Episode 6: Food is Life with Soleil Ho
Soleil disrupts food writing.
Virgie Tovar: Hey everyone, Virgie here. I just wanted to let you know that I might sound a little different in this episode - we recorded this one in my bedroom, where I’m sheltering in place.
I also wanted to note - in this episode, we’re talking about the role restaurants play in our relationship to food. I think it’s really important to acknowledge the hard time folks who work in the food and beverage industry are having right now. If you are able, check out the link in the show notes - it’s a good list of organizations helping restaurants, workers, and farmers in this tough time. If you have the ability, consider donating.
Here’s the show.
Growing up, I really dreaded Sunday mornings. It was church day. And church day meant the following. Number one: having to wear panty hose that chafed my inner thighs and made them red hot and bumpy. Number two: having to listen to grown-ups talk for HOURS on end about stuff that didn’t make any sense. Number three: sitting still while the pastor gave a sermon. He was the MOST boring grown up of them all! And number four: All this, while having access to literally zero snacks.
The only thing that redeemed Sundays was RED LOBSTER.
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[1:34] VT: Because when church was finally over, my grandfather would pile all of us into the dark blue station wagon, the one with little silver specks in the paint.
My grandfather was the breadwinner of the family. He had been a body builder in his 20s, and was still pumping iron three or four times a week even then, well into his 50s. He was the head chemist at a factory, a union job. He worked long hours with other men who were big and strong like him. I remember how he’d puff out his chest when we rolled up into Red Lobster for lunch. He’d grown up super poor, and the idea of being able to pay for 7 people’s worth of seafood was a BIG FUCKIN DEAL. My grandmother loved being the fancy lady at his side, who never had to reach for her purse when my grandpa was around. She would do her hair up in curlers on Saturday night and pick out her special Sunday outfit. Yes, it was for the church people, but REALLY it was in case we ran into anyone she knew at Red Lobster. So she could show off her family, well-fed and well-dressed.
For my grandma and grandpa, being able to go out to eat meant something really special and really specific. It meant making it -- in the best damn country in the world as far as they were concerned. They had come to this country with only $2 in their pockets, and there they were eating crab melts. They were giving their family something better than they had growing up. For that two or three hours at Red Lobster -- because TRUST ME we stretched out lunch -- we could leave all our troubles at home and laugh and eat until we were stuffed and alive with the American dream.
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[3:39] VT: I’m Virgie Tovar, and this is Rebel Eaters Club. We’ve talked a lot about the private and intimate side of food, but my guest today will walk us from the intimacy of home to the public domain -- where food takes on yet another dimension. Soleil Ho is the restaurant critic at the San Francisco Chronicle.
Soleil Ho: I'm delighted that I even got to choose a snack that got an upgrade from the usual.
VT: She’s taught me that when it comes to eating out, there’s way more to it than meets the eye. Soleil, do you want to tell us the snack that you chose?
SH: Right in front of us is a yellow package of Saki IKA, which is prepared shredded squid. You often find this in Asian grocery stores. And this was the snack that I would always gravitate to when I was a kid and we were going grocery shopping. I would grab it and just just throw it in the shopping cart without asking you.
VT: Yes [laughs].
SH: So to this day, I love it. It's just squid jerky. Sometimes cuttlefish jerky, sometimes spicy, sometimes not. But it just tastes like really sweet and savory and salty. And it's so chewy. You really have work on it.
VT: Yeah. Do you want to do the honors?
SH: Yeah, I'm gonna open it. And then there's like a bloom of just fermented squid smell that flies out at you once you open the bag. So perfect. I put way too much of my mouth just now because I was so excited.
VT: Yeah. It's got that. Like that taste of the sea.
SH: Mm hmm. And it's so umami, it just makes you salivate. Thank you for bringing this for me.
VT: Thank you for opening up the package, it was so beautiful and it's delicious. OK. So we can keep snacking on this delicious, stringy, bloomy aromatic treat. In the meanwhile, though, I need to know, who are you? Who you are? Who is soleil?
