Episode 265: The Way We Think About Bodies with Virginia Sole-Smith
Kate and Doree go deep with diet culture journalist and Fat Talk author Virginia Sole-Smith about the systemic roots and reach of diet culture and fat-phobia, parenting our kids and ourselves in our size-obsessed culture, and reframing our perceptions about food and health.
Photo Credit: Gabrielle Gerard Photography
Mentioned in this Episode
Get your tickets to Doree’s Birthday Celebration on May 17th!
The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image, and Guilt in America by Virginia Sole-Smith
Belly And The Beast
Connect with Virginia
Podcast: https://virginiasolesmith.substack.com/s/the-burnt-toast-podcast
Website: virginiasolesmith.com
Twitter: @v_solesmith (https://twitter.com/v_solesmith)
Instagram: @v_solesmith (https://www.instagram.com/v_solesmith/)
TikTok: @v_solesmith
To leave a voicemail or text for a future episode, reach them at 781-591-0390. You can also email the podcast at forever35podcast@gmail.com.
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Transcript
Kate: Hello and welcome to Forever35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Kate Spencer.
Doree: And I'm Doree Shafrir.
Kate: And we are not experts.
Doree: We're not. We're two friends who like to talk a lot about serums.
Kate: And you can visit our website forever35podcast for links to everything we mentioned on the show and find us on Instagram @Forever35podcast in the Forever35 Facebook group world where the password is serums you can find products we love at shopmy.us/Forever35. And you can sign up for our newsletter at Forever35podcast.com/newsletter.
Doree: And if you would like to reach us, we have a voicemail and text number at (781) 591-0390 and our email is Forever35podcast@gmail.com.
Kate: We are doing a live show.
Doree: Oh Yeah, we are.
Kate: That is happening on Wednesday, May 17th, seven, May 17th at 5:30 PM Pacific, 8:30 PM Eastern Link in the show notes to buy tickets.
Doree: It's moment.co/Forever35 I believe.
Kate: And days before that we are playing in the Bitches Deep Dive Pickleball Tournament. Oh yeah. Here in Los Angeles, California and Saturday May 13th. We'll link to tickets for that. If you want to come watch Doree and me play Pickleball on the same team.
Doree: On the same team
Kate: Together.
Doree: Together.
Kate: And we have a code for 15% off. It's Kate/Doree. We'd love to see you there. If you are a listener who comes to this pickle tournament, please say hi.
Doree: Please say hi. Please let us know who you are and cheer for us,
Kate: please cheer us.
Doree: We're going to need it.
Kate: I don't know. Doree and I played today and Doree was fantastic, so you're being modest, you're really good for the first time you've ever played.
Doree: Okay, Okay, thanks.
Kate: Incredible.
Doree: All right. I will take the compliment.
Kate: Take it.
Doree: Thank you,
Kate: Doree. Should we seriously just hop right into our interview?
Doree: I think we should
Kate: We had the absolute pleasure of talking to Virginia Sole-Smith. We're sure you know her as the writer and podcaster behind Burnt Toast, an incredible newsletter. She's also the author and I should say, excuse me, an incredible anti- diet newsletter and podcast by the same name.
Doree: That we have name checked on the pod on our podcast, many times,
Kate: Too many times to count, and she's also the author of a new book, it's called Fat Talk Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture That is out, just came out, her previous book is The Eating Instinct, food Culture, body Image and Guilt in America. Her reporting on diet, culture, health and parenting has been in everything from the New York Times to Scientific American. She's really a thought leader in the anti- diet space and
Doree: That's a great way of putting it.
Kate: Thank you. We've wanted to talk to her for a very long time and we chatted with her for a while, so I think we just want to bring you our whole conversation today because we got so much out of it and out of her book, so we're just launching right into it.
Doree: Let's do that.
Kate: Without further ado, here is our conversation with Virginia.
Doree: Great.
Kate: Oh boy, Virginia, welcome to the pod. This is very exciting. I just want you to know that I just bragged about getting to interview you to a friend over text message a few moments ago. So thank you for the bragging right.
Virginia: I feel very honored. Very honored to be text brag worthy.
Kate: Yeah, you are text brag worthy.
Doree: We both wanted to interview you for so long and we were like, well, she has a book coming out. We should wait till the book is out and now the book is out.
Virginia: Yay.
Doree: Yay. Which is so exciting. Congratulations. It's truly a huge accomplishment. It's so great. I know I'm going to be talking about it for so long, so thank you for writing it.
Kate: Oh yeah. Oh, thank you. I already posted it in a parenting Facebook group with a suggestion to read it.
Virginia: I love you. Thank you so much.
Doree: Well, Kate, should we just get into it?
Kate: Let's just start. Let's just start and let's never stop.
Doree: Okay,
Virginia: Perfect.
Kate: Well look at every beginning of our show, we ask our guests about a self-care practice they have in their life. Now this can literally be anything as I think we all kind of understand the umbrella of self-care to be. Do you have something, Virginia that is meaningful to you as a practice of self-care?
Virginia: I was thinking about that. I have a couple. The one that I has been the most useful to me, but that is currently under siege a little bit, and I'm reworking to maintain it, is I realized early on in parenting that I loved my children more if I woke up before them and had some time to myself to just do wordle or read or not be touched or talk to by anyone. And this has worked really well. I was a real stickler for, I call it reverse sleep training, where I would make all these rules that they couldn't leave their rooms and was really strict about it to preserve. I could get up an hour before then. I also don't have super early risers, so everyone who has a 5:00 AM riser, this is obviously not for you, not a doable strategy. And it worked really great and now my kids suddenly decided to share a room and now they're both getting up earlier and it's falling apart. And I'm just really recognizing how much it's like I had started to take it for granted.
Kate: Yes.
Virginia: It was so great, and now it's a little bit gone and I'm like, okay, we got to, it's time to lock down some stuff again. So yeah, that is my self-care practice that is currently a work in progress.
Kate: I love that. If it works for folks, that early morning time of just alone to do whatever you want. It's similar to the kind of, and I'm forgetting the name of it, but the staying up late and scrolling time that we also have.
Virginia: Yes.
Doree: Revenge bedtime procrastination.
Virginia: Yeah. It's like a version of that. And sometimes it is just phone scrolling first thing in the morning.
