Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, it's Virgi. I wanted to take a minute
Speaker 1: to acknowledge the stress we're all going through right now.
Speaker 1: This moment of uncertainty is bringing up all sorts of
Speaker 1: stuff for everyone. I've been hearing from a lot of
Speaker 1: friends who are feeling drawn to old restriction habits or
Speaker 1: have deep rooted fears coming up around not having enough food.
Speaker 1: I know those feelings can be really unsettling, and I
Speaker 1: also know that everyone needs a reminder that they are
Speaker 1: not alone sometimes, So I'm going to say it. You
Speaker 1: are not alone. I am here. We're all in this together.
Speaker 1: I wanted to return to how Rebel Eaters Clubs started
Speaker 1: with the hopes that we could help you thrive through
Speaker 1: fearless interrogation and intimate conversations that centered the human relationship
Speaker 1: to food. When the coronavirus state of emergency was called
Speaker 1: last week, I went back and listened to each episode.
Speaker 1: If I'm honest, I think I was doing it out
Speaker 1: of fear that everything we had discussed was now irrelevant.
Speaker 1: But what I realized as I listened was there is
Speaker 1: nothing farther from the truth. Family, history, sustenance, wisdom, humanity, love, justice.
Speaker 1: These are what's at stake in this show, and they're
Speaker 1: what's at stake in the world right now. I hope
Speaker 1: that as we finish out the season, you will be moved,
Speaker 1: maybe in a different way than before, to ask important
Speaker 1: questions of yourself and our culture. And I hope that
Speaker 1: the show can be a source of laughter, fun and comfort.
Speaker 1: If you want to reach out, our email address is
Speaker 1: Rebel Eaters Club at gmail dot com and our phone
Speaker 1: number is eight six two two three one five three
Speaker 1: eight six. Here's the show. When I was four years old,
Speaker 1: I had a boyfriend named Ray Ray. We'd met in
Speaker 1: our Tiny Tots preschool. Ray Ray was the smallest kid
Speaker 1: in the class and I was the biggest. I can't
Speaker 1: entirely remember how our love connection began, but knowing me,
Speaker 1: I probably initiated with a pickup line that went something like,
Speaker 1: guess what I like you? You're my boyfriend. Now. Back then,
Speaker 1: I lived in a world where I was the hottest, funniest,
Speaker 1: smartest girl on the planet. I had swagger, and Ray
Speaker 1: Ray was one hundred percent there for it. My friends
Speaker 1: in Tiny Tots hadn't been taught body shame or fat
Speaker 1: phobia yet, so no one thought our relationship was weird
Speaker 1: or worthy of commentary. None of Ray Ray's friends told
Speaker 1: him he shouldn't be dating a girl who was way
Speaker 1: bigger than him. Ray Ray didn't feel like he needed
Speaker 1: to hide his love for me, and I didn't think
Speaker 1: twice about the fact that this boy I was in
Speaker 1: love with probably wouldn't be able to pick me up
Speaker 1: and carry me across the threshold on our wedding day
Speaker 1: like I'd seen on TV. I hadn't learned shame about
Speaker 1: my body, and he hadn't learned to be ashamed of
Speaker 1: his innocent desire. It all just flowed. After Ray Ray,
Speaker 1: I would go on to learn that my body was
Speaker 1: seen as undesirable, and that made me forget how to sparkle.
Speaker 1: I forgot how to live my life unapologetically. Today, I'm
Speaker 1: talking with someone who lives her life with zero apology. Hello.
Speaker 1: Shane Neery is a plus size model who lives and
Speaker 1: works in New York City. Shay, do you have your
Speaker 1: true eat? I do have my treat. I see honchos
Speaker 1: and cheese fries. I got like an extra little bit
Speaker 1: of onion add on too. It's like there's a lot
Speaker 1: of special fries you have over there. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: know it's like magical fries. I ordered them from a
Speaker 1: computer onions and sauce and shit. Bit I'm in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: I got I got French fries with white American cheese melted.
