Dan Pashman: Just be here and talk a little bit, just so I can check the level on your voice. 

Lindy West: Yes. Hello, my name is Lindy and I had a croissant this morning for breakfast that was supposed to be a muffin. I ordered a muffin and they brought me a croissant. And I was too shy to say anything because it seemed embarrassing to storm back and demand a muffin.

Dan Pashman: Why is that? Why would that be embarrassing?

Lindy West: I don't know. I just got self-conscious. As a fat person, you're always under surveillance when you're eating or when you're in proximity to food. So demanding my muffin, my rightful muffin, just seemed like making too much of a scene. So I just didn't. And the croissant was fine.

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: This is The Sporkful, it’s not for foodies. It's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. Lindy West is a leading voice of the fat acceptance movement, which is a position that's earned her a lot of devoted fans, but also a lot of enemies. In fact, she's been the target of so many online attacks and threats that a few years ago, she had to shut down her Twitter account.   

Dan Pashman: She’s the author of the best selling book Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman, which has been adapted into a TV series on Hulu. Now, in one of my favorite passages of her book, Lindy writes, “When you're a fat person, you can't hide your vulnerability, because you are it and it is you. Being fat is like walking around with a sandwich board that says, 'HERE’S WHERE TO HURT ME!' That's why reclaiming fatness, living visibly, declaring, “I'm fat and I'm not ashamed”, is a social tool so revolutionary, so liberating. It saves lives.” 

Dan Pashman: Now, that part's pretty serious, but I should also say that a lot of the book is hilarious. I spoke to Lindy back in 2017 and I’ve been thinking a lot about that conversation now, as articles about “Pandemic weight gain” are making the rounds, and ads for new “COVID diets” are popping up all over social media. 

Pashman: Lindy and I met up at the Square Diner. It's an old school spot in lower Manhattan. She had been doing a ton of traveling for her book talks. And she had gotten herself into one of those VIP lounges at the airport, where they have free food. She posted a photo on Instagram of a ham and cheese panini she made herself in the lounge. So, of course, I had to get details.

Lindy West: I can't believe you're asking me about this. OK, so they have like — 

Dan Pashman: I’m very excited to hear about this. 

Lindy West: They have a spread of cold cuts and breads and cheeses and mustard is the key. And then they have a DIY panini press. So you can take this bread and put mustard on it and put a piece of cheese and some ham and a tomato slice, if you like, and then throw it in the panini press. nd then you have a DIY ham and cheese and mustard sandwich hot at the airport, toasted, and it is bomb. And it's not like you can just recreate it at home because you don't have a panini press at home. At least I don't. I think they're expensive.

Dan Pashman: And it feels more special, just like when you're living this first class existence. 

Lindy West: Absolutely. 

Dan Pashman: All these high rollers around. You're like, I'm gonna teach you a thing or two. 

Lindy West: Yeah. It makes you look like you know what you're doing in the Qantas lounge. 

Dan Pashman: Right. You're like, this is not my first rodeo.

Lindy West: Exactly. And then you impress all the businessmen. 

Dan Pashman: Right.

Lindy West: Not really. They don't care about you, actually. They can tell that you don't belong. That's fine.

Dan Pashman: And what was your technique? Tell me about how did you layer the ham and the cheese?

Lindy West: OK, well. OK.

Dan Pashman: Please?

Lindy West: We can get into this. So first, a lot of mustard. 

Dan Pashman: OK.

Lindy West: I'm really — I feel like when I was a child I was like, get that away from me. And now I just cannot get enough of it on my food. 

Dan Pashman: Yes, me too. 

Lindy West: I am obsessed with it.

Dan Pashman: Doesn't it make you feel like you're a real adult?

Lindy West: Yes.

Dan Pashman: Once you start switching to mustard?

Lindy West: Absolutely. So big smear of that. I mean, the smart thing to do is like rip the cheese in half and do half of the cheese, then the ham, then the other half of the cheese.

Dan Pashman: So you get cheese on top and bottom. 

Lindy West: So that the sandwich holds together. 

Dan Pashman: Yeah, yeah. It's like a mortar. 

Lindy West: Exactly.

