The Burnt Toast Podcast

You're listening to Burnt Toast. I'm Virginia Sole-Smith. Today my conversation is with none other than the beloved, the brilliant, Lindy West.
Lindy is the author of four books, The New York Times bestselling memoir, Shrill, as well as the essay collections, The Witches Are Coming and Shit, Actually, and her brand new memoir Adult Braces, out now.
Lindy is a former contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. Her work has appeared in This American Life, The Guardian, Cosmopolitan, GQ, Vulture, Jezebel and many others. She is the co-host of the comedy podcast, Text Me Back!!! and the author of the newsletter Butt News. Lindy was a writer and executive producer on Shrill, the Hulu comedy adapted from her memoir, and she co-wrote and produced the independent feature film, Thin Skin. She lives on the Olympic Peninsula in rural Washington state.
Lindy joined me to chat about her brand new memoir, Adult Braces. We get into her relationship to fatness, having people comment rather relentlessly on her marriage, why more best friends should start podcasts and so much more—including a quesadilla she invents in real time while we recorded. You are going to love this one.
This conversation with Lindy is so juicy that we're breaking it up into two episodes! In Part 1 we’re talking about her brand new memoir, Adult Braces, as well as her eating disorder therapy, being a public fat person and having people comment on her body and her marriage.
In Part 2, we're getting into non-monogamy, the benefits of being in a throuple, podcasting and so much more!
If you're already a paid subscriber, you've got both parts of the episode right here, right now in your inbox!
Everyone else: Join Burnt Toast today to hear the whole thing! Membership starts at just $5 per month and also gets you commenting privileges.
One last thing! You will want to read Adult Braces after hearing this conversation. If you order it from my local independent bookstore, Split Rock Books, you can take 10% off if you have also ordered a copy of my book Fat Talk from them. Go to Split Rock Books and use the code "fat talk" at checkout.
Here's Lindy West.
If you enjoy this conversation, a paid subscription is the best way to support our work!
Join Burnt Toast
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Virginia 
We are here to talk about your new memoir, Adult Braces. My producer Kim and I both read it. We loved it. Like, crying laughing, full body experience reading this book. 
Lindy
Thank you so much!
Virginia
Do you want to give us a brief summary of what the book is about?
Lindy  
The book is about a road trip that I took in 2021 from Seattle to Key West and back, which I decided to do when I was having a crisis in my life. I needed to get away from my house, and I needed to get away from my family and my responsibilities.
I had found out a couple years earlier that my husband had a secret girlfriend, which was sort of illegal in our relationship, sort of not. That was quite a topic of conversation for several years, and we eventually figured it out. But then I was exhausted from a year of COVID and three years of non-stop couples therapy. I was like, I gotta get out of here. So I left and I drove to Florida in a van that I rented. I slept in the van. I just wanted to be out in the world and be brave and alive.
The road trip stories are interspersed with chapters about my life before. A big message, at least for me, is that it's really easy to read my crisis as this monogamy/polyamory conversation, but when I think back on it, everything about my life was messed up before that. I had so many other problems, in my mental health, in the way that I managed my career, my life and my brain chemicals. I wanted to build a full picture of that, because I think the easy story is like, 'Oh, no good husband.' But it was a lot more complicated than that, and a lot of it stemmed from work that I had to do on myself, which is ultimately the only work that I can do. I can't do work on my husband.
Virginia 
Nope. A lot of us learned that the hard way.
Lindy  
Right! That was actually one of my problems. I was constantly waiting for my husband to transform into the person that I had imagined would be my husband, and that's not how people work.
Virginia 
It's annoying, but true. 
Lindy  
It's very annoying. The book is about all of those figurative journeys happening at once, and also my literal journey. 
Virginia 
It's spectacular. The van alone. I'm obsessed with the van. There's a mural on the outside of the van. It's incredible.
Lindy  
The van has a big, scary rabbit on one side and then a big, anxious sheep on the other side. The van was named BAAA, like the noise a sheep makes. I think I'm going to make some social media content out of this. I'm trying to be an influencer in order to promote this book. I want the van. I want that van. I want it in my possession.
Virginia
I was sad when you gave it back. 
Lindy
I know! Me too, and now the company has gone out of business. I tried to rent the van for my book tour and they don't exist anymore. Someone has that van. I think I'm going to do a social media campaign called "Help me find my van," so that I can buy it.
Virginia 
Burnt Toast listeners, if any of you have a van with a rabbit on one side and a sheep on the other, hit us up. Even if it's a different van with that art, I think Lindy would be interested.
Lindy
Yes. I will pay upwards of $1,000.
Virginia 
To get that van back. It was a sad moment. It was like the end of those movies with a person on a journey with an animal, and they say goodbye. It was like the volleyball in that Tom Hanks movie.
Lindy  
Oh, my God, yeah. I had to watch BAAA float away on the ocean. BAAA had really been there for me. BAAA is an old lady now. Maybe she doesn't exist anymore, because she already had 250,000 miles on her and then I drove her another 50,000.
Virginia
She was in her golden years. 
Lindy
She was in her golden years. But I think those Ford Transit vans are built to last, so I think someone has her. It turns out all the van companies are going out of business because I had a really hard time finding a van. I called three different companies that had all recently gone out of business, because #vanlife is not that popular anymore now that people have #donthavetowearamasklife.
Virginia 
They had a little Renaissance moment there.
Lindy  
I called this other company that was going out of business, and I was like, "Well, what are you doing with your fleet?" I know the all the terms now. I was like, "What's happening to your fleet? Can I buy one of your vans?" And he was like, "Yeah, they're $90,000." Sorry, excuse me?
Virginia 
It doesn't even have a rabbit on it, sir.
Lindy  
This van is blank. I think that if there's any hope for me getting a van, it's got to be old lady BAAA. If you're listening and you know where BAAA ended up, please call me.
Virginia 
I mean, I'm now picturing that BAAA probably has a new owner who also really loves her. There's going to be a complicated journey to restore BAAA to her rightful owner, which is you, but ...
Lindy  
Ok, now that you said that I don't want to take BAAA away from her new family.
Virginia 
Well, maybe it could be a joint custody situation, you know? Let's be open-minded to different family structures.
Lindy  
That's true. You're so right. God, that was very regressive of me.
Virginia 
But yes, I hope that you can be reunited.
Lindy
Thank you.
Virginia
Along with the story of BAAA, you talk about many vulnerable things in the book. One of them that I know our listeners will be really moved by is your exploration of having an eating disorder and starting treatment for that. It was just so relatable. Like when you wrote about reading through the list of nutritionists from your doctor, and only one doesn't mention weight loss. When you're looking for eating disorder treatment!
Lindy  
It's a snapshot of what most people are going to the nutritionist for: weight loss. That's what everyone's looking for, in every direction. So, I get it, but it was very frustrating. Luckily, the one lady that wasn't weight loss focused is the best person I've ever met, so it all worked out.
Virginia 
What was it like working with someone who was like, "Actually, you don't need to lose weight. You need to eat more food?"
Lindy  
It's been amazing. I mean, it's frustrating, because you still have the diet culture voice inside your head, even if you've done as much healing as you thought was humanly possible. I realized once I started working with her that some tiny part of my brain had been like, Once you see the nutritionist, maybe you will lose weight. Not that that was my goal. But there's always this little, dee de dee dee, then your life will be perfect. It's really hard to deprogram that.
Grace, my now therapist, just kept being like, "Your job is to eat whatever you want all the time." And I'd be like, "Yeah, but what if I want vegetables?" She was like, "That's fine, but you're not allowed to not eat candy." And I was like, "But don't you want to give me some kind of guideline for how to be perfect?" And she was like, "No, that's disordered."
Virginia 
That’s the opposite of what we're doing now.
Lindy  
I find myself still searching for someone to tell me how to live so that I don't have to figure it out. Unfortunately, the answer is listening to your body and learning how to know yourself. So I'm doing that instead. 
Virginia
She said joyfully.
Lindy
Again, I'm not trying to lose weight. I'm not on a weight loss journey. I think after so many years of living untreated in diet culture, I don't have any kind of a natural relationship with food. And it is a lot of work to figure out how to listen to my body. So even from a non-diet culture perspective, I was hoping that some part of this therapy was going to be her handing me a worksheet. Even if the worksheet said "One piece of cake for breakfast, one piece of cake for lunch, one piece of cake for dinner." I just was like, Making the choices is triggering to me.
Virginia 
The decision fatigue! It's a lot of work, every meal. I have to, again, make the decision to eat and what to eat and how. All day long we do this??
Lindy  
I have to do the grocery shopping?
