Today Virginia is chatting with Mary Carney, the founder of Towel, a new size inclusive lifestyle brand. Because a towel that doesn't wrap around your body is just a classic example of anti-fat bias in action. 

If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber to get all of Virginia's reporting and bonus subscriber-only episodes—including the director's cut of this conversation where VA and AHP answer all of your gardening questions. 

Disclaimer: Virginia is a journalist and human with a lot of informed opinions. Virginia is not a nutritionist, therapist, doctor, or any kind of health care provider. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions she gives are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.

BUTTER & OTHER LINKS

Towel

Meet the towels: Ava, Joni, and Gemma

Towel on Instagram 

BT episode on Old Navy's failed plus size promises

Mia O’Malley on making sure your life fits your body

we have mentioned chairs

Really Big Towel

the viral pajamas

Maddeningly, Virginia's jumpsuit seems to have sold out right before publishing, BUT there is a really good buy / sell / trade group for Universal Standard on Facebook. 

FAT TALK is out! Order your signed copy from Virginia's favorite independent bookstore, Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the US!). Or order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, or Kobo or anywhere else you like to buy books. You can also order the audio book from Libro.fm or Audible.

CREDITS

The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia on Instagram or Twitter. Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing. The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe. Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell. Tommy Harron is our audio engineer. Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

Episode 106 Transcript

Mary

So I got out of the shower last year and I had a towel and it didn’t wrap around my body. And I was like, enough is enough. Someone has to fix this. This is a towel. Something I use every single day. I was standing there, just out of the shower and I was like, well, some of my towels are in the wash. Some of them are a little bigger. This one happened to be one from childhood, ironically. But it doesn’t wrap around my body. And I know that I’m not the only person who experiences this. So in that moment, I was set. I was like, I’m going to make towels. It’s should be pretty simple. In hindsight it’s not simple, but…

Virginia

It really feels like it would be! It’s one piece of fabric.

Mary

Yes, it does, right? It’s one piece of fabric. I was just like, “Why hasn’t anybody done this?” So in that moment, I decided to name it Towel because I was like, it’s so simple. It’s an essential. It’s pretty ironic, as well, that it is just one strip of fabric and yet, this one strip of fabric we have in our houses doesn’t fit many, many bodies. And so Towel was conceived.

My first step, because I really love designing and branding is, was to build an Instagram and start to build community. What I realized then is that there are actually so many more people resonating with this idea than I even imagined. At that point, I think, it became about more than even towels. This is a community and these people deserve more in terms of access to essentials and clothing. 

For me, working in the fashion industry, I’ve seen small brands trying to start and know what’s involved. So, a towel is just one item to focus on. I was like, I think I can do that well, and yeah, here we are. 

So this past spring, we successfully funded a Kickstarter, which is amazing. We had 695 backers, and we raised just over $72,000.

Virginia

Wow. Congratulations. 

Mary

Thank you. 

Virginia

So now the towels are going into production?

Mary

Yes. So that round of funding was essentially to launch us into the industry, but also to get the production run started. I want Towel to be a lifestyle brand. There are many more items that we can expand on, but right now, it’s just towels. 

So yes, the production is happening. We’ve had a couple of bumps in the road, but I’m working with a great team to make it happen and they will hopefully be here within a month. We have things going on in the back end.

Virginia

So we are recording this at the end of July and your episode is going to run in August or September. So, as people are listening, towels will either be here soon or may already be here. You are very close to realizing your towel dreams if you are someone looking for this kind of towel, which I definitely am. I can’t even tell you how many nice hotels I go to and the towels are like a travesty, right? A travesty!

Mary

It’s in every house, at the pool, at the spa. And because they don’t have it at the spa or they’re not provided at the hotel, that makes people in larger bodies have to do more work when they enter those spaces, right? They either have to bring a towel or they know that they’re going to prepare themselves to be uncomfortable. Maybe they bring a robe. I would love for one day where all bodies can go into spaces and they know that they’re going to have a towel that’s going to wrap around their body so they’re able to have that comfort that everyone else has.

Virginia

Yeah, anytime I’m in a nice hotel and the towel does not wrap around me I just think, how much am I paying? And I can’t dry myself? This is ridiculous.

Mary

No, no, it’s crazy. I used to do a lot of road trips with my family as a child from the Midwest. I grew up with a dad who was in a larger body and I just remember as a kid, we would bring our own towels for him, or his robe. I think as a kid I didn’t quite understand it. And then when it came time, growing into teenage adulthood, you remember when your towel begins to not fit you. And everyone deserves to have that experience of it fitting, right? There’s so much emotion that go into it, as well. There is a lot of healing of child wounds in this brand for me.

Virginia

Definitely. 

Mary

Hopefully, for other people, too. I have a friend who has on