The Burnt Toast Podcast

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. 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. 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. 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.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.

Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark! It's time for your September Extra Butter! Today we are discussing... dating as a fat person! We'll get into navigating the apps, Corinne's rules for first dates, and why do so many cishet men post fishing pictures. 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. Otherwise, to hear the whole conversation or read the whole transcript, you'll need to join Extra Butter.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.CorinneI’m really excited about our topic for today.VirginiaI’m so nervous about our topic for today.CorinneThere’s nothing to be nervous about. We’re going to talk about dating. And just to be clear, both of us are single. Slide into our DMs. VirginiaOh yes, there’s no announcement being made here. But as two single people, one of whom has significantly more dating experience than the other—CorinneIt’s me. VirginiaThat’s Corinne, to be clear. We felt like we should do an episode about fat dating specifically, because it really is it’s own thing. It’s its own world with things to navigate, and many anxieties and realities.So in this episode, we have Corinne as our dating expert, because she has actually dated in… this current decade. If we wanted to go back and talk about 10th grade dating, I’ve got tips.CorinneI did very little dating in 10th grade, so that could actually be helpful. VirginiaWe’re not going to get into that! But yes, Corinne is the more current dater of the two of us. Corinne is going to be our expert. And we also did a call out to all of you. So we have a lot of your questions, but also your advice, which we’re going to read. And we’re all going to learn a lot, I think. Mostly me.CorinneI’m excited. I have a lot of strong opinions about this. VirginiaI’m ready for your strong opinions. Okay, to kick it off, I just wanted to read this note from Jenny, which I think sums up the vortex of feelings that we have about this:There’s so much vulnerability required to date and I think that’s what makes dating as a fat person even harder. We’re already feeling vulnerable at times just for existing in a fat body. So to be extra vulnerable requires even more courage and energy. For people who have the experience of being desirable, they too must be vulnerable, but they start from a place of security. What are your thoughts?CorinneI mean, I do think that’s true. I also think that dating feels vulnerable for everyone and I think whether or not you’re starting from a place of marginalization, it still feels hard. I think it could be helpful to remember that the people you’re dating also feel that way. Also, if you’re a fat person, you could be dating another fat person, and they could be experiencing similar feelings of vulnerability.VirginiaRight? And we should also say fat people can experience being desirable! That’s not an experience universally reserved for thin folks. But I understand what this person is getting at. You may be coming into this feeling like “I have not had that experience of being desired” and that’s adding to the vulnerability.CorinneYeah. I think that it’s helpful to remember the vulnerability goes both ways.VirginiaThat is helpful to remember. I think we tend to think almost like the other people don’t feel real at a certain point? We’ll get into the apps, but I think they add to that feeling. Remembering that everybody is terrified is a good note.So about the apps, the number one question by far that we got is: Do we post full body pictures on the apps or make other disclosures of fatness in our profiles?What say you, Corinne?CorinnePersonally, yeah. I’m always going to post a full body pic. But like, so does everyone else, you know? I just feel like that’s the norm. VirginiaOh. Interesting.CorinneI feel like it would be weird if you only posted pictures of your face! But maybe I’m just biased?VirginiaI’m not on any apps, so I know nothing about it. I’m just an anthropologist at this point. Tell me more of the of the norms on the apps! CorinneMaybe I’m wrong! Maybe I’m just conditioned to do it this way because I am fat. I do try to post a photo—like, I’m not going to only post a full body photo of me that’s super flattering or something, you know? Like, I’m not gonna post—it’s hard for me to even think of an example, because I don’t wear shape wear or something. But I’m not going to post a photo where I’m wearing shape wear. I’m trying to post a photo that’s realistic. Like maybe it’s a photo of you hiking or you doing something where you’re not posed in a way that is clear you’re trying to make yourself look as thin as possible.VirginiaSo, no selfies taken from above.CorinneNo. And I think when you see other people’s profiles that is also what you want to see! I feel like the best photos are photos someone else takes, because you’re not arranging your body or your face in a way that’s trying to be appealing.VirginiaI mean. I agree with you, and I totally admit, that one of the places I struggle is with photos that I didn’t take and don’t have control over! Because I know the ways that I take photos