Kate: Yeah,
Virginia: That's all. It's coffee and phone scrolling. And that's all I've got. I mean, the best version of it is now that it's spring and getting into summer, I go out into my garden and I sit outside with my coffee and do that. And that might be the solution is if I leave the house, I can't hear them if they get up and they have to, we might have just solved it, guys solve.
Doree: I was just going to say, I feel like Kate, you have periodically posted early morning Instagrams or just wherever on social media of I'm enjoying my coffee and it's like 6:00 AM and you're outside. And I'm always envious of that. And I usually see them when I'm awake, but just lying in bed and not feeling motivated to get out of bed. So I applaud anyone who is able to actually get out of bed before they absolutely have to, which I, I've pretty much never been able to do. So.
Virginia: I mean it's definitely, you're either wired this way or you're not. I can barely stay awake past 8:30 at night, so thats the downside of it.
Doree: It, oh, I was in bed at 9. It's on both ends. But I just don't ever want to leave bed.
Virginia: Valid, valid also self-care. So that's fair.
Kate: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like not leaving bed is a really valid, really great, wonderful choice.
Doree: Yeah. Okay. Thank you both. Thank you both. Yeah,
Kate: It's not, get it twisted here, so let's hop into it because your newsletter has been such a pivotal part of my own understanding of diet culture and now your book, which I devoured yesterday,
Doree: We named your newsletter all the time on this podcast.
Kate: Yes.
Virginia: It's so nice. I always like, oh guys, thank you. Hope messages from people. It's very exciting.
Kate: It's nonstop. So I would love to just start, if you could give our listeners a bit of a background about your professional and personal journey into this area and covering diet culture. I know you are a journalist, but when did that become your focus and was it intentional or was it something that you just kind of found yourself coming to again and again?
Virginia: A little bit of both. So I started my career in women's magazines, so I was very much a creator of diet culture. I was a health and nutrition journalist, and so it was a lot. And this was early two thousands, so it was a lot of portion control and sugar phobia stuff and low carb and then also all the well early wellness culture stuff. So Michael Pollen and eating organic and quinoa and all the whole grains, all of that why olive, olive oil is fine, but not trans fat, et cetera, et cetera. So I was doing that and I was sort of wrestling with, it was a very messy time. On the one hand I really identified as a feminist, I didn't think that we should have to pursue thinness and hotness as this cost of being a woman in particular in society. And yet I was very much in my own struggle of feeling if I can just find, there's got to be a diet where it's not really a diet and it's this lovely easy way to eat and it's very aspirational and you go to the farmer's market a lot and that's just fun. So you're not dieting, it's fine, it's a date. This sort of version of it that I was looking for and that would feel good for my politics and just the whole aspirational image I had of myself. And yet also regularly diving headfirst into a box of Cheez-Its and feeling like, oh wait, it's all falling apart. And so I was just kind of in this messy place with that, doing these articles, not feeling great about these articles, hearing from readers about how they made them feel not great, just this is the cycle that we're in. And I started to learn more about concepts, which we can definitely get into more specifics of concepts like health at every size, the concept of diet, culture, intuitive eating. These things were on my radar and I would sort of go do one story on them and then the next week do a story on why you shouldn't eat sugar. It was very back and forth. And then the big turning point, which is a little bit cliche because I feel like motherhood is so often this turning point, and it shouldn't have taken motherhood, but it did was my daughter was born in 2013 and she was born with a rare congenital heart condition. We spent three years in this medical odyssey of multiple surgeries and just really pulled out of our regular lives into this whole other experience. And one of the things that happened during that time was that she stopped eating and was dependent on a feeding tube. And it helped me understand just how much I was defining myself, myself as a mother, the whole thing I was grading on, what eating looked like and whether we were getting it right. And I had this whole vision of myself as a mother who would of course exclusively breastfeed and make my own baby food and have a kid who was a perfect eater. I can remember being my child will never use children's menus at restaurants. What? hilarious now? Hilarious. Anyway, but we're forced completely outside of that paradigm, right? Because forget children's menus. She's not putting anything in her mouth. She's on a feeding tube. We're trying to figure out how to make food feel safe for her. And I realized we had to throw all of the rules out. We had to completely reject this idea that there would be an external set of rules that would teach us how to do this. We had to figure it out like me and her together. And so that led to my first book, the Eating Instinct, which explores how diet culture, how are all of our relationships with food are so informed by diet culture, which is all of these messages about perfect eating and thinness. And then in writing that book that got me more firmly on the path of understanding the role of weight in this whole conversation. And so ever since then I've been now really reporting on diet culture from the outside, really critiquing it and reckoning with it and understanding that dealing with anti-fat bias is really the foundation of the whole conversation.
Doree: Yeah, it's been, I mean for me. It's hard. It's hard for me to talk about this without talking about me personally. So I'm going to talk about myself for a second, but I know kind of unlearning all of the stuff that we were taught, whether implicitly or explicitly is such a big part of this journey. But then as I think you say in your book, the unlearning is kind of the first step. So can you talk a little bit about what is the next step in this journey for me, for you, for everyone?
Virginia: Well, so I think most of us, especially those of us with varying types of privilege, white privilege, thin privilege, et cetera, most of us start at this with dieting, right? Because that's the thing you learn to do. It's the thing that's sort of been weaponized against you really dramatically in one way or another. And so most people come to this conversation with this sense of, I don't want to diet anymore or I don't want my kids to diet, but I don't know what else to do. And so we start by working on the personal and that completely makes sense because that's the harm that's most apparent to you. That's the thing that is sort of looming largest in your own life. And also it's what diet culture has taught us to do to make this a personal self-improvement project. That's how we think of bodies as a personal self-improvement project. And so it's not that it's not valuable to work on our own issues. I have certainly benefited personally from doing this work in a thousand different ways. It's really great to get to a freer place with food and weight a hundred percent. But if we stop there, we're ignoring the fact that all of this is actually a systemic form oppression and that it harms the people who are the most marginalized, the most. So the fatter you are, the more anti-fat bias you're experiencing and the thinner you are, not only are you experiencing less bias, but you're likely perpetrating the bias in ways that you can't entirely see. And so that's why we have to do more than just sort out our own personal issues.
Kate: You talk about the intersection of fat phobia and anti-black racism and the ways in which fat phobia is so deeply rooted in white supremacy, which this is such an important connection that I think I know personally I I've often overlooked. Can you kind of dig into this a little bit for our listeners?
