90: How Has Purity Culture Shaped Eating Disorder Experiences? with Rebecca Wolfe

“”In our culture, food is sin, as is taking pleasure from it. When you pour that onto this [Protestant] environment that is already so cruel to bodies, disembodiment is encouraged, and women are constantly surveilling their own body to see how it is perceived by this male gaze, and trying to anticipate that, making it simultaneously attractive yet steering way clear of being sexy, because that’s to be sinful. It creates this impossible double bind.”
— Rebecca Wolfe
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If you grew up in the early 2000s, you might remember the American push for True Love Waits, abstinence only-sex education, and purity rings being sported by celebrities like Jessica Simpson or the Jonas Brothers. Known as Purity Culture, this Protestant evangelical movement emphasizes sexual purity through abstinence… but beyond sex, how has the culture shaped how women understand their bodies, experiences with food, or informed the broader American diet culture?

My guest this week is Rebecca Wolfe, who is currently a doctoral candidate in the department of Social and Behavioural Sciences at UCSF. She is interested in the intersection of race, class, gender, religion, embodiment and eating disoders. Her current work is focused on the impact of the Protestant, Evangelical movement known as “Purity Culture” on the development and manifestation of eating disorders in people assigned female at birth and raised within the movement.

Learn More About Rebecca: 

89: #BakeupwithJerrod - Exploring the Transformational Power of Baking and Makeup with Jerrod Blandino

“A recipe can bring back somebody you’ve lost for the moment that you’re baking it, or the moment you’re eating it… you feel that love, and you can transform your kitchen through that love, by baking those recipes that mean something to you. It becomes so much more than a bake, it becomes emotional.”
— Jerrod Blandino
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If there’s one thing a lot of us have been doing since the start of COVID last spring, it’s returning to our kitchens – sometimes to help us grieve, sometimes to find joy, and sometimes just for needed sustenance. But there’s something about baking in particular that has re-emerged as an incredible source of joy and heart.

My guest this week is Jerrod Blandino, and he is here to talk about how his personal experiences baking have transformed into something much bigger and community based.

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Jerrod is the Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Too Faced, a beauty brand he launched with Jeremy Johnson in 1998. Blandino got his start working behind the Estee Lauder makeup counter in the 1990s, and through working one-on-one with clients, he quickly discovered the transformative power that makeup had on women. While he loved working behind the counter, one of his main goals was to create a fun and unique makeup brand that would inject joy back into an industry that was rigidly defined by rules. With a credit card, laser-like focus, and a dream to celebrate and empower women, Too Faced Cosmetics was born.

Over twenty-two years, Blandino’s out of the box creativity helped pave the way to make the bran grow into a multi-million dollar business. Aside from Beauty, Blandino’s other greatest passion in life is baking, and many of Too Faced’s product names are a nod to this - if you’ve ever used Too Faced products, you’ll immediately think about the captivating food-inspired and infused scents that many of their products have – there are cocoa contours, peach eye shadow palettes, and cinnamon bear lip plumpers… it’s really like a candyland dream come true!

In 2019, he began baking more seriously, and started an IGTV series, #BakeupwithJerrod, which has racked up thousands of views and features celebrity guests. Today, Jerrod is here to talk about his revamped IGTV Bakeup series, and shares how he takes inspiration from the beauty of the natural world to bring to his beauty and baking experiences. I don’t know if it’s obvious yet, but I’m a huuuge fan of Too Faced cosmetics, so being able to interview Jerrod on the intersections of beauty and food is really a dream come true for me!

Learn More About #BakeupwithJerrod!

88: Re-imagining Colonial Binaries in the Relationship Between Sikhi and Alcohol with Manvinder Gill

“To be a Punjabi male means that you can drink a lot, it’s a sign of your masculinity. It’s perpetuated through Punjabi music, through the upper caste Jat identity… This idea that this infallible text is telling me I can’t drink alcohol - that’s not a concept that’s easily graspable. It becomes an unhelpful conversation to say that Sikhi says no to alcohol, because there are all these other facets playing a role. ”
— Manvinder Gill
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What role does religion play in cultural attitudes and practices towards drinking alcohol? Is it possible to look at one element without accounting for the other? And how does gender inform how religious and cultural identities are understood or enforced? 

My guest this week is Manvinder Gill, a researcher interested in the intersections of alcohol and Sikhi. She recently finished her MA in religious studies at McMaster University. Her thesis interrogated the ways colonialism and intergenerational trauma influence problems with alcohol in the Sikh-Canadian community. Outside of the academy, Manvinder is the co-lead at Asra: The Punjabi Alcohol Resource (asranow.ca), a grassroots organization that serves as a starting point for Punjabi families who struggle with alcohol use. Currently, Manvinder is pursuing her Master of Social Work at the University of Toronto.

