The Burnt Toast Podcast

In this enlightening discussion with Laura Thomas, PhD, a Registered Nutritionist specializing in anti-diet culture, she reframes our understanding of ultra-processed foods (UPFs). Laura tackles the misconceptions around UPFs, emphasizing their role in modern family dining and the importance of context. She delves into how UPFs relate to body image issues and societal structures affecting food choices. Personal anecdotes add warmth, showcasing the joy found in family traditions like birthday trees and simple meals. It's a fresh take on nutrition that celebrates ease and connection.

Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark!This month we’re unpacking content from Rosey Beeme, Brianne Huntsman, and other influencers who long identified as body positive, plus size fashion folks—and now are talking proudly about their intentional weight loss journeys. But it’s not a moral failing if you can’t wipe your own ass.CW: This episode includes some unavoidable discussion of intentional weight loss and links to posts that promote it. Take care of yourselves!To listen to the full episode and read the full transcript, you’ll need to join Extra Butter, our premium subscription tier.In these monthly episodes we get into the GOOD stuff like:Why all the fat influencers are getting skinnyIs Kids Eat In Color anti-diet?And did Virginia really get divorced over butter?And Extra Butter ensures that the Burnt Toast community can always stay an ad- and sponsor-free space—which is crucial for body liberation journalism. Join us here!(Questions? Glitches? Email me all the details)PS. If Extra Butter isn’t the right tier for you, remember that you still get access behind almost every other paywall with a regular paid subscription.Extra Butter Episode 6 TranscriptThis episode includes affiliate links. Shopping our links is another great way to support Burnt Toast!CorinneAre you ready? We’re tackling a big one today.VirginiaThat we have been ambivalent about tackling, I want to say. Especially you? You have been ambivalent.CorinneI have been ambivalent. It’s a tough topic, but a lot of you have asked us to talk about this.So we’re going to talk about plus size influencers, Ozempic, and intentional weight loss.VirginiaThe Rosey Beeme of it all.CorinneYes. Part of the reason we’re talking about this now is because there was a big Instagram kerfuffle where the longtime plus size influencer Rosey Beeme, who has recently been pursuing intentional weight loss through the use of semaglutide, posted a very shitty Instagram story. She said, “Full transparency: I have zero remorse or shame for being public about my weight loss. Two years ago, I couldn’t wipe my own ass. That’s the tea!” VirginiaYup. She did say that. On Al Gore’s Internet.CorinneThat is a very fucked up and ableist thing to say. And, rightfully so, a lot of folks felt hurt and offended by that. And, so, yeah. We’re here to talk about that.VirginiaI think this has really highlighted how much there is a difference between someone talking about their own experience in a personal way, and doing it on a platform. Because, a very common thing people will say to me is, “I support fat rights. I’m against diet culture. But I just know I would feel better, I just know my knees would hurt less. I want to be able to wipe my own ass.”And these health or life or logistical things get named as a valid reason for wanting to be thinner. And it’s both. Because there’s a kernel of truth here, right? Life is easier if you have the mobility to wipe your own ass, and that’s a hurdle you don’t have to deal with. And: People’s lives are just as valuable and meaningful if that is not the case. I mean, my God. I’ve thrown my back out so many times and not been able to do this! I don’t love throwing out my back. But I don’t feel like I need to like pursue some intensive life altering thing in order to not. It just feels very… I’m getting ramble-y because I’m upset about this. CorinneIt’s upsetting. Something that we learn from disability activism is that we’re all only temporarily able-bodied. God willing, if you live a long life, there’s probably going to be a point in your life where you can’t wipe your own ass.VirginiaWe’re all going to end up there, if we’re lucky. CorinneIt just sucks to be making people feel bad about the different ways that they exist in their bodies.VirginiaI think what’s tricky about the ableism conversation is you are allowed, as a person with a disability or a limitation like that, to be frustrated by it and to want something about your body to be different. We’re allowed to want that. But she basically said it as if no one could argue with that. Like, “Well, obviously, I had to lose weight because that was true about me.” That invalidates so many other people’s experiences. I think there is a real gray area and that she was not in the gray area. She was fully in the anti-fat, anti-disability area. But I can understand the kernel of the gray area that made her think it was okay to say that. But she had such a responsibility to do something different with her platform.CorinneI think for a lot of people, it’s also hard to stomach this coming from someone who has historically made money from fat people. Via brand deals, and affiliate links for her fat fashion recs.VirginiaFat community paid her bills for a long time. CorinneTo turn on a dime from that to rejecting that and making ableist comments just feels hard. VirginiaI’m looking at this next post from her, and it’s interesting because she’s talking about being on a health and fitness glow up because of having been on Mounjaro. This is a video of her on a walking pad and talking about taking weight loss drugs. And she says, “I’ve loved visiting the theater without being concerned for the size of seats. I’m flying solo this January for the first time in a long time. And I’m not concerned.”But these are not personal failings, these are structural issues. Because that’s great, Rosey! You can fit in an airplane seat. The airplane seats haven’t changed. A lot of people still can’t fit in them. Your ability to—for now anyway—achieve the smaller body solves all of these issues, but it doesn’t fucking solve it for anybody else. CorinneRight? This is body liberation. You can do whatever you want with your body. You can decide to pursue intentional weight loss and talk about it publicly. And, making the experience of other fat folks harder sucks. VirginiaShe only solved her own problem. This is not a step forward for anybody else. She just decided to solve her own problem—again, probably temporarily—while throwing everyone else under the bus. And to conflate fitting into a seat with health. That’s not a health and fitness glow up. That is you are now the size that our society deems more acceptable so the world is built for you. That’s just privilege. So she’s conflating health and privilege in this really annoying way. And then she talks about now she wants to work on her cardiovascular health and achieving her dream aesthetic. Again, only one of those things has anything to do with health. This is not a health glow up, this is a thin privilege glow up. CorinneI will say one thing I do kind of appreciate about Rosey is that she’s been so open about the fact that she’s using drugs to achieve this. Because I think there are a lot of other influencers out there who are going on similar journeys and not discussing how they’re getting there and or just saying they’re “pursuing health” or are on “a fitness journey.”Alex, the founder of Shiny By Nature, has also been on a health and fitness journey that has included a lot of weight loss, but no mention of drugs. And there’s also The Huntswoman who recently started a new Instagram account, which involves literally changing her name, to pursue “a health journey,” whatever that might look like.VirginiaShe’s not The Huntswoman anymore?CorinneHer old account is called The Huntswoman and her name is Brianne and then she started this new account called Becoming Gwen. So she’s literally like, I’m becoming this other person and pursuing a glow up and pursuing health, including weight loss.VirginiaOkay. Also, the writer in me just has to be annoyed for a second, because the tagline on her new account is “don’t call it a glow up, it’s a rendezvous.” And that… can’t be the word she meant? That doesn’t make any sense. A rendezvous is when you serendipitously meet up with someone. Like, “we’re having a rendezvous at Starbucks.” It can be like a secretive meeting, like lovers. CorinneYeah, so what does that mean here? It doesn’t make sense.VirginiaThat’s not the word she meant. I don’t know what word she meant. But that’s not it. We’re not suddenly having a clandestine meeting with her about her new body? I don’t know. Not the point, but that’s irritating.CorinneYes, she says she’s going to be discussing health more candidly over on the new account with some discussion of intentional weight loss. VirginiaWell, again, I am glad she is putting it in a different place. That at least, is very clear for your followers. I know I don’t need to follow her Becoming Gwen. I’m not going to go to that rendezvous, Gwen. Because I don’t need to rendezvous with Gwen about her weight loss. That won’t be helpful for me.And same with Rosey! I do think if you are someone, especially fashion influencers, you’re going to have a lot of younger followers, people who are at very vulnerable ages for disordered eating and eating disorders and glamorizing weight loss is never helpful for that. It doesn’t serve anyone except you.CorinneIt really sucks to have it framed as a health journey. Everyone being like, “I’m on a health and fitness journey and suddenly I like eating apples.” VirginiaThey don’t want to call it a diet, so it’s called a health and fitness journey. That’s pretty exasperating. We talked awhile back about some other fat fashion influencers—I can’t remember when this was, maybe around the time of the midsize queen conversation? And we talked about how there’s a problem with assuming that someone who has become public for being fat is automatically a fat activist. And I guess these people are showing us that. Do you think there’s anything to the idea that us scrutinizing these fat folks talking about it this way—is that useful? Or are we not holding thin folks to the same standard? Do you know what I mean? Like, are we being harder on fat folks? CorinneThat’s a great question. I think for me, it’s this thing where you built an audience around being fat. You’re making money off of fatness and now you’re making money off of weight loss. That kind of feels bad. Even though yes, people can do whatever they want with their bodies. I haven’t seen or noticed a bunch of thin or straight size influencers talking about these these drugs or going on, quote unquote, health and fitness journeys, but I’m maybe just not as plugged into that. VirginiaI feel like they are all always on a health and fitness journey.CorinneYeah, I don’t know.VirginiaWell, and in terms of the way the media initially covered Ozempic and Mounjaro and all our weight loss drug friends—it was really focused on skinny celebs, the Kardashians, Mindy Kaling. So I think there was a lot of attention paid to thin people using these drugs to get even thinner and some backlash against that. “No, no, save them for the fatties who really need them,” was kind of the message, which was problematic.CorinneI follow a couple other influencer people who have also recently lost a ton of weight and said nothing about it, which I also have complicated feelings about. That also doesn’t necessarily feel great, but it’s none of my business.1VirginiaBut are they not saying anything about it? Or are they pretending they lost weight a way they didn’t? I think is my question.CorinneNot addressing it. Saying nothing about it.VirginiaI think I feel more okay with that. This is something I think about a lot. Nobody owes the world their body—even influencers. I think about some of the questions I get about my personal life because I wrote about my divorce. People think they should get to know a lot of details about my marriage. You’re still allowed to have boundaries and I would rather someone not address their weight loss at all and continue to stand up and be vocal for fat people. Their body is not the point of that. CorinneThe people I’m thinking of, I don’t think are people that would have identified as fat activists or even plus size influencers, but existed in the world in bigger bodies. So I think it just makes me question: Are you still advocating for other people in bigger bodies? Or are you just done with that? VirginiaI think your point about the monetization is really important. Rosey, The Huntswoman—all these people used body positive rhetoric. They used fat, they use the language of the movement, even if they weren’t truly identifying as activists. Like Rosey is sort of like, “I was never anti-diet” now. She is being very like, “this word was never for me.” And that’s fine. But you used the language. You used the hashtags in order to grow your following in order to post your affiliate links, get your sponsor deals, all of that. So you did profit off that rhetoric. So now what you’re basically telling us is you coopted all that rhetoric and you don’t believe it at all and that is pretty gross.Sarah Sapora is someone who has been in this lane for a very long time. She identifies as plus size and body positive, but she has always been pro-intentional weight loss. She argues that this can be part of being body positive. It’s a way of “prioritizing yourself.”Again, body liberation. Her body is her choice. This is a message that may resonate and maybe be helpful to some folks. I don’t know. But from where I’m sitting, it feels like someone who is just still stuck. She’ll talk about not wanting to do it in a disordered way and like not wanting to crash diet and “been there, done that” and all of that. But that just feels like diet culture rhetoric. Every diet says, “We’re not a crash diet.” Every diet is like “the numbers don’t really matter, it matters how you feel.” What are you doing that is any different from any other intentional weight loss? I don’t see it because it’s still, at the end of the day, celebrating pictures of herself looking smaller. She’s still celebrating the aesthetic. And anytime you’re celebrating the aesthetic, you’re in reinforcing anti-fat bias. CorinneShe did do a good post, where she says, “so your favorite fat creator doesn’t want to be fat anymore. Here are six mindset tips to process their journey in a self loving way for you.” And I do think her tips around it are pretty good. Just like, it has nothing to do with you. If it feels bad, unfollow. VirginiaYes.I appreciate that she’s saying, what I care about is all people make the decision that’s most self loving for them, which is body liberation language. I can get on board with that. CorinneIt’s a tough topic. It feels kind of heavy, feels a little heavy. VirginiaWell, and the reason we’re having this on Extra Butter and not on the main stage is because anytime people start to dissect these creators or really any creators, there’s the immediate pushback of well, you’re just gossiping. You’re being vindictive. But we’re really trying to think about the impact of this messaging and the ripple effects on the larger cultural conversation. I think particularly within the fat community, this is an important conversation to have, because it is a lesson for all of us to just be a little more careful about who we follow and what authority we imbue them with, I think is my takeaway. CorinneSomething I also am curious about that I just, like haven’t really researched, but are people who take these drugs just to manage conditions like diabetes or PCOS—are any of them doing any influencing?VirginiaThat’s true.CorinneIs any influencer like, “yeah, I have diabetes and I started taking this”? Or is everyone just like, I’m on a, quote unquote, fitness journey taking this drug. I don’t know. It just feels unfair.VirginiaI would like to see that story. It’s only further reinforcing the fact that people forget—I mean, you had to remind me of this in editing the other day—that Ozempic isn’t even approved for weight loss. It’s a diabetes medication. It’s getting used off label for that.CorinneI think that’s part of what sucks so much! It’s a drug for a disease that’s already very stigmatized, especially for fat folks. People are monetizing being able to take this drug and lose weight and have before and after photos and sell walking pads and people who need to take this drug to manage chronic conditions just can’t benefit in any way. VirginiaAll of that.On a related note, I do have questions about a walking pad and whether I would like having one? but not for weight loss to be clear! This is just the second time today I’ve seen someone on a walking pad on Instagram and I have thoughts.CorinneWalking pads are huge on TikTok. I have seen one walking pad in real life owned by a fat person that I know. I saw it stashed at their house and was like, oooh, is that a walking pad? Like, how is that? And she was like, “It actually is really kind of hard to walk on because of how narrow it is.” Like, you have to pay attention. Because they’re designed to be small and I know a lot of them also have lower weight limits. I feel like if you’re going to use it while you’re watching TV or something, they actually maybe aren’t that practical because they don’t have the sides that you can hold onto, you know?VirginiaWhich seems like it could be a problem. To be honest, I want one because I wonder if my kids would like it? Again, not for any weight loss situation. I have one kid who’s a big pacer and needs to pace to get her energy out and her anxiety and all of that and sometimes her pacing is in laps around my couch. And that’s not great when I’m sitting on my couch. So what if I could just put her in the corner on a walking pad?CorinneThat’s actually a really interesting idea because now that you’re saying that, I pace a lot when I’m on the phone, like if I’m talking to a friend I just kind of walk in circles, but I don’t like to do it outside because it’s too noisy and distracting. Maybe a walking pad would be good for that?VirginiaI don’t know. I don’t think I’m gonna do it because I just feel like the potential is there for it to go diet-y so fast. Lauren Leavell just got one. That was the other person I saw on it and I was DMing with her about it. She’s also a big pacer. And she was like, “I do really like it as a tool for my pacing.” For the stress pacers. I’m not a stress pacer.CorinneI’m really interested in one of those mini trampolines. VirginiaOh, I’m also interested in that for the same reason. For the children. And maybe I would try it? I think I would like it, because my knees are a whole situation. A trampoline is a low impact way to get some cardio in. That could be kind of fun. CorinneYeah, it looks like it would be fun, but I feel like my ceilings might not be high enough.VirginiaWell, and again, the weight limit question! A lot of the mini ones are marketed for kids and the weight limit is like 100 pounds.CorinneI mean, you’ll love to know that there are some really expensive ones made in Germany that you can specify the weight.VirginiaI love to know this.CorinneI haven’t bought one because they’re like $800 or something. I can’t even remember, is it $400 or $800? Both of those are so out of reach to me.VirginiaAbsurd. Walking pads are only like $180 and I was like, this feels like a little ridiculous.ButterVirginiaWell, our Butter is not walking pads or mini trampolines, yet.CorinneYet! Stay tuned.VirginiaBut Corinne, do you have a Butter for us?CorinneI do have a Butter. MyButter is kind of a two parter. Part one is that it’s been really cold in New Mexico, which no one wants to believe, but. And during this little cold spell, I have finally pulled out my cashmere woolies. So I’ve been wearing a lot of cashmere. I specifically have a pair of joggers and a sweater from Naadam, the cashmere company. They go up to 3x, but it’s a pretty generous 3x.But when I pulled them out to start wearing them, I realized that the sweater had a little hole in it and I was really sad about it. I was kind of like researching how this could be fixed and I came across something called needle felting. Do you know what that is? VirginiaI do, I have an aunt and a cousin who were very into needle felting back in the day.CorinneI was drawn to it because it seemed really easy. So basically, you get wool roving and you kind of stuff it in the hole. And then you use this big needle to just stab it until it covers the hole. So I did that and it worked pretty well. You can see it’s a slightly different texture than the rest of the sweater, but it took two minutes and I now am just like, it’s like good enough that I can just wear it. Or I could wear it backwards and it would be on my back and it wouldn’t bother me at all. So I want to recommend cashmere and needle feltingVirginiaI need to do this because some of my Vince Camuto sweaters that I have recommended here all winter and it’s all I wear—two of them have tiny little holes, and I’ve been really upset and feeling like I needed to disclose this.CorinneI feel like you should try to get one of your kids into it. There are people that do cute patches, like a little like mushroom shaped patch over the hole. It could be really cute. Like a little heart. I wasnot that ambitious. VirginiaOkay, a little heart sounds so sweet. This sounds like a fun new hobby for all of us for February. CorinneWhat’s your Butter?VirginiaMy Butter is that I am in my robot vacuum era. I bought a robot vacuum in a Black Friday sale. This is something I did because with an adult moving out of the house, there is more labor to keep up my house. So I have been spending money on things that make that easier. It turns out you can replace a husband with a robot vacuum? CorinneDang! Put a ring on it.VirginiaIt’s really satisfying and it’s really helping. I am someone who has a lot of allergies and I kind of accept that waking up congested is my lot in life. Every morning I wake up with a stuffy nose. And since I started robot vacuuming my whole bedroom every day, it is happening much less. It’s a little confused because then I got cold, obviously that threw out my data collection, but now that my cold is gone it’s been like a week. I’m not waking up congested. What’s happening?CorinneMy question is how does your dog feel about it?VirginiaShe has a lot of feelings. She definitely is easily startled. I actually own two, I have one that I do around the house and then I have one that just lives in my bedroom and is on a timer to do that room every day because I’m trying to deal with my allergies. I set it for 8am and most days we’re out of that room well before 8am. But on a solo weekend recently, I slept in and Penelope sleeps in my bed with me, so we were woken up by the robot vacuum. And she was like, what is happening?CorinneThat’s pretty funny, VirginiaBut she kind of makes peace with it. Once she’s like, okay, it’s that thing again. But at first she’s always like, who is that?CorinneI think my dog would try to play with it/attack it. VirginiaIt’s kind of entertaining. But yeah, if you are someone who’s dealing with allergies or also just vacuuming is like a very physical chore and it is hard on our bodies and not having to do it is great. Big fan of the robot vacuum.

Lyz Lenz, author of the thought-provoking newsletter Men Yell at Me, dives into her inspiring journey post-marriage in her new book, This American Ex-Wife. She critiques societal norms around marriage, emphasizing personal happiness over duration. The conversation touches on the systemic challenges single parents face and the historical context of marriage's patriarchal roots. Lenz also shares her personal triumphs in embracing solitude and empowerment, illustrating how finding joy in independence reshapes life after divorce.

