Virgie Tovar

Last week I posted an image of myself on Instagram, middle finger raised, in front of an enormous ad that said “Power to the Thinnest.”

It all started with a text from my roomie, Kori: "I am manifesting lying out, and getting some sun on my cooch."

One of the things that has become exceedingly obvious to me is how our current cultural attitudes toward fat people are steeped in bigotry.

I’m a fat brown girl from an immigrant family. I grew up learning that no one would ever love me because I’m fat. I was taught that I have to work twice as hard to get half as much. If someone looks at me weird or says something rude to me, I always see it or hear it and I have a massive (exhausting) anxiety/adrenaline rush/aggro response/comedown cycle. I feel like I have to fight to maintain dignity and humanity every, single day.

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.

Earlier this month I flew into JFK for the Glamour Women of the Year Awards (WOTY, for short) and took selfies with Gabourey Sidibe!

I saw my boobs as a way to get me into the secret world of feminine desirability, so I played them like they were my winning hand. I created an entire story about my sexuality that centered my breasts because they felt like the only normal — or maybe extraordinary — thing about my body. I think I hoped that I could use them to get some precious ween (obvi), but also to get MORE.

Fat girl trauma, brown girl trauma, sexist trauma, class trauma. It’s time to start seeing our gifts, or handout an invoice for fat girl emotional labor

My boundaries around how people can talk to me about my body are very clear. I’d like to share with you four body boundary tips for a better holiday.

If you asked me to guess what was going through her head, I would say she was in shock that a fat lady would wear a tight skirt, belly in full sight. This feminist act of taking up space, tacitly but clearly making room for myself in a fatphobic culture, is a bold-but-crucial move if you’re my brand of fat babe.