Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark! We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay.

This episode first aired in November 2024, right after the presidential election. We’re now 8 months into Trump’s second term, and continuing to grapple with how America has slid to the right. So the story of a public health advocate and scholar who is now aligned with conservative media feels incredibly timely—especially because many of you are starting back at school this month, and Emily’s take on school lunches is particularly complex. That said, we also want to hold space for how much Emily’s work has meant to so many of us (including Virginia!).

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In these monthly episodes we get into the GOOD stuff like:

Dating While Fat

What to do when you miss your smaller body

Is Kids Eat In Color anti-diet?

And did Virginia really get divorced over butter?

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Virginia

I’m just going to say up front, I am nervous about doing this episode. It is a complicated one. People have very strong feelings about Emily Oster. But we are in our Extra Butter safe space, and I am trusting that.

So Corinne. You are coming in somewhat cold to this topic, because you don’t have kids, and Emily is primarily a parenting expert. What do you know about Emily Oster and her work?

Corinne

I know two things about Emily Oster. One is that she wrote a book about parenting or maybe pregnancy? And my main takeaway about that book is that it’s okay for you to drink a small amount of alcohol when you are pregnant. 

Virginia

Yes. This is a gift that Emily has given to the world. Unquestionably.

Corinne

And I basically just know about that from having friends who are pregnant. Then the other thing I know is that she was involved in some COVID controversies. 

Virginia

Uh huh. 

Corinne

The book came out before COVID, and then during COVID she started to become a controversial figure.

Virginia

She actually had two books come out before COVID, Expecting Better, about pregnancy, and then Crib Sheet, which is a parenting book. Expecting Better actually came out in 2013, the same year my first child was born. So it’s 11 years old. She’s been around for a long time!

Corinne

Did you use those books as a pregnant and child-having person?

Virginia

Well, Expecting Better was published on August 20, 2013 and Violet was born on August 18. So I did not use it for that pregnancy. But I did later read a lot of Emily’s work, and in particular the work she was doing around breastfeeding not being the most essential you-have-to-do-it-or-you’re-a-terrible-mother thing. She did a lot of really great research breaking down some of those myths and showing that the benefits of breastfeeding over formula are not as extreme as we’ve been told. All of that was super helpful to me during my own breastfeeding situations. So yes, she’s definitely been a parenting voice on my radar for a long time. 

Emily is also actually from New Haven, Connecticut, as am I. We are around the same age, but I don’t think we knew each other as kids. But we are both ladies from Connecticut. Emily has a PhD in economics from Harvard. She then went on to pursue research in health economics and is a professor of economics at Brown University. She is a mother of two, and her official bio says, “Emily was inspired by her own pregnancy and lack of clear information to guide her decisions. She decided to use her expertise in reviewing and analyzing data to help other parents navigate those topics. She’s a New York Times best-selling author.”

So we are both 40-something moms, originally from Connecticut. I think the other place our work has overlapped is that we both do some of this work of, “here is this mainstream thing you’ve been told that’s actually quite punitive towards mothers, and what if we looked at the data and flipped some of that on its head.” 

The work she did on pregnancy and breastfeeding was super helpful to me. It’s been super helpful to so many of my friends. My younger sister just had her first baby this summer, and she was reading Expecting Better. So I just want to go into this conversation saying I really think all of that work is valuable. 

Then more recently, as you noted, Emily launched ParentData, which started as a Substack newsletter that she sent out during COVID. Now it is its own standalone website. 

And during COVID she started sending out these newsletters that I think a lot of us, as parents, were living and dying by, because she was helping us calculate the risks. And then she started to push for schools to reopen before a lot of people were ready for schools to reopen. There was a lot of controversy around her takes at that point and how she was calculating risks. And in particular, I think, how she was calculating risks for kids from more marginalized backgrounds. It often started to sound more like she was just thinking about, “I want my kids back in school.”

 It was messy. I’m not going to talk a lot about her COVID stuff today, because we have a whole other issue to work through. But I do want to acknowledge that COVID is when a lot of folks started to feel very divisive about Emily. 

I also want to acknowledge right off the top that Emily blurbed Fat Talk and was a big supporter of Fat Talk and of my work. She’s interviewed me on ParentData twice, once before Fat Talk came out, once after. A lot of the early Burnt Toast community came from Emily’s community. So this is all the more reason why we should have this conversation. There are a lot of Emily Oster fans in our community. There are a lot of Emily Oster critics. We’re gonna talk about all of it. 

Corinne

I feel like we should say the reason that people have been asking us to do this episode is because she has recently joined forces with conservative journalist Bari Weiss and they are doing a podcast together. And there was an episode about childhood obesity? Feeding kids? Which a bunch of people have written to you, with questions about. 

Virginia

The new podcast is called Raising Parents with Emily Oster. It is produced in partnership with The Free Press, which is Bari Weiss’s publishing empire.

Do you want to talk to us a little bit about what The Free Press is, and that whole piece of things before we talk about this episode?

Corinne

Sure, yes. The Free Press is a website started by Bari Weiss. Bari Weiss is a journalist. She was hired by The New York Times after Trump was elected in 2016, in an effort to platform conservative voices at The New York Times. 

Virginia

They were trying to both sides it.

Corinne

Yes. And she notoriously quit with a manifesto-y letter, claiming that she was bullied or not really taken seriously. And then I think after that, she started this website, The Free Press. She’s someone who started out as somewhat moderate, and has become more of a conservative person. She’s very “anti woke,” I guess is what I would say. She’s very pro-free speech and anti-identity politics, that kind of thing.

Virginia

Yeah. I think Emily’s involvement with The Free Press is surprising and not surprising. I think what’s interesting about Emily Oster, kind of all the way along, is that she’s an incredibly smart person. I think her work really connects with a certain kind of smart, data conscious parent or person—especially moms. And I think she would say her personal values or political beliefs should not be in the mix at all, that what she’s doing is not political. And yet, of course, it is political. Health is political. If you’re going to talk about COVID, if you’re going to talk about breastfeeding, if you’re going to talk about—as we’re going to talk about—kids’ weight, it’s going to get political very quickly. 

It’s been interesting to watch this evolution. I think this sort of smart, data driven mom—which I certainly identify as. A lot of those types of moms who would identify as feminist were like, “yes, let me drink during pregnancy.” “Yes, tell me I don’t have to breastfeed.” That felt really resonant to us. And then there was this move in this other direction that’s been subtle, and sort of confusing at times. 

But I think aligning yourself with The Free Press is not subtle or confusing. So yes, we’ve got the new podcast, “Raising Parents with Emily Oster.” And episode three of the new season is called, Are We Feeding Kids The Wrong Foods? And this is the episode that a ton of you have been in my DMs and my email being like, what is happening here? 

So Corinne, do you want to read this quote from the top of the episode? This is from Emily, and it lays out the premise that she took into this project

Corinne

Yes.

While BMI is just a number and doesn’t magically determine health, it is the case that BMI in this higher range is associated with a substantially elevated risk of many metabolic or other chronic illnesses. The United States ranks 12th worldwide on obesity prevalence. The question is, why? And why haven’t we been able to reduce childhood obesity rates?

Virginia

So what’s your thought about just that quick summary?

Corinne

It seems like she’s both saying that BMI is a bad marker of health, and using it to determine that there is a problem.

Virginia

She’s saying the question is, “why do we have high rates of obesity in the United States?” She’s not saying, why should we care? Is that even the question? Is that even the problem? 

Corinne

She’s saying BMI is just a number. And also, let’s use that number to say that we have a problem. 

Virginia

There’s some both/and-ing here that’s uncomfortable to me. And, a refusal to question the basic premise. If we have elevated risks and metabolic and other chronic illnesses, why are we not talking about those illnesses? Why are we focusing the conversation squarely on BMI, which we just acknowledged is not a useful measurement? So that’s the starting point for the whole episode.

I’m not going spend a lot of time explaining why BMI is a bad measurement. I’m assuming a lot of us have that working knowledge, but we can link in the transcript to some background if you are new and are like, but wait a second, I thought BMI was great, and what is the problem? 

I will also link to a really great analysis that Christy Harrison wrote about this episode that we’re going to refer to a few times during this conversation. Because she did dig more into what is really just bad, lazy science that Emily is doing here. So I have a little snippet if you want to read. This is Christy Harrison, MPH, RD now talking about what has kind of gone wrong at face value here:

Corinne

In her previous work, Oster has always harped on how correlation, aka Association, is not causation, and how there are many other confounding variables that can explain these sorts of relationships. Yet in this episode, she takes at face value that the link between BMI and the risk of some diseases automatically means higher weight is unhealthy. In fact, there are many confounding variables to challenge and complicate that narrative.

Virginia

And then Christy links to a whole bunch of other resources that we can include as well. 

Why Is Emily Oster Suddenly Pro–Diet Culture?

So right off the bat, I was just struck by, Wait a second, Emily. My understanding of your work is that you are data driven. You analyze this so carefully, and yet, these basic tenets of good data analysis—correlation, not causation, and understanding the confounding variables—you are suddenly willing to throw out the window in order to do a whole episode about how do we get kids’ BMIs down. 

And then immediately after setting up the problem, she’s like, “We’ve tried all these things, to fight childhood obesity, and none of them have worked.” And she specifically starts to talk about, Let’s Move, which was Michelle Obama’s big initiative in 2008 where she danced with Big Bird and overhauled school lunches and was really focused on, we are going to get the childhood obesity rate down by 5 percent. And instead, that did not happen. Child obesity rates went up. So, you know, by its own metrics, Let’s Move was a pretty big failure. Then Emily also talks about Cookie Monster, who was part of the whole Michelle Obama stuff. There’s a famous Cookie Monster bit where he’s debating whether to eat cookies or broccoli. 

Then she says, “Cookies are very tempting. At the core of concerns about children’s weight is the fact that kids are eating an inordinate amount of unhealthy food.”

Corinne

Yikes. 

Virginia

I’m just already frustrated because we’re leapfrogging wildly. To be fair, the title of the episode is, “Are we feeding kids the wrong foods?” She wanted to do an episode about food. But then why do we need to frame it in weight?

Corinne

So her rise to popularity was for questioning these correlations we have between babies’ health and breastfeeding, or pregnancy and alcohol, but now that it’s about weight…she’s just buying into it. 

Virginia

It’s a really strange pivot. The next chunk of the episode is where Emily starts getting upset about food advertising and talking about how much advertising kids get, which, like, I don’t disagree. Food advertising to children is shady. 

She quotes a mom from Ohio who talks about her kids getting influenced by Mr. Beast to want to drink some sugary energy drink. But then she also starts to blame parents, and in particular, she talks about how the average parent now only cooks four meals per week, as if this is like a major fail.

Corinne

Yikes. I mean, who has time? I might only cook four meals a week.

Virginia

I mean, that’s actually a lot of meals. Like, that’s most weeknights. You figure Friday and Saturday you might do something more fun and you probably need a break some other night. 

Why I Hate Cooking Right Now

Corinne

Especially if you’re working 40 hours a week or more than that. 

Virginia

Or work a job that has you out of the house at dinner time.

There are a million reasons why the average parent only cooks four meals a week. 

What I’m also noticing is this subtle, parent-blaming thread starting to come through. Which, again, feels so at odds with her earlier work, which was so grounded in the data. You can make your own choices about whether to drink. You can make your own choices about breastfeeding. Let’s give people the information and let them make their own choices. This is not that.

Corinne

It also seems like even if you were kind of following her logic up until this point, you could reach a different conclusion. Even if you’re saying, okay, yes, certain chronic diseases are on the rise, maybe part of the problem is the food system. Then leaping to blame parents for not cooking enough is just… tough. 

Virginia

Well, and it’s a very conservative approach, right? To use that angle, as opposed to looking at what are the larger systemic reasons. If we really need all American parents to be cooking dinner, what support do American parents need to be cooking dinner? You need to let people go home from their jobs at four o’clock. There needs to be an entire culture or shift that we have not made, and have made no steps towards. 

Corinne

Yeah, I’m thinking the problem might be capitalism, white supremacy culture, perfectionism. Lack of community care and involvement in raising children. 

Virginia

Yes, yes, yes. Who’s watching your kids while you’re cooking dinner? So many reasons why. Like, relying on American parents—and let’s be honest, we’re saying American mothers to cook dinner, to fight the childhood obesity epidemic? This cannot be the answer, guys. This is some Michael Pollan retrograde bullshit that I can’t believe I’m still having to talk about. 

Corinne

And that’s not even the end.

Virginia

Oh we are nowhere near the end. So the episode then pivots into a weird clip which is not credited, and I could not tell who it was, but it was some body positive influencer talking about the evils of diet culture. It’s a little sound bite she throws in and then Emily responds to the sound bite. So, Corinne, can you read this next block?

Corinne

There is today less stigma about weight, which is good. It’s really good. When I was growing up, I remember how cruel people were to overweight kids, and I know from being a mom that that kind of bullying still sometimes happens. What I think has changed is that such behavior is now considered wrong and despicable, and there is a growing stigma against people who bully in that way, rather than towards the overweight person. But the other thing that’s happened, perhaps inadvertently, is that people, including health experts, have stopped speaking out loud about the real health risks of obesity.

Virginia

Corinne, how do you feel about that the weight stigma is gone now?

Corinne

I mean. Said like a true thin person. Like, how the heck would she know?

Virginia

Well, she just knows. As a mother, she knows? 

Corinne

I really haven’t heard about anyone being stigmatized for bullying fat people. 

Virginia

No, that is new to me.

Corinne

Is there any evidence to back this up? Or is this just pure Emily Oster speculation?

Virginia

Just her musings, I think. I do think that, much like you were saying about the whole Bari Weiss, anti-woke culture, there is a certain group that complains, like, “you can’t even make fat jokes anymore.” In kind of the same vein as, “men can’t even harass their secretaries anymore!” I think it is hard that now we have standards for not being an asshole to people. But I actually don’t think that standard is that rigorous around weight. In a lot of social settings, fat jokes are still pretty accepted. I don’t think that we have made this much progress!

Corinne

This kind of reminds me of the whole #MeToo thing and how people were like, “But Louis CK’s career is ruined!”  

Virginia

How will these white frat boys get to a good law firm after Stanford?

Corinne

Obviously this is speculation on my part, but is she saying this because…you wrote a book? 

Virginia

I fixed it. Did you not know that? Did you not know that my book fixed it? 

Corinne

Is this your fault actually??

Virginia

You’re welcome.

Corinne

You wrote a book about fat stigma, and it stopped existing, and so this is your fault.

Virginia

I erased it, so now you can go back to being mean about fatness, because we have to make everyone thin. That was actually the master plan all along. 

I mean, this was a real heartbreak moment for me, because again, Emily has been personally lovely about my work and supportive of it in many ways in the past.

But I think that a lot of folks who work on “obesity prevention” have started to really grasp that it is important that they name the existence of weight stigma or anti-fatness. Anytime I interview someone who does mainstream obesity research now, they are fully willing to acknowledge that that is a terrible thing. Whereas five years ago, 10 years ago, when I was reporting on these issues, they were not willing to acknowledge stigma was real. They were framing weight as a personal responsibility problem. And now the party line is absolutely, weight is not a matter of personal responsibility. It’s biology—and that’s why we made these drugs. So we can fix it for you. That’s where they’ve gone. But that is not the same as saying that there is no stigma.

Their rhetoric against weight stigma is being used to sell more weight loss, which perpetuates the stigma. 

Corinne

Yeah. I mean, it’s obvious to me that weight stigma still exists.

Virginia

Because you fly on airplanes and buy clothes and move through the world.

Corinne

Because I live in the world. Is there a way to measure weight stigma? 

Virginia

Well, actually, yes. We can link to the interview I did with Jeff Hunger. Jeff Hunger is a weight stigma researcher who I think would be quite surprised to hear that weight stigma no longer exists. 

Can We Conquer Anti-Fat Bias?

Corinne

Yeah, I recall him saying in that episode that there was a lot of proof that becoming aware of stigma and doing implicit bias training didn’t actually get rid of stigma.

Virginia

Yes. They don’t really know yet what works to reduce the stigma from a data perspective, because the traditional things have not been working. Because the stigma has not been going down. 

Then there is a study that came out of Harvard in 2019 which found that while some forms of bias are decreasing—like we are making some progress towards less homophobia, less anti-Black racism, there’s some shift towards neutrality there, not to say those biases aren’t still huge problems because they absolutely are. [Post-recording note: Again, this was recorded before the election!] But we were seeing tiny drops. We are not seeing that drop when it comes to anti-fat bias, and that was the bias in the study that was actually increasing the most. 

Corinne

Oh.

Virginia

Okay, so it’s going to get even worse. Well, I don’t know if worse is the right word? But it’s definitely going to get really weird and super, super retrograde. Something I kept thinking throughout this whole episode was: Did you make this podcast in 2009 because so much of the conversation just feels like, how are we still having this conversation? 

The thing that happens next is Emily brings on Sam Kass, who is the Obama’s former private chef. He made them dinner every night when they were in the White House. And he also partnered with Michelle Obama on Let’s Move. He was kind of like her chef consultant. 

So I want to be clear that Sam Kass is not a nutritionist. He is not a public health researcher. He is not a doctor. He is a private chef who has a lot of opinions about food. He’s also now on the board of Plezi Nutrition, which is Michelle Obama’s fruit juice brand, which I wrote about last year.

Michelle Obama Is Not Coming To Save Us

I don’t consider him a thought leader on the question of our children’s health, because he has no medical or scientific qualifications to be a thought leader on children’s health. But Emily brings him on the podcast and he starts to explain to Emily that his plan was to get into the White House, and the big thing that he and Michelle originally wanted to do was to get rid of the crop subsidies for corn and sugar that have made the American diet so unhealthy. Which, I don’t know how much you followed that story, especially back in the mid 2000s.

Corinne

I remember that being a big Michael Pollan thing. 

Virginia

Totally, totally. And I think that there’s a lot of logic towards changing the way the crop subsidy situation works, and not giving industry so much incentive to grow so much corn.

However, the Obamas were not able to achieve that in Washington. They made zero progress on crop subsidies. And so, as Sam Kass explains to Emily, that actually wasn’t ever the solution. That wasn’t the right thing that they should have done in the first place. So, why don’t you read the Sam Kass quote here?

Corinne

I came running into the White House ready to go, like we’re empowered now we can fix this. It’s not the subsidies that are producing our food environment, it’s our culture. And it’s our culture that has been influenced and shaped by the industry who has pumped billions, probably trillions of dollars, over the last 40 to 50 years to shape our attitudes, norms and behaviors, but fundamentally, our culture is supporting what we choose. I think we have a culture that has separated the connection between what we put in our bodies and the impact it has on our health.

Virginia

So again, this is another way of saying, “it’s our fault.”But what is culture? That is a vague entity.

Corinne

It kind of feels like they were like, “Actually, you know what? It’s too hard to fight back against the billions of dollars that the industry is using to lobby our government, and instead we’re going to blame individual personal behavior.”

Virginia

Which, again, is a weird conservative pivot. And there are lots of food activists and child health activists who have been critical of Let’s Move because of this, because they didn’t get this done. And clearly he has decided that it didn’t matter that they didn’t get it done, because if American moms would just fucking cook dinner, then we wouldn’t have this problem. 

Okay, so that was a lot. But then Emily brings on Pamela Druckerman. 

So Corinne, do you know who Pamela Druckerman is?

Corinne

I do not.

Virginia

Okay. Pamela Druckerman, is best known for writing a book called Bringing Up Bebe. She is a journalist who lives in France and writes about French culture. Bringing Up Bebe —which came out in 2011 so it’s almost 15 years old— is a book all about how the way French children are brought up leads them to be gourmet eaters and the way American kids are brought up leads them to be terrible eaters.

My main memory of her—the book came out before I was a parent, but I remember her appearing on The Today Show wearing a beret. And again, she’s American. But she was living in France and deciding to write about how amazing French children are and how amazing the whole French parenting system is. So it is a book about how to parent like a French person, and how to feed your child like a French person.

Corinne

You know what else I hear is really amazing about France?

Virginia

What’s that?

Corinne

The healthcare and postpartum care and stuff. I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.

Virginia

The government-funded free preschool is probably also a pretty amazing thing. But Pamela Druckerman says no, specifically it’s the way French kids eat. Because, according to her, French kids from the age of like three are capable of sitting through a multi course dinner. They are capable of having dinner later at night. This is somehow super important, I guess, because it makes you cooler if you don’t eat dinner at 5pm? They can behave in restaurants. They don’t need to bring iPads into restaurants. They don’t eat Goldfish. They don’t need sippy cups, they are eating like tiny gourmet adults at all times.

Corinne

This also reminds me of the French Women Don’t Get Fat thing. 

Virginia

Correct, correct. 

Corinne

It’s also just like, what? So the solution is just we all moved to France? Or…?

Virginia

Yes, yes, that is one solution on the table.

Corinne

Or we get government-funded childcare? 

Virginia

That would probably do so much more. That never gets suggested in this episode. Emily never suggests that the government should fund child care. But she does talk to Pamela for a long time about how the French people get their kids to like food.

Pamela explains that you can make kids like vegetables, if you just tell them they are delicious and serve them sitting down at a table.

So that’s some really useful advice for all of us. 

Corinne

Yeah, it notoriously works great to just tell someone they like something they don’t.

Virginia

“Carrots are delicious!” I can just imagine my children staring at me in absolute disgust. 

So Emily responds to Pamela talking about the carrot thing by saying, “I can hear all the American parents now, but what about my picky eater? In their defense, there’s pretty clear data that between the ages of two and six, children get pickier, but France has a fix for that!”

And then Pamela explains what the fix is. This is a really long quote, but do you want to read this?

Corinne

Partly, what happens in France is that kids don’t eat between meals. So when they come to the table, they’re hungry. You kind of learn from an early age to tolerate not starvation level hungriness, but like having a slight pit in your stomach where you want to eat, and that pit has not been satisfied. So you get to the table and you’re more apt to eat what’s put in front of you because you’re hungry for it. You haven’t been snacking. You know, your mom didn’t give you a banana 20 minutes ago, because you were whining, she said, We’re going to eat in 20 minutes. Go play and come back, and then the first thing that’s served in this moment in the meal is a vegetable. It’s not rocket science, any of this.

Virginia

I want Pamela to come to my house and talk to my children 20 minutes before dinner. I just am so annoyed about this! I don’t know. Tell me what you’re thinking.

Corinne

It just sounds like if your kids are hungry enough, they’ll eat vegetables.

Virginia

Yes, and that they should be accustomed to walking around with a pit in their stomach all the time because you don’t let them have snacks.

Corinne

Hungry children are annoying. 

Virginia

They are!  

Corinne

I mean, even just speaking for myself, I am not the nicest, funnest, smartest person when I’m hungry.

Virginia

Nope, nope. I find this really insidious, this idea that we should teach kids to tolerate hunger is a really creepy notion to me. because I think any girl who came of age in the 90s has a lot of experience with learning to, quote, tolerate hunger. And it didn’t work out great for us. This is not the goal. This is a dieting behavior. 

Corinne

Isn’t the whole thing that when you feel really hungry, that often backfires and ends up with like bingeing or overeating?

Virginia

It just seems like you’re teaching kids to live with this experience of deprivation, which some kids bodies might do totally fine with, right? People get hungry at different rates. There are people who can eat only three times a day, and that works really well for them, and that’s awesome. But that doesn’t mean that’s going to work really well for everybody. And little kids in particular have small stomachs that empty fast. They don’t want to go six hours without eating. That is going to be meltdown city.

Corinne

It’s also like, when does this start? Because I don’t think anyone’s telling breastfeeding mothers, “Wait until your baby is starving and has a pit in their stomach to feed them.” You know?

Virginia

I think as soon as they’re off, breast milk is when it starts. Because she talks about being at the playground at 10am with the toddlers, and nobody’s carrying around little bags of Cheerios because the kids don’t expect to have snacks at the playground. Because they know they’re going to wait till they go home and eat lunch. I drive around in my Subaru at all times with a box in the back of my car filled with snacks. And we don’t always need them. It’s fine. But I don’t want to get caught somewhere with a hungry, grumpy child. If I’m sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office and it’s taking 40 minutes when I thought it was going to take 15, I’m really glad to have that bag of Goldfish. 

She’s equating snacking with sloth and excess when it’s just like parenting your child, responding to their needs, recognizing that they are getting hungry, and maybe you are too, and everyone will feel better with a snack.

Corinne

Yeah, it feels like a confusing solution.

Virginia

And again, just not very replicable. She describes the way the French schools serve lunch and how it’s this very elaborate presentation, and they get three year olds to sit around a table and use silverware. Nobody is trying that in the United States. Even if there are lessons we can learn from that, nobody is attempting to replicate that here. So any individual parent trying to replicate that at home is just making their lives really complicated.

Corinne

This is where we get into the systemic versus personal stuff again, too. Maybe it works in France because they have a totally different system. Maybe parents have more energy to tolerate kids screaming when they’re hungry because they’re not working 60 hours a week. Maybe kids are less hungry when they get home from school because they have a nice five course meal at school. You can’t take one part of the system and and bring it over here and just blame parents for not doing enough. 

Virginia

Exactly.

So then Emily decides she needs to find an American mother who is doing this so we can all learn from her. She brings in a woman named Ellie, who I think we would affectionately call an almond mom. Ellie never lets her kids buy the school lunch. She cooks from scratch at home. They are a vegetarian household. She doesn’t shop the middle of the grocery store. She only shops the perimeter, and she doesn’t let her kids have fast food or really, any processed food. Do you want to read this quote? 

Corinne

Wait, I need more information. Is Ellie, like a friend of Emily’s? Who the f is Ellie?

Virginia

No. She’s just a mom. Sprinkled throughout this episode, she just brings in regular moms to share their stories of feeding their kids. Her producers probably cast around to find people.

Corinne

Um, does she also share Ellie’s income?

Virginia

She does not.  

Corinne

Okay. Anyways, Ellie says about her children. 

They say, can we have Cheetos and mac and cheese? And we’re like, there’s nothing in that that nourishes you. Every single element of that meal is chemicals. So we might look at the box or something and talk about the difference between the way chemicals make things taste good and just the taste of food.

Virginia

So to be clear, this quote is presented with zero context or follow up, even though it contains wildly inaccurate statements. First of all, all food is chemicals, water is a chemical, air is a chemical. 

Christy Harrison broke this down really clearly about why Emily should have called out the chemical thing as just being blatantly wrong. You cannot say that mac and cheese contains more chemicals than homemade pasta. They are all foods. 

So Emily is bringing in this woman’s story and holding her up as an example, even though the woman’s position is “no processed foods, no matter what.” But Emily has already written about the fact that the processed foods debate is overblown and the health risks have not been proven by the data.

Corinne

Yeah, it’s also like, what is the proof that this parent is doing something better? That her kids aren’t fat?

Virginia

Yeah, that’s a great point. We never hear actually any details about her kids. But I’m going to go out on a limb and guess they aren’t fat just because I don’t think Emily would have brought in the mom of a fat kid and held her up as an example.

Corinne

But also, just because the kids aren’t fat now doesn’t mean that they won’t be fat someday.

Virginia

It also doesn’t mean they’re not freaking losing their minds and eating all the Cheetos when they go to their friend’s house.

