Virgie Tovar

One of my favorite ways to help people conceptualize patriarchy is by asking them to imagine a Chuck E. Cheese.

Two weeks ago, I was in West Lafayette, Indiana. I flew into Chicago at around midnight, and I was picked up by new friend and hostess, Mel.

Dieting is a socially sanctioned method of mentally high-tailing out of whatever is going on and keeping you entirely in your head, laser-focused on your next bite, your scale, your plate.

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

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.

Sharon is so intensely interesting to me in The Sinner. We get to see a fat woman who is over thirty exercise extraordinary sexual power.

After years and years of fatphobia-induced body dysmorphia, it’s hard to actually just see my body with anything approaching objectivity. But when I finally looked at the photos of myself in my underwear, I knew there was nothing that fatphobia or my inner asshole could do to take away the beauty and the magic that was right before my eyes.

When we both moved to San Francisco in our 20s, she moved to a wealthy neighborhood and I moved into a neighborhood where old men had phone sex on the pay phone at the laundromat. Our friendship threatened her world in a way that it didn’t mine. The people I knew had neither wealth to protect nor any desire to play at that game, and so their lives were inspired by a freedom I adored. The kind of freedom that allows you to talk about shitting and fucking over dinner.

On Sunday night, I went on a Christmas tree hunting expedition.