Virginia: Absolutely. And I would first say there are lots of scholars who have done this work who I should reference. I did not discover this connection.
Kate: And you do in the book too. Yes, you definitely.
Virginia: So Sabrina Strings Fury in the Black Body, Deshaun Harrison, belly of the Beast, those are my two go-tos for black scholars who have really nailed down this connection. But what their work really shows is that modern diet cultures, we know it really has its roots in the United States in the end of slavery. And what happened then is black people achieved rights that we hadn't given them before. And so in order to shore up white supremacy in order to maintain the hierarchy of power, white culture began to really celebrate the thin white body and demonize and other even more so rounder, larger black, darker bodies. And so all of the beauty ideals that we most celebrate in this culture have to do with playing into that, with maintaining white supremacy. And just recognizing that I think is, it can take people a minute. I understand, but I also think it's really liberating because it just makes it so cut and dried. Okay. I don't want to uphold white supremacy working pretty hard to not do that a lot of the time. I mean I recognize we all do, but I'm interested in divesting. So if that means don't reload noom on my phone. Okay, great. That can be a very concrete motivation for stepping back from some of this stuff. And you start to see it too. I mean you see it in the way different celebrities get treated. The way we talk about Gwyneth Paltro versus the way we talk about Lizzo, it's pretty clear the racial overtones in the way we think about bodies. And I just think starting to grapple with that is a big piece of this.
Kate: Okay, well let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.
Doree: Can we talk a little bit about how to talk to people about fat phobia and diet culture? And you have some very concrete advice in the book that I feel like I need to commit to memory. But I'm wondering two things. One is if you have just general suggestions for how to shut down conversations about weight and then also on social media. Kate referenced a parenting group where there have been some conversations. I'm in the same group and there have been some conversations that I would describe as fat phobic. And is it our job as people with thin privilege to call people in on that? And how do we do that?
Virginia: It's a tricky thing because you, it's so important in this conversation not to, we have to hate the game, not the player, because we're all swimming in the same soup. We're all struggling with this in different ways. And especially if you're someone with some thin privilege and you're talking to someone in a bigger body, they've experienced the soup in a way that you haven't. So for you to be like that's so fat phobic is not always your place and especially online, that can be hard to suss out.
Doree: Totally
Virginia: the kind of levels of harm that people have experienced. So I always try to start with compassion for, okay, this person is saying this harmful thing. They're may be talking, it's your friend talking about how she's intermittent fasting again and oh my God, so exhausting. But also this is something that she is struggling with or they are struggling with for the same reasons we all struggle and we can find some common ground there. So I always try to find ways to pivot it so it's not like I'm saying you shouldn't diet or right, that's obviously not going to work. But instead something like, ah, it's so exhausting how our culture makes us feel like this is necessary. It's so frustrating that we keep getting these messages that our bodies aren't enough. And then it's like you're finding a point of commonality and you can sort of shift it away from let's trade diet trips and more into let's talk about the larger system. And if that doesn't work, if someone is just really stuck on wanting to talk about how great paleo is for the millionth time or whatever, I mean you can set different boundaries depending on what the relationship is. Corin who works on burnt toast with me has this great line that she uses where she'll just go, it's so interesting how we keep talking about our diets. And I just love that for just dropping it out there. It's so interesting how you keep mentioning food and you're not judging, you're just making that kind of impartial observation, but you're also kind of letting it be known that this is not the conversation you most want to be having. And that can be a useful one, especially Thanksgiving dinner or something.
Doree: Yeah, I'm thinking back to a couple of specific interactions that I feel like I probably should have handled in a different way, but you know what? Know better do better.
Virginia: And you can't swing at every pitch, you know what I mean? This is my work and I don't pick up every opportunity. Sometimes you just don't have the bandwidth or you can just tell it's not going to go well and you have to conserve your resources.
Doree: Totally.
Virginia: But yeah, when I will also say I think folks within privilege looking, one thing I would love folks within privilege to think about doing is, and I know you guys talked about not getting weight at the doctor's office and how that's something we can opt out of, but it also is something that only folks with thin privilege can opt out of. If you show up in a fat body, they can see your fat. So even if you don't get on the scale, medical weight bias is still going to be in play. So for those of us who are opting out of getting on the scale, a way to take it further is to start to explain why you're doing that and say, I really think that we should be taking weight out of conversations in healthcare and explaining that piece of it. And so that's something else I talk about in the book is how to start to push the needle a little bit. Because if you have the ability, clothes is another one. If you shop at a brand that's not offering plus sizes or not offering enough plus sizes, cause there's a lot of fake plus size stuff going on, even if you're a size six, I would love for you to say, Hey, I would shop here more if you were including all customers or if they add plus sizes, letting them know that's something you value.
Kate: You mentioned the doctor's office and one thing I'm really glad that you address in the book is this the kind of counter-argument often presented of, but what about health? Health as kind of the way we talk about sugar and health is often used as a retort or a justification and it's, that's for me always a little bit of a gray area when we talk about this stuff. How do you handle the ways in which health is this idea of health is used to, I don't know if weaponize is the right word, but perhaps justify or counter these conversations?
Virginia: I think weaponize is a great word actually.
Kate: Okay. Okay, good. Okay.