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk to say about desire, about how
Speaker 1: we are drawn towards the things that give us pleasure
Speaker 1: and comfort and healing, including food. So do you want
Speaker 1: to take a delicious, loving bite together? Sure, make sure
Speaker 1: it sounds extra delicious. Make it sounds sexual. I'm a
Speaker 1: former sex worker. I wonder if I can make cheese
Speaker 1: fries sound sexual. I'm sure you all that I'm trying.
Speaker 1: These are really good. Yes, yes, so like wait, so
Speaker 1: can we back up? So when we were talking about
Speaker 1: this snack we're gonna get you, you were like hanchos,
Speaker 1: but only the rand flavor. You discuss your relationship to
Speaker 1: this item. Hanchos are my drug, Like if I like,
Speaker 1: I can't describe the innate love I have for hanchos.
Speaker 1: But they're a tortier chip. What is that they are?
Speaker 1: They're like they're dorito. They're they're kind of like doritos,
Speaker 1: but like the old school ones before before they started
Speaker 1: like spraying on the flavoring the hand toss doritos. That's
Speaker 1: exactly what they taste like. Oh I love that. So
Speaker 1: let's back up, like pre hanchos. Who are you? She
Speaker 1: is a thirty two year old M plus size transsexual
Speaker 1: from Pennsylvania and the Poconos and she's a busy gal.
Speaker 1: She works as an office manager for a large advertising
Speaker 1: company in Flat Iron and as a model when she's
Speaker 1: not doing those things. And you know she's a busy gass.
Speaker 1: You got things to do, yes, So, actually I want
Speaker 1: to drill down on something you said. So, you're known
Speaker 1: as being the first trans plus size model to be
Speaker 1: featured in a major fashion campaign. I am doesn't that
Speaker 1: sound fancy? Lord? It is? It's very sound fancy. It is.
Speaker 1: How did you get into modeling? Um, it wasn't intentional.
Speaker 1: I a friend. I was working in the food industry
Speaker 1: for twenty years and a friend of mine who I
Speaker 1: worked with, saw this ad in Time Out magazine and
Speaker 1: it was like this trans modeling agency and he was like, girl,
Speaker 1: you need to apply. And I was like, I Am
Speaker 1: not applying, Like they are not taking my fat ass.
Speaker 1: Like I literally at this moment where I was like,
Speaker 1: um no, I'm not doing it, and he like forced
Speaker 1: me like the next day to like send my pictures
Speaker 1: over and this girl responds and she's like, oh, oh,
Speaker 1: aren't you pretty? And she's like, come in, we'll do
Speaker 1: some test shoots. And I got booked that like next
Speaker 1: week to be in the agency for trans models. And
Speaker 1: I came across this advertising for cover story. It was
Speaker 1: this woman looking for plus trans woman to put in
Speaker 1: her ads, and I remember going to the Goho Sie
Speaker 1: to meet her, and I point blank was like, why
Speaker 1: do you want to put a fat trans woman in
Speaker 1: your ad? And she's like, I have tons of plus
Speaker 1: trans friends, none of them are model worthy, but in
Speaker 1: reality she's like, they all have wonderful personalities and they
Speaker 1: deserve to have imagery out there. And I was like, well,
Speaker 1: that sounds friendly enough. Like when the shoot went live,
Speaker 1: Refinary twenty nine picked it up, Mike dot Com picked
Speaker 1: it up, AOL Yahoo. It went all around the internet,
Speaker 1: hardcore viral. It kind of like spread like wildfire, and
Speaker 1: then I was getting contacted to do other stuff, and
Speaker 1: then a UK company contacted me, and then I became
Speaker 1: the first plus sized trans model to book a UK campaign.
Speaker 1: I will say, you give really good face. But this
Speaker 1: actually brings us to our meat cute. Um. So, the
Speaker 1: first time I laid eyes on you was when we
Speaker 1: were both doing that shoot for a plus sized company
Speaker 1: called Dia and Co. In New York. Um it was this,
Speaker 1: I just remember. It was this huge loft space in Chelsea?
Speaker 1: Was it Chelsea? I remember like walking down this long
Speaker 1: corridor for what seemed like half a mile, and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I heard like dozens of people,
Speaker 1: lots of people, and and the craft services table was
Speaker 1: the first thing I clocked after that, and it was
Speaker 1: it was pretty impressive. Yeah, yeah, fun. Don't get me wrong.