SH: Sure. I am a restaurant critic. My pronouns are she, her, hers. And I work for the San Francisco Chronicle, I started the job about a year ago, so I'm fairly new to the restaurant critic world. But previously I had a podcast called Racist Sandwich, which was all about how food intersected with race and class and gender. And I was a freelance writer. I would do things once in a while. As befit my mood. But my main gig was cooking and working in the restaurant world.
VT: I'm gonna ask you about a million questions. I remember someone I was dating brought it up. We were driving somewhere and he was like, oh, did you hear that there is this new restaurant critic for the Chronicle?
SH: Oh, funny!
VT: And she really made a splash and she sort of a little bit talked about how she wasn't interested in reviewing and revering places like Chez Panisse. And it's just like and he was like, I think it's right up your alley. And it was just one of those things where we had like this 30 minute conversation about that. This is when you know you've succeeded. When people can have a 30 minute conversation about something that you did through hearsay and it's stimulating. So can you talk about that like what is your day to day life like as a restaurant critic?
SH: I read a lot of yelp, which is funny because, you know, I'm not supposed to write Yelp reviews basically. Because that's not the style that I do. But it is interesting to me to see what's coming up. What's interesting. Like what's new. A lot of research because there are more than 7000 restaurants in San Francisco alone. Right. And there are 365 days a year. So I really need to choose wisely what's happening here. Often when I go out it's for dinner. And so I'm probably going out to eat maybe like five times a week, minimum. And I usually if I have to make reservations, I'll make it under a fake name. The anonymity part is just for me to help workers be a little less stressed, at least in the lead up. And just to help me avoid some awkwardness because it gets awkward sometimes.
VT: Can I ask about your methodology as a restaurant critic?
SH: Sure. So when I started the job, you know, I was always criticizing the food media from the outside. I was always talking about how, you know, like even for something that is so light as a genre, you know, people don't really take it seriously, it can still perpetuate colonial ideas. Like fat shaming ideas. Like there are really serious things that we engage with through food media, even if we don't acknowledge it, right? Through othering of other people's cuisines, through talking about food in gendered ways, like all kinds of really below-the-waves kind of stuff. And so when I got this job, which was very unlikely to me that I got this job, but I did, I realized, OK, here's my chance. I have a much bigger platform. Here's a chance to really engage with those things that I was so worried about and worked up about when I was on the outside. And here's how to put it in practice. Right. So how do you write about food and restaurants in a way that acknowledges that there are more than two genders, for instance? How do you write about restaurants in a way that doesn't otherize people who didn't grow up eating mashed potatoes,you know what I mean?
SH: The L.A. Times's food critic Patricia Escárcega just released a newsletter about how the L.A. Times food section will no longer italicize foreign words. And she used foreign in quotes. She is of Mexican descent. And so she was talking a lot about, like, who is being made to feel foreign just so you can italicize words because it's your style or whatever. And I thought that was really interesting. When I first started the job, I wrote a whole list of words that I wasn't going to use, you know, in my writing.
VT: Can I ask what they are?
SH: Yeah. Yeah, it was a little indulgent. But I wanted to also introduce myself, you know, because I was kind of an unknown quantity for a lot of people who subscribe to the Chronicle. The words included things like ethnic, for instance, like what is ethnic cuisine? What do you imagine? Do you imagine a French bistro? Or Spanish tapas? Or do you imagine like, you know, Indonesian food? Or Indian food? Like crack. I don't use that phrase. Addictive. I don't use that phrase. Guilt. I don't use any sort of language of guilt when I talk about food.
VT: Ugh, yes.
SH: Basic, right? You know but we get pitched on it all the time, right? Like as writers, you know, the guilt free pasta for summer 2020.
VT: Right.
SH: All that stuff is just. No, no.
VT: I was reading the piece that you did on the S.F. restaurant, Le Colonial. Am I saying that correctly?
SH: I don't know. We're not French. Who cares?