Corinne

Yeah, they go to your house and eat nine Oreos. 

Virginia

You don’t let them buy school lunch and you control the food in your house, but your kids are growing up and going out into the world where all of this food is—and you have been telling them that it’s poison and they shouldn’t want it, and yet they know it tastes good.

And Emily really celebrates that this mom says, “we have a dialogue about it. And we always explain why something is bad and they can’t have it.” And that is held up as if, that’s good communication between the parent and child. But it reminds me a lot more of the protein mom weighing her food and explaining to her daughter why she’s weighing her food. Just because you’re giving your child a lot of information about your food decisions does not mean you are teaching them to have a healthy relationship with food. 

Protein Moms and the "Eating Enough" Myth

The other reason I know Ellie’s kids are not fat is then because Emily does want to hear from the mom of a kid in a bigger body. So she brings on Karen, and Karen has a six year old in a bigger body who she’s really worried about in terms of feeding her child. 

And Karen’s story in this episode really breaks my heart, because she’s the only person in this whole episode who has directly experienced any anti-fat bias. She talks about having experienced herself growing up, and then how it’s kind of doubled since she had a child who’s in a bigger body. She’s constantly made to feel like she’s doing something wrong, that it’s a moral failing that her daughter is in a bigger body. She also talks a lot about her guilt that she had to formula feed her daughter as a baby, and how she was constantly wondering if she was overfeeding her or if formula is the reason why she’s bigger.

She says the constant thought in the back of her mind was, “Are you giving your baby too much food?”

Corinne

Oh, that’s so sad.

Virginia

It’s so sad. I’ve heard that story a lot, that that is the message, especially parents of bigger babies get around formula. And it’s just, I mean, to your point earlier, no one would say to a breastfeeding mom, are you feeding them too much? Like it’s such hypocrisy.

This clip, I think, was Emily’s attempt to throw a bone towards the importance of combating anti-fatness, because Karen does sound like she’s really trying to push back against that pressure. She wants to raise her daughter to feel good about her body. She tells a story of a kid at a birthday party called her daughter fat, and her daughter was just like, we don’t talk about people’s bodies. And good for that kid, for handling that so well. So she sounds conflicted, but like she’s trying to not raise her daughter to feel ashamed about all of this. 

But then Emily just kind of drops that story and gives no support for that perspective. And she makes this really odd speech. So another long one for you to read, Corinne.

Corinne

Karen’s experience with her daughter brings up the bigger question, how much of obesity and overweight is in our control and how much is just biological? Shaming people for being overweight is unequivocally wrong, but sometimes, especially in recent years, the goal of trying not to offend people has led to a shift in the conversation and a lot of confusion about the very real effects of obesity on health.

You might hear it’s possible to be healthy at Every Size. While yes, it’s absolutely possible to be healthy at a range of weights and sizes. And no, not everyone needs to be a size two to be healthy. And in fact, for some people, a size two would mean they are not healthy. But it’s also true that, on average, many diseases and health complications and health outcomes are more likely for people who are obese.

Virginia

So again, it’s like, “Don’t shame people. Shaming people is so bad. Also, people are so unhealthy if they’re fat.”

Corinne

She’s saying people have become scared to say that the problem is being fat or something. 

Virginia

Yes, yes. They’re being silenced. And again, I think every fat person who’s been to the doctor really feels like that message isn’t getting out to us.

Corinne

Right? And again, the correlation versus causation thing, she’s implying that all of these diseases, health complications, and health outcomes are the cause of obesity, when we really don’t know that.

Virginia

Just to break down correlation causation further: When we say these diseases are more likely for people with high BMI, we don’t know that the high BMI is what causes the increased risk for thes diseases. We know that these two things happen together in some cases, but we don’t understand the relationship. 

So it could be that the diseases cause the weight increase. It could be that the weight increase sometimes causes the diseases. It could be that they are two unrelated things, but they have a shared root cause.

And in every one of those scenarios, the concern should be the disease, not the body size. What can you do for the disease? And if that changes body size, fine. But if it doesn’t change body size, that doesn’t mean you’ve failed if you can make improvements on the disease.

I feel like I have been making a version of that speech for 10 years now, and yet this episode is still out there, so that’s fine. I’m tired. 

Corinne

It just sucks because it felt like Emily Oster was someone who could wrap her head around that.

Virginia

I did think that.

But part of why I think she is not wrapping her head around that anymore—at least in this episode,—is because she then brings in another expert, this guy, Robert Davis, PhD, who is the author of The Healthy Skeptic. He is a health journalist with a public health PhD, but again, he’s not a doctor or a researcher. He writes mainstream, commercial books. 

But if you didn’t understand his background, you would interpret him in this episode as being the voice of medicine and science. He is brought in as a very credentialed expert who we are going to take seriously as having the final word on this topic. And this is what Robert Davis has to say about Health at Every Size:

Corinne

The pendulum has swung too far when it comes to the idea of body positivity and HAES. The effort to fight those ideas from diet culture is a good thing. But if we then say, well, let’s just forget about promoting weight loss or promoting a healthy weight and let’s just say people should be able to sort of eat what they feel like and eat dessert at dinner and go with intuitive eating and what they feel like eating. I think that’s a big mistake, because, again, we know that these foods that we’re talking about are designed to trick our brains and make us want more of them.

Virginia

So, it’s great to fight back against diet culture, but don’t go so far as to eat dessert at dinner. That’s a bridge too far for Robert Davis.

Corinne

Fighting diet culture is good, but we shouldn’t go far as to say that weight loss isn’t good.

Virginia

It’s unclear what he wants to fight from diet culture, because he really wants to keep quite a lot of diet culture. And I should also say Robert Davis just published an article on The Free Press, with the headline, “Diets are Bad. Ignoring Childhood Obesity is Even Worse.” The subhead is “Activists tell parents not to fat shame an overweight child, or make them go on a diet, but parents who refuse to tackle the issue are putting their kids’ lives at risk.”

And by activists, he means me, because he calls me out in the article as a “prominent ‘fat activist,’” who he thinks is getting everything wrong about this. So obviously, Robert and I are not going to, like, go to dinner and hang. 

Corinne

Even if we agreed that child obesity was a problem, there’s still not a solution. Dieting or putting your kid on a diet isn’t going to solve it. So it’s just very confusing to be like, “parents aren’t fighting back against this thing.”What does Robert want us to do? 

Virginia

I’m glad you asked. Let’s go to his article, because he does have a lot of a lot of specific ideas that I will try to read with a straight face. So he says: “Avoid restrictive diets. They don’t work and they can make the problem even worse. Instead, children should be encouraged to eat mainly whole foods, including colorful fruits, veggies, beets, beans, nuts, seeds, fish, lean poultry and whole grains.”

Children, famously fans of seeds.

Corinne

And fish. 

Virginia

That’s an easy sell. 

Virginia

“Involving kids in grocery shopping and cooking their own food gives them a sense of agency and will get them excited about eating well and using cookie cutters to slice fruits and vegetables into fun shapes like hearts and stars, where serving veggies with dips can make these foods more enticing.”

Corinne

This is really reminding me of Kids Eat In Color.

The Ballerina Farm of Kid Food Instagram

Virginia

Yes, yes, it is. 

Corinne

And once again, I feel like the problem is capitalism. Like, sure, I will cut celery into stars if I don’t have to have a job.

Virginia

I cannot listen to a white man tell women to cut their kids fucking vegetables into hearts and stars. I cannot do it.

I am incandescent with rage about this. I am sorry.  Mothers have enough to do. We do not need your guilt trip. I do not need to hear that I need to stop using Instacart and take my kids to the grocery store, an experience that will make all of us cranky and tired.

Corinne

Do we think that Robert J. Davis has children? 

Virginia

He probably does? But does he have a wife who does all of this? Also probably yes.

This advice is so simplistic. It is so ignorant of the context of family’s lives.

If you have a kid who is picky, I mean, genuinely picky and rigid around food choices.

If you have a neurodivergent kid who’s reliant on a lot of processed foods as the safe foods.

If you are on a tight budget.

There are one thousand reasons that you cannot eat like this.

He does go on to say, “How about we also get rid of screen time?” So that’s another helpful suggestion. “Have a regular game day on weekends where the entire family enjoys a fun physical activity out of the house, like hiking or bike riding.”

Corinne

My God. I just really feel like these people don’t live in the real world.

Virginia

Like, my kid’s dad takes them hiking every weekend. They may still end up in bigger bodies. If it’s something you all enjoy, that’s wonderful. This may not move the needle on body size, because body size is not determined solely by lifestyle habits. And if you’re telling people that they have to do all of these things to control body size, and it doesn’t work, that’s going to backfire and cause bigger problems.

So I’m just very tired. I’m very tired of all of this. 

Corinne

I am determined to find out if this guy has kids, and just for the record, he’s not wearing a wedding ring in his videos. I just feel like there’s no way this guy is speaking from personal experience, you know? Like he’s just spouting bullshit that he read somewhere. 

Virginia

He talks about having been in a bigger body himself and his mom putting him on diets as a child. And I have all the empathy in the world for that. But please do not think you are helping anybody by telling us to cut fruit into a fucking heart shape. I will take my cookie cutters and melt them down. My child would not eat a kiwi if it was shaped like a star if I paid her. It’s not gonna happen.  

So, I think it’s pretty clear where we land on all of this, but Emily does have one final speech in the episode which sums up where she is landing on this. And we can read that and then have feelings. 

Corinne

What will it take to get more vegetables and fruits into the hands of kids and families? That, in my view, is the core question. But the cultural problem is just as pernicious. As we learned from Pamela in France, Carrots are just delicious, objectively. In America, that’s not a fact. I’d say here, Doritos are objectively delicious, and therein lies the problem.

What would it take to have more parents like Ellie who simply refuses to give her kids fast food, who prioritizes fruits and vegetables for them because she knows and has told her children that that’s what’s good for bodies. She’s setting them up for a much better chance at good health.

Virginia

She’s also setting them up for a much higher risk of an eating disorder. I mean, the fact that we’re ending the episode by saying Ellie—who is the most restrictive parent in the episode—is doing it right, really says a lot to me about where Emily is landing on these issues now. And, just how useful this whole conversation could be to any parent, if the takeaway is you need to be rigorously cooking from scratch, getting your kids to like fruits and vegetables at any cost.

None of this is new advice. None of this has worked before. This is the Let’s Move playbook, which Emily herself acknowledges did not do anything to move the needle on childhood obesity. 

Corinne

Yeah, and this whole thing about it being like a cultural problem is so mind boggling to me, because when I hear “but it’s a cultural problem,” I’m like, yes, it’s a systemic problem. How is Ellie telling her kids that carrots are delicious solving a cultural problem? That’s just one person? 

Virginia

You’re defining culture as social systems and structures, and she’s defining culture as personal preferences. And that is not accurate. This whole pivot into personal responsibility, again, I feel like, is really at odds with her earlier work. And it’s just very aligned with The Free Press and with being in a more conservative media outlet, which is what’s happening here. And I’m sorry to see it.

Again, I do think Emily is fundamentally a smart person. I’ve had a lot of respect for her work over the years, and it’s hard to see this transition. 

The last thing I’ll say is on a personal note: Emily, if you listen to this episode, I hope you’re still letting your kids eat their Halloween candy. Because one thing I did achieve a few years ago was persuading her not to count out her kids Halloween candy anymore. And I just hope you haven’t changed on that one, because I really want your kids to enjoy their candy. 

All right, well, I’m excited to hear what everyone thinks about all of this. I’m sure there will be many diverse opinions. We welcome you in the comment section.

This section contains affiliate links. Shopping our links is a great way to support Burnt Toast!

Corinne

For my Butter, I want to shout out this new collaboration between Universal Standard and Jordan Underwood. They did send me a pair of pants and a tank top for free, So little caveat there. And I will say that I tried them on and then ordered some more stuff, so…

Virginia

They sent it for free and and were effective in getting you to buy more of it! 

Corinne

Yeah, it definitely worked. It’s a little capsule collection of some clothes that I think Jordan had something to do with designing, and they’re more androgynous pieces. There’s a pair of cargo pants and a cropped tank and a flannel and some sweats. But they’re really cool, and I think people should check them out.

Virginia

I am obsessed with the crop tank. I think I need it.

Corinne

Yeah, it’s really nice because it’s both high neck, which I feel like can be kind of hard to find in a tank, and it hits right at your pants waistline. 

Virginia

It’s like, the perfect amount of crop. It’s not belly-baring, which would be fine, but we’re getting into colder weather here. It’s just the right fit. 

Corinne

Also seems like it would be really great to wear under stuff, because sometimes you don’t want a long tank under a shorter shirt.

Virginia

I’m very excited to check out the collaboration. 

Corinne

What’s your Butter?

Virginia

My Butter is something I have talked about many times, but it is not in the official library of Butter, which seems important to remedy. So my Butter is Meredith Dairy Marinated Sheep and Goat Cheese, which is the world’s best cheese. I will die on this mountain forever. I thanked this cheese in the acknowledgements of my book, 

Corinne

Oh my gosh. 

Virginia

I thanked other people, too, Corinne. I thanked you! But you know, I did shout out the cheese. And when I updated the paperback edition, I continued to shout out the cheese. Stand by that forever.

It is a really good creamy goat slash sheep cheese, and it comes in this really delicious oil. Again, I’ve talked about it so many times. I feel like people are gonna be like, yeah, yeah, we know the cheese. But I just need it to be officially in the records as the best cheese. 

Corinne

I have never tried it, so I am going to search this out. 

Virginia

I know Costco sells it. It’s not a super hard to find thing anymore. A lot of grocery stores are carrying it. I know at Costco you can even get a bigger jar. I get it from a local grocery store, but I’ve definitely seen it more and more places. Because whenever I talk about it, people around the country tell me how much they love this cheese. So I know people in Wisconsin are having it, people in Oregon are having it.

It is a great cheese, and you can eat it straight. You can put it on toast with some jam of some sort. It’s very delicious. I also like to as when the jar is almost empty, save the like final bit of cheese in the oil and use that in pasta or salad dressing, and it’s life changing and delicious. 

Corinne

That sounds really good. 

Virginia

Yep, I’m just glad to have it officially in the record of butter. That was something I needed to remedy, so thank you.

Today Virginia is chatting with Anna Maltby. 

Anna is a health journalist, editor, content strategist, personal trainer, and author of the newsletter How to Move. Anna also created Pilates For Abortion Funds, a monthly online class that has raised about $30,000 for abortion funds since July 2022. She has been an ACE-certified personal trainer since 2015, and a certified mat pilates instructor since 2021. She’s also a certified prenatal and postpartum exercise specialist. Anna lives in Brooklyn with her husband, two kids, and two extremely cute cats.

Anna was previously a guest on one of Burnt Toast’s most popular ever episodes, The Myth of Visible Abs. What’s so great about Anna—and what makes her different from a lot of fitness writers and personal trainers out there—is that she’s so smart about bodies, she’s truly anti-diet and size neutral as a fitness professional…and, she’s been in the belly of the beast. Anna worked in women’s magazines with me long enough to know all the diet culture tricks. So she’s one of my favorite people to talk fitness with, because she can dissect what is marketing, what is diet culture, and what is actually maybe useful for your body.

Two content warnings for today:

1. We are going to talk about specific forms of exercise. This will always be through a weight neutral lens, but if you’re recovering from an eating disorder or just otherwise in a place where exercise is not serving you, please take care.

2. CW for Butter, because we ended up talking quite a lot about toilets! And while I feel it’s all incredibly practical information and you’re going to thank me for my great Butter recommendation this week, I do realize that toilet conversation is not for everyone. It’s usually not for me! So I get it! You’ve been warned.

To tell us YOUR thoughts, and to get all of the links and resources mentioned in this episode, as well as a complete transcript, visit our show page.

If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber — subscriptions are just $7 per month! —to get all of Virginia's reporting and bonus subscriber-only episodes. 

And don’t forget to check out our Burnt Toast Podcast Bonus Content! 

Disclaimer: You’re listening to this episode because you value my input as a journalist who reports on these issues and therefore has a lot of informed opinions. Neither my guest today nor I are healthcare providers, and this conversation is not meant to substitute for medical or therapeutic advice.

FAT TALK is out in paperback! Order your signed copy from Virginia's favorite independent bookstore, Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the US!). Or order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, or Kobo or anywhere else you like to buy books. You can also order the audio book from Libro.fm or Audible.

CREDITS

The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Follow Virginia on Instagram, Follow Corinne  @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing and subscribe to Big Undies.

Our theme music is by Farideh.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism. 

Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark!

We are Corinne Fay and Virginia Sole-Smith, and this month we’re discussing… Things Thin People Say. 👀

The list includes:

⭐️ The most bananas comment about swimsuit shopping

⭐️ That thing where they think their boyfriend’s clothes will fit you

⭐️ How Caroline Chambers’ thin privilege shows up

⭐️ Our thoughts on Haley Nahman’s sugar addict essay.

⭐️ And more!

To hear the whole thing, read the full transcript, and join us in the comments, you’ll need to join Extra Butter, our premium subscription tier.

Extra Butter costs just $99 per year. (Regular paid subscribers, the remaining value of your subscription will be deducted from that total!)

Extra Butter subscribers also get access to posts like:

Is weight loss surgery the new Ozempic?

Does Dr. Becky have a privilege problem?

Is Kids Eat In Color anti-diet?

And did Virginia really get divorced over butter?

And Extra Butters also get DM access and other perks. Plus 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, and cc [email protected].)

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.

Corinne

So, today we’re going to talk about the fatphobic things that people say without realizing it. And I think any fat person you talk to probably has an example of this.

Virginia

Or a dozen examples of this.

Corinne

Or a dozen examples of this.

We asked Burnt Toast readers to share stories. And we’re going to talk about a couple of examples that we stumbled across recently…

Virginia

On the Internet.

Corinne

In the course of our jobs.

Virginia

We are going to talk about Caroline Chambers. We are going to talk about Haley Nahman. We’re going to get into some stuff that’s been happening with the thin folks.

Obviously, since I just mentioned some high profile people, you might think this is going to be a really juicy, gossipy episode. That’s not really the goal here.

I think of this as more an opportunity to have some moments of catharsis. As fat folks, we so often have to endure these comments, which can be unintentional but still really harmful. And that’s something we all live with. So it’s just good sometimes to list them and be like… Yep. That happened.

And hopefully, this is instructive for thin listeners. If you’re listening to this podcast, I assume it’s because you are interested in divesting from diet culture. You are interested in unlearning anti-fatness. And that is not always easy or comfortable work. Sometimes we have to be willing to look at ourselves. You might realize, “wow, I did say a not cool thing, and that was my thin privilege.” And I hope the place you go with that is: I didn’t even realize it was harmful. But now I know, so how can I show up as a better ally?

Corinne

I also think a good thing to mention about that is that, as fat people, we experience thin people making these type of comments. But as humans, we also make these types of comments about other groups of people. I’m sure I’ve made an offhanded comment that was harmful to someone who’s Black, or to someone with kids. You know?

Virginia

You offend me all the time, as a person with kids.

Corinne

I am so sorry. I try not to. I love kids.

Virginia

You have literally never said anything offensive about children.

Corinne

Well, I just can imagine—we don’t always have other people’s sensitivities in mind.

Virginia

Right. The whole thing about privilege is it makes you unaware of other experiences. This is why we have to look at it.

Corinne

So anyone who does this is not bad or evil. It’s a normal part of life and still worth talking about.

Virginia

OK, soI think I first sent you the Caroline Chambers piece we’re going to chat about a few weeks ago. She wrote about what she was wearing during her fourth pregnancy. It’s called Getting Dressed Is Kind of Hard Right Now, and that is very relatable. Getting dressed during pregnancy is very hard, no quibbles with that.

Corinne

I was going to pretend that I had just organically stumbled across this article about getting dressed while pregnant, Virginia.

Virginia

How would you?

Corinne

I was going to be like, “I write about clothes… Caroline Chambers, of whom I’m a fan. I own her cookbook.”

Virginia

All true. But I am the one who was like, “Oh, did you see that piece?” Because there were a few comments in it that that made me pause.

Corinne

The comment that made me pause—which I then quickly highlighted and restacked—was Caroline saying, “I think loose dresses like this polo number”—with a link to the dress— “are really cute while pregnant, until your stomach extends past your boobs, and then it starts to look like you’re wearing a circus tent. I’ve reached circus tense status.”

Virginia

And you said, “here to tell you that it is, in fact, cute to wear loose dresses when your stomach extends past your boobs, whether you’re pregnant or not.” Which I support 100 percent.

Corinne

I stand by that.

Virginia

This is just a perfect example of these kinds of comments. When you are a thin person and you gain weight during pregnancy, it’s a disorienting experience. Your body feels very unfamiliar. I mean, everybody’s body feels unfamiliar during pregnancy, but this aspect is disorienting. Suddenly, your shape is more similar to a shape you have been told is not desirable, and so you have to reckon with that. And I don’t want to say what her intention was, but I read this and thought, “She’s saying this, and she doesn’t know what she’s saying.” Caroline Chambers probably hasn’t considered how many people in the world have stomachs that extend past boobs. That’s a pretty common way to have a body regardless of pregnancy status.

Corinne

Yeah, I think it was one of those kind of slightly self-effacing comments that you don’t realize can be hurtful. You think you’re critiquing yourself, but… there’s actually a lot of other people that fall into that category.

Virginia

I think we’re going to see this as a recurring theme. One of the most common ways thin people display their anti-fatness is by saying something critical about themselves, without realizing they’ve just described every fat person’s regular body.

Corinne

I do also want to say that I posted this on the Substack social media, and Caroline Chambers saw it and responded to it and edited the post and was apologetic.

Virginia

Props for that. She wrote, “I’m sorry that this clearly came off in a way I didn’t mean it to. I love your Substack, and I did not mean this to be a global commentary. I’ll do better.”

Yeah, we want people to be doing better. Also, read Big Undies, everyone. Corinne’s Substack is great, and I’m glad Caroline knows that.

Corinne

Yeah, there’s definitely a lot on my Substack about wearing loose clothing.

Virginia

Your recent loose clothing roundup definitely inspired me to do some shopping for big loose clothing. And it’s entirely possible I will be mistaken for pregnant in those outfits, and that’s fine. I will be very cute.

Another high profile one we wanted to chat about is a recent piece by Haley Nahman. The essay is called Making Bad Decisions On Purpose. This one is really interesting because there is anti-fatness in it and there’s a lot that I agree with. And this is another common theme where I think people get it like, 40 percent or 60 percent right, but there’s still that piece they haven’t looked at because they haven’t had to look at it.

Corinne

This one I had complicated feelings about.

The essay was about Haley’s experience eating sugar. She frames it as an almost compulsive relationship with eating sugar. This one was complicated for me, brought up a lot of feelings. Because I think a lot of it is very relatable! But it’s one of those things where she’s talking about her own experience, her own eating habits, and it’s just hard to not extrapolate out into your own experience.

The part that really stuck with me after I read it, and which I had to follow up on, was where she lists out what she’s been eating:

On heavy rotation over the last year: homemade chocolate chip cookies the size of saucers; bags of sour gummy bears or chocolate-filled cookies shaped like panda bears; pints of Häagen-Dazs ice cream finished in two to three sittings; salted brown-butter rice crispy treats

She goes on and on. She’s listing all this stuff as if it’s a lot.

Virginia

It’s like, you should be scandalized that she’s eating.

Corinne

Another thing in there is “chopped up green apples dipped in greek yogurt mixed with peanut butter.” But that’s not a sugar snack.

And then this one thing is driving me freaking nuts. I was like, “a pint of Haagen Dazs finished in two to three sittings?”

Virginia

That’s how long a pint lasts.

Corinne

I went to my freezer. I opened my freezer. I pulled out a pint of Haagen Dazs to see how many servings it contains. It’s two and a half! What the heck? How much ice cream does she think you’re supposed to be eating? A tablespoon? I don’t know. I was just like, what the heck? A pint is two cups.

Virginia

And: Even if you’re finishing a whole pint in one sitting, that’s not necessarily a destructive eating habit. Portions are very personal and different for all of us. She’s just talking about eating ice cream several times a week. The way people do.

This section reminded me a lot of that Caity Weaver essay that was in the New York Times a few months ago, which I wrote about.

• How That Sugar Addiction Piece Became a Journey Into Hell

I understand that thin people have complicated relationships with food and dieting. understand that they may have internalized diet culture messaging so they think that eating ice cream is bad and that taking three sittings to finish a pint is a problem when it’s not. Like, I get that. And: A fat person could not publish an essay listing out the food they’d eaten without expecting serious blowback.

I couldn’t be in the New York Times telling people that my children ate processed snack food crackers without getting relentless anti-fat commentary. I didn’t even say if I ate them, you know?

• Why the Internet Cares So Much About My Snack Cabinet

There is so much criticism and blowback directed at any fat person acknowledging that we eat sugar or any kind of “junk food.” So for a thin person to wax poetic and lean into listing all the details like you’re going to be so scandalized—that alone is so irritating to me. The reason you could even publish this essay is because you clearly fit the trope of skinny woman who can eat whatever she wants and have no consequences. This is a Loralei Gilmore essay.

Corinne

Another thing that kind of complicates this one is at the end, she talks about how she would like to eat less sugar. And then she says,

But until I feel more capable of adjusting without triggering old (worse) patterns, I’m trying to appreciate what being lax about it has done and is doing for my mind at this time in my life.

So, she’s acknowledging the value of this as a coping skill.

Virginia

That’s the part I liked. She’s talking about being in a really challenging season of early parenthood and needing a lot of sugar as a coping strategy. This is something she’s letting herself have because things are hard. And it’s a great coping strategy for that! Nothing wrong with this.

Obviously, she’s struggling a little bit because she had to write a whole essay articulating why she’s allowed to do that. But, I mean, I publish those types of essays, too, so I get that. I get that. That’s a great use of a newsletter.

I think what this essay really needed, though, was just that added layer of awareness that she can publicly wrestle with her sugar consumption and not experience any criticism for it. People are going to chime in and be supportive and say, “You absolutely deserve that ice cream. You’re working so hard, Mama.” All that kind of stuff.

And she’s not acknowledging that the main reason she’s uncomfortable with how much sugar she’s eating is, as she puts it, “my longer term needs,” which we all know is code for “because I might get fat if I keep eating this way.”

Corinne

That’s another layer that’s missing here. She is sort of saying she wants to eat less sugar but it’s like, why? It’s just because you have absorbed the cultural message is you should eat no sugar.

Virginia

Alright, well, those were the two on the Internet moments we wanted to talk about. Should we now run through some listener submissions?

Corinne

Let’s do it.

Virginia

Some of these are honestly, kind of delightful in their terribleness. I’m excited to read these. We’re going to do it all anonymously. Do you want to read the first one?

Corinne

Yeah.

The best one ever came from my mom, because, of course. “I told your sister, you don’t eat like a fat person.”

Virginia

The passive aggression of “I talked to your sister about you, and now I’ll also tell you that we talked about you?” No thanks. No thanks, Mom, you don’t need that.

All right, this next one—I’ll read it, but I may laugh a lot during it.

My mom once told me I wasn’t as good a driver as my sister, who is thin, because I wasn’t “as athletic.”

I’m so confused. How athletic do you have to be to drive a car?