Speaker 1: They're hard work, but it's fun. Yeah. No, it's true,
Speaker 1: and I've been. I mean I remember that day like
Speaker 1: I had never seen so many lights and cameras. There
Speaker 1: were racks and racks of clothing, dozens of shoes. There
Speaker 1: was like a bunch of tables swished together, covered in
Speaker 1: every imaginable accessory, and there were about half a dozen
Speaker 1: hair and makeup artists and the person did my hair
Speaker 1: named Chucky put about twenty pounds of glorious hair extensions
Speaker 1: into my head. And I just remember like the photographer
Speaker 1: just asking me to hop around like a bunny. It's
Speaker 1: just like it's just like amazing, right and absurdum And anyway,
Speaker 1: so you were there that day and I probably heard
Speaker 1: your laughter furs and before long I was listening to
Speaker 1: you tell stories and entertain everybody there. So you remember this, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, you know it's funny. I didn't want to
Speaker 1: intimidate the other girls, and I felt bad because like
Speaker 1: I had modeled all the time, and these women in
Speaker 1: the room they had not ever modeled before. I become
Speaker 1: very different on shoots. Um, Like I take my modeling
Speaker 1: really seriously, but when I'm behind a camera, I always
Speaker 1: see I become my character. It's like my drag persona
Speaker 1: is Sha Butter. But when I'm behind a camera is
Speaker 1: when Sha Butter comes out. That's been like Sha but
Speaker 1: It's like I'm gonna make some money now, like pay
Speaker 1: attention to me. I will steal your focus in the
Speaker 1: frame in any shot, like I will make you find
Speaker 1: me so Like a lot of times, like women yet shoots,
Speaker 1: they'll they're like they get like a timidity invite because
Speaker 1: I'm not afraid to like step in front of you.
Speaker 1: I will like literally shift in front of you to
Speaker 1: get this shie like, I'll be respectful, but know who
Speaker 1: know who's who? Yes, I mean shake, and I ask,
Speaker 1: how did you become this person? I think years of
Speaker 1: hating yourself and then finding a re like, finding a
Speaker 1: re establishment for your identity really like puts you in
Speaker 1: a different headspace. Before my transition, I very much I
Speaker 1: didn't like who I was, like, I didn't like my personality.
Speaker 1: I didn't like my identity, my appearance. And then when
Speaker 1: I started my transition, I started seeing myself in the
Speaker 1: mirror the way I wanted to see myself Not that
Speaker 1: I needed to change to be happy, but that I
Speaker 1: was finally recognizing the person in front of me instead
Speaker 1: of it being this like mystery individual. I felt like
Speaker 1: I was living in the shell of like. So a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of my attitude, a lot of
Speaker 1: my strength has come from leading a very challenging life
Speaker 1: growing up. Sha says her family was pretty poor. Then
Speaker 1: when she was six or seven years old, the river
Speaker 1: next to their house flooded and Shay and her family
Speaker 1: literally watched their home float away. After that, they moved
Speaker 1: from place to place to place, which only made a
Speaker 1: bunch of difficult family and dynamics worse like my parents were.
