The Burnt Toast Podcast

Post-Publication Note: Many of you have emailed to let me know that the J. Crew coat we talk about in this episode is no longer available in plus sizes! The link has changed since we put it in the transcript and we’re so sorry. Anti-fat bias in fashion is REAL, y’all.You're listening to Burnt Toast. I'm Virginia Sole-Smith and I also write the Burnt Toast newsletter.And today Corinne is back! She got bangs, you guys! And it is time for a very special holiday themed Ask Us Anything. As always, we record these once a month. (Except last month when Thanksgiving threw us off. But here’s October if you missed it!) So if you have questions, you can email them over by hitting reply to any newsletter or drop them here.One quick piece of advocacy, first: Please sign this petition in support of clemency for Nikki Addimando, a mom in my community currently serving a five-year prison sentence for killing her abusive partner in self-defense. It’s long past time that we stop criminalizing survival. As Nikki said at her sentencing trial: "I wish more than anything it ended another way. I wouldn't be in this courtroom right now, but I wouldn't be alive either. This is why women don't leave. They so often end up dead or where I'm standing — alive, but still not free.”We are asking the governor of New York to commute Nikki’s remaining sentence and bring her home to her children this year. You can read more of Nikki’s story here (CW for sexual assault and abuse), follow the #FreeNikki campaign on Instagram, and share the petition with friends here.Episode 72 TranscriptVirginiaHow are you? How are you doing?CorinneI’m doing good. As discussed, I got bangs. VirginiaYes, and you were on an emotional journey with them. But now you’re feeling good about the bangs?CorinneYeah. I think I’m feeling good about the bangs. This time of year is so crazy. Do you have any upcoming travel holiday stuff?VirginiaFor Christmas we are doing this big trip. My brother-in-law and his family live in Bangkok. They have been there for years and we haven’t visited yet. And you know, when the pandemic happened we couldn’t go. So we’re finally doing it. CorinneSo you’re going to Thailand? In, like, a month? Wow.VirginiaYeah. For Christmas. With my children.CorinneOh my God.VirginiaAnd my amazing 15-year-old niece who I’m hoping is really going to hold the whole thing together. No pressure, Lorelai! I’m super excited. It’ll be such a great adventure. I’m also a little bit glad we couldn’t go in 2020 when we had a two-year-old. I think that would have been much harder. But still, listeners: If you have any tips about long haul travel with a five- and nine-year-old, tell me in the comments! I need all of the advice. CorinneWell, it’ll definitely be an adventure! VirginiaOh, it will be. I’m super excited.Alright, should we do some questions? We have many questions this time. I tried to group them into categories for us. And since this is our December episode, we’re going to do some December-y type questions. Winter Fat FashionCorinneYes. Okay! Your recommendation for soft pants has been life changing. Thank you for introducing me to Eileen Fisher Lantern pants. Any recommendations for winter coats like a soft coat?VirginiaWell, that’s a thank you to you because you introduced us all to Eileen Fisher lantern pants. CorinneI’ve never been more flattered in my life. I feel like I’m finally being seen.VirginiaI now really need to get some because this is like a double endorsement. It’s very exciting.CorinneThey are great. You just got a coat!VirginiaI did just get a coat, so I do have a coat recommendation. Basically, I wanted a quilted barn coat like my five year old wears, and I wanted it in my size. And I went on an odyssey to find it. I was sent many links over Instagram for coats, and I ended up getting the J.Crew quilted cocoon puffer in olive green. I love it a lot.We previously discussed the issues of being hot / running warm when you are fat. And this coat is warm in cold weather but very lightweight. Like, it doesn’t make me sweaty. So it’s really threading that needle.CorinneYeah. And the shoulder restriction in the car?VirginiaRestriction is good. And I will say I have heard very mixed things about J.Crew plus sizing in general. But this coat I feel optimistic about because I think I bought the XXL, which suggests to me that like the 1x, 2x, 3x are sized appropriately. It’s a roomy coat. I think it’s a pretty inclusive option for folks. I will say the zipper was stiff but a reader told me to run a wax candle over it and that helped. What about you? You’re a big coat fan. CorinneI do like coats. I’m more of a light coat person. I just recently got a fleece from Alder Apparel, which is a Canadian outdoor brand that has very inclusive sizing. VirginiaYeah, they’re supposed to be great. CorinneThey are great. Some of the stuff is pretty pricey, but it’s great. I love it. And I would definitely call it a soft coat. Sometimes I wear it around the house. Another thing I really like about it is that it has snaps. VirginiaOh, yeah, that’s good. CorinneI’m very into snaps on a shirt or a jacket. I feel like they last longer than buttons. You never accidentally pop them off. I’ve also, in the past, gotten coats from Universal Standard and Girlfriend Collective, puffy style coats. They both have a lot of sizes and styles.VirginiaWhile I was doing my coat research Universal Standard sent me approximately 18 emails about coats because that’s how that works. And I didn’t end up buying one, but they have some strong contenders. Definitely wait for sales and if you do the J Crew coat for sure wait for a sale because I got my I think I paid like $90 dollars for it. I got a really good deal. CorinneOh wow, thats a really good deal. VirginiaWe also got a request for fleece leggings. And I have the same request. I have a pair from LL Bean but I don’t love them. I need to hike them up a lot. They don’t hold their shape super well. CorinneI don’t have any fleece leggings. I don’t know if I would wear them, but here is what I’ve heard. There’s a Canadian brand called Anne Mulaire and they have a pair of bamboo fleece leggings.VirginiaOooh, that sounds exciting. Yes.CorinneAnd then I have also heard Land’s End and Target have fleece leggings but I can’t personally endorse any of those. VirginiaNo, but that’s good to know to check out. Yeah, that’s exciting. I was also thinking this might be a place for the Naadam cashmere pants we discussed previously. I get their emails and I put them in the cart every week and then I don’t quite pull the trigger because they’re kind of expensive.CorinneThey are kind of expensive. VirginiaI mean, they’ve definitely been doing some 25% discounts. So I know they go on sale.CorinneWait until 40%.VirginiaYeah, yeah, that’s exactly. I mean, I know you love your shorts from them.CorinneI have also had pants from them, which got eaten by moths, but they were great.VirginiaThat’s the miserable part about Cashmere. All right, what’s next? How do you balance feelings around bodies and clothing? Especially when it feels like buying and finding clothes would be cheaper and easier in a smaller body?CorinneThis question makes me sad.VirginiaI know, I know. Because there’s like a kernel of truth to it, right? There are more clothing options for small bodies. That’s true.Corinne It’s just like, how do you balance feelings around it? You can’t really. It just sucks. I guess you balance feeling around it by finding things that you like to wear.VirginiaI wouldn’t normally say shop your feelings, but I think here I would say shop your feelings. I do think when you can find even just one piece you’re really excited to wear, it helps so much. And when you’re in a transition with your body, that happens, right? Nothing fits and you’re trying so hard. It can just feel so miserable.It’s not an easy solution, like “just go buy something great!” And you’re like, but there is nothing great. But I’m trying to think what’s the easy starting point? Like, maybe it’s a top? I feel like tops can be easier to fit than pants. Depends on your body, maybe? A dress might be easier? CorinneOr even an accessory, like a hat or something where it’s something anyone could wear.VirginiaI mean, I think this is why I leaned into glasses so much. When I have my cool glasses on, I feel stylish no matter what. That’s a nice baseline. So finding that anchor piece. And then, it’s still going to suck. It’s just gonna suck. CorinneI think the glasses are good advice. I would also say maybe this is a time for remembering: You’re still a cool, interesting person even if you don’t have all the right clothes.VirginiaAbsolutely. Absolutely. Yes! Write that down if you need to. Put that somewhere you can read that, by your closet. And I just want to underscore that neither of us are saying pursue a smaller body in order to make this easier. That’s not the answer. It won’t really work. It won’t make you happier.CorinneIt will definitely make you miserable. Okay, next question.When you’re in a store, and they don’t carry your size, do you have any cute snarky comeback or response?VirginiaYou know, I had such a fail on this recently. Dan and I were away for the weekend. We were in Kingston, New York, which is a very cute Hudson Valley town. And we went into this super cute boutique that had clothes and home stuff. And I realized right away, they had nothing in my size. And I completely did nothing about it. I said nothing. I purchased nothing. I just wandered around the store. Dan bought a shirt because they had his size. I advised him on buying the shirt. And then we left and I was just grumpy about it.And I was like, Why didn’t I speak up? Like, this is literally what I do. But I was looking around for who I would talk to and the store was very crowded also. So even getting a salesperson… it was a Saturday. Getting someone’s attention was gonna be hard. And then I saw who I thought was the manager, and he was this skinny, hipster guy. And I just was like, he’s not gonna get it. It was a combination of a lot of things. But I was also furious, because I would have spent a lot of money and they had really cute stuff. I would have bought things. I think what happens is you suddenly have this feeling of like, I don’t belong here. They don’t want me here. Yeah, it’s hard to overcome in the moment. CorinneThat really does suck. I don’t think that I’ve ever said anything about that to anyone, either. I feel like there might have been times where there’s been a bigger person working in the store and then I’ve just been like, “Oh, I really wish you guys carried bigger stuff,” and they’ve been like, “I know.”VirginiaYeah. I probably would have felt safer saying something in that context.CorinneI feel like I’m just so accustomed at this point to stores not having my size.VirginiaRight. I was expecting it.CorinneIt’s just so much the norm.VirginiaIt was a moment where I thought to myself, you know, I’ve been really working on doing this advocacy in doctors offices, like I decline to be weighed. I work on saying why and I am working on that piece of it. And I was like, I need to start building these skills in retail, as well. I so rarely shop in person. So if this is something you want to work on, I think it’s a great place for activism. But I also think if you just feel like it feels hard, it’s okay to just leave the store and shop online instead or whatever. Or you can always like, I think it can be effective to do some calling out in social media, depending.CorinneI’d be curious to hear from readers / listeners, if they have done this or have good thoughts on how to do it. Or maybe someone’s done it and the shop has started carrying bigger sizes!VirginiaI did have a nice exchange with a thin friend, recently. She DM’ed me a brand and she was like, “this brand has amazing jeans and they’re size inclusive. They go up to whatever.” And I looked at the size chart and I was like, “no they don’t.”CorinneOh yeah, like they go up to a 4x and it’s a size 12.VirginiaExactly. It was not extended sizes. And she was like, “Oh my God, I didn’t understand that.” I mean, she’s skinny, she’d never had to try on the 4x and realize this. So she was like, “Well, I’m friends with her so I’ll talk to her about it” and I was like, “Good, yes.”CorinneThat’s really awesome.VirginiaIf you are a good customer in a store that’s not size inclusive, especially these local boutiques, that does feel like a place where you can do this. And I also hear from local boutique owners about how there’s many layers making it difficult for them to do this. But they totally should still get this feedback from customers.CorinneOkay, the next question is:Virginia, could you do a bra science project like you did with Jeans Science?VirginiaNo. Don’t make me. Don’t make me do it. CorinneYou need a PhD for that. You need an advanced degree in mathematics.VirginiaOh my God. I have shared before the bra brands that I like that I shop at barenecessities.com. They have really good customer service. They carry a really wide array of sizes and styles. I have found decent bras there.I do not feel amazed about my bras regularly, but I feel fine about my bras. I do think there is a deeper investigative story to be done about the way bras are marketed and the weird pseudoscience around bra fits and the way you have to be such an educated customer to understand bras. Like, I do think there’s a fascinating American marketing story to be told there. So I will think about it. But I do not think it will translate to me trying on 600 bras for you.CorinneMaybe not a bra science journey.VirginiaYeah, not like a try-on experience. Because I don’t want to try on bras.CorinneAs bad as jeans are, bras would be worse.VirginiaIt has occurred to me that another way to do fashion science in the future would be to get some Burnt Toast reader-volunteers who want to try stuff on and maybe we make some kind of test panel?CorinneInteresting. VirginiaI haven’t worked out any details around that, like logistics. It would be people having to shop and put it on your own credit card and manage your own returns.CorinneYeah, like crowd-sourced…VirginiaBut yeah, like if we could get a panel of readers in different body sizes that might be really interesting. CorinneI also think the last time that we talked about bras, I plugged this, but there’s an incredible Reddit that’s called a bra that fits. They’re definitely doing bra science. They can advise you and you can submit photos. And they’ll be like, it’s not fitting, right. They’re doing bra science.VirginiaSo maybe this need is being met and maybe we don’t need to do it for bras. But I’m open to doing it for something else. Maybe? Well, we’ll see what people think.Holiday Survival ModeVirginiaSo that was all our clothing questions for this month. Now we’re going to get into holiday questions, since by the time this airs, we will have just had Thanksgiving. I hope you all survived. And for many of us, now we’re getting into Hanukkah and Christmas, et cetera, et cetera. It’s an intense time of year for bodies and food and all of the feelings.CorinneYes. Okay. Let me ask you the first question:So we’re having Thanksgiving with a family who has one kid with extreme picky eating, and it’s somehow always a focus of conversation. Can’t possibly be comfortable for the kid. Plus, my daughter is old enough to pick up some of the terrible food messaging. Is there anything to do here except just change the subject?VirginiaOh, so this is interesting. So the picky eater is presumably a nephew or niece or something, not your child but another child at the table where relatives are focusing on that kid’s picky eating. Yeah, that’s a bummer. I mean, my go to line in these situations is “We trust their body. We’re not worried about this.” But if you’re not the parent, that might feel weird, for you to be like, “I trust your body.” He’s like, “Thanks. I haven’t seen you in eight months.”CorinneOr then the kids’ parents feeling like you’re criticizing them.VirginiaExactly. Depending on the relationship, you may not really have a way to wade in. I think changing the subject is good. I think, don’t worry so much about what your daughter will pick up from it, you are modeling a different way of thinking about food to her and that matters most. If you feel like it’s contributing to negative talk at the table, like now everybody’s being weird about food, you can definitely try to pivot that. Talk about how delicious things are. You’re so excited to be having this meal. There’s so many good foods to try.But also, make sure your daughter knows she’s under no obligation to eat food she doesn’t like. It’s fine! She can say yes or no to things and I think as long as your own boundaries are clear, she can understand that other families handle this differently. And yeah, it’s kind of a bummer that her cousin doesn’t get to just eat rolls or whatever it is he wants to do. But you know, I think you have to go carefully here. Because however the parents are choosing to handle it, this is probably a huge source of stress and worry for them and I think you want to be respectful of that and a big family meal is not the place where you’re going to have a real heart to heart about it.CorinneUm, I feel like this is probably the wrong answer. But I think if I were in this situation, I would probably take the aggro approach of being like, “wow, we’re really talking about what this kids eating a lot.”VirginiaOh, I like it. It’s a little spicy. I like it.CorinneI have very low tolerance for bullying.VirginiaI think that’s kind of great. CorinneI think sometimes a neutral observation about what’s going on can make people realize they are acting weird.VirginiaYeah. Especially if it’s coming from mutual relatives. Like, if it’s your mom, who’s the grandma saying this stuff, by all means get in there and help set some boundaries. And probably the parents will really appreciate it, even if they are doing their own sort of weird stuff around food with this kid. CorinneYeah, that’s good. I just like the approach of just stating an observation and other people can take that chance to reflect.VirginiaExactly. That’s perfect. CorinneHow to navigate a mother-in-law who won’t stop expressing worry about a six year old grandson’s body to my husband who doesn’t push back against it or shut it down. She won’t say it to me, so I can’t address it directly. Their family is rail thin. I am fat. Kiddo has been big since babyhood and is a healthy, active, happy little boy who loves goldfish crackers. Makes me so mad.VirginiaThis is your husband’s problem. You need to talk to him about advocating for you and your child with his mom. This is his territory. Especially because she’s not saying it to you. So either you have set a boundary or she just realizes it would be pushing things too far. But if she is expressing worry about the kid in front of the kid to your husband, your husband needs to shut that down. This is where he needs to say, “We trust his body. We’re not worried. We don’t see a problem here.”  And if he’s not willing to do that, I have questions for him, and some notes.CorinneThe question I have about this question is, if the mother-in-law is expressing worry to the husband, how is the question asker finding out about it?VirginiaProbably because he’s coming back and saying “I can’t believe what my mom said.”CorinneIs he saying, “Can you believe this horrible thing my mom said?” or is he saying “You know, my mom is really worried about…” Like, whose side is he on here? Which is maybe not a nice way of putting it. VirginiaNo, I think this husband has some explaining to do of his position. And why he’s not backing his kid and his wife better. That’s what it comes down to. I don’t think you have to take on your mother-in-law. If she does say it in front of you, I feel pretty confident you will address it directly. And just keep letting your kid love his goldfish crackers. And you do you. But yeah, your husband needs to step up.CorinneWhat are your favorite one liners to respond to common fatphobic comments from family during the holidays?VirginiaWell, now I’m going to use yours of like “We’re really talking about this?” because I love that.CorinneYeah, not a one liner. But I do think a good approach is just to be like, “Wow, it’s so interesting that you’re commenting on my body.” It’s like, I don’t know, you’re taking like the anthropologist approach. I mean, how often am I actually able to do that and not just be like “shut up you idiot?” Definitely not very often.VirginiaBut this is the goal. The way this stuff comes out in events that I’m at, it’s usually more food shaming than body shaming. When people are talking about how I’m being so bad, I can’t eat X. So then I do a lot of like, “no bad foods, no bad foods.” And I just like will keep dropping that in as needed. I also often disengage. I’ll just steer clear, change the subject. Depending on what I have the energy for. You don’t have to fight every one of these because there’s too many. And it’s exhausting. But yeah, I think if it’s around kids, I always do jump in. Then I always do say, “there are no bad foods, and we trust their bodies and this is not a problem.” I wish I had more funny lines. I don’t feel like I have good funny lines here.CorinneYeah. Me neither. I think the funny line is so appealing because it can just turn something that’s so uncomfortable into like a “gotcha!” moment. But it’s really hard to think of them.VirginiaIt’s really hard because a line you could memorize now won’t actually apply to the comment that comes out. CorinneYeah, you never quite see it coming.VirginiaI also think if it’s possible to set some boundaries ahead of time, that can go a really long way. This is if you have someone in your family that is a problem. If you could like send a note ahead of time and be like, “I love you. I can’t wait to see you. I really don’t want to talk about bodies or food.”CorinneYeah. VirginiaAnd if they can’t respect that, then when it comes up, you could do like, “It’s so interesting that you’re talking about bodies and food, despite my email.”CorinneDo you have any tips for holiday treats and potluck season in the workplace?VirginiaI didn’t totally understand this question. Because I think my main tip would be to just enjoy the food?CorinneI interpreted it as being a little like the last question where there’s a lot of treats and food around people make weird comments. Mostly because that was my experience of holiday treats and parties at work.VirginiaOh yeah, office parties are the literal worst for that. CorinneYeah. So not to be the one trick pony, but I feel like that same thing works really well in the office because you’re not getting emotional about it. “Oh, it’s so interesting that you don’t let yourself eat chocolate.”VirginiaI love this. The “It’s so interesting” is the go-to framing.Corinne“I’m noticing that you’re being really hard on yourself about food.”VirginiaThat’s really good.CorinneI do think the holiday food at the office thing is really stressful. VirginiaI mean, another thing is like, can you just not go to some of these events? How important is it to attend? I’m a big fan of doing less around the holidays and if there’s something where you just know it would be impossible to just sit and enjoy the cookie plate because everyone’s going to be so toxic about it, make your own cookies at home and just skip it if you can. If that feels okay to do in your job.CorinneI’ve worked a lot of places where at the holidays the company gets sent holiday treats. And then there’s always just tons of caramel popcorn and weird boxes of chocolate and fruit trays and cookie trays. And yeah, people are just so weird about it.VirginiaYeah, that’s exhausting.CorinneI mean, it is nice to have cookies around.VirginiaI think that’s another way to go into it, right? You talk about what you’re enjoying. And you can do sort of the same quizzical thing of like, “I’m really enjoying this cookie plate. You don’t seem to be.”Corinne“So interesting that you don’t like cookies.”Virginia“That sounds like not a really fun way to have this party for you.”CorinneThe longer I look at this question, now I’m like maybe they’re asking how should you deal with not feeling like you need to restrict your eating around this stuff?VirginiaI mean, I do think these events can be big triggers. If you’re someone who struggles with restriction, you’ll feel like you need to compensate beforehand or after. And I think remembering that you don’t, that your body knows what to do with food. Even if you eat a lot of cookies and your stomach hurts for a little while. This is not a fatal condition, you’re gonna feel better in the morning. Just really giving yourself permission if you have been restricting a lot in the past. This is probably a really important time for you to lean into permission, lean into “I’m going to let myself have as much as I want of everything.” And then be very non-judgmental about what that looks like. Because the temptation is going to be to start counting and calibrating and all of that, and you just need to have some good support people around hopefully, like have some folks who can help you remember, “I am leaning into permission. I’m leaning into I can have whatever I want.”Because these treats are not around all the time, it is understandable that they do trigger a little scarcity mindset. Like, Oh, these Christmas cookies that I only eat at Christmas, I want to get a lot of them because I only eat them at Christmas. That’s not a problem. That’s a normal way to react to a food you don’t see often. It is often a situation where you’re kind of noticing how scarcity mindset shows up. But if you can remember that this is like a benign scarcity mindset, if that makes sense. And it doesn’t necessarily need to trigger any kind of response afterwards. You don’t need to do anything differently the next day.CorinneAnd no matter how bad it is, it will be over in a month.VirginiaYou will make it through. You will make it then we’ll be in January, which is a whole other journey.CorinneIs it really okay that I don’t restrict how much sugar my kids eat? I do not feel confident.VirginiaIt is really okay. It is really, really, okay. It’s not only really okay, it’s really important that you don’t restrict how much sugar your kids eat. Because the more you restrict it, the more they will fixate on it and the more this will become a source of stress for both of you. I suspect you don’t feel confident because you are early on in this process of releasing restriction and you’re probably seeing them eat a lot of sugar and that feels uncomfortable to you. But your discomfort is not a reason to put restrictions back on because they’re not actually doing anything wrong. They are responding to a release from restriction by eating which is what their bodies are supposed to do. You need to sit in this discomfort and let this happen and see where it goes. And you may always have kids who love a lot of sugar or you may have kids who love sugar, but get to a more take it or leave it place. And neither of those is better or worse than the other. You’re gonna let them figure out their own relationship with sugar. And that’s the goal. But yeah, you have to sit in this discomfort right now. And it is hard because it’s going against the grain of so much of what you’ve been taught to do. But it is really, really okay.More sugar reading:Why It's Not Sugar AddictionAsk Virginia When Is It Restriction, and When Is It Good Parenting?CorinneGood advice.VirginiaHow to navigate the doomsday scroll of bodies, body comparison of old photos in a smaller body?CorinneI mean, put down your phone.VirginiaStop looking.CorinneYeah. I mean, why? It’s just, why. That sounds miserable.VirginiaTake the photos off your phone. If you need to delete a whole year of photos off your phone, do it. Just do it.CorinneJust start watching TikToks, you’ll lose hours of your life and you’ll forget what you look like. You’ll forget you even have a body. You’ll be in the metaverse. Okay, this is maybe not helpful advice.VirginiaI mean, I get it. I think we’ve all done it. One reason I’m trying very hard to divest from Facebook is because of the Facebook memories thing that shows you old photos. CorinneDoes your iPhone not just do that? My phone just does that. VirginiaYeah, my phone does that, too. But my phone is new enough that I only have the last couple of years, so it’s not bringing up body stuff. Facebook has this tendency to show me like pictures of when my daughter was in the hospital and I’m just like, you know what? Didn’t need that. Didn’t need that today.CorinneThat’s what I have with my phone. I’m like, “Oh great! Photos of people who are dead.” VirginiaNot helpful. But also, that’s hard because you don’t actually want to get rid of those. Well, I’m happy to take them off Facebook, but you wouldn’t want to delete those photos of that loved one or that difficult experience. CorinneI think also sometimes when you’re comparing yourself to old photos, it can be helpful to look at the bigger picture. You may have been smaller. You may have also been dumber. VirginiaOr hungrier. CorinneOr in a worse place. And now you’re different and it’s good.VirginiaYes. If I see photos of myself at 25, I think a lot about the many foot injuries I gave myself from obsessive running. And you know, those foot injuries stay with me to this day at 41. I could have not screwed up my knees and my ankles as much as I did. So it’s useful to think about that. This may be something that it’s helpful to work through with a therapist. I think this is something that like therapists who specialize in eating disorders are really good at knowing how to help you look at. Like there can be a time and a place for looking at these photos and processing your feelings around them and that’s different from a doomsday scroll, but it’s not something you should sort of like attempt to do on your own. You need support to do that.CorinneAny foods you hated as a kid because it was only prepared or purchased diet-y?VirginiaRice cakes. I feel like people like rice cakes now and I just cannot understand that. They only exist to me as a diet food. I don’t want to eat them. More recently, green juice. Don’t really need a green juice in my life. Don’t actually like it. Kale is one I’ve had to really like tussle with. Like, do I actually like kale? Do I like it in certain things but actually don’t like it most of the time. I had to give myself permission to not like kale. That wasn’t as a kid, that was as a young adult. CorinneMy family was vegetarian for a while growing up. My dad was a Buddhist, so it was a philosophical thing. VirginiaSure. CorinneHowever, I did not love it. And I now am just not interested in fake meat products. It does kind of go both ways because there’s some I actually like and have an almost nostalgic childhood food thing and there’s some I’m just like, disgusting. Like vegan hotdogs. I’m just like, No. Absolutely not. Give me the real hot dog.VirginiaHave they gotten better? I feel like vegan hotdogs from the 80s and 90s were probably particularly terrible. CorinneYeah, I mean, maybe! It’s just one of those things. I’m just now like, eh. Or like Impossible Burger. I’m like, I don’t care. However, like Morningstar vegan breakfast sausage? It’s delicious. VirginiaInteresting. CorinneThe other thing is like growing up my mom always bought this butter yogurt spread stuff. VirginiaOh, gosh. Like one of those it’s not butter?CorinneYeah, but it was a more like nature-y version. It was made with yogurt. Anyways, if that still exists, ban it. Did not like it. VirginiaI think ban all the fake butters. CorinneYeah, there’s probably people out there who like it.VirginiaOh, yeah, I can also put on this list Sweet’n Low, which, at various points in my childhood if I wanted to put sugar on my cereal Sweet’n Low was the option I was encouraged to use. And that’s not delicious on cereal. And I mean, Diet Coke is technically a diet food, but it’s also essential to my life. So that’s one I’ve totally reclaimed. We did a really good Friday thread about reclaiming diet foods ages and ages ago. It was really interesting to hear which diet foods stay in the torture category and which ones people are like, actually, I do love that. And like, what is it about the food that makes you like realize like, oh, I can actually love that in a non diet-y way now. I think that’s so interesting.CorinneInteresting. I’m gonna look back at that.ButterI’d love to hear about any books you’re reading lately.VirginiaI have already plugged it, but I really love Helen Hoang’s romance novels The Heart Principle and Kiss Quotient. They’re delightful. Feminist romance in general is a genre I really got into this year and I’m super here for it.The non-romance novel I will endorse is Flight by my friend Lynn Steger Strong. It is so beautiful and awesome. It just came out a couple of weeks ago. It’s a great holiday read. She’s having to deal with the whole like, it’s a mom book, it’s a Christmas book. And it’s also like actually brilliant fiction that if a man wrote it would not have those labels on it.CorinneI’m in a weird phase of I haven’t been reading a lot, but this summer I read This Time Tomorrow. VirginiaOh, yes. CorinneBy Emma Straub. And I loved it. And I’m kind of annoyed that more people I know haven’t read it.VirginiaThat was the number one book I read this year.CorinneOh, it was just so good. And then I went on a rabbit hole of like reading everything she wrote.VirginiaAll her books are good.CorinneI want everyone to read that.VirginiaI keep wanting Dan to read it. I’m like, this is such a beautiful father/daughter story that’s just, like, amazing.CorinneAnd yeah, I would say especially if you’re someone who’s lost a parent or lost a father, it’s really good.VirginiaBut also be prepared for it being a hard read. It’s beautiful. And she lost her own dad this year. That’s all a part of it. And oh my god, it’s so beautiful.CorinneYeah, I have a feminist romance question. I’m curious if you’ve read this book, Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake. It’s a romance that takes place on the Great British Bake Off, basically. I mean, fictionally. My mom has gotten into romance and she listened to it and then I listened to it on her audible account. And it’s great. The main character is bisexual, so i guess thats what makes it Feminist. But I thought it was really good.VirginiaThat is an excellent recommendation. Okay, I mean, we just gave some but do you  have other Butter recommendations?CorinneMy recommendation is for you to make yourself a monte cristo sandwich.VirginiaThis sounds delicious.CorinneDo you know what that is? VirginiaNo, say more. CorinneOkay. So it’s a sandwich. It’s a ham and cheese sandwich. The inside is ham and cheese. And you put bread on the outside, and then you put the bread in egg. Like French toast-y. And then you cook it. So the inside is like melting ham and cheese and outside is like french toast bread. And then traditionally you sprinkle sugar on it. So if you like a slightly sweet thing, you could do that. Or you could not do that.VirginiaThis sounds like it solves my perpetual brunch conundrum of whether I want to go sweet or savory, the eggs or pancakes debate.CorinneYes. And I mean, this is maybe a little annoying, but I feel like the way to do it is to sprinkle sugar on it and then torch it or put it under the boiler. So it’s like a brulee sandwich. VirginiaOh, so as you are toasting the sandwich, just like you would do with French toast, right?CorinneDo you do that with french toast?VirginiaYeah, I dip it in the egg mixture and I put it on the griddle. Then when I flip, I sprinkle the cinnamon sugar on and then I flip and sprinkle the cinnamon sugar on and so that that’s caramelizing on that as the French toast is cooking. If you’re making french toast, this is French toast with ham and cheese inside. CorinneYes. It’s delicious. It’s genius. VirginiaThat’s really good. Well, we could link to a recipe, but also I think you’ve just explained it to us. CorinneWhat’s your butter? VirginiaOkay, so my butter is I just discovered “Derry Girls.” Have you watched? CorinneI also have just started watching it.VirginiaIt’s so good. It’s so good. I’m obsessed. I don’t know how to express my love for it. I feel about it the way I felt about “A League of Their Own.” Which is to say extremely enthusiastic. And I was in a mourning period because I just finished “Bad Sisters” and I felt like I didn’t have anything to watch. Corinne“Bad Sisters” is so good. VirginiaIt was so good! And I wasn’t ready to leave Ireland, it turns out. So “Derry Girls,” if you haven’t seen it, is set in Northern Ireland in the 1980s when they’re at the height of…CorinneThe Troubles. VirginiaBut it’s very funny about being a teenager in a country where bombings happen a lot. And also very moving. And oh my God, I’m obsessed. I watched the whole first season in like two nights,I’m watching on nights when Dan is out and I’m on my own, which happens a couple times a week. And I’m doing a very good puzzle while I watch Derry Girls, and it’s just like my little blissful evening routine.Alright, I think we did an episode! Thank you, Corinne. This was great. Do you want to tell people where to find you?CorinneYou can find me on Instagram @selltradeplus or @selfiefay is my personal account.VirginiaThanks again for listening to Burnt Toast!