Corinne

I thought driving was something that fat people could really succeed at.

Virginia

I think body size doesn’t really correlate to driving skill?

Corinne

I agree.

Virginia

I do often feel that not having played enough video games as a child is why I can be a nervous driver. I think if I’d played more video games, I’d be better at driving.

Corinne

I played no video games as a child, and I’m a great driver.

Virginia

You are a great driver. I’ve driven with you. That’s true.

I never really got super solid on left and right. I just have to make the L with my left hand a lot, and I can get real turned around.

Corinne

You don’t have a good sense of direction?

Virginia

Oh, zero sense of direction.

Corinne

That is an athletic ability.

Virginia

I have an instinct to always turn left no matter what. No matter where I’m going, I just turn left. To the point that now if we’re driving somewhere, Jack will just be like, “left turn, left turn.” Because I just always take us to the left. I don’t know why.

Corinne

That’s also the hardest turn.

Virginia

I know! It’s like I’m facing my fear. I don’t know. I hate making left turns. I also do it leaving a hotel room. I always turn left, even if the elevators down to the right. It’s like I can’t keep track of where we are in a building.

It’s okay. I have other other skills. Not athletic skills! But anyway, fat people can be good drivers. Virginia is not one, but it’s not because I’m fat.

Corinne

Okay, here’s the next one.

[CW for violent anti-fat imagery!]

I worked in retail for a bit, and the amount of horrendous things older, thin women would say about their own bodies, completely oblivious to the fact that they were obviously much smaller than me was mind boggling. One woman literally said that she should just shoot herself in the head because she hadn’t yet lost the COVID weight. This was 2021.

But even crazier was I told that story to my two best thin friends with the closing thought of, “I just hope that when I’m in my 60s and beyond, I’m not using any of my energy on worrying about losing weight.” And one of my friends responded, “I’m just focused on making choices right now that will help me be as healthy as I can for as long as I can.” And my other friend said, “Same.” And I thought I had walked into the Twilight Zone.

Virginia

All three of the thin people in this story had no idea of their privilege whatsoever.

Corinne

The thing that really struck me about this was just how incredibly violent it is to say you would shoot yourself in the head because you haven’t lost weight.

Virginia

And specifically, hadn’t lost the COVID weight, when it was 2021 and COVID was still a real big deal. A lot of us still weren’t going a lot of places.

I mean, that is one of those heartbreaking comments that just tells you so much about that person’s struggle. And is a horrifically violent thing to say in front of a fat person. Don’t do that. Don’t suggest that death is better than fatness, because that’s not true.

This one is very cringey. The comment the thin person made is,

I’m sure you could borrow a sweatshirt from (male) partner, if you’re cold. Translation, the male partner’s clothes are adorably oversized on me, so they would definitely fit you. Narrator, they definitely did not fit me.

Corinne

Oh, man, yeah. This one is very relatable. This happened to me in elementary school. I threw up on the bus.

Virginia

Poor Baby Corinne!

Corinne

It was on a field trip. And one of the moms of a very skinny boy was like, “Oh, so and so has an extra pair of pants that you can wear.” And I was like, “Um, those are not going to fit me.” And she was like, “Just try them.” And I was like, “Yeah, they don’t fit.”

I think I was in fourth grade.

Virginia

Oh my God. That is so painful and mortifying on so many levels! Puke on the bus, terrible. You have to wear a boy’s pants, in fourth grade, terrible. You don’t want to have to wear some boy’s pants! That’s traumatizing. And then for them to not fit because, like, I mean, of course not. In fourth grade, all the boys are tiny. No, you’re not going to be able to wear Kevin’s pants.

This is super obnoxious, and it’s such an easy fix, too. Just say, “Do you want to try this sweatshirt?” Instead of saying it definitively, like I have the answer to your problem. Why would you, you’re not this person’s body. You don’t have this context. Ask a question. Ask how you can help instead.

Corinne

Well, and the assumption that of course you’d be smaller than a man.

Virginia

No, obviously, yes. Men are enormous, don’t you know? It’s real cool. I’ve written about the whole mixed weight relationship nonsense. Many women are larger than the men we are with. That is true.

• Every Relationship is a Mixed Weight Relationship

Corinne

Okay, here’s the next one:

I’ve noticed that almost all women only compliment my hair now, the color, the cut, et cetera. I guess because it’s still my appearance, but not my body or clothing, so it feels like a safe zone. The funny thing is that I have gone full pandemic mode recently, and haven’t had my hair cut or colored in nine months. It looks fine, but it certainly isn’t the best it has ever looked.

Virginia

I mean, I kind of love that, and I feel like, take the compliment! But also, yes, this is under the general heading of “You have such a pretty face!” which is a very common way that fat people get compliments. People pick out the one or two details about you that they can decouple from your fatness. And they do this as if you wouldn’t know that’s what they were doing. We all know!

Have you had this one happen?

Corinne

I can’t say I’ve noticed it. I mean, this person says, “All women only compliment my hair now.” So it sounds like maybe their body has changed. And I was thinking sometimes this kind of feels like someone is saying, “I noticed something, and I know I can’t say it.” You know what I mean?

Like, they want to say “Your body has changed,” so instead they say, "You cut your hair!”

Virginia

How about just don’t comment on people’s bodies, guys? That’s another tip for thin folks. Or give genuine compliments. Also, you can compliment people who are fat. You don’t have to look for the one thing about them that doesn’t remind you of their fatness. You could just give them a compliment like, “you look really good today!” You don’t have to say anything else after that.

All right. Next up:

That thing of adding a physical descriptor of someone’s body when it’s not needed to tell the story, especially when complaining about someone and then mentioning the size of their body or weight when it’s not relevant, as if that further proves how annoying or awful the person is.

This is also something white people of a certain demographic tend to do about race or sexuality. You know, like, when it’s like, “that Black nurse” or like “I was at the dentist and the receptionist, who’s really gotten fat, said….” People feel the need to include marginalizing details when you don’t need that information to understand the story because now they’re just going to tell you something that has nothing to do with their body size.

Corinne

When I first read this one, I was like, I don’t know if I’ve heard that. But when you said that about people mentioning race, I can kind of imagine what you’re talking about.

Virginia

Often people think they’re being inclusive? And it is true, we don’t want to be colorblind or ignore people’s size. It’s fine to acknowledge people’s identities. But when you’re inserting their identity in a story that’s negative about them, you’re inserting it because you want to emphasize that this is why they were sloppy or lazy, or any other stereotypical trait that you link to fatness.

It’s bad. Don’t do it. Be better. That’s my take on that one.

Corinne

Okay.

When bathing suit shopping with my mom and sister, without fail she’ll show me cute one pieces and she’ll always show my sister who is thin cute two pieces.

Virginia

Nope.

Corinne

To make a point, when she holds up the skimpiest bikini, I’ll reach for it and say, “That’s my style. Wow, so cute.”

Virginia

Perfect response. I also want to note that all these mom/sister stories are from different people. This isn’t one person repeating anecdotes. The mom/sister dynamic is not okay! And, yeah, buy the two piece, obviously, if you want to wear a two piece. Because they are more practical to go to the bathroom in. You are allowed to, regardless of body size.

The condescending, chirpy, “good for you!” if I mentioned something about my habits or routine that they perceive as a diet.

I mean, you’ve had this when you’ve been congratulated for being at the gym.

Corinne

That’s exactly what I was thinking about. The first time I ever went to a gym, when someone said, “good for you. I see you here all the time.”

Virginia

Also, to be clear, the first time you went to that gym. It wasn’t your first time going to the gym. You probably could have bench pressed that man, and he was thinking you’d just shown up to take your first brave steps.

Corinne

No, I had just shown up and he was congratulating me on having been there.

Virginia

Oh, yeah. That was even weirder, because it was like, all fat people look alike.

Corinne

He was like, “good for you. I see you here all the time.” And I was like, you’ve definitely never seen me here before. He was like, “you’re putting in the work.” And I was like, I’m not putting in the work that you think I am.

Virginia

This is why I don’t work out in public spaces. I don’t need to deal with this shit.

Corinne

Well, I work out in public spaces three times a week for almost the past three years, and it’s only happened to me once.

Virginia

I’m glad to hear that, but I can understand why people are ambivalent about doing that.

Corinne

The smugness of assuming their bodies are a pure result of all their lifestyle choices, rather than genetics or other factors, and therefore, if other people just did the same work, they would look the same.

I would love the phrase “it’s all about moderation” to be forever retired.

Virginia

As someone who has had so many men on the Internet explain calories in, calories out to me in response to all of my work, even when it has nothing to do with calories, I co-sign this one completely.

Corinne

I had really never thought much about the phrase “It’s all about moderation” before.

Virginia

I think it’s a pretty toxic phrase. I think it’s heavily coded with, “you’re not going to eat the pint of Haagen Dazs in two sittings.” There’s a lot of implied restriction in “it’s all about moderation.”

Corinne

You’re allowed to do that now, as long as you’re not always doing that.

Virginia

Right. It very quickly becomes, “you can do it this one time.” You can have a cheat day.

Corinne

That’s what I’m saying.

Virginia

I also see this happening when thin people are undertaking a project of weight loss. They’re getting really excited about their new lifestyle habits. Or if they’re doing Ozempic, or whatever they’re doing. And they often want to frame this new weight loss intervention as the reason why they’re feeling so good, their energy is so high, etc.

It makes sense, because we’re taught that weight and lifestyle is the total explanation for any health issue you could ever have. But it’s so problematic to take credit for health and say it’s because of your lifestyle habits without acknowledging all of these other factors that contribute to health. Just because you’re eating an avocado a day or something does not mean that someone else could do that and would have the same amazing health results that you’re having.

Corinne

True, very true.

Virginia

All right, I’ll read the next one.

I’m a flight attendant, and while we no longer have weight requirements, we are still required to fit into the jump seat seat belt, which can vary quite a bit in length, similar to passenger seat belts. Some of the seat belts I have to put on the loosest setting they can go. One time, I was working with someone who was probably half my size, and she was on the jump seat next to me. We buckled in for landing, and she couldn’t stop talking about how big she was and how much weight she needed to lose after I actively made my seat belt as loose as it could go in front of her. I really wanted to say something to her, and I chose not to, but I still think about the ridiculousness sometimes.

This makes me want to do a whole piece on flight attendants. I have so many questions!

Corinne

Yeah, all I can think about reading this is how horrible it would be to be a fat flight attendant. For so many reasons.

Virginia

But the more relatable part of the narrative is the thin person talking about how she needs to lose weight right in front of you. And even if you haven’t had to do something like adjust a seat belt, you’re sitting there in your bigger body. You’re just sitting there being bigger, and they’re saying how they need to be smaller. Like, what? How do they not hear it? How do they not hear it?

Corinne

Okay, here’s the last one:

A friend who was an extra extra small wanted to go shopping in New York City. I was dreading it, but had no real good reason to say no. We went to H&M, and she’s like, they do have some bigger sizes, too. Size 16 was where they maxed out. Size 16 was not even remotely close to fitting me. She’s a lovely person, but the absolute cluelessness about it struck me hard.

Corinne

Oh, that’s so real. I feel like I’ve had people recommend brands to me, and they go to, like, an XXL. And I’m like, “Baby…”

Virginia

This is something I will take the note on, too. I think even those of us on the smaller end of the fat spectrum need to be mindful of this. Because there are a lot of brands that fit me, and then when I go to check, they go up to a 3x but it’s not a particularly generous 3x and a lot of people are bigger than a 3x. So anyone who has shopping privilege of any kind needs to be really careful about this one.

I just hate that this person’s friend was like, “let’s go shopping!” and just didn’t even think about it. And the way she’s like, “They do have some bigger sizes.” Like you hadn’t thought to check. You were just assuming your friend would want to come along and watch you shop. Like, what? That’s terrible.

Corinne

I do feel like there’s a thing where a thin person thinks they’re being flattering by being like, “This size 16 would fit you.” You know?

Virginia

Oh, I don’t like that at all. No, thank you.

All right, we’re going to end with two really nice stories that people sent in, just because we’ve got to bring it up a little and not end too dark.

So the first one is

A random man was sitting on the side of the road and shouted after me, “fat, pretty lady running for the bus!” And you know what? Hell yeah, accurate on all counts.

Corinne

That’s cute. I don’t want to be yelled at either way, but.

Virginia

No. I mean, to be fair, it’s also fine if you interpreted that as extremely aggressive. But I can understand with the right delivery, and if you’re in the right mood, it’s like yeah! that’s what I’m doing! Great. Thanks for noticing. So that’s cute.

Corinne

Okay, the next one is:

A skinny salesperson at the high end plus size boutique Marina Rinaldi, when a pair of pants didn’t fit, said, those pants don’t deserve you and whisked them away as if to the guillotine to find another size. It wasn’t that deep for me, but I still find this so funny. And say it all the time, a subpar margarita does not deserve me, etc.

Virginia

I mean, I’m definitely adopting this phrase.

Corinne

Yeah, love that.

Virginia

That’s great. Those pants don’t deserve you.

Corinne

Great salesperson.

Virginia

Perfect response. Also filing it away for talking to my kids about when they’re outgrowing clothing sizes, or if we order something that doesn’t fit. Like, what a good way to talk to a teen or a tween about clothing sizes. Like, they don’t deserve you. So that’s really cute.

Virginia

My Butter is an update on the chickens! We finally finished building the chicken coop, and they moved into their coop this weekend. So they’re off my back porch, which is great. If you’re following along on the chicken saga. They were first living in a closet of my house in a Tupperware container, and then they got too big for that, so they moved to a dog crate on my back porch, which was good, but extremely messy.

And now they’re out in my yard in this very cute chicken coop.

Corinne

Wow, that’s awesome.

Virginia

It’s super exciting. The kids are jazzed. They’re chickening around eating. I’m hoping they’re going to eat every tick that comes into my yard. We’re having a horrendous tick season. So I really want them to earn their keep that way. And then in September, we should start getting eggs.

Corinne

That’s awesome.

Virginia

Also, when I say we built the coop, Jack built the coop. I did nothing. I did paint some of the coop. And I picked out the color palette. It’s very adorable.

Corinne

That sounds great. My Butter is Fat Swim because it happened this weekend and it was really fun.

Virginia

It looked magical in the photos you posted. You wrote about it on Big Undies. I really want to come to Fat Swim one year.

Corinne

I think you should organize one!

Virginia

I know, should we?

There is a pool in the next town. My town does not have a town pool.

Corinne

But there’s Swimply, or go to the river. Or, you have a little pool!

Virginia

It’s little, though, and we wouldn’t be able to have a lot of people. I could have a mini fat swim? That would be really fun. It just looked great. And yeah, and you said like, what? 40 people came?

Corinne

Yeah, more than 40.

Virginia

That’s awesome. And were they people you knew, or just people who came?

Corinne

A mix. At this point, there are people I recognize from having done it the past two years that I don’t see anywhere else. And then, yeah, also some friends, and also some new people.

Virginia

Aww, I love that, because it’s creating a community opportunity for people who maybe need that.

Corinne

That’s kind of the whole point.

Virginia

That is a really good Butter. I hope that the summer involves lots of swimming and chickens for everybody.

Corinne

Me too.

Dr. Mara is a family physician on the faculty of Cooper Medical School of Rowan University, as well as a writer, journalist and contributor to NPR. She also writes the newsletter Your Doctor Friend by Mara Gordon about her efforts to make medicine more fat friendly. And she was previously on the podcast last November, answering your questions on how to take a weight inclusive approach to conditions like diabetes, acid reflux, and sleep apnea.

Dr. Mara is back today to tackle all your questions about perimenopause and menopause!

Actually, half your questions—there were so many, and the answers are so detailed, we’re going to be breaking this one into a two parter. So stay tuned for the second half, coming in September! As we discussed in our recent episode with Cole Kazdin, finding menopause advice that doesn’t come with a side of diet culture is really difficult. Dr Mara is here to help, and she will not sell you a supplement sign or make you wear a weighted vest.

This episode is free but if you value this conversation, please consider supporting our work with a paid subscription. Burnt Toast is 100% reader- and listener-supported. We literally can’t do this without you.

PS. You can always listen to this pod right here in your email, where you’ll also receive full transcripts (edited and condensed for clarity). But please also follow us in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and/or Pocket Casts! And if you enjoy today’s conversation, please tap the heart on this post — likes are one of the biggest drivers of traffic from Substack’s Notes, so that’s a super easy, free way to support the show!

And don’t miss these:

• Healthcare is Ground Zero for Fatphobia

• Is Dr. Mary Claire Haver Making Menopause a Diet?

Virginia

When I put up the call out for listener questions for this, we were immediately inundated with, like, 50 questions in an hour. People have thoughts and feelings and need information! So I’m very excited you’re here. Before we dive into the listener questions, let’s establish some big picture framing on how we are going to approach this conversation around perimenopause and menopause.

Mara

I should start just by introducing myself. I’m a family doctor and I have a very general practice, which means I take care of infants and I have a couple patients who are over 100. It’s amazing. And families, which is such an honor, to care for multiple generations of families. So, perimenopause and menopause is one chunk of my practice, but it is not all of it.

I come from the perspective of a generalist, right? Lots of my patients have questions about perimenopause and menopause. Many of my patients are women in that age group. And I have been learning a lot over the last couple of years. The science is emerging, and I think a lot of practice patterns amongst doctors have really changed, even in the time that I have been in practice, which is about 10 years. There has been a huge shift in the way we physicians think about menopause and think about perimenopause, which I think is mostly for the better, which is really exciting.

There’s an increased focus on doctors taking menopause seriously, approaching it with deep care and concern and professionalism. And that is excellent. But this menopause advocacy is taking place in a world that’s really steeped in fatphobia and diet culture. Our culture is just so susceptible to corporate influence. There are tons of influencers who call themselves menopause experts selling supplements online, just selling stuff. Sort of cashing in on this. And I will note, a lot of them are medical doctors, too, so it can be really hard to sort through.

Virginia

Your instinct is to trust, because you see the MD.

Mara

Totally. There’s a lot of diet talk wrapped up in all of it, and there’s a lot of fear-mongering, which I would argue often has fatphobia at its core. It’s a fear of fatness, a fear of aging, a fear of our bodies not being ultra thin, ultra sexualized bodies of adolescents or women in their 20s, right?

This is all to say that I think it’s really exciting that there’s an increased cultural focus on women’s health, particularly health in midlife. But we also need to be careful about the ways that diet culture sneaks into some of this talk, and who might be profiting from it. So we do have some hearty skepticism, but also some enthusiasm for the culture moving towards taking women’s concerns and midlife seriously.

Virginia

The cultural discourse around this is really tricky. Part of why I wanted you to come on to answer listener questions is because you approach healthcare from a weight inclusive lens, which is not every doctor. It is certainly not every doctor in the menopause space. And you’re not selling us a supplement line or a weighted vest, so that’s really helpful. So that’s a good objective place for us to start!

Here’s our first question, from Julie:

It’s my understanding that the body naturally puts on weight in menopause, especially around the torso, and that this fat helps to replace declining estrogen, because fat produces estrogen. I don’t know where I’ve heard this, but I think it’s true? But I would like to know a doctor’s explanation of this, just because I think it’s just more evidence that our bodies know what they’re doing and we can trust them, and that menopause and the possible related weight gain is nothing to fear or dread or fight.

Mara

Oof, okay, so we are just diving right in. Thank you so much for this question. It’s one I get from many of my patients, too.

So I looked into some of the literature on this, and it is thought that declining estrogen—which happens in the menopausal transition—does contribute to what we call visceral adiposity, which is basically fatty tissue around the internal organs. And in clinical practice, we approximate this by assessing waist circumference. This is really spotty! But we tend to think of it as “belly fat,” which is a fatphobic term. I prefer the term “visceral adiposity” even though it sounds really medical, it gets more specifically at what the issue is, which is that this particular adipose tissue around internal organs can be pathologic. It can be associated with insulin resistance, increasing risk of cardiovascular disease, and risk of what we call metabolic—here’s a mouthful—metabolic dysfunction associated steatotic liver disease, which is what fatty liver disease has been renamed.

So I don’t think we totally understand why this happens in the menopausal transition. There is a hypothesis that torso fatty tissue does help increase estrogen, and it’s the body’s response to declining estrogen and attempts to preserve estrogen. But in our modern lives, where people live much longer than midlife, it can create pathology.

Virginia

I just want to pause there to make sure folks get it. So it could be that this extra fat in our torsos develops for a protective reason —possibly replacing estrogen levels—but because we now live longer, there’s a scenario where it doesn’t stay protective, or it has other impacts besides its initial protective purpose.

Mara

Right? And this is just a theory. It’s kind of impossible to prove something like that, but many menopause researchers have this working theory about, quote—we’ve got to find a better term for it—belly fat. What should we call it, Virginia?

Virginia.

I mean, or can we reclaim belly fat? But that’s like a whole project. There is a lot of great work reclaiming bellies, but we’ll go with visceral adiposity right now.

Mara

Anyway, this is an active area of menopause research, and I’m not sure we totally understand the phenomenon. That being said, Julie asks, “Should we just trust our bodies?” Do our bodies know what they’re doing? And I think that’s a really philosophical question, and that is the heart of what you’re asking, Julie, rather than what’s the state of the research on visceral adiposity in the menopause transition.

It’s how much do we trust our bodies versus how much do we use modern medicine to intervene, to try to change the natural course of our bodies? And it’s a question about the role that modern medicine plays in our lives. So obviously, I’m a fan of modern medicine, right? I’m a medical doctor. But I also have a lot of skepticism about it. I can see firsthand that we pathologize a lot of normal physiologic processes, and I see the way that our healthcare system profits off of this pathology.

So this is all to say: Most people do tend to gain weight over time. That’s been well-described in the literature. Both men and women gain weight with age, and women tend to gain mid-section weight specifically during the menopausal transition, which seems to be independent of age. So people who go through menopause earlier might see this happen earlier.

This weight gain is happening in unique ways that are affected by the hormone changes in the menopausal transition, and I think it can be totally reasonable to want to prevent insulin resistance or prevent metabolic dysfunction in the liver using medications. Or can you decide that you don’t want to use medications to do that; diet and exercise also absolutely play a role. But I think it’s a deep question. I don’t know, what do you think? Virginia, what’s your take?

Virginia

I think it can be a both/and. If everybody gains weight as we age, and particularly as we go through menopause transition, then we shouldn’t be pathologizing that at baseline. Because if everybody does it, then it’s a normal fact of having a human body. And why are we making that into something that we’re so terrified of?

And I think this is what we’re going to get more into with these questions: It’s also possible to say, can we improve quality of life? Can we extend life? Can we use medicine to help with those things in a way that makes it not about the weight gain, but about managing the symptoms that may or may not be caused by the weight gain? If the weight gain correlates with insulin resistance, of course you’re going to treat the insulin resistance, because the insulin resistance is the concern. Does that mean weight loss is the thing we have to do? Not necessarily.

Mara

Totally. I define size inclusive medicine—which is the way that I practice medicine—as basically not yelling at my patients to lose weight. And it’s quite revolutionary, even though it shouldn’t be. I typically don’t initiate conversations about weight loss with my patients. If my patients have evidence of metabolic dysfunction in the liver, if they have evidence of diabetes or pre-diabetes, if they have high blood pressure, we absolutely tackle those issues. There’s good medications and non-medication treatments for those conditions.

And if my patients want to talk about weight loss, I’m always willing to engage in those conversations. I do not practice from a framework of refusing to talk with my patients about weight loss because I feel that’s not centering my patients’ bodily autonomy. So let’s talk about these more objective and less stigmatized medical conditions that we can quantify. Let’s target those. And weight loss may be a side effect of targeting those. Weight loss may not be a side effect of targeting those. And there are ways to target those conditions that often don’t result in dramatic or clinically significant weight loss, and that’s okay.

One other thing I’ll note that it’s not totally clear that menopausal weight gain is causing those sort of metabolic dysfunctions. This is a really interesting area of research. Again, I’m not a researcher, but I follow it with interest, because as a size-inclusive doctor, this is important to the way that I practice.

So there’s some school of thought that the metabolic dysfunction causes the weight gain, rather than the weight gain causing the metabolic dysfunction. And this is important because of the way we blame people for weight gain. We think if you gain weight, you’ve caused diabetes or whatever. This flips thta narrative on its head. Diabetes is a really complex disease with many, many factors affecting it. It’s possible that having a genetic predisposition to cardiometabolic disease may end up causing weight gain, and specifically this visceral adiposity. So this is all to say there’s a lot we don’t understand. And I think at the core is trying to center my patients values, and de-stigmatize all of these conversations.

Virginia

I love how Julie phrased it: “The possible related weight gain in menopause is maybe nothing to fear, dread, or fight.” I think anytime we can approach health without a mindset of fear and dread and not be fighting our bodies, that seems like it’s going to be more health promoting than if we’re going in like, “Oh my God, this is happening. It’s terrible. I have to stop it.”

And this is every life stage we go through, especially as women. Our bodies change, and usually our bodies get bigger. And we’re always told we have to fight through puberty. You have a baby, you have to get your body back as quickly as possible. I do think there’s something really powerful in saying: “I am going through a big life change right now so my body is supposed to change. I can focus on managing the health conditions that might come along with that, and I can also let my body do what it needs to do.” I think we can have both.

Mara

Yeah, that’s so beautifully said. And Julie, thank you for saying it that way.

Virginia

Okay, so now let’s get into some related weight questions.

I was just told by my OB/GYN that excess abdominal weight can contribute to urinary incontinence in menopause. How true is this, and how much of a factor do you think weight is in this situation? And I think the you know, the unsaid question in this and in so many of these questions, is, so do I have to lose weight to solve this issue?

Mara

Yes. So this is a very common refrain I hear from patients about the relationship between BMI and sort of different processes in the body, right? I think what the listeners’ OB/GYN is getting at is the idea that mass in the abdomen and torso might put pressure on the pelvic floor. And more mass in the torso, more pressure on the pelvic floor.

But urinary incontinence is extremely complicated and it can be caused by lots of different things. So I think what the OB/GYN is alluding to is pelvic floor weakness, which is one common cause. The muscles in the pelvic floor, which is all those muscles that basically hold up your uterus, your bladder, your rectum—all of those muscles can get weak over time. But other things can cause urinary incontinence, too. Neurological changes, hormonal changes in menopause, can contribute.

Part of my size inclusive approach to primary care is I often ask myself: How would I treat a thin person with this condition? Because we always have other treatment options other than weight loss, and thin people have urinary incontinence all the time.

Virginia

A lot of skinny grandmas are buying Depends. No shame!

Mara

Totally, right? And so we have treatments for urinary incontinence. And urinary incontinence often requires a multifactorial treatment approach.

I will often recommend my patients do pelvic floor physical therapy. What that does is strengthen the pelvic floor muscles particularly if the person has been pregnant and had a vaginal delivery, those muscles can really weaken, and people might be having what we call genitourinary symptoms of menopause. Basically, as estrogen declines in the tissue of the vulva, it can make the tissue what we call friable.

Virginia

I don’t want a friable vulva! All of the language is bad.

Mara

I know, isn’t it? I just get so used to it. And then when I talk to non-medical people, I’m like, whoa. Where did we come up with this term? It just means sort of like irritable.

Virginia

Ok, I’m fine having an irritable vulva. I’m frequently irritable.