You’re listening to Burnt Toast!We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it’s time for your July Indulgence Gospel!We’ll be getting into:Millennial vs Gen Z feelings about socksHow to even begin a closet reorganization projectWhat to do when the roller coaster doesn’t fit your body.And so much more!This is a paywalled episode. That means to hear the whole thing you’ll need to be a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. This transcript contains affiliate links. Shopping our links is another great way to support Burnt Toast!Episode 153 TranscriptCorinneSo, I heard you have some pants to tell us about.VirginiaI am wearing barrel pants. CorinneSo trendy. VirginiaIt’s trendy, and for a woman who previously could only wear a skinny pant, this is a major growth moment for me. Is it not?CorinneIt’s a major growth moment.VirginiaThese pants are very wide. They are truly barrel shaped.CorinneWow. Yeah. Where did you get them?VirginiaI got them from my Nuuly box. Nuuly is a clothing rental service, which I am trying out for the first time ever because four of my local friends do it and are obsessed. Like I can’t tell you how much of every gathering is talking about Nuuly boxes. It’s a little bit culty, I think? But I’m trying it out and I’ll probably write a longer essay about it. (Here’s a discount code for anyone who wants to try it out in the meantime!)I have mixed reviews so far on how good they are in plus sizes. But I’m going to give it a few months, really get in there, and then report back. And the first win is definitely these Anthropologie barrel pants, whichDacy Gillespiealso loved.Do you have them, too? Or were you just think about getting them?CorinneNo, I don’t have them. I’m unclear whether Anthropologie sizing works for me. VirginiaWell, I will say these are the 1x, and they’re roomy.CorinneAre they zip fly or are they elastic waist?VirginiaElastic waist. And I’m wearing the 1x. They go up to 3x. And they’re pretty generously sized, other reviewers also said they ran large. I really enjoy them, but they do fall down after a few days of wearing as do all pants on me. And I was like, “Well, it’s great that I’m renting them because I can just have that experience.” I have them in the light blue right now.CorinneRental seems like such a good option for stuff like that, where you want to try it out.VirginiaI didn’t want to buy a whole pair of barrel pants when I didn’t even know how I felt about this trend. So trying it out. I did want to ask a follow up question—you had talked both on the podcast and onBig Undies, about some Old Navy denim shorts you got. Are you still liking them?CorinneI’m still liking them. In fact, I bought another pair.VirginiaBecause I’ve been thinking about them and I was like, I need to find out how they’re holding up on multiple wears.CorinneThey’re good. Okay, should we move on to socks chat?VirginiaWe really should because this is a burning question, which was sent in over Instagram.What is your input on the whole millennial ankle versus Gen Z calf sock debate?The reason I’m going to immediately throw this to Corinne is because when we were doing the Style Challenge with Dacy a few months ago and we were having extensive text threads about pants and shoes and all of the feelings and the Birkenstock skinny jeans fiasco we won’t speak of. And Corinne was like, “Guys, Gen Z has really different feelings about socks.” And then it was like everything I knew about socks was wrong.CorinneBasically there’s this thing where people say you can tell if someone is Gen Z or Millennial based on their socks.VirginiaBecause there would be no other way to tell the difference between me and a 27 year old.CorinneThat would be the only way. Because Millennials like wearing no show socks. And Gen Zs think that is very uncool. And Gen Z thinks the cool socks are crew socks.VirginiaI’m a little bit with them? I have always felt like no show socks are the absolute dorkiest of socks.CorinneYeah, they’re embarrassing. VirginiaYou go to somebody’s shoes off household and then you have to walk around in your weird little no show socks, but they’re showing.CorinneI also never found them comfortable. I don’t think I ever found ones that actually didn’t fall down.VirginiaThey slip so weirdly! A little bit of them inevitably does show, but not enough to look purposeful.CorinneThey’re really ugly. So I guess that’s where we land on the debate but for I, for a long time, have been wearing these socks from Shiny By Nature. And I love them. I don’t know if they could really be considered a crew sock? They’re more of a high ankle sock, maybe. But Shiny By Nature is doing some weird stuff. I kind of don’t want to keep buying from them. I’ve currently been buying crew socks to test out to see if I can find any cute ones that don’t leave an indentation in my calf. Because crew socks feel fatphobic. They never fit my calf right. VirginiaThey are anti-calf. And that is one of socks’ two jobs right? To cover your foot and also part of your calf?CorinneDo you have any socks you like?VirginiaI am a millennial who has not been wearing socks as much as possible. At this time of year, I don’t wear socks because I am just wearing Birkenstocks all the time. And then what do even I wear in the winter? CorinneIt does feel like the no show sock is part of the ankle/pants/shoe thing where you need to show your ankle because it’s the smallest part of your leg or something. VirginiaAbsolutely. I think it’s all bound up in that. And I do think that the Gen Z trend of the covered ankle is alternatively exploding that norm or reinforcing the thin ideal because you have to have such thin legs in order to wear a bulky sock and not make your leg look overall larger. And I don’t know which one it is. CorinneOr for it to not have the sock elastic be turning your leg into a little sausage. VirginiaAnd cutting off circulation in your feet. So I think all the socks are fatphobic is what we’re saying. It’s a fatphobic category of clothing and yet also not wearing socks is also fatphobic. Because you’re showing your ankles.CorinneYou really can’t win.VirginiaI don’t know. Do we go back to Uggs? I don’t know where we go with this. This person wanted input. We’ve offered input, I guess. We’ve not offered direction.CorinneI saw a funny TikTok where someone was like, “Just wait till they have to deal with the crew sock tan lines.” Nothing could be less cool than crew sock tan lines. VirginiaIt’s so true.CorinneI’m trying to get into more crew socks. We’ll see.Virginia I mean, when I was a child of the 80s, did I love The Baby Sitters Club ice cream cone socks? Yes, I did. Did I wear my push down socks in turquoise and hot pink and magenta, all together? Absolutely. So I feel like this is in my DNA. This is something I can come back to. I’m excited for the potential of a crew sock with like, a little fun stripe of color. There’s a lot of places you can go. CorinneOkay, should we move on to the next question?VirginiaYes. I will read our next question. Hi Virginia and Corinne,I love Burnt Toast so much. It means the world to me to listen to smart, funny, thoughtful women talk about all the things that make life hard and beautiful about being fat.I am somewhat new in my body liberation journey, actually very new in respect. But I’ve not been participating in active weight loss for about three years now. It felt good in so, so, so many ways, and I can’t tell you just how much intuitive sense it makes to not participate in a very clear cycle of oppression. And I’ve had some experiences fresh from the weekend that have made me feel uncomfortable about my path. I say uncomfortable because I don’t feel unsure or confused, just uncomfortable.Since deciding to stop trying to shrink my body, my body has grown. I have bought the bigger clothes and in my day to day my fat body does all the things they want for the most part. And some things are harder, like tying my shoes. And with that I use it as an opportunity to explore my own ableism and discomfort.This weekend, though, my mom (a very small person) and I wanted to ride our favorite ride at the fair together. I was nervous about fitting into it but thought maybe it will be okay. We got on and it was clear as the man tried so kindly to push the bar closed that it was not okay. I was panicking. But he was kind and I held on to the hope and my mom was trying hard to be supportive and I just wanted to cry out of frustration and pain and embarrassment. I contorted and he finally got it closed. And I rode the ride and I was in so much pain but I laughed with it and made it fun because I wanted so badly to be there with my mom. It makes me tear up now to write about it.And then now the thoughts come. What am I giving up for this? I can’t ride the rides with my future children, with my mom, my brothers. What else can I not do because of this? And am I missing something in my newness of this experience? I want to love my body more but I know part of that is hoping it will get smaller. I guess I don’t know what my question is, just what to do when it feels like this?CorinneThis is such a sad question.VirginiaIt’s so sad. It is so uncomfortable. I think we’re just sitting in the discomfort with you.CorinneThis is a hard question to give advice to, right?VirginiaI don’t think she’s even asking for advice.CorinneI mean, I think she’s asking what to do. And I don’t know that there is anything to do really. It just sucks. VirginiaIt just sucks. I’m glad her mom was supportive. I’m glad the man was kind. I wish they built amusement park rides to fit all bodies. It isn’t your body’s fault. That is the ride’s fault.CorinneYeah, I think that is the thing to remember, just that it’s not your fault. And it has nothing to do with your body. It has to do with the system.VirginiaSo, I guess one thought I have is: Okay, maybe you can’t ride the amusement park rides with your future children. But what were you giving up when you were trying to make your body smaller? What was not available to you when you were in that place?It’s different for all of us. But if you were continually preoccupied with dieting and exercising to a degree that was unsustainable and causing injury, like, all of that would also cost you. Your relationship with your future children will be more intact if you are healthy and happy and safe in your body than if you are shrinking yourself down. So you can’t twice a year ride on a roller coaster with them. I will never ride on a roller coaster with my children even if I do fit in the seats, because I hate them. And I think my kids are doing okay. CorinneI can’t say I’m dying to go on a roller coaster either, but I feel like the point isn’t the roller coaster.VirginiaYeah, if you love it, you love it. I’m not trying to take that away. But if you weigh up what you are missing out on now versus what you were missing out on in a smaller body? I think that’s worth looking at. CorinneTotally. I also just think: Is there a way you can replace that experience with something else? Like, maybe going to the fair to go on roller coasters isn’t fun anymore. But what would be fun to do that you can do? Maybe it’s going to the fair and watching the sheepdog trials or something. I don’t know, something else that doesn’t require you to squeeze yourself into an uncomfortable space.VirginiaThe sheep dog trials!CorinneThat’s what I always like to do at the fair. I was also going to say like, getting fried doughl or something, but I didn’t really want to make it seem like the only thing fat people can do at the fair is eat.VirginiaBut I mean, fair food is amazing. And maybe that is something that is available to you now, that wasn’t when you were dieting. Going to the other things, the sheep dog trials.I also want to shout outBrianna Camposwho is Body Image With Bri on Instagram, and also writes a great Substack. She is a mental health counselor based in Jersey who does a lot of body image work. And she specifically works on body grief, and grieving things that have happened to your body. I think her writing is really beautiful about this. She’s talked a lot about changes in ability and mobility. That might be a great resource for you to check out.CorinneI think it is good to remember that we all have changes in ability at some point. VirginiaIt’s a hard moment when you realize something is harder than it used to be because we’re programmed to think body size is something I should fix or change. Like, I just realized I’m going to need a new glasses prescription because I’m like, wow, I really can’t see the TV again. But I don’t go through a judgment process about my prescription changing. CorinneYou don’t immediately sign up for eyeball gym and eyeball diets.VirginiaI mean, but when I’m like, “Wow, it’s a little harder to get off the floor than it used to be,” I think like, “Oh, that’s something I should be like actively trying to fix, and is weight loss the way to do that?”CorinneI will read the next question. I went to the midwife this week and she told me it’s fine to lose weight while pregnant. Really? Obviously I don’t want to.VirginiaI think you need a new midwife. I hate that for you and all people who get pregnant and are told that.Okay, so I’m looking up a text from my awesome midwife, Danielle Stracci, here in the Hudson Valley. We’ve talked a lot about how she works with fat folks to help them understand they can have a normal pregnancy. There’s so much fear mongering that goes into the way we talk about weight and pregnancy, and I will link to other work I’ve done on that topic. And we also have an episode of the podcast coming up, that’s gonna go deeper. But just top level, Danielle said, “Unfortunately BMI becomes part of the discussion, because that’s where the research is—but by far, it doesn’t steer the ship completely.” Her bottom line is no, there’s no evidence for “it’s great to lose weight while pregnant.” There’s no clearcut science on that. There’s a lot of nuance to the conversation about weight during pregnancy. And you deserve to be with a provider who is not going to push you in that direction. Do you have anything to add? CorinneIt’s unclear whether the provider told her she should lose weight or whether this person is losing weight and concerned about it, and the provider is just saying it’s fine.VirginiaThat’s a good point. Obviously a lot of folks, if they have intense morning sickness, do lose weight. And I think it’s reassuring to know that most of those people go on to have healthy babies. The thing about pregnancy is—I’m not a doctor, but having done it twice, I can confirm from lived experience. Your body is throwing you under the bus the whole time in order to keep the baby safe. So you’re going to feel terrible, but the baby is probably going to be okay in a lot of these situations.But also: If you are so sick that you’re losing weight, I want your midwife actively trying to stabilize your nausea. And making a plan with you about what you can eat to get through the day because you do still need to eat and this is really challenging. How do we figure out what foods don’t trigger your nausea? A blanket “it’s okay if you’re losing a little weight during pregnancy,” is not helpful.CorinneI hope this person is able to find someone who feels more helpful. Tips for organizing your closet when you fluctuate between a few sizes. I’m fine with changing size bodies change, but it makes my closet a mess.VirginiaI mean, this is so real. CorinneYes, it is so real.VirginiaCorinne is getting ready to work on a big closet makeover! I just announced something that she maybe doesn’t actually want to do, but I’m trying to talk her into it!CorinneI do want to do it. Just in a few months, not a few days.VirginiaStay tuned in a few months forBig Undiescloset coverage. We’re going to do a whole thing and I’m very excited. I love closet organization.CorinneOh my God.VirginiaI’m a really fun person. CorinneWell, I recently downloaded the app Lucky Sweater. Have you heard about this app? It’s an app where you can trade clothes. VirginiaOh, that’s so smart. CorinneBasically, the way it works is, you upload stuff that you’re wanting to trade. And then you can message with people about trading. But where are you putting the stuff that you want to get rid of, but haven’t gotten rid of yet? I need to solve that problem in my head before I start. Because it’s not instantaneous—it’s the same with listing something on Poshmark or eBay. You list it, and then it’s sitting around somewhere for a week, waiting to see what happens.VirginiaI think I would just get a big reusable shopping bag, like the kind of thing you’d buy your seltzer in, and have that sitting in a corner of my bedroom. All the stuff that I’m getting ready to swap or sell goes in there. I don’t think that should be in your closet. Because I think your closet should be clothes you’re actively wearing. So something like that should not be kept in your closet.CorinneNo, I agree. But then you have a shopping bag full of clothes sitting in your house indefinitely.VirginiaI tend to shove that in my mudroom, which I realized not everyone has a mudroom, but my mudroom is where there are library of books to be returned, that sweater I’m loaning a friend, the things that my children’s friends leave at our house that I have to return at the next play date. CorinneI keep my clothes that I’m not wearing this season, but I might want to again in the future, in a bin in my entry. VirginiaOkay, but so for the organizing the closet, because I think the question is: Are you fluctuating sizes seasonally? Or are you fluctuating sizes over the course of a month, like related to your menstrual cycle?So if it’s seasonal, like if you’re noticing I’m bigger than I was three months ago, I think for that what I would suggest is that every two to three months you do a closet clear out. Anything that’s not fitting you right now goes into like stashing in your basement or any kind of other storage space. CorinneI think the problem is also sometimes you don’t know. Like, sometimes you realize you need a different pant size and you buy new pants, and then it’s like, you don’t necessarily want to get rid of the old ones too fast because you might need them again.VirginiaThat’s why I would put them in a box in your basement, not donate them right away. But just have them somewhere else. Or, like, my closet has this really high up shelf that’s not convenient. I would never put stuff there I want to access daily, but I’ll often put a bag of stuff that I’m like, "this is not the right size right now,” but it’s close enough that if I need to get on the step stool, I can get it down again.But I think it is committing to doing this process pretty regularly. If you’re fluctuating over the course of a month, like, “I know I need my period week pants,” or that kind of thing. Then I think I would maybe if you have space, I mean, obviously I don’t know what this person’s closet looks like. But can you group things together by size? So that the week that you’re in your bigger size, that’s all this shelf or this section of the closet. Smaller stuff is this section. What’s a nightmare is when you have all your pants stacked up together, but you know six of those pants only fit a certain way and six of those pants fit a different way but they’re all jumbled together. You need two piles of pants. CorinneThat’s what I have. Everything jumbled together.VirginiaYes, I’ve seen your closet.CorinneI have like, whatever, three or four pairs of the same jeans. So I every time I’m like looking at the size tag.VirginiaYou need to shelve it by size.CorinneI might need to demolish my bathroom and turn it into a closet.Virginia I’m not against that.CorinneWho needs a toilet? VirginiaThere are different ways. We’re not designing your closet today!CorinneOkay, never mind. VirginiaFor this person, I think whether it’s a couple different bins, a couple different shelves, I think you do want to keep it organized by size so it makes sense. And because I also think you want the ability to just not look at the stuff that’s not working for you that day. Because it’s just going to stress you out. And not even necessarily from an anti-fat perspective. But just because it’s more noise. Like, I have to remember that those three pairs of pants don’t work today? I just don’t need it. CorinneHow long would you wait before donating something that wasn’t fitting anymore?VirginiaI mean, the rule of thumb you always hear is if you haven’t worn it in a year. I’m probably even a little more ruthless than that. Because I think I can usually tell. Sometimes it’s a combination where it doesn’t fit quite right and I know I never really reached for it. So if I had like two or three strikes against an item I’ll donate it faster. But otherwise, I’ll definitely put stuff in the basement. And then it’s like, if I look in that box, and I’ve forgotten all that, I’m going to let it go.But I do this seasonally. So I won’t donate the winter stuff that wasn’t working when I pulled out my winter stuff. Because I don’t know where my body will be next winter. So I’ll probably evaluate when I pull out my winter clothes. It makes sense.CorinneWhen do you do the seasonal thing?VirginiaWhen…the seasons change?CorinneOne day, you’re like, “I’m cold. Guess I’ll go get my sweaters box?”VirginiaWait, do you really not do that? Well I guess you live in New Mexico so the weather variation is different.CorinneNo, it gets very cold here. I feel like you don’t understand.VirginiaI do understand!CorinneI guess I never feel that organized about it. I’m like, “Wait, I’m cold. Where are my sweaters?”VirginiaWell, honestly, I probably do two mini clean outs per season because I feel like there are the micro seasons, you know, the shoulder seasons. CorinneThat’s like a clean out every two weeks!?VirginiaProbably every six to eight weeks? I don’t know. It isn’t really that much work though because I’m constantly like, “Oh, we’re now wearing open toed shoes.” I don’t know how to explain weather to you, Corinne!CorinneI mean, I don’t think it’s the weather I’m struggling with.VirginiaI think usually in October or late September/early October is when I tend to do it for fall. So that’s when it starts to get a little bit like chillier here. CorinneBut it’s not like in your calendar. It’s just like, a day comes where you’re like today is the day.VirginiaYeah. I mean, it tends to be a Sunday afternoon where I’m like, doing laundry anyway and then I deal with the closet and I move everything around. And I do my kids’ as well. For them I put their out of season stuff in bins on the high shelf in their closet. For my closet, which is a decent size. I actually have some extra hanging space—divorce privilege!—that used to house someone else’s clothes. So now I have a space where I can rotate stuff through. So I still have my sweaters on hangers. I just moved them all to that side of the closet. And then I have the stuff I’m wearing right now all on one rack.I’m excited to do more on closets. I think it’s very interesting. I think you learn a lot about people.CorinneI feel targeted. Um, next question. Is scent part of your personal style? VirginiaI’m so fascinated about this. I think how in the comments recently you were saying that you feel like people are either music neurodivergent or podcast neurodivergent or whatever? I think I am scent neurodivergent, which is I don’t ever think about like, having a scent. Like, I don’t really register scents. Except I am also very anxious that that means my house smells bad all the time and people aren’t telling me.CorinneOh, wow. VirginiaSo I guess I have some scent anxiety. CorinneInteresting. I would say maybe I’m the opposite. I’m really sensitive to scents and have a very strong sense of smell. And I like some scents, and I like smelling people’s perfumes or whatever, sometimes. But I have a really hard time wearing scents because it’s almost like it’s distracting. Like, it’s like white noise. If I put on perfume, after a while I’m like, get it off of me. After like six hours. VirginiaNo, I get that. CorinneAnd because of the world we live in, so many products are scented. Like laundry detergent, shampoo, deodorant—that is often enough for me. I can smell people’s deodorant and their laundry detergent. One time at my old job, it was the day after a party or something and someone had left a jacket behind. And I picked it up and caught a whiff of it and was like, “Oh, this is so and so’s.” Like, in that weird way where you’re like, I cannot tell people that I identified this by smell.VirginiaYeah, I never wear perfume. I just don’t think of it though? That’s what I mean. CorinneI theoretically like it. And I like the idea of smelling stuff, but it’s just so rare that I actually like something. I do enjoy reading about perfume stuff, likeRachel Symehad a really good perfume newsletter for a while. And Christina Loff, our friend at Substack has a cool scent Substack called The Dry Down Diaries 💅.VirginiaThat is really cool. I kind of feel about this the way I feel about wine. It would be nice to have more knowledge about this, but I don’t think I really want to put in the effort to learn about it.But I will say, since we did just adopt kittens, as we are going to discuss later in this episode—I am now extremely anxious about how my house smells. Because I think you really know when you’re in a cat house if it’s not being managed well. We’re cleaning the litter box obsessively. And I did just get one of those plug-in scent things. It hasn’t arrived yet, so I haven’t tried it out yet. The problem is, in order to get the children to clean it, the litter box has to be somewhat accessible. So I can’t just have the litter in the basement, which is what we we used to do with our old cat. It’s in an upstairs bathroom. And so I do feel like now it’s a little too central. I’m trying to figure out a workaround. So I’m going to see if having a scent strategy for my home is the answer. CorinneInteresting! I’ll be curious how that works.VirginiaBut for my body, I’m just like, no. I smell fine with just deodorant. It seems like enough.CorinneYeah. Do you use scented detergent?VirginiaNot consciously?CorinneBut like, you don’t buy unscented?VirginiaI think I do? I don’t know.CorinneIt’s crazy to me that you don’t know, but okay.VirginiaI don’t have a strong position. CorinneWow. Fascinating. That is something that comes up on SellTradePlus a lot. When you’re buying used clothing and then you buy it and it has someone else’s detergent smell. Some people are really sensitive to it. VirginiaOne of my favorite smells in the whole world is Comfort fabric softener which is a UK fabric softener because my grandmother and my aunt always used it. When I smell things with Comfort on them, I’m like, oh, childhood, family. And I’m pretty sure it’s an incredibly toxic chemical, but I love the smell of that.All right. Next question.Chambray/collared button up shirt?Go, Corinne.CorinneI feel like this is really your wheelhouse. Chambray?VirginiaYou’re the reason I wear collared button-up shirts!CorinneI’m feeling like I’m looking for a collared button-up shirt right now. But maybe I’m always looking for them. Is this long sleeve shirts or short sleeve?VirginiaOh, I assumed long sleeve. I don’t wear buttoned up short sleeve shirts. CorinneOkay, I wear a button up short sleeve.VirginiaI know you do. CorinneI have the Universal Standard one. And I’m sort of like medium on it.VirginiaI like it better in the cooler months. It’s a little heavy for right now.CorinneThat makes sense. I have one denim button down that I love. And I feel like I’m struggling to find like a super lightweight one.VirginiaI am wearing a lot of these Target button down shirts this summer. (Plus sold out in that link, sorry!) I have two of their linen ones. And two of their cotton ones—cotton percale? I don’t know. They remind me of percale cotton. And I’m really enjoying them. They are quite oversized. And sometimes they feel like they’re the wrong length with shorts. So I’m deciding how I feel about that. But I do really like the general feel of them. And the length is really nice. But that’s my button up shirt story is Target and Universal Standard. We’re not very original.CorinneThose are good recs. VirginiaI also feel like it’s not something you need to overthink. CorinneYeah. I always think the ideal one is probably like vintage but that’s so hard to find. I also was going to say I did just see some really cute ones on Anthropologie, which this is what prompted my “does Anthropologie sizing work for me?” question. The Bennett stripe button up is the style and they have a bunch of cute striped colors and stuff.VirginiaI’m curious to see how much better they are than the Target one.CorinneWho knows.VirginiaI think just like with jeans, there is not a big difference between the $300 pairs of jeans and the $40 pair of jeans. All the jeans are kind of the same. I think button down shirts are another thing where you’re paying for the label. I don’t think the quality is that different. I think once upon a time, sure, if you’re buying your shirts on Savile Row and getting hand-stitched cuffs and whatnot. But like, when I’m talking about a shirt that I’m going to roll up the sleeves, I’m going to not iron it. I’m going to wear it unbuttoned over a bra, like…CorinneWell, I want you to order and tell us.I did just get a long sleeve one up from Wray that I’m excited about.VirginiaThat’s different because it’s going to be a very fun fabric. CorinneDo you have a non-negotiable self care practice? What does that term mean to each of you?VirginiaI had to really think about this.CorinneMe too. “Non-negotiable,” I think, is a tripping point for me.VirginiaEverything is negotiable?CorinneWell, kind of.VirginiaI almost want to say, if it’s not negotiable, is that a problem for you? CorinneYeah, exactly.VirginiaIt’s like, I’m trapped in diet culture in my self care.CorinneFor example, yesterday, I was like, “I really need a house day.” Like, I need to spend a day alone in my house, and do some cleaning, do some cooking, do some organizing. But that’s not a non-negotiable thing for me every week. If someone was like, “Do you want to go to dinner on Sunday?” I wouldn’t be like, “No, Sunday is my house day.” You know? VirginiaIf something comes up, you’re not wedded to the house day.I have often wished I was more non-negotiable with exercise. For me, exercise is often the first thing to cross off the to do list when I’m feeling busy or overwhelmed. I’m like, “Oh, I don’t have time for that.” And then I’m, like, “Oh, my back hurts. I wish I had made time for that.”But I do think I will prioritize some kind of downtime in my day, whether that’s watching TV or doing a puzzle, reading a book for a little bit. Garden time. One non-negotiable for me in the summer is every morning, I’m going to go out and walk around my garden.CorinneThat’s a nice one. VirginiaBut that’s seasonal. But I think some kind of wind down, power down time. If I don’t have that I feel extremely sad. CorinneI’ve started to think about self-care less as face masks or whatever, and more as like, cleaning, cooking for myself, going to the gym, changing your bedsheets. I’ve started to think about chores more as self-care, rather than necessarily a relaxing activity. Even though they’re both different ways of self care. But I think, like, where you’re more type A, I’m more like, “I could lie in bed all day.” I’m realizing, oh, it’s actually self care to do stuff that will make my life easier and better. VirginiaWell, also, I have to do the chores, right? I’m parenting and caregiving. So I have to keep our lives running. And so cleaning and cooking does not feel like self-care for me at all. Because it’s in the service of other people. Like, it’s not in service of just me, right? I mean, tidying up the house is for me. Before I go to bed or first thing every morning I always go around my entire downstairs and do a sweep, picking up all the clutter. And that one is for me. Cooking does not feel like self-care for me. If I could never cook again…I’m just currently in a place of, it’s a necessity