General levels of explicit and implicit bias against other groups have just rapidly decreased over the past 30 or 40 years. Whereas for weight, it’s actually still going up. So, you know, we’re up against a pretty big battle.You’re listening to Burnt Toast. This is the podcast where we talk about diet culture, fatphobia, parenting, and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith and I also write the Burnt Toast newsletter.Today I’m chatting with Jeff Hunger who is an assistant professor of social psychology at Miami University in Ohio and my very favorite weight stigma researcher (if you’re allowed to have favorite weight stigma researchers and I say that you are!).Jeff is someone I got to know several years ago when I was reporting on weight stigma in healthcare. We’ve evolved into internet buddies with a shared passion for hidden kitchens, which you will hear us discuss if you stick all the way through to the Butter. Our focus of this episode is Jeff’s work on anti-fat bias, understanding how we internalize it, the difference between implicit and explicit bias, and how we start to separate out concepts like body image struggles from the larger conversation of anti-fat bias. We cover a lot of important ground. Including Taylor Swift. So here’s Jeff!Episode 71 TranscriptJeffSo I’m Jeff Hunger. I’m a social psychology professor at Miami University. That’s the one in Ohio not the one in Florida. VirginiaFewer palm trees. JeffNo slipping out to South Beach after our chat, unfortunately. I’m also a husband, a cat dad, and if you follow me on Instagram, an annoying foodie is probably the easiest way to classify me.VirginiaI consider you a delightful foodie, not an annoying foodie. I have a lot of foodie envy when I see your content. JeffI think that just means that you might be in the in group with me. VirginiaI’m not in the group because I have to feed small children and I don’t get to be in the group anymore. But I dream of coming back someday.JeffOne of these days we’ll just have to have you out to Ohio. We can do a foodie weekend.VirginiaYes, please, that sounds great. JeffMaybe more relevant to the folks listening: I’m a stigma researcher. So a lot of my research looks at how weight stigma in particular shapes our mental and physical health. And recently we’ve been focusing a lot on how this plays out with respect to disordered eating and body image.VirginiaWe started talking about doing this episode when I sent you a question I got from a reader which I’m going to read, because it gets into all these big questions about bias that you work on.Hi Virginia, what does the research and or other sources say about how to truly rid ourselves of anti-fat bias, both internal and external? Obviously, self awareness is key. But I’m curious if you have come across what works. I see it in my own mind constantly, and try to bring awareness to it. But it seems fairly intractable in spite of now several years of educating myself. It comes out in how I view myself, my bigger bodied child and is tied up in shame and judgment. Who is doing therapeutic somatic intellectual meditation, etc work to really uproot this type of bias? I know there are studies on mindfulness and implicit bias. Are there any studies showing the kind of therapy or other modality that works?So basically, how do we fix our bias?  I think this is a brick wall we all come up against at some point. JeffThis is a fantastic question and I do think that it is one that needs a lot more research attention. But there is a recent review of this work that is really interesting, because it basically found that a lot of intervention approaches that have been tried just don’t seem to reliably work. And these are approaches that we took from other forms of bias reduction. You know, there’s a larger literature on how we reduce explicit and implicit bias that’s only recently—you know, past 10 or 15 years—being done as it relates to weight. This is things like trying to reduce the belief that weight is controllable, having folks get exposed to fat targets who are counter stereotypical and trying to invoke things like empathy or perspective taking. All of these have been tested and it turns out none of them seem to really be effective.VirginiaSo they’re effective for other kinds of bias, like racism or sexism, but not for anti-fat bias. JeffFrom my read of the bias reduction literature, yeah. They seem to be more effective with other groups but tested in the weight domain, they don’t really seem to hold up.VirginiaSo what’s going on? That’s so weird. Is it weird?JeffI do think it’s weird, a little bit. But what I think is really interesting was that the review also found that the interventions that were effective were better able to reduce self-directed bias or internalized bias, as opposed to the bias that we direct towards other people.So unlike other categories, weight is one in which there’s a really, really strong internalization piece and one that I think is a little bit more intractable, because the boundaries between these groups, between being fat or being not, it’s kind of permeable. It’s a lot more permeable than other groups, like when we think about race or sexual orientation, there’s far, far less movement between them. What this review found that did work was interventions like adopting a Health at Every Size perspective. This seemed to be an effective tool, at least for reducing that internalized weight bias, as was research that uses the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.1So there are a few approaches that we seem to see from this literature, at least from this recent review, that help us at least tackle internalized stigma or self-directed stigma. I think where we need to go then is knowing that we have a little bit of a success story, if we can kind of build on that to see if there are ways to modify those approaches to not just reduce the self-directed stigma, but also the anti-fat bias that we’re directing towards other people.VirginiaThis is making me realize we should also define a couple of terms for folks who are less familiar with this conversation. JeffI’ll put on my social psychology professor hat. So, when we think about internal versus external, we can direct weight stigma towards someone else, we can direct anti-fat bias toward a person in our social world—a partner, a child, a stranger. At the same time, we can direct that same sort of anti-fatness towards ourselves. We can turn it inward and start to devalue ourselves and stereotype ourselves because of our weight. Now, implicit bias is bias that isn’t as easily reportable. You know, we can’t just walk up to you and go, you know, Virginia, what’s your level of implicit anti fat bias? It’s assessed in more indirect ways because it’s below conscious level. And that’s in contrast to explicit bias which is where I can just walk up to you and say, okay, Virginia, how do you think about fat people or what do you think about fat people? I can readily report on that form of bias.Both are important, but I think more recently implicit bias has kind of gotten a lot of media attention and attention in other spaces.VirginiaAnd it’s interesting because my first thought is, oh, there must be a very bright line between these two types of bias, but the more I’m thinking about it, I’m wondering, can someone experience something as implicit bias, but other people experience it as explicit bias? Does that make sense?JeffThat’s another interesting and thorny question. My bias might be at the implicit level and so it could lead me to behave in a way that you pick up as explicit, that you end up feeling discriminated against because of your race, your gender, your weight, when I didn’t really notice that I was doing anything wrong, because my implicit bias was leaking out. So it may not look the same as shouting a derogatory term at someone, but it might be the ways in which I position my body, subtle nonverbal behaviors that I engage in as we interact with one another, things that can shape the outcomes and the experience of the other person, even if I don’t notice them.VirginiaIt just speaks to the level of awareness we need to start to unlearn these biases, right? Because you can be executing them in ways you are not aware of. JeffAnd I think as the reader that contributed this question noted, a lot of that is thinking about self-reflection and trying to be self aware. But at the same time when we think about anti-fat bias, we also need to be thinking about how bigger, broader, structural forces are shaping our anti-fat bias, both internal and external. Because if all we do is emphasize and try to make gains at the individual level, I imagine that those are going to be hard to sustain against the continued backdrop of anti-fat fuckery in our society, excuse my language.VirginiaYou never have to excuse your language here. And absolutely. It’s making a personal project out of something that is this much larger societal question that we have to grapple with.When we look at how the research shows what we know works for other forms of bias doesn’t work as well for anti fat bias, do you think that has something to do with the way as the larger system doesn’t support that personal work? JeffI think that that very well could be why we are not seeing these maybe tried and true, or at least more well-established bias reduction tools work when it comes to weight. We also see that just general levels of explicit and implicit bias against other groups has just rapidly decreased over the past 30 or 40 years. Whereas for weight, it’s actually still going up.So, you know, we’re up against a pretty big battle, an uphill fight to reduce this. Because not only is it a little bit resistant to these techniques that we have tried before, in general, across the country, at least in the US, that bias seems to keep creeping up when things like bias against gay individuals has gone down over the past 20 years.VirginiaRight. It just shows how much it’s being reinforced in healthcare, in schools, in these different places that have made some progress—not enough progress, but some progress on other forms of bias—that here we really are still on the starting blocks, so to speak.JeffAbsolutely. There’s this really interesting study that I reviewed and read recently that basically found that things like large scale, fat-shaming events against celebrities can actually push around implicit bias at a grand scale. VirginiaOh, that’s fascinating.JeffThey basically had all of these large scale, public fat-shaming events, whether it was all of the many times that Lizzo has been the target of this or a lot of other celebrities. It was basically celebrity fat shaming, and they see that it does have a small effect. We’re not going to see this jump up a ton every time, but if we think about cumulative exposure, think about how many times we see a fat celebrity get talked terribly about online or in the news, even if each one of those events only has a tiny, tiny little bit of an impact on our implicit bias, over time it’s just gonna build. We’re dealing with shit like that as well, having to push back against things like seeing anti-fat bias continually reemerge.VirginiaI always think when that happens, when I see progressives fat-shaming Donald Trump. Like, Donald Trump does not care. He is not going to see your tweet and there are so many other reasons to eviscerate Donald Trump! You don’t need to talk about his body at all. And yet, your fat friend just saw your tweet. And you equated them to this person who I would describe as a monster in most ways.JeffIt’s not the “gotcha” take that I think a lot of otherwise progressive or liberal folks on Twitter would think it is. One, it’s incredibly lazy and unfunny. And two, like you say, Donald Trump doesn’t give a shit about what you tweet about him. But fat people in your sphere online, do they see it and they take note?VirginiaSo, to get a little more into the internal versus external piece of it all, one thought I had in reading this person’s question is that they seem to be equating anti-fat bias with body image struggles, and with shame about their own body and shame about their child’s body. And this made me wonder if these two concepts are always intertwined or if we can, and maybe should, separate them. Can you be fatphobic but not struggle with your own relationship to body? And on the flip side, can you be struggling, maybe even have an eating disorder, etc, and not be fatphobic?JeffI personally think that these ideas need to be separated. I do think that issues with body image and anti-fatness can and do operate independently from one another. Of course, anti-fat bias living in a structurally anti-fat society is going to contribute to poor body image, but they, to me, are not one and the same. Like you said, I think someone can be incredibly fatphobic and perfectly content with their own body. And on the flip side, I do think that folks can struggle with body image and not be inherently fatphobic.VirginiaI think that is really helpful to hear. Because I often hear from people having that added layer of guilt on top of their own struggle. Like, “I feel bad about my body and I feel bad that I’m perpetuating this thing. And how do I separate those?”JeffI think that’s a really important insight for folks to make, that they can both feel bad about their own body and worry that feeling bad about their own body is going to contribute to perpetuating fatphobia. I think that acknowledging how one’s body image struggles may inadvertently be contributing to this sort of anti-fat system is different than what I’ve seen, which is occasionally folks using their body image struggles as a justification for their anti-fatness. I think that’s that’s a different animal altogether. I think recognizing how your own body struggles and how your own feelings about your weight might reflect bigger, broader anti-fatness is an important one to have. It’s not an excuse for you to be shitty to fat people.VirginiaHow does Taylor Swift fit into all of this?JeffI am going to out myself as not a Swiftie. I think I just lost my gay card. But I think that from my very loose sort of understanding, it basically was that she steps on the scale and it just reads “fat” on the scale? VirginiaYeah, exactly. And it’s supposed to be a comment on her eating disorder struggles, that she gets on the scale, and it says fat.JeffAnd I think that it probably could be approached in a way that still communicates that she is not liking her body without having to say she doesn’t like it because it is a fat body specifically. She can express struggles with disordered eating and with her eating disorder that she has disclosed previously, but I think doing it in a manner that doesn’t necessarily equate feeling bad about your body with being fat.I mean, I will probably get annihilated on Twitter for all of that, because I think there was a heated debate about this.VirginiaThere was a very heated debate. Taylor Swift fans came out fast and furious in support of her and it got very complicated. I say this as someone who really can’t name a Taylor Swift song? So they can come at me, too, if they want. JeffWe’re both canceled. VirginiaBut I just kept thinking: If this was someone who I loved and admired in the way that the Taylor Swift fans love and admire Taylor Swift, why would I not also hold them to this higher standard?In comparison, when Lizzo used an ableist term in one of her songs and people noted it, she immediately took the term out and apologized. It was very straightforward and everyone was like, “That was fine. We’re over it, we all learned something.”And Taylor did eventually edit the video, but hasn’t, as far as I know, made a statement. I just think there was a lot of white lady energy around it. It shows how uncomfortable we are getting this kind of feedback and having to admit to wrongdoing. And it certainly spoke to all the implicit bias stuff that you’re talking about. JeffI also think that instances like this really show us the darker side of Stan Culture, like online internet fandom, you know? Because we should want to hold each other—including celebrities that we look up to—to account for what they do, what they say, how they produce certain things, whether that’s a music video or a song. And I think that Lizzo’s swift and clear response to her use of the ableist term was just a master class in how you should be doing this.VirginiaIt was like, Taylor, did you miss that? Like, it was like, last month? She literally gave you a blueprint for how to navigate this situation.JeffDidn’t Beyonce also have an issue with this and kind of stumbled as well? You’d think someone on Taylor’s team would have been like, “Okay, Lizzo did it really well. Beyonce stumbled a little bit and we saw how the Internet reacted. Let’s get on top of this.”VirginiaI think it ties back to what you were saying about fatphobia is on the rise. There were so many people pushing this argument of like, “Oh, you’re just being too sensitive.” It wasn’t taken seriously by her fan base as a real form of oppression. It was just sort of like, “Oh, these are people getting their feelings hurt. She’s trying to tell us her truth.” JeffYep, absolutely. And it doesn’t have to be an either or. It doesn’t have to be she is speaking her truth or reflecting on her own struggles. It can be that and she could have gone about it a different way. And I think it seems like an appropriate level of criticism was leveled at her. But I need to fully dive into this. VirginiaI think it’s had its moment, and we can all move on. But it does set us up well for the next topic I wanted us to get into, which is who gets to call themselves fat?I think the Taylor situation is kind of a perfect example of when it is problematic for a thin person to call themselves fat. But I’m really curious to hear your thoughts about this.JeffThis is a big question. And I would agree with you that a person with thin privilege calling themselves fat is unacceptable because this is almost exclusively done in a demeaning or a condescending manner. I think we absolutely agree on that.What I’m curious to get your thoughts on, too, is where along the weight spectrum do we then draw the line to say, okay, that person can call themselves fat? Like, obviously I’m not about to be like, “Let’s breathe life into BMI again and give that another shitty purpose.” But where and how and who decides where that cut is made? And I really don’t have a a good answer to this question. But I think it’s an important one, because it ties back to the conversation about body image and weight stigma not necessarily being the same thing and equating them as such being problematic. Because if we flatten those ideas, if we flatten body image struggles and weight stigma, we lose sight of who truly faces the brunt of interpersonal, instructional anti-fatness—and that’s fat people.And so if we lose sight of that we are losing sight of the way in which our social structures are disproportionately impacting and harming higher body weight individuals. Even though folks across the weight spectrum can “feel fat,” (or however we want to use that also problematic language) that’s not the same as being fat and being the target and the ire of a whole lot of people because of your body size.VirginiaRight? It reduces the whole conversation to your personal feelings about your body and minimizes the fact that this is the systemic form of oppression that is showing up in paychecks, in access to public spaces, and access to health care, and all of these other arenas.JeffMaybe this is the time to mention that I think that we, as weight stigma researchers, are kind of doing a disservice because this type of thinking has crept into the research on internalized weight bias. So, we’ve seen work in this area grow exponentially over the past decade, but it’s become increasingly common to see research on internalized weight bias being done with predominantly or or exclusively thinner participants.2 VirginiaOh, wow. JeffThis is an issue because asking a thinner person about their internalized anti-fat bias is a bit like asking me my level of internalized anti-straight bias. I’m very gay. It’s not my internalized bias, it’s just my bias, you know? And so, I would love if we, as researchers in the weight stigma domain, would engage more thoughtfully with this idea. Just because supposedly internalized weight bias is associated with some outcome, what does it mean when we’re measuring it among people that aren’t part of that group? Are we capturing something like internalized societal ideals around around thinness? Which is totally fine. But if we are, let’s call a spade a spade. Let’s not coopt this idea of internalized anti-fatness almost exclusively in thinner people. Because again, then what it does is it washes out this idea of who’s disproportionately impacted.Some people want to want to flip that on their head and be like no, look, everyone can be impacted by weight stigma. Which is true, everyone can be impacted by living in a structurally anti-fat society. But again, it’s fat people that see it show up in their paychecks, in their doctor’s visits, in their insurance premiums. And not everyone across the weight spectrum gets that same treatment at the hands of anti-fat bias.VirginiaCan we draw a parallel with sexism? I would argue sexism is really harmful to cis men as well because it narrows the conversation around masculinity and being able to express emotions if you’ve labeled all of that as “girly.” But it still hurts women more because we’re the people not getting paid equally and being denied rights to our own bodies.JeffI think that is a really helpful parallel. Folks can experience consequences of that structure, of the heterosexist patriarchal society that we live in, and like you say, men will be hurt by it. They are not hurt in a necessarily systematic way like women are, however. VirginiaAnd it does sound like you’re saying that, in terms of the research conversation, the implicit bias of thin people is maybe getting more research dollars and energy than explicit bias experienced by fat people?JeffYeah, I think that there’s a lot of attention being paid to internalized, self-directed weight stigma, that is not centering the experiences of fat people.VirginiaThat’s maddening. That’s very maddening.JeffThere’s a commentary that’s been brewing in the back of my brain for about five years that I’m hoping to put pen to paper about this topic. If I end up writing it, I’ll send it to you.VirginiaThank you. I really want you to write that because this feels like such an important shift in the conversation. It’s something I struggle with, even just as a journalist covering these topics. Most of the questions I get are about people’s personal relationships with their bodies. I think about it in the balance of the newsletter content, but it’s hard when this is how people enter this issue, in this very personal way.I think it’s so crucial to say, no, this is part of this larger, systemic thing. You have to recognize the larger system. I think it’s actually crucial to working on the personal piece of it to understand that your struggle fits into this larger puzzle. But it’s also like, how do we get the conversation past the personal struggle piece and onto the systemic piece? And how do we focus on making that kind of systemic change?JeffThose are really important questions. And maybe it’s something like we saw in that literature review that I mentioned earlier, that folks who are engaging in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy seem to reduce their levels of internalized or self-directed stigma. So maybe that’s step one. Maybe step one is fixing things at home and then taking that newfound freedom and that newfound energy and trying to figure out strategies to also reduce the ways in which your bias towards other people might be manifesting. Once you’ve reduced it, the anti-fatness that you’re directing towards the self, maybe that’s going to free up people with the resources and the energy and the ability to also make sure that they’re not turning around and being assholes to fat people in their social world.VirginiaAnd we really have to hold all of ourselves accountable to not stopping at step one, right? Let’s not be white feminists about it. We have to keep doing it. And that’s, I think, the tricky piece, especially as it sounds like we don’t have as much clear direction from the research yet about what step two looks like. JeffAbsolutely. And I think that’s why if there’s any budding social psychologists or bias researchers out there, this is a big area of needed attention. Run with it, it’s so vital.VirginiaOne last thing I wanted to talk about and maybe this gets us starting to think along these step two lines is: A lot of the Burnt Toast audience is parents and a main way that we see anti-fat bias presenting itself most acutely is when a kid comes home and reports that someone called them fat or has otherwise teased or bullied them for their weight.So this is maybe a little less about unlearning our own biases, although I think they still come into play here, and more about helping kids cope with the reality of this bias in the world. I’m just wondering if you have thoughts on strategies here? Is there anything promising in the research on weight based bullying about what works here?JeffIn the weight stigma domain, I haven’t seen a ton of work that has directly addressed this, what is a really important question. Like, how are we to help our kids cope when they come home and say, "okay, I’ve been the victim of weight based bullying.” I do wonder if this is a place for having a conversation with kids ahead of time about bias. An analogue might be when minoritized parents talk to their kids about the potential for discrimination. So maybe we can work to have developmentally appropriate conversations about how some bodies are unfairly treated, how others are unnecessarily glorified. Maybe this is going to help kids be better equipped to face the bullying, if it happens, or maybe help them stop internalizing their own mistreatment, you know?We can’t always stop the experiences that they’re going to encounter at school. But if we can stop them from internalizing and turning that negativity to themselves, maybe we can at least sort of buffer a little bit.VirginiaYeah, I think that makes a ton of sense. And parents of thin kids have the work to do to educate our kids about this issue as well, right? About their privilege and not being part of the problem? JeffYeah, absolutely. I think that there’s a place for everyone in this conversation,. And I did want to also mention that I know that Mary Himmelstein at Kent State does have some research showing that kids who are bullied or teased because of their weight, would just love more support from their parents. They’ve also indicated that they want to see stronger policies in schools to prevent being bullied in the first place. VirginiaYeah, that would be great.JeffYou know, is weight explicitly named in the anti-bullying policies in your school or your school district? If not, work to change that. If the policy does include weight, is it being enforced? Are teachers and staff being trained to identify and intervene on this type of bullying?So there are ways to be an ally like this that can hopefully even start to cut off those experiences before they manifest or before they happen. And what I like about that is, because it’s at a bigger policy level, it’s going to support your own kid, but it’s also going to help other fat kids and other kids in the school as well.Butter For Your Burnt ToastJeffMy only recommendation would be to stop commenting on people’s weight. You know, whether it’s the weight of your friends, the weight of your family, celebrities like Lizzo, assholes like Donald Trump, yourself. Just stop it. You’re going to be better off for it. The folks around you are going to be better off for it. VirginiaYes!JeffAnd also build hidden rooms in your kitchens because they’re so cool.VirginiaThey’re so cool. Oh my gosh. So for people who are like, “What are they talking about?” JeffWe sound crazy right now. VirginiaWe sound a little crazy. Can you explain? Because I feel like you DM’ed me about it first. Well, I don’t know how we discovered this mutual love for them, but why don’t you explain what we’re talking about.JeffYeah, so it’s this big Instagram trend where you’re in this gorgeous kitchen, then all of a sudden a pantry pulls open and there’s this gorgeous second room, like a butler’s pantry or a hidden coffee nook. Or you know a full second kitchen. It’s just like ridiculous shit that people are hiding behind a single door. I think I DMed you because I think I told you to have Dan build one. It was a very specific request for you, on your behalf, to have Dan build you a hidden room.VirginiaAnd he still has not, I have to report. I feel like it got inspired by the appliance garage concept where like God forbid anyone sees your toaster. They make a slide down cover for it. And then people were like, if we’re hiding the appliances, what if we also hide… and it’s just gotten bigger and bigger and more absurd. And I’m so here for it. It’s so entertaining. I also, as a feminist, have many qualms about it and like how it is requiring us to perform domesticity and hide the mess and all of this, but also I want one. I’m conflicted and I love it.JeffYeah, I can totally see the problematic nature of it. To me, it’s like from when I was a kid I always wanted secret passageways because I was like a nerd like that. And so to me, it’s like I want a hidden library or a hidden something behind a book. I just want something cool like that. And these are real. They’re really hitting that like 11 year old Jeff fantasy that’s now kind of blended with the fact that I’m 35 and an annoying foodie. It had to manifest this way.VirginiaI think that’s totally what it is. When I was nine, we moved into a house that was built in 1832. And like, for a year I was hunting for secret passageways. I never found one. I was so determined that there would be one. It was not a large house. It was not a fancy house. It was a small New England farmhouse. They don’t have secret passageways. But I was just like, there will be one. So yes, I think it totally taps into that.I think that’s why my very favorite example of this trend is not a kitchen thing at all, but it’s Elsie Larson of A Beautiful Mess.You’re in her upstairs hallway and you push on the wall, and then it goes into that little hidden library. Did I send you that one?JeffOh, no, but I really need you to.VirginiaI will. It’s this tiny little nook. I can’t figure out where in her house it is, but it’s just like a little hidden library for her kids. And it’s like, oh my gosh, the most adorable thing.JeffLike slightly related, but we have a friend who works at a social media company and they have a name tag that they just tap on this random part of the wall and a door shows up and you really can’t see the door. It’s mind-boggling. And then it’s a hidden bar.VirginiaWow. Okay, they’re living the dream. I mean, if they like their job there, that part of their job is living the dream.JeffI was living my dream for a day because I just got to wander around this place and do all of the fun things at the social media company without the work, you know? I will be in the game room, I will be in the hidden bar.VirginiaIt’s actually really hard to look at your house and figure out where… I mean, I have started to obsess over this. But it basically means you have to wall something off in a way that unless your house is absolutely enormous would create other problems. So do we think that the influencers with the hidden kitchens just have like huge like mega-mansions? Is that what we’re seeing? JeffI have to assume so.VirginiaLike, how do you have space for it?JeffBecause the public kitchen is also usually huge. VirginiaIt’s usually huge! It’s got a giant island in it. And then you push through and you get to this whole other space. JeffMy dream is that our next house has an unfinished basement so that I can make this a reality because if you have an unfinished basement, then it’s a lot easier to hide something, you know? I’m just going to take away a kid’s library or playroom somewhere. So, if my husband is listening to this he knows that’s on my long term list of house goals.VirginiaSomething we’re working towards. I’m remembering the way Elsie did it was I think it had like one of those double height foyers when you walk in—you know, like a lot of McMansions have like the double height foyer? And she closed it off. I’ve seen a couple influencers do this. If you have a McMansion with a double height foyer and you put a floor halfway up it, you can make yourself a hidden room of some sort. So that’s just a little life hack for everyone with a McMansion who’s listening to this.JeffA very casual reno tip. Add a floor, just add an entire floor.VirginiaJust add a floor then you can also build in a hidden room.JeffI think we should disavow anyone out there that thinks a professor would be able to do that on a professor’s salary. VirginiaIt’s nice to dream. So yes, people can follow us for more inspirational life hacks like that.JeffYeah, maybe our next podcast should just be one that where we give those like really down to earth life hacks like that together.VirginiaJust like really useful practical advice for people about expensive home renovation projects. I am very good at spending other people’s money on their home renovations. JeffOh, yes.VirginiaDefinitely a superpower of mine. Well, Jeff, thank you. This was so much fun. Tell people where they can follow you for your food, cat, and hidden kitchen content and also your work.VirginiaWell, thank you first off for having me. This was fantastic. I always love chatting with you. So, for research related content, you can find me at jeffreyhunger.com. All of my research is going to be up there so that’s typically the most up to date place to find any of the published work that we’ve been doing. Otherwise you can find me on Twitter and Instagram @DrHunger on both platforms. But as Virginia just mentioned, that’s going to be a mixture of research, food posts, and my cats, so if you’re into that sort of thing, by all means, please find me there.VirginiaI mean, it’s pretty great. I recommend it. 1 - Here’s a good introduction to ACT, and here’s an example of research on its utility in reducing weight stigma (ironic warning for weight-normative language there!).2 - Jeff noted after we recorded that this is a trend he’s noticing personally, not something documented in the literature (yet).