Also, when you've been shamed your whole life for those choices, making the choices is stressful. Now I feel like, either direction, I'm doing something bad. I'm either doing diet culture by choosing to have a salad, even if I want one. I still am like, Am I betraying myself? Or the opposite, if I choose to eat something sort of indulgent or whatever, then I'm doing fat person. Which is fine.
Virginia 
You have to negotiate it in both directions.
Lindy  
Yes! Except then I'm like, Well, but if I'm eating something decadent, is that just reactionary? Because I know I'm not supposed to do diet culture. So then do I even want this ice cream? I'm still, to this day, fairly lost. I'm way better than I was five years ago, and I've definitely figured some stuff out, which is just having routines. It's like, I have oatmeal. Done.
Virginia 
One less decision.
Lindy  
In the morning, I have oatmeal, and then I have certain staple things I keep around. I'm so angry that my head has been messed with to this degree. You know what I mean? 
Virginia 
Yes. And you were trying to navigate recovery as a public fat person, which brings a whole other layer. I have had a tiny fraction of what you experience, and it's bananas. The amount the world feels like they can engage with our bodies and have opinions and theories and comments and all of that. You doing it, especially when you first started doing it, was such a gift to the rest of us. You were really on the front lines. 
Lindy  
It's really hard, and that's the thing that I write about in the book. Obviously, the mean people are the worst. But there's a way that my fans feel an ownership over me that is a little bit ... not claustrophobic - I appreciate it, it's very loving - but also, I feel surveilled. I'm definitely being watched. People notice if my body changes, and that is confining in a certain way. It's hard to navigate, because you don't get to just have a private relationship with your body, which, to be fair, I voluntarily gave up because I said "I'm going to present my body for public conversation," basically.
Virginia 
I don't know that we ever have informed consent around that though. I don't think you could have known when you decided to publish that first essay in The Stranger what this would be like. You know what I mean? I don't think you could wrap your head around where it would have gone.
Lindy  
I can't blame the fans, especially since so much of this stuff was grassroots on the Internet. I used to be a fat girl lurking on Tumblr, taking from other fat people who came before me. I don't want to build a wall around myself and say, "No, you can't look at me, and you can't feel anything about my body, and you can't have any opinions or connection to it," because I did the same thing. But navigating of it is hard, and complicated.
Virginia 
It is complicated. I can understand, especially when navigating your own recovery and wanting to make choices for yourself, but feeling like people will feel let down. It's complicated. We all do it with other public figures all the time. 
Lindy  
Oh, I don't like it when famous fat people lose weight. I don't trust it at all, but I don't say anything about it. You know what I mean?
Virginia 
At least, not super publicly. Maybe in my own head.
Lindy  
Just to the group chat. "Oh, ozempic, got another one?" I'll send that text. I do have this fear that if eating disorder treatment and recovery did cause me to lose weight, because I changed my relationship with food in such a way that my body changes—which I don't know if that would happen or not, there's no way to know, probably not—but if it did happen, it's so scary to think that I could be perceived as having betrayed people, or that I'm one of those people that I look at and send to the group chat and say, "Oh boy." Which is why I shouldn't do that.
Virginia 
Sure, fine. Now that you're putting it that way, I suppose.
Lindy  
It depends on the person. Look, just don't take me on your weight loss journey. I don't need to hear about your journey.
Virginia 
That's really the key to me. People do what they do with their bodies, and that's fine, but I really appreciate it when a celebrity says nothing. If you start justifying and explaining it, odds are that you're causing harm to somebody.
Lindy
It's not that hard to not say anything.
Virginia 
Yeah, just have your body. That's fine. You do you.
Related to people dissecting your body online, another experience we unfortunately share is having our personal lives written about and commented on online, particularly in regards to marriage. In my case, my divorce. It made the Daily Mail, which is a real point of pride for me.
You write really candidly about your marriage with Aham in this book and there are many difficult parts. Did it feel like you were taking some control back over the narrative to write about it? How do you feel about how people might react once they read what you've written?
Lindy  
I wanted to take control of the narrative. People react so intensely to non-monogamy. It's very scary to a lot of people, and I get it. You're sort of promised an equation for happiness, which is one person loving you obsessively for the rest of your life until you die. Just the idea that some people might choose a slight variation on that —it's threatening.
And it's a slight variation. I am married to two people. It's just one extra person! There's just one extra. It's not really that different. If you think about it, being single is only one person away from being two people. Just one less.
Virginia 
Right. Every single person is basically married. And every married person is basically in a throuple.
Lindy  
Is it that weird? People find it very weird. There was so much backlash, particularly directed at Aham, but also at me. My body was a big factor in it. The way that people perceive our relationship is never disconnected from the way people look at my body. 
So when people started to clock that we had a third person in our marriage—my partner, Roya. I shouldn't just talk about her like she's a mysterious, shadowy figure—so much of the response was, "Oh, we see what's going on here. You're fat and ugly and gross, so he doesn't like you. He needed a thin woman so that he can actually be happy."
Virginia 
He had to trade up in some way. 
Lindy  
He had to upgrade, as any man would, because, "Unfortunately, you're disgusting, and that's why we're here to defend you against this evil man."
Virginia 
Yes, defend you —because this is from people who were your fans. That was what blew my mind [when you first came out]. I was like, But wait, you're a pro-Lindy person drawing these conclusions about her life. That doesn't make sense.
Lindy
Why are you being so mean to me?
Virginia 
You're so mad on her behalf. But she didn't ask you to do that.
Lindy  
Right? And you know who's not saying anything mean to me? Aham. You guys are being way meaner. 
So, I don't know. It just felt like I wanted to get some definitive version down on paper, even though people are still going to do the same thing: take it and run with it, fill in the blanks. Everyone became a body language expert. People are obsessed with being the genius who read between the lines and could figure out what wasn't being said. We're in the age of conspiracy. I get it. But you can't actually just look at a picture of some people on the Internet and figure out what isn't being said. 
I couldn't even capture it in the book, because part of it is me and Aham sitting at the dining room table doing couples therapy over Zoom every week for three years. How do I put that in the book? It's so much work. 
People keep asking me, "Why are you so hard on yourself in this book?" Some people think I'm too easy on Aham. People keep telling me what my feelings are, and that I'm this naive person who's been duped. Or that I don't really understand, I can't really see, what's been done to me. 
I wanted to get my feelings down in hard copy. I can't excavate Aham’s feelings in my book. When I tried to, I cut it because it sounded like I'm begging the audience to co-sign that it was ok for me to stay, that I'm allowed to stay in my marriage. It feels like rationalization, and I don't want to do that. 
Virginia
You don't actually need our permission. 
Lindy
I don't actually need anyone's permission. But what I can do, and what I have the authority and right to do, is put down in excruciating detail my process and the things that I came to realize about myself, and the ways that I had been a part of the toxicity in our marriage. The ways that I had been in denial, and the ways that I had not been taking care of myself, emotionally, psychologically and in a million different ways. 
That's what I have to work with. I'm also, in my personal life, a passive, shy person. I have this childhood wound of being talked over and not given the authority to speak on my own experiences, and not feeling capable of asserting myself. That's a lot of what this book is. I'm hard on myself because I found it fascinating. I found it so illuminating to realize all of these ways that my brain had been warped, and I thought it was rational. How interesting to come to a realization that these things that you thought were a given actually, maybe you were wrong. People read it as me being really cruel to myself, but to me, it felt really healing to excavate all those things and figure them out. I hope it's not a grind to read.
Virginia 
No, it's definitely not. I found it more healing than you being hard on yourself.
I mean, there are moments—and I think this is, you know, this is me being a fan for a moment—like we love you Lindy. We've been rooting for you for a long time. There are moments where I would think, Oh no, Lindy. I want to protect you. I don't like this. But then you would have this breathtaking insight about yourself, and I'd be like, Oh, shit. Ok, well, that makes sense.
That was my experience of reading the book. These moments of feeling defensive or protective, and then being like, Oh, mind blown. 
Lindy  
Thank you. I was just going to say, I do keep having this little feeling of, if you read the book and you're like, I can't relate to this because she's so hard on herself, well ... it sounds like you've never been fat.
Virginia 
Or in therapy of any kind.
Lindy  
Congratulations on never having low self-esteem?
Virginia 
Must be neat to always be so sure. Are you maybe a narcissist?
A lot of what I saw in that narrative of "Lindy's the victim. He's trading up for the thin woman." is that this is so many fat women's core fear, right? So this was people projecting their own stuff of,  'This is what's going to happen to me. My husband's going to leave me for a younger, thinner woman.'
