Virgie Tovar

The first time I heard about the #DropThePlus campaign I was of two minds.

I thoroughly appreciate that there is a primary focus on self-love, but I also feel the painfully deep silence around the healing power of loving — and dating and sleeping with — other fat people.

What does it mean to want this body? What does it mean to fight for this brown, fat feminine body? In this culture, it means revolution.

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

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.

There is not a single path to self-love, and so you must become an engineer of that process. We have to feel lots of uncomfortable things.

I wanted the photos to record exactly how I looked and felt in those moments – double chin and all. I’d like to encourage you to take the leap!

What I’ve noticed, as a fat feminist, is that self-identifying as a feminist or an activist bears a different social cost depending on your body size.

I think there’s a special kind of burden placed on stigmatized people to pretend that everything is A-Okay. Would I be smiling if I was oppressed? Heck no.

A historian told me once to always be suspicious of anyone who used the word "progress" to describe the unfolding of events from past to present and from present to future. History is full of instances of change, she said, but it’s important to remember that change isn’t the same as progress.