You’re listening to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast about anti-fat bias, diet culture, parenting and health. I’m Virginia Sole Smith.

Today I am just beyond delighted to be chatting with musician and comedian Farideh, who I have been high key obsessed with on Instagram for months now.

Farideh is known for relatable and hilarious takes on motherhood. In December 2022 her song Such a Good Dad went viral, generating over 10 million views in just three weeks. Her new album, “The Mother Load” came out on October 24. It is so good!

Farideh’s music hits that sweet spot of super relatable, mostly elder millennial discussions of motherhood, about bodies, gender norms, and socialization. There’s just so much good stuff here. She’s a delight. This is a really fun episode and we’re going to play some of her music, too—so even if you’re usually a transcript reader, consider listening today!

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Episode 115 Transcript

Farideh

So I’m a musician. I’m a comedian, I guess now. I’ve been a musician most of my life and then I’ve just kind of been foraying into the comedy later in life. People can find me on Instagram at @IloveFarideh, same handle everywhere. I started getting into content creation a couple years ago and I’ve been mostly focusing on music for moms nowadays. 

Virginia

I want to talk about the mom thing. But I first got into your work when literally 900 of my followers were DMing me the diet song. They were like, “do you know about Farideh? Have you heard the diet song?” I know in your bio you said the “good dad” song is what went super viral, but in our world, it was the diet song. In the Burnt Toast community and I think also just in fat activism, anti-diet communities in general, the diet song really went quite viral locally.

Farideh

That’s good to know. Of course you have your views, but that doesn’t always mean something permeates communities in the way that you thought. So that’s really cool to know.

Virginia

Oh my God, we’re obsessed with that. What I love is you when you first released it, you did a very funny video of you being a pirate and dancing with gnomes, which is great. And then you later released a version that makes me cry. And I was just like, how is she so brilliant? She can do both. 

Farideh

I was a musician my whole life and then I kind of thought I had ended that career. I didn’t know what to do, so I started content creation and then I was doing funny stuff. And then just before the diet song come up, I had made the most obvious to everybody else but me connection of like, “Ph, I should be writing funny songs because that’s actually two abilities of mine together.” I should combine these things that I like, instead of separating them out. 

So it was around December and I was just like, okay, so I need to build up a body of work really fast. Because I didn’t really have a collection of funny songs at my disposal. But it was the end of the year and I just knew that the vultures were circling. You know, the beginning of the year, let’s start the shame spiral. So I was like, this is a song that’s like half funny, half true.

This is part of the journey of music and comedy, because they both actually really live in the vein of truth. I also want to give myself freedom that I don’t have to be a comedian. I am a musician, and I will always be a musician. And while I’m experimenting with comedy, it can be both. I can be serious, I can be comedic, because that’s who I am. 

Of course, the diet song comes from a very personal place. I was very heavily into diet culture as a young person. I