VT: Yes. Oh, my God. I always in my regular life, I intentionally, consistently mess up French. Like I'll say, “frights” instead of “frites.” Anywho, whatever, anyway. All that to say, you know, in the piece you're kind of talking about, these restaurants that are romanticizing eras that are in fact, very violent. And the allure of the restaurant from the person who is dining is that you are the person in power in that experience.
SH: Right. Yeah. I think a good place to start is thinking about, in any context, who is doing the serving and who's being served? And what, in what ways are those demographics, whatever normalized and, well, in what ways are they normalized in hierarchies that are present in that context? Right. So when I think about a restaurant like Le Colonial, which is essentially cos playing French colonial Indo-China, what they called Indo-China, like Vietnam, Cambodia. You know, the glory days before the revolution, before the uprising, before the French got kicked out. You're prompted to take on the positionality of the colonizer. You know, you are in a place that is kind of rustic, lots of mahogany everywhere. The people serving you are mainly people of color. The furniture is of that era. And it's just this moment of peace where everything is so secure, locked in, you know, before everything's upended by revolution, war. And to me, that's so troubling. Pleasure is really troubling. And maybe that has a lot to do with me and my shit.
SH: But anytime I feel like you are asked to or you're lulled into this sense of complacency. Of just accepting stimuli, I feel suspicious, you know. Because that's when you're the most susceptible to ideology. And restaurants are that place for a lot of people. Where our senses of gender are reinforced. Right. There are many restaurants still to this day where women, if they are in mixed company, they receive menus that don't have prices on them. And so many people realize, you know, their bodies don't fit the restaurant either. The chairs or the floor plan or whatever. And they're treated like furniture. So they're not only places of pleasure, but they're also places where who gets to feel pleasure. You know, there are assumptions based on who they are and what you bring to the place. So, you know, they're not ideologically empty places, restaurants. You know, for for many people with power, pleasure is derived from hierarchy. And it's derived from people being in the places that they're supposed to be. And sometimes that means not in your presence.
VT: Yes. Yes. Woah. I'm just letting that sink in. Yes
SH: On the other hand. Recently, I went to a restaurant in the mission for the first time called Prubechu which is Chamorro for Bon Appetit, essentially. And it is a Guamanian restaurant. And the chefs are really clear about how colonialism informs the food that they serve. Because Guam has been colonized, taken over, whatever, occupied by the U.S., Spanish, Japanese and had a lot of influence from the Philippines and China as well. So the food that they make, the Chamorro like the indigenous people, is very much you know full of spam and Chinese vegetables and sausages and like all kinds of things from all of these people. Vietnamese food is a similar thing. Filipino food is a very, very similar thing. Indigenous American food is similar, has a lot of those sorts of, you know, like with fry bread. Those those hallmarks of this is what we received and this is what we're gonna do with it, you know, and this is how we survive. In that way I find those stories so empowering and so interesting, you know, that even even when you are in this kind of culture that is treating you as something to be trampled under foot, you will still find ways to make something beautiful and sustaining and fulfilling for you and your family or your loved ones. And in that way, you know, you can even under conditions of extreme duress, create something amazing. And I just love that.
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SH: So for me, every article that I write or every review is an opportunity to really think about that and wrestle with that and try to change things just slightly And that's the sphere that I can influence, you know, as a food writer. I can't influence everything and everyone all at once. But if I can change this little thing, I can maybe die happy.
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[15:50] VT: Soleil is a radical presence in the food media world for a lot of reasons. For one, she shifts the perspective of the critic. There’s this concept I first learned about in graduate school -- it’s called positionality. It’s the acknowledgement that who you are influences how you think.
Food media has for a long time been dominated by wealthy white men’s voices. As a result, we’ve been taught to think about food the way they think about food. As if their positionality is the default way of seeing the world. But most of us aren’t wealthy white men, and acknowledging that frees us up to see that every single dish has a history and a context and that those things matter
That seems pretty obvious to me, but that simple acknowledgement is immediately seen as political. And what Soleil is doing - writing about how colonialism has affected Guamanian food, for example, makes some people feel very uncomfortable. More on that, after the break.
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[19:50] VT: We’re back. Before the break, we were talking about how Soleil is disrupting business as usual with her food writing.
