Virgie Tovar

I’m a fat brown girl from an immigrant family. I grew up learning that no one would ever love me because I’m fat. I was taught that I have to work twice as hard to get half as much. If someone looks at me weird or says something rude to me, I always see it or hear it and I have a massive (exhausting) anxiety/adrenaline rush/aggro response/comedown cycle. I feel like I have to fight to maintain dignity and humanity every, single day.

A couple of weeks ago I got an email that contained a question I never thought I’d be asked.

The wound of codependency leaves a haunting question in its wake: Do I actually matter? Diet culture’s answer to fat people is: no.

I saw my boobs as a way to get me into the secret world of feminine desirability, so I played them like they were my winning hand. I created an entire story about my sexuality that centered my breasts because they felt like the only normal — or maybe extraordinary — thing about my body. I think I hoped that I could use them to get some precious ween (obvi), but also to get MORE.

A historian told me once to always be suspicious of anyone who used the word "progress" to describe the unfolding of events from past to present and from present to future. History is full of instances of change, she said, but it’s important to remember that change isn’t the same as progress.

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

Fat people often get so little attention that feels positive. When someone offers exploitative attention or exploits fat people it can feel really good.

Last week I posted an image of myself on Instagram, middle finger raised, in front of an enormous ad that said “Power to the Thinnest.”

Fat Girl Scarcity — the sense that we are not enough or that we don’t have enough — permeates the life of a person in a marginalized body.

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?