Speaker 1: Really they were heavy alcoholics, heavy trauma built individuals like
Speaker 1: that didn't understand their past nor did they want to
Speaker 1: deal with it. And like cheese fries. It's funny, like
Speaker 1: we talked about cheese fries. How that's one of my
Speaker 1: favorite foods. One of my favorite foods because it's easy
Speaker 1: to bring home from a bar because like, you didn't
Speaker 1: really have time to cook that much when you're out
Speaker 1: drinking at a bar all day long. My parents always
Speaker 1: could bring home cheese fries. It's something like chicken cheese
Speaker 1: fries and chicken tenders. It was like a regular dinner
Speaker 1: for me if my mother wasn't cooking. I think food
Speaker 1: has Food is kind of a witness in some sense
Speaker 1: to your experience, and we our lives are kind of
Speaker 1: catered around that. We have foods that bring us innate
Speaker 1: comfort because there they were with us in times of
Speaker 1: struggle or times of positivity. And sometimes it can bring
Speaker 1: us great pleasure, and sometimes it can remind us of
Speaker 1: pain and things we've been through. And I think you
Speaker 1: kind of view food as you've kind of experienced it
Speaker 1: through your life. But if you become aware of when
Speaker 1: you do these things and how you eat them, or
Speaker 1: what you choose to do when you're in pain or
Speaker 1: in pleasure, Like then you you kind of like start
Speaker 1: to choose things base off of that. More that after
Speaker 1: the break, everyone's got comfort foods, things that bring us
Speaker 1: warm feelings of home, of plenty, feelings of being held
Speaker 1: and loved. Because, my god, there are a few things
Speaker 1: that make me feel more amazing than a warm apple
Speaker 1: crisp with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, or hot
Speaker 1: Cheetos with slightly maltebres or manutho. The way it feels
Speaker 1: to top off the bowl of soup with a small
Speaker 1: fistful of onions and cilantro, to squeeze little slices of
Speaker 1: fresh lime, the little bit of juice that dribbles down
Speaker 1: my wrists and out to anyone close enough to be
Speaker 1: in the manuvo slash zone. I even love being part
Speaker 1: of the elite club of people who understand the glory
Speaker 1: of tripe. Then are those sacred ingredients. We all know
Speaker 1: how strong our associations with food can be, because food
Speaker 1: is a witness to our experiences, a witness to the
Speaker 1: sweet memories and the difficult ones. Eggplant, parmesan literally is
Speaker 1: like things I will never eat again, Like the amount
Speaker 1: of fights my mother and father had over eggplant fucking parmesan.
Speaker 1: This one time a tray of eggplant parmesan fell out
Speaker 1: of the stove because my father didn't use like a
Speaker 1: proper thing, and he burned his hand and it created
Speaker 1: this massive, massive fight, or my dad got belligently drunk
Speaker 1: and it got very abusive, and my like, because my
Speaker 1: childhood is so built upon that, like food has become
Speaker 1: so tied into those experiences. My life has kind of
Speaker 1: been in disarray so many separate times where like I
Speaker 1: got thrown out when I was fourteen, and I live
Speaker 1: with my drag mother for a large period of that time,
Speaker 1: and kind of started escorting at a very young age
Speaker 1: and nowadays, like we like even then it was considered
Speaker 1: like child prostitution, but then it was like survival for me,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Like I wasn't I wasn't
Speaker 1: looking at it like that, right, I was sort of
Speaker 1: thinking about, you know, going back to escorting and sex work.
Speaker 1: And there's kind of this I don't know, like this
Speaker 1: fascinating binary of like good, bad, secret public those kinds
Speaker 1: of binaries that I feel are really at work when
Speaker 1: we're talking about sexuality and sex work. I was thinking
Speaker 1: about when I first moved to San Francisco and I
Speaker 1: was dating someone and we had this like really incredible
Speaker 1: sexual chemistry and he just worshiped my fat body in
Speaker 1: this way that was really extraordinary and that I kind
Speaker 1: of I don't think i'd ever really experienced, and it
Speaker 1: gave me so much freedom, and I was sort of
Speaker 1: falling for this person because he was so clear about
Speaker 1: his desire for my larger body. And then you know,
Speaker 1: a little bit of time goes on and he straight
Speaker 1: up tells me like, listen, you're my ideal body. You're
Speaker 1: really awesome. But I do not have he said this,
Speaker 1: raise I don't have the balls to deal with the
Speaker 1: ship my friends are going to give me if I
Speaker 1: date you publicly, So that might make me a coward,
Speaker 1: but that's just the reality of the situation, and just
Speaker 1: kind of thinking about like, right, I mean, obviously how
Speaker 1: hurtful and humanizing it is to hear something like that,
Speaker 1: but the other side of it being like, wow, you
Speaker 1: know this, there's so many layers of the secrecy, the hiding,
Speaker 1: the closeting, whatever you want to call it. You know
Speaker 1: it's you said, you said that you felt good about yourself,
Speaker 1: like you felt like you you, and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden they didn't want you, and you're like, oh well,
Speaker 1: they were like, I'm being a coward because of this,
Speaker 1: because of what society thinks I should date and should have.
