The Burnt Toast Podcast

Virginia Sole-Smith
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Burnt Toast is your body liberation community. We're working to dismantle diet culture and anti-fat bias, and we have a lot of strong opinions about comfy pants. Co-hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (NYT-bestselling author of FAT TALK) and Corinne Fay (author of the popular plus size fashion newsletter Big Undies).

  1. [PREVIEW] Lindy West Doesn’t Need Your Permission

    1D AGO

    [PREVIEW] Lindy West Doesn’t Need Your Permission

    You're listening to Burnt Toast. I'm Virginia Sole-Smith. Today my conversation is with none other than the beloved, the brilliant, Lindy West. Lindy is the author of four books, The New York Times bestselling memoir, Shrill, as well as the essay collections, The Witches Are Coming and Shit, Actually, and her brand new memoir Adult Braces, out now. Lindy is a former contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. Her work has appeared in This American Life, The Guardian, Cosmopolitan, GQ, Vulture, Jezebel and many others. She is the co-host of the comedy podcast, Text Me Back!!! and the author of the newsletter Butt News. Lindy was a writer and executive producer on Shrill, the Hulu comedy adapted from her memoir, and she co-wrote and produced the independent feature film, Thin Skin. She lives on the Olympic Peninsula in rural Washington state. Lindy joined me to chat about her brand new memoir, Adult Braces. We get into her relationship to fatness, having people comment rather relentlessly on her marriage, why more best friends should start podcasts and so much more—including a quesadilla she invents in real time while we recorded. You are going to love this one. This conversation with Lindy is so juicy that we're breaking it up into two episodes! In Part 1 we’re talking about her brand new memoir, Adult Braces, as well as her eating disorder therapy, being a public fat person and having people comment on her body and her marriage. In Part 2, we're getting into non-monogamy, the benefits of being in a throuple, podcasting and so much more! If you're already a paid subscriber, you've got both parts of the episode right here, right now in your inbox! Everyone else: Join Burnt Toast today to hear the whole thing! Membership starts at just $5 per month and also gets you commenting privileges.One last thing! You will want to read Adult Braces after hearing this conversation. If you order it from my local independent bookstore, Split Rock Books, you can take 10% off if you have also ordered a copy of my book Fat Talk from them. Go to Split Rock Books and use the code "fat talk" at checkout. Here's Lindy West.If you enjoy this conversation, a paid subscription is the best way to support our work! Join Burnt Toast 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 Virginia  We are here to talk about your new memoir, Adult Braces. My producer Kim and I both read it. We loved it. Like, crying laughing, full body experience reading this book.  Lindy Thank you so much! Virginia Do you want to give us a brief summary of what the book is about? Lindy   The book is about a road trip that I took in 2021 from Seattle to Key West and back, which I decided to do when I was having a crisis in my life. I needed to get away from my house, and I needed to get away from my family and my responsibilities. I had found out a couple years earlier that my husband had a secret girlfriend, which was sort of illegal in our relationship, sort of not. That was quite a topic of conversation for several years, and we eventually figured it out. But then I was exhausted from a year of COVID and three years of non-stop couples therapy. I was like, I gotta get out of here. So I left and I drove to Florida in a van that I rented. I slept in the van. I just wanted to be out in the world and be brave and alive. The road trip stories are interspersed with chapters about my life before. A big message, at least for me, is that it's really easy to read my crisis as this monogamy/polyamory conversation, but when I think back on it, everything about my life was messed up before that. I had so many other problems, in my mental health, in the way that I managed my career, my life and my brain chemicals. I wanted to build a full picture of that, because I think the easy story is like, 'Oh, no good husband.' But it was a lot more complicated than that, and a lot of it stemmed from work that I had to do on myself, which is ultimately the only work that I can do. I can't do work on my husband. Virginia  Nope. A lot of us learned that the hard way. Lindy   Right! That was actually one of my problems. I was constantly waiting for my husband to transform into the person that I had imagined would be my husband, and that's not how people work. Virginia  It's annoying, but true.  Lindy   It's very annoying. The book is about all of those figurative journeys happening at once, and also my literal journey.  Virginia  It's spectacular. The van alone. I'm obsessed with the van. There's a mural on the outside of the van. It's incredible. Lindy   The van has a big, scary rabbit on one side and then a big, anxious sheep on the other side. The van was named BAAA, like the noise a sheep makes. I think I'm going to make some social media content out of this. I'm trying to be an influencer in order to promote this book. I want the van. I want that van. I want it in my possession. Virginia I was sad when you gave it back.  Lindy I know! Me too, and now the company has gone out of business. I tried to rent the van for my book tour and they don't exist anymore. Someone has that van. I think I'm going to do a social media campaign called "Help me find my van," so that I can buy it. Virginia  Burnt Toast listeners, if any of you have a van with a rabbit on one side and a sheep on the other, hit us up. Even if it's a different van with that art, I think Lindy would be interested. Lindy Yes. I will pay upwards of $1,000. Virginia  To get that van back. It was a sad moment. It was like the end of those movies with a person on a journey with an animal, and they say goodbye. It was like the volleyball in that Tom Hanks movie. Lindy   Oh, my God, yeah. I had to watch BAAA float away on the ocean. BAAA had really been there for me. BAAA is an old lady now. Maybe she doesn't exist anymore, because she already had 250,000 miles on her and then I drove her another 50,000. Virginia She was in her golden years.  Lindy She was in her golden years. But I think those Ford Transit vans are built to last, so I think someone has her. It turns out all the van companies are going out of business because I had a really hard time finding a van. I called three different companies that had all recently gone out of business, because #vanlife is not that popular anymore now that people have #donthavetowearamasklife. Virginia  They had a little Renaissance moment there. Lindy   I called this other company that was going out of business, and I was like, "Well, what are you doing with your fleet?" I know the all the terms now. I was like, "What's happening to your fleet? Can I buy one of your vans?" And he was like, "Yeah, they're $90,000." Sorry, excuse me? Virginia  It doesn't even have a rabbit on it, sir. Lindy   This van is blank. I think that if there's any hope for me getting a van, it's got to be old lady BAAA. If you're listening and you know where BAAA ended up, please call me. Virginia  I mean, I'm now picturing that BAAA probably has a new owner who also really loves her. There's going to be a complicated journey to restore BAAA to her rightful owner, which is you, but ... Lindy   Ok, now that you said that I don't want to take BAAA away from her new family. Virginia  Well, maybe it could be a joint custody situation, you know? Let's be open-minded to different family structures. Lindy   That's true. You're so right. God, that was very regressive of me. Virginia  But yes, I hope that you can be reunited. Lindy Thank you. Virginia Along with the story of BAAA, you talk about many vulnerable things in the book. One of them that I know our listeners will be really moved by is your exploration of having an eating disorder and starting treatment for that. It was just so relatable. Like when you wrote about reading through the list of nutritionists from your doctor, and only one doesn't mention weight loss. When you're looking for eating disorder treatment! Lindy   It's a snapshot of what most people are going to the nutritionist for: weight loss. That's what everyone's looking for, in every direction. So, I get it, but it was very frustrating. Luckily, the one lady that wasn't weight loss focused is the best person I've ever met, so it all worked out. Virginia  What was it like working with someone who was like, "Actually, you don't need to lose weight. You need to eat more food?" Lindy   It's been amazing. I mean, it's frustrating, because you still have the diet culture voice inside your head, even if you've done as much healing as you thought was humanly possible. I realized once I started working with her that some tiny part of my brain had been like, Once you see the nutritionist, maybe you will lose weight. Not that that was my goal. But there's always this little, dee de dee dee, then your life will be perfect. It's really hard to deprogram that. Grace, my now therapist, just kept being like, "Your job is to eat whatever you want all the time." And I'd be like, "Yeah, but what if I want vegetables?" She was like, "That's fine, but you're not allowed to not eat candy." And I was like, "But don't you want to give me some kind of guideline for how to be perfect?" And she was like, "No, that's disordered." Virginia  That’s the opposite of what we're doing now. Lindy   I find myself still searching for someone to tell me how to live so that I don't have to figure it out. Unfortunately, the answer is listening to your body and learning how to know yourself. So I'm doing that instead.  Virginia She said joyfully. Lindy Again, I'm not trying to lose weight. I'm not on a weight loss journey. I think after so many years of living untreated in diet culture, I don't have any kind of a natural relationship with food. And it is a lot of work to figure out how to listen to my body. So even from a non-diet culture perspective, I was hoping that some part of this therapy was going to be her handing me a worksheet. Ev

