in a hot spring, so I didn’t feel like I needed a lot of options. And if I had checked my bag, I wouldn’t have had my luggage, because my flights got all messed up. I was able to switch airlines.CorinneIt did give you more options and that was good. 3. Packing While FatVirginiaWhat are everyone’s favorite shoes for walking and standing around in cities all day?CorinneI don’t have great advice for this, because I don’t think I’m super picky, but I like Vejas.VirginiaI don’t find Vejas give me enough arch support. I like them for the cuteness. But I’m getting ready for this trip to London, and I think I’m gonna bring my Birkenstocks, possibly my cute platform Tevas. And then I’m debating on the sneaker option. I do feel like I’m going to want a sneaker option. And I’m debating between my Vejas or some New Balances.I find Birkenstocks really comfortable to walk in. Like a good, broken-in pair. Especially for city travel, I am unwilling to totally sacrifice aesthetics in the name of comfort. So I have a hard time going to the truly comfortable shoes.But Vejas are cute, and they’re definitely super walkable. CorinneI will say, I feel like the best thing about driving as opposed to flying, is you can bring as many pairs of shoes as you want. I think I brought like, six pairs.VirginiaI mean, it’s another reason to check bags. It’s really hard to be a minimal packer about shoes because there might very well be a pair of shoes you’re only gonna wear for one day. I definitely no longer try to bring a cute pair of shoes for dressing up.CorinneIt’s also the one thing that will make you so miserable, if you fuck it up. I’ll be curious to see what you end up bringing.VirginiaWe’ll see how comfortable they really are, but I did order a pair of Charlotte Stone sneakers.CorinneOh, those are so cute. VirginiaI want them to thread the needle of the cute and comfy sneaker. [Post-recording note: They did!!!]CorinneAlright,Non-sweaty travel outfits with pockets, please. I have a trip planned to Europe soon.VirginiaOkay, I think this person’s thinking summer travel. Europe is so hot in the summer. Since this is for October, I’m also thinking about fall travel. But we can kind of just lump it all in together.I do feel like this is where you need a really good pair of pants that are not jeans. Like a light pair of pants, because I feel like shorts are sometimes tricky with travel, especially in Europe. If you’re going to be going into the churches, you might feel like you shouldn’t be showing. I don’t know, sometimes Italy can be strict about stuff and shorts can read very American. So I feel like this is where something like a cool barrel pant seems like it would be really ideal.CorinneThis is like the the Eileen Fisher lantern pants or the Alder Apparel hiking pants. They look nice, but they’re also stretchy and comfortable.VirginiaI have this old, old pair—I think they’re Gap or Target. I’ve been wearing them so much this summer. They’re just a very light cotton striped drawstring waist pair of flowy, wide leg pants. Something like that I think is really good. A listener suggested LaLa play suits, which is new to me, and so I’m looking them up.CorinneYes, one of my friends has one of these, actually.VirginiaThey’re like a big tunic type top and then a stretchy, wide leg pant.CorinneThe one thing I’ll say is I think they are just pure polyester. That’s fine. I find polyester to be a little, like, sweaty sometimes. But they’re really cute, and they go up to 2x but I do think it’s like very oversize-y.VirginiaI’m seeing 3X. Chest, 56 inches. Waist 40 inches. This is a fun recommendation. I feel like a jumpsuit, if it’s a one that you can get easy on and off, is kind of nice, because it’s a whole outfit in one piece. It reduces some decision fatigue. VirginiaI feel like I’m going to maybe bring for London my Beyond Yoga jogger pants, too, that I’m so obsessed with. Probably for the plane. But I would also wear them in London. Maybe with a cute sneaker. You can be a little dressed up, but still in sweats. I think you can combine those things. What Virginia wore to fly to London. Outfit details here.CorinneHow do you handle packing anxiety when you know if you need clothing—something rips, unexpected weather, lost luggage, etc—you can’t just run out and buy something like a straight sized person. I feel like I have to bring my entire wardrobe with me for every single possibility, and it’s emotionally and physically taxing.VirginiaI mean, as discussed, this is why we’re checking our luggage. This is the number one reason why I’m checking my luggage. I can’t just run out and buy something. I need all my options. I do think planning—so this doesn’t cover the scenarios she’s talking about. This person is talking about rips, weather, or whatever. But planning out loose outfits is very helpful to me when I’m packing. Dacy Gillespie has a great packing PDF to guide you through the packing process. That’s super helpful.I’ve definitely used that to help me plan outfits and think about if a piece can work in multiple combinations. It can help me feel like I don’t need to pack quite as much as I think and that I know everything’s going to get used. And if I know everything’s going to get used then I don’t feel like I’m over packing just because I’m checking a bag. CorinneI feel like planning helps. I usually try to do it by category. Like, I’m going to bring this many pairs of pants and just try to make sure none of the categories are only one thing in case something does go wrong or whatever. VirginiaTravel with multiples.CorinneLike, bring at least two pairs of pants.VirginiaSo you’ll have a backup option if something gets spilled on. I feel like a lot of people do advise putting extra underwear in your carryon. And sometimes I remember to do it and sometimes I don’t. I don’t think luggage gets as lost as much as people fear. Now I’m going to say that, and everyone’s going to comment with their horror stories. It has happened to me, but I fly a lot, probably a minimum of three or four times a year. I’m 43 and I’ve been doing that most of my life, and I think twice in my life I’ve had luggage lost, in hundreds of flights. So I don’t think it happens as often as people think. But if it makes you feel less anxious to have underwear or a spare outfit in your carry on bag, by all means, do that. CorinneI think it’s one of those things that maybe just happens less often now, or something.VirginiaWith the missed connection sort of situation, your luggage may be delayed, but they will bring it to you. It gets worked out. So you’ll be, struggling for a day, but not the whole trip. I know it happens. I don’t want to discount people’s lived experience of luggage trauma. And also doing some recon before you go to a new place, to figure out if there are options. I do like to know, if I’m traveling domestically, where’s the nearest Target? They may not have everything I need, because Target obviously carries more of my size online than in stores. But I know I could go there and get socks or new pajamas or something. Some basic stuff if I needed.CorinneMy clothes are bigger. I sweat more, so I change more. Now I need a bigger suitcase. Or is there a hack for this? VirginiaOkay, I really think the theme of this episode is it’s okay that we’re bringing big suitcases, that we’re checking our bags. What is the tyranny here? I really want to investigate. Is it a diet culture mindset that you can’t travel with the things you need? What is this?CorinneI do think there’s this stereotype that if you have a big suitcase, that you’re high maintenance or something, you know? VirginiaYou’re winning travel if you manage to travel lightly. What are we buying into here? Like, traveling lightly is what? What about it makes you a better person? CorinneYou’re easygoing.VirginiaBut I’m not easygoing! Anyone who’s met me knows this. CorinneIt’s like the Gone Girl thing. The cool girl.VirginiaCan we all please push back against this. We don’t have to be the Manic Pixie Dream Girls of travel, for God’s sake. Nor do we have to travel like tech bros.CorinneHave you ever watched Real Housewives and they’re going in the Hamptons for the weekend, and they each have a trunk?VirginiaI think that’s a harmful stereotype, Corinne, and I think that I want to push back against that. I think that’s a harmful stereotype about how women travel. And yeah, I have overpacked. I don’t go to the Hamptons, but I have overpacked for a weekend trip. I will be answering no questions about it. I don’t know. I grew up in joint custody, you guys. I need to have my stuff with me. This is just my thing. I moved back and forth between two houses my whole childhood and I like to have my things with me. And I fully unpack anywhere I’m staying. I move into that hotel room. I am nested, I’m settled, I’ve rearranged the furniture.CorinneMy God.VirginiaThat’s okay. It’s okay.CorinneI feel like there is something sometimes kind of interesting about traveling. Like you suddenly have a capsule wardrobe or whatever.Big UndiesThe 20 Pieces of Clothing I wore for 55 DaysAs discussed, last week I drove back to New Mexico, where I live, from Maine, where I grew up. For the past few years, I have driven out to my mom’s house for an indefinite visit, sometimes in winter, sometimes in summer. I bring my dog and work from my mom’s basement while I eat seafood and go swimming and help my mom fix the screen door and stock the chest freezer…Read morea year ago · 57 likes · 41 comments · Corinne FayVirginiaI like the puzzle of that and I like thinking it through. That’s why I do plan out my outfits for the week when I travel. I like having that kind of mapped out, and then you don’t have the decision fatigue when you’re there, because you’ve sort of done all that thinking ahead of time. But I guess what I’m thinking about is how quickly that can also become a way of measuring your success as a traveler. It can turn into this performance thing that is not helpful. And if it’s already stressful for you to pack and get organized for a trip, feeling like you also need to do it as minimally as possible feels like it’s making it harder. CorinneAnd that’s another thing about checking bags, too. Your bag has to be under 50 pounds or whatever. But if you’re checking a bag, it can be as big as you want it to be. It’s not like, it costs less to check a smaller bag.VirginiaThere’s no prize!CorinneJust get a bigger bag, pack the stuff you need to feel comfortable and try and let go of everything else.VirginiaI mean, I do get that it’s super annoying that airlines charge to check bags. Now most airlines do and I understand people are trying to avoid that added expense. But I think you have to weigh that $30, $50, $60 against are you then going to be on vacation and stress you don’t have what you want? Are you going to end up impulse buying something on vacation that you don’t really need that’s not really the