and I’m good at it. But it’s not a joy thing for me right now.CorinneI don’t think it’s a joy thing for me either. But I think it’s like, I’m doing this because it’s going to make my life easier. You know? Like, I’m going to make food and have it in my fridge so I’m not Doordashing every night.VirginiaOh see I’m like, but isn’t that why we have Doordash, Corinne?CorinneI mean, absolutely no judgment. Sometimes I don’t even want to DoorDash.VirginiaAm I going to order sushi for the third time this week? Right after we finish this, I have to figure out what I’m making for dinner. And I think I’m just ordering sushi because I have no bandwidth.I think because I spend a lot more active time in chore and caregiving mode, I think the self-care that I have to make non-negotiable is rest. And I do notice my exhaustion level tick up if I don’t. I’m single parenting nine days in a row. I need to force some rest pockets into that. It’s a lot of stamina. Otherwise when I then have my solo weekend, I’m just like, comatose on the couch. I can’t be so depleted by the end of it. So I’m trying to figure out that balance.CorinneWhen I put off those self-care tasks, it doesn’t affect anyone else, you know?VirginiaRight. I mean, I can put off some and no one cares. CorinneDo you have any summer book recommendations?VirginiaI have a bunch!CorinneI’m excited about this question, because I feel like I need some summer book recommendationsVirginiaI'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself: One Woman's Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris,Glynnis MacNicol’s new memoir. You’re probably seeing it all the places. CorinneEveryone is reading that.VirginiaIt’s so fun. And it’s also more subversive and powerful than I think you might first realize. Like, yes, it’s about a woman who at 46 or 47 took herself to Paris for a few months, and just ate a lot of delicious food, and had sex with a lot of men, and that sounds like well yay! But it’s like not Eat, Pray, Love at all. Because it doesn’t end with “and then she found love,” right? She’s like, I found my power and I’m centering my own pleasure and joy.I am just about to start All Fours by Miranda July. I’m very excited. People are calling it the perimenopause but also the women-over-40 sex book. So that’s pertinent to my interests. I’m really excited to get into that one. So those are two more literary recommendations. [Post-recording note: I’ve finished All Fours and I very much agree withEmma Copley Eisenberg’s take here and samantha irby here!]And then, for some some fun easy reads. A very good rom com feminist romance I just finished is called Barely Even Friends by Mae Bennett. It has a fat protagonist who has been hired to renovate a giant historic estate. And the only resident is this curmudgeonly, reclusive hot guy. It’s a modern retelling of Beauty and the Beast, for sure. And Beauty and the Beast is a problematic narrative to retell because it does reinforce a lot of toxic relationship dynamics but Mae Bennett has updated appropriately. It’s fun if you like house stuff, too. It’s got that nice little sprinkling of home renovation with your romcom. And I am now finally working my way through the Bridgerton books. I think I’m late to that party. I think a lot of people have done that. But if you haven’t, I think they’re a good mind eraser. Just a lovely little rabbit hole to fall down. I do think the show is better for a lot of reasons. The books do not have the diversity of the show. That was all Shonda. The Duke is white and the sex is much less feminist. Like, all the women are these delicate, innocent, virgin types and that I’m not so here for. But you know, if you’ve just finished season three and you’re feeling a little bereft and you want to be in the world a little longer, then it’s good.CorinneI’ve been curious about those.VirginiaI don’t know how you would feel about them. I mean, you do like the show. But there are some exasperating parts to them. But it’s kind of fun to go back to them after having watched the seasons that they’ve made the books about ready to be like, oh, here’s what they did differently. There’s a lot that they did that they ended up doing in season three for Penelope’s character that’s much better than the original book. And it was nice to see that. Colin is underwhelming in every medium. It’s what it is. CorinneWell my recs are, I just read Housemates and loved it. The other one is one someone just recommended to me so I haven’t read it yet, but Delilah Green Doesn’t Care. Have you read those books? They’re queer romance. I’m curious if people have read those. And then I also just read Big Swiss. Did you read that?VirginiaI did read Big Swiss. What did you think of it?CorinneI loved it! And a lot of people hated it, which is why I really wanted to ask you, but I loved it. I thought it was hilarious. I don’t know, I just loved it. One thing I liked about it is I felt like everyone in it had a normal weird job and lived a normal weird life. Part of it is her living in this falling apart house.VirginiaI mean, it wasn’t normal…CorinneI don’t know. I just feel like I know so many people like that actually, it’s kind of realistic. But I don’t know. VirginiaI hear what you’re saying. CorinneAnd she’s a gig worker, essentially. I just found it refreshing. VirginiaIt definitely captured some realistic qualities of Hudson, New York. I was like, yep, this is very Hudson. I’m going to get cranky emails for saying that, but it was true. I read it a few months ago, so I’m trying to remember what I particularly didn’t like about it. I think I did not like the Swiss lady?CorinneYeah, I mean, she’s really odd. VirginiaShe’s so odd and unlikable, and I was like, Why? Why is this who you want? I just didn’t buy the relationship? The sex felt very… I don’t know. I was like, this doesn’t seem fun for you.CorinneYeah. I mean, it’s a really odd book. There’s a lot of really odd stuff in it. But I really liked Big Swiss so maybe give it a try.Butter!VirginiaOh, they’re sleeping right now. CorinneOh my God. So cute.VirginiaOkay, so we adopted two kittens. Who can I hold responsible for this? Obviously, my children, who launched an extensive letter writing campaign saying we needed kittens. I also have to blameLindy Westand Meagan Hatcher-Mays, because I’ve been listening to their very funny podcast and they did a whole episode where Meagan impulse adopted a dog and it was just so good. I was filling out a shelter application like an hour after I listened to it. Meagan kept saying, “I went into a fugue state and drove to Pennsylvania and adopted a dog” and I think it was contagious?I mean, the kids and I have been talking about having cats again for a while. Although I now present as a dog owner, I identify as a cat person more. I originate as a cat person. I had four cats throughout my childhood. Then we adopted three cats is our 20s, one of whom is still alive. But when we divorced, my kids’ dad took that old man cat and I kept the dog, because they did not get along well. And since then, for about the past year, we haven’t had any cats in the house and so I lost my mind.And now we have five pets in this house.CorinneWow. Tell me about how fun they are.VirginiaThey’re so cute and fun! They’re bonded littermates. They are brothers. Their names are Licorice and Cheese, named by my children. They sleep all curled up together. They play and eat each other’s faces. I really encourage anyone who is going to adopt a kitten, get a bonded littermate pair like that, because they’re just so much easier because they are happy together. Two is not more work really. You’re already scooping litter. And they are just funny and really snuggly. They really liked being held. That’s the reason we went with kittens versus older rescues, because I wanted cats that would bond with my kids, which these definitely are. It’s really fun. And Penelope has…adjusted. The first week was rough. I would describe it as an existential crisis. She did not understand what happened or why. I did this whole process of gradually getting them together. And then finally got to the point where I was throwing out treats and all three of them were eating the treats. And I was like, we’re here. We’ve done it!So I’m glad now that we did this and not a second dog, which would still be so much work. They’re really cute. Let me now pass on the podcast pet influencing, and influence someone else to go adopt a pet that they probably don’t need. CorinneOkay, my Butter is hot dogs.VirginiaThat’s a good one. CorinneYeah, I’ve really been enjoying eating hot dogs. I got some fancy co-op brand hot dogs. VirginiaIs there a difference between a fancy brand?Corinne I mean, probably not, but but any fancy thing you buy at a co-op is automatically more exciting. I do think the best hot dog buns the brioche hot dog buns from Trader Joe’s. And I’ve been eating them. It’s such a nice quick meal. I’m like, oh, yeah, I can have a hot dog! And I like to eat them with baked beans and a salad or something.VirginiaI’ve never thought about that! That’s a good combination.CorinneWhat? Did you grow up in New England? Baked beans and hotdogs is a classic combo. VirginiaI grew up in like, beans on toast territory.CorinneOh my God.VirginiaA deprived existence. I do want more interesting things to put on hot dogs because I have one kid who loves hot dogs. So it is an easy dinner for us. CorinneI like relish. My other best toppings are both from Trader Joe’s. One is Trader Joe’s dill pickle mustard, which is really good. And I also like to buy, they have these frozen bags of grilled peppers and onions. VirginiaYeah, that sounds delicious. CorinneThey just take like a minute or two to like heat up and they’re really good on a hotdog or a sausage.VirginiaI don’t know if I’ve figured out my sausage personality.CorinneYou should experiment because I feel like there are a lot of good sausages out there now.VirginiaWell. This conversation is taking a turn.CorinneThere’s gotta be some bougie Hudson Valley sausages.VirginiaYes, I’m sure there are! I need to explore. ---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 Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

You’re listening to Burnt Toast!I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. Today I’m chatting Anita Bhagwandas, author of Ugly: Giving Us Back Our Beauty Standards.Anita is an award winning journalist who explores beauty culture, unpicks aesthetic standards, and questions how pretty privilege holds the power to shape so much of our lives. Anita also writesThe Powder Room, is a beauty columnist for The Guardian, and a freelance beauty director at Conde Nast Traveler. She lives in London. I really loved talking to Anita about the origins of so many specific beauty standards, some of which you might already think you know, but a lot of which was new even to me, a person who does think about beauty standards pretty often. I also took Anita on my chin hair acceptance journey, and we talk about the absolute dumbest beauty purchase I have ever made.Ugly is available in the Burnt Toast Bookshop!Don’t forget, you can always take 10 percent off that purchase if you also order (or have already ordered!) Fat Talk from Split Rock Books! (Just use the code FATTALK at checkout.)(Non-US listeners, here are all the links for you to find it.)PS. If you’re enjoying the podcast, 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 152 TranscriptVirginiaSo I got to read Ugly when it first came out in the UK and adored it. The book goes very deep into the origins of our beauty standards. What surprised you the most about how we’ve come to value the specific physical traits and characteristics that we have been taught to value?AnitaThere was so much that surprised me. I thought I was very well-versed in all of this, I’ve always had an interest in obviously beauty, but also the history of beauty. There were definitely so many things that just made me think, “Oh my God, if everyone knew this, I don’t think they would hate their bodies, or their faces, hate their appearance in the way that they do.” In the way that I know I had, for most of my life. I think was one of the most surprising things is how thinness is linked to race. I looked through various journals and books and old texts to look at where this came from—and lots of people have written about this as well. There are old references that specifically talk about in that era where colonization is still a very big part of the British Empire, etc. It’s almost like things are starting to shift a bit and you can tell that there’s something going on and essentially all the descriptions of people of color in the colonies were quite nice up until a point and I think there is a point where maybe Britain thinks they’re about to lose some of their control or something is happened, that it that all of those descriptions switched to being really just derogatory and positioning white beauty above everything.You see it in the art of the time, you see it in all of these texts, you see it in these very famous books written by people at the time. You see it everywhere. And I think, if people knew that [our thin ideal] was so, so closely linked to colonization, I think they would be shocked. Because I know that when I heard that—and I had always known there was a link. But I think once you read the specifics, you’re like, wow, this is wild. This just blows my mind. So yeah, I think that was a really big one for me.VirginiaWe have a parallel and equally depressing and dark story in the States about how the end of slavery led to the same kind of transitioning of language and doubling down on negative descriptions of Black folks’ bodies. It’s just fragile white people trying to hold onto power in both scenarios. That’s the root of all of this. It is a lot to sit with.AnitaIt’s one of those things that we have to know. Because, probably everyone who is listening to this and listens to your podcast hasn’t signed up for that. They don’t agree with that. So, you know, it is just going okay, wait, you know, what is my obsession with thinness? What is my obsession with dieting? It makes me complicit in something I don’t believe in and I don’t stand for.And I think that for me, it was a real turning point.VirginiaHow do you think about navigating our complicity in that? Because it’s hard. On the one hand, we can say, “None of this is my values. None of this is what I want to replicate.” And yet, these standards have such a hold on us. The stakes of not participating in thinness and beauty culture can feel so high. AnitaI don’t think we should beat ourselves up about these things. I don’t think we should be horrible to ourselves about these things. These beauty standards have come as a result of years and years of levels of oppression and forces that have tried to control us. So, I think that’s the first thing, is having a bit of compassion towards ourselves. But then also looking at how you can unpick those narratives and make some decisions for yourself that are truly, as much as we can, based in what you really believe and what you really think. I had thought my entire life that if I was thin, everything will be okay. Because that’s what we’re sold, right? We’re sold that if you’re thin, you’re successful, you’re rich, you’re pretty, you’re popular, you get everything. That’s the narrative we’ve all been sold. And there was a real point for me, I think it was probably about 10 years ago, I just went, “I actually don’t want to be thin.” And this is no shade to anyone who is really thin, because all body types are beautiful. But I was just like, “For me, I don’t actually want to look like that. If I’m honest with myself, I actually don’t want to look like that.” I think it was the first time I’d actually tuned into what I wanted. And it was really liberating. Because then when I was working out, I wasn’t working out to be thinner. It was working out to improve my strength or whatever it is. It was just a real shift for me to actually pick what I wanted and pick you know, pick to celebrate my body and pick to actually celebrate the something that wasn’t the sort of standard beauty ideal. VirginiaWe’ve been sold a certain aesthetic so much, and so often that the idea of your preferences being something different—you just assume that’s what you want, right? How do you look at what you actually want?For example, I’m not a big makeup wearer and I notice whenever I go through phases of wearing more makeup, I start to expect my face to look the way it looks in makeup. And then if I stop wearing makeup, there’s a rocky dismount period and then I go back to being like “This is my face and I’m fine with this.” AnitaI’ve had that experience with makeup, too. Even though I’m critical of beauty culture and the beauty industry, I love makeup and I love self-expression. I like playing with different things versions of myself. And I know I’ve experienced this, where I have become addicted wearing really, really thick, heavy makeup. And then it’s almost like, when the seasons change and I have to go without any makeup on, without anything done to it, it is fine. I try and have a day, usually on a Sunday, where I will try not to wear any makeup or do anything and just go out and be that in the world. To be okay to go meet your friends for brunch or whatever and challenge yourself to be the same level of confident as you would be fully made up. It’s really hard at the start. And then it starts to normalize. And it starts to be a choice, which I think is the really key thing.VirginiaDo you feel like going out is an important part of it? My first instinct would be like, well, sure, when I’m just hanging out at home watching TV, who cares? But that is then reinforcing the idea that it’s okay to look a certain way without an audience. But if there’s any kind of external gaze, you have to make changes. AnitaI think it depends on your level of comfort. For some people even being at home without makeup on or their hair done or whatever it happens to be, would be really, really challenging. So if this is something you want to try, start at your level of confidence. It might just be that you don’t wear a certain thing that you always wear outside one day a week or one day a month. And I think you can almost build it up. It almost just helps decondition you to thinking you have to look a certain way. Then it becomes more of a choice. And I think that is more of an empowering place to be in.VirginiaWe should name, too, that it’s safer for some of us to experiment with this than others, right? Folks in fat bodies know that they’ll get treated worse if they show up looking sloppy. People of color experience this as well. There is the stuff that we’re working on inside and then there are the realities of the external world, right? AnitaThat’s definitely something I’ve experienced as a person of color. My parents moved from India to the UK. I had it drilled into me from a very young age that I always had to look presentable. As I got into my teen years, my mum would always say, “Go put some makeup on.” It’s constantly trying to look like you’re part of society, like you’re worthy of being in society. And that does come with challenges because the outside world does discriminate and it does treat us badly.I guess it’s looking at how comfortable you feel within to resist that. And that’s really different for everyone. And I guess if you can resist that safely and in a way that doesn’t harm you. In a way, I think that could be a really positive thing.VirginiaEven just being clear when you do decide the armor is necessary, it can be helpful to be clear on, “this feels necessary for safety.” Because that’s still putting some distance between you and the standard. AnitaThat’s really helpful. I think that could be really good for people who feel like they definitely need that. That’s a really useful way to frame it.VirginiaI’m just thinking about your mom—she was doing that to keep you safe. It was rooted in love, even though it was also constricting.AnitaYeah, absolutely.VirginiaI love the section in the book where you run down this whole list of questions you ask yourself before buying a face massaging device.AnitaThat script is really helpful because despite knowing how the Internet works, social media, the beauty industry, ads—despite being in that and knowing how that works, I still find myself clicking on things and going to buy things very impulsively. I’ve also got ADHD and quite high on the impulsive scale. If I’m not careful, I will buy into the promise of some thing that says it’s going to change my life. Maybe you feel this too, but I feel like I’m being sold to constantly when I don’t want to. Particularly on TikTok I find this quite hard. I feel like I’m just being sold to. And I just wish there was a button to turn it off. The technique I have coined for myself is to just give myself some boundaries if I do want to impulse buy something that I think will change my life in some way. And at the point, when I was writing the book, I gave the example of a face massaging sort of tool that said it was going to help tighten and tone your skin. And I was like, oh my God, I want that. Like, it was my first thought that I want to tighten and tone my skin. VirginiaAdd to cart. AnitaAnd then I was like, wait a minute. And then I talked myself down a bit and talked myself out of this place of anxiety—because that’s where that was coming from—that I need that to fix this thing that actually isn’t really a problem. It didn’t bother me a minute before I saw this ad for it. I was cool a  minute ago.VirginiaI hadn’t been plagued by my lack of tone. It was all fine.AnitaThen all of one minute later, I’m like, I’m so withered. It’s to take you out of that frame and to just go, okay, why do I want this? So there is a series of questions in the book. Starting with: Why do I want this? Maybe I do really, really want it. But I only saw it a minute ago, so I probably don’t really want it that much. Then it’s sort of just probing into why that could be. And quite often for me personally—and this might be different for different people—when I keep going, why do you want this? What’s the real reason? And you keep digging, layer by layer by layer, underneath all of that initial impulse, quite often for me, it comes down to I’m really tired. I feel like shit and I actually just need some sleep. I look in the mirror, like, oh, I look tired, I probably just need a bit more sleep. I think that’s probably true for a lot of people, particularly women. We have so many different roles in society, we probably just need a bit more sleep. So that will save you a ton on anti-aging creams and de-puffing products and all of that. Let’s just have some sleep.VirginiaAnd how depressing that buying this device feels more doable somehow than reorganizing your life to get more sleep consistently. That’s a whole other thing.AnitaMost of the best self care and wellness stuff that you can do is free.But it’s a bit of investigation to find out what’s really going on. And quite often it is something else. Maybe you’re trying to distract yourself from something, maybe you’ve had a fight with somebody and you feel shit and you need to pick me up or whatever it happens to be. And there is almost always something. And, you know, when sometimes there’s not, in which case, what I tend to do is put it on a list. And then I’ll revisit that in a certain time period. That can be different for everyone. It could be a month, it could be a week, it could be three months. VirginiaInstituting that pause is so helpful. AnitaThe pause is amazing. I have to do this with everything I buy, because I am so impulsive. I have to put it on a list and come back to it. Otherwise I would just be in tons of debt. So yeah, I think that’s a really helpful way to take the pressure and anxiety out of stuff. And if you still want it in a month, if you can afford it, you’ve done your research, you think it’s going to work, whatever, cool, go for it. And you’ve used up everything you’ve got at home, as well! I think that’s a crucial thing. Quite often we might have something that we could use at home instead of whatever this new thing is. That saves us money, saves the planet, etc. It’s good to use those things up before you go and buy something new, like a new serum that promises it’s going to take 10 years off your whatever—which is never going to happen in a serum. VirginiaOkay, I have to tell you about my purchase that I should have put through all of these filters. AnitaCall me next time. VirginiaMy most embarrassing beauty purchase. There we go. There’s the headline of this episode.So I have a lot of chin hair that I manage. My part-time job is managing my facial hair. And I’ve tried laser, but it’s expensive and you have to drive to the place and it’s such a project to keep up with it. So, mostly I shave it but then sometimes when I’m shaving, I get breakouts, and then I’m like I should just embrace this but I’m just not there on my chin hair acceptance journey. So Julia Marcum, from Chris Loves Julia, recommended this product called Nood. Have you seen this? It’s a handheld laser you plug in at home and you can zap your whole face. And it was $199. I’m not proud of this. In a moment of weakness, I purchased it. And I used it for six months and…nothing. Zero reduction in hair growth. Nothing. I just was like, “What happened there, Virginia?”And now it’s just sitting in my bathroom mocking me because I can’t donate it because it doesn’t work. Do you know what I mean? I can’t pass it on to someone else and be like, maybe it’ll work for you. Like, it probably won’t. I don’t think it works for anybody.Thank you for hearing my confession.AnitaSee, it’s so disappointing! I definitely have had experiences in my life where I thought “This one thing is going to be, amazing. It’s going to change everything.” And then it just doesn’t.VirginiaEven though the influencer said it would on TikTok!AnitaI mean, was she being paid to tell you that? I’m sure it was at least an affiliate link.VirginiaAbsolutely. Of course. I know this. And if I had done your process—I don’t think it was tiredness, exactly. But I do think it was just a feeling of flatness. And also, this is a chore and I would love it to be easier. I was like, well, it’s $200. But that’s so much cheaper than laser at the dermatologist. And there were just a lot of hopes and dreams that weren’t realized. And at the end of the day, I would love to unpack my issue with that beauty standard, but that’s hard work too.AnitaIt’s really hard. I have had those those hairs lasered off myself and it’s really tough. I think we have to have a bit of compassion with ourselves for these things. Because there are so many people that have grown out hair in different places. And that’s really cool. But there are some things that are so hardwired into us. And we are all in different places in our lives. Generationally, I think people have different experiences with this as well, because I think each generation has a very strong set of sort of beauty parameters that we have been sold and indoctrinated with. It can be really hard to step outside of these norms. There are people that do and that’s awesome. I think they’re really inspiring. But it can be really hard and I don’t necessarily think we have to push ourselves to do that. We don’t have to feel bad about those things. So if the hairs are there, you don’t have to feel bad about that. Then it becomes a choice to actually remove them. But, you know, in a way that actually doesn’t waste your money. VirginiaYeah, at least don’t buy products off the internet that are not going to work. Probably just shell out for laser or keep using the little face razors. AnitaLaser has made a massive difference for me. I guess as a side note, I was plucking them out and it was causing loads of hyperpigmentation on my dark skin. The laser was actually a real game changer. And because I would find myself sort of playing with them in a meeting. I was like, What am I doing? And then I realized I was, stroking my chin hairs.VirginiaI do it all the time! But it’s a hard thing to talk about. That’s the thing. Often you feel so vulnerable even admitting you have this “beauty problem” because our belief systems around these beauty standards are so entrenched that then the only people who want to talk to you about it are the people who want to sell you a solution. And that’s tricky. AnitaConversations like this and normalizing things like this, I think are really important. Definitely when I was a junior beauty editor and beauty journalist I had never heard anyone admit to having chin hair or any of those things. And it is those honest conversations that make us go, oh, I’m not alone. It’s not such a bad thing. I’m not a freak. I’m not this. I’m not that. I’m not ugly. VirginiaI just have a face. And human faces grow hair. AnitaI just have a little furry face and that’s cool.VirginiaI’d love to also hear a little more about working as a beauty editor. I spent years in women’s magazine trenches here. I wasn’t in beauty but I was in health and wellness, which is very beauty-adjacent. What are your thoughts about having navigated the beauty industry from inside it? And now as a critic of it? Is there anything you look back on and you think, well, that was wild that we did that? Or is there anything that you feel like this was actually really valuable but we need to do it in a different framing?AnitaThis is something I’m asked about a lot, you know, is there anything I regret writing, stuff like that? I think particularly for journalists, they probably you know, as time goes on, there are things you probably regret writing. VirginiaOh, for sure. AnitaI think in pursuit of being funny, I definitely was a little unkind about people in features, as a bit of a joke. You know, like celebrities. And we’re in an era now where we don’t say things like that about people. It was a different time. In terms of the actual content, I think there was only one time that I felt like it was out of sync with what I believed in really. It was when I actually worked on a health magazine, so I was a beauty and health editor at Women’s Health. None of it was sitting right with me. And I it took me ages to work out what that feeling was. And it was because number one, I was the only plus-sized person on the team of this big health and wellness magazine. I was one of the few people of color and the only plus-size person.And, you know, we were writing about losing weight and macros and all of this stuff. Keto was huge then, when I was on that magazine. All of these things were normalized. A lot of our content was about cutting calories. When I looked at some of the cover lines, they really stayed with me because I just find them wild now, because they feel so out of date. There was one—I mean, it’s terrible but it was quite funny at the time. But it was like, “tapas that won’t give you a fat ass” or something like that. Which is actually slight genius.VirginiaThe magazine editor in me is like, so good. And then the fat activist in me is like, no.AnitaAnd I remember thinking, Oh God. I remember being in a meeting and someone quite senior, a man, was talking about fat. And I just remember going, “But I’m fat.” And I just felt so out of place. I think that if I could go back in time, I think that was probably not the right place for me. It didn’t feel like a right fit. I didn’t feel empowered doing it. It was a shame. I did I actually, when I was there, I did do quite a lot of content around being plus size, etc. But annoyingly I did do it from a weight loss place, because I was very much still in that zone. It was before those conversations were being had. And although I was pushing for that internally, and I’d always push for those things wherever I worked. I look back on that and I’m like, That was not me. That didn’t feel empowering to me or anyone else actually. And I felt a little empty, I have to say. I’ve been lucky in that everywhere I have worked, generally speaking, apart from those very early jobs, I have been able to have a voice to a certain extent. Or