    26 min
  2. "I Refuse To Be Good"

    MAR 5

    "I Refuse To Be Good"

    You're listening to Burnt Toast. I'm Virginia Sole-Smith. Today my conversation is with the brilliant Savala Nolan. Savala is a writer, public speaker and professor at UC Berkeley. Her brand new book, Good Woman: A Reckoning is out now.  Her first book, Don’t Let It Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender and the Body, was shortlisted for the William Saroyan Prize and celebrated as a “standout collection” by the New York Times. Savala's writing has been featured in Vogue, Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times, NPR, TIME and more. I have a lot of conversations about bodies. I have a lot of conversations about gender. There is a lot that I thought I knew about race and bodies and gender in America. Reading Good Woman and talking to Savala blew my mind apart in ways that I'm still putting back together.  This conversation is a must listen. This book is a must read. There was so much good stuff in this conversation, we are breaking it up into two episodes. Today in part one, we’re talking about bodies, race and gender. Part two will drop in two weeks, and that's when we're getting into sex, divorce and Savala’s classy and trashy butters. That conversation will be for paid subscribers only, so go to patreon.com/virginiasolesmith to join us. Membership starts at just $5 per month. You're not going to want to miss this one. One last thing! Trust me, you will want to read Good Woman after hearing this conversation. If you order it from my local independent bookstore, Split Rock Books, you can take 10% off if you have also ordered a copy of my book Fat Talk from them. Go to Split Rock Books and use the code "fat talk" at checkout. Here's Savala. If you enjoy this conversation, a paid subscription is the best way to support our work! Join Burnt Toast 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 Episode 235 TranscriptVirginia Why don't we just start by having you tell listeners a little bit about who you are and what you do? Savala   I'm a writer. I was thinking about this question quite a bit, actually, because my very first instinct is to say I'm a mom, which makes perfect sense. Motherhood is all consuming. But I thought I'll start with something that doesn't include my relationship with another human being, just in the interest of practicing my own wholeness. So, I'm a writer and a mom and a lawyer. I direct the social justice program at UC Berkeley's Law School, which is really a privilege and gives me a lot of hope, because I get to see hundreds of law students every day who want to change the world and make it better.  I'm also a former dieter. Like a hardcore, former dieter, which is what initially brought me into your world and your work. I was put on my first diet when I was two or three, and rode those waves up and down until I was maybe 36 or 37, so I've got a few decades under my belt. I include that in my biography because that experience of going on and off diets for so long, and of being almost pre-verbal when I was indoctrinated into that world of dieting, informs a lot of what I do, including as a mom, including as a lawyer, including as a writer. Body liberation, gender and race, they fascinate me endlessly, how they play together and kind of co-create each other. Most of what I write about, and definitely what I write about in Good Woman, stems from that experience of dieting, and then breaking free from dieting in my thirties. Virginia   That is the best intro I think anyone's ever given themselves on the podcast.  Savala Oh, stop.  Virginia No, really. I love that you are like, 'Let me own this part of my story. This is the origin point. And then now let's get into the conversation.' That's fantastic.  We are here to talk about your exquisite new book Good Woman: A Reckoning. It is a collection of 12 essays about what it means to be a woman. It's this incredible blend of memoir, reporting and history. I would love you to read us the first paragraph, just to set the stage for everything we're going to talk about. Savala I'll just take a quick second to set it up a little bit. I'm trying to take a critical and very skeptical eye to all the ways that women and girls are socialized to be good. Almost from birth, right? In our particular culture, good means agreeable, quiet, serving of others, all the things that probably would pop into any woman's head when she hears the idea of a "good woman" or a "good girl." I'm trying to unpack and destroy some of that socialization in my own life, and think about what lies beyond it. To kick the book off, there's this very short essay that's sort of a manifesto. I think of it as a huge bell that rings to open the book. Here's the first paragraph. I refuse to be good. This is a matter of survival, not inclination or mood. I refuse to be easy and I refuse others preferences. I refuse to be amicable and I refuse to appease. I refuse to go along and I refuse to agree. I refuse to do what I was trained to do. Instead, I choose whatever lies beyond my social conditioning, even if I'm still looking for it, still spurring it into being. This is work of the mind, cerebral and tough. This is work of new language, new concepts, new intonations and my thinking must expand to fit the scale of all existence. It is also body work, work that is nailed to my flesh. It is gestating of new bones, an anointing of muscle and fat. It is passing through the stomatous black opening of my own cervix to the bright field, waiting on the other side in the wilderness. It is a lot to take on. But I welcome the challenge and the mystery and the darkness. It was in darkness that the universe was made. It is in darkness that each day is made new. Virginia   Thank you. That was incredible. Really, it was. Savala Thank you.  Virginia   I loved how you opened the book because it encapsulates so many of the themes that you then go deeper in in every chapter. One of the biggest themes of refusal in the book is around the body. You write about how Black women's bodies in particular are constrained, controlled and made not their own. I really, really want people to read this because we don't have time to talk about all the history you go through and it's so well done. You trace this narrative from Sarah Baartman and Sally Hemings all the way to Nicki Minaj, connecting so many dots. It's really powerful. What has and what hasn't changed when it comes to how Blackness and fatness are policed for women? Savala   I love this question. We could probably write a doctoral thesis or dissertation on this question alone. So I'll just sort of share what comes to mind, a sort of smorgasbord of thoughts that come to mind when you ask this question.  The first thing is, there's an overlap when we talk about Blackness and fatness in this culture. The very first point to make is that everything here is cultural. Not all cultures treat women's bodies, Blackness and fatness the way we do. That's the page on which everything else is written.  It's interesting to me that when we talk about Blackness and fatness, the stereotypes overlap, right? Both fat people and Black people are viewed in this culture as out of control, lazy, kind of greedy, having a hyper appetite. Either being hyper-sexualized or de-sexualized. You either have the kind of va-va-voom, or the 'friend, never the leading lady' when it comes to fatness. With Blackness, it's the same thing. You either have the video vixen - this kind of hyper-sexual Black woman in a music video - or the mammy. It's interesting to me that the stereotypes overlap so much, and maybe the most powerful way they overlap is that they're both undesirable. They're both things in our culture that you should try to get away from if you can. You should try not to be too Black or too fat in our culture. So to me, as a woman who's fat and Black, it's kind of a one-two punch. They work together. The stereotypes overlapping tells you there's some relationship in our culture between these two things. And as you say, it goes way, way, way, way back in this country. It goes to chattel slavery, where Blackness and fatness started to be policed together and associated together, very literally. I talk about this in the book - there's a magazine called Godey's Lady's Book, which you might consider the Vogue or Good Housekeeping of today. Sort of fashion, but also home-y stuff. It was the biggest magazine in the antebellum country. And they talked all the time about how white women should stay thin or else they might start to be Black, like they might start to be looked on as if they're Black. There's another article from that magazine that says, "If a white woman gets fat, she might as well put herself in Black face." You can't see it if you're listening, but there's a lovely eye roll from Virginia. Our culture has long braided these things together. That's the history when you think about what hasn't changed. I think they are still braided together. When we think about what has changed, from my vantage point, there was maybe five or 10 years where it felt more ok to be fat, and more ok to be Black. It was the like ascendance of Lizzo, you know? Virginia A brief shining moment.  Savala It was a shining moment. There was also the George Floyd moment. There was a political reckoning with Blackness that was refreshing. I guess maybe it wasn't even five years. It was a brief window. Now it feels like we're in a backlash. It feels a little bit like the more things change, the more they stay the same. We had this moment of a collective leap towards something like liberation.  Because of politics and because of the capitalistic nature of the pharmaceutical industry in this country and GLP-1s being so, for now anyway, profitable, we're seeing a real backlash to both fatness and Blackness. That lands on women really hard, because of how women are tied to our bodies in this culture in a particular way. So I guess I would s

    32 min
  3. [PREVIEW] Is It Normal to Spend $700 on Groceries?