of myself, and it’s not that I think I look thin in my photos, but I have adjusted my brain to accept myself and to present in that way. Like I have the mirror selfie I take to show an outfit on Instagram, and I think it’s relatively accurate of my body, but probably not as accurate as someone else taking a picture of me straight on.CorinneI mean, this is getting a little more philosophical, but I think when you see photos of other people that they haven’t taken in that way where they are arranging themselves, or taking the photo in the way that they think they look good—it’s like you can see more of like their personality or something too. You can see faces reacting to another face, instead of a face just looking at itself.VirginiaThat makes sense. CorinneThat’s my theoretical thing. But it can be hard to find those photos.VirginiaNow I’m like, “Okay, must go on a beautiful hike with a friend who is a good photographer.”CorinneWho candidly takes a photo of you. VirginiaMake sure I’m just laughing delightedly. CorinneWear your Spanx. VirginiaSo I’m now turning to the listener notes here. Universally, everyone said yes, include a full body photo. Say you’re fat, say you’re a fat liberationist. Chelsea Levy, who’s a friend of mine, a fat dietitian in New York City, she wrote: Share full body photographs in your profile. Doing so will save you time syncing up with someone who is intrigued by your whole package of personality and authenticity. There is someone for everyone. And I liked that. It’s kind of what you’re saying. She’s taking the focus off aesthetics a little bit even, which I hadn’t thought about doing with photos.CorinneI do say in my profiles—I usually say “fat.”VirginiaLike, in case people don’t look at photos or something?CorinneWell, it’s something that I’m going to talk about. Like, if they ask me what is your job? And I’m like, “I’m on a podcast sometimes.” And they’re like, what’s the podcast? It comes up, you know? So I just want it to be out there. VirginiaYes. Donnelle, one of the people who runs Philly Fat Con, said, “Make sure it’s clear that like you’re fat and you’re not trying to change it,” which I hadn’t even thought of! But there could be a misconception that if they see your body, but they don’t see you talking about it, they might assume you’re on a weight loss journey or something.I also like this from Camille, who wrote:One thing I do is always make sure to post at least one full body pic and I include in my bio that I’m a fat liberationist. I don’t do this because I feel the need to warn people about my size, but rather because it weeds out the fatphobes quite well.Also, I only date other fat liberationists at this point in my life, and it freaking rules.CorinneWho’s going start a fat liberationist dating site? Camille, you seem like a good candidate.I liked this next one too. This person says,Recently, I went on a date with someone and beforehand, I was really worried that she didn’t know I was fat, as we hadn’t exchanged photos. So I just told her over text, “hey, just FYI, I’m a fat femme, and that identity is really important to me. I’m letting you know ahead of time, so it’s not a surprise when we meet, since some people aren’t cool with it.”Her response was, “Some people are assholes. I swore off skinny bitches a long time ago,” which is, of course, not an unproblematic statement. But I cannot describe the feeling of relief that washed over me when she said that. Yeah, I like that approach. You might as well just put it out there. VirginiaYou’re letting people know who you are and also your values, which feels important. I think that’s really good. The last note we got about this question is someone who is also, pro-photos, pro-being clear about who you are. They wroteLI always post a whole body picture. I don’t spend very long chatting. I usually try to move to meeting pretty quickly, and will be the one to ask for a date if I’m inclined. And on a first date, I try to tune into how I feel in my body when I’m with them. I really love this idea of, “How am I feeling in my body while I’m in this experience?”CorinneI love that idea, too, and that’s definitely not something I have heard articulated before, or articulated myself. But I also really agree about don’t spend too long chatting on apps! It almost always ruins everything, for whatever reason. If you have too much chatting chemistry, it never translates. At least not for me. It’s almost like this body thing. Dating or being in a relationship with someone is more about being in space with them. So you just need to as quickly as possible figure out if you have in-person chemistry, and go from there.VirginiaOne thing we didn’t articulate, or this person didn’t mention, is: Is it different if you’re dating for a relationship, versus dating just for a hookup? I guess not. I guess in any scenario, you want to not just be texting,CorinneI think it’s really important for both. I feel like there’s this thing that happens with online dating where if you chat too much before you meet, you can get overly intimate. The intimacy jumps ahead of itself or something. You start talking about stuff that you wouldn’t tell people when you’re first meeting them and it just makes it awkward. My advice is: Talk as little as possible, meet up as soon as possible, and for the first date, plan something very short, something you would