Are Women's Shoes a Diet?

You're listening to Burnt Toast! We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and today we're talking about women's shoes. This is a topic you have all been asking for, and today we're going to answer the question: Are women's shoes are a diet? We're getting into: ⭐️ Virginia's fraught history with high heels; ⭐️ The lie that high heels are comfortable; ⭐️ It's fatphobic for brands to keep making their shoes narrower. Housekeeping note: We've changed things up a bit to solve some behind-the-scenes tech issues, so here's how to get your Burnt Toast fix: FREE LISTENERS can find this episode on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or the podcast player of your choice. PAID SUBSCRIBERS can listen right here on Patreon, or add your member-only feed to the podcast player of your choice. Paid subscribers also get transcripts, commenting privileges and our bonus (audio only!) Indulgence Gospel segment. This week Corinne and I are going to talk about the new Lena Dunham memoir Famesick, plus our love for Girls, being a public fat person, chronic illness, et cetera. We will be getting into it. Don't miss out — join us here! BUTTER & LINKS Virginia's Butter: Albion Fit pants Corinne's Butter: Tarot for the Wild Soul and Soul Tarot by Lindsay Mack (See also: Lindsay Mack on Big Undies) Em Seely-Katz on Substack: "Can Barefoot Shoes be Stylish? (Part 1: The Contenders)" Famesick: A Memoir by Lena Dunham (See also: Lena Dunham on Big Undies!) Welnove Silicone Toe Separator Spacers Birkenstock Gizeh Big Buckle Birkenstock Boston clogs Adidas Sambae Shoes Adidas VL Court Bold Shoes Veja Esplar Sneaker New Balance 237 Sneaker Nisolo Carmen Chelsea Boot 2.0 Charlotte Stone Raleigh ADIDAS SAMBA OG BLACK Merrell Moab 3 Hiking Shoes Keen Men's Jasper Zionic Sneaker Keen Women's Jasper KM Lite Mary Jane Dr. Martins Madaline Mary Jane Rub Off Leather Sling Back Shoes Adidas SAMBA JANE SHOES https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/posts/are-womens-shoes-161156993 EPISODE CREDITSCo-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Producer:  Kim Baldwin. Logo design: Deanna Lowe.Theme Song: Farideh.Video Editor: Elizabeth AyikuAudio Engineer: Tommy HarronFollow us on social! Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.  Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism! 

You are listening to Burnt Toast. I'm Virginia Sole-Smith. Today my conversation is with Hayley DeRoche. Hayley is a humorist, poet, and the creator of the viral “Sad Beige” TikTok series. Her work has been covered by the BBC, Washington Post, New York Times, and more. She lives with her family near Richmond, Virginia, where she is also a public librarian. Hayley joined me to chat about her new book Dress Your Baby in Sage and Taupe, the origin story of "Sad Beige," perfectionism and performative parenting, plus the beauty and power of mom groups and so much more. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 FREE LISTENERS can find this episode on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or the podcast player of your choice. PAID SUBSCRIBERS can listen right here on Patreon, or add your member-only feed to the podcast player of your choice. Paid subscribers also get transcripts, commenting privileges, and our bonus (audio only!) Indulgence Gospel segment. This week Corinne and I are chatting about performative parenting and getting into celebrity mom Jenny Mollen's recent controversial boy mom essay. Don't miss out — join us here! BUTTER & LINKS Hayley's Butter: The Baby-Sitters Club Club podcast. Virginia's Butter: Your kids making slime at home, but with very specific rules (aka slime laws, aka s'laws) about where and what they can put their hands on. Here's our basic recipe and here's everything we're using in our slime station. Indulgence Gospel: That Jenny Mollen essay and her Instagram. (She also published this follow-up piece after we recorded.) Paid subscribers, we know a lot of you just read transcripts—don't forget to listen to the audio of this episode for our discussion! It's spicy! You'll want to read Dress Your Baby in Sage and Taupe 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 "FATTALK" at checkout. Now, here's Haley! https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/posts/good-moms-dont-160536368/ EPISODE CREDITSCo-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Producer:  Kim Baldwin. Logo design: Deanna Lowe.Theme Song: Farideh.Video Editor: Elizabeth AyikuAudio Engineer: Tommy HarronFollow us on social! Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.  Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism! 