You’re listening to Burnt Toast. This is the podcast where we talk about diet culture, fatphobia, parenting, and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith, I also write the Burnt Toast newsletter.Today I am chatting with Emiko Davies, an award winning Australian-Japanese food writer, photographer, and cookbook author based in Italy.Emiko grew up in a diplomatic family and spent most of her life living in countries other than her own, from China to the United States. After graduating from art school, she ended up in Florence, Italy in 2005 to study art restoration, and fell in love with a Tuscan Sommelier. They live with their daughters in a charming hilltop village between Florence and Pisa and plan to open their own space for sharing food and natural wine experiences in San Miniato in 2023. (Book your travel now!) Emiko has also written five cookbooks, most recently Cinnamon & Salt, and she also shares her recipes on her Instagram and in her Substack newsletter, Emiko’s Newsletter.But today we’re talking less about Emiko’s amazing food (although I always have time to talk about Emiko’s amazing food). We’re talking about Emiko’s experiences parenting her daughter Luna who is in a bigger body. And as you can imagine, that gets especially complicated for Emiko, as a semi public figure who shares pieces of her life and her kids online. Episode 70 TranscriptVirginiaYou have been on my radar for such a long time as someone who produces this beautiful and delicious food. You live in Italy and live out my dreams in many ways—or at least it looks that way. I’m allowed to fantasize. But I didn’t realize until you started doing your Substack about a year ago that you were also very firmly anti-diet. And I am always so thrilled to discover food people who feel that way. Because, as I’ve discussed in the past (here with Julia Turshen!), the food world has a complicated relationship with all of these issues, as I know I don’t need to tell you.EmikoWell, I actually didn’t realize that there was a term for anti-diet until I started reading some of your work. I’m pretty sure you had a lot to do with it, Virginia, so thank you. But I once I started reading about that I realized I’ve been anti-diet my whole life. Because I, like my daughter Luna, grew up in a in a bigger body. I basically went through puberty and then became thin, like over the summer. My body completely changed. And then I was a thin teenager and have been all kinds of body shapes as my through my 30s and now I’m 42. Especially having babies and everything else.VirginiaWe all try out a lot of bodies, a lot of shapes.EmikoYeah, exactly. But one thing I have never been into was diets. I was just very lucky that growing up, that was something that my family never hinted at or never suggested that we needed to do. So I realize now, looking back, that I went through those periods of my life where I was in a bigger body completely unscathed really. I don’t really remember anytime ever feeling ashamed of myself or hating myself. For that, I feel really grateful. Restricting food was never something I was gonna do. I loved eating and I loved cooking. So when I realized there was a term for anti-diet, I was like, wow, this is, this is me. I found my home.VirginiaWhat a gift your family gave you. Do you have a sense of why your parents or the adults in your life were able to provide that safe space? EmikoI don’t know why I was so lucky. My mother is Japanese and she’s very tiny. She’s a really tiny Japanese lady. My father, though, is in a bigger body. And I don’t know if that had something to do with it. Body commenting or any of that sort of thing, it just was never something that we did in my family. I have a younger brother, who was always stick thin and still is stick thin and has never changed. My sister, though, was just like me, she had a bigger body as a child and as an adolescent. So maybe it was just a combination of the fact that we we all had different shaped bodies. And that was just who we were.VirginiaThey didn’t feel like, “We have to fight this.”EmikoI feel very lucky. Looking back on this now, I didn’t realize how lucky I really was. VirginiaSo you had this realization when you started sharing pictures—particularly of Luna, you have an older daughter, too—that suddenly you were in this conversation in a different way, that you weren’t just sharing pictures of your kids.EmikoSo my older daughter is nine and she’s straight sized. And actually, we had a few years of really difficult eating, where she basically was only eating a handful of things. She was so anxious about school that she wouldn’t eat breakfast or eat at school. So she would come home at four in the afternoon and hadn’t eaten a thing and she was getting so skinny. So she was a whole different thing. I was always trying to make sure she was really comfortable around food and that mealtimes were just really the chillest and most peaceful place to be. I didn’t want to create any more anxiety than what she was already going through. And then Luna came along when we were in the middle of this really difficult eating phase. I’m gonna say its a phase because she is getting out of it now that she’s nearly 10. But the ages between four and eight were really, really difficult years.And Luna was born when she was five and a half, so right in the middle of this. And Luna was just this bubbly, funny, kind of crazy, little second daughter. When she was a toddler, I was posting photos and videos as I had always done on on Instagram and on my blog, of food things that we do together, which is basically like what we do whenever we have any free time. Almost every day, on the weekends or after school, we’re making something or at least I’m cooking something and my kids usually jump in and want to play with whatever it is that I’m making.And when when Luna was a toddler, people loved seeing Luna content. You could tell she really loves food. She loves trying anything, eating anything, sticking her hand in a bag of flour or whatever it was. You know, making a mess. I’m usually in the kitchen testing recipes and things like that and I would post all these photos and videos and sometimes we’d be making pasta or baking something, whatever it was. And so that was great, people love seeing little Luna doing that.And one of her one of the videos that that people still talk about when they write to me about her is Luna drinking a bowl of minestrone which was her favorite thing. She literally will pick up the bowl and drink every last drop out of there. And then like put it down and give this big sigh. Like, “That was so good.” So I was sharing these things. And when she was little, people just loved it and saw the joy and the innocence. That was the main thing people would write to me: This is just pure joy.VirginiaI mean, her reaction to minestrone is exactly correct. It’s delicious. EmikoThe first time I got some really startlingly negative, really hateful comments was about a year ago. I happened to be making a tiramisu when Luna popped in like she always does no matter what I make in the kitchen. She’ll be there like, what are you doing? Can I come and help you? And she’ll stick her hands in whatever it is I’m making. I was gutting a fish and she did the same thing with a fish, right? She’s just in there, curious about whatever it is that I’m doing.But this time, it happened to be a tiramisu, which, you know, is a dessert made with mascarpone, eggs, cream. I had some persimmons that were super ripe and I was using them in the tiramisu. And I think it’s kind of… what’s the word? Maybe predictable? That this was going to happen with a photo of Luna with a dessert. Not minestrone, which was full of vegetables, but a dessert. And the only actually the only times I have ever gotten negative comments is when they see Luna with something sweet. In this case, it was a tiramisu and she wasn’t actually eating it. She was helping me make… I wouldn’t even say she was helping me. She was just making a mess! VirginiaShe was in the process.Luna and the TiramisuEmikoShe was like, “What’s this?” And literally stuck a savoiard, like the lady finger biscuit, in the egg and sugar before I had even put the mascarpone in there. And she was just messing around. So I had these photos and I have the recipe that I was sharing in my newsletter. That was the first time that I got some really negative comments and the comments were basically, “What are you doing to this child?” This was clearly something that they saw as my fault. “What kind of parent does this to their child?” The assumptions are that she’s eating too much and that she has this really like hearty appetite, which also she doesn’t. She eats regularly! Thank god, she’s not a difficult eater, like my older daughter, but she’s not a particularly big eater, either. I just don’t think that that has anything to do with anything at all. But it’s this assumption that people have when they see her, especially coupled with an image of cake or dessert or sweets, right? The assumption is that I am to blame for how she looks. And I think that’s the problem.VirginiaThe problem is that they’re seeing her body as a problem, when it’s absolutely not a problem. It’s just her body. I have so much anger about this whole situation. They’re taking this one tiny snapshot of your day —I can’t even say it’s a snapshot of your life. It’s a moment of a day!—And they’re assuming that they know everything about your parenting, your feeding, her relationship with food, who she is. The number of assumptions being made here is staggering.But what makes me saddest is that it puts you in this place of having to defend yourself—which you don’t owe them or owe anybody—and of feeling like you have to explain what her appetite really is, when that’s none of our business. Nobody needs to know how Luna eats or doesn’t eat. That’s this dynamic that we force on kids in bigger bodies and parents of kids and bigger bodies that you have to justify that things are okay. And you’re never asked those same questions if your older daughter is in the tiramisu picture. Nobody would have had anything to say about it.EmikoExactly. Because I do have so many more photos and videos of Mariù, my older daughter, making cupcakes, making cream buns. They just see this thin, “normal” looking girl and there’s no problem there for them. Whereas when they see Luna, they think there is something wrong with that picture.VirginiaRight, which is just anti-fat bias. You have also had a lot of really positive comments about Luna. So I wanted to also talk a little bit about that piece of that because I mean, I love Luna content. She is such a joyous child. She’s such a sunshine-y kid and I love seeing her explore foods. EmikoI’ve actually been blown away by the positive responses from people, to be honest. They far outnumber the negative comments. People have have written privately and publicly to me—all kinds of people, younger people who don’t have kids, older people who were a kid like Luna, people who are in food, people who aren’t, so many people wrote to me—not only about this negative comment, but just in general. Whenever they see something of Luna, they just write to me to say, “I love this, I love seeing this celebration of food and joy and life.” So that has actually been something that has always encouraged me to continue sharing Luna and sharing just these little snippets of our life. Because I do get so many really, really heartwarming messages and actually quite often tearjerking messages, as well. One of the ones that really stuck out to me, for example, was I got a private message from Karen Barnes, the editor of Delicious Magazine in the UK. She wrote to me to say that she had grown up in a bigger body and how she was put on a diet. Like for Easter, she wasn’t given an Easter egg, they’d given her some tights or something else. And she felt many, many, many years of complete shame about her body and went through yo-yo dieting. She’s still now battling all of these issues, because of what was put on her as a child. And she wrote to me just to tell her her story, and to say how how happy she is to see that Luna is going down another path, and that there’s somebody showing that there is another path.You can just continue with life and celebrate food as it is, encourage a good relationship with food, and do it no matter what size your child is. So when I when I get messages like that, I think, yeah, I’m not doing anything wrong. I should continue sharing this. emikodaviesA post shared by Emiko Davies (@emikodavies)VirginiaI just had a message today from a reader who had taken her daughter in a bigger body to the pediatrician. And the pediatrician had made comments about “Are you eating healthy foods?” And she was questioning herself . When you get the negative comments, our culture has trained us to then think What am I doing wrong? They’ve called me out in some way. You sharing Luna and sharing the way your family is so joyful with food and so respectful of your kids bodies is helping families to say, “Oh, I can keep parenting my child in a larger body from this place of trust and respect and love. And I don’t need to do anything differently.” And it’s so powerful and we really need that representation. But I’m also very aware that it’s coming with a cost to you, because you have to deal with these other reactions.EmikoYeah, it feels—and I’m sure you you feel like this, too—like you’re swimming against the stream. And sometimes I wonder, should I keep doing this? What am I doing? But on the other hand, I also think the percentage of negative comments I got were actually tiny compared to the outpouring of warm and supportive messages. I think I need to maybe learn to just to block those hateful comments and try not to take them personally, which is super hard. When it’s about me, it’s easier for me to not take it personally, but when it’s about my child, that’s that’s really that’s really tough.VirginiaIt’s so vulnerable. I completely get that. And, you know, in my case, my older daughter’s story was shared in a very public way. I wrote a book about it, I wrote a New York Times Magazine article about it. I’ve done dozens of podcasts about it. And I did reach a point where I thought, “I’m going to talk a lot less about her.” I don’t put her picture on my public Instagram anymore, unless you can’t really see her face. Because I wanted to start to give her, as she was getting older, more privacy. And with the younger one, I’ve started to move in the same direction. Even though she doesn’t have a dramatic story like that. It’s easier to share when they’re little, when they’re toddlers and babies and preschoolers, there’s something much more innocuous about sharing them at that point. So I really relate to the struggle you have of like, they’re a joyful part of my life, I share my life as part of my work and where do we draw these lines? How do we figure out what guardrails our kids need? There are no easy answers to this one.EmikoYeah, the lines are very blurred.VirginiaI don’t know if you’ve thought about either turning off comments on Luna posts or putting a clear disclaimer of “I’ll be blocking negative comments.” Having some clear boundaries set with your audience can be really helpful. What’s nice about it in a way is the the people who are going to make the negative comments are still going to make the negative comments, but it gets everyone else on the same page. Your audience, the ones who support you, the ones who get it, the ones who appreciate what you’re doing and realize the value of what you’re doing. So then I find it helps the audience step up. I’ll see people dealing with the negative comments for me, which is lovely and so supportive when people want to take on that work. It also clarifies, for me, when someone breaks one of my rules that I have set, it’s an instant delete, instant block. I just don’t even engage with it because I’ve set that clear boundary. I don’t engage with it, I don’t try to convince that person of anything. EmikoI recently discovered that I can turn off commenting and only allow comments from people who follow me. VirginiaYes, I did that! That was a game changer.EmikoYes, it was. The most recent negative comment that I got about Luna, I just decided, I know that my community are the supportive ones. In fact, that one about the persimmon tiramisu, there were two people who wrote some comments and they got eaten up by my followers. I didn’t even have to say anything to them. They just got ganged up on in the comment section until they deleted their own comments. So it was incredible. I have such a supportive group. I really do. But yeah, turning off comments but allowing your followers to comment.VirginiaThat’s another reason why comments are a paid subscriber benefit on Burnt Toast. I don’t want Burnt Toast to be a place where I have to deal with trolls, or at least if I do they have paid for the privilege.EmikoThat is really brilliant.VirginiaIt keeps this community safe. And as a result, it is a place where I feel like I can talk more about more complicated or personal things in a way that Instagram doesn’t always feel like the right venue for. So that’s really nice.EmikoOne of the one of the places where I found this whole conversation really difficult actually is with a family member when I was recently back in Australia for the first time in nearly three years. They hadn’t seen Luna since she was one year old and they felt it necessary to comment. They again assumed that I was doing something really wrong, that there was something wrong to begin with all of that. That’s been more difficult because you can’t just block your family member. Well, some people do, but it’s a bit harder.VirginiaYeah, that is a tricky one. I think often in those moments—I don’t know if this comment was made within earshot of Luna—but I think what’s really important is to think, what do I want my kid to take away? I want my kid to see me trusting them. This person or family member making this comment has no business making this comment to you, so their feelings are sort of immaterial even if you have to be kind of careful because family social dynamics are complicated. I still feel like the most important thing is just, “We trust her body, we trust her, we are not worried. We don’t see her body as a problem.” And then that way, whatever that other person says, the kid is taking away that “Mom is not worried about this. Nobody in my immediate core family is seeing a problem.” And that is really powerful and something I’m sure Luna is getting from you regularly.EmikoI think that I actually read those exact words from your newsletter. I have them written down. This is something that I wanted to practice because it is so hurtful when when somebody says something about your child, and I wanted to be calm and collected and have the best thing to say back and those words are the best thing to say.VirginiaIt shuts it down because what does this person want to say? “Don’t trust your child?” They can’t combat that, they sound like an idiot. I developed that strategy when my older daughter was at the height of her feeding challenges, I developed that strategy because that’s another place where people feel very free to weigh in on what your child is eating or not eating or they’re only eating white foods or that kind of thing. I’ve actually used it with both my kids quite often, for a variety of reasons. It’s really all purpose, because these are very much the same problem even though they’re manifesting differently. In both cases, someone sees a child who only eats five foods or who in my case was on a feeding tube, and they see something’s gone wrong. There’s a problem and this child’s body is a problem. We see someone in a bigger body and we assume this is a problem to solve. In both cases, there’s this unsolicited input, feeling like they need to undermine or question your parenting in some way. It’s all coming from this larger cultural messaging about there being one right way for a kid to eat, one right body for a kid to have, and that the right way to eat should equal the right body when of course we know these two things are totally unrelated. EmikoI have actually used that phrase as well with my older daughter in a parent teachers meeting where her teachers pointed out to me that she wasn’t eating anything at school and they were very, very, very concerned. They would watch her like a hawk and if she did take a bite, they would get the whole class to applaud. They were doing this for a couple of months and she didn’t tell me about this. I didn’t know the teachers had done this. And she had developed this fear of eating in front of other people. She felt really ashamed. She didn’t even want to go over to her best friend’s house if it involved a lunch or dinner. She was like, “You have to pick me up before dinnertime. I don’t want to eat there.” Because I think she had become so afraid of the adults judging her.VirginiaIt’s an amazing erasure of body autonomy. It just stuns me that people think just because this is a child, they have no right to any privacy. It’s a such a boundary violation.EmikoMind boggling.VirginiaSo I think it is using all these skills you built with your older daughter and repurposing them for the same kind of boundary violation. I’m curious, too—I know Lunas only four, these conversations are very much probably just starting with her. But does she have an awareness of her body being different? Does she have any sense of that? Has any of that started to come up for you guys?EmikoI don’t think that she really knows or maybe doesn’t have the language for it yet. But we have had a couple of instances, especially this summer, like when we were at the beach, where other children have pointed at her and within earshot said something about her body. And I just had to whip around to them and say, “I’m sorry, but it’s really not polite to talk about other people’s bodies.” And just leave it at that. But either she didn’t hear it or she didn’t seem to care or she didn’t know really what they were saying.But what breaks my heart is when she does say that she doesn’t look like Mariù, her older sister, and she wants to be beautiful. She only ever wants to wear dresses, the fluffier and the tutu-ier, the more sparkly it is, the better. She she wants to be ultra feminine. So it’s got to be pink or maybe purple, it’s got to be glittery. It’s got to be a dress. So at the moment, all she wears to school are dresses when all the other kids are wearing stuff they can get messy on the playground. But I’m fulfilling her ballerina dreams by letting her wear tutus to school.VirginiaThat is another form of body autonomy, letting kids lean into their own aesthetic choices. I say this as the parent of a child with blue hair at the moment. We’re embracing her aesthetic choices. And it’s pretty fun to see what they come up with and see their version of these things. I mean that “I want to be beautiful” piece is of course heartbreaking because bigger bodied is beautiful. These things are not in opposition to each other. And that’s a conversation that I’m sure will evolve as she gets older. There’s that wonderful kids’ book Beautifully Me by Nabela Noor. I don’t know if you have that one.EmikoI don’t, but I’m on the lookout for any book or film or anything that’s that has somebody that is bigger bodied and beautiful.VirginiaNabela is an influencer, she started as a beauty YouTuber. She is Bengali, she’s in a bigger body. And it’s a picture book she wrote a kind of about her own childhood. The main character is probably like five or six and aware of like her older sister on a diet and her mom saying something about her body and picking up on all these anxieties about the adults in her life. And then starting to worry, “Can I be beautiful if they feel like they can’t be beautiful. “The upshot is a really lovely message about you decide what’s beautiful and beauty is inside us, as well. I was surprised by how thoughtful and how nuanced the story is. So that’s certainly one to add to your library when you have a kid who is really interested in being beautiful.The other piece of it is we have to help kids understand that beauty is the least important thing about them, that that’s not what we’re defining ourselves by, and that it’s an optional standard you can opt in and out of. That’s a conversation that takes longer. And when you have a kid craving this experience of feeling beautiful, it’s nice to be able to give them this book and give them the tutus and the sparkly dresses and let them enjoy that. EmikoYeah, that sounds great. VirginiaWhile we’re on the subject of kids clothes, you and I have also talked a little bit about the challenges of plus sized kids clothing. I’d love to hear any recent breakthroughs you’ve had on that front or, or struggle points that you’re having.Burnt Toast by Virginia Sole-SmithWhere Are All the Plus Size Kids' Clothes?Listen now (41 min) | It’s hard to be fat as an adult. When you are fat adult with a fat child, you’re a particularly kind of terrible in society. You’re listening to Burnt Toast. I'm Virginia Sole-Smith and I also write the Burnt Toast newsletter. Today I am chatting with Pam Luk, founder of…Listen now3 years ago · 21 likes · 31 comments · Virginia Sole-Smith and Pamela LukEmikoDresses are, I think, the easiest way to dress Luna. And the fact that she loves them and always wants to wear them tells me 1. She’s comfortable in them and 2. They make her feel good. Sometimes I do try to put leggings on her. The choice of girls’ clothing here in Italy is is really a disaster. Everything is made out of stretchy material so it’s more meant to be like skin tight, skin hugging. I think that she finds tights and leggings too restrictive because they are tight. She doesn’t like that feeling. So we’re still having quite a balmy autumn at the moment, so she’s still wearing her summer dresses. I usually look for A-line dresses. Nothing with a waist because those also like cinch in and are not comfortable. Anything that she can move around easily in because she’s really active. She’s a really active four year old. VirginiaYes, she wants to be able to play. I was a big sparkly dress kid, too. I can remember one of my grandmothers being sort of horrified that I was playing in the mud in a sparkly princess dress. I think it was a bridesmaid’s dress, like I’d worn it to be a bridesmaid in the wedding and then I was still wearing it every day.EmikoThat sounds familiar.VirginiaAnd my mom was like, “Well, if she wants to wear party dresses and she wants to play then the party dresses are just gonna get dirty. I’m not going to say ‘Oh, you have to be so careful because you’re wearing a fancy dress,’ because then the dress is this barrier.”EmikoA barrier to having fun and being yourself.Leave a commentVirginiaThe other thing I wanted to touch on quickly, is: You talk a lot in your work about your approach to family dinner. As you said, prioritizing comfort and relaxation above all else. This is so crucial and something I am always also struggling with. I would love to hear a little more about what you’ve figured out, and any sort of policies you have at your family table. EmikoOur family has quite an unusual dinner time because my husband works six nights a week in a restaurant so he’s not there. It’s just me and the girls. And before even Luna was was here, it was just me and my older daughter. It was just the two of us. And so two things happened with that dynamic.One was that lunchtime became our main family meal where we could all have lunch together because the girls come out of school early enough to have lunch, so like 1 pm. And it’s before my husband goes to work. So lunch was our main meal together. And I think that lunch just feels a little bit more casual. I feel like there’s a like a lot less pressure, as opposed to dinner.For people who have trouble getting the family dinner together, what if it was breakfast or what if it was lunch that was your time together? Just a time that you are all at the table together and you’re all relaxed. My experience of dinnertime is this is the time of the day where my kids are there crankiest, I am my most tired. And then I’m on my own, on top of it, and having to get them ready for bed, get them ready for school the next day, make dinner, get them bathed, get them in their pajamas, get them to bed. It’s just all so much work for one parent to be doing or even two parents to be doing that. Or if you’re outnumbered. There was so much pressure in the evening. So I kind of liked that lunchtime became our our family meal time. And that really took the pressure off in the evening.So dinner, when it was just me and the girls, has always just been what do you feel like? I would basically let my daughter choose what she wanted to eat based on how she felt because of her unpredictable appetite. I would say that whenever I did try to assume she would like this thing for dinner, even if it was one of her favorite safe foods, quite often she wasn’t in the mood for it. And then I would have wasted all this time like preparing something.VirginiaYeah, I’ve had that dinner about 4000 times.EmikoExactly. So because it was just me and her, by around like 5pm I’d be like, “okay, so what do you feel like eating?” And let her tell me how she felt. And then I would usually have whatever the basics were there, whatever their safe foods were, I usually have those around. And then that way I would make her the dinner that she that she wanted based on what she she chose. It’s usually something quite simple because we have already have had a nice lunch together with with the whole family at lunchtime. So dinner might be like a bowl of rice with like a fried egg or something. And then whatever fruit was around or whatever other little things I could add, other little dishes. I could build on that and make like a little meal out of it and make something that I would like to eat. I always have something else that I want for myself. That’s important, too. Like, we’ll both be eating a bowl of rice as the base, and then she’ll have her thing and I’ll have my thing. That’s kind of how our family dinners evolved, when it was just her and me having dinner together.And then when Luna came along, I just I just kept going because that was still quite a big thing for us. When we were at the table together, I just wanted that to be the most safe, comfort, comforting, comfortable place for her to be so that she could just be herself she could eat if she wanted to. She didn’t have to eat if she didn’t. I just wanted us to sit around a table together and and be able to connect and maybe chat.VirginiaI think that’s a really helpful reframe. I mean, my family’s schedules and lives does make it so dinner is the time when we can come together. But I’ve been thinking a lot about how do we prioritize that this is the safe space and a relaxed place, and not prioritize what everybody’s eating or how much people are eating and all of that and just I think that’s a useful touchstone to keep coming back to so I really appreciate you speaking to that. ButterEmikoThis might be wildly unpopular, but at the moment what is on my mind is tofu. And the reason for that is because I’ve just come back a couple of days ago from Japan. I haven’t been back to visit my family there in five years so it was a really special trip for me to be able to go back there. Also, before the country officially opened to tourists and travelers, because Japan has been closed this whole time.VirginiaWow. EmikoSo it’s a really special time to be there. And one of the things that I had organized to do, which was like a dream of mine, was to learn how to make tofu. And so my mom came from Australia to meet us there and my sister came as well and we all went to the mountains in Japan and we made tofu together, which was just so so wonderful, because I can’t get good tofu here. I always had the most amazing tofu at my grandmother’s home in Japan. I don’t know, maybe in the states you get better tofu, but in Italy you get really really bad tofu. There’s only one kind and it’s like ultra vacuum packed and it’s just…VirginiaThat’s certainly my experience of it here, but I’m not a tofu expert.EmikoSo homemade tofu or artisan made, actual really freshly made, like made that day tofu, I would often liken this to Italians, I’d be like, “that’s like having really fresh buffalo mozzarella, like a proper mozzarella. And so doing this doing this tofu making class was was exactly what I was hoping for. It was exactly that. It was just like making cheese. We were able to eat it right after the class and it was just the most amazing. I was just trying to capture this very nostalgic childhood memory I have of eating tofu at my grandmother’s table and I have never found that tofu again until the other day when I was tofu making class. So I am now going to make it at home. I can get back to that flavor and that sort of that really like creamy, melt in your mouth kind of texture.VirginiaI love that. I have to admit, that makes me want to try better tofu and give it another try.EmikoYeah, it makes a difference. It was like a whole world of difference.VirginiaOkay, well mine is like the opposite of this experience. Now I’m a little embarrassed, to be honest. There are no bad foods—I’m very big believer in that. But I’m recommending frozen dumplings.EmikoOh no, frozen dumplings are a staple in our house!VirginiaOh good, because I was like, she’s making tofu from scratch, like as it should be made in Japan and I’m like, “this box of frozen dumplings just really improved my family dinner.”But yeah, I had never made them before! I don’t know why or where they’ve been all my life, but we are doing this family meal planning where we sit around as a family every Sunday and everyone’s grumpy about it and I love their grumpiness and I make them pick meals. And I had seen a recipe in New York Times Cooking for a dumpling soup made with ramen noodles or rice noodles or whatever and vegetables and broth, like very simple. And I just thought, I’m gonna pitch this for my night where I get to pick because I knew at least one of the kids would likely eat the noodles. I was like, I can deconstruct this into elements they might go for and it looks really tasty and its fall and I’m craving good soups and soups that like fill you up because I feel like a lot of soups are not a full meal. And we don’t talk enough about that, but anyway.EmikoAbsolutely.VirginiaAnd it was so simple because you make the noodles, you make the broth for the soup with ginger and garlic and miso paste and stock and then just drop in the frozen dumplings. You can just drop them straight in and they cook in the pot. And it was a 75 percent success rate, which is the most I can ever hope for with the four of us. I will never get 100 percent. 50 percent success with the kids, one kid was delighted. And what was cool and I have to give props to their school, both of the kids had done some kind of dumpling lesson around Lunar New Year last year. So they had a passing reference for it and were like, “Oh, dumplings. We know dumplings.” And I was like, I didn’t know that your school had done this, I would have gotten on this bandwagon so much sooner. Now I’m just like, I’m gonna buy all the dumplings and I want to try other ways to cook them.EmikoYeah, actually, frozen dumplings are a staple. We always have them in the freezer, because that’s something that everybody loves. So on those nights when you only want to cook one thing, It’s like dumplings. We’re all just gonna have dumplings. And actually what you were saying that soup, I was going to say that when we’re doing one of our family meals, one of the things that I really like is the dishes that you can build on or take away from. You’re basically giving everyone the same base, like tacos. You’ve got all the ingredients, you put what you want in them. Or like a noodle soup. I do a plain noodle soup, like the one you were just describing for the girls. And then for Marco and I, I will put all kinds of things in.VirginiaYeah! We added chili garlic sauce, I’m so excited about it. That is really helpful to think about.Well, Emiko, thank you so much. This was a wonderful conversation. I loved getting to talk with you. I feel like we could do this for hours. Thanks for being on the podcast!EmikoThank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure to chat with you. VirginiaTell listeners where they can follow you and support your work and get more Luna content.EmikoYou can find me at @EmikoDavies on Instagram or my website is Emikodavies.com. And I have a Substack newsletter, which is just calledEmiko’s Newsletter.

