How to Protect Your Kids From Diet Culture
The Waves: Gender, Relationships, Feminism
Slate Podcasts
4.2 • 903 Ratings
🗓️ 4 May 2023
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s episode of The Waves, we’re doing a very special Mom and Dad Are Fighting crossover with host Jamilah Lemieux. Jamilah sits down with author Virginia Sole-Smith to talk about her new book, Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture. They discuss helping kids accept their bodies in whatever form they take, dealing with our own internalized fatphobia, and more.
In Slate Plus, answering a listener’s question on secret snacking.
If you liked this episode, check out Making Friends As An Adult.
Podcast production by Cheyna Roth and Rosemary Belson with editorial oversight by Daisy Rosario and Alicia Montgomery.
Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Waves, Slate's Podcasts about Gender, Feminism, and Important Conversations. |
| 0:17.0 | Every episode you get a new pair of feminists to talk about the thing we can't get off our minds. And today you've got me, |
| 0:24.0 | Jamila Lemieux, a writer and co-host of mom and dad are fighting, |
| 0:27.6 | slate's parenting podcast. Later in the show I'll be joined by author of Virginia Soul Smith. |
| 0:34.0 | Today we're going to be having a very important conversation about a very important topic, diet culture. |
| 0:40.0 | As an elder millennial, I grew up in an era where thin was not just in, it was everything. |
| 0:46.4 | Heroin, chic, Slim Fast Shakes, Callista Flockhart on Ali Macbiel, |
| 0:51.4 | Snackwell's cookies, Fat Monica on friends, |
| 0:55.0 | Tabloids that moralized over Celebrity Weight Gain and fond over Celebrity Weight Loss. |
| 1:00.0 | Nearly everyone on TV was thin, and if weren't they were probably the butt of a joke. |
| 1:06.0 | You got a shot of Monica. Where's Monica? |
| 1:09.0 | Over here, Dad. |
| 1:11.0 | Wait, how do you zoom out? |
| 1:13.0 | There she is. |
| 1:17.0 | Some girl ate Monica. Shut up, the camera adds 10 pounds. |
| 1:27.0 | Huh, so how many cameras are actually on you? |
| 1:30.0 | Diet culture ruled my childhood and the result for me has been a lifetime of disordered eating. |
| 1:36.0 | There's been drastic change in the media landscape in recent years. |
| 1:40.0 | Activists and influencers have demanded greater representation for fat bodies, and we've seen much more diversity in terms of the body types featured in TV, film, and advertising campaigns. |
| 1:51.0 | A fat black woman, Lizzo, rolls to the top of the pop charts and has emerged as one of the most important recording artists of the era. |
| 1:58.0 | Something inconceivable when CNC Music Factory hired a model to lip sync to Martha Wash's vocals in the early 1990s. |
| 2:05.6 | Everybody Dance Now. |
... |
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