Speaker 1: And I deal with that every day. People find me
Speaker 1: attractive or want to be with me, but won't facilitate
Speaker 1: their desire. They won't actively pursue it. What they want
Speaker 1: is a societal picture. They want the imagery that will
Speaker 1: make everyone in their life happy for them, not what
Speaker 1: actually makes them happy. Because a lot of times what
Speaker 1: we desire is not innately what we want. What we
Speaker 1: want is typically a picture of what our families want
Speaker 1: for us, what our friends want for us, who will
Speaker 1: judge us to make us into who we are, not
Speaker 1: exactly what we desire, which is sometimes outside of the
Speaker 1: spectrum of what one is considered normal. I've never lived
Speaker 1: in a position where I've been considered societally normal. I'm
Speaker 1: a freak. I'm an outcast, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: And that someone doesn't want to fall in love with
Speaker 1: an outcast. Anything that doesn't fit within the white line
Speaker 1: stream of what is supposed to be and what isn't
Speaker 1: is going to be considered fetish which is why there's
Speaker 1: such a huge amount of sex work and pornography, because
Speaker 1: people have to sires that they're not actively willing to push.
Speaker 1: For a lot of people in American society, there is
Speaker 1: an unspoken rule that some relationships are meant to be
Speaker 1: public and some are meant to be private. There are
Speaker 1: the relationships that are acceptable that don't shake things up.
Speaker 1: Often its relationships within people, white people, sis gender people,
Speaker 1: able bodied people. We learn those are safe to make public.
Speaker 1: Then there are relationships that we are told to hide,
Speaker 1: people that we're supposed to feel ashamed about desiring about
Speaker 1: accepting even we're told that we should not desire to
Speaker 1: be close to people who are fat, people of color,
Speaker 1: people who are trans or gender expansive, people who are disabled,
Speaker 1: people who do sex work. In our culture, we're taught
Speaker 1: that having desire for these kinds of people is taboo
Speaker 1: or deviant, So they are fetishized. They are stripped of
Speaker 1: their full humanity and reduced to a source of sexual
Speaker 1: release or pleasure, all that total poop garbage. People are
Speaker 1: capable of finding beauty, sexiness, appeal in all kinds of
Speaker 1: bodies and personalities. That is normal, it's natural. And burying
Speaker 1: that desire that's what's harmful to ourselves, to the people
Speaker 1: we love, and to our culture. Like we're all turned
Speaker 1: on by something. My key question always is is, like
Speaker 1: what gets you hot? If you're not, if you're not
Speaker 1: seeing something or facilitating a relationship with something that doesn't
Speaker 1: get you hot, you may want to check why it's
Speaker 1: not going to work out in a year or two, Like, right,
Speaker 1: because you're you're trying to befit the cookie cutter, and
Speaker 1: not everybody fits in a cookie cutter. Honey. Some people
Speaker 1: are a bunkcake. Some people are freaking Italian loaf. They're
Speaker 1: not all cookie cutters. Yeah, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like some bitches get you a slice, Like yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I mean I think you're getting at I mean to me, right.
Speaker 1: I think for a lot of people, they believe that
Speaker 1: attraction and desire are things that we're born with. Right,
Speaker 1: They're innate, they're perhaps evolutionary. At the end of the day,
Speaker 1: though most attraction is socially constructed. We learn who to
Speaker 1: be attracted to by our culture. We get the thumbs
Speaker 1: up when we're doing the right thing, we get the
Speaker 1: thumbs down. We're doing the wrong thing, we get the carrot,
Speaker 1: we get the stick. Right, I don't know. I'm just
Speaker 1: thinking about like how like how we end up in
Speaker 1: these situations where people are incentivized to act and authentically,
Speaker 1: to not pursue pleasure, to not do things that feel good.