Today Virginia is chatting with Naureen Hunani, the founder of RDs for Neurodiversity, a neurodiversity-informed online continuing education platform for dietitians and helping professionals. Naureen also has her own private practice in Montreal, where she treats children, adults, and families struggling with various feeding and eating challenges through a trauma-informed, weight-inclusive, and anti-oppressive approach. If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. It's just $5 per month or $50 for the year. Producing a weekly podcast requires a significant investment of time and resources from several talented people. Paid subscriptions make all of our work possible and enable us to offer an honorarium to expert guests, which is key to centering marginalized voices in this space.And don't forget to preorder Virginia's new book! Fat Talk: Parenting In the Age of Diet Culture comes out April 25, 2023 from Henry Holt. Preorder your signed copy now from Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the USA). You can also order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, Kobo or anywhere you like to buy books.Disclaimer: Virginia is a journalist and human with a lot of informed opinions. Virginia is not a nutritionist, therapist, doctor, or any kind of health care provider. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions she gives are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.BUTTER & OTHER LINKSRDs for NeurodiversityOn the Division of Responsibility and diet cultureMelinda Wenner Moyer on core strength and sitting at the dinner tableFor little ones, Yummy Toddler Food has roundups of good baby and toddler highchairs, booster seats, and toddler tables.For older kiddos, we're hearing good things about this chair and these wobble stoolswhat is misophoniaAgainst ImpulsivityThe Heart Principle by Helen Hoang Want to come on Virginia's Office Hours? Please use this form.CREDITSThe Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia on Instagram or Twitter.Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting independent anti-diet journalism.Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.Episode 69 TranscriptNaureenSo I am a multiply neurodivergent person. I’m also a mom of two multiply neurodivergent kiddos. Both of my children have feeding differences. And professionally, I’m a registered dietitian. VirginiaCan you talk a little bit about why neurodivergent folks may have a hard time with eating? How much of this is due to being neurodivergent—and how much of this is due to our culture’s neurotypical expectations around food and around mealtimes? NaureenI love that question. That is something that I have been exploring the last couple of years. How much of this struggle or difference is really related to the neurotypical expectations? Who gets to define what is and isn’t a problem?  It’s really interesting because people of all neurotypes can can have challenges when it comes to eating. We do see, however, that neurodivergent children, in general, will present with a lot more feeding differences, compared to children who are developing more typically. What we often see is selective eating, or what a lot of people call “picky eating,” and those types of feeding/eating behaviors. It could be related to sensory needs or the child’s feeding ability. But I think what harms neurodivergent children the most are neurotypical developmental milestones related to feeding and eating—the shoulds and the expectations, right?I know, as a pediatric dietitian, this is huge. I remember talking to parents and saying things like, “By 12 months, they should be able to eat like the rest of the family and by 18 months they should be able to self feed.” And this is what we see in daycares, schools, these expectations that we have for children to develop a certain way. And when that doesn’t happen, a lot of parents struggle. Because parents are given prescriptive advice, right? So when there are differences that show up, it becomes really difficult to access support.So, I really see this as a difference and not necessarily a problem. And that’s what I encountered also, as a parent, right? When I was struggling to feed my family, it was really difficult to find support if people didn’t fully understand what I was struggling with. I didn’t have the language and my children, of course, didn’t have the language. I think that it’s definitely a bit of both, but I do think that these milestones can can be quite damaging to children who are developing differently.VirginiaI love the language choices you’re making. I love that you’re saying “feeding difference” instead of “feeding problem.” As someone with a kid with a lot of feeding differences, I really resonate because it just is so negative. It can feel like a problem, right? Because you’re really struggling. And people are telling you that something’s not okay. But to reframe it as a difference and not something you’re blaming your kid for, or that everybody’s doing wrong—that you are doing wrong, that the kid’s doing wrong—that alone feels like such a powerful reframing.NaureenThank you. For me personally it has made a huge difference and the families that I work with feel very much affirmed by that type of language. VirginiaSo in terms of the expectations, I completely hear you on the milestones. My older daughter definitely did not eat like the rest of the family at 12 months or 18 months, or any of that. We had to throw out that whole timeline. And a lot of these expectations that are on parents today come from diet culture. What rules or misconceptions from diet culture in particular do you see getting weaponized against neurodivergent kids?NaureenI think diet culture impacts all children in a negative way. I think for kids who are neurodivergent or disabled, it’s particularly problematic. Because we know that diet culture is rooted in white supremacy and so is ableism, so then you’ve got these two systems of oppression coming at you.Because when we look at what diet culture pushes—it’s not carbs, right? Carbohydrates are softer, easier to chew, easier to digest. And a lot of the foods that kids who are more sensory sensitive gravitate towards are demonized by diet culture.There are different pieces, the ability piece, the texture perspective, and all of that and the sensory perspective can be difficult because of feeding abilities. Kids who are choosing certain foods because they’re easier to consume, often those foods—boxed foods, processed foods, packaged foods, all of those are—are demonized by diet culture. So I feel like it can become really, really messy. We see also that neurodivergent children have more feeding defenses. And when you look at the adult population, they’re also more likely to develop eating disorders later on in life, right?VirginiaYes and how much of that might be rooted in the shaming they’re experiencing around those food preferences? NaureenAbsolutely.VirginiaI think about this all the time, how the way we’ve been told to think about feeding our kids is just so wildly out of line with how our kids want and can eat. And that is true for neurotypical kids, too. But you’re right. The demonization of carbs, the demonization of processed foods—if we could get rid of those two things would make everyone’s lives so much easier when it comes to feeding kids.So I think a diet culture version of feeding kids is pushing vegetables really hard, being anxious about carbs, that kind of thing. And there’s also the clean plate stuff, like “finish this before you can have this,” those kinds of rules. And then the model we’re given as the alternative to those rules is usually Division of Responsibility, which is the idea that parents are in charge of what foods are offered and when they’re offered, and kids are in charge of whether they eat and how much they eat. You and I have also talked about how that model doesn’t always work for neurodivergent folks. So I’d love to have you spell out what you see as limitations there as well.NaureenYes, I think that DOR is something that can be adapted, right? So, if we look at, for example, the parents’ job—the what, when, and where—I find that if the parent isn’t necessarily informed about how the child’s developing, and if the idea here is to get the child to eat like the rest of the family and to appear as neurotypical as possible, that’s not going to work. I think that’s one of the reasons why DOR can fail.I do think there is still a lot of value in the child’s jobs in feeding, in terms of deciding whether or not they wants to eat and the quantity. But it’s the what, when, and where that I feel like a lot of people struggle with. Because a parent might think that the family meal table is the best place for the child to eat, but maybe it’s not. I think this is where things get really, really messy, where I have had to sometimes even separate different family members, because it’s just doesn’t feel safe. Or what the other members are eating is just so aversive from a sensory standpoint, the smell. Plus all the demands that come with socializing, when it comes to eating. Some children don’t have the capacity at the end of the day to be able to socialize and, quote unquote, behave well and sit down and all of that.So for some children, having a little table on the side works better. Or it could be in front of screens, even. For some children that works better because it provides self-regulation and some predictability instead of adding those social demands and all of that. With the what and when and where, we have to really look at the child’s development abilities, feeding abilities, preferences, all of that, and then make the right decision, whatever that looks like.VirginiaOn the one hand, I hope what you’re saying is giving a lot of parents a moment of real relief and giving them permission to think “Oh, I don’t have to try to execute the family meal in this rigid way. I can make more of my own choices here. And really meet my kid where they are ,as opposed to trying to drag my kid into the situation that’s not working.”But I imagine, too, that you sometimes encounter folks who have a knee jerk reaction of, “This is too permissive. How will they ever improve if we make it this easy for them?”I’m deliberately playing devil’s advocate here. This is not how I feel about it. But I have encountered that perspective and I wonder if you have as well. How do you talk through those concerns? NaureenI think it’s important to have these conversations. We live in a society that is so ableist, so we do internalize a lot of these ableist beliefs, too. But if we think of the changes that parents are making as “accommodations,” (because that’s what they really are) then it makes a lot more sense. It’s like saying, “Why are we going to put a ramp? If we do that wheelchair users will never walk.” You would never say that.So, when we start thinking of eating in that same type of way, then it makes sense. Children want to learn. They naturally want to be like others and please their caregivers, but sometimes they just can’t eat the way the rest of the family does And so, these accommodations can be so supportive and actually help build a safer relationship with the caregiver. And that leads to healthy attachment because you’re meeting the child’s needs. Being responsive will not spoil the child. The children will still be intrinsically motivated. If they see something interesting that they want to eat, they’re going to take it. They’re not going to not eat it, because you’re offering preferred foods alongside that newer food. VirginiaI also think, a lot of times when parents are having that reaction, we have to take a moment and say, “Well, what we’re trying to force here is not happening.” The kid is not sitting at the dinner table or not eating the vegetables, or whatever it is. So why wouldn’t we give this a shot? As opposed to just continually trying to get this round peg into the square hole or whatever metaphor you want to use. NaureenIt’s interesting, Virginia, because a lot of parents are already implementing a lot of these strategies on their own because parents are, typically, in my opinion, quite attuned. They know what’s happening. But they just feel a lot of shame and guilt. They’ll share, “We are doing this” but feel so shameful about it. And I’m like, “This is a brilliant strategy.” So sometimes it’s really about how about maybe we remove some of that shame. How do we empower parents because they, they’re the ones who are feeding their kids, all day long. I mean, providers can be helpful and supportive for sure. But I think that at the end of the day, we need to empower parents so they can make the right choice without feeling all of that guilt and shame.VirginiaRight, and without feeling like you’re being graded. I had a mom reach out recently, she mentioned that they were doing a lot of meals in front of the TV because that’s what’s working right now. She was like, “I just think about how our meals look like from the outside,” and I just thought, but who’s looking in your windows at night? Who is on the outside that you’re so worried is seeing this and judging you? If that’s someone in your life, who loves you, that person is not being supportive. And if it’s the sort of  amorphous, larger world of Instagram and culture and whatever—none of them are invited to dinner so it doesn’t matter. I would love to get into some practical strategies. And I’ve got a bunch of listener questions I’ve gathered that I thought we could go through. The first one says:“I would love any practical tips for making dinners more doable. My child often only sits for three to five minutes tops. And as soon as she’s done, her younger sister is done, too. So it’s like the whole meal just kind of unravels at that point. Would a different chair or other physical support help her stay longer? Or is it just not realistic at this time of day for dinner to last longer than five minutes?”NaureenDefinitely, seating makes a really big difference. Make sure that you have a chair that supports the child. because often what ends up happening is that if the child is not well-supported, a lot of energy is going towards sitting down, the core muscles, and then you just don’t have the capacity to engage in the fine motor skills. Sometimes that means that just having a smaller table. Like a kiddie table with smaller chairs can work well.Virginia’s Note: For more on kids, core strength and sitting at the dinner table check out Melinda Wenner Moyer. For little ones, Yummy Toddler Food has roundups of good baby and toddler highchairs, booster seats, and toddler tables. For older kids, I hear great things about this chair and these wobble stools and like that they are both much less expensive than the beloved Stokke Tripp Trap, though you likely won’t regret that investment since it does grow with kids. If you have experience with a great kid-friendly chair or other dinner table supports you love, post in the comments!And, of course, we need to manage expectations, too, right? We don’t necessarily want kids to be at the table for 30 minutes. That’s way too long. Sometimes getting them to move a little bit can be helpful and provide a little bit of that input because sitting down can be difficult for some children. There are weighted objects that can be placed on the lap, which can be supportive too.Something else to consider, and I’m not saying this is the case, but this is just something that I thought about: A lot of people with misophonia have these very strong reactions when they hear other people chewing or yawning. So sometimes, later on, we find out this is why this particular kid was running away constantly.So the first thing is chairs, seating, all of that. If that’s adjusted and the child still escaping? Well, it’s because they’re telling us something. Something’s going on, right? And so then we have to see what can we do to make this more comfortable and figure out what type of accommodations we need.VirginiaI’m also just thinking, and I don’t know if this is that letter writers perspective, but: For kids who have had a hard time with eating and feeding dynamics, the dinner table can just be this thing, right? It can just be a trigger.NaureenOh, yeah, absolutely. The fight or flight response. So if there has been trauma or a lot of pressure or other factors that we don’t necessarily think about, if there’s sensory differences, like the smell of what others are eating is a lot. I really think the child’s behavior is telling us a story. And then we need to figure out what does this really mean because children don’t just behave a certain way for no reason. There’s always a reason.VirginiaThis next question is about an adult child, which I think is interesting.“My daughter is 23 and living with us, is autistic and ADHD. She’s not intellectually disabled, but I’d say her emotional maturity lags by a good bit. She’s very impulsive, and she also takes medications that affect appetite and has since she was five. It complicates so much about decision making and hunger and eating.When I say impulsive: As a kid she could be sick and throw up and immediately want a milkshake and not understand why that might not be a good idea. I’m pretty sure this still holds true at 23. The hyperactivity is 24/7, so it’s her nature to wake up, walk around, eat a banana in the middle of the night, forage for breakfast number one at 5am, and then have another breakfast once I’m up. Then the meds kick in and hunger is back burnered until five, when it roars back with urgency.I try to be weight neutral. She and I are both in bigger bodies. She’s mostly comfortable in herself, much more than most young women, I think. Although every now and then I hear an ‘I’m fat’ type of comment. But I’m often lost in the quandary of what boundaries are okay to set and what’s really not. I often say, ‘Are you sure you’re still hungry? Can you wait 10 minutes and if you’re hungry, come back and find something?’ Or ‘Hmm I think you already had two breakfasts, are you really hungry?’ And sometimes, of course, as the human mom running in the kitchen. I’m just frustrated, and ‘how can you be hungry?’ But that’s probably unfair.” NaureenWe have to be careful because, often, neurodivergent people are more likely to get infantilized. Because 23 is an adult, right? With or without cognitive impairment. But if we want to generalize a little bit, children sometimes also have these behaviors, right? Where they’ll go and eat, and you feel like maybe it’s not the time to eat. And in this case, it seems like this person maybe has an eating pattern that wouldn’t be considered “typical.” It’s also important to remember that when we eat, we eat for different reasons. Sometimes it’s related to physical hunger, but it could also be to cope with certain emotions, it could be for stimming, because it provides certain sensory input, stimulation, self regulation, all of that. So it is important to acknowledge that whatever is going on, there is a reason behind this. There’s a purpose and it’s not just for nothing.In this case, I would really look at what does the day look like, aside from eating. What else is happening? Sometimes mornings are really difficult for a lot of neurodivergent kids. Getting through the routine. Let’s say this particular person has to go out to work, school, whatever their routine looks like, and there’s a lot of stress. Sometimes we want a little something to soothe us. So I wonder if maybe the mornings are a little bit stressful.It can also be related to interoception. Some people need to eat frequently throughout the day because their early satiety signals are sometimes uncomfortable or maybe even painful. So some children will eat more frequently. And that this is where you see that they’re grazing all day, and we see that in adults, too, right? I see a lot of adults that will have a lot of different small type of meals instead of sitting down because sitting down, eating a big meal can be understimulating, as well. Some even call it boring.VirginiaMy kids definitely say that.NaureenAnother thing I find that shows up—even for people who are totally on board with weight neutrality and size diversity—sometimes we can still, as parents, struggle with internalized fatphobia. So I notice that parents who have children in smaller bodies often don’t have these types of concerns. I’ll hear things like, “He eats like all day, but he has a good metabolism.” And it’s like, no concerns, right?I have a lot of compassion for parents who are in larger bodies and have children in larger bodies because it is violent. Our culture is so terrible, right? And so you want to protect your kids and you want to make sure that that they are accepted and all of that. So I think sometimes that shows up, too, because I do see often a difference in how parents will treat children who are in larger bodies versus smaller bodies when it comes to this type of eating pattern.VirginiaI’m just realizing, when I read her question, my screen cut off the last line of the email. She also wrote, “And the idea of not limiting sweets is blowing my mind trying to relax around that one,” which I also have a lot of compassion for. That, of course, is a message that’s drilled into us for so long. But I think you’re completely right here that some of this anxiety about this adult child’s eating patterns, is probably rooted in some of this weight and diet culture stuff, as much as it is also confusing and discombobulating to the mom to have a kid who’s not eating during the day and wanting multiple breakfasts. It sounds like the adult child’s schedule is not lining up with what the parent wants their schedule to be. NaureenAbsolutely. VirginiaSo there’s that conflict, which is hard, especially as you are two adults living together now. But then there’s this added layer of maybe this parent is worrying that that the adult child’s eating schedule is the reason for their body. And we need to disconnect that.NaureenAnd medications are involved. So what happens is meds really—depending on the medication—will impact appetite. So the person may not feel super hungry and then when the meds wear off—I see this all the time in my practice where parents think their kid is bingeing. No, this is just a natural response because they couldn’t eat enough earlier in the day, when the meds were really impacting the appetite. They eat smaller amounts and then at some point, they need to make up all that. So the fact that it’s happening a lot in the morning tells me that maybe this is maybe before the medication and there is more appetite. Bodies are brilliant, really.VirginiaYes, it seems really smart to eat a lot in the morning before the meds kick in so they have fuel to get through that long stretch when they won’t have appetite. It’s just a brilliant strategy and maybe just making some space for, “this is what she needs.” And then yes, at 5pm she’s going be really hungry again when the meds wear off. But that’s not a problem unless we label it a problem.NaureenAbsolutely, it’s a strategy and I work with families where their kids will have two or sometimes three suppers after dinner because they really are not eating much during the day because of the medication and all the other factors. VirginiaThat’s so interesting.Alright, another listener question:“Recently, I’ve found myself resorting to cajoling bites for my child (age five, uses they them pronouns.) They become so absorbed in play that they forget to eat or reject the suggestion that it’s time for snack. I suspect ADHD. Sometimes hours later, they’ll completely collapse into meltdowns lasting 20 to 40 minutes. I’ll sit there begging them to just eat the snack because I know it will make them feel better. But they always refuse my initial offers. At meals they will often only nibble on things, or take three bites from a happy meal before declaring “I’m full” and playing with the toy. Now I find myself resorting to “take three bites,” as my child retorts, “I know my body and I’m not hungry.”“I have ADHD time blindness1 and getting absorbed in tasks also makes me forget to eat. But I’ve been working on that more lately. How can I improve things for my kiddo? I’m worried about them not eating lunch at kindergarten.”NaureenYes, things can get quite messy when there are multiple neurodivergent people, because you want to make sure you can eat and it’s a schedule, and routine—and remembering all of that can be hard. When kids don’t eat when it’s time to eat can be quite stressful because it’s like okay now I have to remember to offer something else, maybe 30 minutes later. It really increases the executive functioning load.But there could be so many reasons why this type of behavior is like showing up. For some children, asking “would you like this or that?” creates a demand on kids who are more demand-avoidant or have demand anxiety. So sometimes leaving the food in the environment—and I know this is totally going against DOR again—but just very casually leaving it in the environment can be helpful. The important thing here is we’re giving frequent opportunities to kids to eat and nourish their bodies.Sometimes that could be like, “We’ll read a book or we’ll do something that doesn’t require a whole lot of focus and then have snack in the environment.” You’re just kind of eating and just engaging in that. For some kids, that works really well because they’ll say no if it’s a demand and they don’t want to be forced into this snack time because they’re busy doing something else. But when you pair it with another activity, that works. It has to be something that doesn’t require a whole lot of focus, though, because then you forget about the snack.VirginiaBecause they’re getting so absorbed in the playing. NaureenExactly. So it varies from child to child. But this is where we have to think about more creative strategies, right? And I love that child confirming “No, I know my body, I know my body.”VirginiaWe love body autonomy.NaureenI love it. I love it. But yeah, sometimes it’s really about creativity and letting them lead. Because again, some children won’t eat because it becomes a demand. So we have to find creative ways.VirginiaI’m also wondering about having a snack cabinet (here’s ours) or a snack drawer that the kid can access on their own. And again, this might lead to a grazing pattern that feels counter to what you’ve been told to do. But if it lets them engage a little more directly with feeding themselves, that might help with starting to hear some of those cues, too, right? NaureenAbsolutely. VirginiaAll right, and then this next question, oh, this is another person who has been burned by Division of Responsibility.“The strategies you often write and talk about don’t work for us, especially Division of Responsibility. My son is eight years old and has ADHD. He takes Ritalin which suppresses his appetite, so he doesn’t get reliable hunger or satiety cues. I would like to understand how to develop body trust when you have a body and brain that you can’t always trust because of medication, and because it struggles with self-regulation, impulse control, distractibility, et cetera. How much can we expect our kiddos to get this? And how do we help them with it, especially since impulsivity is also such a thing and I don’t want to demonize or pathologize his impulses, either.” NaureenThere’s this misconception that we can’t trust neurodivergent children when it comes to their bodies and food. And it’s because we are looking at neurotypical ways of eating and showing up in this world and then we’re comparing neurdivergent children.Again, when there are medications involved, typically children will eat a lot more food before taking the medication and then after the medication wears off, and that is totally fine. So I’m really curious about what the eating pattern looks like and what is it telling us right? And impulsivity is very interesting. Shira Collings, one of my friends and colleagues, wrote a blog on this topic, Against Impulsivity. And it talks about how the behavior we’re seeing is a result of unmet needs.I’m just going to make some assumptions here. Sometimes I’ll see parents say things like, “Oh, my kid is so impulsive when it comes to eating sweets or sugars or certain foods.” And I’m like, “Okay, well, I would be like that, too, if I wasn’t allowed to eat sweets and all the foods that I enjoy. I wouldn’t leave the sweet table either.” So I think often, it has to do with some type of restriction or unmet need. I think that again, we need to approach this with a lot of compassion and curiosity, and think about how these behaviors are actually serving this kiddo. Understanding the story can be really, really valuable.VirginiaI really understand where the parent is with their initial perception, but I love this idea of reframing impulsivity as a strategy, and as a way of expressing a need, that’s really powerful. I’m thinking about this medication piece of it, which I had not really considered before. And I’m just curious: Do you often see a lot of kids on these medications basically not eating lunch at school? I’m sure that’s worrisome to parents as well. Do you have any strategies to help with that?NaureenSo for some kids during the day, they can’t eat all that much because of the medication. But they’re okay drinking chocolate milk. So let’s pack three of those, please. We’re going to try and get in some nourishment that way. It’s about being creative, so when it comes to certain more palatable foods that bring a lot of joy and pleasure, those are easier to consume, right? And we’re like that too, right? Sometimes it’s like you’re full, but then you see the dessert and you’re like, well, I’d love to have a piece of that. So I think sometimes it’s about that, too. So this is how you feel, but what are some foods that might be interesting or easier to take in? For some kids that can work really well. You know, liquids or more snack type of foods, right? Not necessarily like pasta in a thermos, but maybe some cheese crackers and a little bit of fruit or something. And that might work.VirginiaI was going to ask about crunchy foods or foods that give a lot of oral feedback. Do they help ever?NaureenIf that is what the child is into, yeah, absolutely. We all have different sensory profiles. So it’s really about being creative. And about giving more opportunities before and then after. That’s where we see parents that are concerned, “My kiddo just ate dinner and 30 minutes later, they’re hungry again. What do I do?” And I’m like, “Well, if they’re hungry, it’s because they are hungry. Let’s offer more opportunities to eat.”So the pattern ends up looking different, and sometimes it looks very different, and it doesn’t align with how the rest of the family members are eating, and that’s okay. And that’s totally okay.VirginiaRight, it makes sense that these are kids who probably need a good bedtime snack. So in terms of these kids, who, at least from the parents’ perspective, don’t seem like they have strong hunger and satiety cues, or we know medication is a factor and it’s suppressing those cues: How do you talk to the kids about that? Is there language that’s helpful to a child to start to help them tune into that?NaureenI am very careful about teaching children hunger/fullness. That’s something that I’m actually quite uncomfortable with. I think that children, as they get older, they see how other people are eating and what eating looks like for others. I think that they make connections. They are very aware. When we start telling kids that they can’t feel fullness or they can’t feel hunger, we can run into a lot of trouble. Because how hunger and fullness show up in the body can look different for different people, depending on interoception.So for some kids, parents will say things like, “Oh, my kid doesn’t say that they’re hungry and then they have a meltdown.” I’m like, “What else happens before that?” Those are the signals that we should be looking at. We don’t want to hyper focus on like, “hunger should be felt in the stomach” and “this is what your tummy is telling you.” Because for a lot of people, that’s not where they will feel it. They will not feel it there. They will feel it as “I can’t focus and I have a bit of a headache.” Or “I’m not feeling super good. I’m thinking about food.” Or there are other ways, right? And that looks so different. So we can’t really teach that.VirginiaBecause you don’t know what their experience is.NaureenWe don’t know, right? And it’s so interesting because adults will tell me, “I don’t feel hunger, I don’t feel fullness.” And then a few months later, they are so aware of their eating experience. They’re like, “I can actually do my homework and I don’t feel tired. I’m in a better mood.” And like, these are your signals, right? This is what’s happening inside your body.I think that having a flexible structure and teaching children that we can develop a flexible structure where there are multiple opportunities to feed the body can be super valuable. And that’s the work I do with adults, too. They’ll say “I don’t feel hunger,” but like, okay, well let’s see what happens in your body when we start feeding it every couple of hours. Oh, wow, I feel different. Okay, do you like that feeling? Yes, I do. Okay, let’s keep doing this. So it’s really about helping them, giving them that structure so they can take care of their bodies, right?VirginiaAnd I think, too, a big part of this must also be accepting that it’s not going to look like what you the parent are expecting it’s going to look like. And it’s going to change. Kids are changing all the time. I think one of the most exhausting parts of feeding your family often, is that realization of, “This dinner that was working so well a month ago, now, everyone hates it.” Or this dinner time that we had picked based on our schedules doesn’t work because the kids are hungry an hour earlier or not till an hour later, or whatever. You’re constantly pivoting, which can be exhausting. NaureenIt can be, absolutely. But it’s also useful data. VirginiaI want to end on this last question because I just really love it:“What do you think our priorities should be in terms of helping neurodivergent kids with meals? What matters most to help them build and maintain healthy relationships with food?” NaureenHonestly, the first thing that comes to my mind is validation. We need to validate that their experiences are real. Whatever it is they are experiencing has meaning.I can share a little bit of my own personal experience here, as a mother who doesn’t have feeding differences, who is supporting children who do. I really had to learn to normalize their experiences. So I remember my daughter having these very unique experiences with food and then I would totally validate that. “You’re right, if you’re saying that this doesn’t feel good, then then that’s okay. That experience is real and we’re going to figure something out. If you don’t want those little pieces of whatever it is in your rice, we’re going to take that out and I’m not going to say you’re being too difficult or your brother’s eating them.”So, really offering validation and normalizing whatever it is that is coming up. I have one kiddo who likes spices and another one who doesn’t like spices. I often have to accommodate and modify my recipes. So, that’s a lot of work for me as a neurodivergent parent. And at the same time,I also want them to feel like their bodies are not broken, right? That these experiences are their experiences. They have the right to be able to find joy and pleasure in food. And I don’t get to define what’s pleasurable, they get to define that for themselves. And that is what I think is super important. VirginiaYes. Empowering them to have these experiences and to know that their experiences are real and valid. That feels like everything. ButterNaureenWell, I am in Montreal, and the fall weather here has been just fantastic. So I’ve just been spending a lot of time outdoors and just admiring the beautiful leaves, the colors. And that’s what I have been doing. It’s just so nice.  VirginiaEvery year I think of myself as someone who doesn’t like fall because I’m really someone who doesn’t like winter. And so I get a little sad at the end of summer because it means winter is coming. And then every year I’m like, oh, wait, fall is great. NaureenIt’s beautiful, it really is magic.VirginiaI grew up in New England, like I’ve experienced falls for 41 years. And I don’t know why every year I’m like, Oh! It’s beautiful.Okay. Well, my recommendation is a book I just read actually, over the weekend, while I was on a little admiring pretty fall leaves weekend away from my kids. It was great. I read the book The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang.It’s a really delightful romance novel and it is about the experience of a neurodivergent woman. She’s actually a violin player and she’s gone through a sort of traumatic experience with her violin playing and her relationship to music. And it is a romance. There’s a delightful romance plot. But it’s also her starting to understand her her identity as an autistic person and having to come out to her Chinese American family. There are a lot of complicated dynamics. I saw the title The Heart Principle and I thought it was just going to be a fun romance novel and it absolutely was. And I was also sobbing because the story of this woman’s experience was so beautifully done. The author is herself autistic, so it’s also very much grounded in her own experiences. I just loved it. It was much more than I had expected from the very cute cover and delightful in many ways.Naureen, thank you so much for being here! Tell listeners where they can follow you and how we can support your work.NaureenI have two social media accounts. For parents, I have an account Naureen Hunani Nutrition on Instagram and Facebook and then for providers It’s RDS for Neuro diversity. 