Mara

And so that can cause a sensation of having to pee all the time. And that we can treat with topical estrogen, which is an estrogen cream that goes inside the vagina and is an amazing, underutilized treatment that is extremely low risk. I just prescribe it with glee and abandon to all of my patients, because it can really help with urinary symptoms. It can help with discomfort during sex in the menopausal transition. It is great treatment.

Virginia

Itchiness, dryness…

Mara

Exactly, yeah! So I was doing a list of causes of urinary incontinence: Another one is overactive bladder, which we often use oral medications to treat. That helps decrease bladder spasticity.

So this is all to say that it’s multifactorial. It’s rare that there’s sort of one specific issue. And it is possible that for some people, weight loss might help decrease symptoms. If somebody loses weight in their abdomen, it might put less pressure on the pelvic floor, and that might ease up. But it’s not the only treatment. So since we know that weight loss can be really challenging to maintain over time for many, many reasons, I think it’s important to offer our patients other treatment options. But I don’t want to discount the idea that it’s inherently unrelated. It’s possible that it’s one factor of many that contributes to urinary incontinence.

Virginia

This is, like, the drumbeat I want us to keep coming back to with all these issues. As you said, how would I treat this in a thin person? It is much easier to start using an estrogen cream—like you said, low risk, easy to use—and see if that helps, before you put yourself through some draconian diet plan to try to lose weight.

So for the doctor to start from this place of, “well, you’ve got excess abdominal fat, and that’s why you’re having this problem,” that’s such a shaming place to start when that’s very unlikely to be the full story or the full solution.

Mara

Totally. And pelvic PT is also underutilized and amazing. Everyone should get it after childbirth, but many people who’ve never had children might benefit from it, too.

Virginia

Okay, another weight related question. This is from Ellen, who wrote in our thread in response to Julie’s question. So in related to Julie’s question about the role of declining estrogen in gaining abdominal fat:

If that’s the case, why does hormone replacement therapy not mitigate that weight gain? I take estrogen largely to support my bone health due to having a genetic disorder leading to fragile bones, but to be honest I had hoped that the estrogen would also help address the weight I’ve put on over the past five years despite stable eating and exercise habits.

That hasn’t happened, and I understand that it generally doesn’t happen with HRT, but I don’t understand why. I guess I’d just like to understand better why we tend to gain abdominal fat in menopause and what if anything can help mitigate that weight gain. I’m working on self acceptance for the body I have now, and I get frustrated when clothes I love no longer fit, or when my doctor tells me one minute to watch portion sizes to avoid weight gain, and the next tells me to ingest 1000 milligrams of calcium per day, which would account for about half of the calories I’m supposed to eat daily in order to lose weight or not gain more weight.

It just feels like a lot of competing messages! Eat more protein and calcium, but have a calorie deficit. And it’s all about your changing hormones, but hormone replacement therapy won’t change anything.

Ellen, relatable. So many mixed messages.

Dr. Mara, you spoke to what we do and don’t know about the abdominal fat piece a little bit already in Julie’s question, so I think we can set that aside. But yes, if estrogen is playing a role, why does hormone replacement therapy not necessarily impact weight?

And what do we do with the protein of it all? Because, let me tell you, we got like 50 other questions about protein.

Mara

I will answer the first part first: I don’t think we know why menopausal hormone therapy does not affect abdominal fat. You’re totally right. It makes intuitive sense, but that’s not what we see clinically. There’s some evidence that menopausal hormone therapy can decrease the rate of muscle mass loss. But we consider it a weight neutral treatment. Lots of researchers are studying these questions. But I don’t think anybody knows.

So those messages feel like they’re competing because they are competing. And I don’t think we understand why all these things go on in the human body and how to approach them. So maybe I’ll turn the question back to you, Virginia. How do you think about it when you are seeking expertise and you get not a clear answer?

Virginia

I mean, I’m an irritable vulva when it happens, that’s for sure. My vulva and I are very irritated by conflicting messages. And I think we’re right to be. I think Ellen is articulating a real frustration point.

The other thing Ellen is articulating is how vulnerable we are in these moments. Because, as she’s saying, she’s working on self-acceptance for the body she has. And I think a lot of us are like, “We don’t want weight loss to be the prescription. We don’t want to feel pressured to go in that direction.” And then the doctor comes in and says, “1000 milligrams of calcium a day, an infinity number of protein grams a day. Also lose weight.” And then you do find yourself on that roller coaster or hamster wheel—choose your metaphor. Again, because we’re so programmed to think “well, the only option I have is to try to control my weight, control my weight, control my weight.” And you get back in that space.

What I usually try to do is phone a friend, have a plan to step myself out of that. Whether it’s texting my best friend or texting Corinne, so they can be that voice of reason. And I would do this for them, too! You need help remembering: You don’t want to pursue intentional weight loss. You’re doing all this work on self-acceptance. Dieting is not going to be helpful. So what can you take from this advice that does feel doable and useful? And maybe it’s not 1000 milligrams of calcium a day, but maybe it’s like, a little more yogurt in your week.

Is there a way you can translate this to your life that feels manageable? I think it’s what you do a great job of. But I think in general, doctors don’t do a great job with that part.

Mara

Yeah, I bet you Ellen’s doctor had 15 minutes with her. And was like, “Well, eat all this calcium and definitely try to lose weight,” right? And then was rushing out the door because she has 30 other patients to see that day.

I think doctors are trying to offer what maybe they think patients want to hear, which is certainty and one correct answer. And it can feel hard to find the space to sort of sit in the uncertainty of medicine and health and the uncertainty of like our bodies. And corporate medicine is not conducive to that, let’s put it that way.

Virginia

But so how much protein do we need to be eating?

Mara

I have no idea. Virginia, I don’t think anybody knows.

I think exercise is good for you. It’s not good for every single body at every single moment in time. If you just broke your foot, running is not a healthy activity, right? If you’re recovering from a disordered relationship with exercise, it’s not healthy.

But, movement in general prolongs our health span. And I’m reluctant to even say this, but, the Mediterranean diet—I hate even calling it a diet, right? But vegetables, protein—I don’t even want to call them healthy fats, it’s just so ambiguous what that means. But olive oil. All those things seem to be good for you. With the caveat that it’s really hard to study the effects of diet. And this is general diet, not meaning a restrictive diet, but your diet over time. But I don’t think we know how much, how much protein one needs to eat. It is unknowable.

Virginia

And that’s why, I think what we’ve been saying about figure out how to translate this into something that feels doable in your life. It’s not like, Oh, olive oil forever. Never butter again.

Mara

Of course not. I love butter. Oh, my God. Extra butter!

Virginia

Right. Butter is core to the Burnt Toast philosophy. I know you wouldn’t be coming here with an anti-butter agenda.

Mara

Oh, of course not. Kerry Gold forever.

Virginia

But it’s, how can you take this and think about what makes sense in your life and would add value and not feel restrictive? And that’s hard to do that when you’re feeling vulnerable and worried and menopause feels like this big, scary unknown. But you still have the right to do that, because it’s still your body.

Mara

Beautifully said.

Virginia

Well, this has all been incredibly helpful. Let’s chat about things that are bringing us joy. Dr Mara, do you have some Butter for us?

Mara

I had to think about this a lot. The Butter question is obviously the most important question of the whole conversation.

We have been in a heat wave in Philly, where I live, and it’s really, really hot, and we have a public pool that is four blocks from our house. Philly actually has tons of public pools. Don’t quote me on this, but I’ve heard through the grapevine—I have not fact-checked this—that it is one of the highest per capita free public pools in the country. I don’t know where I heard that from. I know I should probably look that up, but anyway, we’ve got a lot of pools in Philly. And there’s one four blocks from my house.

So I used to think of pool time as a full day, like a Saturday activity. Like you bring snacks, you bring a book, you lounge for hours. But our city pool is very bare bones. There’s no shade. And so, I have come to approach it as an after work palate cleanser. We rush there after I get my kid from daycare, and just pop in, pop out. It’s so nice. And pools are so democratic. Everybody is there cooling off. There’s no body shame. I mean, I feel like it’s actually been quite freeing for my experience of a body shame in a bathing suit, because there’s no opportunity to even contemplate it. Like you have to hustle in there to get there before it closes. There’s no place to put your stuff. So you can’t do all those body shielding techniques. You have to leave your stuff outside of the pool. So you have to go in in a bathing suit. And it’s just like, all shapes and sizes there. I love it. So public pools are my Butter.

Virginia

We don’t have a good public pool in my area, and I wish we did. I’m so jealous. That’s magical.

Since we’re talking about being in midlife, I’m going to recommend the memoir, Actress of a Certain Age: My Twenty-Year Trail to Overnight Success by Jeff Hiller, which I just listened to on audiobook. Definitely listen to it on audiobook.

Obviously, Jeff Hiller is a man and not in menopause, but he is in his late 40s, possibly turned 50. He’s an actress of a certain age, as he says. If you watched “Somebody Somewhere” with Bridget Everett, he plays her best friend Joel. And the show was wonderful. Everyone needs to watch that.

But Jeff Hiller is someone who had his big breakout role on an HBO show at the age of, like, 47 or something. And so it’s his memoir of growing up as a closeted gay kid in Texas, in the church, and then moving to New York and pursuing acting and all that. It’s hilarious. It’s really moving. It made me teary several times. He is a beautiful writer, and it just makes you realize the potential of this life stage. And one of his frequent refrains in the book, and it’s a quote from Bridget Everett, is Dreams Don’t have Deadlines, and realizing what potential there is in the second half of our lives, or however you want to define it. Oh my gosh, I loved it so much.

There’s also a great, great interview with Jeff on Sam Sanders podcast that I’ll link to as well. That’s just like a great entry point, and it will definitely make you want to go listen to the whole book.

Mara

I love it.

I will briefly say one thing I’ve been thinking about during this whole conversation is a piece by the amazing Anne Helen Petersen who writes Culture Study, which is one of my favorites of course, in addition to Burnt Toast. She wrote a piece about going through the portal. That was what she calls it. And she writes about how she’s talking with her mom, I think, who says, “Oh, you’re starting to portal!” to Anne. And I just love it.

What she’s getting at is this sort of surge of creativity and self confidence and self actualization that happens in midlife for women in particular. And I just love that image. Whenever I think of doing something that would have scared me a few years ago, or acting confident, appropriately confident in situations. I’m like, I’m going into the portal. I just, I love it, it’s so powerful, and I think about it all the time.

Virginia

Well, thank you so much for doing this. This was really wonderful. Tell folks where they can find you and how we can support your work.

Mara

Thank you so much, Virginia. I’m such a fan of your work. It has been so meaningful, meaningful to me, both personally and professionally. So it’s such an honor to be here again.

You can find me on Substack. I write Your Doctor Friend by Mara Gordon . And I’m on Instagram at Mara Gordon MD, too. And you can find a lot of my writing on NPR as well. And I’m writing a book called, tentatively, How to Take Up Space, and it’s about body shame and health care and the pursuit of health and wellness. So lots of issues like we touched on today, and hopefully that will be coming into the world in a couple of years. But yeah, thanks so much for having me, Virginia.

The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, and Big Undies.

The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.

Our theme music is by Farideh.

Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.

Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

Hello on this steamy Summer Friday!

We’re popping in to share the (unedited! very casual!) video from the Live we did Wednesday… just generally catching up on some urgent summer news like:

* Our new favorite tank tops

* Why we hate And Just Like That (but can’t stop watching)

* Why we love Lena Dunham but are…complicated?? maybe in love?? with Too Much.

* Plus some Butters!

As a reminder, we use the Substack Live feature super casually. These haven’t been edited to audio or visual perfection. We’re at the mercy of Substack tech (and our iPhones and Airpods) to sound good. And there is an AI-generated transcript attached (click the video to access it!) but it won’t be as beautifully edited as podcast episode transcripts, which Corinne and I spend hours on every week.

Totally get if these low production values are not your jam! But if you want to debate who wears light yellow best… here you go.

Links to everything we chatted about here are:

The yellow tank top we both love! (Virginia wears 1X, Corinne wears 5X, avail up to 6X.)

Corinne’s other favorite tank top.

Corinne is making me put this in against my will: The True Spring Yellow.

And this is a True Summer Yellow:

Kate Manne on the toxic masculinity of Felix. (Corinne is still rooting for him!)

Full details on how to make your own Mosquito Dunk Bucket. And here’s mine:

You’re listening to Burnt Toast! Today, my guest is Tracy Clark-Flory.

Tracy is the feminist writer behind the newsletter TCF Emails and the author of Want Me: A Sex Writer's Journey into the Heart of Desire. She’s also the cohost of the new podcast Dire Straights where she and Amanda Montei unpack the many toxic aspects of heterosexual relationships and culture.

I brought Tracy on the podcast today to talk about my feet, but we get into so much more. We talk about porn, sexual identity, and the male gaze—and, of course, how all of this makes us feel in our bodies.

This episode is free but if you value this conversation, please consider supporting our work with a paid subscription. Burnt Toast is 100% reader- and listener-supported. We literally can’t do this without you.

PS. You can always listen to this pod right here in your email, where you’ll also receive full transcripts (edited and condensed for clarity). But please also follow us in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and/or Pocket Casts! And if you enjoy today’s conversation, please tap the heart on this post — likes are one of the biggest drivers of traffic from Substack’s Notes, so that’s a super easy, free way to support the show!

Virginia

I am so excited. We’ve been Internet friends for a long time, and it’s so nice to finally have a conversation. I’m very jazzed!

Tracy

Right? I feel like we’ve talked before, but we have not, which is such an odd sensation. We’ve emailed.

Virginia

We’ve emailed, we’ve DM-ed, we’ve commented on each other’s things. But we have not, with our faces and mouths, had a conversation. The Internet is so weird.

Well, the Internet being weird is a lot of what we’re gonna talk about today. Because where I want to start today is feet.

Tracy

Why not?

Virginia

So I initially emailed you when I was working on my essay about my Wikifeet experience, because you have written so extensively about porn and the Internet’s treatment of women. And when I discovered my Wikifeet, one of my first thoughts was, “I need to talk to Tracy about this.” Tracy

That makes me so happy. I want to be the first person that everyone thinks of when they find themselves on Wikifeet.

Virginia

I was like, “I don’t know how she’ll feel…” so I’m glad you take that as a compliment.

I don’t even know where to start. Even though I wrote a whole essay about this, my brain is still, like, “record scratch moment” on the whole thing. Sojust talk to us a little bit where in your vast reporting on porn did you kind of become aware of fetish sites and what’s your read on them? What’s going on there?

Tracy

I think I first became aware of Wikifeet in 2008-ish when they launched, and that’s when I was a proper, full-time sex writer, on the sex beat, covering every weird niche Internet community. And then in the years since, I’ve unfortunately had many women colleagues—often feminist writers—who have ended up on the site. So unfortunately, you’re not the first person I know who’s ended up on there.

Virginia

It’s a weird thing that a certain type of woman writer is gonna end up on Wikifeet. Why?

Tracy

There are no shortage of women who are consensually volunteering photos of their feet online for people to consume in a sexualized way, right? So the fact is that this site is providing a venue for people to do it in a very nonconsensual way, where images are taken from other venues that are not sexualized. They’re stolen images, you know? Things that are screenshotted from Instagram stories, that kind of thing—and then put into this sexualized context. Not only that, but put into a sexualized context where there is a community around sexualizing and objectifying and even rating and evaluating body parts.

My take is that this violation is part of the point. Because there is having a foot fetish—great, have at it, enjoy. And then there’s consuming images that are nonconsensual. So I think that the violation is part of the point. And to the point of feminist writers, women writers online, ending up on it—I don’t think it’s an accident. Because I think that there is—perhaps for some, maybe not all—some pleasure taken in that aspect of trespass.

Virginia

Yes. My best friend is a food blogger, and I immediately searched for her because she’s way more famous than I am, and she’s not on there. And I’m glad, I don’t want her non-consensually on there! But I was like, oh, it’s interesting that I’m on there, lyz is on there. It is a certain type of woman that men are finding objectionable on the Internet. And putting us on WikiFeet is a retaliation or just a way of—I don’t know. It’s not a direct attack, because I didn’t even know about it for however long my feet have been up there. But it is a way for men to feel like they’re in control of us in some way, right?

Tracy

Oh, totally. And it’s because there is something interesting about taking a body part that is not broadly and generally sexualized, and sexualizing it. There is this feeling of a “gotcha!” in it.

There is something, too, about feet—I mean, I think this is part of what plays into foot fetish, often. There is this sense of dirtiness, potentially, but also the sense of often being hidden away. It’s secret, it’s private, it’s delicate, it’s tender. Feet are ticklish, there’s so much layered in there that I think can make it feel like this place of vulnerability.

I’ve written about upskirting. This was maybe like 15 years ago. But it’s these communities where men take upskirt videos and photos of women on the subway or wherever, and then they share them in online forums. And that’s very clearly a physical trespass. You’re seeing something that was not meant to be seen. So it’s quite different. But it’s feels like it exists on a spectrum of trespass and violation and taking sexualized enjoyment out of that.

Virginia

From someone who had no intention of you taking that enjoyment, who’s just trying to ride the train to work.

Tracy

Totally. And the foot thing, it just makes me think of all these different ways that women experience their bodies in the world. You can’t just be at ease in your body, because someone might think your feet are hot.

Virginia

It’s really interesting. I’ve talked about this on the podcast before: A little bit after I got divorced and I started having, weekends totally to myself in my house, it was the first time I’d been alone in my house in a long time. Obviously, usually my kids were there. My husband used to be there. And I had this strange sensation of being observed, even when I was completely alone in the house.

It’s just me and the dog. She’s asleep. I’m making dinner or watching TV or doing whatever I’m doing. And I couldn’t shake the sensation that I was watching myself, still thinking about what I was going to wear. It was so weird, and I realized it actually isn’t particularly a comment on my marriage. It’s more a comment on women are so trained to always feel observed. It’s really hard for us to actually access a space where we’re not going to be observed. It was wild.

Tracy

We adopt that perspective of the watcher, and we are the watched. We experience ourselves in that way, as opposed to being the watcher, the person who sees and consumes the world and experiences the world. It’s like we experience ourselves being experienced by someone else—an imagined man often.

Virginia

Yes, you’re always self-objectifying. It doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to please that gaze, whether you’re trying to protect yourself against that gaze. Whatever it is, we’re always aware of how we’ll be perceived in a way that I don’t think cis men ever have to consider. I don’t think that’s a part of their experience of the world in the same way.

Tracy

And how messed up is that tension between trying to please and trying to protect oneself? What an impossible tightrope walk to be constantly doing.

Virginia

Right, and to not even know which one you want sometimes. Like, which one you need, which one you want.

Tracy

Yeah, going back and forth between those extremes. You’re always kind of monitoring and on edge.

Virginia

And, it did shift. Now when I’m alone in my house, I don’t feel like I’m watching myself. Like, it did lessen. But it was this very stark moment of noticing that.

And I think the way our work is so online, we are so online, it doesn’t help. Because we also have all learned through the performance art of social media to constantly be documenting. And even if you’re by yourself, you might post something about it. There’s that need to narrate and document and then also objectify your experience.

Tracy

The sense of, like, if I don’t take a photo of it, it doesn’t exist. It didn’t happen. It’s not real. It must be consumed by other people. I mean, when you were talking earlier about that sense of being surveyed, I think that is a very just common experience for women, period. But then I think, for me, growing up with reality TV, the explosion of reality TV, like that added this like sense of a camera on one’s life.

And then I think, like, if you want to bring porn into it, too—Like, in the bedroom, that sense of the watcher, so you have this sense of being watched by men, but then you have the sense of kind of performing for an audience, because that’s so much of what I came up with culturally.

Virginia

I mean, the way we often conceive of our sexuality is through performance and how are you being perceived not how are you experiencing it yourself? I mean, you write about that so well, that tension.

Tracy

That was my whole thing. My sexual coming of age memoir is so much about what it meant to try to move out of that focus on how I’m being perceived by my partner and into a place of what am I experiencing? What do I even want beyond being wanted?

Virginia

Man, it’s amazing we’ve all survived and gotten where we are.

Another layer to this, that I thought about a lot as I was processing my Wikifeet, was how instantly I felt like I had to laugh it off. I really felt like I couldn’t access my true reaction to it. I just immediately sort of went into this Cool Girl, resigned, jaded, like “What do you expect from the Internet?” This is why I wanted to talk to you. Because I was like, oh, this feels very similar to stuff Tracy struggled with and wrote about in her memoir.

Tracy

Oh, totally. It makes total sense to me that you would go to that default place. It makes me think of how I, especially early in my career writing online as a feminist blogger, I would print out the very worst, most misogynistic hateful comments and post them on my fridge because I was willing myself to find them funny, to be able to laugh at them and just kind of distance myself from them and to feel untouched by them.

I think that Cool Girl stance is a way of putting on protective armor. So I think that makes sense as a woman writing online, but I also think it makes sense in the context of sex. So much of what I did—this performative sexuality, this kind of sense of being down for whatever in my 20s—was, subconsciously, a kind of defensive posture. Because I think I had this feeling that if I’m down for anything, then nothing can be done against my will, you know? And that was the mental gambit that I had to engage in, in order to feel safe enough to explore my sexuality freely. Granted, it wasn’t very freely, turns out.

But it makes total sense that you would want to default to the laughing at what is really a violation. Because I do think that there’s something protective about that. It’s like, “No, you’re not going to do this to me. You’re not going to make me feel a certain way about this.” But that only takes you so far.

Virginia

Well, because at the same time, it also is a way of communicating, “Don’t worry, I can take a joke. I’m not one of those feminists.” It also plays right into that. So it’s protective and you can’t rattle me. And, I’ll also minimize this just like you want me to minimize it. So I’m actually doing what you want. Then my brain breaks.

Tracy

Right? And then we’re back to that thing we were just talking about, the wanting to please, but then wanting to protect oneself, and the impossible balancing act of that.

Virginia

Like you were saying you’ve experienced these horrific misogynistic troll comments. I experienced them in the more fatphobic sense, but like a mix, misogyny and fatphobia, very good friends.

So I think when you’ve experienced more extreme things, you then do feel like you have to downplay some of the minor stuff. It feels scarier for men to say that my children should be taken away from me than it does for them to take pictures of my feet. I can hold that. And yet I’m still allowed to be upset about the foot thing. Just because some things are more awful, it doesn’t mean that we stop having a conversation about the more mundane forms of violation, because the more mundane forms of it are also what we’re all experiencing all the time.

Tracy

Right? Like the daily experience of it. I mean, unfortunately, there just is a full, rich spectrum of violation.

Virginia

So many choices, so many ways, so many body parts.

Tracy

I do think that the extreme examples do kind of serve to normalize the less extreme, you know? And what we sort of end up putting up with, you know?

Virginia

What would you say was a helpful turning point for you? What helped you start to step back from being in that cool girl mode? From being in that “I’m performing sex for other people” mode? What helped you access it for yourself?

Tracy

I mean, honestly? A piece of it was porn. It’s funny because I turned to porn as a teenager online in the 90s as a source of—I felt at the time—intel about what men wanted. Like, here’s how to be what men wanted. And I tried to perform that, you know? And there were downsides to that, of course. There are some downsides. But I would also say that like in the midst of plumbing the depths of 2000s-era, early 2000s-era tube sites to understand what men “wanted,” I also started to kind of explore what I wanted.

I wasn’t drawn to it from that place of self discovery, but I kind of accidentally stumbled into it because I was watching these videos. And then I was like, oh, wait, what about this thing? Like, that’s kind of interesting to me. And then, you start to kind of tumble down the rabbit hole accidentally. Women are socialized to not pursue that rabbit hole for themselves, right? So it was only in pursuing men’s desires that I felt like I was able to unlock this whole other world of fantasy and desire for myself that I wanted to explore and that I was able to get into some non-mainstream, queer indie porn that actually felt very radical and eye opening.

It was this circuitous route to myself. That was just a piece, I think, of opening up my mind to the world of fantasy, which felt very freeing. Then, getting into a relationship where with a partner who I could actually be vulnerable with, was a huge piece of it. To actually feel safe enough to explore and not be performing, and to have those moments of awkwardness and that you’re not just this expert performer all the time. Like, that doesn’t lead to good sex.

Virginia

No, definitely not.

There’s a part in the memoir with your then boyfriend, now husband, and you say that you wanted—you call it “a cozy life.” And I think you guys put that in your wedding vows. I think about that all the time. I think it’s so beautiful. Just like, oh right, that’s what we’re looking for. It’s not this other giant thing, the performing and the—I don’t know, there’s something about that really stuck with me

Tracy

That’s so interesting. I haven’t thought about that for a while. It’s really interesting, and it’s funny, because it was part of our wedding vows.

Virginia

Cozy means safety with another person, that felt safety with another person, right? And the way we are trained to think of sex and relationships really doesn’t prioritize women’s safety, kind of ever.

Tracy

I mean, yeah, it’s true. There is something very particular about that word cozy—it’s different from when people say, like, “I want a comfortable life.”

Virginia

Yeah, that’s bougie.

Tracy

Cozy is like, I want to be wrapped in a cozy blanket on the couch with you. And feel safe and intimate and vulnerable. So thank you for reminding me of that thing that I wrote.

Virginia

Well, It was really beautiful, and I think about it often, and it was kind of clarifying for me personally. And it’s not saying sex won’t be hot, you know? It’s just that you have that connection and foundation to build whatever you’re going to build.

Tracy

Right? And I think coziness kind of is a perfect starting point for being able to experience sexiness and hotness. I think we have this cultural idea that one must have this mystery and sense of otherness in order to be able to build that kind of spice and fire. And at least in my experience, that was not ever the case. I know that other people have that experience, but for me, I never had the experience of that sense of otherness and kind of fear even, and trepidation about this other person leading to a really exciting experience. It was more like being able to get to a place of trust and vulnerability that could get you there.

Virginia

And obviously, there are all different ways people enjoy and engage in sex. And I don’t think every sexual relationship has to be founded in any one thing, but I think when we’re talking about this transition that a lot of women go through, from participating in sex for his pleasure, for performance, for validation, to it being something you can do on your own terms, I think the coziness concept is really helpful. There’s something there.

All right, well, so now you are working on a new podcast with Amanda, as we mentioned, called Dire Straights. Tracy, I’m so excited, because Heterosexuals are not okay. We are not okay, as a population.

Tracy

Just like, literally, look at anywhere. Open up the front page of The New York Times. We’re not okay on so many levels.

Virginia

So tell us about the pod.

Tracy

So it’s a feminist podcast about heterosexual love, sex, politics and culture, and every episode, we basically pick apart a new element of straight culture. So examples would be couples therapy, dating apps, sex strikes, monogamy, the manosphere, pronatalism, the list goes on and on. Literally this podcast could just never end. There’s too much fodder. Unfortunately, I’d love for it to end for a lack of content, but that’s not going to happen.

So we look at both sex and dating alongside marriage and divorce, and the unequal realm of hetero parenting. We examine celebrities and politicians and consider them as case studies of dire heterosexuality. Tech bros, tradwives, terfs, all the whole cast of terrible hetero characters are up for examination, and our aim is to examine the worst of straight culture, but it’s also to step back and kind of try to imagine better possibilities.

