Virgie Tovar

That’s the thing about I Feel Pretty, the narrative only makes sense when you consider how limited the onscreen life of everyone but white dudes gets to be.

Recently there’s been an uptick in fatphobic derailments, and I thought it would be helpful to share them as well my responses to them.

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.

It was Nancy's thin privilege that obscured her ability to see what Barb saw in the Popular Kids, to make the social leap that Barb couldn't, and that led her to ultimately symbolically (and actually) leave behind their friendship when a more normative offer presented itself.

I told you I never wanted to speak to him again. I offered that we work together to rid him from our lives. I thought we had both made the realization that he was garbage, but in reality, only I had.

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.

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

The point is: no matter how wonderfully delicious a man (or anyone) is, once you’ve seen him sneeze, fall, eat peanut butter or chew loudly, if there’s nothing else (or mostly nothing else), then he will ultimately make your skin crawl. So, there’s no point after all, right? In doing things the way we know how to do them?

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

I was taught that weight loss was self-care, but then I did a bunch of research and realized dieting is actually the patriarchal destruction of my body.