Lindy  
And that's rational, of course. That's what they do! I get it, because that was my fear. That's why I didn't want to do it. I was like, I know you're just waiting to upgrade. But in retrospect, it doesn't make sense. If what you were waiting to do was upgrade, why would you not just leave me?
People talk to me as though, I'm still, to this day, being victimized. But to me, it was so healing to be brave and step through this veil into this other relationship structure and discover that Aham does not love me less. He didn't leave. I don't have less of him. He was telling the truth about, at least, how he feels about me.
I was always so paranoid about that, and I always had so much doubt about it. People read it, and I get it, of course. Most people feel like they are barely holding their husband back from running off and being evil.
Virginia 
But if that's the case, there is divorce. I just want to say to everyone in that box, there is this other path. You don't have to stay with that guy.
Lindy  
If you're worried about that, please get a divorce. You will love it. 
Virginia 
It's so great. It's real rad. 
Lindy  
Look, I don't trust men either. I get it. I have the same wounds and the same anxieties. That's why I resisted so hard for so long. But I also didn't want to not be with Aham, because we have a really, really special relationship and I couldn't imagine ... I mean, I did eventually imagine, actually, there's a chapter cut from the book called "If I'd Left" about all the stuff I would have done. 
Virginia
Ooh, I am intrigued. 
Lindy
I'll tell you about it, but mostly it was a list of the different animals that I would acquire. 
A big part of this whole journey—I've said "journey" so many times—Aham tried to do it right. He brought it up day one. He said, "This is non-negotiable if we're going to be together." I said, "Ok, sure." He tried to talk to me about it over the years. I avoided the conversation. I would throw a fit and cry and hyperventilate. I could not handle it. 
When I found out that he was seeing someone else, he said, "I think we want different things, and if that's the case, we need to not be together."
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Part 2 is for paid subscribers only.
To hear the rest of our conversation with Lindy West, go to patreon.com/virginiasolesmith and join us. Membership starts at just $5 per month. You don't want to miss this the second part of this conversation.
Join here for just $5 per month
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The Burnt Toast Podcast is hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. You can follow Virginia on Instagram at @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.bsky.social. You can follow Corinne on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay.bsky.social and on Patreon at Big Undies.
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Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.
Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

You're listening to Burnt Toast. I'm Virginia Sole-Smith. Today my conversation is with the brilliant Savala Nolan.
Savala is a writer, public speaker and professor at UC Berkeley. Her brand new book, Good Woman: A Reckoning is out now. 
Her first book, Don’t Let It Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender and the Body, was shortlisted for the William Saroyan Prize and celebrated as a “standout collection” by the New York Times. Savala's writing has been featured in Vogue, Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times, NPR, TIME and more.
I have a lot of conversations about bodies. I have a lot of conversations about gender. There is a lot that I thought I knew about race and bodies and gender in America. Reading Good Woman and talking to Savala blew my mind apart in ways that I'm still putting back together. 
This conversation is a must listen. This book is a must read.
There was so much good stuff in this conversation, we are breaking it up into two episodes. Today in part one, we’re talking about bodies, race and gender. Part two will drop in two weeks, and that's when we're getting into sex, divorce and Savala’s classy and trashy butters. That conversation will be for paid subscribers only, so go to patreon.com/virginiasolesmith to join us. Membership starts at just $5 per month. You're not going to want to miss this one.
One last thing! Trust me, you will want to read Good Woman after hearing this conversation. If you order it from my local independent bookstore, Split Rock Books, you can take 10% off if you have also ordered a copy of my book Fat Talk from them. Go to Split Rock Books and use the code "fat talk" at checkout.
Here's Savala.
If you enjoy this conversation, a paid subscription is the best way to support our work!
Join Burnt Toast
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Episode 235 Transcript
Virginia
Why don't we just start by having you tell listeners a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Savala  
I'm a writer. I was thinking about this question quite a bit, actually, because my very first instinct is to say I'm a mom, which makes perfect sense. Motherhood is all consuming. But I thought I'll start with something that doesn't include my relationship with another human being, just in the interest of practicing my own wholeness.
So, I'm a writer and a mom and a lawyer. I direct the social justice program at UC Berkeley's Law School, which is really a privilege and gives me a lot of hope, because I get to see hundreds of law students every day who want to change the world and make it better. 
I'm also a former dieter. Like a hardcore, former dieter, which is what initially brought me into your world and your work. I was put on my first diet when I was two or three, and rode those waves up and down until I was maybe 36 or 37, so I've got a few decades under my belt.
I include that in my biography because that experience of going on and off diets for so long, and of being almost pre-verbal when I was indoctrinated into that world of dieting, informs a lot of what I do, including as a mom, including as a lawyer, including as a writer. Body liberation, gender and race, they fascinate me endlessly, how they play together and kind of co-create each other. Most of what I write about, and definitely what I write about in Good Woman, stems from that experience of dieting, and then breaking free from dieting in my thirties.
Virginia  
That is the best intro I think anyone's ever given themselves on the podcast. 
Savala
Oh, stop. 
Virginia
No, really. I love that you are like, 'Let me own this part of my story. This is the origin point. And then now let's get into the conversation.' That's fantastic. 
We are here to talk about your exquisite new book Good Woman: A Reckoning. It is a collection of 12 essays about what it means to be a woman. It's this incredible blend of memoir, reporting and history. I would love you to read us the first paragraph, just to set the stage for everything we're going to talk about.
Savala
I'll just take a quick second to set it up a little bit.
I'm trying to take a critical and very skeptical eye to all the ways that women and girls are socialized to be good. Almost from birth, right? In our particular culture, good means agreeable, quiet, serving of others, all the things that probably would pop into any woman's head when she hears the idea of a "good woman" or a "good girl." I'm trying to unpack and destroy some of that socialization in my own life, and think about what lies beyond it. To kick the book off, there's this very short essay that's sort of a manifesto. I think of it as a huge bell that rings to open the book.
Here's the first paragraph.
I refuse to be good. This is a matter of survival, not inclination or mood. I refuse to be easy and I refuse others preferences. I refuse to be amicable and I refuse to appease. I refuse to go along and I refuse to agree. I refuse to do what I was trained to do. Instead, I choose whatever lies beyond my social conditioning, even if I'm still looking for it, still spurring it into being. This is work of the mind, cerebral and tough. This is work of new language, new concepts, new intonations and my thinking must expand to fit the scale of all existence. It is also body work, work that is nailed to my flesh. It is gestating of new bones, an anointing of muscle and fat. It is passing through the stomatous black opening of my own cervix to the bright field, waiting on the other side in the wilderness. It is a lot to take on. But I welcome the challenge and the mystery and the darkness. It was in darkness that the universe was made. It is in darkness that each day is made new.
Virginia  
Thank you. That was incredible. Really, it was.
Savala
Thank you. 
Virginia  
I loved how you opened the book because it encapsulates so many of the themes that you then go deeper in in every chapter. One of the biggest themes of refusal in the book is around the body. You write about how Black women's bodies in particular are constrained, controlled and made not their own. I really, really want people to read this because we don't have time to talk about all the history you go through and it's so well done. You trace this narrative from Sarah Baartman and Sally Hemings all the way to Nicki Minaj, connecting so many dots. It's really powerful. What has and what hasn't changed when it comes to how Blackness and fatness are policed for women?
Savala  
I love this question. We could probably write a doctoral thesis or dissertation on this question alone. So I'll just sort of share what comes to mind, a sort of smorgasbord of thoughts that come to mind when you ask this question. 
The first thing is, there's an overlap when we talk about Blackness and fatness in this culture. The very first point to make is that everything here is cultural. Not all cultures treat women's bodies, Blackness and fatness the way we do. That's the page on which everything else is written. 
It's interesting to me that when we talk about Blackness and fatness, the stereotypes overlap, right? Both fat people and Black people are viewed in this culture as out of control, lazy, kind of greedy, having a hyper appetite. Either being hyper-sexualized or de-sexualized. You either have the kind of va-va-voom, or the 'friend, never the leading lady' when it comes to fatness. With Blackness, it's the same thing. You either have the video vixen - this kind of hyper-sexual Black woman in a music video - or the mammy.
It's interesting to me that the stereotypes overlap so much, and maybe the most powerful way they overlap is that they're both undesirable. They're both things in our culture that you should try to get away from if you can. You should try not to be too Black or too fat in our culture. So to me, as a woman who's fat and Black, it's kind of a one-two punch. They work together. The stereotypes overlapping tells you there's some relationship in our culture between these two things. And as you say, it goes way, way, way, way back in this country. It goes to chattel slavery, where Blackness and fatness started to be policed together and associated together, very literally.