    FEB 26

    [PREVIEW] Is It Normal to Spend $700 on Groceries?

    We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay and it’s time for your February Indulgence Gospel!Today we are talking about influencers who show their expensive influencer grocery hauls, as well as people who spend A LOT OF MONEY on food delivery. (If you too had feelings about that ChrisLovesJulia reel...let's get into it!) We also talk about our own spending on groceries and food delivery....and our complicated feelings about both. 🥴 You do need to be a paid Just Toast subscriber to listen to this full conversation. Membership starts at just $5 per month! Join Just Toast! 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 Episode 234 TranscriptVirginia Today we are going to talk about a phenomenon that I keep seeing on Instagram: influencer groceries. So these are reels where people unpack all their bags and show you all the food going in their fridge. It's like, 'Oh, by the way, we're a family of four and we spent $600 at the grocery store.' As someone who buys groceries for a family that size, I would like to say that that number is jarring and yet, also not totally out of the realm of possibility. It made me take a hard look at my grocery spending. What are we performing in these reels where people are showing what and how they eat, and what are the diet culture implications of that? Corinne, how about you? Do your groceries cost $600 a week? Corinne   I won't respond to that directly. Virginia We will just skip that question. Corinne   Groceries are a perennially interesting topic for me. Everyone has been saying that grocery prices are crazy now!  Virginia They're so high.  Corinne When I saw that particular reel about how much a family is spending per week on groceries, I was like, "believable." Virginia   Yeah. The reel that we're going to talk about is from Julia Marcum, aka @chrislovesjulia. I have talked before on this podcast about she is one of my problematic faves.  She is a high-end, home influencer/Mormon wife and mother who now lives in North Carolina, just to locate the economics of her grocery shopping. She has talked openly about living with a lot of food restrictions due to health problems. She is grain, gluten, dairy, pork and refined sugar free. Which I was like, How do you spend money on groceries? There's nothing left to eat.  This is a particular reel where we see her husband, Chris, coming into the house with multiple paper bags of groceries from, I believe, Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. Then he's unloading organic yogurt, so much produce, like nine boxes of blueberries, and these sort of, I don't know, some kind of special breakfast sausage, lots of packaged foods, but not the kind of packaged foods we would demonize as processed foods. It's very heavy on the wellness brands and the produce side of things, I would say. Corinne   I agree with that assessment. When I was watching it being unpacked, I was like, This feels like a treats grocery shopping trip for me. Where you go grocery shopping and buy yourself a lot of treats. Virginia   It's the fancy food shopping. That's what I thought, too. Corinne The juice, the berries. Virginia And they were like, 'No, this is how we eat every week. We just eat fancy food all the time.' There's two whole chickens in the mix, which I'm oddly fixated on. But it is true, sometimes a whole chicken doesn't feed as many people as you think it's going to. So I guess I understand roasting two at once.  A couple of things were really interesting to me about this. One, yes, there's the diet culture piece of things: she says that her go-to snack is blueberries. That is both an expensive go-to snack, and not a very satisfying go-to snack. What's with the blueberries? I want to know. She talks about how she eats exactly what the rest of the family does, but if they're eating rice, she'll eat cauliflower rice. So I was like, Well, that's not eating exactly what the family eats.  There's also a humblebrag that Chris "runs the grocery and dinner rhythm," as she puts it. She cooked for six months after they got married and then he took over. That's obviously fairly rare in heterosexual marriage. Much more often the mom is doing all of the mental load of grocery shopping and food prep. So I thought that was pretty interesting.  There's also the backlash in the comment section. People were pretty mad about this grocery haul.  Corinne   It's hard not to feel mad when you're seeing someone living it up when most people are stressed about grocery bills. Also, how are they keeping all those blueberries good for a week? One thing of blueberries in my fridge goes bad in like two days. Virginia   I know. You breathe on them and they all wither and die. Corinne   Just buy frozen blueberries? Virginia   I buy quite a lot of frozen blueberries for smoothies every week and they are much cheaper. Corinne   Definitely more economical. Virginia   If you're just standing there snacking on them like a squirrel, what difference does it make if they're fresh or frozen?  This reel was posted the first week of February. It was just a couple months ago that the federal government canceled SNAP for all of November. Millions of families didn't know how to buy groceries at all. So there's a real lack of awareness. The Marcums are never political, but I would guess their political leanings run conservative. There's probably a conscious choice not to worry, 'Are we offending people who are struggling to feed their families when we talk about spending $657 on one week of groceries?' It also made me think about Mormon prosperity gospel culture. This is very celebrated to be able to live lavishly and well in this way and have all of this elaborate food, and they kind of dress it up in 'food is an important part of our family's bonding time.' But you can have quality family bonding time around food and not have it be this kind of food. Corinne   One question I also had was, when they made this reel, did they think, 'Oh, people are going to be outraged by this.' I'm just so curious what they expected the response would be. Virginia   I can't decide if they are that out of touch with what the average family is like. Is this like the Lucille Bluth banana moment? Is that what's happening? Or was it honestly a little more insidious, and they knew that number would get crazy engagement? Because it absolutely did. Corinne   I kind of think the latter. Did they respond at all? Virginia   Yes, there is a comment from Julia where she says, “I know that's a big grocery budget. Everyone prioritizes their money differently.”  Some people just don't have money Julia! But sure, it's priorities.  “I've been sharing Chris Cooks recipes for 17 years, and our budget has fluctuated from price matching everything in my cart to this.” And then she talks about her eating issues. “The back story that newcomers may not know. Two years ago, I had a really bad relationship with food. It felt like every month I had to cut out a new food group due to health complications. My blood sugar was out of whack. I was diagnosed with reactive hypoglycemia and celiac disease. On top of my autoimmune condition. I coped by completely disconnecting from food and saw it as fuel only. It wasn't fun to eat because my diet was so restricted.” She names all her restrictions.  “At the beginning of 2025 I made it a goal to have a better relationship with food, for me and my family's sake, food is so much more than vital. It brings people together. It's an activity and a hobby and an experience. I still don't eat more food groups, but I no longer eat the same thing every day out of fear.”  Other than the pint of blueberries, I guess.  “Yes, we spend a lot of on groceries. It's usually closer to $550 a week, to be honest. But this week we got more because of bad weather. But it is also Chris's hobby, my medicine and the way we show our love to others, no regrets.” Corinne   In a way, I do find that comment sort of convincing. Virginia   It's really her experience of it.  Corinne   If you have a hard relationship with food, I think there is freedom in just being like, 'Yeah, I'm going to spend more money on food I like.' If you have the money. Virginia   There's a tremendous privilege here. I would love more acknowledging of the privilege rather than just saying, 'Everyone has different priorities.' Some people's priority is keeping their heat on, so they're not spending a lot on groceries. Corinne   I don't follow her, so maybe I should start. But what is she cutting back on? Virginia   Absolutely nothing. One of my favorite comments in the thread/backlash is a person being like, 'Are you all surprised? They live in a million dollar home. They just bought a lake house. Like, was this your first clue that they are living a lifestyle the rest of us cannot afford?' So no, she's cutting back on absolutely nothing in order to pay for these groceries. It's not a question of priorities. It's a question of conspicuous consumption.  I also think it's interesting that she frames it as Chris's hobby, that family dinner and feeding the family is his hobby. She's propping him up, like, 'Oh, what a hero. He does the grocery shopping and makes dinner, so I don't have to. What a good husband.' And then also, it's like, 'Well, guys, he just really loves it. It's his hobby.' Corinne   That is a justification people use for spending more on groceries though. It's entertainment, basically. Virginia   And I don't think that's the worst thing. I just think it's interesting in the context of her saying, 'This is labor he's performing for the family.' Corinne   I would not like to hear a husband say that about his wife, that cooking dinner "was her hobby." Virginia   'She's just so into it, she just can't get enough.' No, it just has to happen every night, but ok. Corinne   Should we talk about our own grocery bills? Virginia   I'm

    11 min
  4. Meet the Newest Burnt Toast Team Member!

    FEB 19

    Meet the Newest Burnt Toast Team Member!

