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.

There had only been room for a persona - a sunshiney child-parent. My mother and grandmother had always fixated on my childhood. It finally made sense how the happiest time of their lives could be my darkest.

Resolution season is rough for many of us.

Why do men text me about their dicks all the time? Do thin women get this many texts about penises?

My boundaries around how people can talk to me about my body are very clear. I’d like to share with you four body boundary tips for a better holiday.

Fat positivity creates room for fat people to be seen with full humanity — not as failed thin people, but as complete and precious.

Jealousy is such an interesting thing to me. As immediate and intense as it feels when it hits, it has always struck me as a secondary — a smokescreen for something else.

I have seen the same tropes of fat people for the entirety of my life. Personally, I am so ready for a remake on what fat people are capable of doing and being.

Like many women and girls, I was taught that confidence is a commodity that we can use to attain romantic and sexual attention from men. We spend a lot of money and energy trying to capture that elusive sense that we are worth a damn. But for me, healing has become my primary focus and it has led to major shifts in my sense of self, more clarity about what I need, and a deeper relationship to my desire.

I got tired of waking up and being terrified for my health and so I decided to do what I’d been taught to do in moments of distress: craft.