I talk about this in the book - there's a magazine called Godey's Lady's Book, which you might consider the Vogue or Good Housekeeping of today. Sort of fashion, but also home-y stuff. It was the biggest magazine in the antebellum country. And they talked all the time about how white women should stay thin or else they might start to be Black, like they might start to be looked on as if they're Black. There's another article from that magazine that says, "If a white woman gets fat, she might as well put herself in Black face."
You can't see it if you're listening, but there's a lovely eye roll from Virginia.
Our culture has long braided these things together. That's the history when you think about what hasn't changed. I think they are still braided together. When we think about what has changed, from my vantage point, there was maybe five or 10 years where it felt more ok to be fat, and more ok to be Black. It was the like ascendance of Lizzo, you know?
Virginia
A brief shining moment. 
Savala
It was a shining moment. There was also the George Floyd moment. There was a political reckoning with Blackness that was refreshing. I guess maybe it wasn't even five years. It was a brief window. Now it feels like we're in a backlash. It feels a little bit like the more things change, the more they stay the same. We had this moment of a collective leap towards something like liberation. 
Because of politics and because of the capitalistic nature of the pharmaceutical industry in this country and GLP-1s being so, for now anyway, profitable, we're seeing a real backlash to both fatness and Blackness. That lands on women really hard, because of how women are tied to our bodies in this culture in a particular way. So I guess I would say, the more things change, the more they stay the same. 
The silver lining being that because we did have these few years of something like enlightenment, the first sun rays coming over the mountain, there are a lot of people who have a much higher capacity to talk about what our culture does to fatness and Blackness than there were 20 years ago, right? So that's a silver lining, I think. 
Virginia
Yes, I agree with that.
We see these moments of women claiming their bodies and claiming control over their bodies, and then facing tremendous backlash. You talk about the Nicki Minaj album cover that she was taken to task for being too sexual, too graphic, etc.. She was like, 'It's my body.' 
Savala  
'It’s my body.' Also, it's no worse than a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and everybody likes those. 
Virginia
Yes, they sure do. But those are skinny white lady bodies. 
Savala
Those are skinny white ladies, not voluptuous Black women.
Virginia  
There are these moments where we have the conversation. Whereas if she hadn't had the album cover, we wouldn't have had the conversation. But I'm with you on how it's not enough. The backlash feels so brutal right now. But I do hang on to those moments.
Savala  
I do, as well. The comfort of a backlash is that you know you were doing something right. You can't make a quilt with one stitch. You have to put a lot of stitches in. So we have to keep stitching as far as our own liberation goes. The backlashes will come periodically, the tide comes in and out, you just try to keep inching it forward. I'm hopeful that we will continue, ultimately, to do that.
Virginia  
And keep reminding people where we've been. I really appreciated your post on Instagram this week. There's been so much talk about ICE as the gestapo and you were like, 'Guys, it's not the gestapo, it's slave patrols.' It's our own country. It's our own history that's coming up again here.
I should note for listeners, you're hearing this in March, but we recording this at the end of January, right after all of the violence and murders in Minneapolis. 
Savala  
I understand the urge to look to other countries and the violence in other places, and it's gestapo-like, you know. It's certainly fair to think about a comparison. But to completely ignore the fact that we actually invented this stuff.
Virginia  
That the gestapo guys learned it from us.
Savala
One hundred percent. Exactly.
Virginia
They've been watching what America was doing.
Savala  
Yes, and it's sad to own it, but it's a necessary step, and managing it and moving beyond it is to hold it close and see that it's our own stuff. It's like an individual who wants to grow and improve. They have to own their shit. 'Oh, this is my shit. I have to work on it.' It's the same. It's just at the level of culture.
Virginia  
As a country, we have to own our shit, and some of us are doing more of that than others. 
Well, on the level of the individual, you write a lot in the book about growing up as a fat little girl, being put on diets so heartbreakingly early and then continuing to pursue thinness throughout college and early adulthood. Now that you're on the other side of that, you write about how abandoning the pursuit of thinness feels like becoming a non-woman. I really was interested in this idea of the non-woman. I would love to talk about that a little.
Savala
There's a quote I love from a scholar, Sander Gilman, who studies fatness and gender. You might know this quote Virginia, some of your listeners might, too. He writes that dieting is a way that women show they understand their role in society. Part of the way that women remain and become legible in our culture is by practicing and performing privately and publicly dissatisfaction with their bodies and the pursuit of a better body, which generally means a thinner body, a more toned body, or a "healthier body."
When you do those things as a woman, people get it. They understand you. They don't have to make any inferences. They don't have to wonder what you're doing. It's instantly obvious. When I talk about how much people rely on that sort of vocabulary to understand women. When I talk publicly at schools about this, one of the first things I do in my talks is post a before and after photo without the words "before" and "after." I ask people to raise their hands if they know what it is. The room could have 300 people in it and everybody raises their hands. They know exactly what they're seeing. That's what I mean when I say that the performance of dieting, or body improvement, or body shame, publicly and also privately, makes you readable as a woman to the culture. People can literally read it instantly, the way you can read a stop sign. 
When you stop doing that, when you stop dieting, exercising in ways that are meant to control the shape of your body, the weight of your body, all that stuff. When you stop using that vocabulary to bond with other women, when you stop policing what other people eat. When you stop doing those things, people don't get it. There's some level on which you're no longer performing the role of a woman. That's what I mean when I say that you become a non-woman. You become this other entity, that, let's be clear, exists in other cultures. It has existed in this culture to some extent, in various pockets of it, but that's what I mean. You step outside of the mold, and then people aren't quite sure what to do with you. 
Can I give a quick example? 
Virginia
Yeah, please. 
Savala
I work with a fabulous team of people I love and adore at UC Berkeley. One of them had a birthday, so to celebrate, I brought in a box of fabulous French pastries. We have a little birthday party and we invite lots of people to come by and pick something up if they want to. Every single person, every person, who came in the room said something, and they all happen to be women, something like, 'Ooh, I worked out this morning. That's how I that's how I earned this.' Some version of, 'Oh, God, I shouldn't. I had a bagel for breakfast,' or, 'I'm gonna cut it in half because I think I'm gonna have a big dinner tonight.' I was the only one who didn't. At some point I said, "Come on, guys. Let's just let the food be food. We don't have to earn our food here."
Virginia  
You don’t actually have to publicly perform. 
Savala  
You could have heard a pin drop, Virginia. 
Virginia
Oh, I'm sure.
Savala
It was like I said something in a different language. People don't know how to read the moment anymore. They don't know how to read me anymore. It's so disruptive. So that's what I mean about becoming the non-woman. In that essay, I then go on to talk about the joy of being a non-woman. I don't mean this in the sense of gender identity, I mean it in a more metaphorical, philosophical way. I very much identify as a woman.
Virginia  
Right, but you're rejecting these expectations and this narrow definition of womanhood.
Savala  
One hundred percent. It's a little experiment. If listeners want to try that, I'm sure most of your listeners are already at least one foot in the door of not dieting anymore, but if they want to try performing something else and seeing how they become no longer instantly readable in the space, they'll know what I mean.
Virginia  
It's interesting because it's about how you simultaneously become more visible because you're doing this uncomfortable thing no one knows what to do with, and you're rendering yourself more invisible because you're no longer saying Yes, you can identify me as a sex object. Yes, you can identify me as young and thin and pretty and all the you know. So then it's like, 'Oh, we don't know what to do with her.'
Savala  
Totally. It's a spotlight. It's like, what's that? There's some rubbernecking that happens and you can be in the mood to deal with it or not. It's not like I always will say something when I'm around little pockets of diet culture. But in that moment, there were 12 or 15 people who came through and it was every single one. 
Virginia  
Can we not just eat the pastries?
Savala  
Yeah. And if you don't want one for whatever reason, that's ok. 
Virginia  
Don't tell us why. Just don't eat it. It's fine.
Well, that's a great example too, because that's also the kind of modeling that I'm sure you're conscious of doing in front of your kiddo. There's a line in the book I really loved where you write:
My child is my child, carrier of my histories, and I worry she'll be particularly vulnerable to dieting. In order to fortify her, I build a home life free from diet culture. 
This is, of course, a huge focus of my work. It's why I wrote Fat Talk.
Savala
It's the bread and butter, if you will.
Virginia  
It is the bread, yes. We'll get to the butter, but it's definitely the foundation of Burnt Toast. Deliberately, I'm more likely to say, 'Let's just eat the cake,' or 'Eat the dessert' when I know my kids are listening, because I've got to model the other way. I've got to model the non-woman for them.
I would love to know what are some of the little things you do to get the anti-diet, parenting stuff in?