I haven’t had to do too much that has jeopardized anything for me morally. I’ve always pushed to have diversity and inclusivity. I’ve always pushed to make things real. Wherever I have been able to control that, I have tried to do that. It’s been tricky, though, when I do look back and I’m like, that was not great.VirginiaI have a million of those stories, too. I also think these big mainstream media outlets are reaching huge audiences. Anything we can do from inside that space to push the conversation in a better direction is also valuable. So it’s that push/pull.And obviously, at a certain point, I was like, okay, I’ve pushed and pulled too much and I’m done. But I still think it’s hugely important to get the conversations into those spaces. It’s a both/and for me. AnitaI think I got to a point where I felt like I was swimming upwards and I was like, I have got no more fight left in me. I cannot.This is slightly a side note, but I remember actually drawing a diagram, like diagramming a picture of levels of oppression to have to explain intersectional feminism to an editor. And I was just like, No. Can’t do this. I thought I’d reached the peak of awful women’s magazine. I was like, I’m out. I can’t do this anymore. I shouldn’t have to do this.VirginiaI shouldn’t have to justify my existence in this way.I’d love to hear how working on the book has changed your own relationship with beauty. I mean, obviously, it’s part of this professional evolution, but personally as well. AnitaOne of the things in particular was just how much cosmetics, how the cosmetic surgery industry came about. I had no idea. To tell a very short version of the story: Post-World War II there were a huge amount of surgeons with nothing really to do. So they all were looking for work because they had fixed everyone that needed fixing from the war. They needed something to do to make money because they’d all trained in surgery. So they went, okay, what can we do? We’re going to manufacture some anxieties and try and fix those instead. Virginia“If only the war had given us more casualties we could have worked on.” AnitaI mean, they still would have gotten done with those at some point, and turned towards fixing women and making us more anxious.VirginiaThat is a depressing origin story.AnitaBut fascinating because we don’t know that. I didn’t know that as a beauty journalist. I think just knowing some of that history can really give you perspective on things.Because we are told, you know, “love yourself” and like “self love” and like “do some affirmations in the mirror,” etc. And that’s all great. But for me, I had been doing that for ages. And I’ve had loads of therapy and nothing had helped until I went back into history to find out: Why did that happen? Why has this become a thing? Because at some point, someone must have decided this was a thing. It was better to be lighter skinned, it was better to be thin, it was better to be young, etc. So where do all of those things come from? So in the book, I’m almost learning these things with the reader. And it was just light bulb moment after light bulb moment. They all sort of sit together quite well. By the time I’ve done all the research and come out of that process, I was like, Oh my God, I feel like I have to rethink everything I ever thought about beauty and beauty standards, because there is so much here. I think the thing that really struck me was actually just how much I didn’t know, even though I thought I knew a lot. And I think a lot of people, probably a lot of your listeners, we all think we know where this came from or why this happens. And actually reading those specifics can be really valuable.VirginiaIt’s a little bit like how we all think we know the models are photoshopped. But when they do studies, they see that the photoshopping still impacts us. Even though we think we know what’s happening, we don’t know the extent of it and it still gets in your brain. So I think that’s like on a meta level what you were doing, like oh, yeah, I think I understand this and then it’s like, holy shit, there’s so much more.AnitaAs a modern example, I feel like if people saw what some people do for their pictures—celebrities, people who are in the limelight, influencers, etc. If people saw what they did to their pictures, they would probably be shocked. I don’t know, maybe in this day and age, people expect that but we still don’t know when you look at something for a tenth of a second, particularly with celebrities. I think a lot of people do really unfairly hold themselves up against celebrities and I know this firsthand being a beauty editor and having interviewed hundreds of celebrities.There is so much that goes on to make a celebrity look how they look. Like, they do not arrive on a set looking the way they do at the end. And that’s no shade. They look great but there is a long process of transformation. And  that comes from wealth, the privilege of wealth. I think we do often hold ourselves up to really unrealistic expectations and role models.VirginiaNot to make this just about my continued chin hair acceptance journey, but because I have a feeling this question will come up in the comments: Is there a similar backstory that people don’t really understand about why facial hair on women is so stigmatized? I’m just curious if there was anything you came across in your research that helped connect those dots.AnitaThe story with body hair and underarm hair, I think is quite interesting. There was a certain point where leg hair and underarm hair, some people removed it, some people didn’t. But it wasn’t taboo until around the 1920s, where the fashion silhouette changes. But within that, Gillette launched a women’s razor, because they had conquered the male market and everyone had a razor, the old steel razor. It really seemed like if anyone had a razor, it was probably a Gillette razor. It was this really well made proper razor,VirginiaYou didn’t need to buy a new one every month. AnitaThere’s only so many of those you need. So they were like, oh, what can we do? Similar with the cosmetic surgery? What can we do next? Who can we target next? And then they were like, women. Okay, so what are we going to do with women? We’re going to shame them about their armpits. We’re going to shame them about their legs and make that a taboo. So there are quite a lot of stories of those things in beauty.There is another one which is shampooing the hair. It was essentially people washing their hair once a week, and then all of a sudden, to sell more shampoo, this myth was created around us needing to wash our hair more, and to buy more shampoo. So yeah, there are quite a lot of stories like that.VirginiaAnd the only reason we can shampoo less frequently now is if you’re doing an elaborate curly girl regimen where you need 12 products, so you’re still going to buy more things. I guess one top line question to always ask ourselves is: Who created the market for this? Because it is a market that was created. It’s not an actual flaw that needs to be addressed.AnitaI think most of those things that we don’t feel okay about or that we’ve been shamed for, that are shameful within society, have been manufactured by somebody. That somebody is quite often patriarchy. A lot of those ad companies, most of those companies, were owned by men. There were lots that weren’t actually, particularly makeup, but a lot of those companies were owned and run by men. The ad agencies were almost certainly run by men. That’s one system of oppression that was definitely very present and still is. And then there are lots of different ones on top of that, when we think about class and how that is so woven into beauty in a way that we don’t really think about.The tanning example is actually a really interesting one. Because there’s that flip. People talk about it all the time as an interesting anecdote, of Coco Chanel, she was on a yacht and she got a sunburn. And all of a sudden, people went from not wanting to have a tan because it signified that you worked outside and were of a lower class, to it being cool. But the flip side was because of the industrialization that was happening at the time, people who were inside were now taking leisure time outside and people who were out working outside were now working inside in factories. It does all come back to class.That narrative still lingers. I have so many friends who look in the mirror and go oh, I look so pale. I look pasty.  And I always think that’s really interesting. You don’t think your skin tone looks okay. You don’t think you look well? Why is that? Because we’ve been sold golden skin. Not dark skin. Not naturally dark skin, however, because that is still not aspirational. But that lightly tanned, in the sun glow, we’ve been sold because it’s linked to wealth. There are just so so many things that have become part of our society and our narrative that actually really do come back to class and I think that’s really fascinating. VirginiaOh, that is really mind blowing. There’s so much there. Well, the book is fantastic. I’m so excited for folks to check it out. ButterAnitaIf I think about the thing that I’ve really enjoyed most recently, there was a really brilliant British photographer and she’s actually passed away now, sadly. And her work is sort of just becoming seen for the first time, in a public way. There’s actually a documentary about her that I think everyone can access. If you are in the UK, it’s on the BBC at the moment. And her name is Tish Murtha. She was a photographer from the 1970s to 1990s and was a real activist. She grew up in working class Newcastle in the UK in a time where there was a huge economic issues. People were really deprived. It was a really, really awful time. She documents the reality of working class life, and the way she captures subjects is incredible. Because she’s one of those people, she really is able to embed herself in communities. I just think the work is beautiful. Very definitely worth checking out because she is this undiscovered, amazing sort of genius. VirginiaOh, these are incredible. I had never heard of her and I’m so excited to learn more about her. This is wonderful.My Butter is actually also photo-related, but not professional, brilliant photography. But something I’ve been doing recently is making a point to print out more casual photos. I don’t know if you have this as much in the UK, but in the US, there is a very big culture here around having professional family photos taken where you all dress up in cute outfits. We did that for a few years when my kids were little and then they were just absolutely not available for it anymore. So I hadn’t printed out any family photos in the last few years.And I was like, well, first of all, we all have an iPhone. So we all take good photos all the time. And I love some of the professional ones we’ve done with a photographer friend, they’re beautiful. But they don’t capture who my kids are, or who I am, on a day-to-day basis. And so I have been going back in my Instagram and my phone archives and just pulling out some random ones and getting them printed. And it is bringing me so much joy to have these very imperfect, candid shots. They remind me more of the family photos I would have had growing up.And I am not wearing makeup or anything. Like, there’s a real ignoring of beauty standards because a lot of them are like, we took this in bed one morning or whatever. I’m just here to say we need to get some of those photos off our phones and into our lives because it’s really, really special to have them. I think particularly for moms, there’s a big erasure of moms from photos often. Like we’re often the ones taking the photos, we’re not in the photos. So make a point to get yourself in photos and then print them out and have them up.AnitaYeah, that’s really lovely. Actually, as a side note, on my 40th birthday, I took a random old school disposable 35 millimeter camera out with me, and gave it to one of my friends. And I was like, just take some pictures of people. VirginiaI love that. AnitaAnd I got these pictures back and it was so joyful. It felt like taking pictures in the 90s. As a result of that, I bought a proper, it’s actually a Lomography camera that does all like the mad color and light leaks and stuff like that. But I actually bought myself a manual camera to take take proper pictures again. And I bought a Polaroid as well because I was like, this is so joyful to capture a moment like this in the actual moment. VirginiaYeah, and with old school cameras like that, you can’t look at your phone and then pick the one that came out best. You just get what you get. I was trying to explain that to my kids. Like, back in the day we’d have like 20 pictures on a camera and they just couldn’t wrap their brains around that. Now I want to try that, too, and bring back the candid not at all styled photos. Really joyful. So, Anita this was fantastic. Thank you so much for being here. Just tell folks how we can follow your work and how we can support you. AnitaAbsolutely. Thank you so much for having me. It’s been such a such a lovely chat. You can follow me on Instagram at itsmeanitab and the same on TikTok. And my Substack isThe Powder Room.VirginiaFabulous. And we will of course link to the book which is called Ugly. ---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 Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark!🧈🧈🧈It’s time for your July Extra Butter! Today we are discussing the intersection of sobriety and diet culture—and taste testing a whole bunch of mocktails! 🍹🍹🧈To listen to the full episode and read the full transcript, you’ll need to join Extra Butter, our premium subscription tier.In these monthly episodes we get into the GOOD stuff like:Why all the fat influencers are getting skinnyIs Kids Eat In Color anti-diet?And did Virginia really get divorced over butter?Extra Butter ensures that the Burnt Toast community can always stay an ad- and sponsor-free space—which is crucial for body liberation journalism. Join us here!(Questions? Glitches? Email me all the details)PS. If Extra Butter isn’t the right tier for you, remember that you still get access behind almost every other paywall with a regular paid subscription.Extra Butter Episode 5 TranscriptCorinneToday we are doing something really exciting: We’re going to try some non-alcoholic beverages! And, we’re going to talk a little bit about sobriety and sobriety culture, as two non-sober people.VirginiaThis idea came about because we did an Indulgence Gospel episode a few months ago where someone asked for our favorite non-alcoholic beverages. We were both like, “seltzer water?” But everyone in the comments started suggesting really good stuff. We were like, “We need to try a bunch more of these.” So that’s the fun part where we’re going to be taste testing—and linking everything, of course.  We’re also really interested in how sobriety culture intersects with diet culture, so we’re going to talk about that quite a bit, too. I want to be very, very clear right off the top: We are pro-sobriety, whether you need it, whether you just want it. We think sobriety is awesome. But we do think there’s a conversation to be had about the marketing and messaging in this space, which can veer into diet culture territory fast. So that’s the focus today.Okay, are we ready to try our first one? CorinneJust to set the scene, we each have a little lineup of four tiny cans in front of us.VirginiaAll the cans are so freaking cute.CorinneNon-alcoholic beverage marketing is doing a good job. I mean, as we knew, because I was dying to try these.VirginiaYou have been influenced. CorinneI have definitely been influenced. First up is Ghia Le Spritz, ginger flavor. VirginiaAre you drinking from the can or a cup?CorinneOh, I was gonna drink from the can. VirginiaI don’t like drinking from cans because I got really scarred by some Dateline episode or something about like, how rats poop on the top of cans. Anyways!CorinneWow. Well, I’ll be drinking from the rat poop hole.VirginiaMaybe we should have covered that off mic? Anyway. I have a little tumbler.CorinneThat looks very nice. VirginiaIt’s a pretty color. CorinneOh, it’s a really pretty color. It’s like orangey pink.VirginiaThe tumbler is helpful because we can see the color. Alright, cheers![Everyone drinks.]We’re making some faces.CorinneIt’s surprisingly…bitter, maybe? VirginiaYeah, it’s…sour? It’s a little sour.CorinneIt tastes like it’s going to be a really spicy ginger beer, but it doesn’t have the spicy. I was like, “Is this going to make me cough?”VirginiaI think I like it. But does it feel more like a winter mocktail?CorinneI think this feels too ginger ale-y to me.VirginiaIt’s very ginger ale. CorinneYeah, I like ginger ale. But is it better than ginger ale?VirginiaIt feels like one of those fancy ginger ales. This is not Canada Dry, which is my preferred ginger ale. I like a basic airplane ginger ale. CorinneIt’s almost like if you crossed ginger ale with Campari or something?VirginiaOh, that’s what it is. Yes! It’s bitter/sour. I don’t know if I’d get through a whole can of this one. But if you like a Campari or Negroni type situation, I could see this being satisfying to you. It just doesn’t feel refreshing,CorinneI feel like the thing that I always miss, the thing that’s always missing from non-alcoholic drinks is—VirginiaAlcohol?CorinneYes. Mmmhmm. That’s what I was going say.But you know how alcohol kind of burns? I feel like they’re trying to get that with the spicy ginger flavor, but it’s not the same. VirginiaYes, you’re right. You’re right. CorinneI feel like a lot of non-alcoholic stuff I’ve tried, it’s just kind of too sweet. VirginiaWell, this one’s not sweet. CorinneIt’s definitely not too sweet.VirginiaDo we want to talk a little bit about why mocktails are such big business right now?CorinneIt seems like a lot of this is being driven by like Gen Z. VirginiaYes. Apparently Gen Z doesn’t drink. One of the statistics we found was that Gen Z folks drink 20 percent less than millennials. [VSS Note: Correcting because I accidentally said 40% in the recording!] I mean, caveat, that was a marketing survey. And, as I was saying off mic, I think they’re just high a lot of the time? I think legalization has changed the game. I don’t think that it’s that Gen Z is like “no inebriation for me,” but alcohol is less their game.CorinneI also feel like since the pandemic, a lot of people have cut back on drinking. And I don’t know if that’s just like people are going to bars less or everyone just reevaluated their lives.VirginiaI was chatting about this on a text thread that included who lives in the Pacific Northwest, who lives in Iowa, me in New York, and who lives in central Pennsylvania and who is in California, in New Hampshire. So we were covering many parts of the country. And I asked, “What do you guys think about drinking culture where you are?”And we were all experiencing totally different drinking norms. Ann Helen said that in Pacific Northwest for sure there has been this like “if you didn’t get sober during COVID what did you do wrong” kind of thing. With almost a little bit of moral judgment around it. Like, everybody got sober. And Lyz was like, “Yeah, in Iowa, we’re still fully drinking.”CorinneThat’s funny.VirginiaAnd Amy said that in Central PA, there’s like no cannabis? Weed moms are not a thing in her circles. Whereas in New York, I can definitely say there are a lot of weed moms and just in general, a lot of pot now. So it’s fascinating. I think there are these little micro pockets of norms and cultures around this. Like, are people getting fully sober or are people switching substances? But the upshot is the alcohol business is kind of in trouble. Because of both the rise of sobriety and I think the rise of weed and cannabis. So there are all these interesting articles about how the alcohol business is trying to figure out how to get Gen Z to care about them and what to do about mocktails? We’re in an interesting moment, I think. CorinneYeah, I would definitely say in my community here in New Mexico, which is people in their 30s, but probably mostly people that don’t have kids. Or some people with young kids, definitely fewer people are drinking. I feel like it’s noticeable.VirginiaThat’s interesting, because my pre-kids social life was very drinking heavy.CorinneWe’ll still go to breweries and stuff, but I also feel like it’s pretty normal for at least a few people to not be drinking. I should also say that I live in a high altitude place where drinking is actually just WAY less fun, because you pretty immediately feel horrible.VirginiaWe are also seeing a lot of celebrities getting sober. I love how Anne Hathaway just casually dropped into an interview with Vanity Fair, like, oh, yeah, I’ve been sober for four years now. So it’s less of a headline story. It’s not like Courtney Love or Matthew Perry or something. It’s just like, more millennial and Gen Z celebrities are like, yeah, this is not for me. And I think that’s pretty great. I love the normalizing of that. CorinneI think that’s a good way of putting it. Like it has just become a lot more normal to not drink.VirginiaYeah. Although, who has written a lot about her sobriety and was also on this group chat discussing drinking norms was like, “If you’re actually getting sober, you feel the stigma.”CorinneThat’s fair. VirginiaSo I want to hold space for how the recovery journey is different from the recreational sobriety journey.CorinneEven recreationally, if you’re with a group of people who are drinking and you’re not, it’s not always the most fun.VirginiaI was designated driver for a group of friends who went out to dinner this past weekend, in part because I was like, “Great, I actually don’t want to drink tonight.” And thankfully, there were agua frescas at the taco bar we went to, but I was glad this was not a group of friends that goes hard when we go out because I was like, “I don’t want to be back in college taking care of people.” CorinneDrunk people can be really annoying.VirginiaI’m just driving my Subaru to the taco bar now. Alright, What are we trying next?CorinneSo our next one is Figlia Fiore Frizzante.[Cans crack open.]VirginiaThat one sprayed me a little bit!CorinneI do not like the smell. It smells very— VirginiaGrandma perfume?CorinneBath and Body Works. I guess it is the rose?VirginiaBut is this going to be a good rosé substitute? Because I do like a rosé.CorinneOh god. It tastes like you spilled hand soap in your fruit juice. VirginiaYou captured it perfectly. That is exactly what it tastes like.CorinneOr your body wash.VirginiaI mean, I hope these get better. I’m a little underwhelmed by our first two! And I think I accidentally bought an eight pack of this! Oh, this one’s really bad. CorinneThis one is definitely less bitter.VirginiaThe Figlia is not as bitter as the Ghia, but the Figlia is much more soapy. It’s not great. CorinneI feel like I’m getting less of the soapy-ness now? You really smell it but you taste it less as you keep drinking. VirginiaI don’t want to keep drinking. Don’t make me keep drinking it. CorinneI wouldn’t freely choose this. VirginiaI would have to be forced. CorinneI would have to be on a desert island with only this for hydration.VirginiaShould we talk a little bit about our own relationships to alcohol and drinking?CorinneWhat’s your current drinking status?VirginiaI have never been a big drinker. I did not drink until I was 20 because I was just really afraid of getting in trouble. You know, classic oldest daughter good girl stuff. I was just like, “It’s fine. I am the sober friend!” I did party more in my 20s, for sure. Because we lived in New York City and in a very party heavy sort of social circle. But it’s never really been my thing. I am also very migraine prone and would get hangovers easily. It’s also worth noting, my ex was six years sober when we split up. And I’m very proud of him for that. And that meant I was de facto sober for the last six years of our marriage. Because it was a no brainer to me. If it wasn’t good for him to be around alcohol, we didn’t have to have it in the house. And that was a shift! I think I used to have a glass of wine with dinner most nights, just out of habit. And then I went to basically nothing, or maybe like, twice a year have one drink. And day to day, I didn’t miss it really at all. Then once he left, I was like, “Well maybe it would be nice to have a glass of wine with dinner again?” or have it back in the house. And now what I’ve learned is that one glass of wine will give me a migraine in the next day. My tolerance is just non-existent.If I hydrate like mad all day long, you know, fill up my giant water bottle and get through at least three of them, I will be okay. But I don’t need drinking mental load! Who wants to think about hydration all day long just so you can have three sips of Chardonnay? So I will have a half glass of wine maybe like twice a month and then always be like, oh right.What about you? CorinneI was definitely more of a recreational drinker as a young person. Like in my 20s and stuff. And I did briefly work in the restaurant hospitality industry where I did a lot of drinking. When I moved to New Mexico, it was a good chance for me to reevaluate. When I first got here, I still drank like a bit from time to time. And then as I’ve gotten older, as my body has changed, I’m just pretty unable to drink. I will also get a migraine after just one or two drinks. VirginiaIt is wild, and frankly annoying, because I do like the taste of wine and I would like to just enjoy a glass of wine. But I don’t like it that much.CorinneI’ve also dated a lot of people who are sober. And I think that has actually made me realize that in some ways, I like dating people who are sober because dating someone who is not sober can be really annoying if you don’t drink a lot. VirginiaBecause you will end up being designated driver. CorinneOr just, like, drunk people are annoying! I feel similarly about weed sometimes. Like, it’s great. And I don’t necessarily want to hang out with high people? I probably drink like maybe once a month. I’ll have one unit of alcohol.VirginiaAnd what do you usually drink when you do drink? CorinneI would probably go for a cocktail because I find those most delicious. There is a bar here that has an alcoholic slushy drink that I got really into last summer. But yeah, one or two and you’re like, uh oh. VirginiaThis is reminding me that I haven’t had a cocktail in a long time and I’m kind of curious to see if I get the same extreme reaction with a cocktail? Like is it the wine or is the alcohol? I don’t really know. I mean, in my youth, I had some bad experiences with various hard liquor, so I don’t tend to go to them. But maybe a very watered down Mojito would be fine? Maybe two sips of a mojito would be fine.CorinneI’ve definitely found that I react to all of it. It all makes me feel bad. But I like drinking cocktails the most.VirginiaThat’s where you’re willing to roll the dice. When I was in more of a diet culture place with my migraines in my 20s I had really convinced myself they were caused by red wine. But I think that was mostly because that was the thing I could most bear to give up. Alright, should we try another one?I’m excited for this one since we were just talking about mojitos. Mojitos are my favorite cocktail. And since I probably cannot drink a whole mojito without feeling like death the next day, I would love to find a mocktail mojito.CorinneNext up is Ish. The mindful drinking company. Non- alcoholic pre mixed cocktail Mojito. VirginiaAll right. Let’s try it.[Cans open.]CorinneThis one weirdly smells like alcohol to me.VirginiaOh it does. They faked it well! I’m excited for this one.CorinneWhoa.VirginiaOh, I like this one. You don’t?CorinneI’m getting my bearings. It has a real alcohol feel. Like it has rum flavoring or something.VirginiaYes, this feels decadent for us to be drinking on a Monday.CorinneYeah, it’s not even noon.VirginiaI’m looking at the label to make sure.CorinneIt says less than 0.5 ABV. So what does that mean? Do the other ones say that?VirginiaThat is the thing about a lot of non-alcoholic drinks is they sometimes do have a trace amount. CorinneI thought that was just non-alcoholic beer.VirginiaI don’t know if it’s because they put in a little sprinkling of something in? Or if it’s because things are fermented and so you might be getting a little bit?Well, this one I really like and I would totally buy this again and have on hand so I can have a mojito in the summer, hopefully without a migraine.I feel like your experience is being impacted by the can. Because I do really want to have this in a glass with a lot of ice and fresh mint.CorinneYeah, I think these would all be good with ice. I feel like this could use a few more squeezes of lime. It’s a little bit sweet.VirginiaI could use this as a base and doctor it up into a really nice summer drink. I would not drink this straight from a can but you wouldn’t drink a mojito from a can. That’s not correct.CorinneIt has like an alcohol-like flavor. VirginiaThe other two just felt like experimental sodas. This one feels like I could believe this is a cocktail.CorinneShould we talk about diet culture and alcohol?VirginiaWe should because these labels are a lot. If we go back to Figlia—the one that tastes like bad soap—on the label, you will see it is “woman owned,” “1% for the planet,” and then— “no added sugar” is right up there. CorinneFascinating.VirginiaWhat you will see with a lot of mocktail marketing is a big emphasis on these drinks being lower calorie and lower sugar. I don’t think the other ones we bought are too egregious on this front, but it is definitely a recurring theme.CorinneWell, yeah. And the big non-alcoholic beer brand Athletic Brewing is sort of named that because—VirginiaBecause of Athletic Greens is my theory! CorinneThey’re like, “We like to do athletic activities.”VirginiaIt’s the man mocktail. You’re going on a long run and then you want to crack a cold one so you can have an Athletic Brew. Their marketing feels very “male wellness culture” to me in a lot of ways. And of course it may be accidental, but in terms of the impact in the market, you’re so used to hearing Athletic Greens marketing, and then here comes Athletic Brewing—you’re going to conflate the two.We also talked about this on the Substack Chat, andd there were some really interesting comments.CorinneIt’s super fun. It’s like basically having a little group text. VirginiaSo we’ve been having little conversations about any random thoughts that we have. I know it’s annoying to download another app, but it’s a pretty good, harmless app. Get more from Virginia Sole-Smith in the Substack appAvailable for iOS and AndroidGet the appCorinneI actually really like that app. I think if you subscribe to even just one Substack newsletter, it’s worth having the app.VirginiaYou can then delete them from your inbox and enjoy reading them in the app and it’s a much more leisurely reading experience, I feel.CorinneYeah. And it’s easier to comment.VirginiaOkay, that was a sidebar plug for Substack Chat and the Substack app!But in the chat, I asked folks for thoughts about all of this. One person wrote:“I keep getting ads for pot gummies and drops because ‘I shouldn’t waste calories on wine.’ I like wine and never think about its calories so these ads really surprised me.”That’s weird for people to be like, “let’s emphasize the calorie difference.” Because there’s the thing about pot where it makes you want to snack? So it’s probably going to be a wash, which is fine. But that’s a weird thing to lean into. CorinneTotally. There’s a whole thing where it’s like, you shouldn’t waste calories on alcohol. And then the whole thing of skipping meals so you can drink.VirginiaYes, saving your points. In college, my friends on Weight Watchers used to save their points all day so they could go out drinking at night. Which meant that they were starving when they went out drinking. It was a real solid plan. Just, no downsides there.Someone else said they subscribe to the sunnyside app, which is one of those encouraging you to drink less tracking apps. And the app tracked how many calories you were not consuming by not drinking alcohol. That just feels like such an annoying way to approach this as a project. Especially because if you were truly getting sober, because you have a problem with alcohol, you need space to have other things in your life to replace that craving. And for a lot of folks, that ends up being sugar for a while. And that’s a very healthy switch to make, because you will not crash a car eating sugar. CorinneAnd alcohol actually is poison, unlike sugar. VirginiaAs my brain reminds me every time I have two sips. So for lots of folks getting sober will coincide with gaining weight or changing eating habits. And that’s going to be tricky enough in diet culture. But if you’re also thinking well, part of my motivation for getting sober or one perk should be that I’m consuming less calories and I’ll lose weight….that can really jeopardize someone’s recovery. CorinneI have anecdotally known people who have lost or gained weight becoming sober. VirginiaIt can definitely go either way. CorinneBut I can’t imagine wanting to get sober and having that coincide with weight gain, and then diet culture sending you back.VirginiaRight? That’s scary. Someone else wrote:“I have noticed in certain circles of mine, there has been a morality tone to sobriety similar to that of diet culture. I’m all for further acceptance of sober life in general. I think that’d be good for us as a whole. There’s just a tone I can’t quite put my finger on that feels a little disingenuous.”Have you noticed this? What are your thoughts? CorinneI feel like most of the sober people I know are not sober for morality reasons, so I’m not sure?VirginiaI kind of know what they’re getting at? Alcohol is often included on the list of things you cut out if you’re doing some kind of cleanse or diet. If you do Whole30 or Paleo or something.And it just gets messy because you’re removing too many variables, right? You’re not actually getting any useful data on your relationship with alcohol because you’ve cut all this other stuff, too. And often you’re doing it all for a weight loss component so there are these weird tangled knots. This is where I would say where sobriety gets coopted by diet culture, or gets sort of subsumed by it, and becomes another tenet of diet and wellness culture. CorinneI think there’s kind of a myth or an idea that people who have gone through recovery have some sort of emotional maturity, which I think is both true and not true. Some people have, some people haven’t.VirginiaThere are a lot of different versions of this. CorinneYeah, I could see that being a morality thing.VirginiaIt depends on why you’re getting sober, but also how you’re getting sober. If you talk to anyone doing real recovery work, they will tell you that not drinking is not the whole ballgame. Going to meetings, the support, the doing really intensive therapy, and really dealing with yourself in a new way, that is arguably the bigger piece of the whole thingThis is from my cousin , who writes the Substack about mental health and living with chronic illness. It’s a new Substack, it’s really good. Kate is also in long term recovery from eating disorders. And they wrote:“A lot of people move from alcoholism to eating disorders, and vice versa, because they are stored in the same part of the brain. So dismantling diet culture in recovery spaces and everywhere is super important. Plus in treatment spaces, weight loss as a benefit to not drinking is mentioned a lot, as healthy eating and avoiding bad foods.”So that is super depressing for this weight loss language to be being used in formal treatment programs for substance use disorder. CorinneTotally. Yeah, using diet culture as a tool to keep people sober. VirginiaAnd especially as they’re saying, because there is a lot of overlap between eating disorders and alcoholism. This is also why a lot of the research following folks post-bariatric surgery documents that an increased risk for substance use disorders post-surgery, because the surgery changed how they can engage with food, but didn’t give them any support for the underlying mental and emotional and psychosocial stuff. And then they’re vulnerable for this other kind of substance abuse. It’s messy.CorinneIt’s complicated. VirginiaOn that note, we have another mocktail.CorinneThis is the one I’m most excited about. VirginiaYou saved the best for last.CorinneThis is the brand is called Parch. This is a non-alcoholic Agave cocktail. It’s a spiced Piña Rita.VirginiaSo like a piña colada and a margarita? CorinneI think like a pineapple margarita? And the it’s infused with botanicals and adaptogens.VirginiaWellness culture!!Did you see on the back there’s a note about “pour behavior?” So we’re drinking it wrong because it says “pour slowly over ice and garnish with a dried orange wheel or sip straight from a chilled can.” It isalso gluten free and vegan. This marketing is pretty, pretty diet culture-y. CorinneThis one smells spicy. I’m nervous. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh God. It’s so smoky! Why is it smoky? It literally tastes like bacon! It’s salty and smoky. It doesn’t say smoky anywhere!VirginiaMaybe it’s a good breakfast mocktail?CorinneBreakfast?!?!VirginiaWell, it does taste like bacon! I don’t know! CorinneOh, God. Oh God. I’m so sad.VirginiaYou really had your hopes up for this.Corinne It just doesn’t say smoky anywhere.VirginiaIt says it on the side in tiny letters. See? It says “smoky and spicy.”CorinneOh God. It’s horrible.VirginiaI’m so sorry. You really wanted to like it.CorinneOkay, I’m trying to get over the smokiness, which has really taken me aback.VirginiaIt’s like drinking bacon. But not in a delicious way.CorinneIt’s nuanced. It’s salty, sweet, spicy. Pineapple-y.VirginiaWhere’s the pineapple? I don’t taste any.CorinneWhen I smelled it, I thought it smells pineapple-y but it doesn’t taste it and the smoke—the smoke is too strong. It’s overpowering.VirginiaIt was so busy telling us about the adaptogens it did not warn us enough for what we were in for. I see the ingredients are organic blue agave, golden pineapple, Mexican lime, and smoky cayenne. I would say it’s mostly that last one.CorinneOh. I don’t know. See after a few sips. I’m always like, “Okay, okay, fine.” VirginiaI can’t finish that! CorinneIt’s really smoky though. It’s also quite salty. VirginiaHow would you eat a potato chip with that? When I’m having a mocktail, I also want a salty snack. And there would be too much salt. I realized that we should have said this at the top, but we did purchase these with our own money. These weren’t sponsored. Clearly,CorinneSadly, we have paid for all of these.VirginiaI was trying to order in the smallest quantities possible, but I have like eight more of a lot of these. CorinneYeah, I have a couple of some of them as well. VirginiaWe’re going to have to figure out what to do.CorinneWould you drink any of these again?VirginiaI would drink the mojito one.CorinneWhen I ordered the Ghia I ordered a few of the flavors and I liked some of the other flavors.VirginiaOh, you did? Okay.CorinneI think I would drink some of the Ghia. VirginiaI’m going to keep this and just offer when people come over over the summer, when I’m hosting and people could try them. And yeah, maybe other people will feel differently. Maybe some people like drinking soap and bacon!CorinneI mean, the one thing I’ll say is, they do feel celebratory. We’re judging them just on how do they taste at at noon on a Monday. But if I went somewhere and didn’t want to drink and had an option to buy one of these canned cocktails, I probably would. You know? VirginiaYeah. Well, I don’t think I would buy the bacon one or the soap one. CorinneBut only now that you’ve tried them. VirginiaIt’s true before I knew, I did buy them. And I also think, especially the mojito one, I could see how that could be really elevated. I mean, some of them, I’m wondering, do you just need to water them down? CorinneYeah, like if you mixed this with pineapple juice, or seltzer. VirginiaThat might help. I could see the bacon one being better if it was way more subtle.CorinneI wonder if you poured it into a glass with ice some of the like fumes would diminish and it would taste less smoky.VirginiaI don’t know if we’ve given people good intel on how to do their mocktail shopping. Try to taste them before you buy them. This is a wide open market.The last thing we were going to chat about is how does alcohol fit into intuitive eating? CorinneI think it’s a complicated question. I think for someone like me, who already feels kind of alcohol averse, I do think part of what has led me to drinking hardly at all is noticing how it feels in my body when I drink, and it feels bad. So doing less of it. What do you think?VirginiaSame. I do think when I drank more before, like when I was much younger, I couldn’t as clearly connect my headaches to drinking. Because if you’re having a glass of wine most nights and then you’re not getting a headache every day, it felt more random. But now it’s like, I’ll go two to three weeks without having a drink, have one drink and then have a terrible headache the next day. It’s just very stark. And it is this useful data point that I can make a decision about. But I want to just acknowledge some privilege here that I’m not an addict. This is not the thing that triggers my brain this way. So it felt like a very positive decision. I don’t feel remotely deprived. I mean, there will be occasions where I’m like, “It would be nice to have a glass of wine or a taste of that.” And then I’ll have a taste of that. But it doesn’t feel restrictive to say, “I’m not going to drink.” And again, I just want to recognize that that’s not true or simple for folks who are addicted to alcohol. So there’s a privilege that I can say that I can truly take or leave this. And I’m able to assess how it feels for me in this more dispassionate way. But I think that is a form of intuitive eating because if you don’t feel like a food has to be off limits, you can much more clearly evaluate whether you want to be eating it or not and how it feels in your body. So yeah, I think it’s related. I mean, it’s true with food, too, but with alcohol in particular. I think it’s such a personal one because there’s a lot of variation. There are a lot of like shades of grey in how people relate to alcohol. It’s not binary, it’s not like you’re either not an alcoholic or you are an alcoholic. You can be uncomfortable with your relationship with alcohol without identifying as a full blown alcoholic and still find it challenging to give up and there’s just a lot of gray there.CorinneYeah, and there are cultural components, too, like people who don’t drink for religious reasons or cultural reasons.VirginiaYeah, absolutely. Or if you live in a culture that is high drinking.CorinneYep. Families or the hospitality industry.VirginiaPeople’s family contexts, people’s work. A lot of workplaces are very alcohol-oriented and then it feels harder to opt out. CorinneYeah, definitely. VirginiaOne of the norms I struggled with when we were a de facto sober house was if we were having people over for dinner, not having wine to offer them felt odd to me. People in our life were super supportive. No one was ever like, “I’m not coming to dinner because there’s no wine there.” No one would do that. But I felt like I’m being a bad host somehow? I’m not offering a complete dinner experience? So I do now if I’m having people over, I’m always like, “Must have wine on hand, even if I’m not going to drink it!” And that is sort of silly! I know, because I did it for six years, you can hang out have a great time with people without drinking. It’s not necessary. But there’s that social norm of it.CorinneWell, and the other thing is people bringing you alcohol. I had so much alcohol leftover from having a birthday party in January that I still have some of it. Everyone brings a six pack or whatever. And then I never drink it. So it’s taking up an entire shelf of my fridge. VirginiaAnd I think it would be good for us to be more thoughtful about that. I tend to not bring alcohol anywhere now, just because I feel like I don’t know everyone’s individual relationships. I no longer assume everybody wants to drink alcohol. I’ll bring flowers instead. That feels nice. CorinneYeah, I do think it’s like if you’re not stopping drinking because you must for addiction reasons then it is sort of like, what is the like, celebratory alternative, you know? Or like, what is the nice hostess gift alternative? VirginiaFor sure flowers. I think you can never go wrong.CorinneFlowers, if you’re visiting Virginia. I will take flowers too.VirginiaI think anyone likes flowers. CorinneYeah. Or like other food stuff. VirginiaBringing nice chocolates is good. Or a fun loaf of bread if you’re going to dinner is nice.CorinneOr one of these non-alcoholic cocktail cans.VirginiaBut not the bacon one. Unless you’re trying to send a message.ButterCorinneI want to recommend this podcasts that I just started listening to and am addicted to called Hang Up the podcast, and it’s a reality dating podcast. VirginiaOh, you talked about this in and I was like what is she talking about?CorinneSo it’s a queer REALITY DATING podcast. So all the dates take place over the phone and are recorded. And the latest season season two is in Albuquerque. And obviously, everyone has to change their names so that the person trying to find a date can’t google them or whatever. Each episode they have to hang up on someone or eliminate them. And then at the end the person who gets chosen gets to either choose to go on a vacation with the person or take $1,000 So I’m really curious what’s going to happen.VirginiaOh my God. This is a fascinating premise, especially for a podcast. Like, they’re not even on Zoom. CorinneYou can’t smell the person or see how it feels in real life.VirginiaSmell the person? CorinneI don’t know! Like, what is chemistry!VirginiaIf you go on a date with Corinne, you better smell good, folks.CorinneWhat I’m saying is, there’s an element to being in real life with a person that you’re not getting over the phone. VirginiaI’m just picturing you sniffing people now. CorinneNo, that’s not what’s going on. The first round of dates the main character person who is being set up, asks everyone this question, which I now want to ask you, which is, you choose, either your face looks 10 years older or your body looks 10 years older. I was like, this is a terrible shallow question.VirginiaIt’s so shallow. CorinneBut it’s also very interesting. They’re basically asking you to choose between wrinkles on your face or saggy boobs.VirginiaI’m going to go with body because when I did this essay on body hair, a lot of people 10 years older than me told me they lost a lot of body hair. So I’m excited for my body getting older and me being less hairy. Having less hair-related maintenance feels like a real asset. CorinneInteresting. VirginiaAnd saggy boobs? I had two kids. That ship has sailed. We are there. You can’t scare me.CorinneI chose face just because it’s less surface area.VirginiaWell and you already have body hair privilege, so you don’t need to worry about that. CorinneYeah. Didn’t even cross my mind. VirginiaAlright, I definitely want to listen to this. It sounds really fun.CorinneYeah, what’s your Butter?VirginiaI feel like it’s not nearly as fun as that. It’s not as spicy as a reality dating show. My Butter is I have honed in on my summer uniform, what I will be wearing all summer. I feel like every season there are those weeks where I’m like what is the weather?! How do we do this? And then I hone in.So all last winter it was the joggers and those sweaters, that sweater jogger combo. Now, I am really on the train of sets, with a matching shirt and shorts. And I now have three sets, all from Target. I’m wearing one right now. It’s a linen, the blue linen. Very pretty, kind cornflower blue color. Matching shorts. And then I have a striped green one (sold out) and a purple paisley, which sounds bold but it’s actually very cute. I realized it just removes all the decisions of getting dressed. This is the perfect work from home outfit, the perfect run errands outfit. As we know, I don’t do anything else. That is my whole life. What I like about these is the shirts are very big and light and loose, so I can layer them over a tank top. Then if I get hot I can ditch the long sleeve shirt and just be in the tank top. But I kind of like the look of that. I feel like when the shirt is buttoned up and the fabric matches the shorts, I can’t quite shake the feeling of wearing pajamas. But unbuttoned over a tank top that works for me, styling wise. CorinneAre they all linen?VirginiaTwo of them are linen and then that dark green, light green striped shirt and shorts that I wore when we were in New Mexico, that’s cotton.CorinneOh cool.VirginiaI feel like the trendy shirt of the moment is a light blue and white striped button down shirt. I feel like every fashion person I follow is either shopping for this or wearing this. just did a post about it. on her newsletter was like I’m shopping for this.CorinneLike a striped button down?VirginiaBut specifically light blue and white is the look and then you wear it with red shorts or you wear it with jeans or you wear it with white shorts. has one so now I do kind of want a set that is light blue and white stripes. But do I need four sets? There are many days in a week. CorinneYeah. Then you have one for every day almost. VirginiaBasically it would be covering Monday to Thursday. I recommend the sets. You know we love a no decision dressing moment. CorinneYeah, that’s a really good recommendation. VirginiaThe final thing of it is I hung them in my closet together with the shorts and the shirt on the same hanger, which is very nerdy. And I realize some people would break up the sets and mix and match things. But I just really love the ease of I’m just getting dressed this way. I really feel like I have capsule wardrobed the summer.CorinneThat’s awesome. I love it.VirginiaAll right. This was a good episode. I hope people enjoyed us tasting things they couldn’t taste and understanding that we were not enjoying it.CorinneLet us know if you’ve tried any of these!VirginiaYes, we’re dying to hear. We want to hear in general about how you feel about mocktails, how you feel about drinking. How you feel like drinking fits in with your intuitive eating stuff.---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 Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

You’re listening to Burnt Toast!I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. Today I’m chatting with Melissa Walker, head of Giving Circles at The States Project about how to save democracy.And yes, it’s July 4, so we are technically off today—but it is also America’s birthday and a very, very scary and complicated time to be an American. We recorded this conversation before last week’s debate dumpster fire and this week’s horrific SCOTUS rulings — but I promise, it’s still the reassuring action plan you need right now.The States Project works to flip state legislations blue around the country. In 2022, Burnt Toast raised over $28,000 to hold ground in the Arizona State Senate. Last year we raised over $15,000 to elect majority making candidates in Virginia, where we defended the State Senate and flipped the House of Delegates to put a wall in front of Governor Youngkin’s right wing agenda. I know November is looming, and many of us feel paralyzed with fear about Trump, and not so great about Biden. So Melissa explains why state legislatures are where we can focus our energy and do some real good—even if Trump wins again.I’m setting a goal for the Burnt Toast Giving Circle to raise $20,000 this year, and I fully expect us to hit that, and exceed it. After you listen to this episode, be sure to vote in our poll for the state you want us to support. You can also start your own Giving Circle to support the state of your choice!Join the BT Giving Circle!Happy birthday, America! You’re a mess. But we’re trying to form a more perfect union here. Or honestly, anything even a step above dumpster fire would work.PS. If you’re enjoying the podcast, 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 150 TranscriptMelissaI’m Melissa Walker, I am the head of Giving Circles at The States Project. We focus on shifting the balance of power in state legislatures to elect majorities that are focused on improving people’s lives. VirginiaAnd you were on the podcast in 2022, when we first launched the Burnt Toast Giving Circle.It's Time to Stop Panic Giving.Virginia Sole-Smith·March 10, 2022Read full storyAnd I asked you to come back because, Melissa, everything feels bad right now. It truly seems like Trump will win in November. And I feel like we’re not even talking about it because we’re all just burnt out with fatigue. But you are this voice of reason in my life who’s always like, “This is what we focus on. This is what we do.” So can you talk us off some ledges, please?MelissaYes, I can. First, I want to acknowledge the fatigue, because it’s very real and we all feel it. Your fatigue is definitely a feature, not a bug, of a right wing that wants to dismantle our democracy. So if you’re feeling it, know that that is perfectly normal and we’re all feeling it to some extent. But also know that the helplessness and the isolation paralyze us, and that can cause some really bad things. I am lucky enough that I found a political path for me in December of 2016 when I heard New York State Senator Daniel Squadron speak about state legislatures. What I started to understand was that there were these 50 mini-congresses in our country where the right wing had been building power for decades, and where it turned out, I could have an impact. Being able to walk that path since 2016 has been therapy for me.I think that gathering people in community and taking action in whatever form you do, it is the antidote to despair. It is also the only thing that has ever worked to move a democracy. As Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”And I really believe in that. VirginiaAnd it’s what the other side has been doing for decades, as you said. They’ve been changing the world for the worse. So now we need to be that small group of committed citizens.MelissaThat’s correct. VirginiaTell us a little bit about how The States Project works and what you’re focusing on for 2024.MelissaState legislatures are the places where everything that we care about domestically is decided, from education funding to environmental policy to health care to civil rights to abortion to the course of our democracy, voting rights, and gerrymandering, the drawing of the district lines that decide who goes to Congress—it’s all happening in the hands of state lawmakers. These are not folks who people will have heard of. They are not going to be the spotlight races or the names on MSNBC at night. But they are the people who are deciding state by state by state what rights Americans have and get to keep. It’s an incredibly important power center. So The States Project does a 99 state chamber analysis every year—it’s 99 because Nebraska is unicameral. We figure out where we can target to try to shift power to elect majorities to improve people’s lives or break a right wing supermajority or defend against one. We figure out which races we need to go into to support with tactics and resources to make that happen. This is where the right wing has been building power for decades, no matter who’s been in the White House. And a lot of things that I think people remember, like the bathroom bill, the Stand Your Ground gun laws, the Flint, Michigan water crisis—those are all things that happened under an Obama presidency because the right wing had taken over state legislatures. This is where the rubber meets the road on policy and where we have to focus if we want to build back our democracy.VirginiaI mean, that’s weirdly reassuring because if those horrible things could happen under an Obama presidency, it means another Trump presidency wouldn’t necessarily have the impact that we’re all fearing, if we can make this progress in the State legislatures.MelissaYes. States will be a best line of defense if Trump is to win the presidency. Because states are the places where we can protect a lot of our rights and even advance them. Michigan ’22 is a great example. Michigan is a state where The States Project has been working since 2018 and making gains each year. But in 2022, we were finally able to help flip the State House and the State Senate—both of them flipped by one seat. Both of those seats were won by fewer than 400 votes. And with that trifecta—meaning Gretchen Whitmer in the governor’s mansion, and majorities in both the State House and the State Senate—Michigan has been able to codify the right to abortion, pass free breakfast and lunch for public school children, end right to work laws so unions can be strong again, and they passed the strongest climate bill in the country last fall—stronger than New York’s or California’s. All of that is because of one seat majorities in the state legislature. And again, not with politicians you will have heard of, but with that power shift comes real policy shift that changes people’s lives in Michigan and becomes a model for the rest of the country about what is possible when we elect people who are focused on improving lives.VirginiaSo tell us which states you’re focusing on for 2024. We’re going to put a poll in the show notes so that we can vote on where our Giving Circle should focus our energy.MelissaGreat. Yes. So we will be in Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania to defend new majorities that we recently were able to win.All those majorities won on very slim margins. In fact, the ones that I just mentioned in Michigan were the largest margins of those three states. In Minnesota, we were able to flip the State House by 191 votes. And in Pennsylvania, the State Senate, we flipped 12 seats, and the last one was won by 63 votes. VirginiaOh my gosh. MelissaSo what I really want to tell the Burnt Toast crowd is that each Giving Circle really matters in this work. If every piece of the basketweave isn’t there, these are the margins that we’re winning or losing on. So we’ll be back to defend in those states.And in addition, in Pennsylvania, we’ll be working on the Pennsylvania Senate as well to try to get to a tie there. Only half the seats are up so we’re looking for a tie in 2024. That will help us set up for 2026 flip. We’ll also be in Arizona to try to flip both chambers. We are two seats away from a flip in each chamber, one seat away from a tie. And that margin has held for the past few years. We are really, really close to flipping Arizona. There’s a Democratic governor. It’s an incredibly important state, obviously. All the states are important, but it’s a presidential swing state, so we’ll be in Arizona. We will also be in New Hampshire to try to flip the State House and tie the State Senate. That’s another, of course, swing state. And then we’re in a few states to try to break right wing super majorities. So we’re in North Carolina today to break a right wing supermajority. We just need one seat in the State House to do that. And we’re in Kansas to try to break a right wing supermajority for a Democratic governor Laura Kelly. Breaking those super majorities means that a Democratic governor has veto power which is incredibly important. One illustration of that is in Kansas where we saw voters come to the polls in Kansas and reject abortion restrictions, but the state legislature passed them anyway. When the governor vetoed them, they overturned her veto because of the supermajority. So if we’re able to break that supermajority those vetoes can stand and that’s a really important power shift that needs to happen in Kansas. Especially because the will of the voters is being completely ignored. We will also be in Nevada to try to build a supermajority against a right wing governor who vetoes everything. We’d love to be able to overturn those vetoes. And then in Wisconsin, we are going to be working to flip the assembly, which is what they call their state house. And Wisconsin has new maps and this is the first time that we actually see a path to shifting power there because of those new maps that are fairer than they’ve been in years in Wisconsin. So that’s a big lift, but an exciting new state for us to be in.VirginiaEvery state listed above is linked to its page on the State Project’s website so you can read up on them if you like. It turns out that Substack’s poll feature only lets me list 4 options, so here’s a Google Poll everyone can use to vote!Which state should BT support?If your state doesn’t get picked for the Burnt Toast giving circle, however, you can start your own giving circle to raise money for the state that you are most focused on. Melissa, tell folks how they do that.MelissaSo I should say a couple of things about Giving Circles. One is that it is often cheaper to change the balance of power in an entire State Chamber than it is to win a single competitive congressional seat. Congressional races cost millions and millions of dollars and state legislative races do not. So, if you think, “Well my Giving Circle won’t be big enough to make a difference,” I beg to differ. Because dollars at this level go so incredibly far. Whatever you are thinking about investing politically this year—because I know everyone is looking for a place where they can really have impact—think about having that impact and then inviting 10 other people to come in and match what you gave. You’ve just given 10 times what you individually are able to do. And that’s the beauty of Giving Circles. It’s the community coming together for collective power. I think it’s a real antidote for that isolation and helplessness that a lot of us tend to feel when we watch what’s happening on the national scene. I should also say this, because I think it’s really important: Last year, Congress passed about 30 bills. Michigan, with that new trifecta, passed 321. This is absolutely where things are moving. If you care about Congress, you should care about state legislatures, because state legislatures draw the district lines that decide who goes to Congress in 70 percent of the country.If you care about the Supreme Court, you should care about state legislatures because the Supreme Court doesn’t write laws, they rule on laws that are coming out of state legislatures. It was a Mississippi law that took down Roe and if that one hadn’t done it, there were 16 other states that had queued up abortion bans right after Kavanaugh was confirmed with the explicit purpose of rising up to the Supreme Court to challenge Roe. Those laws are coming from state legislatures. If you care about the presidency, you should care about state legislatures because not only do state legislators decide who can vote and when and how and when to purge the rolls or close polling places, but also because the path that the Trump team tried to steal the presidency and 2020 ran directly through state legislatures. It wasn’t senators or congresspeople that Trump called to the Oval Office in December of 2020, it was state legislators from Michigan and Arizona and Pennsylvania. He was asking them to change their electoral college votes because state legislatures are in charge of their state’s elections. And what I say to everyone who starts a Giving Circle at any level is that they’ve turned on the porch light for strategic political giving and that is a gift to everyone in their networks—their friends, their families and their neighbors—because everyone is looking for that right now. So I really appreciate the Burnt Toast community having a Giving Circle. I hope folks will join. I should also mention that in 2023, the Burnt Toast Giving Circle helped us focus on Virginia where we were able to defend the State Senate and flip the House of Delegates, so that there is a wall in front of Governor Youngkin’s rightwing agenda. There were a lot of articles about Governor Youngkin and his national ambitions and his plan for an abortion ban in Virginia last fall. But you haven’t read much about him lately and that is because the legislature has blocked everything that he’s trying to do, and that was partly because of the Burnt Toast Giving Circle. VirginiaGood work us! Yes, yes.MelissaStart a States Project Giving circle at statesproject.org if you’ve got your own crew, and just don’t give into the helplessness and despair. We do not have to be witnesses to what is happening in our country. We can absolutely be active participants to make it better. VirginiaI mean, I feel so much better when I talk to you about this. There is a clear path, this is a thing we can all do. It’s doable. We can do this and we just need to come together and make it happen. Thank you so much for hopping on to talk about this. I’m excited to see which state Burnt Toast picks to focus on (vote here!) and to hear from everybody starting their own Giving Circles. Keep in touch. We want to know what you’re doing and what you’re focusing on.MelissaAmazing. Thank you so much. VirginiaThanks, Melissa.---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 Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!56

