Virgie Tovar

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.

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.

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.

We forego doctor visits because we know with near-total certitude that we are going to be told to lose weight. That we don’t need care — we just need to “cut back.”

One of the things I have done for myself in adulthood as part of my healing process is make a strong claim to fatness femininity.

We wrote this article while driving from Yachats, Oregon to the northernmost tip of Oregon with a little Airstream named Bambi hitched to Jen’s car. We decided we wanted to share the three biggest lessons we’ve learned from roadtripping together:

My sad little girl brain remembers exactly what it feels like to risk everything and get rejected. It happened so many times for me during childhood and then later in my early dating years. I’ve created elaborate systems of avoidance, emotional self-control and pre-emptive rejection. And frankly, girl, I’m tired of it. It’s a lot of goddamn work.

2. Fat People Are In Survival Mode. I then moved onto a very basic reality: fatphobia is unjust, fat people are oppressed, fat people are being forced every, single day to navigate fatphobia while attempting to keep their dignity, heart, and spirit intact.

More than lip service to an unlikely situation, I needed accountability from my family. Small things that required less bravado, but more work. Just before Christmas, I experienced the moment that made our breakup crystallize.

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!