enjoy doing even if it was alone. And no alcohol.VirginiaWow! No alcohol?CorinneIt’s this “how it feels in your body” thing. Alcohol affects things, you know?VirginiaRight, okay.CorinneI don’t know. I guess you can have a drink. But my go-to is to go get ice cream.VirginiaI was about to say, this feels like ice cream. CorinneFor me it’s great if it’s literally 15 or 20 minutes, because within that time you’ll know: Do I want to see this person again or not? VirginiaI  feel pressure about this! What if you’re kind of slow to warm up?CorinneDon’t you think you know very quickly after meeting someone whether you want to know them better?VirginiaUm, again, I haven’t done this since the tenth grade.CorinneBut even if it wasn’t dating! Like a friend? I think it’s really similar. VirginiaYeah, you do get a vibe even if you’re just talking to someone at a neighborhood barbecue or something. Like, can I stand to be in conversation with this person longer or not? Okay, I see that. How do you tell people you only want it to last 20 minutes, though? I feel like I would be hung up on that. CorinneI mean, I don’t. I’m flexible. I think it’s more just that it could end in 20 minutes. VirginiaCorinne only has dates before she has a dentist appointment. So if it is going well, you would stay longer.Corinne Sure, yeah. VirginiaUnless you have the dentist. CorinneI’m not only scheduling them before dentist appointments. But it could end quickly and move into a second longer hangout or something. VirginiaGot it. So how long does the second date last? If there is a second date.CorinneI’m flexible. The second date is like, "“Okay, yes, I could have dinner with this person.” Like, a dinner date with someone you don’t like? Then you’re like, “Oh, great. Now I have to hang out for an hour and try to make conversation.” I’m much more into a quick first date. Plus, then you feel more excited about it.VirginiaThis is excellent advice.CorinneI feel like I’m giving away all my secrets.VirginiaI mean, I guess the only downside is everyone would like dating more? Okay, so that is what to do with our profiles: Yes, full body pictures. Yes, put some language in there about your your fat values, all of that.We also got questions about how to evaluate other people’s profiles—and how diet culture can show up and anti-fatness can show up in very coded ways. One person wrote, “I’ve noticed that so many straight men”—and we’re going to get to the straight men, so put a pin in that part—“list ‘healthy lifestyle’ as what they are looking for in a potential partner on their dating app profiles. And I strongly believe it is code for be thin. Don’t be fat.”CorinneI have definitely seen this, not from just straight men. I feel like the other one I see a lot is like “active.” Like, “I’m active.”VirginiaSomeone else said there are so many profiles that have “being active” as a priority. CorinneEven like, hiking.VirginiaOh, hiking is a red flag.CorinneIt’s loaded. And I feel like this one is especially interesting for me, because I am active and do spend a lot of time at a gym. And I also know they’re not talking about me. You know?VirginiaOh, yup. That’s interesting.CorinneLike, you like hiking, but they might not be talking about you.VirginiaI’m not “active,” though. I wouldn’t put active in my profile. That’s a thing I do, sure. But that would be like, am I going to put teeth brushing in my profile? Also, I sleep every night?To me, if someone is emphasizing their activity levels in their profile, they’re telling me that that is more of a hobby. Being active is not one of my hobbies. Or it’s like, again, this coded thing, like they’re really saying that they want someone thin.CorinneYeah, it feels like they’re saying, “My expectation is that you’ll be able to keep up,” or something. VirginiaNo! Thank God this date is only 15 minutes long!Someone else wrote:“I tend to pass on any guy who says anything about healthy lifestyle, but maybe I’m making an assumption. I also struggle with whether I need the guy to already be doing his own work to understand himself and the world better, or if I only need someone who’s open minded to new ideas like fat liberation.”And that’s fair, some people might be using the active, healthy lifestyle stuff without having reflected on what that all means. I can see someone inadvertently using it, I guess. CorinneI do think it’s better, or more important, to find someone who’s open-minded than who already knows about these issues. Not to say that it isn’t hard in its own way to have to explain anti-fatness to someone. But I just think it’ll go a lot further if someone is open-minded. And that should go for us, too. I think we also have to remember to be open-minded to other people’s ideas about whatever. VirginiaRight. That’s annoying, but true.It also feels like, if you narrow the pool down to only people who have already done extensive work on fat liberation, you might, depending on your geographic area, have really narrowed your options. Like, that just might not be feasible in some places to winnow it down that much.CorinneI think that’s why open the open-minded thing is also helpful. Because even if someone doesn’t know about fat liberation, they might know about Black Lives Matter. They might have feelings about trans rights. There are other marginalized identities that they might have feelings about or experience with.