Virgie Tovar

Every inch of skin that can experience a breeze is urgently needed in Jamaica. This makes choosing the tank top and short shorts so much easier. It takes the thinking out of wearing very little clothes for me, and being scantily clad is still an exercise in vulnerability.

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

So as you can see, “polite” bigotry is just bigotry. It's manipulative. It's aggressive. And it hurts people. Speak up against polite fatphobia!

It took me a long time to bury the dream of being thin. For some people it doesn’t take much to let go, and for others it’s a slow series of awakenings.

It’s taken me a long time to write about this topic because I’m not an eating disorder specialist or clinician.

Shade is a resiliency tool constructed and wielded by those who have been forced to survive systems of unfairness. Shade isn’t polite, but everyone knows that the high road is over-sold to oppressed people! I knew I had to begin my own complete anthology of fat girl shade. And I thought I would start the chronicle here with Take the Cake. This tale is one from the vault, and it starts in high school.

Like, "Yum, there is a table full of delicious food" but also, "Ugh, am I gonna hate myself after I eat this?"

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.

My jaw clenches in judgmental discomfort whenever I think of any event with "BBW" in the title. To me, the term "BBW" is coded. When I hear that word, my eyes begin a preemptive roll as the keywords "heteronormativity," "hookup," "gendered labor," "mansplaining," and "ugh" scroll past the neon pink kiosk in my brain.

I’d like to enter the term “thinspreading” into the running for 2017's new word of the year. Fat people are expected to take up as little space as possible.