right thing, because you didn’t bring whatever.I’ve definitely done that. If I don’t have something I’m going to try to buy something to make it work, and that’s never a purchase that ends up standing the test of time.CorinneYeah, I think it’s worth it to try and get a suitcase that will fit all your stuff, versus the other kind of stress buying that can go on before a travel trip. VirginiaThat’s a good point. Buy Corinne’s suitcase rather than buying six pairs of cute slash comfortable sneakers. Note to Virginia.CorinneOne of my travel anxiety strategies is definitely to just buy a bunch of stuff that I think will make me more comfortable. VirginiaYep, yep, yep. That’s relatable content. Sometimes it works a little bit. The piece I did after that big Thailand trip of all the stuff I bought, some of it was really helpful. Some of it I’m still traveling with. I should look back at that list and see what stood the test of time.CorinneI would be curious to see that. The last time I flew, which was in March of this year, I was having so much anxiety about getting motion sick that I bought, like everything I could find online that was supposed to help with motion sickness. VirginiaBut it did! You didn’t throw up!CorinneWell in the end, I just got a prescription from my doctor for scopolamine patches, which were life changing. I enjoyed looking out the window of the airplane, which has never happened to me before. But now I literally have this huge bag in my my closet that’s like wristbands, those weird eyeglass things. It’s crazy, but whatever. VirginiaI feel like you could donate that to some nauseous pregnant person?CorinneI’m holding on to it just in case. 4. Traveling & Anti-FatnessVirginiaAll right, let’s talk a little bit about navigating anti-fatness when we’re traveling:On a more philosophical note, I would love to hear how people show themselves kindness when they feel out of place, like they are uncomfortable taking up space, and how they advocate for themselves in those situations as well.CorinneI feel like this is kind of what we’re talking about. Part of dealing with that discomfort and anxiety is sometimes buying stuff that you think will make yourself feel a tiny bit better. Having a bigger suitcase and checking the suitcase so you’re not a sweaty, fat person in the airport, discombobulated and juggling a bunch of different bags or whatever. Or finding the shoes that will make you feel both comfortable and like you’re not like a slob.VirginiaI do think the planning and related purchasing is how I get through it, too. I think you also have to just have grace for the fact that there’s going to be moments of travel that feel very uncomfortable. That’s true kind of across the board, right? Because travel is a fundamentally uncomfortable experience. We’ve taken ourselves out of our comfort zones. There are always lines you have to stand in. There is always waiting. There’s always walking and being physically uncomfortable. The bathrooms are not where you want them to be, etc. So part of deciding to travel is knowing that you’re putting yourself in a series of uncomfortable situations for some greater good of the experience.And then, of course, if you are traveling fat, knowing that you have this added layer that other people are not having to navigate and that that’s unfair. I think if you’re traveling with straight-sized folks, figuring out how to advocate for yourself and get someone on your side so you can make sure that whatever plans are being made for the trip, that you can participate, and that your needs are being factored in, I think is important.CorinneThis is also definitely one where I’m like, I try to be well-groomed and be as friendly and polite as I can. It’s sort of annoying advice, but.Virginia It is really annoying advice, but it is an understandable survival strategy.CorinneIt’s not the kind of advice I want to give to anyone else. Like, I don’t want to say, oh, you should try and brush your hair and wear your nice pants or whatever. But that is what I find myself doing.VirginiaAnd do you find it helps? Like, do you think it changes anything?CorinneI mean, it’s so hard to know. I think it mostly just makes me feel more comfortable.VirginiaYeah, that makes sense. And I think that’s valid. It’s valid to say, I’m choosing to do a few things that in my day-to-day normal life. I don’t feel like I have to go to these lengths, but I’m choosing to take these steps now to make this experience more manageable for me.CorinneI mean, and is brushing my hair before I go to the airport at 5am when I’ve gotten two hours of sleep really making a difference? Who knows.VirginiaSo awful. But yes, I’ve done the same thing. We got a couple questions about traveling as a fat person in Asia. One person said they were going to Japan. One person said they were going to Taiwan as a size 20, 6 foot tall person, and had had straight size shorter friends mention getting comments about their body size, so wondering how that’s going to go. I have not been to Taiwan. But I have been to Thailand as a fat person, and yes, you are aware, like clothing shopping is not going to be part of your experience. I did buy a great purse and a great sunglasses case and many other cute things, so still got to shop. The one thing I noticed that was stressful to navigate there was seat belts were smaller in cars. Like we took a lot of Sprinter vans, where it’s like, you call a van that can sit like seven people and the seats are small, and the seat belts never fit me. Sometimes they were just adjusted so tight, and I could lengthen them out and get them to fit, but I went without seatbelts a lot. And I hated that, obviously. Bangkok has more traffic accidents than anywhere in the world. So luckily that didn’t happen. That was the biggest thing I noticed. But I did not feel like people were being unkind to me, or I didn’t experience negativity. It was just like, this is not built for me, which wasn’t great, but was the experience. CorinneWe did get one message from a listener, which I thought was kind of nice, and this is about their experience living abroad. I lived in Japan for a year a long time ago. I was small fat then, and way bigger than most people. This was about 15 years ago. So anyone who has more recent experience, please chime in. I found people expected North Americans—assuming you’re North American—to be bigger. I really enjoyed being different than everyone. I tried to embrace that and show what a bigger body could do. Sometimes it was hard though. They would comment on how much they thought I would eat a lot, and weight was discussed. I don’t know if this would happen as a tourist, but just so you know. There’s a lot of stairs, and you’ll probably do a lot of walking, so prepare yourself for that. If you need to buy something clothes wise, the bigger department stores tend to carry a limited amount of larger sizes. Most shops don’t carry anything over a US medium. It is super humid in the summertime, and a lot of people have hankies to wipe the sweat off themselves. I also like the baby wipe method for keeping fresh.VirginiaHankies and baby wipes. I like that. CorinneYes, I love those tips. VirginiaI think there’s just such a range of experiences. I don’t think it would be accurate to say that traveling in Asia will expose you to more fatphobia than traveling as a fat person in America. I think there are different cultural nuances to fatphobia around the world, but it also shows up everywhere. So traveling as a fat person in America or Europe, you’re going to experience anti-fatness as well.CorinneYeah, I like the perspective here about just enjoying being different, too. It’s kind of a nice reframing.VirginiaI think that’s, again, that comfort zone thing we were talking about. But I also think for those of us who are white Americans and used to a certain amount of privilege and safety, it’s a good experience to be the other and have to force ourselves to get comfortable with that. I think there’s value in that experience. It’s complicated.CorinneAll right, last question,should I splurge on the villa with a private plunge pool or brave the resort pool deck?VirginiaI mean, amazing question. We’re so excited for your trip. CorinneYeah, invite me. I mean, it’s kind of hard not to say splurge on the villa. VirginiaObviously, it’s splurge on the villa. Who is not saying splurge on the villa here? But I want to be clear, we know nothing about this person. We don’t know where the villa is. We have zero context. This is exactly how the question was submitted. But Corinne and I are confidently endorsing that you should splurge on the villa. CorinneBut I want you to splurge on the villa because that’s what you want to do, and not because you’re afraid to be seen on the resort pool deck.VirginiaThat is the other layer of this. I’m guessing this person is asking because they are fat and they’re worried about being at the resort pool deck. And you deserve to be there. However, if you can splurge on the villa and you don’t have to go there, I mean, why? I don’t know, or you’ll go to both. Because the pool decks probably fun, and that’s probably where the snacks and the drinks are and then your private plunge pool will be so lovely. We’re excited, and we want to come on this trip. It sounds really fun. I forgot to put this in the outline, but someone else did say, “What about a Burnt Toast vacation?” And I was like, I mean, I’m available. I don’t know the logistics of that, but that’s pretty great. And there are a couple of folks who are who organize fat travel, like specific fat travel programs. One that I hear amazing things about is Stella Vision. Their slogan is “where the ease of all inclusive meets behind the scenes Italian travel. Boutique trips for feminist travelers.” And she has talked a lot about traveling fat in Italy. So I mean, I’m dying to go on one of her vacations. They all look amazing. And, yeah, I think we can, if other folks know, some drop them in the comments, because I think that’s a great thing to explore. ButterCorinneVirginia, do you have a Butter? VirginiaI do have a Butter. I have a Butter I’m very excited about. So the backstory to this butter is that I threw my back out again, as I love to do every couple years. And so I’m back in physical therapy, working on my recovery, and I’m doing much, much, much better. And my physical therapist had me get this, which is a balance board and calf stretcher. It is like a wood wedge-shape device that you can stand on, like on a slant, to stretch your calves. And then you can lift off the lid, and it has a curved bottom, and you can put it on the ground. You can stand on it to do balance work. And this particular one is rated for up to 400 pounds, so decently size inclusive, I feel very secure on it.It’s so fun, and it really is helping. Like, after I’ve been sitting at my desk for a while, I get up and stand on the balance