Dan Pashman: It fuses. 

Lindy West: I tried it once with two pieces of cheese. It was too much cheese.

Dan Pashman: Mm-hmm. 

Lindy West: I mean these were like sort of pre-cut slices, you know?

Dan Pashman: Right.

Lindy West: So yeah. I would do, I think mustard ham, cheese, bread.

Dan Pashman: Were you at all self-conscious there?

Lindy West: Weirdly, no. Because of the aforementioned cred I felt like it gave me in the lounge community. And also, you know, there's nothing wrong with a nice wholesome sandwich. It's more like foods that we code as bad that are sort of nerve wrecking to eat in public. Like they would have sometimes a small mediocre cake in this lounge. I avoided that and it also didn't look good. Should we look at these menus? 

Dan Pashman: Let's do it. 

Lindy West: All right. Do you have recommendations?

Dan Pashman: I kind of came here with omelet on the mind. Like if I’m coming to a diner, I'm usually going to get an omelet.

Lindy West: You're doing breakfast. God, that's really opening my mind up to the fact that I could get pancakes right now.

Dan Pashman: You could.

Lindy West: And eat them. 

Dan Pashman: You could.

Lindy West: God, I hadn't even considered.

Dan Pashman: But then, you know, the problem with the diner is you get flummoxed by the paradox of choice. 

Lindy West: I know. 

Dan Pashman: That's what I think the first thing you've got to do before you even look at the menu is decide breakfast or lunch, because that will eliminate some choices.

Lindy West: I think I'm gonna go with my original instinct, which was lunch.

Dan Pashman: OK.

Lindy West: Hmm. All right. 

Dan Pashman: I think I'm going to go mushroom omelet, American cheese.

Lindy West: Oh, I love that idea.

Dan Pashman: All right. After you, Lindy.

Lindy West: Hello. Can I get the sweet and spicy chicken sandwich? 

Server: Fries?

Lindy West: Yes, please. And a chocolate malt.

Dan Pashman: Could I please have a mushroom omelet with American cheese. 

Server: Anything to drink? 

Dan Pashman: I'll take a coffee along with milkshake.

Lindy West: Did you order your milkshake?

Dan Pashman: Oh, I didn't — [LAUGHS] vanilla, please. 

Server: OK. Fantastic. 

Dan Pashman: Thank you. 

Server: Got it.

Lindy West: All right. What else should we talk about?

Dan Pashman: Well, I saw that you are a big fan of the Lean Cuisine French bread pizza. 

Lindy West: Yes. 

Dan Pashman: Is that right? Pepperoni?

Lindy West: French bread pepperoni pizza, Lean Cuisine, specifically. Not the other — not your standard Lean Cuisine round pizza. Those are a disaster. 

Dan Pashman: Right.

Lindy West:  But they're — the French bread pizza, Lean Cuisine pizzas are like legitimately good to eat.

Dan Pashman: I grew up on those. 

Lindy West: Yeah. 

Dan Pashman: Saturday nights.

Lindy West: Yeah. Because my mom would eat them. So I have a theory because I recently had a Red Baron French bread pepperoni pizza. 

Dan Pashman: OK. 

Lindy West: I think that the Lean Cuisine might just be the Red Baron with some of the pepperonis picked off to make it lean.

Dan Pashman: Right. They're like, "Look how lean it is?".

Lindy West: Because the pepperoni is the same weird triangle shape. That's just a hypothesis. I have not tested it. I haven't done a side by side analysis. 

Dan Pashman: Right. 

Lindy West: But it's my hunch and I feel like it's a good one.

Dan Pashman: Yeah. I like it. 

Lindy West: It's so exciting.

Dan Pashman: Thank you. 

Lindy West: Thank you so much. Man I should have gotten vanilla. 

Dan Pashman: Mmm.

Lindy West: Is it good? Can I try it? 

Dan Pashman: Yup, please do. 

Lindy West: Oh, man. if my Internet trolls got a hold of this... just an hour of me drinking a milkshake and talking about pepperoni.

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: But, you know, it occurs to me that that for you in some way, like for you to just hang out and nerd out on frozen pizzas and milkshakes is like a political act.