It’s not fatalist, it’s not nihilistic. I think we both have this sense of wanting to engage in some kind of utopian dreaming one might say, while we’re also picking apart what is so awful and terrible about the current state of heterosexual culture.

So our first episode is about dark femininity influencers. I don’t know if you’ve ever encountered them online.

Virginia

Yes, but I hadn’t connected the dots. So I was like, oh, this is a thing.

Tracy

That’s that thing, yeah. That’s how I experienced it. It was, like, they just started showing up on my TikTok feed, these women who are usually white and wearing a bold red lip and smokey eyes, and they’re essentially promising to teach women how to use their sex appeal in order to manipulate straight men into better behavior. They’re selling this idea of seduction as liberation, and specifically liberation from the disappointments of the straight dating world. This idea is that by harnessing your seductive powers, you can be in control in this terrible, awful straight dating sphere.

Virginia

It’s like, if Drusilla from Buffy the Vampire Slayer wrote a dating book. I don’t know if that reference speaks to you or not.

Tracy

I’m a little rusty on my Buffy, I have to say.

Virginia

She’s like, pale skin, red lips, black hair, and tortures men. But yeah, it’s this idea that you harness all your like, seductive powers to torture men to get what you want, which is men. Which is a husband or a boyfriend or gifts or whatever. They’re shooting for a heterosexual relationship by exerting this power over men, and so the idea is it is somehow it’s giving them more power in a patriarchal dynamic. But it doesn’t really because they end up in the same place.

Tracy

It’s the same place, it’s the same exact place. It feels to me, in some ways, like a corrective against the cool girl stuff that we’re talking about that kind of emerged in the 2000s, where, you know, it’s this sort of like being down for whatever, that kind of thing. These women are kind of saying, you’re not going to sleep with him on the first date. You’re going to make him work for it, you know? And so there’s a sense of like, I’m in control, because I’m not giving it away for free. It plays into all these awful ideas about women and sex and power. But it is ultimately ending up in the same place, and it is just ultimately about getting a man, keeping a man. And so, you know, how different is it really? I don’t think it is.

Virginia

I mean, it’s not. It’s the same rules and conversations that Charlotte’s having in the first season of Sex in the City, which is ancient at this point. How are we still here? Are we still here?

Tracy

We’re just inventing new aesthetics to kind of repackage these very old, retro, sexist ideas, you know?

Virginia

I also think it’s really interesting and helpful that you are interrogating straight culture as someone inside a heterosexual marriage. I’ve written about my own divorce, my critiques of marriage, and it triggers great conversations, but it always triggers a very uncomfortable response from a lot of married women who don’t really want to go there, don’t really want to pick up the rocks and look underneath it because it’s too scary. It makes sense. And I’m wondering how you think about that piece, and how that’s working for you.

Tracy

I think it’s very destabilizing for a lot of women in straight marriages and just straight relationships, period, to consider these things. I think it was over a year ago now that I wrote this piece about trying to coin this term hetero-exceptionalism in response to the backlash that I was seeing to the divorce memoir boom, where women reviewers, but also just people on Twitter or wherever, were kind of pointing at these authors and being like, well, I don’t know what’s wrong with you because my marriage is great.

Virginia

The Emily Gould piece in New York.

Tracy

There’s this sense of like, oh, well, either I chose a good man or I know how to conduct a healthy relationship.

Virginia

I’m willing to put in the work.

Tracy

Gotta put in the work.

You will love our next episode about couples therapy, because we talk about this concept of putting in the work, and the idea that marriage is work, and that if you’re not doing the work you’re lazy. You’re failing, the whole project of it.

Virginia

Thank you for unpacking that incredibly toxic myth! It really keeps women trapped in “I just have to keep working harder.”

Tracy

Which I think totally relates to this, the response to the divorce memoirs we’re getting from people and the discomfort of when women raise these issues in hetero relationships that are not individual. Like, yes, we all feel that our relationship issues are special and unique. But they all relate to these broader systemic factors.

I think that is really, really, really uncomfortable to acknowledge. Because I think even if you’re reasonably happy in your hetero relationship, I think if you start to look at the way that your even more minor dissatisfactions connect to these bigger dissatisfactions that women are writing about that’s all part of this experience of love in patriarchy that it doesn’t feel good. That feels terrible. So I totally understand that.

In the same way that we’re sold this idea of trying to find the one and that whole romantic fantasy, I think we’re also sold this idea of trying to achieve romantically within these patriarchal constraints. So it’s like, well, I found the good one. I found the unicorn man who checks all the boxes and I did my work and so I’m in a happy marriage.

Virginia

“I’m allowed to be heterosexual because I’m doing it right.” That’s feeling uncomfortably familiar, to be honest. You think you’re going to pull the thread, and you realize you’ll rip it all out.

Tracy

The thing is that a lot of people should be pulling the thread, and a lot of lives should be unraveling, you know? I think that’s the uncomfortable truth, right? I totally get the resistance to it. But on the other side of it, I think there are obviously, clearly, a lot of women who are wanting to look at it, and who do want to have these conversations.

Virginia

It sounds like this is what you’re trying to chart. There has to be a middle path where it’s not this defensive stance of, oh, I found the one good one. And we’re equal partners. It’s okay, but a relationship where we can both look at this, we can both acknowledge the larger systemic issues and how they’re showing up here, and we can work through it and it’s not perfect, because it is love in patriarchy, but it can still be valuable. There has to be this third option, right? Please tell me you’re living the third option, Tracy.

Tracy

I mean, I do believe that I am but I also hesitate to put any man or any relationship on a pedestal. What I’ll say is that to me, it feels so utterly essential in my relationship to acknowledge the ways that our relationship is touched by patriarchy, because all relationships are touched by patriarchy, right? And to not fantasize about us somehow standing outside of it, but also to be having constant ongoing conversations within my relationship where we are mutually critiquing patriarchy and the way that it touches us and the way that it touches the relationships of people we know, you know?

I think that’s part of why I think I’m able to do this podcast critiquing heterosexuality from within heterosexuality is because my partner showed up to the relationship with his own prior political convictions and feminist awareness. I wasn’t having to be like, here’s what feminism is and, here’s what invisible labor is, and the mental load and all that stuff. He got it, and so we’re able to have a mutual shared critique, and that feels very important.

Virginia

That’s awesome to know exists, and that you’re able to figure that out without it being such hard work. But where does that leave women who are like, oh yeah, my partner doesn’t have that shared knowledge? Like, I would be starting the education process from zero and encountering many resistances to it. And therein is the discomfort, I think.

Tracy

I mean, and that is the discomfort of heterosexuality. It’s in this culture, because that is the reality is there are not a ton of men who have voluntarily taken women’s studies courses in college and have the basic background for this kind of stuff. It’s a really high bar and there is this feeling of what are you going to do? Are you going to hold out for the guy who did do that? Or are you going to try to work with him to get there? And I think that’s fine, but I think what’s essential is are you both working to get there, or are you pulling him along?

Virginia

Yeah, that’s the core of it.

I think just in general, reorienting our lives to where our romantic relationships are really important, but so are our friendships. So is our community. I think that’s something that a lot of us, especially us in the post-divorce club are looking at. I think one of the great failings of heterosexual marriage is how it silos women into these little pods of the nuclear family and keeps us from the larger community.

Tracy

Totally. I really do believe that the way that our lives are structured, this hetero monogamous, nuclear familydom, it works against these hetero unions so much. Which is so funny, because so much of this is constructed to try to protect them. But I actually think that it undermines them so deeply and drastically. And that we could have much richer and more vibrant, supportive, communal lives that made these romantic unions like less fragile and fraught.

Virginia

Because you aren’t needing one person to meet every single one of your needs, you aren’t needing this one thing to be your whole life.

Tracy

We put all of the pressure on the nuclear household for the cooking, the cleaning, the childcare, all of that. That is an impossible setup. It is a setup for failure. There’s I wish I could quote the writer, but I love this quote about marriage and the nuclear family being capitalism’s pressure cooker. If you think about it in those terms, it’s like, this is absurd. Of course, so many people are struggling.

Virginia

It was never going to work. It was never going to work for women anyway, for sure.

Well, I’m so excited for folks to discover the new podcast. It’s amazing, and I’m just thrilled you guys are diving into all of this. It’s such an important space to be having these conversations. So thank you.

Tracy

Thank you! I’m very excited about it, and it does, unfortunately, feel very timely.

Tracy

I definitely do have Butter. And this is so on topic to what we’ve been discussing. This book of essays titled Love in Exile by Shon Faye. It is a brilliant collection of essays about love, where she really looks at the problem of love and the search for love as a collective instead of individual problem. It is so good. It’s one of my favorite books that I’ve read in the last five years.

She basically argues that the heteronormative couple privatizes the love and care and intimacy that we all deserve. But that we’re deprived of in this late capitalist hellscape, and so she sees the love that so many of us are deprived of as not a personal failure, but a failure of capitalism and community and the growing cruelty of our world. It’s just such a tremendous shift of perspective, I think, when it comes to thinking about love and the search for love and that longing and lack of it that so many people experience.

Virginia

Oh my gosh, that sounds amazing. I can’t wait to read it. Adding to cart right now, that is a great Butter. Thank you.

Well, my Butter is, I don’t know if you can see what I’m wearing, Tracy, but it is the friendship bracelet you sent me when you sent me your copy of Want Me.

Tracy

Do you know that I literally just last night was like, oh, I’m going on the podcast tomorrow, I wonder if she still has that friendship bracelet.

Virginia

I’m wearing the one you sent me, which says Utopia IRL, which I love. And then I’m wearing one that says “Fuck the Patriarchy,” which was made by one of my 11 year old’s best friends for me. So the 10 year old girls are going to be all right, because they’re doing that.

Tracy

That’s amazing.

Virginia

I wear them frequently. They go with many outfits, so they’re just a real go-to accessory of mine. My seven year old the other day was reading them and was so delighted. And now, when she’s at her dad’s and we text, she’ll randomly text me, “fuck the patriarchy,” just as a little I love you text. And I’m like, alright, I’m doing okay here.

Tracy

You’re like, that’s my love language. Thank you.

Virginia

So anyway, really, my Butter is just for friendship bracelets and also mailing them to people, because that was so sweet that you did that.

Tracy

Can I mention though? Can I admit that I literally told you that I was going to send you that friendship bracelet, and I made it, I put in an envelope, and it literally sat by my front door for a full year.

Virginia

I think that makes me love it even more, because it was a year. If you had been able to get it out the door in a timely fashion, it would have made you less relatable to me.

That it took a full year that feels right. And I was just as delighted to receive it a year later.

Tracy

It was a surprise. I was like, you probably forgot that.

Virginia

I had.

Tracy

I emailed about it and that we had an inside joke about it, because it had been a year.

Virginia

I did, but then I was like, oh yeah!

Tracy

You know what? I think it’s a testament to you and how you come off that I like felt comfortable sending it a year later and just being like, fuck it, she’ll be fine with it.

Virginia

Yes, it was great. Anyway, my recommendation is send someone a friendship bracelet by which I mean put it in an envelope by your front door for the next year. Why not? It’s a great thing to do.

So yes, Tracy, this was so much fun. Thank you for being here. Tell folks where we can follow you support your work, all the things.

Tracy

You can find the Dire Straights podcast at direstraightspod.com. And you can find my weekly newsletter about sex, feminism, pop culture at Tracyclarkflory.substack.com and you can find me on Instagram at Tracy Clark-Flory.

Virginia

Amazing. We’ll link to all of that. Thank you for being here.

Tracy

Thanks so much for having me.

The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, and Big Undies.

The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.

Our theme music is by Farideh.

Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.

Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

You’re listening to Burnt Toast!

We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it’s time for… part 2 of our 200th episode!

We are continuing to revisit favorite moments from the podcast archives. Coming up:

🔥We have feelings about aging!

🔥What’s our current take on heterosexual marriage?

🔥How do you set boundaries when you’re in eating disorder recovery but your partner is…on a diet?

And so much more!

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Corinne

Okay, so here’s the first question that I picked, from a mailbag episode we ran in January 2023:

Is It Ever Okay to Eat at Chick-fil-A?

What are your personal philosophies on aging, and are you conflicted about it in any sense?

Virginia

I feel firmly that I am someone who was born to be an older person. I think my whole life, I have been working towards being someone in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, who mostly stays in and does puzzles and has plans.

And I think the story I kicked this off with about my one night of tequila sidewalk lying down illustrates how bad I was at being a fun young person, and I’m so glad. I’m so glad I don’t have to be fun and young anymore.

Corinne

Wow, there’s nothing you’re conflicted about? Like, how do you feel about gray hair?

Virginia

I actually feel fine about gray hair.

Corinne

Do you have any?

Virginia

Okay, here is the thing about me and gray hair, I don’t have a lot. I do have several. I am not actively trying to dye them, but I do get highlights, and my very talented hair stylist often places the highlights in ways that distract the gray hairs. Doesn’t cover them completely, but yes. And because I made a self care decision to outsource my hair to her, like about a decade ago, and I just do whatever she wants to do with my hair, because I’m always happy with it. And that way I don’t get, like, worked up about what should I do with my hair? I haven’t yet said to her, like, we don’t have to actively cover the grays, but, like, I haven’t started not dying it, is what I’m saying, because I’m happy with how it looks. But it’s not because I’m happy it’s covered my grays. It’s just that I don’t want to think about my hair that much, yeah. But as I get more grays, I will not be trying to hide them. Am I conflicted about aging? When does it come up for me?

Corinne

Sagging face? Menopause?

Virginia

Sagging face, I will admit to feelings about face sagging sometimes. I do have a lot more chin hair in my 40s. So much more chin hair. And managing that is a hobby I didn’t really want. So that one sure. Menopause, I don’t even know. I mean, my relationship with my menstrual health is like I’m suppressing it all with an IUD for as long as possible. So I don’t know. Menopause could be a gift. It could be a nightmare. I have no idea, but what’s going on currently isn’t great.it’s not like I’m gonna be losing out on some beautiful experience of menstruation. So yeah, mostly I just love having to give fewer fucks about stuff.

But yeah, what about you? You sound a little more conflicted. And we should say I’m older. I’m several years older.

Corinne

Not by much.

Virginia

I’m going to be 42 in a few months.

Corinne

I’m 37 when you listen to this podcast. If I did the math right.

I always thought that I wouldn’t care, and then when I started getting gray hairs, I was like, Oh, I do care. And I have the color of hair that you can’t really see them unless you’re like, up close. But yeah, I just was like, Oh, I feel sad that I’m gonna have different hair in like, a few years. I just feel like tI, like, identify with how my hair looks. But yeah, I don’t know that I will start, like, dyeing it because it seems like a lot of work and money. I think I feel like low key sad about it, but also, like I do feel also good about still being alive and giving fewer fucks.

Virginia

I mean, I think there’s a lot of ways in which I haven’t had to contend with a lot of ageism yet. Because I work from home, I’m not in an office where I think it would be dealing with ageism much more concretely on a daily basis. I think that that would be harder and may become harder. I’m at this point like mostly when I sort of suddenly realized that my age or my weight, either one, has rendered me invisible, like to a man or something. I’m usually like, amused, slash, fine with it, like, annoyed sometimes, but also like, Oh, God, are you really gonna be this cliche?

But I mean, again, there’s like, privilege there. My job is not hinging on how people perceive my age yet. Obviously, the idea of, like, adding more oppression is not, like, exciting, and, you know, the idea of dying one day isn’t like, a cheery thought. But, God. I don’t miss my 20s at all.

Corinne

Don’t miss lying on the sidewalk?

Virginia

It was one night. I can’t underscore that enough.

Corinne

You’re never going to live that down

Corinne

So I wanted to revisit this one, because when we recorded this, we were merely 37 and 42. And now I’m 39 and you’re 44! And we were talking about aging. We have aged. Just curious if we feel the same way or or what?

Virginia

Well, first of all, I just got really excited that you’re turning 40 next year, and I want to know what we’re doing for that.

Corinne

Oh God, I’m already having so much anticipatory anxiety about what I should do.

Virginia

I’m so excited. It’s a great birthday. I had my 40th birthday during COVID. Don’t necessarily recommend that, but it’s a good birthday.

I think my feelings are still very similar. I am still someone who was always born to be middle aged or elderly. I still enjoy an early bedtime. I like puzzles. I like gardening. I am extremely comfortable being in my 40s. I feel just delighted by it all the time. I feel so glad that I feel no pressure to be young and cool. That sounds exhausting.

Corinne

Well, I wanted to bring this up because I feel like I’ve heard you mention in some recent episodes, like the one with Sarai Walker—you were like, “I feel rage sometimes about getting older and not getting noticed or being ignored.”

"I've Thought About Unleashing Jennifer on MAGA."

Virginia

Oh, so now you’re calling me out because I was like, I love being older?

Corinne

I didn’t mean it to be a call out! I just thought, oh, maybe this is something where your opinion has changed. Because I originally had much more mixed feelings about aging as a mere 37 year old.

Virginia

Yes, what was your deal? You were an infant!

Though I actually think that’s normal. I think a lot of times, aging is something where we fear it coming. We get really worked up in advance, and then you do it. And you’re like, “Oh, right, I’m still the same person.”

Corinne

That’s deep. That’s what anxiety is!

Virginia

It’s actually not that deep. That’s just what that is.

So, my feelings about the stage of my life I’m in are the same, which are positive. This season of life is a great season compared to previous seasons.

My feelings about how my aging is perceived by the world, yes, I think are a little more complicated now. Like, when I was like, “I feel great about gray hair. I mean, yeah, I don’t have any, but I would be fine with having it.” I think that’s still true, but I continue to not say, “Hey, let’s stop covering up my grays!” I have yet to be like, you know what? I want to see what my hair is doing!

One change we talked about though: I mentioned my chin hair, and the hobby of managing my chin hair, and I did finally, a few months ago, do laser hair removal.

Corinne

Wait! Why have you not written an essay about this?

Virginia

I don’t know! Okay, this is kind of breaking news? I’ve just finished my eighth session or something.

Corinne

Wow! Is it so painful?

Virginia

Okay, I really probably should write an essay.

Corinne

Yeah, maybe save it for the essay? I just have so many questions.

Virginia

The lip is crazy painful. With the lip, you tear up and want to die for a second, painful. The chin, not so bad. And I have to do my jowls, my whole beard area.

Anyway, so, I guess that is me participating in beauty labor to resist aging. Because my facial hair increased with age, and I didn’t like it and I took it down. I would also say for me, it feels a little gender affirming?

Corinne

It’s gender affirming care.

Virginia

Thank you. I don’t know if that’s problematic to say, as a cis woman?

Corinne

I think it’s actually really good to normalize cis people also participating in gender affirming care.

Virginia

Okay, well, I am for sure participating in gender affirming care then, with my laser hair removal. And it’s the kind of thing that I didn’t do for so long. Even though it is painful and it is expensive, too, so those are reasons not to do it, of course. But it’s briefly painful, and then it removes this daily stress from my life because I’m not every morning like, “Oh, do I have to shave? What am I doing with my chin hair?”

So that’s one change. I did decide this is one aspect of visible aging I didn’t like. And I decided to do something about. I still have yet to do anything like Botox. I have yet to really adopt a skincare routine of any kind besides sunscreen. So otherwise I feel the same. What about you? Any aesthetic-related aging differences?

Corinne

I also haven’t done anything aesthetic. I have done no injectables.

Virginia

Well, we have fat privilege so we don’t wrinkle as much.

Corinne

I definitely have wrinkles.

Virginia

Not as much as if you were thin, Corinne. I am telling you. That famous French actress always said, “You choose between your ass and your face.” And I think we’ve chosen our asses.

Corinne

The thing I’ve been thinking about aging lately is how, if you’re a certain type of person who grows up being precocious in some way? Like you’re smart, and you’re a young, smart person, and then as you get older, you’re kind of like, wait now, I’m just an average old person.

Virginia

You can be a smart old person!

Corinne

But I’m never going to be like a 30 under 30.

Virginia

Yes. Your prodigy days are behind you.

Corinne

Sometimes it’s just weird to not be a young person. Like, oh yeah, I’m just a middle-aged person on TikTok. It’s not a great feeling all the time. But that’s where I am at!

Virginia

I don’t know. I find that sort of relaxing. I think I felt a lot of pressure to be some kind of very special young person. I like that I no longer feel like I have to deliver some degree of unprecedented excellence at all times.

Corinne

I think the self-consciousness of trying to be a young, interesting, smart person probably kept me from actually making TikToks or whatever.

Virginia

And now you do make TikToks!

Corinne

Because I don’t fucking care!

Virginia

Yeah, you’re liberated!

Corinne

I mean, I wouldn’t go that far, but.

Virginia

You’re comfortable with middle-aged mediocrity. We are sitting in our unremarkable era. We are comfortable just existing.

I do feel a lot more comfortable just existing than I did when I was young. I don’t know, people might feel differently. I’m sure it relates a lot to how much you’ve been able to go after things you want to do in your life, so I don’t want to downplay that struggle. I feel less ambitious than I was in my 20s, for sure, which is interesting.

Anne Helen Petersen writes about the portal and how our 40s is often this time of huge ambition for women. And I’m like,Did I just go too hard?I don’t know or maybe it’s still coming! But right now, I’m good just coasting along.

Corinne

For me, the way I think about it is kind of about values. It makes sense that some women or people in their 40s would be like, “I’m going for it.” Like, I’ve realized I really want to do this! Whatever “this” is. And other people are like, “Oh, I realize I actually really value spending time with people and gardening.”

Virginia

Yes! I think that is the shift. I’m like, I want to enjoy my weekends. Leisure time matters more than when I was younger. When it was kind of always like, well, couldn’t you be working harder?

Well, I think we sound very evolved now! Good for us.

Is "Mom Rage" Actually "Marriage Rage?"

I decided to go back to some of our guest interviews because, I mean, Corinne and I are really smart, as just referenced, especially in our youth. But we have so many brilliant guests on the show!

So this is a clip from my interview with lyz, which ran in February 2024 when we were celebrating her bookThis American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life:

Lyz

I was talking to a friend the other day who was like,my job is just so hard to do with three kids, and so I’m really angry at my job. And I was like, is it hard for your husband to do his job with three kids. Why? Why is it not hard for him? And like, it’s easier to take that rage and channel it to things that we cannot change. Because I think we’re really afraid of what it would look like, like what that other side would look like. I think deep down inside, we know what’s gonna break our relationships. Let’s be mad at what deserves our rage! It’s this system that’s oppressing us. Like it’s not your job because your partner has a job and he can do it. Get mad at the person who’s not wiping the counters. Andit’s exhausting, right? You’re like, Oh, I love him. OKAY.

Virginia

Mm, I love you so much. I mean, we get that people love their husbands.

Lyz

I mean, do we?

Virginia

We hear you.

Lyz

It’s a concept that intellectually I grasp.

Virginia

Yes, right? We’re just suggesting that building your entire life’s happiness based on the premise of romantic love is a shaky business.

Lyz

It’s a shaky business at best. And then people will say like, well, he is a good man, and I’ll never find anything better.

One of the reasons I wanted to write this book is to say you are that something better. And even if you are in a good relationship, you have to be that something better, because, again, you do not know what is going to happen, right? Like he could Charles Lindbergh you! And like, have a second family in Germany. Or, God forbid, die in a car accident, right?

So, like, we have to find ways to center our happiness. And women are not taught to center our happiness. We are taught that life is miserable and that our happiness is frivolous and that we have to throw ourselves onto the pyre of marriage and motherhood. And I’m saying, Take yourself down off that cross, because we need the wood.

Virginia

I picked this because I think we ran this interview when I was—well, I was divorced. I mean, I’m still divorced. But I was more newly divorced. And I still stand by everything we talked about here. I actually really agree with it. But I am interested to note that I feel a little less… militant about some of it, I guess?

I think the core of what she’s saying—that women need to center our own happiness and we don’t need to sacrifice ourselves for marriage and motherhood—that 1,000 percent. I feel in my bones to be this truth that I think so many women are grappling with now.

But I will say, I think we were like, “Can anyone love a husband?” in a way that now I’m a little more like, I get that people do love men.

Corinne

Now that you’re loving another man?

Virginia

Yeah, that’s probably a factor here. I don’t know. I’m curious for your take on this.

Corinne

I mean, I think that makes a lot of sense. I think as time passes, our sometimes militant views soften and evolve. I also think, as someone who has never been married, I can really see both sides. I can completely see why women would be enraged at the institution of marriage, and I can understand why you could come back around to it, you know?

Virginia

Yeah. This isn’t any kind of announcement, people! I’m still pretty angry at the institution of marriage. I want to be really clear about that. I do think she’s articulating something when she says, “I think deep down inside, we know it’s going to break our relationships to name our anger.” I think that is really something I see so often, especially with heterosexual married women.

And I do think that it’s important that we still keep pushing women to name that. Even if a lot of marriages don’t survive that pressure. Those aren’t the relationships that maybe should survive, is where I land.

But I think I’m more interested now in the question of, how can we make something different? What does it look like to be in a relationship that doesn’t replicate all these same systems of oppression? Is that possible? I’m a little more curious about the possibilities now, I think.

Corinne

I think it’s also the difference between being mad at one specific man that you’re married to versus the institutions that uphold these systems.

Virginia

I do consistently look at these relationships all around me, and think, “This man is choosing to participate in something that’s clearly not equitable.” Sir. How are you okay with that?

I mean, I get we all participate in inequitable systems. Any time I buy fast fashion I’m participating in someone’s exploitation. But to live in the same house as the person being exploited by your participation in a system? It does just really stun me from time to time that that happens.

So I still agree with it, but I am a little more like… “What else could this look like?” And I think there’s a lot to be learned from people who are in relationships that are not traditional heterosexual marriages. So I’m learning a lot from that.

"This Was Before It Was Normal for Makeup to Give You New Skin."

Corinne

This next one is about how relationships intersect with diet culture. It’s from another mailbag episode, which also ran in February 2023.

I’m curious about navigating anti diet culture and fat acceptance with a partner—in this case, he’s male and I’m female—who still subscribes to a baseline of healthy eating and exercise that is quite triggering for me. I’m in a small to medium fat body and in recovery from atypical anorexia and exercise disorder. I’ve been invested in anti-diet and fat acceptance for about six years now.

But my husband, though encouraging of my mental stability and happiness, still eats less than me, has some generalized rules about when to eat and what to eat. For example, if you have pizza one night, you can’t have pasta the next night. And he does some form of exercise—stationary cycling, yoga, walks most days. I’m in the process of separating from the web of exercise that has plagued me for the last 20 at least years, and what that looks like for me is canceling all or most forms of regular exercise, even neighborhood walks, and letting the space settle before I decide what if anything I would like to do in that arena.

Basically, I’m just asking what your experience of navigating all this has been like while being with a partner who has been with you before, through and after the shift from diet obsessed to ditching diet mentality. What did / does this look like for you? And any tips you can share on keeping on with figuring out your way of doing things while they keep doing their thing?

Virginia

Oh, this is such a good question. First, I just want to say congratulations on being in recovery and doing this really, really hard work. And I love that you are giving yourself space from exercise and taking care of yourself, that’s amazing.

I have a thing I want your husband to read. It is a piece that ran on autostraddle. I linked to it recently. Do you know what I’m talking about?