board, and it just kind of like forces me to reengage my glutes, release my hip flexors. Like, engage my core a little bit. It just kind of fixes my particular issues. Which are overly tight and weak hip flexors, and then just never using my glutes ever. My body considers those to be optional muscles. And I do a lot of sitting because I’m a writer, and then gardening, which is a death sport, and the combination is bad for my lower back. So standing on this thing a bunch of times a day is really, really helping. CorinneSo when you stand on it, like, after you’re sitting at your desk for a while, are you standing on it in the slant position or are you doing the balance? VirginiaI’m doing the balance. I usually use it as a calf stretcher a few times a day as well, because my calves do get very tight, and that sort of seems it’s like a chain reaction thing. My calves get tight and then I stand too much on my heels, and everything’s off. So first thing in the morning, especially, I stretch my calves a lot, but then I use it as a balance board throughout the day. This morning, I stood on it to do a 10 minute upper body free weights video and it was the added a challenge like doing bicep curls on the balance board.Oh and I’m including this one because it has the highest weight max that I could find.CorinneWow, that’s cool. VirginiaYeah, it like, really improved my form, because you have to engage your core to stay balanced.CorinneYes, this looks really cool. I’m definitely tempted to order right now.VirginiaIt’s great. I really recommend it. And my kids are obsessed with it, too. And I have fidgety kids who regulate by moving their bodies. So if that is also in your family household, this is good for kids. I have a kid who just gets on it and balances, balances, balances, while she’s watching TV. It’s really good for her. CorinneThat’s cool. Okay, well, I just decided I needed some new hair clips, and I just ordered these hair clips from Undo Hairware. And they’re really cute. I feel they are, like, a little bit expensive, but they they come in tons of cute colors and tons of different lengths. I ordered a few different lengths and a few different colors, but they’re really cute. They’re the kind of thing where you’re like I want to eat this. Like, I want to put it in my mouth. I don’t know what it is. I have one in like, a pretty jade green. And some of them are sort of like stone, like marble looking. But they are very satisfying clips. VirginiaHow big are they? CorinneThey have different lengths. There are some that are four inches, two inches, one and a half inches and one inch.VirginiaWhat size are you using?CorinneI got one and a half inch and two inch. And I think I like the one and a half better. But they also have one inch, which is pretty small, VirginiaThat seems teeny. I sometimes use a one inch if I’m just pulling my hair half up. CorinneYeah, exactly. So if you need a little tiny treat, I recommend Undo Hairware. VirginiaWe love a little treat. Yes. So fun. All right. This was a great episode. 

You’re listening to Burnt Toast!I’m Virginia Sole-Smith, and today my guest is Claire Ayoub.Claire is the writer and director of the brand new feature film—opening tomorrow!!— called Empire Waist, a heartfelt comedy about teens learning to love their bodies through fashion design and friendship.I saw Empire Waist a couple of days before I interviewed Claire, and I haven’t been this excited about a movie in a very, very long time. It’s a film I can’t wait to show my 11 year old, but I’m also dying for all of you to see it. I think kids and adults are going to feel so so seen by this story.  You’re going to get so much out of my conversation with Claire. But also know this is an independent film. It’s not getting a huge box office release and the more we, as the Burnt Toast community, can do to show up for it, the more distribution it will get—and the more we’ll communicate to Hollywood that we want more stories that center fat experiences and fat joy.PS. If you enjoy today’s conversation, please tap the heart on this post — likes are one of the biggest drivers of traffic from Substack’s Notes, so that’s a super easy, free way to support the show! And, make sure you’re following us (it’s free!) in your podcast player! We’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Pocket Casts! And while you’re there, please leave us a rating or review. (We like 5 stars!)Episode 161 TranscriptClaireI’m Claire Ayoub. I’m the writer and director of Empire Waist. It is the movie I wish I had as a teen, and honestly as an adult. As a person with a body.I wrote a piece for Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls in 2015 called Take The Plunge. It was a note to my 12 year old self, and I wrote about how I quit swimming at 12. I wrote it at 25, because I was getting back back in the pool. For me, that was really important to write to my younger self to say, “You’re about to quit something that is your favorite thing in the world because you can’t handle making that walk from the locker room to the pool.” A 20-foot walk to my favorite thing, and I couldn’t handle it because of the shame I felt about my bigger body and my changing body. During puberty, our bodies change—and that’s normal. But I felt so ashamed! So I wrote this piece—and I was so terrified to write it—but the response to it is why I wrote this movie. Hundreds of people, especially women, across the US and around the world, were responding about the things they quit at that age. I wish we had had something that we could have seen to make us feel more seen and less alone, that we’re not alone in this struggle. And so that’s why I wrote the movie. I basically had the idea of, what if you could wear whatever you wanted, that what was available wasn’t the obstacle, but you still didn’t feel worthy to wear it. We see a character who is so talented and has a passion for fashion design, but she’s bullied at school. She keeps her head down. She keeps it to herself, and she doesn’t wear any of her designs because she doesn’t feel worthy to. It’s not until her clothes get discovered by her fat classmate at school who’s confident—she has that confidence and loves color and patterns, but can’t find the clothes she wants to wear that really resonate with her. So she begs her to make her one dress. And what starts there is a friendship love story. Because the movies I saw about body image were all really sad. You know, seeing people binge or seeing people be sad and bullied.VirginiaThe Calista Flockhart eating disorder special that we all grew up with. ClaireI wanted to show what helped me get through it, and always helps me get through it, which is friendship. No matter what our body type, our friends see us at our most powerful. Just because a character is super confident, like in the case of Kayla who plays her best friend, that does not mean she is a two dimensional character who’s just figured it out, you know? That was why it was really important for me to direct and to see this through from beginning to end. Because it was a very commercial script. I had offers to buy the script through The Black List. But I knew if I handed this over, it could have just been smoothed out.VirginiaThere were so many moments as I was watching it, where I thought, oh, she avoided that. You avoided so many moments where I felt like it could have gone in a Disney, a cliched afterschool special way, but also in a way that would have been so much more apologetic of fatness.I just want to say for folks, I got to see a screener a few days ago. I mean, I cried multiple times watching it. I also laughed a ton. It is an incredibly joyful, hopeful movie, with some tough stuff, of course. And I just kept thinking: There is no apology for fatness here. ClaireIt’s really important to meet your audience early and often, because Hollywood doesn’t think we’re worth the risk. Because they don’t see it as a story that resonates, a story that will drive box office. Because it’s always about dollars. So I always talk about finding your audience. Prove that there is an audience on the business side, but also craft-wise. Talking to people, testing the script with them, and getting their actual feedback. Because we only have our one life experience. This is a very diverse cast, and I am a white gay woman. But being gay doesn’t mean I get to talk about everything else in the world, you know? I’m a cisgendered woman, I’m an able-bodied woman—so looking at that, I really wanted to ensure as a way to take care of the story, and also make sure people saw themselves represented.So I did 17 live readings across the country in 2019 and early 2020. And that’s not that’s not normal, that is not normally part of the process. I was like, “I’m doing a script tour!” Everyone’s like, “what’s a script tour?” I’m like, “Just go with it.” And I really gave permission to the audience, both in person and afterwards in Google Forms to say what was working and what confused them and what could be done better. Especially when it came to the diversity and inclusion of this film. So I learned on this script tour across the country, that the script resonated with people from 14 to 84.VirginiaWow, that’s cool.ClaireI remember a 70 year old woman come up to me after a reading, who had lived a life, right? And she goes, “I can still remember my mom and when I was maybe six or seven, giving me skim milk and my sister whole milk because I was bigger than her.” I had another mom who came up to me in tears going, “Oh my God, I have to call my adult daughter.” She’s in her 60s or 70s. She goes, “I thought I was helping. I thought I was helping when I was saying these things.” So in the beginning, I talked about this movie being for teen girls — but I stopped doing that early on, because why are we limiting this? We got great feedback, especially from non binary kids and adults saying thank you for not gendering this to make it just a movie about teen girls. Because body image is body image, and that was really important to us. During this whole process, it’s about learning and shifting and adjusting based on what you learn. Because this is what we love about it is people coming up to us after and saying they felt seen. VirginiaI watched it by myself and the whole time was like, I can’t wait to show my 11 year old. She’s going to love it. But I was also thinking, I can’t wait for Burnt Toast listeners in general to watch because as you’re saying, it really is all ages. It makes the conversation very accessible to kids, which doesn’t always happen. But as a parent, I mean, I connected so hard with her dad. I saw her mom, I know her mom. It is just, it’s really rich and beautifully done.ClaireI just want to shout out really quick, Missi Pyle, who plays the mom. She is one of the most supportive human beings—especially when it comes to body image. Because those seventeen live readings basically were for