Lindy West: I pay a great price. I mean, really, it's true. It's different for me to do this than for you to do this, because people — like I said, people watch what I eat and what I — what food I talk about. And, you know, as a — if you're going to be a fat person who achieves any level of respect, you have to be the kind of apologetic, always on a diet fat person.

Dan Pashman: So you prefer fat as opposed to any other word?

Lindy West: Yeah. I mean, I just think it's more honest. I don't tell other people how they have to refer to themselves, but I personally don't like being referred to with euphemisms. They're still calling me fat, but they're also drawing attention to the fact that they're uncomfortable with my body. You know what I mean? And so my end goal would be to make it OK to be fat and to to let people live their lives, their complicated, long, busy lives without having to carry around this stigma. And so I think the more you can use the word in a neutral way and model that neutrality and say, "Yeah, I'm fat and there's nothing wrong with being fat.", that has a political impact and it ripples outward and it changes the way that other people think about themselves and the way that people treat each other.

Dan Pashman: One of the things that really struck me that you've talked about in interviews and in your book is this idea of sort of the the good or acceptable fat person versus the bad fat person. 

Lindy West: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: Can you kind of explain that difference a little more?

Lindy West: Mm-hmm. Sorry, I'm drinking milkshake.

Dan Pashman: Finish your chocolate milkshake before you go on.

Lindy West: OK, so when I started writing about being fat, it was still totally open season, like just be horrible and cruel to fat people for their own good. And then I feel like they're — people got it into their heads that maybe that was not a good look to just being gratuitously mean. And, you know, more and more fat people started to be like, hello, I am a person and I am a human being and deserve basic dignity and respect. And so then people put these qualifiers on it like, OK, well, it's still OK to berate and abuse fat people if they aren't doing everything they can to become thin people. Because we have this idea that that being fat is never a permanent state, that you're just a thin person who is a failure. And so it's totally acceptable to nag and insult and harass fat people if they aren't fulfilling their duty to, you know —

Dan Pashman: Like if they aren't feeling the shame that other people think they're supposed to feel?

Lindy West: Well, not just feeling the shame, but — well, definitely. I mean, people don't like it, if you don't feel the shame. They get very mad. But it's not just feeling the shame, I mean, you have to be sort of demonstrating and performing your penance. Like you have to be ostentatiously eating salad in public at all times and going to the gym and posting on Instagram about going to the gym. Except also when you go to the gym, people are mean to you because it's not real. Like you can try as hard as you can to be the good kind of fat person and they still hate you. They just might not insult you to your face quite so often. So I would rather not have to choose between good fatty and bad fatty and just be a person. I mean, I guess I choose bad because the game is rigged. It's not real. You know, you can't actually — you not you should not have to try to win your humanity, but also you can't because people don't actually care about your health and they don't actually care about their insurance premiums. They care about having someone to take a dump on.

Dan Pashman: That's the short version of the answer to a question Lindy says she gets a lot. In fact, she gets it so much that a few weeks before our interview, she wrote a piece in The Guardian saying she won't answer it anymore. And the question goes like this: By promoting fat acceptance, aren't you encouraging people to be unhealthy? Her response is basically that first, there are a lot of reasons why someone may be fat, and many of those reasons are beyond a person's control. But no matter the reason, treating fat people like garbage sure doesn't help. In her Guardian piece, she writes, "If you claim to care about fat people's health but do nothing to fight fat stigma, you are a liar." And as Lindy told me, that stigma is especially bad when food’s around, like at the grocery store. She says she's gotten past a lot of those issues, but she hasn't forgotten them.

Lindy West: It's definitely performative at the grocery store. It's like even if I'm going to the grocery store and I still do this sometimes if I'm feeling, you know, insecure that day. It's like if I have to go to the grocery store to buy a birthday cake for my child, I will be self-conscious and also get like a big bunch of carrots that I don't need so that people don't think that I'm just fat lady buying and whole cake on a Saturday night to go eat it while crying. You know, which is not even, you know, not the case and also is fine if that's what you want to do. It's not my business. You eat whatever you want. If you want to eat a whole cake while crying? I mean, I am sorry that you're crying. Now I'm concerned about this fictional person that I invented in my head. But, you know, there's always this like, how can I temper this bad food with a good food so that people don't think that, like, God forbid I was actually going to eat this. 