Corinne

Yes. The piece is called You Fat-Shamed Your Beautiful Girlfriend and the author is Heather Hogan.

Virginia

I mean Heather, chef’s kiss, all of this. It’s perfection. I want you to share this piece with your husband, because Heather articulates so perfectly the ways in which a partner can harm a partner over this issue. Like the ways in which your husband may not realize or be reckoning with his own fat bias, his own stuff, and like how it’s showing up in your relationship and how unfair that is for you.

Heather talks so well about how loving a person is something we do regardless of what’s happening with their body. If you can’t stand with your partner through body changes, how are you going to stand with them through real crises, like other health issues or job loss, depression, etc, you know?

And it’s just a perfect piece for kind of summing up what I want your husband to be doing for you, which it sounds like maybe he’s not quite there.

And I, you know, I don’t want to, like, shame him for that, like we’re all part of this whole situation. But you were doing this really, real work, and it is valid to say to your partner, your partner, I need you to do some work, too.

Corinne

I don’t even know where to start. Like, I feel like my experience has generally been that it’s really hard to get people on board if they’re not and like, how it’s like, not always possible to convince someone.

Virginia

Yeah, and it sounds like he’s got kind of his own stuff, right? I mean, he’s got a lot of rules about what he eats. Yeah, he’s pretty religious about his exercise habits. And, yeah, I am curious if some of that’s triggering for this question writer.

Corinne

Yeah. I mean, I think this person says it’s triggering.

Virginia

Yeah, yeah.

Corinne

And then it’s like, have you had that conversation with him? Does he know that it’s, actively upsetting for you?

Virginia

How much have you communicated this with him, and what responses are you getting? But I do think just generally being able to radically communicate where you are with this, what you need, not feel bad about stating those needs. That kind of honesty is the only way through and I think. Even if it may lead to some really hard conversations, because he’s in a very different place than it sounds like you are.

Corinne

Yeah, do you have other places that you recommend that people start if they’re trying to get a partner on board?

Virginia

The fact that you have a diagnosis and you’re in recovery, it just says to me that this is so serious and you should be on board with your recovery.

So maybe it’s a question of like, I really appreciate how much you support this in the big picture sense, but in our day to day lives, there are ways that your behavior creates something I have to deal with, you know? And I just feel like, if I knew that some daily routine of mine was causing harm to my partner, I would want to know that so I could assess whether I needed to maintain that routine, you know? And most likely, if I love this partner and am supporting their recovery, I do not need to maintain that routine.

But if that’s hard for me to give up, then that suggests that’s some stuff I have to look at. Because I would argue that your partner’s mental health is more important than you not eating pizza and pasta two nights in a row. Yeah, it sounds like a tricky one. We’re sending you a lot of love, and I hope that this leads to some good conversations for you guys.

Corinne

So since we answered this question, you’ve had experiences navigating body liberation with a new person. And I was just curious if you had any tips or tricks or different changes of opinions on this?

Virginia

I mean, I really stand by all our advice here.

If you’re partnered with someone who’s in recovery from eating disorders, or even just trying to divest from the stuff, it’s really not okay to put your own diet stuff on them. So I think everything we said about like you need to set boundaries, he needs to be more supportive of all of this, I totally stand by.

I think because I put such strong barriers up in my dating profile from the get-go, this has been a boundary that’s been easy to hold, because the people that gravitated towards me were people who are on the same page about this for the most part.

I did go on one date with a guy—not my current boyfriend. Just a one date guy. Where I thought we’d had conversations about this over text… and this is Corinne’s advice forever. Don’t get too hung up on text! But I thought we’d have conversations over text that showed we were really on the same page. And then when we went to dinner, it was very clear that there were a lot of foods he didn’t eat. And he sort of alluded to health reasons, but I don’t know if it was truly health. It was like… vague health things. It was suddenly very clear that this was someone who was not at all comfortable in their own body. And that food was a major source of stress, and something he was putting a lot of energy towards managing.

And, I mean, there’s a reason there was only one date there. I was like, “I can’t take that on.” I don’t want to say it’s a deal breaker, but… I now am with someone who loves food as much as I do, and sharing food together is a major source of joy and delight. We’re both extremely not picky eaters who like to cook together and it’s just so fun. So it would be really hard for me to not have that with someone again.

What about you? Any food stuff coming up in your dating life?

Corinne

I was trying to think about that. I mean, I’m not dating right now. I was thinking in the past, I want to say five years, um, I’ve only dated very briefly someone who wasn’t fat. And I did have a conversation with them that was just like, “Have you ever dated a fat person? Do you have any questions?”

I’ve never really set boundaries, like, “I will absolutely not talk about this or not do that.” But yeah, I do think dating fat people kind of establishes some overlap?

Virginia

Although, I mean, the bad date was with a fat guy. Alas.

Corinne

For me, the dread around those topics is less around food and more around, I hate trying to navigate seating stuff. Like, if we’re like, where are we going to meet? I’m like, is it going to be somewhere comfortable? I don’t want to sit in a booth—that kind of stuff.

Virginia

Oh, totally. And needing a partner who’s going to get that sort of instinctively and know how to navigate that.

Corinne

Yeah, yeah. And I find having to explain that and have that conversation just really unpleasant.

Virginia

Yes. That sucks. That should be more something people think of and anticipate.

Corinne

Yeah, even with friends. Just not my favorite.

Virginia

Valid.

Corinne
I have a special future Butter. We’re recording this in the past, but this episode is coming out on July 10th. And today is the day that

Lena Dunham’snew showcomes out!

Virginia

Oooh, that’s exciting!

Corinne

And my Butter — because nobody is sending me screeners for that — is “Girls.” I love to watch “Girls.” I think that show has really held up in a way that a lot of comedies of the past have not. I also think at the time, for whatever reason, people didn’t think it was as funny as it is? It’s really funny.

Virginia

I never watched it all the way through! I loved the first season and then I lost track of it.

Corinne

Oh my God.

Virginia

Yeah, alright, you’re making me want to revisit it! I mean, if I’m still watching “And Just Like That,” which is an absolute train wreck.

Corinne

It’s way better than “And Just Like That.”

Virginia

And Lena Dunham is just a brilliant human. I’m excited for her new show, which I didn’t even know about! Hello, Hollywood, we would cover that.

Corinne

Well in the meantime, I recommend revisiting “Girls.” It’s become popular again on TikTok.

Virginia

Oh Gen Z found it? Oh the kids today.

Corinne

Yeah. Still not kid-friendly, I would say!

Virginia

Yeah, my middle schooler and I are finishing up Ted Lasso right now. Which is not not raunchy! But overall more wholesome.

Corinne

“Girls” deals with some dark topics.

Virginia

It goes there! Alright, well my Butter is the dress I’m wearing nonstop, because it’s been 100 degrees all week. This was very much inspired by your recent Big Undies newsletter about clothes that barely touch you, for when it’s very hot but you want coverage. And I shopped many of those links but then I ended up over on Old Navy…and yes this is a fast fashion rec and we said we weren’t going to do those anymore! But I am going to really hope this one holds up. It is a Butter of the moment. I hope it will be a long-term Butter. We will see when we review the year’s Butters.

Clothes That Barely Touch You

But it’s just a very light, crinkly fabric. Really breezy. It’s very inexpensive, I think I paid $30. A great pool cover-up. You could dress it up. And it goes up to 4X and I had to size down, so I think it’s a very size-inclusive 4X.

Corinne

Yeah. It’s a great color.

Virginia

It’s a very fun red. There’s also a more muted olive green and a lavender. And I will also say, I’ve been getting tons of questions about what bra to wear with it, because the straps narrow at the top. And I just let my bra be visible. So my other Butter is not worrying about bra straps. I’m fine with visible bra straps. It’s 100 degrees outside. And if the jig is up, because people were otherwise assuming I didn’t wear a bra, like…I’m okay dissuading them of that fantasy. So I wear one that’s the same color as the dress and don’t care about it.

Corinne

I feel like a bathing suit top could be fun. In a contrasting color.

Virginia

Yes! Well, thank you all for being here for 200 episodes! We are so grateful. We love making this podcast for you.

We want to hear what you want to hear more of in the coming months. And we’re going to keep doing it. Let’s do another 200, Corinne!

Corinne

Wow.

Virginia

Corinne is not committing.

Corinne

Oh, I’m committing! I’m just like…Wow.

Virginia

Can you imagine we’re at 500 episodes? We’ll be so, so much older and wiser! Maybe I’ll have embraced my gray hair by then, who knows?

Corinne

Or fully rejected it.

Virginia

It could go either way. Stay tuned.

The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, and Big Undies!

The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.

Our theme music is by Farideh.

Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.

Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

You’re listening to Burnt Toast!

We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it’s time for your July Indulgence Gospel!

And… it’s our 200th episode!

To celebrate, we’re making today’s Indulgence Gospel free to everyone and offering a flash sale — 20% off to celebrate 200 episodes!

This newsletter contains affiliate links, which means if you buy something we suggest, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only ever recommend things we love and use ourselves!

Now that it’s summer, ice cream is a daily state of being here and I’ve been using my East Fork ice cream bowls constantly (they are also the perfect size for cherries and for many of your favorite snacks). If you are also an East Fork disciple, heads up that their annual Seconds Sale starts today! This is where they sell pots that are slightly imperfect but still 100 percent functional and food safe for 30-40% off. And yes, there are a lot of cute ice cream bowls.

PS. You can always listen to our episodes right here in your email, where you’ll also receive full transcripts (edited and condensed for clarity). But please also follow us in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and/or Pocket Casts!

Corinne

200! Can you believe it?

Virginia

I can and I cannot. It’s one of those things where I feel like we’ve always been making the podcast, but also 200 feels like so many.

Corinne

I went back through, to look at some old episodes. And I was like, you know, I kind of remember all of them. I was like, surely there are some I have forgotten. But yeah, kind of not.

Virginia

When I was looking back at the old episodes, it was like visiting old friends. I was like, I know you guys. We’re cool.

Corinne

If you write into us with a question and we answer it, it really sticks with us!

Virginia

We continue to think about you. And would like updates, honestly. We don’t always get them, so putting that out there. We’d like to know.

Corinne

To celebrate, we have a special two part episode for you. We’re picking favorite moments from the archives to revisit, to see if our feelings and opinions have changed.

Virginia

Alright, I decided to look back at our many excellent guest conversations and pull out some favorites. First up, I thought I’d look back at our work ultra-processed foods since it is such an annoyingly evergreen topic.

We did a great pair of episodes with Laura Thomas, PhD, who writes “Can I Have Another Snack?” which ran in July 2023.

Here is a little excerpt from the first conversation.

Virginia

It feels like it’s important to say very clearly that processed is not synonymous with has no nutrition, and that actually processing foods is a good thing to do in order to eat, right?

Laura

Yeah, well, all forms of cooking are a process, right?

So unless you like want to go down some raw vegan path, you can’t really avoid processing your food to some extent.

Now, advocates of NOVA, I think, would say that’s a bit of a red herring, because what we’re actually talking about is this additional level of processing, this ultra processing sort of phenomenon.

But even within that category, I think there are merits to processing–even Ultra processing–our foods. One of the things that happens when we process food is we extend the shelf life of it, and that means that we are wasting less food overall, which I think we would all agree is probably a helpful thing.

But industrial food processing, it reduces foodborne pathogens. It reduces microbes that would spoil food and make things like oils turn rancid faster. It also significantly cuts down on the time and labor that it requires to cook a meal. And I think that’s for me as a parent, and I know for you as well, like, that’s huge.

Virginia

It’s really everything, honestly. For me personally. Nothing should be everything for everybody, but limiting the amount of time I spend cooking dinner is the thing that enables me to eat dinner with my family at night.

Laura

But it’s not just like super privileged white women that have a lot of you know nutrition knowledge, right, that benefit from ultra processed foods. I’m also thinking about kids with feeding disorders that would struggle to get all the nutrition that they need without processed foods. I’m thinking about elderly or disabled people who can maintain a level of independence because they can quickly cook some pasta and throw an ultra processed jar of pasta sauce on that and have a nourishing meal. I’m thinking about pregnant people who otherwise might not be able to stomach eating because of morning sickness and nausea, which we know lasts forever, not just morning, right?

So there are so many groups of people that benefit from ultra processed foods, and they just seem to be missing entirely from the conversation around these foods.

Virginia

So often there’s this pressure of like, we have to just get poor people cooking more and get them cooking more. And it’s like, okay, but if you live in a shelter, you don’t have a kitchen. If you are crashing on a couch with family member, you know, in a house with lots of different people, and it’s not easy for you to get time in the kitchen. There’s so many different scenarios where cooking is not a practical solution, and having greater shelf stability is very important.

Laura

But it also says a lot about where we place our values, right? And who is making decisions about where we cook our values? Because it’s not everyone’s value system to spend more time cooking from scratch and buying fresh ingredients and spending more time in the kitchen.

Virginia

I picked this clip because I think Laura is summing up so many important pieces of this conversation that I just continue to see nowhere in the mainstream media discourse around ultra-processed foods. Like the fact that they are useful and convenient. And convenience is not a moral failing. I don’t know where we decided food should be inconvenient to be valuable and healthy? But it seems like that’s a thing that we believe.

Corinne

I know Maintenance Phase just did an ultra processed food episode. I listened to that.

Virginia

Oh, it’s excellent.

Corinne

And both they and you and Laura got into the way that “processed” is just such a moving target. It means so many different things.

Virginia

It means literally anything.

Corinne

And also nothing.

Virginia

Yes, when I say this is missing from the discourse, I don’t mean Maintenance Phase, who I think we’re very much in conversation with. As Mike and Aubrey kept discussing on their episode—I think Laura says some of this, too—depending whose classification system you go by, honey is ultra-processed or it’s not ultra-processed. Foods are moving categories all the time.

And as Aubrey said: Really what it comes down to is they’re categorizing foods so that the ones that “people who make less money than you buy” are bad. And I was like, yep, there it is. This is really classism and racism and all the other isms to say let’s demonize these foods that people rely on.

Which is not to say we shouldn’t improve the overall quality of food in the food system! But doing it through this policing of consumer habits just will never not make me furious.

Corinne

Really feels like this hasn’t gotten better since the episode aired two years ago?

Virginia

If anything, I think it has intensified. I think RFK and MAHA has really put this one in their crosshairs, and it’s just getting worse and worse. It’s really maddening, because we’re just not having any of the real conversations we need to have about how to improve food quality in this country or anywhere.

Corinne

What a bummer.

All right, let’s listen to this next quote, which is about jeans.

Virginia

Oh, jeans.

Virginia

So the backstory is on recent Indulgence Gospels, we have talked about how Corinne converted me to the universal standard straight leg jeans, and I do really like them. But earlier today, I had to be in photos, and we had a plan. The three of us had a plan that I was going to wear those jeans, and at the last minute, I texted Dacy. I didn’t even text Corinne because I knew she’d yell at me. I texted Dacy, and I was like, I can’t do it. I’m in my skinny jeans for the photos. And, yeah, it was like, do I look too sloppy? Are these, like, saggy in a weird way that I have no control over?

And I feel like for something like having your picture taken, like, wear the pants, you’re not going to feel like you’re only thinking about your pants. You know what I mean?

Corinne

Okay, so I wanted to revisit some of your feelings about jeans. You may recall that we used to open like every podcast episode by chatting about pants!

Virginia

We did. We haven’t done that!

Corinne

We kind of fell off pants chat, and I don’t know why.

Virginia

Bring back pants chat!

Corinne

But I do feel like since we started doing the podcast, your feelings about jeans have evolved? True or false?

Virginia

They have evolved. They definitely have. I mean, I still own a pair of emotional support skinny jeans. The same pair I mention in that episode.

Corinne

When is the last time you wore them?

Virginia

I actually have not worn them very much at all. I did wear them two weeks ago under a shirt dress because it turned out to be colder than I thought. And I was like, “Oh, it’s not a bare leg dress day.” So I put on skinny jeans under it, but I haven’t worn them for any other reason in a really long time.

And I will say: I’m wearing my Gap straight leg jeans the most, the baggier fit ones the most. So I do think I’ve evolved to embrace a more relaxed fit of jean, which does make it much easier to get jeans to fit your body.

I still think the primary finding of Jean Science was correct, that jeans are designed terribly, that fashion in general is terrible at fitting people’s bodies, but particularly when it comes to fitting pants onto fat people. They’re really bad at it. And so I think all the jeans are bad.

But I will say if you can embrace a wider leg or a more relaxed fit, you will have more options.

Corinne

Yeah, I think that’s true.

Virginia

I still cannot solve for the factor of, if you wear a more relaxed fit, they will still stretch out when you wear them, and they will be falling off you by the second day, if not later in the first day. And nobody has solved this.

Corinne

I think someone did solve it, and it’s belts.

Virginia

That is not a solution that is available to me, personally. I don’t like belts. I guess I should try belts? I don’t know about belts. Okay, that’s a whole other thing.

Corinne

This is kind of neither here nor there, but I just read this post from Em Seely-Katz who writes Esque, and I think they were actually writing about something else, raw hem jeans. But they were saying that men’s jeans, the zipper goes all the way from the bottom of the crotch up to the top. Why don’t women’s jeans do that?

Virginia

Wait, men’s jeans have a different zipper?

Corinne

Like, the zipper on women’s jeans is shorter. It doesn’t go all the way down.

Virginia

Is it because they don’t want men to pee on their pants?

Corinne

Well, I think it’s so you can open them up more to get your… whatever but, but I think women’s jeans should also have that option for access.

Virginia

I just really have to pause on how uncomfortable Corinne was saying penis right there. She was like… whatever you’ve got down there.

Corinne

I think I was going to say dick and then I was like, is that inappropriate?

Virginia

Whatever, we swear all the time. Anyway, the zipper is longer so that men can deal with their junk.

Corinne

I think women should have the option of being able to deal with their junk as well.

Virginia

Agreed, agreed. Pro longer zipper.

Corinne

Also, I feel like it would be easier to to get jeans on if they opened up more at the top.

Virginia

Now that you’ve put this very important issue on my radar, I’m ready to adopt it as a primary cause.

Corinne

Okay, thank you.

Virginia

We will have a petition for everyone to sign shortly.

You are a diehard jeans person. You always look great in jeans. You’re inspiring on the topic.

Corinne

This year I have adopted drawstring jeans, which feels like it’s barely jeans.

Virginia

But also sounds like a life hack.

Corinne

Yeah, it’s very comfortable.

Virginia

I love drawstring. In the summer, I wear a lot of drawstring. I don’t wear a lot of drawstring in the winter.

Corinne

Drawstring would probably solve your stretching out after a couple wears problem, similar to a belt.

Virginia

It would be like a belt, but not a belt, so it wouldn’t trigger my belt concerns.

I think my other struggle with jeans—that is maybe not really even about jeans—is that since I have broken up mostly with dark skinny jeans, there is sometimes a category of outfit I am trying to achieve where I’m trying to be dressed up, but not too dressed up. And I feel like the dark skinny jean really filled that need. Does that make sense?

Like, you want to look like kind of polished because you’re going to your kid’s chorus concert or out to dinner with friends, but it’s not like all the way to a dress level? That might feel like too much. I feel like the dark skinny jean really threaded this needle.

This stems from having been in my 20s in the early 2000s and being trained in the School of the Going Out Top. The going out top and dark jeans was a uniform. And I think I’m still like, “So what replaces the dark jeans and the going out top?” And then I realized, like… anything? That’s me trying to dress like it’s 2003 and it’s not.

But that is one place I still struggle, because I don’t feel like the lighter, more relaxed denim can can do that same category?

Corinne

Hmm, what about darker, wide leg jeans? Is that not a thing?

Virginia

Maybe I just haven’t found a pair I really like that are darker. That’s a good thought.

Corinne

Or maybe with wide leg jeans, you need a slightly fancier top, I don’t know.

Virginia

I think a lot of our dependency on the skinny jean was just because we’d really learned the outfit formulas for it. And I do feel like sometimes when I gravitate back towards it, it’s because I’m feeling at sea with how to put an outfit together without them.

Corinne

This is not about jeans, but I’m really into these Old Navy shorts I have that have stripes down the side. They’re sweat shorts. And they’re so comfortable. But then sometimes when I’m going out, I am like, wait, what do I put on the top so that it doesn’t look like I’m just in sweats?

Virginia

I just came here in pajamas. Yeah, don’t you feel like that’s a struggle with shorts and tank tops in general in the summer? And I feel like more of a struggle for fat folks?

Corinne

Maybe.

Virginia

It’s harder to look like you got dressed or something, right?

Corinne

Like, how do I look like I’m not just wearing a t-shirt and jeans?

Lately, I’ve been experimenting with the answer to that being socks. Right now I’m wearing—am I about to try and show you my socks? Nope.

I’m wearing chartreuse socks, kind of like a chartreuse dress sock. I’ll send you a pic after. But I feel like that with the tank top and shorts kind of makes it look more outfit-y.

@selfiefayStay for the pitbull cameo #ootd

Virginia

You should know my 11 year old is doing the same thing this summer.

Corinne

Oh, that’s cool.

Virginia

There are a lot of brightly colored socks with regular shorts and t-shirts. Also, she has a lot of animal print socks. So you’re blessed by Gen Alpha or whatever she is.

Corinne

Amazing.

Virginia

Good job.

All right. Well, for the final clip, I went back to another favorite guest conversation. To be clear, I love all of our guest conversations. But this was one that was just like one of my favorite ever. It was with Martinus Evans, who is the author of Slow AF Run Club: The Ultimate Guide for Anyone Who Wants to Run. Martinus also runs the Slow AF Run Club, which is a running community for folks to run in the bodies they have. He is so hilarious and delightful.

This episode ran in June 2023 so here’s the clip.

Martinus

So what that looks like is like letting them know that obstacles and rising up in the face of adversity is a good thing. Because for a lot of people, they think it’s a bad thing. Like, oh, I face adversity. I’m slow.

Or, here’s the thing I always get, is that I started running, and then I got a little tired, and I started walking, and I felt absolutely horrible that I had to walk. And then me come in and say, Well, what was wrong with that? Did you start running again? Yeah, I did. Well, fuck like, let’s celebrate that then? It’s that thing of letting people know that it’s okay to bumble and stumble and figure this thing out because you’re doing something with your body that you have not been A. celebrated to do, right? But B. You’re kind of stifled, like being a plus size person, like you may have even been stifled with movement, because you haven’t had the liberty to actually explore the things that your body might be able to do. You got to explore and figure all this stuff out.

So, like, that’s where providing psychological safety is letting them know that it’s okay. It’s almost like, imagine a kid who’s like, riding a bike for the first time. They ride the bike, you let it go, they lose their balance, they fall, they scrape their knee. They’re going to cry. They’re going to be like, Oh, I don’t want to ride this bike anymore. It’s horrible. I don’t want to do this. Don’t make me do this. But as a good parent or as a good coach, you’re going to like, okay, let’s cry it out. You done crying? Okay, now let’s get your ass back on that bike. The same thing is true with physical activity. All right. You did it. You got a side stitch? Okay, cool. Let’s figure this out. Oh, you got shin splints. Okay, cool, yeah, let’s figure this out. Oh, oh, you got delay, onset, muscle soreness? Great. Let’s figure this out. But guess what? Yeah, that’s going to continue to move.

That’s the approach that I take. Like we’re all going to fall off, and somewhere around us being grown start to be embedded in us, like doing something and then like failing or like not getting it right on the first time is a bad thing. I think it’s school.

Virginia

I think school is a lot of it, yeah. I’m thinking, like, when a baby’s learning to walk, they fall a million times, and people aren’t like you should stop trying to walk. You know what I mean?

Martinus

Imagine that like walking a baby trying to walk. And I said, screw you baby! Like you suck you’re not. Damn you for trying to walk.

Virginia

Yeah, you are a fat baby who can’t walk. And yet we have this narrative that then kicks in of somehow, if I have to stop to walk during my run, that’s like a moral failing. Like walking and running are morally equivalent activities, right? Like if you’re walking, some of it, if you’re running, some of that, as you said, like the pace of your running, if you are slow, that is still running. There’s no need to be attaching all these values to it.

But it does seem like the culture of running at large is so built on that paradigm, and you are really challenging an entire paradigm here.

Martinus

Yes, I am. Here’s why. If you’re not an elite athlete who’s like their life depends on winning prize money and like going to the Olympics, all of us are then paying for a participation medal to participate in a parade.

Corinne

I love this. He’s really delightful.

Virginia

He’s so good. And the reframing of running marathons as participating in a parade will just make me happy forever. It’s so correct.

I mean, obviously we stand by everything Martinus said. There’s not really a lot more to say. So I thought we could also talk a little bit about how working on the podcast has changed each of our relationship with exercise. Because I think we’ve done a lot of good fitness content over the last 200 episodes, and I personally feel like I’m in a better place with exercise than I was when I started this project.

Corinne

Hmm, that’s awesome. Well, I think I started lifting around the same time that I started doing the podcast.

Virginia

There was an early episode where you were, like, “I’m using a broomstick.”

Corinne

Oh, that’s right! I was doing Couch to Barbell!

Virginia

And look at you now, power lifter.

Corinne

I mean, one thing that is interesting about maybe starting any exercise, or maybe specifically powerlifting, is I think, in the first like year that you do it, you get better fast. Like, really consistently, almost every time you go to the gym, you’re lifting more weight. And that is so rewarding. And probably a little addictive.

Now that I have been doing it for two and a half years, I’m not getting better every time. Sometimes I can’t lift weights that I have previously lifted for various reasons. Even if I’m maxing out, sometimes not hitting my previous maxes. I think it can be hard to figure out what am I doing? I took a little bit break last summer. I went to visit family, and I decided to just not go to the gym.

Virginia

I remember, that seems good. I feel like it was good you took that break.

Corinne

Yeah, it was good. And it sucked getting back. So yeah, I’m still figuring it out.

Virginia

I guess that’s the tricky thing about any sport where there’s progress attached to it, which power lifting is still a sport organized around progress.

Corinne

I mean, there are different ways you can measure progress, too. Like how many reps, versus just straight up how much weight.

Virginia

But it’s still measuring progress. It’s still expecting there to be progress, which is both exciting, and I think progress can be very motivating. And what do you do then when you’re in a period with it where it’s not really about progress? How do you find value in that relationship? That’s a tricky question.

Corinne

Or when the progress is just much smaller.

Virginia

And can you still feel good about that?. Or do you start feeling like what’s the point?

I think for me, it’s so funny that I love this conversation with Martinus so much, because I am just never going to be a runner again. Running was such a bad relationship that I’m so glad to be done with.

I think for me, so much of finding joy and exercise is about not having progress goals of any kind. Like just having different activities I like doing for their own sake, and kind of rotating. Like, I like weight lifting. It was exciting when I went up to larger weight, heavier weights. At some point I hope to go up to heavier weights again.

But I’m not tracking it. I’m like, these still seem hard. I don’t know, it seems fine.

Then the other stuff I do, like walking the dog and gardening, are really not things you would be like, wow, I weeded two more flower beds this week. It’s not progress.

But I do feel good that I, in various flavors, work out much more consistently than I have at other points in my life. Because it’s more built into my lifestyle. And, I think talking to people like Martinus, Anna Maltby, obviously Lauren Leavell, Jessie Diaz-Herrera and all the folks who’ve come on and talked to us about different approaches to fitness have just really helped me claim it for myself in a way that I really was struggling to do. So that’s been cool.