me to get this mom’s character right.VirginiaIt’s a hard character!ClaireIt’s a tough character. It would have been so easy for this mom to be a two-dimensional, icy bitch who is just being mean to her daughter. So really walking that fine line that she loves her daughter so much and is so afraid for her to be rejected, to be bullied, that she wraps that kid in love and fear and it hurts, right? Looking at that. And Missi Pyle—she and Rainn Wilson going toe to toe. There’s a big argument scene that had all of us crying behind the scenes. The two of them have been such champions of this movie, and its message. Both of them are parents and just really want to see this story of acceptance and how to support your kids. It’s really looking at your own fears and where it’s coming from. VirginiaLet’s talk about the cast a little bit. We had Katy Geraghty, who’s an incredible Broadway actor, on the podcast last year. She talked about how, as a fat person playing fat characters, it’s both a huge opportunity for representation, and you’re often reliving some of your own trauma or dealing with a director who is not so sensitive, and it can be really fraught.So talk a little bit about what you did to protect the cast, because the the actors that play Kayla and Lenore are quite young, right?ClaireThey were. They were 19 years old when we filmed. They were babies. My refrain this whole time was, “I am not going to have you pull up something that happened yesterday. I don’t want you pulling from your own experience. I don’t want you re-traumatizing yourself.”What was really important to me was understanding how to protect my cast and crew, both physically—we were shooting at the height of covid—and mentally, because this is a story about someone who has deep self loathing for her own body. This is a movie with bullying from a character, a mean girl who has her own struggles with food, right? Her own struggles with control and body image.  I had two people come up to me after that scene with Missi Pyle and Mia Kaplan in the hallway, where the mom really being very clear about her own views of her daughter’s body and how people see her. I had two grown adult men ask if they could give me a hug because they needed a hug, because they had teen daughters, right? So a big part of this was preparing myself with the skill set to support my cast and crew, meaning I tested the script not only with people 14 to 84, but with social workers, psychologists, teachers, educators, healthcare providers. I needed to ensure my cast and crew did not suffer to tell this story.VirginiaSo important.ClaireI was talking with a social worker at a friend’s birthday. And I mentioned the mean girl character, Sylvie, and how she controls her friends’ food. And the social worker goes, “Whatever you do, do not show what she’s eating.” VirginiaYes, I noticed this! ClaireMy brain went, what? Because, as a filmmaker, what would we do? An overhead shot showing four identical meals to convey that. And she goes, whatever you do, do not show what she’s eating. Because someone struggling with an eating disorder will see her, want to look like her, and snap a photo and replicate that. So I relayed it to our props team to say, “Nothing clear. I don’t want to see the food. I only want to see the tops of the food so we know they’re eating something. No direct shots of food. We’re going to shoot across the table to show that they’re sad eating their food, but we’re not going to show what they’re eating.” That is the kind of intentionality that was very important to me. And with my actors. I created essentially a care plan with them, for my for my actors who played Lenore, Kayla and Sylvie, our bully. We worked together on zoom ahead of time, individually and then together as a group, to parse how the character was feeling, why they were feeling, and also making it super clear that they had each other’s backs in the moment, that this was just a script. So they could trust each other to be there for each other. So I talked with each of them and said, “What do you need in the moment? What do you need beforehand and what do you need after?” All my actors basically were like, “I need to be left alone leading up to it. I’m probably going to have headphones on listening to music, getting in a headspace for it.” So I relayed that to my my crew to say, hey, hair and makeup, especially costuming: They’re going to be heads down, really getting in them in the moment. Let’s leave them some space and grace to do that.Then in the moment, it was about making sure that the only people on set were the ones who really needed to be there for certain scenes. But also that our crew had a heads up for really triggering scenes as well.And then afterwards, my favorite example is Mia Kaplan, who plays Lenore. I was like, “What do you need afterwards to really get shake out that feeling of where you are in the scene?” And they’re a big theater kid and they go, “I want to dance.” And so Mia made a playlist called We Finished the Fucking Scene. And basically my instructions were to wait till the last shot and then burst into the room playing songs from this incredible playlist. So yeah, I scared the bejesus out of Rainn Wilson during a scene where she gets weighed at a doctor’s office. It was the final scene of this long day of terrible scenes for Mia, and I jumped into the room blasting Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman.” And was like, we finished the scene! Poor Rainn was like, Oh my God. Like, what?VirginiaYou mentioned making the decision not to show the food when the character who has disordered eating behaviors. Another thing I noticed you didn’t show was in that scene where she gets weighed at the doctor’s office—we don’t see the number on the scale. I would love to just hear a little more about any other things like that that you were like, “let’s not include that,” or “let’s make sure to show this” in order to talk about these issues, but in a way that’s going to be safe for everyone watching it, too.ClaireAbsolutely. So for the weigh-in scene, I wanted to capture the feeling she had leading up, not just on the scale, but leading up to it, right? I wanted to capture how she felt. And fun fact, movie magic, Mia Kaplan never stepped on that scale.VirginiaLove that.ClaireThat was our camera operator, Jesse Sanchez Strauss, who stepped on the scale. I didn’t want to show her weight, just like I’d never show Lenore’s own disordered eating. I never show it, and that was done on purpose. We see her taking a bite of pizza. We see her bringing snacks out of her closet. But I did not want someone to be able to freeze frame that and go, “See? See? See? She could have stopped, she could have just not eaten that.” To grab onto that kind of trigger topic and say, see? I was like, no, I want you to see Lenore Miller as a human being. I want you to see Kayla as a human being. I want you to see Daisy Washington, who plays Marcy as the most powerful person in the room. This is a movie genuinely for everyone. It’s not just for fat people, right? It definitely is to feel seen, but it’s not just for fat people. It is a space to understand and feel empathy towards all bodies. Like, I never saw The Whale. I had friends flag it to me. They were like, do not. Nope.VirginiaMarked safe.ClaireMarked safe. Exactly. And I always look at content like this and say, do we need to se this? Just like something we talk about for trigger content, like rape, things like that in film. Do you need to show it? Do you need to re-trigger people to tell this story?  And just like my original instinct as a filmmaker would be to show the food, thanks to experts, I didn’t do that. Again, how can I make sure I don’t unintentionally harm my audience, my cast and my crew? Super important. VirginiaIt just seems like such a tricky line that you must have to keep revisiting because on the other hand the movie does contain these raw, emotional scenes of the parents fighting about how to handle her or between the mother and daughter. The bullying is really hard to watch.I was saying to my friend who is planning to watch with her daughter, I think all of that might actually be harder for us as parents to watch. I think kids are just going to be like, “Yup, that’s right. That’s my experience.”But this happens a lot with my work, too. Parents will say, “I don’t want to talk to my kid about anti-fat bias because I don’t want to tell them they should be worried about their bodies.” And the problem is, kids already know. They’re already seeing it, they’re already experiencing the bullying. So we have to be less afraid of those hard emotions. That’s what they need to see. But they don’t need to see the numbers on the scale. They don’t need to see the specific behaviors. But that’s a very nuanced thing to sort out.ClaireI love that you write about this in your book, that the fear of becoming fat is so triggering for so many people. I have this with my own mom, who’s one of the most badass people in my life. I love her. I channel her in everything I do. It’s the reason I’ve gotten to this point. But hearing her say things about her body, and I take her by the shoulder, and I go: Mom, I love you. It’s hard to hear you say these things, because I know how powerful you are. I’m never going to tell you what to do. You know, it’s our body, our choice, right? But I’m going to ask and bring up the point of, are you coming from a place of self loathing? Are you coming from a place of beating yourself up and changing yourself from there? Or are you like, I want to be able to run around with my kids, or I have a history of heart disease and I want to make sure that I’m taking care of myself that way. Or is it I don’t count in the body I’m in now, I’m not worthy of love in the body I’m in now. I’m not worthy of this job in the worthy I’m in the body I’m in now. We have 100 theaters that are on the fence about bringing us in. [Update: At press time there were now 110 theaters confirmed to show the film!] They’re not sure it’s going to resonate with a community, if it’s going to be worthy of an investment. And this is an award winning film. It has been awarded Best Empowerment Film, Best Social Impact Film. I’ve had practitioners saying they want to bring it into their hospitals, medical practices, psychology practices, schools.But our way of getting to people, getting to audience, getting this curriculum to audiences, is movie theaters and we’re being told, “I don’t know.” I heard that yesterday. I went, all right, to the mattresses, right? Let’s start a campaign. And basically, the way you do it—for your listeners in the future, and especially for filmmakers—you go in person to your local theater and you say, “Are you screening Empire Waist on September 27?”VirginiaGot that everybody?ClaireFor the future, if you have movies coming out that you are so excited to see that are representative of you, go in