You’re listening to Burnt Toast!We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it’s time for your June Indulgence Gospel! We’ve got an old-fashioned listener Q roundup today, including:How should we think about breast reductions—are they medically necessary or diet culture or both?How are we solving chub rub this summer?Do they make fat-friendly toilet seats? (Corinne says yes!)And so much more!This is a paywalled episode. That means to hear the whole thing you’ll need to be a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. This transcript contains affiliate links. Shopping our links is another great way to support Burnt Toast!Episode 149 TranscriptVirginiaWell, Corinne, we have to talk about Big Undies because we are recording this on the day that you launched. How are you? CorinneAs I told you earlier, my brain is a little bit addled. I was haunted last night by typo nightmares, which I just feel is very unlike me. But that’s where I was at. I mean, typos happen. What are you going to do? VirginiaWe have typos in Burnt Toast almost every week, even with both of us proofreading it. They are a part of life. But I know that first one is a ripping off the bandaid moment. It’s just like, oh man. It’s going out.CorinneI’m also really excited and grateful for the Burnt Toast community. And for you, Virginia, pushing me off the ledge. VirginiaSo, usually when people work with me, I have them sign an NDA, meaning if I was reporting something super sensitive you wouldn’t put it on Twitter or whatever, back in the day. And when Corinne first came to work with me, she was like, “Will it be a conflict of interest because I think I might start with my own Substack at some point.” And I was like, “No, absolutely not. That sounds amazing. Let’s do it.” And that was three years ago. So then when we were at the hot springs, I was like, hey, what if we did it now?CorinneYeah, here it is. It has definitely been a project that I have had in my mind for a long time even before I started working on Burnt Toast. I was like, I really want to start a podcast about clothes. So here, it’s finally happening. Not a podcast, but. VirigniaI mean, maybe a podcast! Maybe someday it will turn into aBig Undiespodcast as well.Do you want to talk a little bit about what kinds of stories you’re planning to do? It has been out for a month, so hopefully folks have gotten a good sense of things. But what are you most excited to be working on? CorinneI’m really excited to do some interviews and questionnaires with people that aren’t necessarily fashion influencers. I’m excited to do some deeper dives into clothes. We’re doing fat swim week and I’m also really open to what other ideas people might have, so send me a message. VirginiaThere are a lot of things that have come up that we’ve been like, “Oh, Corinne should write about this.” And now there’s a place where you can really explore all of it. So, if you are listening to this, you are already a paid subscriber to Burnt Toast. And that means you can subscribe to Big Undies for 20% off, which means you get both Burnt Toast by Virginia Sole-Smith and Big Undies for less than $12 a month for both newsletters.CorinneAwesome. Should we get into the questions? VirginiaWe should because we have some very juicy ones. CorinneYeah, this first one is meaty. Okay:Is it diet culture to want a breast reduction? Of course there are benefits to how I would look in my clothes but it would also mean less painful bra experiences, easier shopping, and relieving the strain on my back and shoulders. For reference, I’m a small fat and wouldn’t want to do any intentional weight loss since I know from experience that’s not sustainable.VirginiaI want to say no, it’s not diet culture. This person is allowed to do whatever they want with their body. Your body belongs to you. And, I don’t think we can ever disentangle thin ideals from this particular form of body modification. CorinneI feel like I always say this, but it’s complicated. I do kind of feel like the answer is yes and also no.VirginiaI’m not trying to discount this person’s pain or experience of their body at all, but as someone who has the size breasts that many a plastic surgeon would feel qualify for breast reduction, and who deals with some back pain issues, I guess I’m not convinced my boobs are causing my back pain issues? I think I would do this surgery and put myself through all of this and I would still have back pain issues.And I think there’s a lot you can do to address back pain with physical therapy, like getting your core stronger. I guess the reason I’m saying this, again, is not to say this person should or should not do the surgery. I think often we’re told, “be smaller and all of these physical problems will go away.” And that may sometimes help to some degree, but I think not if you’re not addressing the structural issues, your pain might not resolve. And a breast reduction wouldn’t do that. CorinneI do think part of the reason this one is complicated is also because there can be so much gender stuff around boobs and how your clothes fit. I do think that is very real. And, I also think having bigger breasts does make you look bigger in a different way. I think if you’re “top heavy” in that way, you you look bigger sometimes. VirginiaYou present as fatter. CorinneAnd I think people also object to that.VirginiaAnd that’s complicated, right? Because I would have no qualms supporting someone who said, “I’m getting breast reduction or breast removal to affirm my gender identity.” That makes total sense to me. And I do have a different response to someone saying, “I’m doing it for back pain” or “I’m doing it to look thinner.” I think I have different responses to each of those. CorinneI thought it was interesting that this person mentioned easier shopping. I guess that’s where we get into the systemic stuff where it’s like… It makes me really sad that people are like, “I need to have surgery so that shopping is easier.” That’s a bummer. VirginiaRight this is a major operation, with a long recovery time, drains in your chest. It’s a whole thing so that you can fit into clothes at The Gap. Why doesn’t The Gap just make clothes that fit? That’s a lot to put yourself through for access. I also wonder—as a small fat, I guess there are times where my boobs are the reason something doesn’t fit. But like, the jeans are still not going to work. You know what I mean? Boobs are not the only reason I can’t find something that fits.Neither of us wants to give this person direct advice. We do not know you. We don’t know what’s right for you. But I think if I had a friend who was like, “what do you think?” and wanted my input, I would be curious and encourage them to really drill down on what are you expecting to change? And how likely is the surgery going to change that variable for you? And weigh that up against the risks and the stress of going through the procedure.I think, yes, diet culture is in there. How could it not be? That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. But being honest about that being what part of it could be clarifying.CorinneIt is a serious surgery and it’s elective, so you’re probably paying for it. Although I guess maybe, if it’s related to back pain, it’s not? I don’t know. VirginiaYeah, it probably varies.CorinneI think the fact that you’re still considering it even though it like could be very expensive and hard to recover from probably means there is something there.VirginiaYeah, totally. And we support you no matter what you choose. We are not in your body. It’s a lot of big questions to go through. The research on how people feel after getting bariatric surgery does show very clearly how much these body modification procedures are not a fix for everything. Often folks after weight loss surgery are struggling more with how they feel about their body, with their relationships, with depression. This is a different procedure, I’m not saying it all applies. But it might be interesting to do a search on PubMed, which is the National Institutes of Health database where you can get medical studies, for long term outcomes on breast reduction surgeries and see what kinds of things they even track people for and how long they track them.I’m curious to know how people feel 5 and 10 years out. And they may not follow patients even that long. Think about what are your priorities with the surgery? And then say, are they even looking for how people do with this in a research setting? Are they following patients for this variable? CorinneThat is a really good idea. And that is super interesting because isn’t the research on gender affirming surgery is that almost no one regrets it? Seems like there is an interesting gap there. VirginiaThe outcomes of bariatric surgery and gender affirming surgery are opposite extremes, I think. It goes to show how different these needs are. One is being pushed on you culturally, and one is something you’re doing to be more yourself. Now I want to write a whole piece comparing that research. Anyway! Super fascinating.Let’s do some clothing questions. The next one is,How do you avoid chub rub? Do I have to retire from wearing shorts? June feels like the time to do our annual discussion of chub rub. And as someone currently wearing shorts, I’m going to say no, you don’t have to retire from them.CorinneAs someone also currently wearing shorts, I agree. For whatever reason, the way I live my life now, it’s not something I’m struggling with a lot. I guess maybe part of it is because I wear a lot of bike shorts and I feel like that kind of solves it.VirginiaBike shorts are a really good solve.CorinneThere are a bunch of products now, too, like Megababe Thigh Rescue. Do you use that? VirginiaI use Old Spice antiperspirant, which is the same thing I use for my deodorant. I use it as my chub rub and it works great. So I have never upgraded to one of the fancier chub rub products. But if that hasn’t worked for you, there are many options. Under dresses in the summer I’m always wearing slip shorts. I really liked the Universal Standard ones because they’re very, very thin and silky, so they don’t make me hotter. I pretty much just wouldn’t wear a dress without them because that is is uncomfortable. It is true with linen or looser cotton shorts, you can get the same issue. What I find even more annoying about that type of short is there’s the chub rub, which I can correct for with my antiperspirant trick. But then the fabric of the shorts often bunches up and gets caught on your thighs. Do you know I’m talking about? I don’t have a good fix for that. Except to mostly just decide I don’t really care. And just pull my shorts out when they get caught on my thighs.CorinneI think there are some different schools of thought around that. I think sometimes it’s because they’re either too small or too big and it doesn’t happen as much with a different size. But I do think that it does happen.I think it also has to do with body mechanics sometimes. I remember having horrible chub rub when I was younger and It just doesn’t happen to me as much now and I don’t know if it’s because I’m walking less, or it’s dry here, or I don’t know, VirginiaNew Mexico is a dry heat. I think the fact you wear bike shorts so much is the main reason you’re not struggling, I think. This is reminding me that I’m debating whether I want to start my annual quest for jean shorts. I feel like every year I’m like, I’m not going to do it. And then I’m like, I do want jean shorts. And then I buy some and they’re sort of okay, but not great. And then here we are again. Jean shorts are one where they really can end up in your crotch. Maybe this is helping me hone in on the fact I don’t need to do that again.CorinneI just got some jean shorts I like.VirginiaOf course you did. You can wear jeans, too.CorinneThey’re just Old Navy jean shorts. I’m sure they will be sold out by the time this airs.VirginiaOkay, wide width shoe recs! We got a couple of questions about this. One person specifically wanted wide width sandals and one person one wanted general recs and said why are the options so bad?CorinneI am someone with wide feet. And I personally have just found what works best for me is to go the men’s shoes route. But I know that’s not everyone’s style. I have wide feet and long feet, so it works for me. But I do know about a couple of brands that people like. The first one is there’s this brand called Adelante shoe company. I think you have ordered from them? They do custom sizing. There’s also a newer brand called Wydr Studios, and I feel like they actually have some pretty cute styles.VirginiaOh, yeah, these are cute. Some very good sandals. They kind of remind me of Saltwater Sandals. It’s a similar fisherman sandal vibe. CorinneYeah, they have a bunch of styles. They have some that kind of look more like Teva-ish. They have some heels. I think they have cute stuff. Yeah, so definitely check out Wydr.And then this other brand I just learned about called San Antonio Shoes. VirginiaSan Antonio Shoemakers.CorinneI learned about them from Val on Instagram. She had a pair of sandals from them that were really cute. The relaxed sandals, relaxed back sandals. They’re like a kind of strappy sandal. They look super comfortable but they’re also cute. And they come up to like double wide width.VirginiaThey have a Birkenstock vibe and they look really, really comfortable. I will say these are all pricey. I’m looking at the black sandal is $194. So, fat tax. But — lots of privilege behind the statement— I do tend to buy pricier shoes because I’m just like I can’t  with uncomfortable cheap shoes. My feet cannot handle it. I spent most of my 20s wearing really cheap heels that I bought on 8th Street in New York City for like $9 a pair, and did some long term damage. So to me these price points are not shocking. However, if you were hoping Target had the answer, these are major price points, but they seem like really high quality well-made shoes. CorinneI will also add that I think Target actually has started selling wide width shoes! But I haven’t tried them. VirginiaI’m also seeing Zappos has an extra wide shoes section. I don’t know a lot about what the options are in there. But it’s nice to see that they at least are listing that as like an option.Then the next fashion question is: Can we do a Burnt Toast guide to brands that have our sizes in stores? And my answer is yes, but it should be aBig Undiesguide.CorinneI mean, I agree. I would love to look into it. But I’m also like, who? Who has my size in stores?VirginiaIt would be a very short guide. CorinneNever heard of it.VirginiaI mean, do you buy anything in stores ever? I really don’t.CorinneI’m trying to think. I feel like I’ve gone in an emergency situation to like, Torrid. I can’t remember what it was I needed. And I’m so glad that that option exists. But no, not really. Virginia What if the guide was little shopping diaries from people who are like, “I went to my local Torrid and this is how it was.” Or reviews from someone who lives in New York City who can shop at Wray or Brooklyn Plus Bus or something? All firsthand experiences. Because then if you are traveling somewhere, it would just help people know, oh, there is an option in the city. And here’s this person reporting what they got and what they liked about it. That might be kind of fun to crowdsource if Big Undies readers have specific favorite local plus-size stores. There is definitely nothing around me. There is a bra store in town that has a small fat size mannequin in the window along with regular straight size mannequin. I keep meaning to go in, but I have to admit, I feel so awkward if I go in and then they don’t have my size. I feel like I then have made their lives uncomfortable. I have a thing to unpack there where I’m going to feel bad for this little shop. I think I have some sympathy with small boutique owners. It’s difficult for them to stock a lot of stuff. But then I’m also just like, “I would go buy bras from you if you carried my size.” We may need to call first. CorinneYeah, I was going to say you could always call and ask.VirginiaI know, but then I have to use the phone. I mean, it’s just stress upon stress! Alright, well, this is why we need the BigUndies Guide To In-Person Shopping.CorinneYeah, that would be really fun. What’s an aspect of public or social life that’s inaccessible or hostile to fat people but not talked about enough?VirginiaI just have to say I had a moment of drawing a blank because I’m like, “I think we talk about that?” And then I was like, well, we do. Like, me and Corinne, and Burnt Toast and Big Undies. We’re all here to talk about it. But what are people not talking about in the mainstream? I thought everybody knew this, but I was texting with a group of friends recently, all of whom are thinner than me and one of them was picking out new dining room chairs. And I was like, “Oh, FYI, those are very cute, but I might break it if I sit in it.” And none of them had any idea. They were like, “Wait, what? Dining chairs have weight limits? What?” They had no idea that dining room furniture is not size inclusive. So that’s my one recent experience where I was like, “Guys, you read Burnt Toast!” (It was my book club - love you all!) But now they know. And they’re all ready to look into that. But what do you think?CorinneAgain I kind of feel like we talk about it. But public spaces in general—seating in theaters or seating in basically any kind of public space is often going to be chairs with arms that are not going to fit everyone. And that’s a huge problem.VirginiaIt’s a huge problem.CorinneI got called for jury duty last year and I was like, well, this is not something where there’s going to be a Yelp photo that I can look up beforehand. I don’t know what it’s going to be like.VirginiaCould you get out of jury duty though? Because that might be a plus? CorinneI mean, you definitely could, but would you have to be standing for 10 hours until then? It ended up being fine. But I was definitely worried about it. Like, seating in public places, public access places. And also in people’s homes. Like, I can’t tell you the anxiety that I have about like going to someone’s house and being like, I’m just gonna have to stand the whole time.VirginiaDo you flag it for people?CorinneI mean, I do sometimes, but it’s also like, what are they going to do? You know? Like, you’re going to someone’s birthday party and you’re going to be like, can you buy a chair for me? Or am I going to drag my own chair?  VirginiaIt’s so frustrating. CorinneFor the jury duty one, I think they asked about accessibility stuff. So if there’s something like that, I’ll always say, “I’m fat, and I need seating without arms,” or whatever. So hopefully, they’ll start thinking about it.VirginiaIt is really interesting how often it’s not on people’s radar, though. I always include it when I do speaking gigs. When I’m talking to schools, I always tell Aubrey Gordon’s anecdote of being in high school and the chairs with the desks that attach and that she couldn’t close her desk for like, all of high school. It’s just so enraging to me that she had to experience that. I often see school administrators shifting nervously as they are realizing their classrooms probably have some of those desks in them. And they need to fix that.CorinneI mean, yeah, that’s just awful. Schools, that is so sad. VirginiaIt’s a human rights issue. Kids need to be able to sit in the classroom and take notes. I’m curious what people will bring up in the comments because I’m sure there are other flavors of this or other issues we’re not thinking about and I’m always looking for more of these so we can talk about them and do more stories on them. All right, the next question,What do you do about flimsy toilet seats? I just moved into a new house and I’m sliding around all over the place. I can buy a new one, but I don’t know what to look for.Corinne. You have the best toilet seat.CorinneYeah, so I I ended up with this toilet seat after I broke two rapidly in a row. There’s a toilet seat made by the brand Big John. They are bigger than your toilet, if that makes sense. Like the ceramic circle that is your toilet bowl, it like sits on that but it extends out. VirginiaAnd it’s strong enough? I’m picturing that that could be…CorinneNo. It’s strong enough. Because I feel like the problem is like that they come unscrewed at the back or whatever. And I think it does have like a slightly different way of screwing into those holes. I do still have to tighten mine but it’s not as bad as a regular toilet seat. I will say when I first put it on, I was like, this is horrifying. I’m going to be so ashamed anytime anyone comes to my house. And I don’t know, I just forgot about it. And I have had a couple of people now be like, whoa, your toilet seat is amazing. Even not fat people just because toilet seats are so unnecessarily small.VirginiaThey are really small. Why not have a comfortable seat? Take up space in the bathroom!Going back to the previous question: Nobody’s lives are made harder if chairs are more comfortable and fit bigger bodies. It’s like, nobody loses when we make space more inclusive. So this is a great example, thin people aren’t like, I can’t sit on a wide toilet seat. Nothing bad is going to happen? CorinneAnd toilets or bathrooms are probably a good one for the last question, too. Like toilet stalls being too narrow.VirginiaWall mounted toilets. I know a lot of people have anxiety about that.CorinneOooh I’ve never even thought about that. But now I will. VirginiaThey’re very common in Europe. And then you’re like, am I going to take this thing off the wall? How would that work? Important accessibility issues. CorinneAll right.Any advice for how not to be an oversharer and keep some things for the inner circle?VirginiaSo when I first read this question, I said to Corinne, is this a subtweet of me.CorinneI think I was assuming that they were admiring your ability to not be an over-sharer.VirginiaI hope that’s the case. I will absolutely take it as a compliment. I mean, as someone who writes personal essays, who is a semi-public figure, who has an Instagram—there are all these ways in which you’re constantly being asked to share more and more and more of yourself. And I don’t know if the person who sent this question in is also doing that kind of work, or just in their own life feeling like they overshare.I think in some ways, oversharing gets a bad rap. Being very open and vulnerable is how we form relationships and sticking to small talk types of topics doesn’t get us anywhere. So I think there’s a place for oversharing. I think it’s actually a beautiful thing that helps bring us all together. And I also know that icky, nauseous feeling you have when you’re like, well, I put more out there than I wanted to. And now what? What are your thoughts about this? CorinneI think I tend to be a little more on the private side, maybe? The thing that I’m thinking about is just, like, if you’re worried that whatever you’re going to share is too much, you can always ask? Like, “I want to tell you this thing, do you have the capacity?” Or I don’t know if we’re talking about on social media, I guess that’s a little different. VirginiaThe Internet would be like, “Yes, we do.” Corinne“Do tell us why you got divorced.” VirginiaI think one thing I do, when I’m talking about my life publicly, in the way that my work requires, is I do have a list of no fly zone areas. These are the things that I’m like, “That’s not ever going in Burnt Toast. That’s not ever going to be an anecdote I share in the world.” So I think having a kind of running list in your head and checking in on it periodically can help.One of my kids recently let me know that she does not want one particular topic discussed publicly anymore. And so it will not be. And that was really helpful for me to have that conversation with her so I could just take it off the table of things that I’m available to comment on. And sometimes it is challenging, because people might expect that you are available to talk about something but certainly when I say “I’m sorry, that’s a boundary I have to keep for my kids,” only assholes are going to try to argue with that. So I think just being clear with people about your boundaries if, again, you’re doing some kind of public facing thing where you need to say up top like I’m not going to do this. I never show the exterior of my house online. I never share my kids’ last name online. There are certain things I’m just never going to talk about.CorinnePersonally I’ve struggled more with having the boundary. Like if someone asks you something you don’t want to answer, how do you respond to that? Because I have had some times where someone has asked me something I really didn’t want to answer. And I’ve said “I’m not going to answer that,” or “I’m happy to talk about that with you at a different time or in a different place.” And it hasn’t been well received. VirginiaI mean, I think that’s their problem, though.CorinneI totally agree. But I think that is also complicate.VirginiaI think we have to look at our people pleasing tendencies. It’s okay to disappoint people. We don’t owe the world our bodies and our lives and our stories. And I keep coming back to that. CorinneWell, I think I’m much more willing to share or overshare one-on-one than I am in a group setting or something like that.VirginiaGo for breakfast burritos with Corinne. She’ll tell you everything. I’m just an oversharer in all contexts.CorinneAre you? I don’t know.VirginiaI think you can’t do my job and be a super closed book? And like I said, I think there are a lot of strengths to being a person who shares. You can make friends quickly and that’s nice. But I have sometimes gone to a social event and the next morning wanted to send a group text being like, “did I overshare? Did I take our conversation in a weird direction?” But that’s the social anxiety piece, which is a whole other conversation. CorinneYeah, I was going to ask if there was anything you had shared that you had regretted? VirginiaWell, I’m not going to share it on the podcast! I can’t think of an example that I would be comfortable sharing the podcast. But I think we all have those moments. Well, maybe you don’t. A lot of us have those moments.CorinneI definitely have moments where I’m like, ugh, I wish I hadn’t shared that. All right.Why are men so resistant to unlearning diet culture? Not all men, I know. Do women think about their bodies more than men and therefore have more to gain from getting their brain space back? For people with complicated food histories, do you ever get all your brain space back?VirginiaOkay, I want to save the second part of that question for when we move on to the next question, because they kind of go together. So for now, we’ll talk about men being resistant to unlearning diet culture and do women have more to gain from getting their brain space back.I don’t think it’s that women have more to gain from getting our brain space back. I think it’s that men have a lot to gain by upholding diet culture, because upholding diet culture upholds patriarchy and white supremacy.CorinneThat seems right.VirginiaI think there’s a lot of reasons for men to resist unlearning it because it is the first card in the house of cards to fall. And if you’re shoring up your white male privilege, shoring up your thin privilege along with that makes a lot of sense.CorinneI do think that the way that we get men on board is the fact that diet culture, patriarchy, and white supremacy also harm men. VirginiaI shared this reel on Instagram last week. The Washington Post had this video clip of the cadets at one of the military schoolsCorinneOh, yeah, doing some weird man ritual. VirginiaIt’s an end of year ritual for the cadets after they’ve gone through whatever grueling boot camp they’ve gone through. It’s all these shirtless men trying to climb a greased obelisk. So basically a bunch of men climbing over each other to climb what is a giant phallus. It’s just a penis. And it’s like, Men will do anything but feel their feelings.It’s a whole separate thing. But it’s also this. The way all of this harms men is by making them think they have to go to war instead of just having a conversation about shit. They would benefit because they would be given the full range of human emotions. We don’t currently socialize boys to have vocabulary for their feelings. If they could do this unlearning. CorinneWe should also say men also have eating disorders. Men have their own special type of diet culture, like Andrew Huberman. And there are also fat men, fat men also exist.VirginiaTotally. Men are navigating slightly different messages around bodies, but equally unattainable ideals. And they’re navigating it without any emotional script. Like, women can immediately bond over body anxieties. It’s an immediate conversation you can have in any public bathroom in the world with other women. Not that you would necessarily all be on the same page, but women can talk about our bodies. Especially those of us who are oversharers. And men just can’t walk into a public restroom and be like, “I hate my body,” to another man.CorinneYeah. I think there’s just as much bullying and that kind of thing amongst men about bodies too. Like weird stuff on sports teams. But they never get to the point where then they’re like, “Oh, everyone has this problem and it’s harming all of us.”Virginia Right. Right. And I think they’re less likely to get diagnosed for eating disorders. because we assume men are non emotional about that, which is bullshit. Men are absolutely emotional about bodies. But because we assume they’re not emotional about it, we give them this gravitas, and assume that anything Andrew Huberman is telling you to deal with carbohydrates is science and not just his own weird food hang up. We don’t give women the same space. But then in some ways it gives women more nuance and more tools if we want to avail ourselves of them. It’s hard for everybody. Bodies are very hard. It’s hard to have a body in this world. CorinneThat’s true. VirginiaOkay, but so the second part of this question for people with complicated food histories, do you ever get all your brainspace back? And then another person wrote,I’d love to know from you guys and other Burnt Toasters—I like toasters, by the way, We usually say toasties.After divesting from diet culture and all the attendant obsessive repetitive thoughts, what did you fill your mind with? Find it filled with instead?CorinneMy immediate reaction to this one was just like, there’s just so much other stuff to fill your head with—not that none of it is diet culture related. Have you tried TikTok?Your head will immediately be filled with six second song clips.VirginiaI mean, obviously, my answer is gardening at this time