[Note: We’re not equating anti-fatness to other forms of bigotry here, just emphasizing that someone already doing work to combat other biases is likely to be more open to this conversation as well!]VirginiaYeah, you just have to make sure it’s not the way libertarians say they’re open minded.CorinneMmm yes. Oh, when we were talking about what profile things are red flags, the one that drives me nuts is the fishing pictures. VirginiaWait.CorinneLike, pictures of men holding fish that they’ve caught. It’s so common. It’s really bizarre. Or hunting stuff, like deer. VirginiaNo.CorinneIt’s funny because I was just saying, “use a picture of you doing something that someone else took,” but not if it’s fishing or hunting!VirginiaWe are being open minded. But not about everything!CorinneYeah, I don’t know why that is just such a no for me. VirginiaI mean, is it telling me that fishing is your life so much that you made it your profile picture, in which case I’m not interested because what are we going to talk about? I don’t like to fish, or know how to fish, or want to learn.CorinneI think it might be one of the only situations that you have a picture of yourself in.VirginiaThat’s true, especially for straight men, who may not have been socially conditioned to take a million photos of themselves. I also feel like there’s something to… look how big this fish is.CorinneYeah, like “I’m a provider” or something. VirginiaNo, I think it’s “I have a big penis.” It feels compensating, is what I mean to say.Does that mean we should talk about straight men? CorinneYes. VirginiaOne person wrote, “dating cishet men as a not thin, 40+ year old woman is terrible. Sorry, I know this isn’t even a question.”Which was real great for me. Thanks!And my friend Emily McCombs, who’s a great fat writer, wrote to me, “Fat dating is a literal nightmare, but from what I can tell, so is thin dating if you date man.”So it may be less about bodies and more about the men?CorinneI mean, I don’t date straight men, so I feel like I don’t have the most straightforward advice here. But I do think it’s really helpful to go into dating feeling open to meeting people or even excited to meet people. And I think that’s really hard when you’re like, “Dating cis men is terrible.” Not to discount that experience, because I think it’s true. But I also think, if you are going into dating being like, “this is going to be terrible,” it’s going to be really hard.VirginiaThat’s annoying. But it’s good advice.I think what I struggle with—and again, I’m not on the apps yet. But I am a woman on the Internet who hears from a lot of men. I hear from the worst versions of men. There’s this shirtless bro on Tiktok who just really loves to make videos yelling at me right now. And it’s fine! We would never match on a dating app. He’s really not my type. If that man has a profile, it is absolutely full of “active lifestyle” and not even coded. Like he probably just says, “no fatties,” you know?CorinneIf you met him for ice cream, you would not want to sit down for more than 15 minutes. VirginiaWell, no, because he probably can’t eat ice cream. We would not even get that far. But I have to do some work to separate out that type of dude, and those experiences and not bring that into this. Because I think you’re completely right. There’s no point if you’re going in with this negative attitude. And our lived experience in these interactions with toxic straight men is a real thing. CorinneI find, just as an introvert homebody type person, that sometimes I just don’t want to go at all. Meeting a new person and getting to know them is really hard. It takes a lot of energy. And I do think, to some extent, dating is a numbers game. It’s just about meeting a bunch of people and deciding whether you like any of them, and whether they also like you back. So I do think if you get to the point where you’re like, “fuck this, fuck men, everything is horrible,” just take a break. Quit the apps or the sites and just go back to living your life in a way that you like.VirginiaA couple people talked about that and that is certainly how I feel. I freaking love my life. Anything that happens here has to be a real value add. And I think remembering that you have that, and you don’t need this to be a complete person or a happier person. A relationship cannot be the reason someone becomes a happier, more complete version of themselves. There was a comment I wanted to get your thoughts on. This person wrote,It’s been so interesting to observe different factors in my dating life. When I was a small fat, dating was different from now. While I’m a medium/large fat, I’ve always dated people of different genders, but when I used to have men in that mix, I noticed a lot of fetishization. Also my fat politics have changed. I used to call myself body positive, now I’m a fat liberationist, and I can definitely see ways in which that affects my dating life for the better, honestly.But yeah, can we talk about the fetish thing a little bit? What are your thoughts on that? CorinneI don’t know, it’s been a while since I’ve dated straight men. I haven’t had a lot of experience with it. I’m almost sort of like, "How are you noticing it?” I’m curious about how it’s actually being manifested. VirginiaAnd I mean, some people are into that fetish. So no judgment if that’s your thing. But it’s a weird one to