in person and say, “Are you screening this?” Because they tick that and send it to a manager who’s booking and so that’s really important. We had over 500 people submit theater request forms before the trailer was even out. People who have been following this journey across the country and around the world. But even then, and since then, even more, we had over a million views of our trailer on Twitter. Thanks to you fat fab feminist, right? Over a million views on one post, of people saying, “oh my God, I’m crying. This is therapy. I feel like this is going to heal something in me,” right? But that’s not communicating to the people doing the booking. So it’s up to us to take the space in that way. I know it’s enraging, and if there’s anything I’ve learned in this whole process, is to turn that anxiety and rage into action. VirginiaYeah, absolutely. Okay, I want you to talk to us about the curriculum, and then I also want you to tell us how can we see the film? Let’s go through both of those things.ClaireSo our curriculum is was sponsored by Procter & Gamble and Gillette Venus. We basically got a quarter million dollars in funding from them to create a fully free, vetted education curriculum. It is seven videos, 15 downloadable activities, all available on our website starting tomorrow.The mission was to answer the question I kept getting asked after every live reading, which was: What do I do next? So instead of having people feel all these feelings who maybe don’t have access to therapy or don’t have access to a safe space to process, right, it’s a lot to pull out. I was like, what if we could send them somewhere that would have vetted material? I was also scared they were gonna go down a wormhole with untrustworthy influencers being like, well, this person’s really confident and she’s also doing intermittent fasting, but she seems really cool about it, right? So looking at that, we basically are driving people directly to their curriculum. And it features interviews with our actors, interviews with healthcare providers. And I basically emcee the whole thing. And it covers seven topics from our movie. We basically go point by point, section by section, one video and two to three activities per that. People could watch the video, hear from our actors, hear from our experts, and then do two to three activities to go deeper. VirginiaLove it. ClaireReally it’s a space for our audience, tweens, teens, adults, whether you’re a caregiver or not, or even for adults to talk to each other and de-stigmatize conversations about body image, a space for you to start your own healing journey, your own exploration.And I actually hired my old boss, who I used to write curriculums for. She has 30 years of social emotional learning expertise. And I also brought in an amazing therapist and social worker who also served as our DEI expert. She’s Chicana. She especially works with queer youth and LGBTQ+ youth and kids of color to specifically vet everything to make sure it was as accessible and inclusive as possible.So in our section on bullying, for example, we had something in there about, like, “give your kid a mental health day, let them stay home.” And Noemi Maciel pointed out most parents can’t afford that, right? To take that time off work. And so instead of making a parent or caregiver feel bad about not being able to provide that, we just struck it from an option. So we’re sponsored by PNG, Gillette Venus, and they were like, “We’d love to have a shaving scene in the movie.” And to be honest, they were very great partners, across the board. I love working with them. And I brought up immediately, “look, I want to make sure we don’t tell people that they have to shave their legs in order to be beautiful or to love themselves.” And they were so on board. Of course not. And so in the movie, you see one character shaving as they’re getting ready for this big event, and it pans to the next person with hairy legs who gives a thumbs up and pans away. And in our curriculum, we have actors talk about body hair and talk about some of them love shaving and like the feeling of that on their skin, and they love it as self care. And then others were like, I love my like, natural eyebrows. Cassandra Tellez, who plays Diamond who didn’t shave her legs in that scene.When I tell you, I texted the cast to be like, “Hey, who wants to stop shaving their legs” And everyone goes, me! And I was like, okay, just one of you. Also, Mia, it can’t be you, you are in every scene. Give yourself a break. And Cassandra talks about it really beautifully, about how she had always been very self conscious of her body hair because it’s darker. She’s Chicana, darker hair, and she’d always felt super self-conscious about it. And she talks about it in our curriculum. And she talked about it with me. She goes, “I stopped shaving my legs since then and I feel confident.”This is what I love about this project, and I’m so excited for audiences, not just to hear from me, but to hear from our cast, just in how working on this project really forced them to confront a lot of their own held beliefs about their bodies and their limitations. Someone posted a really awful video, like a troll video, basically. And I watched 30 seconds of it, and I went, “absolutely not.” And it took me a full day to process before I could talk to anyone about it, because I had just done a video about, like, “we can’t control other people’s self loathing. We can’t let that stop our joy.” And then I was like, well, am I challenged by that?VirginiaI would like to though. ClaireI’m like, I’d love to set them on fire, right? But I can’t, I can’t do that because I love living in my home and not in a prison. And I love being able to vote. So it’s really important. But I took a full day and then I texted the group, and I was like, heads up, this video is out there. I want you to know that a bunch of men are sitting in their basement thinking it’s a great use of their time to hate on Black people, fat people, trans people, right?We can’t control them, but here’s what we can do. We can show up as ourselves. Their words do not speak for your reality, right? These are people who hate themselves and are lashing out because of it, or lashing out at people who do not fit their very narrow worldview. And I am here for you. And that’s the most important thing. It’s never like, let’s shake it off. It’s like, we’re here if you need to talk me and my producer, Crystal Collins, we’re always there. And we said that from the beginning, we are your mama bears on set. You all have great parents, but we are your mama bears here. Come to us if you ever feel uncomfortable. VirginiaIn terms of seeing the movie, we’ve got to talk to our local movie theaters. But what else do we need to know about how to support and how to see it?ClaireYou can go to empirewaistfilm.com to see theaters where it’s going to be playing. You could also find us on Fandango, set an alert for when it’s at a theater near you, and opening weekend is the most important. It basically signals to people that we are worth an investment. So we’re going to be playing in theaters across the US and in Canada starting September 27 and then we are going to be going global after that, later in the fall.So we’re going to be coming out that way, and our education curriculum will be released on our website, empirewaistfilm.com/curriculum on September 27. So that is why we’re fighting so hard to get it into theaters so people can start using that resource. And you can follow us at empirewaistfilm on Instagram.VirginiaPerfect.ButterClaireMy Butter is audiobook platforms. So Hoopla and Libby basically got me through making this movie. The one I have been just loving and is now my new comfort listen—which might sound weird, but I’m doing a lot of nitty gritty work, and having a comfort listen that I’m not following the plot is really important—is Mrs. Nash’s Ashes, and it’s narrated by my friendMara Wilson, who’s just the greatest. I miss her as a friend, she lives in LA and I’m on the East Coast. So I was like, I really miss you. I’m going to listen toMrs. Nash’s Ashesbecause I’ve heard great things, and her narration is so delightful that I have to recommend it to your listeners.And then also Jasmine Guillory books are also my guilty pleasure. I love her writing and she’s a fellow Wellesley alum, and we just support the hell out of each other. VirginiaI love that. I love Jasmine. I think all of Burnt Toast adores Jasmine’s work.ClaireShe also just walks the walk, and is such an amazing mentor and amplifier, especially for women and writers of color in the romance industry. You cannot ask for better. And her dog, Rosie, is my favorite. One of my favorite reasons to follow her on Instagram.VirginiaOh yeah, so cute. Love the Rosie content. Well, those are excellent Butters. Mine is this big electric griddle that I’ve had for a few years. And the reason I specifically am obsessed with it is for making pancakes. It’s like this big plug-in griddle. And number one, it doesn’t get as smoky as cooking pancakes on the stove.Just imagine “Femininomenon” blasting while these pancakes were made.ClaireOh, hell yeah. VirginiaIt doesn’t set off the fire alarm. I don’t know why the nonstick electric griddle doesn’t get smoky, but you just plug it in and it makes really good pancakes. And I just used it for my older kiddo, who turned 11 in August, and we had a sleepover birthday party. Then the next morning, I made pancakes for all the kids. Her little sister and one of the party guests made them with me. We were playing Taylor Swift, we were playing Chappell Roan. We’re having this pancake dance party in the kitchen. And I was like, I’m sorry, is there anything better than tween and teenage girls? There’s not. It’s just the best stage of life.ClaireHonestly, you were basically living in an amazing teen movie montage scene, right?VirginiaIt was a very Empire Waist moment, I felt.ClaireMy serotonin went up listening to you. Also happy 11th birthday to your daughter. VirginiaOh, thank you. So the practical suggestion is electric griddle will save you, because you can also make a lot of them at once, which is good when you’re making pancakes for a crowd. Like, you’re just stuck making three at a time, and it’s like when do I get to eat? But you can make like 12 at once. My best friend told me about this griddle. So shout out to Amy of Yummy Toddler Food for that. But also, make them for a group of 10 to 12 year olds, and just revel in the joy that is that age group and thank me later.ClaireAnd the soundtrack.VirginiaSo good. And just use the mix. Don’t overcomplicate it.ClaireMix is there for a reason.VirginiaEspecially for a bunch of kids. It doesn’t need to be lemon ricotta. ClaireYou know, talking about shame. It’s being like, I should do everything this way. It’s like, nope, throw that out the window. Your time matters.VirginiaExactly. Well, Claire, thank you so much. This was absolutely fantastic. I am so excited for Burnt Toast to show up and support this movie for you. I mean, I just want everyone to see it. So thank you for your work.ClaireAnd thank you for creating this space. Honestly, if I had had exposure to your work at a younger age, I would not have been moving through the world blindly and so harsh on myself. VirginiaWe’re doing what we needed!

