The Burnt Toast Podcast

Virginia Sole-Smith
  • 4.7 (419)
  • HEALTH & FITNESS
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

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] Fat Fashion: Spring Edition

    1D AGO

    [PREVIEW] Fat Fashion: Spring Edition

    We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it's time for your April Extra Butter episode!This normally where we would say "Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark, " but today we're saying, "Welcome to Extra Butter." Longtime listeners know that we used to call the Virginia and Corinne episodes "Indulgence Gospel" in honor of a troll comment. We still love the name and are having a hard time letting it go, but we wanted to make it easier to know what kind of episode you're listening to when you listen to Burnt Toast. Burnt Toast has three membership tiers: Burnt Toast free member 💛 (Free!) Just Toast member 🍞 ($5/month or $50 annually) Extra Butter member 🧈 ($10/month or $100 annually) And Today we have an Extra Butter Episode! If you're listening to this episode, you're part of the premium tier, which means you're one of our favorite Burnt Toasties. You can get behind every paywall! Your support makes all our work possible and keeps Burnt Toast and ad and sponsor free space. Today we are talking about: ⭐️ Fat fashion. Is it getting harder to shop? ⭐️ Virginia's bad boyfriend (J. Crew). ⭐️ How the oversized fashion trend leaves out fat people. We're also answering listener questions about: ⭐️ Skinny jeans, yay or nay? ⭐️ Managing a wardrobe to fit weight fluctuations. ⭐️ How are we wearing layers during perimenopause? To hear the whole thing, read the full transcript, and join us in the comments, you do need to be an Extra Butter subscriber. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/join. Who doesn't want extra butter on their toast? Join Extra Butter! 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 Episode 239 TranscriptCorinne:  Today we have a very exciting (for me) topic, which is we're going to talk about fat fashion, spring edition. Virginia:  Is it getting harder to shop? Corinne:  I mean, quick answer: yes. Virginia:  Absolutely. It's terrible out there. Is it the state of the world, is it retail, or is it both? We're going to get into how it's feeling like there are fewer plus-size options, and we're going to get into some of your practical questions.

    2 min
  2. [PREVIEW] The Diet Culture Voice In Your Head

    MAR 26

    [PREVIEW] The Diet Culture Voice In Your Head

    We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay and it’s time for your March Just Toast episode!Today we are talking about: ⭐️ The new, skinny American Girl dolls ⭐️ Does taking a GLP-1 make you a better parent? We're also answering listener questions about: ⭐️ The diet culture voice in your head ⭐️ Colonoscopy prep and the feelings it brings up ⭐️ Virginia's review of the Heated Rivalry books You need to be a paid Just Toast subscriber to listen to this full conversation. Membership starts at just $5 per month! Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/join. Sign up for just $5! Join Just Toast! 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 Episode 238 TranscriptVirginia Today we are catching up on some things we are mad about in March. Corinne Some people have been annoying us. Virginia We have a list, and you may or may not be on the list. First up is ...

    2 min
  3. [PREVIEW] Get In Loser, We're Bringing Back Chivalry

    MAR 19

    [PREVIEW] Get In Loser, We're Bringing Back Chivalry

    You're listening to Burnt Toast. I'm Virginia Sole-Smith. Today is the second part of my conversation with 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. Today is the second part of my conversation with Savala. In part one, we talked about bodies, race and gender. Today in part two, we're getting into sex, divorce and classy and trashy Butters. This conversation is 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! If you order Good Woman 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. You 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 237 TranscriptVirginia  All right, we've got to talk about men a little bit. Savala   Do we have to? No, I'm kidding. I love them. Virginia   I really questioned whether we did. You write really well about men in this book. You articulate a lot about a certain kind of man that is going to be very familiar to a lot of our listeners. You call him the "voting booth feminist." Define voting booth feminist and tell us how that particular type of man, perhaps without realizing it, contributes to this narrative about what a "good woman" should be. Savala   Well, the voting booth feminist is alive and well, Virginia. I was married to one.

    2 min
  4. [PREVIEW] Lindy West Doesn’t Need Your Permission

    MAR 12

    [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
  5. "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
  6. [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! 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈

    11 min
  7. 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
  8. [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!

    11 min
See All (241)

4.7
out of 5
419 Ratings

About

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).

Information

You Might Also Like