You're listening to Burnt Toast! We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and today we're talking about ableism and GLP-1s. Lately, the cultural conversation around GLP-1s has started to get weird. We've noticed how little the conversations around these medications center, or even consider, people who are taking these medications for actual illnesses. It's starting to feel ableist. We're getting into: ⭐️ How mainstream media centers people like Clavicular, celebrities, or thin rich people taking GLP-1s. ⭐️ Why are people taking GLP-1s for diabetes not being included in the conversation? ⭐️ How often cultural discourse about bodies, even illness, medicine, people's experiences of their bodies almost never reflects the experience of people who are actually ill. ⭐️ And Corinne opens up about their own GLP-1 experience, which you can read in even more detail here on Big Undies. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 Housekeeping note: We've changed things up a bit to solve some behind-the-scenes tech issues, so here's how to get your Burnt Toast fix: FREE LISTENERS can find this episode on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or the podcast player of your choice. PAID SUBSCRIBERS can listen right here on Patreon, or add your member-only feed to the podcast player of your choice. Paid subscribers also get transcripts, commenting privileges and our bonus (audio only!) Indulgence Gospel segment. This week Corinne and I are chatting about The Devil Wears Prada 2. Did they fix the fatphobia? Does it make me miss working in fashion magazines? Were editors-in-chief really that bananas? We will be getting into it. Don't miss out — join us here! BUTTER & LINKS Virginia's Butter: this neck massager Corinne's Butter: these Old Navy pants Virgie Tovar’s GLP-1 Burnout Support Group The Cut: Losing My Friend Over Wegovy She hid her semaglutide use, knowing that I would spiral. She was right; we haven’t spoken since. By Sophia Ortega Search Engine (podcast): What we got wrong about GLP-1s Weight and Healthcare: Semaglutide 7.2mg - The Ever-Expanding Dose Part 1. By Ragen Chastain NYT: We’re at the Dawn of the Ozempic Era — and It’s Really Weird. By Ezra Klein NYT: We’ve Missed the Point on GLP-1s for Children. By Julia Belluz Intelligencer: The Moral Panic Over Ozempic Misses the Point The media has made the drugs about body politics and our obsession with thinness. That’s the wrong story. By Rachael Bedard https://www.patreon.com/posts/what-were-wrong-159854489 EPISODE CREDITSCo-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Producer:  Kim Baldwin. Logo design: Deanna Lowe.Theme Song: Farideh.Video Editor: Elizabeth AyikuAudio Engineer: Tommy HarronFollow us on social! Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.  Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism! 

You are listening to Burnt Toast. I'm Virginia Sole-Smith. Today my conversation is with Tracy Clark-Flory. Tracy  is a journalist, essayist, and author of the new memoir My Mother's Daughter: Finding Myself in My Family's Fractured Past, which Kirkus calls "powerful," "deeply researched," "lyrically written," "trenchant," and "moving." She's also the author of Want Me: A Sex Writer’s Journey into the Heart of Desire, an NPR Best Book of the year. Tracy writes a weekly newsletter and co-hosts Dire Straights, a feminist podcast critiquing hetero love, sex, politics and culture. You can find more at tracyclarkflory.com. Tracy joined me to chat about her new memoir My Mother’s Daughter, stigma around unwed motherhood, stigma and shame around women who like sex and how so often daughters don’t know their mothers’ lives, especially the parts having to do with love and sex. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 Housekeeping note: We've changed things up a bit to solve some behind-the-scenes tech issues, so here's how to get your Burnt Toast fix: FREE LISTENERS can find this episode on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or the podcast player of your choice. PAID SUBSCRIBERS can listen right here on Patreon, or add your member-only feed to the podcast player of your choice.* *Except Spotify: Paid episodes aren't syncing there right now, but we're working on it. Paid subscribers also get transcripts, commenting privileges and our bonus (audio only!) Indulgence Gospel segment. This week Corinne and I are chatting about my laser hair removal journey. Don't miss out — join us here! BUTTER & LINKS Tracy's Butter: Sexual Pleasure for Dummies by Myisha Battle Virginia's Butter: "Just hanging out with your friends and watching a really good movie you can all really discuss." (We watched Babygirl!) One last thing! You will want to read My Mother’s Daughter 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. Now here's Tracy. EPISODE CREDITSCo-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Producer:  Kim Baldwin. Logo design: Deanna Lowe.Theme Song: Farideh.Video Editor: Elizabeth AyikuAudio Engineer: Tommy HarronFollow us on social! Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.  Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism! 