SH: So there's a perception that I'm bringing politics into the genre. But the reality is politics have always been present. Just in ways that were acknowledged as you know, as nail sticking out of the board in the same way. I would also say that a lot of people kind of consider my, you know, my positionality as inherently radical. Right. And you hinted at that. But I think that what is more interesting, I think, because you couldn't be like me and you can look like me and you can, you know, want to have sex with people that I to have sex with. But you might want to just uphold the old ways of doing things anyway. You know what I mean?
VT: Yeah.
SH: So for me, I'm always wrestling with how do I maintain my politics, maintain like the way that I see the process and technique going in the way it should go while also not resting on my identity as like the inherently interesting thing about me. Because that's also the critique that I get from people who are in bad faith. But also there's a hint of truth there, who say, like I'm a diversity hire. You know? And I don't ever want to pretend or to just kind of shrug backwards into that. You know what I mean?
VT: Yeah I do know what you mean. Can we actually go back into your background? Like what was food like growing up for you?
SH: Yeah. So my family is Vietnamese. They're Vietnamese refugees. I'm the first of the first generation to be born in the US. My grandmother raised me when I was very young in Illinois, where my family was put. And then my mom moved my sister and I into New York to go into fashion, which is very exciting. And she was a single mom for most of the time. A lot of our meals were were like simple, like TV, dinner type things. But then like once in a while it would be delivery. Cause you know, in New York, we lived in Manhattan, everybody delivered. McDonald's delivered in the 90s, which is you know, nothing now. Everyone delivers.
VT: Did not know that. That's amazing. Continue.
SH: There's a number you could call that would route you to the nearest McDonald's. And it was 2 1 2 3 3 7 FAST.
VT: [laughs] I love that you remember this!
SH: And they actually remembered our orders after a while. Which was really embarrassing for my mom.
VT: What was your order?
SH: I think I would get like a cheeseburger happy meal. My sister would get the chicken nuggets. And so every time we would do it, my mom would fan out the menus, because there were physical menus back then. And she would ask so do you guys want Indian, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, like what you want? My palate was developed from that. You know, it wasn't just American or Vietnamese. It was all of this stuff I wanted to try, you know. Palaak paneer or, you know, a burrito or all this stuff. It was really cool in that way
VT: Was food- was there a point where food became fraught for you?
SH: Hm hmm hmm hmm. I can't think of the point. My mom was always on a diet like my whole life. And she would joke that we did it to her. Pregnancy. You know, she was always trying to lose that weight. And she was always much smaller than me. And so the point at which I outpaced her in size, that's when I was like, oh, should I be worried about this, you know? Right. She never compelled me to go on a diet or anything like that.
VT: Right.
SH: But it was more just- I was in a typical family where talking about weight was kind of a constant thing. It was just a way for people to make fun of you. So, yeah, that was that was that was a contradictory, like weird part of my upbringing that I think a lot of people probably could relate to. Where you're just- people are always talking about fat people and you're always afraid of fat people. Like the specter of fatness is always chasing you as they give you like that second helping of noodles or whatever. And it's like, whatever, guys. And so you realize over time like that this isn't about food.
SH: I luckily kind of escaped any sort of disordered feeling about food because it was my primary thing of interest besides video games. So if I lost that, I don't know what else I would have.
VT: Totally
SH: Yeah I think I tried to go on a diet once and I was just like a total failure. Cause like I didn't want to do it. Couldn't do it.
VT: Yeah I mean they suck pretty bad.
SH: Yeah, they do.
VT: You know, you're like you literally have a person's salary's worth of- that's your budget for eating for the year, right? So you have this incredible array of food experiences. Many of them are sort of in the traditionally referred to as like fine dining establishments. Can you talk about the role of fat phobia and food anxiety in those spaces?
SH: It's really interesting when people who are trying to insult me or whatever, because that happens, you know, people get really heated over restaurant reviews. You know, they talk about my weight, which is just funny to me. Like, what do you expect when you eat for a living? Like you're not going to be Gwyneth Paltrow.