Savala  
Well, the number one thing, and this will be very familiar to the Burnt Toast crew, is I, myself don't diet. That's number one. I don't pursue intentional weight loss, and I haven't since my daughter was about six months old. That was breaking point when I started to look for a different kind of life. Not only do I not diet or pursue intentional weight loss, I never, not once, have ever spoken ill of my body or complained about my body in front of my daughter.
It's funny when you're raising a girl because on the one hand, I want my daughter to feel beautiful and I want to speak a sense of beauty into her. "Oh, you're so beautiful." And I want to talk about myself through the lens of beauty for that reason, too. On the other hand, you don't want to over emphasize beauty and teach them that that is a super meaningful currency that they have to ... you know what I mean? 
Virginia  
It's like, 'You are beautiful and it's the least interesting thing about you.' You're holding both of those with both hands all the time.
Savala  
All the time. So I speak well of my body, but try not to do it in a way that feels too "cover of a magazine" oriented. There are other little things like, we decant food in our house so most of it is not associated with "nutrition information."
And we talk about nutrition information, because she picks it up in the world. But in our house, it's just in the container. I make a point of letting her choose how much she eats. I tend to take on the responsibility of picking what's on offer, and then she chooses how much. But we've mix that up as she's gotten older.
I fill my home with physical media, like figurines, statues, posters, books that have all kinds of bodies, especially fat bodies, because I want that to feel normal and celebrated for her. I want her to see fat bodies depicted as beautiful, wonderful things, not just as things we try to move away from or punish. It's good for me, too. Almost anything that I practice for myself, I practice for her, in an age appropriate way. 
Including being really playful. It doesn't all have to be political. I talk in the book about this one episode where my daughter was probably about four or five years old, and she wanted some chocolate chips after she had already had dessert. Initially, I was like, "No, you had your ice cream. We'll have chocolate chips another time." And then I was like, I want some chocolate chips. I said, "Actually, yeah, let's have some chocolate chips." We each had a little handful, and she said, "I wish I could have more." And I was like, "I think one is enough." And then I was like, "Actually, let's have more." And we sort of did that playfully a few times. She still loves it. She remembers it was such joy. My goal there was to have a little fun, but also to celebrate appetite, and take this moment that we often are taught to read as personal failure - going back for a little more - and change it into something that was fun and goofy and totally fine.
Virginia  
Celebrating pleasure. Yeah, let's have more. It tastes good tonight. Let's do it and not feel like we have to put guardrails around that.
Savala  
Exactly. I look for moments like that, and I'll say, who knows what the future brings, but my kid has a really joyful, non self-conscious relationship with food that involves eating all kinds of things, including broccoli and kale, and with her body. Who knows what the world brings? Well, we do know what the world brings. We know what's coming, but she has a foundation that's much better than mine was.
Virginia  
Yeah, such a different foundation than what you had. And that has to do something. I have to believe that.
Savala  
Yeah, it has to. It has to. And I must say, obviously, your book inspired me and was part of my inspiration in how I approached feeding my kiddo.
Virginia  
I'm so glad it's helpful. Yeah, I mean, it's always a work in progress, but it is really rewarding when you see kids having that ease and not overthinking and not getting caught in those in those traps that we do. 
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Butter
Editor's note: We're splitting Savala's interview into two episodes, so tune in to part two on March 19 to hear Savala's "classy and trashy" butters.
Part two will be for paid subscribers only, so go to patreon.com/virginiasolesmith to join us. Membership starts at just $5 per month. You're not going to want to miss this the second part of this conversation.
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Virginia
All right. Well, this was an amazing conversation. Thank you so much for being here. Just tell folks where we find you and how we support your work.
Savala
Oh, it's been a serious joy to be here. I could do it all again. 
The best way to support my work is, of course, to buy Good Woman: A Reckoning and share it with the women in your life that you love, and maybe even the the men in your life that you love.
Virginia
I agree with that. 
Savala
If you can't buy it, you can get it at libraries, or borrow it from a friend. Obviously, as an author, I'm interested in book sales, but mostly I'm interested in the ideas in the book doing good in the world. So read Good Woman.
If people want to hang out a little bit, I'm on Instagram at savalanolan. SavalaNolan.com is my website, which is another way to get in touch with me. I totally welcome that. I love doing book clubs, talking to readers, all that stuff, so if folks are interested, they should reach out.
Virginia  
Thank you, Savala. This was such a joy.
Savala
Thank you, Virginia. The pleasure was mine.
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Thanks for listening to Burnt Toast. If you enjoyed the conversation, please support our work with a paid subscription. They start at just $5 a month, and you'll keep Burnt Toast an ad and sponsor free space. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/join.
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The Burnt Toast Podcast is hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. You can follow Virginia on Instagram at @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.bsky.social. You can follow Corinne on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay.bsky.social and on Patreon at Big Undies.
This podcast is produced by Kim Baldwin. You can follow Kim at @theblondemule on all platforms and subscribe to her newsletter at The Blonde Mule.
The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.
Our theme music is by Farideh.
Our video editor is Elizabeth Ayiku, who also runs the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders. Learn more and donate at melittlemefoundation.org.
Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.
Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay and it’s time for your February Indulgence Gospel!
Today we are talking about influencers who show their expensive influencer grocery hauls, as well as people who spend A LOT OF MONEY on food delivery. (If you too had feelings about that ChrisLovesJulia reel...let's get into it!)
We also talk about our own spending on groceries and food delivery....and our complicated feelings about both. 🥴
You do need to be a paid Just Toast subscriber to listen to this full conversation. Membership starts at just $5 per month!
Join Just Toast!
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You're listening to Burnt Toast! We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay.
Today our conversation is with Kim Baldwin, the newest member of the Burnt Toast team.
Kim is the former digital editor for the Nashville Scene. Her culture writing can be found in places like the Nashville Scene, Parnassus Books’ Musings and on her Substack. Kim has interviewed folks like Sarah Sherman, Trixie Mattel, John Waters, Samantha Irby and Tess Holliday.
Originally a blogger, Kim started The Blonde Mule in 2006 and later turned her popular interview series “These My Bitches” into a podcast called Ladyland. Kim writes a weekly newsletter about books and pop culture, teaches social media classes and is a frequent conversation partner for author events in Nashville.
If you enjoy this conversation, a paid subscription is the best way to support our work!
Join Burnt Toast
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Episode 233 Transcript
Virginia
We have a very fun episode for you today. We are introducing to all the Burnt Toasties, many of whom may already know and love her, our new podcast producer Kim Baldwin. 
Kim
Hi, hi, hi. 
Virginia
We are really happy you're here. Kim is doing a lot of things to improve our workflow. Yesterday she taught Corinne and me how to use Slack. Corinne, I think you already knew how to use Slack, but I sure did not. So that was exciting.
Kim is joining us not just to teach us Slack, but to help with podcast production and make everything run more smoothly and efficiently. We are really grateful to her and thought it would be fun to do an episode where you get to know her.
Kim  
I'm excited to be on the Burnt Toast team, and excited to be here today despite harrowing conditions. 
Virginia
Truly harrowing.
Kim
I'm coming to you live from a public library because my home does not have water or internet.
Virginia  
Yes, Kim is surviving the Nashville ice apocalypse, where, what 130,000 people have been displaced?
Kim
230,000.
Virginia
230,000 people have been displaced. So she has been heroically working on
Burnt Toast while literally being out of her home, back in her home, but now working from the library. Yay, public libraries! We love you.
Let's dive in. Corinne, why don't we take turns asking our questions?
Corinne  
My first question is, what is your fat radicalization story? How did you get interested in body liberation work?
Kim  
When I turned 40 I had to get a biometric screening for health insurance because over 40, you have to qualify for insurance. It was a really stigmatizing appointment. In hindsight, it was traumatic. My therapist was like, Enough. You have to go see someone now. 
That was 2018. I started working with an anti-diet registered dietitian. I thought I was going for one or two appointments, just for someone to say, "It's fine, you're all good." It became evident I had a disordered relationship, primarily with exercise, but also with eating. I went into what I now call recovery. It wasn't called that in real-time. It was just a chill, "Well, why don't you come see me every week for a while?"
So I did that. I worked with Katherine Fowler, a non-diet, registered dietitian nutritionist here in Nashville. She's great. I knew nothing before her. She introduced me to anti-diet and Health at Every Size. She gave me a bunch of resources, one of which was Christy Harrison and Food Psych. I went whole hog. I listened to the back catalog of Food Psych, I read a bunch of books. I think Christy's first book came out around that time. It was so radical to me to think, Hold on, I can be fat, or, Hold on, I don't have to exercise this much. I was an Iron Man, so I was at that level of exercise.