Corinne

Yeah, that is cool. That’s inspiring.

Corinne

Well, this was fun to look back on some favorite episodes! Should we do butter?

Virginia

I just came up with my Butter while I was eating lunch. And it is what I ate for lunch. And it is Sushi Salad.

I invented this today. I had some leftover sushi, but it wasn’t quite enough to be lunch by itself. So I chopped up the spicy tuna roll, with the rice and everything, chopped it up into little chunks, and I put it over a bed of greens with some some chopped bell peppers, some red onion, and then I kind of made up a fake spicy mayonnaise Asian-ish salad dressing. I’m not saying this is culturally authentic in any way. I need to underscore that a lot. But it was such a good lunch. So Sushi Salad is my Butter.

And in general, I’ve been a big fan of leftovers plus salad as a lunch formula. A lot of leftovers lend themselves well to being a chopped ingredient in a good salad, and then it’s like a new take. If you’re someone who gets sick of leftovers, it’s a whole new experience.

Corinne

I’m also going to do a food.

Virginia

Great. We love food Butter.

Corinne

I had some friends over for dinner earlier this week, and I made this Smitten Kitchen recipe, she calls it garlic lime steak and noodle salad.

Virginia

Oh, sold.

Corinne

It’s a really good hot weather meal, because it’s rice vermicelli that you basically dunk in hot water for a few minutes and can serve cold or room temp. Then you chop up cucumbers and tomatoes and green beans, and then you make a marinade that also doubles as a dressing that has fish sauce, sugar, stuff like that, and and grill some steak and put that on top.

Virginia

Oh my gosh, I’m making this this week. I love this kind of recipe. Also, a great salad. Don’t sleep on main course salads.

Corinne

Yes, I had the leftovers as a salad yesterday. So good.Well, coming up next week, we’re going to visit another bunch of favorite moments. Including: Feelings about aging, heterosexual marriage and what happens when your partner is on a diet.

Virginia

That episode WILL be paywalled, just like all our other Indulgence Gospels, so you should become a paid subscriber so you don’t miss it!

The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, and Big Undies!

The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.

Our theme music is by Farideh.

Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.

Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

Sorting fact from diet culture myth, with Cole Kazdin

You’re listening to Burnt Toast! Today, my guest is Cole Kazdin.

Cole is an Emmy Award-winning television journalist and author of What's Eating Us: Women, Food, and the Epidemic of Body Anxiety. Cole came on Burnt Toast about two years ago to talk about What's Eating Us when it first came out—and the way the eating disorder industrial complex leaves so many folks struggling to find durable recovery.

Today, Cole is joining us again as an eating disorder expert, but also as a fellow woman in perimenopause… who is reeling right now from all the diet culture nonsense coming for us in this stage of life.

Our goal today is to call out the anti-fatness, ageism and diet culture running rampant in peri/menopause-adjacent media. I know a lot of you have more specific questions about menopause (like how much protein DO we need?). Part 2 of the Burnt Toast Menopause Conversation will be coming in a few weeks with Mara Gordon, MD joining us to tackle those topics. So drop your questions in the comments for Dr. Mara!

This episode is free but if you value this conversation, please consider supporting our work with a paid subscription. Burnt Toast is 100% reader- and listener-supported. We literally can’t do this without you.

PS. You can always listen to this pod right here in your email, where you’ll also receive full transcripts (edited and condensed for clarity). But please also follow us in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and/or Pocket Casts! And if you enjoy today’s conversation, please tap the heart on this post — likes are one of the biggest drivers of traffic from Substack’s Notes, so that’s a super easy, free way to support the show!

Virginia

So, Cole, you are back because you emailed me to say: Is all of menopause a diet? What are we doing? By which I mean menopause and perimenopause—we’re going to kind of lump them together everyone. They are distinct life stages. But in terms of the cultural discourse, they’re very much hooked together.

You emailed and said:

Look, I’m not a menopause expert, but I am an eating disorder expert and I’m seeing a lot of stuff that I don’t like. How do we take a skeptical but informed eye about the messaging we get as we age? How do we get through this without developing an eating disorder as we are in the full witch phase of our lives?

So, let’s just start by getting a lay of the land. What are our first impressions as women newly arriving in perimenopause?

Cole

There’s something that is so exciting about all the books that are out and the research that’s emerging, from actual OB/GYNs to the existence of the Menopause Society to Naomi Watts wrote a book about menopause. I think we’re the first real generation to have menopause information and conversations.

When I asked my mom about her perimenopause and menopause she doesn’t really remember it. So I think I really want to preface this by saying how valuable this is. When I sat down to start looking at the available information and read these books, I was stunned by some of the symptoms that I’ve never heard of—tinnitus, joint pain, right? Things that aren’t just hot flashes, which I think are the standard menopause symptoms that we tend to hear about.

Virginia

There are a lot. It’s like, everything that could be happening to your body.

Cole

And then very quickly… there’s a sharp left turn to intermittent fasting.

Virginia

Yes. It’s like, wait, what? I want to know about my joint pain? What are we doing?

Cole

And it felt to me, like some sort of betrayal. Because you get on the train of “we’re going to learn about something that’s happening to our bodies that no one’s ever really talked about or paid attention to before.” And, then it’s oh wait, I have to track my protein. What just happened?

I’m having so much trouble with that clash of gratitude and absolute hunger—pun intended, sorry, there’s no other word—for the information and research. And then being told, “But no hunger!”

Virginia

I mean, this is always the story with women’s health, right? Women’s health is so ignored and forgotten by the mainstream—the media, the medical system—so we are left to put it together on our own.

And of course, we have a proud tradition of centuries of midwives teaching women about our bodies. It’s the Our Bodies, Ourselves legacy. There’s all this wisdom that women figure out about how our bodies work, what we need to know to take care of ourselves. But because it’s being ignored by scientific research, it’s being ignored by the mainstream, and it is this sort of an underground thing—that also opens up a really clear market for diet culture.

So it’s really easy to find an influencer—and they may even be a doctor or have some other credentials attached to their name—who you feel like, “Oh, she’s voicing something that I am feeling. I’m being ignored by my regular doctor and here’s this person on Tiktok who really seems to get it,” …and then also wants to sell me a supplement line. It’s so quick to go to this place of it’s just another Goop, basically.

Cole

And what if it didn’t go there? What does the world look like where it doesn’t go there?

I am really hyper conscious of my own vulnerabilities—even though I feel very, very, very, very solid in my eating disorder recovery. I don’t go there anymore. I know there are vulnerabilities there, because I struggled on and off with eating disorders for decades. But, I really feel solid in my recovery. And then I wonder if I should start tracking my protein?

I was shocked to even hear that in my own head, and then to hear my very sophisticated turn of “well, you’re not looking at calories, you’re not trying to get smaller, you’re done with that for real for real. But you should probably start looking at how much protein you’re getting!” Wait a minute, stop!

Virginia

Where’s that coming from?

Cole

I’m fortunate enough that because of my background and because I wrote a book on this, I can reach out to top eating disorder researchers in the country, and just ask a question. Isn’t this kind of funny that I did this? Isn’t that interesting? What do you think? And to be met with: Do not go near tracking apps! That is not safe for you. DO NOT track your protein. It’s not funny.

I did that last night. I just reached out to one of the top eating disorder experts in the country, because this is something we don’t talk about. But I think with something like intermittent fasting, which we hear about in all aspects of wellness diet culture, we have to remember that intermittent fasting is extreme food restriction. Our bodies panic when we fast. But these can set us on roads towards very disordered relationships with food in our bodies. And the worst case is developing an eating disorder.

Virginia

Right, or living with a subclinical eating disorder that makes you miserable, even if no one ever says, yes, you have a diagnosis.

Cole

Absolutely. Thinking about protein every day is stressful and just being consumed with this idea of what we’re eating and how much we’re eating and what we need to be doing. And the fear of the consequences, right? If I don’t track my protein, I’m going to break a hip, right? I mean, I’m condensing the messaging. But if you follow the steps, that’s kind of where it goes.

Virginia

Well, and I don’t think it’s even just “I’m going to break a hip.” I think it’s “I’m going to become old and vulnerable and undesirable.” The hip is symbolic of this cultural narrative about older women’s bodies, which is that you are going to become disposable and irrelevant. And the fear that’s stoking us, that’s making us hungry for the information—which is valid, it is a mysterious phase of life that we don’t know enough about.

But there’s this fear of of irrelevancy and and not being attractive, and all of that. You can’t tease that out from “I’m worried about my bone density.” It’s all layered in there.

Cole

And my own OB/GYN told me at our last visit—she offers a separate let’s have a talk about perimenopause appointment, which I think is great. It’s essentially about hormone replacement therapy and when and if that might be part of your journey. But she told me that most people who don’t have some immediate symptom like hot flashes are coming to her in perimenopause because of weight gain or redistribution of weight, which is very normal during this phase of life. And they are asking if hormone replacement therapy could “fix” that issue.

So it’s the post-baby body thing all over again. As if there’s a return to something, as opposed to a forward movement. But the fact that that’s an entry point for a lot of these menopause physicians that write books and have a presence on social media. It’s very, very connected to an audience that is looking for weight loss.

Virginia

I think there is something about any mysterious health situation—whether it’s perimenopause, or I see a similar narrative happen around diabetes often—where the condition gets held out as this worst case scenario that’s so so bad that therefore any concerns you had about is it disordered to diet? Is it risky for me to count protein? All of that kind of goes out the window because we get laser focused and we have to solve this thing. You no longer get to have feelings about how pursuing weight loss can be damaging for you. This physical health thing trumps all the emotions.

Cole

It’s a medical issue now.

Virginia

Right! I’m at sea in this whole new complicated medical landscape of menopause. I don’t know what it is, so obviously, whatever I used to feel about needing to accept my body no longer applies. I don’t get to do that anymore. I have to just like, drill in and get serious about this.

I’ve had older women say this to me. Like, “you can be body positive in your 30s or early 40s, but get over 50, sweetheart, and you’re not going to be able to do that anymore.”

But why not? That should be available to us throughout our lives. So that frustrates me. Because simultaneously, we have no good information, we have no good science about what’s happening to us. And yet menopause weight loss is given this gravitas. You can’t argue with it, and you have to just be okay eating less for the rest of your life now.

Cole

Maybe this is where body liberation is in one of its most critical stages? To develop it here in this phase of life. Because I think what complicates it further, and I will give people the benefit of the doubt that it is not nefarious when the messaging is also married to we’re not trying to get smaller, we’re trying to get stronger. But here’s also how to get rid of belly fat. And that I find genuinely confusing, I think, oh good, you’re not talking about weight loss. Oh, wait, you are talking about weight loss. But is being stronger now a proxy for weight loss? You’re telling people not to diet.

We see this in other arenas, and I even wonder, gee, now that these weight loss drugs are so ubiquitous, is menopause, the next frontier of of health and weight being conflated? And it’s such a letdown. I mean, I know that sounds so simple it’s just so disappointing. It’s so disappointing.

Virginia

You called it the Full Witch Phase. This should be a stage of our life that’s more free than ever before, right? We’re not 20-somethings trying to find a man to be a baby daddy, we’re through with that pressure.

Cole

No this is the taking pottery lessons, stranger sex, no pregnancy phase! Maybe, I don’t know. For some people.

Virginia

It seems like it should be!

Cole

It could be.

Virginia

And yet, here is all this body stuff/weight stuff coming in.

And women go through this at every stage of our life. I’m watching my my middle schooler in puberty, where weight gain is absolutely normal and what we want their bodies to be doing. Reproductive years, childbirth, weight gain—this is a part of having a body with a uterus is that you are going to go through phases where it is normal for your body to get bigger. And in every one of these stages, we’re told it’s terrible and you should avoid it at all costs.

That said, I do feel like in some of the other arenas, like around pregnancy, there’s a lot of pressure on women to get their bodies back after they have babies. But you can find a counter-narrative that’s saying, no, I don’t have to erase the evidence that I had a child. My body can be different now, I’m going to embrace that. There are those of us out there saying that.

But I don’t see that counter-narrative around menopause. I don’t see women saying, “Yep, you’re going to have a bigger stomach in menopause. It makes sense because of the estrogen drop off.” This is why bodies change in menopause. Let’s just embrace it. Instead, it feels like this, of all the weight gains, you must fight this one the most. And I don’t understand. I mean, again, I think there’s a link to ageism there. But what else do you think is going on there?

Cole

I mean, it’s ageism, it’s ableism, it’s beauty standards. It’s all the things. It’s how we’re valued as women. I want to dive deeper in this to see the fat menopause doctors. I would like to find some of those. I don’t know.

Virginia

Listeners, if you know some, drop them in the comments please. We want to talk to the fat menopuase doctors!

Cole

To just see people that look different from some of these “classic doctors”e we see on Instagram and Tiktok, to just talk about what do we really have to think about during menopause? We know that the drop in estrogen affects from the brain, affects everything in our bodies, and how we don’t want to lose sight of that because we’re trying to get rid of belly fat either.

Virginia

Right, right? I think of Jessica Slice, who I had the on the podcast recently, talking about differentiating between alleviating suffering and trying to “fix” your body. Or caring for your body instead of trying to force it into an ideal.

We’re not saying that this isn’t a time of life where women need extra support, where our bodies need extra care. That makes sense to me. My face does this weird flushing thing now it never used to do. I just suddenly get blotchy for like, 20 minutes and feel really hot. But only in my face. It’s not even a hot flash. So there are all these wild things our bodies are doing that we deserve to have information about, and we deserve to have strategies to manage them. I mean, the face blotchy thing is not really impacting my quality of life. But there are a lot that do. The night sweats are terrible. I want strategies to alleviate that suffering. And it just seems like what a disservice we do when all of the advice is filtered through weight loss instead of actually focusing on the symptoms that are causing distress.

Cole

Yes, yes. And is it boring to talk about weight fluctuation? Because I find it interesting that weight fluctuation is so deeply correlated with so many health problems. There has been research on this for years. That’s why I ask if it’s boring, because we know this, and we don’t talk about it nearly enough, but we know this. The research is so, so so deeply there. It’s correlated with chronic illnesses. And who among us hasn’t in their history had weight fluctuation? With our diets or whatever our behaviors are. And so what is weight fluctuation going to do in menopause? I doubt that’s being studied.

I was looking at weight fluctuation and fertility when I was researching my book, and there aren’t those studies, because fertility studies are much shorter term, and weight fluctuation studies are longer term. So never do they meet.

But could weight fluctuation impact negatively our menopause experience? It would make perfect sense if that if that were the case.

Virginia

Yes. This maybe isn’t a stage of life wher you want to be weight cycling and going up and down, and deliberately pursuing going down, because there might be cost to it.

I mean, we do know that higher body weight is really protective against osteoporosis, for example. If you’re concerned about breaking a hip, pursuing weight loss, I would argue, is counter to that goal for a lot of us. Researchers call this the obesity paradox, which is an extremely anti-fat, terrible term. But we know that folks in bigger bodies have lower mortality rates, that they survive things like cancer treatments and heart surgery with better outcomes.

So as we’re thinking of our aging years, where we’re all going to be dealing with some type of chronic condition or other, some type of cancer, heart stuff, like this is what’s going to happen right. Then pursuing thinness at any cost is not actually going to be the prescription for that. There’s a good reason to hold onto your body fat.

Cole

And I come back to the stress piece of this, which I don’t think can be overstated. Stress is so detrimental to our health, and this preoccupation with food, body exercise, tracking apps, all of that really does elevate our stress. And I think we’re so used to it. It’s invisible in so many ways because it’s bundled in with so many other stressors in our lives. Eliminating the stressor of what am I eating? Am I getting enough fiber? All of that is really, really can be a crucial piece of having a better experience in our bodies and of our health.

It’s that Atkins echo over and over and over again, which I thought we had decided already we were done with. But it’s those two triggers, the protein, resistance training, lifting.

I think it comes back to, you can control your behaviors. You can’t control your weight. And if weight is ever going to be some sort of goal, you’re really setting yourself up for stress, health problems, and again, at worst, an eating disorder.

Virginia

Absolutely. And we should caveat here: I personally love lifting weights. It’s my favorite kind of workout. If these things bring you joy, keep doing that. We’re not saying nobody should lift weights or nobody should eat protein.

I just feel like I have to slip that in because people get frustrated.

Cole

No, I think that’s important, and I am the same as you. I love lifting weights, and for me, it has actually been an antidote to a lot of the compulsive cardio I did when I had an eating disorder. There’s something about lifting weights that is so grounding.

Every month or so, I go to this this guy—he does training in his garage—and we lift weights. And I told him before our first session, look, I’m recovering anorexic, I’m perimenopausal. I’m not here to have language like “tone up” and all of that. I do not want to do it. I want to lift something heavy and put it down. That’s what I’m here for. I was a little aggressive.

Virginia

I mean, you have to put the boundary, though, you really do.

Cole

But to his credit, he has respected that. And we lift heavy shit and put it down, and it is so so good for me. In repairing my relationship with exercise, which for me was one of the biggest challenges in recovery. So when someone says, lift weights, I’m here for that, because I really enjoy that. But I agree with you. I think it’s so important that we go with our ability and something we enjoy.

Virginia

The main reason I lift weights is because I do a lot of gardening, and I have to be able to lift a heavy bag of soil or a pot or dig big holes and do these things.

We need to remember that these things, eating protein, lifting weight, it’s supposed to support you living the life you want to live. It’s not a gold star you need to get every day to be valuable as a person. I can tell weightlifting all winter is really helping me garden this year. That’s what I did it for. So you can recognize the value that these things have in your life—I’m less cranky if I eat protein at breakfast. I make it through my work morning better. And not be measuring our success by whether or not we’re doing those things and like, how we’re doing them and counting how much we’re doing them every day.

Cole

Well, that is key. I mean, first of all, I will say there are a few things more gratifying than hauling a 40 pound bag of cat litter up the stairs to my second floor apartment. I feel like I need some sort of like, are people watching me? Am I getting a medal for this? Even if no one is.

Virginia

I totally agree.

Cole

It is exciting, me, alone with myself, walking up the stairs with that, and it’s not that hard. I get excited. I lift weights so I can carry this bag of cat litter. I mean, it’s more complex than that, but that is a very significant percentage of why I lift weights.

Virginia

Because that impacts your daily functioning and happiness.

Cole

And I think with eating, I find I’m in a better mood when I’m carbing it out. You know what I mean? I’m sure protein is great. And I have some. I do all the things, whatever. And everyone’s body is different. Everyone responds differently. But some people will say, oh, when I have salmon, I just feel fantastic or something. I don’t know.

Virginia

Have they tried pasta? Do they not know about pasta?

Cole

For me, I feel better when I eat—it almost doesn’t matter what it is. And if I don’t eat, then I have low energy and brain fog and don’t feel good.

Virginia

And again, it’s because of the fear mongering around the stage of life. It’s because of this you’re now in this murky waters where everything could go wrong with your body at any moment type of thing. I mean, this is what diet culture teaches us. Control what you can control. Okay, well, probably I can’t control what’s happening to my hip bones, but we think we should be able to control how we how we exercise and losing weight.

The fact is, your day to day context is going to change. Having arbitrary standards you have to hold yourself to because of vague future health threat stuff is unhelpful when you may have a week where you don’t have time to make all the salmon and you have to just be okay with eating takeout. There’s no grace for just being a person with a lot else going on. And every woman in perimenopause and menopause is a person with a lot going on.

All right, we are going chat a little bit about one of the folks that we see on the socials talking about menopause relentlessly —Dr. Mary Claire Haver.

Cole

She wrote the book The New Menopause, which is a really great, significant book in many ways in terms of providing information that has never been provided before.

Virginia

Oh yes, this is @drmaryclaire.

Cole

When I bought her book, I saw that she has also written The Galveston Diet, and I said to myself, hmm. And then bought the book anyway. And you know now it all makes sense. Because The Galveston Diet is is very geared towards the perimenopausal, menopausal lose belly fat, but also have more energy help your menopause symptoms, right? How can you knock that? Come on.

And so it's very sort of interwoven with all the diet stuff. So it's not surprising that she would bring so much of that up in her menopause book and a lot on her Instagram. She wears a weighted vest all the time. I thought, “Should I get a weighted vest?” And I again, I wasn't sure if I was doing it for menopause diet culture reasons, or I just love to lift heavy things reasons. I thought, “That could be cool. Maybe that'll be fun. I'll just wear a weighted vest around the house, like this woman, who's the menopause authority.”

I guess what’s coming across in this interview is how vulnerable I am to any advertising!

Virginia

No, it's relatable. We all are vulnerable! I mean, I'm looking at her Instagram right now and I'm simultaneously exhausted at the prospect of wearing a weighted vest around my house and, like…well…

Cole

Wouldn't that be convenient? But let me save you a minute here, because when you go to whatever your favorite website is to buy weighted vests, and you look at the reviews, it's split between people saying, “This is the best weighted vest [insert weighted vest brand here],” and other people saying, “Gee, the petroleum smell hasn't gone away after two months.”

Virginia

Okay. I can't be walking around my house smelling petroleum. No, thank you.

Cole

Because they're filled with sand that comes from who knows where, and the petroleum smell doesn't go away. And according to some reviews I read—because I did go down the rabbit hole with this—it actually increases if you sweat. So I thought, You know what, I can do this in other ways.

Virginia

I'm sure there are folks for whom the weighted vest is a revelation. And, it's a very diet culture thing to need to be alway optimizing an activity. You can't just go for a walk. You need to be walking with a weighted vest or with weighted ankles. Why do we need to add this added layer of doing the most to everything?

And I'm looking at a reel now where she talks about the supplements she's taking. Dr. Mary Claire is taking a lot of supplements.

Cole

So many supplements!

Virginia

Vitamin D, K, omega threes, fiber, creatine, collagen, probiotic… That's a lot to be taking every day. That's a really expensive way to manage your health. Supplements are not covered by insurance. There's a lot of privilege involved in who can pursue gold standard healthy menopause lifestyle habits.

Cole

And it's always great to ask the question, who's getting rich off of the thing that I'm supposed to be doing for my health? Because it's never you.

Virginia

Yes. She keeps referencing the same brand — Pause.

Cole

It's hers. It's her brand.

Virginia

Oh there you go. So, yeah, taking advice from someone with a supplement line, I think, is really complicated. This is why it's so difficult to find a dermatologist as well. Any medical professional who's selling their own product line has gone into a gray area between medical ethics and capitalism that is very difficult to steer through.

Cole

And even in the most, let's say, the most noblest, pure intentions, it still creates that doubt, I think, with patients.

Virginia

I'm interested to see some “body positive” rhetoric coming in. There's a reel I'm looking at from May, where she's talking about, “When you were 12, you wanted to be smaller…” The message is, as you get older, you're constantly realizing that the body you once had was the perfect body.

And so she's arguing that we shouldn't this pursuit of thinness can leave us more fragile, more frail and less resilient as we age. Instead of chasing someone else's standard, celebrate the strength, power and uniqueness of you. “Because your body's worth isn't measured in dress sizes. It's measured in the life it lets you live.” Which is kind of what we've been saying. And this is from a woman who sells a diet plan, so I don't know how to square that.

Cole

That's what I'm struggling with, with this whole menopause thing! Because when someone starts selling me supplements, or talking about weight loss, talking about tracking your protein, I no longer trust them. And yet, it's not so black or white, because there's a lot good information too. She's helping a lot of people, myself included, with the information about menopause symptoms and the history of research or lack thereof, on this. It's really valuable, and it is hard to square that with the other part.

Virginia

It says to me that these people are choosing profit. I mean, maybe this isn't the piece she believes the most. Maybe she cares more about getting the information about menopause out there, and cares more about correcting those imbalances—but she's also comfortable profiting off this piece. And that's something that you just have to hold together.

And I mean, listeners have been asking me to do a menopause episode for like, months and months. And the reason I keep not doing it, and the reason, when you emailed, I was like, Oh, good, there's finally a way to do this, is I can't find an expert who is a menopause and perimenopause expert who is not pushing weight loss in a way that I am uncomfortable with. There certainly isn't a social media influencer person doing it.

I mean, my own midwife is great and extremely weight neutral. I hope people are finding, individually, providers who are really helpful. But the discourse really is centering around “you’re in this terrifying stage of life you have to fight looking older at every turn,” and that includes pursuing thinness now more than ever.

Cole

And: Don’t worry, we’ll fix this belly fat thing.

It’s so difficult to find providers who can talk about menopause, period. I have friends who went through menopause early and they were given every test in the world except a conversation about menopause, and found out after thousands of dollars and spinal taps and and really big procedures, that it was early menopause. So it’s so difficult to find a provider who is educated in menopause and can talk with you about it in a constructive way. So that’s the first step.

Then to be so audacious as to hope for a provider who will then be weight inclusive. Maybe we’re not there yet.

Virginia

We’re really reaching for the stars.

I hate to end on a depressing note, but I do think that’s where we are. I think it is hopefully helpful that we’re just voicing that and voicing this tension, that we’re seeing this disconnect, that we’re seeing in this conversation, that there needs to be better better information. That we need menopause voices who are not selling us things and pushing weight loss.

But yeah, this is, this is where we are. So I appreciate you talking with me.

Cole

Me too, and the answer to menopause is not weight loss.

Virginia

It really does not seem like it should ever have to be. It really is never the answer.

Cole

Isn’t the whole point caftans??

Virginia

Can we please get to the caftan stage? I’ve been training my whole life to be in my caftan era. It’s all I want.

Virginia

Well, speaking of caftans and things that make us delighted, Cole, do you have any Butter for us this week?

Cole

I do. My Butter is very specific. It’s my friend Catherine’s swimming pool. A good friend of mine from New York is now here in Los Angeles, where I live, helping to take care of her mother. And they have a lovely house with a heated swimming pool in the midst of a garden. I’ve never had the opportunity to be a garden person because of where I have lived. I would love the chance one day.

Virginia

In your Full Witch era!

Cole

In my Full Witch era. Lavender and roses around the swimming pool. It’s kind of like a three or four hour vacation. I went there the other day. I brought my son. He was absolutely delighted to be out of our two bedroom apartment. So my Butter is my goal. My summer goals is more of my friend Catherine’s pool. And whatever that is for anyone else, I wish that for them, too.

Virginia

Yes, I love this Butter. I am going to double your Butter, because we have a small pool that I love. It’s not a full-size swimming pool. It’s called a plunge pool, but it’s big enough for a couple of us, to get in. And it’s in my garden, which is a magical combination. And the thing about being having pool privilege—which I own. I have a pool, so I have pool privilege—the thing about pool privilege is your kids will then disgust you, because they will stop caring that the pool is there.

It’s just like everyone gets a backyard swing set. It becomes window dressing. They don’t see it. They’re like, “I don’t need to go in the pool. I don’t want to go in the pool.” And you’re just like, do you not know how privileged you are? Do you not know how lucky you are that we have a pool?

But I realized last night the trick to it. We were having dinner on the back patio, and I wanted them to go swimming after dinner, because I’m trying to wear out my kids. And they didn’t want to go in. And then I was like, “Well, what if you went in with your clothes on?” And they were like, oh my god, this is the best ever. I just let them jump right in. And then I went and put a swimsuit on, because that is not my journey.