Dan Pashman: Or at least it comes across like a "normal" person buying...

Lindy West: Right, exactly. 

Dan Pashman: A full slate of groceries that might include some sweets and some vegetable.  

Lindy West: Exactly. Or sometimes I would do like a big theatrical like, "Oh, oh, just got to pick up this candy for my mom."

Dan Pashman: Right. 

Lindy West: Even if I was buying candy for myself. You know, like, "Oh no, it's not for me. I prefer jicama."

[LAUGHING] 

Lindy West: I don't know. It's just like there's no way you can slice it that having that kind of a relationship with food is healthier, makes you healthier. It just makes you miserable and fixated on food all the time, you know, because you have to constantly be thinking about it. And I don't know, I think that —

Dan Pashman: I would suspect that even at home, when you're alone away from prying eyes, it's still really hard to enjoy a meal.

Lindy West: Yeah. I mean, because you're still — you still have those thoughts. I mean, it's better to eat in private alone. You're less self-conscious. But, yeah. I mean, it's not like you can just turn that off.

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: Coming up, my conversation with Lindy West continues, her husband's body type is really different from hers. She'll talk about the way people react to them when they're together. Plus, when your goal in life is to instill confidence in others, what do you do on the days when you don't feel so confident yourself? I'll ask Lindy. Stick around. 

MUSIC

 

+++BREAK+++

 

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: Welcome back to The Sporkful. I'm Dan Pashman. On last week’s show I visit Jake Cohen. He’s the author of Jew-ish: Reinvented Recipes From A Modern Mensch, and he’s become a social media star. This book has really expanded how I think about what Jewish food in America is, and what it can be.

CLIP (JAKE COHEN): Perfect example? Kasha varnishkes. I think of that dish, which is this old school Ashkenazi dish of bowtie pasta with buckwheat groats. I think of it as like this sad deli side in a cup. And I thought like why don't we turn it into like a weeknight pasta. That's like fun. And I add like lemon zest and tons of chopped dill and fancy mushrooms. That is celebrating and moving Jewish food forward through the lens of Jewish joy and not trauma. 

Dan Pashman: When Jake was younger, judaism wasn’t a big part of his identity. Hear the story of how it came to be the focus of his career in our conversation, it’s up now. 

Dan Pashman: All right, let's get back to Lindy West. Our food arrived. I sandwichized my omelet in a toasted English muffin, as I am wont to do. Lindy quite liked her sweet and spicy chicken sandwich and we kept chatting. In her writings, Lindy talks about the fact that when a lot of people see a fat person, they feel a sort of visceral disgust. I asked her where she thinks that reaction comes from.

Lindy West: I mean, I used to feel that. So I understand that that feeling is real. But I think that — I mean, based on how easy it was for me to think myself out of that cycle, you know, I think it's something that we're sold really aggressively and conditioned into because a lot of people make a lot of money off of our body insecurities and our body hierarchy. And telling people that there's something wrong with them is a great way to get their money. I mean, the thing that helped me come to terms with my body was looking at diverse bodies, just looking at them, you know, scrolling through endless fat fashion blogs and just looking at people's bodies until they didn't give me that jarring feeling anymore.

Dan Pashman: You reprogrammed yourself. 

Lindy West: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: So I should say so, so I grew up. I was a fat kid. My brother too, both my parents were fat kids. This was a gene in my family, fat kids. And we kind of hit puberty and stretched out. And I was going to kind of bring that up and kind of compare notes with you. And then it occurred to me like, well, being a fat kid certainly isn't the greatest in a lot of ways, but I wonder if it bothers you and people who've had that experience compare or act like they understand your experience.

Lindy West: It does irritate me, actually. I hadn't really thought about it. But I mean, it's fine. Everyone's entitled to their experiences, but it is different. It's different to never grow out of that, you know what I mean? To never — to not have that just be a phase and to try to to make a life as an adult, as a fat adult, because it changes your employment opportunities and your romantic opportunities and the way that every single person treats you. 