You’re listening to Burnt Toast!I’m Virginia Sole-Smith, and today my guest is Nicola Salmon.Nicola is a leading voice for fat folks seeking fertility support, and author of the book Fat and Fertile. As a fertility coach and fat activist, Nicola works to challenge the fertility industry’s entrenched weight bias and empower marginalized folks to take control of their reproductive health. (You may know her from Instagram.)The intersection of anti-fatness and infertility is a story I've been covering for over six years now, and depressingly, the situation seems to only be getting worse. I hear from so many of you all the time who are navigating fertility treatment and encountering doctor after doctor who all tell you to lose weight before they'll consider helping you.As I wrote for The New York Times in 2019, this is pretty clear cut medical discrimination—and yet we haven't made much headway in getting clinics to change these policies. If you want more on this whole conversation, check out episode 29 of this podcast, where I talked through all of my reporting and the research on weight and fertility, as it stood at that point. And then go listen to episode two of Cult of Perfect, where we explored the fat mother narrative—and the kind of healthcare that fat moms, and fat pregnant people, get.PS. If you enjoy today’s conversation, please tap the heart on this post — likes are one of the biggest drivers of traffic from Substack’s Notes, so that’s a super easy, free way to support the show! And, make sure you’re following us (it’s free!) in your podcast player! We’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Pocket Casts! And while you’re there, please leave us a rating or review. (We like 5 stars!)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. AND: If you are in the thick of your own fertility journey, and today’s episode doesn't feel good for you to hear, please take good care.Episode 160 TranscriptNicolaI am what I call a fat positive fertility coach, which means specifically that I support fat folks who want to get pregnant in bigger bodies. So that involves lots of different things: Working one-to-one with people, doing courses and basically just getting lots of information out there which fat folks might need, and then navigating the healthcare system when they are looking to get pregnant and maybe not finding that support with their doctors or their clinics. Just doing everything I can to make sure that fat folks have everything they need to get pregnant and don’t feel guilted or shamed or judged in the process.VirginiaWhich is all too common. We know that anti-fatness shows up in every realm of healthcare and fertility seems to be a particular hot spot. I’m curious: Why do you think fertility care is where we see so much medical anti-fat bias?NicolaPeople want this so bad—growing their families, having babies. And I think there is often this lack of control that we have around the process. We cannot control when we ovulate. We cannot tell our bodies, “okay, now’s the time! Go, go, go!” I think because of that lack of control, people are desperately seeking other ways of controlling the process, controlling their fertility, controlling their health somehow. And especially the diet industry, has really got their claws and latched onto that, and they’re offering people a way of being able to control something about the process. Supplementation, dieting, eating foods, cutting out foods, following all of the different things, regimes. I think giving people that element of possibility that they can control and somehow influence this process is what people really hold on to.The diet industry is really feeding into this idea that people need that control, and they really want that control in order to navigate getting pregnant and being able to influence how they navigate that journey. I think the healthcare system is really just playing into that because we have this idea that is our responsibility to somehow fix ourselves as fat people in order to get pregnant. If there are ever any problems, if there are any other issues, then we never get looked at. We never get the test offered. We never get the treatments offered. It’s just, “it’s your weight. You need to do something about that. Go away, sort that out, and then come back when you’ve lost weight.” And I think just all of those combinations of factors have led to this cesspool of fat people not being able to access any kind of fertility support. VirginiaI mean, it completely makes sense. We’re conditioned our whole lives to think this way with whatever is hard in our lives—try to control your weight, try to control how you’re eating and you’ll fix it. Women in particular are given that message from so early, and then, in this most vulnerable time of life where you’re trying to do, as you’re saying, this very hard thing that you have very little direct control over. It’s just a perfect storm.You posted a few months ago that the most common reasons fat folks get stuck trying to get pregnant is because they hesitate to give themselves permission to even try in the first place. NicolaI think it goes back to what you said earlier about the conditioning, right? We are conditioned to believe that we need to be smaller in order to become a parent, and that’s shown in the media. With pregnancy, all you ever see is the very slender person with the beautiful bump. I know so many other incredible folks trying to disrupt this. But still, the general narrative is it’s small people getting pregnant. And that is what we see all over the pregnancy magazines. If you’re in any of the apps, like, it’s just this one person who gets pregnant, which is a thin, white lady. We don’t see any representation. And what that means is that we don’t believe that this is a problem that other people face. So many people I talk to feel so isolated because they don’t see anybody else in bigger bodies getting pregnant, necessarily. They think it’s something to be ashamed to talk about. They don’t want to share that with their friends or with their family because of the judgment that they might get back. It’s just really normalized for people to comment on their bodies and to judge them for wanting to grow their families. I think the thing about permission—with that post, I didn’t want people to think, “Oh my gosh, it’s my fault that I am doing this, like I am not giving myself permission.” This is not something else that we need to beat ourselves up about. It is the social conditioning that has led us to believe that we need to be something different in order to be able to do this and to be worthy of doing this. To give ourselves permission to even go to the doctor, for example, or get tests if things are taking a little while longer than you’d expect. So it is really just giving people the permission to think about that and go, actually, yeah, I’ve been putting this off because I think I need to be smaller and just shining a light on it really.VirginiaIt’s hard to give yourself permission to do something that culture is not giving you permission to do. It’s very, also very tied to our ideas about who will be a good mom and to “maternal fitness.” That phrase gets turned thrown around a lot, which I would like to just send right off into the sea if we could. NicolaOh yes, please. VirginiaSo does that come up for folks you’re working with, too? This fear of, “Can I be a good mom in a bigger body?”NicolaYes, because it’s always this conversation of, “Will you be able to pick up your kids off the floor when they’re little? Or will you be able to play in the park with them and run after them?” And I think it comes from such an ableist place. We believe that only one type of person can be a good parent. And actually, the world is made up of so many millions of different types of humans and I think that’s what makes it really special. I think that we all have different ways that we can contribute in terms of mothering. My size has never held me back from being a great parent for my children. I mean, sometimes I can’t sit on a swing or sometimes I might not be able to fit on the roller coaster, for example. But that’s the swing’s fault. That’s not my fault.Because my body isn’t accommodated, there are ways that I have to be a bit mindful about that if we’re going somewhere that may have restrictions and things that might not accommodate me. But day-to-day life, my kids don’t know any different, right? They understand that I’m their mom. This is my body, and they love me for me. Their lives are no less because of the size of my body. It makes me so cross that so many doctors will tell their patients, oh, it would be unethical for me to try and support you in getting pregnant or you’re doing something irresponsible. That puts that responsibility, that shame, that idea that you need to be fixed in some way on people again and again and again. VirginiaI mean, it’s wild. I think about what we know from parenting research on what makes kids feel safe, happy, what helps kids grow up to be good, contributing members of society. Parent body size is never on the list! I’ve been thinking about this a lot because one of the themes my trolls love to focus on is that I must be a bad parent because I’m in a bigger body. Because being a fat mom is seen as so selfish. I kind of want us to unpack the ableism of that for another minute, because I think that is a core fear that folks are up against, and we want to hold hold that together with what we actually know about what kids need from caregivers.NicolaObviously the biggest one is that kids need safety. Kids need to feel secure, feel a sense of belonging, and feel understood and validated. We are so capable of giving that to our kids. And, it shouldn’t be down to solely us, either. We should have a community around us, and we don’t live in that world really anymore where that is often an option or available. But we should not be the sole provider of all that for our kids. We can all have different parts to play in our children’s lives. I think giving them a variety of adults and humans that they interact with and can get different things from is a really good way of helping them become well rounded adults.VirginiaWhat other barriers do you see fat folks encountering? Maybe you’re getting over the this initial “Am I worthy of this? Can I do this?” piece, and then you actually are going to the doctor. What hurdles are you going to encounter there?NicolaBy far the biggest one is the anti-fat attitudes of