Virgie Tovar

Dieting is a socially sanctioned method of mentally high-tailing out of whatever is going on and keeping you entirely in your head, laser-focused on your next bite, your scale, your plate.

The politics of food are the politics of class, and the subtlety of those politics creates a kind of deniability that makes it hard to discern the rules of engagement. One’s success in ascending the ladder is marked by fluency with these invisible boundaries.

One of the things that has become exceedingly obvious to me is how our current cultural attitudes toward fat people are steeped in bigotry.

My jaw clenches in judgmental discomfort whenever I think of any event with "BBW" in the title. To me, the term "BBW" is coded. When I hear that word, my eyes begin a preemptive roll as the keywords "heteronormativity," "hookup," "gendered labor," "mansplaining," and "ugh" scroll past the neon pink kiosk in my brain.

It's okay to hate Thanksgiving. After years of gritting my teeth I finally gave myself permission to choose what I wanted to do.

Read Part 1 here.

You were taught not to invest in yourself. You were taught to invest in the culture, which is bolstered by patriarchy, racism, etc..

When we both moved to San Francisco in our 20s, she moved to a wealthy neighborhood and I moved into a neighborhood where old men had phone sex on the pay phone at the laundromat. Our friendship threatened her world in a way that it didn’t mine. The people I knew had neither wealth to protect nor any desire to play at that game, and so their lives were inspired by a freedom I adored. The kind of freedom that allows you to talk about shitting and fucking over dinner.

One of the things I have done for myself in adulthood as part of my healing process is make a strong claim to fatness femininity.

It took me a long time to bury the dream of being thin. For some people it doesn’t take much to let go, and for others it’s a slow series of awakenings.