not know how it’s going to come up, I guess.CorinneAnd I think, sometimes, if a thin or straight-sized man is interested in a fat woman, it’s assumed that it’s a fetish thing.VirginiaYes. And that’s problematic.CorinneI would be curious to know more. Probably Burnt Toasties who have more straight dating experience might have more thoughts. VirginiaYeah, I want to hear what people think about that and how it’s coming up! Because I am curious. Well, to end the “why are straight men” segment on a more upbeat note, I’m going to read this note from Jen who writes, I met my husband on plenty of fish after trying literally every app for well over a year. Lots of interesting first dates, not a lot of second dates.Didn’t pass Corinne’s ice cream test, I guess. It depends on what you’re looking for. I was definitely looking for long term commitment at the time, so the way I framed my profile and how I answered messages was very different from just looking to date or hook up. But I was still very much entrenched in my own anti-fat bias at the time, so I was convinced that I couldn’t find a good partner because I was fat… but then I was also being super judgmental of any fat dudes who wrote to me as well.It took me dropping all that crap and giving anyone who seemed interesting, interested, and put together a chance. For me, I found my soulmate who also happens to be fat. Turns out I was doubting my own ability to be attracted to someone over an un-photogenic profile photo. Also, the Internet is fake. It’s a great tool, but you’ve got to use it quickly and get onto the in-person stuff efficiently to really know if things are going to work out.Which is your advice again. But that is a really interesting note that sometimes, in our concerns about fatness, we should reflect on if we’re applying it to the other person.CorinneYeah, this is definitely something I’ve noticed and experienced. I think there’s a certain status if you’re a fat person who has a thin partner. Like, it kind of feels like you are passing in some way? It’s validating. And so I do think that fat people who aren’t into fat liberation or who are more like on the line sometimes can be really averse to dating other fat people. And that sucks.VirginiaWell, I just appreciate this person’s honesty that they saw this was getting in their way. It was narrowing the pool. I think that’s just something to be honest with yourself about.CorinneI think that what they’re saying about giving anyone who seems interesting, interested, and put together a chance is really good advice. Because it’s just so hard to get a feel for a person based on an Internet profile.VirginiaI mean, those are really good criteria. Put together is a nice way of saying it because it’s not body-specific.CorinneIt’s like, “Has a job.”VirginiaOr at least, “Is just is a grown up.” Like, “Comes across as a fully-formed adult human being.”CorinneI love this question. How does an introvert meet people in real life when you’re not interested in dating sites? Is sitting at a bar, beach, diner, bookstore, coffee shop, by yourself a way to do it? Like to become part of the regular crowd? I’m in Seattle and the freeze here is real.VirginiaI also love this question. I think it really depends where you live. As someone who lives in a small town in the Hudson Valley populated mostly by people I know, becoming part of the regular crowd is not the answer I think. Just because, yeah, small town life.CorinneI think the the thing that makes dating sites so appealing is that you know other people are looking for something. In real life, even if you do meet someone and you like them, the chances that they’re also single or looking for the same kind of thing are so small. So I feel like my advice would be to try to go to dating-specific activities. Go to speed dating or go to queer meetups or singles meetup.VirginiaA singles mixer! Why do all the names have to be so cringey?CorinneI don’t know. It’s terrible. I think the other thing you could do is try to ask your friends if they have other single friends that they could host to hang out with.VirginiaEspecially if you’re relationship-oriented. That feels a good way to to do it. But yeah, as an introvert who also doesn’t like to leave her house a lot, I really feel this. We did get some good advice on this. One person wrote,I spent a lot of time on the apps and dates from those apps. When I was dating, I really wanted to be in a long-term relationship, but I met my husband and lots and lots of friends through MeetUp. I went to a few meetups that sounded interesting, and got to know folks. It was just a great way to get out and be social with like-minded people. Better than the apps, for sure.And another person said they joined Sierra Club and Audubon Society to do the same thing because the apps were horrible, in their opinion, and couldn’t replace meeting people in real life through shared interests. And that’s interesting to me. I think the shared interest thing feels really smart.CorinneYeah, well, and I feel like that follows my advice about doing something on the first date that you would actually like doing anyways, like getting ice cream or going on a bird walk. VirginiaI don’t know, bird watching can take a long time, though. You would exceed your time limit.CorinneA 15 minute bird walk. Oh but, how would you know that the other people were, like, single?  