Virginia: I mean, I think what about health is often a bit of a dog whistle, especially in online discourse because it's often followed up by really shaming judgemental statements. They should just hit the gym or why can't you eat? I do. Or it's not hard to lose weight and all these sort of really negative stereotype late in ways of thinking about fat people. So that's one piece of it is I completely understand that knee jerk of like, oh God, they got me with the what about health question? But it's good to know that if you're talking to a man on the internet, he actually doesn't have you because it's almost always backed up by nothing. If it's a doctor, it gets more complicated. But the Twitter trolls for sure are using that line without any kind of backup. What we really understand about the research on health and weight is that weight has much less to do with health than we've been told. And we can see this in large epidemiological studies that show that people with higher BMIs actually tend to live longer than people with lower BMIs. There are certain health conditions where higher BMI is protective, things like certain kinds of cancer, people recover better fat people get less osteoporosis, which is a huge issue as you get older, fat people recover better from heart surgeries and researchers call this the obesity paradox because the bias against fatness is so baked into the research that whenever they find a benefit to fatness, they just can't even believe it. So it must be this paradox as opposed to like, oh, huh, maybe this whole weight thing's a lot more nuanced than we thought. So that's one part of it. Another thing to understand is all the research claiming to show that larger body size causes health problems is all correlation, not causation. So we do see these population trends where folks in bigger bodies have higher rates of the weight linked health conditions, heart disease, high cholesterol, diabetes, things like that. But we don't have evidence showing that it's the actual body, the pounds on your body causing the health problems. Instead, we think it may be more likely that these are sort of two characteristics of these groups of people with these higher disease rates and that there may be a common explanation for both, or they may just be sort of two coexisting things. Sometimes poor health or certain health conditions can increase weight. Like P C O S is an example of one where it seems like folks with P C O S tend to gain weight in response to the way that their hormones are working, but losing weight doesn't cure P C O S. So focusing just on weight is not going to resolve the underlying health issue. And that's the other piece of this is most of the time, even when we do see a more direct relationship between weight and health, and again, it's often not weight equals health, but maybe it's health is influencing weight, maybe weight is contributing to health in all of those scenarios, losing weight doesn't cure the health condition. Treating the health condition is what manages the health condition. And sometimes weight loss is a byproduct of that and sometimes it's not. And so when we make weight the entire story, we risk really underserving people's health because if you say to people, I need you to lose weight, start exercising and they start exercising and they don't lose weight, they're going to get frustrated and stop exercising. But we know the exercise benefits your health in a thousand different ways, even if you don't lose weight doing it. So it make so much more sense to say, Hey, let's talk about exercise and what would feel good for you and what's doable and how can I support you finding a workout routine that is fun and fits your lifestyle and let's not even think about the weight piece of it because we know you'll reduce your stress, you'll sleep better, all of your biomarkers will improve if we can get you more active. And it doesn't matter whether the scale changes. So that's the shift I'm talking about is let's talk about health. If we care about health, let's leave weight out.
Doree: That's such an important and good distinction that, I mean that, I can just think of countless examples anecdotally that people are just so personally too. In the past, Kate and I have talked about how our views on exercise have changed from trying to get jacked or to enjoying ourselves moving. And I, there's that person, you talk the doctor in the book, Sarah, I think Sarah is her name, who now has the weekly pickleball game and which Kate does. And yeah, this is such an important mental shift that I was not able to get to until recently.
Virginia: Yeah, it's really, I mean, same exercise for me even more than dieting was my disordered space with all of this for years. And when I was in my twenties, I tried to be a runner and did all this running and really screwed up my feet and my knees. And now it would be very easy to go to this place of, well, I'm fat and that must be why I have knee pain. And I just look back on my twenties and I'm like, no, I know why I have knee pain. And it was
Doree: Right
Virginia: Obsessive running at my thinnest that left me with decades worth of knee issues to work out and weight loss is not going fix it cause it'll only put me back in that super disordered place out. so figuring out different ways to move has been really life changing and now it's this joyful thing I look forward to and that I crave as opposed to this thing that I was always dreading and putting off and
Doree: yes,
Virginia: feeling shame about.
Doree: Yes. You touched on this a little bit earlier, but I wanted to talk a little bit more about your work in women's magazines because you have written about how, you know, feel like you were complicit in perpetuating diet culture, and I was just wondering if you could expand a little bit more on what you experienced and especially internalized from your time there. And also if you have thoughts on where women's media, and I know this is a big question, but where women's media is today, because it does seem in a lot of ways we are not in the same place that we were in 2005, but at the same time it does also seem like there's still a lot of harmful stuff and maybe it's just not as explicit as it was in 2005, but it's still there.
Virginia: Yeah, I think we're in a messy middle space for sure. I definitely mean, look, when I was writing primarily for women's magazines, that made up the bulk of my work. I managed to write a piece about health at every size for Marie Claire back in 2009 or something. But it was a huge uphill battle. I remember it was pitch meeting after pitch meeting in order to convince them that this was a worthwhile conversation. And I looked back at the piece recently and the woman who was the lead source in the story, I don't usually use numbers to talk about weight, so trigger warning for anyone who doesn't want to hear a number, but I will use it because it just illustrates where we were. This was this woman who we were supposed to be celebrating for embracing her fat body and she weighed 160 pounds, which is not a fat body by any measurement. And Marie Claire was like, we're so brave, she is a size 8 and we are putting her in the magazine.
Kate: Oh my god,
Virginia: maybe she was a size 10. I dunno. But so again, apologies for all those numbers, but just to show you, and I thought I was being a real hero. I was like, wow, yeah, this source is so brave to share her weight, first of all. Now I would never even include sources weight in the story that would just feel wrong in a lot of ways. And she was awesome and good for her, and I want every 160 pound person to feel good about their body, but that is not the person being the most harmed by diet culture or anti-fat bias at all. And the fact that there is so much harm for that person just speaks to how screwed up. The whole situation was so definitely very complicit. Even when I thought I was really pushing the envelope. I mean, another example is I was sure I remember when my older daughter was about two, so this would've been like 2015, and I was really sure I had totally broken up with dieting. I was like, yeah, yeah, I'm totally past all of that. I think I was already working on eating instinct and I did a story for self magazine investigating detox diets where I went on a detox diet, let's not really investigate just doing the detox diet. And I was like, oh, but I'm really digging into the science of it while I've cut out eight food groups. So we were where we were and I think it's, I don't mind talking about it because I want to be clear, I know I have been part of this harm and all I can do is sort of take responsibility for it and do better, but I am glad to have done the learning and to still be doing the learning that I'm doing in terms of where women's media is now. I mean, for one thing it's such a smaller market. I mean, I was in women's magazines in the heyday when there was 18 magazines and five bridal magazines. There were categories of women's media, six fitness titles, and now there's none. And they're all online only. So the whole industry has shifted so dramatically. And obviously that's been bad in terms of job security for anyone who was working in women's media. But the upside of it, or maybe a silver lining is that I think it loosened the reins a little bit between the advertisers and the magazine. And editorial and self is a great example. I did that detox story back when self was still a print magazine and so diety and when self went online only it got this great new editor in cheif, they've done. Some, they were publishing Aubrey Gordon when she was still using her pseudonym Jessica Jones. They're doing great, really progressive, really innovative content about these issues. So that's been very cool to see. I mean, I think the relationship with advertising is still there for sure. Yeah, I don't think we've dealt, we've resolved that and I think it's more complicated now with obviously the rise of the influencer and that whole relationship is, that's sort of the new women's magazines in a way.