    You're listening to Burnt Toast! We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay.Today our conversation is with Kim Baldwin, the newest member of the Burnt Toast team.Kim is the former digital editor for the Nashville Scene. Her culture writing can be found in places like the Nashville Scene, Parnassus Books’ Musings and on her Substack. Kim has interviewed folks like Sarah Sherman, Trixie Mattel, John Waters, Samantha Irby and Tess Holliday. Originally a blogger, Kim started The Blonde Mule in 2006 and later turned her popular interview series “These My Bitches” into a podcast called Ladyland. Kim writes a weekly newsletter about books and pop culture, teaches social media classes and is a frequent conversation partner for author events in Nashville. If you enjoy this conversation, a paid subscription is the best way to support our work! Join Burnt Toast 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 Episode 233 TranscriptVirginia We have a very fun episode for you today. We are introducing to all the Burnt Toasties, many of whom may already know and love her, our new podcast producer Kim Baldwin.  Kim Hi, hi, hi.  Virginia We are really happy you're here. Kim is doing a lot of things to improve our workflow. Yesterday she taught Corinne and me how to use Slack. Corinne, I think you already knew how to use Slack, but I sure did not. So that was exciting. Kim is joining us not just to teach us Slack, but to help with podcast production and make everything run more smoothly and efficiently. We are really grateful to her and thought it would be fun to do an episode where you get to know her. Kim   I'm excited to be on the Burnt Toast team, and excited to be here today despite harrowing conditions.  Virginia Truly harrowing. Kim I'm coming to you live from a public library because my home does not have water or internet. Virginia   Yes, Kim is surviving the Nashville ice apocalypse, where, what 130,000 people have been displaced? Kim 230,000. Virginia 230,000 people have been displaced. So she has been heroically working on Burnt Toast while literally being out of her home, back in her home, but now working from the library. Yay, public libraries! We love you. Let's dive in. Corinne, why don't we take turns asking our questions? Corinne   My first question is, what is your fat radicalization story? How did you get interested in body liberation work? Kim   When I turned 40 I had to get a biometric screening for health insurance because over 40, you have to qualify for insurance. It was a really stigmatizing appointment. In hindsight, it was traumatic. My therapist was like, Enough. You have to go see someone now.  That was 2018. I started working with an anti-diet registered dietitian. I thought I was going for one or two appointments, just for someone to say, "It's fine, you're all good." It became evident I had a disordered relationship, primarily with exercise, but also with eating. I went into what I now call recovery. It wasn't called that in real-time. It was just a chill, "Well, why don't you come see me every week for a while?" So I did that. I worked with Katherine Fowler, a non-diet, registered dietitian nutritionist here in Nashville. She's great. I knew nothing before her. She introduced me to anti-diet and Health at Every Size. She gave me a bunch of resources, one of which was Christy Harrison and Food Psych. I went whole hog. I listened to the back catalog of Food Psych, I read a bunch of books. I think Christy's first book came out around that time. It was so radical to me to think, Hold on, I can be fat, or, Hold on, I don't have to exercise this much. I was an Iron Man, so I was at that level of exercise. Virginia   Oh wow. Oh gosh, that's aggressive. Kim   When you exercise that much, for me, restrictive eating is just part of it. They really do go hand in hand. You control your food to try to control your outcomes and races and stuff. That's a long answer: back in 2018 I started working with registered dietitian, and she blew my mind and saved my life. Virginia   That's amazing. Yay, registered dietitians who do that work! Also, yay, Food Psych! That was a great podcast. Corinne, wasn't it one of your entry points, too? I feel like we've talked about this. Corinne   Yeah. I was a regular listener. Virginia   Just hearing people's stories over and over. The way Christy structured that was so healing and valuable for so many people. I've always been a fan of your culture writing. You always have amazing book recs, movie recs. Your newsletter The Blonde Mule is definitely one of my go to's for like, Ooh, what culture am I missing out on? Kim will know. So I would love to know who are some of your fat culture inspirations, icons, or just people you really love in that space? Kim   For sure Aubrey Gordon. She was an original, and back then, she was anonymous. Her Instagram posts back in the day - she still sometimes reposts those old ones in her stories. She still means so much to me. I learned about her early on.  And then, of course, Lindy West. I had read Shrill, and because I worked at an alt-weekly, she also worked at The Stranger in Seattle, which is their alt-weekly, and we had similar jobs, so I looked up to her. She had this great essay in The Stranger where she came out as fat. In real time, I wasn't there yet, but when I got into recovery and started learning, I realized how ahead of her time - ahead of all of us - she was.  And then, Virginia, you and people I found through Food Psych and through Christy. Back then we were all still using social media with wild abandon. You could learn about people through Instagram stories. Christy Harrison would repost all these people to her Instagram stories and I would click through and follow who she reposted. She'd repost something of yours, or, I can't even remember all the people back then. Oh, Ragen Chastain. I've been reading her stuff this whole time. I hope everyone reads her and knows what amazing work she's doing in this space. I can't get a sense of how many people know how much she's doing. Virginia   She does such deep dives into the research. She really is someone who is taking the time to take apart scientific papers, look at the methodology, look a what bias went into the research. I have learned so much from Ragen. I started following her back in probably the early 2000s when she was writing about being a fat dancer. I remember I interviewed her for a woman's magazine. Kim Oh right. I forgot about that, her original handle. Virginia Dances With Fat. Oh, you're making me nostalgic for this time. Now everyone's like, Body positivity is dead, and it was never really good, but there were these really good folks doing great work in the mix.  Kim   There was an organic way to find, I don't want to say community in the way we say it now, but I didn't know anybody in real life going through what I was going through, or who was learning what I was learning. All I had, truly, was Food Psych. So if someone was on Food Psych, I would look them up. I would follow them. And then that reposting thing, that's how I found so many people. Virginia   Yeah, it's so true. Corinne   Kim, where does the name The Blonde Mule come from?  Kim   Oh, this question. Corinne If you want to skip it ... Kim It brings up a lot of embarrassment. I should address it.  Virginia It's time. Kim, it's time. I don't know the backstory. Kim In 2006 I started a personal blog on blogspot because everyone was doing it. Back then it was the thing to have a cutesy name. No one used their government name online back then. Your email wasn't your name, your blog - none of that was your name. I'm a Taurus and I am actually stubborn, so "the mule" was kind of a nickname. There was this formula of a physical descriptor plus a nickname. All my friends had a version of this. I thought, Oh, I'll just do the blonde mule. I'll change it later, nobody cares. No one followed me.  Then I had to buy my domain name and get handles on social media sites. So 2006 to 2026, how many years is that? Is that 20 years? So unfortunately, I'm locked in. Because now I own that name. I don't love it because I wish I hadn't self identified with my hair color. Especially because it's blonde and that means a lot of things that don't align with my values. Also, during the pandemic, I quit coloring my hair and so I'm not really blonde anymore. Virginia   A blonde-ish mule. Corinne   I would consider you blonde.  Virginia   I still would consider you blonde.  Corinne Also Virginia, aren't you also a Taurus? Virginia I am also a Taurus. I am also pretty stubborn. Corinne This is an earth sign podcast. I'm a Capricorn. Kim John, my husband, is a Capricorn. Virginia   I don't know what that means.  Kim We're very compatible. Corinne   Yes, I also have a Taurus Moon. Virginia   Sure. I've been meaning to get one of those. I don't understand astrology. But I do relate to picking a name and sticking with it because now you're stuck with it. In many ways that is the backstory of Burnt Toast. So relatable. I named it on a whim. People are always like, What's that about? And I'm like, I mean, not a lot. But it is what it is.  The Blonde Mule is sticky. It sticks with you. Kim   There are people who make me feel better. One is Samantha Irby because she is still bitches gotta eat. She also is from, like, 2006. There are a few of us that are locked in. What are you going to do? I literally bought this name. Virginia   I'm stuck with it. You might as well own it, for sure.  Another part of your work life is that you work at the famous Parnassus Books, owned by best-selling author and icon Ann Patchett. I am a former bookstore girl. I love bookstores. Most authors, we love bookstores. So I really love talking about bookstores. I want to know, what's the most fun part of bookstore life? Also, does this bookstore hav