Today Virginia is chatting with with Pam Luk, founder of Ember & Ace, a new line of plus size athletic clothing for kids. We get in what's wrong with the kids' clothing industry, and Pam has so many tips and hacks to making finding clothes for kids in bigger bodies more doable. If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. It's just $5 per month or $50 for the year. Producing a weekly podcast requires a significant investment of time and resources from several talented people. Paid subscriptions make all of our work possible and enable us to offer an honorarium to expert guests, which is key to centering marginalized voices in this space.And don't forget to preorder Virginia's new book! Fat Talk: Parenting In the Age of Diet Culture comes out April 25, 2023 from Henry Holt. Preorder your signed copy now from Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the USA). You can also order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, Kobo or anywhere you like to buy books.Disclaimer: Virginia is a journalist and human with a lot of informed opinions. Virginia is not a nutritionist, therapist, doctor, or any kind of health care provider. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions she gives are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.BUTTER & OTHER LINKSEmber & AceJeans Science.Virginia reporting on the weight/child custody case for SlateJulia Turshenwhat is a 10/12 pluswhy I just always buy two sizes of everythingTarget boots (yes, mostly sold out)Want to come on Virginia's Office Hours? Please use this form.CREDITSThe Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia on Instagram or Twitter.Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting independent anti-diet journalism.Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

You’re listening to Burnt Toast. This is the podcast about diet culture, fatphobia, parenting and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith, I also write the Burnt Toast newsletter, and I’m author of the upcoming book Fat Talk.This is the October bonus episode for paid subscribers! Today we are revisiting another essay from the Burnt Toast archives. We’re going to talk about gender roles and Halloween costumes. I’m going to read you the essay, then we’re going to chat about it, and you’ll get this week’s Butter. If you are already a paid subscriber, you’ll have this entire episode in your podcast feed and access to the entire transcript in your inbox and on my Substack. If you’re not a paid subscriber, you’ll only get the first chunk. So to hear the whole conversation or read the whole transcript you’ll need to go paid.The essay I’m revisiting today is called Halloween in Girl World. I published it on October 3, 2019. This was back when only about 500 people read Burnt Toast. It was also, depressingly, a better and more hopeful moment to be a feminist in a lot of ways. So it made me a little sad to go back and realize how many things have gotten worse. But, I think that makes this conversation about Halloween costumes all the more relevant today. Girls and gender nonconforming kids are growing up in a culture that automatically objectifies them and these seemingly innocuous moments—like what they’re going to be for Halloween—are where a lot of that starts.

Today’s episode is our October Ask Us Anything with Virginia and Corinne Fay of @SellTradePlus! We get into unlearning fatphobia, managing treats with kids, and our very unpopular opinions about Halloween. If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. It's just $5 per month or $50 for the year. Producing a weekly podcast requires a significant investment of time and resources from several talented people. Paid subscriptions make all of our work possible and enable us to offer an honorarium to expert guests, which is key to centering marginalized voices in this space.And don't forget to preorder Virginia's new book! Fat Talk: Parenting In the Age of Diet Culture comes out April 25, 2023 from Henry Holt. Preorder your signed copy now from Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the USA). You can also order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, Kobo or anywhere you like to buy books.Disclaimer: Virginia is a journalist and human with a lot of informed opinions. Virginia is not a nutritionist, therapist, doctor, or any kind of health care provider. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions she gives are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.BUTTER & OTHER LINKSVirginia (Corinne) joined TikTok.The good seltzerHow to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davislazy can also be a very racialized term@LordTroyour last reader surveyBody Liberation Hiking ClubSTP's Philadelphia Clothes SwapChristy Harrison’s provider directoryCorinne's cheesy songEllyn Satter/DORKid Food InstagramAubrey Gordon has a great argument for why we should say anti-fat bias and not fatphobiaHow to Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes by Melinda Wenner MoyerThe $58 plus size Rockford Peach Costume on Amazon. Noihsaf BazaarCorinne is making this chocolate sheet cake with brown butter frosting.Lizzo playing James Madison’s fluteVirginia is into Lauren Leavell FitnessWant to come on Virginia's Office Hours? Please use this form.CREDITSThe Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia on Instagram or Twitter. Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing. The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe. Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell. Tommy Harron is our audio engineer. Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!Episode 66 TranscriptVirginiaI’m excited we’re doing this. I’m opening a seltzer.CorinneI also have seltzer.VirginiaI’m opening the good seltzer.CorinneEssential.VirginiaOkay. I’m ready. We’re going to answer some questions. We’re going to talk about Halloween. We’re going to talk about some good stuff.CorinneOkay. I’m gonna ask you the first one.I’d love for you to talk about the intersection between diet culture and being freezing. The temp where live has dropped below 80 finally, and suddenly all of these very thin moms are super bundled up at drop off. Meanwhile, I’m sweating still and shedding all my layers. Feels like one of those weird things where it’s expected that women are small and freezing. Is this a thing? Just me being self conscious about still being sweaty in October?VirginiaI think it’s a thing. Don’t you think it’s a thing?CorinneI don’t know. I was confused by this question.VirginiaI have often noticed that I will not be wearing a coat and my skinny friends will be in scarves and very bundled. CorinneI definitely am hot. I definitely am hot and sweaty.VirginiaAll the time, year round. And maybe because you don’t live in a cold climate you don’t see this juxtaposition? But I know what she’s talking about. I mean, I could rant for several minutes about my hatred of coats, particularly coats and cars together. It’s the worst because you just feel like bunched up and stuffed into this thing.CorinneYeah, like your shoulder mobility.VirginiaAlso I have garage privilege. We have an attached garage to our house where I spend most of my life because my office is above it. So when I leave my house I don’t have to put a coat on because I’m going to walk into my attached garage. And so it takes until bitter cold here, like February, before I actually wear a coat. Do you know what I mean? I live in suburbia and so I’m driving everywhere and I get in my car without a coat and then I get to the grocery store and I just run in. Like, do I need a scarf and a cute hat to walk across a grocery store parking lot? I don’t. But I definitely notice this and people will always be like, “Aren’t you cold?” And I’m like, “No, I’m fine.” I have padding.Corinne“No, I’m not cold, I’m fat!”VirginiaThank you.CorinneIt’s funny because I actually love coats. But I don’t get to wear them very often. I like a light coat. But I do understand what you’re saying about wearing them in the car.VirginiaI was just fighting with a raincoat earlier today, picking my kid up, because it’s pouring rain and I was like, “Oh, I guess I need to wear a raincoat.” And I got in the car and I was like, “I am being suffocated!” CorinneYeah. That’s not a good feeling. Raincoats in particular just make me sweat. VirginiaBecause you’re wearing a garbage bag! Even if it’s a cute garbage bag, it just is.CorinneAre people expecting women to be small and freezing?VirginiaWell, we know they’re expecting women to be small. I think there’s some cheesy romcom tropes around this, don’t you think? Like, “Oh, she’s wearing his big sweater.”CorinneI feel like people are expecting fat people to be hot and sweaty. And I am living that.VirginiaI am meeting their expectations. I guess I would just say, be comfortable? I mean, who cares? Let those ladies have their sweaters and their scarves. We’ll get there. CorinneYeah, it definitely seems better to just be honest about it than to try and bundle yourself and make yourself uncomfortable.VirginiaOn the flip side, I will say I have one thin friend who runs very, very cold. Thats just her journey and she has said that people will comment on that.CorinneIn conclusion: Stop commenting on what people are doing with their bodies.VirginiaAll right. I’ll read the next question. I think this is from a teacher.My colleagues constantly called fat children lazy. What to say? It’s obviously fatphobic. I usually challenge them about the individual child. Also, do they think I’m lazy, too? Hard to trust now.It was sort of truncated because she put it in an Instagram question box. But yeah, that sounds awful. Awful.CorinneMy first question is what profession is this? Because that’s so sad.VirginiaWhy are these people allowed to work near children? I’m guessing it’s either a teacher or some kind of health care provider.CorinneYeah, I was guessing health care. Just sad to imagine that people that take care of kids are calling them lazy. Virginia I think it’s great to challenge them about the individual child. I also think is there a way to say something thing like, “I’ve been really trying to unlearn some of those stereotypes.” Or, “I think it’s such a bummer that we are so hard on fat kids.” You’re not specifically calling out your colleague for saying the terrible thing, but you’re talking about the fatphobia. I always like to bring it to the larger system. CorinneMy suggestion was, if someone says like, “Oh, that kid’s lazy,” ask some follow up questions. Like, “Oh, what makes you say that? I’m so curious why you think that?”VirginiaYou’re kind of putting them a little on the spot, not in an aggressive way. And then if they have to really spell it out, hopefully they hear themselves. CorinneI think you could also continue that into the more broad thing and just say, “Why are we calling people lazy? It’s sort of mean.”VirginiaThis is reminding me, I just finished KC Davis’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning. CorinneI really want to read that.VirginiaIt’s so good. I’m obsessed with KC. She talks about how lazy doesn’t exist. I’m just thinking this might be a good read for this person because she’s not talking about it in the context of weight. She’s talking about it in the context of how clean your house is and if you’re neurodivergent, how thats challenging. But it could be great to just be like, “I was just reading this book and lazy is a social construct.” People being lazy need to rest. Resting is valid.CorinneI think you’re right. It makes sense maybe a teacher would be calling someone lazy because you’re supposed to be ‘hardworking’ in school. But I don’t know, I think calling someone lazy is mean. So just don’t do it, whether they’re fat or not. VirginiaYeah, it’s a really unhelpful term. It’s super ableist and super fatphobic.CorinneIt’s trying to shame someone into doing something that they maybe don’t want to do.VirginiaWhich is always a successful strategy. We’re really sorry you have to deal with that. It sounds terrible. And in terms of can you trust your colleagues, I think that’s valid, to feel like you can’t trust them. I don’t know how safe you would feel doing this because it does not sound like a super supportive environment, so consider this part very optional, but you could also say: “That does not feel safe for me as a fat person to hear you say that.” I think that would make them deeply uncomfortable and hopefully they’d shut the fuck up. But I throw that out there with all the caveats of, that may not feel like an option.CorinneI also feel like we should probably mention that lazy can also be a very racialized term. That could also be playing a part. So let’s not call anyone lazy. Okay.Recommendations on finding and building fat community as a fat person unpacking their diet culture BS?VirginiaI feel like you should answer this first because you have been building selltradeplus as a wonderful, fat-positive community. CorinneI think it’s kind of that question of how to make friends as an adult. And I guess my first answer is: Online. VirginiaIt is often the safe starting point, right? You don’t have to leave your house or put on pants. CorinneAnd I think also people can be a little more upfront about how they feel about things online in a way that… You know, sometimes you meet someone in person and you like them and then you realize like, we disagree about a lot of things.VirginiaI shared a reel the other day from @LordTroy being like, “I don’t trust it when I see a group of friends and they’re all thin.” (Sorry, we can’t find the specific reel anymore but everything @lordtroy posts is gold.)CorinneOh, I saw that.VirginiaI was like, YES.So obviously there’s Burnt Toast, where I think we are building a great community that is quite size diverse, according to our last reader survey. So, I would not say we are a specifically fat community, but there’s certainly a lot of fat folks centered in the community. And I think that’s been really lovely. In terms of in-person community, really, my only experience with it is this Body Liberation Hiking Club I keep talking about. Alexa, who is a teacher here in the Hudson Valley, just decided that she wanted to build fat community and started this hiking group and made a Facebook and an Instagram and started putting up schedules for hikes. And people go on the hikes, it’s so awesome. I mean, I’ve only been on one hike, but I aspire to go on more.It made me realize I had never hiked without—I’m married to a thin guy, and I’d never hiked with other fat people! And I was like, I’ve been doing it all wrong. It’s so much nicer. Just not having any of that noise of comparison or anything and just all being really supportive and safe together.So, I guess, look for a group like that. And if there’s not one, start one! It doesn’t have to be hiking either. Obviously hiking has a little built-in ableism because not everyone can hike, but it could be a book club? I think book clubs are great. Someone told me about starting an articles club, because reading books takes too much time. And I was like, I love it. CorinneWow, that’s a great idea! Oh, Pool Party.VirginiaPool party, always always. CorinneI like the suggestion of starting something if you can’t find something in your area, because there are definitely fat people everywhere who probably want other fat friends.VirginiaYes, I don’t know if you’ve heard the talk about this epidemic…? You can find us. Although, I will just say as an introvert, starting an in-person thing sounds scary. I would be so anxious that no one would come and I would feel bad. So maybe if you have like one friend, even if they’re not fat, but they’re just supportive that you can like anchor it with, you know? CorinneFrom SellTradePlus, there have also been a few groups of people meeting up that met on SellTradePlus. So you could come to SellTradePlus and see if there’s people in your area. There’s now a Philadelphia Clothes Swap that’s very big and happening at the end of October. So, if you’re in Pennsylvania, you could go to that.VirginiaThat’s awesome. I fantasize about Burnt Toast meet ups! My hope is when the book comes out, maybe book events can be a useful starting point for that.CorinneOkay, next question.If your eyes are wide open to diet culture and fatphobia, but you still hate your body, how do you move forward? For example, I know why I find being bigger triggering, but that doesn’t stop me wanting to be smaller. How do you unwire that?VirginiaI do think it’s important to know that you can have your eyes wide open to these things, you can be a good advocate working to dismantle fatphobia, and you can still be in your own personal struggle. Like, you do not have to have the shit worked out in order to be a good ally or advocate or any of that. So, cutting yourself some slack here and giving yourself permission to be struggling might be helpful. It can often be really beneficial to work with a therapist, a good anti-diet, fat-positive therapist. I can link again to Christy Harrison’s directory for finding folks. What are your thoughts?CorinneYou can’t completely unwire this without solving fatphobia on a global level. It’s just the air we’re breathing. Everything around you is telling you that you should hate being bigger. And, it’s uncomfortable! It can be very uncomfortable to be in a body that doesn’t fit places or breaks chairs or whatever. So, that’s valid.That said, my recommendation would probably be to try and find some stuff that you could do where you’re enjoying just being in your body. Whether that’s some type of exercise or swimming or meditating or yoga, or like taking pictures of yourself and looking at them without feeling disgusted or just some way to appreciate what your body can do for you, even if it’s not like the body that society tells you you should have or should want.VirginiaThat’s so smart. And yeah, appreciating your body for what it does versus how it looks, like releasing yourself from the expectation. I just described 10 years of therapy for a lot of us.But at least noticing. I think it can be good just to notice. I’ve talked about this before, when I have wardrobe anxiety about things not fitting or it doesn’t look right, when I take a minute to say, “Wait, what else is going on?” It is always not about the clothes. It is always that I’m cranky and hormonal or because I have to see people in the world and my social anxiety kicked in or I’m stressed about work and taking it out on pants.I think it’s good you’re noticing that you’re getting triggered because I think for a long time people stay stuck in this perpetual triggered state that feels like normal. You’re at least like, Oh, I’m getting triggered and now I’m having these thoughts that don’t align with my values. That’s a useful place to be.CorinneEven if being in a bigger body doesn’t allow you to do certain things like run marathons, maybe you can still like smell flowers or like feel the rain on your skin and now I’m singing a cheesy song.VirginiaGot a little Julie Andrews there, but that’s fine. But no, you’re right. Finding ways to enjoy the tactile experience of your body. Like cozy blankets. If you’re not too hot. CorinneLaying on the couch. Having a body allows you to lay on the couch which is fun.VirginiaIt’s so great! Let your dog sit on you, it’s awesome. Finding ways to appreciate that or just noticing that. Maybe while you’re noticing being triggered, also noticing positive sensations in your body could be useful. CorinneWe solved fatphobia on a global level.VirginiaWe did. We broke down a lot of systemic bullshit.CorinneOkay, here’s the next question.We’re trying to be an Ellyn Satter/DOR house and avoid labeling any food as “treats” so as to present food more neutrally. In our own unlearning, sometimes this goes better than others. But we’ve been doing the Ellyn Satter deal for his whole life, four and a half years now, yet he regularly asks us for “treats” or why there isn’t a “treat” at every meal or snack. We bake often and we’ll do snacks where the treat is on the menu. And he gets unlimited access to those things. We try to do it regularly. But still his talk of treats persists, he goes to daycare and gets a heavy dose of this kind of messaging there even if implicitly. Ideas?VirginiaOkay, so this is fascinating because it makes me realize something that I think we’re doing wrong when we talk about keeping foods neutral. I do think it’s important to avoid labeling foods as junk or bad foods or trash, but I think also some foods are treats and that’s okay. I think it’s okay to say that something is a treat. Maybe a treat is something you eat daily and maybe I have a treat at most meals, you know? It doesn’t mean it’s something I can’t have. We could reclaim the word treat.He maybe is just asking for foods that feel fun to him to eat. It’s okay that he’s noticing that some foods are more fun to eat than other foods. He’s figuring out preferences. And people have different ideas of treats. I was just hanging out with a bunch of girlfriends this weekend, and I made brownies because me and one friend really wanted brownies, but the other two just wanted cheese. And like I love cheese, too, but that’s not dessert to me. But they were like no, that is our dessert. And like, that’s a valid life choice to feel that cheese is your dessert, but it’s a valid life choice to feel the brownies are your dessert.CorinneDoes Division of Responsibility say that you shouldn’t call things treats?VirginiaI don’t think that’s textbook. It does emphasize the importance of not labeling foods as good and bad and it is true that there are certain contexts where treat equates with bad. I do think the messaging he’s getting at preschool may be like, “Oh, don’t eat too many treats.” You see that on Kid Food Instagram a lot.But what I’m saying is, I think you’re going to be making your life hard and also sort of doing a disservice to your larger goals if you’re trying to correct him when he’s using the word. You don’t have to get so hung up on the word treat. If he was saying “junk food” or “it’s bad for me” or something, that would be different. But treat is not an inherently negative word. So maybe we’re overthinking a little bit. CorinneDoes the fact that he’s asking why there isn’t a treat at every meal or snack mean that he’s not getting enough treats?VirginiaWell, that was where I was going to go next. I’m just looking at the question again, this person says “we bake often, and we’ll do snacks where the treat is on the menu, and he gets unlimited access to those things. We try to do it regularly, but still his talk of treats persists.” So, what is regularly is my question. Because if it’s once a week, that may not be regularly enough.And the advice, if you’re gonna go back to Ellyn Satter canon—which you don’t have to do. You don’t have to follow all of those rules, this is a choice. But the official advice is you can serve dessert at most meals in a smaller portion and then also have snack times where treats are unlimited, so that kids get these opportunities, at least once a week, it could be more often, to eat as many cookies as they want. and there’s a cookie available at dinner. Now in my house, we are not that precise about it. My kids eat treats—foods that I think this four year old would call treats—pretty much every day as after school snack. They tend to have cookies or chocolate or whatever they want along with what other other food they want for snack. So we don’t always do dessert every night at dinner because I know they’ve got that like built in snack time and that’s always unlimited access at snack time. And then also usually on the weekends, there’s going for ice cream or making brownies or something where it’s really unlimited, like you’re gonna have as much as you want.My point is, they call them treats, but they don’t have like a lot of hang ups about the idea of treats. And I think that’s our goal. It’s okay to describe cake as a treat but not have a restrictive attitude towards treats. The other thing I want to say, because what I think I’m really picking up on in this question is a level of perfectionism around how to do these concepts. And I think that’s so understandable, but it is also what diet culture teaches us. So it is diet culture showing up in your attempt to not do diet culture, which: Valid. But I think it is useful to know is that your four year old bringing home some messaging around treats from daycare is not a disaster. It’s expected. That’s how most daycares talk about like “eat your sandwich before your cookie.” Do I agree with it? No. Do I think it’s going to lead your child to have an eating disorder? Really not. Especially if what’s happening in your home is we love all foods, we embrace all of this, we don’t have a restrictive mindset. CorinneAll right. This is another question for you.You said the book title changed love the title, but can’t find the old one in my brain? Explain more also?VirginiaThe original title of the book was Fat Kid Phobia. I think the subtitle was still going to be “parenting in the age of diet culture” or something like that. And I was very attached to it, because I liked how it was taking fatphobia and putting kids in there and, you know, sort of exploding that. I know Aubrey Gordon has a great argument for why we should say anti-fat bias and not fatphobia, but I think when it comes to parents, a lot of it is fear driven as well as bias. So I did really love the title, and my publisher and my agent liked it, too, initially. And then as we got kind of further along in the process, they became concerned for a couple of reasons that were interesting to unpack. A big one was they felt like parents would not want to read a book and leave it lying around the house with “fat kid” on the cover. They worried that would be triggering to kids to see. CorinneThat totally makes sense.VirginiaIt does. And it also broke my heart because the whole point is that we’re reclaiming fat and there’s nothing wrong with being a fat kid and fat kids are awesome. But the kid may not have read the book and the parent reading the book may be where they are with their work. They may not even want to buy it in the store, you know? So I thought that was really right, but in a way that made me sad.I was like, “Fat has to stay on the title.” I can’t remember all the other titles we left on the cutting room floor. But there were various versions that didn’t have fat in it and I was like, No. I mean, this is a book about anti-fat bias. We’ve got to say it. CorinneYeah, I remember growing up seeing books around the house and not loving it. So I think that makes sense, like Reviving Ophelia or whatever. VirginiaWell, and I had a whole conversation with my friend Melinda Wenner Moyer who is the author of How to Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes. And they did stick with that because they felt like it was such a central idea of what that book is about, which is basically you don’t want your kid to be Donald Trump. Here’s how we do that. CorinneI can imagine not liking that as a kid though.VirginiaRight. And she said some kids are offended by the title.So it was sort of interesting that that one made it through and fat kid was where we decided it was too hurtful. And I have feelings about that. But I do think Fat Talk is a great title because it also works on multiple levels. We are talking about the issues of fatness and anti-fat bias. Fat Talk is that thing that people do to hate on their bodies, like women do it together, and we’re challenging that idea. And it’s also a play on “sex talk,” like how you have to have the sex talk with your kids. A big argument of the book is you have to talk to your kids about anti-fat bias. You have to talk about how it manifests and how to push back against it. The last chapter of the book is called “How to Have the Fat Talk.” And of course, it’s many talks. It’s not one talk. If you like the title, you can go ahead and preorder it. CorinneWhere would we preorder it?VirginiaAnywhere you get your books! My local independent bookstore is doing signed copies. I will sign the copies, that sounded awkward how I said that. Pre-Order a Signed Copy of Fat TalkCorinneDid you come up with a new title or did the publisher?VirginiaThey came up with Fat Talk and so also I had to get over my ego because Fat Kid Phobia was mine. But the more I thought about it, the more I was like, I do like it. I do think just putting fat in the title at all does automatically mean there are people who won’t pick up the book. And that is what it is because it’s a bummer because they maybe most need to. But I just couldn’t see a way around that. All right. People want us to talk about Halloween costumes.Do you dress up? What are you going to be this year?Also got some questions about Halloween candy. We could talk about that a little bit, too.CorinneOkay, well, I do not dress up. And I do not have children. So no one in my household dresses up.VirginiaNot even Bunny?CorinneI mean, no. She doesn’t love having clothes on. And I personally feel like having to dress up as a human every day is enough of a costume.VirginiaI am right there with you. We’re about to make ourselves very unpopular. I hate Halloween and this is a very unpopular opinion in my town. I live in a big Halloween town. So having kids in this town means that there is a school parade, there is a town parade, there is a neighborhood party. and there is trick-or-treating at this one street in town that goes crazy for Halloween and everyone in town goes there. So it is like a four day situation. And adult costumes are strongly encouraged for all of this except maybe the school parade. I hate it so much. It was just ranting to Sara Petersen about it because it’s awful.CorinneSo are you being pressured into dressing up?VirginiaEvery year I just half-ass it and at the last minute think of something. Like last year I wore a floral sweatshirt and carried a watering can and I said I was my garden. CorinneThat’s cute. VirginiaIt was cute. It was fine. Nobody wants to do a family costume except me because I want to do it so that I don’t have to make a decision about myself. I’m like, can you all think of a cool family costume and I’ll just be Marge Simpson or whatever you make me be? And they’re like, we’re all doing our own cool thing. You need your own cool thing. But can we also talk about how this is also a fat tax issue. Halloween costumes are harder if you’re fat, I think.CorinneYeah, that seems right. I mean, I was thinking part of the reason I don’t like dressing up is because I just feel like I don’t need anything else to make me feel more uncomfortable. Like, I just want to be comfortable.VirginiaYeah, completely. And