You're listening to Burnt Toast! We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and today we're talking about DINNER! ⭐️ What we feel guilty about—and why dinner brings up such Big Feelings. ⭐️ Takeout and delivery. How often is too often? Virginia is asking for a friend. ⭐️ What we've been cooking and eating lately, including favorite recent recipes! Housekeeping note: We've changed things up a bit to solve some behind-the-scenes tech issues, so here's how to get your Burnt Toast fix: 🎧FREE LISTENERS can find this episode on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or the podcast player of your choice. 🎧 PAID SUBSCRIBERS can listen on Patreon, or add your member-only feed to the podcast player of your choice. ⭐️Paid subscribers also get transcripts, commenting privileges, and our bonus (audio only!) Indulgence Gospel segment. ⭐️ This week we're answering a listener question about what to do when your partner loses weight on a GLP-1 but leaves you with the mental load of explaining weight loss to your kids and family.    Don't miss out — join us here! BUTTER & LINKS Why I Had to Kill Family Dinner Book Dinner Is Giving Up Your Furniture a Diet? The Couples Fighting Over Food Delivery Costs The Yummy Toddler Food cookbook  Julia Turshen's pickle dressing salad Corinne's favorite Korean meatball recipe.  taco salad taverna salad sticky miso salmon bowl Corinne's Butter: a quilt pattern — and the finished quilt!! Virginia's Butter: Joining a gym (sort of)   EPISODE CREDITSCo-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Producer:  Kim Baldwin. Logo design: Deanna Lowe.Theme Song: Farideh.Video Editor: Elizabeth AyikuAudio Engineer: Tommy HarronFollow us on social! Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.  Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism! 

You’re listening to Burnt Toast! Today my conversation is with Jamilah Lemieux. Jamilah is an award-winning writer, cultural critic, and leading voice in digital feminism, known for shaping online conversations around race, gender, and relationship. She writes the Care and Feeding Parenting Advice column for Slate, and her work has appeared in outlets like the Los Angeles Times, Vanity Fair, and the Washington Post. Jamilah is also the author of the brand new book, Black. Single. Mother. Real Life Tales of Longing and Belonging. I've been a fan of Jamilah from Slate's Care and Feeding Parenting Podcast, where she was a longtime co-host. Today we get into who gets to call themselves a single mom, the kind of social life co-parenting lets you have, the importance of friends, and we ask: Is dating (especially for single moms) a diet? Become a paid subscriber to comment, get episode transcripts, and hear Indulgence Gospel — our new bonus segment, running after every episode! Corinne hops on to debrief with me about my conversation with Jamilah. Indulgence Gospel segments are audio-only so don't miss out! You can listen right here (tap "play" above) or add us to Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen.  Another great way to support Burnt Toast is to MAKE SURE you are following us for free in your podcast player! And if you have two more seconds, please leave us a rating and/or review! Just scroll down wherever you're listening and tap the stars, five of them please, and leave a little note about why you love Burnt Toast. Both of these things really help new listeners find conversations like these! BUTTER Jamilah: Old Wisconsin Yumbo honey brown sugar turkey sausage stick. Virginia: Kin by Tayari Jones EPISODE CREDITSCo-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Producer:  Kim Baldwin. Logo design: Deanna Lowe.Theme Song: Farideh.Video Editor: Elizabeth AyikuAudio Engineer: Tommy HarronFollow us on social! Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.  Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism! 

You're listening to Burnt Toast! We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and today we're talking about PEPTIDES.   This new diet trend is the cursed love child of the protein bros and the RFK stans, and it's supposed to make you thin, tan, and maybe horny. What could go wrong?! We're getting into: ⭐️ What the heck is a peptide? Why would one stack them? ⭐️ Clavicular, the 20-year-old looksmaxxer extraordinaire. ⭐️ Why Bro Science is exhausting and deliberately hard to fact-check.  ⭐️ Why are so many peptide fans... also anti-vax? We also have a new Indulgence Gospel for you, with a few unfiltered life updates plus a rundown of what we've been reading! To hear that bonus segment, read the transcript, and join us in the comments, you do need to be an Extra Butter subscriber. Butter Virginia: toe spreaders, Petra Fisher Corinne: Instant Glow Serum EPISODE CREDITSCo-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Producer:  Kim Baldwin. Logo design: Deanna Lowe.Theme Song: Farideh.Video Editor: Elizabeth AyikuAudio Engineer: Tommy HarronFollow us on social! Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.  Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism! 

