Sex Talk, Fat Talk, Book Talk

Reads from this week, plus a reading list inspired by TOUCHED OUT!

Huge congrats to

Virginia Sole-Smith

of Burnt Toast, whose new book Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture just made the NYTimes bestseller list!! Here’s her love note to readers, who helped make the book a national conversation, and to which I very much related— TOUCHED OUT wouldn’t exist without all of you (and I have some fun book news for you all below!).

I’m still waiting for my library copy of Virginia’s book to free up, but knowing her work at

Burnt Toast by Virginia Sole-Smith

, I am certain I will learn a lot. And I was delighted to be featured briefly in this piece by

Nancy Reddy

on how to respond when your family makes weird food comments around your kids, inspired by Virginia’s book. In our email exchange for the piece, Nancy and I discussed how fatphobia, like all misogynistic attitudes, is rooted in gendered expectations about who and what bodies are for—it’s a mechanism of control.

Some of what we discussed didn’t make the piece, so I’ll share: