Virgie Tovar

I have met many people who can't say no. We all benefit when we speak clearly and frequently about what we need in order to thrive.

As much as I love the idea of family, I actually like not being married, and I actually like not being a mother right now.

I know that not everyone has the same appetite for The Vent, but when it comes to doing work around diet culture and fatphobia, venting is a powerful tool. For people who are in the process of healing from diet culture, we are often wading through an enormous ocean of misinformation, gas lighting and dirty ol’ lies. Without access to venting, our emotions and thoughts occur in sort of a vacuum where we can easily talk ourselves out of what may well be very astute analysis.

“Chill” is, I think, a coded word that describes an environment where low expectations, low commitment, and zero accountability are considered normal.

How does a weight loss company sell weight loss products to people who don’t want to be fat but also don’t want to say they don’t want to be fat or identify as being on a diet? This question lives at the heart of what I’m going to call “BoPo-washing.” BoPo-washing is the new paradigm of companies using weight-neutral or body positive language in order to peddle products.

There are a lot of places where fat people don’t feel safe because of fatphobia. What does it feel like to feel safe in your fat body?

Fat people, we do not have to acquiesce to our culture's normalization of hierarchy. We do not have to turn the other cheek. Joy does not come at the expense of your dignity, of your humanity.

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

To me, being a spinster is a lot about prioritizing myself, my needs and my desires over the culture’s needs and desires for my life.

That’s the thing about I Feel Pretty, the narrative only makes sense when you consider how limited the onscreen life of everyone but white dudes gets to be.