I guess you’d just have to take that risk.VirginiaYou would have that risk that you’re talking about where you might connect with someone and then turns out they’re married or whatever or just not looking today. But I can see if you’re forming more friendships, you’re making your pond bigger. CorinneThat’s true too. Because even if you meet someone, whether or not it’s a good romantic fit, maybe they know someone else that they can set you up with or something. VirginiaI think as introverts, finding ways to feel connected to community is ongoing hard work and anything that makes that feel more doable, I think, will be rewarding in and of itself. And if it leads to dating, great. And if it doesn’t, hey, now you also have fun friends to go bird watching with, so that’s a win. It feels like there’s no downside other than getting over—and believe me, I feel it—that initial introvert hump of like, why do I have to leave my house? CorinneYeah, that’s a really good point. Whether or not you meet someone, it’s enriching your life.VirginiaI really love the way,Glynnis MacNicoltalks about this, andlyz, and some other writers I really love, who write about being single.Taking the focus off “central monogamous relationship as the epicenter of our lives” is a win for everyone, pretty much. It just opens you up to a lot more possibility, in all sorts of ways. And that can lead you back around to a relationship or not, but the important thing is having that sense of your own life as very full and rich. Corinneif you do want to find a romantic relationship, whatever that looks like, it doesn’t make sense to make yourself miserable doing it. You have to find a way to do it that’s, if not enjoyable, at least tolerable. So it’s not ruining your life. You still have to like living your life whether or not you end up with a romantic partner.VirginiaOh, my God, totally. That was very well said. I agree. All right, the last chunk of questions we got were about working through our own internalized anti-fatness. And this person wrote: How do I work through feelings and beliefs of, if I were smaller, I’d get more likes, engagements, and dates?CorinneThis is tough. My advice for this is: You gotta let it go. Those people aren’t for you. I have also known thin people who have really struggled with dating for whatever reasons. Just to say, I think people struggle with it for all types of reasons. Body size, gender, neurodivergence. There are all types of reasons that people feel that they’re being rejected. But I don’t think the answer is to change yourself to fit in. Do you want to change yourself so that more people are swiping right on you on Tinder? That seems miserable.VirginiaAnd are those the people do you want to be with, someone who would only swipe right on you if you were smaller? I mean, if it’s just a hookup, maybe. But if we’re talking about longterm relationships, bodies change. So that might not go right down the road. This other comment was interesting. This person wrote,Something I’ve been struggling with lately is trying to figure out how much my lack of dating success can be traced back to being fat and on top of that, how much of my lack of attention from people I’m attracted to is genuine fatphobia in potential partners and them not being interested attracted, versus how much is a self fulfilling prophecy of my internalized fatphobia causing me to assume they won’t be interested or attracted and therefore not making connections or being flirty and not seeming interested in anyone. A little bit of a puzzle there. But I think I get what they’re saying: Is it that people are not attracted to you, or is it that you’re not putting out “be attracted to me” vibes? So assuming that they’re not attracted. CorinneThis one also makes me wonder: Are you feeling attracted to, or interested in people who are fat, or are you just trying to find a thin or straight-sized person and assuming that they’re not going to be interested? I don’t know.VirginiaThat’s a fair question.CorinneIt’s tough. I mean, I think feeling rejected or feeling like people aren’t interested in you definitely makes you question everything you’re doing.VirginiaI’m thinking though about how one of the triggers for me on negative body thoughts is social anxiety—which will make any future dating a real joy, I’m sure. But it’s not that my body is the problem. It’s that when I’m feeling anxious and stressed, I put that on my body.And I’m wondering if there’s a parallel thing happening here where it’s not your body that’s the problem, but if you’re feeling rejected and vulnerable, you have been conditioned to decide your body is the reason for all of that.CorinneI think that’s probably accurate.VirginiaI can intellectualize that for us all! But then how do we get to the point where we can, break out of that body blaming and or not go there in the first place. That’s hard work. CorinneI mean, I don’t know. I guess that’s maybe part of why I’m like, are you only trying to date thin people? Because you just have to assume that other people are going through the same thing, VirginiaThis is some good advice from one of our Burnt Toast OGs, Katie Rose, who wrote,When I was dating, my amazing therapist at the time told me make a list of must haves and would likes in a partner and hold firm and to ensure my profile was genuinely me and not what I thought men wanted