Virgie Tovar

I’d like to enter the term “thinspreading” into the running for 2017's new word of the year. Fat people are expected to take up as little space as possible.

This week I went to a networking event and had feelings about it. This is the story of those feelings. 

On Sunday night, I went on a Christmas tree hunting expedition.

Dieting isn’t just a practice; it’s a way of life. What do we do when we don’t have any more calories to count and we have to deal with the wide-open space left in their wake?

Every inch of skin that can experience a breeze is urgently needed in Jamaica. This makes choosing the tank top and short shorts so much easier. It takes the thinking out of wearing very little clothes for me, and being scantily clad is still an exercise in vulnerability.

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

A lot of people don’t know this, but fat activism has been around in the United States since the 1960s. Yes, it’s true!

Even children experience fatphobia. Children deserve to be treated with care and responsibility, free from the stigma we grew up knowing.

If you like the idea of being with a fat fetishist, I think you should do it. If you hate the idea, then don’t. If you want to experiment with it, try it.

One of my yearly rituals is making a list of things I’ve learned in the past year. So, I thought I would make public the list of things I’ve learned, and rather than just focus on one year, I thought I’d share my most important lessons from all the years I have been on this sacred poo-ball called earth.