Lindy West: And that's not to say that it's not incredibly painful for a lot of kids who are bullied and who are — you know, who face the same kind of stigma that fat adults do. But it's very, very frightening and painful to face the reality that you might and probably will statistically be fat forever. You know, to have to come to terms with that as an adult, when you're told your whole life that this is the worst possible thing you can be and there's no possible way to be fat and happy? It's really deeply frightening and traumatic. 

Lindy West: You hear fat phobic adults say things like, well, I was a fat kid and, you know, I grew out of — or, you know, I'm not fat anymore. So therefore, why don't you just stop being fat. Or, yeah, when I was in high school, I started jogging and now I'm not fat. So you should go back in time and learn to jog and then you will be me. Which is like — I mean, I played three sports in high school. I mean, the idea that fat people aren't active is a lie. The idea that fat people don't know about exercise is a lie. I guess people love to assign sort of moral value to to things that aren't necessarily accomplishments. Like, oh, you grew six inches in high school and suddenly you weren't fat anymore? And you think that displays some sort of like —

Dan Pashman: Virtue?

Lindy West: Yeah, virtue. 

Dan Pashman: Right. 

Lindy West: I mean, we instill very fraught and toxic relationships with food in kids when they're very young. And for some reason, no one wants to address that because it's more fun to just abuse fat people.

Dan Pashman: And easier.

Lindy West: Yeah, and easier.

Dan Pashman: You and your husband are not of a similar body type. Is that fair to say?

Lindy West: Oh, my God. And he's only getting worse and worse. We're making a film and he has to play a twenty-five-year-old. So he's — so anyway, he's like obsessed with the gym now and he's constantly working out. He used to just be like tall and skinny and and now he's like a weird, annoying, muscle bound Adonis.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] That sounds awful.

Lindy West: It is so annoying. And I'm just like fat and, like I also go to the gym every day that he goes to the gym. And the same thing does not happen to me. So I don't know. It's not fair. I mean, it's fine because I don't care. Obviously, this, my whole life's work is about being happy with the body that you have. It's just funny. But yeah, anyway, yeah, so I have a skinny, hot husband and then I am a fat hot lady or whatever. I don't think of myself as hot, but I feel like I should say that for the for the for the gals out there. Model that confidence, which is weird. People don't assume that we're a couple. Every restaurant, the server asks if we want separate checks or just brings separate checks. Women try to pick him up at all times when we're in public.

Dan Pashman: When you're with him?

Lindy West: Yeah. like, I'll just be sitting there like, hello? It's weird. I mean, it's just weird, I think, the assumptions that we make about people needing to match their partner. And I think there's this pressure on men, especially, to constantly upgrade to like the most conventionally hot woman you can get. And because of that system, people assume that, I guess, that I'm a witch. I cast a spell on him or something, or that he has some sort of fetish or something and that it couldn't possibly just be to adults, who love each other. I don't know. That's totally baffling to people.

Dan Pashman: I was reading up on this a little bit and I saw a fascinating study that they showed the people in taking the study pictures of different romantic couples with different body types. And the people were asked to rate how favorable or unfavorable their perception of each romantic couple was. 

Lindy West: Uh-huh. 

Dan Pashman: The highest, most favorable rating went to a couple where both people were skinny.

Lindy West: Yeah. 

Dan Pashman: The next rating down was where both people are fat. 

Lindy West: Yeah. 

Dan Pashman: The lowest rating was a skinny person and a fat person together. 

Lindy West: Yeah. 

Dan Pashman: Which was lower than two fat people.

Lindy West: Yeah. Because you're supposed to match your partner. I mean we have a model for fat man, skinny woman. Because men can do whatever they want. But fat woman, skinny man is so confusing for people and weirdly threatening. It's kind of the same as if just being a fat person who doesn't hate yourself. There's this idea that you somehow cheated or, you know, you took something that wasn't yours. 

Lindy West: When people spend their whole lives participating in diet culture and pouring money and time into it with the promise that at the end you win happiness and fulfillment. And then a person, like me, declares that I deserve happiness and fulfillment now and then just goes and lives that way. People are like, wait, I really invested a lot in this. What have I been doing with my life for the last twenty years? I could have just skipped to the finish line and been happy. I mean, and, obviously, there's nothing wrong with setting goals and doing whatever you want with your body. I'm just saying it's not a magic trick. 