Virginia  
Oh wow. Oh gosh, that's aggressive.
Kim  
When you exercise that much, for me, restrictive eating is just part of it. They really do go hand in hand. You control your food to try to control your outcomes and races and stuff.
That's a long answer: back in 2018 I started working with registered dietitian, and she blew my mind and saved my life.
Virginia  
That's amazing. Yay, registered dietitians who do that work! Also, yay, Food Psych! That was a great podcast. Corinne, wasn't it one of your entry points, too? I feel like we've talked about this.
Corinne  
Yeah. I was a regular listener.
Virginia  
Just hearing people's stories over and over. The way Christy structured that was so healing and valuable for so many people.
I've always been a fan of your culture writing. You always have amazing book recs, movie recs. Your newsletter The Blonde Mule is definitely one of my go to's for like, Ooh, what culture am I missing out on? Kim will know. So I would love to know who are some of your fat culture inspirations, icons, or just people you really love in that space?
Kim  
For sure Aubrey Gordon. She was an original, and back then, she was anonymous. Her Instagram posts back in the day - she still sometimes reposts those old ones in her stories. She still means so much to me. I learned about her early on. 
And then, of course, Lindy West. I had read Shrill, and because I worked at an alt-weekly, she also worked at The Stranger in Seattle, which is their alt-weekly, and we had similar jobs, so I looked up to her. She had this great essay in The Stranger where she came out as fat. In real time, I wasn't there yet, but when I got into recovery and started learning, I realized how ahead of her time - ahead of all of us - she was. 
And then, Virginia, you and people I found through Food Psych and through Christy. Back then we were all still using social media with wild abandon. You could learn about people through Instagram stories. Christy Harrison would repost all these people to her Instagram stories and I would click through and follow who she reposted. She'd repost something of yours, or, I can't even remember all the people back then. Oh, Ragen Chastain. I've been reading her stuff this whole time. I hope everyone reads her and knows what amazing work she's doing in this space. I can't get a sense of how many people know how much she's doing.
Virginia  
She does such deep dives into the research. She really is someone who is taking the time to take apart scientific papers, look at the methodology, look a what bias went into the research. I have learned so much from Ragen. I started following her back in probably the early 2000s when she was writing about being a fat dancer. I remember I interviewed her for a woman's magazine.
Kim
Oh right. I forgot about that, her original handle.
Virginia
Dances With Fat. Oh, you're making me nostalgic for this time. Now everyone's like, Body positivity is dead, and it was never really good, but there were these really good folks doing great work in the mix. 
Kim  
There was an organic way to find, I don't want to say community in the way we say it now, but I didn't know anybody in real life going through what I was going through, or who was learning what I was learning. All I had, truly, was Food Psych. So if someone was on Food Psych, I would look them up. I would follow them. And then that reposting thing, that's how I found so many people.
Virginia  
Yeah, it's so true.
Corinne  
Kim, where does the name The Blonde Mule come from? 
Kim  
Oh, this question.
Corinne
If you want to skip it ...
Kim
It brings up a lot of embarrassment. I should address it. 
Virginia
It's time. Kim, it's time. I don't know the backstory.
Kim
In 2006 I started a personal blog on blogspot because everyone was doing it. Back then it was the thing to have a cutesy name. No one used their government name online back then. Your email wasn't your name, your blog - none of that was your name. I'm a Taurus and I am actually stubborn, so "the mule" was kind of a nickname. There was this formula of a physical descriptor plus a nickname. All my friends had a version of this. I thought, Oh, I'll just do the blonde mule. I'll change it later, nobody cares. No one followed me. 
Then I had to buy my domain name and get handles on social media sites. So 2006 to 2026, how many years is that? Is that 20 years? So unfortunately, I'm locked in. Because now I own that name. I don't love it because I wish I hadn't self identified with my hair color. Especially because it's blonde and that means a lot of things that don't align with my values. Also, during the pandemic, I quit coloring my hair and so I'm not really blonde anymore.
Virginia  
A blonde-ish mule.
Corinne  
I would consider you blonde. 
Virginia  
I still would consider you blonde. 
Corinne
Also Virginia, aren't you also a Taurus?
Virginia
I am also a Taurus. I am also pretty stubborn.
Corinne
This is an earth sign podcast. I'm a Capricorn.
Kim
John, my husband, is a Capricorn.
Virginia  
I don't know what that means. 
Kim
We're very compatible.
Corinne  
Yes, I also have a Taurus Moon.
Virginia  
Sure. I've been meaning to get one of those. I don't understand astrology.
But I do relate to picking a name and sticking with it because now you're stuck with it. In many ways that is the backstory of Burnt Toast. So relatable. I named it on a whim. People are always like, What's that about? And I'm like, I mean, not a lot. But it is what it is. 
The Blonde Mule is sticky. It sticks with you.
Kim  
There are people who make me feel better. One is Samantha Irby because she is still bitches gotta eat. She also is from, like, 2006. There are a few of us that are locked in. What are you going to do? I literally bought this name.
Virginia  
I'm stuck with it. You might as well own it, for sure. 
Another part of your work life is that you work at the famous Parnassus Books, owned by best-selling author and icon Ann Patchett. I am a former bookstore girl. I love bookstores. Most authors, we love bookstores. So I really love talking about bookstores. I want to know, what's the most fun part of bookstore life? Also, does this bookstore have any pets?
Kim  
The bookstore has so many pets. We have shop dogs. Ann famously has a dog, Nemo. He appears in most of the videos. Before Nemo she had a cute little guy named Sparky, who I loved so much. There's a back office staff and they almost all have dogs and bring their dogs to work. 
Virginia
Love this. 
Kim
There's one bookseller who has a dog, but she's on maternity leave, so we're a little bit short on dogs that are out on the floor, but in the back office, it's dog central. 
This is my second time working there. I worked there in 2019. I've mostly been self-employed and worked from home for a really long time. My mood was starting to get dark and my therapist suggested it would be nice to have some socialization and to leave my house one or two days a week. I was friendly with Parnassus, so I asked, "Is this a thing?" And they were excited, so they hired me to be a part-time bookseller back in 2019. Then the pandemic hit and they closed for a long time and it just didn't make sense anymore. 
I went and did a whole other job for a few years and left that job last year and went back to the bookstore. Same thing. I still work from home and I work at the bookstore one or two days a week.
I do actually love a million things about it, but my favorite thing this round is everyone I work with is 24 years old, give or take. I love them so much. It is so invigorating to be around a whole staff of 24 year olds. They all love their parents. They have really good parents. They're mostly queer, which makes it extra nice that none of their parents were bad. Their parents are super accepting. They're all really smart and they're all funny. The things that are funny to them are so strange. There are all these long running jokes about, like, which Muppet are you? That's a fun thing for Gen Z.
Virginia  
That sounds delightful. I mean, I think bookstore people are just the best people and the most charming weirdos. And I love hearing that 24 year olds love their parents. Because even though my oldest kid is 12, and we have a ways to go, fingers crossed we'll get there.
Kim  
Yeah. Our generation, not so much.
Virginia  
It's not a given. Let's put it that way. It's not a given.
We're going to do a lightning round of fun, goofy questions so we can all get to know you better. Corinne, why don't you kick it off?
Corinne  
All right, first question. Tell us about your pets.
Kim  
Ooh, I have two official pets. I have two cats. They came in at different times. They're both street cats. One is Nomi. He's kind of a Siamese cat. The other one is your regular striped street cat. His name is Benny.
Virginia
And you have an owl in your backyard. 
Kim
I have an owl. I live in the country, so we have deer, turkey, owls, hawks, a skunk and a lot of snakes.
Virginia  
Nice.
Favorite hobbies? I know from Instagram you are into collage making and you are into puzzles and I'm here for both of them.
Kim  
Yes, you are part of my puzzle journey. I knew that you got that table and you were doing them, and I thought, Ooh, that seems relaxing. We moved into this house last year, and I thought, Who am I going to be in the country? I'm going to be someone who does puzzles, and I'm going to get a puzzle table. And I did.
Virginia  
It's so relaxing. The best.
Kim  
The collage thing is new. I went to a divorce party and we were doing blackout poetry collages. I had never heard of any of this. I had the time of my life and my friend was like, You can just do this at home. And so now I do.
Virginia  
Corinne was nodding because Corinne is cooler and of course she knows what black out poetry collages are. I do not. 
Corinne
I think you do, as well. 
Virginia
Is it like what Kate Baer writes? Like blacked out words? Okay, that is cool. I love that.
Corinne  
Kim, tell us your favorite comfort food or snacks.