the healthcare providers and the policies that are in place, not only with doctors, but with the fertility clinics they work for. That is the biggest barrier that fat folks face, by far. Because there’s nothing often that you can do, individually. Like this is a system-level problem, there are bad policies in place. There are often procedures in place at clinics. There are doctors who’ve had however many years of education that is anti-fat education. It’s really difficult to sometimes navigate that when you’re coming up against doctors time and time and again who have either strict BMI limits or have very anti-fat attitudes around “you need to go and lose X pounds or X kilos.”Not only is that a physical barrier in terms of you can’t physically access the tests and treatments that you might need, but it is exhausting. Mentally, when people are having to have these conversations and the doctors judging them, and putting their nervous systems through appointment after appointment, or even just sending off emails and getting the same response back time and time again. That labor is so exhausting and it’s not labor that people should have to do in order to access basic fertility care.VirginiaHow do you encourage folks to start? What support do we want to get in place as you’re navigating this?NicolaThe first thing is to not assume it’s going to be hard, right?Virginia**I like that. That’s helpful. NicolaIt can feel like a mountain, and when I talk to folks about it, I want people to be fully informed of all the potential pitfalls because I don’t want people to be surprised. But if we go in prepared for the worst, but expecting the best, we could come across a great doctor who’s going to give you everything that you want, and that’s what we want. We want the outcome of being supported, of having evidence-based healthcare, and we just have to be prepared that that might happen. But that also might not happen. So having tools in our back pocket for if that doesn’t happen, what we can do instead. I think it can be really helpful to zoom out as well when you’re getting started and really looking at okay, where does this blame truly lie? I understand that culture has given me this blame of it’s my fault, It’s my body’s fault that maybe I haven’t got pregnant as quickly as I wanted to. But then really zooming out and looking okay, well, what systems are in place that are really to blame?It is the healthcare system that has been based on very racist and anti-fat roots that have led to doctors believing that fatness is bad, that fatness is unhealthy?It is all the researchers who are doing their best as researchers, but also live in the diet culture soup where they truly believe that and make assumptions about fat bodies, which biases the research that they do?It is the people who are doing the procedures and the IVF pioneers, who decided we’re only going to look at IVF in straight sized bodies? We are not going to include fat people when we decide what kind of drug levels we give, how we design the protocols. Because once we leave fat people out, that means it doesn’t work as well for fat people, which makes total sense, right? But you cannot then use the research and go, oh well, it doesn’t work for fat people if you’ve never included them in the first place.There are so many people that are to blame for the fact that you cannot access fertility care, but you are not one of them. I think being able to zoom out and see that bigger picture and see really where you sit in it can be really helpful when your mind kind of goes, oh, it’s my fault. You can get in this spiral of shame, which so many of us do all the time, about so many different things around our bodies. It can be really helpful to be going, okay, I understand why I feel like this. It makes total sense that my brain is telling me all this stuff. And I think reframing it like that can just really help people to go, yes, this is a problem. Yes, it’s not my fault, and still I need to take some responsibility to move forward to make sure that I get the care that I deserve.Which, again, not their labor. Should not be having to do this. But right now, we live in a world where that’s the only choice. It’s that or perform weight loss for a short term to be able to go through the BMI barriers. And I do not judge people for going either way. It’s such a hard place to be in and you just have to make the decision that you have to make that’s best for you. But it, yeah, that is, for me, the first pieces of people being able to move forward with this, really believing that they are worthy of it, because it is not their fault. VirginiaHere in the States, when I reported this out, I found that there was a real difference in private fertility clinics, which can set their own BMI cutoffs, and the BMI cutoffs were sometimes as low as 26. Basically anyone out of the “normal” range, they wouldn’t treat. Versus university or major hospital clinics, like within hospitals and university healthcare systems, which tended to have either no BMI cutoffs or much higher BMI cutoffs and better set up for the care that fat folks need. Like having an anesthesiologist on hand who understood how to do that, and bigger tables and gowns that fit—all the like basic human dignity issues.Is there a similar strategy in the UK that you would recommend? I know the healthcare system is quite different, but I’m just curious if you have any practical advice on, here’s where you might be more likely to find affirming care.NicolaIt’s really tricky because of the way that our healthcare system is set up. We have the NHS, which is a free at point of care healthcare system, which is amazing. But it’s got a finite pot of money, and they are very limited in what they can and cannot do. So anybody with a BMI over 30 doesn’t get to access IVF care under the NHS guidelines, which is low. That’s about a third of people, I think I’ve worked out, that actually get denied based on BMI. We have a couple of, like, big major hospitals, obviously, but they don’t really have the big fertility departments in the same way. They’re often NHS / private. So the same consultants are working under both and what that means is that the anesthesiologists just don’t have the same expertise or because they’re under the NHS most of the time, they don’t have the confidence to be doing these procedures. So we have maybe two or three clinics in the UK that I know of that will go up to a BMI of 40, and that’s it. VirginiaWow. That is dire. NicolaPeople have to go to Europe. That is their only option if they have a BMI over 40, and it’s a great solution for many folks. Like, it’s generally cheaper, even when you include flights and hotel accommodation. Obviously, you get to go to a nice, sunny place, which doesn’t happen here very much in the UK. But obviously it’s not financially accessible to everybody. VirginiaDefinitely not. Like time off work, whatever. NicolaAbsolutely. So it’s hard, right? Navigating language barriers, potentially, and navigating meds across two different countries. It’s not the funnest thing in the world to do, especially when you’re going through such a vulnerable thing like IVF and the the number that it does on your mental health, your physical health, is huge. It’s not a small undertaking to take. It’s wild here and it’s so sad because there are so many people who are missing out because they think that’s the norm. Like, oh, it’s 40, that’s the cutoff. And they may not think to look abroad. They may not think to look anywhere else, and they just believe that that’s not for them, and then they don’t get to grow their families. And I have a list on my website of clinics in the UK and the US that folks can find great BMI limits, but that’s the only way I’ve been able to find to help folks find the resources that they need.VirginiaI’m just sitting with the anti-fatness of that. The NHS, the National Health Service, so the government funded health care that everybody pays for with their taxes. So I’m a taxpayer, but my BMI is 31 or 32 or whatever, I don’t get to access health care through the national health care system. Nicola100%. It’s purely to do with money. It’s nothing else. Like, of course, it’s more socially acceptable to do that. This is the only socially acceptable way that they can exclude people, apart from obviously queer and trans people as well get excluded by this. But, yeah, people accept it because they firmly believe and have been conditioned to believe that it is their fault and they just need to lose the weight and then they can access the healthcare service. But no. And it’s not just fertility. My uncle has just had a heart attack and gone through trying to access a heart bypass. He can’t do that until he’s lost weight. And it’s it makes me so angry.VirginiaYeah, sure, you want to wait on that.NicolaYeah, of course you do. Of course you do. VirginiaDefinitely take 18 months to lose some weight first before we rush to actual life saving medical care. Oh, my God. I mean, obviously the United States, we’re even further behind, because we don’t have very much in the way of socialized healthcare. But that is even more enraging in some ways that you have the system in place, but there’s this bias denying people access to the system they pay for. NicolaIt makes me really angry. But in the US as well, there are some people who, like, geographically, can’t get to a clinic, or they have to travel across states and states to find someone who’ll support them. It’s just wherever you look, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, it is a pretty similarly dire picture, unfortunately. VirginiaCan we talk a little bit about PCOS and the misconceptions around the role of weight loss here?Because obviously PCOS is a a very common underlying reason people are seeking fertility care and there’s this narrative that PCOS causes weight gain and therefore the only solution to PCOS is weight loss. I often see that delaying people’s access to fertility care. You’re then told, like, “go lose weight for a year, then come back and we’ll see,” that kind of thing.NicolaOh, yeah. I have PCOS. I was diagnosed at 16 and I was told I’d never be able to have kids.VirginiaWhat a lovely thing to say to a 16 year old child. NicolaThis was 20-odd years ago now, so it was like, no Internet, no resources, I don’t know anything about PCOS, nothing. And of course it’s like, weight loss will cure it, which makes total sense. PCOS is such a tricky one, because it manifests in so many different ways. I think the problem that fat folks tend to have is that they can often be misdiagnosed with PCOS. A doctor will see your fat body and go, “PCOS.” They won’t do the appropriate testing. They won’t do the appropriate work up to diagnose you properly. You know, heaven forbid they’ve heard of a differential diagnosis. And it can be really harmful for folks to get a diagnosis that’s not helpful to them. They