VT: Well, I mean, but there is this kind of mythology of like that. Because our idea of a foodie is a thin person. Our idea of sort of somebody who is like this aspirational gourmand is consistently I mean, not only like a cisgender man, but also a thin person. And I kind of want to unpack that.
SH: Yeah. Yeah. Well I think it's as- the perception of the restaurant critic or the foodie or whatever is that they are an expert. And when you're an expert, you don't consume to excess. Right. And like when you have a body that's larger, that is a symbol of excess.
VT: Right.
SH: Right. It's a symbol of you not having control, whereas like expertise is the ultimate control.
VT: Yes.
SH: So like, how do you square that circle?
VT: Oh, Soleil. Yes. Yes.
SH: I think it's also kind of a function of do you- are you willing to respect a fat person? For a lot of people who don't think very hard about it, probably not, right. You know.
VT: Right.
SH: You're- the fat person is a joke. They're not someone you listen to. But, It takes a lot of work to to taste all this food. To eat all this food. And to actually like think deep thoughts about it beyond I had the steak, it was too salty. You know what I mean?
VT: [Laughing] Yes.
SH: You're not just taking one bite, OK, that was pretty good. And then, like, move on.
VT: Right.
SH: You know, like, that is a very shallow way of engaging. And you don't- you also wouldn't trust someone who only ordered one thing and left and then like wrote a whole article about it. It's real work. It's a real job.
VT: Yes.
SH: So for someone to insult me based on how I look or whatever is just completely like, what are you try-? It is nonsensical. You know, insult me for what I do.
VT: My emergence as someone who became interested in food in a nerdy way was highly connected with my experience of fatphobia. Essentially, right like I'm in high school, I'm horny, I'm a nerd. I desperately want a boyfriend and no one will date me because I'm a fat pariah. Right. And I turned to you know, a phone personal service. Essentially I started talking to older business men. All that to say, right? Like my first experiences going on dates were actually at fine dining establishments in San Francisco. Food became a site or a location of a lot of tension for me. Because I saw- I began to see not only these people like these white businessmen as these sort of heroic figures, because I could tell from how they were being treated by others that they were respected. In my mind, there is a sort of cross wiring that occurred around like white masculinity. Fine dining. Getting away from my roots. Do you know what I'm talking about? That kind of like circuitry that begins to occur.
SH: Yes, it's called ideology.
VT: I mean, do you have experience with this? I'm just curious, like, what what is your wiring like?
SH: Oh, God. That's a hell of a question. I think a lot of the way I think has very much been informed by really not liking myself. And I still don't really like myself. I never really liked myself. I disassociate constantly, you know. It's a very exercised muscle, my ability to kind of feel like an alien. And in later life, I've been able to use that to my advantage as an analytical kind of mode.
VT: Yes, I relate.
SH: Yeah. And I think it also made me feel very judgmental. But so like trying to figure out, OK, what's the line between my personal sense of pettiness and actually rigorous kind of study and thinking about how things are connected? You know, for me, that's been my struggle.
VT: Mm hmm.
SH: And also, like, why would I be judgmental if I'm shit? Like that doesn't make any sense. Right. See this is me talking to the therapist I don't have. Thank you.
VT: [Laughing.] Yes.
SH: But the thing is, there's so much that is kind of pulled in to that because there's like, you know, me being the child of refugees who don't really belong. And also not being able to speak to them in Vietnamese and not feeling like I belong with my family either. And then being the only out queer person in my family. Like all of this stuff.
VT: Yeah I mean, I kind of- I want to talk about this theme of belonging. Because I mean, as I've been talking to people, I've been thinking a lot and hearing a lot of stories about how food can be this locus of alienation or of belonging or of faking it or you know what I mean, or of feeling like you're passing or- and has all of these meanings. What does it- What does it have for you?
SH: Mmm. I love food. I love eating food. I love like tasting new things. At the same time, it's a reminder that pleasure hides so many things behind it. So for me, it's it's an embodiment of that anxiety of just like I can't trust this feeling of good because there's always something behind it. Which is true, though.
