Virgie Tovar

I don’t drink much, and embarrassingly I don’t even know how to smoke, but I do have a tendency to use experiences the way addicts use substances, because I learned addictive behavioral frameworks growing up.

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.

Like many women and girls, I was taught that confidence is a commodity that we can use to attain romantic and sexual attention from men. We spend a lot of money and energy trying to capture that elusive sense that we are worth a damn. But for me, healing has become my primary focus and it has led to major shifts in my sense of self, more clarity about what I need, and a deeper relationship to my desire.

When it comes to plus-size fashion, we’re all outsiders to this world — a world that makes amazing garments in our size and welcomes us with open arms full of bubbly water and tiny cakes.

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Fat people, we do not have to acquiesce to our culture's normalization of hierarchy. We do not have to turn the other cheek. Joy does not come at the expense of your dignity, of your humanity.

I hadn't been to a club like this one — the kind full of straight men who are probably homophobic and at least a little coercive, who smell like Old Spice deodorant and have enough disposable income to keep an open tab (the kind of men I'd been taught were "a catch") — for a very, very long time. I tried to remember exactly how long. A decade? More?

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.

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

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.