    36 min
  5. [PREVIEW] The State of GLP-1 Discourse

    FEB 12

    [PREVIEW] The State of GLP-1 Discourse

    Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark! We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it's time for your February Extra Butter episode! Listen to hear about: ⭐️ Anti-diet GLP-1 life ⭐️ Who gets left out when the tradwife aesthetic takes over influencer culture ⭐️ Interrogating the ableism of not wanting to be on medication your whole life Plus, serious stuff, like: ⭐️ Corinne in a prairie dress ⭐️ How long Virginia will last in a zombie apocalypse ⭐️ Why hot cheese is in for February To hear the whole thing, read the full transcript, and join us in the comments, you do need to be an Extra Butter subscriber. Join Extra Butter!This transcript contains affiliate links. If you're going to buy something we mention, shopping these links supports Burnt Toast at no extra cost to you! Episode 232 TranscriptCorinne Today we are talking about the state of GLP-1 discourse. A few recent media pieces have us wondering if the GLP-1 backlash is finally beginning, and if so, why is all of the coverage still so anti-fat? Virginia We're going to use two primary texts for this conversation, but I also want us to talk more generally about how we're seeing the conversation shift, because I feel like there's been an amorphous shift. Corinne I think the initial craze has died down and we're starting to see a more nuanced conversation. Virginia Which in many ways is good. There's more nuance on both sides, but there's still a lot of harm being done in the way the media is framing this conversation. Corinne For sure.  Virginia Exhibit A on that front is a piece by Dani Blum that ran on January 15 in the New York Times. The headline is The Hard Truth of Weight-Loss Drugs: You Probably Need Them Forever. Corinne what is your immediate first reaction to that headline? Corinne No shit, Sherlock. Why were people confused about this? Virginia I guess people were. It seemed obvious that if a drug makes you lose weight, and you go off the drug, you won't continue to lose the weight. Corinne Unfortunately, except for maybe antibiotics, that seems to be how drugs work. You have to stay on them. Virginia There's a lot that comes up for me in this piece. It's looking at new research, bringing to light the fact that when people go off the weight loss drugs, which many people do because they can't tolerate the side effects and it's too expensive, they just get tired of it. There are lots of reasons that people fatigue about being on a weekly injection drug. They're seeing now that people regain the weight. This is being framed as a grave disappointment and a surprise in the article. Corinne Not to me, but to Oprah. Virginia Oprah particularly. Oprah was surprised. They referenced the fact that even Oprah said that she had stopped taking a weight loss drug cold-turkey for a year and then gained back 20 pounds. "I tried to beat the medication," she told People Magazine. It was then she realized it's going to be a lifetime thing.  Brilliant marketing for Weight Watchers, Oprah. She thought she could go off it, but you can't. You should be on it forever. So buy your GLP-1s from Weight Watchers. Of course she wants us to be on it forever. She has a business incentive to make that work.  It gets into ableism. Why is it problematic to be on a medication for the rest of your life? I have asthma. I expect to use an inhaler to manage that for the rest of my life.  I have sleep apnea. I expect to use a CPAP for the rest of my life. Most people with mental health conditions expect to be on an SSRI for the rest of their life. Why is that a problem? Corinne I think there's something about human nature where people think, I don't want to be on a medication for the rest of my life. I've heard so many people say that. Virginia Often it's the main resistance to starting a medication. Why? What is it about that that makes us sad? Corinne We want to believe that we're strong and independent and don't need pills to make us ok. Virginia You and I are going to wear glasses for the rest of our lives. Corinne I am extremely screwed. So many medications, so many glasses. Virginia If the zombie apocalypse comes, I'm out in the first week because if they break my glasses or I lose an inhaler, I'm sorry, I'm not going to try that hard to survive. Even my acid reflux medication - I don't have debilitating acid reflux - but it's irritating. I would be out. Corinne Same.  Virginia Take me now.  Corinne I take multiple medications every single day that I would be lost, if not dead, without. Virginia I don't understand the aversion to that because it's great that I get to breathe through the help of medication. I'm a big fan. Corinne I think what you're hinting at is it's ableism. Virginia It's ableism. We want to believe we can overcome these challenges. We see it especially in conditions that are weight linked in any way. This is why people get told to diet before starting a blood pressure or cholesterol medication when those drugs work really well to manage those conditions ... Corinne ... and diets don't. Virginia And diets tend to not do so. Is it such a moral failing to have to go on a statin? I don't think so. Corinne The other thing they're not talking about directly is - and we've talked about this before - that studies show people who take these drugs for conditions like diabetes and/or insulin resistance, don't tend to stay on them long-term because they're hard drugs to be on.  Virginia Yeah. Corinne This article is so sad for people who got to lose weight on these because they will have to be on them forever if they want to "keep the weight off." It's also sad for people who need to take them to manage chronic conditions. These drugs suck in a lot of ways and people don't want to be on them. Virginia That's a valid reason to think, I don't want to be on a drug for the rest of my life if it's giving me terrible side effects. My inhalers don't give me terrible side effects. I just like breathing and want to do it all the time. I’m an oxygen addict.  If it's a medication that's giving you side effects, I understand not wanting to be on it for life. For folks who are pursuing this just for weight loss, independent of metabolic health, maybe that's a reason to reflect on whether you need to do that. It is a depressing thing to say, "I will be on a medication that gives me diarrhea, fatigue or whatever side effects, but at least I can be a smaller size." That feels like something to reflect on. That reflection is nowhere in this article, however. Corinne The article doesn't mention side effects at all, does it?  Virginia It mentions that it's why a lot of people in the studies are going off the drugs.  It's this Catch-22 where they're saying, Oh, people are saying, wow, it's so expensive, or, wow, I have terrible side effects, so I go off it. Then they're framing it like those people were quitters. That they gave up.  On the other hand, some of this aversion around "you wouldn't want to be on this medication for the rest of your life" is another layer of anti-fatness. The message is we shouldn't let fat people get away with thinness this way. We don't want them passing for thin because they can stay on a GLP-1 forever. We want them to do the "real work" of weight loss. The idea that you could only achieve weight loss by staying on the medication forever makes the weight loss feel fake to people.  It's interesting because all intentional weight loss is fake to some extent. It's all manipulating your body in a direction it doesn't naturally want to go in. So why do we penalize medication-based weight loss versus excessive-running-based weight loss? There's also a nice shout-out to RFK, Jr., who also thought the drugs would just be a short-term fix for people and then we'd go back to eating beef tallow to stay thin. Turns out that's not science, but I don't think we're surprised he's not science.  Another flavor of anti-fatness in this piece is the casual normalization that you could do this the old fashioned way. In talking about folks who are able to lose the weight even after they go off, the article says: It's not impossible, but it is extremely difficult. Dr Hauser estimates that fewer than 10% of her patients have successfully kept off 75% or more of the weight they lost after going on a GLP-1 without turning to another weight loss medication or undergoing bariatric surgery. "Those are the people that are working out two hours a day, tracking what they eat. They're working really hard," she said. "I haven't had anyone that just tapers off and isn't really putting that much thought into it and just keeps the weight off. I've never seen that happen." That's just casual normalization of eating disorder behavior. Working out two hours a day and tracking what you eat is not a normal way to live. Corinne The choice is either drugs or an eating disorder. Virginia That's not interrogated by this piece, or in any of the discourse I've seen around the whole idea that you have to be on it forever. It's either you have to be on it forever, or we expect you to do this the old fashioned way, like a good fat person would. Corinne It's also getting into the Rosey Beeme of it all. She lost some weight with a GLP-1 and then was like, Well, I guess weight loss surgery is the way to go here. Virginia Right, to continue her health journey. I haven't checked on her in a while. Do you know how that's all going? Corinne No, I don't and I don't honestly want to know. I just think that will become a more common storyline where people are saying, I didn't want to stay on this drug. It didn't lead to permanent weight loss, but maybe bariatric surgery will. Virginia Well, that's depressing. Corinne Speaking of influencers, the second article that we wanted to discuss today ran at the beginning of January in Vulture. It's titled ‘Less People Click If You’re a Size 16’ How plus-size influencers are faring in a GLP-1 world. Virginia This one is payw