of year.CorinneYeah, that’s probably a lot more healthy.VirginiaWhatever, it’s also an obsessive and expensive hobby. You said something interesting, though, before we started recording when we were talking about this question. You said, “this isn’t my struggle,” or something? CorinneI’m not sure I ever had a point where I was like, “What do I put in my head now?” I think I’ve always been pretty good at finding ways to distract myself. I think, to me, the question that is a little bit maybe more interesting is like, “Do you ever get all your brain space back?” And I think the answer is kind of no. VirginiaBecause you never know what’s going to trip you up. I just wrote that piece when I wasn’t working out as much and suddenly feeling sort of spirally about “I’m not working out enough,” and then realizing, it’s because I like gardening better. It’s fine. Divesting from diet culture means you get to pick. But the fact that I have to go through that process every time is that old stuff coming back. CorinneAnd you can fill your brain with Tiktoks. And then you’ll come across a Tiktoks about dieting or you’ll realize that you only care about young thin Tiktokers. It’s just always there. VirginiaAnd I think we just have to have grace for that. CorinneIt’s never gonna stop coming up because this is the world we live in. But I’m also not weaponizing it against myself in the same way. I can watch a Tiktok about whatever. I can witness that. And I’m not going to turn it against myself.VirginiaThat seems big. CorinneYeah. Okay, I’m gonna ask you the next question. There’s so much crap out there about picky eating. What is your bottom line advice for parents who have kids who really only have a handful of safe foods and when even some of those foods don’t work sometimes, especially when those foods are something that’s demonized by diet culture, like crackers or bread? How do we support ourselves in feeding our children and getting them what their bodies need and tuning out all the other crap? Will the kids forever only eat bread?VirginiaOkay, so I did not want to include this question because, as we talked about in the June Extra Butter episode that came out a few weeks ago, I’m really wrestling with how much time I should spend on these kinds of questions at this point in my work. I am not a feeding therapist. I’m not a dietitian. And I think there’s been a misconception that because I write about our cultural relationships with food and anti-fatness that that should somehow translate to me giving specific feeding advice. Probably because I’ve given specific feeding advice sometimes. So, with that caveat! I think if you have a kid who really only has a handful of safe foods, and I think the number is fewer than 20, you should definitely seek out a responsive feeding therapist. Follow the work of Laura Thomas who writes Can I Have Another Snack? And Helping Your Child with Extreme Picky Eating is a great resource by Katja Rowell and Jenny McGlothin.If you’re not in the severe feeding issues category, I would also recommend adding on How to Raise an Intuitive Eater by Amee Severson and Sumner Brooks. All of those folks are much better equipped than me to give you specific advice about how do you plan meals, how do you handle it when kids don’t want to eat, all that kind of stuff. What I do want to talk about is the piece of this where your kid only has the short list of safe foods and a lot of those foods are things that are demonized by diet culture, like crackers or bread. The bottom line advice I have for that is that is fed is best. Your child needs to eat, and your child does not deserve to feel shame for the foods that they feel safe eating. So it is absolutely okay to set whatever boundaries you need to set around protecting that kid’s ability to eat their white bread and Cheez-its. That is how that kid is getting fed right now. Nobody else knows your life. They don’t know what you’re up against. And I’m sorry, but they can go fuck themselves for having an opinion about it. So that’s where I am, bottom line. I think you may need other parents who are on this journey with you who can help you remember that when it feels really hard. Whether that’s a partner you’re co-parenting with, or mom friends, or a Facebook support group. You need some folks who can remind you that your child deserves to feel safe with the foods they eat. They do not deserve to feel shamed for this. You need someone who can keep bringing you back to that place. And while we can support folks and work with kids are building skills and building their comfort level, and there’s a lot of value in that work—we also have to say, if this never changes, your kids still deserves to feel safe and feel no shame about how they eat. Because everybody deserves that. That’s the fundamental right. So yeah, I don’t know your kid. I don’t know if they’re going to forever eat bread. But if they do, that’s okay. That’s a valid way to live in this world. CorinneCool, that’s good advice. Virginia, where did you buy your Dahlia bulbs and how are your dahlias?VirginiaThis is what is filling my head now instead of diet culture. So, this weekend, I planted my first raised bed of dahlias. I’m so going hard on my dahlias this year but in a more organized way than I ever have before. And it’s a real journey partly because I then opened my box of dahlias and realized I only ordered half as many as I needed. And as you’ll recall last year I bought three times too many so I don’t understand. I can’t do dahlia math. It’s so hard for me. But the first bed that I planted this weekend, which is a four by eight bed, and it has 32 dahlias in it. There’s one per square foot, eight different varieties. Those are all from Swan Island Dahlias, which is a dahlia site thatAnne Helen Petersentold me to get them from. Really, really good high quality stuff. And all Dahlia sources are not created equal,there is a lot of drama in the dahlia community. So you do want to go to reputable sources and Swan Island is a good one.THE VISIONI will also recommend following Anne Helen’s Garden Study which is the garden section of the Culture Study newsletter. And then she and her best friend are starting basically a dahlia micro farm. They’re posting tons of great dahlia content.Then for the other bed, which I have not planted yet because I didn’t buy enough dahlias, I’m getting them from my friend Marcella, who is a local dahlia farmer here who runs Parcel Flower Co. I was texting her on Saturday with a degree of urgency to be like, tell me you still have tubers. Can I buy some tubers? What color tubers do you have? Because I’m trying to stick to a whole color palette this year. It’s a whole thing. It’s a whole thing.Currently.CorinneSo when you bought too many dahlias last year… Wait I guess I just don’t really understand this. Can you recycle the tubers or no? VirginiaOkay, if you live in a very very, very warm zone like Mexico. You can overwinter your dahlias in the ground. Even in England, and where you live, probably people can overwinter dahlias. So last year, I pulled those tubers out because I know I can’t overwinter in a raised bed, and I stored them. But I did not store them well and they did not survive the winter.CorinneDamn. How do you tell that they didn’t survive? VirginiaBecause they’re mushy. CorinneOh, they rot or something? VirginiaThey can either totally shrivel up or they can go mushy. They’re basically potatoes, like a potato is also a tuber. So if you think about potatoes you’ve left in your pantry too long and the variety of ways that can go bad you can see what you’re dealing with.CorinneBut if you dig them up, don’t they still freeze? Or you have to dig them up and keep them in your house? VirginiaSo that’s why I did half of it. I dug them up. I let them dry. Usually I let them dry out for a bit. And then I packed them in boxes, in these milk crate type boxes, and I put them in layers of vermiculite or something like that. And then I meant to move the boxes to my garage, because my garage stays at about 50 degrees all winter, which is optimal dahlia winter temperature, but instead I left them in my potting shed, which is not insulated and so they just froze.CorinneWow. So that is a lot of work.VirginiaLook, if someone has been dieting on a high level and they need something to fill a lot of time, I really recommend dahlia farming or growing. I’m not farming. Because it’s a very intricate, nerdy hobby. Have I spent so much now because I keep losing my dahlias over the winter? Yes. I think I said last year that everyone had to hold me accountable to overwintering my dahlias and you didn’t do it. So I blame everybody else. And what I’m saying is this year, you’re going to hold me accountable. And I’m going to store them properly. And that’s gonna be that.Corinne, are you gardening at all this year?CorinneI’m trying to have a demolition year. I’m actually doing this thing called Tree School where I’m working with this person who does garden landscaping stuff to come up with a plan and stuff. So recently I got all the weeds out of my front yard, my front yard is very small, and had mulch put down. My backyard is just a crazy mess. There is all this fencing that doesn’t need to be there. So right now, I’m trying to find someone to take out the fencing. Then I need to find someone to take out all the weeds. So I’m having a demolition year. And trying to take care of my existing trees. VirginiaWhat kind of trees do you have? CorinneIn the front yard, I have two ash trees, which are going to die because we have the ash borer. But hopefully, they’ll be around for a few more years. Then in the back I have an almond tree, which is not in great shape and has never produced almonds. But I’m trying to take better care of it. All of this stuff is pre-existing, I should say. It came with the house. I have a mimosa tree, which is really, really pretty. And there’s also pinon and some bird of paradise bushes.VirginiaWell, I’m excited for your demolition year and your save the trees year. CorinneYeah, we’ll see how far I get.VirginiaAnd then next year, you can join me in the dahlia obsession. Or you can just watch dahlia TikTok, which is pretty good I have to say. ButterCorinneAll right. Do you have a Butter?VirginiaI do. I’m going to do a garden Butter. I mean, it’s June. This is this is peak garden. My Butter is this garden apron I got from Target. Hilton Carter, who is a house plant influencer and seems like a delightful human being. He has a collection at Target of garden and houseplant gear. And this is a waxed canvas, dark green apron with leather straps, and it has pockets you can put your garden tools in. And it’s only $30 (on sale for $15!!) which, let me tell you, these garden aprons can be expensive. Like the reason I haven’t had one is I’m like, am I spending $90 on an apron? I don’t know. I’ve always been kind of meh about the idea of an apron because I garden without a bra in my pajamas first thing in the morning. I just go out. I don’t want gardening gloves. I’m like, am I going to put on an apron? But then I realized the beauty of the apron is number one, my phone fits in one pocket because I’m often having to keep track of time or listen to a podcast or something. And if I remember to put my tools back in the pockets at the end, I know where they are the next time I go gardening, which is a real leg up. When you’re like, “I have half an hour I can get some stuff done,” and then you spend 18 minutes looking for the tools. It’s very comfortable. I think pretty size inclusive? I was trying to gauge but I do have to pull the ties in pretty far to tie them, so I think it would fit a range. And yeah, it turns out it’s really handy to have a little garden tool apron. And then the other thing related is I just got a Hori Hori knife, which is a Japanese gardening tool, and it’s like a narrow trowel. But it’s very sharp. One side is a regular knife and one side is a serrated knife. And oh man, it is good times. You can dig and divide. I’m having a good time with that. CorinneThat’s really cool.VirginiaWhat about you?CorinneWell one of my takeaways from the style challenge was that I wanted to do more accessories and so I just bought this ring. CorinneIt’s a glass ring and it has a little like opal chunk in it. I think it’s a man-made opal but I like it because it feels very pretty and fun, and also very affordable. It’s under $100. I think this was $60? The brand is called Struggle Glass. And she has a bunch of extended sizing stuff. I think she does drops, so if you visit the website stuff might be sold out but follow her on Instagram and she posts about when stuff is going up. So it’s a fun sparkly accessory that is not super expensive. It’s made out of the kind of glass that they use for bakingware, so it’s pretty sturdy, but we’ll see.VirginiaThat was my question. I assumed it was plastic because I would never trust myself to have a glass accessory and not have it end in tragedy. CorinneYeah, I have definitely been like, am I scratching this? I don’t know. We’ll see. But so far I’m enjoying it.VirginiaThis is very cool. Her work is gorgeous. Well, I want to hear how you do with a glass ring before I got one but I’m excited.CorinneYeah, I’m excited, 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 Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

In this engaging discussion, Angel Austin and Ani Janzen from the Association for Size Diversity and Health share insights on the 'health at every size' (HAES) movement and challenge anti-fat bias in healthcare. They highlight the importance of inclusivity and the evolution of fat activism. Listeners will appreciate their personal anecdotes about reclaiming joy through tea, fantasy books, and cherished recipes like carrot cake, all while advocating for compassionate care and community support in health.

Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark!🧈🧈🧈It’s time for your June Extra Butter! Today we are giving you a behind-the-scenes look at how we make Burnt Toast. And yes, finally addressing some of the butter-related Internet rumors about Virginia’s personal life. 🧈🧈🧈To listen to the full episode and read the full transcript, you’ll need to join Extra Butter, our premium subscription tier. Extra Butter ensures that the Burnt Toast community can always stay an ad- and sponsor-free space—which is crucial for body liberation journalism. Join us here!(Questions? Glitches? Email me all the details)Extra Butter Episode 4 TranscriptCorinneToday is a really special episode of Extra Butter because we are celebrating three years of Burnt Toast. Virginia, can you believe it has been three years?VirginiaIt feels like it’s been forever and also no, not at all. It’s wild.CorinneHow are you celebrating?VirginiaProbably buy a plant. CorinneOh, yeah. I was going to say brownies. Or cake. VirginiaOh, I should see if my mom wants to make me a butter cake!CorinneOh my God. Yes!VirginiaFor people that don’t know, my mother is an amazing cake baker, and we have a family tradition where she takes requests to make elaborate cakes for many occasions, including the dumpling cake she just made for my sister’s baby shower. CorinneIt was extremely cute.VirginiaYeah, so three years is very cool and weird. We have definitely grown in ways I could not have predicted when I decided I was going to turn on paid subscribers. We had 700 people on the list. Now there are over 54,000. I have to not think about the numbers too much sometimes. It’s a big stage. But it’s it’s exciting! And I’m excited to dish a little today about how we make it happen. So we’re going to talk about how the podcast is made, we’re going to reflect a little bit on where we started, where we’ve come from, the journey of Burnt Toast. And we’re going to talk a little bit about the recent New York Times profile. CorinneI thought the best place to start might be to talk a little bit about how Burnt Toast started. How did you get the idea to start a Substack? How did you know about Substack? What was your vision for the newsletter?VirginiaWell, I have to give credit to who is the pre-you. She was my research assistant who worked with me a lot on my first book and various articles and things. We were doing a newsletter to market my first book on TinyLetter, but Jessica is younger and cooler than me and writes a great environmental Substack called Pinch of Dirt that I encourage folks to check out. It’s very fun, especially if you like lots of hiking and nature writing. So Jessica was like, “The youths are on Substack.” And I was like, “What is a Substack.”She migrated the list from TinyLetter over to Substack and helped me figure out what we were doing. And I remember her saying, sort of in passing at that point, “Oh and lot of people are turning on paid subscriptions and maybe you’ll want to do that sometime.” And at that point, I was still locked into “I write for mainstream media outlets.” I was just like, no, why would I do that? And then I started following a lot of Substacks, and reading more and it became, Wait, why would I not do this? Because I was also becoming increasingly frustrated with doing the kinds of stories I wanted to do at mainstream media outlets. And then I lost two big anchor clients in 2019 and 2020. I’d been writing a column about kids and food and body image for the New York Times Parenting section. And I had been doing a lot of work for Medium. Medium was great. I had great editors there and they would let me do pretty in-depth diet culture investigations, but then they changed their whole structure and were like, “LOL we don’t pay writers anymore.”I was like, “Well, it’s interesting because I am a writer who still needs to be paid, so that won’t work.”Then The Times reorganized and cut my column, which is just the perennial freelancer thing where you have a couple of anchor clients, they run their course and then you pivot and start hustling up some new anchor clients. And I had been doing this for almost 20 years, I was so tired. This was also January 2021. That’s when I was like, Let’s make Burnt Toast into a thing. I spent about six months working on it before I turned on paid subscriptions that June.CorinneAnd how did the podcast start? Did you always know that that was in the future of Burnt Toast?VirginiaNo, not at all. I would have told you when I started, “I’m absolutely never doing a podcast.” My best friend and I had done a podcast together, Comfort Food. We did 80-something episodes and it was really fun, but we made zero dollars on it. It cost us quite a lot of money to make because we had to pay an audio editor, and it was just a ton of time.It’s really hard to start an independent podcast and make money at it, because you have to get your numbers so big to get advertisers interested, or to get picked up by a podcasting network. Podcasting as an industry has gotten really messy.So during 2020 when both of us had no childcare we were like, “we have got to put Comfort Food to bed,” which was the right decision. I really liked making a podcast, but I was like, “There’s no way to do it that makes financial sense for my life.” Maybe in retirement or something. But soon after I became working on Burnt Toast more wholeheartedly, Substack was like, “We are in the podcasting game!” And because they knew I’d done a podcast, they reached out and were like, you should really do a podcast for Burnt Toast. And I was like, no thank you, I would not like to do that. But then they covered the cost of Tommy, our amazing audio engineer, for the first year. So I knew I could make it sound good. And Tommy is amazing to work with and makes it so much easier.Also: Part of what makes a successful Substack is publishing multiple times a week. I cannot churn out a reported essay or a first-person essay more than once a week. Honestly even that is a big lift, so I knew that I needed another type of content in the mix.But I would say for at least the first year, I was still like, is the podcast working? Or is this just so much more work? Are we getting anything out of it? Once we were able to start adding paywalls to the podcast episodes, it started to make a lot more sense to do. Because it’s impossible to grow an independent podcast to big numbers, but if you already have your newsletter community, then it’s a different thing. So we’re never going to be Maintenance Phase—and we’re not trying to be Maintenance Phase. It’s a different model. Then of course once I started making it with you—I think that was the other point where I was like, “Well now I really want to make the podcast.” It’s so much more fun to do it with someone.CorinneIt has been really fun! Should we talk a little bit about how the podcast and newsletter get made? VirginiaOr how many texts I send you a week?CorinneI mean, texting works for me. How do you find people to bring on the podcast?VirginiaYou and I are constantly brainstorming. You’ll see something, I’ll see something. We do get pitched a lot, too, but I think we’re a hard podcast to pitch. I get sent a lot of books, so I’m always looking at authors. And we want to support other fat activists and other feminists and folks working in these same spheres. Then also, we’ll get a reader question and we’ll be like, oh, who would be a good expert to answer that? Or like some crazy fatphobic thing happens in the media, right? CorinneA news thing.VirginiaWe’ve started having editorial meetings now, too. So we’re more official. That’s an exciting recent development since our retreat. We stepped it up.CorinneHow does production flow work? Like, once we have like an idea for a podcast? We kind of plan out like, “this week we’ll be running Indulgence Gospel.” And then how do we make it happen?VirginiaWe go over the calendar together in our editorial planning meetings, which are twice a month, plus we text all the time. I’m usually booking guest interviews, like one or two a month, whenever I’m like, crap, we’ve run out of guest interviews. Let me go book some more. You and I record Mondays. Any Monday we’re not having a meeting, we’re recording an episode.Before we record, one of us writes an outline for the episode. If I’m interviewing a guest, I write up interview questions. For Indulgence Gospel, one of us dumps it all, all the questions we’re going to answer into a Google Doc. And then we record and then we send Tommy our recording files and Tommy puts them together through his wizardry into a master file. Then Corinne heroically wrestles that into a transcript using Otter. She doesn’t have to hand transcribe the entire interview. But AI still gives you plenty to do, I think.CorinneYes, we use an AI transcription service that transcribes the recordings and then I go through and make it actual words. VirginiaBecause whenever I interview another white lady, it doesn’t know who’s talking, and that kind of thing.CorinneI divide up who’s talking when and put in the names. I make it make sense. And then I will also just go through and mark where we should cut stuff, like asides in the conversation or somebody saying um six times—that’s usually me.VirginiaOr “Absolutely, absolutely.”CorinneOr someone’s dog is barking, things like that. Then I send it back to Tommy and Virginia.VirginiaAnd then I go through and do another ruthless pass where I’m usually meanest to myself. I’m trying to cut out all my Valley Girl speech so my mother doesn’t text me too much about how many times I say like and um and you know. Then Tommy’s always the nicest about it, and he’s like, “No, we don’t have to cut that many!”Are you used to the sound of your own voice? CorinneNo.VirginiaI’m pretty used to it but there are things I say that when I’m listening back—CorinneYeah, the things I say over and over again drive me crazy. When I’m editing the transcript for myself, I do think I’m way harsher. VirginiaI think we’re harshest on ourselves. Sometimes Corinne will cut something and I’ll be like, no, put that back because that’s funny. But most of the time, it’s like cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. Get it down to something we can use. Then Tommy takes the Google Doc with all of the cuts and he makes those cuts in the audio file, and sends it back to us to approve. Meanwhile, Corinne is getting the cleaned up transcript into Substack. You do a lot of work there. CorinneYes, I edit it again to try and make it more readable. I take out even more weird verbal tics to make it easier to read.VirginiaIt’s interesting that editing for reading is actually different than editing for audio. You can leave in more verbal tics with audio because they’ll go by fast. But in a sentence that your eyes are going to go over, you have to take out all the likes and pauses and things. CorinneThen I add photos and links.VirginiaAnd I do another pass on it. So this is every episode. The recording happens whenever we can schedule with people, but then this process we’re talking about is spread out over the week before the episode runs. So on Wednesdays, which is the day before the episode runs, Tommy gets us the final audio. Corinne has the transcript draft in Substack. And I spend an hour or two doing a final pass and schedule it.Transcripts are a ton of work, so I’m really glad so many of you do read them. It’s probably the thing we spend the most hours on, the bulk of the work. Which is weird to think about. And then, at the same time that we’re keeping a podcast going, we’re also always working on whatever essay I’m running on the Tuesday. That’s its own process. Usually a week before, I’m panic texting Corinne, “What am I writing about? What is that story idea I told you about three weeks ago that maybe I should write about but I forgot what it was?” And we brainstorm and then I write a draft and try to get you the draft by Thursday afternoon is my goal. And then you edit it. CorinneI read through the draft and put it in Substack, make any notes for Virginia, and add photos. VirginiaThen Monday I do my final obsessive editing and we do a lot of texting about headlines usually. That’s a big focus. Headlines cannot be written alone. You need a sounding board.CorinneYou’ve really become a Substack Headline expert, I feel.VirginiaReally? Thank you. Years of  women’s magazine training. CorinneYes, that makes sense. VirginiaIt translates. So we do a lot of thinking about headlines and paywall placement.CorinneNow that you’ve been doing this for three years, I’m curious how things have changed. How is the podcast different now than it was when you started? How is the newsletter different?VirginiaThe most fun difference is that now I do it with you! So, Jessica, who I adore, left and—when did she leave? CorinneI was just thinking about that! I didn’t realize the podcast hadn’t been going on for now very long, because I think I started in October 2021. VirginiaSo the first six months I was just muddling along. I had Jessica, who was fantastic. But this is less her world. She is a really amazing environmental reporter. So when Corinne came on board, I realized, having someone work on the newsletter with me who was also very in the community and gets the issues, would be so fun and useful. And I think makes this work a lot more collaborative and creatively satisfying. I really love that. So the podcast is something we’ve really grown together at this point. Indulgence Gospel has become its own thing and that’s the last year really.CorinneI mean, also, when I started I had a full-time day job, while also doing SellTradePlus.VirginiaYeah. And then when you left your day job, you were like, “Okay, I want to do more with this.” That transitioned us into a different thing, which has been really cool. So that’s a really big change. I think the other thing that I just did not predict and that’s so wonderful is the community! When you write for mainstream media outlets, you know who your reader is in this very abstract way. Women’s magazines would always be like, “our girl shops at The Gap.” And “our girl is career-focused!” There was this marketing rhetoric around who your reader was, what brands she shopped at, how many kids she had, whatever. That was helpful to a point, but not actually reflective of a real human being. The only other job I ever had that felt even remotely close to this was Seventeen Magazine, where teenagers did write to us all the time and as an editorial assistant, a big part of my job was answering reader emails. So I did talk to our readers and really feel connected to them. And I always missed that at every other place I ever wrote for. Especially as a freelancer, you’re just writing the piece. You’re not thinking as much about who the reader is, that’s the editor’s job. So when I started writing a Substack, I was intrigued by the idea that people were building these communities, but I did not think I would be very good at that. I did not think this would be something that people would want from me. I remember doing my first thread and being like, “Well, this will be awkward. No one wants to talk.” And it turns out, a lot of people love to talk! We have our regulars who I feel like I’m really getting to know in the comments section. And that is just spectacular to me and makes me feel really proud of the thing we’re all building together, you know? CorinneIt’s so interesting because in a lot of traditional media, like, for example, The New York Times, the comment sections are such a horrible place. And the comment section on Substack or on Burnt Toast specifically is so great. VirginiaSo lovely. I mean, obviously, the fact that we limit it to paid subscribers helps. We just don’t have drive-by trolls very frequently. We have occasionally been like, “Well that person paid $5 just to yell at us.” And you know what, okay. We’ll take your five bucks. But that’s maybe three times total.And whenever I do go out into the rest of the world, the response is so different. So it’s a real safe haven for me to have Burnt Toast. I always say, as a mom, my favorite thing is my kids’ relationship with each other and how that doesn’t really have anything to do with me. But I’ll just be like, oh my gosh, my kids! when they’re playing together. It makes me so happy. And my favorite favorite thing on Burnt Toast is when the comment section kind of takes on a life of its own and people are talking to each other, giving recs or when we did the where are you from post and people are organizing meetups. Like, what! That stuff makes me so happy. I’m just like, yes. Talk amongst yourselves. Find each other! That’s not something I ever thought I would be good at facilitating, or it’s not something I’d ever thought about doing, but it’s so satisfying.CorinneWhat about the scope of subject matter? Are there things we are talking about now that you’ve never thought you’d be writing about?VirginiaThere are two answers to that. I mean, one is that I initially thought I would only be able to write about body image, eating disorders, weight and health, like Health at Every Size, that sort of niche set of topics. And it’s fun that I’ve been able to be like, “Sometimes I’m going to do a gardening essay!” And obviously when we do reader surveys, it’s not like the most popular topic is the gardening content. But people are sort of happy to go along with like, oh, what conversation does Virginia want us to have? Sure, let’s talk about Stanley Cups. Let’s talk about 1000 Hours Outside, whatever. So that has been really satisfying Not that there was anything wrong with those core topics, but you can get to a point on a beat where you feel like you’re repeating yourself. Or like, “Am I really helping if we always come back to that?” So it’s fun, creatively, to be able to go in other directions. Then the other thing is, I come from what’s called service journalism. Every story you write for a women’s magazine or a parenting outlet, even if it’s an essay, not a reported feature, has to have a takeaway for the reader. It has to have some tips or some service sidebars. So I’m just used to thinking of my writing as something that’s going to help people do X, Y, and Z.And that’s wonderful. This is not me hating on service journalism at all, I think it’s a really valuable