Then we hung out in the pool, and once I get them in there, we have the best conversations. Pools, being in any water, is such a nice way to bond with your kids, because you can’t really be on your phone. Something about the water, it just puts everyone in a good mood.

But yeah, for anyone else with pool privilege and annoying children, just let them go in with their clothes on. It’s fine. You’re going to be dealing with wet clothes anyway afterwards.

Cole

That is such a constructive menopause tip.

Virginia

True. The reason I wanted to go in the pool is because I was freaking hot. And I could have gone in without them, but I was trying to be a fun mom, you know? Trying to have a magical moment, damn it.

Well, Cole, this was wonderful. Tell folks where we can follow you, how we can support your work, where we send our vents about our menopause symptoms.

Cole

I’m on Instagram and have been kind of quiet on Instagram lately, but I’ll get loud if we talk about menopause.

Virginia

All right, all right. I’m here for it. Thank you so much for doing this. This was really delightful.

Cole

Thank you so much. So good to talk.

The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, and Big Undies.

The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.

Our theme music is by Farideh.

Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.

Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

Plus what to eat when you don't want to eat and another fat dating update.

We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it’s time for your June Indulgence Gospel!

It’s time for a mailbag episode, so we’ll be diving into your questions about:

⭐️ Virginia’s online dating adventures 👀

⭐️ What we’re cooking right now 🧑🏻‍🍳👩‍🍳

⭐️ How we’re doing with the Target boycott!

⭐️ Plus Corinne’s best Maine recs 🦞

And so much more!

Virginia

It is time for your June indulgence gospel, which I am recording while losing my voice. In addition to my voice, this is also our second take on this episode. We’re having technical difficulties, so it’s just really a banger day. So Corinne, thank you for bearing with this.

Corinne

Oh God, it’s my fault.

Virginia

Yeah, but we’re going to do this. We’re going to answer these listener questions. I’m going to make Corinne read them all so I can save my voice for responding, and we’re going to muddle through. It’s going to be great.

Corinne

It’s going to be great.

All right. Are you ready for the first question?

Virginia

Hit me.

Corinne

My daughter wanted me to bake the red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting for her birthday instead of buying them, and I used a box mix for the cupcakes. And I feel that this, in and of itself, was a rejection of mommy perfectionism, which is a rejection of diet culture. Yes?

Virginia

Hell yes. 100 percent. We are pro-box mix. We have a family tradition where my mom makes really amazing birthday cakes for my kids, and she does it all from scratch, but she frequently uses a box mix for the cake itself so she can save her creative energies for the frosting. And I think that’s wise. I think that’s very wise.

Taming the Terrible Chocolate Cake Monster

Corinne

I love that. I feel that box cake mix often has a tenderness to it. It feels homemade.

Virginia

Yes, it’s got a really good texture. I mean, I feel about it the way I feel about my brownie mix, which is I don’t need to make them from scratch because they perfected the box mix. So, Team Box Mix forever here.

I mean, when you want to do something fancy from scratch, that’s great. Corinne is a great baker and does that kind of thing, but especially for kid birthdays...

Corinne

How old is a kid turning where they’re demanding cake from scratch?

Virginia

Oh, this feels like peak teenage energy. Like, Mo-om, I need it from scratch.

Corinne

Rude.

Virginia

A little bit rude. So you rejected mommy perfectionism and diet culture and also modeled for your daughter that your bandwidth matters.

Corinne

All right, the next question is:

Hoping to escape the hellish Texas summer for a couple of days in August, and I was hoping to visit Maine. I would love some main recs from Corinne.

Also, would love for longer episodes to make a comeback.

Virginia

Well, we hear you, but this will not be a longer episode, because I’m losing my voice. But noted, I think we’ve mostly gone shorter because of production bandwidth issues, the amount of time it takes to edit and edit transcripts. Also shorter episodes do better in Apple and other places. So there’s pressure to be shorter these days. Blame TikTok.

Corinne

Blame TikTok. I’m going to give a couple of recs for stuff to do in Maine. However, I will note that this person did not say where in Maine they’re going.

Virginia

It is a large state by northeast standards at least.

Corinne

So if anyone is ever going to Maine and wants recs, please feel free to DM me.

I’m going to assume you’re going to Portland, because usually people go there, or at least stop there, and there’s so much good food in Portland. It’s a great place to eat. I really like Leeward for dinner. It’s kind of fancy, but the food is unbelievably good. Crispy Gai is another good dinner spot. There are also tons of good bakeries and coffee. Tandem Bakery is great. I also think if you’re going to Portland, you probably should get a lobster roll. I like to go to the Two Lights lobster shack. It’s an outdoor place where you can order lobster rolls and fried seafood stuff and sit at a picnic table. There’s a lighthouse. It’s very Maine.

Virginia

Peak Maine. Any seating notes about these places?

Corinne

They’re all places that I have eaten and sat at, so should be fine. Two Lights has picnic tables. Tandem also has outdoor picnic tables. Leeward has bench seats on one side with seat chairs on the other side.

Virginia

Great.

Corinne

You should be good. It’s also very fun to go to the beach. There’s some really sweet little beaches around Portland. I also really like Popham Beach, which is about 45 minutes away. And my last thing I’ll say is, if you’re going to the midcoast area, my friend Marjory is opening a cafe in Rockland this summer called Cafe Grazie with her friend Marcy, and you should definitely stop by there. I will be stopping there as soon as I am in Maine and I can’t wait.

Virginia

This makes me really want to go to Maine. It sounds all delightful and delicious,

Corinne

It’s a very fun place to visit. So much good food. Oh right! Also, there is a plus size secondhand store in South Portland called Artemis and we’ll put a link to that.

Virginia

Alright, what’s next?

Corinne

What are some foods that other people might label kid foods that you like as an adult?

Virginia

This is a delightful question, although we agreed that there’s a lot of overlap between what is a kid food and what is a snack food. So I would say Cheez Its, but I don’t know that Cheez Its are a kid food or everybody food? What comes to mind for you?

Corinne

Uncrustables, which I discovered probably since I started working for Burnt Toast.

Virginia

That would have been a great alternate name for this newsletter. Yeah, uncrustables, wow, they’re just so easy and portable and delicious.

Corinne

Yeah, so tasty.

Virginia

Great errand snack, hiking snack, etc.

Corinne

Also peanut butter and jelly in general. I also like mac and cheese box. Mac and cheese was a kind of childhood staple for me, at least.

Virginia

I did not grow up eating mac and cheese because I have a British mother, but I embraced it in college. So for me, I’m like, that’s a college kid food, but of course, also a childhood staple.

Corinne

College kids are kids.

Corinne

Um, I also mentioned Bambas, those peanut butter, puff, things which I thought were kid food, but are maybe just snack food.

Virginia

Yeah, unclear, but delicious.

Corinne

Goldfish. The saltier, more delicious Cheez-It.

Virignia

Okay, that’s controversial. Not everyone would subscribe to that position. I would say that’s really counter to the Burnt Toast mission. But okay. Oh, chocolate milk is another one I’m going to give a shout out to.

Corinne

Yeah, I love chocolate milk.

Virginia

You feel like it’s a kid drink, but it’s not. It’s for everyone.

Corinne

It’s so good. I love applesauce, and sometimes I buy it in the kid shaped pouches.

Virginia

I mean, portable and convenient!

Corinne

Okay. Staying on the food subject.

What recipes have you been making and enjoying lately, or just buying and eating? I love to hear about what you two are cooking up.

Virginia

So I did not cook this, but Jack made us ribs on the grill over the weekend. He grilled them for a really long time. I don’t know, two hours? And then did something else to them, and then did like another hour. There was some kind of maple spice rub, and things were involved. There was a sauce. They were incredible.

Corinne

That sounds incredible. I would like someone to cook ribs for me.

Virginia

And we had it with asparagus and the carrot salad from Julia Turshen’s cookbook, which is delightful. And pesto pasta, because that’s what the kids will eat.

What about you?

Corinne

That sounds really good. The farmers market just started up here, so I’ve been eating a lot of the early spring vegetables, like asparagus, radishes, peas.

And then I’ve also been getting kind of into this food Substack called

Restaurant Dropout

where she gives you five recipes to make for the week. And gives you the shopping list and a prep list. So it takes all the decision making out of cooking for yourself, which I love.

Virginia

I mean, the decision making is the worst part, for sure.

Corinne

Totally. And I haven’t actually done a full week of it, but I’ve done three recipes or something, and they’ve been really tasty. And I do kind of like the system of doing the prep and then having stuff ready to go in your fridge.

Virginia

I go back and forth about prep. Especially when the weather’s good and I want to be outside more, I feel more punished by meal prep on the weekends. It feels more like an oppressive chore.

And then in the winter, when I’m like, maybe I’d be making a stew or something on Sunday, like I feel cookish, and like puttering around the kitchen, then I don’t mind prep. And I’m always really glad when I did prep. So I’m open to simple prep things, I guess, that will save time, like putting the chicken in the marinade when you get it back from the grocery store. I always try to be that person.

Corinne

This prep is mostly like, there’s part of it that’s like chopping vegetables and making sauces, but it’s not like, make the meal ahead and then eat it. You’re not heating it up three days later. Because I don’t like that. But it’s like making a bunch of sauces, or putting proteins in marinades, and then you just cook them the day of. But anyways, I would recommend Restaurant Dropout for anyone looking for something like that.

And then also recently—I’m a big Baker—and I recently made a coconut cream pie.

Virginia

Not from a box mix.

Corinne

Not from a box mix. I used a recipe from Dahlia bakery, which is in Seattle, and it was really good, and I would really recommend it to anyone interested in a baking project.

Virginia

The other thing I’ve been making and eating a lot—because we eat so much pasta and now that it’s getting nicer. I don’t really want heavy red or meat sauces. So I’ve been doing kind of a fancy mac and cheese where I use the Meredith Dairy sheep goat milk cheese and put some scoops of that and mix it, whisk it with some reserved pasta water and lemon and sometimes garlic, and then I just throw in tomatoes and basil and any other stuff we have around and toss it all with the pasta. And it’s so good and easy and super fast, easy dinner.

Corinne

That sounds amazing. I still haven’t tried the cheese.

Virginia

I need to get you some.

Corinne

Okay, one more food question:

What do you eat when you don’t feel like eating, even though you’re hungry?

Virginia

I was thinking about this. I often don’t feel like cooking, but I think I always feel like eating. But I know people struggle with this.

Corinne

I know I was kind of wondering if this is a thing where you’re like, “I’m hungry and I don’t want to eat any of the stuff I have.” Or if you’re like, “I’m hungry and I think I should eat something healthy, but I don’t want to.” It is kind of an interesting conundrum.

Virginia

I mean, I know a lot of folks in eating disorders recovery struggle with, “I know I need to eat, but I don’t want to eat.” And that’s a recovery challenge. So I wondered if it was that. I guess there are lots of reasons that people might not feel like eating. It has not been my personal journey, but I can relate to that. I sometimes feel too busy to eat. Or again, it’s like, I really want to be eating, but I don’t have time to make a thing. So what can I eat fast? What would you say are some of your go-to’s for just making a meal happen quickly?

Corinne

Well, I had two thoughts. One thought was stuff that I personally eat when I’m sort of like, don’t feel like eating, maybe let’s say, not that hungry. But two things that I’m usually available for are fruit. I try to always have some type of fruit, like apples, grapes, oranges, and I’m usually pretty happy to eat fruit. Also soup. I just feel like it’s, like, easy on the stomach, comforting, soothing. I like to eat soup.

Virginia

Do you have like canned soup?

Corinne

I often would have it in the freezer. Or, yeah, I mean, Panera has good, fine soups. And then I was the other thought I had was just like, something really palatable, like bread, Bagel, frozen bagel, frozen pizza. My friends run a bagel shop. I often have frozen bagels in my freezer, and I can, just like, put it in the toaster, with butter. Or cream cheese.

Virginia

I’m also thinking about bagels as an easy meal. I do like peanut butter on bagels sometimes with sliced banana on top. I do butter and Marmite—that’s not for everybody—on bagels. Or make it a turkey sandwich with some mayonnaise, turkey and if you have pickles or lettuce and tomato. Those are super fast and simple to assemble.

My go-to fallback is pasta and Rao’s jarred sauce. One of my children basically lives on that. So if I make a big pot of that I know at least two of us are going to eat. Yeah, and it’s just comforting. And you know, you can add more to it if you feel fancy, but if you don’t feel fancy, you still eat dinner. You know?

Corinne

I also think, a little snack dinner. Like, crackers and cheese, pickles, fruit kind of thing,

Virginia

Yep. I mean, the whole girl dinner concept is problematic. But if you’re, like, not wanting to put the time in and still need to eat.

Corinne

Ingredients on a plate. And you can, kind of, like, pick at it, and be like, oh, I want more of this or less of this.

Virginia

Why did I think I wanted all these olives? I don’t, I just want the cheese.

Our farmers markets also been getting into more filled out summer mode, and we’ve been picking up some really good cheese there, and baguette and having that on hand. Oh, and summer sausage. That’s so filling and satisfying. Getting summer sausage on a cheese plate? I’m really into hard salami.

Corinne

Yum. This is making me very hungry.

Virginia

I know. I literally ate lunch before we started recording. Now I’m like, do I have that in the fridge?

I will also do my usual plug for takeout. Ordering takeout removes the bandwidth. Obviously, that’s not accessible for everyone, but having a ready-made, delivered meal that you didn’t have to put any effort into can be very helpful. If it’s one of these situations where you’re like, “I have to make myself eat.”

Corinne

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, this one is for you, Virginia.

I would love more specific online dating insights from Virginia. What criteria did you use to help screen? How challenging was it to find men who you were interested in and who were respectful to you? Any Fat positive screening questions, besides being like, just so, you know, I’m not planning to engage in behaviors to attempt to be as thin as possible?

Virginia

So my profile said fat. It said “Fat, happy, not interested in your diet.” Or it might have said, “I don’t give a shit about your diet.” I can’t remember how salty I was in my language. So that boundary was right there.

I also followed Corinne’s advice and included full body photos. I think that did a lot of heavy lifting to weed out assholes, because it was right there, you know?

Dating While Fat!

What I also experienced, and I talked about this a little bit in the episode we did with Brianna Campos, I would often be having a conversation with a man over DMs in the app where it was clear this is a guy who just wants to get laid. There was nothing very specific aboutmethat they were interested in.

And I would say the vast majority of men on dating apps are not going to ask questions like, “What do you do for work? Or what are your hobbies?” They’ll ask those upfront, and then if they can get you to do more flirty, sexy talk, it’s like, forget it, none of that exists any more.

There were times where that was fine with me, is what I’ll say. There were times where I was not looking for a profound connection. But very few of those people did I meet in person. Because I was like, there’s no there there. This person is not interested in me as a human being.

But I think one of the biggest reasons it was not stressful for me was because I wasn’t feeling that panicked about “I need to find a life partner.” I was on it for recreational purposes. And just kind of open to whatever, and not taking it that seriously. So I wasn’t that sensitive to the rejection. I wasn’t that sensitive to needing to make somebody into somebody they weren’t. Like, it was kind of funny to let the men eliminate themselves, if that makes sense.

What are your thoughts?

Corinne

I think that’s very reasonable.

I mean, the thought I had when I was reading this also was, like, “any specific fat positive screening questions?” Let’s not make this into a test, you know? I feel like you’ll be able to tell whether it’s an okay situation or not. And I don’t think we need to be creating some type of pass, fail situation.

Virginia

I don’t know if you feel this way, but I also feel, given what my work is—I’m not likely to meet a person on a dating app who is as well versed in fat liberation as I am, right?

That’s not going to happen unless I match with someone who I already know from this very specific world. So I’m not expecting them to have done deep dives on this work. Especially since I date cis men, and they mostly haven’t.

So I was looking much more for—and this, I think, was advice Corinne gave in one of our earlier dating episodes—a curiosity and open mindedness. I mean, I will say too, I was dating, meeting people over last summer and early fall, so I was much more concerned with weeding out Trump supporters. And that I did throw in. Like, I would make sure very quickly in any conversation that seemed like it was going somewhere, I would say something political to make sure that they were on the same page with me. If it wasn’t obvious from their profile that they were.I was weeding that out.

And if people did ask me about work, I would certainly talk about my work. And if they were uncomfortable, then that would be a way to weed them out. But I was looking for people who are curious and open-minded and clearly interested in me. And if you’re interested in me and valuing me, then this is not going to be hard for you. You would have to be on board with this, because this is such a big part of who I am.

Corinne

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense to me. I think that’s smart.

The next question is

Do you guys have any tips for making new friends in your 30s? I haven’t done much friend making outside of places you kind of make automatic friends, like school, medical training, etc.

Virginia

I think this is a lovely question.

Why don’t you start? I feel like you’re better at this than me.

Corinne

Oh God. Okay, so I think there’s research to show that the way to that you make friends is by doing something repeatedly with the same people. So I think the key is to find stuff like that, and so besides school or medical training that could be the gym, a class, a long-term class, some other kind of hobby, political organizing, or some kind of values based thing like that. Church.

Virginia

Some of my closest friends in my community, where I live now, I had hung out with a few times. I knew through like our kids all go to school together, and we have a lot of mutual friends. And then one of them mentioned that three of them had started a book club. And I basically just decided I’d join. I was like, “I will also be in your book club!” And they were like, oh, great.

Corinne

Amazing.

Virginia

Which, in retrospect, is funny, and I think I was inserting myself. And that’s obviously a little bit of a risk, and it’s not always going to work, right?

I actually can think of another time, when some other friends in town mentioned an activity they were doing, and I was like, “I would love to come along next time!” And they have never invited me to said activity. And I’m going to leave out specifics, because I don’t want anyone listening to feel bad. It’s fine! You didn’t invite me. I get it. I was trying to throw myself into your friend group.

But I think when I was looking for closer friends beyond just like, oh, I know you because we show up at the same school events, I did just kind of, force myself in and you just have to risk that it’s not going to always work? But if it works, it’s going to really work.

And then the book club is the same thing. Like, we meet every month, so it’s like a built in standing date. And then over time, that’s really deepened our friendships. And it is hard. You have to kind of push for more intimacy, I think. I definitely make a point of, like, if I meet somebody in a casual way getting their number so we can text. You might meet another mom chaperoning a field trip, for example, and chat on the bus ride, and then it’s like, oh, I want to level up this friendship. Like, you have to take the extra steps to follow them on Instagram or get their number so you can text them and then follow through and start a conversation. Like, like, let that be an ongoing connection, not just a one time thing.

How Do You Dress to be a Field Trip Mom?

Corinne

It’s definitely hard. I do think it takes some vulnerability to take those extra steps.

Virginia

There are a lot of parallels with the online dating thing, too, though, where I’m like, but it’s also okay if it doesn’t work out. It’s not really about you. If it doesn’t work out, everybody’s lives are busy and complicated. These are people who are probably holding a lot of things together in their lives, and if there’s not a space for you, it’s not because you’re not worth making space for.

It’s just because they’re holding a lot of cards, and they don’t have the space in their life right now for this friendship to go deeper, and that’s fine, because also casual acquaintance friendships are nice and feel good, and over time might build to something else, or just stay in that sort of comfy, like, oh hey neighbor place.

Corinne

Totally. And it goes both ways.

Virginia

I am sure there are people who have reached out to me hoping we would like, level up the friendship, and we didn’t, for whatever reason. And it’s not because I don’t think they’re a spectacular person. I’m just sort of at capacity at the moment. And I think you just can’t take that personally. You have to let it keep playing out and just keep trying and keep suggesting a plan.

And, yeah, obviously, if someone blows you off three or four times, like, you’re probably not going to keep trying. Don’t be weird about it. But you have to put in some effort and not be afraid to feel a little weird about the effort, even if it might not come of anything. We should also link to Katherine Goldstein’s newsletter, where she’s doing a lot of great work on community building, and there’s a lot of nice resources over there. Anne Helen Petersen writes about this a ton, too.

Corinne

The last one is that we got a bunch of questions, just wanting to sort of hear about clothes, fashion, what we’re wearing, Summer Fashion quandaries. Is there anything you have that you want to talk about?

Virginia

I don’t have any recs. But I do have a quandary. Which is… this Target boycott, you guys. Did we win yet? Like, can I go back yet?

Corinne

You know, um, I have actually been wondering. I realized when I use DoorDash, I don’t use DoorDash, but use GrubHub. And I think is GrubHub owned by Amazon? But because I have Amazon Prime, which I did cancel, but I paid for the year up front.

Virginia

Oh, right. So you still have it lingering. Mine is gone.

Corinne

Yeah, and I just haven’t been using it. But so I realized that I have a GrubHub premium subscription because of the Amazon. So I was like, Oh no, is GrubHub owned by Amazon anyways? I just was wondering how you’ve been doing with that? And, yeah, we’ve also been not shopping at Target, so I’m just kind of curious how, how’s all that going?

Virginia

So I haven’t slipped on Target, but I’m really feeling it and realizing I buy a lot of summer clothes at Target. They are my go-to for tank tops, for cheap shorts. I’m trying to replace them with Old Navy. I’m not sure that’s ethically better. And then I was like, well, let’s just try not to buy stuff. But the problem is, since I bought cheap Target tank tops the last few years, they didn’t last because they were cheap Target tank tops, so I don’t have any. So I have to buy something, and there’s no one making an ethical plus size tank top.

Corinne

Okay, yeah, I’ve been thinking about this because we kind of touched on it the other day on Big Undies. I feel like one option is Big Bud Press. I mean, it’s quite a bit more expensive, and I do think sometimes their stuff fits a little weird. But they do have a bunch of tank tops. They’re also short, which maybe would work for you?

Virginia

Interesting, I do kind of need a little bit of a crop so that it sits at my waist, which is just very high.

Corinne

Yeah. But we’re talking like 50 bucks, instead of like 15.

Virginia

$48 a tank top, whereas I was paying like $7 a tank top. I would be fine paying it if it’s going to last. I just don’t believe that stretchy tank tops last.

Corinne

I think it might be worth trying a Big Bud Press one. My friend has some, and I just saw her wearing them and I was like, that’s a really nice tank top. And then I looked into them, and I was like, I think these are too short for me.

Virginia

Okay, I’m going to try a Big Bud tank top. Everyone, stay tuned. I’ll order it as soon as we’re done recording and report back.

Corinne

They have nice colors. But also, if other people have recs for non-Target, non-Old Navy tank tops, where you getting them?

Virginia

It’s going to be hot. I need tank tops! I’m okay not buying a random target sundress that’s going to fall apart in three months. But I’ve just suddenly felt it in a way, that I wasn’t feeling the Target boycott and I’m like, oh, wow, I was very summer dependent on Target. So that’s been interesting.

Corinne

That is really interesting.

Virginia

Amazon, I have done pretty well with. I have had a slip up, which I stand by, which is I had to order a couple specific kid things, and I couldn’t get them quickly and easily from another source, and I did an Amazon order.

Corinne

That’s fair.

Virginia

And it’s not ideal, but anyone who’s needed to sort things out when a child needs a specific item. But I don’t have a prime membership, so I definitely won’t place the order unless we’re going to qualify for free shipping. And it will make sure that I shop there dramatically less than I ever shopped there before. So I feel pretty good about that. and I have been doing the thing of, like, let me look it up on Amazon and then go find it somewhere else. And I’ve been able to do that most times. I just did that today. I had to order some Loop earplugs, and I was like, wait, just go to Loop. Oh right. You can just order it from the brand.

Overall, I’m not missing it, and it’s working. I guess my feeling is like, this isn’t perfect boycott behavior, and people can come at me, but like, if I’ve put in a good faith effort and need the thing, like, I’ve done enough thinking of, do I really need this thing, then, like, it’s okay if once or twice a year, I end up placing an Amazon order.

Corinne

Yeah, I agree with that.

On the other hand, I have seen that the Target sales have been way down. And that also freaks me out, too, because then I’m like, what if Target stops making plus size clothes because we’re all boycotting Target?

Virginia

I know, I know. That’s a really tricky piece of this math is, where will they make the cuts? What will be vulnerable for them to cut in response to dropping sales? Are they going to listen to the demands of the boycott and do what people want? I don’t know. Yeah, it’s messy and imperfect. But I’m going to order an expensive tank top.

Corinne

I hope you’ll review it. Maybe we should both order it and try it on and a live.

Virginia

I feel like people would adore that, even though most of the Burnt Toasties were like, stop doing lives. I’m sorry, guys, we can’t. The algorithm requires them. We hear you on your concerns, but we’re doing them for a little bit, and we’ll see where we land. Some people have really liked them.

Corinne

It was fun for me.

Virginia

Yeah, I like doing them because we get to hang out and chat. We need to perfect the audio concerns. We’re getting there.

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Corinne

Oh, yeah, I forgot about Butter.

Virginia

Do you have a Butter?

Corinne

Yeah, my Butter is going to be matcha. If you’re a Big Undies reader, you’ve already heard me going on about this. I did mention it as a newsletter. But I will say in the newsletter, I was recommending that I was going to a coffee shop nearby me and getting a matcha tonic, which is like a cold drink. And then since then, I have ordered my own matcha. So now I’m making matcha at home, I’m really into it, and I will say I’m probably not doing it right. I didn’t get the little whisk. I just got a milk frother, and I use that to mix my matcha, which is probably really offensive, but anyways, I’m enjoying matcha, and matcha is my butter.

Virginia

That’s a great Butter. I don’t think I like matcha, but maybe I do. Maybe I need to revisit that.

Corinne

It is kind of bitter and grassy.

Virginia

So my Butter is these cool felt tiles I just put up on the wall in our family room. This is an add on to last butter that I did with you, which was the swing that my kids are obsessed with in our family room. The problem with the swing was there was nowhere to put it where they couldn’t bounce off a wall, and so they were bouncing off the wall and leaving foot marks.

And I went eyes wide open to that, because, like, I’m not going to hang it in the middle of the room. Then where would other furniture go? Like, it just had to go in a corner.

But then I was like, okay, it is going to make me nuts that this wall is covered in footprints. And my friend Rachel had used these tiles to make a cool thing in her kid’s playroom. And she was like, let’s do these tiles. And they’re very fun. They’re these, organic shapes that you just stick up. It’s removable adhesive. And we put them all up on the wall, and it looks really cute, and the colors are pretty, and go with the rest of the room, and I’m super into it.

Corinne

That’s awesome. And so the they bounce off the felt tiles?

Virginia

Yeah. They bounce off the tiles. I mean, they’re not designed for this purpose, like, they’re not super thick. It’s not like having a gym mat on the wall. But at least gives it something, like there’s some buffer. I couldn’t put art on the wall because they’d break the glass of the frame, or a canvas would get ruined. But I think these tiles can take it and they look cool. And it sort of designates that corner as a little kid zone without being obnoxiously Kid Zone. And then I figure when we’re eventually out of our swing era, I’ll just take off the tiles and put something else up on the wall.

Corinne

That’s awesome.

Virginia

Yeah, they’re very fun. It looks super cute. My friend Rachel came over and we used a level and hung them. It’s definitely a project like do with a friend to hang up the tiles and not make yourself crazy about how they look. But I’ll put a picture in because they look cute.

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The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, and Big Undies—subscribe for 20% off!

The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.

Our theme music is by Farideh.

Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.

Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!