Welcome to a very special episode of Burnt Toast!

We recorded this on December 3, at Seattle’s Town Hall, with an absolutely delightful crowd. This was the official end of the Fat Talk book tour, but I promise it’s not a regular book promo conversation. Because it’s Angela Garbes and me, talking about books sure, but also talking about bodies and big life transitions and other good stuff.

Both of Angela’s books, and mine, are available in the Burnt Toast Bookshop!

Don’t forget, you can always take 10 percent off that purchase if you also order (or have already ordered!) Fat Talk from Split Rock Books! (Just use the code FATTALK at checkout.)

If you’re enjoying the podcast, make sure you’re following us (it’s free!) in your podcast player! We’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Pocket Casts! And while you’re there, please leave us a rating or review. (We like 5 stars!)

Episode 126 Transcript

Virginia

Welcome to the first ever live recording of Burnt Toast!

This is the podcast about anti-fat bias, diet culture, parenting and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. 

Angela

And I’m

Angela Garbes

. That’s right. We’re here in Seattle, Washington! Live at Town Hall!

Virginia

Angela is my co-host, and hype woman, tonight because we are in Seattle! Thank you, Town Hall. Thank you all, for coming out. Let’s do this! Let’s make a podcast!

Angela

So as you can see, there’s a large projection of Virginia’s book Fat Talk here. We’re here to talk about Virginia’s book, Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture. We’re also going to talk about bodies and we’re going to talk about big life transitions—but we’ll put a little pin in that for the moment.

I had the pleasure of reading Fat Talk before it came out, and I remember being so blown away by it. I think in the blurb I wrote like, “Virginia Sole-Smith is a visionary.” But it’s true because Virginia took so many disparate things that I understood about American culture and about bodies and about diet culture and put it all together. One of the things that I was just saying—we had dinner before this. We were talking about the male gaze—you can boo for things like that. 

Virginia

It might come up a few times.

Angela

But I was like, when we talk about the male gaze, we’re talking about American culture in many ways. We’re talking about diet culture. And what Virginia helped me see when she threaded together beautifully through research and reportage is that American culture is diet culture is white supremacist culture is anti-fat culture is all of these things. When we talk about one, they are inextricably linked. No matter how much we would like to separate them out, and the powers that be would like us to separate them out, or not talk about them at all, they’re so deeply linked. And she presented that in such a way that I was like, “Well, there’s no turning back now.” I see it differently.

The other thing that I love about this book is, it’s about parenting. And I’m the mother of children, but I desperately needed this book for myself! There’s so much that we, as the grownups, have to unlearn. There’s a lot of parenting and reparenting that we have to do for ourselves around diet culture and anti fat bias. Virginia’s work has been very meaningful to me. I was so honored that she asked me to read it. I was so honored when Virginia blurbed my book, and I asked her to blurb mine after. I think we have kind of cute meeting story, actually. We met in our Instagram DMs. 

Virginia

I think I slipped into your DMs! Or did you slip into mine?

Angela

You slipped into mine. I had posted a picture, when I was working on <a href="https://www.splitrockbks.com/book/97