    11 min
  6. When Your Teen Has an Eating Disorder

    FEB 5

    When Your Teen Has an Eating Disorder

    You're listening to Burnt Toast. I'm Virginia Sole-Smith. Today my conversation is with Dr. Lauren Muhlheim. Lauren is a psychologist, a fellow of the Academy for Eating Disorders, a certified eating disorder specialist and approved consultant for the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals. She's also a Certified Body Trust Provider and directs Eating Disorder Therapy LA, a group practice in Los Angeles. Lauren is the author of When Your Teen Has an Eating Disorder and a co-author of the brand new The Weight-Inclusive CBT Workbook for Eating Disorders. Lauren joined me to chat about how she and her colleagues have been working to make eating disorder treatment less fatphobic, because, yes, that really needed to happen. We also get into why it's feeling harder than ever to treat eating disorders, or live with one, in this era of RFK, Jr., MAHA and GLP-1s. Plus what to do if your child is hiding food, lying or otherwise showing signs of developing an eating disorder. When do you intervene? And how do you do so in the most supportive way possible? If you enjoy this conversation, a paid subscriiption is the best way to support our work! Join Burnt Toast 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 Episode 231 Transcript Virginia I am really delighted. We have been, I guess I would say, colleagues in this space, or comrades in this space, for a long time. Lauren Comrades, for sure.  Virginia I've interviewed you for articles over the years. We're both in the fat activism world in various ways. You're someone I learn so much from. I'm very excited to have you here today. We are going to talk about your new workbook that comes out this month, called The Weight-Inclusive CBT Workbook for Eating Disorders. Do you want to give us a little background on how this workbook came to be? Then we're going to dive into my list of questions. Lauren I should introduce CBT for eating disorders. CBT stands for cognitive behavioral therapy for eating disorders, which is one of the leading treatments. I was trained in it back in the 1990s by one of the two main researchers who's credited with developing the treatment. Cognitive behavioral therapy looks at what's maintaining a problem in the present. It looks at the relationship between thoughts, behaviors and feelings, and helps to sort out ways to solve problematic behaviors related to eating.  Fast forward to present day, we've learned a lot more about eating disorders than back in the '90s when I was trained in the model. When I was trained, it was very weight-centric, focused on primarily low weight and "normal weight." You know, thin-ish white women, and that's who was largely studied.  But now we know so much more - that eating disorders affect all people, all genders, all ethnicities and all body sizes. As I've evolved as a clinician over the last 20 years, I've really become influenced by the weight inclusive movement, Health At Every Size and listening to people with lived experience who have experienced harm from traditional weight-centric treatments.  So I have evolved. And in my mind I had modified what I was doing, and when I went back to look at the manuals, I was horrified to remember what was still in there that was really weight-centric. This has been a passion project for the last eight years. I've collaborated and talked to different people about it. I ultimately teamed up with two colleagues who were as passionate as I am, and we came up with the idea of modifying CBT to be weight inclusive. We coined CBTWI to be weight inclusive, and we took the 30 year old manuals and updated them to be relevant to today and to speak to people in all size bodies. A lot of people come to us in bigger bodies and the old manuals were so harmful. You know, focusing on about being the right weight and other elements that were just not conducive to people in larger bodies when they go through this work. Virginia Can you give a specific example? For folks who've never been in eating disorder treatment, or just don't know the world well, it's like, 'What do you mean eating disorder treatments are not weight inclusive? Isn't that where you go to feel better about your body?' Give an example of what CBT used to do that was harmful, and how you've updated it. Lauren When I was trained in CBT, I always thought it was a non-diet approach, because the focus is on regular eating and including all foods. So the center of the model is still good. But some of the fatphobic elements that were in the original treatment were - one was this insistence on regular weekly weighing and the client knowing their weight. And that if the therapist refused to weigh the client weekly, it was the therapist's own anxiety and avoidance of tolerating the client's distress over being weighed. But if you're in a bigger body, being weighed is more than just exposure. It can be traumatic.  Virginia Yeah.  Lauren We don't need to put people through that, where every week they see their weight. So that's one of the first things that we eliminated.  The other thing, there's behavioral experiments with a focus on challenging what they call the broken cognition. The broken cognition is this belief, and again, this was developed on primarily thin, white women who had the belief that if 'I eat a cupcake, I'll gain five pounds.' The behavioral experiment was to have them eat a cupcake, weigh them before and weigh them the following week, and prove that they didn't gain five pounds, but that's also hugely fatphobic. Because you're trying to prove to people that it's all in their heads, that weight stigma is not a thing. Virginia Well, and you're saying, 'Look, the scary, terrible thing didn't happen.' Lauren Which reinforces that that's the scariest thing. Virginia Even what you're saying, weighing folks in bigger bodies can be traumatic, not because inherently it's bad to be in a bigger body, but because if you're in a bigger body and you've been weighed in medical settings, you've had that number weaponized against you for so long. That's the trauma you're alluding to.  Lauren Yes, exactly. Virginia I see, so it was a lot of methodology around weight numbers meant to reassure thin women that 'Don't worry, you won't get fat.' Lauren Exactly. Virginia Which really leaves out any fat person with an eating disorder, and doesn't really do the thin women any favors either. Lauren Right. Because it just reinforces this fear that weight gain is the worst thing that could happen to somebody. Virginia That's fascinating. It sounds like a lot of very much needed updates and a really terrific resource for folks. I saw in the back of the workbook under Resources, you listed Burnt Toast as one of the newsletters with an online community dialogue. It means a lot to have us spotlighted in this way. We do work hard to have our chat rooms and safe spaces in the comment section for folks coming for support. You also listed a lot of folks that we love and look to as leaders in this space: Christy Harrison, Ragen Chastain, Rachel Milner, Sabrina Strings, Bree Campos, Chrissy King, etc. How do you think about the importance of community in the work you do with your clients as you've been reframing CBT in this way? Lauren We are big fans of yours and all the people you've named, and it was really important to us because here we are, three white women with privilege doing the updating of CBT and we wanted to take it further.  It was really important to us that we learned from people with more marginalized identities. We negotiated with our editor to have sensitivity readers and we had people advising us on some of the things that we might not have been as aware of, like food insecurity, gender considerations, and the experience of people in larger bodies. As references, we tried to include some of the thought leaders that we've really learned from.  Community is super important in this work because we're asking people to go against the grain of society. Many of the people that come to us for help with eating disorders are people in larger bodies who have been told by medical doctors and people in their lives to lose weight. And then they come to us and we say, 'Well, you're not eating enough.' And they think we're kind of crazy to say that.  It really helps when you're asking people to do this work, which is so hard, to have other people in their lives who are supporting this. Many people don't have people in their personal lives who are anti-diet. Where do you find those people? A lot of it is online and in podcasts. I always tell people it helps, even if it's you and me and the person listening to the podcast. They're hearing the interviewer and the guest and there's two other people who are in this world with you.  Virginia That's right. Lauren It helps a lot. And I do think that is the missing piece for people in bigger bodies who experience disordered eating - they don't have the support. Virginia Especially right now. We're in a really dark cultural moment. You know, just like a swirling vortex of badness in a lot of ways. So it feels even harder, because what the federal government is telling us, what we're seeing in the news, etc, etc, is also running counter to what will actually promote healing.  To that end, I'd love if we could talk a little bit about how you're thinking about your work in this dark time. We just had RFK’s latest USDA dietary guidelines come out. Lauren, how are you feeling about the new food pyramid? Lauren Sadly, I feel like I am not going to be able to retire anytime soon. The culture just propagates and perpetuates disordered eating in so many ways. Obviously eating is so much more individualized than just following a guideline, but what I can say is that I have never seen a person with binge eating who was not restricting their carbs.  Virginia That’s really interesting. Lauren Carbs are basically the building blocks of what we ea