the sizing issues on costumes.CorinneIt’s not like you can just walk into Spirit Halloween and buy a whatever costume.VirginiaAnd, also, I don’t know, I feel like this is going sound preachy, but it’s like everyone’s environmentalism goes out the window around Halloween? The only way to efficiently do Halloween is to Amazon Prime some shit. And the whole rest of the year I’m supposed to feel guilty about Amazon. And then suddenly, for Halloween, everyone’s like, I’m Amazon-ing an astronaut costume. And I’m like, What are you going to do with it afterwards? Do you have a closet full of costumes in your house? I mean, I guess people do, but why? I don’t need a closet full of grown up costumes.So I don’t know what I’m doing. I have a lot of angst about it already. My one idea for a costume is to be a Rockford Peach from “A League of Their Own.” Topical, witty, aesthetically pleasing to me. And I did look and there seems to be a plus size option on Amazon. CorinneWow.VirginiaBut I’m still like, number one, will it fit? Like will their 1x or 2x be the 1x or 2x I need? Question mark. Number two, it’s $58. Do I need to spend $58? But I have to go to all these damn Halloween events.CorinneI mean, I feel that it’s impressive that you haven’t just bought a witch hat and worn all black because that’s what I would do.VirginiaMaybe. And then I just, that’s what I do forever. Because there’s like just a huge mental load piece of it, too, figuring out your costume. Like I’ve already had to figure my kid costumes with them and like lock them in and be like, it’s panda and ladybug, guys. We’re not changing our minds.CorinneThat’s what they’re being this year?VirginiaYes. The older one is being a panda. And the younger one is now being a ladybug, which I’m thrilled about because the older one was a ladybug for like four years. So we own so much ladybug stuff. CorinneYeah, that’s great. Do you follow Noihsaf Bazaar on Instagram? It’s another like buyer/seller Instagram and they now have a website. And they have historically done like a Halloween costume like resale thing. VirginiaOh, interesting.CorinneWhere I think you can buy used Halloween stuff. So that might be something to look into.Virginia I’m gonna investigate this. That would be useful. I do feel like I need to just lock in on one thing and just be like, this is my costume for the next 10 years.CorinneDo you have a preferred Halloween candy?VirginiaIt’s Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups or Mini Snickers. The end. CorinneI like Butterfinger. VirginiaOkay, yeah, respectable. And people are gonna want to know how we manage Halloween candy. And the answer is we let our kids eat all of it. I don’t care. I don’t think about it.CorinneDo you sneak or steal candy from your kids?VirginiaNo, but I buy Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Mini Snickers for myself. I make sure we have the candy I’m going to want to have in the house. I also buy these candies at any point in the year I want them, because they are treats but I don’t have a restrictive mindset around them. See this in action right here, guys?I let them have all the candy they want. I have literally no rules. They can eat it while we’re walking around trick-or-treating. Some people are very big on “wait till we get home so I can check it for razor blades.” And I’m just like, if this town makes me go to five freakin Halloween events and someone’s putting a razor blade on this candy? There’s no way.So they can eat it while they walk around, I don’t care. They can come home and sit there and eat as much as they want before they go to bed. I don’t care. The next day they can eat as much as they want. Usually by day three, they’re so over it. Like, we ate all the good stuff and we’re done. And then we just throw away what they don’t feel like eating. You’re just setting yourself up for negotiations and power struggles if you try to put a lot of rules around it.CorinneYeah. I will say I was very obsessed with Halloween candy as a child. I definitely noticed when my parents took one single piece out of the collection. VirginiaThat’s mean! They worked hard to get it. They wore the costume. They walked around.Butter for Your Burnt ToastCorinneMy butter this week is a recipe. I was at my mom’s house this summer and she gets Bon Appétit. And she was like, looking through it and she was like, “Look at this cake. It looks amazing.” And the cake is this chocolate sheet cake with brown butter frosting. And we proceeded to make it a few times over the months that I was staying with her. And it is delicious. The cake part is a chocolate cake, but it’s one of those chocolate cakes that you don’t have to use a mixer for. You can just mix it in the bowl, which I love.VirginiaYeah. Not Having to haul down the mixer is big.CorinneYes. So you just mix it in a bowl with your spatula and dump in a pan and bake it and then the frosting has brown butter in it and it is delicious.VirginiaQuestion: Is brown butter a type of butter or you have browned it in a pan?CorinneYou have to brown it in a pan. Okay, so brown butter is when you cook butter until the milk solids in the butter turn brown and toasty. It’s very delicious.VirginiaThat sounds yummy.CorinneYeah and in this particular recipe, you actually add milk powder to the butter and to get extra brown toasty bits before you whip it into frosting. And I have been putting sprinkles on top of it. And that is also very beautiful.VirginiaThat sounds really, really delicious.So I just want to circle back to Lizzo and the flute and just say how much I loved her playing James Madison’s flute. And of course the discourse around it got ridiculous because people are absurd. But it was so great. Oh, I am going to also talk about Lauren Leavell Fitness. I will link to her Instagram. I have just started doing her workouts and she does bootcamp, which I haven’t tried yet, cardio barre, and regular barre. And they’re just joyful. Her whole energy is delightful, super anti-diet, super fat positive.CorinneYou do it through Instagram or she has like a Youtube or?VirginiaShe has a membership. I think it’s $40 a month. She is doing a couple of live Zoom classes per week in each of these categories. I never make it to the Zoom live because they’re like 11 on a Sunday and I have to parent my dumb kids, but she then uploads the Zoom so you can do them anytime afterwards. And so I do them at seven in the morning before my children are awake, which is when I can do them.[Post-publication note from Virginia: A kind reader pointed out that it was unproductive and potentially harmful to listeners to call my kids “dumb” here, even as a throwaway joke, since that’s the kind of word that is often weaponized against children. I am so sorry for inadvertently triggering anyone. My kids know I think they are brilliant and beloved on a lot of levels, but I do regret this poor choice of phrase.]CorinneDo you need any stuff? VirginiaWell, for barre you need a yoga mat. I do have some little two pound weights. You could probably use like a seltzer can. And then you just need like, like I just use my desk chair like as the barre. Or you could do it by a kitchen counter.I have done barre in the past and really hated it. I did—I’m just gonna throw them under the bus—Barre Three when I was in a more diet-y place. Now I understand they have had an evolution and now they’re very body positive. But from what I could see they have hired no fat instructors. So how far have they gone?CorinneThere’s another good one, I think body posi barre on Instagram?VirginiaThere’s definitely a couple of people doing barre in a body positive way. And I was curious to try it because I knew the exercises are similar to what I’ve been doing in PT to build up my core and work through all my back issues. It’s like a slightly more aerobic version.Lauren is very funny, I love her energy. I just decided I am so done with having to filter it out. Do you know what I mean? Like people will be like, “I love this workout, but sometimes they talk about...” And I’m like, no. Why are we paying these people money? Why are you encouraging them? CorinneYeah, I don’t need the baggage.VirginiaYeah, I don’t want to have to like turn down that volume and be like SHHSHHH. I just want a safe space. I am confirming that Lauren is a very safe space.CorinneWait! We have one other thing we need to talk about. VirginiaOh, yeah? What is it?CorinneVirginia, you joined TikTok.VirginiaI did. I did join TikTok. You’re right. Let’s be clear when I say I joined TikTok.CorinneI made Virginia a TikTok account.VirginiaCorinne was already on TikTok.CorinneI am obsessed with TikTok, unfortunately.VirginiaFortunately for me because I was like “Corinne I think I have to do it and I don’t want to and I don’t know how.”CorinneSo, we’re trying out TikTok. VirginiaWe are. Burnt Toast TikTok. CorinneCome find us. Yes. It’s @v_solesmith. VirginiaYeah, we just made it the same same as my Instagram so it’s easy to remember, and my Twitter. It’s a lot of cross posting from Instagram. Because now that I have to do reels on Instagram, we could do a whole other episode about my feelings about all of this. Oh, god, it’s the worst.But we’re really trying and we’ll do some stuff probably just for Tiktok, too. Especially if more than the two of us start following me. CorinneYes. Yes. So come find us on TikTok. We will follow you back.And if you see stuff on TikTok that you think Burnt Toast should know about, send it to us. At @v_solesmith.VirginiaPlease do. Corinne is making it happen. Thank you for doing this.CorinneYes. So if any Burnt Toast people need a little extra push to get on TikTok, maybe this is it. It is really cool and fun. You will lose hours of your life.VirginiaI enjoy watching the Tiktoks that people post Instagram. As an elder millennial, that is how I have chosen to engage with that.CorinneYes. You’re just seeing them weeks late.VirginiaI like being three weeks late to something. I think that’s good for me.Alright, I think we did an episode. Thanks for being here. Appreciate it. Tell people where to follow us on all of the places.CorinneWell, you can follow me personally at @selltradeplus on Instagram or at @selfiefay my personal account. And you can find Virginia @v_solesmith on Instagram, Twitter, and now TikTok!VirginiaWait, what’s your TikTok? Are you on TikTok? CorinneYes, I’m on TikTok. I think my TikTok is @SelfieFay which is the same as my personal Instagram. I will say I rarely post. I think I’ve only posted like dog stuff, but maybe that will change.VirginiaI mean, we’re here for the dog content. But you’re not doing @selltradeplus on TikTok.CorinneOh, God. Well, stay tuned.VirginiaAwesome. Well, thank you for doing this. This was great. 

Today’s episode is a delightful conversation with Shelly Anand and Nomi Ellenson, co-authors of the wonderful new picture book I Love My Body Because. If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. It's just $5 per month or $50 for the year. Producing a weekly podcast requires a significant investment of time and resources from several talented people. Paid subscriptions make all of our work possible and enable us to offer an honorarium to expert guests, which is key to centering marginalized voices in this space.And don't forget to preorder Virginia's new book! Fat Talk: Parenting In the Age of Diet Culture comes out April 25, 2023 from Henry Holt. Preorder your signed copy now from Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the USA). You can also order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, Kobo or anywhere you like to buy books.Disclaimer: Virginia is a journalist and human with a lot of informed opinions. Virginia is not a nutritionist, therapist, doctor, or any kind of health care provider. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions she gives are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.BUTTER & OTHER LINKSWant to come on Virginia's Office Hours? Please use this form.Shelley's first book Laxmi’s MoochErika Medina, illustrator of I Love My Body BecauseRoxane Gay's book HungerSonya Renee Taylor's book, The Body Is Not an ApologyTyler FederNabela Noor (Beautifully Me)More body positive picture books studies on representation of kids of color in children's booksNomi's Butter: The Cycles JournalCREDITSThe Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia on Instagram or Twitter. Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing. The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe. Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell. Tommy Harron is our audio engineer. Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!Episode 65 TranscriptVirginiaWhy don't you each introduce yourselves?Shelly I'm Shelly Anand and I am a picture book author. I'm an attorney. I'm an immigrant and worker rights attorney. I'm a mother of two. And I'm really excited to be on your show!NomiHi, I'm Nomi. I'm a photographer and I specialize in a genre called boudoir photography, which is about empowering women in their bodies, connecting with that inner goddess, and all of that good stuff. I have a photo studio in Brooklyn and I'm also expanding. I live in Montego Bay, Jamaica and I'm starting to do photo shoots here, as well.VirginiaWe are here to talk about your wonderful book I Love My Body Because. It is very beloved in my house already, I can tell you. So I want to hear the story, how do a boudoir photographer and an immigrants rights attorney decide to write a body positive kid's book?NomiIt seems so random, but it really was such a moment of flow. Shelly and my sister are best friends from Wellesley College and when Shelley's first book came out, we were hanging out at the beach. As a boudoir photographer, I'm constantly talking to women about their bodies and how they feel about themselves, their sensuality. So much of what I say to them is what you would say to that inner child in all of us. And I said to Shelley, “What are your thoughts about doing a body awareness children's book?” and she was automatically like, “Let's do this.” It just all felt like it was in the stars and meant to be. That's the short version of how it all happened.VirginiaShelly, I would also love to hear how you came to do Laxmi’s Mooch. And how you see these books as connected?ShellyI didn't set out to become a picture book writer. I've always loved stories and storytelling, and reading, but I think becoming a parent and being a brown mom in the Deep South, raising biracial children—my kids are half Indian, and my husband's a white white man from Wisconsin. We were looking for books that were important to us, that instilled values that were important to us. So children's literature became something that I got interested in as a mom. I was on maternity leave with my second when a friend of mine from from college who lives close by, who's also South Asian, also raising hairy Desi kids in the south, called me and said that her daughter had been teased in school for having a mustache. And she was only six years old.It just was a very poignant moment for me. I had given birth to my own daughter who inherited my hairiness and it just brought back a flood of memories of body hair removal and being teased myself as a young, brown, hairy child. And really thinking that I wanted it to be different for for my children and for all children, that that they not go through what what we went through and it really be a choice that you know, you don't feel this pressure to wax or bleach or thread a part of your body off because other children or other people are teasing you or because that's what Western society is pushing on you.And so that's where the idea for Laxmi’s Mooch came from, I wanted to create a story about a young girl discovering her body hair and hair removal not being the answer. I started reading a bunch of kidlit and joining writers groups and things like that and that's how Laxmi was born.So when Nomi was like, “I'd love to work with you on a book about body positivity,” it felt like a natural next project for me, because they are very much connected. Laxmi’s Mooch is very specific about body hair positivity. But when Nomi and I were talking about this, there weren't a lot of picture books out there on body positivity and specifically fighting fatphobia and dispelling the word fat being something negative. Like Nomi said, it was a very different process than writing Laxmi’s Mooch. Laxmi had more of a narrative and this is more like an ode to your body and all the amazing things our bodies can do—not just physically but intellectually. That we can read and we can learn and we can take care of ourselves. It really just poured out of us and it was a very, very healing. Both books were a very healing experience for me.VirginiaOh, I bet, I bet. I work particularly in the anti-fat bias space. And the body hair conversation does not come up nearly enough. I was thinking the other day, my kids have—because I'm their mom and we talk about this stuff all the time—they have really good fat positive vocabulary. But they've seen me shave my legs or tweeze my chin hairs and been like, “What are you doing?” And I'm like, Oh, I don't have the narrative I need for this piece. This is another part I need to work on.I'm always just like, “It's a choice, you don't have to do it.” But I feel very panicked in the moment, realizing I haven't thought about it. So, I love that you are giving us language and giving us a story that we can use to have these conversations. And not just when you're being barged in on in the shower, when I don't do my best parenting.ShellyI mean those are the moments, when when our children come to us, in the shower or on the toilet.VirginiaIt’s like, Okay, let's do this. ShellyLet's have this conversation. Yeah, absolutely. Uma, my daughter, now asks me, “Why are you shaving your legs?” Because of this narrative that was created when she was born around being being proud of your body hair. She is kind of like, “What are you doing? Why are you removing your body hair? You don't have to do that.” I'm like, Okay, Uma. Thank you.VirginiaIt’s so cool to see that happening.It sounds like this was like a real mind meld of a process. How did you each think about what bodies you wanted to represent in the new book?  Nomi What we were thinking about with different bodies is anchoring in the gratitude for what our body enables us to do. And anchoring in that respect, and that love, and that feeling of celebration, because it is such a gift. Often, everything in the outside world can make us feel negative towards various aspects of ourselves. Creating vocabulary around what's positive and what feels good, enables a new kind of conversation to take place.We would receive sketches from Erika Medina, our illustrator—she really did an amazing job—and we would be like, “We would love to see this representation and that representation,” and just making sure that it was visually aligned with what we felt in our hearts. While we were writing it, we were definitely thinking about the visuals of the words. For us, it was very intertwined. We wanted the words to be meaningful, but also for the book to evoke a certain kind of imagery.ShellyTwo books, in particular really inspired me. They're not children's books, but they both address children and perception of bodies. The the first book was Roxane Gay's book Hunger. Something that stood out to me was her talking about children looking at her and pointing at her and being like, “Oh my God, that woman is so fat” and being horrified. Thinking of myself as a parent, but not wanting my children to ever do that to another human being.[Virginia’s note: This piece is a good read for strategizing on that kind of comment.]And then Sonya Renee Taylor's book, The Body Is Not an Apology. She talks about children having this sense of joy and wonder and curiosity about their bodies that goes away, and is eroded by messages from the culture about having to look a certain way, having to be skinny and light skinned and blue eyes, and blonde hair, all of that. And I, unfortunately, like so many people, grew up in a fatphobic household and a fatphobic culture. It's actually something I'm starting to think about that's specific to South Asian culture. We have a word for fat, “moti,” and it's pejorative. And it was a word that I feared. It was so negative for me. I think having my children and the pressure that postpartum people feel to have their bodies somehow go back to the way they were before giving birth to other human beings. VirginiaBecause that’s a realistic goal. ShellyI mean, that had a huge impact on me. And not wanting my kids to have to go through what I went through in terms of being so mean and self-critical to myself. So there were things in this book that were really important to me, like talking about stretch marks, right? And how they're tiger stripes. Those were things that were really important for me. Because I have these stretch marks now and I see them as a sign of my strength that I carried two human bodies in my body. I think children are taught that there are things about their body they should be ashamed. When in fact, they're quite beautiful, and they should be celebrated.Even though this is a children's book, it's very much a book for everyone, not just children. It's a book of, like Nomi said, of gratitude. This phrase, “I love my body, because…” can be a gratitude practice, and a reminder, when you're feeling unsure, or insecure, or whatever. Just reminding yourself, I love my body because it helps me move through the world. It helped me start that practice, writing this book, creating that gratitude practice for myself.VirginiaI'm just thinking too, as you're talking about these inspirations and the wonder that Sonya Renee Taylor talks about that comes so naturally to kids. Little kids—like three or four year olds before the world descends on them in this way—don't feel like they have to justify these things about their bodies, right? They don't feel like they have to give a reason for having stretch marks. It can just be that you're growing or this is your body. We, as adults, have learned this other language of needing to say, “Well, the stretch marks are because of pregnancies.” Some of my stretch marks are just fat, you know?And I love this idea of starting in this place of gratitude and meeting kids where hopefully at least some of the kids reading this book still are, in this place of “of course, I love my body, why wouldn't I love my body?”That's so powerful to think about how at some point, however fleetingly, we all started there.ShellyYou're exactly right. All of us have signs of our growth and our development and we're told that it has to look a certain way. Like, for some reason, having a mooch or a moustache at two or three is okay, but at 12 and 13, it's not. I went through my mother putting bleach on my skin and trying to turn my hair blonde. So unnatural. And I think it was her way of protecting me, but I think it has to be a choice. And it has to be something that a person wants to do, versus “This is what I have to do to make myself acceptable.” NomiWith kids, these neural pathways are being highly developed and we want to be building up that muscle memory of feeling good about their bodies. When they're met with that resistance of the negative narrative, they build that internal muscle that much more where they're able to actually think about it for themselves, rather than just accepting what they've been taught.VirginiaWhat I really love about the book is that you do expand this idea of body beyond just physical to talk about intellectual gifts. It takes the focus off the aesthetic completely, right?NomiBoth of my parents are rabbis and I grew up with a sense that our external bodies were not the most important thing at all. Not that we were like schlumpy, but it definitely was not about pop culture and whatever the trends were growing up. So when I started doing fashion photography and I saw that the focus was so based on the external, I was like, “There's a disparity here.”There's a disconnect between the value we place on our external looks—even though there's value to that and it's okay to want to feel good externally. I think we lose that conversation. Because we get so stuck in this fat skinny/binary convo versus like, actually, what does it mean to self care and take pride in this external, in our looks, versus this internal. That's how we're able to actually live our lives and be connected more to our internal souls and everything.ShelleyGrowing up as a woman, in any culture, but in this culture in particular, there's so much emphasis on having to be beautiful or considered beautiful or being attractive. It's certainly an aspect of South Asian culture, as well, that's pretty problematic. We want kids to be thinking about what our bodies are capable of —beyond whether or not someone thinks we're pretty or cute or handsome. And we're capable of so much, right? The way we can move through the world, the way we can read and learn. We talk in the book about building bridges and skyscrapers. The possibilities of what we're all able to do is so much more than our physical appearance. That's definitely important to me. I'm very mindful of what we say, especially to girls. “Oh, you're so pretty,” is the first thing that will come out of someone's mouth about a girl versus her intellect versus her capabilities.VirginiaYou also have kids using wheelchairs and you're speaking to mobility on a lot of different levels, which I appreciated.NomiWe have a child with a hearing aid, too! VirginiaThat's great. I'm curious to talk a little bit too about how you feel publishing is doing on this front. Book publishing in general is super white, super not evolved on a lot of these issues. As recently as like three or four years ago, when parents would ask me for book recommendations, I felt like I had nothing to give them. And now we have your beautiful book, we have Tyler Feder, we have Nabela Noor. In the picture book space, I feel like we are starting to make some progress. I mean, not enough. But I now have a list of like eight books I can put on the website, as opposed to one that was self published by someone 20 years ago. What do you think is changing? ShellyYeah, I definitely think there's a change. I think a lot of writers in the social justice space are looking to children's literature as a space to start having these conversations because that's when ideas and values are formed. I mean, there have been studies showing the percentage of books that feature children of color being so low compared to picture books about animals talking and things like that. VirginiaYes, we have more books about snails or something than about Black kids.ShellyAnd I think, more and more, authors of color are wanting to create narratives that are stories that children walking into a bookstore can relate and see themselves on the cover of a book and messages that are important for all children to learn. When I wrote Laxmi, I wanted something that was going to be empowering for hairy, brown girls all over the world. And I think more and more authors are wanting to do that, and publishers are seeing the value of that. I think we're recognizing as a culture that there's so much unlearning we all have to do from how we were socially conditioned to think about ourselves and about others and the value of starting really early, starting as young as you can with with reading these books. It does make a huge difference. I mean, I didn't believe it, but when Laxmi came out, people were saying, “Oh, my gosh, my kid discovered they had leg hair and is really excited.”VirginiaAww, I love this.ShellyAnd same thing with I Love My Body Because. Erica’s illustrations are phenomenal and kids are seeing themselves in this book, like, “Oh, that looks like me.” Or being able to be inquisitive and asking questions, like maybe they haven't seen someone in a wheelchair before, but then they're seeing it in a picture book. That's an opportunity for caregivers or teachers to have have those conversations about the diversity of what bodies look like. I think more is needed, right?There's this book Beautifully Me which is about a Bengali South Asian girl.VirginiaYes, that’s Nabela Noor’s book!ShellyThere has to be a point that we get to where you see a child, a fat child, and the book is not about her fatness or his fatness or their fatness and it's just about them going trick-or-treating or just about them playing. I think we have that discussion a lot as authors of color. There doesn't always have to be a book about our our struggling or us being teased or us having to confront oppression, right? We can just be kids. So I think that's the future and that's the next step that we need to get to.VirginiaCompletely agree. I do love Beautifully Me. But now I just want to follow that character doing something completely unrelated to how she looks.Any other fun responses you're getting from parents or kids when they're seeing the book and seeing themselves?NomiI have several clients who are teachers who brought the book to their classrooms and they've sent me these really adorable drawings of what the children love about their body. Shelly and I are actually in process of developing some curriculum and worksheets to help people who are reading the book to others to have the conversation. Because it's about reading the book, but it's really about the discussion that flows from reading it and continuing that conversation after you're done turning the final page.ShellyWe we went to a local library here in Georgia, in Lilburn. We read the book to the kids and to the families. And at the end, whenever we're reading the book, even at home, the last phrase is, “So what do you love about your body?” And we turn that question to the audience. And this boy, he must have been eight or nine years old, he said, “I love my body because I'm Black and I’m me.” And he was there with his younger siblings and it was just so, so powerful. So beautiful. And you know, his mom was there, smiling with pride. That's why we wrote the book.Butter for your Burnt ToastShelleyI have a pretty robust mental health self care regimen which includes a therapist, a life coach, but I've added in incense. I light incense in the morning and it helps me relax and set the mood for the day. I've gotten into crystals, as well. And then I recently started going to this local healing arts center. It's called Decatur Healing Arts and there's a woman there who's trained in Reiki and in gong baths which is like sound baths and it has been amazing. It has changed my life.VirginiaSo wait is a sound bath… I've been confused about sound baths for a long time, so I'm glad you brought this up. Is there water involved? Or you're bathed in sound?ShellyYou’re bathed in sound.VirginiaThank you for clarifying what was obviously a dumb question.ShellyNo, not at all. I mean, I didn't know anything about it. But I was talking to my therapist and I was in like, a difficult space with my my day job, and I needed to find release. She's like, “You're Indian, have you tried ayurveda? Have you done any of these things?” I'm like, no, I haven't. And I've been taking SSRIs for forever. VirginiaAlso a useful tool.ShellyYeah, SSRIs are great. I'm very pro but I needed more than that. And gong baths, incense, and crystals have been a great addition to my mental health regimen. So I wanted to share with folks.NomiSo my butter on toast situation is I found this journal called the Cycles Journal, which allows you to track your flow with the moon. I'm interested in continuing this internal work as a way of empowering women to view the things that maybe have made us feel less than, like getting your period is a negative and being like, actually, how can we harness our flow as a way of empowering ourselves to live our best lives, basically. So, this woman named Rachel Amber created it. And you can track where you are in your cycle with the moon and all the different ways to kind of check in with how you're feeling, what your body is doing. I'd highly recommend it.1VirginiaI love anything that helps people understand our bodies, more especially stuff like menstruation, which has such a ridiculous taboo.My recommendation this week is a gardening recommendation—I don't know if either of you are gardeners, but my podcast listeners have to indulge a lot of gardening talk. And where I am, in the Hudson Valley, it is now Dahlia season. Dahlias are native to Mexico. They are a spectacular, spectacular flower. We have to plant the tubers in the middle of May. And then you really wait all summer because they have to like grow up from just a root. They start to bloom at the end of July, but they really hit their stride in September and October. It is just something I really need in my fall because I don't have seasonal depression exactly, but I definitely have seasonal anxiety. I am not someone who likes like traditional cliched fall things like pumpkin spice and all that because it just means the end times are coming. That is not exciting for me.But realizing that I could grow dahlias and still have really spectacular flowers in my garden at this time of year helps me. Now I really look forward to September and October. Last year, they even bloomed into November. So, fingers crossed for a late frost this year.Thank you both for being here. Again, the book is I Love My Body Because. Tell listeners where else they can follow you both?ShellyYou can follow me on Twitter at @maanandshelly. You can also follow my organization, Sur Legal Collaborative which is a nonprofit immigrant and worker rights organization at @SurLegal_ATL and that's the same on Instagram. And then my Instagram is @LikhoShelly. Likho means ‘to write’ in Hindi.NomiThe best way to see what's happening is my Instagram @boudoirbynomi. It's a place with my photography, but I also talk a lot about mindfulness and getting more in touch with your body. Then also I have another Instagram handle, @nomifoto, and that's where I also post stuff about the book and just some other things going on in my life. So Instagram is the best way to see what's up.---We just want to acknowledge that not everyone with a uterus has, or can have, or wants to have a regular monthly menstruation cycle. And that is totally fine and totally normal!