might get put on drugs like metformin and things that may not help them, and they miss having the correct diagnosis. Hypothyroidism, for example, is a really common thing that folks in bigger bodies can experience, and if they’re not getting the appropriate treatment again, that can just delay things even further. But for folks with PCOS, yes, sometimes it can be a co-occurring symptom to have PCOS alongside an increased body mass. But we don’t have any evidence to support the idea that one causes the other. We don’t have any evidence to support the claim that weight loss will support your fertility or your PCOS. What I’ve seen, as a sample size of one, is that not when I diet, not when I lose weight, but when I prioritize things that meet my needs, in terms of supporting my nervous system—reducing my stress levels, getting better sleep—those things have a positive impact on my menstrual regularity. Which makes total sense, right? Because I think for me, what makes sense is that I was on diets from a really, really young age. I was in the phase of low-fat dieting from maybe ages 10 to 12. That was the trend. And it makes total sense to me that being on a very low-fat diet at those ages would impact my hormones, which are made of fats, and would impact how I went through puberty and how my menstrual cycle was set up. VirginiaI want to talk a little bit about the role of menstruation diet culture in all of this. I get press releases all the time for seed cycling, and these plans where you should eat a different set of foods every week of your cycle. You should exercise differently every week of your cycle. All of which sounds exhausting to keep track of! Is any of this useful, or is this all just kind of more of wellness culture’s anti-fatness, pushing weight loss, but calling it something else?NicolaI think it’s maybe a little bit of both. I feel like there is some wisdom that as folks who menstruate, we are never really taught about how our hormones impact our energy levels, how they impact our mood throughout the month. Like I know for me, it was helpful to learn more about how in the first phase of our cycles, from when we bleed to when we ovulate, we have estrogen as the dominant hormone. And the second phase [there is more ]progesterone. It really helped me to lean into knowing that I’ll probably feel a bit more active and be wanting to start projects at the beginning of my cycle, and then at the end. That first phase is when I have more completer energy. And then I find I’m not wanting to do anything when I’m menstruating. But feeling like Superwoman when I’m ovulating. I feel like knowing those things can be really helpful and they do tend to ring true.I think the concept of yes, your body varies over your menstrual cycle with different hormones, makes a lot of sense, and is something that we should all be taught. But then I think diet culture sees anything that’s like, “oh, this is interesting and valuable” and shifts to: How can we manipulate this? How can we profit on this? VirginiaHow can we both optimize and complicate it as much as possible? NicolaBecause of the culture we live in, we’ve been conditioned to break that trust with our bodies. And obviously it starts with food, around not being able to trust our fullness and our hunger cues, not being able to trust what we crave or what we don’t crave to eat, like forcing ourselves to eat specific foods and not others. But I think it goes so much deeper than that.Like for folks in fertility, especially, there is this underlying fear and idea that we can’t trust our bodies to do the very thing that we want them to do, which is to ovulate, to get pregnant, to do all of the steps that lead up in that process. Anything that they can tap into that kind of feeds into this idea of, oh, this is how you can hack your body or fix it in some way. The thing is, our bodies aren’t broken, so we don’t need a quick fix. We don’t need seed cycling to help us with our hormones, because they are so great at doing that on their own. And so many people, fat folks especially, say, “Well, the doctor tells me that because of my weight, my hormones are all over the place.” Yet when they do all the hormone panels, nothing comes back. And I’m like, make it make sense. If there’s some problem with your hormones, if there’s an imbalance somewhere, that’s what the tests are for. To look at the imbalances, see what’s going on, see what the root of the problem is. But if it’s all coming back normal, then how can we say that weight is having an impact on your hormones? VirginiaI like the reframing that you’re suggesting. You’re talking about body literacy, you’re talking about people understanding their bodies and how they work. The diet industry is taking all of this and saying, how can we convince you your body is a problem to solve, and then sell you solutions for it. And that is what doesn’t serve us. Knowing our bodies better serves us. But knowing our bodies better in order to pay other people money to make them smaller does not serve us. NicolaThere are so many apps nowadays for tracking menstrual cycles and tracking where you’re going with that. To some degree, I think it can be helpful. Some data can be really useful. We can use data to inform us and to make decisions about our healthcare. But to track them for months on end, for years on end, getting the same results back? That can be really harmful for our mental health, and it takes you away from the signs and the signals of your body. So sure, we can track our ovulation by looking at our basal body temperature or peeing on a stick. But we can also listen to what our energy is doing, what our mood is doing. Do we notice a change in our cervical mucus? Do we notice a change in our libido? All of these things as well can be really great ways of not only figuring out when ovulation is occurring, but getting back in touch with our body and really understanding and listening. Like you say, body literacy around the cues as to what ovulation feels like for us and how we experience it in our bodies.VirginiaI love that. ButterNicolaSo the thing I am loving most at the moment is having a sports bra that fits and that didn’t cost me the earth. VirginiaA unicorn!NicolaI’ve started doing some more cardio, and I was just dreading moving my body, because I have big breasts, and that’s always the hardest thing for me to find. So I found this website. I got a tape measure, and I was measuring under here, and then I had to bend down and measure how far they hung, and all this stuff. But I actually got a number out, went on to Vinted found a sports bra that was in my size, which was not as easy. I think it was like, 44GG. Found one bra, and it’s amazing. VirginiaOh, that’s wonderful. NicolaIt fits! I didn’t have to go to a shop and be looked up and down and measured by strange people that I don’t know. It just changed the way I’m looking forward to moving my body, because I’m not permanently uncomfortable. It made me realize how hard it was before, because I didn’t have a bra that fit or my trousers would fall down, or the tops if they fall down your shoulders and just constantly adjusting your body. It’s been a revelation, having one single bra that didn’t cost me like $50, $60. VirginiaSo tell us the website you used!NicolaSo the website used for measuring myself was called Boob or Bust, which I think is a brilliant name, and it just walks you through all the measuring, which I loved. And then I found my bra size and went on Vinted and for 10 pounds found a bra that fits. And it felt magical.VirginiaThat is such a good butter, finding a bra that works, whether it’s just for everyday wear or for sports, just always feels like the Holy Grail.NicolaYeah, it really does.VirginiaMy Butter is just a sweet, fun recommendation for reading with kids or even on your own. I just reread the Winnie the Pooh series with my younger child, who is six. It was our bedtime read for several weeks and it was so magical and so sweet. I think everyone knows Winnie the Pooh. I’m not lsuggesting anything totally revolutionary here. But what I had forgotten about Winnie the Pooh is that Winnie the Pooh is fat and very proud of eating lots of honey and not at all apologetic or ashamed about that. And his friends are very accepting of him! It’s actually a pretty fat positive text. There is a scene where he gets trapped in the door leaving Rabbit’s house, and they have to diet him to get him out. And I was like, how am I going to handle this scene? Because this is not the not the greatest. But it led to a great conversation with my kid. There’s a line where Pooh says, “it all comes from doors not being big enough.” And it’s sort of played as a joke in the book. They’re like, “no Pooh you need to get slimmer.” But I said, “What do you think about that?” And my kid was like, “Well, why isn’t the door big enough for him?” So what a great chance to talk about anti-fat bias in the built environment. Of Rabbit’s home in the Hundred Acre Woods.NicolaOh, I love that. VirginiaIt’s not a perfect book, not shockingly for a book written in the 1920s or whatever. It’s not a radical fat positive text, but Pooh just is actually a great fat character. And you can use it as a jumping off point to talk about anti-fatness with your kids in a very charming low-key, low stakes, low pressure way. Because everybody loves Pooh and is rooting for him. And the writing is just so funny and charming and wonderful. It’s a book I grew up reading. My mom read them to me when I was little. And when my older child was in the hospital, it was a book I read to her a lot, and it was kind of like our comfort read. So we’re very attached to Pooh.NicolaOh, I love that. I do remember reading the Pooh books when I was little and loving them but I haven’t read them with my kids yet. VirginiaWhat I will say is, I think, because they’re about stuffed animals coming to life, people often think that they’re good books to read to little, little kids. And the writing is actually fairly sophisticated. So I would suggest waiting. My kids are 6 and 10 right now, and even the 10-year-old would come and listen. She wouldn’t admit she was participating in bedtime reading, because she’s very cool. But she’d be like, in the background. NicolaOh, I love that.VirginiaSo I think they actually skew a little older, and it’s okay to wait on them, but then they’re a really delightful experience. Well, Nicola, this was wonderful. Thank you so much. Tell folks where we can follow you and how we can support your work.NicolaYeah, so I’m generally on Instagram. My handle is fat positive fertility, and my website is Nicola Salmon, which is where I share all the courses that I do, all the work that I do over there. I’m always happy to get a DM in my inbox, if anybody has got any questions or anything so happy to chat. VirginiaSo appreciate your labor. Really wonderful. Thank you.NicolaThank you.