genre of writing. But I’ve been interested over the last year in particular, the pieces that are getting the biggest responses are not that. It is more stuff like the Stanley Cup piece did great, or the Huberman Husband essay, which isn’t me telling you how to feed your kids or how to do a thing. It’s just cultural analysis. It’s a think piece, I guess. And those are super satisfying and hard and challenging for me to write, in a really good way. I talked about this a little bit in the piece I wrote about the response the snack cabinet got. I don’t know if I want to say I’ve been getting it wrong, but I think me giving a lot of prescriptive advice about how to feed kids was always a little bit of a wrong turn. Does that make sense?CorinneI mean, yes. Say more.VirginiaWell, I think if we’re primarily here to work on advancing fat rights, then that’s a complicated topic. Because the personal is political. And the way you talk about food and your family dinner table does impact how your kids feel about their bodies and about other people’s bodies. So it is a place of doing activism. But because we also think of how we feed our kids as this health and nutrition issue, there was this kind of problematic thing of people applying a layer of “Virginia should be teaching us how to raise healthy eaters.” And that’s not my job or what I care about or what I’m qualified to do. I think this also speaks to my own evolution, as I’ve become more engaged in fat activism specifically, as opposed to just anti-diet culture more broadly. My first book is much more—I mean, it is an explanation of how we eat. So I’m not like, “How dare people think I have opinions about how we eat!” I wrote this book called The Eating Instinct. I get it. But I think that was part of me grappling with these larger conversations and then in response, I was getting asked really specific questions about what do I do when my kid doesn’t eat vegetables? I don’t think I was ever the right person to answer that question.CorinneYeah, that makes sense. Like, because you wrote a book about eating, people look to you as an expert for advice. And then at some point, giving advice is almost at odds with the larger conversation about body autonomy. VirginiaAnd even that first book is a cultural exploration. It’s not a prescriptive “this is how to feed your kids” book.CorinneYou’re not a public health professional or a nutritionist.VirginiaI mean, I know you really want me to write about my snack cabinet.CorinneAs a person with no kids, I do just find that stuff weirdly fascinating. Probably because I don’t have to face it on a daily basis!VirginiaI mean, I don’t mind sharing with Extra Butter that when I wrote the essay about, "why is everyone trolling my snack cabinet?” I did first write a whole piece explaining, "here’s how I really use my snack cabinet.” And then I was like, “I’m not running it.” And Corinne was like, “Ok but can we run it next week?”CorinneI think deep down all of us just want someone to tell us what to do sometimes.VirginiaBut my whole thing is…that’s diet culture, right?CorinneThat’s what we’re getting at. Advice and body liberation sometimes are at odds. VirginiaThey really are. And I don’t think I understood that. Certainly not when I was writing and promoting my first book, but even in the first year or two of Burnt Toast I think I was still sorting that out. And- the places where people are going to get granular advice about how to feed their kids are often so saturated in diet culture and anti-fatness. So we do really need an another model. And I think those sources exist. I think it’s How to Raise an Intuitive Eater by Amee Severson and Sumner Brooks. I think it’s the most recent edition of Intuitive Eating. I am not the person to give those tools. I am more of the person to be like, “This is what it’s like trying to execute those tools in my own messy life.” And, “Oh, it’s not working for me. I don’t know what else we do.” And, “Let’s talk more broadly about this cultural message.” I’m here to talk about the culture of it, not the what do I think you should be doing? But I have veered into that lane at times. So I think I want to be doing less of that, even though I’m glad that there are some solid resources, like all those Burnt Toast Guides we made. I’m glad to have all that there, if it’s useful to people. But I just don’t want to be put in that box anymore, I guess. CorinneWell, and I think the guides aren’t prescriptive advice really. They’re like, “Here’s a bunch of stuff you could consider.”VirginiaThen I think the other thing is just, I feel like we have a lot more fun on Burnt Toast now. There’s more humor.I do really value deep dives into research on weight and health. I think it’s very, very important. I’m very grateful to someone likeRagen Chastainwho is doing it every single week. And I think I initially thought that’s where readers wanted me to stay. Like, let me explain again why the BMI is trash. Let me explain again causation versus correlation. And, again, I’m glad we have a lot of resources about that on the Substack. I think that’s really helpful. I’m glad we’ve done episodes about that.And I’m glad that I can sometimes write about this TikTok thing or let’s do a style challenge. Maybe that’s, again, the women’s magazine person in me who has always been like, I want to do a little more of everything and have there be fun in it, too.CorinneYeah, that makes sense. VirginiaYou have helped me figure that out a lot, too. Corinne is very fun is what I’m saying.CorinneExtremely fun.What have been some highlights from the past three years? Any guest interviews that have really stuck with you?VirginiaOh, man. This is like when someone asks what you’re reading and your mind just goes blank. I want to know yours first. CorinneOne for me that really stands out is Jessica Wilson. When I listened to her, I was just like, wow, my mind is really changing.VirginiaThat was one of the conversations that shifted me. I really don’t want to be giving prescriptive advice after she pointed out how much our own identities and biases impact the kind of advice we think we should give. When she was like, “Eating disorder treatment doesn’t work for Black women because this is a necessary part of survival,” I was just like, “Oh, okay, I truly know nothing. I can tell people nothing.” That was a really great one.More recently, I’m very partial to the episode about American Girl dolls. CorinneYeah, that was incredible. VirginiaWe definitely do talk about diet culture and how there has not been a fat American Girl doll. That’s important. And we looked at my childhood trauma around Samantha.CorinneWhich was really fun. VirginiaWith many embarrassing family photos. That was a really good one. Another really fun one I loved that was also super useful was Martinus Evans. He’s just a delight. So fun to talk to. And anytime we attack the fitness industrial complex, I feel like I’ve done a good day’s work.CorinneHe was a great podcast guest. I also have really enjoyed some of the authors like Crystal Maldonado. Even when I haven’t read their books. Like, I haven’t read any Crystal’s books. They’ve been on my list for a long time.VirginiaThey are a treat. CorinneI’m sure I will love them. But just really interesting to hear what she has to say even if you haven’t.VirginiaI’m glad you say that. Listeners should know that author interviews are the lowest performers usually. And it really breaks my heart, as an author and someone who’s here to help platform these other really important authors doing good work. I’ve been starting to think about, how do we change up the format of bringing authors on the show?It doesn’t make sense to me, because when we do Friday Threads about books, they are super popular. We are a community of readers. People want to share what they are reading and talk about books. And for whatever reason, the author interviews tend to be some of the lower downloaded ones. I don’t know what it is.CorinneI always wonder if it’s like, people don’t want to listen if they haven’t read the book yet? VirginiaMaybe we need to be clear about no spoilers? But I mean, Fresh Air! Terry Gross interviews authors all the time. CorinneYeah, it’s true. There are podcasts, though, where if I’m just dipping in, I want to listen to someone that I’ve heard of.VirginiaI think it’s also a tension with podcasts, especially when you have a format like ours, where sometimes it’s two hosts chatting and sometimes it’s guest interviews. I think the two hosts chatting often works against the guest interviews because people are like, but I want to hear the friends hang out! I want to hang out with you guys! And then the new person comes in. And everyone’s like, “Well, I don’t know about this new person.” That’s not author specific. That’s just guest specific. Like, even though guest episodes are always free and so the whole list can get them and our episodes are always paywalled, we get way more comments on Indulgence Gospel episodes than we do on guest interviews. I think it’s just it’s fun to chat with your friends.CorinneDo you have a favorite essay that you’ve written?VirginiaI really love a piece I wrote last summer about going to The Plaza with my younger kid and digging into the history of Kay Thompson and understanding Eloise as a kind of radical feminist while also a problematic white lady. It’s all there. That was maybe a little bit of a quieter essay, but it just was such a joy to write. It was really fun doing the research for that one and understanding how are we manufacturing girlhood? How are we marketing this pink princess concept when in fact Eloise is not any of that?CorinneThat was a cool one for me, too, because I got to look up old photos of her and that was really fun. VirginiaYeah, good photo research. What about you? Any essays?CorinneI like the ones about eating dinner. VirginiaThe ones I just said I’m not writing anymore?CorinneYeah. Like dinner table rules and reading at dinner.  VirginiaNotes on Single Mom Dinner? I do like that piece because I feel like I captured a little bit that feels like a scrapbook for me. I’ll read that in 10 years and be like, oh,that year when we were reading at the dinner table. I have affection towards it. I don’t know, I’m curious to hear what other folks think about this. CorinneI think what part of what I like about those is is not that it’s prescriptive advice, but that I’m peeking into how other people do stuff. I’m not a parent. I just think it’s interesting to see what other people are doing. And I feel like sometimes how people are feeding their kids is helpful for me in feeding myself. VirginiaI hear that. I’m curious to hear what other people think about that stuff. I think I’m feeling, as I said in the piece about the snack cabinet, like I cannot keep explaining myself to the world, as a fat mom being asked to justify that. And if I had written a piece about “look how healthy we are like, look what a good job I’m doing,” then that doesn’t make space for the fact that you can be a really good mom who’s not making healthy dinners. Fat people don’t have a moral obligation to do all of that.CorinneRight. And you have faced way more scrutiny than any normal person does, or should have to.VirginiaIt’s hard for me to tell how much is me responding to that, versus how much am I really feeling like this doesn’t align with my fat activism body liberation values. But I do think there’s a little tension there that I’m still trying to figure out how to navigate as a writer.But those dinner pieces are fun to write.CorinneOkay! Let’s talk about The New York Times article.I’m curious to hear a little of the background on how that came to be. How did it work? How much time did this person spend with you? How does being profiled work?VirginiaThis was definitely the most in-depth experience I’ve ever had. I’ve been profiled a few other times and it can vary from basically a 30-minute Zoom conversation with someone to much more time intensive. When The Cut profiled me before the book came out, Erica Schwiegershausen came and spent the day with me as well. We went to lunch and then the photoshoot was happening at the same time. We were just chatting extensively throughout. So it was an interview/photoshoot combo and it was like five hours. And I really loved how that piece turned out.CorinneWas she recording you the whole time?VirginiaYes. I’ve been on the journalist side of this, too and I want to say, it’s very tiring reporting. You do record. You bring your phone, some people bring a backup recorder as well. And you still take some notes while you’re talking to them. But you’re really just listening super intensely trying to figure out what you’re going to be able to use and where you need to follow up. Then you have to go home and go through just hours and hours of recording to find what’s good. There’s often a lot of nonsense.When I used to do a lot more in person reporting, pre-COVID, I would always just be so stressed out. Because often the best conversation would be happening when we’re in a restaurant and it’s really loud. And then I’m like, I’m not getting the recording! Try to remember, try to remember. It’s an exhausting day, on both sides. For The Times piece, we had a pretty extensive conversation off-record ahead of time discussing what the piece would be, and what my boundaries would be, and all of that. And then she came and spent about five hours at my house, first hanging out just with me, and then my kids got home from school, and she stayed through dinner. So she was around all afternoon till like seven o’clock. And then we had multiple follow up phone calls—like probably another four hours over multiple phone calls and texts. It’s a little odd having someone in your home. That feels vulnerable to me, always. And it’s a little awkward. She wanted to get this slice of life of me with my kids. So I was thinking the whole time, “Please have good days!” Like, no  judgment on my kids. Kids are allowed to have bad days. And I was like, “What if this is one of the days when a kid comes home and just needs to have a meltdown?” They deserve that privacy.I did talk to my kids quite a lot ahead of time. I asked, are you comfortable with having this person here? What ground rules do you have? What don’t you want talked about? I got a lot of consent from the kids ahead of time to make sure they felt okay about it. But there’s also the valid argument that children cannot give informed consent because they are minors. So for both of these in-person experiences, the reporters were absolutely lovely in person and really fun to hang out with. It was like talking to a friend. And again, I know as a journalist, you’re deliberately cultivating that atmosphere because people are much chattier and more open when they feel relaxed with you. So it’s very weird for me having been on both sides of it to notice like, oh, I’m getting relaxed and letting my guard down. They kind of want that to be happening. It’s strange. Very strange.CorinneWhen I think about that—because I’m not a journalist, I don’t have either of these experiences. But if I were trying to make someone relaxed, I’d be telling them my own personal stories. But none of that actually ends up in the profile! VirginiaThe Cut journalist did a lot of that. The Times reporter did much less of that, although still did some. I always did a lot of that when I would do in-person reporting because I think it does really build a lot of rapport. I mean, it’s a technique that’s taught in journalism school. Share a vulnerable story about yourself. And it is a strange thing because, yeah, that’s not going to end up in the piece. You’re artificially creating rapport with a total stranger. CorinneI feel like I would just be so exhausted. As an introvert, having someone stay with me? I can’t even.VirginiaYeah, I was tapped out. They’re in my home, so I’m hosting as well. I’ve written about my stress about hosting. So I definitely am like, cleaning my house really frantically beforehand. And thinking, am I offering them something to drink often enough? All of that social conditioning, gendered stuff is coming into play. It’s really intense. I can’t say I totally recommend it. CorinneYeah, that’s fair.VirginiaI think it also can be how you can do really important storytelling. Because you are seeing someone in their space. Just like what you were saying you like about when I write a piece about my family dinner. That enables the journalist to capture that same feeling of we’re in this person’s life with them. And it’s so satisfying. I kind of wish in a weird way that I’d had the experience of being profiled years and years ago—no one would have profiled me, I hadn’t done anything interesting. But it gave me a lot of empathy with my previous sources. Just to be like, oh, there are times where you just want this person to go. I just feel journalists should have to be on both sides of it. There’s a lot of value in that.CorinneThat’s a good point. Was there anything in the article that you felt really good about?VirginiaMy enviable hair.CorinneYes. You did get called out for your incredible hair. VirginiaI’m just glad it got appreciated. I mean, the photos are gorgeous. I really loved the photographer. That was fun. In terms of the rest: It’s a tricky thing, because we do have this privilege of being mostly in the Burnt Toast space these days, so if I go a few months without doing anything in the mainstream, I forget what the reception is going to be out there. I think I both took for granted, and was given reason to believe, that there was going to be a certain amount of empathy and respect for my work. And I didn’t feel was 100 percent communicated in the final piece. There were choices made in the framing of the final piece that felt more tuned towards what will stir up the comments section and what will get a lot of clicks and get this read. And I get it. That is also part of their job, right? Just like earlier, when you were like “you’re really good at Substack headlines.” The reason I’m really good at Substack headlines is because I have spent years as a journalist thinking of headlines that will make people want to read a story. So I think you’re always trying to do two things at once with a profile. You’re always trying to both do your subject justice, and empathetically and respectfully tell a story. And you’re trying to write a piece that people are going to want to read and share. Which increasingly, means a piece that is explosive in some way.And the ways they can make my story explosive—because I’m actually a fairly unexplosive, suburban mom feeding her children snack crackers—are to lean into how radical fat activism is, and to make us all sound a little unhinged, and lean into personal stories about the divorce, and all of that. I think the article is still a net positive in terms of a lot of new folks finding our community and more crucially, I hope, folks are finding body liberation work and fat activism who will benefit from it. And, the immediate fallout of a piece like that is exhausting to weather. CorinneDo you want to talk about any of the fallout? You got a lot of angry emails.VirginiaA lot of angry emails, and a lot of DMs. And I mean, the comment section itself—they had to close it after 800 comments and 95 percent of them were all wretched.CorinneWhen they close the comments, do they tell you they’re doing that? VirginiaOh, no, no, no. And it happened really fast. The piece went up at like 5am on a Sunday morning. And it just got a deluge. And then they closed it. I think they always close it when it reaches a certain amount, probably just so it doesn’t take down the website. This piece just hit that point very quickly, which was a bummer because I think if the comments had moved a little more slowly, maybe Burnt Toast readers or just folks in general who resonate with my work, would have gotten in there as well, and you would have seen more of a mix. But it was very quickly hit by the trolls and very quickly hit by the critics. And then there was no room or time for any other conversation. Jeannie Finlay talked about how it flares white hot and then it dies down. And I’ve been through the flare white hot moment a bunch of times in my career with a piece, or with the book launch last year. The difference this time was with this piece, a lot of the flaring white hot was personal attacks. Critiquing me as a journalist feels really different than making judgments about my kids’ health or my kids’ wellbeing, or should CPS be called, and am I abusing my children. It’s not that I even take it super personally. I know I’m a good mom. I don’t need random men on the Internet to understand that. But it’s more that there’s this itchy feeling of, they’re judging a kind of a character of me. They’re not actually even seeing my real life. They’re seeing my real life filtered through this journalist, filtered through The New York Times Well section, filtered through their own biases. They’re just responding to a funhouse mirror version of my life.CorinneI mean, I truly cannot believe how upset people were that you are giving your kids brownies.VirginiaI am sad for all the children who don’t get baked goods. I mean, of the the all the terrible things you can do to your children, I don’t think baking them brownies is even anywhere on the list. And then of course, we also had the very hilarious second tier coverage of the piece.CorinneWhat was that the headline that was so incredible?VirginiaNothing has made me laugh harder in a long time.CorinneThis is definitely something I didn’t understand until probably last year when your book was coming out. Somewhere like The Cut or The New York Times does an article and then conservative media just picks it up and twists it. VirginiaYes. So The Daily Mail ran a headline: “‘Fat Activist’”—in quotes, always in quotes—“Who Thinks Childhood Obesity Is a Myth Reveals How She Feeds Her Kids Dessert First After Divorcing Fitness Freak Husband Who Lost It When Their Daughter Ate a Stick of Butter.”CorinneI mean, put that on your gravestone. VirginiaI will never not laugh at it.CorinneHow does your ex-husband feel about being called “a fitness freak?”VirginiaI texted him a screenshot of it and he was literally on a run at that moment. He was like, “I see no lies.” I mean, I’m like “this should be our co-parenting Christmas card.” We have laughed about it quite a lot. He did for my birthday bring me a stick of butter with a candle on it and got me a butter knife that says “Keep Calm and Have More Butter.” It’s very cute. So it’s fine. We are fine. Our co-parenting relationship and friendship remains intact.CorinneTrue or false: The divorce was caused by butter.VirginiaI mean, it’s amazing that I have to explain this to the Internet. No, we did not get divorced over a stick of butter. It is true that one of our children—I don’t even know if they ate the entire stick. But they definitely picked up a stick of butter at the dinner table and chewed on it, the way one would eat cheese. They just really enjoyed this butter. And Dan was appalled by that. I was like, “Well, butter was on the table!” And I will die forever on the mountain of butter is basically cheese. To a two year old, it’s the same thing. CorinneI feel like almost every kid has a story about like, yeah, eating butter, as if it were cheese.VirginiaAnd that child, many years later, does still really enjoy butter and would like the butter to be visible. I gave them a bagel with butter for breakfast this weekend and the butter was melted into the bagel. And they were like, “Where’s the butter?” And I was like, I get it. You want the butter to have some presence. But they don’t eat sticks and sticks of it. This didn’t become some ongoing saga of our lives. It’s very funny that the Internet got so upset about that. So no, we did not get divorced over butter or even really have much of a fight over it. Because the piece did focus a lot on that question somehow. And there was a moment of the Internet speculating about our marriage. And I noticed that coming from corners of the Internet that weren’t just straightforward trolls. Like, not just people that I would expect to tear me apart. Bt people who I might have thought were kind of on my side, or that were in the same loose conversation.And I think I just want to say: A core value of body liberation is that you don’t owe anyone your body. And you also don’t owe anyone your life story. I know I have talked and written publicly about being divorced. That does not mean I owe the world any more than I want to say about it.CorinneYeah. I mean, I have never been married. But I have been through a few breakups. And how do you ever distill that down into one thing? VirginiaNo, it’s never one thing. CorinneEven if it were a stick of butter, it’s never just the stick of butter. I don’t know.VirginiaAnd it was not the butter.CorinneObviously.VirginiaIt’s super strange. And this assumption that somebody owes the world more of an explanation or more details than they feel safe giving—it’s just not allowing people to live their lives.CorinneYeah. I feel like it’s one of those things where people just want to know why you got divorced so they can know if they are going to get divorced, you know? They just want to be like, “I want to make sure whatever reason people break up isn’t something I’m doing.” VirginiaWell, I will say: If your kid eats a stick of butter, and your partner wants to call CPS on you, then you should divorce them. That is grounds for divorce. That is not what happened in my life. But if your partner responds the way one of my Internet trolls responded, over a child eating butter, that’s a red flag for you.CorinneYeah. I think I would break up with a partner if I found out that they were commenting stuff like that on the Internet. VirginiaIf you are married to an internet troll…CorinneDivorce them.VirginiaYou deserve better. We want better for you. I think that’s right. If you are married to one of the men who sends me emails calling me a spoiled fat cunt, we want better for you.CorinneOkay. Anything you’re excited about for Burnt Toast this year? Any upcoming changes? Anything you’re trying to accomplish this year?VirginiaWell, I think I’m most excited about . That is the project I am most excited about, Corinne having her own Substack that is in conversation with Burnt Toast. Part of our whole family, I don’t know if sister publication is right. We’ll figure out the right terms. CorinneSpider web? Anthill?VirginiaGarden?CorinneOh, that’s a good one. Garden. We like garden. VirginiaThe Burnt Toast garden is now growing Big Undies.CorinneThe tree has been planted.VirginiaDo you want to talk a little bit about that? Your hopes and dreams? I feel like this is like the new big thing.CorinneYeah, I’m excited. For a long time I have wanted to start a Substack and now seems to be the moment. I’m excited to be making some content about clothes that feels inclusive of different bodies. VirginiaI mean, I was just remembering anIndulgence Gospel many moons ago, we were talking about fashion bloggers. And you just said something about like, “It is perpetually annoying that I’m like, I like this fashion and I’m not going to be able to wear the clothes this person is talking about.” I just am really excited for this to be a place where that is not the case. We need more plus size fashion. You’re not only going to write about fat folks and clothes, but that’s always going to be foundational.CorinneYeah, I mean, that is my lens. VirginiaAnd we want to know, what particular types of clothes do you folks want Corinne to write about? What people who wear clothes that you love do you want to hear more about their style? Send Corinne your ideas and thoughts. Are you going to answer reader questions?CorinneI mean, remains to be seen! Probably? Maybe? Definitely!VirginiaIf you have fashion questions, you may now direct them to Corinne. I am super excited for that.CorinneI’m excited, too. VirginiaAnd over on Burnt Toast I think I’m obviously wrestling with this prescriptive versus not question. But I think the pieces that I’m most excited about are elucidating some phenomenon related to diet culture that helps us continue the divestment work and continue to figure out our own stance on things and our own thought process about stuff.We’re also doing a lot of brainstorming about theme weeks.CorinneI’m super excited about the theme stuff because it’s just nice to be able to look at something a little more like deeply, I guess. We have just done Fat Swim Week. We were talking about doing one in the fall—VirginiaFat travel!CorinneWe’re going to do fat travel.VirginiaSo, more themes. If there is stuff you guys want to hear about, we are here for it. And obviously at some point, I’ll have to do a deep dive butter taste testing. For my haters.ButterCorinneHell yeah. Do you have a Butter?VirginiaI do have a good Butter. I think I’ve talked about becoming a single mom and having only one coffee drinker in the house. So I had a whole journey to figure out my single lady, one cup of coffee solution, which is my little French press.And similarly, my children and I start every day with a big smoothie and I make it in my trusty Vitamix blender that I got as a refurbished blender back in 2014. This thing has been with me 10 years. I hope I get 10 more years out of it. We actually got it at a medical discount because we were using it to make blended food for my daughter’s feeding tube at that point. Vitamixes are expensive! But I’m telling you, I’ve been using a refurbished model for 10 years without any issues. It will stand the test of time. But it’s big. So when the kids go to their dad’s and I don’t need to make a 30-ounce smoothie every morning, I’ve been struggling with the proportions of how to make just the size I want. And then like making too much, and blueberries are expensive. So I just got a Ninja Portable Blender. And I’m so obsessed with it. I took it with us this weekend to Boston because I wasn’t sure if our Airbnb would have a blender and it did not. I was able to make us each individual smoothies in it every morning. It’s like a USB charger situation, so it doesn’t even need to be plugged in all the time. It’s just extremely powerful and effective. I could make my same smoothie, but just make an individual, one person, one portion. It’s holds 16 ounces and it’s super fast and blends really well. And it’s making me so happy. CorinneThat’s cool. Yeah, I definitely would never think that a cordless blender would be cutting it. VirginiaI was extremely skeptical. And I think this is a very diet culture a thing because I’m sure everyone’s using it to make their green smoothies. The marketing picture is people on a beach with it. And I’m not doing for any of those reasons. I just love my morning smoothie. And it’s a very satisfying way to make a one person smoothie without accidentally using a gallon of oat milk.CorinneI have that problem because I live alone. And if I ever want a smoothie, it’s too small for the Vitamix.VirginiaIt can’t work with it, because you didn’t give it enough liquid. This is what you need. What’s your Butter? CorinneI’m a sporadic coffee drinker, I go in and out of it, but when I was traveling recently and not wanting to deal with buying coffee, I got these little instant pour over coffee things from this brand called Copper Cow. It has this really cool little packet and you just like kind of rip off the top and then pour boiling water over it. Then the other really exciting thing is it’s this little pour over coffee and then it just comes with a little tube of sweetened condensed milk. It’s very delicious and easy and travel friendly.VirginiaOh my gosh, these looks so good. Look at us just giving you all a nice travel breakfast setup! That is really fun.---The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and who runs @SellTradePlus and Big Undies—subscribe for 20% off.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!I think I made a mistake calling these instant! It’s apparently “a pre-filled, single serve pour over.” The coffee does not dissolve! It just comes ready to go.