Kim  
I've needed a lot of comfort this week. My go-to is chicken tenders and mashed potatoes. You do need carbs when you're this stressed out because your body's trying to slow you down and get you to rest and sleep. So there's been a lot of tendies in my life.
Corinne  
Are these from a specific restaurant? Or the freezer section?
Kim  
This week they're from a grocery store. There's a proliferation of chicken stuff here - the Nashville hot chicken. Truly, everywhere you go, there's hot chicken and there's tenders. The driving force of Nashville is chicken tenders.
Corinne
Sounds like heaven.
Virginia
Burnt Toast retreat in Nashville?? We just eat chicken tenders for three days? Start planning it now. That sounds great. 
Favorite thing you wore recently, and what makes it your favorite?
Kim  
Let's talk about jeans. I don't know what we're supposed to be wearing anymore. I am still comfortable in skinny jeans.
Virginia
It's okay. This is a jeans safe space.
Kim
I'm locked and loaded in those high-rise, skinny jeans. But that is not what we're supposed to be wearing anymore.
Virginia  
They're real mad at us for still wanting to wear them.
Kim  
Let me tell you what the people I work with wear. It looks like I work with the Insane Clown Posse. They are wearing jeans so big and baggy it blows my mind. So I thought, Let me try. I bought a pair of - everything comes from Big Undies - I bought these Old Navy barrel jeans and I feel nuts in them. But I wore them to work and everyone was like, That's what you're supposed to look like! I've never been more uncomfortable in my life than when I wear these jeans. 
Corinne  
You realize you're going to have to send us photos, right? We're going to be texting your co-workers to take secret photos of you. 
Kim
Oh, my God.
Virginia  
We're going to need a photo.
Kim  
I went to a museum recently and wore those Old Navy barrel jeans - light wash, I will add - very uncomfortable.
Virginia  
You went right into the deep end of that swimming pool.
Kim  
I went in. And then I have this Universal Standard shirtdress. They have them in white and black. It's just a button up, floor length thing. I wore that, obviously unbuttoned from the waist down, and then I have those Crocs Dylan platform clogs.
Corinne  
My God, this is very chic outfit. 
Kim
I have the ones that are like clown shoes.
Corinne
They're platform Crocs.
Kim  
I wore that to the museum and I think it's the coolest I've ever looked, but it's the most uncomfortable I've ever been in my life.
Virginia  
So cool though.
Corinne  
Dying to see it. 
Kim
It's my only outfit. Everything else is workout clothes.
Virginia  
You have one outfit. You're set. 
I mean, jeans are a whole conversation. That silhouette and changing from how we've been programmed, I feel you. But even wearing something where you're like, I know this is cool, but it feels so different from what I like. The way the trends have changed. I do feel like that is one of the oddest things about getting older - suddenly realizing the clothes are so unfamiliar. Corinne is the baby of the podcast, so she might not be able to relate to that.
Corinne  
Kim, how old are you?
Kim
I'm 49. I turn 50 this year.
Virginia  
Ooh, exciting. When's your birthday? 
Kim
It’s a whole thing. I'm working through it.
Corinne  
Wait, what if you guys have the same birthday?
Kim  
I'm May 20.
Virginia
I'm April 30.
Kim
Oh, you're an April Taurus.
Virginia  
And that means a thing?
I feel that it is a whole thing about clothes. You're just like, It's making less and less sense. I'm trying, but I don't know.
Kim  
It's hard. I think we're just supposed to feel stupid.
Corinne  
Well, not to change the subject, but how do you feel about brownies? Are you an edge, corner or center of the pan person? 
Kim
Center. I can't deal with the edges.
Virginia  
Same. 
Kim
It needs to all be the same texture.
Virginia  
You've got to pair up with your edge people so that you can get the brownies you want.
Corinne  
Following up that groundbreaking question, peanut butter in the fridge or pantry?
Kim  
Pantry. I didn't know anyone put it in the fridge. But during the storm, we stayed at a hotel for eight days, and then we moved into someone's empty house, and they had their peanut butter in the fridge. I was like, are we supposed to be doing this?
Virginia  
Yes, that's what the Lord intended. I am.
Corinne  
I am also a fridge peanut butter person.
Kim
Are you supposed to?
Virginia  
Not from a food safety perspective, but it spiritually feels correct to me. It feels like it should be cold. I threw this in here because it was a recent poll on Burnt Toast and the people were against me on this. 
Corinne
Oh, wow. 
Virginia
When my boyfriend moved in, he was like, Why is the peanut butter in the fridge? What's happening? You're insane. And I was like, well, let's check with the public, assuming that my Burnt Toasties would rally around me. Instead they were all like, What are you doing? 
Corinne  
The only open stuff in my pantry is crackers and cookies. Open stuff goes in the fridge. 
Virginia
If it has a lid, it needs to be cold.
Kim
But what about hot sauce?
Corinne
Fridge.
Virginia  
Yeah, in the fridge.
Kim
We do, too. But I have started to think i'm not supposed to because, at restaurants, it's just on the table. 
Corinne
This is true. 
Virginia  
You have a good point. I'm not saying it's correct, but I'm saying it's correct. 
Another favorite Burnt Toast question that a reader submitted that we think is very fun to ask people is, which liquids would you want shooting out of your fingers? If you could have fingers that shoot liquids.
Corinne  
Each finger can be a separate liquid.
Virginia  
But also, if you don't want to think of five, it's fine. If you're like, I just want a Coke finger. That's all I need.
Corinne  
It could also be a liquid that's not something you drink.
Kim  
Like what?
Corinne
Gasoline. That's my new best answer. I would want gas to be able to shoot out of my finger.
Kim  
I did just had to buy a generator. I hope this episode doesn't give me PTSD when I listen to it in a month and remember how traumatized I am from the storm. I'll be like, Why did I keep mentioning generators and hotels?
Ok, I think it would be iced coffee, like a cold brew; Pamplemousse La Croix; honestly, orange juice. Love orange juice. Love an acid. That's it. Those are my three. I'm not a soft drink person.
Corinne  
Well, are you an electrolyte person?
Kim  
Oh, my God. I've been dying to talk to you about this. No, they're fake science, Corinne.
Corinne  
Well, fake science works for me.
Kim
No, I'm not. I used to be.
Corinne  
Talk to me when you come to high elevation.
Kim  
You know what? Honestly, that's fair. I have been in your part of the country a lot the last few years. We have to go to L.A. a few times a year. During COVID we couldn't fly, so we started driving, and now we are obsessed with driving cross-country.
Corinne  
Oh, wow. We really should talk.
Kim  
I didn't know you yet, but the last time we were in Albuquerque I told Virginia I wanted your phone number to ask you where to get a breakfast burrito. 
Corinne
Oh, my God! Yeah, you should have!
Virginia  
Corinne always has that intel.
Kim  
But no, the high altitude, that's legit.
Virginia  
I'm excited to have another electrolyte skeptic in the podcast. That's going to be helpful for me.
Virginia  
The beverage I will never be needing less of is Diet Coke. Are you pro or con Diet Coke, and if you are not pro Diet Coke, what do you drink?
Kim  
I'm pro Diet Coke, especially with pizza. I drink one on the days I'm at the bookstore. I just need one halfway through to keep going. I do love Diet Coke. I just wake up and drink coffee. That's typically it for the day, but if I'm out to eat or if I'm at work, I drink a Diet Coke. 
Virginia
Yeah, it's a nice little treat.
Corinne  
I just learned that there's a difference between Diet Coke and Coke Zero.
Virginia  
Obviously! There's a huge difference!
Corinne
But what is it? No one can really articulate it.
Virginia
The taste.
Corinne  
But why are they making two zero calorie Cokes?
Virginia  
Diet culture.
Kim  
I think it's gender. I think they think women want Diet Coke and men do not.
Virginia  
Men are drinking a manly Coke Zero? That doesn’t sound more masculine.
Corinne  
But what is the difference? Is it different sweeteners?
Virginia  
I am Googling it to get to the bottom of this. "Coke Zero aims to replicate the classic Coke taste using a blend of aspartame and acesulfame potassium." Diet Coke uses only aspartame.
Corinne  
So it is the sweeteners. They both have caffeine?
Virginia  
They both have caffeine. They both are calorie-free and sugar-free. Diet Coke is where you want to go for that pure aspartame hit, which is what I'm looking for. 
Corinne  
Speaking of Diet Coke, any other diet-y foods or habits that you've reclaimed?
Kim  
Recently, I've started eating Uncrustables, which I hadn't had for a long time. When I was doing Iron Man training, that was what you'd take on a long bike ride. So I've associated that with needing to refuel during workouts. But I've started eating them again.
