Virgie Tovar

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.

It's okay to hate Thanksgiving. After years of gritting my teeth I finally gave myself permission to choose what I wanted to do.

I became aware that my body creates static in establishments dedicated to amazing food. As a fat person, I’m not supposed to be there. The fat body is the body of the undeserving poor, an aggressively unwelcome reminder of the world just outside the gorgeously appointed, impeccably designed restaurant.

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

I can say that dieting symbolized a lot of things for me. I work to claim a uniquely fat femininity that thrives when my belly is full.

I was introduced to the concept of ugliness when I was five years old. It was, for almost all intents and purposes, the totality of who I was. Fat was me. I was fat. I was taught that fat is the opposite of everything that is feminine, moral, and beautiful. Just like ugliness. But even though I still live in the awful world that made my traumatic childhood possible, I know for certain that ugliness isn’t a physical reality, it is a cultural fabrication. I truly believe that we are born with the capacity to see beauty in all things, and it is through the dispiriting reality of our cultural education that we lose that ability.

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.”

October is a busy month for me. It’s one of two peak periods for lecture bookings on university campuses.

Fatphobia morphs into a conversation about looks because fatphobia targets women. The bigotry is masked through this gendered decoy.

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