    33 min
  7. The Pets + Gay Hockey Episode

    JAN 29

    The Pets + Gay Hockey Episode

    We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay and it’s time for a BONUS January Indulgence Gospel!This episode is free for everyone. If you enjoy it, consider a paid subscription to Burnt Toast! It's the best way to support our work and keep this an ad- and sponsor-free space. You'll also get behind some of our most popular paywalled episodes like: 🧈 Why is Katie Sturino Working for Weight Watchers? 🧈Don't Go On the Pete Wells Diet 🧈The Mel Robbins Cult of High Fives And more! (Find every Indulgence Gospel episode here.) Never miss another episode! 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 This episode may contain affiliate links. Shopping our links is another great way to support Burnt Toast! Episode 230 TranscriptVirginia So today we are just catching you up on some general January news. These are things that are happening in our lives and the world. And then we're going to answer a few listener questions.  Corinne This is kind of my favorite type of episode,  Virginia Same. Do you want to go first? Do you have an update for us? Some news?  Corinne One thing that I've been dying to ask you, and I've kind of been holding back on is... have you watched Heated Rivalry.  Virginia I haven't watched it.  Corinne Okay, but do you know what I'm talking about? Virginia Well, I'm just going to Google it real quick. Corinne Oh, my God. No! Don't even Google it. This is what you need to do this weekend. Wait, do you have a kid-free weekend because it's not kid-friendly. Virginia Oh come on, it’s a sports thing!  Corinne There is so little sports. Let me just tell you. Virginia Okay... Corinne If you're watching it for the sports, you will be disappointed. There' is no sports, okay? No sports. Basically, if the camera was one inch lower, it would be porn.  Virginia Oh! Okay. Corinne It's based on, like, gay romance novels. Virginia Ohhhhh it's the gay hockey players! Yes, alright. Watching. I am kid-free and I will be doing that this weekend. Corinne And I think Jack will like it as well. So I recommend you watch it together.  Virginia Obviously. Corinne It's very horny. Whoa. And I will say: I watched like, half of the first episode, and I was like, I don't think this is for me. And then it was, like, popping off on the Internet. So I was like, all right, I gotta give it another try. And now I'm, like, obsessed with Connor Storrie. Virginia So okay, is it like you're watching it because it's so absurd? Or are you invested in the characters?  Corinne I'm invested.  Virginia You're invested. Corinne It's just like a romance novel. They're both different kinds of sports tropes. One of them's kind of like a tough guy from Russia, and the other one's a little softie Canadian. It's very sweet. And I think that the actors have a lot of chemistry.  And you see their butts a lot. Virginia Well, I'm in. We'll watch this this weekend. I mean, I have read many a hockey player romance novel. Some of them were gay.   Corinne Then you've probably read the novels. Virginia I may have read the novels. Although I don't like hockey, I have to say, I'm never going to be a pick me girl for hockey. It's a confusing sport to me.  Corinne There's like, basically no hockey. Having watched the whole thing I can tell you nothing about hockey. Virginia  You have learned nothing. Corinne  There's like, cup that you can win? That's all I know. Virginia Oh yes. Wait. I want to call it a Stanley Cup? But isn't that the water bottles? Or is there also a hockey Stanley Cup? Corinne I don't know, Virginia and I don't care. Gay hockey forever. Virginia Delightful. This is an amazing update. We are actually watching the second season of Bad Sisters right now, on your recommendation. So we do have to finish that up. I didn't think that it could pull off a good second season, but they really are delivering. And then in my parenting life, I'm continuing to work through Buffy the Vampire Slayer with my 12 year old. It's a delight. I really do feel like you maybe need to consider a Buffy watch at some point. Corinne Next time I have 47 hours unscheduled weeks. Virginia I mean, you can chip away at it too. It's on Disney Plus! Oh wait, you probably don't have Disney Plus. Corinne My bad.  Virginia No that's fair. Well, it's been very fun we're in season four now for the Buffy fans in the audience. And it's going to start getting a little more violent. I'll have to feel it out. But I think we're, at the point of no return. That's a good TV update. Have you been reading anything good? I read a book that I think you liked, and I don't think I liked it. But I think I'm in the minority.  Corinne Which book? Virginia Heart The Lover by Lily King. Corinne Oh, my God, you didn't like it?! Virginia No. What am I missing?  Corinne What didn't you like?  Virginia I felt like they were all so annoying and pretentious. Is it because I was an English major, so I don't like English majors? We're just pretty annoying, with all the literary references. Okay, we get it. You are boys who read books. I was just like, why would you sleep with either one of them? I don't get it. Corinne Oh, fascinating. I mean, I was just sobbing for the entire second half. Virginia It does get sad in the second half, but I didn't like him, so I didn't care? Corinne You weren't invested. Virginia And it's not hard to get me invested in a health journey of any sort! I'm not going to spoil it for anyone, but—okay, spoiler alert! We're going to talk about it with spoilers, so that we can really get into it. If you didn't read that book, you'll want to skip ahead about a minute and a half.  🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 SCROLL TO NEXT SET OF BUTTER EMOJIS TO AVOID SPOILERS! Okay, I thought it was real weird that she gave a kid up for adoption, and then was just like, "But I know she's fine. It's fine. It's all fine." And yet she was so worried about the kid she did have who had health issues. I mean, of course she was worried about him— but she had just mentally been like, that one's fine. I picked good people. They had a nice photo. So I know she's having a great childhood. That was really weird to me.  Corinne I mean, I felt like that seemed like the decision of a young, stressed out person, Virginia Yeah, maybe. And how she keeps talking about it is meant to be a trauma response? Corinne It was a questionable young person decision. Virginia Yes, definitely. But it felt weird that she would never reflect further upon it as she got into her own motherhood. I'm not saying she was wrong to give the baby up for her adoption. I also think abortion exists, and that would have made sense. But I'm not saying she should have kept the child. I just thought, don't you think you would have gotten any more nuanced in your feelings about it as the years went on? Corinne The book is her getting more nuanced about it. Right? Virginia Not really! Not about the baby. She's like, Yeah, she's fine. I mean, she finally tells him about it, but. Corinne I don't know. I think she was kind of in denial about it, or just avoiding it, and then the book is her coming to terms with it.  🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 END OF SPOILERS Virginia Well, I just felt like everyone was pretentious and unlikable. And it feels like everyone loves this book so much, and I don't know what I missed.  Corinne Have you read her other books?  Virginia No, this was my first Lily King,  Corinne Okay, because there's also, like a connection to one of the other books.  Virginia Well, I'm not going to read it because I didn't like any of these people. But Corinne loved it, guys, so if you love it, if you've read it, let us know in the comments! I was just surprised. This is the first time I've ever not liked one of your book recs. Corinne I am a little surprised, but I think maybe I'm primed to like those college, academic group of kids books. That's a genre I really like. Virginia  I think it's a genre I don't like. I think I actively dislike reading about people in college. Corinne Yeah, it's interesting, because I'm not like, looking back fondly on my own experience at that time. Yeah. I think I just like, enjoy the dynamics. Did you read A Secret History?  Virginia No,  Corinne I love that book. So I feel like, this was maybe tapping into that. Virginia I think I just think academia is very pretentious? Corinne Isn't one of your parents a professor?  Virginia Yes I was raised by professors.  Corinne So maybe there's something there.  Virginia Three out of four of my parents have worked as professors. So yes. I grew up in academia. Corinne Okay, well, none of mine have. Virginia Well, I am now reading The Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood. It's about this woman, who's sort of lost  in her life and moves into a convent. And I keep thinking "Corinne would really like this book."  Corinne It does sound good to me.  Virginia I don't know if I like it, but I do think you would really like it. Usually I'm a big do not finisher if I don't like a book. And I will say Heart The Lover was a snappy read. So I kept going. Because I was like, well, Corinne loved this book, so I'll keep reading to find out when I'll love it. And that was never, but it was a fast read, and this one is too. I'm moving through it quickly, but I think I do need to really root for the characters. Corinne That's funny. I have a conversation like this a lot with my mom, because she doesn't like books where the characters are too flawed. We always say it like, if she doesn't like them, she, doesn't want to read it. Virginia I am okay with flawed, but they have to be flawed and likable. Corinne They have to have redeeming qualities, Virginia And maybe some awareness of their flawedness in a interesting way?. I don't know. I don

    40 min
  8. [PREVIEW] A White Man Thought He was Fat and Quit His Job.

    JAN 22

    [PREVIEW] A White Man Thought He was Fat and Quit His Job.

