It's (Still) Time to Have the Fat Talk
An update on the book that Burnt Toast built!
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Friends, we’re obviously still living in chaos and dark times, but here’s one good thing…
Fat Talk comes out in paperback on Tuesday, December 10th!!!
It’s so exciting that I made you an awkward little video announcement (and longtime readers know I’m mostly retired from the talk-to-camera phase of my career).
You guys, the paperback is SO CUTE. I love how we tweaked the cover just a little. (Yes, I extra love that it says New York Times bestseller at the top!) For that reason alone, you probably need to order, idk, 5 or 10 copies? For everyone on your holiday shopping list???
It’s also such a genuinely useful version of this book:
I was able to update the Resources section in the back to include even more great books, newsletters, podcasts, and other useful things.
The brilliant wrote a foreword just for this edition, which made me cry.
I wrote an afterword, which talks about what it really felt like to release this book into the Era of Ozempic. There are a few troll stories I’ve never shared before, and a lot about why I still have hope we’re bending the arc of the universe towards being a safer place for fat folks, especially fat kids.
As I said when Fat Talk first came out, this is the book that Burnt Toast built.
Your stories, your insights, your participation in the comment sections all guided me as I was reporting and writing the book. And your support for the book is why it has already found its way into so many homes, schools, libraries, doctors’ offices and more. I am so excited for this new (lower-priced!) edition to help this work continue to find its way to the people and communities who need it.
You can order the paperback anywhere you get books. But you should absolutely order it from my local independent bookseller, Split Rock Books!
Split Rock will be the only place to get your preorders signed by me.
I’ll write whatever you want, so if you’re buying this to make your dad finally stop making fat jokes, let us know and I’ll tell him straight! On a sweeter note, I also love when people ask me to sign copies for their kids, sob. Fat Talk makes a great baby shower gift!
The first 50 preorders will receive a FREE sticker!!
If you haven’t seen these, they are cute as shit.
AND purchasing Fat Talk through Split Rock also gets you 10 percent off any of the titles in the Burnt Toast Bookshop!
You can also preorder with Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, and yes, Amazon—or if a preorder is out of reach, ask your local library to stock it. Every bit of this will help make sure that Fat Talk continues to live its best life, and do what it can to keep pushing towards progress.
Thank you friends, so much. xo
PS. International readers: This edition is North America only, but we do have a new edition of the UK version coming soon too, so stay tuned!
And Now, A Big Fat Link List
I’ve already ordered Plan C and Plan B, and if you love anyone with a uterus, you should too. Here are some other things to get done before January.
RFK hates Big Food but not McDonalds? Someone make it make sense. (Yes, I’m following this story/will write about it as soon as my brain stops melting from the cognitive dissonance. In the meantime, my stepmom is quoted in this piece.)
A very good roundup of fat lingerie!!!
Related, I just bought this set and love it. (Up to 6X)
Trust
to bring us the most delightful newsletter that I want to eat with a spoon.Melania Trump is not a victim. Important to remember now she’s back(?) from outerspace.
The dreaded “right before dinner” snack request. Truly, I think it’s just impossible to win this one!
Just hard relate to
writing about home design as a coping mechanism.Am newly into this smart, spicy podcast, especially
’s episode on vanilla sex.Tracy also has this excellent deep dive on 4B and heteropessimism.
Feeling this bright colored sock trend.
As a former women’s magazine person, this was a chilling read.
If the looming holiday season has you feeling sugar-anxious, here’s a reassuring read.
Good communication gets you nowhere without shared goals.
is always required reading but especially this.
And: Are ab exercises a scam?
ICYMI on Big Undies…
How many pairs of pants do you own? (I confessed my number.)
Why is the perfect sweatshirt so damn elusive?
And I just loved this conversation about old friends and very good boots.
I'm darkly fascinated by the MAGA women's magazine in Sara Petersen's piece, so I went and found the article "Do You Smell Like a Feminist? Here's How to Tell". I thought it was going to be tongue-in-cheek/ at least winking at the reader. But it seems dead sincere and entirely instructional. It says: only wear florals and sweet edible scents; avoid anything that could smell unisex (anything that isn't floral or edible), and unfortunately every perfume has a note of (unfeminine???) amber so just try to minimise it. Every bottle they recommend is pink. And the writer is so serious.
I think the Fat Talk paperback will be an excellent Christmas present for myself (I read it in hardback, but it was my sister’s copy, so I am sure I do need it for my personal collection). I have been thinking a lot about the book recently because I know that Hannah will be with a whole new group of kids next year and they won’t all be eating the same thing anymore since meals aren’t provided for the school we are sending her to (private Christian school in our area has this weird takeout option where you can order food from local restaurants which I know she wouldn’t eat), so I know there will be a lot more talk about food in general. I already have heard her say the phrase “junk food” which she picked up in preschool from talking to friends, and I have had to reiterate that we don’t worry about only eating “healthy” food in our house. I told her that we eat a wide variety of foods, and some of that includes things that some people might call junk food, but she doesn’t need to feel like it’s “bad” to eat certain kinds of food or “good” to eat other foods. I said that the food we buy or the food given to her at school encompasses a wide range of foods, and she should just enjoy eating what she likes.
For the record she told me that currently her favorite foods are Daddy’s spaghetti (she says the school spaghetti isn’t nearly as good as his), Daddy’s jambalaya, baked beans, rolls, cheese pizza, ham and cheese sandwiches with only mayonnaise on the bread, strawberries, strawberry ice cream, toast with strawberry jam, oatmeal cream pies, butterscotch pudding, goldfish/CheezIts, bananas, muffins, and she says she only wants to drink milk and water because she doesn’t like juice. So it does seem like there’s quite a wide variety of things even among her favorite foods!