Kate: I really love, I love the focus on parenting of your book, but I really appreciated that you talk about dads and diet culture because I do feel like this is not a conversation that is happening enough. And I thought your analysis of the performance of male dieting was fascinating. And I just wanted to dig into this a little bit because as you note this, the male diet is often presented under the form of optimizing performance or biohacking, Jack Dorsey from Twitter and the recent news story of Chris Martin only eating one meal a day because that's what Bruce Springsteen does.
Virginia: God
Kate: yes. And just even the fact that that is referred to as a diet and not just a starvation plan. I mean it's just all of it is. It's just such a part of our cultural conversation that we don't even sometimes blink an eye when we read these headlines. So what do you see as the role of dads? And I think when we were talking about dads, we're talking about white more specifically white men.
Virginia: Yeah, Straight white men. Yeah, for sure.
Kate: Yes. What is the culture there of dads and Dia culture and do you have any thoughts on trying to shift this conversation? Cause I feel like so much we're talking about women and diet culture and fat phobia and then you have this conversation happening beside it and it seems to be called in less and that just might be
Virginia: Much less. No, it's much plus. Ok. Yeah, I mean, I am waiting for the male me to run with this basically.
Kate: Yeah,
Virginia: I am waiting for the guy journalist who wants to really do this work because we do not have it yet and specifically do it. Talking to fathers, we don't have that and it's so needed. I mean, what's interesting about male diet culture, number one, they don't think they have diet culture. They think they have all this sort of science based, intermittent fasting is so research based and where they're doing the Michael poll, the Mark Bitman thing of this is for the environment and climate change. They have a lot of justifications for what they're doing and they're given a gravitas for it. We don't question men around food and exercise decisions. We don't look at the dad doing his four hour marathon training run on Saturday while mom's stuck with the kids. We're not like, oh, is this a healthy relationship with exercise? We were like, oh, he is doing his training runs. He's going to do an Ironman. Good for him. This is what he and his buddies do. We don't unpack that in terms of his relationship with his body. We might be annoyed that he's tapping out on childcare for the fifth weekend in a row, but we're not like, huh, what's, what's going on? Is that a little obsessive? We don't do it. Whereas when women exercise that way, it gets scrutinized, it gets picked apart. And that's because we assume women are emotional about food and bodies and we assume men are dispassionate and clinical and just doing this because it's part of their male identity in a way that just drives me nuts because we know that men are just as screwed up about their bodies. We know that they are insecure about it. The research shows men struggle with these issues in the same ways women do. The difference is men have a more generous range of the body. Standards for men are more flexible than they are for women. And it's like they are both the oppressed and the oppressor at the same time. Women's beauty ideals are about pleasing men. Men's beauty ideals are about pleasing men, so they're about pleasing themselves. So it's a little more, and I want to be clear, men can really suffer and men are really underdiagnosing men with eating disorders. Men are much likely, much more likely not to have it get flagged. A doctor's not even going to ask those questions. So again, the weekend warrior stuff, oh, you're go to bed until you close your rings on your Apple watch. Nobody's going to be like, oh, that's a little intense. They're going to be good for you being so healthy. And that does mean a real disservice because they may be really, really struggling and no one's giving them a language. We don't have a script for how they talk about that. But then it also does this extra disservice to the women in their lives, to the kids in their lives because their family is carrying the burden of their struggle and being impacted by their struggle that nobody is naming and nobody is talking about or even identifying as a problem.
Kate: One chapter that really rocked me personally, based on my own lived experiences was talking about American youth sports culture and thinness. And I have just spent a lot of time reflecting the ways in which growing up in a community that really valued sports for their kids above anything else has impacted me for my whole life, especially as a person who did not play sports.
Virginia: So you didn't play sports even though you lived in a really sporty place.
Kate: I lived in an incredibly sporty place that was the barometer for success, for popularity, for everything. And that was not, I mean, that was not my thing. And as an adult, I've come to sports and really enjoyed myself and felt a lot of sorrow that I never got to have that experience as a kid. Listen again, you're not my therapist, but
Virginia: No, no.
Kate: I am interested in how diet culture is such a part of youth sports, not just us as adults and fitness, but the ways in which our culture values and pushes this kind of really ultra-competitive sports culture. And the way in which I think for parents, it reflects what we think of the reflection of that on us.
Virginia: Yeah, well, it's the entire model for youth sports. And I think this was true when we were growing up too, but it's really even intensified more is predicated on this idea that every child might be Michael Phelps or Simone Biles. Yes. Or insert any other elite athlete here. And so what that means is instead of these being opportunities for kids to play and have fun and yeah, it's competitive, but in a team building sense, instead, it's all about coaching these kids to be their best selves as athletes. And that means they're applying these really narrow definitions of who gets to be an athlete. And they're all rooted in body size. Every sport you can think of, you think of, well, that's a runner's body, that's a dancer's body, that's a basketball player's body. They're all these physical characteristics that we assume are necessary are prerequisites for excellence in the sports. And just the fact that we prize excellence in youth sports to the degree we do is really problematic. And so yeah, that means that anyone who doesn't have that body is just a non-starter, literally. And so when you think about the stereotype of fat, kids are so lazy, it's like, well, are they lazy or are they not literally invited onto the teams? Do they not even have jerseys in their size? No. The coach is so focused on winning and on which athletes are get them the results they need. They're not thinking about, how do I make every kid who wants to play this sport feel like they're a part of the team, feel like they belong here, and not just like, oh, sure, Timmy, you can play too, but truly, you are a valuable member of this team. We want you here. We have built this to include kids of all body sizes and kids of all abilities. And so a lot to do with, I mean, it's capitalism, it's a lot to do with how for profit, most of the youth sports are now. Folks are making a ton of money off this. Parents are spending a ton of money on it, so they want to see certain results. And it really does kids a disservice. And I draw a pretty direct line from that kind of anti-fat bias in the way kids sports are set up early on to the kinds of abuse power we see. And then you see that at the elite levels. You see that in women's soccer, gymnastics, et cetera, et cetera. These kids have grown up thinking their bodies belong to their coaches, not to them. And what a terrifying message to teach kids what truly destructive. So I feel you, because I also grew up in a sporty town and was completely unathletic and just felt like I was watching all the popular kids being like, what is happening? I don't, don't make me run. I don't want to run. So yeah.
Doree: So we're just going to take a short break and we will be right back. I have a question that is maybe a sort of, again, selfish one, but
Kate: I'm hoping that not, I have the same question.
Doree: Some people can relate to this because one place that I personally get tripped up and Virginia, again, we know you're not our therapist, but I am hoping you can help me kind of unpack this. No pressure is the idea of not labeling foods good or bad, which I'm on board with. We don't do that in our house, but are there foods that are just not as good for you? And how do we thread that needle? And I think I'm also going to insert my acknowledgement of privilege here, but if I'm in a grocery store, I will probably buy wheat bread with a few ingredients and not wonder bread because I don't want to eat super processed white bread. But is that also playing into diet culture? And is there a way to be healthy without also perpetuating fat phobia and diet culture?
Virginia: This is a really good question. I think fundamentally what I want us to do is reframe how we think about food and feeding kids away from nutrition ending of food and feeding kids as an opportunity to teach body autonomy. And if that is your reframe, so if you can put nutrition aside, which, and I'll get back to the nutrition piece of it. Cause I know that's a big ask to be, just stop worrying about nutrition. But if you can say, my goal at family dinners or getting breakfast into my children before they get on the bus or whatever, all the times you're feeding your kids, my goal is for my kids to come away from this meal feeling like they could feed themselves. They felt nourished, they felt, they leave the table satisfied. And we had maybe some moments, not all the moments because parenting is hard, but some moments of connection and they felt loved and seen, and I trusted their bodies and they could trust their bodies. If that is your real goal for family meals, which I would argue is the more important goal, then which type of bread you're buying, whether they ate any broccoli, whether they only wanted chocolate ice cream for dinner, which happened at my house last night, all of these questions are kind of moot because you're already winning. If you're able to say, my kid got fed, they left the table satisfied and they got to trust their body, great A plus. And that just takes a lot of the pressure off. And I would argue, going back to what we were just talking about with youth sports, it's such a fundamental lesson for parenting. It's such a fundamental gift to give to our kids that's going to help them withstand diet culture and anti-fat bias is going to help them stand up to that co coach that wants to bully them, is going to help them in dating scenarios when someone offers them drugs. All the things that we worry about as parents. If my kid is like, my needs matter, my preferences matter, I get to listen to my body. And they learned that at our family dinner tables over the years. That's a really useful and health promoting foundation. So that is why I argue that matters more than nutrition. They have their whole lives to try out whole grains or kale or any of these things, but we have only so many years in which to try to instill this sense of you can trust yourself first because the world is trying to take that away from them all the time. So that's my big picture thing now. Okay, what are you doing in the grocery store with the bread? It's really your call if you have the privilege and you think that whole grain bread tastes better than Wonder Bread than buy the whole grain bread. It's not that you, there's something wrong with choosing that bread. But if part of you is actually, I really loved Wonder Bread when I was a kid and maybe my kid would love Wonder Bread and my kid is really picky and it's hard to find a bread that they'll like and probably Wonder Bread would be that bread, but I'm not going to let myself buy it because I think it's a bad food. Well, that is where I would say let ourselves off all of those hooks. So it's really, if it's truly just your personal preference, great. You should eat the foods you like. You don't have to eat a food. I don't like flaming hot Cheetos. I'm not going to eat flaming hot Cheetos, but I do love extra toasty and I'll eat them every day. So you're allowed to have preferences, but it's like you should unpack what is it that's making you choose that food. And if it's some kind of virtue signaling or punitive thing or feeling like you're failing as a mom, if you buy the other thing and if it's making your life harder to buy that, and I'm speaking as someone who feeds two very cautious eaters still. So we have a lot of processed foods in our house because cautious eaters do really well with processed foods because they're predictable and they always taste the same, and they can leave the table knowing they got fed. And that is so important to me.
Kate: So that's such an important point that, yeah, I've heard other parents make recently that I hadn't really thought about and I just, it's really resonated. Yeah,
Virginia: I, yes, do I do back flips when they add a new food to the repertoire. Of course. It's very exciting. It makes cooking dinner easier. If we could all agree on more than three foods, that'd be so nice. But we are where we are. And you know what? Frozen burritos are getting me through a lot right now, and that's really grateful to them. And I mean, I think one of the lines in the book that just I come back to all the time was the dietician who said, the most important thing about nutrition is getting kids enough to eat. And if your kids are getting enough, enough calories to grow and thrive, the minutia of nutrition is going to work itself out.
Doree: Yes, I love that.
Virginia: And that I was just like, okay, I'm putting that on my fridge.
Doree: Yeah, right.
Virginia: Say that to me myself every night at dinner,
Doree: Like you said, let's keep kind of the big picture in mind
Virginia: Then that's what let me say. Okay. Then body autonomy is where I keep my focus because I know I'm letting them get enough food. But right now I can mark on the other thing.
Doree: Okay. I have one last question, Kate and Kate. But Kate, if you have another one, please.
Kate: No, no.
Doree: Jump in. But
Kate: I'm ready for this one.
Doree: I really liked your example in the book of how to approach not having your kids' birthday party at a paintball place because they don't have gear that fits all of the kids. And you talk about the ways in which the world is just not set up for fat people. What would be some ways that the physical world could be more fat Inclusive
Virginia: Chairs is a huge one. Restaurants that cram all the tables really close together and the chairs have arms. And so it's difficult for folks to literally fit in the space booths that are not just built. Spaces are a big one. Airplanes, I think go without saying. I mean, even here, I thought, I've done all this work and done all this learning. And a friend of mine came over and was like, your dining room chairs are not comfortable for me. And I was like, thank you for that note. Okay, good to know. They have arms and they dig into her after a while. And that was just something that I hadn't really dealt with. And now we have two armless chairs that I can pull out for anyone who needs them. And that was a pretty easy upgrade to make. costs. I sacrificed nothing, and now I feel like I can welcome people into my home. So it's taking that moment to evaluate, if you're hosting a party, if you're having people stay, will they be comfortable? Is this accessible to them? And definitely, yeah. If you are coaching a soccer team, what size do the jerseys come in? If you're a dance teacher, if you're anything with kids thinking a little more broadly about how do we make this an inclusive activity for all abilities, it goes such a long way. And it's a great thing to be modeling for our thin kids as well. Our fat kids deserve this, right?