Virginia  
They're so good. A great purse snack. I like to have one for errand running.
Kim  
I've also started doing that. I just throw them in there. They're great because the purse thaws it out.
Virginia  
Yes, exactly. I put it between my sunglasses case and my wallet. It gets nice and toasty.
Kim  
And honestly? Yogurt. I quit eating yogurt for a long time, but it turns out you can have yogurt for fun.
Corinne
Yogurt is good.
Virginia  
Especially if you can have the full fat yogurt.
Kim
Oh, my God. Game changer. I bought it on accident because they were out of the one I buy. I was like, Oh, it never occurred to me to switch.
Virginia  
The one thing RFK, Jr. and I agree on is full fat yogurt. The one overlap in our otherwise completely disparate Venn diagram circles.
Kim
That disgusting, broken clock of a man.
Virginia  
Any diet-y foods or habits that you'll never touch again that you're like, Nope, that ship has sailed?
Kim  
Turkey bacon and turkey sausage. 
Virginia
Let that go. Just, why?
Kim
I'm just going to eat pork if I'm going to eat pork. Oh, Lean Cuisine. Never bringing that back. All kinds of snacks. I could never eat a pretzel again for the rest of my life.
Corinne  
Oh, wow. I love pretzels.
Kim  
Or unbuttered popcorn. All those zero point foods.
Virginia  
The ones that I hear people fully reclaim are cottage cheese, but again, pivoting to full fat cottage cheese. Rice cakes surprisingly have a lot of devotees. That's one where I'm like, No thanks. People like the crunch. I don't know.
Kim  
The exercise stuff I remember more. All of that has just gone away. 
Corinne  
Never going to do another Iron Man? 
Kim
No, I am not. I just take little walks.
Virginia  
So much better.
Corinne  
Do you have any current favorite TV shows?
Kim  
Oh, my God. My favorite topic is television!
I am watching The Wire for the first time. I watched season one and I'm obsessed with it. I'm going to start season two as soon as I have internet in my house again.
I am a middle-aged white woman, so I love RuPaul's Drag Race. I am its main demographic. I'm watching that right now. There's a new season. And I'm watching The Pitt.
Virginia  
I can't watch The Pitt because of medical trauma, but I do think I would like it. I need a website that gives me spoilers, so I can pick and choose which episodes, then I can do it.
Corinne  
Our last question is what are you reading right now?
Kim  
Ooh, I'm reading Lindy West's next memoir that's about to come out in March. It's called Adult Braces.
Virginia  
🎉 Spoiler, but Kim did get Lindy to come on the pod soon. So get excited, folks!
Kim  
I've read all of her books. I think this is her fourth book and second memoir. Man, it's blowing me away. I love her writing, and this is beyond anything she's written before, not to disparage her other books, but this is a whole new level of vulnerability. It's so good. I'm reading Heated Rivalry, also. 
Corinne
Oh, fun!
Virginia  
I have both of those on tap to start as soon as I finish what I'm reading right now. I can't wait to read Lindy, and I can't wait to read the Heated Rivalry books, which I ordered from your friend's bookstore, Tropes & Trifles. 
Kim  
That's awesome. My friend Lauren owns that bookstore. She's great. Her bookstore is great.
Virginia  
It felt like a really good way to support Minnesota, and also my own need for more gay hockey after Corinne got me into Heated Rivalry.
Corinne  
Finally! It took so long. 
Virginia  
It did. People were so mad.
Kim
It took longer than it needed to.
Virginia
I know. I just missed it somehow. And then I was like, Okay, I'm here. I get it.
Kim  
I'm in a romance group chat. One of the people in the group chat is Lauren, who owns Tropes & Trifles. The first episode hit HBO, the group chat lit up. They all just said, "All of you, watch it now."
Virginia  
Like, just stop what you’re doing.
Kim
We have to talk about this collectively. So I watched it in real time. It was a mandate.
Corinne
Amazing.
Virginia
Delightful.
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Butter
Virginia  
Well, this was so fun. I'm glad we got to chat with you more. Before we wrap up, of course, we have to get you to give us some butter. What do you have for us?
(Editor's note: my mind went blank, so we skipped to Corinne and then came back to me.)
Corinne  
I'm going to recommend a book that I'm reading right now and really enjoying. It's called Long Bright River, and it's by Liz Moore, who wrote God Of the Woods that a lot of people read last year. I've been listening to the audiobook version and it's great. It's kind of a detective/crime situation, but there's a lot of twists and turns, and finding out things about the main character that you didn't know at the beginning. I'm really enjoying it. I'm also not quite done, so if something crazy happens at the end, don't blame me. I think I have only an hour left, so I feel pretty confident recommending it.
Kim
Do you know it's a TV show, too?
Corinne  
Oh no, I didn't, but that makes so much sense. I was listening to it and thinking it would make a great show. What is the show?
Kim  
Same name. It has Amanda Seyfried in it.
Virginia
Oh, I love her.
Kim
It's a great cast. It's actually a great show.
Corinne  
I'll have to check that out.
Virginia  
I love that book. Kim, do you want to go next?
Kim  
My butter is boba. I somehow had never had it even though there are great places all over Nashville that have it. But back to chicken tenders, near the place I live now, there's a little strip mall and it has a chicken tenders restaurant and a boba place. They're the only two things there. I went over there and they were so nice. They had me taste a bunch of stuff and they made me an iced coffee boba with a brown sugar top off. I'm obsessed with it. Anytime I'm there - it's actually across the street from where I am right now. Will I get one today? Yes, I will.
Virginia  
I think you need one after our morning.
Kim  
Why did I wait so long for boba? It's so fun and delicious.
Virginia  
I have to confess, I don't think I've ever had it.
Corinne  
This reminds me that there's an amazing TikTok of some guy trying boba for the first time.
Virginia  
I will endorse an item of clothing. It's fast fashion, which we know makes for a problematic butter, but I know I'm going to stand by this one because it is the third time I've bought this cardigan. It is the pranayama wrap from Athleta. I wear the 2x. It's roomy on me, but it only goes up to 3x. It's not a super size inclusive brand, but Corinne just said she doesn't care.
Corinne  
I never said that. I feel like a wrap is a flexibly sized item of clothing.
Virginia  
I agree. Athleta is a brand that frequently makes me mad because Old Navy is making plus sizes. You're the same company. The same as with Gap!
I am at the point in winter where my perimenopausal self is cold and hot at the same time, and I can't wear my sweaters because I'm so sweaty. It's a real thing. You just get to a point where your sweaters are too warm, but it's still cold, and what are you going to wear?
I've been getting more into the sweatshirt space, but even some of them are too heavy. This wrap is a really good one. It's lightweight, but it's warm, and it comes in different colors. I got this purplish-blue color on sale and I'm living in it.
My butter is a layer that you can actually be warm, but not die in.
Corinne
Amazing.
Kim
I support that.
Virginia  
Thank you, but I do acknowledge that it is not a great brand, and I would like them to make larger sizes.
Kim, this was a delight! Tell folks where they can follow you, at your website and the name you don't like.
Kim  
The Blonde Mule everywhere is me. As I mentioned, I bought that name.
Virginia  
She owns it.
Kim 
It’s easy to find me. TheBlondeMule.com is my newsletter where I write about books and pop culture. When I've got the bandwidth, I write essays. And then @TheBlondeMule on all the platforms.
Virginia  
You'll also find her in the Burnt Toast comments and Big Undies comments. And know that she is working a lot of magic behind the scenes here. You'll probably hear from her more every now and then, as well. 
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Thanks for listening to Burnt Toast. If you enjoyed the conversation, please support our work with a paid subscription. They start at just $5 a month, and you'll keep Burnt Toast an ad and sponsor free space. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/join.
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The Burnt Toast Podcast is hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. You can follow Virginia on Instagram at @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.bsky.social. You can follow Corinne on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay.bsky.social and on Patreon at Big Undies.
This podcast is produced by Kim Baldwin. You can follow Kim at @theblondemule on all platforms and subscribe to her newsletter at The Blonde Mule.
The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.
Our theme music is by Farideh.
Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.
Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark!
We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it's time for your February Extra Butter episode!
Listen to hear about:
⭐️ Anti-diet GLP-1 life
⭐️ Who gets left out when the tradwife aesthetic takes over influencer culture
⭐️ Interrogating the ableism of not wanting to be on medication your whole life
Plus, serious stuff, like:
⭐️ Corinne in a prairie dress
⭐️ How long Virginia will last in a zombie apocalypse
⭐️ Why hot cheese is in for February
To hear the whole thing, read the full transcript, and join us in the comments, you do need to be an Extra Butter subscriber.
Join Extra Butter!