VT: Yeah, it is.
SH: It's not just paranoia. It's so-
VT: Right. But it's like the privilege is really the not having to have that thought.
SH: Yes. I find it really fascinating as a food critic because, you know, the things that a food critic is thought to like are very much, you know, demographically based.
VT: Right.
SH: To say it nicely. And the things that I like are very different. And it's a lot of people's jobs to figure out what I like. Me, personally.
VT: Right.
SH: What I enjoy. And so often when I see the dissonance in that, I'm just like, oh, wow, this is so interesting. When they try to appeal to me as if I were an old white man, I'm just like, whew. Like the easiest example is like when I went to the French Laundry, right?
VT: Yes.
SH: And the owner Thomas Keller, took me and my friend, a colleague to- on a tour. He showed us the wine room where they have like the tens of thousand bottles of wine. And I was like oh, wow that's coo, that's a lot. And then in the wine room, there's his humidor and then like they offered me a cigar. But I've never smoked a cigar in my life. And I was like, why? What like? First of all, I think of them as really gross. And when anyone smokes cigar near me, I'm just like, ugh what? Like what are you some like political cartoon? Like what is this?
SH: I would never offer anyone a cigar unless I knew for a fact like, oh, yeah, this guy, cigar freak. Just had a baby like, yeah, let's do it. You know, but like- So it was very much, it felt like an imposition that was strange. Are you are you offering this to someone who's not here? Like a ghost that's hovering behind me? Like, what is this?
VT: Yes.
SH: You know, I mean, in that way, I felt like they they were trying to appeal to someone that I wasn't.
VT: Like I don't- I don't even know if this is a question, but I'm kinda thinking about like this idea of you being a taste maker. You do- you your relationship to food has this entire- this utility that's really fascinating.
SH: Well, yeah. And in a lot of ways I am trying to change other people's relationships to food.
VT: Yes.
SH: You know? We know that taste isn't universal. When we think about cilantro people, for instance.
VT: Yes.
SH: For them, they taste soap. So in that way taste is very much personal. Like for so many people, taste is a personality. Whether you're talking about Star Wars or Italian wine or you know, anything else. Right. And that's when things get dangerous I think. Any sort of critique of that thing is going to drive you into a rage, you know, because that is an attack on you personally.
VT: Mm hmm.
SH: So that's one aspect of it that I have experience this year.
VT: Yes. You represent to maybe the person who's been reading the San Francisco Chronicle for a long time and reading the food section- you know, you represent, would you call it a threat to their world view? Or like what would you call that?
SH: I think for some yes. I think that's the only reason why people would send hate mail. Right. It's like, oh, obviously, they feel threatened or they're scared. They feel a violent objection to whatever I'm doing. That's the explanation that I have at least. Because you've invested so much money and time and travel or whatever in developing your sense of taste, if the person who is a tastemaker doesn't care about some or all of those things, then where does that leave you? And, you know, I think anyone who tries to kind of shake the foundation of like- for instance French food being superior or American food being superior or whatever, to the mongrel race food of brown people. You know, that's going to be seen as an attack.
VT: Yes. Well, I mean. Right. It seems to- maybe to the average person, it would seem kind of extreme for someone to write hate mail to a restaurant critic.
SH: Yeah. You would think. But they all claim to be normal people. So.
VT: Right. I mean- I guess this is sort of a theoretical existential question, but those are my favorite. What are you coming for? What do they feel like you're coming for? When they're writing this mail to you.
SH: Oh, God, I don't know. I mean, I think there's a portion of it that is like a generational kind of conflict. I think. Where I am just another millennial coming for boomers I guess. Or I'm just a hater and they can't abide that. Although why are you reading a restaurant review if you don't want to read any criticism of anything?
VT: Right.
SH: And, you know, for me to talk about things that are facts like colonialism. To use the word white. They're seen as like extremely radical. Sure, it’s inherently political, but everything is.