Doree: Yeah.
Virginia: Our fat kids deserve to feel safe and welcome in these spaces. But our thin kids need this too, because we need them to not be fat phobic. And I was a thin kid who's a fat adult. They may not always be thin. And so you don't want them to think that their worth is hinged on maintaining that thinness because that is not guaranteed.
Doree: Well, Virginia, I mean, I guess we will let you go. Cause
Kate: Oh, I guess
Doree: Presumably you have other things to do today, although I guess I would like to talk to you for, I don't know, three more hours. Thank you so much for this, such an amazing conversation and your book is so wonderful. And I would also like to encourage people who are do not have children to. Buy your book as well, because I think there's so much to be learned from your book that is not just about being a parent. So I just want to put in that plug as well.
Virginia: Thank you.
Kate: Amen.
Virginia: I do like to say it's like parenting writing for people who don't have kids.
Kate: Yeah.
Doree: Well, we were all kids and there's a lot there that I think a lot of people could unpack.
Kate: Yes. And many folks are reparenting themselves.
Virginia: Yes, exactly.
Kate: So this is very helpful,
Doree: Virginia, where can our listeners find you?
Virginia: So tonight on the 26th, since that's when we're listening, I am doing a virtual event with Christie Harrison to celebrate her new book and my new book, her book is The Wellness Trap, and we're doing that with Women and Children's First, which is a independent bookstore in Chicago. And then I have a few more events coming up, rj Julia's in Connecticut on May 9th and the Museum of Science in Boston on May 10th. So those are our book tour opportunities to come out and say hi. You can get Fat Talk anywhere you buy books or audiobooks or eBooks. You can subscribe to my newsletter, burnt Toast Virginiasolesmith.com. You can get the Burnt Toast podcast wherever you are listening to this podcast. And you can find me on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok @the_SoleSmith.
Doree: Amazing.
Kate: Thank you so much.
Virginia: Thank you. Thank you. This was awesome.
Doree: I mean, look, we talked to a lot of really great people.
Kate: It's like the biggest privilege of doing this podcast,
Doree: But that definitely was one where I was like, I could just keep talking to you for a few more hours.
Kate: Yeah. Because I think it's a topic that we are constantly evaluating both for ourselves as individuals, as friends, spouses, parents, the impact of Diet culture, both like societally and on us as individuals and the way it impacts our relationships and how we move through the world is so intense.
Doree: Yes,
Kate: Totally. And something that I feel like I have kind of scratched the surface in my understanding and is a space where I really do want to try to do the best for my kids that I can, knowing full well that I will make mistakes and have made plenty already.
Doree: Yes.
Kate: So many.
Doree: And that's really important to remember.
Kate: Yes. I think there's always this feeling, and it's not just with parenting, but with any of this stuff, when we're trying to get something right where it means a lot to us and we're trying to be so intentional, this feeling, this worry that we can't mess up, that if we mess up, it means we've done it wrong or done a bad job. I mean, this is something I've struggled with in all aspects of my life since I was, I would say a day old. I was like, I fucked up. Coming out of the womb, did it wrong. They're mad at me. But I just think that can oftentimes get us in our head. When really it's
Doree: Totally
Kate: Understanding that that's the process with any of these things.
Doree: Yeah. Yeah.
Kate: I really, if you don't subscribe to Burnt Toast,
Doree: You really need to
Kate: Yeah. And please check out this book. It's really, it's been great. And I think it's the kind of book I recommended it to. One of my bestie group chats with folks that are parents and not parents. And I thought I said, I think this would be important for anybody to read. On that note, let's set some intentions.
Doree: Let's do it. Kate, did you travel smartly and light?
Kate: I did. Oh my God, I did a really good job. I'm not going to lie.
Doree: Oh my gosh. I'm so happy for you.
Kate: So when I travel with a carry-on, I often mold have the suitcase, and then I have the biggest legal sized backpack I can possibly have that will fit under a chair under the seat in front of me. And instead I just brought a purse. I still fit an iPad in. I still crammed it full of stuff, but I had to really cut back.
Doree: So you had the suitcase and the purse?
Kate: Yep.
Doree: I love that.
Kate: That was big for me. Was my suitcase like brimming? I got to say away suitcases. I can shove so much stuff.
Doree: You really can get a lot in there.
Kate: Their larger sized carry-on suitcase, that thing is like,
Doree: yeah, that's become my go-to.
Kate: It's a lifesaver.
Doree: Yeah.
Kate: My child right now just stole it to take on a one night school field trip. I was like, how dare you. Wow. But that thing is great.
Doree: Yeah.
Kate: I was sitting there and I was like, I am advertiser or not. I love this.
Doree: Totally.
Kate: I love the suitcase. So that suitcase really got me through life and also my Calak toiletry kit, which you just busted out in front of me today. That thing is a real workhorse.
Doree: I was really influenced between you and Caroline from G. Thanks. There's just a lot of fans of that Cosmetics Care. What's it called? Organizer? Cosmetics Organizer.
Kate: Yes. The smaller size.
Doree: The smaller size that I respect their opinions,
Kate: Well, It's the kind of thing that you bulk at because the price tag is so high, but then you realize totally it's, it works and it lasts. Yes. It's really durable. Anyway, I could go on and on, but I did travel well. I had a great time in Seattle, beautiful city. Phish was amazing. This week I'm seeing more Phish shows and this weekend Doree, I'm seeing Phish every night, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And then during the day, I'm appearing on both Saturday and Sunday at the LA Times Festival of Books.
Doree: You have quite a weekend.
Kate: It's a really intense weekend with two of my most favorite things in the world
Doree: Now are you going to these shows alone? You're going with friends, what are you doing?
Kate: I'm going with friends. I have a variety of friends.
Doree: And you're going with 15,000 of your closest friends?
Kate: I Think four of my absolute best friends on stage. I have a friend who I think I'm sitting with who's got me a ticket with her and some of her friends. I have friends who are going one night who I'm going to try to meet up with. I have a friend who I see a bunch of shows with, and he, I are sitting separately, but we'll go together. It's going to be, I think because it's in Los Angeles, it'll be really nice. He'll probably know a lot of people. Yeah, totally. It'll be really fun. It'll be like my home turf and I'll kind of be obnoxious. You guys are in my living room and then during the day, I get to just talk romance books and see so many of my favorite writers and authors and people I be lucky enough to become friends with and people I'm fans of. So if you're at either of those things, I hope I see you. Oh, so my point is I have to take it easy. I have to because I have to be at, I'm going to bit Phish till midnight, one in the morning.