Today’s episode, a conversation with blogger and fat liberation activist Linda Gerhardt, is the kind of story I can only tell on Burnt Toast. Because lipedema—despite impacting some 11 percent of women worldwide—isn’t a Sexy News Story. It doesn’t have the kind of hook mainstream media outlets want. Lipedema patients aren’t the kind of victims (i.e. thin white ladies) that America loves to rally around. But there are millions of them living quietly, in pain, unable to access healthcare or even clear answers because, as Linda puts it, “lipedema lives in this cursed intersection of medical fatphobia and medical misogyny.”If you want more conversations like this one—about the true costs of anti-fat bias, told in ways that center fat folks—please  rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. It's just $5 per month or $50 for the year. Producing a weekly podcast requires a significant investment of time and resources from several talented people. Paid subscriptions make all of our work possible and enable us to offer an honorarium to expert guests, which is key to centering marginalized voices in this space.And don't forget to preorder Virginia's new book! Fat Talk: Parenting In the Age of Diet Culture comes out April 25, 2023 from Henry Holt. Preorder your signed copy now from Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the USA). You can also order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, Kobo or anywhere you like to buy books.CW: This episode does contain some discussion of medical fatphobia and medical trauma, as well as prescription weight loss and weight loss surgery. If any of that wouldn't be good for you to listen to, please take care of yourself and give this one a miss.Disclaimer: Virginia is a journalist and human with a lot of informed opinions. Virginia is not a nutritionist, therapist, doctor, or any kind of health care provider. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions she gives are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.BUTTER & OTHER LINKSWant to come on Virginia's Office Hours? Please use this form.Linda blogs at Fluffy Kitten PartyLinda's (awesome!) Instagram is @littlewingedpotatoesThe Standard of Care for Lipedema in the United States by Dr. Karen HerbstRagen Chastain on why movement doesn’t have to be joyful and health is not a moral obligationVirginia is watching Bad Sisters (on Apple TV). CREDITSThe Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia on Instagram or Twitter. Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing. The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe. Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell. Tommy Harron is our audio engineer. Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!Episode 64 TranscriptVirginiaWhy don’t we start by having you tell people a little bit about yourself and what you do?LindaMy name is Linda and I run a blog called Fluffy Kitten Party, which I chose because I couldn’t find a domain name that was allowed and available, so that was what I chose. I haven’t written in it for a while, but on that blog I wrote about fat liberation and Health at Every Size and my own experiences within the health care system.I also have an Instagram account, @littlewingedpotatoes, which is a Mystery Science Theater 3000 reference, for anybody who’s curious. That was another desperate choice when I couldn’t find a name and everything I tried was taken. I post a mix of memes and personal nonsense and fat liberation health and every size content. It’s a real grab bag, but you can always follow me there if you’re curious about what I do.This isn’t my full-time job, I have a full-time job doing something completely different as a consultant. I’m just a fat lady who’s really invested in fat liberation and Health at Every Size. I need it. And so I share my story, and my experiences and my thoughts and feelings and opinions in the hopes of moving things along. VirginiaI just want to say right now, anyone who’s not already following Linda, please follow Linda, because just there have been so many issues over the years. I think you’re the first person who taught me about terms like “small fat.” You’re doing 101 stuff for those of us who need it. LindaThank you. The real feather in my cap is that I am one of the top search results for “Fat at Disney.” I will rest on that for quite a while, if not my whole life.VirginiaHow much higher can one fly? LindaIt’s the dream. VirginiaToday we are going to talk about lipedema, which is a condition you have been struggling with for many years. But you’ve only recently gotten properly diagnosed and started talking publicly about this.littlewingedpotatoesA post shared by Linda (@littlewingedpotatoes)LindaHindsight is 20/20 and having the diagnosis, I can look back and reconstruct when it started for me. I was a thick, chunky kid, but at puberty, I got really lumpy. Like, I was hoping for boobs and I got giant thighs and a fat ass instead. I was like, “Well, that kind of sucks.” I looked around at my peers and I’m like, “Yeah, I’m lumpier than you guys. I’m shaped very differently.” But I just kind of carried that and lived my life.It wasn’t until I was in my mid 20s, I was working as a photographer—very active job, lugging equipment up and downstairs, setting it up and taking it down multiple times a day—and I started to have problems with swelling and pain in my legs. And just for context, I was a baby photographer. So this involves getting down on baby level. I spent 20 to 30 minutes at a time on my knees without any real issue. So when I started having this pain and swelling, like first of all, this could affect my livelihood if I can’t kneel anymore. I went to the doctor, and they were kind of like, "Huh, well, your legs are really weird. They’re kind of firm and full of fluid, but we don’t know what that is. But you should probably just get weight loss surgery.” So I ended up at a weight loss surgery seminar. Went through a few beginning steps of getting weight loss surgery, but ended up not getting approved because I had terrible high deductible pre-Affordable Care Act insurance. So I was kind of saved by my bad insurance. So I just said, “Okay, well, I’ll just keep living my life and do my best.” Then in my early 30s, I started getting a lot of pain right underneath my knees. I had developed this pad of fat, for lack of a better term, that was on both sides, so symmetrical, and just extremely painful. If my little eight pound cat placed one paw beneath my knees, I hit the ceiling. It was like somebody was stabbing me.Pain is normal to some degree in life but legs that are throbbing with pain all the time is not quite normal. So, I started the journey of going to different doctors and saying, “Do you have any idea what’s going on with me?” Didn’t really get anywhere. I had many, many scans done of the veins in my legs. Veins are healthy. Ruled out things like congestive heart failure. And it was actually really frustrating because it’s great to be healthy, but when you’re in pain and you know something’s wrong, when you get that clean bill of health, it’s really frustrating. I didn’t have a lot of those metabolic issues that doctors were looking for. They didn’t know what to do with me.VirginiaMeanwhile, you’re still in pain and you have no answers as to what’s happening.LindaYeah, and my mobility decreased. It had really inhibited my ability to do a lot of things because my legs were heavy and painful and swollen. A friend of mine, I was complaining to her about my sore legs, and she said, “Have you ever heard of this person on Instagram? She has painful legs and looks pretty similar to you.” So I follow the link that my friend sent me and I went to this woman’s Instagram. And it was like running into a wall because this woman had my body.Her legs looked like mine. And she had a condition called lipedema, which I had never heard of. This was I think 2018 or so. And so I started researching lipedema like, what is this? Is this lymphedema? I didn’t know anything about it. And as I was looking at the description of the condition, I thought, Oh my God, this is me. This is what I have.I started this process of going to doctors and being like, Have you heard of lipedema? I think I might have it. And either they had no idea what it was, or they were just like, “eh probably not.” Because there is this misconception about lipedema that it only is present in thin women who have large lower bodies, which is not the case.VirginiaOh, so it was like, they only diagnose it in someone they don’t expect to be fat.LindaPrecisely. That’s it on the nose. I’m kind of fat everywhere and that’s how I’ve always been—like I said, I was a chunky kid, I was a chunky teenager, I’m a chunky adult. And so they would think, “Oh, well, you can’t have that because you are fat elsewhere.” And I thought, oh, okay, well, maybe I don’t have it. But you know, I just I had it, I knew I had it.Eventually I found a doctor who specializes in lipedema. He’s a surgeon and he was able to diagnose me on sight because lipedema has a very characteristic look. You can see it on people’s bodies. You can also feel it, because the texture of the fat with lipedema is not normal. It kind of feels like marbles. Which are these nodules. And some of those nodules can get extremely large. So when I was 13 and saying, “Hey, I’m so much lumpier than my peers,” that was a big part of it.A lot of things clicked into place once I had a name to call it. But the bummer is that there really isn’t much that can be done for lipedema, because doctors, especially in the US don’t really know a whole lot about it. As a condition, we’ve known about it since the 1940’s. But it’s still kind of a mystery and if you went to your family doctor and wanted to talk about lipedema, they would probably have no idea what it is. I’ve heard of people going into their doctor’s office, telling them to Google Images of lipedema and then the doctor goes, “Oh, well, you absolutely have that.”VirginiaThat is wild.LindaIt’s been interesting to see the gaps in medical knowledge among medical professionals. It’s kind of the saddest club because you have a name you can call the thing that you experience, but nobody can really help you in any significant way. There is help available. But it’s very tricky to get because this is all very new and experimental and nothing is really evidence based at this point because people are not interested in helping lumpy fat ladies.VirginiaSo just to do the 101 thing for all of us who are learning here, let’s just say what lymphedema is versus lipedema and how they’re related. LindaSo lymphedema is something that you’ll often see in people who have had cancer and have lymph nodes removed, where the lymph fluid—which we all have, it’s just this waste fluid that flows through our cells—is pooling in a particular area. So, in lymphedema, somebody will have like one arm, typically, that’s very large and swollen and painful, or a leg. And in lipedema, it’s all over and it’s slightly different.How lipedema works: It’s believed to be hereditary, so your genes are kind of a loaded gun and hormones are the trigger. So a lot of women will start to see symptoms of lipedema at puberty. And then if they get pregnant or start birth control, that can kick it into high gear. A lot of women who have lipedema, notice it after a pregnancy. I noticed it after starting Depo-Provera. People gain weight on Depo-Provera, but I gained a significant amount of weight on Depo-Provera. And that was around the time I started having the symptoms that worried me, like the pain under my knees.All of us have fat cells that are moving fluid in and out all the time—that’s how our cells work. With people who have lipedema, the cells are letting fluids in and not cycling them out fast enough. So these fat cells are just full of this garbage fluid that your body is supposed to be getting rid of. And it causes pain, it causes swelling.And one thing I did want to note because I keep saying women, lipedema affects almost exclusively women and people assigned female at birth. I haven’t read any cases of cis men with it. Lipedema is hormonal and lives in this cursed intersection of medical fatphobia and medical misogyny. Because people aren’t interested in learning how women’s bodies work.VirginiaNo, nope, definitely not. Or including them in medical studies until like 10 years ago. LindaSo these fat cells that are holding onto fluid, it can cause overgrowth of fat. It almost kind of spreads and builds upon itself. So that can cause compression on your lymphatic vessels in your lymph nodes and that can cause lymphedema. Later on when you have widespread lymphatic dysfunction—which is where I live right now, I have leg lipedema and I also have a mild case of lymphedema that is nonetheless very painful and annoying in one of my legs. That is called lipolymphedema, which is the final stage of lipedema. And it’s hard to deal with, medically, because you’ve got two things going on. You’re full of fluid and nobody wants to work on you.VirginiaThis is a lot you’re dealing with. I just want to take a minute and say, as someone who considers you a friend, it’s been really tough to watch how much you’ve had to struggle and it’s really fucking unfair.LindaThank you. I appreciate the support. Just hearing that it’s unfair is really helpful to me because it’s the barriers to getting help are really significant. There’s not a whole lot of help available because, again, people don’t understand what it is, which I think is a travesty in and of itself. If I were an ob*sity researcher, I would be interested to find out what’s making all of these fat ladies so lumpy and miserable. Like, why are they in pain? Why are they lumpy? Why is their fat different? What is going on?I think it’s really fascinating. And there just isn’t really much research. The treatment options are limited. I wouldn’t even call them treatment, I would call them symptom management. Compression is the frontline treatment. Wearing compression garments, pneumatic compression pumps.Manual lymphatic drainage massage has been a life changer for me. It kind of gets that lymph fluid flowing and helps with pain and swelling and kind of loosens you up. It’s actually really wild, I’ll walk into a massage appointment and my shoes and pants will be tight. And I’ll leave and my shoes are loose and my pants are loose.VirginiaWow. So over the course of the session you really see a difference.LindaI can feel the lymph moving. It’s very strange. It’s almost like water trickling inside your body.VirginiaWhoa. That’s intense.Linda It’s it’s a little weird, but now I look forward to it. I need it every every couple of weeks—ideally every week, but it’s not covered by insurance.VirginiaI was going to say that sounds expensive.LindaIt’s definitely expensive. VirginiaYou’ve talked a little bit on Instagram about looking into surgical options.LindaYeah, at this point the major surgical option is liposuction. This is not normal, healthy fat, this is abnormal—I don’t want to use the term “diseased,” but it’s not healthy tissue. So removing that tissue also removes a lot of the pain, the nodules that cause that immediate sense of “oh my god, don’t touch me.” And there’s a network of surgeons, they’re not affiliated with each other, but they are plastic surgeons who perform liposuction on lipedema patients. It is different than standard liposuction because you’re not looking for aesthetics, you’re basically looking to remove as much lipedema fat as you safely can so that the patient experiences relief. I’ve heard of people getting liposuction who say that they feel better being wheeled out of the surgical room than they did going in, even though they come out with drains on.VirginiaRight and recovering from anesthesia.LindaBut again, your insurance isn’t likely to want to cover liposuction because people hear liposuction, they think, Oh, that’s cosmetic. That’s optional. And a lot of the plastic surgeons are frankly used to being able to pick and choose their patients and not operate on people that they don’t want to operate on. So, especially for larger patients, it can be a real difficult process to find a surgeon who wants to operate on you, especially if you also have lymphedema, which is another complicating factor.So that’s been where I’ve been looking into getting help and finding door after door getting slammed in my face. But that’s one of the treatment options that’s available. It is considered experimental because there haven’t been any longterm peer-reviewed studies. There has been some preliminary research into it. Dr. Karen Herbst is one of the researchers who has been really proactive about publishing research papers about lipedema. She also published [a paper called] The Standard of Care for Lipedema in the United States. But this is all really new. It’s kind of the wild West. And in terms of treatment, gosh, if you go into a Facebook community for people with lipedema, people are just gonna scream “keto” at you until you leave. VirginiaSo I want to get into the keto of it all in a minute, but on the surgery piece: Listening to you talk, I’m just thinking about what a disservice doctors are doing to patients here. Because plastic surgery has become this specialty that we associate with aesthetics, right? We associate it with nose jobs and boob jobs and lipo for thinner thighs. When it should be very focused on treating conditions like yours and things like burn victims. But because diet culture, because beauty culture, etc, the money for this specialty is not in helping lumpy fat ladies. The money is in doing it in this other way. And I’m just thinking about how much that has distorted the ethics of that entire specialty, but also your ability to access care.LindaI mean, plastic surgeons do a lot of non-cosmetic procedures. I would say most of them are trained to do things like help babies with cleft palates, and help people who have skin issues and injuries that require resetting bones and that kind of intense surgery. But people hear liposuction in particular, and they think of the only utility as making a person thinner for purposes of vanity. Literally, my legs could look like hamburger meat and if they didn’t hurt, I would be fine with that. They could give me like wooden pirate legs and I would be fine with that. The reason I want this surgery is not because I want to be smaller, I’m just looking for relief from this condition that is causing widespread lymphatic dysfunction in my body. And that’s it.I think there’s also this issue of capitalism within the doctors who treat lipedema. There’s a lot of marketing. They’re all in private practice. So some of them don’t work with insurance at all, right? And they’re looking to market themselves, so they’re also looking at a patient and saying, “will this give me a good before and after picture that I can put on social media?” And my legs are probably not gonna be beautiful after surgery. I just want them to not hurt. I want them to function. VirginiaAnd how bananas that this is not a success point that a surgeon feels like would market his or her practice effectively? And is it your impression from being as active you are in the lipedema community, that the thin woman with the bigger lower body, that she is more able to access this treatment than someone like you?LindaOh, 100 percent. I’m in a couple of communities online for people who are pursuing or have had or will get liposuction for their lipedema. It’s much easier for thinner patients not only find surgeons who will happily operate on them, but to get insurance coverage. Because that’s sort of the new frontier, is getting your insurance company to actually cover all or some of the procedure. And it is sequential, so typically for people with lipedema, we’re not talking one and done. We’re talking five, six procedures, possibly things like thigh lifts and skin removal, because it really can be disfiguring in a lot of ways.VirginiaI was wondering if there was recurrence. I have endometriosis and I had surgery to remove all my endometrial cysts, but my body keeps making more endometrial cysts. They can remove the current issue, but they can’t turn off the problem completely.LindaExactly. It’s exactly like that. So if you have liposuction for lipedema, you’re not looking for a cure. You’re just looking to improve your quality of life in the short term or the long term. It’s hard to say because there haven’t been many studies. Anecdotally, people can see it come back in other areas. I’ve heard of patients saying, “Okay, my abdomen is growing lipedema now, now that it’s been removed from my legs.” So it can recur. It’s really just sort of the last hope for people who are in a lot of pain and want to have some option to live a normal life, even if it’s just for five years after surgery.VirginiaI mean, that’s huge. LindaIt’s definitely not a cure because, frankly, we don’t understand why it happens. And until somebody is curious enough to investigate that question of why this is happening to certain people and what is kicking it into gear, how can we slow it down? How can we stop it? There’s not really anything that we can do significant for people with lipedema, aside from manage those symptoms and try to provide a decent quality of life and mobility for as long as possible.VirginiaI’m just filled with white hot fury right now. Because it is, as you said, this intersection with women’s healthcare in general. How little we understand endometriosis, how little we understand migraines, how little we understand PCOS, all of these conditions that, like lipedema, we have known about for decades. And yet, because they primarily happen not to cis white men, we haven’t bothered to do the science and that bias is just holding us back.And because there’s this expectation that women should be okay with living with pain, right? Women’s pain is so dismissed and minimized. That it’s just part of being a woman that your life’s gonna be full of this hormonal driven constellation of pain, and that we should accept that.LindaI sometimes wonder what I would be capable of if my legs didn’t hurt. Like, what would somebody with endometriosis achieve if they weren’t, like out of commission in like horrible pain for like a week of every month? It’s unreal that it’s allowed.VirginiaIt’s completely ridiculous. White hot fury for that.The other thing I have white hot fury about is that of course as you’ve been on this journey, trying to access the liposuction or any other type of treatment you’ve been able to find, the number one thing doctors have been saying to you over and over is just lose weight, right?LindaYeah, sometimes with no modifier. Like, just that. And I’m like, “You acknowledge that I have this condition, that is a fat disorder, that makes it difficult or impossible for me to lose significant amounts of weight. But I also need to lose like 70 pounds so that you will feel more comfortable putting me under anesthesia? Even though if I went to a different surgeon in your same hospital system, and was like, ‘Well, I would like one weight loss surgery, please,’ they would happily put me under?”VirginiaNo problem with that anesthesia. LindaAnd I think the root of it and how this intersects with fat liberation is people have an expectation that—and I think it’s a very Calvinist American idea—that the outcome is the proof of your virtue. So, if you have a fat body, that is evidence that you have done something un-virtuous to get to that point. And that is very hard to untangle because it’s so ingrained in who we are.It’s so ingrained in our medical system that if you do the right things, and you follow the path, and you eat the right foods, and you exercise the right amount, if you do the correct things, you should be the ideal of the thin person. That is the expectation that most of us have is that we see a thin person and we think that they have done something correct. We see a fat person and we think they have done something incorrect and wrong and that they need to take some sort of corrective action, they need to change their behavior.The doctor who diagnosed me told me very clearly: “There’s no diet, you could have gone on, no exercise program you could have joined, that would have prevented you from having this body. This is lipedema. This is the condition that you have, and there’s nothing you could have done to prevent it.” And I wept. Because that’s the opposite of what I’ve heard my whole life, which is “Well look at you. You are clearly doing something wrong.”So either you’re at home with your secret Cheetos shovel or you’re lying to me in some way. There’s this suspicion—and there’s almost this desire, because the thing that has been suggested to me was, of course, weight loss surgery. And I haven’t read any evidence that it helps with lipedema. In fact, that’s how a lot of women discover they have lipedema. They’ll undergo weight loss surgery and they lose weight up top, in their face, in their chest, and their arms. And then they have this large lower body and it doesn’t budge. And so that’s when they go, “Oh, well, there’s something else going on here.”But weight loss surgery is also presented to me, like, “well, let’s just cross that off the list.” I don’t think that 75 percent of my stomach is a reasonable barrier for entry. It’s not like it’s something that we’re just going to try to exclude just for funsies.VirginiaI mean, what you’re outlining here about the puritanical Calvinist nature of it, I think, is just dead on. Because what they’re really saying to you is: “Even if this underlying lipedema is through no fault of your own, you need to atone for your body before we’ll help you.”What happened to meeting people where they are? What happened to “do no harm?” Even if you did have the Cheeto shovel, right? You still deserve health care, you still deserve to be treated like a human being. And that’s what’s missing.LindaYeah, for sure. And no disrespect to people with Cheeto shovels. Like, I love Cheetos. But there’s this desire to rake us over the coals, make us walk through the fire, jump through some hoops before we can get the thing that we need. I really think of it as proving our virtue. We understand that we have to atone and we have to sort of come to this place where we’ve been brought to our knees by all of the things that we’ve had to do just to prove that we’re not actually sinners. VirginiaAnd it removes your ability to advocate for yourself. You’re having to meet this arbitrary standard and perform the Good Fatty for them. Just the way you’re being asked to play this game is so insidious.LindaI think that one thing that a lot of lipedema patients have in common is that we approach every appointment as preparing for battle. And the end result is unfortunately that these interactions with doctors don’t tend to go well. Because we go in with our dukes up, because we’re expecting a fight, because that’s all we’ve ever gotten from people in those white coats.I wish that I could make myself smaller. I have tried. I’ve tried everything short of surgery. I gave myself gallstones when I tried Atkins. I’ve given myself kidney stones. I have put myself in the hospital. I have starved. I’ve exercised until my ankles were screaming at me and I could barely walk, and it doesn’t move the needle in any significant way. So at a certain point, I’m not willing to play that game anymore.I’m willing to play ball a little bit. Like if they said, “Well, we want you to follow this diet before [liposuction surgery.]” Sure, I can do that. But I’m not willing to allow myself to be raked over the coals in quite the way they want to and I’m certainly not willing to try out amputating part of my stomach, in case I’m lying and I do actually just eat a ton of food. I’m not willing to shrink my stomach just to prove to medical professionals that I’m worthy of treatment.We know that when we get a 90-year-old patient, they’re going to have certain risks. And there’s certain things you have to keep in mind if you’re operating on a 90 year old person who needs surgery. But you know you can’t change them. You can’t make them younger. Same thing with babies! Like, operating on small babies and children. It happens a lot. And it’s not a standard surgery, it’s not an ideal situation. But you can’t make them into fully grown a healthy adults. VirginiaWe have all these protocols to make pediatric surgery safe for their tiny bodies. LindaBut for fat people, it’s, “Well, let’s make the bodies smaller and more convenient for us,” instead of just allowing for the fact that, yeah, they might be harder to intubate, but we can do it. Again, if I wanted weight loss surgery, they would find a way. Because that’s highly profitable for them. VirginiaSo that is the super depressing story on the health care side.Another piece of this is how the Health at Every Size community has really let down folks with lipedema and in our haste to untangle health and weight, we often gloss over the lived experiences of chronically ill fat folks. So take us through that.LindaYeah, so for me personally, there’s a lot of shame in not being the Good Fatty and being the chronically ill fatty, who can’t go on a long hike because my legs are heavy and swollen and hurt. There’s this focus on “well, you can be healthy at any size, just do the health behaviors.” And, you know, some people can’t.Some people can’t be healthy, sometimes the literal problem is in your fat. So, it’s kind of this interesting contradiction, which I’ve been grappling with. Because I identified with Health at Every Size. I care about Health at Every Size. I want people to be able to access better medical care, and I want us to have this broader understanding of health, and maybe treat it more as a resource than an end goal. But we’re just not included in the conversation.And it can be a really weird place because, it’s a lot of thin yoga ladies giving advice that you can eat the cookie and you should engage in joyful movement. And literally, the only movement that I can manage these days is “I hate every second of it, but I did it anyway,” because I needed to get lymph flowing in my body. So it just kind of feels like we’re left out.I also think that there’s been a lot of capitalism that has infiltrated Health at Every Size. People marketing services as dietitians and coaches. And you know, get that bread. I want everybody to be able to make