Speaker 1: And I feel like this is this is in a
Speaker 1: big way, the big sort of the big takeaway from
Speaker 1: this conversation in general. But I kind of want to
Speaker 1: to really dive into the fact that, like the culture
Speaker 1: really fucks us up by telling us that there's something
Speaker 1: wrong with our desires, and so we end up denying
Speaker 1: them and repressing them. And I think this goes to
Speaker 1: this concept like the metaphor of taste, right, I don't know,
Speaker 1: Like the metaphor of taste reminds me of going to
Speaker 1: college for the first time. I was in a white world,
Speaker 1: in a white affluent world, having grown up in mostly
Speaker 1: immigrant suburb of the Bay Area, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I'm at UC Berkeley, and it was a very rapid
Speaker 1: education in how to perform taste, how to how to like,
Speaker 1: and how to perform that through food choices. Right, like
Speaker 1: I like I could perform that I was passing, or
Speaker 1: like I could imagine in my head that I was
Speaker 1: passing by mimicking the foods of the people that people
Speaker 1: around me were eating. Obviously, it's so tied up in
Speaker 1: my own, you know, experience with disordered eating and dieting
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. But I remember actually developing physical
Speaker 1: aversions to food that I knew was like food that
Speaker 1: was quote unquote off limits to me at that time,
Speaker 1: Like I would I would literally develop like nausea when
Speaker 1: I thought about or got close to food that I
Speaker 1: thought would you know, lead to like my worst case scenario,
Speaker 1: which at that time was that I would stay a
Speaker 1: fat person, or that I would regain some of the
Speaker 1: weight that I had managed to through some method, through
Speaker 1: some terrible method, to lose. Our relationship with food and
Speaker 1: society is so torn. It's like it's just a sensibility
Speaker 1: that like you're being you're better than someone, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. The difference between shopping at whole Foods
Speaker 1: or shopping at stop and shop, Like the difference between
Speaker 1: shopping at Trader Joe's, Vida, shopping at Aldease, Like they're
Speaker 1: all selling the same exact shit. But it's like we
Speaker 1: look at people who kind of who buy their stuff
Speaker 1: at cheaper stores as like trashy. You see Foodtown on
Speaker 1: someone's cheddar, and you're like, oh, you went to Foodtown. Ill.
Speaker 1: I think food is very elitist. So you know how
Speaker 1: taste has more than one meaning, like your literal sense
Speaker 1: of taste, the party in your mouth when you take
Speaker 1: a bite of a red velvet cupcake, and it also
Speaker 1: has a second meaning that's all wrapped up in class
Speaker 1: indicating the ability or inability to tell if something is refined.
Speaker 1: Taste is defined by tastemakers, and in food for a
Speaker 1: long time, one of those tastemakers was Gail Green. She
Speaker 1: was a New York magazine food critic for more than
Speaker 1: thirty years. Shaye told me when she was young, she
Speaker 1: wanted to be just like Gail Green. I went to
Speaker 1: college to be a food writer. I wanted to make
Speaker 1: a lifetime writing about food and sex and how those
Speaker 1: two are so innately the same, and how like the
Speaker 1: control between making a good meal and the patience to
Speaker 1: establish a great recipe, between the compromise of making passionate
Speaker 1: love to your partner or sharing a free moment with
Speaker 1: a sporadic individual, and how food is so innately combined
Speaker 1: with that. I wanted to master that. And then I worked.
Speaker 1: I worked for a red farm for a while, and
Speaker 1: my the owner, was best friends with Gail Green, and
Speaker 1: I met her in person, and I realized how unlike
Speaker 1: this woman I was, how like I didn't come from
Speaker 1: a wealthy background. I didn't come from money. I didn't
Speaker 1: know the difference between good great food and good food
Speaker 1: or fancy food, like the difference between per Se and McDonald's.
Speaker 1: Do you think I gave two damns back then? I didn't.
Speaker 1: I just loved cooking. I loved enjoying myself with food.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm I'm Sicilian, so like food is love,
Speaker 1: I want I want people to enjoy food for what
Speaker 1: it is like. I don't want them to over absorb
Speaker 1: themselves in the nutritional values of food, because in reality,
Speaker 1: any food you're putting in your mouth is good for me.