She's on the show today to explore the results of this research, highlighting the complexities of alcohol consumption and problems with alcohol for Sikh-Canadian communities, the role that masculinity plays in this relationship, and how the colonial binaries of good/bad can be re-imagined for better harm reduction approaches. 

Learn more about Manvinder!

87: Are Local Food Movements Elitist? with Paul O. Mims

“The local, slow food movement romanticized everything, and created a dichotomy that if you don’t eat organically, from local food sources, from farmers, you’re not doing it right. You’re not eating right, you’re not caring about the environment, you’re not caring about yourself… It’s not realistic, there are people who can’t afford it! You have to use what you have. ”
— Paul O. Mims
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It’s been a while since I’ve put out an episode, so I am extra excited to get these episodes rolling out again. These are a continuation of season 6 that got a bit de-railed after a provincial lockdown up here in Ontario. Today, we’re back on our regular interviews, and this one is an episode I’ve been SO pumped to share since the moment we sat down for this talk.

When we talk about the food system and all its faults, the overwhelming trend in the last twenty years has been, well… we just have to eat local. But what does that actually mean, and is it accessible to eat local, or is it an elitist bandaid solution to the much bigger societal problems it’s trying to skirt?

My guest this week is the phenomenal food writer, creator, and educator Paul O. Mims, who is on the show to explore the elitism of local food movements and his unique and refreshing lens as a food writer. Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Paul began cooking at six years old with his grandmother. He's run culinary programs at a public library, worked as a museum educator at New York’s premier food and beverage museum, taught at public schools worked as a community organizer conducting community food access programs, and even teaching cooking as a drag queen. Paul's unique and expansive career is so easily showcased in his food writing as well: he has that very rare ability of being incredibly concise but also able to bring so many considerations in when exploring key issues in the food world.

This week he’s on the show to explore one of the essays he’s written on Medium unpacking the local food scene. We look at how the local food movement started, and Paul explores how the public started to romanticize agriculture, and how white women’s moralities began to shape and take hold of the ethics of food consumption in the 21st century.  If you grew up in the era of Food, Inc, feeling stressed about Michael Pollan telling you what to eat and how to eat it, this is one of those conversations that really takes a step back and assesses the amount of damage that these movements and their elitism has had on the food world, and I have been so looking forward to sharing this with you.

Learn More About Paul! 

86: Seedkeeping and Land Back with Tiffany Traverse of 4th Sister Farm

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Today’s interview is really special for me to share with you all, because my guest is someone I’ve formed a really wonderful friendship with through the podcast community – I’m fairly certain we connected through one of my former guests, Trina Moyles – and being able to sit with her today after years of both of us growing our work and cheering each other on means a lot. So! Now that I’ve set the stage, I will introduce our fabulous guest for today… Tiffany Traverse!

Tiffany’s self described as a Secwépemc and Swiss-Italian Seed Keeper, chicken chaser, Zone 2 stretcher, and Fourth Sister to the land. She’s been experimenting and working on cultivating, saving, and sharing Indigenous vegetable and herb seed varieties through Fourth Sister Farms.

Today she speaks with me on the work she’s doing at Fourth Sister Farm and how it connects to a broader community of seed keepers across Turtle Island to foster Indigenous food and land sovereignty. We also speak to the importance of Land Back and the ways we can do more to help Indigenous land and water protectors continue their efforts.

Learn More About Tiffany and 4th Sister Farm! 

More Land and Seed Resources

85: How Food "Authenticity" Commodifies Identities with Jenny Dorsey

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We’ve seen food media really start to crack when grappling this summer with who can cook what, and for who. The power that recipe production and food media has on flattening complex marginalized identities into harmful stereotypes while white chefs appropriate cultural dishes for their own prestige has become a much bigger conversation. But how does the idea of authenticity shape power and privilege in cooking? And what are the particular ways that commodifying identities can harm BIPOC chefs and restaurant owners?

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Today chef and activist Jenny Dorsey is here to explore these further. She founded and runs the incredible Studio ATAO, a non-profit that creates immersive experiences at the centre of food, art, and social impact. Jenny is a first-generation Chinese American who has worked in Michelin-starred restaurants. In 2014, she pivoted to impact-driven culinary work, which eventually led to the formation of Studio ATAO. It’s best known for Asian in America, a public exhibition that explores the narrative of Asian American identity through food and drink courses, VR, spoken word, and poetry, and they’re also know for their free, collaborative community resources that address social impact topics.

Since the onset of the pandemic, she and her team have put their public and live events on hold, but they’ve continued to create online content and educational resources that address pertinent issues in the food world and beyond, from Recognizing, Disrupting & Preventing Tokenization in Food Media to Understanding Anti-Intellectualism.

Today on the show we’re unpacking the idea of authenticity in food, and how it ties in deeply to the commodification of marginalized identities, as well as the ways she’s challenging this through her exhibits, resources, and impact-driven culinary work. 

Learn More About Jenny & Studio ATAO!