money. But the activism of going inside these systems and making substantive changes that produce better healthcare for fat patients—that isn’t happening because we’re all busy doing webinars and attending conferences where we all talk about the things that everybody already agreed upon.And there’s no outward looking, like how can we actually make life tangibly better for fat people and make it easier for them to access medical care? The house is on fire. People are dying. You can’t sit on the lawn and talk about the architecture of the building. I need you to get in the house and pull some people out. And that’s why I stopped really identifying as heavily with Health at Every Size as a movement and moved into fat liberation because this is ultimately oppression. This is systemic oppression of a certain population of people based on something that is not within their control. I think that I just want to see more action and more attempts to get inside the building and pull out the people who are suffering. VirginiaIt feels like what HAES ends up doing is not that different from what you’re experiencing from these doctors that are asking you to perform Good Fatty stuff for them. They’re asking you to say, “Of course I want to lose weight, of course I’ll do anything to be thin.” And then the Health at Every Size folks are saying, “You have to pretend you can be healthy, even if you’re not healthy.” And so there’s still this performance element. And there’s this discomfort in acknowledging: Yes, some fat people are chronically ill. Sometimes that chronic illness is related to fatness. As you’ve said, lipedema is essentially a fat disorder. And weight loss is not the answer. Healthcare is the answer. But in the haste to promote this idea of being healthy at every size, we’re rendering invisible these other struggles. LindaThe point where I started feeling this disconnect between HAES and and my own life was when I started developing lymphedema in my left leg. And again, it’s pretty mild. But even the most mild case of lymphedema is very uncomfortable and painful. And it was affecting my ability to walk around and comfortably engage in any sort of movement. There was a lot of shame that came with lymphedema with the realization that this is growing. I can’t control it. It scares the shit out of me. And it’s also making it so that I am one of those fat people.Because I think there is a challenge point with fat people for HAES in particular, where we start seeing people who have lymphedema, people who have chronic illnesses, and their weight is not immaterial, that’s the body that they exist in. And sometimes that can come with unattractive conditions like lymphedema.But I think that HAES spaces are very uncomfortable with those types of people who have some issues that may be associated with their weight. And I’m not saying caused by, but associated with, because people at the higher end of the weight spectrum, oftentimes do struggle with lymphedema and other issues and there can be a lot of shame in it. I can feel the discomfort sometimes, when we talk about these issues, because they’re seeing a fat person who’s not healthy, who can’t go put on yoga pants and go hike around and engage in joyful movement. And lumpy fat ladies who are not engaging in joyful movement just kind of get left out. And that makes me very sad as as one of the lumpy fat ladies.VirginiaI think it’s not even discomfort. I think they’re worried it’s gonna blow up the whole thing. They’re worried that doctors are going to be able to point to a case like yours and say, “Well see, you can’t have Health at Every Size. You can’t do it.” And that is such bullshit. They’re afraid. LindaYou can see that in who HAES spaces lift up as the icons. Like, you look at somebody like Ragen Chastain, who does amazing work. I think she’s fantastic! She’s also famous for being a fat person who ran marathons. So, those are the people that HAES wants as the mascots. And I hate to say it, but there are mascot fat people in HAES. And fat people who have messy medical conditions that are difficult to untangle and may have some association with weight. And it feels like if we admit that that is the case, then the whole worldview just gets blown up. VirginiaAnd I do like that Ragen has a great piece she wrote about how movement doesn’t have to be joyful and health is not a moral obligation. But you’re absolutely right, the way her work gets quoted by others is often reinforcing this very thing that I don’t think she wants to reinforce.So, not to make you do the thing of like, “tell us all how to fix it.” But what change do you want to see? How can people be good allies? LindaThe thing that I would really like to see is thinking strategically about social change. How do we create change? What’s our theory of change here? So that we can make a plan to do outreach to medical professionals. How can we get this message that fat people deserve health care in the bodies they currently have? How can we get that to exist in hospital systems? How can we take that nugget of wisdom that everybody deserves the right to health care? How can we put that into action so that when a fat patient walks into an office they can be met with compassion and a desire to care for them?Because that’s what’s not happening. I don’t work in the healthcare industry so I am not great at understanding what the path is to get into the right spaces, get in front of the right people, get in front of the right organizations, I don’t really know. But I think that HAES has often split off and offered this place that operates outside of the mainstream medicine. And I want to see it infiltrate mainstream medicine. I want to see a takeover, where if a fat patient walks into an office, they have nothing to worry about. They will be met with somebody who wants to help them and can care for them and is not going to blame their body for the failings of training of medical professionals. That’s what I want.And I guess that’s not really as a strategy. But that’s the end result I want to see. And I really want to look to the people who do have those connections that experience that clout to think about that problem. VirginiaI actually am really encouraged how often I do get an email from someone in medical school right now, saying they’ve listened to the podcast or they’ve read something. I just got one from someone saying, “I was listening to the podcast, I had to pull over and cry,” and I’m like, “good.” I mean, I’m sorry you cried, but good. This is what we need. It is these people who are going to be health care providers going in and thinking about how they can blow it all up and rebuild something better. LindaI am encouraged because I do see change happening. It’s not happening overnight, but I do see small shifts. And one thing that I am also seeing is that people are learning about lipedema and getting diagnosed. Again, saddest club, we can’t really help you.VirginiaBut it is true knowing what it is is the first step of anything happening. That is something. Leave a commentButter for Your Burnt ToastlittlewingedpotatoesA post shared by Linda (@littlewingedpotatoes)LindaI want to say my adopted kittens. Go adopt a kitten everybody. I adopted two of them recently and they bring such joy into my life. I could literally just stare at them all day. So adopt a pet, go to your shelter, find some cute animals, adopt them and love them. They make everything better, I swear to God.VirginiaAnd wait, one you thought was a girl and then turned out not to be a girl. So remind me their names?LindaLuke and Liam. Liam used to be Leia until Leia was walking across my desk and I looked under the tail and I was like, “Oh, you are not Leia.” The Star Wars theme is gone. But they’re still very cute and fluffy and adorable.VirginiaThey are so adorable. One of them has a little heart on his fur. Oh my gosh, they’re so sweet.LindaHe’s a real life Care Bear. My husband sent me a picture of this kitten that was at a local rescue and he had a heart, it’s like a perfect tabby heart. He’s a white cat with Tabby spots. He’s got a tabby heart. And I just lost my cat Pixel after 17 years of living with her. And I thought okay, well my heart is broken. And this kitten has a heart on his side. VirginiaMy older daughter is a devoted passionate animal person who would like us to have about 900 more pets than we currently do. And we have a dog, a cat, and a fish tank, but it’s not enough and I often show her your kitten content. We have a couple celebrity pets we follow on Instagram and Luke and Liam are on the list. We like to check in on them,LindaLove it. I’ll tell them that they are famous.VirginiaAt least locally, in my house. Yes.Well, my recommendation for butter this week is a TV show. I’m obsessed with Bad Sisters. It’s on Apple TV with Sharon Horgan. She was in that really awesome show “Catastrophe” a few years ago. She’s an Irish comedian, actor, writer. And it is kind of like Irish “Big Little Lies,” but better. If you like dark comedy. It’s about this family of five sisters—and this is not a spoiler because it’s in the first episode—one of them is married to a total asshole. And the other four are plotting to kill him. And I just love ladies murdering a shitty man.LindaI also love to see that. I love to see it. VirginiaI just love any kind of content about destroying a terrible man. And the sisterhood relationships are beautiful. It’s really funny. It’s beautiful because it’s in Ireland. So check it out.Linda, thank you so much. This was an amazing conversation. I am so appreciative of your work, and you taking the time to educate all of us and share all of this. Tell listeners where they can follow you and how we can support your work.LindaThank you so much for having me! I really love that you’re talking about this and that you invited me on. You can follow me on Instagram @littlewingedpotatoes. Again, lots of memes, lots of cats, but you’ll also get some fat liberation content occasionally. And you can also check out my blog Fluffy Kitten Party. I haven’t written there for a while, but I think I should start doing that again. So, maybe there will be a new post.

This week, we're taking it old school with a solo Virginia episode! She's reading her most popular essay to date, about why you should stop romanticizing your child's lunchbox. (Note: We recorded this before the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health; check the transcript for some thoughts on these new developments.) If you'd like to support Burnt Toast, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. Producing a weekly podcast requires a significant investment of time and resources from several talented people. Paid subscriptions make all of our work possible and enable us to offer an honorarium to expert guests, which is key to centering marginalized voices in this space.We've got an urgent call to action for the Burnt Toast Giving Circle! Details in the transcript. Help us fight for a blue majority in the Arizona state legislature. And don't forget to preorder Virginia's new book! Fat Talk: Parenting In the Age of Diet Culture comes out April 25, 2023 from Henry Holt. Preorder your signed copy now from Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the USA). You can also order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, Kobo or anywhere you like to buy books.Disclaimer: Virginia is a journalist and human with a lot of informed opinions. Virginia is not a nutritionist, therapist, doctor, or any kind of health care provider. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions she gives are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.BUTTER & OTHER LINKSWant to come on Virginia's Office Hours? Please use this form.The original essayHere's the Biden administration’s new National Strategy on hunger and nutrition, including school lunches. The pandemic school lunch scramble.Jennifer Gaddis on school lunchesSchool lunches are healthier than you thinkSo, what about processed foods?Meal planning mental loadstress-organizing my kitchenTomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle ZevinCome hiking with this amazing groupCREDITSThe Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia on Instagram or Twitter.Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting independent anti-diet journalism.Please Stop Romanticizing Your Child’s Lunchbox(This is a reprint of last year’s essay, with a few new additions in footnotes. If you read it before, just scroll down for the rest of the episode’s analysis and your Butter recs!)Back in April 2021, the USDA announced that it would extend a waiver that allows schools to serve free meals to all students through the entire 2021-2022 school year. Families no longer have to apply or demonstrate eligibility for free lunches in most districts; cafeterias are just feeding every kid who shows up for lunch. This effort started as a response to the pandemic-fueled increase in childhood hunger, as I reported for the New York Times last year. And anti-hunger advocates are hoping to make it a permanent change by getting Congress to pass the Universal School Meals Act.1 So we are now officially back to school in every district in the nation, and most kids are walking into a radically different cafeteria than ever before.   There are some nuances to this, of course. “Please note that USDA is not providing a free universal meal program,” a USDA spokesperson told me via email because I guess the government never wants to look like it’s caring too much. States have to opt in to the waiver before schools can serve free meals to all; otherwise they can participate in the normal National School Lunch Program, where kids pay full price, reduced price, or nothing based on their family’s income eligibility (meaning schools and families still have to do that application process).And some, such as the Waukesha School District in Wisconsin, have opted not to participate. In that case, it was because school board members worried that feeding kids lunch would make them “spoiled” and also, rather inexplicably, pave the way to mask mandates. (The school district has since reversed that decision.) The USDA does not yet have data on how many districts around the country opted in or out, but the same spokesperson confirmed that “the majority” of states are in. So we can expect to see a big spike in participation numbers from the last time this data was collected, in 2014-2015, when just one in five schools offered free lunch to all students. I also did some extremely un-scientific Instagram polling (on my own account, and then I borrowed Yummy Toddler Food’s much larger one), 81 to 89 percent of followers who voted said lunch is free at their kids’ school this year. Unless you are a heartless Wisconsin school board member, universal free lunch is unequivocally great for the estimated 12 million American kids who can’t get enough to eat at home. There is no debate about that (which is why we should have been doing it for decades already). But what if you don’t have a financial need for school lunch? The real question—that may very well determine whether or not universal free lunch becomes a permanent part of the American education system—is: Will Nice White Parents let our kids eat school food? So far, the answer appears to be: An awful lot of us won’t. “Roughly 20 million eligible children, mostly from middle- and upper-middle-class families, continue to opt out of the national program by bringing lunch or by buying special à la carte food items not covered by the program,” wrote Jennifer Gaddis, PhD, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin and author of The Labor of Lunch, in a New York Times op-ed from February 2020. We don’t yet have data on how the shift to free lunch will change that for this school year, so I once again turned to Instagram for more insight. In my (again, totally unscientific!) poll of 210 parents, 49 percent of parents said yep, their kids are eating the free school lunch, and 51 percent said no, they are still sending in lunchboxes. In other words: Just over half of this group of parents are paying for a meal—and investing time and labor in preparing said meal—that their children could be eating for free. I suspect the vast majority of these folks were horrified by that Wisconsin school board. These are parents who support free lunch programs, in theory, at least, for other kids. Indeed, some said they didn’t want to take free lunch away from kids who need it. But the reality is that participation rates drive this program’s funding: “When millions of families [pack lunch], their actions reduce the political will and financial resources necessary to make public school lunches better for everyone,” wrote Gaddis last year. I checked in with Gaddis yesterday and she confirmed that this is still true, even though lunch is now free. The federal government reimburses schools per student eating lunch and they reimburse at the highest rate per students eating for free, so schools can now receive the maximum subsidy.2Perhaps even more important: When lunch is free for everyone, then the kids who need free lunch aren’t stigmatized by the kids who don’t. “You can often see huge divides along income and racial lines in cafeterias between the kids who get free lunch and the kids who bring lunch from home,” notes Gaddis. “If we want to create spaces in our schools that are inclusive and welcoming for all, participation really matters. When people with the economic means opt out of school lunch, it sends the message to policy makers that this is a program they don’t really have to care about.”So why aren’t more parents—especially progressive parents—sending their kids to the lunch line? Diet culture has taught us that school lunches aren’t good enough for our kids. I asked the lunch-packers for follow-up and this lesson came through explicitly in about 14 percent of my respondents, and was implied by many more. “While the lunch is free, it’s not actually healthy and I like knowing my kids aren’t eating junk,” said one mom. In fact, school lunches are pretty darn healthy: A 2018 analysis of over 16 years of data concluded that schools “are now the single healthiest place Americans are eating.” This shift is due, in large part, to the 2010 Healthy and Hunger-Free Kids Act, championed by Michelle Obama, which overhauled school nutrition standards and changed the nutritional intake of school children in several important ways. And, as Gaddis argued in her piece, with more kids eating, school lunches could get even healthier: “The food-service director of the Austin Independent School District, Anneliese Tanner, told a local news outlet that the district could afford to serve grass-fed beef if the kids who currently opt out of the national program would eat school lunch just once a week.” (Tanner is now the director of research and assessment at the Chef Ann Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to helping schools do more from-scratch cooking.)But no, cafeteria meals likely won’t pass muster if your definition of healthy comes from diet culture. “We eat plant-based,” or, “There aren’t enough whole foods” came up a lot in my Instagram DMs. See also: “Kid says school lunch tastes like plastic,” and many similar comments equating school food with “processed food,” “fast food,” or “diner food.” And it’s not just my followers. In Royal Oaks, Michigan, parents protested when the elementary school’s free lunch included grab-and-go items like bagged Goldfish crackers and Scooby-Doo Graham Cracker Sticks. And the Chef Ann Foundation where Tanner now works had to apologize recently after posting a meme unfavorably comparing school meals to ultra-processed foods. It’s also true, as Bettina Elias Siegel reported last week (CW for o-words), that due to Covid restrictions, labor shortages, and supply chain issues, many schools have been forced to switch out hot meals for grab-and-go lunches. Gaddis acknowledges that these issues may be impacting menu composition right now: “What you’re likely to find in a typical cafeteria right now is more processed food and less scratch cooking than you would have seen pre-pandemic,” she says. And, Covid or not, many schools incorporate processed foods into their meals, both because such foods are cheap and convenient when you’re mass-producing meals (and don’t have the budget to hire experienced school cooks), and because their pre-printed nutrition labels make it easy to ensure they are meeting complex government nutritional standards. But Graham Cracker Sticks are not our enemy. Nutrition perfectionism is.As I’ve written before, the problem with processed foods isn’t their ingredient lists; it’s our culture’s dysfunctional relationship with them. Your fear of snack crackers is a big reason why your kid seems so obsessed with them. Letting kids eat these foods at school, alongside the fruits, vegetables, and other foods that school districts are also required to serve, could be a great way to lessen a child’s scarcity mindset around them.But to do that, we have to sift through the layers of classism and racism that underpin our feeling that kids eating “fast food” for lunch is proof of lazy or bad parenting. Many parents who are using school lunch this year told me that they feel guilty for taking such an “easy” way out, as if letting your child eat the same meal that another kid has no choice but to eat is being a #badmom. Meanwhile, one school lunch abstainer wrote that she has “been dreaming about packing lunches for kids 4ever ♥️.” Instagram, Pinterest, and the rise of the momfluencer has turned school-lunch packing into a cross between competitive sport and creative self-care practice. We’re flooded with images of $60 PlanetBoxes and $42 OmieBoxes, rainbow produce cut into stars and hearts, and the message that all of this is a valid measure of our mothering. But that’s only true if your definition of motherhood is almost exclusively white and upper-income. Possibly related: Around 40 percent of my followers said they were skipping school lunch because “my kid won’t eat it.” As the parent of one child with a traumatic feeding history, and another doing the typical picky preschooler thing, I absolutely feel this. But within this “picky” group, I noticed that responses ranged from “ARFID! She needs her safe foods,” to a more shrugging, “My kid doesn’t like it.” I wonder here whether it’s always the kid who doesn’t like the food, or the parent, or the kid internalizing a parent’s rigid standards. Children with true feeding disorders or other sensory challenges do need extra support and may be overwhelmed by trying to eat in a cafeteria setting. And, of course, kids with food allergies, especially life-threatening ones, may need a packed lunch to eat safely. (That group made up about 8 percent of my respondents.) But: Our more garden-variety picky eaters may get more adventurous in the cafeteria than you’ll ever see at home. Research shows that kids tend to eat a larger variety of foods when they get repeated exposures to them in a peer setting, as Sally Sampson and Natalie Digate Muth, M.D., wrote for the New York Times back in 2015. This is also another reason not to freak out about processed foods on school lunch menus; Goldfish and the like are often the familiar, predictable foods that cautious kids need to use as stepping stones and to feel empowered when navigating a new eating situation.About one-fifth of the parents in my poll said they took a hybrid approach, letting kids study weekly school lunch menus and decide which days to bring or “buy.” Gaddis and I agree that this seems like a great work-around for most picky kids because it lets them build confidence eating in a new setting with foods they like, and still encourages involvement in school meals—which benefits everyone. Some of this group even require kids to pack lunch themselves on the days they don’t want to eat the school meal, which is a rather genius way to get kids more involved in their own meal planning mental load.I also heard from a vocal minority of parents who really want to do school lunches but have opted out because of logistical issues, especially long lines that don’t leave their kids time to eat (especially in places limiting lunch periods to 15 minutes right now to reduce Covid risk). I too worry about kids who need to stand in line, eat, and get to the bathroom during this timeframe—solidarity to all the kindergarten teachers dealing with afternoon wet pants! If a lunch logistic is your deal-breaker this year, Gaddis says, “Just don’t make this your permanent decision about school lunch.” And do contact your elected officials and let them know that you want them to support the Universal School Meals Act and several other pieces of legislation pending now.So no, school lunch is not perfect. But the problems likely aren’t what you think. And it could be so much better if we started to shift away from this diet culture-fueled hierarchy of kid lunches, with cafeteria trays always on the bottom. Letting go of these standards for perfect kid lunches and perfect parenthood is hard. More than one mom told me they pack lunch because, “This way I know what food she’s offered,” or, even more bluntly, “I like the control.” But our kids will have a healthier relationship with food in general if we empower them to eat this meal without our micromanagement. Releasing some of this control can be a way to let our kids know we trust them; to encourage their curiosity; to enable more community building in cafeterias, instead of dividing kids up into those with lunchboxes and those without. This could be how we turn school meals into something different, and better. And probably, still containing Graham Cracker Sticks.Essay DiscussionSo there were several threads to the reaction to this piece that are interesting to discuss a year later. One: I heard from many parents of picky eaters and parents of kids with true feeding challenges who said that eating school lunch has been really helpful for their kids. It can be more neutral place to try new foods than the family dinner table. And because school lunches are designed to be kid-friendly, they often do feature foods that selective eaters do well with. This is not to say that school lunch will work for every selective eater – but don’t rule it out as an option full stop just because you have a picky kid. It can absolutely be a helpful tool. A lot of you also told me about the logistical issues with your school’s lunch program that make buying lunch too hard. Super short lunch times, long lines, even food shortages in many districts. That was particularly hard during the pandemic and I get it if you packed lunch for your kids under those circumstances. But I do think those of us with the privilege to pack should not check out of those issues completely. We still need to be thinking of lunch as a school community event that we all participate in and work on. But the really fascinating thing is how many comments I get—and this just happened on Instagram when I did a repost of this piece at the start of September—from people saying they can’t buy school lunch because the food isn’t healthy and is too processed or has too much sugar. This is the whole problem. We have to stop defining “healthy” as a plate full of fresh vegetables. Lunch does not need to be a salad to get a gold star. Most kids won’t even eat a salad. (Also plenty of schools serve salad!)We can define a healthy lunch as a meal that kids are able to navigate themselves, as a meal where they share food with their community, as a meal where they can get full enough and get the energy they need to learn and play the rest of the school day. All of that can come in the form of an Uncrustable. We don’t need to make this so hard. The last thing I want to talk about is what we’re doing in my house, this year, for school lunch. One thing I didn’t share when I wrote the piece last year was that my kids were attending a small private school that didn’t offer a lunch program. This was a super hard decision that we made during Covid due to my older daughter’s high risk status—and it was absolutely a decision we were able to make due to a pile of privilege. But let me tell you how much I missed the school lunch program during the two years we spent there! This year, we are so happy to be back at public school. Our school, like many schools, is no longer offering free universal lunch because the federal government program expired June 30. So we are paying $3.10 per lunch and I am happy to do it. My younger daughter buys every day and gets the exact same thing every day; Peanut butter and jelly and chocolate milk plus whatever fruit they have that day. The first day she told me she ate mango and carrots, and believe me when I say those are two foods she has never willingly eaten at home.My older daughter, who is more selective and also more independent at age 9, is studying the cafeteria menu each week and buying some days and packing her own lunch some days. I told her she could make that decision as long as she packs her lunch herself—because I know if she forgets, she can eat the cafeteria PB&J even if it’s not her favorite. (She has opinions about the thickness of their bread.) And this is working really well for her because she loves the control of picking her own lunch. We also had some good conversations about the importance of the school lunch program and the role of privilege in packing. So she is buying less frequently than her sister, but still buying at least once or twice a week and I’ll call that a win for now. Butter for Your Burnt ToastYou’re just getting my recs this week, but I’m giving you three of them! These are all things I did over Labor Day weekend, when I had my house to myself for THREE WHOLE DAYS and, as newsletter readers know, spent a lot of that time finishing my book and stress-organizing my kitchen. But that’s not all I did! I read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, and loved it. Someone on Instagram compared it to A Little Life and I got scared, but can now reassure fellow literary-trauma-avoiders that it is NOT on that scale. (But yes there is heartbreak and loss.)I went hiking with this amazing group and yes, I want to write more about that experience soon. (You can spy me here!)I watched so many episodes of the new A League of Their Own and sobbed through the last two. Fervently hoping for season 2.