Doree: Oh my gosh.
Kate: And waking up and I want to be fresh to talk about books.
Doree: Oh my gosh.
Kate: I'm not drinking any alcohol. I am hydrating. I'm liquid IVing.
Doree: Good.
Kate: I'm wearing my most comfortable sneakers. I am sleeping as much as I can.
Doree: Great.
Kate: And I'm taking it easy.
Doree: I'm really happy to hear that.
Kate: That's my plan.
Doree: Okay.
Kate: How about you? You had clothes on a chair.
Doree: Okay, so I have made a very large dent in the clothes on the chair.
Kate: Oh my gosh. You sent me a photo of your closet, which just like, well, hangers,
Doree: Well, Kate, I have to say, you issued a challenge to me.
Kate: Go on.
Doree: Well, I was telling, I don't think this was on the pod. I believe this was on text. I don't remember actually where I said I, I wanted to get rid of a lot of stuff. And you were like, okay, but you can't just replace it.
Kate: I did say that. Yeah. I was like, don't buy anything new.
Doree: And I was like, I know that. But then I was also like, well, I have bought a few new things, but certainly nothing approaching what I've gotten rid of, I think. But then I was like, let me see. And I went through my closet and I found all the empty hangers, which I used to have no empty hangers in my closet. I was at the point where things weren't getting hung up because I didn't have enough hangers.
Kate: You were in the overflow?
Doree: I was in the overflow zone. Now I have, I don't know, 20 hangers.
Kate: Whoa.
Doree: Something like that. It's noticeable, it's substantial. It feels great.
Kate: And everything that was on the chair, the clothes on the chair. Are they still there?
Doree: Ok, not everything has been disposed of, but I have sold a lot of stuff. And it's funny because there's some stuff that has been on the chair for a few weeks that I've tried to sell in various places. And I was finally like, maybe just no one's going to buy this. And then people bought it this weekend. So I was kind of like, okay, I'm just going to give everything another real other shot. Also, can I put in a plug for something that I'm doing?
Kate: Of course. Yeah, of course.
Doree: So in my newsletter now we're talking, I am writing a fashion advice column for people who feel like they've either reached a certain age where they don't know how to dress or they've had life changes, maybe pregnancy or what have you, or post pandemic. And I'm writing an advice column for them. For those people.
Kate: This is your calling. If I
Doree: Thank you
Kate: Do say so myself.
Doree: So, We're recording this a few days ahead of time, but by the time this airs, the first column will have been published and you can read it at Doree.substack.com.
Kate: I can't wait to read it.
Doree: Thank you.
Kate: You are a good stylist
Doree: Oh. Well thank you.
Kate: You're a good closet cleaner outer. And you're also good at being like this with this, put this together. This would work for your needs.
Doree: Thank you. And I will say, as a little preview, I came up with a few just sort of general guidelines that I'm trying to abide by.
Kate: I like that
Doree: When it comes to fashion and clothes and buying clothes and all that stuff. So if you know, are interested in that topic, tootaloot on over as we like to say.
Kate: Nice. I'm interested and I'm a subscriber, so
Doree: Yes, you are. Now, this week, this Sunday, I mean this will have already happened when this airs, but this coming Sunday for when we were recording, this is Henry's birthday party. He is turning four, which is very old, and I am a little, what have I done for the birthday party? Because we invited his whole class because he's in preschool. That's just kind of what you do.
Kate: Yeah, I think that's nice.
Doree: It's at a park.
Kate: Okay, perfect.
Doree: So there's 24 kids invited most of, well, and then there's a few others who don't go to his preschool who are invited. Most people of RSVPd yes, I know there will be drop off day of, or there's already been a couple people who have been like, oh, I actually can't make it. But so many people who have RSVP'd are bringing siblings, which is great. I want it to be inclusive. But I'm now looking at the invite and it's like 36 children have already RSVPd, and I'm like, oh God, What have I done? So I'm sure it will be fine. I'm sure it'll be fun. I'm just a little bit at the stage right now at this precise moment where I'm like,
Kate: How many pizzas do I need to get?
Doree: Exactly how many? And I'm always like, oh, I don't need to do goodie bags. But then I kind of feel like Henry loves goodie bags and I just like, I'm like, oh, okay. I'll just do good. But I don't know how many goodie bags to make.
Kate: Just get a bunch of bubble wands.
Doree: Okay.
Kate: And tie a bow on each one, hand them out.
Doree: Is that a thing I should just do?
Kate: Sure.
Doree: Okay.
Kate: Just get a bucket. Fill them with bubble wands. You could tie a little, could even tie a little bow and put a little something in the ribbon. Tie a little ribbon on it. I don't know. Bubble wands are easy too, because then they can start playing with them at the park.
Doree: That's interesting. All right. I'll take it.
Kate: Every kid normally just dumps out the bubble wand by the end. But
Doree: Yes, that's what Henry does,
Kate: Which is the best part about the bubble wand, honestly.
Doree: And then he gets sad.
Kate: I know. I mean, goodie bags, it's, that's tricky.
Doree: It's tricky. And I know every once in a while is like, oh, so much plastic crap. But I will tell you, Henry gets weirdly, gets so much delight out of a goodie bag at a birthday party.
Kate: I love it
Doree: that I'm like, well, I guess I should just do birthday parties.
Kate: My 10 year old, my 10 year old daughter just did goodie bags for her four person sleepover that she had. So Yeah, I get it.
Doree: I love that. Anyway, so that's my intention for this week. It's not really an intention, but I, I'm just trying to be a little bit calm. I don't want to get how I get sometimes before events are just so stressed out.
Kate: Yeah, I get that.
Doree: So I'm also trying to delegate some stuff and it'll be fine.
Kate: It'll be great.
Doree: Okay. Forever35 is hosted and produced by me, Doree Shafrir and you, Kate Spencer, produced and edited by Sam Junio. Sami Reed is our project manager, our network partner is Acast. We will talk to you all again so soon.
Kate: Bye-bye.
Doree: Bye.