Virgie Tovar

I understand the connections between the violence that leads to police shootings and the violence that leads people to starve themselves. I know with complete certainty that diet culture is a manifestation of the state’s expectation of assimilation and of social control, both of which are manifestations of institutional violence.

I think a lot of us are probably walking around with mild PTSD, anxiously calculating risk and making plans about what and who to avoid.... Even though I’m no longer technically walking the halls of junior high, I am living in a fitness-obsessed city that doesn’t feel as safe as it ought to considering almost everyone is over age 13.

This week I have been thinking a lot about home, and how home shapes the way we feel about our bodies.

Though there was useful commentary, deeply personal stories, and some incisive observations, my problem with the episode is that it ultimately repeats a harmful framework:
Fat people (nearly all women) were on trial and up for observation (their privacy already considered non-existent) — not the fatphobic bias that had so clearly shaped their lives.

Resolution season is rough for many of us.

Last week I was sitting anywhere between nineteen and thirty-seven feet from Kevin Bacon.

Weight gain is — in my anecdotal experience — quite common once you stop attempting to control your weight. My story is not everyone’s story.

Affection or attention that relies upon body conformity is not love — it’s exploitation. I’m here to tell you once and for all: your body is yours.

This week in Babecamp we were talking about Sarai Walker’s novel Dietland.

I hadn't been to a club like this one — the kind full of straight men who are probably homophobic and at least a little coercive, who smell like Old Spice deodorant and have enough disposable income to keep an open tab (the kind of men I'd been taught were "a catch") — for a very, very long time. I tried to remember exactly how long. A decade? More?