    We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay and it’s time for your January Indulgence Gospel! Today we are talking about former restaurant critic turned diet crusader Pete Wells—and why the New York Times always spends January turning into a women's magazine from hell. CW for discussions of intentional weight loss and lazy fat jokes (from Pete), including some that are offensive to both humans and bassett hounds. You do need to be a paid Just Toast subscriber to listen to this full conversation. Membership starts at just $5 per month! Join Just Toast!Don't want an ongoing commitment? Click "buy for $4!" to listen to just this one. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 This episode may contain affiliate links. Shopping our links is another great way to support Burnt Toast! Episode 229 TranscriptCorinne Ugh. That's all I can muster. Virginia And it's not a new ugh. They do this every January, guys. We have to emotionally prepare ourselves—those of us who still have an admittedly increasingly problematic subscription to The New York Times—we have to emotionally prepare ourselves that every January they become like Cosmo from 2004, and do this ridiculous weight loss challenge b******t. And it's so odd and misaligned with actual journalism.  OK, so dd you see the piece that came out like two days ago? Corinne “Our Former Restaurant Critic Changed His Eating Habits, You Can, Too?" Virginia The before and after journey of Pete Wells. Corinne I sure did see it. I mean, my first thought was... the food looks good.  Virginia Food does look good.  Corinne I might be making some of these recipes. And guess what? I'll still be fat. Virginia Virginia comes in hot and angry. Corinne...angry, but also willing to make a delicious chickpea dish? Corinne I'm definitely going to eat this. But don't get me wrong, also very angry. Virginia One of the listeners said in the chat today, Why does New York Times Cooking do this to me? They have good recipes and then they have to,take this weird turn. Like, just make good recipes. That's what you do. That's what we pay for. We just want the pretty food pictures and the useful recipes. We don't want this. We don't need this.  Corinne Articles like this are literally putting people off the recipes. Virginia Before we talk about the current "Reset Your Appetite" challenge, and the way he's talking about his story now, we'll just quickly back up for people who blessedly missed this whole thing.  Pete Wells is a former restaurant critic for the New York Times. And last July he wrote a piece titled, "After 12 years of Reviewing Restaurants, I'm Leaving the Table." It was all about how the job had made him fat, and so he couldn't be a restaurant critic anymore because he felt bad about being fat. Wells talked a lot about his own health issues, too. He said, “my cholesterol, blood sugar and hypertension were worse than I expected. The terms pre diabetes, fatty liver disease and metabolic syndrome were thrown around.”  And sure, that is all upsetting, and a lot to deal with. But he blamed it all on his weight and then made all these really lazy fat jokes. He wrote, “I've decided to bow out as gracefully as my state of technical obesity will allow.” Which just, why? Why do you need to frame it like that? Fat people are graceful. F**k you. There's no need for talking about bodies in such a gross way. Even though he's making a joke about himself, which I'm sure makes him think it's okay. Corinne I mean, I hate it. It makes me feel really weird. Virginia It is really weird. It's like we're watching one man's midlife crisis just unfold in our nation's supposedly most reputable newspaper.  Corinne There is just something confusing about it, too. You wanted this job! Why can't you eat the way you want to eat? I don't know. He makes it sound like he's being force fed or something.  Virginia I do think restaurant reviewing is a job where you often have to eat even if you're not hungry. Like you have to taste things, right? He talked about how he was eating an average of 125 multi-course restaurant meals a year. Which is not how most of us eat. Corinne That is like, twice a week? I bet a lot of people go to restaurants twice a week.  Virginia But you don't necessarily get appetizers and cocktails and dessert every time, because you don't have to try the whole menu when you go. And let's see, 52 meals a year... it would be 104 if it was twice a week. So it's two to three times a week.  Corinne Okay. It's a lot. Virginia So I agree there's an open question of: Did eating this way take a toll on his health? Possibly. Does he need to make it all about his weight and make lazy fat jokes? He doesn't. We don't need to do that. And do you need to tell America that the reason you're quitting your job is because of health reasons? I don't know that this was news. A lot of people quit jobs after 12 years. I don't care. Corinne And a lot of people quit job for jobs for health reasons, and then don't write weight loss stories.  Virginia That was the other layer to this piece last year that really bugged me. He talked to other former restaurant critics, including Adam Platt, who was at New York Magazine for a really long time. And Adam Platt called the job "the least healthy job in America." I'm sorry, sir. You are not an underwater welder. You are not working at coal mines. Corinne Professional athletes come to mind, too. Football players.  Virginia The least healthy job in America? You get to eat in beautiful, comfortable places. You get to expense the cab ride home. You're not being underpaid. You're not being abused. You're not being forced to have sex against your will to stay employed. You're not being held captive in a workplace. There are a lot of jobs that are less healthy than this, sir. And just the total lack of acknowledgement of that privilege made me insane. I find it just so exasperating.  Another great quote from Platt: "Your body changes over time. You have this giant distended belly which wants to be filled. All those weird sensors in your brain that cry out for deliciousness are at DEF CON one all day, you become an addict."  It's just such a dramatic—and again, super anti-fat— way of talking about your experience with a career which brought you...a lot of success and financial privilege. Corinne It's troubling. Virginia So that is the back story.  Corinne A successful white man thought he was fat and decided to quit his job. Virginia He felt bad about his body, so he quit his job. That was the tragedy that befell Pete Wells. And now he's back, Corinne! Because he lost 60 pounds in a year! Corinne "An entire basset hound." Doesn't he say that? Virginia Yes, I'm sorry. And trigger warning that we're using numbers. He's using numbers, we're just quoting. “Today, I'm about 55 pounds later than I was at my zenith, a loss roughly, roughly equivalent to dropping an entire male basset hound.”  Is there nobody at The New York Times—I am truly asking, as someone who has written for this newspaper, been interviewed for this newspaper—is there not one editor in any of your departments who can spot anti-fat bias? Is there not one person in the copy editing department, or maybe one senior editor reading a draft of this, who would say, "Wow, this is wildly offensive, dehumanizing language to use about people's bodies?" Corinne Or notice how ableist It is against people with diabetes. Because that's what struck me when I read this. Virginia Yes, to Pete Wells, diabetes is a death sentence and a moral failing. It is the nightmare scenario he's desperate to avoid.  And I'm not downplaying the stress of managing a chronic condition. But that is extremely offensive to the many millions of people who live functional, happy lives with diabetes. Corinne And who don't have a choice to focus all their energy on avoiding it and get a New York Times column to write about how they avoided it.  Virginia Let's talk about after he describes his "basset hound" weight loss. He then says: "...Slimming down was not my main purpose. I never counted a single calorie. Somehow that took care of itself because of the new ways I started shopping, cooking and eating back then, and it more or less stuck to since.” Corinne I mean, could it get any more diet-y? You're selling us a diet. Virginia It's absolutely about slimming down. All you're talking about is how unhappy you were that you got fat. Obviously, you care about slimming down. Yes, you were worried about your biomarkers. But if that was all you were worried about, you would shut up about the basset hound! You would not use that phrase. It's so egregious. What's also egregious is that this is the first of four articles Pete Wells will be writing on this theme. We are recording this on January 7. You are hearing it on January 22 which means by the time you listen, there have been two more atrocities that we can't even get into because we haven't read them yet. But I can bet they're crap! Corinne I think it's also kind of interesting to think about this whole thing within the greater GLP-1 era. He doesn't really say whether he's taking a GLP-1 or not, although it feels like he's implying that he's not? And with that, there is some kind of moral judgment. Virginia That struck me as well. This first article is all about how to break up with sugar. That's literally a headline in here. Which, again, they stole from a women's magazine from 2005. Like I wrote that! "Break Up With Sugar" is classic women's magazine b******t. But okay, Pete Wells. When a white man writes it, we get to pretend it's real journalism.  Corinne Doesn't he also talk somewhere about how sugar makes you crazy? Virginia Yes, he writes: "And having raised two boys, I probably should have known that going through sugar overdrive many times a day was not producing the most rational behavior." There have been mu

    11 min
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Burnt Toast is your body liberation community. We're working to dismantle diet culture and anti-fat bias, and we have a lot of strong opinions about comfy pants. Co-hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (NYT-bestselling author of FAT TALK) and Corinne Fay (author of the popular plus size fashion newsletter Big Undies).

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