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SH: If I can change the way people think about, for instance, Vietnamese food and like why, why we consume it, why it looks the way it does. All that stuff. And maybe the next time they get to bun me, they think about it. They think about colonialism, they think about like, oh, wow. Like the resilience of these people for making this kind of food under the feet of French colonizers, that's so interesting. To me, that's that's really important, you know?
VT: Yes totally. Thank you so much for being here.
SH: Thank you. And thanks for all the squid.
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[37:15] VT: Recently I went into this little bookshop down the street from my house… I was looking for a gift for my boyfriend’s niece, Adeline. Adeline has long hair down to her waist, loves the movie Frozen, and pronounces my name “VOJIE.” She was turning four and we wanted to find her something for the burgeoning feminist.
And as I was browsing I picked up a book called Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story, by Kevin Noble Maillard. It goes: Fry bread is food. Fry bread is time. Fry bread is sound. Fry bread is us. And then there’s this page: Fry bread is history.. “The long walk, the stolen land, Strangers in our own world, with unknown food, we made new recipes, from what we had.”
And I stood there in the shop, thinking about fry bread and Soleil, and I felt so grateful that this beautiful little book summed up everything I hope to get at in Rebel Eaters Club.
I’ve spent this entire season talking with amazing people about food from different perspectives. Mia and I talked about how food is family. Bayley and I talked about how food is healing. Deb and I talked about how food is fun. Chef Fresh and I talked about how food is land. Shay and I talked about how food is comfort. And Soleil and I talked about how food is political... The food we have access to and how we prepare it has a history -- sometimes a violent one of turning wars, struggle, famine, resiliency, and hope into craft, into something nourishing, celebratory, connective, delicious. I hope this season of Rebel Eaters Club so far has helped you see food as more than calories or a commodity.
We’ve talked about diet culture too. That thing that gets in the way of understanding how complicated and powerful food is. It takes away the healing, the fun, and the potential that can come from our relationships with ourselves too, and with each other. I hope this season of Rebel Eaters Club has helped you begin the breakup with diet culture. It is long overdue, girl.
Because we are masses of stardust who have the limitless capacity to experience and share pleasure, connection, healing, delight, difficulty, and comfort - all on a full stomach.
For this week’s prompt: write a contract with your inner Rebel Eater. Maybe you have some thoughts about how you’d like to change your relationship to food, but you haven’t put them into practice yet? Maybe you’ve decided to stop using moralizing language around food. Maybe you’ve realized that commenting on your weight isn’t a practice that works anymore. Write these things down. This can be a living document. It can be a contract with yourself that you look back on and add to whenever you want.
If you want to share your thoughts, you can send them to us at rebeleatersclub@gmail.com, or leave us a voicemail at 862-231-5386 and your story could make it onto the show. That number is 862-231-5386.
When you’re done, don’t forget to give yourself the merit badge you EARNED: the FOOD IS LIFE badge. You can print it out on our website: RebelEatersClub.com. And show us what you’re eating! Tag us on social with hashtag rebel eaters club or @transmitterpods.
We’ll be back next week with an episode recorded live at our San Francisco launch event, and more of your voicemails.
I wanted to share this one this week, from Jordan in New Jersey.
I just finished listening to the episode with Chef Fresh who I love. They have such a good story and they made me think about a lot. I’m reflecting on my current challenge with food right now which is what is good nutrition separate from diet culture. What is my truth about my body separate from diet culture. Like I don’t fucking know what to be eating without thinking about what is going to make me fat and what is going to make me thin and that fucking pisses me off because it’s been ruling my whole life and I hate it. And so that’s my breakup letter. That’s the one i want to write. Because most of my life diet culture and white supremacy and colonialism and capitalism have been writing the narrative of what my truth is about my body. I will happily hear the next podcast when it comes out. Thanks so much. Bye
Rebel Eaters Club is an original podcast from Transmitter Media… the podcast company that’s like finding a stash of chocolate that you forgot you saved for yourself.
I’m Virgie Tovar. The show is produced by Lacy Roberts and Jordan Bailey. Our editor is Sara Nics. Gretta Cohn is our executive producer.
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See you next week!