Speaker 1: So you have a special relationship to cereal, if I'm
Speaker 1: not mistaken, I do. Yeah, I found girl for Cereal,
Speaker 1: and you've identified food as cereal as a soothing food
Speaker 1: for you hundred percent. Because it's easy. It was easy
Speaker 1: to get Like if my mother had made food that
Speaker 1: I didn't want, my grandmother would give me a bowl
Speaker 1: of cereal, like she want me to starve. Yeah like
Speaker 1: like so like like my mother, my grandmother didn't believe
Speaker 1: my mother. If I didn't want to eat what she
Speaker 1: put on the table, she would literally send me to
Speaker 1: my room and without anything. And um, so like my
Speaker 1: grandmother would always always give me cheerios or like frosted flakes,
Speaker 1: like a bowl of it. She'd poured me some and
Speaker 1: she'd act like she was going in the kitchen for herself,
Speaker 1: and then she'd ended up bringing it to my room.
Speaker 1: So a lot of like my comfort and joy, I
Speaker 1: always eat cereal. It's the first thing I did yesterday.
Speaker 1: I got home and I literally made myself a bowl
Speaker 1: of shredded Trader Joe's maple whatever the hell they are, Yes,
Speaker 1: the frost, yes, yes, yes, So like cereal is a
Speaker 1: food that still gives you all these yammy good feelings
Speaker 1: that it's sort of reminiscent of like this really special
Speaker 1: caring behavior that your grandmother did for you. And I'm
Speaker 1: sort of like great, like what's the power and being
Speaker 1: able to give ourselves what we want? The power in
Speaker 1: giving us what we want. Um, I like, I feel
Speaker 1: like adulthood is like finally making choices for yourself that
Speaker 1: you actively wanted to make as a child but couldn't.
Speaker 1: The positivity that's blossomed from my relationship with food is
Speaker 1: because I don't. I don't want to look at it
Speaker 1: negatively anymore. I don't want to. I don't want to
Speaker 1: have a negative relationship with food because it's not It
Speaker 1: doesn't control my life. I control it. So like if
Speaker 1: I if I want to have and enjoy a piece
Speaker 1: of pizza because that's what I want today, that's what
Speaker 1: I'm going to have. And whether I have to suffer
Speaker 1: through the thoughts of eating that piece of pizza and
Speaker 1: what the terms mentally that come along with it, I'm
Speaker 1: going to try to reshape those mentalities. Like eggpan parmesan
Speaker 1: is not something I can reshape, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: That's a box that's closed. She's not eating that ever. Like,
Speaker 1: but like there are things that I'm kind of reworking,
Speaker 1: and I think we all can do that within our power.
Speaker 1: We all have the power to refoster things mentally for ourselves,
Speaker 1: and it requires work and effort and things like everyone
Speaker 1: wants things to be easy, and there's nothing easy about
Speaker 1: your mentality, not a damn thing. Things don't happen overnight.
Speaker 1: You have to work on your mental health. You have
Speaker 1: to work on fostering healthy mental relationships with everything you have,
Speaker 1: And if you don't do that, you're kind of you're
Speaker 1: leaving yourself on the disadvantaged side of the scope. And
Speaker 1: I have no want or desire to do that, not anymore.
Speaker 1: At least say you are amazing and wonderful. You've shared
Speaker 1: so much. Are you looking in the mirror when you
Speaker 1: say those things. I'm so grateful, Like I can find
Speaker 1: a little bit of time talking with you about your
Speaker 1: food history in your life, and thank you, just thank
Speaker 1: you so much. I love how Shay talks about our
Speaker 1: power to reconstruct and reimagine things that are paid to
Speaker 1: turn things that suck into things that work for us.
Speaker 1: We live in a culture that loves to label things
Speaker 1: as good or bad, a culture that uses those labels
Speaker 1: to control our actions and our desires. There's good food
Speaker 1: and bad food, public relationships and private ones, the right
Speaker 1: kind of desire and the wrong kind. There's so much
Speaker 1: pressure to make the socially acceptable choice when we want
Speaker 1: something else. We get some pretty strong messages that there's
Speaker 1: something wrong with us, but we should feel guilty and ashamed.
Speaker 1: If you're sometimes debilitated by those feelings, you are not alone.