Dan Pashman: Right. 

Lindy West: Where you're magically happy. So anyway, I think people are threatened by fat people having things that that we construe as prizes for obedience and physical beauty. You know?

Dan Pashman: Right. One of the phrases you've used a couple of times we've been talking is model confidence, that you try to use viewed as sort of part of your work to model confidence. That's something I kind of want to ask you about, which is like, we all have days when we're not feeling so confident and so great about ourselves. But it's like so much of the work you've taken on in your career is to project a certain way that you feel about yourself. How do you deal with that on the days that you don't feel that way inside?

Lindy West: Yeah, I mean, I guess if I'm not feeling it, I don't bother. You know, I mean, there are plenty of days where I just go out in a giant sweater and hide myself. You know what I mean? Like, swaddle myself in 40 yards of wool and slink around. You know what I mean? There's no mandate that you have to be perfect every day to live a good life and to be a happy, confident person.

Lindy West: If I'm telling fat people, fat women especially, that they need to just fight back against this pressure to be perfect all the time and, you know, go be yourself and live with confidence and believe in yourself. And then also you have to do that perfectly. And if you ever mess it up, then you're doing —

Dan Pashman: You suck. 

Lindy West: Then you suck. 

[LAUGHING]

Lindy West: And you're not even being fat right. You know what I mean? You know, the real answer is like, you just should — you just get to live and you get to be flawed and you get to be unhappy. You know, you don't even have to be happy. I hope that people finally give themselves space and permission to achieve happiness. But this pressure to have a great day, a great Instagram worthy day every single day is totally unrealistic. I don't think that pressure serves anyone. You know?

Dan Pashman: I know in your book you talk about other issues besides body image. 

Lindy West: What??

Dan Pashman: I know it's crazy. So before we say goodbye, I want to ask you, like, what's what's another part of your book that you feel like you never get asked about or hardly ever get asked about that you wish you got to ask about more that you would be eager to talk about?

Lindy West: No one ever asks me about periods. 

Dan Pashman: Go on. 

Lindy West: I don't know why. No, I don't want to talk about periods. I do think it's unreasonable that we have to have them and that men don't have to have them. That is cis-gender men don't have to have them because they are really intrusive and expensive and they take up a lot of time and a lot of mental energy and the least that men could do is read my very disgusting period chapter in my book. You know what I mean? I mean, I know so much about adolescent boners. There's like plenty of media about like, "Oh, I got an awkward boner in math. I had to use my folder to — ", like, yeah. I mean, I guess there are books about periods but did you read them? I don't think boys read —

Dan Pashman: I do remember learning about it and like in health class, but it wasn't exactly like — 

Lindy West: You weren't reading, like Judy Blume books about — 

Dan Pashman: No. 

Lindy West: Yeah. 

Dan Pashman: Right.

Lindy West: But I feel like girls read books about boys lives because they're just presented as books.

Dan Pashman: Right. 

Lindy West: Not — I don't know. I mean, I'm going off on a tangent and I haven't thought any of this through, but it feels true.

Dan Pashman: Well, that's good enough in today's day and age.

Lindy West: Just a food podcast. 

Dan Pashman: Yeah. 

Lindy West: Not a facts podcast.

[LAUGHING] 

Dan Pashman: That's Lindy West, her New York Times best selling book is Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman and you can see the TV version on Hulu. Lindy's also written two other books, The Witches Are Coming, and Shit, Actually: The Definitive, 100% Objective Guide to Modern Cinema.  

Dan Pashman: On next week’s show, I talk wttith Queer Eye’s Antoni Porowski. When the show first came out, everyone had one question: Can this guy actually cook? I’ll ask him how that felt for him then, and how he feels about it now. That’s next week. 

Dan Pashman: In the mean time, if you’re looking for more Sporkful? Check out last week’s episode, where I talk with Jake Cohen, who translates old-school Jewish recipes into viral TikTok videos. That’s in your feed right now.