You’re listening to Burnt Toast! I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. Today my conversation is with Emma Copley Eisenberg. Emma is the author of the nationally bestselling novel Housemates and the story collection Fat Swim. Her essays, literary criticism and reporting have appeared in The New Republic, Granta, and Esquire among others, and she writes the Substack newsletter Frump Feelings. She lives in Philadelphia. Emma joined me to chat about her new short story collection Fat Swim, fat characters in fiction, what thin authors get wrong, why we’re over Jonathan Franzen and so much more. And become a paid subscriber to get Indulgence Gospel — our new bonus segment, running after every episode! Corinne is going to hop on to debrief this interview with me. We're talking about fat kids in fiction, our Default Outfits and MORE! Paid subscribers all get commenting privileges and a full episode transcript. JOIN US HERE.  Photo by Kenzi Crash EPISODE CREDITSCo-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Producer:  Kim Baldwin. Logo design: Deanna Lowe.Theme Song: Farideh.Video Editor: Elizabeth AyikuAudio Engineer: Tommy HarronFollow us on social! Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.  Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism! 

In the original episode, we asked, "Is Mel Robbins a Diet?" Plot Twist (or is it?): Mel is now selling nutritional supplements. Protein shots, to be exact—so we decided to give them a try. Paid subscribers can listen or WATCH Corinne try Mel Robbins' Pure Genius protein shot and give us her honest review. 👀 Free list: You won't want to miss this! Subscribe here.  EPISODE CREDITSCo-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Producer:  Kim Baldwin. Logo design: Deanna Lowe.Theme Song: Farideh.Video Editor: Elizabeth AyikuAudio Engineer: Tommy HarronFollow us on social! Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.  Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism! 

We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay and it’s time for your April Just Toast episode!This is a special episode because we recorded in person! I traveled to New Mexico to see Corinne, have new Burnt Toast headshots taken and visit Meow Wolf with my kiddo and my boyfriend. It was a glorious trip and I'm excited to share some of the behind the scenes with you today.In this episode we're talking about: ⭐️ Why it's so hard to have your photo taken.⭐️ Thin friends not putting their fat friends on the grid.⭐️ The art of a good selfie.One audio note: our Airbnb in Santa Fe was an acoustical odyssey, so please bear with us on the sound quality. You need to be a paid Just Toast subscriber to listen to this full conversation. Membership starts at just $5 per month! Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/join.Sign up for just $5!Join Just Toast!🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈Episode 241 TranscriptVirginiaWe're recording in person from an Airbnb in Santa Fe, New Mexico. If the audio is not perfect today, it's not Tommy's fault. It's that we're doing it in an adobe room and that creates some echoes.CorinneWe have covered the floors with soft things, but it's still very echo-y.VirginiaSo bear with us. This is only our second ever in person episode, so it's going to be a really fun one.This is a Just Toast episode. As we explained on our previous Extra Butter episode, we're no longer calling it the Indulgence Gospel, although we always will in my heart.We're trying to make it clear what kind of episode you're listening to. So if you are listening to this whole episode right now, you are a Just Toast subscriber, which means you are a regular paid subscriber tier. There's also our premium tier, Extra Butter, for a little more money where you can get behind every single paywall. Whichever tier you are, we're very happy you're here.CorinneWe're going to talk about something we did yesterday.VirginiaCorinne and I did something together for the first time.CorinneIf you're a longtime listener subscriber, you may have noticed that we have no photos together.VirginiaExcept one we took in a hot tub two years in Hot Springs.CorinneYesterday, while Virginia is here in New Mexico, we got some photos taken by a photographer named Molly Haley.VirginiaWho is an old friend of yours.CorinneWe went to middle school and high school together.VirginiaSince we were doing a photo shoot, we thought, well, we've got to talk about photos on the podcast because it's a whole thing.CorinnePhotos can be hard!VirginiaI would amend that sentence and say photos are hard.CorinneAlthough your child would disagree.VirginiaMy 8-year-old keeps telling us that that's a silly thing to think and photos are great and they love having their photo taken.CorinneThey're not wrong.VirginiaNo, it's a lot of stuff. A lot of diet culture noise. It's a lot of being seen, I think. Being perceived.CorinneWould you say that you've struggled with photos? EPISODE CREDITSCo-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Producer:  Kim Baldwin. Logo design: Deanna Lowe.Theme Song: Farideh.Video Editor: Elizabeth AyikuAudio Engineer: Tommy HarronFollow us on social! Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.  Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!