to see. Learning to be true to what I wanted and not compromise was really hard, but I ended up with a partner who fit my list, with one exception—he’s bald and I had “full head of hair” on the would like list.And honestly, biggest advice I could give, don’t date without a really good therapist.I mean, that seems like really good advice. What do you think about the list of must haves and would likes?CorinneI think it’s a good idea to be thinking about that, and probably having a list is a good idea. I feel like I would struggle with whether I would put physical characteristics on that. This person is obviously saying they were kind of flexible about it. I’d go back to what that other listener said: Interesting, interested, and put together—those are kind of flexible characteristics. VirginiaI feel like, to me, the only must have would be to be in agreement about what we’re looking for in the terms of the seriousness of the relationship. Because that feels like, if you have a mismatch, that can be really frustrating. But yeah, it’s an interesting idea. I have not made a list. All right. Should we move on to the last thoughts?CorinneOkay, this was the other thing I was going to say. This is not necessarily a first date thing, maybe a second date thing or something. But I also think it can be nice to ask people—maybe this is more getting into the fetishization thing. But I think it can be nice to ask people: Have you ever dated someone fat before?I think it can just be a good way to sort of talk about, either what you need from someone you’re dating around that, or whether they have any experience with it or, I don’t know. And I think also a good opportunity for the person you’re dating to bring up if they have any stuff like that. VirginiaSo do you tend to do that? Has that gone well for you? CorinneI usually have that conversation around if I’m going to start sleeping with someone. I’ll be like, “Have you ever slept with a fat person before?” And that’s when you’re sort of like, okay, is this a fetishization thing? Is this a totally new experience for you that you’re going to be weirded out by?I’ve probably gotten that from like, dating and sleeping with trans people who have asked me, “Have you dated or slept with a trans person before?”Virginia Sure, sure, sure.CorinneThen also it’s a good segue into conversations about, do you have parts of your body that you don’t want people to touch or is there stuff you don’t want people to say, or stuff like that. Boundaries.VirginiaAnd consent. So healthy. I love it! It’s very evolved.CorinneIt’s a good kind of open-ended conversation to have at some point. I don’t know when or where it makes sense. You’ll probably have to figure that out yourself.VirginiaWhich lick of the ice cream cone, in that first 15 minutes?CorinneYou can spend more than 15 minutes with them, but can you have a conversation about bodies?VirginiaTo be fair, having a conversation like that about bodies with your best friend probably feels hard and scary. So, yeah, doing it with someone who you’ve only got that 15 minute of ice cream time in with, that’s vulnerable. If that sounds terrifying to everybody else, agreed. But it does seem smart. CorinneI do think it’s terrifying, but I think it’s good information to have. And it’s something that’s going to be addressed at some point. So why not bring it up in a way that’s not like, in the heat of the moment or something. I don’t know.VirginiaAnd of course, rejection sucks or whatever. If it doesn’t go well. But I’d rather do that before we’re super down a road or invested in some way. It’s going to sting less at that point. CorinneI think maybe that’s why it’s a better second date thing. If you’re going on a second date, both of you are at least somewhat interested. And then you can be like, “I don’t know, what is your experience dating fat people,” or something like that. VirginiaThis is very good advice. Okay, all right. So to wrap up, we have a couple of last notes here that I think will like leave us all feeling a little more hopeful and optimistic about the dating landscape. Do you want to read the first one from Chelsea?CorinneYes.While marketing and advertisements centering beauty standards of smaller bodies will have you believe you need to be smaller, that is far from the truth. 2.3 million couples wed every year in the United States. Rest assured, within that 2.3 million is body diversity. Attraction is multifaceted beyond the physical. Yes, fat people are beautiful. Most important, fat people are worthy of love. What would it feel like to center fat joy and fat romance in your ether? And that’s from Chelsea Levy.VirginiaI think that’s so wise. I love what she says about attraction is beyond the physical. I think that’s something that’s easy to forget when you’re reacting to the apps. Really, really smart. And Chelsea just got married, too, and her wedding photos were so lovely.She also suggested, in terms of books you’re reading, TV shows you’re watching, your social media feeds: Make sure you’re centering fat aspirational characters and stories. Surround yourself with examples of that love.CorinneThat is really lovely. VirginiaAnd then the last one that I really liked, just because it made me laugh, and I think it’s a good mantra for us all. This person wrote, “Don’t settle for somebody who accepts your body. Fat people are hot. You