Speaker 1: Defying all that pressure is especially hard work if you're
Speaker 1: also dealing with things like classism, trauma, and fat phobia. Well,
Speaker 1: rebel friends, I'm here to say that you can go
Speaker 1: at your own pace, find your own way through it,
Speaker 1: and I'm here to say that it's work that is
Speaker 1: worth doing. Standing up for what you want and need
Speaker 1: is a powerful kind of transformation. For this week's prompt,
Speaker 1: Shay talked a lot about how food has been a
Speaker 1: witness to our experience. What foods have been witnesses to
Speaker 1: your life? Remember try not to see food you write
Speaker 1: about as good or bad. Focus on the details of
Speaker 1: the story, and leave room to honor what you've been through.
Speaker 1: For the past few weeks, I've been closing each episode
Speaker 1: with a journal prompt and encouraging you to share your stories,
Speaker 1: and many of you have written and called in. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much to each of you for sharing your
Speaker 1: personal experiences with all the diet culture poop garbage. Here
Speaker 1: are a few of the calls. Hello, my name is
Speaker 1: Kellie and I am calling from Rolling, North Carolina. My
Speaker 1: family's food is Doritos and cream cheese, plain nacho Doritos
Speaker 1: dips and just a block of cream cheese that we
Speaker 1: have the snack at every party, every gathering, every tree night.
Speaker 1: When we watched American Idol together, a family would just
Speaker 1: devour two solid rectangles of cream cheese like four bags
Speaker 1: of Doritos. I should definitely try it. And thank you.
Speaker 1: Hi there, Viggie. And my name and Jessie, and I'm
Speaker 1: twenty five years old and I live in a town
Speaker 1: called Sudbury, and I'm in Canada. My food that I'd
Speaker 1: like to talk about is mashed potatoes. When I think
Speaker 1: of mashed potatoes, I think of comfort, I think of home.
Speaker 1: I think of my mum making my favorite food when
Speaker 1: I was young, buttery, goodness, family. So quickly, unfortunately it
Speaker 1: turned into carves, starch quote unquote bad too, potatoes, bad, indulgence. Bad.
Speaker 1: As I worked into my own personal journey with even
Speaker 1: this sort of recovery, I realized white foods are fine
Speaker 1: now again. Mashed potatoes, revelation, yummy, comfort, bottery, fluffy, versatile bulists,
Speaker 1: indulgence in every acquick that I need, want and desire.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, Virgie, I love your podcast. Thanks again
Speaker 1: to everyone who called. If you'd like to share your story,
Speaker 1: call the Rebel Eaters Hotline at eight six two two
Speaker 1: three one five three eight six. That's eight six two
Speaker 1: two three one five three eight six. You can also
Speaker 1: write us a note and send it to Rebel Eaters
Speaker 1: Club at gmail dot com. I can't wait to hear
Speaker 1: from you. When you're done, don't forget to give yourself
Speaker 1: the merit badge you earned, the pleasure is power badge.
Speaker 1: You can print it out on our website Rebel Eatersclub
Speaker 1: dot com and show us what you're eating. Tag us
Speaker 1: on social with hashtag rebel Eaters Club or at transmitter Pods.
Speaker 1: Next week, we're talking to Soleho about being a new
Speaker 1: kind of food critic. If I can change the way
Speaker 1: people think about, for instance, Vietnamese food, and maybe the
Speaker 1: next time they get a bund me they think about colonialism,
Speaker 1: they think about like, oh wow, like the resilience of
Speaker 1: these people. That's so interesting to me, that's really important.
Speaker 1: Rebel Eaters Club is an original podcast from Transmitter Media,
Speaker 1: the podcast company that's like a surprise Lasagna your friend
Speaker 1: brings you when you're sad. I'm Virgie Tovar. The show
Speaker 1: is produced by Lacy Roberts and Jordan Bailey. Our editor
Speaker 1: is Sarah Nix. Greta Cohen is our executive producer. Like
Speaker 1: what you hear on the show and want to sponsor us,
Speaker 1: Send us a note at Rebel Eaters Club at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com and let us know. And please head to
Speaker 1: your favorite podcast app and give us a review. It
Speaker 1: will help us grow the club. See you next week.