are hot and should be treated like a damn snack.” CorinneYeah, I love that. I do think fat people are hot and I do think it’s helpful to remember that when you’re dating. If I’m attracted to other fat people, why wouldn’t other people be attracted to me? VirginiaAmen, I love that. I love that. And let’s not let the bar be just mere acceptance. We want more for all of us. That was very good, and I found it very informative, as someone who hasn’t dated in this century. So I hope it’s helpful for everyone with much more recent experience.CorinneYeah, I’m excited to hear what people have to say. I bet Burnt Toasties will have a lot of good advice, too.VirginiaI feel like you may get more follow up questions. You might now be our new dating guru. CorinneI can’t wait. Colette pants in dark wash denim. Also, mirror selfie!!ButterCorinneOkay, my Butter this week is a recipe.VirginiaOoh, fun.CorinneIt’s a good end of summer, last hurrah, type of recipe. My mom made it for me when I was in Maine, and then I have made it since coming home. It’s a New York Times recipe and it’s called Taverna salad. It’s like a really big, delicious salad that has tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and also you toast pita and add it in, and it also has halloumi and chickpeas. So feels very hearty and filling. It’s really good.VirginiaIs it one you can have good leftovers from?CorinneYes, the pita chunks will get a little soggy, but they’re still totally good. I'm eating it over multiple days.VirginiaOh, okay, I need to do this. That sounds like a great work from home lunch option. What kind of dressing?CorinneIt has its own dressing recipe. Like, red wine vinegar and oregano or something. It’s kind of Greek-ish or Italian-ish. It’s really good. It has a lot of salty things, like olives and capers and stuff. Highly recommend.VirginiaOkay, my Butter is really a butter in progress. Because I haven't totally decided if I like this thing, but I want to talk about it, because finding pants is so hard. It’s the bulk of our work, really, as humans, as well as Burnt Toast readers.I have for several weeks now, been auditioning the Colette pants from Anthropologie, which a lot of people really love. They’re a cult favorite, and I tried them first through Nuuly, which is that clothing rental service I've been doing. Which, yes, I’m going to do a whole thing talking about the pros and cons of Nuuly as a fat person.But what is interesting about the Colette pants is how weird the sizing is, and yet they might be great? They are a mid-rise, almost like sailor pant style and available up to 26W. But they don't have all the crazy buttons. They have cute front pockets, and they’re a very wide-legged crop pant. I first got them in linen, in a hot pink. But the sizing is extremely generous. I first ordered the 20 (my usual Anthropologie size) and it was enormous. I went to dinner with my book editor and they fell off me by the end of dinner. They stretched out so fast. So then I went down to the 18s, and they were pretty good, but after a day, they were stretched out too. And then I went down to the 51s, and in linen, the 15 would not zip up. And I was like, “well, that means these are terrible pants. This is not for me.” But now I’m wearing them in the denim in the 16, and they were tight the first day, but now they’re amazing.People really love these pants, and they run big, so the sizing is more generous than we sometimes think from Anthropologie plus sizes. But I want to hear people’s thoughts, because they come in a lot of different fabrics and there are a lot of varieties of these pants. So they’re not all great, but there may be one that works for folks. The denim is very cute, and they stretch just enough.Sophie Strauss told me that she also loves them and recommends them for clients all the time. A lot of people don't like Anthropologie, I understand all the reasons not to like Anthropologie. But pant shopping is hard!But I do have mixed feelings about the idea that pants are going to be too tight to put on the first day and then fit the next day. This is asking a lot of labor for me from pants. So that’s why it’s a qualified butter. But they are very fun and cute. And if the fabrics work for you, they come in like a million good colors.

Nisha Sharma, a captivating romance author known for 'Marriage & Masti', dives into the pressing issues of body representation in the romance genre. She discusses the underrepresentation of fat bodies and the striking absence of fat male love interests. Nisha critiques the industry's biases and advocates for genuine inclusivity in storytelling. The conversation also touches on the challenges authors face with marketing fat characters and the role of societal perceptions shaped by medical trends. A refreshing take on love, identity, and narrative evolution!

The hosts dive into the anxieties parents face about their children's body image and eating habits. They advocate for unconditional acceptance of body sizes and a healthy relationship with food. Personal anecdotes reveal the intricacies of snack sharing and portion control in family life. Discussions also touch on the comfort versus fashion dilemma, particularly with clogs, and the journey toward more comfortable bras. Expect laughter and insights on navigating diet talks while promoting self-acceptance and joy in culinary choices!